Stanley Schmidt - The Sins Of The Fathers

A faster-than-light spacecraft is actually a time machine. It can "catch up" to events that happened in the past. But it can also reveal the harsh realitites of the future.

When we finally jumped back into normal space, the three of us uncovered one of the big ports and gathered around it, drinking in the stars with a sense of relief and exhilaration I can't begin to describe. I'm a stable man - otherwise I wouldn't have had a chance at this job - but nobody can spend two months in a tin can, cut off from all direct evidence that the rest of the universe exists, without its getting to him at least a little. So it was a great feeling to be back among real, glowing stars.

Of course, the stars themselves reminded us we were a long way from home. The constellations don't change quite as much as you might think in a hundred and thirty light-years, but they change a lot - enough so we couldn't find any part of the sky to feel at home with. And the thought that we had, in a sense, also gone a hundred and thirty years into Earth's past didn't help us feel any less isolated.

For a moment I almost grasped the full reality of our situation, and I shivered a little. Dirk Borowski, the skipper, felt it too. "The mind boggles," he said, very quietly. "Three of us out here, over a hundred light-years from any other member of our species. And some of them are star-hopping too - though closer to home. Who would have thought we'd be so far so soon?"

We were silent-for a while. Then Lewiston, the astronomer behind our mission, slapped both hands down against his sides as if to shatter our mood and turned away from the port. "Well," he announced, "we're here and we have work to do. I hope your timing was good, Skipper." And he walked briskly away to start his observations of S Andromedae. I never got any idea how much he shared our feelings when the stars came back. I'd already learned that he kept any feelings he might have neatly hidden behind a perpetual grin that reminded me of a mild-mannered Cheshire cat, and this was no exception.

I followed him across the cabin. He stopped and activated a large curved screen. Mostly, it darkened, but pinpoint images of stars, accurately brightness-coded, sprang into being all over it. I checked the automatic instruments that were to carry out a dozen other experiments, then activated another screen similar to Lewiston's. It would show me the entire sky either as we actually saw it from here or as astronomers on Earth had predicted we should - and by asking the computer to compare the two views and point out discrepancies, with little red circles on the screen, I might discover significant things never before suspected.

There were three red circles, and one of them, in a region of dense star-clouds, I couldn't explain away. "Dr. Lewiston," I said, "I've found an anomaly."

"Just a minute, Mr. Turabian. I'm busy right now." While I waited, it seemed to me that something about the anomaly's location should be ringing a bell in my mind. But I wasn't used to seeing the sky from this viewpoint...

When Lewiston saw it, his grin seemed to increase a little - although changes in it were always so slight as to be uncertain. "Interesting, all right," he muttered "Wouldn't want to get my hopes up, but it could be a fresh supernova right here in our galaxy. Even better than S Andromedae. Talk about serendipity!"

It was serendipity, all right, but not the way he was thinking. By that time I'd clarified in my mind what was special about the anomaly's position. "Do you suppose there's any special significance in its being in that direction?" I asked.

For a full second, his Cheshire grin deserted him completely. And that I found frightening.

- From the trip journal of Jonel Turabian

I

Henry Clark, Lieutenant Commissioner of Grants, stood in the main cabin of the newly returned Archaeopteryx and watched, slightly dazed by the events of the last few hours, as two white-coated attendants led Donald Lewiston out into the Florida sun. The once-eminent astronomer looked only slightly more unkempt than before the trip, with the same plain and slightly sloppy suit and the same token collection of brown hairs plastered radially around his bald spot, but his face had changed immeasurably. There was a dazed blank-ness in his eyes now that was chilling to behold, and he let himself be led away with neither resistance nor cooperation of any kind.

Only minutes earlier, Clark had watched other attendants remove the corpse of Skipper Bocowski from the ship's freezer, cover it, and wheel it on a cart through the same door. And he still had only the dimmest possible understanding of what had happened.

For him, it had begun with the urgent message that the Archaeopteryx was on the verge of landing - and that Ship's Mate Jonel Turabian was in command and wanted to see Clark and nobody but Clark when he arrived. Now Turabian emerged from the automatic debriefing chamber that had been brought aboard and said quietly, "I'm sorry this has to be your first look at our triumphant return, Mr. Clark. I guess you can see now why I didn't want anybody coming aboard right away except you and a few attendants you could trust."

Clark nodded absently, noting at the same time that his glasses were pinching his nose and he would have to get them fixed. "Yes, of course. Quite a mess. I'm still not clear on what, happened. You say Dr. Lewiston went berserk and attacked Borowski?"

"Yes. From behind. With one of our bulkhead tools, which is basically a very big wrench with several special-purpose attachments." Turabian, young, slender, and dark-skinned, was carefully and thoroughly conditioned both physically and mentally, and Clark envied his calm self-control under the present circumstances. Of course, he had had a lot of time to adjust to them... "I managed to pull him off and subdue him, but too late," Turabian said.

"A pity," said Clark. "You tried, anyway. What do you suppose happened to unsettle him like that? Lewiston, I mean."

Turabian shrugged. "It happened in super-c. Can you imagine what that's like? When you're going faster than light, you can't see any of the normal objects. And if you look out a port, there's nothing there. Absolutely nothing. So you learn not to look out ports - but when you're in super-c week after week without a break, you're likely to think about it now and then. The Rao-Chang drive is so new there's no medical data to back me up, but I'd bet that that feeling of isolation can be rough on the marginally stable. And I'd say Lewiston fit that description. I guess it just got to him."

Clark raised an eyebrow. He was unused to hearing one of the world's top astronomers described in such terms. "Oh?"

"I'd say so. Did you know him, Mr. Clark?" "Slightly."

"You may have noticed his facial expression. He grinned - always. It wasn't an unpleasant grin, but it was always the same, so you could never tell what he was thinking. I think it was a mask he cultivated deliberately. He always seemed unemotional, but I've got a hunch that a good deal went on inside, with a tight lid on it. The grin was all you saw until the lid blew - but if there was enough under the lid, it might not take much to blow it." Clark nodded noncommittally. He hadn't known the man well, but from the little he remembered and the little he knew about psychology, Turabian's explanation might be plausible. Still, it was shocking to think of the astronomer suddenly turning on the captain of the ship whose launching he had inspired. Committing violent, senseless murder...

He changed the subject. "We should try to remember Dr. Lewis-ton as he was. Did he get the spectra he wanted from S Andromeda?"

"Yes. They're quite good." "And you brought them back safely?"

"Yes. Those, and the results of all the other experiments we were commissioned to do. We were all finished with those and well on our way home before - "

"Good." Anxious to avoid, for the moment, getting back to the murder (was it murder if Lewiston was insane at the time?), Clark asked quickly, "Could you show me some of your findings?"

"I'd rather not now, if you don't mind." Turabian looked past the still-open hatch at the sunshine and landing field and the blue sky and tropical plants and ocean beyond. He smiled apologetically. "A little later, certainly. But please remember I've just been through the same months of isolation as Lewiston. Plus witnessing that grisly incident on board and then having to bring the ship home single handedly while babysitting a helpless, demented astronomer. What I need more than anything else right now is a booster shot for my own sanity - like a couple of days of quietly wandering around out there soaking up the atmosphere of good old Earth."

"I understand." Clark hesitated briefly, then added, "But it's possible that some of the others with experiments on the Archaeopteryx will hear that she's back and start badgering us for information. And, distasteful as it is, the Foundation will certainly have to have an immediate inquiry to formulate an official report on this business - and a way of handling PR when the news breaks. We should be able to get in touch with you if necessary. Could I persuade you to carry a -pocket communicator?"

"Well... O. K. But please don't bother me unless it's absolutely necessary."

"We'll do our best. Thanks, Jonel. And in case nobody's mentioned it, welcome home." They left the ship together, crossed a strip of field still clear of all personnel in accord with Turabian's pre-landing stipulations, and stopped in at the Foundation's port office to pick up a communicator. "Take a couple of good days to unwind," Clark told Turabian as he handed him the tiny instrument, "and then we should be able to get everything sorted out in a week or so."

Turabian went out. As soon as he had left, Clark got on the phone to Joe Sanchez, the Foundation's chief counselor, in New York. When he got an answer, he didn't even try to keep the .worry out of his voice. "Joe, I'm down at Kennedy Spaceport and we have a real mess on our hands. Can you come down right away and talk it over?"

Turabian went to his quarters, making sure nobody he knew was around, and changed into a tan outfit that he felt sure would be inconspicuous. He did indeed need time to unwind - among other things - and being recognized by tourists, with the resulting celebrity treatment, wasn't the way to do it. He didn't need to worry about intentional publicity, of course - Clark had every incentive to keep his return as quiet as possible, as long as possible. But it was worth a little conscious effort to blend quietly into his surroundings.

He felt a little guilty about not letting Sandy know he was back, of course. Once or twice he almost decided to call her, but then stopped himself. He wanted to see her, but it would have to wait. Right now he really needed to be alone, away from everybody else. Even Sandy.

Wearing sunglasses adjusted to then- darkest setting, he hopped an uncrowded ground shuttle and rode it to a seaside park he knew a few miles down the coast. It had a narrow mile-long strip of light sandy beach between the ocean and a group of tropical gardens, with enough paths winding among the lush vegetation to provide effective solitude for quite a while. He strolled them slowly, savoring the impressions of Earth that flowed to him through all his senses. The isolation of super-c, and the realization that he was alone with two others over a hundred light-years from all other men, had brought a kind of awesome exhilaration, but being back was a more than welcome change of pace. Out there, there were no sea breezes bringing him that salty smell with- The musical accompaniment of breakers on the beach. There was no feel of warm sand underfoot. There were no palms waving against a backdrop of massive white cumulus clouds in a deep blue sky that stretched, wide open, to the horizon.

No, he thought with a slight chuckle, remembering space even as he sought to re-attune himself to Earth, but there are other things. Things that palm trees can't replace any more than they can replace , palm trees. I'll be back, someday.

Gently, he nudged his mind back to Earth. He stayed on the beach for a long time, occasionally wandering to the water's edge but more often using the twisting paths to avoid the park's few,, other visitors. Gradually he relaxed and began to feel at home.

And then the other thoughts began to surface. O. K. - let them. He would have to face them soon enough, and he wanted to be calm and relaxed when he did. That was why he had come out here.

He had not been entirely candid with Clark, and that bothered him a little. He hadn't told any lies, but he had selected his pieces of truth with care, and he was sufficiently attached to openness and honesty that even that bothered him. He would feel more at ease when everything was out in the open.

Of course I'm going to tell them, he thought defensively, as if answering some accuser inside his head. I just need time to think it over. Want to make absolutely sure it's the right thing to do.

Such thoughts, of course, implied doubt. That had been. Lewiston's undoing. Doubt. Well, there was doubt. It was important to be sure he was doing the right thing. But eventually he would have to make a decision and live with it, whatever its consequences.

The thoughts began to churn in his mind, goading him toward action. A part of his mind was back aboard the Archaeopteryx, hopping from scene to scene,, sampling snatches that seemed immeasurably far away and at the same time vivid and urgent.

"Maybe," Lewiston said over and over, each time introducing some scholarly string of qualifiers. "But none of that matters, because there" - he pointed to the screen - "is the reality."

It was starting to come back to me now, and I didn't like it. I asked him about the other indications, and he nodded. "Dangerously?" I asked.

"I'm not sure," he said. "We're not well-instrumented in that area. And I'm not a biologist."

We talked some more. Details blurred, they don't matter. Then I heard Lewiston say, "After all, they have a hundred and thirty years."

"They don't have a hundred and thirty years," I corrected bluntly, amazed that he would forget the cosine factor. He must really be rattled.

Turabian's mind snapped back to the present. The sun was getting low beyond the trees to the west, and his wandering thoughts had filled him with a fresh sense of urgency. If he caught a shuttle right away, he could still get into a town and get a few things done tonight.

Let's see, he thought as he turned, checked his pockets, and started with sudden briskness for an exit. A library, certainly... and a doctor...

"Archaeopteryx," Joe Sanchez mused idly, still experimenting to find the most comfortable position for his huge frame in the chair Clark had provided. "Odd name for a ship like that. Any special reason for it?"

"More or less." Clark, seated behind the big steel desk and still unnerved by the whole affair, wished Sanchez would quit beating around the bush. But he knew that was unlikely. Sanchez would come to the point in his own good time, and until then there was nothing to do but go along with him and try to appear patient. "The archaeopteryx was the first bird, its modern namesake is one of the first star-ships, based on the fundamental breakthrough Rao and Chang made a few years before the turn of the century. But even more than that, from our point of view, the original archaeopteryx was a bird of the past. That's what our ship was supposed to be."

Sanchez, in the process of lighting a cigar, lifted his shaggy eyebrows and blew a cloud of smoke out through his mustache. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

"You haven't been following this? Well, Donald Lewiston heard a couple of remarks in his youth that stuck with him and so I guess they're sort of behind this whole project. The first was by a man named John Campbell - back when going to the Moon was big news - to the effect that what astrophysics needed most was not bigger and better telescopes or spectroscopes, but a time machine. Lewiston was one of the first - or at least most vocal - to recognize that the Rao-Chang FTL drive could provide some of the same advantages."

Sanchez looked interested but didn't speak. After a brief pause, Clark went on, "The other remark that influenced Lewiston came from a professor he had as an undergraduate. Do you know what a supernova is?"

Sanchez nodded. "When a star goes bang?"

"Right. A bigger-than-average bang. There hasn't been one in our galaxy for centuries, but in 1885 there was one right next door - S Andromedae, in the great spiral galaxy M31. An unusually favorable location for study - except that photographic spectroscopy wasn't well-developed yet. Lewiston's professor's remark was simply that if S Andromedae had been just twenty years later - or a thousandth of a percent farther away - we would now know far mote about super-novae than we do."

Sanchez grunted. "And so Lewiston wanted to take this... er... 'time machine' back to 1885 for a better look?" "In a manner of speaking. Not in every sense, of course - no Inee.ting Great-grandma as a young girl or anything like that. But the light that came past Earth in 1885 was now a little over a light-century past us, and since the Rao-Chang drive can move much faster than light, it would be a fairly simple matter to go out and overtake it. That way we'd get a look at-the same view we missed in 1885. It would even be as bright, for all practical purposes, since a light-century is a very small fraction of the total distance the light traveled"

Sanchez knocked a long ash off his cigar. "A cute idea," he said. "But you said it went out over a hundred light-years. That's a lot farther than any of the other Rao-Chang ships have gone. I'm surprised the Foundation approved it so soon - especially just for one man to go look at one star."

"It almost didn't. The other ships are looking for colony sites, the Archaeopteryx was a purely scientific venture, and the Foundation did indeed balk at supporting it. But Lewiston was determined, and despite the popular picture of him as shy and mild, he could be shrewd and even ruthless when he was after a grant. When we made it clear that we wouldn't risk a trip of that length and potential danger just for his supernova spectra, he conned a dozen other influential astronomers and physicists into letting him run experiments for them on the same trip. They wouldn't have to go along - the instrumentation could be so automated that the ship needed no crew beyond one pilot, one full-fledged astronomer, and a mate who could double as the astronomer's assistant. So he finally convinced us that the scientific value could be made commensurate with the cost and risk of life." Clark smiled self-consciously. "In fact, some of us had very high hopes for this expedition."

Sanchez took a long draw on his cigar, blew a mediocre smoke ring, and cleared his throat. "I see. And now the expedition's .back - with the pilot dead, the astronomer insane, and nobody left to tell about it but the mate."

Clark winced. Well, he thought with a sigh, at least he did finally get back to the point.

There was an awkward silence while Clark tried to think what to say. Then Sanchez said, in the same musing way .he said so many things, "I wonder if it was really wise to let that fellow - Turabian? - wander around with nobody sure where he was going."

Clark blinked, startled. "Why shouldn't he?"

"Well, I gather you didn't question him very thoroughly. I haven't had a chance to question him at all."

"He'll be back." With sudden surprised comprehension, Clark laughed nervously. "Oh, come on, Joe! This isn't a murder mystery!"

"Isn't it? I mean, are you sure? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm not saying our problem is going to be any more than figuring out the most delicate way to tell the world that Lewiston did just what Turabian says he did. But, at this point, is it really so obvious that Turabian's story is true?"

"I don't see-"

"You don't see any clear-cut evidence of exactly what happened, do you? I don't think you will, either. Turabian says they struggled, the bulkhead tool would have had both sets of fingerprints on it, and they've probably both been cleaned off. All I'm saying is that Turabian told you one version of what happened, and there may be others. Which came first, Lewiston's mental breakdown or his alleged killing of the skipper? If the murder came first - and maybe brought on the collapse - did Lewiston do it or witness it? Whoever did it, why? If Lewiston's insanity came first, what precipitated it? No matter how it happened, all those questions need good solid answers before the Foundation can adopt a strong position on this matter. And I don't see how we can get good solid answers when we don't even know where Turabian is."

Clark scowled, simultaneously slightly ashamed that he hadn't thought of the same questions earlier and more than slightly annoyed that Sanchez was making such a big deal of Turabian's temporary absence. "You're making a big fuss over nothing," he said. "Look, I know Jonel Turabian. I trust him. There's no problem."

"You're too willing to trust people," Sanchez told him bluntly. He looked really disturbed. "Too willing for your own good. I've often worried about that, Henry. Frankly, you never did know how to use power. You've got to realize that the people you can't trust are going to be very careful to make you think you can - so you don't dare really trust anybody. You've got away with it so far, just dealing with grant applications and such. But maybe someday you're going to find yourself dealing with something more important, and somebody you trust is going to catch you so off guard it'll make your head spin. I just hope now's not the time." He shrugged, but annoyance and frustration were strong in his usually undemonstrative face. "My advice would have been to keep him here until this whole thing's cleared up. But all I can do is advise. I can't make you listen to me. What are you going to do now?"

Clark pressed his lips together and silently studied Sanchez' face for several seconds before answering. Sanchez was being unreasonable - ridiculous. And yet, however slightly, he had managed to erode Clark's certainty that he could trust Jonel. Clark resented that, finally he said coldly,. "Do you want me to get him back here?"

Sanchez' eyebrows rose slightly, very briefly. "Can you?"

"Of course. I asked him to carry, a pocket communicator when he left the spaceport. He took it without the slightest hesitation."

"Ah," Sanchez smiled mildly, "but will he answer it? I suggest you try him."

There was a phone on the desk. Somewhat apprehensively, Clark punched the code for the communicator he had given Turabian. An intermittent musical hum told him the call was getting through.

But nobody answered. Clark began to sweat with the third buzz, and grew more tense with each later one. He quit after twenty and turned away from the phone, badly shaken. "If it is a murder mystery," he asked almost inaudibly, "who has jurisdiction out there?"

"I don't know," Sanchez replied with a shrug. "But I certainly want to talk to somebody - preferably a psychologist - who knew Lewiston before the trip. And Turabian too."

As he worked at his tissue analyzer, Dr. Sidney Marvin kept stealing furtive glances at his unexpected late patient. He felt just the slightest twinge of unprofessional annoyance - it was dark out already, and he had been all set to go home to Cynthia and supper when this young man showed up insisting that he had to know right away how much danger he'd been exposed to. He'd tried to convince the man - Jim Koehler, he said his name was - that doing the tests tonight wasn't going to be any better than doing them tomorrow morning. But Koehler had protested that he wouldn't be able to sleep until he knew, and had made enough of a scene that Marvin finally gave in. Now he kept thinking that something in the man's manner didn't quite ring true.

And that he ought to recognize him, even though he was quite sure he knew no Jim Koehler.

He turned away from the big stainless steel box and walked back over to the patient, examining the readouts as he went. "Well, Mr. Koehler, you can relax. There doesn't seem to be any damage, either functional or genetic. I don't think we'll even need to check the crystal dosimeter you brought along."

"Please do," Koehler said at once. "It's possible that I was in a position where something shielded me from most of the radiation. I'd still like to know how bad the general levels got."

"But-"

"Please. You already put the crystal in the evaluator, so it's just a matter of looking at the results. Right?"

Marvin started to argue, then shrugged and walked over to the evaluator. He took out the crystal and the card that lay next to it, containing an automatically printed summary of its indications. He gave the card a perfunctory glance, then did a double take and stared hard and long at it. Finally he said, "Good heavens, Mr. Koehler, you were lucky! You haven't been messing around with unlicensed radiation research, have you? That's very dangerous - "

"No," Koehler interrupted, "I haven't. May I see that card, please?" Before Marvin- thought to stop him, he scooped up the crystal and the evaluation and stuck them in his pocket

Marvin realized a little later that he should have insisted on getting the card back immediately. Now all he thought of was to blurt out, "Well, if you haven't been doing unauthorized research, where on Earth did you get exposed to stuff like this?"

Koehler flashed him a quick, odd, almost humorless smile. "Funny you should ask that, but I don't think the answer's really important to your diagnosis. Thanks, Doctor. You've been a big help. I believe you said your fee would be eighteen dollars." He pressed a twenty into Marvin's palm and disappeared through the door.

Five minutes later, Marvin remembered why he had seemed to recognize Koehler. His mouth dropped open, he stopped suddenly with his hand on the doorknob, and after two seconds' hesitation he rushed back to the phone and picked it up. "Long distance information, please."

II

Stephan Kovacs was still in New York when they called him the next morning, but Sanchez and Clark agreed that even small nuances might be revealing enough to warrant using a shielded picture-phone line. The image that looked out of the screen at them resembled a very distinguished white-haired walrus with rimless glasses, but there was nothing comical about the psychiatrist's speech. His words came quietly, carefully, and trimmed right to the point. .""Yes," he said, "Donald Lewiston has been placed under my care."

"And you also handled his original screening examination before he was cleared to supervise the experiments on the Archaeopteryx?" Sanchez asked his question without ever moving his eyes from the screen. Clark just listened from}. the sidelines.

"I did."

"You got to know his character pretty well?"

"I'd say so."

Sanchez lit his first cigar of the morning, talking off-handedly around it as he did so. "Dr. Kovacs, you've already been told that when Lewiston came back in this condition, the original pilot of the ship was found to have been murdered. This is all very awkward for the Foundation. We're trying to find out exactly what really happened before word gets out and the public starts ad-libbing. So please keep whatever we say under your hat."

"Naturally," said Kovacs, with a hint of impatience.

"The ship's mate, who was the only one aboard in a condition to tell us anything, says Lewiston broke down under strain during the trip and killed the skipper. Does that sound likely?"

"It's quite possible."

"The mate says he often suspected that Lewiston could suffer such a breakdown rather easily. He mentioned Lewiston's usually wearing a characteristic fixed smile, which to aim suggested that Lewis-ton's outward appearance of self-control was maintained by what he described as 'a tight lid that might blow ofF. Does that jibe with anything you found in your screening tests?"

Kovacs nodded slightly. "There was an edge there, rather sharp and well-defined. Lewiston knew where it was, though, and did an admirable job of staying back of it."

"But you do think he could have been pushed over?"

"Yes. Under the right circumstances."

"The mate blamed it on the feeling of isolation while they were going faster than light, when the stars are invisible for an extended period. Do you think that could have done it?"

The psychiatrist smiled almost imperceptibly. "Well, I've never actually experienced super-c myself, but I'd have to say no. It would have taken more than that to send Lewiston over the edge, or I never would have O. K."d him for the trip. It would have taken something more specific - more of a definite shock."

"Hm-m-m." Clark noticed a fleeting expression of something on Sanchez' face. Then the counselor continued smoothly, "The ship's mate we're talking about is named Jonel Turabian. Did you screen him also?"

"Yes."

"Is it possible that Turabian himself killed the skipper, witnessing that act triggered Lewiston's collapse, and Turabian took advantage of that to transfer the blame to Lewiston?"

Kovacs looked surprised. "Highly unlikely," he said. "Turabian was quite stable. It would have been very hard to drive him to something like that. He was about as far from homicidal tendencies as anybody I've ever examined. It's a simple matter to fun a lie detector test on him if you're in doubt, but I'd put money on what it'll show."

"You feel pretty sure Lewiston did it, then?"

Kovacs nodded. "He thinks he did. He's in no condition to give us much more information, but I think he's right."

Sanchez thanked him and broke the connection. "Well," he said, turning to Clark, "looks like you were right. It isn't a murder mystery." Clark had already started to feel relieved, but Sanchez immediately added, "It may be something much worse."

The smile Clark had started to form dissolved. "What?"

"According to Kovacs, Lewiston did just what Turabian said he did. Except that what sent him over the brink was something more than just the isolation in super-c. So what was it?"

Clark's jaw dropped slowly as he grasped Sanchez' point. Something must have happened out there. Something drastic enough that it drove Lewiston insane and Turabian didn't want to talk about it. What?

"I think," Sanchez said earnestly, "it may be important. I think we'd better try again to get Turabian back here as soon as possible and find out what happened that he's covering up. Want to try his communicator again?"

Clark nodded unenthusiastically. Fearing the same response - or non-response. - as before, he reached for the phone. And it rang.

He picked it up, startled. "Hello? Henry Clark'here."

It was the Foundation office in New York. "Mr. Clark," said a smooth-voiced young lady "we had an odd phone call last night, from a small town somewhere down there - Wabasso, I think it was. An M.D. named Marvin said he'd just-, had a patient who was acting strangely and was concerned about some radiation he'd supposedly been exposed to. He didn't show any body damage, but he brought along a crystal dosimeter that showed definitely alarming levels. And - get this - after the man had gone, this Marvin thought he recognized him as one of our Rao-Chang crewmen. Description sounded like Jonel Turabian. Is that possible?"

"We'll look into it," Clark said. "Anything else?"

There wasn't. As soon as that connection broke, Clark punched out Turabian's code as fast as he could. He felt tremendous relief when, after the first buzz, Turabian's voice said softly, "Yes?"

"Jonel!" Clark said with audible surprise. "You had us worried. Why didn't you answer when I tried to call you last night?"

"I was with somebody, and you wanted me to be inconspicuous, didn't you? So I thought it would be best to ignore the communicator right then."

"O. K. Was the somebody you were with a doctor?"

Turabian sounded startled. "How did you know that?"

"Never mind that now. Joe Sanchez came down from New York, and we need to talk to you right away. Where are you?"

"Public library and computer terminal in Palm Beach."

"That'll keep. We'd like you back here as soon as possible."

"Can you give me another hour or two? I need some more information and - "

"You can get it later. Please, Jonel - now."

Reluctantly, "O. K. Be there shortly. Maybe I can take some of this with me and read it on the way. So long."

As Clark hung up, he frowned. Now what, he wondered, can be so all-fired urgent about a public library?

Turabian arrived early in the afternoon, which was quite reasonable, but Clark's cordiality was strained as he welcomed him back and led him into the small conference room he and Sanchez had appropriated. As soon as they were all seated, around a small oval table with a magic slate top, Clark said bluntly, "You've been holding out on us, Jonel. We talked to the psychiatrist who dealt with Lewis-ton both before and after your trip, and he says Lewiston wouldn't have cracked the way he did just from spending time in super-c. He says something else must have happened. Then we find out that in your first few hours back on Earth you've gone to a private doctor under a phony name with a worry about radiation dosage. Something's very fishy here, Jonel. What is it? What happened out there?"

He was prepared to meet resistance, but Turabian simply nodded, thoroughly unruffled, and said, "You're right." It seemed to Clark, somehow, that he looked disturbingly calm and solemn. "I have been holding out, and I'm sorry. But I'm ready to tell you about it now. It's important and it'll take a little while, so make yourselves comfortable and listen closely." He glanced from Clark to Sanchez and back again, as if waiting. Clark, feeling fidgety, made a determined effort to look relaxed and attentive. Finally Turabian asked, "Do you know what a Seyfert galaxy is?"

Clark searched his memory for the term. Sanchez said, "I don't."

"Neither does anybody else, really," said Turabian. "We've only seen a few, and those from great distances, so we don't know much about them. We know they're spiral galaxies like ours, and they have small bright nuclei - or small bright regions in their nuclei - and peculiar spectra with strong emission lines and a lot of Doppler broadening. Some of them are strong radio sources. Some people have thought they may be" important sources of high-energy cosmic rays. But nobody's sure what the mechanism is, except that it seems to be some kind of explosion involving the nucleus as a whole. Possibly a chain reaction of super-novae - or maybe something else, but that at least helps you picture the order of magnitude. Imagine tens of thousands of things like S Andromedae occurring in a few years in a small region of space, and you may get some of the right idea."

Clark squirmed uncomfortably in his chair. What was the man driving at?

Turabian continued, but changed his tack. "Now, consider this. We liked to think of the Archaeopteryx as going into the past - by running after the light from S Andromedae, we reached a point where we were seeing things on that side of the sky as Earth had seen them in the past. Not all at the same time in the past - the exact amount depended on direction, from practically zero for distant objects straight out to the sides up to a hundred and thirty years for things straight back - but all in the past. But at the same time, and in just as real a sense, we had moved into other parts of Earth's future. We had moved closer to objects on this side of the sky, and so were seeing them by light that wouldn't reach Earth for quite some time yet.

"The center of our galaxy was about sixty degrees from our forward direction on the Archaeopteryx. Not straight ahead, but definitely in the 'future' half of our sky. And that's where we saw the anomaly."

Clark frowned. "What anomaly?"

"A bright spot that nobody'd ever seen before. Nobody's ever seen the galactic center, you know, although we've known where it is for some time. It's thirty thousand light-years off and hidden behind thick 'clouds of interstellar smog. But we saw it, right through all that stuff. And that means it was bright."

Clark felt a chill trying to start up his spine. Sanchez said, "Are you trying to say our galaxy's going to become one of those Seyfert things?"

"I'm saying it already has. It happened some thirty thousand years ago, the light and radiation just hasn't reached us yet. But we've seen it coming. It has the right kind of spectrum, and it's coming from a point quite far off in the right direction. It'll get here."

"O. K.," Sanchez said quietly. "When?"

"A very pertinent question," Turabian nodded. "We weren't in a position to fully evaluate the danger, what with limited cosmic ray instrumentation, medical knowledge, pertinent references in the ship's computer memory, and time. But we did find references indicating that radiation levels in an exploding galaxy could get high enough to wipe out life-forms on planets all over the galaxy. So we rigged a dosimeter on the ship's exterior to get data that could be analyzed later to give us an idea what Earth was going to be up against. And then we started home - jumping in and out of super-c several times to look at the explosion from various distances and find out when it starts."

This is crazy, Clark thought. He's talking seriously about the center of our galaxy exploding and destroying life on thousands of planets including this one - and it seems so far from reality that I don't feel anything at all about it. Nothing. But slowly, insidiously, the feeling was starting to build up.

He heard Sanchez say, "And what did you find? I take it a hundred and thirty years was an upper limit-"

"Sixty-five years was an upper limit," Turabian corrected. "There's a cosine factor hi it because we hadn't traveled straight toward the galactic center." He quickly sketched the geometry on the tabletop."Lewiston forgot it, too - and when he forgot something as basic as that, I knew he was really upset. The minute he first realized the bright spot was toward the galactic center was the first time I ever saw him lose his grin, and he was never the same after that. When we started hopping home, he looked up everything the computer had on Seyfert galaxies, and he worried. Sometimes he got obsessed with the idea that we must stop wasting time and get the warning home as fast as possible. Other times he thought we shouldn't deliver it at all because there wasn't really any danger and warning Earth would achieve nothing but unnecessary terror. And at still others he thought we shouldn't deliver it because the danger was real and so bad that nothing could be done - so a quiet finish would be better than spending our last days worrying about the inevitable.

"More and more, during the long days in super-c, he took to sitting silently and morosely in a corner, never speaking except for occasional spells of hallucinations and raving on one of those themes. One of those times was when he attacked Dirk-I think he had all three of his ideas tormenting him at once that time. He struck with amazing speed and strength, I couldn't stop him in time. I don't think he even understood what he'd done afterward. All I could do was keep him tied up, sedated, and fed the rest of the way home.

"I only dropped below c once after that. The added strain of running the ship and taking care of Lewiston was getting to me, and besides there was a risk of getting stranded if I tried any more intermediate looks. So we came on in after that one. The thing in the nucleus was 'Weaker that time, so I guess we were near the beginning, but it was still there."

Clark shuddered. It was starting to feel more real now - about as real as the mid-morning memory of a vivid nightmare. "So," he asked, "how long do we have?"

"At most," said Turabian, "twenty years."

III

Something unpleasant caught in Clark's throat. "Why didn't you tell us this right away?" he rasped.

"I wasn't sure it was wise," Turabian said simply. "Frankly, I was a little afraid one of Lewiston's worries might be right. In particular, I thought maybe he was right that there was dire danger and nothing to be done. You'll certainly recognize that, whether right or wrong, announcing this would have impact. Panic... despair..."

Yes, Clark thought bitterly as the reality continued to burrow into his mind, certainly despair. How cruelly ironic that the Rao-Chang drive should give man access to the stars - and then show him an impending threat from which even those stars can provide no refuge.

"If that was the case," Turabian was saying, "I thought it would be wrong to mention it. Once the cat was out of the bag, there'd be no way to get it back in. So I had to find out first how great the danger was. I buried our observations of the explosion in the computer, stored under a key word known only to me - don't worry, I'll give it to you now - and I sneaked out of the ship with the crystal dosimeter we planted outside in my pocket. I took that to Dr. Marvin last night, and went to the library to check some things our ship's computer didn't know." "And?"

"Lewiston was right. The danger is very real. The ship protected me, but out in the open I would have been in bad shape."

Clark felt an irrational flash of resentment. Sanchez asked the question that was in both their minds. "Then why are you telling us now?"

"Because," said Turabian, "he was wrong about there being nothing that could be done."

Another feeling surged up in Clark. He jumped on the words. "What can possibly be done?"

"It's possible to hide," Turabian said. "Not pleasant, but possible. And probably not even that without large loss of life. But at least some can take their lives and civilisation underground during the part of the day when radiations bad.

"Oh," said Clark. He was disappointed, he had hoped for a more pleasant way out. "How long will such measures be necessary?"

"It will seem like forever. Quite possibly a million years or so." He paused, neither Clark nor Sanchez said anything. Finally Turabian added quietly, "The other way - for some - is to migrate."

