first flights

edited by damon knight

this book contains the first published story by ten famous science fiction wri
ters

A LANCER BOOK � 1963 

FIRST FLIGHT 

The Isolinguals, The Faithful, Black Destroyer, Life-Line, 
Ether Breather, Loophole, Tomorrow's Children and That 
Only A Mother were originally published in 
Sen�e Fon. 
Copyright, c, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1946, 1947, 1948, by Street & 
Smith Publications, Inc. 

Walk To The World was originally published in 

Copyright, c, 1952 by Space Publications, Inc. 

T was originally published in Nbul Science Fco Copyright, c, 1956 by Peter Ham
ilton. 

Copyright c 1963 by Damon Knight 

All rights reserved 

Printed in the U.S.A. 

LANCER BOOKS, INC. � 26 WEST 47TH STREET � NEW YORK 36, N.Y. 


CONTENTS


Introduction
7

The-. Isoljnguals ... ...;     L. 
Sprague de Camp   9
The 
Faithful 
Lester del Rey 
27
Black Destroyer     A2 

, van Vogt 
36
Life-Line   ,...Robert A. Heinlein 
67


Ether Breather 
Theodore Sturgeon .n ;.
85

Loophole     Arthur C. 
Clarke   99
Tomorrow's Children 
Ponl 
Anderson   105

That Only a Mother 
Judith 
Merril   132
Walk 
to the World 
Algis 
Budrys   t42
T     Brian W. 
Aldiss   154

INTRODUCTION


IF I COULD go back and rearrange the third decade of 
my life to suit myself, I would somehow manage to start 
doing 'my best work in 1937 instead of 1950, and join the 
group of writers that began to form around John W. Campbell 
in that year. As things actually happened, I was in New 
York only a few years later, writing science fiction; but like 
James Blish, Cyril Kornbluth and a few other late-flowering 
types, I had a long apprenticeship to serve.

Heinlein, d Camp, del Rey, van Vogt and Sturgeon were 
of a diffrerrt breed. The first published story of each was 
distinctive, brilliant and memorable. Te same is true of five 
younger writers who came along in the late 40s and early 
--Aldiss, Clarke, Budrys, Merril and Anderson.

It would be hard to overestimate what science fiction owes 
to these ten writers, and more particularly to the first five I 
mentioned. There have never been more than a dozen really 
able and prolific writers working in this field at the same 
time. A sympathetic editor can encourage good wrkers, but 
cannot manufacture them. It was Heinlein, Sturgeon, de 
Camp, del Rey and van Vogt, along with the Kuttners, Hubbard, 
Asimov and one or two more, who brought the new 
science fiction into being.

In a sense, the whole history of modern s.f. is contained in 
these ten first stories. Here are the technical genius and the 
dramatic gifts of Heinlein, the wry wit of de Camp, Sturgeon's 
pyrotechnic inventiveness, the nightmare world of 
van Vogt; del Rey's pathos, Merril's deep perception, the 
human insights of Budrys, Anderson's hypnotic tale-telling, 
Clarke's intellect, Aldiss's grotesquerie.

Without these ten, the magazines might still be lumbering 
along in the old girl-vs.-bug-eyed-monster pattern, or more 
likely; be as extinct as Big Little Books. Reading their stories 
as a group, then, and realizing that each one was the first 
bright glimpse of an enduring talent, I find them fascin,-ating. 
I hope you will, too.

DaaoN


TI:rE. ISOLINGUALS 
by L. Smavr.W. 


De Camp bas been a patent expert, engineer, advertising man 
and correspondence course teacher, as vell as 
most tpenty-five years after this story vas publisbed, be 
turned from science-fantasy to the historical novel: but bis 
interest in antiquity and the classics is apparent in this, the 
first de Camp story that ever appeared in print.


mc rooro at the cop, and the cop looked at Nick. 
The fruit vndor's friendly smile suddenly, froze. The cop 
didn't know it, but something had gone ping inside Nick's 
head. He wasn't N'iccolo Franchetti any longer. He was Dec-imus 
Agridola, engineering officer of the good old XXXIInd 
Legion. He had been standing behind his ballista, laying it 
for the Parthians' next charge. Of the crew, only he and two 
privates had not been struck down by the Asiastics' terrible

arrows.

Then something awful had happened: the vast red rock 
desert of Mesopotamia had vanished, and with it the swirling 
masses of hostile cavalry, the heaps of dead and wounded, 
and everything else. One of the ballista crew was gone likewise; 
the other had metamorphosed into this fat fellow in the 
tight clothes. His catapult had, in the same twinkling, become 
a little two-wheeled wagon piled with fruit. He was 
standing on a paved street, lined with buildings of fantastic 
height.

Decimus blinked incredulously. Sorcery! Those Parthiam 
were said to be good at it. Tile man looking at him must be 
Cartoricus, the Gaulish replacement. "Onere!" he shouted. 
"Load!"

The man in dark blue iusr stared. Decimus lost his emper. 
"What's the matter, don't you understarld good Latin? 
They'll be at us again in a minute!" ne man did nothing. 
Decimus lek for his SWord. It wasn't there. He was wearing 
queer, uncomfortable clothes like the other. He snatched an 
apple; at the touch of it his mind reeled. Ir felt like a real 
apple, not a sorcerer's illusion. He bit into it. Then stark terror 
seized him. He threw the apple at the fat man and started 
to run.


9


10
L. SRm.m E 
C

Arthur Lindsley picked up the hand set. "Hello? . . . Oh, 
it's you, Pierre. How's the esteemed son-in-law this 
morn

"Fairish, replied the instrument. "I'm up at Rockefeller 
Med. Bill Jenkins has a case that might interest you. None of 
their high-powered psychiatrists have been able to do a thing 
with it. Want to come up?"

Lindsley looked at his watch. "Let's see---my elementary 
biology class lets out at two thirty. I can come up then."

"Fine. And could you round up a couple of good linguists

and bring 'em along?"

"Huh? What for?"

"Take too long to explain over the 'phone. Can you bring 
them?"

"Well, there's Van Wyck over'at Barnard, and Squiex's Of-rice 
is down the hall. Say, are you and Elsa going to have 
Christmas dinner with us?"

"Sorry, but we promised my folks to have it with them 
this year. Yeah, we're taking the train for Quebec next 
Thursday. Thanks anyway. Now please bring some really 
good language sharks. It might be important."

Professor Lindsley sighed as he hung up. He didn't look 
forward with much pleasure to the undiluted company of 
his two sons all day Christmas. Hugh would talk interminably 
about the vacuum-cleaner business. Malcolm would 
drape himself over the furniture and make languid remarks 
in his newly acquired college voice about how art is all. What 
did Pierre mean by dragging Elsa off to spend Christmas 
with his Canuck parents? They were the only intelligent 
members of the family, besides himself

Lindsley took the new Tenth Avenue Subway up to the 
Medical Center, with his two linguists in tow. Squier had 
been in, but not Van Wyck. A search of the language department 
ha unearthed a Dr. Fedor Jevsky, who said he'd be 
ver-r-ry glad to come. Lindsley was a smallish man, very 
erecr, with mapping eyes and a diminutixe white beard. He 
looked odd, leading the rangy Squier and the obese Jevsky 
like a couple of puppies.

Dr. Jenkins' office was jammed. The thickset, shabby man 
was speaking: "It's just like I told the guys down at the hospital, 
doc; Mrs. Garfinkle and I been married ten years, and 
she never showed no symptoms or nothin'. We're just poor 
woiking people "


THE ISOLINGUAIsS
11


� Jenkins' bedside voice suddenly recovered its normal snap.

"Come in, Arthur; I take it these are your linguists. I've got a

� queer job for them."

Pierre Lamarque's broad, coppery face grinned at his 
fa
ther-in4aw from across the room. Jenkins was explaining:

"--and all at once her normal personality went out like a

light. She began talking this gibberish, and didn't know her

husband or the city or anything else. That's just the trouble;

we can't, locate a single physical paranoiac symptom, and

aphasia won't work either. Split personality, yes, but it

doesn't explain her making up what seems to be a whole

new language of her own. But that's not all. She's the third

of these cases the hospital has received in twenty-four hours.

Sure, naturallywe gave 'em all the routine tests."

The telephone r.ang. "Yes? Oh, Lord! . . . Yes   No.

... 
Glad you let ,me know." Jenkins hung up. "Twelve
more 
cases. Seems to be an epidemic."
Jevsky 
had inclined his globular form--it was impossible
for 
him to bend--in front of the plainqooking woman on the
chair. 
She seemed to be so earnestly trying to tell him 
something 
with that rush of strange syllables. He suddenly
seemed 
to catch something, for he barked at her what
sounded 
like "Haybye-ded-yow?"
The 
rush of sound stopped, and the woman's face broke
into 
a grateful smile. Then the torrent began again.
Jevsky 
wasn't listening. He spoke to Jenkins, "What 
foreign 
languages has Meesez Garfinkle studied?"
"None 
at all; she was born in New York City; both 
parents 
spoke English, at least of a sort; she left school at the
end 
of the eighth grade. What do you think you've got, Dr.
Jevsky?"

"I'm 
not sure, but it might be Gothic."
"What!"

The 
vast shoulders shrugged. "I know it sounds crazy, but
l
abai-ddjau means "ff I had' in Gothic. I 
don't really know
the language, except for a few fragments like 
that; nor, I
theenk, vill many of my 
.colleagues. You, Dr. Squier?"
The other linguist shook his 
head. "The Celtic languages
are my specialty. But I suppose there's 
at least one Gothic
scholar in New York City. There's at 
least 
one of everyTtfing
else."
Jenkins shook bis head. "No, 
gentlemen, it's hardly worth
trying to dig one up on such 
a fantastic hypothesis. Guess
we have a new form of dementia here. 
Sorry 
I 
hauled 
you


12
L, SP. 
D
up; she acted so rational that I thought you might nd something. 
By the way, what is Gothic?"

Squier answered: "The language of the ancient Goths; it's 
more or less the common ancestor of English, Dutch, and 
Germam A complicated affai with about nine thousand useless 
inflections. We have only a partial knowledge of it."

The telephone rang again. When Jenkins had hung up, he 
swore. "More cases. They're coming in regularly now, 
They've got one who seems t6 be talking some kind of English 
dialect, and they're bringing him up here. Suppose you 
all stick around for a while."

They stood or sat on the floor. Lindsley argued with one 
of the Rockefeller psychiatrists about politics. The biologist 
thought Slidell and his so-called Union Party were a 
real menace, that they were xing for a dictatorship and 
were pretty good shots. The psychiatrist didn't; he admitted 
that Slidell was a fanatical demagogue and all that, but 
said that if the other parties would stop trying to cut each 
other's throats they could squash the would-be dictator 
overnight.

At last the hospital men brought in a slim, blond youth 
with a harassed expression. Jenkins rose. "I Understand 
you'rc "

The young man interrupted. He spoke a peculiar English, 
rather like a strong Irish brogue. "If thou're going to ask me 
who I be, like the rest of these knaves, my name is Sergeant 
Ronald Blake, of the theerd company of Noll Croomlc's 
foot, and a mor-r-rtal enemy of ahl Papists! Now are 
satisfied?"

Squier said, "Whose foot? I mean, how do you spell him?"

The youth frowned. "I'm no clerk, but I bethink 
'ds C-r-o-m-w-e-l-1, Croomle."

Lindsley spokeup, "What year is it?"

"Certainly, 'tis the year of our Lord sixteen forty-eight." 
The scientists looked at one another.

Jenkins said, "We seem to be getting somewhere, but I'm 
not sure just where. Young man, suppose you tell us just 
what happened."

"Well, I had gone home on leave, and my wife asked me to 
go down to the butcher's, and I had just toorned on the main 
street o' the village when I spied my old friend Hawks. 
'Hoy, Ronald,' he says, 'how's the brave soldyer lad? And 
is't true thou Wert as Naseby?' So I began to tell him ahl 
about the great battle, and how at the end the Cavaliers fled


THE ISOLINGU/kLS
13

like rabbits, with the long hair streamin' out behind " 
The voice from the past, if such it was, rolled on and on. 
Ser
ll

eant Blake was. evidendy a man who believed in getting in 
the details. 
Later, Lindsley and his son-in-law sat in the former's 
office. Tobacco smoke crawled bluely up through the rays 
of the desk lamp.

"Something's gone haywire," said the professor. "I can't 
believe this is an ordinary form .of insanity, or any extraordinary 
form, either. How can you explain how Mike Watrous, 
package dispatcher at a department store, a young man of 
little learning and few talents, not only g. ets the idea that he's 
a sergeant in the Parliamentary army m the English Civil 
War, but also acquires a complete biography, personality, 
.and accent to go with it? How many literate people, let 
alone those of Mike' background and tastes, know that Oliver 
Cromwell pronouficed his name 'Croornle'?' In most cases 
of this kind the victim thinks he's Napoleon or Julius Cesar, 
but after the delusion has come on he doesn't know any more 
about Napoleon or Cesar, really, than he did before."

Lamarque shrugged. "Any other hypothesis I can think of 
seems equally crazy, unless you're going to admit the transmigration 
of souls, or some such nonsense. Suppose I caught 
this disease, or whatever it is, and thought I was the first La-marque, 
who came over to Canada in 1746, or thereabouts. I 
wouldn't have the vaguest idea of how to go about talking 
eighteenth-century French."

Lindsley sighed. "And now they want us to drop everything 
we're doing and try to help them out. I wish they made 
these psychiatrists--and that includes our friend Jenkins--learn 
enough advanced biology so they wouldn't come running 
to us when' they get stumped. But I suppose we'll have 
to go through the motions, anyway. The worst of k is that I 
haven't the foggiest notion of where to start ."

