Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1—CASTAWAY
CHAPTER 2—GAME-PLAY
CHAPTER 3—TINDER SPARK
CHAPTER 4—EYE OF THE STORM
CHAPTER 5—THE VUDU GLADE
CHAPTER 6—BLUE RIVER
CHAPTER 7—NIGHT SONG
Star Man 1: Supermen of Alpha [First Empire Series]

 

by Stuart J. Byrne

 

 

 

CHAPTER 1—CASTAWAY

 

“Ping!”

 

The sound was sharp, quick, metallic.

 

And final.

 

There was no reversing it. No taking it back or praying it hadn't happened. Thirty-two years of life, hard-packed with training, just at the peak of career—and “ping!” The end.

 

Of course there were a few swift impressions that went with it, but very swift. The air thudded out instead of screaming. He remembered a futile motion to grab for oxygen. There was an axe in his head. A stake crushed through his ribs.

 

Even if he had reached the oxygen mask it wouldn't have been enough. For this he needed his suit, but who had twenty minutes when life was a matter of seconds? The axe in his head was his arteries trying to explode. The stake through his chest was instant asphyxiation. To sum it all up, the last thing Steve Germaine remembered was the meteor.... That is, the meteor was the last thing he remembered that made any sense. There were things much more vaguely remembered. An endless nightmare of drifting ... a dreamless, frozen waiting ... unable to move, buried in a tomb of time...

 

In the distant heart of darkness was a lonely star. It made a spiked cross of light on a circle as though seen out of focus through an imperfect lens. As the seeming eons passed, the star drew nearer and was brighter.

 

Sometimes there was blinding light everywhere with shadows and shapes moving through it—and at times the sensation of sound. Voices, the clink of steel instruments, the high whine of generators or the arcing of high-tension electricity.

 

At other times, the gulfs of blackness again ... a peace of eternal silence. But after ages the star would reappear, and each time it would stay longer. Finally, an awareness grew that he would awaken, that he would one day open his eyes and learn the mystery of the star...

 

His first conscious sensation was that of heaviness. An invisible hand pressed him down against the bed. He tried to raise his arm, but it was made of lead. Either it had gone to sleep and was numb or he was under many Gs of acceleration. But where was the metal-transmitted roar of rocket engines? Ionic drive had no thrust like this. Was he on board a ship at all?

 

He opened his eyes and the star smote him blindingly. He rested several minutes, then experimentally lifted his eyelids again. The star gradually resolved itself into a broad, open window and a view of clear blue sky. At the same moment he heard the long-trilling song of a bird.

 

Earth! He was back home again...!

 

He tried to sit up, but the invisible hand shoved him back. Frustrated, he lay there in a large rustic bed and stared at the ceiling. A vague panic stirred in him and he fought it stubbornly by willing himself to reason—to pick up all the pieces and fit them together and then make a judgement. It had always been his tactic before, whether running a team play or facing the unknown. It had to work now.

 

Just prior to the meteor impact, he'd been trying to contact the Cape, Jodrell Bank, the Canary Islands, Johannesburg, Woomera, Hawaii—anybody. At his tremendous distance from home a one-way transmission required an elapsed time of 31 minutes. As his speed increased and the time between contacts stretched out, a sense of vast isolation came with it—a burden of loneliness never before experienced by the human psyche. Lesser men might have cracked up by now, but that's why he was here in spite of his extra big frame and his quarter-back weight.

 

He was the only astronaut engineer whose physical stamina could pass the “window” test of the centrifuge—the window of physiological survival that said he could take the slingshot maneuver past Jupiter. He was on his way to Saturn and was trying to tell them he had it made.

 

Suddenly the bulkheads had “pinged” open showing a frosting of stars through foot-wide holes. He had blacked out—as if someone had snapped a switch. Therefore, if he had been half a billion miles from home in a ruptured ship, there simply was no logical explanation for his present situation. Here he was in a king-size bed looking at blue sky through an open window and listening to the song of birds.

 

Maybe he was dead and this was Heaven?

 

But why in Heaven should they make beamed ceilings out of rough-hewn logs? Or for that matter, if he were dead, why would he be all tied up to an intricate array of medical gadgets? He had a tube through his nose. A fairly recognizable intravenous setup ran a line to his left arm. In addition, there were anodes attached to his head and chest, very similar to the hookups he had experienced during space-medical telemetry testing. That he was under some kind of intensive care was both obvious and logical—as far as logic went. But he shouldn't be here at all.

 

He should be a frozen corpse drifting away into Infinity at about 85,000 miles per hour. This wasn't Cape Kennedy. It wasn't a rescue ship. It was more like a summer lodge in the mountains of the American West. In fact he heard a familiar rustling outside that sounded like waves on a pebbly beach—ripples against dock pilings and the hulls of boats. A lake! He could even smell it in the air.

 

Steve knew that his own stubborn nature was going to give him trouble in a situation like this. Years of team competition in high-school and college athletics had built in some habits he'd never be rid of—such as knowing he could win any game if he used his head. With logic, that is; by figuring all the factors and matching wits against the odds. But just now he was bugged by not having all of those factors. There was just no use trying to reason out the causes of his rescue, at least not now. He was alive and apparently in friendly, competent hands. The only other mystery—that concerning the extreme sensation of weight—could probably be chalked up to a cardio-vascular reaction to months in space under only about an ounce and a half of acceleration pressure. He was simply convalescent. It was at least some relief to tidy up the world around him to this extent. A few items fit into a natural order, after all, and so he finally relaxed into a prolonged period of sleep.

 

During the next period of wakefulness, much of the medical equipment was gone except for the intravenous tube. Just as he was reasoning that this was a sign of improvement, he heard low-volume piped-in music: “Drink to me only with thine eyes...” It was like a G.I. homecoming.

 

Surprised at his unsuspected softness, he fought back a self-pitying lump in his throat. For two years during his training for Project Neptune he had hardened himself to the idea that he might never come back. Not that he was the suicidal type—far from it. But the gamble had seemed justified in view of the priceless data he would be able to furnish science by means of a manned, directly observed mission. And then again, there was that irresistible challenge of fighting the odds.

 

However, when he passed the orbit of Mars at an exponentially increasing velocity and climbed toward regions of the Einstein equations that were as yet only theory to Man, he subconsciously renounced the planet where his flesh and spirit had been born.

 

Out there in the unbelievable emptiness beyond the asteroid belt, every ghost of his past came to sit with him in a silent mockery. Even his heredity, the memory of his father and grandfather and tall tales of his lineage before that. He knew that a long tradition of seafaring and adventure was in his blood, and even in his own brief life he had seen many horizons. But would he ever see them again?

 

In wakeful waiting, drifting like a castaway through a greater “ocean” than a dozen grand-dads would ever have imagined, he was tortured by memories which became the more painful as he receded into the Abyss. He remembered white gulls gliding over the wide blue bay of Mazatlan, the distant smoke funnel of a tramp ship in the tropical straits of La Paz, colored sails in the sunset off Waikiki ... the blinding whiteness of eternal snow mantling the Andean cordillera, and towering Illimani across the blue expanse of Titicaca.

 

But there was also San Fernando Valley in the early morning, the smell of fresh coffee, and the fresher smell of a blond, brown-eyed girl—Madge Hagan, his fiancee. He had a persistent feeling he would never see these things again. Far, far beyond Earth the unwinking stars were like the raven, saying “Nevermore!” And yet—the music was playing and he heard waves lapping under the dock.

 

Suddenly he was sharply aware of a presence in the room!

 

He had traversed vast distances and come through an impossible gamut of survival. It was painfully vital now to look once more upon a human face. With his eyes still closed, he listened carefully. House-keeping sounds ... dusting, the adjustment of the window curtains, and the straightening of the covers on his bed. The presence was close to him now. He heard its breathing. It was there beside him, looking at his face.

 

Steve Germaine opened his eyes abruptly to see a dwarfish, warty-skinned, frog-faced creature with bulging chameleon eyes.

 

He shouted, momentarily out of control. The shock was too far from what he had expected, and the implications were something his mind couldn't take. His cry was a prolonged, hoarse shriek of anguish. There was a moment of red haze and imbalance. Being dumped suddenly into this unreality was a thunderbolt. The alien creature scuttled out of the room. While Germaine struggled and sweated, trying to get up on his elbows, another kind of creature rushed into his field of vision and sat on the bed, clutching him closely in soft compassion as though he were a child.

 

“Na nu!” this creature seemed to say. “U est untipt fra shok. Soro estoi o, no sta i prezens...!”

 

She was the most magnificent female that Germaine had ever seen in his life. His first impression was that of an angel with long, dark coppery hair and unbelievably wide amber eyes. Almost matching his own exceptional height, she was a gracious, golden-tanned amazon in a loose-flowing blue robe of some synthetic fabric that felt like a kitten's fur. In the center of her forehead was what appeared to be a dark red ruby.

 

He babbled something at her, not even knowing what he said.

 

Suddenly she appeared to blush slightly as though aware of a grave error. “I'm sorry. I should speak to you the old way—” She bit her lip as though she had said too much. To distract him, she smiled beautifully and gently touched a finger to his lips. “I should have been here.

 

Don't try to ask questions now. Everything is all right. Here—I'll give you an unstim—I mean, a sedative...”

 

She busied herself in the room, gracefully fetching him medicine and water. He was unable to take his eyes from her. Moments before, the world had almost tipped. That alien thing he had seen was something his mind hadn't been prepared for. Nor was he quite prepared for this gorgeous woman, either, but she was by far the lesser of two evils if he were going to be plagued by puzzles. That magnificent goddess had to belong to a world that was very real! The waves of uncertainty subsided gradually as he watched her. As she finally leaned over him and supported his head, offering him the medicated water, in a rose-tinted plastic cup, a man entered the room.

 

“Anne!” The voice was deep, controlled, commanding. “I'd suggest you get some clothes on!”

 

She set the cup on a night stand and straightened up, adjusting her robe about her. “He was delirious,” she explained. “The first thing he saw was the alphid. I had to reassure him.”

 

“I'm sure you accomplished that. Now let me handle this.” The woman tossed her hair over her shoulders. She gave Germaine a quick little smile of reassurance and then exited the room—but those great amber eyes of hers lingered. They hinted of a mystery that Germaine's addled brain wasn't able to cope with now. The man, apparently her husband, picked up the cup from the night stand and gave Steve the rest of the sedative. He was also exceptionally tall, perhaps exceeding Germaine's own six feet three by a half inch or so. He was lean but powerfully built and apparently about thirty-five or thirty-eight at the most. He wore a wrap-around smoking jacket of what seemed to be white pongee embroidered with gold and silver threads.

 

His gray eyes penetrated under forward-jutting, thin-plucked eyebrows.

 

“I am Vincent Cardwell,” he said. “You are in my keeping. You will sleep for now. Later, you'll be strong enough to ask questions—and to answer a few...”

 

Fair enough. Germaine had been drained by his emotional experience. He was still very weak. It would actually be difficult to talk just now, and he could feel the soothing effect of the sedative. There was no reason for asking more. There was time. There was life, after all. And a goddess in the bargain.

 

As his mysterious host stood watchfully over him a heavy sleep descended upon him and his tired mind settled into vague and distant dreams. A star in a circle of light. Somewhere behind this montage drifted the bulging eyes of the alphid. What it was or what it signified, Vincent Cardwell would tell him later.

 

But: “na nu ... u est untipt ... ?!” Later ... later....

 

His periods of wakefulness increased in frequency and duration. He had to conclude that a one in a million chance had saved him from the meteoroid collision. Since no one could have rescued him, he must have repaired the ship, himself, and completed his mission. The meteor impact had caused amnesia, and he was just now recovering from it.

 

But where could he have landed on Earth without Government coverage, security-guarded debriefings, and a busload of reporters and photographers? He could not have reached Earth without going through a complex series of ballistic maneuvers back into orbit, from which a space shuttle would have picked him up. And the shuttle would have had world-wide surveillance during re-entry tracking. Where had he been and what had he seen? And where was he now? Actually, he had a duty to find out and to report back to Cape Kennedy. Maybe there was a telephone somewhere, or a radio transceiver. At least even a newspaper or a magazine.

 

These were the normal channels of reasoning he forced himself into, but they were shadowed by two unanswerable questions: why the continued sensation of heaviness?—and what the devil was that alphid creature? Nothing like that existed on the face of the Earth.

 

On the other hand, he kept trying to reject the wild fantasy of being on some other planet. These people were earth humans. In addition to some foreign language they also spoke English and even played old-fashioned earth music over their intercom. Rough-hewn ceiling beams and a lodge by a lake.

 

But there was a bug-eyed monster.

 

At times he tried to get up out of bed. Either he was too heavy or he was too weak. He succeeded once in getting to his feet, but it reminded him of one of his former weight-lifting contests. He soon collapsed onto his bed again. He lay there sweating and panting and insisting that there would be no panic. He still had his brains and if he had to he'd crawl out of here on his hands and knees.

 

Where the devil was Cardwell? And where was that incredible woman of his? Something was going on between those two that was connected with his being here—something a bit too cat-and-mouse. Come to think of it, if things were normal they would have put him in touch with his base immediately or explained why not. But not one word had been mentioned about his fully publicized space mission. No civilized person on the face of the Earth could help knowing about it. Actually, Vincent Cardwell had acted as if he were floating a dangerous enterprise and he didn't want Anne to make waves.

 

Maybe he'd been kidnaped?

 

Well, he could play cats and mice, too. The game-play of the situation might keep him from going batty. Suddenly a valid idea came to him. The stars! That was it! He would wait for night and then take a look at the constellations. That would at least tell him what part of the world he was in.

 

Armed with this piece of strategy, he dozed and waited. And waited ... Sometimes the bright blue of daylight outside was replaced by an orange-red gloom as though a storm were brewing over a sunset or dawn, but he still failed to awaken during the darkness of night.

 

At other times he would wake up to find a tray of food beside him, but this would always be in the daytime. It was fairly normal homespun eating fare. Meat and vegetables, with coffee or milk. But he could never quite define the vegetables. For example, what should have been potatoes were more like pale purple turnips. And sometimes there was brightly colored fruit in the salads having an exotic tang he couldn't classify. But he was developing an insatiable appetite and he rejected none of it. Time went on and still no night. One day, however, he discovered a third mystery, in fact the biggest one of all. The orange-red cast was in the sky again, but this time it wasn't as dark or threatening as before. If this were a dawn or a sunset, there was something very strange about it. There was no feeling here that this was a day's ending or beginning. It was still bright daylight. The burnt orange cast intruded into the blue of a warm afternoon as though a forest fire were in progress nearby.

 

He crawled to the window and looked out. In the sky to the east—or what should have been east—he saw a small orange-red sun and what had to be a colorful sunrise, after all. Something pricked up his instinct when he saw that diminutive ember of a sun. It was—alien! Also, its meager light could not account for the brightness of the day. Moreover, to make matters much more confusing, the predominant shadows from the house and nearby trees established a strong natural light source behind the house, in opposition to the haunting dull glow of the sunrise. It could only mean that a second and brighter sun was shining ‘down on the land from a position high in the West!

 

His big frame prickled with a sudden burst of cold sweat. He could almost feel the gears and pinions of his sanity creaking, trying to find a bearing on reality. The feeble suggestion emerged that this had to be a bad dream, but his stubborn logic and aggressive mentality was forced to reject such a dodge. He was alive and awake, and what he was seeing was real.

 

But everything had to have a cause. How could it all fit together?

 

Just one way—the answer had leapt into his mind almost at once, but it was a struggle to accept it. The only possible location capable of offering such an astronomical combination would be a planet in the trinary system of Alpha Centauri!

 

So now nothing fit! Nothing at all. He struggled to his feet, momentarily unaware of the physical effort it cost him. He staggered back to his bed and collapsed there. Gleaming with perspiration, he stared wildly at the ceiling. Mean distance from Earth, about 4.3 light years, or 25 trillion miles—25 thousand billions of long, empty miles, a meaningless distance across the biggest “ocean” ever traversed by Man!