"Migrate?" Clark and Sanchez gasped in unison. Simultaneously, Clark said, "Where?" and Sanchez said, "I thought you said it affected the whole galaxy - "

"Uh-huh. I also did some research on the Rao-Chang drive when I was in the library. You know we used a top speed of l.OOOc or so on all the runs we've made so far. Do you know why?"

"Why, I suppose..." Clark fumbled for an answer. He didn't actually know, but it was embarrassing to admit that.

"I suppose it's as fast as they can go," Sanchez offered.

"No," said Turabian, "it isn't. It's not an intrinsic limitation on the Rao-Chang drive. We don't know of any intrinsic limitation on the Rao-Chang drive - except that it accelerates so easily when you get much past c that the navigation would be too tricky on trips as short as we've done so far. Like trying to go to the corner drugstore at six hundred miles per hour. But if you start talking intergalactic travel..." Surprisingly, he smiled.

And the smile grated on Clark's sensibilities. "Intergalactic?" he echoed incredulously, annoyed. "It's too far!"

"Is it? Why? The only reason I know is that it's so far beyond what we've done before that we hadn't felt ready to consider it yet. But sometimes a good kick in the pants can get a man to try something he never dreamed he could do - and he finds that he can. As far as I'm concerned, my galaxy exploding is a dandy kick in the pants!"

Clark's head spun, trying to assimilate it all. First being told that this galaxy was exploding, then that a possible solution was to leave it altogether...

For a moment he almost succumbed to the inviting optimism in Turabian's smile. Then sudden counter-reaction set in and he shook his head vigorously and slapped his hand down on the tabletop with a startling bang. "No," he said stubbornly. "It's no good. No good at all."

Turabian looked at him oddly. "What's no good?"

"Your idea. I'm sorry, Jonel, but I can't buy it. Have you really thought about what you're saying? I mean, suppose it's true. Suppose Rao-Chang ships can make intergalactic trips. How many people can they take?"

"I can't give you any numbers. I never pretended it would be a neat way out for everybody."

"You bet. it isn't! Nobody's thought about building a really large-scale transport yet, but I can't imagine anything that would begin to make a dent in the population. The Archaeopteryx only carried three men, but that was special. O. K. The colony ships carried a few dozen. They're far cheaper than we ever dreamed interstellar travel could be, bat they're still damned expensive. So when you sit there spouting glowing chatter about this thing spurring us on to bigger and better things, you're really talking about a tiny elite going off at the expense of the rest of us. Sure, you might be one of the elite, but what about us, Jonel? All of us who have to stay here and die, or curl up and hide and know that more generations than we can picture are going to have to do the same? While you go merrily off to the Magellanic Clouds or - " He stopped abruptly as he realized what he was doing. He hadn't even realized, when he started the tirade, that Turabian's attitude had got to him so much - or that there was so much personal resentment in his reactions. But it was true. If Jonel's idea were accepted, who would decide how many went, and who they would be? It would be a sticky question. However it was done, it was likely that Jonel would go - and even more likely, even unto certainty, that Clark wouldn't. It bothered him more than he liked to admit, and it would bother billions of others who were in the same boat and far less able to accept it.

And he would have to deal with all of them.

That threat was a lot closer and easier to visualize than the explosion itself - and therefore, in its way, more immediately appalling. With a conscious effort, he restored some calm to his mind. But he made no apologies.

He heard Sanchez put into words a faint hope that was in the back of his own mind. "Let's all hold onto our hats here. How sure are you that the situation's really as bad as you've sized it up? You're sure this thing's really a core explosion and not something else?"

Turabian nodded, Clark thought he looked slightly shaken, but it was hard to be sure. "I don't see how it could be anything else. When you check the stuff I left in the ship's computer, I think you'll agree."

Sanchez grunted. "We'll see. O. K., suppose we take that for granted. How sure are you of the radiation hazard? You base your appraisal of that on a dosimeter you planted on the outside of the hull and had a small-town Florida doctor evaluate. Are you sure he knew what he was doing? I mean, the place where you had the dosimeter wasn't exactly equivalent to the surface of the Earth."

"I'm sure he didn't know what he was doing," said Turabian. "But I didn't just take his word for it. I got the analysis card from him and went over it myself, making all the corrections I could. It will be dangerous when it gets here."

"But," Clark objected, "you said the ship protected you. Why won't the atmosphere and the geomagnetic field protect us?"

"They will, to some extent - but not enough. Remember two things. First, a starship necessarily has a good deal of radiation protection built into it. Second, even if the intensity's low enough so it doesn't bother you in a few hours or days, it might still be disastrous if you get a continuous blast of it for your whole life. That's what we're going to be up against - for fifty thousand generations. I came off the Archaeopteryx with no serious damage, but I wouldn't have wanted to stay out there for very long. I was concerned enough to have a thorough tissue check at the same time I had the dosimeter read. I was lucky."

Clark sucked in a deep breath. They were grasping at straws, he knew, but it was better to do that than to pass hastily by things which appeared to be straws but were really more substantial.

O. K. The straws had been tested and found Wanting. Now what?

He thought through a long silence, but no answers came. Finally-he said, "I didn't mean to snap at you, Jonel. You'll understand that this is a bit of a shock to me. I'll need some time to get my balance. But I can tell you one thing right off. I can't accept the solutions you've suggested until I've really dug for something a lot better." "Do you have any idea where to dig?"

"None. But it has to be done. Surely there's a way we can help more people than that - and I've got to find it. Can I count on you to help me?"

Turabian looked at him for several seconds before he answered, and Clark failed utterly to read what he was thinking. Then he said, "Sure. And good luck. Do you have anything for me to do now?"

"Not right now. I have to get my thinking started first. There must be places and people you've been wanting to see since you got back. Why don't you go ahead? If you'll hang on to that communicator, I can call you when I get an idea."

Turabian stood up. "Will do. The key word for the records in the computer is 'syzygy', I guess you'll want to start there." He started toward the door.

"Thanks." In time, Clark remembered to add, "Please remember, all this is still in an awkward state. We're not trying to hide the fact that you're back, but we'll be trusting you to keep quiet about all of the details. Things like what happened to Dirk and Lewiston, and the core explosion business..."

Turabian stopped halfway to the door and nodded. "Sure, I understand. And you'll understand when I say I'll have to make one exception."

Clark started to react with shocked anger, but it dissolved into a relieved smile - the first time he had smiled in What felt like a long, long time - as his mind snapped back to normality enough to catch Turabian's meaning. "Sandy?" Turabian nodded. "Sure," Clark said, still smiling, "I'll understand that. Just make sure she understands. And give her my best. Have a good trip."

Turabian went out. As the door closed behind him, the mental image that had prompted Clark to smile projected itself twenty years into the future and the smile vanished as abruptly as it had come.

Clark felt very much as if a great weight had just descended on him and there was no one around to take it off.

He sat silent for a long time that was probably actually no more than a minute. He gradually became conscious of the fact that Sanchez, retained by the World Science Foundation as "chief counselor," hadn't been doing much counseling in the last few minutes. "Well," he said suddenly, in a tone that might be construed as accusing, "what do you think about all this?"

Sanchez shrugged. "I think I'd better not form an opinion until I know more and have time to put it in perspective."

"No bright ideas about what to do?"

"Not yet. I'd say start by going over everything the Archaeopteryx has filed under 'syzygy' with a fine-toothed comb. Make absolutely sure the problem's really what he claims it is before we put too much effort into a solution."

"And if it is?"

"Then we're going to have to put an effort into it that makes the mind boggle. And I still wouldn't bet on finding a solution we like. I'm afraid this one may be too big." He pushed himself away from the table and stood up suddenly. "I think we both need some time to think before we do much more talking. You know where you can call me." When Clark said nothing, he went out and eased the door shut behind him. A moment later he stuck his head back in and added, "Assuming that is the problem, I can think of one man it might be a good idea to talk to." Then he left again, and this time he didn't return.

Clark stayed where he was for half an hour, letting his mind wander over what he'd heard, urging it to calm down and steady itself onto a course of action. Occasionally he picked up a stylus and doodled absently on the magic slate tabletop, then immediately rubbed out the doodles, annoyed with himself. Lately - it had been building up since Dianne had died, almost two years ago - he had seemed to himself more indecisive and more easily irritated by little things than ever before. And this was no little thing He took it almost as a personal affront that it should be dumped in his lap. He liked his job, for the most part, but he would never have taken it if he could have foreseen that it would include this kind of thing.

Why me? he thought miserably. Then he managed to force that kind of thinking out of his mind.

And a half hour after Sanchez had left, the meaning of his parting words suddenly penetrated. With a new surge of muted excitement, Clark reached for the telephone.

This may be a straw too, he thought as he punched for long distance, but it's worth a try. And it's something I can do right now,

IV

It was still fairly early morning when Turabian turned off the mainway near Knoxville and headed east, following a branching sequence of progressively smaller and less luxurious roads. As soon as he was decisively out of the metropolitan area he took over manual control of the car, enjoying the feel of personally guiding it around the bends and dips and rises. As he wound up into the foothills, he passed through areas where houses were still scarce and trees in their October prime crowded in on the road as if to form a tunnel. In others he skirted open fields from which the brilliant golds and reds formed a plush carpet over distant rolling hills. Either way, it was exhilarating, seen through air as clear as he could-remember a|id sparkling under a cloudless, hazeless sky. This was Earth at its best, almost as if making a special effort to welcome him back.

His last turn took him down a narrow dirt road reinforced with a halfhearted scattering of gravel, and bordered with a tall fringe of goldenrod. Two miles down that, an even narrower driveway swung off to the right around the end of an ancient split-rail fence and climbed steeply through a grove of walnuts and hickories, but Turabian didn't turn off there. Instead he pulled off the road, parked on the grass alongside the fence, and went up on foot. As soon as he got out of the car, clean cool air filled his nostrils with the smell of moist mountain soil and fallen leaves, and the leaves crackled underfoot as he went up the short slope.

The house, a little stone cottage that must be close to a hundred years old, stood on a relatively level grassy shelf looking out over the treetops across a succession of ridges and valleys culminating in the main range of mountains proper. Sandy Dunbar, despite her urban upbringing (or maybe in direct reaction to it, even she wasn't sure which), had fallen in love with it shortly before she fell in love with Jonel. When she found how cheaply she could buy it, she had moved in immediately.

She was home. Her jeep was parked under its shelter roof, a wisp of smoke floated lazily from the chimney, and - most conclusively of all - Ozymandias the Mutt was home and came running gleefully at Jonel's approach. Oz never wasted energy barking, he was a dog of action, not words. Jonel greeted him with just enough roughhousing so he wouldn't feel forgotten, then made it clear that he would have to wait for more. Oz accepted the verdict, but hung around with wagging tail while Jonel knocked and waited.

He didn't have to wait long. Sandy opened the door and registered immediate surprise. Before she could say anything, Jonel grinned at her and recited softly,

"Home is the sailor, home from the stars,

"And the huntress still home on the-"

"You're ad-libbing," she chided, echoing his grin. Before he could finish, she stopped him with a long, simply affectionate kiss. Jonel made no attempt to finish the poem. Eventually Sandy backed up about two inches and said, "But I'm really glad to see you."

To Jonel, experienced in reading the sometimes subtle nuances of her face, it was obvious that that was the weakest possible statement of her feelings. She had been worried - as well she might, with the extra time the trip had taken. "I'm really glad to see you, too," he said, and kissed her again.

Finally she said, "I didn't even know the Archaeopteryx was back. I was starting to get worried. We were expecting you... gee, how long? Two weeks ago?"

"Something like that. We had-" he hesitated slightly, "a little trouble on the ship. I'm sorry I didn't call to let you know I'd be late, but the faster-than-light telephone hasn't been invented yet."

She laughed. "That's O. K. You're back now. What kind of trouble was it?"

"I'll tell you... later. O. K.?"

For a split-second she seemed to have read some of the seriousness of the trouble, and to register concern about it. But she understood at once, and that fleeting reaction - so fleeting that even Jonel wasn't quite sure it was real - was swept aside at once. "O. K.," she said cheerfully, grabbing his hand and turning. "Come on in. I've got a bottle of champagne I was saving for when you got back."

He followed her into the house, automatically checking his memory-image against her actual appearance. Nobody had ever accused her of being excessively pretty, but it had never occurred to either of them that any importance might be attached to that. She was twenty-six - five years younger than Jonel - and looked neither younger nor older. She could be described as fairly tall and slightly lanky, dressed at the moment in blue jeans and a red and white checked flannel shirt, with long brown hair falling straight down over her shoulders. A combination of bright eyes, a slightly sharp nose and an easily triggered good-humored smile gave her face a slightly pixyish appearance, but Jonel had learned to see much more than that in it.

She paused inside and let her eyes dart around the small living room as if looking for something. The place was not a display of model housekeeping. It was clean enough for health purposes, but not immaculate, and fascinatingly disorderly. Books and magazines filled a set of shelves at one end, but others were scattered here and there on desks and sofas and record cabinets. An oboe lay uncased on the desk and a guitar stood in one corner, a typewriter stood in another, with paper in it. Doors opened onto a kitchen with utensils on the table, a bedroom with an unmade bed, and a photographic darkroom hi which water was running. It was, in short, the house of somebody too busy living in it to have much time for appearances.

Except for the pictures all over the walls, and those were what Sandy was looking at - a varied selection of her own sketches, paintings, and photographs, except for a few scenic photos Jonel had given her. Jonel scanned them too, both their eyes stopped on the same one at the same time. He started to comment that it was new, but she spoke first. "You haven't seen this one, I did it while you were gone. You like?"

"I like," he said immediately. -, This one was a, photograph, a most striking photograph made with a split-field lens and showing a mountain sunrise viewed from ground level between dew-covered blades of grass on a nearby bald. "Exquisite. Have you sold it yet?"

She shook her head. "No, I had a hunch you might especially like it, so ,1 was saving it as a welcome-home present for you. If you want me to publish it too, I'll try, but I don't have to. I've sold a few pictures and a children's story since I saw you last, so I'm still eating." She grinned. "It's going to be kind of a relief to stop having to think about being commercial so often after we're married, though. I'm glad that's not very far off."

"Me, too," he said, stubbornly refusing to think about the things he was going to have to tell her this afternoon. He looked back at the picture of the grassy bald. "That's a nice place," he mused. "Why don't we hike up there and gawk at it for a while?"

"Sure. But we have to sample your champagne first." She giggled. "I had the makings for a special meal, too, but they wouldn't keep this long. So would you like a hamburger with your champagne?" "You're ad-libbing," he observed, "but hamburgers and champagne just happen to be one of my very favorite lunches."

There was another primitive road that went fairly close to the unnamed bald in Sandy's picture. Because of their late start, they drove her jeep along that as far as a little-used trailhead before taking off on foot. That left them two and a half fairly rugged miles, with a net altitude gain of fifteen hundred feet - a good trip for an invigorating but unhurried afternoon. Jonel was a little out of shape from the long weeks of relative inactivity aboard the ship, but not enough to make it really hard - and the mountains were in his blood. It was near here, and on a day remarkably similar to this one, that he and Sandy had originally met. They had both been out for late-season solo trips on the Appalachian Trail, up on the main ridge-crest, she heading north and he south. That stretch of trail was little used in that season, and solitude readily available along it, but the day's last sunlight found Jonel and Sandy converging on the same lean-to. They both moved in, pooled their suppers, and then, curled in down sleeping bags, talked well into the night with that relaxed ease characteristic of either old friends or back-packers meeting on trails. By morning he had decided to reverse his trip and head *back north, if she didn't mind having a companion, and she decided that she didn't mind at all. A month later they were officially engaged, and she was not in the least bothered by the fact that he was already in training for the voyage of the Archaeopteryx,

Now, after the Old Bird had gone and returned, Jonel approached the top of this trail with a curious mixture of nostalgia and mild fatigue. He knew when they were almost there, he had been here before and recognized the tangle of rhododendron and laurel that bordered the bald itself. He felt the climb just enough to react by quickening his pace to hurry into the open meadow and then immediately stretching out on his back in the long, soft grass. Seconds later, Sandy tossed off her small day pack and flopped down next to him. For at least two minutes they wordlessly soaked in the view of wildly colored fluff undulating vigorously far into North Carolina. Nobody really knows what causes the treeless mountain-tops called "balds," common in the southern Appalachians, but many are grateful for whatever it was.

Finally Jonel said, "Nice neighborhood you've got here. Supper-time?" Sandy chuckled and got out the food she'd brought - a small, smoked cheese, a bag of her own special gorp, and a small wineskin into which she'd smuggled the rest of of the champagne when Jonell wasn't looking. As they ate and talked of pleasant matters, Jonel relaxed more completely than he had managed at any time since he'd got back to Earth. For the moment, he almost forgot...

And then, when they were finished eating and Sandy was packing the few pieces of garbage to carry home, she asked, with deliberate gentleness, "Are you ready to tell me what went wrong on the ship?"

He hesitated briefly before he started. He wasn't going to hold anything back, of course, but - he wanted to be very careful about how he told her. Some ways would be worse than others...

"Yes," he said. "First of all, let me warn you that Henry Clark - he said to tell you howdy for him, by the way, so howdy - Henry Clark doesn't want any of this being spread around 'yet And I think he's right, at least for the time being. So I can tell you, but I'll have to ask you not to even drop any hints to anybody else. O. K.?"

She nodded, frowning slightly. "Of course."

Jonel paused again, then said, "We'd finished everything we went out for and we were coming home. And Lewiston cracked up. We could see his sanity disintegrating, but neither of us ever suspected he was homicidal - until he killed Dirk." "Oh, no!" "Yes." "But... why?"

Jonel shrugged. "He may "have thought he had a reason, but, I don't know what it might have been. Like I said, he cracked up." No, Jonel thought, annoyed with himself. That's not quite right. This-isn't coming out the way I want it to. But right now he didn't see quite how to fix it. He went on, "He seemed harmless because he was mostly very withdrawn. Sometimes he talked about things that were bothering him, but it was hard to see what Dirk or I had to do with them. Though with hindsight," I guess maybe we should have suspected him of being potentially dangerous. Because he did sometimes have raving spells when he seemed to be hallucinating."

"Oh? What kind of hallucinations did he have?"

"He was usually pretty incoherent, so I can't really say much about that. But apparently one recurrent one involved being chased by demons or something. I remember him yelling out several times, "They're following us, they're following us!"" He paused and admitted, "He got pretty persuasive at times, even when he wasn't making sense. Sometimes there was something about the way he said it that was just plain eerie. Sometimes we had to just tune him out to keep from half-believing it ourselves."

Sandy pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Odd," she murmured, "really odd. Let me get the picture, now. Lewiston went crazy and killed Dirk, so you had to keep him under control and bring the *ship home by yourself, and that's why it took you longer than it was supposed to."

"Yes. That is-"

"I still don't see why it took so long..." She frowned, shook her head, and backtracked. "What do you suppose caused him to do that? Lewiston, I mean."

"I don't suppose," Jonel sighed. "I know."

She looked at him with sudden surprise, waiting.

"You've gotten into astronomy, haven't you?" he asked. She nodded. Jonel had remembered correctly that she had become intrigued when exposed to it in college - and then later'so disappointed with what her professors did with it that she gave up on formal courses in it. She had had similar experiences with a wide range of fields in two and a half years, but she had learned more about many of them after dropping out than many students did by staying in school. Jonel didn't remember just how deeply she'd gone into this one, but he didn't ask, if she needed to ask questions, she wouldn't hesitate.

"Remember Seyfert galaxies?" he said. "The ones with explosions involving the whole core? Well, our trip took us closer to the core of our galaxy, and we discovered that that's happened right here at home." He watched her closely for reaction. She showed surprisingly little except to wait very attentively for more. He wondered whether she had somehow missed the point. "Our galaxy has suffered a core explosion. The radiation could wipe out life all over the galaxy. It'll reach us in less than twenty years." Pause. "That's why I'm so late. We dropped below light-speed several times to look at it from other viewpoints, to get an idea how much time we have. Twenty years - at most."

He looked at her. Still no reaction. Wasn't he getting through to her at all? He reached out and touched her chin. "Sandy... did you understand what I just said?"

She nodded. "Uh-huh."

"And?"

"I'm numb. It's too big to get my emotional teeth into." She smiled thinly. "Let me see now. The Earth is going to become uninhabitable in a few years, and so are all the places we might escape to."

"Not quite - on both counts. A lot of people... and other things...are going to die. I don't see' any way to avoid that. But some can probably survive by going into, hiding underground. And some' may be able to escape by leaving the galaxy. Out between galaxies, we could run Rao-Chang ships a' lot faster than we've done so far. So some people - hardy, adventurous types - just might be able to make it to another one and find a new home there." He paused for a long time, watching her face closely. Then he said, "You see what I'm building up to?"

She nodded, her lower lip caught lightly between her teeth. "I think so. And that I can get my emotional teeth into. The future we had mapped out - you and I - isn't going to happen."

He nodded and managed a philosophical chuckle. "One of the occupational hazards of trying to map futures. O. K., that one's out, no use crying over it. The question is... you see the question that's bothering me, don't you?" " 'What do we put in its place?"" "That's the one." She smiled her very characteristic smile. "Where will we go?" she asked quietly.

More tension than Jonel realized had built up in him relaxed when she said that. He reached out and touched her hand. "Thanks, Sandy. That takes a big load off my mind. You don't mind being a frontier wife and mother?"

"You know me better than that. Where? The Magellanic Clouds?"

"I don't think so. They're the obvious first choice, being the closest neighbor galaxies. But they're irregulars. Different kind of stellar population and interstellar medium than we're used to. They might be O. K., but I suspect we'll have better luck hunting for the kind of planets we need in M31. That's only two million light-years away." He chuckled,-be ginning to feel'better."Besides, I think I'd miss the Milky Way if I went to an irregular galaxy."

"So would I. "Only two million light-years." That has an interesting ring to it."

"Yes. And a little scary, when you start to realize it. Incidentally, we'd better not start thinking of that as our new future yet, either. Physically, it can be done, politically, it may be something else." "How's that?"

"Clark's reaction when I mentioned this kind of surprised me, but it's a good preview of what we can expect. When I suggested that a few people might be able to escape, he was so bitter, automatically, that it even surprised him - and he's over sixty and has a lot more intelligence and self-control than most of the population. We'd just better bear in mind that if something like this reaches the planning stage, there's going to be plenty of heat generated under collars about who gets to go and who doesn't Maybe even enough so nobody gets to go."

"Oh." Sandy shrugged. "Well, if that happens, then I guess we'll just have to make the most of the time we have left here, won't we?" She finished the sentence with an air of finishing today's chapter of the discussion, and Jonel chose not to pursue it. Sandy looked up at the sky and said casually, "Look where the sun is. We probably ought to start down."

Stretching lazily, they stood up. Jonel got the day pack and they headed down through the rhododendrons. The afternoon continued with neither any further mention of the danger nor any feeling of tension brought on by deliberately avoiding it. It continued, in fact, just like an ordinary pleasant afternoon's hike in the mountains. The core explosion had become simply one more item which they both knew and would deal with when the time came. And for her ability to do that, Jonel's admiration for Sandy climbed another notch.

But later, as they sat watching the gold-hued sunset from a rock outcropping not far above the place where her jeep was parked, he noticed that she seemed to become very pensive. "Something wrong?" he asked.

"I was just thinking about two things," she said. "One of them is all the people who can't escape."

"And the other?"

She smiled quasi-apologetically. "It seems silly, really. Though sometimes hunches do have something to them. Maybe they come from subconscious thought, or extrasensory inputs, or..."

He nodded, understanding. "Intuition" was little understood, but he would be the last to deny that it sometimes had unique value. "What is it?"

"I keep wondering," she said, "why Lewiston should have kept thinking you were being followed."

V

Henry Clark had had no previous personal dealings with Chan-dragupta Rao, but he was well aware that in recent years the renowned physicist had become noted for his bitterness toward the Foundation - and, it sometimes seemed, toward the world at large. The reasons weren't clear to Clark - Rao had had a couple of grants turned down, but so had many others including several of comparable stature - but the fact was well known. It didn't matter, because Chang Pei-Fu had died in an automobile accident twelve years ago, so that now only Rao remained. He had been reluctant to grant the interview, but had finally given in after the most determined persuasive effort Clark had ever made.

He faced Clark across a huge wood-textured desk that drew excessive attention to his slight build. Behind him, the morning-lit Sangre de Cristo mountains loomed over his shoulder, adding to die impression. The bushy black hair framing his swarthy face was already graying in streaks, in a way that made him look much older than fifty. But the gaze that riveted Clark, from small black eyes set under craggy ridges, was still as utterly penetrating and disquieting as Clark had ever seen it in pictures.

For a long time after his visitor had been shown to a chair, Rao just stared that way. Then he spoke, in a surprisingly mild voice with the clipped accent common around Bombay. "Brevity is the soul of many good things," he told Clark. "Therefore I will be blunt. Why have you come to me?"

"A fair question," said Clark. Getting the interview without revealing too much of the reason had been the hardest part, but important, the slower the gossip spread, the better. Already Borowski's funeral had spread it more than Clark liked, though fortunately, the skipper had had few relatives or friends. The need for caution was not yet past. "I sought you out as the foremost authority on the Rao-Chang drive - "

Rao laughed aloud, harshly. "Hardly, Mr. Clark, hardly. Pei-Fu and I stumbled onto the technique, that is all. Sometimes I regret it. It seems to have taken all of science in directions quite contrary to what we had intended."

Clark lifted his eyebrows slightly. He hadn't expected this, but he could see potential advantage in listening for a while. "Oh? What do you mean?"

"Consider, Mr. Clark, consider. What were my late colleague and-1 seeking? A more perfect understanding of the universe. And what has been the effect of our accidental discovery of the paratachyonic drive? Theoretical physics is in a shambles, and getting worse instead of better. We can use the drive, but. we don't "understand it. The very foundations of theory need to be rebuilt', and the younger generation of physicists seem to have no desire - or courage - to do the job. And the older ones, such as myself? Well, so much of your Foundation's money is going to men who like to play with toys like star-ships that there is little left for those of us dedicated to honest, basic science. And in a way it's my * fault."

He shrugged and flashed Clark an ironically charitable smile. "But one must be philosophical. You are looking for the foremost authority in matters parataehyonic, Mr. Clark? Then don't come to me, it has gotten out of my hands. Go to the men who play with star-ships."

Clark squirmed uncomfortably. He understood Rao's reputation better now, but he didn't especially like the way the interview was going. Awkwardly, he said, "You underestimate your position, Dr. Rao. As a matter of fact, ships are what I want to talk about, but I still think you're the man I need to see. The engineers are too close to them. I need someone who can see a bigger picture of the principle and its potential. As its co-discoverer, you seem best qualified. I know you've done some follow-up work. And surely you've followed the practical developments at least casually, haven't you?"

"Yes," Rao admitted. "Casually, and occasionally with cynical amusement. As for my own follow-up work, it has borne little fruit because the Foundation neglected to provide fertilizer. But - " he shrugged again, "if you know all that and still wish to ask me questions, I may as well try to answer them, since you have come this far. What are your questions, Mr. Clark?"

"Suppose I told you the government was interested in a large-scale interstellar migration. Much more massive than the little bit of colonization we've tried so far."

"Are you telling me that?"

Clark sighed. "Tentatively, Dr. Rao, tentatively. It's all quite hypothetical. I'm merely interested in your ideas about feasibility, as a matter of... er... curiosity. Now suppose we wanted to move as many people as possible. How many people would you estimate that could be?"

Something else had crept into Rao's eyes, but Clark couldn't identify it yet. The physicist just said, "Your question is too broad. How many people per ship? How many ships?"How long is this hypothetical operation to take?"

"Well... I guess we should think of it as a multivariable-calculus-of-variations problem, Rather than specifying the numbers you mentioned, suppose I just say maximize the number of people while minimizing the preparation time and cost per person."

"Anything else?"

"Assume an all-out industrial commitment to the project. Assume the ships to be capable of supporting the passengers for several months." Rao still stared silently at him and he added, "And if it'll help, you can assume a time limit for completion of the project. Say... fifteen years."

Rao nodded as if finally satisfied with something, and began making hen-scratchings on the magic slate panel inlaid in his desktop. "There are still too many variables for me to do more than guesstimate," he muttered as he worked. "Exactly what is an 'all-out industrial effort'? I don't know, but I will guess. Fuel is no problem, sub-nuclear engines do all the work on both sides of the jump and they'll run on anything. Garbage... seawater... caviar... money... Even the mass ratio is not too horrendous. Life-support for several months? It was done on the first trips to Mars and approximated on the recent colony ships, I suppose it can be done again. How many people? It is not my field, but I find it hard to believe more than a few hundred. If you would like a wildly optimistic estimate, let us suppose a ship can carry five thousand. How many ships? Let us say a thousand' such ships can be built and launched - surely a wild overestimate for fifteen years, is it not? Then that gives you a capacity to move five million, people."

Or, Clark translated mentally, less than one thousandth of the population. And his estimates certainly seem generous enough...

"If you would like a more realistic estimate," Rao was saying, "you may scale down whichever of my figures seem too ridiculous by appropriate orders of magnitude." He blanked the magic slate and leaned back comfortably in his chair. "And now, Mr. Clark, if we are finished playing games with imaginary starships, would you like to tell me what's behind all this?"

The question startled Clark. "I told you it was all hypothetical," he said, a bit sharply.

Rao smiled benignly. "Come, Mr. Clark, I am not so poor a judge of men that I cannot see that there is more than casual curiosity behind your actions. You would not have traveled so far to visit one with my well-known views for nothing. And you would not be so uncomfortable in your chair if you were not afraid of showing more than you intended. If you really want my advice, does it not seem reasonable that I should know more of the problem I am asked to solve?"

Clark swore silently at himself. Would he never learn to stop being so transparent at the wrong times? "You're right," he conceded slowly, "there's a little more to it than that." He ..pushed a button in his pocket. "I'm recording, Dr. Rao. I'll tell you more, with the understanding that it's strictly confidential, and any breach of the confidence is prosecutable by the Foundation and the United Nations."

"Understood. I'm waiting, Mr. Clark."

Hesitating briefly, as if an extra second might bring an inspiration that would make it unnecessary to let .yet another person in on it, Clark began his explanation. "We have reason to believe," he said, "that our galaxy has suffered a large-scale core explosion. In a few years Earth will begin a long exposure to dangerous radiation levels. Most of the galaxy has already been affected, and the rest will be. It's been suggested that we might be able to escape to another galaxy nearby by using Rao-Chang ships at unprecedented speeds."

"Please, Mr. Clark, paratachyonic. It embarrasses me to have my name attached to those things. You have 'reason to believe', you say. What sort of reason?" -

Clark debated briefly whether to tell him, then went ahead. "The Archaeopteryx crew saw the explosion. You know of the Archaeopteryx' Rao nodded. "They saw it, identified it, ran spectroscopic tests on it, and looked at it from several points between here and the point where they made Don Lewis-ton's observations of S Andromedae, trying to pin down the time when the danger starts."

Rao looked faintly and annoyingly amused. "I see. So you are pretty sure about this thing?"

"Yes."

"Perhaps. Perhaps." Rao looked thoughtful for a couple of seconds, then said, "I assume you see the hopelessness of that suggestion now?"

"Perhaps." Rao seemed not to notice the mimicry. "Knowing that the reason we're interested is a real threat to you and me and everybody else doesn't' give you any goad to think a little harder about it? Maybe come up with something you overlooked when you thought it was all a game?"

Rao shrugged. "Facts are facts, Mr. Clark. I gave you my appraisal of them a few minutes ago. The fact that I am personally threatened does not change them. I still find it inconceivable that you could rescue any significant fraction of the population that way." He grinned wryly. "Besides, even if I feel personally threatened, I do not feel any great incentive to be rescued in such a way. Such a voyage would not be pleasant... and what would be waiting at the other end?"

"A chance to survive," Clark answered, a bit snappishly. "But nobody has to go. At least some of those who can't or don't want to can stay on Earth and learn to live in underground shelters - "

"Just as bad," Rao interrupted scornfully. He shrugged "again, with him, the gesture was so habitual as to have little meaning. "Really, Mr. Clark. Is life itself so precious that I must cling to it at all costs, even if I must live like a rat in a hole? Why bother?"

Clark sat silent for many seconds, breathing heavily and plagued by the knowledge that he was getting nowhere. He was beginning to tire of this. They were both beginning to tire of it. Finally he asked in a low voice, "But what about those who want to go?"

Rao shrugged. "Let them."

"And you're not willing to help?"

"I see no way I can help. I have no advice to give you." He drummed briefly on the desk and then added casually, "Except that if you're really concerned about this, you might want to send the Archaeopteryx out again, out of the galactic plane, to get a better look at the core and make sure that's what your crew was really seeing."

You don't believe this at all, do you. Clark thought incredulously, You're humoring me. "The ship's computer already has lots of observations of it," he said - redundantly, he thought. "Including radiation measurements and parallax measurements taken from several observation points along a 130-light-year baseline. We're sure."

"Then," said Rao with a final shrug that carried an air of dismissal, "I can tell you no more." Clark rose from his chair to leave. As he went through the door, he heard Rao add behind him, "Except that you're going to need another expedition anyway - to find out just how much time you do have. Aren't you?"

Disappointment and frustration churned in Clark's mind as he went outside and called a cab. He was glad the private plane that awaited him at the airport was chauffeured - he was too preoccupied to do his own flying.

He found a shaded bench to sit on while he waited. Over and over he reexamined his conversation with Rao, searching futilely for something helpful buried among the callous indifference and veiled sarcasm. That attitude was real, but he seriously doubted that it had gone so far as to interfere with professional ethics. When Rao gave his opinion that no real rescue plan lay within man's grasp, he believed it. He had not told Clark anything he couldn't have estimated for himself, but he had brought the conviction of authority to it. He had laid to rest the haunting fear that Clark, when he reached those same conclusions on his own, was overlooking some saving feature that would be seen at once by an expert.