Hans Rumpel was making a speech. He was in fine form. 
HIS Yorktown audience drank in his flood of words, his piercing 
yells, his windmill gestures. "Red plot .... Jewish assassins 
.... Destruction of civilizatior .." he screeched.

Hans faltered; his oratory died away to a mumble. HIS 
audience was mildly surprised to see him going through the 
motions of stroking an imaginary beard. Then his voice rose, 
again, this time not in English, but in mournful Hebrew. He 
was, in fact, reciting a Hebrew service, just as he--not Hans 
Rumpel, but Levi ben Eliezar, a respected rabbi of the 
Hasi

14
L. SPRAGUE DE CAMI


dim had been reciting it in a Krakow synagogue in the 
year 1784. The would-be saviors of civilization from the 
horrors of democratic government looked at one another. 
Was he another of those cases they had been reading about? . 
Hans stopped his chant, gaped at his audience, and fell on his 
knees. He was praying with mountain-moving fervor

Professor Lindsley emerged from behind the tarn of books 
and papers and threw his eye shade in the comer. "Pierre! 
Let's cut this damn nonsense and get some breakfast. It's 
seven o'clock."


cestral memory in rats might be worth following up.'?

Lindsley frowned. "Something you said the day before 
yesterday gave me an idea, but it popped out of my mind. 
like a watermelon seed, before I could grab it. I've been trying 
to think of it ever since. Must be getting old."

Later, Lamarque made a face. "With all the advances in 
our modem civilization, nobody has yet found how to make 
a drug store serve good coffee. Oh, remind me to wire Quebec 
and tell the folks the Christmas dinner is off. What's the 
latest from Jenkins?"

"More of the same. At the present rate every hospital in 
Nw York wLll be full in a couple of days, and all the medicos 
in town are running around in circles, and the psychiatrists 
are just dithering. Bill says they're fairly sure it isn't 
infectious, from what case histories they've been able to 
trace. And we aren't any further than when we started "

Sunday, in the new church on Tremont Avenue, the 
Bomx, H. Perkins rolled his eyes around so that he could see 
the congregation. Pretty miserable showing. Why had the 
vestry wanted to build this church, anyway? He'd heard a 
lot about the "return to religion" since 1950, but they didn't 
seem to-be returning to bis denomination. Such a worried-looking 
lot, too! Between the threat of a dictatorship by that 
bellowing mounteback, Slidell, and the strange plague of insanity, 
he didn't wonder. What would happen if Slidell got 
in?

H. Perkins passed down the aisle with his most seraphic 
.expression. The "plate"--a most tmplatelike object, when 
you thought of it--was coming, toward him again, giving 
forth a pleasant clink as each corn went into it. He reached 
over and took it from Mrs. Dinwiddie--and it was as thoulz5


THE ISOLING'UALS
15


meek H. Perkins had never been. He, Joshua Hardy, had 
been standing on a heaving deck yelling to the verminous 
ceew the commands from "Old Pegleg." They'd just sighted 
a Spaniard, and were cracking on sail td have a closer look. 
Might be the monthly treasure ship from Colon. And here 
he was, in the aisle of a church, surrounded by people in 
strange clothes, and holding a little velvet bag with two dark 
wood handles.

Josh was too impulsive to make a really top-notCh pirate. 
He shook the bag; to his ears came that sweetest of sounds, 
the clink of coin. Better grab the loot and run, boys. "Avast, 
ye lubbers," he roared. "Give me that!" He snatched the 
other little bag. "Ho, you over there, stand and deliver! 
Where in fifteen thousand bloody hells is my cutlass?" He 
raced down the aisle to cut off the fellowwith the remaining 
bag. Too late! The chase pounded out into the stxeet

Professor Lindsley slammed down his brief' case. "I'm 
about ready to give up and go in for the transmigration of 
souls after all," he said wrathfully to Lamarque, who was 
peering into a microscope. On the microscope slide was a 
bit of nerve tissue of one of the cases who had gotten himself 
killed by an automobile.

Lindsley continued: "They're going to start a concentration 
camp for new cases, as every institution for miles around 
is full. The roads leading out of New York are jammed; people 
are leaving. Glad we sent our women folks off to Quebec 
while you could still buy transportation. A driver of a Madison 
Avenue bus had a seizure and ran his bus into a hydrant 
between Fifty-third and Fifty-fourth Streets. What's new 
around here?"

"If you mean research, nothing. But the first case in the 
university faculty has happened."

"Huh? Tell me about it, quick!"

"Ir was in the lunch room. You know Calderwood, the 
mathematician? As sane and sober a man as you,il find. Well, 
at lunch to-day he iumped uP with a howl and began throwing 
things. Then he got into the kitchen and chased everybody 
out with a carving knife.

"But the best part happened next. Some of them watched 
him around a corner. He marched into the dining room, 
took off his pants, pulled a tablecloth off one of the tables, 
and wound it around his waist like a skirt. Then he stuck the 
knife through one of his garters.


16
L. SPRAGUE DE CAMP


"He must have been a sketch. Wish I'd been there to see. 
He strutted up and down for a while, apparently challenging 
the people, in his own lingo, to come back and fight.

"Well, our friend Squier heard the fuss and came up. 
Squier had a bright idea. He talked Gaelic to Calderwood, 
and he calmed down right away. Seems he wasn't Graham 
Calderwood any more, but the terrible Gavin MacTaggart, 
a wild Highlander looking for a MacDonald throat to cut. 
If he couldn't have a MacDonald, a Gordon would do. 
They got him rounded up eventually."

Lindsley took off his glasses and rubbed his red-rimmed 
eyes. "You're an unfeeling young devil. How'd you like to be 
a member of poor Graham's family? Did you see about my 
classes?"

"Yeah. One of your students in advanced biology is down 
too! Arne Holmgren. Know him? He thinks he's a Viking. 
When they took him away he was roaring some early. Scandinavian 
battle-song; at least, that's what I suppose it was. 
Say, hadn't you better get some sleep? You can't work efficiently 
if you don't, you know."

Lindsley started to snap back an irritated reply, but 
checked himself. "Maybe you're right, Pierre. When my normally 
saintly disposition starts to go sour there's something 
wrong. If anybody 'phones, tell 'em you don't know when 
I'll be back."

Chase Burge lay on his back with his eyes closed, enjoying 
the last moment of his doze. His conscience, which woke up 
a little more slowly than the rest of him, showed signs of 
stirring. He shouldn't have lost his temper yesterday in that 
argument.. But, damn it, Hobart was so rabid on the subject.

Then he sat up suddenly, the last vapors of sleep gone 
from his brain. How had he gotten into this strange room? 
He'd gone to bed perfectly sober. He'd been snatched! He 
sprang from the bed.

The door opened and a man in a dressing gown walked 
into the room. Chase tensed himself to spring; but, no, the 
man might have a gun. Better find out what it was all about.

"Morning, son," said the kidnaper. "I think one of my

shirts strayed into your bureau- "

"Where am I?" marled Chase.

"Where Oh, my Lord-" The gray-haired man looked at 
him with a horrified expression. "You've got it, too!"

"Got what? What did you kidnap me for? My folks haven't 
any dough to speak of!"


THE ISOLINGUALS
17


The other man composed himself with an effort. "Who do

you think you are? No, I mean that as a serious question."

"I'm Chase Burge, of' 351 Wet 55th Street? and I 
demon
strate automobiles for a living. Who are you?"

"I'm Chase Burge. Senior, that is. You're Chase Burge,

Junior, and I'm your father."

"No, you're not. My father's dead, and he didn't 
look
like you anyway. Is this a funny way of adopting me, or

what?"

Chase Burge, Senior, sat down with a perplexed expression.

"Let me explain. You just think you're me. But you're

really me--no, I mean you're you. You're your own son;

really; that is, you're the son of the man you think you are,

but who is really me. Oh dear, I wish I could explain! It's

'this way: ,,you're suffering, a .&lusion that you're your own

father

Chase interruped. "You sound like olnthing out of 
Gil
bert and Sullivan. If anybody has delusions around here it's

muk!" His hand had touched his chin. In a flash he was at

the mirror.

"Holy Moses, where did I get this D'Artagnan effect?

Have I been unconscious long?"

"Why, you've been wearing that goatee for five years.

Lots of the young men wear them."
.

Chase Burge, Junior, began to laugh hysterically. "Oh, 
Lord, I guess I am crazy! I know; this is a loony bin that 
I've been shut up in. I'm crazy, and so are you, unless you're 
one of the keepers."

Pierre Lamarque threw down his brief case. "I think I 
have something, but I'm not sure."

"Let's have it, quick!" barked Lindsley.

"Let me begin at the beginning. I was down at the hospital. 
looking over the new cases. They had one who they said was 
an Englishman of about 1300. I couldn't understand him 
at all, never realized how fast the language changes. He told

US W
'
'
'
' 

e were a pock of foals, which &dn t make much sense,

until a professor told me it meant 'pack of fools.'

"But the prize exhibit was one of the new cases from out

of townma Mrs. Rhodes of White Plains. They told me she

was--or had been--one of the outstanding uplifters of her 

community; during the revival of prohibition agitation

twelve years ago she was one of the leading lights in the

movement.

"Well, you ought to see her now! She chatters in 
Renais

L. Sv.a. v, Cv


sance Italian, and slinks around with a snaky' glide you 
wodn't believe poible for a lady prohibido her 
fogies. She'd made a dead set for e doctom e 
place, unt they're sced to be one wi her. Says 
ena dea eo

"at gave me an idea, m I opped at the libry, and 
fod that there rely was such a person Elem dea 
Coeoffi." Lamque greed wickey. "She w ,a notorious 
smpet at the corn of Care rgia."

Lindsley polished h gla dowly. Lamarque ew 
meant an idea comg, and kept .

"IkIbegto see," said e older biologi 
"Fkst, the cases, when we catch em, act scared to death, 
but othee perfecdy sane, except at they've acquked 
the person of some one, re or agy, who ved before 
� m.

"Secoy, e pseudopche Mways an dividual who 
ht conceivably have been e case's ect ancestor, 
as e ce of the redcap over the Jersey Heights Term
who ought he w a Zu warrior and ied to use 
a avder's umbre as an agai. met the descent 
wod be dct to ace, as the case of Mrs. Rhodeseoffi, 
but you go ck enough generafio and you cod 
be o anybody's descendmt. In one casthat of e 
yog man who thought he was s pm ftherwe ow 
tylog rnship of e e d pseudopsyche 
for a fa.

"ky, at 1 some cases, and conceivably all, 
� e pseudopshe correon& to a person who reagy ved."

"Bu' objected Lamque, " they e real, how come the 
fa h't been noted before ts?"

"Hm-m-m. Weg, coider the ratio beeen rhe tot number 
of people who've 5ved the last couple of migeia 
and e nber who were proment enough to leave a s-torical 
record of thek dongs. You' see how a the 
chances are of g up any big shots.

"Fouhly, the average age of the pseudopche is 
arod thk. at doem't prove anhing by kse. Jerry 
Plomik's revisg the average to clude e late data now. 
But the age fies are much too closely grouped for a random 
disibution: no ch&e and hary any elderly 
people.

"Now su os'u su osethat the pseudopsyche is 
PP 1 PP . ,

a piece of ancesM memory that s gotten carried along n


THE ISOEINGUALS
19


the germ cells; like a piece of ultra-microscopic motion-pic-ture 
film, and suppose that something happens to substitute 
this carriedover memory for the case's real one. You'd think 
you're the ancestor whose memory you've been carrying 
around. For obvious reasons. It would end at a point before 
the time when the said ancestor's child from whom you're 
descended was conceived. Suppose we call the phenomenon 
genotropism. That's not a very good name, but it'll do until 
I thinkof, a better one.?'

Earnarque whistled. "I hope if it happens to me that I'll be 
one of my French ancestors and not one of my aboriginal 
ones. I might be sort of unmanageable as an Ojibway Indian. 
But say, won't this knock Weismann's theory into a Cocked 
hat?"

� "If it's c6.rrect, it'll do worse than that. I'll have to eat 
what I've been'ying for 'thirty years about Lamarkism's 
being a zombie among evolutionary theories. But remember, 
this idea o ours is still just an idea, and we haven't any positive 
evidence whatever yet. More than one scientist has 
been caught because he assumed that because a theory.of his 
might account for certain facts, it therefore was the explanation.

"Uh-huh, I get you. But now that we have your theory, 
what are we going to do with it?" 
"Damned if I know," said Lindsley, reaching for his pipe. 
The manager of the "Venus" looked gloomily at his audience, 
if you could call it that. Everybody xvho could 
scrape up the price of a fare was trying to get out of town, 
and the rest weren't spending much on entertainment. You 
didn't feel safe on the streets any more. Still, burlesque, was 
holding up better than any other form of entertainment; a 
lot of the movie places had closed. Then, too, a merciful 
providence had decreed that two of the "Venus'" biggest 
creditors should come down with the plague.

Betty Fiorelli was working up to the climax of her strip 
tease. A few more grinds and bumps, and more clothing had 
gone into the wings. He'd told her to give 'em the works.. 
The cops weren't likely to send an inspector around at a time 
like this. A faint "Ah-h-h!" from the audience. But what 
was the girl up to? Instead of sidling coyly into the wings, 
she was standing squarely facing the audience, and her rich 
voice rolled out in verse after sonorous verse of classic 
Greek, which was just that to her hearers.