 

Alpha Centauri was made up of Alpha I, a G-type yellow-white sun like Sol, and Alpha II, a larger K5 type that would fit the description of that sunrise star. It appeared small because it was probably a few billion miles away. The two revolved about each other at some unknown fulcrum point, in a period of 80 years. And two suns would explain the absence of normal night, at least seasonally. Probably the former infernal gloom he had observed was the light of Alpha II alone—a temporary “midnight” sun. The third star of the trinary system was an M-type dwarf, Proxima Centauri, but it probably wouldn't be visible here in the most favorable night sky. Only one more proof remained: Beta Centauri. It, too, should probably be visible in the day or evening sky. Maybe it was behind the house on the Western horizon.

 

But he knew he didn't have to look. By now he was sure it was there.

 

Almost spasmodically he clutched at his damp face and realized for the first time that he was wearing a full, heavy beard. What in God's name had happened to him? He had to think, had to pull this raging delirium into plausible reality or collapse into babbling idiocy.

 

Let's see now. If the meteor collision had left the ionic drive in full thrust, driven by the reactor, it would have built up his velocity indefinitely—except for limitations imposed by the Einstein equation.

 

Even at near light speed it would have taken him five or six years to get here. How could he have lived?

 

Had advanced people from the Alpha system rescued him? But—these were Americans, or English people. The latter idea didn't quite work, either, because no British accent. Not even an Aussie twang.

 

Everything also clashed with that warty-skinned creature, the alphid. This had to be another world.

 

It was well he had accustomed his mind to the thought of death, of no return to Earth. This severance was now as complete as death itself.

 

He might as well be living in another incarnation. Certainly now he would never see home again—or would he?

 

He had to find out!

 

He struggled to get up again, but suddenly the accumulated effect of his exertions struck him like a tidal wave. He reeled and fell to the floor, nauseated. Blackness swirled in upon him, and far away was the gleaming star. He knew it now ... Alpha II, looming near in the binary sunlit sky of a far, far planet ... a vast planet with heavier gravitation. The white gulls on the bay at Mazatlan were of Ultima Thule, and the brown eyes and soft lips of the girl in San Fernando Valley might turn to dust before he ever saw home again—if ever....

 

 

 

CHAPTER 2—GAME-PLAY

 

“It will take months to explain it all to you,” said Cardwell. “For the time being, I suggest you concentrate merely on adjusting yourself to our rustic environment here at Lake Catherine.” They sat on the veranda of the two-storied log house overlooking a panorama that would have done credit to the Canadian Northwest—except for two faint clues that marked this for another world. Alpha II was gone for the moment, and the Sol-like warmth of Alpha I created a very normal-seeming day. But in the east was a small daylight star, Beta Centauri, and in the west was the far, pale disc of a planet called Cronos. According to Cardwell, Cronos was a vast blob of semi-radiant gases twice the size of Jupiter. As proof of his claim that the Alpha Centauri complex was probably the most unique planetary system in the galaxy, Cronos tagged along after Alpha I at what astronomers called a “Lagrange Point” in synchronous orbit with its parent body. And as if that were only for starters, Cardwell had mentioned certain lifeless outer planets of Alpha I that unpredictably did a “figure eight” on occasion and switched into orbits around Alpha II. In fact, both suns often indulged in a “swapping” of their farthest spheres, with consequent subtle effects on the inner systems of life-bearing worlds. There was much more—too much to tell all at once. Too much to even comprehend.

 

On the other hand, the view of this “home” planet of Thulone was reassuringly Earth-like as seen from the lodge. Surrounding a wide, deep lake were rugged, cliff-scarred mountains, richly forested and capped by eternal snows. Distant cumulus clouds piled majestically into a limitless blue sky, and to the south a developing rain squall shrouded misty ranges beyond the near horizon. Here was evidence of a young and vigorous geology, a riotous biological revolution in its prime.

 

“We'll have you out of that wheelchair,” Cardwell continued, “as soon as I can get into Center and bring you a set of robo-frames.”

 

“Robo-frames?”

 

“Yes, for robot. They are motorized hydraulic braces to help you get around under this heavy gravitation. From all appearances, though, you may not be needing them permanently.”

 

“Permanently! Are you kidding?”

 

“Most earthmen, such as those attached to the garrison and the diplomatic services here, must wear them permanently—unless they become cross-overs...” Cardwell gave him a slow, cautious smile. “Cross-overs are those who adapt—who have the native build to acquire full strength like the rest of us. We Thulonians were born here, the result of generations of selective colonization.”

 

Germaine stared as if suddenly turned to stone. “Generations!?”

 

Cardwell studied him intently. “That was a deliberate slip. You've got to know eventually, the sooner the better. Now get a grip on yourself and I'll tell you what year this is. According to the old Gregorian calendar of your own time, this is 2471 A.D. You have been in suspended animation for almost five hundred years..."

 

It was too much even for Germaine's highly trained nervous system. There were no words. He closed his eyes, knowing that he had turned white as a sheet. His lips seemed to parch in a matter of seconds. A gorge of bile was in his throat. His physical relocation to this incredible remoteness from Earth had been shock enough, and he was still struggling to adjust to it—but a transition of half a thousand years through time! His mind boggled. He neither tried to hold on to reason nor did he fret himself into hysteria. His usual stubborn habit of struggling for continuity and order was dormant. He simply went numb.

 

Cardwell began to tell the story then, slowly and carefully, while Germaine stared out at the lake, at last grasping feebly for balance at the signposts of Nature's timelessness: the whitecaps, the low-flying lake terns, a distant sailboat, and the forested slopes of the mountains. To all intents and purposes, this was in truth another incarnation. All his earthly connections, allegiances and patterns of evaluation were gone. He recalled in bitter irony the “space-jockey gag” he had been prevented from pulling at the last minute before entering the gantry lift back at Cape Kennedy. The Press had loved him for it. He had tried to take along his credit cards!

 

But the cheers and laughter then was now a far, lost echo, gone beyond reckoning. It wasn't very funny from where he was sitting, not here in the system of Alpha Centauri five hundred years later. Even his personal friends, and sweet Madge Hagan—all were buried in long-forgotten graves. The brave balance of military power, the global contest of ideologies and the brooding menace of Asia—all were gone into history along with the fall of Rome.

 

Apathetically, he accepted the amazing explanation of his survival. It was the only path to reason that was left. His was the rarest case in history—a final triumph of cryogenics, even though it had been a freak accident. Having gone almost instantly into deep freeze when the bulkheads of his ship ruptured, the cells of his body had remained intact. While he had hurtled onward through time and emptiness, World War III had tumbled the ramparts of civilization. Surviving technologists had finally achieved true interstellar flight and arrived here on Thulone. For years they had conducted frenzied research toward a solution of the radiation contamination of Earth's atmosphere. Finally, the magnetic laser was invented, which was later called the tractor beam, or “mag” beam. Armed with this, the survivors returned to Earth and spent over three generations in the epic task of cleansing Earth of its poisons. There were parts of the historical account where Cardwell appeared to become wary, as though carefully selecting his words, but the gist of the story was that civilization flourished during the ensuing four centuries as though it were entering the promised Millennium. Mars and Venus were colonized, as well as Thulone. Cardwell operated a fleet of interplanetary mining freighters that plied between the planets of the double Alpha system. During one such journey, Germaine's punctured ship had been spotted. With its accumulated “small” speed of C-009 (nine thousandths the speed of light, or 7 million miles per hour), it was fairly easy for Cardwell's freighter to overtake it and latch on to it with a mag beam. The story went on. How Cardwell had hired a top medical team to revive Germaine, slowly and carefully, with a temporary artificial heart, transfusions, and special baths and injections. His real heart had only been slowed so that it could take over gradually. Finally, Cardwell had brought him here to his place in the Gilbert Mountains, three hundred kilometers from Center—the major city of Thulone.

 

“What I thought you needed,” said Cardwell, “was an environment as close to the one you knew as possible, so that psychological factors related to your awakening might be easier to handle...”

 

Germaine didn't feel much like talking just now, but a question persisted: “I suppose by now I've become some sort of interstellar freak celebrity.”

 

Cardwell looked at him sharply. “Nobody on the outside knows a thing about you. I've kept it a secret. The medicos who revived you are with us. They won't talk.”

 

“Won't talk? Why not?” Germaine's heavy brows lowered questioningly. “What kind of games are we playing here, Cardwell? What do you mean, the medicos are ‘with’ us? Who is us?"

 

“I said it would take months to explain it to you. For now I suggest that you relax.” Cardwell's long, aquiline jaws clamped shut. He indicated that this leg of the indoctrination was at an end.

 

In that moment the dwarfish alphid appeared with a tray of coffee, bread and an assortment of fruit, dips and spreads. It placed its burden on the long, low table between the two men, rolled its great chameleon eyes toward Steve in reptilian surveillance, and then shuffled away on its webbed, five-toed feet. Cardwell took the opportunity to change the subject.

 

“The alphids,” he explained, “are imports from the fourth planet, which we call Alpha Minor. Their level of intelligence is just enough to make them perfect as domestics and factory workers. This is a very important economic factor with us. Each colonist represents a large investment. He has to be free to deliver his full capabilities here. Only a minimum of time can be devoted to the menial tasks, and these creatures relieve us of those.”

 

“Sounds like ancient Greece—a society of slaves and masters. But they called it a ‘golden age.’ Is that what you have here?”

 

Cardwell had a cold way of smiling that Steve wasn't sure he liked very much—and that was the way he smiled now. He gave the impression of toying with people. “Not quite,” he answered after a careful pause. “We have many problems yet to be resolved.”

 

“And going into that, I suppose, is another no-no...”

 

Cardwell frowned. “No-no?”

 

“I mean I seem to be striking out on a number of subjects around here. And most of them are political...”

 

Cardwell gazed at him sternly. “My first words to you were that you were in my keeping ... You will be informed of various matters in due course, but that must be at my sole discretion.”

 

Germaine had a built-in “tilt” sign somewhere in his people department, and now it jangled the bell for him—apparently the first time it had worked in 500 years. “Cardwell, do you mean I'm your prisoner?” he asked, without much hesitation.

 

“That will depend on you,” was Cardwell's equally prompt reply.

 

Steve was in no condition to get up and punch the man in the nose, but he flatly rejected the idea of anybody holding him prisoner. However, when the other side had him outpointed his rulebook called for time out and strategy. “Yes,” he finally answered, bleakly. “I'm afraid it will....” He returned Cardwell's powerful gaze as steadily as possible, though he felt far from up to par.

 

Cardwell smiled in grim appreciation. He raised his coffee and sipped it. “You have a remarkable resiliency,” he said. “Also, your adaptive capacity is excellent. You've accepted your transplantation into the future with a minimum of emotion...”

 

It hadn't been all that easy. He knew that this whole thing would hit him much harder later when he had a chance to sort it all out. But aloud he said, “No use crying about it—it's done.”

 

“I appreciate level-headedness in a man. You know, Germaine, I think you and I are going to get along together.”

 

“Doing what?" Steve picked up his coffee and tasted it.

 

“That, too, is a long story—perhaps what you might call a no-no.”

 

Anne Cardwell joined them. She wore a softly clinging garment that reminded Steve of a Hawaiian mumu, except that its burnt-orange coloration was alive with rippling variations of shading which changed with every move she made. Her soft, coppery hair was down in heavy braids, decorated by fresh-picked yellow flowers that looked like miniature columbines. For the first time he noticed that the ruby on her forehead was supported by a fine golden chain. As she smiled at him, those great amber eyes seemed to belong to yet another world.

 

“Well,” she said, “how are you two getting along? Are all the mysteries being unraveled?”

 

“We will accomplish that in good time,” Cardwell cut in quickly. He gave her a warning stare and she sat down silently in a chair next to Germaine, apparently embarrassed.

 

As if to escape his sharp surveillance, she turned to Steve and then suddenly reacted. She touched his brow. “Why, he's perspiring!” she exclaimed.

 

“Mr. Germaine is a stubborn man,” commented Cardwell wryly. “All the while we've been out here he's been fighting the extra gravity, not wanting to admit how tired he is.”

 

“But we'd better get him back to bed!” she protested.

 

“I'll be all right,” Steve insisted. Actually, the sweat was from his reaction to being 500 years of time and over four light years of distance removed from a world called Earth.

 

“You know I've been thinking,” suggested Cardwell, “that maybe we should transfer you to my mining ranch on Gamma I. The gravity is lighter there, and it would give you a chance to recover in stages.”

 

“No,” Steve retorted emphatically. “I'll make it here. Those robo-frames aren't for me. I've decided to be a cross-over...”

 

Cardwell studied him warily for a moment, then chuckled. “You're a very determined man, Germaine.”

 

“So I've been told.” Steve met his gaze head on.

 

It was time for subject changing.... They talked about the lake, the weather, and Cardwell's preferences for supper. Perhaps, Anne suggested, when “Mister Germaine” had his robo-frames he would feel strong enough to go for a ride on the lake. Anne had a favorite island where she said she liked to picnic.

 

Cardwell retorted angrily. “You know that island is out of bounds. You'll not get him into your vudu glade...!” He and Anne exchanged glances that were amazingly charged with emotion. Cardwell calmed himself, realizing he had said too much that was on a personal level. “Besides, there'll be no time for nonsense. For now he'd better put in all the hours he can on the sub-sike so that he can learn a few things, such as interstellar history, science—and also Unisol. That takes priority. I can't keep him out of contact with my crews forever.” The words were explained. Sub-sike was “subconscious psych-machine,” a device for rapid hypnotic learning. Unisol meant “universal language of the Sol System.”

 

“You didn't think we still spoke English after 500 years, did you?” said Cardwell. He explained that Unisol was something like a mixture of basic English and such old artificial languages as lingua franca and esperanto.

 

Germaine studied his mysterious host and hostess carefully as he realized that more and more unanswered questions were piling up around him. “But you two speak English ... and what about ‘drink to me only with thine eyes...?’ I heard that coming over your intercom.”

 

Cardwell gave him a faint, dry smile. “Just expensive props to ease your adaptation. We both siked the English after I located some rare mem-disks on the subject. But the hardest part was reconstructing an old model electric player for that music record I stole from the local history museum.” When Germaine continued to stare at him doubtfully, he seemed to fight a subdued anger. “Germaine, you have a very suspicious nature. I've told you everything that I feel it's wise to tell you at the moment, and when the time comes I'll tell you more. You're an astronaut engineering type and you'll probably be able to learn our technology. Apparently you're also a man of action. How would you like to join my firm and learn the interplanetary mining business?

 

“I appreciate the hospitality,": said Steve, “and I don't want to seem ungrateful—but you have to see my side, too.”

 

“In other words, you still have questions...”

 

“Well—one in particular...”

 

“All right, but make it a simple one. What is it?”

 

“Will I ever have a chance to go back to Earth?”

 

Cardwell looked quickly at Anne as though this were the most complex and explosive question of all. She lowered her eyes. Somewhere in that subject also lay a major point of contention between them.

 

After a moment of palpable silence, Cardwell got to his feet. “I'll be able to give you a better answer to that question—in a couple of years...” He seemed grimly pleased with himself, but Anne wasn't pleased at all. She turned away from both of them and stared out toward her mysterious island on the lake.

 

“Don't let me rush you,” retorted Steve, caustically.

 

* * * *

 

The landing signal changed everything abruptly.

 

In one moment Germaine was sitting on the long veranda of a rustic mountain lodge surrounded by a peaceful grandeur that was timeless. In the next moment he was catapulted visibly into the 25th century. The chime-like signal tone emerged from a small speaker near the front door, and a rose-hued lens cap beside it blinked in cadence to the coded intelligence that it transmitted.