The expert had spoken. A small yellow cab pulled up at the curb, almost silently. The driver started to get out and come around to open the passenger door. Clark waved him to stay and opened the door for himself. "Airport," he muttered. He settled back into the seat, arms folded across his chest, as the cab lurched forward.

O. K., he thought, so what now? I'm supposed to get down on my knees and mouth prayers, maybe? Somehow the thought rang hollow. He needed to do something.

But for the first time in his life, he found himself in a situation where there seemed to be nothing he could do - nothing any man-alive could do. A situation where, if help was going to be found at all, it would have to come from outside, from a power bigger than all the resources man could muster on his own.

And when the chips were down, Henry Clark found that any belief he had ever had in such a power had evaporated, sometime during the passing decades.

His thoughts merely idled for the last five miles of flat, arrow-straight road. When the cab turn.ed off into the airport, Clark directed the driver to the right gate with the main part of his mind a million miles away. The cab stopped, he gave the driver his Foundation ID and account cards, waited to get them back, and got out with a minimum of thought. He stood absently watching the cab leave, and finally turned and walked slowly through the gate in the wire fence, toward the little lemon-yellow swept-wing jet.

Tony, the chauffeur, came out to meet him, traveling with an odd hurried gait that was not quite a run. Tony was young and impressed by his uniform and the importance of his job, he moved with a slightly awkward version of military precision as if on display. "Are you ready to go back, Mr. Clark?" Clark nodded and grunted. Tony hurried to open the door, helped him in, made sure his seat belt was fastened. Just before he stepped forward into the cockpit, he told Clark, "You have a message, sir. Counselor Sanchez wants you to call him back. He said to tell you it's urgent."

Clark felt little reaction. He sat unmoving through take-off, musing idly on what Sanchez considered urgent as the engines roared into readiness and the plane taxied out, thundered down the runway, and rose sharply toward the unbroken blue above. Only when they were well off the ground and climbing less steeply did he punch out Sanchez' call code.

But as soon as Sanchez answered, Clark sensed something unusual in his voice. It was too subtle to put a finger on, but there was some sort of - excitement? - there which in Sanchez was hard to arouse. "Did you find anything out?" he asked.

"No. I... just a second." Clark pressed a button, a soundproof glass panel rose to seal him off from the cockpit. He pressed another, and relays isolated this conversation from the pilot's audio circuits. "I saw Rao." He said. "He's as bad as his reputation - though it's not all his fault. He confirmed everything we'd guessed. No way out. Under conditions so favorable they're hard to believe, he can picture a fraction of a percent of the population getting away - if the other ninety-nine-plus give slightly more than their all to make it possible. And I can't picture that. Altruism exists, but this is ridiculous." He paused and added, "So I guess that shoots that. I don't know who else to ask."

"You might think of somebody surprising," Sanchez said. "That's why I called you, actually. We are isolated, aren't we?"

"Definitely."

"Good. I got a really weird call from Kennedy a while ago. They wanted you but settled for me. Seems they noticed a large object in an orbit where nothing belonged yesterday, and sent a shuttle out to investigate. As soon as the shuttle got within fifty thousand miles of it, they got a call on the radio - on the shuttle and at the spaceport and nowhere else that we've heard about."

Clark struggled to sweep the mist away from his mind, concentrating desperately. What was Sanchez getting at?

"You guessed it," Sanchez said. "The speaker said the shuttle should turn back and stay away from the thing in orbit, and they'd send their own down to Kennedy to talk to us. Created quite a furore at Spaceport HQ, but they decided not to take any chances and called their shuttle back pronto. And now they're expecting company."

"What kind of a prank..." Clark muttered, frowning deeply. "Did they find out who it was?"

"Aliens," said Sanchez. "Honest-to-gosh aliens, from Somewhere Else. I know it sounds wild, but it seems to check out, and that's all we know. And they want to talk to you."

"Me?" Clark yelped. "You mean me, personally?" "Yep."

"How would they even know I exist? This whole thing-"

"Maybe you should ask them. But they do seem to know."

"But... why'

And in his answer, Sanchez' voice conveyed a strange mixture of mysterious fascination and profound doubt. "They said something," he said, "about wanting to help."

VI

Clark was too startled at Sanchez' news to express surprise at the alleged aliens speaking English, but he had plenty of time to think about it as they flew straight to Florida - and then as he and a small hand-picked group waited nervously for the emissaries' arrival.

They watched from the glassed-in room atop a control tower, with a commanding view of the whole spaceport, a network of roads and runways crisscrossing the swampy and scrubby ground all the way to the ocean, studded'here and there by spidery towers, two members of the control tower staff were there, as well as Sanchez and Clark - and Rao, hastily summoned to take a look, at the aliens' transportation and listen critically to anything they might say on technical matters. Clark had not been eager to consult Rao again, but a technical consultant was needed, and Rao already knew something of the Archaeopteryx affair. The fewer others who found out, the better - and Clark felt a strong hunch that the alien business was not unrelated.

Beyond that, except for a handful of Guardsmen waiting downstairs, there was nobody anywhere within the expansive boundaries of the port. Never before had such extreme security measures been invoked. The fact that they had been today would in itself tend to arouse suspicions among those who had been barred. But Clark had decided that that risk was preferable to letting unscreened hordes witness the arrival of the first extraterrestrial intelligence man had met. Now he only hoped their arrival would not be so flamboyant as to draw attention from miles around.

And that seemed a rather forlorn hope.

Long minutes crept by, no sign of visitors materialized. Clark, who had rarely smoked in his entire life, bummed two cigarettes from one of the tower men. The radio was on, but silent. They told him the aliens't" ad spoken on it just minutes before his arrival, but he had not yet heard anything. Finally he muttered impatiently, "I thought you said they would be getting here right away."

"They said they were coming down right away. They didn't say how long it would take."

"Did you ask them?"

The man who had answered before, the older of the two at the central console, nodded. "They didn't answer. They haven't said much to us, actually. They don't seem to hear our questions, and they don't ask any of their own. They just tell us what they're going to do next."

Clark didn't like the sound of that. He asked, "How are they coming in?"

"They, didn't say. We offered them the usual landing guidance, but they never acknowledged. Guess they think they can make it on their own."

Clark said no more. Silence grew heavy in the control tower. Then Sanchez said, What's that?"

Clark turned his head sharply and tried to follow Sanchez' pointing finger. But he saw nothing except a couple of small clouds floating in a sky that was unusually free of them. He started to say so, but just as he opened his mouth he became aware of a deep, almost inaudible hum, and simultaneously thought he saw an elusive glint in the sky - as if one small piece of the blue were trying to detach itself from the rest. But that impression had barely had time to register before he most definitely saw the globe settling onto' the pavement less than a hundred feet away from the tower.

He was on his feet instantly, pressing his face- against the window. It was a globe, all right-spherical, smooth, and featureless, of a velvety blue that uncannily matched the sky - and hardly more than twenty feet in diameter. It was the source of the hum, on a sudden impulse, Clark opened the window to better gauge its actual loudness. It remained a mere hum, not even remotely resembling the awesome" roars of man-made spacecraft. And now it died, its pitch dropping smoothly beyond the limit of human hearing and giving 1 way to an eerie stillness. And the blue globe changed shape, its bottom flattening. Within a minute, the whole thing had relaxed into a dome perhaps thirty feet in diameter at the base.

Nothing else changed. Except, that the radio finally spoke behind Clark. "Our landing is complete," it said. "We will be in to see you directly." Clark felt an odd excitement. That voice was not human. Its pitch and timbre had elements resembling both alto and tenor, in human terms, and others that fit no familiar labels. Its pronunciation of English vowels and consonants was uncannily accurate, but its overall inflection had a peculiarly singsong quality.

The words penetrated only afterward, when Clark saw an arched opening appear at the base of the dome, with a dimly glimpsed figure moving inside. "We will be in," the voice had said.

Suddenly Clark was tugging at Sanchez' arm and hurrying toward the elevator. "Come on. Let's go down and meet them."

They emerged from the bottom of the tower a few seconds later, just as the aliens emerged from their craft. On the way through the door, Clark snapped instructions to the Guardsmen waiting in two cars. One of the cars, a three-seated sedan with curtained windows, pulled out almost silently to follow him, Sanchez, and Rao as they walked out onto the field.

And the aliens strode toward them - tall, stately, imposing in appearance as their skins and garments glittered in the bright afternoon sunlight. There were three of them, all very similar in appearance, one walking alone in front, the others side by side behind him. Clark, thought of the forms they might have taken and marveled at the one they actually wore. He had feared they, might evoke involuntary feelings of revulsion, but there was none of that. They were humanoid, with two arms and two legs and walking very erect, their seven-foot forms "cloaked in flowing togas full of metallic sheen and wildly colored iridescence. Bare, bronze-hued skin showed only at their feet, hands, and head - a long oval head devoid of hair, with ears and eyes and mouth hi familiar positions, but no apparent nose. As they got close, Clark noticed that the one in front somehow looked older. Hard to judge in an alien, perhaps, but old age is a matter of increasing entropy regardless of species, and this one gave that impression - through the slightly olive cast and lesser smoothness of his skin, and in a variety of other ways too subtle for Clark to put his finger on.

What do I say to them? Clark wondered suddenly. Somehow everything he could think of sounded corny. But now they were face to face, standing still at close range, and one of them would have to start a conversation. Looking up into the nearest statuesque visitor's face, he saw that they did have nostrils, but set in the throat, far back under the chin. And he noticed a faint, unfamiliar but not unpleasant smell.

Finally he contrived a smile and said awkwardly, "Welcome to Earth. My name is Henry Clark. These are Joe Sanchez and Chan-dragupta Rao."

"Henry Clark," the front alien repeated in the same voice Clark had heard on the radio. "Joe Sanchez. Chandragupta Rao. I am Beldan."

"Beldan," Clark repeated carefully, trying to get the sounds as exactly as he could.

"Beldan," Beldan said again, .in a tone so exactly like the one he had used before that Clark concluded that the tone must be an integral part of meaning in Beldan's language.

"Beldan," he said again, this time imitating the pitch of each syllable as well as he could. This time Beldan did not correct him. "I'm very pleased to meet you." He turned and opened the door of the curtained sedan - fortunately one with a high roof and very roomy interior - and told Beldan, "If you'll join us in the car, we'll go to a room where we can talk."

Beldan's slightly bulging eyes momentarily withdrew deep into their sockets, then returned. "Your offer is appreciated," he said, "but the car is not necessary. We can talk here, or we can walk to your building."

"We prefer not to stand in the sun," Clark explained. "And the building we will go to is not the closest one. The car is for your own protection."

"Then we will go hi it." Beldan turned to his two compatriots and said something in their own language, a terse utterance with an oddly musical (though atonal) pitch pattern, consisting largely of pure vowels but occasionally interrupted by complex consonant clusters. The others' eyes made the same seemingly involuntary movement Beldan's had made, and then they followed him into the second seat of the sedan. Relieved, Clark slid into the third seat, followed by Sanchez and Rao, and the car took off across the field.

"You said the car is for our protection," Beldan said as they started up. "Protection from what?"

The question took Clark by surprise. "Why... uh... protection from any possible mishap. Not that we expect anything, of course."

Beldan said no more, but Clark caught a glimpse of his face and had the distinct impression that Beldan didn't understand at all.

And that, Clark didn't understand.

The driver whisked them into the administration building through one of the vehicle entrances. They sped through tunnels to the central elevator, and there the three humans and three aliens disembarked, and took the elevator to the building's top level. The halls, empty, and silent, felt strange. Clark was used to them when people were coming and going and business machines were humming and clattering in all the rooms. Today's security was so complete that all operations had been suspended even here. Arrangements had been made hastily to route all telephone business to outside stations, but Clark was painfully aware that all that was purely stopgap.

A conference room awaited them at the end of a corridor. It was similar to the one in which Jonel Turabian had first announced that the galaxy was exploding, but considerably larger. They filed in and took seats around the oval table, as if following .unspoken directions, the humans sat along one long side and the aliens along the other. During the awkward pause as they settled into chairs under bright, even fluorescent lighting, Clark noticed details about the visitors that he had missed before. Things like the uniform bright red of their eyes, the long slender fingers and the presence of two thumbs on each hand. And details of their clothing - the intricate rippling color patterns had struck him immediately outside, and now he was increasingly impressed by the abundant use of metals in them, both in numerous small ornaments and in the fabrics themselves. The effect was breathtakingly beautiful - and, by human standards, incredibly extravagant.

When everybody seemed to be settled, Clark self-consciously smiled his best official smile and said, "Under ordinary circumstances, I'd begin a meeting' like this by offering our visitors refreshments. But I'm afraid I haven't had many guests from off Earth before, and I wouldn't know what to offer you. So if there's anything I can get you, please don't hesitate to ask for it." He paused, cleared his throat, and changed the subject "After that, I hardly know where to begin. Perhaps I should compliment you first on your excellent command of English. May I ask how you came to acquire it?"

Beldan's lips parted, revealing a single highly polished ridge across the front of each jaw, where a man would have incisors and canine -teeth. Another such ridge extended back each side of each jaw in place of molars. The gesture seemed intended as a smile, but Clark sensed that it was not a native one, instead, Beldan seemed to be consciously imitating the human response. "We have been orbiting your planet for several days, monitoring your public communications with modulated electromagnetic waves." (Radio and television, Clark translated.) "There is a wealth of study material there from which to learn the language."

"You learned very well... and fast." Clark found the answer incomplete and unsatisfying, but he decided not to pursue it headlong. Instead he asked, "What has brought you to Earth?"

"We noticed your ship in super-c - the Archaeopteryx, I believe you call it. From its behavior, repeatedly making the transition between sub-light and faster-than-light travel, we concluded that its crew must have observed the galactic core explosion and was trying to learn more about it. We followed it home, believing that perhaps you would need help in order to escape the tragedy. We may be able to offer such help."

Clark's heart jumped wildly.

Only hours before, he had been driven to the desperate realization that outside help was the only thing that could provide a way out. Then it had seemed impossible. Now he was sitting across a conference table from a sophisticated extraterrestrial being who was on the verge of making an offer.

It seemed too good to be true. So much so, he cautioned himself roughly, that he'd better guard against investing any optimism in it until it had been so thoroughly checked out that skepticism was no longer possible. He said only, "Your people are already fleeing the core explosion?"

Beldan nodded. Again, Clark didn't know whether the gesture was native or acquired, but it fit. "We - we call ourselves Kyyra - we lived much nearer the core. Not actually inside the galactic nucleus, by your reckoning, but close by. Our homes were among the first and most direly threatened, so we had no alternative but to flee outward. And since no place in this, galaxy could be counted on to be really safe, we plan ultimately relocate in the nearest other galaxy! of similar type - the one you M31."

Before Clark could answer, Ra said. "Perhaps you could tell us a point of information, Beldan-he made no attempt at correct tonation, "just how long we have until the radiation from the cc begins reaching us."

"You have," Beldan answered without hesitation, "just under seventeen of your years. At that time, levels will rise sharply and dangerously. They will continue to rise for many years thereafter."

"I see." Rao showed no emotion. Clark had the feeling he was testing Beldan, but could not see just what he was driving at. "You say you are from near the core. Did any members of the party you are traveling with actually see the explosion begin?"

"No," said Beldan, "but my father did." He seemed uncomfortable, as if the question had awakened unpleasant memories. He reached into a concealed pocket in his robe - Clark noticed as he did so that his arm moved as if it had two elbow joints instead of one - and pulled out a small tube of intricately shaped black metal. Clark's first reaction was to fear that some unintentional offense had been given and the tube was a weapon. Then Beldan took its end in his mouth and Clark was reminded of himself lighting up a cigarette in a moment of unusual anxiety. But Beldan didn't smoke it-he played it It had holes and buttons arranged for Kyyra fingers, and he blew it and manipulated the holes to produce a brief but haunting fragment of melody, in a sweet tone pitched at least an octave below what should have been coming out of such a small tube.

He broke off in mid-phrase, with a hint of what might have, been amusement.""You seem surprised. You must learn to take no notice of this, most Kyyra carry a music-pipe and may use it at any time." He played a few more notes, then stopped and looked back at Rao. "You were saying, Mr. Rao?"

Rao stared at the music-pipe with unabashed curiosity for a few seconds, then looked Beldan in the face. "I am a little puzzled by your offer of help. Can you tell me if your mode of faster-than-light travel is the same one you saw the Archaeopteryx using?"

"There are differences in detail," said Beldan, "but the principle is essentially the same."

"Then I remain puzzled. We have thought about the problem and could see no conceivable way, in the time available, to build and launch enough starships to carry any sizable fraction of our population."

"Nor would we try to do it with ships."

"Then what would you use?"

"Your planet," said Beldan. "The Earth."

Out of the corner of his eye, Clark saw Sanchez .looking much more startled than he normally allowed himself to look. Rao just kept staring skeptically at Beldan, waiting for clarification. After a momentary pause, Beldan went on, "Surely you do not imagine that we would attempt to move a population in tiny individual vehicles such as the one in which we came to this meeting. That would indeed be hopeless, Mr. Rao. But please remember that we Kyyra have been a technological civilization far longer than you. We have learned a few things you have not had time to begin exploring yet. The vehicle in which we came is a mere landing shuttle sent from the much larger starship which your observers saw parked in orbit around your planet. And that starship is but one member of the convoy accompanying one of the home planets of the Kyyra. The planet itself was converted in its entirety to a ship to carry the billions of passengers who were born there."

Clark trembled with excitement - and fear. If Beldan was telling the truth, the abilities of the Kyyra just might be awesome enough to do what mankind needed. But would it carry a price equally awesome?

That was one of a whole chain of questions burning in his mind, questions which he or somebody would eventually have to ask the Kyyra. But right now it would be prudent to wait.

He heard Sanchez ask, "What do you use for fuel when you convert a planet to a starship?"

"The planet itself provides the fuel," said Beldan. He again put the music-pipe to his lips and played a tune made of high, long notes, simultaneously shrill and plaintive.

Clark fought down the last temptation to ask his questions now, and decided to intervene before somebody else did. "We are grateful for your offer," he told Beldan, rather stiffly. "You'll understand that we will need to have more details, and time to consider..."

"Of course," said Beldan, and went back to his piping.

"We need time to consider even what you've said so far. Would you object to ending this discussion now and resuming it tomorrow?"

"Not at all," said Beldan. "You will take us back to our shuttle in the car?"

"We were hoping," Clark said, recognizing even before he started that the point could be awkward, "that you would accept our hospitality and stay in special quarters we've prepared for you here, as our guests. If it's not inconvenient."

"It is a matter of indifference to us where we stay," Beldan assured him. "We don't wish to put you to-any trouble, but if you prefer that 4 we stay in your quarters, we will be pleased. If you will only take back to our shuttle long enough get a few things..."

"Of course." That had been easier than he had feared it might, allowed himself the luxury of feeling relieved. Only later, when Kyyra trio was securely quartered for the night and the other humans were out of questioning range, he allow himself to really consider what he faced in the upcoming rounds of questions and decision and he whistled softly at the enormity of it. Wow, he thought. No rest for the wicked, they say...

VII

Clark spent enough time at Kennedy Spaceport to rate his own apartment there. He retired to it as soon as the Kyyra were secure in theirs, and late that evening he sat on the edge of the bed in his bathrobe, staring at the telephone. A shower had helped to clear his mind, but as he sat there pondering whether or not to make the call, he felt the loss of Dianne more acutely than ever before. He had hardly realized at the time how much she had helped him through rough spots in the years of university jobs, industrial jobs, and finally this one that he had held for the last ten years. She had helped simply by being there to talk to, even about things that he found difficult to discuss with anyone else. The mere act of talking about them had often seemed to dissolve the difficulties surrounding tricky decisions. Now, more than ever, he needed somebody to talk to.

Only Dianne wasn't here now.

The most immediate problem he faced was, to tell Gerber about all this, or to put it off. Franz Gerber was the head of the United Nations and therefore technically not even in the same chain of command as Clark, the World Science Foundation was officially an entirely separate organization. But in practice the two, agencies cooperated so closely in such matters as international space programs and ecological decisions that sooner or later Gerber would have to be brought into this. It was more essential to notify him, in fact, than to notify Clark's nominal superior. The WSF Commissioner-of Grants had evolved into such a sinecure that in fact Clark himself now held the highest responsibility in that area.

Calling Gerber would be, to put it bluntly, a way to get rid of that responsibility. A part of Clark longed to do that. He had never felt comfortable about making decisions that deeply touched the lives of many people. As Lieutenant Commissioner he had to grant or deny research funds, but that had never seemed to be at all the same sort of thing as this. This went so far beyond that that the sooner it was turned over to the UN, the better.

Almost convinced, he reached out for the phone - and then drew his hand back, hesitating again. On the other hand, he suddenly found himself* thinking, the stakes are so high that I'd hate to let anybody else in on it before I'm sure it's the right thing to do. Even Gerber.

Gerber would be angry, of course, if he found out that Clark had been holding out on him. That was even a real possibility. Yet somehow, at the moment, it seemed much less important to

Clark than he might have thought it would.

"Nobody has to go," he had told Rao, back in his office - just this morning, he realized with sudden amazement. It had been an in-' credibly long day. "Nobody has to go." That had been true, for the kind of scheme they had been discussing then. Beldan's proposal introduced a whole new element. Under it, everybody had to go - or nobody. Every man, woman, and child in every country on Earth, every fish, whale, caterpillar, and alligator. Everybody and everything on Earth was directly and irrecoverably affected, and everybody and everything on Earth had to go along with the same decision. There was no individual option.

And that, he thought glumly, is simply and literally a kind of decision that nobody before me has ever had to make. How I'd love to pass the buck - and how afraid I am to do it!

He continued to stare at the telephone, but his hand lay limp in his lap. An ironic thought crossed his mind and he laughed. "Alas, poor Hamlet!" he said aloud.

There was a knock at the door.

Clark looked up, startled. "Who is it?"

"Rao," said a muffled voice. "May I come in?"

Clark hesitated very briefly, frankly irritated. Then he said, "O. K. Just a minute." He got up, drew the robe tighter around him, and went to unbolt the door. Rao thanked him with exaggerated graciousness and came in, still in the same turtleneck suit he had been wearing in his office so long ago this morning. Each of them took one of the two armchairs, Clark settled back and waited wearily for Rao to state his business.

"Since you brought me here as a scientific consultant," said Rao, crossing his legs and staring straight at Clark, "I feel justified in raising a couple of questions about this Beldan character and his offer. Perhaps you've already thought of them, but I'd rather not take chances. So please indulge me, Mr. Clark. First, I trust that in considering any offer, you will give due thought to the question, can we trust them?"

"I'll certainly try to," Clark said coolly. "Do you have something specific in mind?"

"Not too specific, Mr. Clark, not too specific. I merely want to make sure you are fully conscious that, although we do not yet know the details of their offer, they are certainly going to involve drastic changes in the Earth. Leaving the sun... using up large portions of the Earth as fuel... manipulating energies so vast that we can hardly imagine them, much less control them. If they can actually manipulate energies of that scale, they could do tremendous damage as easily as useful work. And since the methods are beyond our own capabilities, we would be at their mercy. We would have only then-word that they will actually use those energies in the way they have promised. So I must ask, can we trust them?"

"I've thought of all that," Clark said uncomfortably. "In case you've forgotten, I'm not just a politician. I've put in some fair years as a scientist and engineer."

"I know, Mr. Clark," said Rao, with a grin that was a shade too amiable. "Do not be offended." He paused and then said, "Secondly, I was struck by the fact that neither you nor Counselor Sanchez inquired about their motives for the offer. Even for a race accustomed to dealing with enormous energies, surely converting an entire planet to a super-c intergalactic transport is not a casual undertaking."

Clark nodded vigorously. "I know. I assure you that question was very much in my mind. What's in it for them? But I do believe my diplomatic judgment is better developed than yours, Dr. Rao. We don't know enough yet to gauge what their response to such a blunt question would be. Quite conceivably they would take offense - possibly even to the extent of withdrawing the offer. I most definitely wanted to avoid risking that. They may be our only chance, and their motives may be straightforward and legitimate. I certainly intend to ask them, in good time. But today wasn't a good time."

Rao, characteristically, shrugged. "Well.jou had better ask," he said. "And not merely out of idle curiosity. I smell a rat."

Clark looked at him sharply. "Why?"

"Do you recall Beldan's response when I asked whether any of their party had actually witnessed, the beginning of the core explosion?"

Clark thought, then remembered. "He said no, but his father did."

"Exactly. Now admittedly, there* may be some ambiguity in what is meant by 'witnessing the beginning of the explosion'. In a sense, we will do it ourselves in seventeen years. But I surmise that in the case of the Kyyra, it means more than that. Since we are also told that the home planets of the Kyyra were near the core, I think it is reasonable to assume that Beldan's statement implies that his father was nearby when the explosion began. In other words, that Beldan's father witnessed the beginning of the explosion from somewhere among their home planets, which are near the core."

Clark frowned. "So?"

"Mr. Clark," Rao asked, "how long do you suppose the Kyyra live?"

Clark did not relax his frown. He didn't see yet what Rao was leading up to, but he did sense that he was leading somewhere. "I can hardly say. Our total contact with them has been a matter of minutes - or hours, perhaps - "

"Granted. But let us deal broadly, with orders of magnitude. Does it not seem that, in view of their similarities to us and what we know about lifespans of terrestrial animals, their lifespan is far more likely to be measured in decades, or centuries, than in longer units?"

"I suppose so. But - "

"Then consider this. Beldan's statement implies that their migration has been on its way for not more than two generations. Let us suppose that means a hundred years, measured in the frame of reference of their motorized planets. There are two possible ways to achieve that at super-c velocities, as you may recall. How familiar are you with the time and energy considerations in operation of the paratachyonic drive, Mr. Clark?"

"Casually. If it's crucial to your argument, maybe you'd better jog my memory."

"It's crucial. You will recall at once the Einsteinian time dilation effect that becomes pronounced as you approach the speed of light from below. Conveniently understood in terms of space-time diagrams except that it now turns put, thanks to me and Chang, that space-time diagrams don't mean what we used to think they did. We don't really know what they mean any more. No matter, we know empirically what the time situation is in super-c. You get the same time dilation effect at n times the speed of light as you do at one-nth of the speed of light. So if you run a ship either far below c or far above it, you get little time dilation and shipboard time is nearly the same as galactic time. If you run close to c, either above or below it, you get a large time dilation effect and the closer to c you are, the shorter shipboard time is compared to galactic time.

"We have established that ship's time for the Kyyra migration to this point has probably only been on the order of a century, and we know they're running faster than light and they've had thirty thousand light-years to come. They could have achieved this either by running much faster than light, in which case galactic time for the trip would also be close to a century, or by running very slightly above the speed of light, in which case - "

" - galactic time would be close to thirty thousand years!" Clark finished in unison with him, suddenly seeing at least part of what he was driving at. "But we know that the galactic time was close to thirty thousand years, because Beldan's father was at home when the explosion happened. If they'd been using the higher speed, they wouldn't have even started until a hundred years ago."

"In which case," Rao nodded, "the beginning of the explosion would have been thousands of years before Beldan's father's time - and very likely would have wiped out the species before they even had time to think about launching a trip at this late date. In fact, for just that reason, they must have set out not long after the explosion. Just how long depends on how close it was, but from Beldan's description, there must not have been very much safety margin. Yes, Mr. Clark, they have been operating their planets and the ships that accompany them at an absurdly slow velocity - probably not more than a thousandth of a percent greater than the speed of light. And that is very strange."

Clark dimly saw why. "Because of the energy considerations?"

Rao nodded triumphantly. "Yes. Just as the time dilation is the same for reciprocally matched speeds above and below c, so is the kinetic energy - and that means fuel required to achieve that speed. A speed of two c requires the same energy as one-half c, the discontinuous transition between those two speeds involves no net energy use. A speed of one hundred c in principle requires as little energy as one-hundredth c. We only bother to accelerate farther than that because the transition is far easier to induce at a speed where the barrier is narrow. But we've never even considered accelerating farther than about two-thirds c before jumping into super-c. With complete mass conversion and an all-photon exhaust, a one-way trip like that needs a mass ratio well under ten. But the l.OOOOlc the Kyyra seem to have been using takes the same energy as five nines c - and with the same assumptions, that's a mass ratio of about a hundred thousand."

Clark saw it all now, and his mind was wide awake and racing. Rao's point was not merely valid-it was staggering. "In other words," he said softly, getting up and pacing the floor, "no matter how they did it, they've gone to a tremendous amount of trouble and expense to go very slowly - when it would have been not only easier and cheaper, but you'd think more desirable, to go faster. Why? They must have had some pretty compelling reason to do that..."

And in that instant he knew he wouldn't sleep much that night.

VIII

Word leaked, of course. Sometime during the hours of tossing and turning and staring into the darkness, Clark decided that he needed rest more than anything else, and switched off the alarm clock. When sleep finally came, it was fitful at first but then he sank deeper and deeper. When the phone finally woke him, it dragged him up from the depths as if through miles of thick syrup, until at last he found himself staring at the ceiling and observing dimly that it was light and the phone was ringing.

The fact eventually penetrated enough to make him reach out for the phone, more annoyed than curious or apprehensive. He managed to pick up the receiver and tuck it under his chin, propping himself up on one elbow. "Hullo?"

"Henry Clark," a painfully loud voice snapped crisply. "Is that you?"

"Yeah," Clark muttered. "Who - "

"Gerber here," said the voice. "Franz Gerber. You may remember me."

Gerber's voice dripped sarcasm. Clark worked diligently to finish waking his mind, but annoyance was still his dominant feeling. "I remember," he said. "What's up?"

"Funny that you should ask that. What's all this rubbish in the morning papers - and why wasn't I notified?"

Clark sat up abruptly on the edge of the bed, suddenly more attentive. "What rubbish in the morning papers? I haven't seen them yet."

"Haven't seen them? Good heavens, Clark, what are you doing? Sleeping your days away while the rest of us try to keep the world reasonably intact?"

Clark's reaction surprised him.

"Knock it oft, Franz," he interrupted. "I'm in no mood for personal vitriol. Come to the point."

A brief pause; Gerber was probably equally surprised. Then he said, very businesslike, "I have three papers in front of me. Each of them carries at least one article on the front page. Not top headline stuff, but front page. Is it true that some sort of extraterrestrial creatures have landed at Kennedy Spaceport?"

"What?"

"You heard me. Do you have aliens there? Or have the wire services gone in for monster fiction?" "What do they say?"

"Hm-m-m," the UN head observed darkly, "you're hedging. The articles I refer to mention the obvious facts that you are there and the port has been shut down more thoroughly than it has ever been shut down before. Naturally speculation about that is rampant. Coincidentally, there's been an unusual rash of UFO reports from that area. At least a dozen in the Titusville-Merritt Island area, all at about the same time yesterday afternoon. Any good newshound would start thinking out loud about a connection, and several already have."

Clark was surprised; the Kyyra ship had blended superbly with the sky. How had so many people seen it - or had they seen something else instead? He wondered silently whether there had been any public word about the shuttle sent out to investigate the orbiting object which he now knew as a Kyyra convoy ship. He asked, "What did these UFO's supposedly look like?"

"The reports were remarkably consistent. The observers all said they saw a single object, high, fast, probably round, and sky-blue. They only happened to notice it when it passed in front of a white cloud. If there'd been more clouds, we might have had more sightings. Nicht wahr?"

For one final moment, Clark toyed with the idea of still trying to cover up. Then he decided that was pointless and the time was too late. He would throw the unembellished truth directly in Gerber's face and play it by ear from there, letting the UN man react however he wanted to. "Wahr," he announced almost belligerently. "Yes, Franz. We have aliens here."

There was a long silence, except for slow breathing. Finally Gerber said tightly, "Why wasn't I informed?"

Clark shrugged; without video, the effect was lost. "They've been here less than a day."

"But you knew they were coming long enough to get down there to meet them."

"A few more hours."

Another long silence. Clark could easily visualize Gerber's round, ruddy, boyish face growing steadily tighter and redder with exasperation. There was a faint hiss of breath being drawn in sharply, and Gerber spat out, "Quit playing games! What do they want?"

"We're not sure. We've only talked to them once."

"And you have no idea what they're doing here?"

"I didn't say that. Look, if you really want to know what little I know, you'd better relax and settle back and listen for a few minutes. Can you keep a secret?"

"What kind of a question is that?" Gerber didn't dignify it with an answer. His anger showed no sign of abating.

"Serious," said Clark. "I'll assume the answer is yes; it had better be. We had a faster-than-light research ship out and it got a look at the core of our galaxy by light that won't reach us for a while. It's exploded. The radiation will begin arriving in about seventeen years."

"Hmph," Gerber snorted. "What's all that have to do with the aliens? Or are you trying to lead me off the subject?"

"That radiation's going to be dangerous when it gets here. It's probably already wiped out life on millions of planets in the galaxy, and it's not going to overlook any of the others. Earth is in danger."

"You're being unnecessarily melodramatic," Gerber said brusquely. "It ill becomes one in a position of such responsibility. What about the aliens?"

Clark took time to reflect that it did sound melodramatic. It sounded more like something that happened in low-budget horror films than in reality ...

But it wasn't a low-budget horror film. It was something that astronomers had known about for years, suddenly brought closer to home. All Earth really was in danger, and it would be purest folly to dismiss that fact lightly because it sounded melodramatic.

"Earth is in danger," he repeated quietly. "The Kyyra have offered to help us escape."

"Bah! You really expect me to swallow this rubbish?"

Clark managed to put a shrug into his voice. "I don't especially care. Reality has a way of forcing itself on you, whether you want to recognize it or not."

Gerber snorted again. He started to say something but bit it off before it had gone far enough to be. recognizable. "I'll buy your aliens," he said. "But the rest of the story? Well ... suppose I buy that too. You say they want to help us. How, pray tell?"

"By converting the Earth to a spaceship and moving it to another galaxy."

"I see." Gerber's voice had become patronizing now, and faintly amused. "Faster than light, of course?"

"Of course." Clark couldn't resist adding, "It's the only way to fly."

"Hmph. And what do they want in return?"

"That," said Clark, "we don't know yet."

