THE

WHITE

ONES

by Wayne Wightman

Our hero is a seasoned spacer who would prefer to ignore politics in the course of his business and in the interest of his personal quest for the “White Ones.” Who are these mysterious beings and why do people go to such lengths to find them? Perhaps finding them depends directly upon the ethics one employs in the search.

Illustrated by Tony Gleeson

W

HEN THEY came out of warp drive, Saxon congratulated himself: he was four rubies closer to his goal than he would have anticipated only 24 hours earlier. The tough part was yet to come, however. He knew that trading with the Dorgrid could be lethal, especially when the trade was a box of rubies for a Dorgrid Efficiency Amplifier.

But that was later. Saxon made it a rule never to worry about things out of his control. It saved the nerves. For now he was pleased. He was four rubies closer to The White Ones.

He checked the scanner, then glanced over at his passenger, a doglike Shrifar, a quiet and incredibly pathetic-looking sentient. Saxon wondered how it could have come from a world as lovely as the one below them.

“I will be glad to be home,” the Shrifar said softly through his translator.

Although the coincidence of their both just happening to be going to the same place had made Saxon suspicious, he had agreed to take the basset-like creature from Tau Ceti on to Shrifar. Saxon had suddenly, though not unexpectedly, found himself unwelcome among the Tauians, and the Shrifar had offered rubies for passage. How could he have resisted? And now Tau Ceti was one other place Saxon would have to avoid in the future.

He had to chuckle again about that. Twenty-seven members of the royal family there had walked right into the room where he had set up one of his Quinlan Wave Generators. All at once they began talking with their gods and attempting to copulate with each other. It had all been the brainstorm of one of the princes who was in the line of succession, and he had paid Saxon six rubies for the use of his equipment.

That brought to twenty-six the number of systems he now had to avoid. And it also brought to seventy-four the number of .5 kilogram rubies in his possession.

Carefully Saxon calibrated the ship’s descent.

“How long till 1 can stand on my earth?” the Shrifar asked.

“About four minutes,” he answered. “You have any soma on Shrifar? I could use a tall glass.”

“No soma.” A kind of breathy laugh came through the translator. “I have heard of your thirst for soma, how you drink it instead of water.”

“You can’t trust alien water,” he said, not wanting to harm his reputation.

“It would please me,” the fleshy doglike thing said, “if you would stay with my family so we could repay your kindness with kindness.”

The ship delicately touched down as the hum of the anti-gravs faded. Saxon unhooked the Shrifar.

“That is gracious,” he said, “but the rubies will suffice.”

The port opened and the sweet air of Shrifar wafted in. It was a planet of perpetual spring. The sentients here worshipped their earth and considered themselves to be only temporary residents on their god’s body. As a consequence, the planet was a garden, immaculately trimmed, green as an emerald, and the outdoors lacked the noise of even the smallest machine. Saxon had seen holos of the place, but now the smell, the greenness… . .

“The rubies are sufficient payment,” he said, “but the beauty of your planet has made me reconsider your offer. If I am welcome, I will stay long enough to have my ship’s systems checked.”

The Shrifar bowed in assent. “Perhaps, Honorable Saxon, we might arrange for an immediate transport of soma.”

Saxon would have thought it impossible, but he thought he saw a trace of humor in this sentient’s sagging eyelids.

FROM THE terrace of the Shrifar’s home, Saxon could see the planet’s single ocean. As the soma warmed his brain, the ocean seemed to become the shining eye of the planet’s god. He was used to such sights. They were unreal and he knew it, but the soma dulled the nagging questions that forever seemed to pester him. After another drink of the white liquid, the planet seemed to become aware of him sitting on its skin.

“You are quiet when you drink soma,” the Shrifar said softly. “I have heard that many who drink it shout meaningless statements and damage themselves.”

At a certain point in his drinking, the hallucinations seemed to back off, taking with them all the cobwebs, all the cares and questions, leaving Saxon clearly aware of who he was and where he wanted to go. “I’m saving all the crazy stuff for later,” he finally answered.