 

Cardwell turned tensely to Anne as though she had something to do with the local traffic. “Sta kan uno kalandato diau?” he asked swiftly in Unisol, forgetting his English for the moment.

 

She shook her head in some wonderment, but she considered Germaine. “No. There was no one scheduled to come here today.” But then she showed new concern as the coded chime tone spelled out a special identity.

 

“That's a Government TPS!” Cardwell turned to the veranda railing and looked east, pointing. “There!”

 

As Germaine accurately guessed—Thulonian Patrol Ship—he saw it. His first impression was of an elliptical flying saucer with bustles. The skirt of the vessel looked like a swollen collision pad, but on second inspection it turned out to be metallic. Above this wide “tank” base were visible port holes and a number of protrusions, some of which were obviously microwave antennas. A few other protuberances could have been some kind of weaponry. In all, the TPS was about 100 feet long, 50 feet wide, and about 30 feet thick.. It was silvery blue in color and bore on its smooth under hull a blazing insignia in which a stylized sun—for Sol—was prominent.

 

Germaine's second impression was more unforgettable: No wings, and a straight-line trajectory that ignored the high winds aloft. To his engineering mind this meant anti-gravitation, and power-beam propulsion. The ship was obviously riding a beam of remotely transmitted energy! The patrol ship was at first a small “saucer” above the far crest of the mountains, but in a matter of moments it hovered in a stationary position above them, not 1500 feet over the lodge.

 

For the first time in Germaine's presence, Cardwell dropped all pretense. In fact he scowled threateningly. “I have to give them the clear to come down,” he said to Anne—then pointed almost fiercely at Germaine. “Movalo i scuro!” This latter was a command, with which Anne hastened to comply as Cardwell hurried into the house.

 

“We have to get you out of sight,” she explained swiftly. “Fortunately the eaves here may have hidden you from their visi-skans...” She operated controls on a back panel of his powered wheelchair, and suddenly he was in motion.

 

“What is this—a raid?” he asked.

 

“Even Vincent can never be sure these days,” she answered.

 

Digesting that cryptic remark occupied him for several moments. “Even Vincent” implied unusual power or position for Vincent Cardwell. But—"these days” had many intriguing interpretations. And why was his own presence a matter of political peril? Why must he be gotten “out of sight?”

 

By this time she had him in a small elevator which had been entered via a camouflaged door in a hall closet. The lift door opened again and he was rolled out into a subterranean tunnel.

 

“What's all this?” he complained.

 

“It was all especially prepared for your coming here,” she answered. “Trust me, Germaine—it's for your own good!”

 

“What makes me so special to you people? Because I'm a Rip Van Winkle or something?”

 

She obviously didn't understand the last part of his question. “I don't know,” she finally answered. “Vincent doesn't tell his plans to anyone—certainly not to me. Whatever they are, no one will stop him. You are some vital key—he has spent a fortune on you.” The wheelchair now rolled into an underground suite of several rooms which were far from rustic. Futuristic design and ample facilities predominated, but it was apparent that these were maximum security living quarters.

 

Prepared for him!

 

He whirled the chair around to see Anne already in the doorway looking back. “Oh no you don't!” he shouted. “Not this game! Nobody is going to lock me away in a cell!” He tried to get to his feet, but the effort sent him crashing to the floor. There was a glint of compassionate tears in Anne Cardwell's big amber eyes. “I'm so terribly sorry,” she said, and the metal door slid back into place.

 

He crawled forward in a sweat and pounded on it, but not for long. Logic told him he was wasting precious energy, So he lay there on the yielding synthetic floor and panted while he cogitated fiercely.

 

Game-play, was it? A political game with him as the pawn. The only strategy he had at the present was to remain calm. If he kept his head on his shoulders he might make it work for him. It always had in the past. Only this game was much bigger and the stakes were higher.

 

After a while, he made it to his cot. He was too weak just now to use the gleaming sink and get a drink of water, or to explore the supply cabinets that lined the walls of the other room. Instead, he lay on his back and stared grimly at the glo-panels in the ceiling.

 

How remarkably similar that ceiling was to any one of the personnel and space-medical rooms at Cape Kennedy! He could go mad and fantasize that 500 years and a star jump were only a dream, that all these incredible things had never happened to him.

 

Now more than ever he was aware of the blood of his ancestors flowing in his veins—generations of seafaring men who had sailed tall ships beyond far horizons but who had always followed a homing instinct, no matter how many years it took to return to port.

 

Here he was beyond the farthest horizon of them all. Somehow, or by whatever means, this sailor would find his way home ... to Earth!

 

Cardwell had said, “in a couple of years.”

 

He had meant, Thulonian years....

 

 

 

CHAPTER 3—TINDER SPARK

 

Ott Keffler stood at the edge of the spaceport pavement and watched the cargo transfer in grim silence. He and his whole crew stood there in a sullen lineup, half at attention, half defiant, glaring daggers at the Colonial Government's armed freighter and its “earthworm” troops sweating in the noonday sun. The gravity here on Gamma I was not much greater than that of Earth, but the earthmen's prolonged garrison assignment on heavy Thulone had weakened them, or perhaps they were inherently lazy, taking the easy way out. They worked in their gleaming robo-frames or drifted about in grav-gyro cars watching over everything with fire-ready machine rifles. The train of radiation-shielded cargo trucks rolled toward the waiting skylift that hung down from the 300-foot hull of the low-hovering spaceship. Bottom ports in the under hull of the vessel revealed a glint, here and there, of the watchful visi-skanners. Every Thulonian on the ground knew he was under the muzzles of a battery of laser stun-guns. Totalitarianism, thought Keffler. The tyranny had come on fast during the past half century—ever since the discovery of cosmium. This might as well be a diamond mine in Africa five or six hundred years ago on Earth. But it wasn't. It was a cosmium transfer point on a planet of the Alpha System in the 25th century. Technology had changed, he mused bitterly, but many other factors had remained the same or perhaps gotten worse—even hopeless....

 

“All right now, men, relax!” he growled as he heard Larry Pyle rumble a string of curses, strictly for the moral benefit of his companions.

 

Big Herb Dobson standing next to him spat contemptuously at the pavement. “Ever heard of the Boston Tea Party?” he griped. “This is taxation without representation, the whole story all over again. Colonists! We've become an army of slaves in this system!”

 

“You know the Code, Herb. Wait! We need time....” The eight Thulonians stood there towering like bronzed supermen over the scene, not one of them under six foot two. And Pyle was a good five inches over six feet. Careful selection and environmental adaptation to the bigger planet of Thulone had produced a physically superior race out here in the exotic gateway to the stars. The Sol System regarded them with envy and fear, but the big Thulonians were indispensable to human survival back “home.” The end seemed to justify the means. But as yet the word “slavery” had not been incorporated into the official language of the constantly changing colonial charter.

 

Whereas on Thulone, itself, these native colonists were each a match for any ten of the comparatively puny earthmen, here under the lighter gravity of Gamma I there was no telling what havoc might be wrought by a steel-muscled Thulonian if he were to go berserk.

 

“Is Cardwell still on board?” asked Dobson.

 

“What else?” answered Keffler dourly. “He's getting in all the brownie points he can with old man Pomeroy.”

 

“What I can't figure is what the colonial governor is doing way out here on an ore freighter.”

 

“He isn't just slumming. It's a very sensitive inspection tour. That's why those gun crews up there are so edgy. They think the ‘natives’ are getting restless.”

 

“They sure aren't wrong about that! Especially when they're loading our cosmium on board. All of it goes to the Sol System. They've stripped us of the right to bear arms, and now they hog the one big asset we have left!”

 

“Well ... Vince Cardwell's Chairman of the Colonial Board. He's the only practical asset we've got. He has to play both sides.”

 

“Against the middle, you mean!”

 

“Who knows?”

 

“Ott, it's about time we found out.”

 

“Stow that, Herb.”

 

“Well you and I are Party members. I say it's our duty—”

 

“I said stow it! You don't discuss the T.I.P. out in the open!” The two men stared in angry silence at the loading operation, but they were both thinking T.I.P.—Thulonian Independence Party. The spirit of insurrection was becoming organized. It took an unusual amount of “spirit” to face the hopeless odds: seven million Thulonians against six billion earthworms—4.3 light years separated from each other. This meant a round trip of almost 13 years for even the latest star ships. And to date all star ships were built on Earth and were Sol Government controlled., which meant exclusive earthman crews. No Thulonian had ever been licensed to become a “star man.”

 

Being a Thulonian colonist had become a one-way street. You stayed in the Alpha System now. You slaved for the Sol System. True representation had become as remote as the Earth, itself, lost in immensity across the incredible interstellar gulf. But as for the spirit of revolt—given enough time the Sol System tyranny was bound to make necessity become the mother of invention. What was needed was a final plan, a sure leader, and enough time.

 

But time was running out. Sol knew it and they were getting tougher. The Thulonians knew it and their desperation grew with each passing day. The entire Alpha System was like the proverbial powder keg with a short fuse, Just one spark....

 

* * * *

 

Danny Duncan was a square-shouldered, full-chested Thulonian standing at six foot four and weighing 260 isu—which meant equivalent earth pounds, or interstellar units. He was a swabby like Pyle, but he was also the newest recruit in Ott Keffler's very special crew. One would have picked him out of the powerful group as being exactly that—a swabby, a catch-all able-bodied spacer rather than officer material—because his square-boned face bore the stamp of the rural farmer. He was a peasant type, born more to the soil than to the technological anti-grav life of the Alpha System space routes.

 

Swiftly changing times had brought him here from the farm home of his childhood back on Thulone. There on the lush steppes of Artesia, one of the big planet's most fertile and well-watered continents, he had grown up as a fifth generation Thulonian agronomist. That was a social science term for farmer. It was what his ancestors had been brought here for, and they had achieved their purpose. Life had been good. They had their own traditions and even regional characteristics such as the mixed Scotch-Irish of his native area in upper New Perth, where he had contracted a good woman and established family-unit status with three children.

 

But then had come the new Sol Government regime. Because of the over-population of a solar system he had never seen, he and his people had been turned into virtual plantation slaves to fill the great “sky trains” with food concentrates for Earth consumption. The long-distance star ships pulled barge trains behind them which were linked by mag beams, capable of making a six or seven year journey pay for itself in massive volumes of transport goods. And seven million Thulonians, aided by millions more of docile, uncomplaining alphids, were the goats. They were brought under the tyranny of Sol to avert Earth starvation. That had been bad enough, but then had come cosmium, the metal of power. As a nuclear energy source, cosmium outclassed by far the older so-called “dirty” unstable heavy elements both in terms of fewer contamination problems and much higher power yield. Technologically, it gave promise of revolutionizing star-ship propulsion and reducing the Sol-to-Alpha trips to as little as five or six years.

 

But cosmium also gave promise of reawakening the ancient ogre of power politics. The Alpha System was rich in the new heavy element. Cosmium had to be politically controlled. So again, Thulonians were slaves for the purpose of serving the far-distant “mother” world, Earth. And in that process some of the last vestiges of human freedom had been brutally obliterated.

 

For one thing, family farms had been “reapportioned” under regional tract systems which were largely automated. Traditional farmers had been replaced by agronomy engineers who were either earth-worm slavemasters, or the more hated “Q-Men"—traitorous Quislings, Thulonian natives who buttered their own bread by serving the dictators from Sol.

 

Worse yet, the family-unit system had been broken up. Women were being taken out of their domestic contract status and put to work in the food concentrate plants. Duncan's precious children had been placed in a state educational school, and he himself had been siked to become a space miner for cosmium.

 

If anyone had motivation for being a revolutionary, it was Danny Duncan, former farm boy from the remote savannah lands of New Perth. His father had resisted the change, and Governor Pomeroy had sentenced him to a firing squad.

 

As Duncan watched the ore cars being loaded in the sky lift, there were tears of rage in his eyes. His sledgehammer fists clenched tightly when he looked up at the menacing freighter and thought of who was on board. Governor Pomeroy, the destroyer of everything worth living for including the pursuit of happiness itself—and Vincent Cardwell, Chairman of the Alpha Colonial Board, whom he didn't trust. Cardwell was too much of an industrial tycoon with far too much to lose on Thulone to make an effective political stand against Sol.

 

For all Duncan knew—and it had been widely suspected—Cardwell himself could be a Q-Man tool of Pomeroy, playing both sides against the middle to strengthen his own personal interests. In Duncan's book, either kind of man deserved death. His embittered mind brewed an acid of hatred and a poison of murderous despair as he watched the proceedings under the guns of the looming ship. They had taken his farm, his woman, his children. They had executed his father. And now they were hoarding the metal of power, building an arsenal for themselves that only increased the hopelessness of the situation with each car of ore. There came a time in a man's life when the bedrock could be reached. You could probe just so far—then nothing mattered. Then death was better than submission. Where Danny Duncan was concerned, they were at bedrock now. His limit of submission had been reached....

 

* * * *

 

Governor Leonard Pomeroy was a massively built earthman who had become a “cross-over” early in his 15-year tenure of office in the Alpha System. Disdain for the weakening robo-frames was typical of his powerful personality, since to him a crutch in any form was still a crutch. He stood on his own feet in many senses of the word. Big-bodied and able though in his sixties, he was a man of commanding presence, with his sullen wide face, his dark piercing eyes and his gray-streaked mane of leonine hair. Typical of the power-politics machine he represented, his was a monolithic policy of cold pragmatism. He brooked no resistance, and he only made “deals” when they were plainly to his advantage.

 

“Cardwell,” he rumbled in a deep base tone, “you're pushing me, and you know that turns me off. I know the issues pending before the Joint Colonial Council as well as you do, but I also know which comes first. Where my position is concerned, you give me star ships and I'll throw you whatever crumbs I can.”

 

“Get off it, Leonard!” retorted Cardwell. “You know I've never settled for crumbs. I can't be pushed, either, so where does that leave us? If my plants push out the ships, your Council is going to license Thulonian crews.” The two men stood on the upper lift platform overlooking the small spaceport and the low-rambling buildings of Cardwell's mining ranch. Beyond lay the sparsely verdured desert country and the bleak, mineral-streaked mountain ranges of Gamma I. In his tan spaceflight zipper suit and work boots, with a white scarf fluttering from his collar, Vince Cardwell stood several inches taller than his companion. He was as lean and lithe as a panther. In his cool gray eyes was a valid challenge that amused the Governor.

 

Pomeroy's granite features broke into a crafty grin. His hamlike fist punched the Thulonian's powerful shoulder. “That could be arranged, Tiger,” he chuckled, with political overtones, “if we shoved the issue of Gamma I to the top.”

 

Cardwell did not respond. Poker-faced, he glared outward at the broad panorama before him. The “issue” of Gamma I was the one political bomb he had to avoid as long as he could. On this planet, earthmen could “cross over” to a normal gravity adjustment without the assistance of robo-frames. Heavy pressure had come from Sol to colonize Gamma I with ordinary Earth people. This unveiled the prospect of a rival civilization to Thulone—and with one extra possibility: At any strategic moment, such a “home-favored” civilization could be provided with weapons, and the entire planet would become a garrison force of earthlings who could bring the feared Thulonian supermen to their knees. The colonists on Thulone were aware of this unacceptable issue, the underground T.I.P. was alarmed about it, and the entire System was looking to him as Chairman of the Colonial Board to fight it.

 

He finally grinned back at the Governor. “If you're looking for a revolution, that one will do it.”

 

“Revolution be damned!” roared Pomeroy. “They wouldn't have the chance of a snowball in Hell, and you know it!”

 

Cardwell concentrated his gaze on the older man's face. His alert, calculating expression was as implacable as Pomeroy's. “The more they know it, Len, the less they've got to lose. You want food, ships, cosmium? You couldn't replace us here in a hundred years. The Sol System would starve out by then....”