"But you're planning to dump a big decision on me, huh? You're going to expect the UN to decide whether to accept their offer or not. Eh?"

"I imagine it'll wind up there eventually." Clark felt stirrings of the old hope of getting out from under the responsibility, but they were weaker now. Gerber wasn't inspiring much confidence in his ability to handle such a matter this morning.

"The last word belongs to us, all right," Gerber said ominously. "And you'd better not forget that. Frankly, I still can't decide whether you're on the level or this is some screwy hoax. But if 'it's real, I'm going to pass the buck right back to you - until the last word."

Clark stiffened. "What do you mean?"

"You're already in this thing. You've made a start on it, and a lot of the things we'll need to know before we make a decision are scientific. Nicht wahr? So I'm not even getting into it yet. Except to tell you to learn everything you can to advise us on a final decision. If the time comes that I actually have to make a move like that, I'm expecting you to make a strong recommendation, with lots of hard facts to back it up. And while you're gathering them, I'll expect interim reports so I won't have to try to assimilate it all at the last minute. Understand?"

"Yes, but - "

"And one more thing."

Clark broke off. "Yes?"

Gerber paused dramatically before answering. Then he said, very deliberately, "This had better be good."

He hung up without waiting for anything else.

Clark sat there, staring at the phone, for quite a while after he hung up. It had not gone as he had expected. Even in the face of Gerber's attitude, there had been that thing in his mind which hoped the conversation would shift the burden of responsibility from his shoulders to Gerber's. It hadn't; instead it had settled the load more solidly than ever where it was. Gerber would not even admit that the things Clark spoke of were real - but if they were, it was Clark who would have to think them through to a decision. It was Clark who would have to bear the constant pressure of knowing that on that decision rode, quite literally, the fate of an entire planetful of people.

And all the while knowing that, no matter how much he tortured himself to arrive at the best possible decision, it could be swiftly and completely overruled by a sudden whim of Gerber's group.

Again he resented it. He felt overwhelmed. But at the same time, a part of him that was slowly beginning to grow stronger quietly resolved to make the best of it. At the moment, caution prevailed. It was already late morning when Gerber called; it was midafternoon before Clark rounded up the Kyyra delegation and the other humans for another meeting. And then it was a singularly fruitless meeting.

Clark recalled afterward that both Rao and Sanchez showed signs of impatience during it, but they also showed restraint. As he had requested, they avoided initiating lines of questioning, leaving that to his diplomatic judgment. He asked few questions himself. There were many in his mind, but somehow the appropriate moment to ask them never seemed to arise. Or at least, so it seemed to him in his present state of mind, colored by an exaggerated consciousness of his responsibility. And Beldan volunteered little except occasional eerie pipings. Clark was becoming increasingly conscious of a peculiar, vaguely unsettling reticence about the entire Kyyra delegation, but he had no way of knowing what - if anything - it meant.

A slightly clearer picture of how the Kyyra proposed to move the Earth emerged from the meeting. But only slightly, and Clark, thinking back, could remember very little of substance that was said before its early adjournment.

The question of motives had not even been approached.

Back in his apartment that evening, he lay on the couch mentally reviewing his performance at the meeting and fiercely criticizing his own timidity in it. Tomorrow, he resolved, would be different.

Somewhere around dusk he was snapped out of his reverie by the phone. "Guardsman Miller at the Main Gate, sir," said the caller. "There's a man here who claims he's Jonel Turabian and needs to see you, sir. His credentials seem to be in order. He has a woman with him. And a dog."

Clark frowned slightly, then said, "Let me see them." He flicked on the small screen in the base of the phone. A second later, a clear picture snapped into being, showing the guardsman, Jonel, and Sandy Dunbar, holding a picturesque mongrel who looked as if he would like to get at the guardsman.

Clark said, "What's up, Jonel?"

"I need to see you personally," Jonel said. "You'll want us to stay."

Clark thought very briefly. Then he said, "Guardsman, escort these people in here and give them quarters. My authority."

"Yes, sir. The dog, too?"

"The dog too." He switched off the screen and hung up.

A half hour later there was a knock and Clark went to let Jonel and Sandy in. He was surprisingly glad to see them.

And he was more than surprised when Jonel said, "Hi! We've come to meet your aliens. Lewiston warned us to expect them - and I thought he was hallucinating."

IX

Jonel's strange opening remark gave Clark the impetus he needed to go into the next afternoon's meeting with a firm battle plan - a series of questions that must be asked and which he would ask before he allowed adjournment. He even went so far as to jot them down on an index card. And he spent an hour in the morning with Rao, working out the wording of some of them.

Beldan, he thought without being able to put a finger on why, seemed surprised and uneasy when the human party filed into the conference room this time - with two new members. There had been no question about admitting Jonel, of course. Clark had balked slightly at letting Sandy in, but Jonel had thought it was a good idea and Clark had not been able to think of a good reason to deny the request. And Sandy herself could be pretty persuasive at times.

They all settled into their chairs. Beldan still managed somehow to look withdrawn and uncomfortable, though Clark did not yet feel any confidence about reading Kyyra faces. There were introductions. Sandy smiled ingratiatingly and then continued to watch the Kyyra with frank interest; Jonel watched too, but with a deliberate effort to avoid being obvious about it. "I have a question," Clark told Beldan when they were through the formalities. "Mr. Turabian was aboard the Archaeopteryx. There was another person aboard who he formerly thought was suffering hallucinations, but now suspects may have been aware that you were following the ship. Is that possible?"

Beldan nodded slightly. "Yes," he said quietly. "You refer to the astronomer. Please accept our regrets for what happened."

Clark frowned abruptly, startled by the unexpected reference to Lewiston's profession. "Exactly what did happen?" he asked sharply.

"Large objects in super-c are very conspicuous to an observer who is also in super-c," said Beldan. "That is how we first detected your ship. To learn more of its nature and origin, we had to use other methods." He hesitated, as if searching for words. "Your language is ill-equipped to tell you about them. You seem to have a few words which approach the fringes of the concepts, but they are incomplete, confused - and not even fully or universally accepted in your culture." Clark felt a touch of fear. Just how much had these beings been able to learn from radio and television broadcasts? "There is a class of phenomena which are associated with minds and follow different laws from, the ones you call 'physical'. But they do follow laws, and an understanding of those laws provided the basis of our normal means of communication while in super-c. You don't seem to have a word for that means of communication."

We don't have the means, either, Clark thought tightly, his fear flaring up. He said, "You mean the Kyyra are telepathic?"

"No. Not in the sense that you use that word, though it is one of the words I mentioned that approach the subject. We have not cultivated direct mind-to-mind contact among individuals. Normally we use transmitters and receivers, controlled by speech or similar means. We tried contacting the Archaeopteryx that way but got no response. So we used a sensor beam which is a modification of the same principle. It is vaguely analogous to your radar, being sent out and returned in modified form by the activities of minds that it encounters. There is no travel time involved, so it can be used in either super-c or sub-c to gain information from a mind not equipped with a transmitter. Less reliable than good two-way communications equipment, but an acceptable emergency substitute."

"And that's what you used on Lewiston?"

Beldan nodded. "And Turabian, and the other one. And later you, Mr. Clark. You seem offended; I fear I don't understand exactly why. This was our only way to learn enough about you to come here and begin these discussions of our common danger. That was our only purpose. It was unfortunate that Lewiston's mind was one of those that are unusually sensitive to the sensor beam. While his two shipmates were at most dimly aware of it, Lewiston at times felt it very strongly and even gained some awareness of what it was and who was behind it. But since such phenomena as telepathy are so sporadic in your species, and the underlying principles not even suspected, he himself tended to regard those moments of heightened awareness as mere hallucinations. Most unfortunate; we are sorry. We learned from such cases as his, and as soon as we were able we restricted our communications with you to your own electromagnetic methods."

Clark relaxed slightly. If the Kyyra weren't reading all his thoughts right now, things weren't as bad as he had thought. Still, he had been read in the past ... "I'm surprised our minds are similar enough for you to study that way " he remarked.

"The basic laws are general," said Beldan. "We have little experience with life forms other than ourselves, but we find a sameness in the effects of human and Kyyra minds on the sensor beam which far transcends the superficial differences in spoken language or even neural circuitry."

Clark whistled. "Wow," he said softly. "What a weapon this must be. When you were home, I suppose you used it a lot in war?"

"What is war?" Beldan asked.

Such a response had never even occurred to Clark. When he recovered from the first shock of it, he said, "Never mind. It would take too long to explain, and it has nothing to do with us." (I hope, he thought involuntarily.) "If you don't know what it is, you're lucky." He changed the subject, but the oddity of the question lingered in his mind. "There's a question that's been bothering several of us, and we think things will go more smoothly if we clear it up now. If I ask it badly, please believe no offense is intended."

"What is it?"

"You've offered to help us escape our galaxy. What we wonder is, why?"

Beldan's eyes jerked back momentarily and then he unmistakably frowned, as humanly as was possible without a nose. "What difference does that make?" he asked. "You know the danger exists, and we offer you a way out of it. Isn't that enough?"

"Yes, but ..." Out of the corner of his eye, Clark saw Sandy watching Beldan even more intently than she had been so far - and her eyes had never left him for more than a second or two. Now her expression had become almost as inscrutable as his, but Clark could spare no effort to try to figure it out. He said, "Of course we're grateful for the offer. But helping us would be an enormous inconvenience to you - "

"Not as enormous to us as it appears to you."

"I can appreciate that," Clark said, with growing exasperation, "but still enormous. What we get out of it is obvious. But what do you ask in return?"

"Must we ask something in return?"

Rao and Sanchez were staring expectantly at Clark, but he couldn't think of another way to attack the question. As unsatisfied with himself as they were, he said, "I don't seem to be making myself clear. Maybe I should leave that question and come back to it later. There is one more thing, though, along the same general lines. Dr. Rao brought it to my attention that you must have left your home not long after the core explosion began and been traveling at a speed only slightly above c. Is that true?"

Beldan's eyes jerked slightly and he was silent for a few seconds before answering. "Yes."

"Wouldn't it have been a lot easier and less costly to jump to super-c from well below, and then accelerate to a very high speed?"

Another pause. "Perhaps."

"Then why didn't you do it that way?"

"How very inquisitive you are," said Beldan.

The remark instantly struck Clark as sarcastic. "Yes," he said with muffled anger. "We're inquisitive by nature. You'd better get used to it."

"I meant no offense," said Beldan. "I meant only that with your planet in such danger, and with so little time to prepare, it seems odd that you dwell so much on matters that have so little to do with the problem."

So little? Clark thought incredulously. But he calmed himself with an effort and said only, "I see your point. If you prefer to talk about procedures, let's talk about procedures." He drew the index card full of notes out of his shirt pocket and looked at it.

Beldan had taken his music-pipe out and started a snatch of melody on it. One of the others also took out a pipe and started an independent tune. At first the two pipings seemed chaotically unrelated. Then they seemed to merge for a moment into an indescribable unity, and then slither off in their separate ways, again independent entities but somehow still belonging together. Clark shivered. The stuff they did with those pipes was unearthly, all right, but some of it was powerfully evocative to human ears. He turned to Jonel and Sandy and explained, "They carry those pipes around and play them at the drop of a hat. Seem to use music like we use cigarettes and coffee."

"I like it," said Sandy. The remark startled Clark; he would never have thought of making it. Beldan stopped and looked at Sandy. "Thank you," he said. He played a few more notes, put the pipe down on the table in front of him, and looked back at Clark. "You have questions?" The other Kyyra kept on playing his pipe, softly.

"Yes." Clark glanced at his card, then back at Beldan. "You said that when you move a planet, the planet itself provides the fuel. Yesterday you clarified that somewhat by specifying that subsurface and core material are converted into energy for propulsion. How much subsurface and core material?"

"An appreciable fraction," said Beldan. "All of what you call core, and a good deal of what you call subsurface."

And you don't want to give numbers? Clark thought suspiciously. He noticed that Rao was doodling on the tabletop. He started to ask something, but right then Rao whipped out a pocket calculator, punched a set of buttons, and looked up. "Excuse me," he said.

Clark glanced at him, hoping he would watch what he said. "You spoke yesterday," said Rao, "of running the Earth up to what we consider a typical speed before the transition to super-c, and then accelerating beyond the barrier to keep trip time down to a small number of years. Any mechanism I can envision short of essentially complete conversion has no possibility of doing that. So you propose injecting large quantities of antimatter?" To human ears, his sarcasm was obvious. Clark found it hard to tell, at such moments, whether Rao was showing an admirable willingness to acknowledge his ignorance, or an eagerness to flaunt knowledge that he thought was greater than it was.

Beldan gave a matter-of-fact answer. "It is not necessary to inject anything from outside. It is far easier to use what is already here. We can initiate a controlled process of complete conversion by a process which induces a transition - Forgive me; your broadcast media have not provided me with a good basis for discussing technical matters in terms familiar to you. The best I can do is to say that our 'induced annihilation' process effectively converts some of the atoms in a sample to corresponding atoms of antimatter. I can see your skepticism, Dr. Rao, but be assured that it is a perfectly normal ... quantum transition, even though you have not recognized the appropriate quantum numbers. And we would only use that process at the beginning of the trip. Reaction engines are intrinsically inefficient, even at their best. Once under way, it becomes possible to use another process - one which I fear is even less familiar to you. It converts a portion of the mass of the Earth directly and completely into kinetic energy of the remaining unconverted part, without wasting most of the energy on an exhaust."

Rao stared at him silently for a long time, disbelief written plainly on his face. Clark could easily understand that disbelief, but he was not yet willing to share it absolutely. Rao punched out something else on his pocket calculator, stared at it, punched again, and shrugged. "And the transition to super-c is achieved by large induction stations built at several points on Earth's surface?"

"Correct. And some or all of that construction can be done after the trip begins, during the sub-c acceleration."

Clark felt a growing, deep-seated discomfort as he began to see some of the ramifications of the Kyyra proposal. If it was accepted, Earth would be changed irrevocably and beyond recognition. A powerful tug-of-war was beginning to grow in his mind and feelings. On one hand, there was the desire to do whatever was needed to save Earth and man in whatever form could be managed; on the other, the desire to save them in their present form for as long as possible - even if only seventeen years. On one hand was the urge toward personal escape; on the other, the intellectual realization that his personal life-span might not extend beyond those seventeen years anyway.

"There's a very simple question," he said, trying to keep his mind focused on one thing at a time. "You say you start out with a reaction engine. Where do you put the nozzle? If you don't know what war is, you can't imagine the trouble that question will cause."

"I believe I can see some of the trouble you anticipate," said Beldan. "Fortunately the best place to start the reaction is relatively uninhabited. A nozzle at your South Pole would have the advantage of thrusting along the axis, and M31 is located roughly north. Once the reaction is under way and has penetrated deeply enough, we can make course corrections by modifying the shape of the reaction zone."

"But running it at the South Pole, one of the first effects would be to melt the South Polar cap. What about all the flooding?"

"A definite inconvenience," Beldan said simply. "But not by any means the last or largest you'll face. I will not try to hide the hardships from you. Others come to mind immediately. As the Earth accelerates and uses up its mass, its surface gravity will decrease - rather drastically. That will have physiological effects on all who are not protected by artificial gravity fields. It will also lead to partial loss of atmosphere. That in turn will be aggravated by the changed thermal properties. We can adjust the heat released internally by the driving reactions to maintain the surface region at a tolerable temperature in interstellar space, but the accustomed structure of your atmosphere and oceans is dependent on the main heat input coming from an external point source. All that will change."

Clark nodded numbly as. Beldan confirmed a whole string of his worries. He had subconsciously half-hoped that the Omnipotent Benefactors could do their good deed without all those unpleasant side effects. But of course they weren't omnipotent. They worked within the strict framework of physical laws, even if those laws were far more inclusive than the ones man knew - or had thought he knew two decades earlier. "So it seems," Clark said slowly, "that the surface will become unfit for life during the trip and we will have to move underground."

"So it seems. But it is not as bad as it sounds. Some of the modifications are needed only for later stages of the trip and can be done en route. For the beginning, you already have some places that are good enough, in your cities which have grown downward in recent years."

That was true. Underground expansion had become big business lately, and some of the underground parts of places like New York would be able to protect travelers and atmosphere with little modification. "But only a few,"

Clark protested. "What about all the others?"

"Many homes could be modified rather easily. The occupants could do it themselves, before starting or in the earliest phases of the trip."

"But that's expensive. What about all the people who can't afford it?"

Beldan shrugged - a shrug too obviously learned from Rao. "A huge quantity of detail work," he said, "but you'll find a way to do it if you want it badly enough. We'll provide propulsion and basic guidance in the whole program, but the rest of the details you'll have to take care of yourselves."

The hope the Kyyra had brought was becoming far too tainted with other things. In a voice bordering on despair, Clark asked bitterly, "So to accept your offer we have to go underground and give up all that means Earth to us. How is that better than just going underground and hiding right where we are?"

Beldan stared at him for a long time, apparently surprised, before he answered. "Do you really have to ask that? The answer is simple enough. At the other end will be new planets - and in far less than the million years that the danger will last here."

The end of the session found Clark mentally and emotionally exhausted. He was relieved when Beldan agreed to a day's recess to allow time for thought. A guardsman came to escort the Kyyra back to their quarters; Jonel and Sandy followed them out without saying anything. But Rao and Sanchez remained, and as soon as the others were gone they both turned on Clark with fire in their eyes. "I trust," Rao said venomously, "you do not think you have cleared up the questions of motives and travel time to anybody's satisfaction except your own."

"Second the motion," Sanchez drawled, frowning as he lit up a cigar. "Sounds to me like I'm still supposed to believe they just want to do this out' of the goodness of their hearts. And I don't."

"Knock it off," Clark said. "I know nothing's settled, to my satisfaction any more than yours. But I didn't see any good way to keep pursuing the questions today. I had the impression, watching Beldan's reactions, that there was' a difference in cultural orientation getting in the way. As when he said we were wasting time on unimportant questions. It's hard for us to see it that way, but I 'think maybe he really believed they were unimportant."

"Then why wouldn't he answer?"

"I won't know that until I understand better how they think. That'll take time. Meanwhile, I freely admit I got nowhere on the motive question. But I did think of a possible reason for the way they've been traveling."

Rao's thick black eyebrows jerked suspiciously upward. "Yes?"

"Maybe they wanted to look for people like us who needed help. And they wanted to have time to make contact when they found any."

Rao laughed, a single contemptuous blast. "Really, Mr. Clark, really! That brings you right back to the motive question. With a galactic explosion breathing down their necks, why should they wish to dawdle along looking for backward races to help? Above all, why should they be so eager to help that they would go to literally tremendous expense looking for such races?"

"Actually," Sanchez mused, "how do 'we know they're really from anywhere near the core? How do we know they're not from right around where the Archaeopteryx went? Maybe they saw it and got scared and this whole business is an elaborate scheme to get a chance to destroy Earth. And us."

"Yesterday," Clark said wearily, "I. was accused of being unnecessarily melodramatic. Were you really listening to what you just said, Joe? Think about it. Why should they want to destroy Earth? And if they did, and they really have the capability to do it, why should they go through all this silliness of meeting us face to face and asking permission?"

Sanchez uttered something between a grunt and a snort, but otherwise said nothing. Clark was somewhat relieved; though his questions were good ones, already he was seeing equally good counterquestions for which he had no ready answers. And he could think of no really positive way to answer the questions Sanchez had already asked.

"We seem," Rao said after an awkward pause, "to be at a stalemate on those questions. However, I would remind you again, Mr. Clark, of the first question I asked you night before last. Can we trust them? Even if they mean well, have you really tried to visualize the measures Beldan has described? He is speaking of spaceship-style living, Mr. Clark, for everybody on Earth for a period of at least a year and possibly many years. Confining quarters; air and water and food supply problems; reduced gravity or dependence on pseudo-gray. And months or years of isolation in super-c; I'm sure you have heard what that is like. Not everybody is suitably constituted for spaceship life, physically or psychologically. There are good reasons why astronauts have always been carefully screened and trained. Most of us are simply not prepared to endure those conditions. I am not prepared to endure those conditions."

Clark looked straight at him. "Are you more prepared to die?"

Rao looked straight back without flinching. "Yes, Mr. Clark, I am. I already told you that, when you first came to see me. I have thought of another reason why pseudo-gravity will be needed, by the way, even before much mass is lost. Acceleration. Our ideas of up and down are going to become rather strange when the whole planet begins accelerating along its axis. I don't know what sort of accelerations they propose to use, but I did a rather interesting calculation during today's meeting. You might be interested in its result, Mr. Clark. It will help you to appreciate the kind of thing we're discussing. Would you like to hear it?"

"Let's hear it," Clark said indifferently.

"I estimated the rate at which they would have to annihilate matter to produce an initial acceleration of half a G - which, by the way, would mean an acceleration time on the order of a year before the transition. The annihilation rate, if I calculated correctly, is roughly comparable to completely annihilating twenty-five Mt. Everests per second. Try to picture that, Mr. Clark. And then think of how delicately even such a puny thing as a bulldozer refines a landscape."

Clark thought about it; the picture was not pleasing. But he didn't say so. He just said, very quietly, "You know, Dr. Rao, I believe you're scared." And he smiled slightly, meanwhile reflecting that there was nothing unreasonable in Rao's being scared. If the Kyyra really did things like that - and the far more spectacular things they had apparently done with their own planet - they were thoroughly awe-inspiring. And the more you knew about science, the more awe-inspiring they were. If Lewiston had got any kind of a good look at what the Kyyra were ...

No wonder he had cracked up.

Rao's piercing black eyes glowered. "Ridiculous!" he snapped. "I merely want to be sure you do not commit us to anything rash." He paused. "Frankly, I seriously question even the possibility of many of their claims."

"Oh?"

"Yes Consider their alleged exhaustless drive. A flagrant violation of momentum conservation. And their claim that they can release little enough of the energy as heat to keep the surface at a reasonable temperature. What about the second law of thermodynamics?"

"Maybe," said Clark, his weariness beginning to overcome his patience, "your knowledge isn't quite as general as you think it is."

"I am not that ignorant. Those laws are fundamental."

"So were certain interpretations of relativity - until you invented the paratachyonic drive." Clark yawned. "All through history people have been sure they've had The Basics, and over and over they've been wrong. They never learn." He paused. "Anything else, Rao?"

Rao glared at him indignantly, breathing hard through clenched teeth. "Just one thing," he muttered finally. "When are you going to tell people about this? Or are you just going to play God?"

He stood up and wheeled to leave in a single swift motion - and almost ran into Beldan, standing with his escort in the open door.

"Excuse me," Beldan said very quietly as he moved aside. "I forgot my pipe." He came in silently, almost apologetically, as Rao stomped out. Clark watched wordlessly as Beldan scooped the pipe off the table, stunned by the realisation that the statuesque alien had heard the last exchange.

X

As they left the conference room, Sandy gripped Jonel's hand tightly and walked more hurriedly than was her custom. Jonel glanced at her and saw that her face was tight, her lower lip caught between her teeth. She looked straight ahead and didn't say anything. All the way to the end of the long corridor, Jonel waited. When they entered an elevator, otherwise empty, and Sandy punched for the ground floor, he finally said quietly, "Something's bothering you."

Sandy nodded. "I'm scared," she said simply. "I felt cut off from Earth in there. Can we go ... out ... to talk?"

The elevator halted gently and its door slid open silently. They stepped out and headed without pause for the outer door nearest the spot where Jonel had parked. He, too, still felt the craving for earthly things he had first experienced when the Archaeopteryx had come home, and he had earlier talked Clark into giving permission for them to come and go while the Kyyra meetings were going on. Clark hadn't liked the idea at first, but had given in after reasonably little persuasion. After all, he knew Jonel was trustworthy, and not terribly well known to the public. And no one had yet announced publicly that the Archaeopteryx was back, much less linked her return with the UFO reports and the suspicious events at the spaceport ...

Jonel knew Sandy well; he didn't try to force conversation now. They stepped outside into late afternoon sunshine and crossed a narrow strip of concrete to the parking area. They got into Jonel's compact blue car; Sandy sat close to Jonel but still said nothing as they spun out to the gate and checked past a slightly puzzled but cooperative guardsman.

Jonel took her to that seaside park he had visited the day he got back. Odd, he mused as he nosed the car into a parking space, I've been here dozens of times and I've never even noticed the name of the place. Don't seem to be any conspicuous signs ...

It didn't seem important enough to check now, either; it was merely a curiosity he had just consciously noticed for the first time. He and Sandy got out, taking along the blanket he always kept in the back of the car, and walked barefoot down toward the water. The place was even less crowded than usual, probably because of the hour - many people would be at supper now.

They found a place where the beach met the gardens and the sunlight struggled through between the leaves to fall in dappled patterns on the sand. Jonel spread the blanket on the sand there and they lay down on it, parallel to the beach. He waited. Sandy looked at the surf and the vegetation and sifted sand through her fingers, and gradually she seemed to relax - but not completely. Finally Jonel said, "You say you're scared?"

She nodded. "Uh-huh. Aren't you? Listening to Beldan describing the way they can help us ... I started picturing it. I don't have the background to be sure of all of it, but ... Jonel, was he making sense?"

"I think so. Anyway, as far as I could tell, he was. Some of it's based on principles we don't know, but the part that's familiar holds water. I don't have any way to check the rest, but there is evidence that they may very well know some principles we don't. And we seem to need some, if we're going to get away."

"Hm-m-m." For several seconds she was silent, thoughtful. Finally she said slowly, "But the way he describes it, it's going to be so much trouble. The trip will he hard for everybody and the Earth will never be the same again. Everything - " she gestured around them, "all of this will be ruined. It hurts to think about that." She paused again. "I found myself wondering if it was really worth it. If it might not be better to forget about running that hard. Just resign ourselves to the inevitable and make sure we get all we can out of the years we have left - "

Jonel was startled - this didn't sound like Sandy at all. "What about the kids?" he interrupted. "Could you really bring children into the world knowing they were going to get as far as their teens and then have that happen?"

"There's the hiding thing," she said feebly. "Or ... maybe we shouldn't have any. Knowing what's going to happen ..."

"Not have any?" He stared at her in disbelief. "But they were such an important part of our plans. We've both always enjoyed doing so much, and we wanted to share it with them ..."

"I know. But if it's all going to end ... as you say, why let them just get as far as their teens and have it all collapse around them?"

"But ..." Jonel found it hard to think clearly about what to say to her, when the things she was saying were so out of character. "O.K. Suppose we decided to just stay here and wait it out and not have any kids. Do you think for a minute everybody else is going to do the same? No matter what we do, there'll be lots of those youngsters around when the radiation gets here. All in the same boat we tried to make sure ours wouldn't get caught in." He looked at her. "The end won't be quick or easy for any of them."

She was biting her lip rather hard. "I know. There aren't any answers I like."

"What happened," Jonel asked, "to what you said when I first told you about this? Before Beldan and his buddies came, you were all set to take off for M31 if we could get space on a ship. All that's changed is that they're saying they can take a lot more people."

"Yes, but ... I don't know. Maybe it's just that I can't bear doing all that to the Earth. I love the Earth. If we went on a ship I could subconsciously pretend it was still right there where we'd left it. But it wouldn't be, would it?" She shrugged, visibly annoyed with herself. "I don't know what I want. I just know I've never been so confused and helpless and - " She broke off and looked at him abruptly, a sharply bordered piece of the uncertainty suddenly gone. "Jonel, what are we waiting for?"

"What?"

"We've known each other long enough and well enough that there hasn't been any question of what we planned to do for a long time. Has there?"

"Of course not."

"Well, now the details are all messed up and nothing's certain any more. Except that. Why don't we go ahead and get married now and then stick together through whatever happens next?"

"Right away?" Jonel asked, startled.

"Uh-huh." She looked at him expectantly. He looked back, reading her face as carefully as he could. Her suggestion was completely unexpected, but he found himself feeling a kind of tenderness for her that he had never before seen her need.

"O.K.," he said.

And they did.

Much later that night, in a married-personnel apartment at Kennedy Spaceport, Jonel and a much more relaxed and cheerful Sandy lay in the darkness, waiting for sleep. The evening's events replayed themselves giddily in Jonel's mind. The ceremony had been quick and inconspicuous, in a shabby little office in a shabby little town a short distance inland. The presiding magistrate, a nervous little fellow with a droopy mustache, had remarked that Jonel's name was unusual, but managed to get through the proceedings without actually seeming to recognize it. Then there had been a very small party, of sorts, instigated by Henry Clark, and the move into new quarters, and ...

He was glad to see Sandy feeling so much calmer. After a while he thought she was asleep - and so he was surprised when, after a long silence, she whispered, "Jonel ... are you awake?"

He whispered back, "Yes." "Were you watching Beldan during that meeting today?"

Jonel frowned in the darkness. He had thought she'd got her mind off that ... "No. Should I?"

"I don't know. But I was. You know what I think?"

"What?"

"I think he's scared, too." "Huh? Why should he be scared?"

"I don't know. Maybe that isn't even exactly what it is. But it's something like that. I could feel it through the whole thing."

"But you've never even seen their species before. How could you - "

"I may be wrong," she said, "but I don't think so. You've often commented yourself on my 'feel' for people and other animals, haven't you? Well, I can't tell you why, but I feel sure something's bothering Beldan. And I think we might be able to help."

Jonel was silent for several seconds. Then he said, "How can we help?"

"I have an idea," Sandy said. "See what you think Henry would have to say about this ..."

XI

Clark needed the day off. He again allowed himself to sleep late, and this time no unwanted telephone calls thwarted his plans. He awoke spontaneously at midmorning, feeling more relaxed and refreshed than he had since before the Archaeopteryx came home. He rose, washed and dressed, cleared the windows to let daylight flood in, and dialed a breakfast of bacon and eggs from the dispenser in the corner of the room. It came quickly and tasted good. He was halfway through it before he noticed the envelope someone had slipped under the door.

He started to get up, still chewing, to go and get it, but he quickly thought better of it. No, he told himself firmly, a few minutes aren't that important. I've got this far without ulcers and I don't intend to start now. I'm going to sit right here and finish my breakfast before I go back to worrying about whatever somebody wants me to worry about now.

But he finished breakfast faster than he had begun it.

Then he picked up the envelope and took it to the couch to examine it. It was sealed, but his name was written plainly in bold blue ink on the outside.

He tore it open hurriedly with his thumb, pulled out and unfolded the single small sheet of paper that was inside. It contained only a few terse words, in the same meticulously neat hand that was on the envelope. Clark read:

Dear Mr. Clark:

I have thought over our conversation last night and have decided that I cannot condone your continued secret consideration of the aliens' proposed abuse of the Earth. I cannot in good conscience continue to associate myself with these deliberations. Nor can I in good conscience allow them to remain secret. As a man of good conscience, I feel but one final obligation to you, and that is to inform you of these two decisions so you will not need to wonder where I stand.

Sincerely, Chandragupta Rao.

Clark read it twice, to make sure he was reading the right meaning out of the stiffly polite phrases. The second time through, slowly and carefully, he began to react, with a mixture of anger at Rao for taking such a step without discussing it first - and worry about what the consequences would be. Up to now he had had only the impending disaster and the Kyyra offer to think about and try to reach decisions about. Now he would have to deal with public opinion, too - a thing he had thought about the day Turabian told him of the threat, but which then had seemed comfortably remote.

Disturbed, his throat dry, he tried to think of something he could do now. There was no way to tell when the note had been slipped under his door - very early this morning or even last night - but very probably it was already too late to stop Rao. Even if it wasn't, he had no idea how he might stop Rao. The physicist had quite understandably left no word as to where he was going, and he would have had little trouble talking his way past the gate guards. If he had aroused any suspicion, Clark would have already been called. And he hadn't been.

So Rao was gone, and very probably he had already blown the whole business wide open. Clark glanced at his watch. There would be a television newscast in a couple of minutes. That would be a good quick chance to find out how far things had gone.

He switched on his room's receiver and waited through two minutes of commercial drivel with the volume turned low, then turned it up as the news began. Rao was the third item. The staff announcer read from his script, "Chandragupta Rao, co-discoverer of the Rao-Chang drive used in experimental starships, this morning alleged that beings from outside the Solar System have landed on Earth and are engaged in secret conferences with high government officials. Our reporters were on the spot; we give you the story in Professor Rao's own words."

The image on the screen switched to a tape clip of Rao, unsmiling and with just enough stage fright to be apparent to anyone who knew him. "I feel it is my duty," he said quietly, "to inform the public of certain matters which directly affect all of them and which their political leaders have been concealing from them. Several days ago the research starship Archaeopteryx returned to Earth. The fact was not made public because of certain events which had occurred on board, but you should know that those events were related to a discovery made by the research party carried by the ship. Galactic nuclei sometimes suffer large explosions whose effects extend to the whole galaxy. If the Archaeopteryx observations are correct, our galaxy has suffered such an explosion, which threatens to make the surface of the Earth uninhabitable within a few decades.

"Two days ago rumors began spreading that intelligent extraterrestrials had landed at Kennedy Spaceport. These -rumors are true. I have been there. I have seen these aliens and talked to them. I have left now because of my belief that the matter was being mishandled and should be public knowledge. Henry Clark of the World Science Foundation has been in conference with these aliens. They claim that they are already fleeing the core explosion which the Archaeopteryx detected, and that they can help us to escape the danger. It appears probable that they can do so, but they have given no indication of why they want to. And they have made it quite clear that their proposed methods of help would drastically affect the life of every person on Earth. So I urge every citizen to demand full explanations from his leaders. Perhaps the danger is real, and perhaps the aliens' offer is a good one, but I remind you of an ancient slogan which applies very well to this case. Caveat emptor!"

Very interesting, Clark thought numbly. And very slick, for somebody with neither experience nor' talent as a demagogue. Calm, objective, factual - and thoroughly inflammatory. Of course, his vocabulary's too big for some folks, but it'll get translated soon enough ...