“Are you going to Dorgrid, after you leave us?” the Shrifar asked. If Saxon hadn’t guarded himself, he would have started with surprise. From the time the sentient had asked him for passage home to his planet, he had been telling himself to pay attention, to keep the antennae out — something was up. And now, here it came. The Shrifar’s only enemy, the ones determined to possess this planet and all its minerals, was the Dorgrid. And there was no way that the Shrifar could have known where Saxon was bound.

“The Dorgrid have something I wish to purchase.”

A long silence intervened. Under the enormous fern trees around the residence, the Shrifar’s children played. They had fashioned airplanes from the broad leaves of certain bushes and were throwing them into the sky.

“I am not political,” Saxon said. “That is the only way I can travel freely. I must remain without politics.”

The sentient’s eyes drooped even more sadly.

Saxon understood his grief. His Shrifar host was an ambassador of sorts and had been on Tau Ceti to beg their assistance. He had heard that the Tauians had confiscated his ship by way of their response. And the Dorgrids. The Dorgrid Empire, as they called themselves, though they occupied only one world, was as different from the Shrifar as imaginable. They were a hard race, humanoid, hairless, and utterly without humor. Theirs was a society of technicians, insect-minded technicians who lacked the smallest trace of imagination — so they stole the ideas for their technology from all over the galaxy. If warp drive worked over the vast spaces between galaxies, they would have stolen from the entire universe. And had they heard of Hitler, they would have worshipped him as well as electricity.

In the distance now, the Shrifar youngsters bounded around the towering ferns. The host shouted at them and they moved closer to the house, never interrupting their play.

“There will be war, of course,” the Shrifar said to Saxon. “The Dorgrid will defeat us.”

Saxon took another deep drink of soma and wished for numbness. Instead, in some space behind his eyes, he saw the levelling of the planet, the mining, the plundering such as the Dorgrid had done to their own world. And the Shrifar themselves ….

The Shrifar host poured himself a small glass of soma and held it gingerly in his paw-like hands.

Saxon wondered if he would really drink it, since this race was known to never alter its consciousness.

He sipped it through his thick dark lips. “With luck, Honorable Saxon, the war will be over quickly. As you know, we do not fight. We have nothing to fight with.” He looked up at Saxon, his mood visibly becoming lighter. “That was interesting, what you did to the royal family on Tau Ceti. I found their dignity superficial and self-serving. Though I did not see, the rumor was that… .” He broke into a short barking laugh. “… that the royal family copulated itself.”

Saxon had never heard Shrifar laughter before. It sounded like an asthmatic St. Bernard.

“After dealing with the Tauians as temporary ambassador, that is what I wished them to do to themselves. How did you effect it?”

“It’s something I traded for about a month ago: a Quinlan Wave Generator. You program it to broadcast whatever emotions or words you want, then you tune it to the frequency of the particular brain type you want to receive it. I set it up, tune it, and you sense whatever I program into it. Basically, it’s a transmitter where the sentient is the receiver. The Tauian royalty thought their gods were making them want to love their brothers. And sisters.”

The Shrifar wheezed his laughter again, then sipped at his small glass of soma. Again they sat in silence on the terrace of the house in the tall forest. Except for the distant call of a strange bird and the barking of the children, the world seemed utterly silent.

“The rubies I gave you for passage …

Saxon knew what was coming. It was something he had avoided thinking for half a day now.

“… you will trade them to the Dorgrid?”

Saxon did not answer. He was not used to feeling like an insect, but he did now. A very low insect.

“It is only academic curiosity,” the Shrifar said. “Four rubies more or less for their lasers will change the outcome of nothing.”

Saxon shrunk in his chair. He wondered if his ultimate plan, getting to The White Ones, was worth dealing with the Dorgrid. Would the very rubies handed to him that afternoon be used to cut down and incinerate the Shrifar children he watched playing?

“My information, Honorable Saxon, is that you have numerous kilos of rubies which you will be trading. Again, that will likely alter nothing. But what is it that they have that you wish so badly to have?”