 

“Now look here, Vince—”

 

“No, Len, I've got news for you. You need me right where I am in colony politics. You and I make sense to each other. I'm the one who can make you look good back on Earth....”

 

Pomeroy began to redden. “Don't you try to strongarm me, sonny boy! I'll—”

 

“You'll do nothing. We'll work together because we have to. I'm best for you only when I'm in a strong position. If you want me to keep the ‘natives’ in line, you're going to have to give me all the leverage I need.” The skylift had brought up the last ore car. It was ready to take them down to the ground. A slender, blond-headed Sol security guard emerged from the loading lock with a machine rifle, and as though by a prearranged signal he moved in his snug-fitting robo-frames onto the platform. Silently, Pomeroy and Cardwell joined him as the lift began to descend.

 

“We'll talk about this when you're back on Thulone,” replied the Governor, and it was the end of the conversation.

 

But when Pomeroy was quiet he was the most dangerous....

 

* * * *

 

“Well,” said Keffler as he saw Cardwell and Pomeroy reach the ground, “I guess we can break this up. Let's get back to the ranch.”

 

“No!” retorted Herb Dobson stubbornly. “Let's wait for Cardwell. I think we should call a meeting.”

 

Keffler and some of the other men glanced at him sharply. This was “Party” language for an emergency underground session of the T.I.P. It was also an unwritten code that a “meeting” call must be honored by every member contacted. Secretly, Cardwell professed to be a Party adherent, which was an imperative anyway if he wanted cooperation of at least fifty percent of Thulonians he had to deal with. He knew that his prize crew led by Keffler was a high-echelon task force of the T.I.P. Yet every such demand for his direct participation seemed to be an open challenge, as a test of his integrity.

 

Vincent Cardwell was a man of power partly because he always succeeded in remaining an unknown factor to all concerned. He kept his own counsel while apparently being forced to play both sides against the middle as a matter of practical strategy.

 

“What the devil for!?” complained Keffler doubtfully. “At a time like this?”

 

“Exactly at a time like this!” returned Dobson emphatically. “We'd better find out what that old walrus, Pomeroy, has been talking about. If Sol is still pushing the Gamma I deal—!” They went on discussing this, and a number of their crew mates joined them in an animated buzz of whisperings...

 

Gamma I—thought Danny Duncan bitterly, as he listened to them. He knew the terrible implications only too well. Originally this planet had not been suitable for normal colonization—it had a bad radiation corona and insufficient oxygen. But the advanced technology of the age had overcome such obstacles in the course of several centuries of processing. An ozone ionization layer had been developed in the upper atmosphere to shield the harder radiations, and massive soil conditioning and plantings of hardy vegetation had improved the oxygen content. This synthetic renovation of planets was called terra forming—actually “bio-fazato” in the Unisol language. Gamma I had been a triumph of planetary engineering. It should have been exclusively a Thulonian triumph, but now even this asset was being threatened!

 

If this newly gained world of the Alpha System were to be given over to earthmen where they could thrive independently of the indigenous Thulonians, they could obviously constitute an encirclement—a final weapon in the hands of Sol to guarantee a security against the true colonists of Thulone.

 

In that case, Thulonian freedom would be lost forever....

 

Pomeroy had walked a small distance with Cardwell away from the skylift, and now they stood alone and conversed privately. The comparatively puny security guard stood some distance away in his glistening frames. He appeared to be talking into a chest microphone which kept him in contact with his men at the gun positions up above in the ship. All other armed guards were back on board by now. Cardwell and the Governor were only about a hundred feet distant.

 

“Let's not kid ourselves!” he heard Larry Pyle exclaim nearby in low tones. “We've got some pretty reliable men working in Center—even the Inner Corps is hinting that Sol might ship out a sky-train load of Gamma immigrants without any colonial agreement at all! For all we know, they could be on their way already—and probably armed to the teeth!” The Inner Corps, thought Danny, horrified. The secret top echelon of the Thulonian Independence Party wasn't even known to regular Party members, but they were the top authority and the main hope of the insurrectionist movement—experts and scientific geniuses like the legendary figure, Paul Traynor, and the still more mysterious man called “L,” who was the titular head of the T.I.P.—all of them working incognito in high colonial positions. If they thought that Sol was betraying Thulone on the Gamma I issue, then it must be so! The years of agony came to a painful focus in Danny Duncan's psyche. This was the naked point where there was nothing more to lose—the ultimate bedrock where only death itself might gain a foothold on the precipice of tyranny.

 

He broke then. With a hoarse cry of rage, he charged wildly out onto the spaceport pavement toward Pomeroy, his powerful peasant hands burning for long-denied vengeance.

 

“Hey!” Keffler shouted the first warning.

 

“Danny's flipped!” yelled Pyle.

 

“For God's sake, grab him!” Dobson cried out.

 

Keffler's prize crew lunged in a body to stop the madman....

 

* * * *

 

Cardwell heard Keffler's shout and turned to see the berserk figure of Danny Duncan charging toward him and Pomeroy. The man's anguished cry of “Down with Sol!” told him everything. In a flash of realization which was typical of his chess-playing mentality, he instantly saw the ramifications of this unexpected crisis. In split seconds he thought: the tinder spark!—guns, death—or possible harm to Pomeroy, which carried with it more potential political disaster for Thulone and for his own secret plans than he cared to contemplate.

 

He sensed Pomeroy's simultaneous reaction as the Governor perceived his danger.

 

“Call off your guns!” shouted Cardwell. “No shooting—we'll handle this!”

 

At the same time he blocked the forward glide of the security guard in his robo-frames. The man had moved toward Duncan in order to shield Pomeroy, his machine-rifle coming up into firing position. Cardwell knocked the weapon away so powerfully that it hit the guard's face and knocked him unconscious.

 

But the stun guns above thudded out a staccato reply. Invisible impacts around Duncan's flying figure were evidenced by dust-puffs along the pavement. Then came hits among Keffler's pursuing crewmen. Phil Sutton and Lee Salkin crashed to the hard ground unconscious.

 

Meanwhile, big Larry Pyle made a flying tackle and grounded Duncan. There was a flurry of fists, then Keffler's remaining crew was on top of the assailant.

 

“Hold your fire up there!” boomed Pomeroy. He had stooped to speak into the unconscious guard's chest mike. The stun guns were silenced.

 

It had all happened in a matter of seconds. The Thulonian crewmen were only fifty feet away, struggling with Danny Duncan, who fought now in a bloodied blind fury.

 

“All right!” roared Pomeroy, turning to Cardwell. “If this is the way things are—”

 

He got no further because Danny broke free. He came like an arrow toward the Governor. Cardwell moved forward, noting that the heavily-battered figure of Larry Pyle was closing in on the insane farmer boy. Powerful as he was, however, he was knocked away by Duncan's juggernaut onslaught. With a wild scream of rage, the farmer charged Pomeroy. The Governor was no ordinary earthworm. In weight he almost matched his Scotch-Irish assailant—but not in that long-inbred native quality of steel strength that characterized the Alpha superman physique—especially in a contest of youth versus age augmented by the younger man's deadly emotional frenzy.

 

Pomeroy's hamlike fist swung with telling effect, but in the next moment he was felled by a battering-ram blow to the mouth. He went down, staggering back ponderously and falling to the pavement, followed by his attacker. But before any more damage could be done, Cardwell and Pyle and the rest of Keffler's men managed to throw Danny free. Four of the Thulonians proceeded to virtually sit on him. Pyle bounced Duncan's thick head against the pavement but failed to knock him out, probably for fear of cracking his companion's skull. The farm lad from upper New Perth finally lay there and gasped in anguish through his blood and tears, while mumbling and moaning incoherently.

 

Cardwell tried to help Pomeroy to his feet just as the skylift disgorged an armed squad of security guards. The Governor shoved him away viciously and got to his feet. His lips were split open and his mouth bled profusely.

 

“That does it!” he bellowed. “Cardwell, if you can't keep your own men in line, I'll do it FOR you!”

 

“Turn it around, Len,” retorted Cardwell coldly. “You tighten the screws, you'll get more of the same. I told you—”

 

“Bull!” interrupted Pomeroy hotly. By now the security guards had surrounded the group at gunpoint. “I'll get more control, that's what I'll get! And I'll tell you right now how it's going to be, because this attack on my person is an attack on Sol! So the wraps are off, buddy! There's three star trains under way already and their barges are loaded with Gamma I immigrants—all of them armed!”

 

Herb Dobson whirled around with Keffler from the group that was subduing Danny. His eyes widened in surprise and anger. “That's a betrayal!” he shouted.

 

“No!” retorted Pomeroy. “By God, it's a confirmation that our hunches were right! The time has come for lowering the boom, lads—you've had it!”

 

Keffler and his men focused their eyes grimly on Cardwell. He met their gaze with tight-jawed resolution. Evidently he had plans of his own—and if this was the impasse things had come to, perhaps he'd take the wraps off of his own preparations....

 

 

 

CHAPTER 4—EYE OF THE STORM

 

Now the Party meeting was more imperative than ever.

 

Keffler and his men sat glumly around in Cardwell's sprawling ranch-house living room, all of them aware of an atmosphere of desperation. Lee Salkin and Phil Sutton were lying on contour couches recovering from the effects of the stun guns. They were as red and swollen as if they'd been snake-bitten, but the drugs they had taken were bringing them around to where they could take part in the proceedings.

 

Danny Duncan was conspicuous by his absence. He had been taken into custody by Pomeroy's security men and was now on his way back to Thulone where he would go through the motions of a trial and receive his sentence by the Sol-dominated Colonial Court. The men present didn't care to think of what such a sentence might mean for Danny—probably far worse than death.

 

What happened to Thulonians who were occasionally shipped off to captivity in the Sol System was seldom known, but conjecture was probably no match for the true facts. Forced labor in the stifling uranium mines of Venus meant a life-expectancy of only a few years even for Thulonians. But far worse than forced labor were the bio-experiments. It was rumored that back on Earth exo-biologists were searching for solutions to special space exploration problems, and manning remote stations which had a normally hostile environment for humans. The Thulonians, who were referred to as the “supermen of Alpha,” were subjects for such strange research as “cyborg reconstruction"—creating half-human, half-mechanical superhuman things that could walk on almost airless half-frozen moons or withstand a hundred Gs of acceleration.

 

All men present mentally said goodbye to the likable farm boy who had been their maverick companion, but his loss only served to sharpen their bitterness and to emphasize the significance of all the other issues. And now the latest betrayal was before them. Three sky trains of earthman immigrants for Gamma I, fully armed and ready for punitive action.

 

“Those star ships are running a B schedule now,” remarked Keffler. “That's one every six months. On a seven-year course that's fourteen barge trains. They'll keep on coming!”

 

“Well, three trains out from Sol is a year and a half,” said Pyle. “The first arrivals are five years away.”

 

“Five years,” mused Dobson. “How can we be ready by then?”

 

From his couch, blond, chunky Phil Sutton studied Cardwell's tall pacing figure morosely. “Vince, you haven't opened your mouth yet—it's you we've called this meeting for.”

 

“That's right, Vince,” said Keffler somberly. “After what happened today there's a new set of groundrules. Either you're a T.I.P. or you're a Q-man—as much an enemy as any earthworm. Which is it going to be?”

 

Vince Cardwell paused in mid-step at these words and slowly turned around to face the other men in the room. His sharp-cut brows lowered slightly over a pair of cool gray eyes that were the more powerful because he could control his emotions. The end product was will, a determination that seemed to radiate into the room.

 

“One thing first of all,” he said quietly but with a will that made itself felt. “You will learn not to try pushing me. Party members or not, you work for me. I told Pomeroy himself that I couldn't be pushed, so I'm not about to—”

 

“Hold it, Vince!” growled Dobson belligerently. “Let's get one thing straight. In this meeting you're talking to the Thulonian Independence Party—that's half of Thulone if not more. So YOU answer the questions!”

 

After a glaring moment of silence, Cardwell gave Dobson a tight, frigid smile. “You seem to have a problem,” he said. “You're not the Inner Corps of the T.I.P.”

 

“But we're their channel, Vince,” Keffler told him. “It's for them we're speaking now.”

 

“Then you put me in contact with them directly—I'll work through no middle men even if you are a prize crew I can trust.” Pyle ventured to interrupt but Cardwell waved him off impatiently. “Look! You're right—after what happened today there's a new set of groundrules. From here on in we're playing for keeps. Now for God's sake I'm the Chairman of the Colonial Board, and I head the biggest industrial combine in the Alpha System. That's the only power you boys have got—you and your Inner Corps! Now either you're going to play ball with me—”

 

“We've got Paul Traynor, Vince,” said Lee Salkin, “not to mention his ship and the weapon...”

 

“Exactly!” returned Cardwell, still calmly but with a new gleam of interest in his eyes. “I can dare to stand up to Pomeroy and even Sol, if I've got the Inner Corps, Paul Traynor, the ship, and the weapon. Give me those guarantees and I'll get us some action!”

 

“What kind of action?” Keffler wanted to know.

 

“A license for Thulonians to become star men, for one thing. Maybe not with the Carlona because she'll be orbiting in a few weeks for check-out runs. But by the time the next ship is ready...”

 

“So?” asked Dobson. “We finally fly the big ones. Then what?”

 

“You're forgetting the long-term plan,” Cardwell reminded him. “For the first time, Thulonian crews will have a chance to look around in the Sol System and see what's really going on. Out here we're blind, totally dependent upon what we're told. Without that beginning we can't build a strategy for the future.”

 

Keffler shook his head dubiously. “Long-term isn't good enough any more, Vince.”

 

“Why not? Buying time is the main thrust right now. You need time for Paul Traynor's or any other young brains you can find—time to build more ships from your prototype, and time to prove out the weapon.”

 

Dobson snorted. “Ha! With three sky trains of armed settlers on their way? Time's run out, Vince!”

 

“No...” They became silent as he glared intently at all of them. “That's where you're wrong. You're letting emotions run away with you. Those space barges can't hold more than a hundred men each, when you think of just the hibersleep tanks alone, not to mention food, air, and water. So the maximum sky train can pull ten barges—a thousand men. All right—three sky trains, so maybe fifteen hundred to two thousand men, and the rest women. Colonization means procreation, you know.”

 

“On a B schedule,” said Dobson, “they'll fill the gap with at least a dozen sky trains before the first one arrives.”

 

“So? Make it twelve thousand, fifteen thousand immigrants—in a course of six or seven years?—and starting with a first arrival in five years? If each armed man were worth ten of us—we're seven million! What do you think they're going to do in that time—replace us? Sol would starve out in the meantime, and they've got to have our ships that we're starting to build here.”

 

“You should have told that to Pomeroy,” suggested Pyle.

 

“That's exactly what I told him, and he said we'd talk more about it when I got back to Thulone. So if you T.I.P. fanatics keep on quibbling instead of backing me to the hilt, you're liable to lose the leverage I've built into this whole political structure. Now—do I meet the Inner Corps or not?” The group fell silent for a long moment. They searched each other's faces, and much that was near and priceless to them went through their minds—a slender lifeline of hope that they had struggled for years to construct in secrecy, sometimes with help from Cardwell and sometimes not.

 

Paul Traynor, mystery figure and renegade genius with a price on his head, the only brain the Inner Corps had to counteract the brilliant mind of Pomeroy's prize Q-man traitor, Dr. William Haufek, a born Thulonian who had gone to the other side. And there was Traynor's triumph, a secret weapon that Sol had no defense against—yet. It would take time to develop these assets just as Cardwell had pointed out.

 

“Vince,” said Keffler, finally, “how do we know you're not a Q-man, yourself?” As Cardwell only grinned at him mirthlessly, he added, “After all, you hire them. They're in every one of your plants back on Thulone.”

 

“They're the best technical brains available among Thulonians,” Cardwell answered, “and I can't use earthmen. That's Sol law, it's Colonial Law.”

 

“And they're the best spies Pomeroy's got—like Ed Jayne, for instance. And how about Doc Olmstead and George Winzer?”