The television picture switched back to the staff announcer. "Reaction to Professor Rao's statement," he said without expression, "has so far been mild and scattered. There has been some picketing, notably at the UN and at WSF headquarters" - two brief tape clips of New York street scenes, each showing perhaps a dozen people carrying placards protesting bureaucratic secrecy and news management, together with a few curious bystanders - "but our spot checks of the man in the street show responses ranging from mild curiosity and skepticism to 'never heard of it'. Now, turning to state and local news - "

Clark switched the set off and swore at himself for not taking more precautions about Rao. Though it actually might not have been so easy, even if he'd thought to try. It had been hard enough just to get Rao here, no emergency had been declared, and his own nonemergency powers had definite limits. Still ...

The phone clamored shrilly for his attention. Annoyed, he snatched up the receiver and snapped, "Clark here. What is it?"

The gate guardsman identified himself and then said awkwardly, "Sir, there are a bunch of ... er ... people out here who say they want to see you. They don't have any credentials, exactly ..."

Clark scowled, counted quickly and quietly to ten, and flicked on his screen. "Show me," he said curtly. The screen showed what was happening at the gate. It looked quite a bit like the scenes in New York. One placard read, "The people have a right to know!" Another said, "This is OUR spaceport. Who invited THEM?" Another ...

"Tell them we're not prepared to admit the public at this time," said Clark. "If they get unruly and you need more men at the gate, don't hesitate to ask for them." He hung up without waiting for a reply.

He stretched out on the bed and tried to think. He had been making progress - slow, but progress. Rao had had no call to throw this monkey wrench into the works, and the fact that he had was intensely irksome. Even as he tried to clarify the new status of the problem and how he should react to the changes, Clark kept being sidetracked by thoughts of how he could get even with Rao - or at least keep him from doing any more damage.

He was also sidetracked by a phone call, but to his great relief it was only Jonel. "Sorry to bother you," Jonel said. "Sandy and I wondered if you might join us for lunch. There's a little thing we'd like to talk to you about."

"Is it - " Clark started to ask if it was urgent, then cut himself off. Whatever else was happening, and whatever else they were, those two were newlyweds and friends of his. If he couldn't even take time to accept their invitation to lunch the day after their wedding ... "I'd be delighted," he said more calmly, "and thanks for asking. About an hour?"

"Fine. See you then."

A minute after he hung up, Clark thought to wonder what the public prints were doing with Rao's statement. He dropped a token in the newsfax dispenser next to the desk, and a minute later he had a sample.

It was on the front page, halfway down, with a three-eighths-inch head reading "EARTH INVADED?" and then a one-eighth-inch subhead: "PROMINENT SCIENTIST ALLEGES FACTS BEING WITHHELD ABOUT BEINGS FROM SPACE."

Clark groaned. The body of the short article was essentially the same as what he had heard on television; the headlines were blatantly irresponsible. A friend who ran a news magazine had once taken offense at Clark's suggestion that all caption and blurb writers should have to pass a literacy test, but it still seemed like a good idea. In this case, the relatively inconspicuous position of the article on the page would help to minimize the damage done, but there was simply no excuse for that kind of wording. Especially on the strength of one man's unsupported word - even if the one man did happen to be Chandragupta Rao.

As if the thought were a cue, the phone rang and when Clark answered, an unfamiliar voice said, "Mr. Clark, I've been trying to reach you all morning and haven't been able to get past your underlings. How do you get important calls?"

"I have ways," Clark said ebony. "I take it this isn't an important call?"

"I didn't mean it that way. Listen, I'm Walter Stuart of Consolidated Information Media. I suppose you've heard Professor Rao's statement about the aliens. We'd like very much to get an interview with you - "

"No comment."

"What?" Walter Stuart sounded incredulous.

"No comment at this time."

A long pause. Then, "But ... we already have a long interview lined up with Rao. It'll be broadcast and printed all over the world."

Clark shrugged. "Well, I suppose there's nothing I can do about that. But if I think of anything, I certainly will."

Another long, unbelieving silence. "I find your attitude astounding, sir. Surely you realize that anything you don't say will be held against you - by the public, that is."

"Surely. When I'm ready to comment, I will. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have lots of work to do - to get ready to comment."

"Have it your way. But I'll be calling back. And so will plenty of others. Interviews with you and Rao are going to be very hot properties before long."

Walter Stuart hung up. Henry Clark didn't; instead, he gave instructions to issue a "No comment," without bothering him personally, to all newsmen who tried to reach him until further notice.

Shortly thereafter, and with a delay time of only thirty or forty hours, he thought of something that should have hit him as soon as Jonel and Sandy had showed up night before last. He put through a call to psychiatrist Stephan Kovacs in New York. "Anything new on Don Lewiston?" he asked.

"Nothing significant. We've hardly had enough time."

"Understandable. I've got a new angle I'd like you to check. I'll have to ask you to regard it as very confidential."

"Agreed."

"I assume you've heard Chandragupta Rao's statements about the aliens who've landed here at the spaceport."

"Yes," said Kovacs. He did not comment further.

"They're basically true, though I think he hasn't fairly represented the problem I face. Anyway, the Kyyra - that's the visitors' name - say they first learned about us by observing the Archaeopteryx crew by something that sounds vaguely like machine-aided telepathy, and that Lewiston was apparently aware of the process and may have been receiving some actual information about them. I don't know how you feel about parapsychology - "

"I have no opinion about it."

" - but the angle I'd like you to check is this. Suppose at least some of Lewiston's 'hallucinations' were real perceptions that he just thought were hallucinations because they seemed fantastic and were coming in through unfamiliar channels. If that's true, he may actually know some significant things about the Kyyra. And if you can sort out what he does know - we need it. Badly."

Kovacs was silent for a few seconds. Then he said, "Noted. I'll look into it, Mr. Clark. Strictly confidential."

And by then it was almost time for lunch.

Thoughts of what to do about Rao intruded once or twice, but on the whole the meal Sandy had fixed in the Turabians' apartment was a pleasant interlude. The food was good and the conversation refreshingly light. They were into dessert - blueberry tarts - before anybody brought up the "little thing" Jonel had mentioned on the phone.

"It's just this," Sandy said. "When I was watching our visitors yesterday, I had the feeling they were as tensed up about this as we are. Maybe even more so."

Clark frowned. "Now why should that be?"

"I don't know, but I can make some guesses. Try to put yourself in Beldan's place. Practically alone on a planet full of aliens, bearer of grim news and an offer of a cure that's 'almost as scary as the disease. One tense session a day with the alien leader - that's you - "

"He could untense them a lot if he'd just come out and say what's in it for them," Clark muttered.

"Could be," Sandy granted. "But maybe there's some reason why he can't - or he honestly doesn't see why we keep harping on that question. Take a look at anthropology - there's an amazing variety of outlooks just among human cultures. Anyway, he has that one grilling a day and that's all he sees of us. The rest of the time he sits cooped up in a room designed for humans because you talked him into staying there for security reasons - which I suspect he also doesn't understand. Anyway, I got to wondering if you would have any objection to Jonel and me inviting the three of them to visit us here when the talks aren't in session. Like this afternoon or evening."

Clark stopped chewing and looked at her, perplexed. "For what purpose?"

Sandy shrugged. "Just a social call."

"A social call? Why, what on Earth could you have in common with them?"

Sandy smiled disarmingly. "I guess we're not likely to find out unless we try, are we?"

Clark chewed vigorously, stalling to think of a good answer. At first glance, he didn't like the idea, but it was hard to verbalize why. Finally he said slowly, "As you say, we know very little about what they're really like. By seeing them alone like that, under... er ... uncontrolled conditions, you could be exposing yourselves to danger."

"Could be. But are the conditions really any more uncontrolled than in the official meetings?"

"Hmph. Well, try to look at it from Beldan's point of view. He might have the same kind of worries about unnecessary exposure to humans."

"Or he might be as indifferent to them as we are. It doesn't cost much to ask."

"Probably not." He looked at Jonel. "Jonel, she said 'we'. You've been sitting there pretty quietly. What do you think about all this?"

"It was Sandy's idea," said Jonel, "but I find it intriguing. From curiosity, if nothing else. And maybe we even can help put them more at ease. Sandy's pretty good at that."

"So you don't mind trying it?"

"Not at all."

"Hm-m-m." Clark put his final bite of blueberries in his mouth. As he chewed it, he suddenly saw something he had been missing through the whole conversation. By the time he finished the bite, his decision was made. "Since you seem determined, I'll say O.K., in spite of the things I've already mentioned. Because it just occurred to me that maybe this is what I've been needing, too. You saw how Beldan was evading my questions yesterday. Maybe if you can establish some sort of friendly relationship, you can find out what I couldn't - if not an outright statement of their motives, at least some understanding of that cultural outlook you mentioned." He grinned and winked at her. "If anybody can do it, Sandy, I'll bet you can."

She returned his smile, but with a certain cool detachment. "Thanks," she said. "I don't intend to spy on them, but if I learn anything you should know, I'll tell you."

Beldan accepted the invitation with surprisingly little discussion or comment - surprising, at least, to Jonel, who had anticipated the kind of reaction Clark had warned against. But Beldan showed neither apprehension nor hesitation. He simply thanked Sandy for the invitation and made sure he knew the correct hour to come. He even agreed that he would be glad to share their supper - a subject Sandy had hesitated to broach because of her uncertainties about both biochemistry and etiquette.

He did, however, say that he would be coming alone. He offered no reason why his two compatriots would not be with him, and neither Jonel nor Sandy asked for one. But it was not hard to imagine possibilities. Possibly they were not interested, or there were social class barriers, or coming here was considered such a dangerous mission that only one of them should volunteer for it.

The doorbell rang at precisely the hour Sandy had specified. She was busy with the meal, then, so Jonel opened the door. "Hi," he said, "come on in." Beldan towered in the hallway and had to stoop slightly to come through the door. Once inside, he stood, simultaneously awkward and awesome, as if awaiting further instructions. The apartment had a low ceiling and so far contained few decorations except the ones that came with it, so Beldan made an even more imposing picture standing here than he had in the conference room.

Sandy came into the living room, smiling broadly. "Beldan," she sang out cheerfully, with surprisingly accurate intonation, "welcome to our humble abode. Sit down wherever you like; we're not very formal."

"Thank you," said Beldan - rather stiffly, Jonel thought, and without making any move toward a chair. "If you will excuse me ... before I sit, it is custom among the Kyyra for a guest to offer his hosts a gift. It is just a small thing." He reached inside his robe and pulled something out. He handed it to Sandy. "Here. For the two of you."

Sandy took it and turned it over in her hands, staring incredulously at it. "Look at this, Jonel. Isn't it beautiful?" It was a relief sculpture showing two Kyyra standing on high ground in front of a city of fairy-tale architecture, under a domed canopy of stars. It was set in a hemisphere six inches in diameter, meticulously crafted down to the smallest details, and - Jonel reached out and felt it - apparently solid metal. And not just metal, but an astonishing swirling blend of what looked like gold and silver and at least a dozen alloys. It would have cost many thousands of dollars - if any human craftsmen knew how to make it. Sandy smiled at Beldan. "Thank you, Beldan. We'll always remember who gave it to us. Now, would you like to sit down?"

Sandy laid the gift aside, on a table, and Beldan sat in the nearest chair. He still seemed somewhat uncomfortable. He took his pipe out and softly played a short tune made of two long, winding phrases. When he stopped, Sandy asked him, "Have you heard any of our music?"

"Some, I believe," said Beldan. "When we were in orbit and listening to your electromagnetic broadcasts."

"There are kinds you've probably missed," Sandy told him. "Would you like to hear some? If you don't like it, I'll take it off whenever you say."

"I would be glad to hear it." Beldan put his pipe away. Sandy went to the entertainment console, looked thoughtful for a moment, and then punched out a code for something in the spaceport's central library. As she came back to join Jonel on the couch, a long, soft note overlaid with fragments of melody started up from speakers all around the room - the beginning of Mahler's First. Beldan looked attentive, but said nothing.

Jonel felt a little awkward, too. So far he had been almost entirely a bystander - but then, Sandy had always taken much more naturally to this sort of thing. He went to the kitchen and returned with a bottle and glasses. "We sometimes have a glass of wine before supper," he told Beldan. "Would you like one? Maybe I should warn you that it contains ethyl alcohol, which acts as an intoxicant if you have too much of it."

Beldan, for the first time since coming here, smiled - and there was little doubt that it meant the same as a human smile under similar circumstances. "For us, it does not," he said. "Yes, I will be glad to have a glass of wine, I have already tried it and found it ... agreeable." He reached out and took the glass Jonel poured for him. "Thank you." As Jonel poured two more, for Sandy and himself, Beldan fished a smooth gourd-like thing out of his' robe and poured a drop of wine into the top of it. He waited a few seconds, then laid the gourd down in his lap and took a sip of the wine from his glass. "You see," he said, smiling again, "there are some differences in our metabolisms, as you might expect. Many similarities, but also differences. Alcohol has no effect on us. The main thing we must be careful of in your food is chlorophyll. But don't be alarmed, Sandy; I promise not to get drunk on your broccoli." He tapped the gourd. "All of us on the convoy ships carry these to make life simpler. If we must eat unfamiliar food - or have the opportunity to try exotic treats, as I do tonight - the converter will analyze a small sample of each item. If it finds anything we are not equipped to handle - such as chlorophyll - it will immediately prepare a liquid which will eliminate the danger to us."

"Very clever," Jonel said. He meant to ask Beldan what the plants on the Kyyra worlds used for photosynthesis, but he was interrupted by a timer bell from the kitchen.

"That means the chlorophyll's ready," said Sandy, standing up. "If you gentlemen want to move to the table, I'll have the food up in a jiffy."

They moved, and she did. As she dished out meat loaf and vegetables, Beldan picked up samples of each and dropped them into his converter. When everything had been sampled, he picked the gourd up, aimed it like a wineskin at his mouth, and a thin stream of clear bluish liquid squirted straight down his throat. It stopped after half a minute or so; then he laid the gourd down and attacked the food with no further inhibitions. Jonel was a little surprised that he seemed thoroughly familiar with knives and forks, but quickly realized that he'd probably been practicing in the quarters Clark had provided.

"I find your music ... interesting," Beldan said suddenly, during the relative quiet following one of the minor climaxes which abound in Mahler. "This that we are listening to now - it is a recording of many individuals simultaneously playing on instruments comparable to my pipe?"

Sandy nodded.

"Most interesting," said Beldan. "That kind of complexity is something quite new to me. But I can see the possibilities."

"That kind of complexity is peculiar to one branch of human culture," Sandy told him. "There are still quite a few places on Earth where the people would find it as novel as you do."

Gradually, as the meal progressed, Beldan showed signs of relaxing. And as that happened, Jonel also began to feel more at ease. Beldan still seemed distant and mysterious, but not utterly unknowable - possibly not even unlikable.

After supper they moved back to the living room and Jonel noticed an insistent scratching sound. He asked Beldan, "Have you met any dogs since you came to Earth?"

"Dogs?" Beldan seemed at first not to recognize the word. Then he said, "I remember seeing them on television. I don't believe I have seen any in actuality. They are small furry animals, aren't they?"

"Yes. Would you like to meet one?"

"I'm not sure. My memories of them from television are mixed."

"This one's very friendly. And if you don't get along, we can lock him back up in the bedroom where he is now."

"All right. I will meet this ... dog." He looked vaguely apprehensive as Sandy went to let Ozymandias the Mutt out of the bedroom. Oz came out with a bound. Jonel himself was a bit uncertain about the results - neither Oz nor Beldan had ever seen anything like the other before. But after the first tense moments, they found each other fascinating, and in fact Oz proved to be the final influence which put Beldan more at ease than they had seen him yet. Beldan and his hosts talked of the role of pets in human society - apparently the Kyyra had none - and finally Sandy felt bold enough to mention Beldan's discomfort in the meetings. She did it discreetly, by mentioning offhandedly that he seemed much more relaxed now than when she first saw him yesterday.

He nodded and kept stroking Oz, who was lying contentedly on his side next to Beldan's chair. "That is true," said Beldan, abruptly solemn. "I feel ... uncomfortable... here. Not here, tonight, in this room, but everywhere else. Next you will ask me why, and I will say that it is hard to explain. I do not know how to say it in your language; I do not even know whether it can be said. But I can try. I feel things among your people that are unfamiliar and uncomfortable to us. The things you call suspicion and distrust ... the ... this is especially hard to communicate ... the absence of God ..."

Jonel was a little startled to hear Beldan speaking in such terms. As he pondered it, he heard Sandy say, "I don't think that's quite universally true, but it's interesting that you should comment on it. Would you be offended if I asked you what kind of God the Kyyra believe in?"

"I would not be offended," said Beldan. "However, it is not a question of belief, but of simple fact. But I would prefer not to talk about it."

"Why?" Sandy asked innocently, momentarily unthinking. Her face immediately showed that she wished she hadn't said it - but it was too late now.

Beldan stopped scratching Oz. His eyes bounced back into their sockets, and when they returned to normal he averted them, looking at the wall to his left rather than at Jonel or Sandy. "Our God is dying," he said in a low, choked voice. "We're killing Him."

XII

There was nothing Clark could do about Rao, of course. True, there was the verbal agreement he had recorded the first time he visited the physicist, under which he could prosecute for breach of confidence. But in practice that would be difficult and time-consuming and would do nothing to undo the damage. Done now, it might even prove politically disastrous by inviting still more charges of unwarranted secrecy. So Clark wasted little time lamenting things he hadn't done. He even found, after the initial shock, that he was rather relieved to have things finally out in the open.

Having them out in the open changed much more than Clark's discomfort at having to be secretive. Very shortly after Rao's statement, Kennedy Spaceport reopened - a measure which had the incidental advantage of restoring at least a small measure of plublic confidence. Security measures remained around the parked Kyyra shuttle and the living quarters of the Kyyra themselves, but at least human shuttles could resume normal operations. And, although the surface of most of the Solar System had barely been scratched, there was enough key industry in orbit and on the Moon to make normal operation of the shuttles an important matter.

The human-Kyyra conferences went on, still in the same conference room near the Kyyra quarters, but with changes. With the public aware of aliens on Earth discussing changes that would radically affect the whole planet, Franz Gerber no longer dared leave the whole matter in the hands of a single man with the unimposing title of Lieutenant Commissioner of Grants. So with considerable fanfare, he demanded that the visiting Kyyra be brought before a special closed session of the UN Security Council, under his personal supervision. They went without protest, accompanied by Clark and Sanchez aboard a sealed plane met in New York by a sealed limousine. They listened attentively to the Council's ceremonial greetings, but shocked the Council by playing their pipes in the middle of Gerber's prepared speech. When asked, Beldan briefly explained their reasons for being on Earth, but the details were obviously beyond most of the Council members. The whole experience was so traumatic for many of them - including Gerber - that they were even more relieved than insulted when Beldan made it clear that he would prefer to return to Florida and continue dealing with Clark. Gerber promptly granted the request "for the time being." But, as a final face-saving gesture, he enlarged the meetings, sending a panel of reasonably prominent specialists to go over the Kyyra proposals with a fine-toothed comb.

And, of course, the public had to know. A majority of the deliberation committee backed Clark in his contention that unlimited publicity would be unwise, so the conference room was not thrown wide open to newsmen. But Clark and two other members of the committee had to submit to regular press conferences - at first daily, then later tapering off to once a week.

And the first pictures of the Kyyra were published. They did not appear often, and Beldan seemed mystified by the reasons for the original request. But Clark largely through the help of Sandy Turabian - managed to persuade him and his associates to sit for a few portraits.

The pictures played a surprisingly important part in shaping public reactions, which grew rapidly at first - and in many directions. The anger over governmental secrecy remained, but more attention gradually focused on the astronomical danger, the Kyyra themselves, and their proposal. At first there was a rash of demonstrations representing a range of opinions and - predictably - more emotion than thought. Most of them fell into two rough categories: "It's the end of the world but here's a chance to do something about it," or "It's the end of the world but we deserve it and it would be against the will of God to resist." (There was also a relatively small "I don't believe it" school - but then there was still a Flat Earth Society, too.) Each category further divided into a rich spectrum of subsects, but each included plenty of hot-headed fanatics and each managed to drum up all manner of support for its position - including biblical quotations.

Clark worried a little when he saw religion being dragged into it. Such an argument was difficult enough when all involved were making an honest effort to be rational and objective. If it became a matter of religious fervor, rationality and objectivity would tend to be drowned out. And there were special reasons for concern in this case. They were directly related to the pictures, and Clark himself understood them only too well. He vividly remembered his own reactions on seeing the Kyyra for the first time, and later when he had found himself unconsciously regarding them as virtually omnipotent benefactors who could save man without unpleasant side effects. He, trained to think self-critically, had caught himself in time - but many others had no such safeguards. The appearance of the Kyyra was an unfortunate accident, and pictures of their orbiting starship only tended to strengthen feelings of awe. It was too easy for humans to think of them as godlike, or divinely sent, or whatever most closely fit their particular beliefs. Traditional beliefs had not been especially strong or popular in the last couple of decades, but there was a noticeable trend toward revivalism in the early days of the Kyyra talks.

But as fall turned into winter and the talks dragged on, the initial wave of public response faded. It didn't die, but when nothing came out of the press conferences except lists of technical details, much of the public lost interest. News releases became less frequent and moved to the 'inside pages of the papers. The most vocal proponents of either jumping at the Kyyra offer or (if possible) running the Kyyra off the planet remained vocal, but people paid less attention to them.

Every couple of weeks somebody would publish an opinion poll, which tended to show sizable minorities - say thirty percent - but never majorities, in favor of accepting the offer. Toward the end of November the polls began to show something else, too - action. One of the earliest things to come out of the news conferences with the deliberation committee had been the statement that many buildings would have to be modified to withstand the trip, and that some of the modification could be done either before or after the trip started. Successive conferences yielded more details. Papers and magazines - some of them with tongue obviously deep in cheek - ran "how-to" articles on making your home spaceworthy in case the Earth is moved to M31. Some people paid attention. Business began to boom quietly in materials for making houses sturdy and airtight and able to recycle their own air and water. Scattered citizens began openly converting their homes, just in case. And in many cases they found themselves victims of persecution by their neighbors, in forms ranging from gentle ridicule and social snubs to large-scale vandalism and physical attack.

That Clark watched with real misgivings. Some police departments hinted that he was to blame for growing lawlessness by encouraging people to go in for weird behavior that naturally attracted suspicion. After one such incident - a case near Christmas in which a suburban Indianapolis family which had been converting had its home burned to the ground and the local police responded with some especially vicious innuendos - Clark finally said something about it to Joe Sanchez.

They were in Sanchez' apartment at the end of an unusually tedious talk session. Sanchez was seated, with a cigar in one hand, and a drink in the other. Clark paced the floor, hounded by frustration. Standing at the window with his back to Sanchez, he remarked, "You know, Joe, I'm beginning to see problems about this that I'd hardly dreamed of when it first came up. Suppose we do decide to accept their offer and move the Earth. How are we going to actually implement all the changes that are needed?"

"Some people are already doing it on their own."

"Yes, but look at the trouble they're having. Look at this thing in Indianapolis. How can you work on a major project like that when your neighbors won't give you any peace and the police are as likely as not to side with them against you?" He sat down, crossed his legs, and looked at Sanchez. "Besides, it still wouldn't be enough. Even leaving public buildings and utilities out of the picture. You remember when Beldan said homes could be modified easily and I asked, What about all the people who can't afford it?"

Sanchez nodded. "Yes."

"He just said we'll find a way to do it if we want to. I've been thinking about that. I've been thinking about it a lot, and I've gradually found myself forced to the conclusion that we won't. Not the way things are now."

"What do you mean?"

"Our whole political and economic organization is all wrong to do that kind of thing. I think the technical resources exist to help almost everybody make the trip alive, but we don't have a chance of getting to more than a few in the time available. Not the way we're used to doing things."

Sanchez was eyeing him narrowly. "Do you have any better ideas?"

"I'm getting more and more afraid that it's going to take something like martial law on a scale we've never seen before. A really strong central authority with the machinery to get things done fast and efficiently over the whole world."

Sanchez stared at him for a long time. "Don't get carried away, Henry," he said finally. "That's strong language. I don't think you have to start thinking that way."

"I hope not," said Clark, "But I'm afraid you're being naive."

"And I hope you're being facetious. I really do."

But the look on his face haunted Clark's memory for a long time. Through it all, Clark kept trying to find the motives for the Kyyra offer. Oddly, the public that wanted pictures was more interested in gossip about the aliens' everyday lives than in concrete reasons for their actions. They remained reticent about that, too. Clark still considered the motive question far more pressing and directed his main efforts toward that. Again and again he raised the question in different ways, and again and again Beldan gracefully evaded it. Clark tried again to enlist Sandy's direct aid, and again she told him she would not do any outright spying and did not yet know leldan well enough to make any statement about him. He checked back with Kovacs periodically, but the psychiatrist never managed to reconstruct anything coherent from his interviews with Lewiston.

Frustration grew. As the winter progressed, Clark was increasingly plagued by the feeling that nothing else was progressing at all.

At least part of the hunch that had led Sandy to invite Beldan to visit was apparently right. The original visit proved the first of many, and as fall passed into winter she gradually came to feel that she was gaining inklings of what made him tick. There was not much that she could put into words, yet, except the conviction that he had indeed needed some more relaxed contact with the aliens who lived on Earth and that she seemed to fill that need and gain his confidence as no one else had done. When Clark had spoken of the possibility of "some sort of friendly relationship," she had taken the phrase lightly. It had seemed too much to expect. But a few weeks later she realized as she was going to sleep one night that something of that sort had in fact developed.

The air of mystery remained, of course. She came to regard Beldan as a friend, but at the same time he never ceased to be alien also. In that fact lay part of his fascination. He was less aloof with her than with others, and the two of them could find common ground to talk about, but he still had a certain inscrutability. Through all their conversations ran the feeling that he was seeing the whole world from a different angle, and Sandy had never quite managed to get her eyes and mind in the right position to see how it looked from there. But she never quit trying.

Sometimes she lay awake far into the night, thinking over something he had said, comparing it with other things he had said earlier, trying to see the pattern that tied them all together - but never quite succeeding. She wondered why he seemed to sidestep certain questions even when she asked them - yet at the same time always seemed to be honestly trying to be completely open and frank. She wondered often and hard about the remark he had made on that first visit, about their dying God. But she could never bring herself to ask him about it.

She wondered and thought about other things, too. She never lost sight of what was behind the whole web of events since Jonel's return, and the decision that must be made. She took to reading whenever she had time, about things like galactic structure and supernovae and Seyfert galaxies. When there was something she didn't quite understand, or she had an idea about a possible implication of something she read, she asked Jonel, who had pursued formal studies of astrophysics as far as a Master's degree. Sometimes he found her questions puzzling, seen without the context of her thoughts, but he always tried to answer them as well as he could. She in turn pursued each point she considered until she could pursue it no further. Many of them seemed to be dead ends; others seemed likely to be significant but she couldn't see clearly why. All of them she filed in her mind for future reference, with no more definite idea of what she was doing than that she wanted to understand as clearly as possible the background against which a decision would be made. If she understood well enough and the decision which came seemed to ignore something vital, she would not hesitate to point it out.

Sometimes - such as the times when the committee wanted to confer with Jonel privately - Sandy did things alone with Beldan. That worked out rather well, in a way. Although Jonel was completely sympathetic toward Sandy's efforts to befriend Beldan, he himself never felt quite the empathy for the Kyyra that she did. Quite possibly that was why Beldan sometimes seemed even more relaxed when Jonel wasn't around. Those times led to some of the incidents which engraved themselves most deeply on Sandy's memory.

Like the time she showed Beldan her oboe, as one of the rough human counterparts to his music-pipe. He watched and listened attentively as she warmed up with a few quick scales and arpeggios and then started one of the oboe solos from the slow movement of the Mahler symphony he had heard. Halfway through it, he suddenly took out his pipe and began playing along, improvising a part that was nothing Sandy had ever heard but which blended uncannily. And where the Mahler oboe part sank back into the orchestra, she found herself improvising too, to avoid stopping. For over a minute the two of them played on, listening to each other and weaving a counterpoint, which, at least to Sandy, made good musical sense. Then, partly because she was afraid she couldn't sustain it any longer, she led her part toward an ending - and Beldan followed. They stopped together. For another minute Sandy sat almost breathless with exhilaration at what she thought they had done - but afraid to ask. Finally Beldan said, "That was very good," and she knew she was right.

There were other incidents too. After the spaceport reopened and the Kyyra presence became common knowledge, Clark's attitude toward security relaxed somewhat. By the beginning of December he had reached the point where he was willing to let either or both of the Turabians take Beldan on excursions outside the spaceport. There were special security requirements for those, of course. They had to use a special car in which Beldan could ride without being seen from outside, he was never to get out in the presence of other people, and the car maintained constant electronic surveillance to be sure those conditions were met. But the fact of being able to show him the outside world at all was a radical and welcome departure.

On one of the earliest trips, Sandy and Beldan stood on a deserted shore of sand and scrubby grass beside an inlet barely outside the north end of the port. The day was bleak and unseasonably cool, with amorphous gray clouds streaming past overhead, in different directions at different levels. At ground level the winds chilled Sandy enough to make her wear a sweater fully buttoned and whipped the water into a choppy froth. Here and there a pointed fin would occasionally appear among the waves, sometimes accompanied by an arching back that rose and descended in a single flowing motion, and once or twice a porpoise jumped completely clear.

Sandy and Beldan watched silently for many minutes, Sandy feeling a kind of melancholy she didn't quite understand, unless it could be blamed on the weather. After a while Beldan remarked, "They look as if they are playing."

Then Sandy thought she understood her feelings - but instead of going away, they intensified. "They are playing," she told him. "They're very playful animals - and very intelligent. We've just begun to learn how intelligent in the last few decades. Some say they're as bright as we are, only adapted to a completely different environment. You hear the noises they're making? They're talking to each other. We've finally started learning the language - just enough to know there's a lot more to learn." She stopped, looked around at the porpoises, and then back at Beldan. "Beldan, what's going to happen to them?"

Beldan didn't look away, but his expression was hard to read and for half a minute there was no sound except the porpoise talk and the lapping waves. Finally he said, "I don't know. That is a problem we have not faced before. But I do know that the oceans will change. If you want to save the things that live in them, you will have .to find ways. And there may not be time."

They said little more about it then, but the day kept getting grayer and later kept haunting Sandy's dreams.

At Christmas the committee adjourned for several days and Clark's security policies had become still more liberal. Jonel and Sandy took the special car and drove up to her - now their - house in the Tennessee mountains, taking Beldan along. The car was equipped so he could watch the scenery from his compartment, and though he was still disturbed by the fact that Clark considered the special compartment necessary, he seemed to enjoy the trip. They spent four days in the mountains, and Beldan liked to stroll around the yard in all kinds of weather, asking Sandy questions about things he saw ranging from valleys full of morning fog to the vein patterns in fallen leaves. On the second day, it snowed, a wet, fluffy snow that clung to tree branches and trunks, and that night it changed to freezing rain and then cleared. In the morning it was ten below and cloudless, the snow on the ground deep and smooth-crusted and the tree branches uniformly sheathed in ice that sparkled dazzling in the sun. As soon as Sandy was awake, Beldan wanted to go outside. He didn't add any visible clothing - either his metabolism wasn't picky about temperature or his robes incorporated some pretty sophisticated thermal controls. But he stayed out for a long time and seemed thoroughly fascinated by the changes the weather had wrought in the landscape. "It's like seeing it for the first time," he said with obvious excitement as they went back into the house. "A planet is truly a remarkable thing."

Sandy squirmed out of her boots and laughed. "You say that as if you were seeing a planet for the first time."

"I am," he said. "I have spent my whole life aboard my ship. I have missed a lot."

"Oh." Suddenly Sandy felt sorry for him, and at the same time found his discomfort on coming to Earth easier to understand.

And then she remembered that if the migration were carried out, Earth would become more of a ship than a planet.

Slowly, through incidents like that which were hard to assess taken singly, Sandy developed a growing understanding and affinity for Beldan and his race. Yet through it all she kept having the feeling that something not yet identified was bothering him.

Something most definitely bothered him when, in mid-January, somebody tried to blow up his shuttle.

XIII

Franz Gerber was on the phone almost immediately after that - meaning as soon as the word reached him via newsfax. Henry Clark held the receiver an inch from his ear to keep the volume down to a bearable level as the UN head fumed, "Damn it, Clark, what are you doing down there? Don't you even have enough sense to keep your security tight? You maybe want to let some imbeciles bring the wrath of a vastly superior power down on humanity's head?"

"You're being unnecessarily melodramatic," Clark quoted wearily. "The wrath simply hasn't happened. Sure, Beldan was badly shaken up. I gather that among the Kyyra violence and that kind of irrationality are unknown, so he has trouble understanding it. But he does understand that we're an alien species and he has to expect us to do some things that seem odd. And he understands that even conscientious attempts at security may not be perfect." He didn't bother to mention that, before the sabotage attempt, Beldan had not even understood the basic need for any kind of security measures. Instead he finished by adding, "But we have found some ways to tighten security around the Kyyra shuttle and quarters."

"I'm very glad to hear that. Though it sounds a lot like locking the barn door after the horse is stolen."

"They didn't get the horse."

"No, but they might have. Just be sure they don't in the future."

Clark shrugged. "We'll try our best, but you can expect other attempts. Somebody once wrote that violence is the last resort of the incompetent, but that's not quite right. Often it's the first. And sometimes it's tried by somebody who isn't quite as incompetent as you'd like."

"Hmph." Gerber paused briefly and then changed his tack slightly. "All I know about this is what I've got through the public media, but you're right on the spot. Exactly what happened?"

"I find it very interesting," Clark observed wryly, "that you haven't shown any personal interest at all in this whole business until some little thing happens to scare you. And then suddenly you want to know everything and start jumping all over me."

"That's because I like to think I can trust things to you and sometimes you make me seriously doubt it. I asked you a question. What happened?"

"We don't know yet, Franz. Except in the most general way. Somebody got past the guards last night and got close to the Kyyra shuttle with a bundle of explosives and equipment to set them off. We know they were explosives because he left some of them behind when he ran."

"He ran?"

"Yes. Some guardsmen noticed him just in time and scared him off. He got away."