Why not talk, Saxon wondered. The Shrifar seemed very well informed about him — they probably knew the answer anyway.

“It’s the Dorgrid Efficiency Amplifier,” he finally said.

“The existence of it is only a rumor.”

“A solid rumor. Worth checking out.”

“And you think they will trade one for thirty-seven kilos of rubies?” Saxon was not wrong in his assumption: for all their simple-minded appearance and their basset-like looks, the Shrifar was to be taken seriously. He had thought that only he himself knew the quantity of his cache.

“I was hoping to trade for two — and then steal as many others as I could get my hands on. I am not overly fond of their race.”

His host seemed to smile. Stealing from his enemy obviously appealed to him. Or perhaps the soma had tickled a few nerve endings.

“Why do you want their machine? If such a thing exists, they will use it to help their weapons kill us — but how will you use it? Have you enemies?”

Again, though Saxon had told no one, he suspected the Shrifar knew the answer. So was this a test? A test to find out how truthful he was or how far he could be trusted? The possibility seemed too remote.

“No enemies,” Saxon said. “As you probably know, warp drive doesn’t work between galaxies for several reasons — mainly power requirements and the scarcity of available gravitons in the void. With the Dorgrid Efficiency Amp, if it exists, coupled with a Star Mark VII Warp Drive, I’ve figured a person could easily travel from galaxy to

galaxy.”

The Shrifar nodded and sipped the white liquid. Saxon wondered if the sentient could still understand his words or if the nod was from mere politeness.

“However, intergalactic travel … is not my real interest.” Saxon hesitated. Should he tell it? He was so close, now, to the Efficiency Amp. The slightest miscalculation could be fatal to his entire nine-year plan.

“Are you interested, perhaps, in The White Ones?” the Shrifar suggested, his voice, even through the translator, a bit unstable.

So he did know. Saxon now had cause for uneasiness, but the cat was out of its bag — so why deny it?

“That’s right. You too have heard of The White Ones. Again, it is another rumor. Occasionally, when a ship’s warp drive malfunctions due to overcharging with gravitons, the passengers come back with tales of The White Ones. They speak of disembodied consciousnesses; less-than-nothings that are there; infinitely intelligent non-existences. Whatever they are, I want to see them or experience them. I have a question or two I want to put to them. So, depending on how many 1 get, I’m going to put two or three or four Efficiency Amps in tandem on the warp drive. That should get me to them.”

The Shrifar stared at Saxon. Evidentally the idea of the Efficiency Amps in tandem was something he did not suspect.

“Do you understand what you’re doing or what will happen?”

“Honored Host, at that point, when I engage the warp drive, I may encounter The White Ones, but on the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if I became your new evening star.”

The stare softened and the Shrifar nodded, his eyes refocusing on his children in the distance. “Soma,” he said, just before clicking off the translator, “soma might help the Shrifar accept its death with a little grace.”

He rose to his doglike feet and walked unevenly into his home, leaving Saxon alone to watch the children tossing their leaf-planes into the air and hear them laughing, laughing as children everywhere seem to laugh, their race notwithstanding. Their lives, or deaths, notwithstanding.

Saxon picked up the pitcher of soma and poured it down his throat. If he found The White Ones, he planned to ask them why, at such times as this, life was at once so lovely and so hateful.

HE DREAMED of a puzzle with four pieces: the Dorgrid Amplifier, the rubies, the Quinlan Wave Generator, and the quiet Shrifar. The parts wove an intricate pattern around each other. They came closer, moved more slowly, and as with most puzzles, the pieces suddenly fit together in a quiet flash of inspiration, providing the most obvious and

unexpected solution.

When he awakened, had the soma not been in his system, Saxon would have assumed he had finally gone mad. Every surface in his sleeping quarters was littered with fist-sized rubies. The air glowed blood red.

He assumed they were hallucinations until he reached toward one and his fingertips bumped it off the bedside table. He jerked himself upright — and then, only then, did he see a Shrifar standing at the foot of his cot. This was not his host. This one was bigger than any of the race he had seen so far. His fur was speckled black and orange, and his eyes seemed old, ancient even, and infinitely weary.