 

“First engineers on the Carlona project,” said Cardwell. “Indispensable.”

 

“There's one you've left out,” said Dobson pointedly. As all eyes turned to him, he continued. “What about Steve Germaine, your prize time-freak—?”

 

“Star man,” corrected Cardwell quickly. “The only man in history who ever crossed the gulf alone.... And besides, you will all continue to refer to him as a Thulonian. I didn't fake his I.D. for nothing.”

 

“Just what are your plans for Germaine?” asked Keffler. “I mean, he's very important to you. It's time we knew why.”

 

Cardwell seemed to struggle with his emotions for the first time during the meeting. And for the first time, he dodged an issue. “You boys have been training him for almost two years. You should know him by now. He's certainly not a Q-man!”

 

“He's nobody but himself,” frowned Dobson. “He's a loner, and that could mean trouble.”

 

“That's right,” muttered Pyle darkly. “He's tight-lipped as a clam, and he'll have no part of the T.I.P.”

 

“But that isn't what I asked, Vince,” persisted Keffler. “I said we wanted to know what makes him so important to you.”

 

Cardwell turned to the double-paned windows of the air-conditioned living room to stare out at the distant spaceport for a long moment. Finally he turned to face the others. His expression was one of deadly seriousness. “Your Inner Corps and the weapon are top secret to you—not to mention the whereabouts of Paul Traynor,” he said. “Germaine is my own top secret. Maybe someday we'll get around to some horse trading, who knows? But I'll tell you one thing—about all the sike training I've put him through. Thinking processes are a little different today from what they were five hundred years ago. Maybe many of you have become too mechanical—too much straight-line logic and not enough intuition and adaptability. Germaine thinks differently than most of you. Someday that may be an asset...”

 

“Or a booby trap!” retorted Pyle.

 

“Yes—that, too.”

 

“Then we'll have to watch your boy,” warned Dobson.

 

“I'll do the watching!” corrected Cardwell emphatically. The meeting broke up on an uncertain note, but not without certain ultimatums from Cardwell. If they wanted to move things ahead at full pace, using his help both politically and financially, they would have to put him in direct contact with their top secret Inner Corps, and guarantee him a backup with the “weapon.”

 

On the other hand, an impromptu meeting later between Keffler, Dobson and Pyle was far less vague.

 

“We've got to find out more about Germaine,” said Keffler. “He may be the missing key to what's going on in Cardwell's shifty brain. We can't operate any longer with unknown factors.”

 

“That's easy,” smiled Dobson grimly. “Why not ask the Inner Corps? They'll know what to do about Germaine.”

 

Within three hours they had their answer. The return directive came as a surprise—and as a shock....

 

* * * *

 

In the distant heart of darkness was a new star—a first magnitude G-type sun like Alpha I, almost obscured in the glitter of strangely warped constellations. It was Sol, the star that kept the Earth alive, 25,000 billions of miles away.

 

But it also kept him alive. Someday, if he waited long enough, he would bask again in its familiar warmth. The logic behind returning to Earth was as misty as his dreams of 500 years ago, but his homing instinct was something else.

 

It maintained his sanity. It was a faint structure of reasoning in a madness of waiting. He couldn't explain it but he felt that because his roots were there he would have to go back if only to find a point of reference where he could rebuild a total new picture of his existence. Then perhaps he could start the business of being—because here he was in Limbo, a false identity wandering through fantastic realities that were not his own. He had never quite recovered from the shock of knowing what had happened to him.

 

Germaine tore his gaze from the filtered binocular scope and studied the night-lighted instrument panel in front of him. The ammeter needle on the dopplerscope read .05. It was a space speedometer and it said that the small ore freighter was splitting the ether at five percent the speed of light. Over 33 million miles per hour.

 

C-05 was the way you logged it.

 

In his astronaut days back on Earth, this would have meant the possibility of reaching the orbit of Mars or Venus in slightly more than an hour of travel time. Once he had toyed with the idea of stealing one of Cardwell's freighters—a small ship like this one—but a few moments of simple calculation had shown him the futility of trying to use it to reach Sol. At C-05 velocity: 86 years. At the ship's maximum of C-10: 43 years.

 

His special sike training had revealed the basic physics problem involved. As physical objects approached the speed of light, their mass had to increase exponentially. He had seen graphs and asymptotic curves that told him the mass of an object approaching C velocity would be close to infinite. Therefore, the power required to move such a mass would have to also be close to infinite. This is why it required immense power outputs in the star ships to reach the velocities they had thus far attained to. The interstellar gulf was an uncrossable vastness except for the great star ships. Given a long run and a super-powered buildup augmented by anti-grav thrusts and ionic drive, they were averaging C-60 to C-65 these days, and it was rumored that the latest models powered by cosmium would achieve a history-making C-80. At that rate the crossing could be made in slightly under six years.

 

But even then the crews had to spend most of the time in hibersleep for psychological reasons, aside from considerations of air, food, and water. It was necessary to shorten the time-consciousness of such a mind-boggling journey.

 

He was a prisoner of space and time. Sol lay serenely before him, glaringly obvious yet incomprehensibly remote.

 

Germaine knew that his only pair of wings for a homeward flight would have to be a star ship. He also knew that until now all star ships were Sol-built and manned by earthmen. No Thulonian had ever been licensed to be a “star man,” at least for several centuries. But something new had been added. Vince Cardwell's industrail complex was now building a star ship. Sol needed more star ships to beef up an ever-increasing traffic in food concentrates and endless other materials needed by a top-heavy population. The main issue was, would the first locally-built ship be manned by Thulonians? And if so, would he be included? Cardwell had risked much to fake his Thulonian citizenship, and he had gone to great lengths with no expense spared to groom him rapidly for his plans—yet with the great Vince Cardwell you could never quite put your finger on the bottom line. There was always a persistent awareness of hidden clauses. There was no other choice but to follow along, and this was where the “body” was buried. There may have been more subtle reasons motivating his long self-containment, but Cardwell's slowly-forming new ship, the I.S.S. (for Interstellar Star Ship) Carlona, was the main carrot that dangled before his eyes.

 

Long, lonely space trips like this gave him time to think about it, and to plan....

 

“In a couple of years,” Cardwell had said.

 

It was a ridiculous length of time for a man to wait for an answer, but he had hardened himself to the waiting. Time could be a weapon.

 

It was a time for his adjustment to reincarnation. It was his learning time ... his time of indoctrination ... and time for making a cross-over. Thanks to a big frame and years in major league athletics, he had adjusted to the heavier gravitation and finally discarded the cumbersome robo-frames. He had experienced the triumph of bracing his powerful legs against the massive planet without strain.

 

Under the tutelage of one of Cardwell's most trusted crews, and helped by the learning acceleration of sike training, he had learned the engineering and science necessary to pilot a space freighter. He had adventured on the inner and outer planets of the Alpha I and II systems like a homesick sailor going out to an alien “sea” in ships. He had sampled and extracted ore from airless, meteor-pitted and frozen wastes or from fetid, steaming jungles infested by giant insects and prehistoric-looking carnivores. The latter environment was typical of Alpha Minor, the little alphid creatures’ home planet—a place that harbored certain unanswered mysteries.

 

Of mysteries yet unsampled, a trip to Proxima Centauri still lay questionably in his future. Cardwell's crack interplanetary ships travelling at a mean velocity of C-20 required from two to three months for a round trip to the treacherous dwarf star and its small family of ore-rich planets in their swift, eccentric orbits.

 

Somewhere in between the Alpha I and II anchorage of the trinary system and Proxima itself was a mysterious gravity-warp area which had captured most of the passing cosmic debris for eons of time and built up a veritable Sargasso Sea of meteor dust, meteorites, asteroids and fairly good-sized planetoids. Far more hazardous than the Sol System's asteroid belt, this region was referred to by spacemen as “the Glob,” because it was a complete glob of bodies revolving about each other in unpredictable and uncountable orbits. To stray into the Glob was to be lost forever. Freighters which infrequently visited Proxima Centauri always gave a wide berth to this eerie “space pocket” of the unknown.

 

But such were the endlessly unique features of the Alpha region of the galaxy, and out of centuries of experience its colonial inhabitants had built up many traditions and choice items of space lore. The adventurer in Germaine might have been enticed, but in the long run Thulone was not his concern....

 

He turned slowly in his swivel-seat to look thoughtfully at the open hatch leading into the night-lighted companionway. Down below were Hank Goodhew and Alex Jardine, off watch and catching some sack time. Johnny Bassett was the only one on duty besides himself—probably down in the gravitron tank or tinkering with his precious bleeder valves, drinking coffee and trying to stay awake.

 

He smiled softly. These Thulonian boys were good men, he mused—pioneers in the finest sense of the word. And what a ball team! All of them over six feet and husky as buffaloes.

 

But the smile gave way to a moody frown when he realized he had to play the loner among them. He had developed a reputation for grim silence and occasional surliness. Of the secret T.I.P. he would have no part. Some of his space companions had probed him cautiously on this subject, but he had turned a deaf ear.

 

His roots were of Earth.... He reasoned that he wasn't merely being stubborn or self-centered about all the humanly vital issues involved out here in the “colony"—it was just that he, too, was human, and he had his psychological limitations.

 

He simply couldn't “turn on"....

 

* * * *

 

Several days later the freighter landed on Thulone, and the small crew disbanded. It was night, and Germaine took a company skycar “home.” Two moons were up, making the Channel Sea look like old platinum. To his left it stretched away to a horizon that seemed the upper lip of a titanic saucer. To his right lay the mainland, rolling back into the Gilbert Mountains. Down below on the shore was the glittering mile-high macro-cube of Center in the middle of a tenuous, straight-lined web of lights marking the swift, mag-lev trainways. Dead ahead on the peninsula was the other cube, Center Annex, and beyond it the fifty square-mile spaceflight station with its endless barge sheds, its lifter cradles, the administration, operations and maintenance buildings plus the garrison headquarters and the interstellar communication towers. The half dozen parabolic antennas loomed like giant inverted toadstools over the moonlit area.

 

As he shot through the big night sky at over 300 miles per hour, hugging the now familiar Henderson range along the coast of Sylvania, his thoughts naturally turned to what lay ahead of him, for here were unanswered mysteries, as well.

 

Mystery number one, of course, was Cardwell himself.

 

When Germaine had first been released from his secret prison under the lodge, the experience had been demoralizing for him. He had tried to fight but in his still weak condition he was outclassed by superior Thulonian brawn. Cardwell handled him as if he'd been a puppy, sending him sprawling with the mere back of his hand.

 

“You're just an overgrown kid,” Cardwell told him. The man loomed over him against the glo-panels of the underground room, silhouetted bigger than life. “You want to go home, Star Man? Just remember that I'm your only ticket. Your only way back is to do exactly what I tell you to do! Control your stupid emotions, learn everything I have to teach you, and keep your mouth shut!”

 

After he had finally made the cross-over and was physically competent, there had been one more fight. The issue was one of mental slavery versus freedom. Germaine insisted on knowing where Cardwell stood in the precarious political structure of the Alpha System. Was he T.I.P., Q-man, or strictly for himself?

 

“I don't buy any of those routes,” he warned Cardwell. “Especially since I'm being used as a tool of some kind. Either level with me, or—”

 

“Or what?" Cardwell had smiled mirthlessly. “Will you turn yourself over to Pomeroy and bare your noble earthman soul to the Great White Father?” He laughed. “Very touching—since it would only put you in a Venusian forced labor camp or maybe in some digger camp at Martanium—worse yet, perhaps on a slab in a bio-experiment lab!” The bitter humor faded, to be replaced by a derisive smirk. “I told you that I'm your only way out, Steve. You'll do exactly what you're told—as usual!”

 

“No, Vince.” He had tried then to make a stand. “If you're not going to level with me, then you're going to have to make me do what you want. And that could be a problem. Maybe Anne is a piece of property for you, but I am not!” That's when the fight had started.

 

During a few friendly workouts with some of these Alpha brutes such as Hank Goodhew , Alex Jardine, and big Larry Pyle in Keffler's crew, he had found one advantage over their still superior brawn. He equalled them in size, weight and general strength, but he needed that added steel muscle-tone that came with their native environment. Still, the 25th century had forgotten an older martial art known as karate. This had taken Cardwell by surprise. They were alone in the ranch house on Gamma I where gravity was not as much a deterrent as it was on Thulone. Cardwell went crashing against a contour couch. He got up slowly, nursing a bruised shoulder, and his smile suddenly became glacial.

 

“So papa can't take sonny to the woodshed any more! He's grown into a big boy now! That's good—very good progress, son. Maybe now I can tell you about the birds and the bees!” This was when he had given him a special sike session he said he'd been holding in reserve. On the one hand, Germaine learned much more about what happened to Thulonian prisoners sent to the Sol System, and the crucial need for Thulonian specimens in the siborg experiments designed to produce superhuman creatures for specialized space work. Secondly, he was exposed to some very cogent facts pertaining to the tyrannical government of Sol, which was headed by a doddering old dictator whose chief butcher was a so-called madman named Luis Forral. The future that Forral had planned for the Alpha System actually spelled the end for all true Thulonians. With the reconstruction of Gamma I there would be a direct invasion of earthmen. With the advent of cosmium and its monopoly by Forral, dominance seemed to be assured in the long run.

 

Following the sike session, Cardwell had then revealed for the first time the T.I.P. position of Keffler's crew—specialized spacemen he'd long been grooming for the eventual maiden voyage of a full-fledged Thulonian star ship. He also hinted at many things he was forced to do “under the table” in order to help them and still keep his political position intact.

 

“I have to play both sides, which takes some doing,” he had told him. “This whole thing is too massive, way over your head, and I'm not going to let you topple a very shaky house of cards just because you're uptight about your own blind emotions. Too many millions of people are involved. I can't tell you everything no more than I can tell Keffler everything—not yet. We all have to wait until we have a foolproof plan. This is a matter of long-range timing, so don't get the idea you're a privileged character. You're going to have to wait with the rest of us.

 

“Just one more thing, Steve. You caught me by surprise today, just once. Don't try it again or I may have to turn you over to the tender mercies of Sol Security, myself. You can take your choice. I have very big plans for you. Don't spoil them. And as for Anne—that subject is completely out of bounds. Stay out of it or you'll really get in trouble....!”

 

So even the T.I.P. didn't quite know which side Cardwell was on. Was he coaxing them all into a giant trap, or was he actually with them? As Thulone's leading industrialist and Chairman of the Colonial Board, he naturally had to keep his “skirts” clean—yet this loose connection with the Independence Party was more or less public knowledge and was certainly known to the Sol Government Authority on Thulone ... therefore, he obviously carried political weight with Pomeroy. Apparently the Sol Government needed Cardwell's entire setup. They needed his widely developed mining industries, especially for cosmium acquisition. They needed his transport, processing and packing facilities for their star ship cargoes. And very especially they needed his space-technical ship-building plants. It would be futile to “nationalize” his sprawling assets under Sol control because Cardwell's position at the head of his Thulonian-manned empire was too efficient a combination to disrupt. That is, as long as Cardwell played ball.

 

So Cardwell enjoyed a relatively impregnable position between two opposed forces, and for this reason he had acquired the underground nickname of “Vincent the Invincible"—not without overtones of either jealousy or suspicion. That depended, of course, on who you were and where you were coming from. The so-called Q-men he hired, usually in very high technical positions, were neither for Alpha nor for Sol, but for themselves. And these were the most dangerous of all because every one of them was a potential spy for Pomeroy—like Ed Jayne, for instance. But then again, maybe these types were what kept the double political machine well-oiled. Each side had its advantage over the other. It was a bald-faced détente ... a provisional peace like the temporary calm in the eye of a hurricane.