"He got away," Gerber echoed as if he found it beyond belief. "What kind of guardsmen do you have there? Don't they have guns? Or don't they know how to use them?"

"They have guns. We don't know how or why the saboteur got away. I'll admit it seems odd. We'll be questioning all the guardsmen, but of course we haven't yet."

"Humph. And you have no idea who it was?"

Clark hesitated a split second before deciding not to mention his suspicion that the saboteur was somebody who knew something about the security arrangements and likely even had some part in them - such as one of the guardsmen. He just said, "No."

"No idea whether it was an isolated crackpot or part of an organized conspiracy?"

"Not yet. Look, Franz, we've only had a couple of hours since this thing happened. We're getting a full investigation under way, but it's hardly had time to produce any conclusions yet."

"I suppose I can grant you that. But it just raises a larger question that's been bothering me. You haven't had enough time for this investigation, but how about the original one you started in the fall - the one about the aliens and whether we should accept their offer? Can you honestly say you haven't had time to get results from that one?"

"You're supposed to be collecting information. Well, what information have you collected?"

Clark scowled. "Haven't you been paying any attention to the papers except when they happen to scare you? We've been releasing information all along. Details about what the trip will entail, how people can prepare themselves for the trip - "

"All that is if we make the trip at all. When will we have enough to make that decision?"

"As far as I'm concerned," said Clark, "we already have all we need."

"What?" A familiar anger flared up in Gerber's voice. "Why wasn't I told?"

"All I mean is that we're not really getting any significantly new information any more. I think what we have is enough for anybody to reach a decision about what he thinks should be done."

Impatiently: "So what is your recommendation?"

"I have an opinion about what I'd like to see done. That's not the same as a recommendation."

"Quit splitting hairs. I don't care what you call it. What's your opinion?"

"I'm not sure I want to give it yet. It might sound too much like an official pronouncement. And I'm still wrestling with moral issues."

"Moral issues? Look, Clark, this is no time for philosophy - "

"On the contrary," Clark interrupted, glaring at the phone, "There has never been such a time for philosophy. If it'll make you feel any better, though, one of my moral issues is very, very practical."

"Yes?"

"If we decide to accept the offer, exactly how do we go about making the necessary adjustments on a worldwide scale so that as many people as possible can make the trip safely? That's a practical problem because there's a tremendous amount of logistics, economics, and politics involved in getting the materials and know-how to the people - and remember the people we have to get them to include Eskimos, Hottentots, and Australian abos as well as the ones you're probably thinking of. And it's a moral problem because the only ways I've been able to think of involve giving governments more power than I like to see them have. Even in an emergency."

"Hm-m-m." Gerber remained carefully noncommittal. "What's the other one?"

"It's simply the question of how to make a decision at all, knowing how drastically everybody who disagrees with it is going to be affected. The people have the information, but they haven't reached any consensus about what to do with it."

"Haven't they? I thought I'd seen polls - "

"That showed something like thirty percent in favor of going? You have. But those polls are local, for one thing. They ignore whole populations of countries. Some of them don't even know what's going on."

"Those countries wouldn't be likely to differ much from the others."

"A moot point," said Clark.

"Well, assume it for the sake of argument. Thirty percent in favor of going. That's seventy percent opposed."

"Even if I grant you that, it's not a real consensus."

"It's good enough for practically any election in the world."

"And in that respect those elections are a farce, but fortunately the stakes in them aren't really very high. In this one they are. I'd like to see a real consensus, and so would Beldan. We'd like to see nearly unanimous agreement on a course of action."

"You're out of your mind."

"Probably. But I can wait a little longer before I give up. Right now I can't even get a consensus from your committee. Incidentally, on your thirty-seventy argument - remember that those are percentages of people now living. How would their descendants vote?"

Gerber was silent briefly. When he spoke again, his tone had changed subtly, as if he had finally started to grasp some of the real implications of the problem. "I'm not used to thinking like that," he said with unaccustomed slowness. "But I can see why you bring it up." He paused again. "Does it have to be that kind of a decision? Couldn't we let the people who want to go, go on ships, 'and let the others stay here?"

"Not a chance. I can see you haven't looked at the arithmetic, but I have." Clark thought back to his first meeting with Chandragupta Rao, and the memory triggered a whole string of others. Since his break with the Kyyra talks, Rao had spoken out frequently against accepting the Kyyra offer or even continued talks having that as a possible outcome. Clark had stubbornly resisted answering him directly, and even now he wasn't sure it was a wise decision ... He told Gerber. "Thirty percent want to go. There's no way we can do that with ships. Maybe a thirtieth of a percent, with real heroism and incredible luck - but not thirty. And we have to assume there won't be a second chance for those who stay behind. The Kyyra are here now and they're moving out. And we can't do it without them."

"Hm-m-m." Gerber paused again, and then abruptly recovered some of his usual commanding air. "Well," he said crisply, "It's quite clear from this sabotage incident that some people have strong feelings about it. The longer we have them on Earth and a decision hanging in the air, the more trouble we're going to have. I don't want that. So, Mr. Clark, if consensus is what you need - I strongly recommend that you come up with a way to produce a consensus. Fast."

And with that he hung up.

He was right, of course. The realization that that was the next thing really needed had been gnawing at Clark's consciousness for several days. He had semiconsciously avoided it, tried to stall, because he had so little idea of how to achieve it. He had a lingering, lurking fear that Gerber was right, that real consensus even within a single nation was so farfetched that it was a quixotic waste of time to seek it. Yet he also clung to a faint hope, however farfetched it might be, that in just this one special case it might be possible.

Indecision again. Over and over he mentally raked himself over the coals for it, but the indecision remained.

Gerber's call demanding that something be done soon brought the matter to a searing focus in his mind. He thought about it night and day. He felt again, as acutely as in the first days after the Archaeopteryx came back and the Kyyra shuttle followed, the crushing pressure of unsought responsibility. Dreams of Dianne haunted his sleep more often than ever before, dreams in which she was back with him and listened as she always had before - but when she tried to speak, nothing came out.

The investigation of the sabotage attempt promised at first to provide a temporary diversion for part of his attention, but quickly proved to be nothing more than an additional headache. Talks with all the guardsmen in the area, held in the couple of days following the incident, failed to pin any blame on any of them. Nor did any of them provide any leads that seemed to lead anywhere. "Run them through again," Clark snapped impatiently when the head investigator told him they had exhausted the possibilities.

Two days after Gerber called, pressure was added from a new and unexpected source. The talks had become routine and dull these days - they seemed to be eternally circling over the same ground and never landing on anything. At the end of this one, as the representatives of both species filed out of the room, Beldan strode over to Clark and said quietly, "May I talk to you privately, Mr. Clark?"

"Certainly," said Clark, both surprised and apprehensive. "Will this room be all right?"

"This room will be fine." He waited until all the others were gone, then closed the door and turned back to face Clark. Clark had the fleeting thought that the Kyyra's height gave him an unfair advantage. Then Beldan said, "I have been in communication with those on both my convoy ship and the planet we are accompanying. They have asked me to convey to you the necessity of your reaching a decision in the near future."

The words hit Clark like an electric shock. "But," he said uncertainly, "there is still much to settle ..."

"We don't think so. I don't believe you really think so, either, do you, Mr. Clark? It is my belief, as Well as that of those you would call my superiors, that all the essential information is in your hands. If there are really central points of uncertainty, I suggest you formulate your questions tonight and clarify them at our next meeting."

"I ... I'll try. If you'll forgive me, Beldan ... this comes very suddenly. How soon must we give our final decision?"

"We would like to avoid imposing the indignity of a rigid deadline. We will do so if it seems necessary, but it is foreign to our nature except as a last resort. First we will simply ask you to give us a decision as early as you possibly can, bearing in mind that there is an element of urgency."

"I'll see what I can do," Clark nodded numbly. "May I ask why the sudden rush?"

"It is not a sudden rush. We believe you have had all the essential information for a considerable time and have failed to act on it for reasons which are less than clear to us. Meanwhile, our planet has been continuing outward, receding from us at a super-c velocity. It has to retain that velocity, Mr. Clark. A planet is not conveniently refuelable and is therefore far less maneuverable than a ship." Especially, Clark reminded himself, at the speed your planet is going. And again we have the question: why? Beldan finished, "The farther behind we fall while waiting for your reply, the more difficult it is to catch up. We have already fallen a fair fraction of a light-year behind.

We do not wish to lose much more time - particularly if you intend to refuse our offer."

Clark nodded. "I'll try to get you a decision as soon as possible," he said, and he meant it. Put that way, Beldan's concern was quite understandable - given that their planet was traveling so close to the speed of light that it was energetically impractical to change the speed very much.

But again Clark found himself utterly perplexed by the question of why they chose to travel at such a speed - and why they seemed convinced that that question was not irrelevant to the larger ones he faced.

It was Clark's idea to take a personal appeal for reason - and hopefully consensus - directly to the people. It was Sanchez' idea that he should do it in a live appearance.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Part of the reason for public distrust to this point had been the fact that all the deliberations were carried out behind closed doors. News filtered out, but the trouble was that "filtered" described the situation too accurately. The public never saw a picture of humans actually in conference with Kyyra. It never saw Henry Clark in a live television interview, as it often saw Chandragupta Rao. It saw so little of the Kyyra themselves, and only in still news photos, that to many people they didn't seem quite real. So it seemed reasonable that if Clark appeared before an actual audience, with live worldwide television coverage, the gesture would help dispel the impression that he was trying to hide something. And if one or more of the Kyyra could be present too, so much the better.

On the day of the show, as Clark watched the gathering crowds and camera crews from behind the scenes, he had second thoughts. He tried to dismiss them as mere stage fright, but he knew they were more than that. In the week since the sabotage attempt, violent emotions on all sides of the question had been much more openly displayed in spots all over the world. The overflow crowd now swarming into the grandstand that had been improvised in a corner of the spaceport was noisy. To Clark it looked uncomfortably like an explosive mixture - and he wasn't sure what it would take to set it off. He was glad he had had the foresight to insist that Beldan be placed in a protectoglass dome at the side of the stage, despite his objections.

For a moment Clark wondered again about those objections. When he had mentioned that he would explain the dome by saying that the Kyyra needed protection from the local atmosphere, Beldan had immediately said, "But I don't. Why should we tell them I do when I don't?" There was so much Clark didn't understand about the

Kyyra. Could a culture really shape its members so that they found violence and deceit as incomprehensible as Beldan claimed to? What kind of a culture could do that?

The time came. Clark strode out onto the stage, shaking in his shoes even as he made his gait project confidence and strength. Polite applause greeted him and died quickly. Just in front of the stage, a long row of commentators and interpreters sat in glass booths with microphones and headsets, poised and waiting eagerly for his first words. He cleared his throat and began, "My friends, I come to you today to talk about a matter of serious concern to all of us - perhaps the most serious any of us has ever faced." The interpreters, keeping their eyes glued to his face, spoke rapidly into their microphones in thirty languages - all of them silent from where Clark stood. "First allow me to introduce a very distinguished visitor. You have all seen his picture in the news: none of you has seen him in person before. Being unaccustomed to Earth, he must be especially careful while visiting us. That is why you see him now enclosed in a dome. It is my pleasure to present Beldan, ambassador of the Kyyra." He gestured and Beldan stood. The audience responded in a strangely nonhomogeneous way. Isolated pockets of people clapped and cheered wildly; one group sang a hymn. Others stood with arms folded and stared stonily; still others gave a few seconds of perfunctory applause and then stood waiting. When it all subsided, Clark said, "Both Beldan and I will be happy to answer questions when I have finished my opening remarks." Some questions, anyway, he thought tightly.

"You all know why Beldan is on Earth. To put it as simply as possible, Earth is in danger because our galaxy's core has exploded. The Kyyra have offered to help us escape the danger. But we must not leave it in such simple terms. It is vitally important that every One of you understand exactly what the danger is and what courses of action are open to us. Let me review things which many of you already know..."

Briefly, but thoroughly, he outlined what the core explosion would mean to Earth, what the Kyyra offer entailed, and what could be done if the offer were not accepted. Sometimes he had to pause for a burst of scattered applause or a wisecrack from a heckler; in each case he waited patiently and then went on. He pulled no punches. He made it very clear that any of the choices would involve, at best, great discomfort and sacrifice.

"And perhaps the saddest part of all," he finished, "is that we all have to live by the same decision. The decision will actually - formally - be made by your political leaders. But once it is made - no matter which choice is taken - we are all going to have to work together as we have never worked together before. That is why I am asking you today to give these matters your most careful thought, so that when we make our decision we can do so with confidence that it reflects your wishes. Sabotage attempts accomplish nothing. Persecuting your neighbors who disagree with you accomplishes nothing. Thinking may accomplish something.

"I hope that after you have thought, we can all agree on our choice. But if we cannot, I hope that all who disagree with the decision will resolve to cooperate fully in carrying it out - because there will no longer be any alternative. And as I said, whichever option we take, we are going to have to cooperate to make it work. The main difference I see is that one choice keeps open the possibility of life somewhat as we know it for our descendants; the other involves fewer unpredictable risks but allows only underground hiding for a longer time than any of us can imagine.

"There is one final point. We are going to have to make our decision soon - within a few days if at all possible. Because our Kyyra visitors will not be able to wait much longer - "

"What do they want?" a heckler yelled hoarsely from one of the front rows. Another joined in, "Yeah, what's their angle?" "Quickly, frighteningly, the scattered shouts grew into a general angry roar of people shaking their fists at the stage and trying to be heard over the din. Clark held up his hands to beg for order, but the tumult just swelled even faster and his vision of consensus shattered into tiny fragments that would never go back together again.

Then two gunshots rang out from the audience, almost simultaneously and from nearly opposite directions. Something smashed into Clark with a tremendous surge of blinding pain.

Everything else was lost as the stage dissolved under his feet and the world turned black.

XIV

Rao was on the air within two hours after the shooting. "I cannot overemphasize," he said, looking earnestly straight into the camera, "how much I deplore this afternoon's unfortunate incident. Any civilized person would agree that there is no excuse for this sort of unthinking violence. We can be thankful only that the injury to Lieutenant Commissioner Clark was not as serious as the offense.

"However ... we must not allow our outrage at this barbarism, or our sympathy for Mr. Clark, to blind us to the seriousness of the issue that prompted him to speak. We must not forget that the question of whether or not to accept the .Kyyra offer deeply touches the life of every one of us - including me and you." He pointed dramatically, straight at his viewers. "We must not forget that Mr. Clark's committee - despite having had some three months to study the problem - has utterly failed to answer the question of why the Kyyra are making this offer.

"Now we are told that the decision must be made within a few days. I urge you as strongly as I can: do not let this decision be railroaded through. We cannot afford to decide on this offer until we know why they are making it. They must have a reason. 1 urge every citizen to demand that our leaders find out what it is - and do not accept any decision until your demand has been met!"

People heard him and listened. Panic had begun to develop, now that something like a deadline had been announced and violence had reached high places. In popular opinion, a muddy -logic shifted blame for the shooting from the anonymous humans who pulled the triggers to the Kyyra whose presence somehow lay behind the whole web of events. Telegrams and phone calls began to pour into the UN, the Science Foundation, national governments, and Kennedy Spaceport. Some demanded that the Kyyra offer be accepted; others demanded just as loudly that it be rejected. But above all there was a rising clamor of demand that the Kyyra motives be clarified, and fast.

Little of that reached Clark at first. He was hospitalized at once, and for over twenty-four hours he was allowed neither visitors nor news. So he had a lot of time to kill with few distractions other than the pain in his right shoulder, which tended to become overpowering in the last hour before he got another dose of painkiller. Then when he got it, the drug tended to make him so drowsy that he fell asleep. But the sleep was hardly refreshing. It was too full of those dreams of Dianne listening to him and not being able to speak - and they got worse rather than better. In one of them, in the middle of the night, she listened and didn't even try to speak, but just turned and walked away while he was in the middle of a sentence. In another, he was back there giving the televised speech and suddenly Dianne stood up in the front row, pointing at him and laughing uproariously.

He woke in a cold sweat, afraid to go back to sleep. Intellectually he knew it was only a dream, of course, but some dreams can plague the sleeper long after he is awake. This one took him quite a while to get reasonably well out of his thoughts, and it might have taken longer if it had still been dark. Instead it was a bright morning and the sunshine flooding through the window encouraged him to stay awake and think about reality.

During the times when the drug was starting to wear off - when he was awake but not yet hurting too badly - he could do that fairly well. He thought a lot about things he had done and might have done differently - his failure to keep tight enough security on Rao, his silent suffering as Rao propagandized during the last several weeks, his tragicomic attempt to bring people together by an appeal to reason. Maybe instead of that he should have just made his own decision and then used Rao's own tactics to make the people accept it. Or maybe ...

But of course there was no point in dwelling on what he might have done. The only question that really mattered was, What could he do now? Gradually he banished the past from his mind and refocused his attention on the immediate future. Very slowly, some possibilities began to crystallize.

In the evening visitors came - Joe Sanchez and Jonel Turabian. Clark was feeling fairly good then. They had caught him in the right part of the drug cycle and he was beginning to feel some slight satisfaction with his thinking. His first reaction when Joe and Jonel walked into his room was to look at them, frown, and ask, "Where's Sandy?" "She's with Beldan," said Jonel.

"Trying to explain to him why things like this happen." He took one of the two chairs in the room, hauled it over next to the bed, and sat down. Sanchez took the other.

"I wish she could make him see why people are making all the fuss about their motives," Clark muttered gloomily. "Well, anyway, I'm glad to see you two. Thanks for coming. What's the news in the outside world? They haven't let me hear any all day."

Sanchez shrugged. "Rao the Rabble-Rouser was at it again, as you might expect, trying to bring the motive question to a head. Meanwhile, the investigators have had a little more luck with your shooting than they did with the guy who tried to blow up the Kyyra shuttle. Maybe you should feel flattered. It isn't everybody who gets to be the target of two independent assassination attempts at the same time."

"Flattered or flattened?" Clark mused. "Independent, you say. They've established that?"

"Pretty well." Sanchez reached for a cigar, thought better of it, and withdrew his hand. "They caught one of them. He was the one who missed you. A bad shot, a crackpot, and a lone wolf with no apparent connections with anybody. Young fellow named Franklin who apparently had some confused idea that you were going to give up our one chance at escape. He thought if he could get rid of you, somebody else would take over with strong reins and make sure we didn't miss out. Don't know who he had in mind. I don't know what's going to happen to him, either. I wouldn't be surprised if he wound up in a loony bin."

"And the other one?"

"Nothing quite so definite there. Nobody in hand who we know did it. A few possible suspects, and some hints that it was part of a plot."

Clark's eyebrows rose slightly. "A plot? By whom?"

"Not certain. The investigators won't even tell me what the clues are. But they've uncovered a conspiracy by a group that wants nothing to do with the Kyyra offer and is afraid you're determined to accept it. It's not too hard to see why they think that. You've been entertaining Beldan for a long time - and some of your remarks yesterday seemed to lean that way."

"Did they? I thought they were very impartial."

"Some of us didn't hear it that way. Anyway, they suspect a connection between that group that's trying to stop you from what they think you're going to do, and the guy who shot you. And that's where we stand now. Further studies are in progress, as they say in the journals."

"I see." Clark shut his eyes and thought for a few seconds. His shoulder was starting to hurt again. "Is Rao in on this?" he asked suddenly, opening his eyes.

"We don't know. It seems hard to believe, but I suppose it's possible. All we know about him is that he's been very openly and vocally against the way you've been handling things and he has a strong personal preference for not accepting the Kyyra offer. And he's built up quite a following. Thanks to his latest effort, everybody's in a hurry and the motive question is the issue of the day. Everybody wants an answer, no matter which side they're on."

"I don't suppose you've seen any new polls, have you?"

"Yes, there was one that came out this afternoon. Hastily done, and started before yesterday afternoon, so it's hard to judge how reliable it is or how much effect either you or Rao had on it. But it does show a shift. The percentage in favor of going is down to twenty-five."

"It shows something else, too," Jonel added. "They asked people if they might change their minds if they had the answer to the motive question. A sizable number in both groups said they might, depending on what answer the Kyyra might give."

Clark closed his eyes and nodded slowly. "Does Beldan know about all this?"

"Sandy's mentioned it to him. He still says he can see no relevance to the question and he can't wait much longer for a decision."

Clark, his eyes still closed, frowned. "It's really odd," he said. "Maybe he really considers it irrelevant, but I find that hard to believe. Anyway, they do have a seller's market. There's nothing they need from us, or they'd be willing to make that much of a concession to get it. It doesn't matter to them whether we accept or not. But if they don't want .anything, and they're so callous that they'd withdraw their help just because we want to know why they offer it - why offer in the first place?"

"Maybe," said Sanchez, "they don't answer because their motives are something they have to hide from us."

"Maybe," said Clark. The possibility was real, but seemed small - and he didn't like to think about it. "But that doesn't make sense either. If it's obvious that we desperately want to know a motive, and they don't want to tell us the real one, why don't they just make up a phony one to shut us up?"

"Maybe they really never lie."

Beldan did try to give that impression. But could it be taken at face value? Trying to talk out the question, Clark found himself growing more confused than ever.

Jonel said, "All I know that seems important right now is that if we don't answer soon we may blow our chance. Motives are the key controversy on Earth. If we could clear them up, everything else might become a lot more clear-cut. So what we need right now, more than anything else, is a way to get them to answer that."

Tell me something I don't know, Clark thought acidly, but he said nothing. For a while none of them said anything. Clark opened his eyes and studied the other two men's faces.

Sanchez looked especially thoughtful, staring at an irregularity in the wall finish in a corner of the room. Finally he said, "I know one thing we might try."

Clark allowed himself no enthusiasm whatsoever. "Yes?"

"Sandy Turabian has more of Beldan's trust than any of us. Maybe you 'could get her to ask him."

"I've tried it," Clark said. "She said she wouldn't spy on him." "I'm not suggesting that she spy on him. I'm suggesting that she ask him a straightforward question. And try to make him understand why the answer is important to us, which is what none of us has been able to do."

Clark thought silently for half a minute. He didn't expect her to agree, and he wasn't even sure she could do it. But he had said weeks ago that if anybody could do it, she could. He still believed that, and at the moment he could think of nothing else that had any chance at all. He looked at Jonel, almost pleadingly. "Maybe if you talked to her, Jonel ..."

"I'll do it," said Jonel, standing up. "And I'll do it right now, so you can talk to her too, if necessary."

There was a phone in the room, on a table temporarily kept out of Clark's reach. Jonel walked over to it, punched out his apartment's code, and waited.

And waited.

After a full minute he hung up, frowning. "I don't understand that," he said. "She didn't say anything about going out. I'd better go check up on her. Take it easy, Henry." He grabbed his light jacket and went out hurriedly.

The apartment was deserted. Everything - furniture, decorations, lights - everything was as it should be, but there was no sign of Sandy or Beldan. Not yet really alarmed, but with a growing prickling sensation that something was not quite right, Jonel went through the whole place, looking on and in all the furniture for any note Sandy might have left to tell him where they were going.

He found nothing. And then he began to worry. It would not be like Sandy to leave voluntarily without leaving a message.

He tried to call the Kyyra quarters. No answer.

He called the spaceport headquarters. "This is Jonel Turabian," he said as soon as he was connected. "I was just trying to call Beldan in his quarters but got no answer. Can you tell me where he is? And while we're at it, do you happen to know where my wife is?"

"Hold on a moment, sir," said the voice at the other end, "while we check your voiceprint." Jonel frowned. Voiceprints were never checked except under very special circumstances when security was at stake.

A minute later the voice was back. "Thank you for waiting, Mr. Turabian. I don't know where your wife is, but all three of the Kyyra have vanished. And so has their shuttle."

XV

There were no actual windows aboard the Kyyra shuttle, but there were viewscreens that delivered a view so realistic that Sandy could easily imagine that there was nothing between her and the starship looming ahead. She watched with rapt fascination as they approached, not even noticing the slight discomfort of the cramped quarters and the alien design of the chair in which she sat. The ship, growing steadily in the screen, absorbed her whole attention. It was a thing of phenomenal size - she could tell that much easily. Just how phenomenal, she couldn't tell because there were no familiar features for comparison. She had noticed the same effect with some of the structures at Kennedy Spaceport, but it was even more pronounced here, with this work of alien hands. Somewhere beneath its surface was a general suggestion of streamlined contours, but what actually met the eye was an intricate array of wildly jutting substructures, for their functions were needed and the ship never had to enter an atmosphere. All of it was metal, apparently, but not mirror-shiny. Instead, the sunlit side shone with a muted velvety luster, and here and there on the dark side panels and bubbles glowed softly with their own multicolored lights. As it grew to fill the screen and then beyond, Sandy saw finer and finer structural details that reminded her of the delicate craftsmanship of the sculpture Beldan had given her and Jonel.

In just a few minutes she would be going inside.

For Sandy, this was a moment of triumph in more than one way. She had never been in space before, and she found it as exhilarating as Jonel had told her it was. And this particular trip was one she had been trying to talk Beldan into for weeks, first with subtle hints and later by asking directly. She still had no intention of spying, but she was very interested in seeing Beldan's home culture from inside. And as she got to know him, she felt more and more strongly - even though it was still just a hunch - that there was no malice in either his reasons for offering aid or his reasons for not talking about them. With an inside look, she might be able to prove that to herself - and possibly even find a way to convince her bickering fellow humans of it without betraying Beldan's trust.

He had put off her request so often - always politely and with apparently sincere regret - that she had almost given it up. Then this evening he had suddenly raised the question and said he had decided to take her to visit the ship if she still wanted to go. He had seemed oddly hurried, and had said confusing, disturbing things about this being their last chance because it appeared that they would soon be leaving Earth and going back to the fleeing Kyyra planet.

But Sandy had jumped at the chance. Within half an hour she and the three Kyyra were high above the Earth, looking down at the tiny spaceport where several guardsmen would now be searching an empty spot in their memories for an explanation of the shuttle's disappearance.

They docked. With a barely perceptible thump, the shuttle settled into an indentation in the side of the big ship. All sensation of motion ceased, and the faint hum of the engines dropped gradually out of hearing. The walls wavered slightly as, outside the passenger compartment, the craft reshaped itself for resting. "We're here," said Beldan, standing up. "They'll be letting us in now."

Sandy stood up, clutching her hastily packed overnight bag with a bit of nervousness. Up until now, she had felt none of that, but now that the moment was at hand little slivers of doubt flashed through her mind. What if the others weren't as easy to get along with as Beldan? What if there really was something sinister behind their actions that she had not even suspected? What if -

A circular door appeared and dilated silently, opening onto a short corridor warm with illumination resembling diffuse candlelight. Three other Kyyra stood at its end, looking out at them. All three wore the rippling robes of multicolored cloth Sandy was already familiar with. No two were alike - the variety in texture and pattern went beyond her wildest imaginings - but again she was dazzled by the free use of metals in the fabrics and ornaments.

Beldan put his big multijointed hand on her shoulder and urged her forward. "Go ahead," he said gently. "Nothing to be afraid of." She stepped into the corridor - and her doubts and hesitation evaporated instantly. Suddenly she was calm, poised, fully at ease. The effect was so striking that a part of her mind noted it intellectually, but the awareness did not ruffle her composure at all.

She walked confidently forward. The short corridor took them gently through the transition from the shuttle's artificial gravity to the ship's. By the time they reached the end and emerged into the room where the three strangers waited, the field was uniform and quite comfortable, just a shade weaker than Earth's.

The waiting trio seemed to be watching Sandy curiously but with averted vision, and they stepped away slightly as she drew close. Beldan said something to them in their own language, except that Sandy recognized her own name in the middle of it. All three members of the welcoming party answered simultaneously. At first Sandy was a little surprised that she couldn't read their facial expressions at all, since she had learned to read Beldan's pretty well. But she quickly realized that what had really happened was that Beldan had learned to use human expressions very well. When he talked to the other Kyyra, his face became as cryptic as theirs.

He turned to Sandy with a human smile. "I told them you are my friend and they said to tell you they are pleased and honored to meet you. These are Arxool, Khalikh, and Zhaldii."

Sandy nodded toward each in turn, carefully intoning each one's name as she did so. "Tell them I am pleased and honored to meet them also," she told Beldan.

He nodded, said a few more syllables to them, and turned back to her. "Zhalaii will take your bag to your room, if you like."

She held it out, smiling. Zhalall reached out and took it quickly, then jerked it back as if afraid to remain too close to Sandy for too long. Sandy was a little startled at their apparent attitudes toward her, but did not take offense. She told Beldan, "Tell him I thank him."

Beldan sang a few more Kyyra syllables and Zhaldii disappeared down a side corridor, followed closely by both companions plus the two who had chauffeured Beldan's shuttle. When they were alone, Beldan told Sandy, "Zhaldil is a her."

"Oh!" Sandy said, startled and just slightly embarrassed. "I'm sorry, I didn't know."

"No matter," Beldan smiled. "We would not expect you to. The superficial appearances of our sexes are not very different, to either the eye or the ear. Not nearly so much as in your species. In any case, our language does not use gender. And even if it did, I would have translated with the appropriate word. There was no danger of offense." He gestured toward another corridor. "Why don't we go to one of the gathering halls? There we can sit and talk, and you can meet some of my friends. And if you have questions about anything you see, don't hesitate to ask."

They started off along the corridor. It curved and twisted like nothing Sandy had seen in human architecture. Evidently the Kyyra felt no obligation to build with rectangular forms, and as a result even something as utilitarian as a ship's corridors took on a surprising grace. Sandy saw no doors along the way, but occasionally one appeared long enough for someone to emerge into the corridor or disappear into a side room. Some of those they passed were wearing tight protective coveralls which made Sandy guess they were engaged in some sort of manual labor - but even their coveralls were of those same dazzling fabrics.

"I'm fascinated by the things you people wear," Sandy remarked. "All that metal! And not just in the clothes, either. Your music-pipe, the furniture in the shuttle ..." She looked around. "Even the floor and walls of this corridor. Do you people make everything out of metal?"

Beldan nodded; Sandy thought his eyes almost made that peculiar involuntary jerking motion, but she wasn't sure. "Yes," he said. "As much as possible, which includes most things."

"Even on the planets?"

"Yes. We have found that for almost all purposes, we can make alloys which are superior to synthetics of the kinds you call plastics. Even when there is no functional advantage, we prefer the metals aesthetically."

Sandy whistled. "Your home planets must have been very rich. On Earth we could never use them so lavishly. So much metal would be fantastically expensive - if enough even exists, which I doubt."

"Our native supplies were not so much greater than yours," Beldan told her. "But when our ancestors were learning to harness stellar energies, they found that for some purposes it is convenient to artificially induce a supernova. You've studied astronomy, haven't you? So I suppose you'll see at once that that method of high-rate energy generation yields large quantities of heavy metals as a useful by-product. Quite enough for all the uses you see, as well as many others." He gestured ahead of them. "Here, we're coming to the hall."

Ahead of them the corridor curved upward, becoming vertical and then looping back overhead at the same time it twisted sideways. That was how it looked from here, anyway. As they got into the loop Sandy found that the field actually shifted so that it was always perpendicular to the floor and so felt almost normal, with just a tantalizing touch of cross-tugs on the upper parts of her body. Then it smoothed out again as, they emerged into a relatively large room.

Actually, she realized at second glance, it wasn't extremely large. It held about thirty Kyyra, mostly seated at curved tables with mirror tops of various colored metals, but it held them without much room to spare. The illusion of size came partly from the number actually present, but more from the design and decor - especially the prominent use of huge mirrors of silver and gold and bronze on all the walls and ceiling.

Beldan took Sandy around and introduced her to several individuals. All of them responded much as those in the vestibule had, with what seemed to be a kind of awkward shyness followed by a rather hasty retreat. None of them tried to converse with her at any length, even though Beldan was available as an interpreter. At first that bothered her slightly, but she quickly decided that a certain timidity was to be expected and then dwelt no-longer on it.

After they'd been around the room, Beldan led her to a small S-shaped table and they sat down. All around them was the sound of thirty Kyyra voices all talking at once, mingled with several music-pipes. Sandy listened intently, concentrating on the very distinctive flavor it gave the place.

Beldan remarked, "The people I introduced you to were delighted that you tried to say their names - and amazed that you said them so well."

Sandy smiled. "Did I?"

"Very well indeed. You know, of all the humans I have met, you are the only one who always remembers to be careful about the pitch." He smiled. "Jonel and Henry Clark usually try, but not as well as you do."

Sandy shrugged, studying the reflection of herself and her surroundings in the copper-colored tabletop. "I just assumed, from the way you talked when you were first introduced to me, that your language is tonal. I take it I was right."

"If by tonal you mean the meaning depends partly on pitch, yes."

"It's absolute pitch, too, isn't it? That is, not just whether a syllable is higher or lower than another syllable?"

"Yes."

Sandy nodded. "That's what I thought. That's why most people don't say your words right. 'Most people simply can't distinguish absolute pitches very well."

"Ah," Beldan exclaimed, "that explains a great deal. We had wondered why all the human languages we studied were so long-winded. If they can't distinguish many shades of intonation, I suppose they have to use a lot of multisyllable words. We don't, you know. With a large number of phonemes to begin with, plus thirteen possible pitches and two lengths for any syllable, our language consists almost entirely of monosyllables and has a bigger vocabulary than English."

" `Beldan'?" Because the tone was an integral part of the word, Sandy had to rely on her face to carry the question mark.

He smiled. "Proper names are the only common exception." He looked thoughtful and said, "What you said before - I suppose that means most humans could not learn our language. Would you agree?"

"Yes. But you seem to have learned English both very easily and very well." She stopped and thought about that while Beldan turned to answer another Kyyra who had just stopped and spoken to him.

The other handed Beldan a gourd-shaped object and left. When Sandy saw what it was, she frowned, puzzled. "Why do you need a food converter here? You're back home now!"