Three minutes later the few strollers on 42nd Street


20
L. SPm D CaMt,

gaped incredulously at the sight of a tall and Well-made 
young woman, clad--precisely in a pair of high-heeled shoes, 
speeding like an arrow along the sidewalk, while after her 
panted the manager of the "Venus" and three stage hands. 
They knew not that they pursued, not Betty Fiorelli, but 
Thea Tisimides, the great poetess of Lemnos, whose contemporaries 
(of the Fifth Century B.C.) thought she surpassed 
even Sappho. ,

The fishy-eyed man was talking earnestly to Professor 
Lindsley: "O.K., but I think you scientific guys are nuts 
for not getting out while the getting's good. You can stay 
until we pull out the inner police cordon, and then out you 
go. There's no use keeping the cordon there when the 
gangs of iso---isolinguals have begun turning up all over New 
Joisey and Westchester. What does 'isolingual' mean, anyway?"

"It means they speak the same language. You can see 
how it is. A case speaks Anglo-Saxon, say. He wanders 
around until he runs into somebody else who speaks Anglo-Saxon, 
and they join up for purposes of offense and defense. 
Pretty soon you have a gang. Come in, Jerry. Dr. Plomik, 
Detective Inspector Monahan. Dr. Plotnik's been helpins us 
with the mathematical side of our research."

"You mean he's one of these lightning calculators?"

"Whoop! You'll insult him. He's a mathematical genius, 
which is something else."

The detective applied another match to his cigar. "Something's 
fishy about this whole business."

Plomik gave a sort of gurgle. "You're telling us?"

"No, sonny, I didn't just mean the .disease. The National 
Patriots have been showing all kinds of activity. We've been 
getting reports from the police all over the country. A lot 
of them have been filtering into New York, when everybody 
else is trying to get out, We've caught a few trying to get 
through the cordons. And the big bug who owns .'em, Sli-dell, 
has disappeared."

"What!" exclaimed Lindsley.

"Yeah. You ain't read about it in the papers, because they 
all been too busy with the plague. But it looks to me--it 
a
most looks--as if there might be a human origin to it."

"But how?" Plomik stopped.

"I dunno. Maybe they poisoned the water. Thought I'd 
take a little run down below the cordon and see if we


THE ISOLINGUALS
21

couldn't catch one of these tough babies that Slidel's been 
sending around to beat up people he don't like. Maybe we 
could find out why they ain't afraid of the p!ague. Like to 
come along?"

Plotnik stood up, almost upsetting his chair. "You get 
Pierre Lamarque to go instead of me; I just had an idea that'li 
take a little time to work out."

Snowflakes glided slantwise out of a gray Jaauary sky. 
"Better park here," said the detective, as LindSley swung his 
car' off Broadway at 72nd Street. "Won't do to go too far 
downtown: Look, there's another!"

Lindsley and Lamarque peered through the windows, and 
saw a hurrying figure slip into a doorway. There was something 
odd about the figure.

�
Lamarque. spo.ke: "He's wearing a football helmet!" 
"Huh?" said th� detective, blinking.. "Well, anywya s, we're

gonna takg a closer look at hs fancy h6adpiece. Got your 
guns, you two?" He slid out of the car, skidded a little on 
the snow, and steadied himself.

"Town's sure gorma get buried in snow, with nobody to 
remove it. Keep your eyes peeled for the isos."

The three marched abreast along the deserted street. 
Professor Lindsley almost stumbled over a body, half buried 
in the snow. He recognized a State trooper's uniform. He 
looked about, squinting against the snowflakes, and realized 
that the half dozen other darkish humps in the snow were 
also corpses. "Say, Monahan---"

"Sh-h! Want our friend to hear you? Now, ProfeSsor La-marque, 
you stand on this side of the doorway and tackle 
him in the legs when he comes out. I'll do the rest."

Lamarque had given up trying to explain that he Wasn't a 
full professor. Moreover, unless something was done about 
the plague soon, it looked as though he never 'would be 
a full professor. The university buildings were deserted 
save for a few dauntless scientists still trying to get at the 
cause and cure of the affliction.

"Remember," Monahan was whispering, "the foist guy 
that shows a sign of going nutty, one of the others taps him 
on the head, but genttelJke, see? We don't want no fractured-skulls." 
He flipped his blackjack up and down to illustrate 
"gentlelike."

The black outline of .a man, weaving slowly along the 
sidewalk, materialized out of the snowflakes. He came up to 
the aml in a pleading whine.


22
L. SP-c D Cv

"Naw, scram, you!" hissed the detective, flipping his blackjack 
suggestively.

The man scrammed.

Lindsley looked nervously up and down the street, and at 
the two younger men beside the doorway, Damn it, he'd 
been a fool to come! Guerrilla warfare was no occupation 
for a sixty-year-old biology professor. He'd pardy 
brought it on himself, by being the only man to present 
a plausible theory to the authorities---well, at least as plausible 
as any others. With ,New York City practically lost to 
civilized control they'd have listened to anybody. At the 
present rate, in another month New England and the Middle 
Adantic States would be a wilderness, inhabited solely by 
roving bands of isolinguals who baffled each other with 
clubs, rocks, and the loot of hardware stores.

Suppose some of them came alofig now? Thinking tear 
they had been translated by. magic into a strange and terrifying 
world, they were as dangerous as wild beasts. Lindsley 
wondered what it was like to shoot a man. And then the 
door opened and the man in the football helmet came out.

Lamarque tackled the fellow nearly below the knees. He 
got out one yell before the detective was all .over him, kneeling 
on his ribs and stuffing snow in his mouth. Then Mon-ahan 
yanked off the helmet and slapped the man's skull with 
his blackjack.

"Come on!" he mapped, getting up and dragging the 
body by the coat collar toward the car.

A cluster of figures loomed out of the semidarkn 
Lindsley counted six--no, seven, and felt in his pocket 
the pistol. The seven iust stared. Monahan brought out :: 
Pistol. The seven gave back apprehensively. Evidently 
.had painful experience-perhaps in the Baffle of Hex 
Square, when a National Guard detachment and a troop 
State police had scattered a horde of embattled isoling' ': 
only to be seized themselves, many of them, and start killing 
each other. '

One of the seven moke up in what sounded like a Slavonic 
tongue. The detecuve tried to smile sweetly. Can 
amderstand you," he said, waggin ,his head. The leader's 
sign was audible above the hiss of t-he falling flakes, and the 
seven trudged off.

The detectives stuffed their captive into the car. Lindsley 
let in the clutch slowly; the right rear wheel spun a 'few 
revolutions and then gripped the sn6w.


THE ISOLINGUALS
25

Monahan yelled in his ar, "Step on it, doc!"

Lindsley jumped and tried to comply. In the mirror he

had a glimpse of .people swarming out. of the doorway. A

submachine gun crackled; a hole the diameter of a finger 
ap
peared in the windshield, surrounded by 'a spider web of

cracks. Lindsley heard a gasp from the captive, and a stream

of profanity from Monahan. "They got our prisoner,


The car sl.ithered around the corner of West End and 
72nd. "Damn good thing this wasn't an old front-engined. 
car," the rasping voice continued. "They'd have let daylight 
into us sure. Bet the rear end looks like a gravel sizer. Take it 
easy, doc; they can't see to shoot more'na block or two."

Later Monahan said, ','Nope, the stiff didn't have no papers 
on hun, but I still' think he's a National Patriot. How you 
coming along with ihos helmets?" '

"All finished," replieff Lindsley. "I've been sanding over 
the analysts with' a club for twenty-four hours. The shielding 
inside the helmet was a lead-bismuth-antimony alloy, 
with traces of platinura and two of the rare metals. My son-in-law's 
gone out to wire the specifications to Albany and 
Washington."

"Hope it ain't too late. We better clear out to-night, before 

any more of us come down with the plague."

"There's still one telephone wire open," continued Linds-ley. 
"And the man I was talking to told me the first case 
ha been reported from San Francisco. A scrub lady started 
doing a hula. Must be a Polynesian sailor in her family tree 
sov.ewhere. I--ah "The voice trailed off. Professor Arthur 
Lindsley was asleep.

A lurch and the clash of metal on metal awoke him. "Hey, 
what.. "

The detective's heroic cursing left off. "You hurt? Guess 
we're all right. Hey, Joe, where the hell are we? Poughkeepsie? 
VVe're on our way to Albany, professor, or rather we 
�vas on our way before the truck pushed us into this here 
' lamppost. Guess it was a case driving, from the way he



weaved. Maybe I should 'a' tried to hunt up a 'plane." 
Lamarque's voice came out of the dark: "Looks as ff there's 
been another battle, from the corpses scattered .around. Will 
that left door still .open? Say, Monahan, don't you ever

sl "


eep.

"Yeah, I grab a litde now and then. Come on."

The drug store's shattered front gaped at them with a 
de

24
L. SP.Au D CAMP


feared air. Inside, the detective's flashlight dug a pallid clerk

out from behind the soda fountain. "Don't shoot, please!"

he quavered. "You're not isolinguals? A gang of 'em took

over the town yesterday, and then this evemng a bigger gang

came along and drove 'em out. I thought they'd all gone and

came down to open up shop, but some more came along just

now. Look, quick, there they are again!"

"Stand back there!" roared Monahan. The figure in the

doorway shouted something back, and the detective's pistol

went off.

"Quick, you guys, pile the--" But the two scientists and

the other cop were already furiously building a barricade

chairs and tables. A few stones sailed past their heads and

made beautiful crashes among the glassware.

Lindsley peered over the top of the upturned table. A

figure, wild in the moonlight, rose from the sidewalk and

raised a length of pipe or something. Lindsley fumbled for

his pistol. Where the devil was the safety catch on the thing?

He pulled the trigger. As his senses cleared after the flash

and report, he saw that the figure was still there. He gripped

the gun in both hands and tried again. The figure doubled

over and went fthup! in the slush.

Hours later Lamarque wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "I-2'

I drink another malted milk I'll get indigestion. What eLe

have you, Mr. Bloom?"

"Sorry, sir, but the isos cleaned out all the pies and bread

and things. And the gas is shut off, so I can't make any coffe.

It'll have to be sodas or nothing, unless you want to try some

cough drops."

"Ugh! Any luck on the 'phone, Joe?"

"Nope. Unless somebody finds us by .dark it'll be just

tough. They re wamng for that to rush u.

Unless somebody found them
There wouldn't be any

street lights to shoot by. And four pistols wouldn't stop

horde of isolinguals waiting out of sight around the coruers.

Darkness--no moon this time. The voices of the is 
wafted into the drug store. The leaders were evidently l 
ranguing their men. Then there was a full-throated yell, a. 
the slopping of many feet in the slush. Bloom, the clerk, �
carefully setting a row of bottles on the floor to use as rr

siles. If you didn't have a gun you had to use something. 
Lamarque's pistol cracked. "Got one!"

Then the fusillade. But they came on in a solid m: 
L'indsley thought, "These are really good, honest citizens In


THE 'ISOLINGUALS
25

shooting, except'for their malady." He realized that he had

been squeezing the trigger of an empty gun. How the devil

did you load the things? -He'd never get it figured out before

they swarmed in and finished them off. They were almost

the drug store 
now-
Monahan stopped his target practice to say, "Now why the

hell are they all running one way? What's that noise? If it's

a machine gun, boy, we're saved!"

Lindsley never imagined he'd find that implacable 
ham
mering the sweetest of sounds. The armored car skidded .to

a stop, and two football-helmeted soldiers jumped out.

Monahan turned to Lamarque. "What's that? Soery, but I

didn't get you. What? Hey/" He flung his arms around the'

young biologist in a bearlike hug. "Soldier! You got any

more helmets?"

Lamarqu's rffuttering rose to a frenzied shriek.

"Yeah, they're in the truck."
'

"What truck?"

"They were right behind us; ought to be along any

Yeah, here they come."

"Well, get one, quick! This guy's gone screwy like the

others["

XVhen the helmet had been forced on Lamarque's 
unwill
ing head, Monahan rubbed his shins. "Lord, professor, I

didn't know you was that strong. I guess the guy you toined

into never loined no Queensbury rules or nothing. But you

shouldn't have tried to bite me."

Lamarque was acutely embarrased. "I--I'm sorry. You

know I haven't any recollection of the past few minutes at

all, up to the time you put the helmet on me "

"'S all right; k wasn't your fault. Now let's find some of

the isos we winged and put helmets on them   "

Forty-eight 
hours later, Lindsley rubbed his eyes. "What do 
you mean by waking me up at this time of day, you young 
scoundrel? Oh, the paper. What's the news, quick?"

Lamarque seated himself on the bed with his slighdy 
satanic grin. "You guessed right. They sent the army down 
to surround the area we figured the radiations were coming 
from, or rather that Plomik figured they were coming from 
by finding the mass center of the locations of-the cases

ported. They were all wearing our cute little helmets, so the 
radiations didn't affect them.

"When they closed in and started searching houses they 
rounded up several thousand National Patriots. There was a


26
L. SP' D


little shooting, but most of the N.P.'s surrendered quiedy 
enough when they saw what they were up against.

"The military located the cause of the whole works .in an 
Old house on Christopher Street. The place was full of radio 
apparatus from cellar to roof. They found Slidell himself, 
and his master mind, a Dr. Falk, whom nobody ever heard 
of, but who modes-dy describes himself as the greatest scientist 
of the age. Maybe he's right.

"This Falk got scared when he saw bayonets pointed at 
his stomach, and let out the whole story.. Seems he found a 
complicated combination of harmonies on a long radio 
wave that would work this ancestral-memory switch, and 
he and Slidell figured to disorganize the whole country with 
it. And when his broadcasting set was turned off and everybody 
became himself again, we'd find Slidell installed as 
dictator and the N.P.'s running everything, Of course, in 
the meantime they'd be wearing the helmets and would be 
shielded from the radiations.

"The army turned the thing off right away, and all our 
medieval knights and yeomen are now ordinary citizens, and 
busy picking up the pieces. Slideil, of course, made a speech. 
Too bad there wasn't a stenographer there to record it. I 
suppose he and Falk will be shot for murder, treason, and 
every other crime on the books, though t think they could 
plead insanity with some justice.