“Honored Guest,” he said through his translator, “we offer these to you as both a gift and a bribe.”

Saxon could feel his blood pressure coming back to a more normal level. Even through the haze in his brain, he realized that the coincidences of the last few days, the Shrifar’s unexpected knowledge of his intentions, had a design. And the design was beginning to make some kind of sense.

“We give you these stones. As they are here, they are without value to us because they are so common in our world. But if they are traded well, they could mean a great deal to us. You see, we want you to have all the Dorgrid Efficiency Amplifiers you want.” ,

That was it all right. Saxon was pleased that he could put two and two together so early in the morning. “And you have specific plans for one of the amps, don’t you, Honored Shrifar?”

“That is correct.”

Saxon felt himself smile, though he knew the greatest risk of his life — the risk the Shrifar depended on for their survival — would be on top of him before the day was finished.

“Honored Shrifar, I have only one question at this point: have you been picking my brain, or did you put this plan there in the first place?” The ancient eyes almost twinkled. “We are a simple race. Surely it is unlikely that we could do either.”

“And surely, Honored Shrifar, it is impossible that your simple race would speak untruths.”

He said, “Well … .” and broke into a loud wheezing laugh.

The rubies were packed in special crates designed to look as much like meteors as possible. Four hundred and thirty-seven kilos of perfect red stone. If the Dorgrid Amplifiers existed, and if the trade was made successfully, the Shrifar might survive and Saxon might end up with a couple of the amps for his warp drive. As he watched the ruby-filled “meteors” being loaded on his ship, he reminded himself that this was probably the nineteenth or twentieth time he had depended on his luck for survival. How many lives could he have left?

But he was still here and only two steps away from attempting some

kind of encounter with The White Ones.

Forty or fifty Shrifar gathered to see him off. He was their only weapon against the Dorgrid and they prayed a moment before letting him leave. As a final blessing, they gave him a handful of their earth, the greatest gift they could confer on anyone. Then the hatch closed Saxon inside his ship, away from the peaceful planet.

Once again, he was on his own.

IN THREE hours, after randomly dropping the disguised rubies along the way and memorizing the coordinates, Saxon’s instruments reported that Dorgrid tractor beams were pulling him into their planet. He expected as much. But he would not land. For the plan to provide him with any safety at all, it was necessary that his ship remain in a parking orbit and that he be transported down.

He changed into a robe that the Dorgrid would hopefully think belonged to a holy man, strapped the Quinlan Wave Generator to the inside of his thigh and around his neck fashioned a necklace of the Generator’s programming discs; their colors identified them: one for panic, one for confusion, another for drowsiness, and a yellow one, already in the Generator, recorded so that a voice would ring out in the Dorgrid minds, telling them to disarm themselves in the face of a holy person.

Saxon took a deep breath and prepared himself for the encounter. He hoped that with a shambling gait, his well-worn robe, and the necklace, he would pass for about one-third mad.

“I AM Dorgun, Second Chief Technician of the world of Electricity,” he said without a translator. “Identify yourself and state your business here.” Dorgun and his associates stood rigid, as though made of stone. In fact, their flesh seemed hard-edged,as if it had literally been chiseled.

“I am Nezz Angle, priest of The White Ones, come to trade.”

“Your White Ones do not exist, so you are misled. What do you have to trade?”

Saxon was prepared for brusqueness, and Dorgun had apparently had much practice. He didn’t want things to go this fast, so he tried to slow them down: “May I rest a moment?”

“Denied. What have you to trade?” The words were no more than out of his mouth when an underling approached, bowed, then whispered in Dorgun’s ear. “You need not answer my question,” Dorgun said haughtily. “Your ship has shown that you have nothing on board of any value to us. Prepare yourself for disposal.”

This was getting rapidly out of hand. Saxon considered activating the Generator. “Dorgun,” he said, “I am no fool. What I have I would not be so careless as to bring with me. May we speak alone, the two of us?”