 

But where did Cardwell really stand? Obviously, deep trouble was brewing fast. A time was coming when the black and the white could no longer be gray. He was not the kind of man who would be caught short without plans of his own. And if Germaine knew Cardwell by now those plans would be meticulously designed to turn eventually to his own advantage.

 

“Vincent the Invincible” was too shrewd to go the Q-man route, because that would make him dependent upon forces beyond his control. One day with enough earthman immigrants transplanted to Gamma I his entire empire could be nationalized. In the long run, he stood to lose by being a Quisling servant of Sol. Yet if the T.I.P. was his only way out, why wasn't he fully committed? Or was he? When was the sudden day of reckoning?

 

So where was Germaine in all this? Why was it so important for Cardwell to keep his identity a secret—and what were those “big plans” he had for him? “Wait,” had been Cardwell's constant admonition. From the outside, this could be considered as a humanitarian and very “fatherly” attitude. On the inside, however, the relationship was questionable.

 

One had only to watch Anne Cardwell to know that Vince stood apart from sentiment. That which was his was regarded strictly as “property.” This was the puppetism Germaine resented. He was the “property” of no man—but the only weapon had been time. Time and knowledge ... “learn all you can” ... All right, in that alone he'd been glad to comply. He had been, and still was, out to learn everything .

 

 

 

CHAPTER 5—THE VUDU GLADE

 

Lake Catherine lay in the lap of the mountain like a shimmering sheet of mercury, capturing and reflecting the composite moonlight in a muted rainbow of colors. The two larger moons, Undine and Hestia, gleamed down from a near conjunction at the zenith of the star-fired night sky, and young Achilles and Cheron were hurtling above the glittering snow mantle of the Henderson Divide in the east. To Germaine, this was his “ersatz” home. Night lights winked to him familiarly from the lodge roof as he made one pass to check the landing port behind the house. Cardwell's custom skycar was absent, as it usually was now in these mysteriously “busy” days.

 

So his thoughts turned to Anne as he banked around to come in. During the past two years of his indoctrination, she had been his teacher, his confidante—and maybe something more. But then again, Thulone was not his concern. Or was it?

 

He had not fully explored the possibility that certain factions in the Alpha System might have good cause to be concerned with him. Had he noticed a long, low launch riding far out on the lake with extinguished navigation lights, he might have given it a second thought....

 

* * * *

 

The island on Lake Catherine was all that Anne Cardwell had described it to be—large, heavily forested, private, and provided with sandy bays and inlets. Cardwell owned it outright as there were not many contenders in this relatively uninhabited region of the Gilbert Mountains.

 

At first when Anne took him there—in spite of Cardwell's cryptically barbed objections—it was merely referred to as the Island. It was apparently an innocent excursion, and Steve was “Mister” Germaine, a student of history with a large appetite for picnic lunches. Later, after she started calling him Steve, the island was dubbed Picnic Rock. But as time passed and the two came to depend on each other it developed a name that was never used in Vincent Cardwell's presence. By now it was “Our Island.”

 

On the one hand, their secret relationship was far more innocent than might have been suspected. She fulfilled her assignments, teaching him everything that Cardwell “wanted” him to know. In the lodge he'd submitted himself to days of sike time, swiftly absorbing science and history into subconscious memory. The island sessions were an open forum in which he could ask questions and review.

 

On the other hand, there was a side to this relationship that would have alarmed or angered Cardwell more than any affair of the heart. Theirs had become a deep friendship based on mutual understanding, a partial sharing of both their troubles and their dreams. The one thing they shared in common was that they were “property"—virtual prisoners in the multi-world complex of Vincent Cardwell's empire. This kind of bond led inevitably to a revelation of things that Cardwell did not want Germaine to know.

 

For example, religion was a taboo subject in both the Alpha and Sol systems, yet the island was where Anne came to pray. Her so-called vudu glade—which meant “voodoo” in Unisol—was an innocent natural chapel where she came to “meditate,” as she called her strange, trance-like meditations there. Steve had laughed at her almost frightened secrecy regarding her devotional activities here, since he himself came from a long line of church-goers.

 

But on Thulone and Earth, God was a dangerous subversion. Anne assured him that there were historical reasons for this. There had been certain pieces of Germaine's history lessons that Cardwell had carefully deleted from the sike tapes—such as the War of the Magicians during the twenty-third century. She was not permitted to discuss the matter.

 

Also, in the Alpha System the sacrament of marriage had been dispensed with generations ago. For purposes of efficiency in terms of population growth, the “domestic contract” policy had been developed. The computers had shown that it was more economical to breed a Thulonian than to transport an earth couple who would later become parents of a Colonial child. So local women were selected for fulfilling domestic contracts.

 

Such was Anne Cardwell's status. This was the significance of the ruby she wore on her forehead—or so she had told him.

 

“What are you smiling about?” she asked him.

 

It was the same night of his arrival from space. Cardwell was away on Gamma I. Both of them had been restless. The evening was balmy and they had taken a canoe to the island. They had gone for a swim, and now they lay facing each other on the sand.

 

“I was just thinking,” he said, “what this shipwrecked sailor might do about that ruby you're wearing, if he didn't have his sails set for Earth.”

 

Anne did not return his smile, nor did she show resentment. It was the first time he had ever touched upon a subject they had both avoided for obvious reasons. A gentle wind played a muted song in the trees, seeming to complete the murmuring theme of the gentle surf only ten feet away. She had removed her bathing cap and her hair framed her face in a moonlit cloud of copper.

 

Finally, she did smile, though faintly. “You sailors are all alike,” she kidded him. “One short trip, and—”

 

“What do you mean, short? This time it was all the way to Tenarus, and that was a couple of months! You know, I think I'll take Vince up on that ground job offer, working in one of his plants. That way I'll be closer to home.”

 

She looked at him somberly. “I thought you said you didn't have a home...”

 

“Anne, I—”

 

She got up suddenly and began to walk along the beach, looking like a moonlit goddess in her gleaming white bikini. He jumped up and followed her. When he caught up to her she turned to face him.

 

“Steve, don't try!” she began in a troubled tone.

 

“I'll try something else,” he told her firmly. “You've never been happy with Vince. He knows it and doesn't seem to care. In fact, he's smug about it. Now where's the body buried? I understand in domestic contracts there's some latitude of a freedom of choice. What ever made you contract yourself with Vince?”

 

She had bent her head down to toe the sand while he questioned her. But now suddenly she looked up at him and her mysterious amber eyes seemed to be bigger than usual. It might have been a trick of the multiple moonlight, but he could have sworn they gleamed briefly with an inner light.

 

“Steve,” she said quietly, in a strange tone that probed him weirdly, “do you have a right to ask me these things?”

 

“No—I sure don't—but it helped just to get them off my chest!”

 

Finally, she smiled. The great gold-amber eyes returned to normal as she placed a gentle hand on his big arm. “I'm sorry, Steve.” The smile had a sadness to it. “That's something I can't even tell you.” When this made a rift of silence, she added, “Let's walk a while...”

 

Neither of them noticed the brief appearance of the unlighted launch a mile or so away, as it soon disappeared behind the island. Under the soft symphony of wind and waves, the low rumble of its nuclear-powered turbo was inaudible.

 

* * * *

 

Anne's vudu glade was a natural amphitheater formed of large rocks and ancient trees. The two of them sat on a moss-grown log that faced a center arbor of vines. Within the arbor was a flat, altar-like stone. On top of it was a peculiar piece of bluish crystal that splintered the slanting moon rays with its many facets, generating a misty halo of colorful reflections. The lights playing across it swirled slowly, hypnotically.

 

Anne called it her Dream Stone. On several occasions she had demonstrated it to him. Some sort of gentle trance could be induced by it, and he could remember several peaceful sessions spent here in deep and strangely invigorating slumber. There was a peace here that reminded him of moments of wonder in his childhood. He called this “the little rock church in the dell.” Yet its peace disturbed him. There was also something about Anne Cardwell that reached beyond the concept of mere woman. Sometimes she seemed untouchable in an earthly sense—a very precious friend, yet something indefinably more.

 

“Steve,” she said, finally breaking a long silence, “have you heard of one who is called ‘L'?”

 

“Yes. It's a code I.D. for the unknown leader of the T.I.P.—head of the so-called Inner Corps. Do you know who he is?”

 

She seemed to evade the question. “The so-called Magicians of the twenty-third century were occult scientists and parapsychologists,” she said. “They used a lot of the ancient wisdom in their work—especially kabalism. For example, the letter L in Hebrew is lamed. It means ox-goad, or whip-lash.”

 

He gave her a slight grin. “That fits. So he's the whip of the T.I.P. But—are you inferring that he's a leftover Magician?”

 

“I've only heard that he prays...”

 

“Well, these days I'd say that's a good idea.” He suddenly noticed that there were tears in her eyes. “Hey now, what's all this!?" he asked.

 

“Oh Steve!” she exclaimed. “You don't understand! This is a living world of thriving humanity, far out on advanced horizons of a new evolution. We're all moving into a time of crisis. It could all come to an end before we're through!”

 

It was the first time she had expressed her true feelings about the revolutionary atmosphere brewing in the Alpha System. Somehow it brought the whole issue closer to him than it had ever been before. He hadn't wanted to get involved—hadn't dared. But he couldn't stand her tears.

 

“Anne—it wouldn't be fair to express myself, but—”

 

She looked at him warily. “But you're going to, aren't you?”

 

He knew he shouldn't have opened the subject but he was trapped with it. “I mean—I'm not a genuine citizen here, and that Carlona trip is in my gizzard. I know I'll go, and it'll take thirteen years or more if I come back...”

 

“I know that,” she answered quietly. “I can't blame you for it. Your circumstance is unique—a voyager into a future age. I know it means a great deal to you to visit your own world again after all those incredible centuries ... But you shouldn't think thirteen years is forever—” Her eyes widened suddenly. “Or didn't you know?”

 

“Know what?”

 

“I mean—about life expectancy. Science has lengthened it considerably even in the Sol System, but here on Thulone the environment and the sun rays are more beneficial than they are on Earth.”

 

He took a long, deep breath. This possibility had never occurred to him. “What is the Thulonian life expectancy?” he asked her.

 

“On the average, I should say—about one hundred years. Many of us are still young at sixty or seventy.”

 

He gripped her shoulders. “Anne! How old are you?”

 

She laughed. “Don't worry! I'm Vincent's little child bride, if that's what you can call a domestic contract woman. Twenty-eight of your Earth years...”

 

“Wait a minute! One hundred years—you mean Thulonian years! Good Lord! That would mean that a man could live here for about a hundred and fifty Earth years!”

 

“That's right. So you see, thirteen years isn't the end of everything.” The future suddenly burst upon him like a flare. This was a new kind of freedom. Time! Time to find himself, to achieve identity, and to come back and claim Vincenet Cardwell's first possession!

 

“Anne!”

 

“Yes, Steve?” There was that mysterious something that kept him from taking her into his arms—something that still held a veil between friendship and possession. He controlled himself by turning to a related question.

 

“What I can't figure out is why it's important for Vince to make the star trip, too. He's the president of his companies—he can send out crews.”

 

“Vincent always has a reason. He never does anything without a purpose. I know he wouldn't have kept you alive, kept you under wraps and done all this work to prepare you unless you had something he needed very badly.”

 

“Oh? And what is that?”

 

“I don't know. Somewhere there may be an awful price tag, Steve—watch for it!”

 

* * * *

 

He was too shaken by all these things to want to stay any longer. He wanted to return to the lodge, but Anne said she'd join him at the boat shortly. She wanted to “meditate” for a while.

 

“It's getting chilly,” he said. “I'll bring you the beach towel.”

 

Down by the boat he put his clothes on while his mind raced through the startling but disconnected facts he had learned. There were deep new stirrings within him, new vistas and powerful callings that he knew might even deter him from the one purpose he had set himself to—the journey back to Earth.

 

But—thirteen years were not forever! The mystery of Cardwell mounted. Anne was right. The man did nothing without a purpose. So what did he value so highly in a lost castaway that he would risk even his priceless political power to conceal?

 

As he carried the big beach towel with him and walked back into the forest path toward the glade, hundreds of stray pieces of sike data sifted through his mind. Among those facts was one that had bothered him vaguely but which he failed to connect at the moment. It passed unnoticed through the stream of his thoughts: After World War III, surviving humanity had been subjected to universal inoculations as a permanent protection against radiation sickness—something about a “lead moiety” in the genes. The newly developed drug's effects could be transferred genetically from one generation to another, affecting chromosomes and many subtle electrochemical processes of the human race. Anne's de-emphasis of this subject during the history lessons had not been deliberate because she was innocent as to the implications affecting the destiny of one Steven Germaine—the only living human who had not been inoculated!

 

His thoughts were interrupted by a sound of footsteps in the underbrush ahead. He stopped, staring at two figures that suddenly emerged out of the woods into his path. They were only a few yards away and it was plain to see that they were Thulonians, unarmed.

 

“What are you doing here?” was all he could think of to say, but his adrenaline was pumping fast. Instinct worked the “tilt” sign for him. This was trouble. He tensed for it.

 

“We're looking for you,” said one of them in Unisol. “Just come along easy—”

 

A faint smile touched Germaine's lips. Since that day over a year ago when his karate had taken Cardwell by surprise, he had by now come up to par with other Thulonian physical standards. Through long, stubborn training and secret workouts he'd prepared himself for a moment like this.

 

He charged. He ran into deadly fists and bear-like wrestling grips, blocking, ducking and rolling, making vital jabs and bringing his legs into play. In a very few moments he had flattened both of them. He started to investigate their prostrate forms when suddenly another voice spoke out of a deeper darkness nearby.

 

“All right,” it said peremptorily, “you asked for it!”

 

A “thud” of energy sounded. There was a faint beam of light. He felt as if a truck had hit him. As he staggered to the ground, stunned into unconsciousness, the last thing he saw was a light reflection on robo-frames.

 

Earthmen!

 

* * * *

 

The bluish crystal on the rock altar had expanded its faint aura to almost fill the arbor with a rainbow of swirling color. The amber eyes of the woman sitting before it were aglow with an answering light. The ruby on her forehead flashed intermittently as though modulated by mental conversation.

 

She tensed as a warning came.

 

“Then I must go to him!” she said aloud, and she rose swiftly to her feet.

 

But she paused, listening to the pulsating lights. She knew then that it was already too late....

 

 

 

CHAPTER 6—BLUE RIVER

 

The after-effects of the stun gun reminded him of high-altitude sickness he had once suffered in the Peruvian Andes. This was like seroche—fish hooks in his eyes, his body swollen lobster red, ready to explode with fever.

 

In his fits of delirium, fragments of memory shifted from montage to montage, tantalizing him with disconnected visions. Mountains of sike data stored in subconsciousness drifted through. From problems in celestial mechanics to the bug-eyed face of the alphid; from stereo-telescopic views of Sol across the dark gulf of cosmic silence—to Anne's warm dear face drifting in a sea of moonlight.

 

Drink to me only with thine eyes. Thirteen years were not forever.

 

“Somewhere there may be an awful price tag, Steve...

 

* * * *

 

He was finally able to sit up and take a look at his surroundings. As he had more or less expected, it was a prison cell. But he was not alone.

 

Across from him sat a heavy-chested Thulonian with reddish hair and wearing an expression of sullen stubbornness on his face. The young brute must have been six feet four and probably weighed over 250 pounds. What a quarterback!—thought Germaine instinctively. Then he came back to reality and remembered that the last of the football gridirons were buried under the sediment of five centuries, 25,000 billion miles away.

 

He cursed aloud, in English. The stranger stared at him in puzzlement. “Che dizo?” he asked in Unisol.

 

Germaine collected himself and returned to the universal language of the age. The two began to converse in the desultory manner of men thrown together in prison, but within a very few minutes what the stranger was telling him made him tense in amazement and alarm. The man's name was Danny Duncan, a recent addition to Ott Keffler's special crew. He was here because he had tried to kill Governor Pomeroy with his bare hands. It had happened one week before on Gamma I, with Cardwell present.