"Oh, yes, you're now the head of the department, and I'm 
a full professor. Also, we're famous, and are about to be intensively 
photographed and interviewed."

Lindsley scratched his diminutive beard. "Seems to me, 
Pierre, that we're getting'away with murder. Plotnik really 
figured out the source of those radiations, and Monahan had 
the idea of suspecting the N.p.'s and setting out to catch one."

"Don't worry about them. They're getting their share of 
the glory."

"I suppose so. But right now what I want is a vacation 
from all scientific thought."


'by Lzs/ DEL REY


Del Rey hails from a Midwest farm, where be was christened 
Ramdn Alvarez del Rey. No more dogmatic or contentious 
man exists on the face of the earth. In person be is forceul 
cynical and profane: but the real inner del Rey emerges in 
such atmospheric poetic stories as the one you are about to 
read.


TODAY, nc a green and lovely world, here in the mightiest 
of human ckies, the last of the human race is dying. And we 
of Man's creatiori ar left to mourn his passing, and to worship 
the memory of lan, who controlled all..that he ]mew 
save only himself.

I am old, as my people go, yet my blood is still young and 
my life may go on for untold ages yet, if what this last of 
Men has told is true. And that also is Man's work, even as 
we and the Ape-People are his work in the last analysis. We 
of the Dog-People are old, and have lived a long time with 
Man. And yet, but for Roger Stren, we might still be baying 
at the moon and scratching the fleas from our hides, or lying 
at the ruins of Man's empire in dull wonder at his passing.

There are earlier records of .dogs who mouthed clumsily 
a few Man words, but Hungor was the pet of Roger Stten, 
and in the labored efforts at speech, he saw an ideal and a 
life work. The operation on Hungor's throat and mouth, 
which made Man-speech more nearly possible was comparatively 
simple. The search for other "talking" dogs was 
harder.

But he found five besides Hungor, and with this small 
start he began. Selection and breeding, surgery and training, 
gland implantation and X-ray mutation were his methods, 
and he made steady progress. At first money was a problem, 
but his pets soon drew attention' and commanded high 
prices.

When he died, the original six had become thousands, 
and he had watched over the raising of twenty generations 
of dogs. A generation of my kind then took only three years. 
He had seen his small back-yard pen develop into a huge 
institution, with a hundred followers and students, and had 
27


28
LESTER DEI, RE�

found the world eager for his success. Above all, he had seen 
tail-wagging give place to limited speech in that short time.

The movement fie had started continued. At the end of two 
thousand years, we had a place beside Man in his work that 
would have been inconceivable to Roger Stren himself. We 
had our schools, our houses, our work with Man, and a society 
of our own. Even our independence, when we wanted 
it. And our life span was not fourteen, but fifty or more

Man, too, had traveled a long way. The stars were almost 
within his grasp. The barren moon-had been his for 
centuries. Mars and Venus lay beckoning, and he had reached 
them twice, but not to return. That lay close at hand. 
most, Man had conquered the universe.

But he had not conquered himself. There had been many 
setbacks to his progress because he had to go out and kill the 
others of his kind. And now, the memory from his past 
called again, and he went out in battle against himself. Ckies 
crumbled to dust, the plains to the south became barren des-errs 
again, Chicago lay covered in a green mist. That death 
killed slowly, so that Man fled from the city and died, leaving 
it an empty-place. The mist hung there, clinging days, 
months, years--after Man had ceased-to be.

I; too, went out to war, driving a plane built for my people, 
over the cities of the Rising Sun Empire. The tiny atomic 
bombs fell from my ship on houses, on farms, on all that was 
Man's, who had made my race what it was. For my Men told 
me I must fight.

Somehow, I was not killed. And after the last Great Drive, 
when half of Man was already dead, I gathered my people 
about me and we followed to the north, where some of 
my Men had turned to find a sanctuary from the war. Of 
Man's work, three cities still stood--wrapped in the green 
mist, and useless. And Man huddled around little fires and 
hid himself in the forest, hunting his food in small clam. Yet 
hardly a year of the war had passed.

For a time, the Men and my people lived in peace, planning 
to rebuild what had been, oncen-the war finally ceased. Then 
came the Plague. The anti-toxin which had been developed 
was ineffective as the Plague increased in its virulency. It 
spread over land and sea, gripped Man who had invented it, 
and killed him. It was like a strong dose of strychnine, leaving 
Man to .die in violent cramps and retchings.


THE F.ITHFUL
' 29


For a brief time, Man united against it, but there was no 
control. Remorselessly it spread, even into the little settlement 
they, had founded-in the north. And I watched in sorrow 
as my Men around me were seized with its 'agony. Then 
we of the Dog-People'were left alone in a shattered world 
from whence Man had vanished. For weeks we labored 
at the little radio we could operate, but there was no 
swer; and we knew that Man was dead.

There was little we could do. We had to forage our food 
as'of old, and cultivate our crops in such small way as our 
somewhat modified forepaws permitted. And the barren 
north country was not suited to us.

I gathered my scattered tribes about me, and we began 
the long trek south. We moved from season to season, stop?ing 
to plint our food in the spring, hunting in the fall. As 
our sleds grew' old and broke down, we could not replace 
them, and our ravel became even slower. Sometimes we 
came upbn our kind in smaller packs. Most of them had 
gone back to savagery, and these we had to mold to us by 
force. But little by lit-de, growing in size, we drew south. We 
sought Men; for two hundred thousand years we of the Dog-People 
had lived with and for Man.

In the wilds of what had once been Washington Stase we 
came upon another group who had not fallen back to the 
law of tooth and fang. They had horses to work for them, 
even crude harnesses and machines which they could operate. 
There we stayed for some ten years, setting up a government 
and building ourselves a crUde city. Where Man had his 
hands, we had to invent what could be used with our poor 
feet and our teeth. But we had found a sort of security, and 
had even acquired some of Man's books by which we could 
teach our young.

Then into our valley came a clan of our people, moving 
west, who told us they had heard that one of our tribes 
sought refuge and provender in a mighty city of great houses 
lying by a lake in the east. I could only guess that it was 
Chicago. Of the green mist they had not heard---only that 
life was possible ttere.

Around our fires that night we .decided that if the city 
were habkable, there would be homes and machines .designed 
for us. And it might be there were Men, and the 
chance to bring up our young in the heritage which was their 
birth-right. For weeks we labored in preparing ourselves for


30

LEER VEL IY


the long march ro Chicago. We loaded our supplies in

our crude carts, hitched.our animals to them, and began the

eastward trip.

It was nearing winter when wc camped outside-the ciw,

still mighty and imposing. In the sixty years of irs desertion,

nothing had perished that we could see; the fountains to

the west were still playing, run by automatic engines.

We advanced upon the others in the dark, quiedy, They

were living in a great square, littered with filth, and we noted

that they had not even fire left from civilization. It was a

savage fight, while it lasted, with no quarter given nor asked.

But they had sunk too far, in the lazy shelter of Man's city,

and the clan was not as large as we had heard. By the time

the'sun rose there was not one of them but had been killed

or impris?ned until we could train them to our ways. The

ancient cty was ours, the green mist gone after all those

years.

Around us were abundant provisions, the food factories

which I knew how to run, the machines that Man had made

to fit our needs, the houses in which we could dwell,

powe drawn from the bursting core of the atom which

needed only the flick of a switch to start. Even without

hands, we could live here in peace and security for ages. 
Per
haps here my dreams of adapting our feet to handle Man's

tools and doing his work were p.ossible, even if no Men were

found.

We cleared the muck from the city and moved into

Greater South Chicago, where our people hadhad their

section of the city. I, and a few of the elders who had been

taught by their fathers in the ways of Man, set up the old

regime, and started the great water and light machines. We

had returned to a life of certainty.

And four weeks later, one of my lieutenants brought Paul

Kenyon before me. Man! Real and alive, after all this time!

He smiled, and I motioned my eager people away.

"I saw your lights," he smiled. "I thought at first some men

had come back, but that is not to be; but civilization still has

its followers, evidently, so I asked one of you to take me to

the leader. Greetings from all that is left of Man!"

"Greetings," I gasped. It was like seeing the return of the

gods. My 'breath was choked; a great peace and fulfillment

surged over me. "Greetings, and the blessings of your God. I

had no hope of seeing Man again."

He shook his
"I am the last. For fifty years I have


TH. FAITHFUL
31


been searching for men--but there are none. Well, you have 
done well. I should like to live among you, work with you--when 
I can. I survived the iPlague somehow, but it comes 
on me yet, more often now, and I can't move nor care for 
myself then. That is why I have come to you.

"Funny." He paused. "I'seem to recognize you. Hungor 
Beowulf, XIV? I am Paul Kenyon. Perhaps you remember 
me? No? Well, it was a long time, and you were young. But 
that 'white streak under the eye still shows." A greater satisfaction 
came to me that he remembered me.

Now one had come among us with hands, and he was of 
great help. But most of all, he was of the old Men, and gave 
point to ou, working. But often, as he had said, the old sickness 
came over him, and he lay in violent convulsions, from 
which he was weak for days. We learned to care for him, 
when he needed it, even as we learn, ed to fit our society to 
his presence. And at last, he came to me with a suggestion.

"Hungor," he said, "if you had one wish, what would it 
be?"

"The return of Man. The old order, where we could 
work together. You know as well as I how much we need 
Man."

He grinned crookedly. "Now, it seems, man needs yon 
more. But if that were denied, what next?"

"Hands," I said. "I dream of them at night and plan for 
them by day, but I will never see them."

"Maybe you will, Hungor. Haven't you ever wondered 
why you go on living, twice normal age, in the prime of 
your life? Have you never wondered how-I have withstood 
the Plague which still runs in my blood, and how I still seem 
only in my thirties, though nearly seventy years have passed 
since a man has been born?"

"Sometimes." I answered. "I have no time for wonder, 
now, and when I do-- Man is the only answer I have."

"A good answer," he said. "Yes, Hungor, Man is the answer. 
That is why I remember you. Three years before the 
war, when you were just reaching maturity, you came into 
my laboratory. Do you remember?"

"The experiment," I said. "That is why you remember 
me?"

"Yes, the experiment. I altered your glands somewhat, implanted 
certain tissues into your body, as I lad done to myself. 
I was seeking the secret of immortality. Though there 
was no reaction at the time, it worked, and I don't know


32
Lvxrv. R vvm RzY


how much longer we may live--or you may; it helped me resist 
the Plague, but did not overcome it."

So that was the answer. He stood staring at me a long time. 
"Yes, unknowingly, I saved you to carry-on man 
future for him. But we were talking of hands.

"As you know, there is a great continent to the east of 
the Americas, called Africa. But did you know man was 
working there on. the great apes, as he was working here on 
your people? We never made as much progress with them 
as with you. We started too late. Yet they spoke a simple 
language and served for common work. And we changed 
their hands so the thumb and fingers opposed, as do minel 
There, Hungor, are your hands."

Now Paul Kenyon and I laid plans carefully. Out in the 
hangars of the city there were aircraft designed for my people's 
use; heretofore I had seen no need of using them. The 
planes were in good condition, we found on examination, 
and my early training came back to me as I took the first ship 
up. They carried fuel to circle the globe ten times, and out in 
the lake the big fuel tanks could be drawn on when 
needed.

Together, though he did most of the mechanical work between 
spells of sickness, we stripped the planes of all their 
war equipment. Of the six hundred planes, only two were 
useless, and the rest would serve to carry some two thousand 
passengers in addition to the pilots. If the apes had reverted 
to.complete savagery, we were equipped with tanks of 
anaesthetic gas by. which we could overcome them and strap 
them in the planes for the return. In the houses around us, 
we built accommodations for them strong enough to hold 
them by force, but designed for their comfort if they were 
peaceable.

At first, I had planned to lead the expedition. But Paul 
Kenyon pointed out that they would be less likely to respond 
to ns than to him. "After all," he said, "ment educated them 
and cared for them, and'they probably remember us 'dimly. 
But your people they know only as the wild dogs who are 
their enemies. I can go out and contact their leaders, guarded 
of course by your people. But otherwise, it might mean 
bat

Each day I took up a few of our younger ones in the 
planes and taught them to handle the controls. As they were 
taught, they began the instruction of others. It was a task 
which took months to finish, but my people knew the need


THE FAITHFUL
33


of hands as well as I; any faint hope was well worth trying.

It was late spring when the expedition set out. I could follow 
their progress by meansOf television, but could work 
the controls only with difficulty. Kenyon, of course, was 
working the controls at the other end, when he was able.

They met with a storm over the Atlantic Ocean, and three 
of the ships went down. But under the direction of my lieutenant 
and Kenyon the rest weathered the storm. They 
landed near the ruins of Capetown, but found no trace of 
the Ape-People. Then began weeks of scouting over the jungles 
and plains. They saw apes, but on capturing a few they 
found them only the primitive creatures which nature, had 
developed.

It was by 'accident they finally met with success. Camp 
had been made near a waterfall.for the night, and fires had 
been lit to guard against the savage beasts which roamed the 
land. Kenyon was in one of his rare m'oments of good health. 
The telecaster had been set up in a tent near the outskirts of 
the camp, and he was broadcasting a complete account of 
the day. Then, abrupdy, over the head of the Man was raised 
a rough and shaggy face.

He must have seen the shadow, for he started to turn 
sharply, then caught himself and moved slowly around. 
Fac
. ing him was one of the apes. He stood there silently, watching 
the ape, not knowing whether it was savage or well-disposed. 
It, too, hesitated; then it advanced.