"It's for you," said Beldan, handing it to her. "You're not. I had it prepared especially for you. Don't worry; it's right for your metabolism. Its adjustment is based on meals I've had at your apartment, and it'll work on everything we have here." As if on cue, the Kyyra who had brought him the converter returned with a tray of assorted solid lumps and tiny, engraved metal cups of colored liquids. None of it looked or smelled familiar, but the mingled odors were not unpleasant. "Try some," Beldan said. "Just take anything that looks interesting. I'll do likewise. Let me show you how to use that..." All she had to do was squirt a dose of the stuff in the converter into her throat; it was pre-mixed to take care of anything she might be served while aboard the ship. Then she started sampling things from the tray, gingerly at first and then with rapidly growing interest and enjoyment. All the tastes were strange, but there were several that she would find reasonably easy to learn to like.

"I was thinking about your learning English so easily," she said, leaning back and looking at Beldan while chewing on one of his tidbits, feeling good. "I think I've figured out, all at once, both why you learned it so easily and why you speak it with the kind of accent you do."

"Do I speak it with an odd accent?" He seemed taken aback.

"Oh, don't get me wrong," Sandy said hastily. "Your pronunciation is flawless - few humans learn to pronounce a foreign human language that well in a lifetime. I'm guessing that that's because of the large number of phonemes you mentioned in your own tongue. They include most of the ones in English?"

He nodded. "Yes. And every other human language we've looked at. What is the odd part of my speech?"

"The tones. We don't use the fine absolute pitches you do, but we use general patterns of rising and falling tones to shade the meaning of an entire sentence. You don't do that. Your voice jumps around and sounds almost like you're singing."

"Oh." He looked thoughtful. "I see. The tones in your speech seemed so arbitrary that I assumed they had no significance at all. I probably tend to simply use random successions of the Kyyra pitches. I'm sorry if I have offended anyone."

"Of course you haven't." Hoping to change the subject to something less touchy, but not too remote, she asked suddenly, "Do Kyyra sing?"

"What?"

"Do Kyyra sing? You've probably heard it on television. When people pronounce words with much more definite tone patterns than ordinary speech. You know ... like this." She leaned closer so he could hear her and softly sang a snatch of an old Irish song:

"'Sing, sing, for music was given

To brighten the gay and kindle the loving;

Souls here, like planets in heaven,

By harmony's laws alone are kept moving ...

"Do you ever do that?"

"I think I understand," he said doubtfully. "Something like combining toneless words with the wordless tones of a music-pipe."

"Exactly."

"But of course since our words aren't toneless we can't do that without losing their meaning."

"That's what I thought."

"But," he added, his face brightening, "we have something more or less related that you can't have. Listen to those young people over there at the next table." Sandy listened as they burst into a short period of spasmodic sounds that she didn't recognize, but she was pretty sure it wasn't speech. "They're laughing," Beldan explained as the sounds subsided. "Now listen." One of them played something on his pipe - something faster and less flowing than most of what Sandy had heard Beldan play - and then they all broke into another round of the alien laughter.

"I cannot let you fully into the joke," said Beldan, "but I can describe roughly what they were doing. Perhaps the pipe-tune reminded you of our speech. What the piper did was to remove everything but the tones from a sentence and play only the tone-pattern. The tone-pattern suggests the complete sentence to a Kyyra - but the same tones could also be pronounced in other ways and mean other things. That particular tune immediately suggests at least four different sentences - and the relationship among them is humorous."

"A musical pun!" Sandy said immediately, laughing appreciatively at the idea. "No, we don't have that. But I can imagine some of the possibilities - " She noticed a group of very small Kyyra who had appeared across the room and broke off. "Beldan, are those children?"

"Yes."

She hesitated, excited by the thought of something somebody had said shortly after the Kyyra came to Earth. She wanted to ask, but wondered whether it was in good taste. That strange inner calm seemed to assure her that it was all right, but still she hesitated. "How old are they?" she ventured timidly.

"Perhaps fifteen of your years." He looked at her face, saw her inner struggle, and seemed to read her mind. "You are curious about our life cycle? Well, I can tell you that we typically live to about two hundred of your years, and consider a generation something like seventy or eighty. If you would like to know more details - " He looked at her again and stopped abruptly. "Forgive me," he said. "I'd forgotten how late it is. You must be very tired. Would you like me to show you to your room?"

She wasn't sure whether it was intended as a hint, but she chose to take it as one. And now that he reminded her, she suddenly realized that she herself had forgotten how late it was and how tired she was. The hubbub of alien voices seemed abruptly distant and dreamlike. "Thank you, Beldan," she said quietly. "I'd like that very much."

Her handbag was waiting for her in the middle of a long, concave bed in a room so full of metal ornament that it seemed hardly meant for sleeping. But presumably it would be dark when she slept, and she was very tired ...

As Beldan closed the door and left her alone, she also felt twinges of loneliness and fear and guilt and doubt. Loneliness, because she was alone among aliens - the first human, she suddenly realized for the first time, ever to be alone among aliens, in an alien bed aboard their huge starship far out in space. Fear, because it was impossible to feel totally at ease among beings so powerful they could talk casually about causing supernovae as "convenient" sources of energy and precious metals. Guilt, because she hadn't really wanted to come without leaving Jonel a note - but Beldan had said this was a favor he would do only for her and he'd rather no one else knew about it. He said the Kyyra had a way he could notify Jonel with no possibility of anyone else getting the message instead; she only hoped he had remembered to leave it. And she felt doubt as a result of all the others - doubt that the whole trip had really been a wise move.

But even as they arose and tried to grow, the loneliness and fear and guilt and doubt receded and vanished: It felt almost as if they were meeting active resistance - as if some soft invisible hand saw them rising and quietly but firmly patted them back down.

As if the ship were trying to soothe her.

She lay down, more puzzled than bothered by the thought. She didn't see a light switch, but as soon as she lay down the light began slowly fading and in two minutes it was completely dark. As distractions receded into memory and she continued to relax, she became more and more aware of the aura that she had first noticed as soon as they came aboard.

And suddenly she had an idea what it was. She sat up, startled, awed, eager to talk to somebody about it.

But the big, soft, invisible hand of the aura quickly smoothed those things out. Very gently, the soothing calm returned and eased her back onto the bed and into deep, blissful sleep.

XVI

Jonel spent a rough night. He found no clue as to Sandy's whereabouts, unless the near-simultaneous disappearance of the Kyyra and their shuttle was one. They wouldn't let him back in to see Clark until the next morning's visiting hours, despite his efforts to make them understand how urgently important it was. They wouldn't even put a phone call through. And when he finally did get in, at ten A.M., he found Clark sitting up in a chair and looking so much more chipper than yesterday that it was hard to believe such a protective attitude had been necessary.

"Sandy's gone," he told Clark curtly. "I don't know where. I tried to reach Beldan and found out he's gone too. So are the other two Kyyra and so is their shuttle."

Clark's eyebrows shot up and then returned. He looked surprised, but not as upset as Jonel might have expected. "Shuttle's gone, huh? Did anybody see it leave?"

"I talked to some guardsmen. Nobody will admit to it."

"That's very strange."

"Yes." Jonel paused briefly and said, "Sandy didn't leave a note. That's not like her. So I suspect foul play."

Clark nodded. "A reasonable suspicion. Let's see now. The shuttle is gone and so is Sandy. They both disappeared about the same time and Sandy was with Beldan, so you suspect a connection. All very reasonable. O.K. - where might the shuttle have gone? The obvious guess is that its owners took it and took Sandy with them for some reason which we don't know. Or possibly somebody else took it, along with Sandy and the Kyyra - somebody like the anti-Kyyra conspirators we already know exist." He gestured painfully at his shoulder. "In either case, the guards should remember and they don't. Which is very odd."

Jonel nodded impatiently. "That pretty well sums it up. So what are we going to do?"

Clark tried to shrug, momentarily forgetting his bad shoulder, and ended in a grimace instead. "If the Kyyra took the shuttle themselves, where would they go with it? For the moment, never mind how they did it without being noticed; we have that problem no matter who took it. Skipping past that, the Kyyra would almost certainly have gone to their ship. We know where their ship is; we've seen it. But lately we haven't been watching it as continuously or as closely as we maybe should have. So we're not likely to find anybody who knows whether the shuttle went there."

"Except on board," Jonel said pointedly.

"Yes. And we're not going to look there unless we get really desperate. They didn't like it when we sent somebody out to investigate when we first spotted them, remember. We don't know what they might do if we tried again. But if they chose to disapprove, we wouldn't have a prayer of doing anything about it. If Sandy's aboard, she might be the first to suffer."

Jonel's mouth was dry. What Clark had just said was true, and he was giving Jonel no satisfaction at all.

"On the other hand," said Clark, "we already know there are human conspirators and we have investigators who are experienced in dealing with such types. They're already looking for them. So until we get something more concrete, I'd say we should concentrate our efforts there. Turn the new incidents over to the investigators who are already on the job and tell them to see if they seem to tie in. And then wait."

Jonel pressed his lips tightly together, thought for a few seconds, and then said, "I guess that's all we can do. Thank you, Mr. Clark." Intellectually, it made sense, but he felt far from satisfied as he turned to go.

And, he reflected as he went through the door, something in Clark's manner seemed to have undergone a subtle change - but he couldn't put his finger on what it was.

Clark watched Jonel go with a feeling of regret. He could easily and fully sympathize with the young man, but he knew little else that he could do at this point. The decisions had seemed to come easier than some, but there were still the lingering doubts about whether they were as good as they might have been. He had only one other idea that he had not mentioned to Jonel, and that was to try to contact the Kyyra ship by radio. He would do that, of course - he had not mentioned it to Jonel only because he saw no point in raising false hopes.

The conspiracy investigation bore limited fruit that same afternoon. The hospital staff finally started letting phone calls through to him that day, and he got one while he was in the midst of eating what they called a lunch.

He picked up the receiver with his mouth full. "Henry Clark," he said mushily. "What is it?"

"You did say Henry Clark, didn't you?" said an unfamiliar, self-assured man's voice. "This is Investigator First Thomas Rodburg, at the spaceport. I think we have a lead on your conspiracy case."

Clark swallowed hastily and pressed his ear more tightly into the receiver, feeling a surge of excitement tempered by caution. "Yes?" he said clearly. "Anything on where Mrs. Turabian and the Kyyra have gone?"

"I'm afraid not. Sorry. This goes back farther. It's about the attempt to blow up the Kyyra landing craft. I've been interviewing a guardsman we overlooked before, and he seems to have most of the pieces we were missing to put together a story. But he's withholding a key name and I think you may be able to get it out of him. Can you get aver here?"

"I'll be there," Clark said flatly. "I may have to browbeat somebody here, but I'll be there as soon as possible. Hold things together. And thanks for calling."

As he hung up, he frowned. Overlooked?

He did have to do a little browbeating, but he had enough of his energy back to do it reasonably well. Within the hour he was dressed, discharged, and riding to the spaceport in a comfortable seat in an ambulance. The gate guard at Kennedy told them where to find Investigator Rodburg. As soon as the ambulance pulled up to the appropriate door, three attendants helped Clark out of it and into a motorized wheelchair. They stayed with him through the corridors as far as the room the gate guard had named.

There a tall, rugged man of fifty or so, with smooth iron-gray hair and wearing a business suit of conservative cut and expensive material, was waiting in the hall outside the door. He came toward them as they approached. "Mr. Clark?" He extended his right hand, glanced at Clark's shoulder, withdrew it and substituted the left. "I'm Tom Rod-burg. Hope you're feeling better."

"Better," Clark grunted, taking the investigator's hand perfunctorily. He turned to the ambulance attendants. "Thanks, fellows. I'll call you if I need you again." They left. Clark turned back to Rodburg and stared at him with frank amazement. "How in the world could you overlook a guardsman?"

Rodburg smiled. "I guess it does sound a little odd, doesn't it? Come on in and meet him."

He opened the door and let Clark precede him into the room, the wheelchair motor whirring softly. Clark looked around as he entered. Long gone were the days of interrogation by a single bare incandescent bulb dangling in front of the suspect's eyes from the ceiling of a dingy room. This room was hardly different from any modern office, with a clean desk and a few other pieces of furniture, all uniformly lighted by a fluorescent ceiling. There was a single window, too, behind the desk, but a, closed venetian blind completely blocked any sunlight from mingling with the fluorescence.

The "suspect" sat in a chair facing the desk; the only visible survival of the old methods was the fact that he was strapped into it. He was in uniform, a small, slightly built fellow of nineteen or twenty with sandy hair and wire-rimmed glasses - and obviously very nervous.

His eyes darted anxiously back and forth as Rodburg sat down behind the desk and Clark parked his wheelchair in a position where he could easily see both of the others.

He felt a little uncomfortable about trying to squeeze information out of anyone. He did not consider himself an imposing figure under any circumstances, and being in a wheelchair with a bandaged shoulder and a useless arm wouldn't help. But maybe Rodburg's presence would.

The investigator looked straight at the young guardsman. "The gentleman who has just joined us," he said, "is Lieutenant Commissioner Henry Clark. You recognize the name?"

The guardsman gulped. "Yes, sir."

"Tell me who Mr. Clark is."

"He's in charge of the investigation of the danger to Earth and the aliens' offer to move it."

Rodburg smiled approvingly. "That's right. Tell the Commissioner who you are."

"Guard Corporal Michael J: Rosser, sir." A muscle in Rosser's arm twitched as if he had a reflexive compulsion to salute but the straps prevented him.

"Thank you, Michael," Rodburg beamed. "Were you assigned to guard the spacecraft in which the Kyyra visitors landed at Kennedy Spaceport?"

"Yes, sir."

"When were you last on duty there?"

"The night of ... I've forgotten the date again, sir. But it was the night before the saboteur got into the, area. I'm sure of that."

"What time did you go off duty that night, Michael?"

"At 1900 hours, sir."

"And then?"

"I caught a plane. I was being transferred to Houston, Texas."

Rodburg turned to Clark. "There's your explanation of how we overlooked him, Mr. Clark. We originally concentrated our inquiries on guardsmen who were on duty at the time the saboteur was spotted, and that wasn't until five o'clock in the morning. But the man was already inside the area when he was spotted and it wasn't certain how long he'd been there. The area is large enough, and has enough scrub palmetto and such, that somebody could conceivably hide there for a while without being spotted. So after our first questioning yielded nothing - and then we re-questioned the same men, at your suggestion - we started extending our efforts to other guardsmen who were in the vicinity but not on active duty at the time. And to those who had been on duty in the hours preceding the incident. Since Corporal Rosser had been not only off duty but out of the state for several hours when it happened, and was out of the state when we were doing our first interrogation, we didn't get to him until we'd exhausted quite a lot of other possibilities."

Rodburg turned back to Michael Rosser. "Let's get to the interesting part now. Michael, did anything unusual happen before you went off duty that night?"

Rosser averted his eyes and spoke almost inaudibly. "Yes, sir."

"Tell the Commissioner what it was."

Rosser's voice became even fainter. "I let someone into the area."

"Louder, please. Speak up, Michael."

"I ... I let someone into the area, sir."

"How many people did you admit?"

"Two, sir."

"But the log book at your post shows only one man being admitted that evening."

Hesitation. "Yes, sir."

Clark frowned, listening attentively. What kind of crazy incompetent was this corporal?

"That's very irregular," Rodburg told Rosser. "Anyone who was admitted to that area at any time was to be promptly recorded in the log book. Wasn't that your understanding?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then why wasn't this other person recorded?"

"Because the one who was recorded told me not to record the other."

Clark pressed his lips tightly together. There was no excuse under the sun for anything like this happening.

"It took us hours to get him to admit even this much," Rodburg told him. He turned back to Rosser. "Do you do everything anyone tells you to do, Michael?"

`No, sir. Only certain people."

"I see. Now let me be sure the Commissioner and I have the picture correctly. Two men - let us call them Mr. X and Mr. Y - came together to your gate and asked to be allowed into the restricted area. You let them in. But you only wrote down Mr. X's name - which we therefore know, assuming he was telling the truth - because Mr. X told you not to write down Mr. Y's name. Is that correct?"

"Yes, sir."

"Why did you do as Mr. X told you?"

"Because I recognized him as somebody very important, sir."

"You recognized him, you say. So I take it you believe the name your log book shows for him is correct?"

"I'm sure of it, sir. I recognized him from pictures, and his credentials were completely in order."

"And you say he was important. So important that you thought he might be exempt from your standing orders?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you didn't check with your commanding officer?"

"No, sir. Mr... . the one you're calling Mr. X told me not to do even that. He told me Mr. Y was a photographer here to take some special pictures that were vital to Mr. Clark's committee's investigation, and no one must know he was here until after the pictures were presented to the committee."

"Not even your commanding officer?"

"Not even my commanding officer ... sir. I thought I was doing my duty. I really did."

"Hm-m-m. Mr. Y was supposedly a photographer. Did he look like a photographer?"

"Yes, sir. He had two cameras around his neck. And an equipment case."

"Did you look inside the case?"

"No, sir."

"I see." Rodburg turned again to Clark. "You probably see the picture, Mr. Clark. We can put this together with items we've got from some of the other guardsmen. Mr. X came back out of the area through the same gate at 1930 hours, and dutifully checked out with the guard then on duty. Since his was the only name recorded, and Rosser was gone, the new guard saw nothing even slightly unusual about the incident. But nobody has any record of the photographer coming back out. Granted, he could have pulled some similar trickery on the way out, but it would have been harder and we have no evidence that anything like that happened. It seems much more likely that he hid there until late at night, with a photographer's case loaded with explosives and possibly other clothes. If he had enough bulletproof clothes, that could explain how he managed to escape even when he was being shot at by supposedly competent marksmen - though the details are still a little hazy there. Anyway, we'd like to get this 'photographer's' name if at all possible, but Michael has refused to give us one. I think he's still confused about whose orders outrank whose. But I think he understands that nobody stands higher in the investigation of the Kyyra matter than you do."

Clark looked at Rosser. "Do you understand that, Michael?"

Rosser nodded. "Yes, sir."

"So if I ask you to tell me Mr. Y's name, you understand that that countermands any previous orders you have - even from Mr. X?"

"Yes, sir. But I still can't give you his name."

"Why not?"

"Because I was telling you the truth before. Mr. X didn't give me Mr. Y's name. I can give you a description, but that's all."

Clark stared at him for several seconds and then turned back to Rodburg. "Well, Investigator, I don't know what else I can do. I have a hunch he's telling the truth. Even if he had been given a name, under the circumstances it would probably be phony. Don't you think?"

"Very probably," said Rodburg. "Well, we tried. Thank you for coming over, Mr. Clark."

"Quite all right. May I ask you one question before I leave?"

"Certainly, sir. What is it?"

"Only the obvious one. Who is Mr. X?"

Any trace of a smile that might have been on Rodburg's face vanished abruptly. He nodded solemnly toward Rosser. "Who was Mr. X, Michael?"

Rosser said the name.

And Clark felt his own face go white with shock.

XVII

Sandy woke up feeling relaxed, refreshed, and intensely alive. The room was light again when she opened her eyes, and for some time she just lay there on her back, looking up at the ceiling and letting her eyes roam lazily over the almost endlessly varied metalwork all around her. Gradually she became conscious that the "aura" was still there, and this time it let her feel the excitement of her discovery. She wanted to tell Beldan about it, but she didn't know where he was or how -s-he might find him. She wondered briefly whether some part of the metal artistry all around her might really be a communicator, but quickly decided that even if it was, finding it would be like finding the proverbial needle. So she shrugged off the search and went into the adjoining bathroom - with facilities sufficiently familiar to give little problem, and with every wall a single mirror - to, get ready to meet the new day.

And as soon as she came out, she heard Beldan outside the main wall. "Sandy," he said softly, "may I come in? I've brought you some breakfast."

She started to open the door for him, then chuckled as she realized that she wasn't even sure where it was - which was a mildly disconcerting sensation. "Come on in," she called, going to pick up her food converter. An oval door appeared in the middle of the wall, Beldan stepped in with a tray similar to the one they had shared last night, and the door disappeared.

"Good morning," Sandy smiled. "Thanks for bringing breakfast. Will you help me eat it?" They sat down on the edge of the bed and Beldan set the tray between them. The bed, soft and with sunken center when Sandy wanted to sleep on it, now obligingly became level and firm. Sandy engaged in a few minutes of small talk as they ate, but only for a few minutes before she turned to the things that had really excited her. "Beldan," she said confidentially, 'I think I feel your God."

He may have looked slightly startled for a fraction of a second, but at most only slightly and only a small fraction. Then he said, "What does it feel like?"

She tried to tell him. "It's ... elusive. Hard to describe. But it's a kind of feeling I get about the whole place. Ever since I came aboard the ship I've felt ... comfortable. Relaxed. Safe. It's a good feeling, on the whole. Humans sometimes say places have auras or feelings about them, but this one's more definite than any I've noticed on Earth. More positive. More ... palpable. I felt it all of a sudden, as soon as we came aboard. Then last night some unpleasant feelings tried to form in my mind, and something seemed to come along and wipe them out as soon as they started. Like instant negative feedback from something that didn't want me to feel bad."

Beldan nodded, smiling slightly. "That's Him, all right. Of course, we don't usually think of it in quite such personal terms as 'Him'. That's a carry-over from my trying to find the closest analogy of the concept in your language. You may remember we spoke of this that first time I visited you and Jonel."

Sandy nodded. She remembered that, all right. She doubted that she could ever forget his expression or her own feelings as he told her that his God was dying - as matter-of-factly and as poignantly as a human might say that his closest friend was dying. She had never dared to bring the subject up again until now. But if he was as willing to talk about it as he now seemed ...

She had to know. "Beldan," she said earnestly, "I don't know how to ask this or even whether I should ask it. So I'll just go ahead, however clumsy I may be, and if I say anything you don't want to talk about, you just tell me to shut up. O.K.?"

"I can hardly imagine a need to speak so harshly to you, Sandy. What do you want to know?"

"This thing I feel ... your God ... or whatever I should really be calling it. What is it?"

"That," he said, "is a long story. Much of it I don't even know because it happened so many generations before I was born. But I can tell you that it corresponds roughly not only to your concept of 'God' but also 'government'. Perhaps we should call it 'the Coordinator'. It is conjectured that at some time in the dim past, before the Coordinator was built but after civilization had attained a high degree of complexity, decisions were made by unlinked minds as in your present culture. But no one mind had a clear enough understanding of all the factors and relationships involved in any decision to make it with real wisdom." He smiled. "I could never have conceived this possibility before visiting Earth and actually seeing the things that happen there, but perhaps there were even conflicts of interest and personality clashes harmful to all concerned.

"The Coordinator can be thought of as a huge mind, originally constructed by our ancestors - or their counterparts on any other Kyyra planet - to regulate all the interpersonal relationships on a planet into a harmonious and smoothly working whole. It could see problems such as food and energy supply in their entirety. It could see to it that suitable numbers of suitable people did all the required things to achieve optimized solutions, while nobody did detrimental things. Part of this involved periodically making adjustments in individual minds to eliminate conditions that might produce unhappiness or inefficiency or - presumably - conflicts. But about this last I can only conjecture. If ever the Coordinator had this job to do, it has done it so well that the need no longer becomes strong enough to be noticed."

Sandy nodded. "And that's why you felt uncomfortable on Earth, where it's, always so strong it's taken for granted." Beldan nodded. "And you really meant it as a simple question when you asked, `What is war?' "

"Yes. Since then I have learned the answer, of course. But I still find the concept hard to grasp. It's so utterly alien. And so horrifying." He paused, then added, "And the concept of horror itself is almost totally alien to us."

Sandy sat silent for several seconds. Then she asked, "For these `periodic adjustments' you spoke of - does a person have to go somewhere periodically to have that done?"

"Not at all. The Coordinator operates continuously. It is constantly monitoring the workings of all our minds, using the 'nonphysical' communication techniques I spoke of in the first meeting you attended, constantly making small adjustments so that large adjustments never become necessary. That is the 'aura' you felt. As you can see, it is a source of great comfort to us."

"And that's what you meant you missed when you said you were bothered by the absence of God on Earth." Sandy sat silent again, this time for a longer period, trying to fully grasp what this Coordinator was and what it meant to the Kyyra. It was a machine built by their ancestors to mold minds - but it was also, from the point of view of somebody living on a Kyyra planet, something very close to an omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent being which was never far away. Its presence was always felt, it controlled the world in which they lived, it could see and solve huge problems with a wisdom far beyond any of their single minds, and it cared deeply and intimately about the welfare and happiness of every one of them.

In short, it gave the Kyyra things that many human religions had sought for thousands of years to give their adherents. But it was far more real and immediate to every Kyyra than the human gods had ever been to almost any man. Sandy was not at all sure she would want men to have one, but she had experienced it and she felt some inkling of what the prospect of its loss must mean to the Kyyra. Only an inkling, she knew - but even that was quite staggering.

Finally she asked, very gently, "What did you mean when you said, 'We're killing Him'?"

His eyes jerked convulsively back into his head and returned slowly. As they did so, he turned them to stare at a shiny medallion in a corner. "That is still painful to talk about," he said.

"Then don't."

"No, I will: I can do it here; the Coordinator will ease the pain in my mind as I do so. And it wants me to tell you now." Sandy blinked, startled at those words. But before she had time to think much about them, Beldan went on, "Imagine yourself in our position when we knew the galactic core had begun to explode. Alone on a group of planets which our ancestors had shaped into idealized, self-regulating homes for our kind. Life was a comfortable routine; each of us had a part into which he was well fitted by the Coordinator.

"Suddenly there was no more routine. We were far closer to the exploding core than Earth is. We could not even consider going into hiding beneath our planet's surface. We were already living mostly underground, and that was no permanent refuge at that distance. We had no choice but to flee. O.K. - so naturally we consulted the Coordinator. It had helped us through minor crises before; now it would help us through a major one. It told us how to escape. We still occasionally moved planets ourselves; our ancestors before civilization stabilized had even done it with inhabited planets. The Coordinator remembered how and told us. But the energy demands were so great, for the distances and speeds we had to use, that we could barely make it. To get started we used several methods together, any one of which you would find awesome. Even so, by journey's end little will remain of the planet that started. Practically all our accustomed civilization will be gone. And the Coordinator will be gone. Because as you might guess, with all it must do, the Coordinator is both large and delicate. By its own instructions, it must be sacrificed to enable us to reach M31. Already it is operating at a reduced level. By the time we reach our destination it will be totally gone." He finished in an almost inaudible voice and then sat staring silently into space.

"I'm sorry," Sandy whispered awkwardly. Then, after a while, she said, "This is happening because a planet uses its own mass as fuel. But the ships don't. Does that mean the Coordinator I feel here will survive the trip?"

Beldan shook his head. "No. Not even that. The ship does not carry its own Coordinator. It carries only a branch nucleus to keep the ship and its inhabitants linked to the planet we're convoying. When the planet finally loses its Coordinator, so do all its convoy ships. None of the Coordinator will remain."

Sandy said no more about it then. Beldan needed some time to recover from the obviously painful experience of talking about it - in a place where painful experiences were actively suppressed. But there was another question she would have to ask. She could no longer avoid it.

Rao had said the Kyyra had gone to a great deal of trouble and expense to travel very slowly. Now Sandy understood, as no other human did, that the cost to them went far beyond anything Rao ever imagined.

And the question loomed larger than ever: why? What reason could be so compelling as to drive a race to sacrifice its very gods?

Beldan bounced back quickly; such was the soothing and steadying influence of the Coordinator. He showed her some more of the ship; they spent some more time sitting and talking in a couple pf the gathering halls, each with its own distinctive decor. The traumatic breakfast conversation became a thing of the past, unmentioned and unlamented.

Until finally, several hours later, Sandy managed to steer the conversation back in that direction. And when she got it close enough, she said, "Beldan, do you mind if I ask you one more question about ... what we were talking about when you came to my room earlier?" His eyes jerked slightly. "You mean the Coordinator?"

"Yes."

He was silent for a few seconds. Then, cautiously: "What is your question?"

"That first day at the spaceport back on Earth - the first day Jonel and I were there, I mean - Clark asked you if it wouldn't have been cheaper and easier to travel much farther above the speed of light. Wasn't he right? I mean, it seems to me that by doing that you could still have escaped and maybe saved the Coordinator too. Because the fuel requirements would be much less ..." She stopped, looking at Beldan staring stonily straight in front of him. "Wouldn't they?"

His answer might have been a playback of the one he had given that long-ago afternoon. "Perhaps."

And Sandy repeated Clark's next question. "Then why didn't you do it that way?"

But this time Beldan answered it - a curt, uninformative answer, but more of an answer than he had given before. "Because the Coordinator said to do it this way."

"Why?" Sandy asked at once, and this time she did it very deliberately.

But Beldan said nothing. After waiting several seconds, Sandy asked less harshly, "Don't you know why?"

He nodded slowly. "We know why. But it is painful to talk about. And it does not want me to tell you that. So I will beg off."

Sandy said no more about it. But she spent the rest of the day hardly hearing the rest of what went on around her, because the things she had already heard were so busy chasing each other around in her mind.

And that night she went to sleep full of the excited feeling that she had almost put everything together into a pattern. Just before she dropped off, something Beldan had said shortly after they boarded the ship popped into her mind and she felt with sudden stark certainty that it was the one piece she still needed to complete the picture. She didn't see quite where to put it yet, but she felt sure she was right on the verge of finding its place. And then ...

She had no idea whether she was going to like the completed picture.

XVIII

"You," Clark said in a tone full of utter disgust, looking up from his desk as "Mr. X" walked into the trap. "You, of all people. Rao didn't really surprise me. But you, Joe? I'm shocked."

Sanchez stood in front of the door as it clicked shut behind him, showing no more evidence of his discomfort than an irritated frown. He glanced from side to side at the two guardsmen who had appeared from opposite sides of the door and thrust long guns into his ribs as soon as he entered. Then he stared at Clark with an external coolness under which Clark knew he must be seething. "What the devil's going on here, Henry? What are you talking about? I got a note that said you wanted to see me - "

"You bet I do!" Clark rasped. "You know why as well as I do, but if you think it's still worthwhile to bluff, come and read this. Slowly." He picked up the single piece of paper on the' otherwise clear desk in front of him and shook it so it rattled.

Sanchez stepped forward, the two guardsmen walking sideways to keep him covered. Investigator Rodburg appeared from a corner to frisk him. Sanchez gave him a dirty look, then stopped in front of the desk and read the statement Rod-burg and Clark had prepared, his face impassive. Rodburg stood up and offered him a pen.

"It wasn't hard," Rodburg told him, "once we got around to recalling the guardsman who let you in. One thing led to another, and in just a few hours after our first breakthrough, we'd managed to see quite a few of the kinks we'd overlooked before and pinpoint quite a few of the key figures. We still haven't tracked down your 'photographer', though. If you'll be good enough to - "

He broke off and watched silently as Sanchez methodically tore the paper into very small pieces and distributed them over the rug, watching them flutter gently to his feet. When the last one had landed, Sanchez looked up at Clark. "I'm not signing any stupid confessions," he said quietly. "Is that all you wanted, Henry?"

"No," Clark said, just as quietly and without blinking. "That was just a legal formality. I didn't really expect you to do it - yet. What I really want to know is: why? Because you're not going to deny it, are you? Whether you sign the paper or not."

Sanchez curled his mustache in a sneering, patronizing smile. "Sure, Henry. Anything you say, Henry. What do you want to know?" He reached into a pocket. The guardsmen followed him nervously with the muzzles of their guns, then relaxed slightly as he took out a cigar and lighter. "Do you mind if I sit down?"

Clark stared at him for a few seconds, marveling at how little he knew this man. He had thought he knew him well, as one who could be trusted and relied upon for aid and counsel, as his title implied. Although, now that Clark thought back, there had been warning signs of a growing split ever since the Kyyra had landed. If only he had been astute enough to recognize them ...

He nodded slightly toward Sanchez. "Go ahead. Over there." He gestured toward an a,mchair. Sanchez thanked him and went over to it, closely followed by his guardsmen. He sat, crossed his legs and squirmed around until he found a comfortable position, then lit up his cigar and leaned back, stretching contentedly. "You were saying?"

Clark could easily find the exaggerated show of nonchalance unnerving, but he knew that was exactly what Sanchez wanted. So he refused. "I didn't really think Rao would go in for things like sabotage and assassination plots," he said calmly, "but I wasn't terribly surprised when I found that he had. I knew he was very much against going along with the Kyyra, and nobody's really understood him these last few years. But you, Joe - you're another story. I never even realized that you had formed a definite opinion about going. If you were against it, why didn't you say so?"

"Because," Sanchez said tightly, "you wouldn't have listened."

Clark laughed nervously. "That's ridiculous, Joe. Of course we would have listened. We always listen to you. That's why we've kept you on all these years. Because we value your advice."

"Not this time, you wouldn't have. I saw something happening to you, Henry, and it scared me. I knew. I had to fight you, and I was afraid I didn't dare let you know I was doing it or you'd find some way to stop me." He paused, then emitted a harsh chuckle. "You see, Henry, I was afraid of you."

Clark tried to laugh and frown at the same time. The thought was so ludicrous that he couldn't believe Sanchez was serious. Afraid of me?" he said incredulously. "Why could you possibly be afraid of me?"

"Because," said Sanchez, and his face was deadly serious, "I saw you starting to think of yourself as a dictator."

Clark stared at him in stunned, unbelieving silence for a long time. Then he broke into loud gales of laughter. "Come on, Joe!" he said finally. "You can't be serious."

"I've never been more serious in my life." Clark's laughter subsided into shaken attentiveness as Sanchez went on. "I half suspected it from the start. You wanted to believe in the Kyyra, and you were suspicious of people who didn't. Maybe you could never see it in yourself, but I saw it." He paused briefly, then went on, the pace of his words quickening. "I never did trust them and their offer. There was too much power there to trust without knowing why. And you could never get them to tell you why. Why should that be unless there was something sinister about what they wanted? I agreed with Rao-I smelled a rat. And I figured, better the devil you know than the devil you don't. But you - you just kept making excuses when you couldn't get at the real issues. It became more and more obvious to me, as I watched you, that you were headed for a decision to go whether you could get at them or not. And you'd do whatever it took. You already had a position with too much opportunity in it - partly because Gerber never took either the core explosion or you very seriously. And Rao and I could easily see you taking it a lot farther." Rao's parting words came flying up from the depths of Clark's memory, and stung: Or are you just going to play God? Sanchez finished, "What finally clinched it for me was that night in my apartment when you started talking about our whole politico-economic setup being wrong to pull people together enough for the trip. Remember, Henry? You said something about worldwide martial law with a really strong central authority ..."