 

And Pomeroy had lowered the boom. Three star trains were en route loaded with armed earthmen for colonization of Gamma I.

 

For all Duncan knew, the revolution was on...!

 

* * * *

 

Blue River was the picturesque name of the Sol Government's maximum security prison on Thulone. Situated in mountainous country in a northern latitude of Sylvania where the seasons were sharply pronounced, it was a multiplex compound of silvery geodesic domes squatting among sturdy conifers which could endure cloudbursts or drought, sudden summer cyclones or smothering blankets of long winter snows. Thulone experienced a double set of interweaving solstices and equinoxes owing to the influence of both Alpha I and Alpha II. These seasonal periods could peak during certain years, bringing long periods of one type of climate, and then level out in long multi-year periods of milder climate, in which not only the vegetation changed but even the contours of the adjacent river. So the Blue River penal colony was housed in sealed, all-weather structures which were semi-portable. The light double-walled plastic domes were pre-fabricated in the southern industrial region of the continent and air-transported by means of “sky mules” or lifters. The lifters were heavy-duty anti-grav ships which served as aerial derricks or freight carriers. They could be used to ferry supplies or entire cargo barges to orbiting star ships, and also as transport work ships within a planet's atmosphere.

 

One particular sky mule, affectionately named the Medusa, had been in long service for the Sol Security Corps and was a familiar ship to prison establishments and garrison bases on several continents. Used as a utility vessel, it carried earthman troops, work-camp prison details, machinery, and provisions. Chiefly it was a food and ammo ship and was often half-loaded with emergency supplies of food concentrates, weapons, and ammunition.

 

On this particular trip to Blue River, however, the Medusa carried more weapons than usual—and with it came the most hated “earthworm” tyrant in the Alpha System: John Damery, Chief of Sol Security and head of all colonial garrisons and prisons.

 

Waiting for his arrival was a Thulonian official who had gained little popularity among his fellow colonists because he was a professed Q-man. What was not professed, however, was that Dr. Edward Jayne was triple-faced, serving Sol, the T.I.P., or Vincent Cardwell with equal dexterity, depending upon where he could tap the greatest advantage for himself.

 

Jayne was both a fearful and jealous man, and in both of these areas Steven Germaine had become his main concern. Acting under Pomeroy's administration as a czar of Thulonian employment and human resources, he used his background in neuro-surgery and medical psychiatry in areas of specialized interrogation. As a result, he had earned the underground nickname of “The Brainwasher.”

 

On the other hand, Jayne was also retained by Cardwell as a “consultant” in labor relations and was secretly on the Cardwell Industries Board of Directors, so that wherever the fair weather went he could go with it. And thus, finally, he also dipped a surreptitious toe into the roiling waters of the T.I.P., both as propaganda consultant and as a spy. Actually his ambidextrous activities were blatant knowledge to all sides, but he was used as a convenient “telegraph” and was normally fed the type of information that was either dispensable, or false, and therefore strategic.

 

But Germaine was a private matter...

 

Jayne was aware of the emergence of this strange Thulonian personality in the inner sanctums of the Cardwell machine. He had certain ambitions of his own and had long eyed the number one position next to Cardwell as his own future preserve. But the mystery figure of Germaine was slowly casting a longer shadow over that future. Who was this stranger? And what was his special secret that caused Vince Cardwell to go to such great personal effort and expense to conceal it? Why did he have Germaine on such a crash program of preparation and development? Obviously he was grooming the man for one of the most vital roles in all of his secret and powerful plans—plans which could possibly affect the destiny of the Alpha System and, therefore, plans that could affect the fate of one Edward Jayne!

 

When earthman John Damery came into the prison office accompanied by two armed bodyguards, he scowled darkly at Jayne, who sat beside warden Matt Finch, another earthman.

 

“I'm glad you finally got here,” said Jayne. “You should have come here directly in a skycar.”

 

“Don't tell me what I should be doing!” stormed Damery. “This is a revolution alert and I'm personally arming and briefing all prisons and garrisons. You'll get my instructions later, Matt.” He nodded curtly to the warden. “But just now we have to settle this mess!”

 

Damery was not only unusually small for even an earthman—he was also slightly spastic and seemed to hang almost pitiably in his robo-frames and his oversized Sol Security uniform. But one look at his intense face and piercing black eyes instantly erased the impression of weakness. He was a dangerous human dynamo who was also to be feared. On the other hand, he wielded power of the martial kind, and if one could use him as a weapon he was an invincible security shield.

 

“Jayne, do you know what the devil you're doing?” he shouted as his aides brought him a chair and he sat down laboriously. “After all, there are some areas that are politically taboo—way above your head or even mine! I found out Pomeroy doesn't know about this, and just for the moment I'm keeping it quiet for your sake. You've acted strictly on your own! Besides, who gave you any authority to make an arrest? Do you want Cardwell on your neck?”

 

Jayne was not where he was for lack of reasoning capacity and strategy. The present atmosphere of dangerously colliding interests was practically his special cup of tea. He smiled calmly. “Relax, John,” he said quietly. “When I had Germaine picked up, I knew what I was doing. You'll see when we put him through sibe...” The guards present exchanged sour glances. Damery stared intently at “The Brainwasher.” The announcement gave him sudden pause, since it opened up new possibilities. Sibe was a Unisol nickname for siber-lektor—the subconscious brain reader, or psycho-scanning machine, developed by Jayne himself in recent years. Nothing could be hidden from it, even under hypnosis.

 

“Germaine is one factor in the Cardwell arsenal that he's hidden from everybody including the T.I.P. and the Governor,” added Jayne. “I thought you'd like to be present when we strip his soul naked to the world...!"

 

* * * *

 

To the other inmates of Blue River, Germaine was Steve Buchanan. He saw no need for wearing his heart on his sleeve, even in the underground. He was an “ex-Cardwell man,” a space swabby. He gave his reason for being here as the usual one: subversive activities for the T.I.P. His provable acquaintance with Ott Keffler's special crew served to convince Danny Duncan of his genuineness, and he was accepted among his “peers"—every man a Thulonian and a dedicated T.I.P. activist.

 

However, hanging over their heads was an imminent threat that they refused to accept. Being political prisoners on Thulone was one thing, but being shipped off to Sol for unknown purposes was another. The grapevine had it that a government star ship would soon be arriving that would pick them all up and dump them into space-barge hibertanks for the “long sleep"—a six or seven-year trip to deadly labor camps on Venus or Mars, or into the bio-labs of the cyborg experimenters.

 

Death was the preferable alternative, so they were planning a prison break.

 

Which was how Germaine's eyes were opened to the seriousness of the Independence Party's plans and their surprising state of development. There was casual and confident talk about the Inner Corps, about their unseen genius hero, Paul Traynor, his mystery ship and his secret weapon. There were hints of T.I.P. strongholds on planets and moons of both Alpha I and Alpha II, of secret factories and caches of arms, ammunition, and even small stores of hoarded cosmium!

 

Most interesting of all were the signs of inner organization, methods of communication, and practical coordination. For example, there was the plan concerning the food containers.

 

At Blue River was a food concentrate packing plant which used convict labor. The concentrates were packed and vacuum-sealed in two-foot cylindrical containers. This was a mass production assembly-line process that utilized practically every Thulonian prisoner available along with a string of alphids. However, out of T.I.P. technology had emerged a plastic explosive material that had the same appearance as the plastic that composed the food container shells. Coordination with factory T.I.P. members in the south had resulted in a plot to ship Blue River a load of the special containers, which could be detonated by certain electronic means. The sky mule, Medusa, had brought in this strategic shipment, and its delivery into the stores department was expected momentarily. Germaine was present in the recreation mess hall during lunch time when the leaders of the breakout briefed everybody. The big mess hall was on the top floor under the main dome. The men were gathered near the east wall among the game tables, and nearby were small barred windows which gave a limited view, through their weather-sealed double panes, of the outside world. From where Germaine was standing, he could see the small spaceport a quarter of a mile away between the tall, spruce-like trees that lined the access road. Out there was the squat, ugly hulk of the Medusa. He could make out the ant-like figures of the robo-framed earthmen laboring along with the alphids at their unloading chores.

 

A strong north wind was blowing coldly and storm clouds were in the sky. He could tell it was cold out there by the way the earthmen clutched their jackets about them and held on to their fur caps.

 

“Hey you, Buchanan! Are you with us or aren't you?”

 

He turned from the window to face Tom Gerney, the burly leader of the insurrection. The man was broad-shouldered and heavy joweled, apparently older than most of the other inmates.

 

“I'm listening,” he answered, non-committally, and the briefing continued.

 

As it went on, he began for the first time to concentrate on the elements of the plan. It would be five minutes for the bell to ring, signifying the end of lunch-shift one, which would be followed by a second contingent of prisoners for lunch-shift two. For want of anything else to do at the moment, he sought to check the breakout plan against his long-ingrained game-theory logic.

 

Most of it checked out with some degree of promise. The new explosive containers were due in from the Medusa almost any time now, presumably first thing after lunch-shift number one returned to work. The first action point would be in the storeroom where the special containers would be unloaded and stacked in bins. The second action would be the process of transporting the new containers to dome three where the assembly plant was located. For security reasons, only alphids ran the tow motors and pulled the supply carts through the interconnecting “igloo runs” between the domes, all of which fit in with the plan. The strategic moment would be when the tow-carts loaded with explosive containers were halfway through the connecting tunnel. Then one of the Thulonians—a slender, nervous-looking electrician named Kelly—would cause a master short-circuit in the main generator, which was housed in dome one. The resulting powerful electromagnetic spark-wave was supposed to be capable of triggering the plastic explosive in the fake containers. The corridor would be blown wide open to the outside, and this would be the signal for all prisoners to overpower the guards and make a break for it. The sacrifice of several alphids in this process was deemed to be essential when weighed in the scale of yes or no survival.

 

Given the superior number of prisoners and a reasonable probability of obtaining weapons during the scuffle, it was then assumed that the plotters would be sufficiently equipped to get lost in the thick surrounding forest and disappear from their pursuers.

 

When Tom Gerney asked for questions, Germaine couldn't resist. “So if you make a clean getaway, then what?” he asked. “Where will the whole revolution get to? Seven million Thulonians against six billion earthworms across 25,000 billion miles of space! All of this is too soon. You're going off half-cocked!”

 

Many of the men frowned at him, and Danny Duncan watched him in puzzled dismay.

 

“What are you, bubi—some kind of Q-spy?” asked Gerney belligerently. “Bubi” was the Unisol equivalent of “Buster” or “bub.”

 

Germaine had been distracted by something he saw outside on the access road, but he turned back quickly to Gerney. “Hardly,” he said. “But anyway, I do have an inside question, just for laughs. You say the new fake containers are exact duplicates of the regular ones? How will you tell the difference when they're all stacked together in the bins?”

 

“They're not going to be stacked with the regular batch, sabo!” retorted Gerney, using the Unisol word for “wise guy.” “We're stacking them across the aisle!”

 

“Who's down in stores now?”

 

“Two of the new guys, and the alphids—why?”

 

Germaine shrugged, pointing out the window. “Your timing may be off. There goes an empty cart-train back to the Medusa. How do you know the load didn't come in during lunch?” The men crowded to the windows in disbelief, staring out at the train of empties being towed by an alphid driver.

 

“Get back!” Germaine warned them. “You'll tip off the guards!” The men pulled back but their faces were grim as they looked at Gerney questioningly.

 

“Good Lord!” somebody whispered. “If they're stacked with the regular cans, he's right! We won't know how—” The bell rang.

 

Guards shouted at the prisoners to line up at the elevators. There was no time to talk. Germaine noticed a change of guard arriving on one of the big lift cages. They had come from the outside, still wearing their wind jackets.

 

Gerney elbowed him angrily and spoke in a low voice. “Do you know what, Buchanan? I still think you're a Q-man—or if not, you don't give a damn! You better be wrong about those containers!” They were herded into the lift cages and went down. Danny Duncan worked his way over to Germaine, his eyes questioning.

 

“I hope to God you're wrong, Buchanan!”

 

“I hope so,” Germaine grinned back wryly. “For your sake...”

 

When a small group of them got to the storeroom, they groaned in unison—all but Germaine. He wasn't surprised to see the entire load of new containers all neatly stacked together with the ordinary ones. In fact, the industrious little alphids had re-stacked the whole line of bins, for uniformity. Ah yes—one thing the warty little devils had been trained in was neatness and symmetry!

 

Gerney cursed. “Now it's worse than ever!” he growled. “They're all mixed!”

 

“And all of them perfect duplicates,” Germaine reminded him. He didn't like Tom Gerney. Such boneheads were bad for any team.

 

“Hey, listen you—!” Gerney threw a haymaker at him, but he ducked, grabbing the flying arm of his opponent and completing a shoulder flip.

 

Gerney went sailing and hit the bins. Containers descended on him in a clattering avalanche. A pitched battle might have ensued had there not been a special interruption. Gerney, coming up out of the fallen containers in a fury, stopped dead cold, staring over the men's shoulders. Everyone turned.

 

Along with three prison guards, standing at the end of the aisle were two armed earthmen in robo-frames who wore the dreaded uniform of Sol Security. In their hands were loaded machine rifles, which were aimed directly at the prisoners.

 

“One of you is Steven Germaine,” said the senior Security officer. “Step forward!”

 

It was in that moment that Germaine thought of a solution to the dilemma concerning the containers—but it was too late. He couldn't say a word, even though Danny Duncan was close to him. Moreover, his mind was racing with the implications of these two Security guards who had come for him. Either his number was up, or maybe Cardwell was pulling him out of the fire. He couldn't tell which, but he raised his hand, much to his companion's surprise.

 

“All right!” said the officer. “Make it snappy! You're wanted upstairs.”

 

“Could I finish here?” asked Germaine. “I was just explaining—”

 

“Forget it!” the other ordered menacingly. The other prisoners stared at him, including Gerney. Whatever this “Buchanan” or Germaine was hiding, they thought, it must have caught up to him. The surliness and suspicion of a moment before turned suddenly to the universal sympathy of one convict for another whose final time had come.

 

Germaine moved forward but suddenly turned to catch Danny's attention. He hugged his arms together over his chest as though he were freezing. “Bubi, it's cold outside!” he said to him. The guards took him away. The prisoners stared at Danny Duncan, who seemed to be transfixed.

 

“What the devil does he mean, cold?” asked Gerney grumpily. “If you ask me, it's hot in here!”

 

“That's just the point!” enthused Danny suddenly. “It's cold outside!"

 

“So?”

 

“Don't you get it? All we have to do is pull out the COLD containers!”

 

 

 

CHAPTER 7—NIGHT SONG

 

The portable siber-lektor was a piano-sized electronic cabinet with a very impressive control console and instrument panels. It had been brought into Warden Finch's office and now stood ready for use. They had cross-examined him for half an hour and it was obvious that their patience was wearing thin. Meanwhile he kept thinking that Duncan and Gerney and the others were loading up tow-carts with the explosive containers. Soon the alphids would be heading with the deadly cart-train for the interconnecting “igloo run,” and electrician Kelly would be getting his crowbar ready to lay it across the giant armature contacts of the main generator.

 

Many of the men might escape, but he would still be here....

 

Aside from this consideration there was a growing fascination for the cosmic-sized politics that seemed to be involved with his identity. For him it was all educational rather than frightening, for the moment. But he sensed a measure of fright or at least consternation in his questioners. The little sadist, Damery, had warned Jayne repeatedly that he, Germaine, might be too hot an item for either of them to be messing with, but on the other hand if this stranger were a high T.I.P. agent, or if his camouflage meant that Vincent Cardwell was plotting against Sol, it would be Damery's duty to find out about it. The dangerous part about Damery was that you could sense in him a volcano of strength that contrasted sharply with his physical appearance. One could feel in his presence the power of death. If Jayne was the “Brainwasher,” here was the Executioner.