"Man--Man," it mouthed. "You came back. Where were 
you? I am Tolemy, and I saw you, and I came."

"Tolemy," said Kenyon, smiling. "It is good to see you, 
Tolemy. Sit down; let us-talk. I am glad to see you. Ah, Tol-emy, 
you look old; were your father and mother raised by 
man?"

"I am eighty years, I think. It is hard to know. I was raised 
by Man long ago. And now I am old; my people say I grow 
too old to lead. They do not want me to come to you, but I 
know Man. He was good to me. And he had coffee and 
cigarettes."

"I have coffee and cigarettes, Tolemy." Kenyon smiled. 
"Wait, I will get them. And your people, is not life hard 
among them in the jungle? Would you like to go back with 
me?" 

"Yes, hard among us. I want to go back with you. Are you 
many here?" 
"No, Tolemy." He set the coffee and cigarettes before


34
Lzsx DEL REY


the ape, who drank eagerly and lit the smoke gingerly 
from a fire. "No, but I have friends with me. You must 
bring your people here, and let us get to be friends. Are 
there many of you?"

"Yes. Ten times we make ten tens--a thousand of us, 
almost. We are all that was left in the city of Man after the 
great fight. A Man freed us, and I led my people away, and 
we lived here in the jungle. They wanted to be in small tribes, 
but I made them one, and we are safe. Food is hard to find."

"We have much food in a big city, Tolemy, and friends 
who will help you, if you work for them. You remember the 
Dog-People, don't you? And you would work with them as 
with man if they treated you as man treated you, and fed 
you, and taught your people?"

"Dogs? I remember the Man-dogs. They were good. But 
here the dogs are bad. I smelled dog here; it was not like the 
dog we smell each day, and my nose was not sure. I will 
work with Man-dogs, but my people will be slow to learn 
them?

Later telecasts showed rapid progress. I saw the apes come 
in by twos and threes and meet Paul Kenyon, who gave 
them food, and introduced my people to them. This was 
slow, but as some began to lose their fear of us, others were 
easier to train..Only a few broke away and would not come.

Cigarettes that Man was fond of--but which my people 
never used--were a help, since, they learned to smoke with 
great readiness.

It was months before they returned. When they came there 
were over nine hundred of the Ape-People with them, and 
Paul and Tolemy had begun their education. Our first job 
was a careful medical examination of Tolemy, but k showed 
him in good health, and with much of the vigor of a younger 
ape. Man had been lengtherfing the ages of his kind, as it had 
ours, and he was evidendy a complete success.

Now they have been among us three years, and during that 
time we have taught them to use their hands at our instructions. 
Overhead the great monorail cars are running, and the 
factories have started to work again. They are 5ulck to 
learn, with a curiosity that makes them eager for new 
knowledge. And they are thriving and multiplying here..We 
need no longer bewail the lack of hands; perhaps, in time to 
come, with their help, we can change our forepaws further, 
and learn to walk on two legs, as did Man.

Today I have come back from the bed of Paul Kenyon.


THE AITHFUL

We are often together now--perhaps I should include the 
faithful Tolemy--when he can talk, and araong us there has 
grown a great friendsh�. I laid certain plans before him today 
for adapting the apes mentally and physically until they 
are men. Nature did it with an ape-like brute once; why can 
we not do t with the Ape-People now? The Earth would he 
peopled again, science would rediscover the stars, and Man 
v/ould have a foster child in his own likeness.

�Ahd'-we of the Dog-People have followed Man for two 
hundred, thousand years. That is too long to change. Of all 
Earth's creatures, the Dog-People alone have followed Man 
thus. My people cannot lead now. No dog was every 
com
plete without ,the companionship of Man. The Ape-People 
� will be Men.

It is a pleasant dream, surely not an impossible one.

Kenyon sm/led as I spoke to him, an.d 'cautioned me in the 
iesting way he uses when most serious, not to make them 
too much like Man, lest another Plague destroy them. Well, 
we can guard against that. I think he, too, had a dream of 
Man reborn, for there was a hint of tears in bas eyes, and he 
seemedepleased with me.

Ther is but little to please him now, alone among us,

wracked by pain, waiting the slow death he knows mus 
come. The old trouble has grown worse, and the Plague has 
settled harder on hhn.

All we can do is give him sedatives to ease the pain now, 
though Tolemy and I have isolated the Plague we found in 
h. is blood. It seems a form of ch61era, and with that information, 
we have done some work. Thc old Plague serum offers 
a clue, too. Some of our serums have seemed to ease the 
spells a little, but they have not stopped them.

It is a faint chance. I have not told him of our work, for 
only a stroke of luck will give ns success before he dies.

Man is dying. Here in our laboratory, Tolemy keeps repeating 
something; a prayer, I thlnl it is. Well, maybe the 
God whom he has lcarued from Man will be merciful, 
and grant us success.

Paul Kenyon is all that is left of the old world which 
Tolemy and I loved. He lies in the war.d, moaning in. agony, 
and dying. Sometimes he looks from his windows and sees 
the b. irds flying south; he gazes at them as if he would never 
see them again. Well, will he? Something he muttered once 
comes back to me:

"For no man knowcth--"


BLACK DESTROYER


-by A. E. v Voax


It's curious bov well some stories, as in the case of de Camp, 
seem to predict their authors' futur.e careers. Van Vogt, many 
of vbose stories revolved arouna magical nev systems of 
philosophy and healing, becavne an early conert to L. Ron 
Hubbard's Dianetics, and turned from writing to dianetic 
"auditing" in 190. In the eleven years be vas active in the 
field, bovever, be turned out some of the most brilliant and 
grotesquely compelling science fiction ever oritten. Here is 
the first.


starless night yielded reluctantly Ieto g

that crept uo'from his left. A vague, dull light, it was, that

ve no see of alproaching war th, no .c. ornfort,, n,thing 
gbaa cold, diffuse lightness, slowly reveaung a mgntmare 
landscape.

Black, jagged rock and black, unliving plain took form

a pale-red sun peered at last ,above, the gro 
around him, as Ir'was then Coeurl recognizea suaaemy mat

tesque horizon.

he was on familiar groun&

He stopped short. Tenseness flamed along his nerves. His

muscles pressed with. sudden, unrelenting strength against

his bones. His great forelegs--twice as long as his 
hindlegs-
twitched with a shuddering movement that arched every

razor-sharp claw. The thick tentacles that sprouted from his

shoulders ceased their weaving undulation, and grew taut

with anxious alertness.

Utterly appalled, he twisted his great cat head from side

to side, while the little hairlike tendrils that formed each

ear vibrated frantically, testing every vagrant breeze, every

throb in the ether.

But there was no response, no swift tingling along his 
in
tricate nervous system, not the faintest suggestion anywhere

of the presence'of the all-necessary id. Hopelessly, Coeurl

crouched, an enormous catlike figure silhouetted against the

dim reddish skyline, like a distorted etching of a black tiger

' on a black
in a

56


BLACK DESTROYER
37


He had known this' day would come. Through all the centuries 
of restless search, this..day had loomed ever nearer, 
blacker; more frightening-this inevitable .hour when he 
must return to the point where he began his systematic hunt 
in a world almost depleted of id-creatures.

The truth struck in waves like an endless, rhythmic ache at 
the seat of his ego. When he had started, there had been a 
few id-creatures in every hundred square miles, to be merci-lesly 
rooted out. Only too well Coeurl knew in this ultimate 
hour that he had missed none. There were no id-creatures 
left to eat. In all the hundreds of thousands of square miles 
that he had made his own by right of ruthless conquest--until 
no ne!ghboring coeurl dared to question his sover-eignty-there 
was no id to feed the otherwise immortal engine 
that was his body..

Square foot by square foot he had gone over it. And now 
--he recognized the knoll of rock jst ahead, and the black 
rock bridge that formed a queer, curling tunnel to his right. 
It was in that tunnel he had lain for days, waiting for the 
simple-minded, snakelike id-creature to come forth from its 
hole in the rock to bask in the sun--his first kill after he had 
realized the absolute necessity of organized extermination.

He licked his lips in brief gloa.tin.g m. emory of the moment 
his slavering jaws tore the wctun mto precious toothsome 
bits. But the dark fear of an idless universe swept the 
sweet remembrance from his consciousness, leaving only 
certainty of death.

He snarled audibly, a defiant, devilish sound that quavered 
on the ak, echoed and re-echoed among the rocks, and shuddered 
back along his nerves--instinctive and hellish expression 
of his will to live.

And then--abrupdy--it came.

He saw it emerge out of the distance on a long downward 
slant, a tiny glowing spot that grew enormously into a 
metal ball. The great shining globe hissed by above Coeurl, 
slowing visibly in quick deceleration. Ir sped over a black 
line of hills to the right, hovered almost motionless for a second, 
then sank down out of sight.

Coeurl exploded from his starded immobility. With tiger 
speed, he flowed down among the rocks. His round, black 
eyes burned with the horrible desire that was an agony 
within him. His ear tendrils vibrated a message of id in such 
tremendous quantities that his body felt sick with the pangs 
of his abnormal hunger.


38
A.E. va VoT

The little red sun was a crimson ball in the purple-black

heavens when he crept up from behind a mass of rock and

eci that fowled below him. ri'he stvery g o ,. p,

th ty
.sp   h. 
' consnicuous a amst mac

of its great sze, l?OKeu W,,.?ff..,. itras a le}sged alive-vast, 
fairylike reacn ox nuns. [

ness a dynamic quicence that, after a moment, made it 
stand out, dominating tn foreground. A massive, rock-ching 
ttfmg of metal, it red on a cracUe made by its

abruptly at the .ou s La a 72. ;�ed 'crea es who

. d in little roups near me urmantty ngn?.u

stoo.
of the ship. throat

yawn.u   .     a 
-a 
his brain rew dark wxm me
immediacy 
ox ms need; am*
first 
wild impulse to bur.st, forth in furioThg[;andeSm.t

these flimsy, helpless-lookang creatures wnu

the id-vibrauons.

Mists of memory stopped that mad rush when. it was ,still 
only electricity surging, through his ...cl:s. MoureTaltonna

orou lit iear m m 
.

his angeles, poisoning the reservoirs of his strength. He naa

time to see that the creatures wore things over their real

bodies, shimmering transl.arent on}aistmhat glittered in

� n e burnin flashes in me rays ox
�

stra g ,

,,,.. rw a;m ars when the

Other memories came suouciy: --,.

that read below was the living., breammgnear

c'ty
SP   in-le 
century oexore 
omoage 
of glory that aotvea m a 

ina guns whose wielders knew only .that.f.o.r the 
survivors
-tre would be 
an ever-narrowing supply otm.
It was the remembrance of those guns 
that held him there,. cringing in a wave of terror that blurred 
his reason. He saw himself smashed by balls of metal 
and 
burned by searing flame.
Came cunning--understanding, of 
the presence of these creatures. This, Coeurl reasoned for the 
first time, was a scientific expedition from another star. In 
the older days, the coeurls had thought of space travel, 
but disaster .came too swiftly for it ever to be more 
than a thought.
Scientist meant investigation, 
not destruction. Scientists in their way were fools. Bold with 
his knowledge, he
� to the o eh. He saw the 
creatures become aware ;T.g.d.l
ey tPed and stared. One, the smallest of tSe

group, detached a shining metal rod from a sheath, and heid

BICK DESTROYER
39

it casually in one hand. Coeurl loped on, shaken to his core

by the action; but it was too lat0 to turn back.

Commander Hal Morton heard little Gregory Kent, the 
chemist, laugh with the embarrassed half gurgle with which 
he invariably announced inner uncertainty. He saw Kent 
fingering the spindly metalite weapon.

Kent said: 'TII take no chances with anything as big as 
that."

Commander Morton allowed his own deep chuckle to 
echo along the communicators. "That," he grunted finally, 
"is one of the reasons why you're on this expedition, Kent--because 
you never leave anything to chance."

His chuckle trailed off into silence. Instinctively, as he 
watched .the/nonster approach them across that black rock 
plain, he moved forward .until he stood a little in advance of 
the others, hi huge form bulking the transparent metalite 
suit. The comments of the men pattered through the radio 
communicator into his ears:

"I'd hate to meet that baby on a dark night in an alley."

"Don't be silly. This is Obviously an intelligent creature. 
Probably a member of the ruling race."

"It looks like nothing else than a big cat, if you forget 
those tentacles sticking out from its shoulders, and make 
allowances for those monster forelegs."

"Its physical development," said a voice, which Morton 
recognized as that of Siedel, the psychologist, "presupposes 
an animal-like adaptation to surroundings, not an intellectual 
one. On the other hand, its coming to us like this is not the 
act of an animal but of a creature possessing a mental awarez' 
ness of our possible identity. Yon will notice that its movements 
are stiff, denoting caution, which suggests fear and 
consciousness of our weapons. I'd like to get a good look at 
the end of its tentacles. If they taper into handlike aPpendages 
that can really grip objects, then the conclusion would 
be inescapable that it is a descendant of the inhabitants of 
this city. It would be a great help if we could establish 
communication with it, even though appearances indicate 
that it has degenerated into a historyless primitive." 

Coeurl stopped when he was still ten feet from the foremost 
creature. The sense of id. was so overwhelming that his 
brain drifted to the ultimate verge of chaos. He felt as if his 
limbs were bathed in molten liquid; his very vision was not 
quite clear, as the sheer sensuality of his desire thundered 
through his being.


40
A.E. vas VoT

The men--all except the little one with the shining metal 
rod in his fingers--came closer. Coeurl saw that they were 
frankly and curiously examining him. Their bps were moving, 
and their voices beat in a monotonous, meaningless rhythm 
on his ear tendrils. At the same time he had the sense 
of waves of a much higher frequency--his own communication 
level---only it was a machinelike choking that .jarred 
his brain. With a .distinct effort to appear friendly, he b. ro.ad-cast 
his name from his ear tendrils, at the same time pointing 
at himself with one curving tentacle.