“Denied. What have you to trade?”

The Shrifar had been right: the Dorgrid hardly qualified for being called “sentient.”

“Rubies.”

That did it. The chisled features twitched and the eyes blinked. At least they feel greed, Saxon thought. Perhaps that would be enough. He played one of his aces:

“Four hundred thirty-seven kilos, nine hundred and ten pieces.” Dorgun gasped; it was faint, but it was a gasp.

“Two hundred twenty-two pieces of one kilo or better, and if I am tortured for information regarding their whereabouts, I have been programmed to die immediately.”

Apparently without signal, the underlings marched through the doors which then closed with a soft hiss of escaping air.

“If you lie to the Dorgrid, we will burn out your nervous system.” “My figures are correct.”

“You may sit, Nezz Angle. What is it you want from us? Would you care for soma?”

He would have loved it, but this was not the time.

“As a priest, soma is forbidden to me. But please yourself.” “Dorgrids loathe soma and those who drink it. What is it you want from us?”

Now came the hard part. “Honorable Technician, I have heard of the genius of the Dorgrid race. I have heard that the Dorgrid has created a machine, an amplifier which geometrically increases the output of virtually any power system far beyond what could reasonably be expected of it. It has been called the Dorgrid Efficiency Amplifier.” Dorgun’s face went as hard and dark as stone. “Such a machine does not exist. It is a lie.”

Saxon suspected that Dorgun protested too much.

‘“Honorable Technician, my destiny is with The White Ones. My concern is not with sentients. I have come here only because you have machines I need, not so I can reveal your secrets elsewhere. I will submit to truth detection procedures on that point.”

“You still assume the Amplifiers exist,” he said without emotion. “I have told you they do not, and they don’t.”

“Honorable Technician, will you submit to truth detection on that point?”

Before the anger could boil over on him, Saxon quickly added, “And I do, of course, have over nine hundred rubies to trade, all of laser quality.”

Dorgun seemed to sink into himself with thought. “I must first see the rubies,” he finally said, “That, before anything else.”

“Honorable Technician, The White Ones have instructed me thus: you produce one Amplifier, then I produce fifty kilos of rubies. I transport . .

Dorgun rose from his chair. Saxon prepared himself fora blow to his face — but it did not come. Again he considered activating the Generator, but that would mean an end to his stay on Dorgrid and, at this point, any chance of trade. Dorgun had turned white with rage. Suddenly he spun and rammed his fist through the small table. It showered across the room in a spray of plastic shards. When he did speak, his voice was barely contained:

“You do not dictate to the Dorgrid! You do not make insulting offers. Your White Ones do not exist and you are moments away from disposal. You ars speaking to the divine Dorgrid race, the race destined to rule the galaxy with our technical genius and our sacred Electricity. You are filth as the Shrifar are filth as are all the sub-species in the galaxy. The Dorgrid,” he concluded, seeming now to have burned off the most vicious part of his anger, “represent the only purity in the galaxy.”

Saxon felt disgust fill his soul to overflowing. “Honorable Purity,” he

said with a quaver in his voice, “I have rubies for trade. I am only allowed to trade for your Efficiency Amplifier. Such are the orders I have received.”

Dorgun’s eyes slitted and he moved toward Saxon with his knobbed fists poised at his sides like mallets.

“I remind you,” Saxon added, one hand resting lightly on the device strapped to his inner thigh, “that 1 will die if 1 am tortured. If I die, the rubies, hundreds of kilos, will be lost forever.”

Dorgun turned without warning and left.

Saxon breathed a sigh of relief and consciously forced his tensed muscles to relax. Until now he had not had time to observe the room in which he found himself. Aside from the splinters of plastic that littered the floor, there was only himself and the small chair on which he sat.

He assumed he was being watched, although there were no peepholes or mirrors or any other interruption in the surfaces of the walls. He had not been alone thirty seconds before the lights went out and he found himself in utter darkness.

Subtle torture, he thought. They wouldn’t risk the use of physical pain — so they could try to worry him into giving them what they wanted to know.