 

As for Dr. Edward Jayne, he was playing so many hands in this game that Germaine doubted he even knew what side he was on. It was a case of blind, flailing opportunism and even jealousy. Obviously, among other things, Jayne was out to destroy any “career” potentials that Germaine might have in the Cardwell empire.

 

Who was Germaine? Where had he come from? Why was Cardwell so secretive about him? And why the fake identity? This part had been determined with impressive efficiency. In Center City was Jayne's main siber-lektor installation, which was connected to the Sol government's computer banks. Here all data concerning Thulonians and earthmen in the Alpha System were on record including interstellar shipping data, all cargo manifests, incoming and outgoing passenger and crew rosters, births, deaths, domestic contracts, transfers, relocations, reassignments—in fact everything pertaining to any human being in the Alpha System. Germaine's personal data, registered at Blue River at the time of his arrival and subsequent recuperation, had been transmitted to the main siber-lektor at Center—fingerprints, voice-print, brain-wave patterns, blood type, etc. The entire master data bank had no trace on him whatsoever. This in itself was fatally incriminating, but apparently its sheer blatancy was a fascinating or disturbing mystery to the principal agents of power.

 

Also of special interest to Germaine was a long-distance visiphone conference with two principal Q-men working in Cardwell's ship-building plant. These were engineer George Winzer and physicist Dr. Albert Olmstead—top managers of the vital Carlona project. Two other Q-men who were close to Cardwell on the project were Dr. Bill Haufek and Dr. Al Makowski, but both of these engineer scientists were running equipment tests in the company's orbiting space lab at the moment. Sol Security, under Damery, had the prerogative of channeling this call on a government “scrambler” system, so that no one could intercept the conversation that occurred.

 

Olmstead and Winzer were surprised, puzzled, and finally amused by Jayne's interrogation. Germaine had been ordered to stand before the visiphone camera for them. They had seen him on a couple of factory tours with Cardwell, but other than that they knew nothing about him.

 

“Looks like you've got yourself a hot potato, Jayne,” chuckled Winzer, a heavy-set blond Thulonian. His pasty, blue-eyed face had been scarred by a former accident or fire, which had left one corner of his mouth twisted into a permanent smirk. “Just don't burn your fingers!”

 

Jayne snapped off the connection angrily and whirled to face Germaine . “Well one thing we've got on you is that your I.D. is illegal!” he sneered. “That's a crime punishable by imprisonment or death—so I've brought you to the right place, after all!”

 

“Perhaps,” suggested Germaine, “you should start by tying your name to formal charges here.” He indicated Damery with a casual wave of his hand. “At least that will connect this blunder directly to you and clear Damery when everything hits the fan. As soon as Cardwell finds out about this...”

 

He noted sudden pallor in the faces of Jayne and Finch, but he had missed Damery's unimpressed glare of defiance.

 

“Don't get smart, Germaine!” exclaimed the little Executioner ferociously. “I'll do whatever I please about you! Your I.D. is a blatant forgery—that gives me carte blanche, especially with a revolution in the air. I'm empowered to slap Martial Law on any district I care to in the interests of System Security. So the court's in session, sabo, and your life is on the line!” This peremptory announcement salvaged Jayne's former smugness, and now he listened triumphantly as Damery proceeded to “tear down” his victim. Following his cue, Warden Finch leaned back in his upholstered chair in somewhat shaken relief.

 

“Germaine, there are only three ways for you to go on this planet—that is, for a Thulonian—”

 

Germaine watched the fiery little devil's enigmatic eyes as the earthman glared at him intensely. Did Damery know still more than he was saying? Did he actually know his true origin?

 

“Either you're a Q-man,” Damery continued forcefully, “or you're a T.I.P. man, or you're a very special tool for Cardwell.... Now which is it going to be, and why?”

 

“There's a fourth route,” Germaine answered coldly, “which everybody seems to be forgetting. What about the whole human race? The main purpose of colonization here was Lebensraum for Mankind.” At least he thought Lebensraum, when he used the Unisol term, vita-sfera. “Thulonians have their roots on Earth. In fact they're the main hope and the cream of the crop by your own selection—the grand payoff for the supreme effort of human civilization. The stupid irony of it all is that tyranny and the usual sickness of political self-seeking have thrown all factions against each other and blinded everybody to the common point of reference. The basic issue is Man, himself...”

 

Jayne snorted derisively. “That doesn't sound like Cardwell sentiment, I'll tell you that! Vincent is neither a bleeding heart nor a crackpot!”

 

Damery fairly snapped his reply. “In the eyes of Sol Security, you sound more dangerous than the Inner Corps of the T.I.P., do you know that?” There was no double meaning in his tone. The man exuded menace.

 

Reassured by this support, Jayne moved confidently toward the siber-lektor. “So now it's time to get down to cases,” he said.

 

“No!” came Damery's icy countermand. Jayne stopped, turned, stared. The shriveled chief of Sol Security signaled to one of his guards. “That thing will take hours—I don't have time to waste!”

 

“But—!”

 

“No buts! I have my own methods—they've always worked before, and this should be no exception!” The guard had delivered a slender black plastic case to Damery, which he quickly unzipped. Out of it came an instantly recognizable instrument of persuasion.

 

Damery struggled to his feet in the robo-frames, seemingly hanging in them as though they were actual crutches. His eyes gleamed a warning as he glared at Germaine.

 

“Now, bubi, we'll find out if you bleed! That is, unless you tell us who you are...”

 

In his wiry quick hands was coiled a long, well-used cat-o'-nine-tails—the ancient torture whip of seafaring pirates...

 

* * * *

 

Danny Duncan wiped sweat from his brow and looked at the wall clock. “Three minutes to go!” he announced with relief. “We're ready!”

 

Four tow-carts were lined up behind the tow-motor in the storeroom aisle, loaded to the brim with explosive containers. Thanks to “Buchanan” or Germaine or whoever he was, they had been able to solve their dilemma about the mixed bin stacks. It had worked like a charm. Each container from the Medusa was markedly colder than the regular ones that had been exposed to the inside warmth of the prison.

 

“Then get ‘em rolling!” urged Gerney nervously. “Two o'clock is gate time for assembly supplies going through. Hey you—Sim and Tadpole!” He signaled the two little alphid drivers. “On your way! Pete, give the word to Kelly. Tell him, about two-oh-three. We'll station our signal man at the power room door. Hank, that's you!” At this order, a Thulonian convict moved quickly out of the stores department.

 

As the cart train trundled away, Danny shook his head sadly. “Sim and Tadpole—poor little devils! When this is all over we should remember them.... They'll have died for the Cause.”

 

“Aw stow that—there's millions of those little warts around!” snorted Gerney. “Who cares? Let's get moving!”

 

In all three dome sectors of the Blue River prison compound, the inmates began to form strange patterns of movement. By means of the invisible but ever effective grapevine, they knew that “skymule was pregnant,” meaning that the explosives had arrived. Therefore, since two o'clock was gate time for supplies to come through from Number One, the moment of liberation or death was at hand. All eyes were on just two objects: the guards, and the clocks. Two P.M. A bell rang briefly for gate time. The carts would be coming through. Two-o-one. The slowing down of assembly line work and the appearance of prisoners milling around in the aisles near the tunnel gate finally attracted the attention of the guards.

 

“Hey—something's up!” exclaimed one of them to his earthman companions. Two-oh-two...

 

He was right. His time was up, but he didn't know it—yet...

 

* * * *

 

When the first whiplash cut through his prison shirt and sliced at his left shoulder, Germaine figured the party had started. It was a case of action now, since he was grimly convinced that for a man to stand still and be cut to ribbons was silly.

 

“I have a little more information on you than Dr. Jayne or Data Central,” snarled Damery, preparing for another lash. “You're the little mystery we have on tap—about a shipwrecked spaceman that Cardwell nursed back to life. Now why don't you tell us your story, hm-m-m?”

 

Jayne and Finch exchanged puzzled glances over this unexpected news. Hopefully, they watched Damery's rising whip.

 

Germaine had sized up the body guards—two earthmen in robo-frames, both with poised machine rifles. Three yards away. The cat-o'-nine-tails landed, some of the flying barbs opening his face. He fell to the floor pretending to grovel, crying out that he'd talk and for Damery not to strike him any more. But he had rolled within two yards of the snickering guards, who were beginning to relax. Damery was right, they seemed to figure amusedly. The whip always worked...

 

At that moment, the electric lights flickered badly and almost went out entirely. Then they brightened again.

 

“What was that?” asked Damery suspiciously.

 

“I don't know,” answered Finch. “Bad storm coming up, but we have our own generator.”

 

In the instant the lights had flickered, Germaine's engineering mind envisioned Kelly's crowbar across the armature mains—and a coruscating micro-storm of high-tension lightning that should have sent a powerful interference spark-wave through the ether.

 

But no explosion. The plan was a dud.

 

Germaine moved. He came up with his husky arms full of guards. Bullets chattered destruction across the ceiling as he smashed the two earthmen against the wall and knocked them senseless. He caught a falling machine rifle and whirled, firing, as Finch raised a pistol from his desk drawer. He caught the warden across the shoulder and one arm, since he knew the man was only doing his job. The lights flickered badly this time and went out—to be followed by a building quake and a billowing explosion.

 

Auxiliary power came on, followed by the bedlam of alarm klaxons. There were distant sounds of shouting and gunfire.

 

“It's a prison break!” groaned Finch, staggering painfully to his feet. One bloodied hand grasped his shattered arm. “Damery, your men—!” He collapsed across his desk.

 

Germaine fired a couple of short bursts which knocked out the phone and the video setup in the room. Jayne could only stand there, chalk white, staring at Germaine's poised rifle muzzle and the spare weapon he had snatched from the floor.

 

Damery was amazingly calm, in fact seemingly amused, as the sirens and klaxons continued their clamor outside. When Germaine took a step toward him his hand moved to a small metal box on his right robo-frame.

 

“I detonate easily,” he said, pleasantly. “If I trigger this, the whole room will go up.”

 

Germaine got behind Jayne and jabbed him with the rifle barrel. “You'll do for cover,” he growled. “Move!”

 

As Jayne started toward the door, Damery called out. “Have fun, Germaine. It's a long walk to the outside, if it'll do you any good to get there.”

 

“Better see what you can do for Finch,” answered Germaine, still prodding Jayne.

 

“One thing I can assure you,” added Damery. “We'll meet again!”

 

As Germaine went out with his hostage, Damery frowned thoughtfully and triggered the metal box under his hand. It was not a bomb device but an emergency shortwave transmitter...

 

* * * *

 

Danny Duncan, Tom Gerney and several other convicts pushed deep into the woods against a howling wind. The sky was dark with storm clouds and it was starting to rain.

 

“It's almost as dark as night!” yelled Gerney. “We'll make it!”

 

Only he carried a machine rifle. The others carried heavy branches for clubs, but they huddled near their leadman with the weapon. Kelly had been shot. There had been considerable casualties, but the breakout had been a considerable success in general. Groups of men were breaking up and heading for separate cover. Only sporadically did they hear shots now because few prison guards were left.

 

“I wonder what happened to Germaine,” muttered Danny.

 

“Who, Buchanan?” queried Gerney. “Forget him—we got ourselves to worry about!”

 

“If it hadn't been for him and his brilliant brainstorm—”

 

“Duck!” somebody shouted.

 

A hail of bullets slammed over their position as they dove behind a large rock ridge and almost fell off a cliff. Below in the rainswept gloom of the storm they could see the racing whitecaps of a torrent of water.

 

Blue River!

 

In front of them was a strong force of prison guards in the woods. Gerney returned their fire but was outclassed by the heaviness of returning salvos.

 

“All right, you men!” came a shouted command. “Throw out that chatter gun!”

 

“We'll hit the river first!” growled Gerney, but only for the ears of his companions.

 

“Here they come!” warned Danny. They could see the small, dark figures of half a dozen earthmen charging forward in their wet-gleaming robo-frames.

 

“I'm diving!” cried out one prisoner above Gerney's ineffectual fire, “Wait!” yelled Danny. “Somebody—”

 

A withering cross-fire caught the guards by surprise. Three figures fell. Gerney got another one. The two remaining guards retreated swiftly and disappeared in the deep underbrush.

 

“Who's out there!?” shouted Gerney. Two figures suddenly joined them behind the rock ridge. One was Jayne, and the other was Germaine. Several streaks of blood mingled with the rain on his face. He tossed his spare machine rifle to Danny.

 

“Let's move out of here!” he said. It seemed to be a command, as though he had taken over leadership of the group.

 

“Germaine—you made it!” enthused Danny as he deftly caught the gun.

 

“How—”

 

“Just a minute!” challenged Gerney belligerently. “Who's that with you?”

 

“A big fat Q-man,” answered Germaine. “No time to explain.”

 

“Well to the devil with that!” yelled Gerney. “Shoot him and let's go!”

 

“He's a hostage, and—”

 

Gerney lifted his gun. Germaine slammed the barrel of his weapon across Gerney's face, breaking his nose. Staring, trancelike, Gerney toppled backward. His waning scream was drowned by the wind as he plunged into the rain-swollen river below.

 

Some of the other men present grumbled menacingly, but Germaine cut them off.

 

“You don't get it!” he snapped at them. “I'm sorry that happened, but the Medusa is carrying an extra load of Security troops. They're all over the place!”

 

“So why don't you men give up now?" urged Jayne anxiously. “I'm Dr. Edward Jayne, and I can assure you—”

 

“Shut up!” Germaine told him. “I've got some questions for you later...”

 

“What are we going to do?” asked Danny, checking his ammo drum.

 

“If we keep to the river bluff east of here,” Germaine told the men, “we may be able to circle around those troops and take the Medusa behind their backs. It's half loaded with guns and ammo.”

 

“Hey!” enthused one of the prisoners. “The Mule! She's better than walking out of here!”

 

“Keep a lookout for more of the prisoners,” ordered Germaine. “We're no good to each other all scattered out.”

 

Danny grinned happily through the rain. “By God, there you go again, Germaine—a brainstorm!"

 

But it didn't work. Unknown to Germaine, Damery's signal to the Medusa had produced results. They had not advanced eastward along the river bluff more than a few hundred yards before they were suddenly caught in the blinding glare of a portable searchlight. It came from the woods to their right.

 

“This is Sol Security!” came an officer's voice. “We're a full platoon, so throw down your guns and come forward with your hands up. No tricks!” The prisoners’ eyes became adjusted to the glare of the searchlight, in which they could see reflections glinting from robo-frames, wet uniforms, and raised machine rifles and stun guns. At least twenty armed troops were out there.

 

“Security!” cried Jayne. “I'm a hostage here—Dr. Edward Jayne!”

 

“Jayne?” The unseen officer apparently recognized the politically powerful name. “All right, Doctor—step across, but easy now!”

 

In gloating triumph, Jayne turned to Germaine. “Now, you renegade, I'm going to have you for a trophy—stuffed and mounted!”

 

Germaine was wondering if grabbing Jayne as a hostage shield would actually work, when suddenly there was an interruption.

 

All men, prisoners and Security Troops alike, tensed wonderingly at the rising hum of wavering musical notes on the gale-swept air. To Germaine it sounded eerily like some mythical siren's call—muffled and afar yet lilting into the center of his brain. He felt a numbness coming over him. Some men began to fall.

 

Above him he could make out a hovering dark shape like a torpedo. It was a ship, perhaps a hundred feet long. His mind raced even as Danny dropped his gun beside him and clapped his hands to his ears. Some kind of new weapon—paralysis!

 

“Danny!”

 

He grabbed his companion and forced him over the bluff with him. During his twisting fall, the last impression he had before he hit the water was a brief glimpse of silvery letters painted on the mystery ship's hull above him.

 

Night Song....

 

THE END