Gourlay, chief of communications, drawled: "I got a sort 
of static in my radio when he wiggled those hairs, Morton. 
Do you 
think-
"Looks very much like it," the leader answered the unfinished 
question. "That means a j.ob for you, Gourlay. If it 
speaks by means of radio waves, tt might not be altogether 
impossle that you can create some sort of television pie-ture 
of its vibrations, or teach him the Morse code.".

"Ah," said Siedel. "I was right. The tentacles each develop 
into seven strong fingers. Provided the nervous system

. is complicated enough, those fingers could, with training, 
operate any mach,me."

Morton said: I think we'd better go .in and have some 
lunch. Afterward, we've got to get busy. The material men 
can set up their machines and start gathering data on the 
planet's metal possibilities, and so on. The others can do a

ture and on the scientific development oI tins race, aha particularly 
what happened to wreck the civilization. On earth 
civilization after civilization crumbled, but always a new one 
sprang up in its dust. Why didn't that happen here? Any 
questions?"

"yes. What about pussy? Look, he wants to come in with


Commander Morton frowned, an action that emphasized 
the deep-space pallor of his face. "I wish there was some 
way we could take it in with us, without forcibly capturing 
it. Kent, what do you think?"

"I think we should first decide whether it's an it or a him, 
and call it one or the other. I'm in favor of him. As for taking 
him in with us---" The little chemist shook his head decisively. 
"Impossible. This atmosphere is twenty-eight percent 
chlorine. Our oxygen would be pure dynamite to his 
lungs."


D .ST OY 

The commander chuckled. "He doesn't believe at, apparently.'' 
He watched the eae moner follow the 
o men tough e gre door. The men kept an aous 
tance from hi en glced at Moron quiomgly. 
Moron waved h hand. "O.K. Open the second 6k 
md 1 h get a w of the ogen. That' ce h."

A moment later, he csed his amazement. "By Heaven, he 
doem't even notice e derence That means he hasn't 
y ls, or else e core is not what h lungs use. Let 
You bet he can go Smith, here's a ease house 
for a biologthars enough ff we're cef. We can -ways 
hme m. But What a metaboS!"

Smi, a , , bony chap with a long, moul face, 
said ' an ody forcef voice: " aH oavels, we've 
fod 6o gher fos 'of e. ose dependent on 
core, an8 e who need ogehe o elements that 
suppo combustion. I'm prepared to ake my reputation 
that no compcated orga cod ever adapt itself to 
both gas a mal way. At thought I should say 
here is an exemely advanced fora of life. is race long 
ago discovered ruths of biolo that we are jmt beginng 
to suspect. Moron, we musm't let h creae get away ff 
we can help it."

" h ae to get inside is any criterion," Commander 
Moron laughed, "then oc w be to get rid of


He moved to the lock with Coel and the o men. 
e automatic mache humed; and a few mut

they were ndg at the bosom of a series of elevators 
.. at led up toe vMg queers.

"Does that go up?" One of e men flicked a umb 
e dkection of e moner.

"Better send h up Mone, ff he'H go ."

Coel offered no objection, t he hed the door slam 
bed h; and the closed cage shot upward. He whkled 
with a savage snarl h reason klMg Mto chaosi Wi one 
leap, he poced at the dr. e metal bent der 
plunge, d the desperate pa maddened h. Now, he was 
apped aruM. He ashed at e metfl with Ms paws, 
bendMg it like so much t. He tore great bs loose wi h 
thick tentacles. The macery screeched; there were horrible 
jerks as the itless power ped the cage along h spite 
of projecting pieces of metal that scraped the outside was.


42
A.E. v Vox


And then the cage stopped, and he snatched off the rest of 
the door and hurtled into the corridor.

He waited there until Morton and the men came up with 
drawn weapons. "We're fools," Morton said. "We should 
have shown him how it works. He thought we'd double-crossed 
him."

He motioned to the monster, and saw the savage glow 
fade from the coal-black eyes as he opened and closed the' 
door with elaborate gestures to show the operation.

Coeurl ended the lesson by trotting into the large room to 
his right. He lay down on the rugged floor, and fought 
down the electric tautness of his nerves and muscles. A 
very fury of rage against himself for his fright consumed 
him. It seemed to his burning brain that he had lost the advantage 
of appearing a mild and harmless creature. His 
strength must have startled and dismayed them.

It meant greater danger in the task which he now knew he 
must accomplish: To kill everything in the ship, and take 
the machine back to their world in serach of unlimited id.

With unwinking eyes, Coeurl lay and watched the two 
men clearing away the loose rubble from the metal doorway 
of the huge old building. His whole body ached with 
the hunger of his cells for id. The craving tore through his 
palpitant muscles, and throbbed like a living thing in his 
brain. His every nerve quivered to be off after the men who 
had wandered into the city. One of them, he knew, had gone 
---alone.

The dragging minutes' fled; and still he restrained himself, 
still he lay there watching, aware that the men knew he 
watched. They floated a metal machine from the ship to the 
rock mass that blocked the great half-open door, under 
the direction of a third man. No flicker of their fingers escaped 
his fierce stare, and slowly, as the simplicity of the 
machinery became apparent to him, contempt grew upon 
him.

He knew what to expect finally, when the flame flared 
in incandescent violence and ate ravenously at the hard rock 
beneath. But in spite of his preknowledge, he deliberately 
jumped and snarled as if in fear, as that white heat burst 
forth. His ear tendrils caught the laughter of the men, their 
curious pleasure at his simulated dismay.

The door was released, and Morton came over and went 
inside with the third man. The latter shook his head. 
"It's a shambles. You can catch the drift of the stuff. 
Ob

-BLACK D,STROYER
43

' viously, they used atomic energy, but ... but it's in wheel

form. That's a peculiar development. In our science, atomic

energy brought in the nonwheel machine. It's .possible that

here they've progressed--urther to'a new type of wheal

mechanics. I hope their libraries are better preserved than

this, or we'll never know. What could have happened to a

civilization to make it vanish like this?"

A third voice broke through the communicators: "This is

Siedel. 'I heard your question, Pennons. Psychologically and

sociologically speaking, the only reason why a territory 
be
comes uninhabited is lack of food."

"But they're so advanced scientifically, why did,n't they

develop space fiyilg and go elsewhere for their foo 7'

� vxsutme Lester, interjected Morton. "I heard him 
ex
pounding some theory even before we landed."

The astronomet answered the first call, ",'I've still got to

verify all my facts, but this .desolate world is the only planet

revolving around that miserable red sun. There's nothing

else. No moon, not even a planetoid. And the nearest star

system is nine hundred light-years away.

"So tremendous would have been the problem of the 
rul


g race of this world, that in one jump they would not only 
ave.had to solve interplanetary but interstellar space traveling. 
When you consider how slow our own development was 
--first the moon, then Venus--each success leading to the 
next, and after centuries to the nearest stars; and last of all to 
the anti-accelerators that permitted galactic travel. Consider-lng 
all this, I maintain it would be impossible for any race to 
create such machines without practical experience. And, 
with the nearest star so far away, they had no incentive for 
the space adventuring that makes for experience."

Coeurl was trotting briskly over to another group. But 
now, in the driving appetite that consumed him, and in the 
frenzy of his high Scorn, he paid no attention to what/hey

y

ere.doing. Memories of past knowledge, jarred into activity 
what he had seen, flowed into his consciousness in an ever 
developing and more vivid stream.

From group to group he sped, a nervous dynamo--jumpy, 
sick with his awful hunger. A little car roiled up, 
stopping in front of him, and a formidable camera whirred 
as t took a picture of him. Over on a moUnd of rock, a gigantic 
telescope was rearing up toward the sky. Nearby, a 
disintegrating machine drilled its searing fire into an ever-deepening 
hole, doxm and down, straight dovn.


44
A.E. van VoaT


Coettrl's mind became a blur of things he watched with

half attention. And ever more imminent grew the moment 
when he knew he could no longer carry on the torture of 
acting. His brain strained with an irresistible impatience; 
his lody burned with the fury of his eagerness to be off 
after the man who had gone alone into the city.

He could stand it no longer. A green foam misted his 
mouth, maddening him, he saw that, for the bare moment, 
nobody was looking.

Like a shot from a gun, he was off. He floated along in 
greai, ghding leaps, a shadow among the shadows of the. 
rocks. In'a minute, the harsh terrain hid the spaceship and 
the two-legged beings.

Coeurl forgot the ship, forgot everything but his purpose, 
as if his brain had been wiped clear by a magic, memory-erasing 
brush. He circled widely, then raced into the city, 
along deserted streets, taking short cuts with the ease of familiarity, 
through gaping holes in time-weakened walls, 
through long corridors of moldering buildings. He slowed 
to a crouching lope as his ear tendrils caught the id vibrations.

Suddenly, he stopped and peered from a scatter of fallen 
rock. The man was standing at what must once have been a 
window, sending the glaring rays of his flashlight into the 
gloomy interior. The flashlight clicked off. The man, a 
heavy-set, powerful fellow, walked off with quick, alert 
steps. Coeurl didn't like that alertness. It presaged trouble; it 
meant lightning reaction to danger.

Coeurl waited till the human being had vanished around a 
corner, then he padded into the open. He was rtmning now, 
tremendously faster than a man could walk, because his plan. 
was clear in his brain. Like a wraith, he slipped down the 
next street, past a long block of buildings. He turned the first 
corner at top speed; and then, with dragging belly, crept 
into the haH-darkness between the building and a huge chunk 
of ddbris. The street ahead was barred by a solid line of 
loose rubble that made it like a valle3, ending in a narrow, 
bottlelike neck. The neck had its outlet just below Coeurl.

His ear tendrils caught the log-frequency waves of whis-ding. 
The sound throbbed through his being; and suddenly 
terror caught with icy fingers at his brain. The man would 
have a gun. Suppose he leveled one burst of atomic 
energy-one burst--before his own muscles could whip out in murder 
fury.


� BLACK DESTROYER
45

A little shower of rocks streamed past. And then the man

was beneath him. Coeurl reached out and struck a single

crushing blow at the shimmering transparent .headpiece of

the spacesuit. There was a tearing sound of metal and a

gushing of blood. The man doubled up as ff part of him had

been telescoped. For a moment, his bones and legs and 
mus
cles combined miraculously to keep him standing. Then he

crumpled with a metallic clank of his space armor.

.Fear Completely evaporated, Coeurl leaped out of hiding.

With ravenous speed, he smashed the metal and the body

within it to bits. Great chunks of metal, torn piecemeal from

the suit, sprayed the ground. Bones cracked. Flesh crunched.

It was simpl to tune in on .the vibrations of the id, and

.to create the violent chemical disorganization that freed it

from the 'crushed bone. The id' was, .Coeurl discovered,

mostly in the bone.
, 

He felt revived, almost reborn. Here was more food than 
he had had in the whole past year.

Three minutes, and it was over, and Coeurl was off like a 
thing fleeing dire danger. Cautiously, he approached the 
glistening globe from the opposite side to that by which he 
had left. The men were all busy at their tasks. Gliding 
noiselessly, Coeurl slipped unnoticed up to a group of men.


Morton stared down at the horror of tattered flesh, metal 
and blood on the rock at his feet, and felt a tightening in 
his throat that prevented speech. He heard Kent say:

"He would go alone, damn him!" The little chemist's 
voice held a sob imprisoned; and Morton remembered that 
Kent and Jarvey had chummed together for years in the way 
only two men can.

"The worst part of it is," shuddered one of the men, "it 
looks like a senseless murder. His body is spread out like 
little lumps of flattened jelly, but it seems to be all there. I'd 
almost wager that if we weighed everything here, there'd 
still be one hundred and seventy-five pounds by earth gravity. 
That'd be about one hundred and seventy pounds here;"

Smith broke in, his mournful face lined with gloom: "The 
killer attacked Jarvey, and then discovered his flesh was alien 
--uneatable. Just like our big eat. Wouldn't eat anything we 
set before him--" His words died out in sudden, queer silence. 
Then he said slowly: "Say, what about that creature?

e s big enough and strong enough to have done this with 
his own little paws."


46
.A. E. vas VOCT


Morton frowned. "It's a thought. After all, he's the only

living thing we've seen. We can't just execute him on suspicion, 
of course--"

"Besides," said one of the men, "he was never out of my 
sight."

Before Morton could speak, Siedel, the psychologist, 
snapped, "Positive about that?"

The man hesitated. "Maybe he. was for a few minutes. Fie 
was wandering around so much, looking at everything."

"Exactly," said Siedel with satisfaction. He turned to Morton. 
"You see, commander, I, too, had the impression that 
he was always around; and yet, thinking back over it, I find 
gaps. There were momentsprobably long minutes--when 
he was completely out of sight."

Morton's face was dark with thought, as Kent broke in 
fiercely: "I say, take no chances. Kill the brute on suspicion 
before he does any more damage."

Morton said slowly: "Korita, you've been wandering 
around with Cranessy and Van Horne. Do you think pussy 
is a descendant of the ruling class of this planet?"

The tall Japanese archeologist stared at the sky as if collecting 
his mind. "Commander Morton," he said finally, 
respectfully, "there is a mystery here. Take a look, all of 
you, at that majestic skyline. Notice the almost Gothic 
out
line of the architecture. In spite of the megalopolis which 
they created, these people were close to the soil. The 
build
ings are not simply ornamented. They are ornamental in 
themselves. Here is the equivalent of the Doric column, the 
Egyptian pyramid, the Gothic cathedral, growing out 
of the ground, earnest, big with destiny. If this lonely, desolate 
world can be regarded as a mother earth, then the land 
had a warm, a spiritual place in the hearts of the race.