When he stood up, hir head hit the ceiling. Four blind steps to the right — a wall. It was then that he heard his chair slowly scraping across the floor. All doubt was removed from his mind. If this was only for fright, it worked.

Saxon did not enjoy the thought of being pressed to death in complete darkness.

If the Dorgrid had the Efficiency Amplifier, perhaps they didn’t need what he offered. Perhaps Dorgun wasn’t kidding when he said he thought all other races were filth. And perhaps Saxon was going to be pressed into a tidy little cube, picked up with tongs and dropped into the nearest waste converter. It did not appeal to him.

When one wall touched each elbow, he decided to call off the joke and activate the device on his thigh. It would probably end any chance of getting the Amplifiers, but at this point he had little faith in his future existence. Since the Generator was tuned to the Dorgrid brain, Saxon heard only a vague high-pitched chattering in his head.

The walls pressed his hips and shoulders from the sides, and now he was bent double from the descending ceiling.

He hit the button again and again, wondering if he had inserted the wrong disc.

The pain of his chin driving into his chest would have made him cry out, but he could no longer open his jaw. Even the blood in his veins seemed under extreme pressure and near bursting.

Then, though the pressure did not ease, it seemed not to increase for a moment.

Open up the walls! he screamed inside his head. Open them up!

One side of the box he had been pressed into simply fell away. One of Dorgun’s lieutenants gently pulled him out.

When Saxon unkinked his body, he saw something that nearly made him laugh: Dorgun was absent, but his entire entourage knelt on one knee in a semicircle, all facing Saxon, their hands held out and crossed in an attitude of reverence.

He decided to play his cards hard and fast. This was not a place where he cared to spend any extra time.

“Bring in Dorgun.”

The lieutenant did a quick genuflection and rushed out.

Dorgun entered a moment later, his sharp features white with some emotion between anger and fear. “You did not die under torture,” he said contemptuously.

“I am neither a fool nor without defense, so do not press your luck, Dorgun. Your rascism has deluded you into believing you are moref powerful than you actually are: And here I am, offering you a trade of power for power, where we both profit. Do not try to prove yourself a greater fool than you have already by refusing this chance.”

His face was as craggy and unrelenting as ever. He was a Dorgrid leader, the homo sapiens’ equivalent of a psychopath; one sign of weakness and Dorgun would go for the throat. Saxon knew that any mistake he made now would be fatal — instantly fatal. Around him, still awed by the voices in their minds, the underlings held their position of respect.

“Dorgun: the trade is offered you this one last time. Eight Amplifiers for four hundred kilos of rubies. For you personally, the remaining thirty-seven. Give your answer.”

He hesitated. “We do not have eight Amplifiers. There are only ”

“How many, Dorgun?”

“Six,” he finally spat out, obviously loathing himself for submitting to the will of one he considered to be filth.

“I am generous, Dorgun. Give me four of your machines. Surely you can build more. But you cannot build more rubies.”

“Four … .” He seemed to choke on the word.

“Take me to your transporter room and have the Amps there within the hour.” Saxon figured that since he had begun giving orders, he would go all the way. “Each Amplifier is to be fitted for attachment to a Star Warp Drive, Mark VII. If you give me dead machines, Dorgun, I will see to it that The White Ones incinerate your world.”

Dorgun’s face twisted like a man’s whose arm is in a hammerlock. Without response, he exited.

As Saxon was escorted to the transporter room, he casually brushed his hand across his thigh several times. Each time he decreased the

volume of the output. He wanted the full shock of the broadcast to have its desired effect in the event he had to use it again.

For the next hour he feigned relaxation in the transporter room as the Dorgrid soldiers brought in the four Efficiency Amps. They were small, the size of a man’s head, and appeared to be utterly solid. Attached were a six-lead cable and a cable that terminated in a calibrated dial. Terribly simple-looking.

Dorgun appeared and his assistant quickly explained to Saxon which lead should be attached where. After the hookup, he explained, one had only to turn the control to whatever degree of efficiency his equipment could handle — anything up to 1000% efficiency.