Clark nodded. "I remember. But you missed the whole point. I didn't like the idea any more than you did. That was what was bothering me." Yet, he reflected uncomfortably, I still don't see any nice way around it ... He shoved the thought aside and forced a little laugh as he thought of another memory. "You know," he said musingly, staring at the blank desktop, "the first time I met Rao and told him about this, he said something about not wanting to live like a rat in a hole. Ironic, isn't it? Because if we don't go along with the Kyyra, it's going to be like that for everybody - for a long, long time.

"Unless they prefer suicide." He shrugged and looked back at Sanchez. "How did you people think you were going to get what you wanted, anyway? The efforts I saw looked pretty clumsy."

"I don't think blowing up their shuttle was such a clumsy idea," said Sanchez. "It didn't quite work, but it came close. Another minute before our man was spotted, and it would have been too late for your side to stop him. And I still think that might have done the' trick. That one thing might have put an end to the whole foolishness of talking to the Kyyra."

"How?"

"By making them so mad they would withdraw the offer. By making them decide we weren't worth saving."

"You idiot! What made you so sure they wouldn't go a step farther and strike back? It wouldn't be much trouble for them to make sure we weren't saved before they went on their way."

Sanchez smiled tolerantly. "We weren't sure, of course. Just as you say. It was a gamble,, but we thought it was a good one. Sure, it wouldn't be hard for them to wipe us out. But why should they bother? We're no threat to them."

"A house spider is no threat to you or me, either. But people step on them." He stared at Sanchez; Sanchez stared disdainfully back. "So that was your reasoning for the sabotage try," Clark said after a while. "And killing me? What was that supposed to accomplish?" Sanchez averted his eyes slightly, as if that question could still bring him pain. "That wasn't supposed to happen at all," he said quietly. "Oh, it was among the contingency plans, but only as an extreme last-ditch thing to try if all else failed. If it got to the point where you obviously had too much influence and nothing else was going to stop you. Even then, nobody liked the idea. The most they could hope to gain from it would be getting somebody less dangerous to take over in your place. And maybe the commotion would make the public leery of the whole business, which might make them a little more ready to listen to our side. On the other hand, maybe somebody even more anxious to go than you might take your place." "You still assume I'm anxious to go. I hadn't committed myself to anything, you know. I still haven't."

"That's what you say. Maybe you even believe it. Anyway, assassination's never been a dependable tactic. Sometimes the public winds up deifying somebody half of them hated when he was alive. So nobody wanted to do that unless everything else had been tried first." He paused and looked at Clark. "I was even more against it than they were. I hope you realize that, Henry. I've known you too long. Even if you become dangerous, I couldn't want to - "

"How noble," Clark interrupted, staring daggers of contempt at the other. "And stop calling me dangerous." He knew the idea was preposterous, but it still made him uncomfortable to hear Sanchez say it. He couldn't rub out his years of respect for the man that easily, even now.

"You say it wasn't supposed to happen," he muttered bitterly. "Then how do you account for this?" He jerked his good hand toward his bandaged shoulder.

"It wasn't the best conspiracy in the world," said Sanchez. "Not enough really qualified people - and too many others. One of the others got to you. A trigger-happy incompetent who had no place in a well-organized plot. But he got into it, and then he got impatient. Thought he knew better than the people running it what should be done. So he went off prematurely, on his own. I'm sorry it happened."

"That helps a lot," Clark said coldly. "Well, what do you have to show for it all? What have you accomplished? The decision's still going to be made - by us, not by your gang of conspirators."

"Is it?" Sanchez allowed a faint, cynical smile to creep back onto his lips. "Are you sure there's still a choice to be made?"

"What do you mean?"

"Looks to me like the Kyyra have left."

Clark said nothing, but he felt his lower lip quivering slightly. He had just assumed they would be back. He knew their ship was still in orbit. But now, for the first time, Sanchez' needling remark suddenly drove home to him the realization that that proved nothing. They might not be back - ever.

And he was a little surprised at how much that bothered him. There had to still be a choice - more than one option.

Surely the whole affair couldn't end like that. It couldn't just fizzle out, after all these long weeks of mental anguish, just because people couldn't make up their minds.

Because he couldn't make up his mind ...

The thought nagged him as he returned to his apartment for a late supper. It nagged him as he ate, slowly and hardly tasting the food. It nagged him as he stretched out on the bed after supper, with the lights low and his eyes closed, to try to think of something he might do to force a sound decision - after he got back the chance to consider a decision at all. He had been through this so often that he was used to beginning the effort with the possibility of success not even in his mind. This time he didn't even know whether the Kyyra would ever be coming back to ask if a decision had been reached. Their ship was still there, all right, but it might just be preparing to leave. And then all the thinking and talking about a choice would have gone for nothing.

He had had the communications staff at the spaceport try to radio them, of course. But there had been no evidence that the calls were being received. Was anybody listening?

I have, Clark thought miserably, no way of knowing. No way at all.

He drifted down to the soft border of sleep when the knocking on the door brought him back up. It began softly and sporadically - the first taps probably never reached his consciousness at all - but as he failed to answer, it grew steadily louder and more insistent. By the time he sat up on the edge of the bed and turned up the lights it was quite a racket. "O.K., O.K.," he grumbled. "I'm coming. Don't knock the door down."

He padded barefoot across the room to the door. He hesitated, standing with his hand poised on the bolt. "Who's there?"

"Please open the door, Mr. Clark," said a voice - and Clark's mind leaped fully awake at the sound of it.

It was a Kyyra voice.

He fumbled with the bolt in his haste to open the door. When he finally got it, he looked out at the Kyyra standing there in the hall. There was only one of them - aloof, dignified, slightly taller than the door itself, dressed in the iridescent robes he had come to regard as inseparable from them.

But this individual was none of the three he knew. And nobody had called to tell him that a Kyyra shuttle had returned to the spaceport. He frowned. "Who are you? And how did you get here?"

The Kyyra shook his head slowly. "It is not necessary to discuss that," he said. His command of English was not quite as good as Beldan's and he made no attempt to accompany his words with human facial movements. "May I come in?"

"Why should I let you come in?" Clark asked, still frowning. "I don't even know who you are. None of this makes - "

"I bring an important message concerning the young lady," the Kyyra interrupted. When Clark looked at him in momentary confusion, he added, "Sandy Turabian."

But of course by that time there was no longer any need for the clarification. And Clark lost no more time in getting the messenger into the room and the door closed and locked.

XIX

The dreams about Dianne had finally stopped.

And, as Clark sat in the office, waiting, refreshed by the best night's sleep he could remember in far too long, he felt strangely sure they would not return. He felt a calm such as he had known far too little, of late, mingled with the excitement of anticipation - and certain other things that he tried to keep from becoming too strong. At every little sound, his eyes jumped to the door, and then, when it failed to open, back to watching those who were waiting with him. Jonel, in the armchair to his left, watched the door with even more feverish anticipation than Clark's own. Sanchez, strapped into the same interrogation chair in which the young guardsman had first revealed his role in the conspiracy, just stared sullenly. Clark still didn't quite understand why he had agreed to let Sanchez be here this morning, unless it was some vague hope of learning still more by watching his reactions. But he had always had a weakness for giving in to requests like that, unless he saw some very obvious reason for refusing.

Jonel glanced impatiently at his watch. "They should be here any minute," he said. "Beldan was always so punctual it was almost funny."

"Don't try to pin him down to the minute," Clark advised. "That's too much to expect."

"Don't worry." Jonel paused, smiled slightly, and shook his head. "I'm glad she got a chance to go and visit; I hope it was a good trip. But I still don't understand why she didn't leave word for me."

Clark, despite a slight upwelling of the anger that he was trying to hold down, resisted the temptation to tell him.

Then steps sounded outside the door, the knob turned, and the door swung open on Sandy, with Beldan looming right behind her. Sandy walked in and went to Jonel, smiling as calmly and happily as if utterly unaware of the concern she had caused. Jonel rose from his chair and hurried to meet her, more overcome with emotion than Clark had ever seen him before. He took her in his arms and didn't let her speak for a while. When he finally did, she seemed a little puzzled, but not at all complaining. "My goodness!" she said with a light laugh. "You'd think I'd been gone for a long time or something."

"We were afraid you were going to be," said Jonel.

Meanwhile Beldan had stepped into the room and stood just inside, waiting. Clark stared at him coldly, saying nothing. Finally Beldan said quietly, "Our deal is completed."

Clark nodded slightly. "Yes."

Jonel and Sandy both noticed the brief exchange. They both frowned slightly, then shrugged almost imperceptibly and turned back to each other. "Anyway," said Jonel, "You're back. That's all that matters. But why didn't you tell me where you were going?"

She looked at him and frowned, apparently startled. "Didn't you get Beldan's massage?"

She turned away from Jonel to face Beldan squarely. The unsuspecting good humor that had been on her face when she came in had evaporated in an instant. Now she was bewildered and vulnerable. "Didn't you leave the message?" she asked Beldan. "The one only Jonel could read?"

Beldan did not look at her, but kept his gaze fixed in front of Clark. "No," he said. "I ... I could not."

"You couldn't? But you promised! And I thought - "

"I'm sorry, Sandy."

"But why - "

"I cannot explain."

She stared at him for a long time, her face full of hurt astonishment. Then abruptly, she became composed, purposeful. "So you can't explain, can't you?" she said in a low, ominous voice. "And you couldn't explain why the Kyyra wanted to move the Earth. I could understand that, Beldan, once I realized what the reason was. But that was different. You weren't breaking a promise then. But now you are, and I thought that was something you never did." She stopped, breathing heavily, and then went on, suddenly louder and faster. "And now I'm fed up with all this secrecy business. I think maybe we'd all better just get everything out in the open and work from there."

Now Beldan did look at her, his head turning so sharply that the motion seemed involuntary. For a moment his face contorted into an alien expression that Clark could not read. Then it played rapidly through a series of human expressions, none of them as skillfully executed as usual. But in that fleeting play of masks Clark was sure he saw surprise and fear and apprehension.

And he felt himself rising from his seat in his own excitement as the meaning of Sandy's words penetrated to him. "Sandy!" he burst out. "You found out why they wanted to do it?"

With an effort, he forced himself back into the chair. Beldan smoothed the ruffled emotions out of his face and stood attentive but otherwise inscrutable. Jonel and Sanchez both stared at Sandy with something like the fierce curiosity burning in Clark. There was no question as to who had the floor.

"I think so," Sandy nodded. "That is, I think I figured it out. I haven't checked it." She paused and looked at Beldan. "Beldan," she said, a touch more gently than before, "I haven't talked to you about this and I'm still not sure how I react to it myself. So let me give you a chance to say something before I tell them. I really think I've figured it out, and I really think I should tell them. Assume I'm right. Do you want to try to talk me out of it?"

Beldan stood silent for many seconds - longer than Clark had ever seen him hesitate before answering a question. Finally, very quietly, the reply came. "No. Go ahead.

Tell them what you think you've figured out. I shall be interested." He stood waiting, still and impassive.

Sandy hesitated briefly, not looking directly at anybody in the room. "I don't know how to tell this," she began finally, almost apologetically. "Some of you are going to say it isn't logical deduction at all, but just intuition. O.K. - so be it.

"There were a lot of things about the Kyyra and their offer that struck me. None of them seemed to say much or mean much by itself. And they didn't seem to tie together into a nice neat logical chain where-one led to another and that led to another and so on to a conclusion, either. But when I let them all sit in my brain and percolate for a while - they finally seemed to line up and point at one thing. Anyway, if that one thing was true, it could explain all the others.

"What did we know about the Kyyra? We knew they came from much deeper in the galaxy than us - from way down near the core. So they saw the explosion long before we did and were already fleeing it. They'd been fleeing for almost the whole time, in fact, at a speed so little above c that it must have cost an incredible amount of energy to do it. And that seemed to make no sense at all. Occasionally somebody suggested that it was so they could look for races like us who needed help - but that didn't seem to make any sense either.

"And beyond that? We knew very little. We knew that they had superb metal craftsmen and used metals,' apparently, as freely as our ancestors in the last century used paper. I had no idea, until I visited their ship, how literally true this was - and I didn't see its significance until late last night. We knew that they had capabilities and experience in handling enormous energies - energies big enough to move planets and alter stars. And we knew almost nothing else, because they - meaning Beldan, as their representative - were reluctant to talk about themselves.

"Above all they were reluctant to talk about why they wanted to help us move our planet, even though the question was of vital concern to us. Some humans suggested that that was because they were afraid to tell us their reasons - but nobody ever went so far as to suggest what they might have to hide. I suspected all along that they were wrong, because I knew Beldan, even if no one else did. But now" - and here the words seemed to come with difficulty - "now I'm almost sure they were right."

She stopped. For a moment she looked at Beldan, standing as if frozen with his eyes glued to her face, and then dropped her own eyes to stare at the floor. After several drawn-out seconds, so quiet that Clark thought he heard his own pulse pounding in his ears, Jonel prodded her gently. "Why is that, Sandy?"

She stood without moving for another couple of seconds, then jerked her head suddenly erect to gaze directly at Beldan while she finished. "When I went aboard their ship, I saw that several of the striking things we already knew about them were even truer - by far - than we had ever suspected. The metal usage? Picture a thousand Kyyra all dressed like Beldan, riding a spacefaring palace of gold and silver and alloys we've never seen, accompanying a planet whose whole surface is like that. I asked Beldan how they did it and he told me - as casually as I might tell you that I grow tomatoes in my back'yard - that they mine supernovas. And if they run short, they pick a star with nobody living around it and make a new supernova.

"And there was one more thing that was truer than we'd ever suspected. It cost them an awful lot to go that slowly - an awful lot, in the most literal sense of the word. The first time I really talked to Beldan he told me their God was dying - and when I was out there I learned what he meant. I met their God - and He really is dying. They're killing Him - because He told them to. 'He' is a computer, we would say - but one that quite literally governs their entire world through constant contact with all their minds, and in the bargain maintains a comforting aura that practically any human would describe as a deeply religious feeling. He told them how to escape. Part of what He told them was that they should travel this way, even though part of the price is that He won't survive the trip. Beldan wouldn't tell me why, but he admitted he knew. And I could see that it must be one humdinger of a reason.

"O.K. - suppose it was because they were looking for people like us. Why should they want to do that - so badly that they'd kill their God to do it? Suppose they felt an obligation to - a very powerful obligation. Why should they do that? Maybe because of something that they'd done in the past? What could they possibly have done that would make them feel that guilty - and think the guilt had anything to do with us? Last night I suddenly found the piece that finished the puzzle. It was what Beldan told me when I asked him about the metals." She stopped and looked at Jonel. "Do you see it, Jonel?"

Clark glanced back and forth between his face and hers. He had seen it happen several times before - either Jonel or Sandy would be thinking out loud about something, and suddenly the other's mind seemed to drop into the same groove and they raced on together. It happened now. Slowly, a light of comprehension washed over Jonel's face and his jaw dropped. And then, weirdly, as if on a pre-rehearsed cue, he and Sandy finished her story in unison. "They started the core explosion!"

Clark felt the shock through his whole nervous system. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sanchez lean forward and turn first pale, then gradually red. In front of him, Beldan's face again went alien, and this time he made no effort to force it back into a form men could read. Sandy nodded vigorously and went on excitedly, "Yes. They were near the core when the explosion started, and they make supernovas. While the talks were going on, I was brushing up on my astrophysics, to see where it might lead. One possible cause of a core explosion is a chain reaction of supernovas. Suppose the Kyyra triggered a supernova - for energy and trinkets - and they triggered it a little too close to a densely-packed region of the core. What do we have then? A Seyfert galaxy - an industrial accident that wipes out life around billions of suns. I think if we did that, we might feel obliged to see if we could help a few of them out, too."

The silence crackled. All human eyes shifted to Beldan. The Kyyra envoy still stood immobile and silent, his face an unearthly mask with nothing recognizably human in it. Abruptly and noisily, Sanchez spat, his saliva arcing across the room to splatter on Beldan's shimmering robes, just below the shoulder. "Monster!" he screamed in a piercing voice of more intensity than Clark could ever have imagined coming from Sanchez. "Murderer!" Then, as if the outburst had drained him of something, his head drooped and shook slowly from side to side. "Not strong enough," he muttered, almost whimpering. "There aren't any words - "

"Shut up," Clark told him, very quietly and very firmly - and he did. And Clark, suddenly oddly calm and self-possessed, looked at Beldan. "Well, Beldan?"

For a moment nothing happened. Then, slowly, Beldan's face turned back into something recognizable to human eyes. But now, as never before, it was the face of someone old and weary and defeated. He nodded slowly. "The lady is right," he said quietly, "as far as she goes." He turned to her. "Your perception is remarkable, Sandy. I hope I may still call you Sandy - but you don't seem to have quite the whole picture yet. First, there is a point I feel obliged to emphasize for Mr. Sanchez' benefit, if for no one else's. It is true that Kyyra supernova operations were resa3nsible for the catastrophe, and it happened much as you described. The star to be used was known to be in a more densely packed region of space than any used before, and there was some slight fear. But even then the theories of supernova chains were incomplete and untested, and the risk was finally judged negligible. It was a most unfortunate miscalculation, and you are quite right that the responsibility for it rested heavily - "

"You said you had a point for me," Sanchez interrupted sullenly. "Get to it."

Beldan broke off his sentence and looked at his questioner. "Very well, Mr. Sanchez. It is simply this. I ask you to remember that I personally had nothing to do with the accident. Neither did any other Kyyra alive today. We are victims as much as you are. As I told Mr. Rao on the day I first arrived here, my father saw the explosion begin. He was one of the youngest aboard the engineer ship which triggered the supernova - not an important member of the crew, but one who was present. That is all. As for me, my whole generation was born on planets and convoy ships well on their way outward from our former homespace. I personally have never even seen the surface of my planet - though I know very well what it is like."

"You said that was your first point," said Sandy. "There is another?"

"Yes, indeed." Beldan turned back to her. "You are quite right that the responsibility rested heavily on us, and I was chosen to bear the unaccustomed burden of guilt even more heavily than most. All my life has been devoted to the effort to detect and contact races such as yours. Partly, as you have guessed, to offer our aid. But there is also another reason for contact."

"Yes?" said Clark.

Beldan hesitated just perceptibly before answering. Then he said, slowly and distinctly, "We need your help."

An incoherent gasp of disbelief burst from several human mouths at once. Beldan went on a trifle faster, his voice recognizably earnest and pleading despite its characteristically odd leaps of pitch. "Has it never occurred to you - not even to you, Sandy? - that our very strength might also be our weakness? We can milk stars of their energy and we can move planets to better places. But in gaining all this we have lost other things. We can convert an uninhabited planet into pure energy to drive the automatic machinery of our homes - but we cannot convert it into a new home. If we were to try, we would prove very ... heavy-handed. No Kyyra has done that sort of thing for too many thousands of years. Even the Coordinator - the 'God' Sandy spoke of - cannot tell us how, for when the first Coordinators were built, the last natural life-forms other than ourselves were long since gone from the Kyyra worlds.

"Yet making new homes from new worlds is what we are going to have to do in M31. Even at the higher speeds you suggested, our planets would be too thoroughly ruined to serve as permanent homes when the trip was over. As it is, even most of our technology will be destroyed, so we will have to do without. It will be as if a human sailor set off on a trip in a modern yacht and reached his destination clinging to a piece of driftwood. We would be hopelessly inept. But you of Earth should be good at it. You have come far enough to have fairly sophisticated methods of shaping a planet's surface, and yet are young enough to have recent experience with a planet in a nearly raw state." He took out his pipe and began playing, very quietly.

Sandy nodded, her expression softened somewhat. "I'm beginning to understand," she said. "When I first saw you, I sometimes thought that beings so far in advance of us should have no more to say to us than we would to cavemen. But if we had just bombed our civilization out of commission and were about to take up residence in caves - well, I guess we sure could use a native guide."

"Exactly," said Beldan. "No offense - "

"Garbage!" Sanchez snarled, suddenly noisily furious again. "What incredible gall, asking us for help after what they did to us. Let them fry in the hell they've made!"

Clark looked at Sanchez with pitying scorn. "And you'll fry right along with them, you poor idiot," he said quietly. "Who will that help?"

Beldan stopped playing and told Sanchez simply, "Our need for help was never intended as a precondition for our offer to help you. That offer is good whether you choose to help us or not. We owe you that much. Beyond that, we throw ourselves on your mercy. But we could hope." He started to put the pipe back to his lips, then changed his mind and put it away. Somehow he no longer looked quite so old as a few minutes ago.

And Clark found that his own attitude had mellowed abruptly. Practically all of his anger had melted away, suddenly seeming so inappropriate that he thought there must still be some misunderstanding. Maybe he should raise the remaining question after all - the one he had intended to let lie. But gently ... He nodded slightly toward Beldan. "You've suffered enough," he said, and then he tried to remember a quotation he'd read somewhere - he couldn't remember where - a long time ago. - The gods visit the sins of the fathers upon the children.'"

"I heard a slightly different version," said Sandy, smiling slightly and looking at Beldan.

"'For the sins of your fathers you, though guiltless, must suffer.'"

Clark nodded approvingly. That version seemed a little closer to what he really wanted to say. "Anyway," he said, turning back to Sanchez, "it no longer matters whether you think it's right or wrong."

Sanchez looked at him sharply. "Why's that?"

"Because - "

And, as if in answer, the room trembled. Not drastically, but enough so that no one in the room could doubt that it was happening.

XX

And it didn't stop.

Expressions froze on human faces all around the room. Sanchez leaned forward in his chair, straining futilely at the straps that held him there. "Earthquake!" he croaked. "Get me out of this chair!"

"Don't be alarmed," said Clark, managing to smile calmly toward Sanchez despite the butterflies in his own stomach. "It's just the engines getting started. As I was saying, it no longer matters what you think because we're on our way. The Earth is irrevocably launched."

The tremor had faded after the initial shock. Now it was only a muffled accompaniment to the conversation in the room. Momentarily that conversation halted as three human faces stared uncomprehendingly at Henry Clark. Finally Sanchez muttered, "What are you talking about, Clark? You'd better be kidding."

"Sorry," said Clark, "I'm not. Last night, when I was beginning to think the Kyyra were gone for good and I'd found no clue as to where Sandy was, a Kyyra messenger came to my room. I still don't know how he got there, but that doesn't matter. He did, and he knew where Sandy was. She had been taken to the orbiting Kyyra starship and was being held there - as a hostage."

"What?" Sandy gasped incredulously.

"A hostage," Clark repeated. "To force us to make a decision."

"But that's ridiculous!" Sandy protested. "I was there of my own free will. I'd been asking Beldan to take me for a long time and he finally agreed."

"You went of your own free will," Clark corrected. "How you came back - if at all - was apparently not up to you. I thought it sounded ridiculous too, or at least out of character. But the messenger knew enough about you to convince me he wasn't bluffing. And he stated in no uncertain terms that you would be returned to us, alive and unhurt, if and only if I gave an immediate definite answer. To start the Earth on its way, or go away and forget about it."

"And?"

"I told them to go ahead. They were all prepared, ready to start as soon as they got the word. As you all know from the talks, all the driving reactions feed on the planet's own substance. There is no need for time-consuming preliminaries like construction of special engines. They simply start the induced annihilation process at a point on the Earth's surface and then remote-control its progress as it gnaws its way into the interior. During the night, a fleet of camouflaged Kyyra engineer ships moved in to Antarctica and lit the match." He paused, looking around the room and soberly studying the others' reactions. All of them were stunned, but Sandy had an additional reason. And Sanchez seemed utterly incredulous. "We have to expect some quake activity at the beginning," Clark explained. "It will pass. But the force is being applied first at the south pole; it has to be transmitted to the rest of the planet through its body. They're keeping it gentle at first, to minimize the damage. But there will be some, inevitably."

"And you denied that you were a megalomaniac," Sanchez said tightly. "I can't believe this..." He turned, glaring at Beldan, and bellowed, "I demand that you stop this while there's still time!"

"I'm afraid there isn't still time," Beldan said levelly. "The reaction can be controlled, as a propulsion source. But there is no way we could stop it at this point. Not until after the planet was thoroughly removed from its orbit - and by that time it would do nearly as much damage to bring it back as to proceed."

Sanchez continued to glare with intense hatred, hissing through his teeth, not even attempting words. And Clark saw that Sandy was staring alternately at himself and at Beldan, her face so unreadable that he suspected even she wasn't sure what her feelings were.

She settled her gaze on him. "I can't believe it either," she said. "Do you seriously mean to say you'd let the fate of the whole planet be decided jug because I was being held hostage?"

"Don't flatter yourself," Clark snapped. Then he caught himself and said more calmly, "Sorry, Sandy, I didn't mean that the way It sounded. Of course I wouldn't, and I didn't. That's why their whole pressure-by-kidnapping scheme was so inept it was laughable. Anybody who'd think I'd sell out a planet for one person, no matter who ..." He shook his head in renewed amazement at the absurdity of it. "I'd already made my decision. I had a lot of time to think in the hospital - and after Beldan disappeared. I gradually reached the decision that if I ever got the chance again, I would do everything I could to see that we didn't pass up the offer. Something Joe said yesterday really drove home to me how close we'd come to completely losing it. Then your ransom message came ..." He smiled ironically. "If they wanted to think I gave in because of you, that was O.K. with me. Of course, the fact that they tried such a stunt, and were willing to act on an answer from me alone, made it clearer than ever to me that they did have powerful reasons of their own for wanting us to go. But I'd .1 passed the point of caring what they were - anyway caring enough to make finding out a precondition for accepting. Now" - he nodded at Beldan - "I understand."

Sandy looked at him for a couple of seconds after he finished, saying nothing. Then she turned to Beldan. "And you," she said quietly. "What if he'd said no? Would you really have kept me out there? Or - "

"Of course not." Beldan hesitated not at all; there was even a suggestion of haste in his reply. Then he, too, managed an ironic smile. "I could never have considered such a thing, Sandy. But we had achieved so little by straightforward means that it seemed time to try the ways of your people. Even if we were just bluffing, and even if we lacked what it took to bluff convincingly. As Mr. Clark said, we were very inept." He ventured a chuckle. "But it's the thought that counts, I have sometimes heard while visiting here. And in the end, it seems, it even worked."

"Don't be so sure of that!" Sanchez snapped. "We haven't agreed to help you. Caesar Clark can't commit us to that."

No, Clark thought grimly, but when the time comes, if we choose not to and they've learned enough of human guile, they have quite an ax to hold over our heads. Because only they can control the reaction that's eating our planet away to get us there. But of course he said nothing of that.

Sanchez addressed him directly, bitterly sarcastic. "Hail, Caesar! When you were deciding what to do with the world, did it ever occur to you to think about anybody who's alive now? People are dying, right now. People who never heard of Henry Clark or Kyyra or Seyfert galaxies and could have lived out their lives happily keeping it that way. What about them? Eh, Henry? How can you live with yourself?"

Clark winced. His former counselor's words struck a responsive chord, already fatigued and aching. He shut his eyes in almost unbearable pain and thought about it ...

Ramon de Leon trudged up the steep slope above the village under a sky delicately feathered with cirrus clouds, his dog at his heels and his heavy staff acting as a strong third leg. It was not every day that he let the sun rise so high in the sky before he went to work, but it was not every day that he celebrated his ninetieth birthday, either. Not that ninety was surprisingly old, in Vilcabamba, but it was enough to be a source of some pride. And there was always his hundredth to look forward to. His stride was still strong, and his breathing still easy in the high Andean air that was the only kind he had ever known. He did not feel guilty about taking an extra hour this morning to bask in the admiration and congratulations of his children and grandchildren.

When he reached the edge of the adobe field, he paused for a moment to lean on his staff and look down on his village, nestled in the valley below. He felt good, standing there with the brisk wind whistling through his beard and making his shirt flap around him. The village was small, but he could imagine no reason to leave it. And it was prospering and growing, in its modest way. There were enough tile-roofed houses there to hold all its people now, but there was enough demand for new ones so that there was a real need for the adobe Ramon would make today.

He allowed himself one smile of contentment and then stepped off the solid turf into the soft, cool mud. He always liked the feel of it on his bare feet, especially when he first stepped in in the morning. But this morning, in midstride, the mountains around him suddenly heaved as if struck a gigantic blow. Ramon lurched sideways. The one foot that was already planted slid from under him and he stretched full-length in the mud, half-buried and unable to get up. He managed to call out weakly for help, even though there was no one around to hear.

Then he looked up and saw the boulders hurtling down the slope above him. They would be here in seconds.

The coyote had no name, in human terms, but he knew who he was. And he had had a good night's hunt and his belly was full. So, although the sky over the desert was still deep black and full of stars, he started home, contented and moving without hurry. By the time he reached his den, a hollow under a pile of boulders near the big saguaro with the broken arm, the eastern horizon had started to glow softly in anticipation of sunrise. He crept into the den, sniffed around to make sure there were no unwelcome intruders, and then curled up to sleep.

He awoke suddenly, only moments later, his ears cocked and a sense of danger pulsing through his whole being. The ground was vibrating under him, and the rocks that walled his den chattered against each other. Some of them, more loosely piled than others, slid over each other with a scraping noise ...

Bewildered but equipped with an instinct that told him what to do, the coyote sprang to his feet and bounded out the front door. The collapsing pile of rocks grazed his tail, but did no real damage. He ran thirty yards and stopped, shaking like the earth beneath his feet, to look back. The rock noises had stopped, but his den was no more, and the shaking continued against his paws. The immediate danger seemed to have passed, but he had never experienced anything like that shaking before and would fear as long as he didn't know what it meant.

Meanwhile, the eastern sky was definitely brightening and the stars were beginning to fade. Soon the sun would take over the desert. Not scorchingly, as in summer, but the instinct that brought pain with the loss of his accustomed shelter knew no calendar.

He lifted his head to the stars and howled plaintively.

Kiroa Wells, not quite two years old, did not know that New Zealana lies on a belt that is more than commonly vulnerable to seismic disturbances. She knew only that it was the middle of a summer night and her crib was shaking violently and she didn't like it. So she cried out in pure terror, and kept at it until her Maori mother came into the room, staggering as Kiroa had sometimes seen people do when they came out of the saloon down at the corner.

Her mother snatched her up and held her tightly, only seconds before a big piece of plaster dropped from the ceiling to shatter where Kiroa had lain. Making quiet, cooing sounds to try to soothe Kiroa, her mother tried to run. But the floor kept lurching beneath her feet so that Kiroa had the sensation of being batted roughly from side to side.

They made it outside, where it was warm and dark and here and there stars peeked through broken, blowing clouds. The ground shook outside just as the floor had in the house, and some of the houses they passed had broken windows and collapsed roofs. Hurrying through the churning streets - Kiroa had no idea where they were headed - they occasionally saw other people, shouting or crying. They saw two lying very still at the edge of the street and Kiroa wondered why. She had never seen anybody lying out on the ground like that before.

As they passed the saloon at the corner, it made cracking noises that swelled suddenly to something like thunder. Kiroa's mother screamed, glanced to her right, and tried awkwardly to shift Kiroa to her left arm and turn away from the building. But the first falling bricks and glass hit her then and she lost her grip. Kiroa flew out of her arms and landed painfully on the hard ground.

She cried for a long time after the rumble ended, but her mother didn't come. Finally she could cry no longer, and she crawled toward where the saloon had been. The world was no longer shaking and it was very quiet, except for a few distant human moans and a roar as of rushing water from somewhere over toward the harbor.

Kiroa found a hand sticking up out of the pile of rubble. "Mommy?" she said hopefully. But there was no answer, and the hand, when she touched it, was limp and unresponsive. "Mommy ... ?"

Clark opened his eyes slowly and looked at Sanchez. "How can I live with myself?" he repeated quietly. "In one sense, I can't. Because you're quite right that the trip isn't going to be made without pain - and so far, at least, others have felt it far more than I have.

"But in another sense, today I can live with myself - for the first time in my life. I've always had a streak of Hamlet in me, and it's always bothered me. Decisions came hard, and the more important they were, the more reluctant I was to make them. It's been especially bad since my wife died two years ago, and getting worse all the time. Especially since this business came up. And then I found that nobody else could make a decision either - but somebody had to. And there weren't any right choices - only ones that were unpleasant in different ways and to different degrees." He almost closed his eyes again, but that made the images too vivid. "An important decision, everybody reluctant to make it, and no right choices. So when Sanchez' trigger-man gave me some time to think, I finally realized that somebody had to work up the courage to make the least wrong one. And if I didn't do it myself ..."

He smiled thinly. "I think I have done it. Yes, Joe, my conscience bothers me. I don't expect it to ever stop. But I finally realized that the only way enough people would - might - get together to do what had to be done was if they were already and irrevocably committed to a course of action. The danger would have to be immediate, not distant and debatable. So I committed us. Now if enough of us get on the ball soon enough, most of us should make it.

"I knew very well that as far as my conscience was concerned, I'd be damned if I did and damned if I didn't. So I did - and that's what I'll have to live with." He stood up suddenly and extended his good hand to Beldan. "So it's done," he said loudly. "We're all in this together. May we all survive."

Beldan hesitated a moment, then reached out to take Clark's hand. He touched it briefly, then turned silently and left the room. Sandy and Jonel followed him, slowly, their arms locked tightly around each other's waists. Clark caught a glimpse of their faces as they left, and he thought they understood, at least a little. He hoped so, anyway.

He didn't look back at Sanchez as he turned to face the wall, and Sanchez troubled him with no more words. Clark stood very much alone as he opened the blind on the window behind the desk and stared out. He thought - he hoped - that he had done his part; from here on out it was up to others. It didn't show yet - it would take hours or days to become obvious, he knew - but the sun had begun to set for its last time in these skies.

In the south. And after that, things would never be the same again.

But at least they could be.