"The effect is emphasized by the winding streets. Their 
machines prove they were mathematicians, but they were 
artists first; and so they did not create the geometrically designed 
cities of the ultra-sophisticated world metropo, lis. 
There is a genuine artistic abandon, a deep joyous emotion 
written in the curving and unmathematical arrangements of 
houses, buildings and avenues; a sense of intensity, of divine 
belief in an inner certainty. This is not a decadent, hoary-with-age 
civilization, but a young and vigorous culture, confident, 
strong with purpose.

"There it ended. Abruptly, as if at this point culture had 
its Battle of Tours, and began to collapse like the ancient


,BLACK DESTROYER
47

Mohammedan civilization. Or as if in one leap it spanned the 
centuries and entered the period of contending states. In the 
Chinese civilization that period .occupied 480-230 B.C., at 
the end of which the State of Tsin saw the beginning of the 
Chinese Empire. This phase Egypt experienced between 1780-1580 
B.C., of which the last century was the 'Hyksos'--unmentionable--time. 
The classical experienced it from 
Cheronea--338--and, at the pitch of horror, from the Grac-chiw133--to 
Actium--31 B.C. The West European Americans 
were devastated by it in the nineteenth and twentieth 
centuries, and modern historians agree that, nominally, we 
entered the same phase fifty years ago; though, of course, 
we have solved the problem.

' :'You may-ask, commander, vhat has all this to do with 
your question? My answer-is: there is no record of a 
culture entering abruptly into the period, of contending 
states. It is'always a slow development; and the first step as 
a merciless questioning of all that was once held sacred. Inner 
certainties cease to exist, are dissolved before the ruthless 
probings of scientific and analytic minds. The skeptic becomes 
the highest type of being.

"I say that this culture ended abruptly in its most flourishing 
age. The sociological effects of such a catastrophe would 
be a sudden vanishing of morals, a reversion to almost bestial 
criminality, unleavened by any sense of ideal, a callous indifference 
to death. If this . . . this pussy is a descendant of 
such a race, then he will be a cunning creature, a thief in the 
night, a cold-blooded murderer, who would cut his own 
brother's throat for gain."

"That's enough!" It was Kent's clipped voice. "Commander, 
I'm willing to act the r61e of executioner."

Smith interrupted sharply: "Listen, Morton, you're not 
going to kill that cat yet, even if he is guilty. He's a biological 
treasure house."

Kent and Smith were glaring angrily at each other. Morton 
frowned at them thoughtfully, then said: "Korita, I'm 
inclined to accept your theory as a working basis. But one 
question: Pussy comes from a period earlier than our own? 
That is, we are entering the highly civilized era of our cul-t-ere, 
while he became suddenly historyless in the most 'vigorous 
period of his. But it is possible that his culture is a later 
one on this planet than ours is in the galactic-wide system 
we have civilized?"

"Exactly. His be the middle of the tenth


A.E. vs. Vor


of his world; while ours is the end of the eighth sprung from 
earth, each o pounds the ten, of course, having been builded on the 
the ruins of the one before it."

"In that case, pussy would not know anything about the 
skepticism that made it possible for us to find him out so 
positively as a criminal and murderer?"

"No; it ould be literally magic to him."

Morton was smiling grimly. "Then I think you'll getyour 
wish, Smith. We'll let pussy live; and if there are any fatalities, 
now that we know him, it will be due to rank carelessness. 
There's just the chance, of course, that we're wrong. 
Like Siedel, I also have the impression that he was always 
around. But now--we can't leave poor Jarvey here like this. 
We'll put him in a coffin and bury him."

"No, we won't!" Kent barked. He flushed. "I beg you. r 
pardon, commander. I didn't mean it that way. I maintain 
pussy wanted something from that body. It looks to be all 
there, but something must be missing. I'm going to find out 
what, and pin this murder on him so that you'll have to believe 
it beyond the shadow of a doubt."


It was late night when Morton looked up from a book 
and saw Kent emerge through the door that led from the 
laboratories below.

Kent carried a large, flat bowl in his hands; his tired eyes 
flashed across at Morton, and he said in a weary, yet harsh, 
voice: "Now watch!"

He started toward Coeurl, who lay sprawled on the great 
rug, pretending to be asleep.

Morton stopped him. "Wait a minute, Kent. Any other 
time, I wouldn't question your actions, but you look ill; 
you're overwrought. What have you got there?"

Kent turned, and Morton saw that his first impression 
had been but a flashing glimpse of ,the truth. There were 
dark pouches under the little chemist s gray eyes--eyes that 
gazed feverishly from sunken cheeks in an ascetic face.

"I've found the missing element," Kent said. "It's phosphorus. 
There wasn't so much as a square millimeter of phosphorus 
left in Jarvey's bones. Every bit of it had been 
drained out--by what superchemistry I don't know. There 
are ways of getting phosphorus out of the human body. For 
instance, a quick way was what happened to the workman 
who helped build this ship. Remember he fell into fifteen


BLACK 'DESTROYER
49

tons of molten metalite--at least, so his relatives claimed--but 
the company wouldn't pay compensation until the metal-ite, 
on analysis, was found tO ;contain a high. percentage of 
phosphorus--"

"What about the' bowl of food?" somebody interrupted. 
Men were putting away magazines and books, looking up 
with interest.

"It's got organic phosphorus in it. He'll get the scent, or 
whatever it is that he uses instead of scent--"

"I think he gets the vibrations of things," G-outlay interjected 
lazily. "Sometimes, when he wiggles those tendrils, I 
get a distinct static on the radio. And then, again, there's 
no reaction, just as if he's moved higher or lower on the 
wave scale. H4 seems to control the vibrations at will."

Kent waited with obvious 'impatience until Gourlay's last 
word, then abruptly went on: "All righ. t,,then, when he gets 
the vibration of the phosphorus and teacts to it like an animal, 
then--Well, we can decide what we've proved by his 
reaction. Can I go ahead, Morton?"

"There are three things wrong with your' plan," Morton 
said. "In the first place, you seem to assume that he is only 
animal; you seem to have forgotten he may not be hungry 
after Jarvey; you seem to think that he will not be suspicious. 
But set the bowl down. His reaction may tell us something."

Coeutl stared with unblinking black eyes as the man set 
the bowl before him. His ear tendrils instantly caught the 
id-vibrations from the contents of the bowl--and he gave it 
not even a second glance.

He recognized this two-legged being as the one who had 
held the weapon that morning. Danger! With a snarl, he 
floated to his feet. He caught the bowl with the fingerlike 
.appendages at the end of one looping tentacle, and emptied 
ts contents into the face of Kent, who shrank back with a 
yell.

Explosively, Coeutl flung the bowl aside and snapped a 
hawser-thick tentacle around the cursing man's waist. He 
didn't bother with the gun that hung from Kent's belt. It 
was only a vibration gun, he sensed--atomic powered, but 
not an atomic disintegrator. He tossed the kicking Kent 
onto the nearest couch--and realized with a hiss of dismay 
that he should have disarmed the man.

Not that the gun was dangerous--but, as the man futi-ously 
wiped the gruel from his face with one hand, he


50
A.E. w Voar


reached with the other for his weapon. Coeurl crouched 
back as the gun was raised slowly and a white beam of flame 
was discharged at his massive head.

His ear tendrils hummed as they canceled the efforts of 
the vibration gun. His round, black eyes narrowed as he 
caught the movement of men reaching for their metalite

guns. Morton's voice lashed across the silence.

"Stop!"

Kent clicked off his weapon; and Coeurl crouched down, 
quivering with fury at this man who had forced him to reveal 
something of his power.

"Kent," said Morton coldly, "you're not the type to lose 
your head. You deliberately tried to kill pussy, knowing that 
the majority of us are in favor of keeping him alive. You 
know what our rule is: If anyone objects to my decisions, 
he must say so at the time. If the majority object, my decisions 
are overruled. In this case, no one but you objected, 
and, therefore, your action in taking the law into your own 
hands is most reprehensible, and automatically debars you 
from voting for a year."

Kent stared grimly at the circle of faces. "Korka was 
right when he said ours was a highly civili.ed age. It's decadent.'' 
Passion flamed harshly in his voice. "My God, isn't 
there a man here who can see the horror of the situation? 
Jarvey dead only a few hours, and this creature, whom we 
all know to be guilty, lying there unchained, planning his 
next murder; and the victim is right here in this room. What 
kind of men are we---fools, cynics, ghoulsor is it that our 
civilization is so steeped in reason that we can contemplate a 
murderer sympathetically?"

He fixed brooding eyes on Coeurl. "You were right, Morton, 
that's no animal. That's a devil from the deepest hell of 
this forgotten planet, whirling its solitary way around a dying


"Don't go melodramatic on us," Morton said. "Your analysis 
is all wrong, so far as I am concerned. We're not ghouls 
or cynics; we're simply scientists, and pussy here is going 
to be studied. Now that we suspect him, we doubt his 
ability to trap any of us. One against a hundred hasn't a 
chance." He glanced around. "Do I speak for all of us?"

"Not for me, commander!" It was Smith who spoke, and, 
as Morton stared in amazement, he continued: "In the excitement 
and momentary confusion, no one seems to have 
noticed that when Kent fired his vibration gun, the beam


BLACK'DESTROYER 51

hit this creature squarely on his cat head--and dicln' hurt 
him."

Morton's amazed glance went from Smith 'to' Coenrl, and 
back to Smith again.. "Are you Certain it hit him? As you 
say, it all happened so swifdy.---when pussy wasn't hurt I 
simply assumed that Kent had missed him."

"He hit him in the face," Smith said positively. "A vibration 
.g.un, of course, can't even kill a man right away--but it 
can injure him. There's no sign of injury on pussy, though, 
not even a singed hair."

"Perhaps his skin is a good insulation againt heat of any 
kind." -"Perhaps. 
But in view of our uncertainty, I think w should 
� lock him-up in the cage."

While MoRon frowned darkly in thought, Kent spoke up. 
"Now you're tlking sense, Smith." � .

Moron asked: "Then you would be satisfied, Kent, if we 
put him in the cage?"

Kent considered, finally: "Yes. If four inches of micro-steel 
can't hold him, we'd better give him the ship."

Coeurl followed the men as they went out into the corridor. 
He trotted docilely along as Morton unmistakably motioned 
him through a door he had not hitherto seen. He 
found himself in a square, solid metal room. The door 
clanged metallically behind him; he felt the flow of power 
as the electric lock clicked home.

His lips parted in a grimace of hate, as he realized the 
trap, but he gave no other outward reaction. It occurred to 
him that he had progressed a long way from the sunk-into-primitiveness 
creature who, a few hours before, had gone incoherent 
with fear in an elevator cage. Now, a thousand 
memories of his powers were reawakened in his brain; ten 
thousand cunnings were, after ages of disuse, once again 
part of his very being.

He sat quite still for a moment on the short, heavy 
haunches into which his body tapered, his ear tendrils examining 
his surroundings. Finally, he lay down, his eyes 
glowing with contemptuous fire. The fools! The poor fools!

It was about an hour later when he heard the man--Smith-fumbling 
overhead. Vibrations poured upon him, 
and for just an instant he was startled. He leaped to his 
feet in pure terror--and then realized that the vibrations 
were vibrations, not atomic explosions. Somebody was taking 
pictures of the inside of his body.


52
A.E. v VoaT


He crouched down again, but his ear ten&ils vibrated, and 
he thought contemptuously: the silly fool would be surprised 
when he tried to develop those pictures.

After a while the man went away, and for a long time 
there were noises of men doing things far sway. That, too, 
died away slowly. 

Coeurl lay waiting, as he felt the silence creep over the 
ship. In the long ago, before the dawn of immortality, the 
coenrls, too, had slept at night; and the memory of it had 
been revived the day before when he saw some of the men 
dozing. At last, the vibration of two pairs of feet, pacing, 
pacing endlessly, was the only human-made frequency that 
throbbed on his ear ten&ils.

Tensely, he listened to the two watchmen. The first one 
walked slowly past the cage door. Then about thirty feet 
behind him came the second. Coenrl sensed the alertness of 
these men; knew that he could never surprise either while 
they walked separately. It meant--he must be doubly careful!

Fifteen minutes, and they came again. The moment they 
were past, he switched his senses from their vibrations to a 
vastly higher range. The pulsating violence of the atomic engines 
stammered its soft story to his brain. The electric dynamos 
hummed their muffled song of pure power. He felt the 
whisper of that flow through the wires in the walls of his 
� e age, and through the electric lock of his door. He forced 
his quivering body into straining immobility, his senses seeking, 
searching to rune in on that sibilant tempest of energy. 
Suddenly, his ear ten&ils vibrated in harmony--he caught 
the surging change into shrillness of that rippling force wave.

There was a sharp click of metal on metal. With a gentle 
touch of .one tentacle, Coenrl pushed open the door; and 
glided out into the dully gleaming corridor. For just a moment, 
he felt contempt, a glow of superiority, as he thought 
of the stupid creatures who dared to match their wit against 
a coenrl. And in that moment, he suddenly thought of other 
coeurls. /k queer, exultant sense of race pounded through 
his being; the driving hate of centuries of ruthless competition 
yielded .reluctantly before pride of kln.hip with the 
future rulers of all space.

Suddenly, he felt weighed down by his limitations, his 
need for other coeurls, his aloneness--one against a hun&ed, 
with the stake all eternity; the starry universe kself beckoned


BLACK' DESTROYER
53

his rapacious, vaulting ambition. If he failed, there would

never be a second chance--no .time to revive long-rotted 
ma
chinery, 'and attempt to solve the secret of space travel.