“One final thing,” Dorgun said, breaking his long silence and stepping stiffly forward. “The exchange operates on our terms: you transport the rubies in, then we transport the Amplifiers out. Payment comes in separately for each machine, and each machine goes out separately.”’

Saxon did not even need to figure the scheme behind that one: When Dorgun saw the final hundred rubies materializing in the transporter, Saxon would be shoved head-first into the nearest disposer. It would then be scored as follows: Dorgrid gain: 400 rubies; Dorgrid loss: three Amps (perhaps retrievable). Saxon’s gain: three Amps, which would be rendered useless because of Saxon’s loss: his life. But there was a possibility of success ….

“Your terms are acceptable,” he said. “Allow me to enter the coordinates of the first one hundred kilos.”

The Dorgrid had no respect for emotion, but they had even less respect for lack of power, so when the meteor shell was broken off the first cache and they visualized the lasers they could then build, they acted like drunken paranoids, casting secret grins here and there, watching the whole time that they did not become noticeably overjoyed. As they stared at the glowing red stones, Saxon casually slipped one disc out of his Wave Generator and inserted another.

Dorgun himself put the first Amp on the transporter stage. Again, Saxon operated the coordinates and sent it onboard his orbiting ship.

The second hundred kilos arrived and the second Amplifier was transported out. The third hundred kilos blurred and took solid shape, and Dorgun set the third Amp on the platform. Saxon set.the ship’s coordinates and then activated the auto timer on the control panel for forty-five seconds. He casually announced to Dorgun that this Amp did not look quite the same as the others. “I wish to take only a moment to inspect it. It is probably nothing.”

Dorgun went rigid with indignation. Not to be trusted by an inferior sentient was almost more than he could bear.

“Thirty seconds,” Saxon thought. He hit the button of the Wave

room. The confusion program worked well. Even Dorgun acted as though he had been hit in the chest. Around the room, the Dorgrid eyes went blank and their faces lost every emotion except the fear of the confusion in their own minds.

“Ten seconds,” Saxon counted. He moved quickly, dodging the stumbling Dorgrid, got to the platform and stood and stood over the amp. “Five … four …

Dorgun lunged toward him. Saxon could see his bitter face twisting in raging anguish as he fought the conflicting emotions in his mind. The world must have seemed horribly distorted, every direction fouled in a tangle of confusion, yet Dorgun drove himself like a blind force of nature, dove at Saxon, and even had got one hand on him when Saxon’s image blurred, flickered, and disappeared.

When his vision cleared, Saxon saw arranged beside him the two

Amps, and under him, the third. Still clinging to his torn robe was Dorgun’s twisted fist. From where the elbow was once, purple blood drooled down onto the deck.

Saxon twisted it loose, and, in utter disgust, disposed of it.

THE WIRING the Dorgrid had provided for the Efficiency Amp needed only the slightest modification for Saxon to hook it up to the Quinlan Wave Generator. This was the final leg of the plan that had come to him while on Shrifar. In only a few minutes he was finished with the connection and was putting the program disc in place.

By orbiting this contraption, the Generator and the Amplifier together, half the planet at any given time would be flooded with fear and loathing for machinery of any type. In ten years their technology would be back in the Stone Age… unless the Generator burned out… or was hit by a meteor … or a hundred things happened. Or unless Dorgun or another like him was strong enough to resist and manage to get to the orbiter and dismantle it.

Saxon had never believed he would get this far in the execution of the plan, so he had never really considered the loopholes. And he knew enough about machinery to know that only a fool would trust his perpetual safety to a machine.

He couldn’t hang in his present orbit long or the Dorgrid could be on him like insects. Something had to be done quickly — some solution without flaw.

And the solution was so simple. It struck him numb. As though it had been hanging on the air, just waiting for him to ask for it, the idea descended on him like a cloud of gloom. The solution was indeed flawless. The Dorgrid would never threaten the Shrifar again.

Saxon punched the program he wanted into the computer and the small disc appeared in the “Completed” slot. This he inserted in the Generator, turned the Dorgrid Amp to maximum and switched it on.

A minute later it had been eased out the port and now freely orbited the planet, bathing it in Saxon’s new program.

He did not want to think of the planet’s surface.

Using the slower ion drive, for there was no need to hurry now, he moved away from their planet.

THE DORGRID technicians had been working smoothly at their posts, tracking the alien’s orbiting ship and arming the unmanned interceptors. Suddenly it dawned on each and every one of them just how dangerous the Dorgrid next to him was. Heads snapped from side to side and their slitted eyes bulged in fear and violent contempt.

Everyone of them feared for his life and felt utter hatred for the monstrously euil beings he saw himself surrounded by. Arms lashed out. Whatever could be used as a bludgeon was used. Someone tripped the transporter switches and as the struggling Dorgrid fell through its invisible beams, their bodies were sheared into pieces and shot to every part of the planet. Friends clubbed each other without mercy. Faces were torn, jaws ripped from their faces, and before the sun set, blood covered the planet.

The wounded Dorgun lay back and felt his life gradually loosen its hold on him. He felt the waves of hatred and he saw the butchery it caused. Dorgun knew the source, and in his last moment of life, he hated his own kind as well as the man who was killing the Dorgrid race.

EVERYTHING WAS finally ready, and Saxon could hardly believe it. Nine years ago he had decided to go after The White Ones, find out who they were, what they were, or whatever was possible. He had bribed, swindled, lied, cheated thieves, and now he had killed …. The word was too weak, he decided. He had just exterminated a race. He had played God, and though he thought he had done a good imitation, it did not leave a good feeling in his stomach.

When he thought of the Shrifar, their green planet, the air, their children …. when he thought of all that, he knew that regardless of how he felt now, he would do it again.

He stepped back and looked at his prizes. The remaining two Dorgrid Amplifiers were hooked one onto the other, and then onto the Mark VO Star Warp Drive. At the junction between the Amplifiers and the drive he had hooked in another Quinlan Wave Generator so it too would get the tremendous power boost. However, rather than preprogram the Quinlan with a disc, he had rigged it in such a way that he himself would provide the program source.

Now, he hoped, not only would the warp drive carry him far beyond the visible galaxies* but whatever capabilities his brain had for making contact with The White Ones would be incredibly amplified.

But then, he thought, most of this was guesswork. As he had said to the Shrifar, he and his entire ship could convert to energy. For a split second, he would be a breathtaking sight.

He webbed himself in and readied the controls.

“Control, ” he thought with irony. When the final switch was tripped, he’d have about as much control over his destiny as the Dorgrid in their death frenzy.

Nothing was really known about The White Ones except that they were there, lurking between the galaxies — or perhaps beyond the galaxies, and they were probably an intelligent form of the highest level.

He wanted to ask them questions; he wanted reasons for the existence of races such as the Dorgrid; reasons for the sickness of existence that he had seen blot out whole races when their will to live simply evaporated. He wanted to know where the Universe was, where it came from, and if there was an ultimate Plan.

The computer signalled a green “Ready.” Saxon took one deep breath and hit it. There was a quiet thud and all the lights came on.

EVERYTHING WAS without color and without darkness. A colorless light, a “whiteness” filled everything. He could see, but there was nothing to see, not even when he tried to see himself.

He started to think, “Where am … .’’but the thought skittered away like a fading dream. Soft, smooth peacefulness filled him, although he knew he no longer “was.”

He started to wonder where The White Ones were, and that thought, too, vanished like smoke.

In an avalanche of surprise, it became unavoidably clear that he was one of The White Ones, that there were others and they were everywhere. The questions he wanted to ask did not seem important. There was something larger here. Communication with the Others was irrelevant: each of Them knew everything, including what the Others knew. Knowing that They were — that was enough; fully enough.

As his burning white form raced away from all other things, racing in a warp that shredded the fabric of space, he knew, with a little sadness, that he had searched so long and worked so hard to find what he had had all along: himself.

The universe around him blazed.