He padded along .on tensed pawsthrough the 
salon-
into the next corridor--and came to the first bedroom door.

It stood half open. One swift flow of synchronized muscles,

one swiftly lashing tentacle that caught the unresisting

throat of the sleeping man, crushing it; and the lifeless

heal rolled crazily, the body twitched once.

Seven bedrooms; seven dead men. It was the seventh taste

of murder that brought a sudden return of lust, a pure, 
un
bounded desire to kill, return of a millennium-old habit of

destroying eve. rything containing the precious id.

As the twelfth man slipped convulsively into death,

Coeurl emerged abruptly, from the sensuous joy of the kill to

the sound of footsteps.
. .

They were not near--that was what brought wave after 
wave of fright swirling into the chaos that suddenly became 
his brain.

The watchmen were coming slowly along the corridor 
toward the door of the Cage where he had been imprisoned. 
In a moment, the first man would see the open doorm 
and sound the alarm.

Coeurl caught at the vanishing remnants of his reason. 
With frantic speed, careless now of accidental sounds, he 
raced--along the corridor with its bedroom doors--th.ou.gh 
the salon. He emerged into the next corridor, 
cringing in awful anticipation of the atomic flame he expected 
would stab into his face.

The two men were together, standing side by side. For 
one single instant, Coeurl could scarcely believe his tremendous 
good luck. Like a fool the second had come running 
when he saw the other stop before the open door. They 
looked up, paralyzed, before the nightmare of claws and tentacles, 
the ferocious cat head and hate-filled eyes.

The first man went for his gun, but the second, physically 
frozen before the doom he saw, uttered a shriek, a shrill cry 
of horror that floated along the corridors--and ended in a 
curious gurgle, as Coeurl flung the two corpses with one irresistible 
motion the full length of the corridor. He didn't 
want the dead bodies found neat the cage. That was his one 
hope.

Shaking in every nerve and muscle, conscious of the 
terri

54
A.E. v VoaT

ble error he had made, unable to think coherently, he 
plunged into the cage. The .door clicked softly shut behind 
him. Power flowed once more through the electric lock.

He crouched tensely, simulating sleep, as he heard the rush 
of many feet, caught the vibration of excited voices. He 
knew when somebody actuated the cage audioscope and 
looked in. A few moments now, and the other bodies .would 
be .discovered.

"Siedel gone!" Morton said numbly. "What are we going 
to do without Siedel? And Breckeuridge! And Coulter and--Horrle!"

He covered his face with his hands, but only for an instant. 
He looked up grimly, his heavy chin outthrust as he stared 
into the stem faces that surrounded him. "ff anybody's got

so much as a germ of an idea, bring it out."

"Space madness!"

"I've thought of that. But there hasn't been a case of a 
man going mad for fifty years. Dr. Eggert will test everybody, 
of course, and right now he's looking at the bodies 
with that possibility in mind."

As he finished, he saw the .doctor coming through the 
door. Men crowded aside to make way for him.

"I heard you, commander," Dr. Eggert said, "and I think 
I can say right now that the space-madness theory is out. 
The throats of these men have been squeezed to a jelly. No 
human being could have exerted such enormous strength 
without using a machine."

Morton saw that the doctor's eyes kept looking down the 
corridor, and he shook his head and groaned:

"It's no use suspecting pussy, doctor. He's in his cage, pacing 
up and down. Obviously heard the racket and-- Man 
alive! You can't suspect him. That cage was built to hold 
literally anything--four inches of micro-steel--and there's 
not a scratch on the door. Kent, even you won't say, 'Kill 
him on suspicion,' because there can't be any suspicion, unless 
there's a new science here. Beyond anything we can imagine"

"On the contrary," said Smith flatly, "we have all the evidence 
we need. I used the telefluor on him--you know 
the arrangement we have on top of the cage--and tried to 
take some pictures. They just blurred Pussy jumped when 
the telefluor was turned on, as if he felt the vibrations.

"You all know what Gourlay said before? This beast can 
apparently receive and send vibrations of any lengths. The


. BLACK DESTROYER
55

way he dominated the power of Kent's gun is final proof

of his special ability to 'interfere .wkh energy."

"What in the name of all the hells have we got here?" One 
of the men groaned. !'Why, if he can control that power, 
and send it out in any vibrations, there's nothing to stop 
him killing all of us."

"Which proves," snapped Morton, "that he isn't invincible, 
or he would have done it long ago."

. Vry 'deliberately, he walked over to the mechanism that 
controlled the prison cage.

"You're not going to open the door? Ken gasped, reach-jng 
for his gun.

"No, but ff I, pull this switch, electricity will flow through 
� the floor, and electrocute whatever's inside. We've never had 
to use this' before, so you-had' probably forgotten about it."

He jerked the switch hard over. Btle, fire flashed from 
the metal, and a bank of fuses above his head exploded with 
a single bang.

Morton frowned. "that's funny, those fuses shouldn't 
have blown! Well, we can't even look in, now. That 
wrecked the audios, too."

Smith said: "If he could interfere with the electric lock, 
enough to open the door, then he probably probed every possible 
danger and Was ready to interfere when you threw that 
switch."

"At least, it proves he's vulnerable to our energies!" Morton 
smiled grimly. "Because he rendered them harmless. 
The important thing is, we've got him behind four inches of 
the toughest of metal. At the worst we can open the door 
and ray him to death. But first, I think we'll try to use the 
telefluor power cable--"

A commotion from inside the cage interrupted his words. 
A heavy body crushed against a wall, followed by a dull 
thump.

"He knows what we were trying to do!" Smith grunted to 
Morton. "And I'll bet it's a very sick pussy in there. What a 
fool he was to go back into that cage and does he realize

The tension was relaxing; men were smiling nervously, 
and there was even a ripple of humorless laughter at the picture 
Smith drew of the monster's discomfiture.

"What I'd like to know," said Pennons, the engineer, "is, 
why did the telefluor meter dial jump and waver at full 
power when pussy made that noise? It's right under my nose 
here, and the dial jumped like a house afire!"


56
A.E. vta� VotT


There was silence both without and within the cage, then 
Mort�n sai& "It-may mean he's coming out. Back, everybody, 
and keep your guns ready. Pussy was a fool to think 
he could conquer a hundred men, but he's by far the most 
formidable creature in the galactic system. He may come 
out of that door, rather than die like a rat in a trap. And he's 
just tough enough to take some of us with him--if we're not 
careful."

The men backed slowly in a solid body; and somebody 
said: "That's funny. I thought I heard the elevator."

"Elevator!" Morton echoed. "Aie you sure, man?"

"Just for a moment I was!" The man, a member of the 
crew, hesitated. "We were all shuffling our feet--"

"Take somebody with you, and go look. Bring whoever 
dared to run off back here--"

There was a jar, a horrible jerk, as the whole gigantic body 
of the ship careened under them. Morton was flung to the 
'floor with a violence that stunned him. He fought back to 
consciousness, aware of the other men lying all around him. 
'He shouted:. "Who the devil started those engines!"

The agonizing acceleration continued; his feet dragged 
with .awful exertion, as he fumbled with the nearest audio-scope, 
and punched the engine-room number. The picture 
that flooded onto the screen brought a deep bellow to his 
lips:

"It's pussy! He's in the engine room--and we're heading 
straight out into space."

The screen went black even as he spoke, and he could see 
no more.


It was Morton who first staggered across the salon floor 
to the supply room where the spacesuits were kept. After 
fumbling almost blindly into his own suit, he cut the effects 
of the body-torturing acceleration, and brought suits to the 
semiconscious men on the floor. In a few moments, other 
men were assisting him; and then it was only a matter of 
minutes before everybody was clad in metalite, with anti-acceleration 
motors running at half power.

It was Morton then who, after first looking into the cage, 
opened the .door and stood, silent as the others crowded 
about him, to stare at the gaping hole in the real wall. The 
hold was a frightful thing of jagged edges and horribly bent 
metal, and it opened upon another corridor.

"I'll swear," whiSpered Pennons, "that it's impossible. The


BLACI DESTROYER
57

ten-ton hammer in the machine shops couldn't more than 
dent four inches of micro rith one blow--and .we only 
heard One. It would take at least a minute for an atomic 
disintegrator to do .the job. MOrton, this is a super-being."

Morton saw that Smith was examining the brek in the 
wall. The biologist looked up. "Iff only Breckenridge 
weren't dead! We need a metallurgist to explain this. Look!"

He touched the broken edge of the metal. A piece crumbled 
'in his finger and slithered away in a fine shower of dust 
to the floor. Morton noticed for the first time that there was 
a little pile of metallic dbris and dust.

"You've hit it." Morton nodded. "No miracle of strength 
here. The monster merely used his special powers to interfere 
with the electronic tensions holding the metal together. 
That xoUld account, too, for the drain on the telefluor 
power cable' that Pennons noticed,' ,The thing used the 
power with his body as a transforming medium, smashed 
through the wall, ran down the corridor to the elevator 
shaft, and so down to the engine too .

"In the meantime, commander," Kent said quietly, "we 
are faced with a super-being in control the ship, completely 
dominating the engine room, and i almost unlimited 
power, and in possession of the best part of the machine 
shops."

Morton felt the silence, while the men pondered the 
chemist's words. Their anxiety was a tangible thing that lay 
heavily upon theix faces; in every expression was the growing 
realization that here was the ultimate situation in their 
lives; their very existence was at stake, and perhaps much 
more. Morton voiced the thought m everybody s m nd:

"Suppose he wins. He's utterly ruthless, and he probably 
sees galactic power wthm g sp.

"Kent is wrong," barked the chief navigator. "The thing 
doesn't dominate the engine room. We've still got the control 
room, and that gives us, first control of all the machines. 
You fellows may not-know the mechanical set-up we have; 
but, though he can eventually disconnect us, we can cut off 
all the switches in the engine room nov. Commander, why 
didn't you just shut off the power instead of putting us into 
spacesuits? At the very least you could have adiusted the ship 
to the acceleration."

"For two reasons," Morton answered. '"Individually, we're 
safer within the force fields of our spacesuits. And we can't 
afford to give up our advantages in panicky moves."


58
A.E. v VoT


"Advantages. What other advantages have we got?'

"We know things about him," Morton replied. "And right

now, we're going to make a test. Pennons, detail five men 
'to each of the four approaches to the engine room. Take

atomic disintegrators to blast through the big doors. They're 
all shut, I noticed. He's locked himself in.

"Seleuski, you go up to the control room and shut off 
er
� erything except the drive engines. Gear them to the master 
switch, and shut them off all at once. One thing though--leave 
the acceleration on full blast. No anti-acceleration 
must be applied to the ship. Understand?"

"Aye, ski" The pilot saluted.

� "And report to me through the communicators if any of 
the machines start to run again." He faced the men. "I'm 
going to lead the main approach. Kent, you take No. 2; 
Smith, No. 3, and Pennons, No. 4. We're going to find out 
right now if we're dealing with unlimited science, or a creature 
limited like the rest of us. I'll bet on the last possibility.''

Morton had an empty sense of walking endlessly, as he 
moved, a giant of a man in his transparent space armor, along 
the glistening metal tube that was the main corridor of the 
engine-room floor. Reason told him the creature had already 
shown feet of clay, yet the feeling that here was an invincible 
being persisted.

He spoke into the communicator: "It's no use trying to 
sneak up on him. He can probably hear a pin drop. So just 
wheel up your units. He hasn't been in that engine room long 
enough to do anything.

"As I've said, this is largely a test attack. In the first place, 
we could never forgive ourselves ff we didn't try to conquer 
him now, before he's had time to prepare against us. 
But, aside from the possibility that we can destroy him immediately, 
I have a theory.

"The idea goes something like this: Those doors are built 
to withstand accidental atomic explosions, and it will take 
fifteen minutes for the atomic disintegrators to smash them. 
During that period the monster will have no powefT. True, 
the drive will be on, but that's straight atomic explosion. My 
theory is, he can't touch stuff like that; and in a few minutes 
you'll see what I mean--I hope."

His voice was suddenly crisp: "Ready, Seleuski?"

"Aye, ready."

"Then cut the master switch."


BLACK DESTROYER 59

'The corridormthe whole ship, Morton lmew--was

abruptly plunged into darkness. Morton clicked on the 
dazz ling light of -his spacesuit; the other men did the ame, their

faces pale and drawn.
.
'

"Blast!" Morton barked int�his communicator.

The mobile units throbbed; and then pure atomic flame

ravened out and poured upon the hard metal of the door.

The first molten droplet olled reluctandy, not down,

but up th door. The second was more normal. It followed

a shaky .downward course. The third rolled sideways--for

this was pure force, not subiect to gravitation. Other drops

followed until a dozen streams trickled sedately yet 
un
evenly in every direction--streams of hellish, sparkling fire,

bright as fairy gems, alive with the coruscating fury of

atoms suddenly tortured, and-Iamnlng blindly, crazy with

pain.

The minutes ate at time like a slow acid.'At last Morton

asked huskily:

"Selenski?"

"Nothing yet, commander."

Morton half whispered: "But he must be doing 
some
thing. He can't be just waiting in there like a cornered rat.

Seleuski?"

"Nothing, commander."

Seven minutes, eight minutes, then twelve.

"Commander!" It was Selenski's voice, taut. "He's got the

electric dynamo running."

Morton drew a deep breath, and heard one of his men say:

"That's funny. We can't get any deeper. Boss, take a look

at this."

Morton looked. The little scintillating streams had frozen

rigid. The ferocity of the disintegrators vented in vain against

metal grown suddenly invulnerable.

Morton sighed. "Our test is ovor. Leave two men 
guard
lng every corridor. The others come up to the control room."

He seated himself a few minutes later before the massive

control keyboard. "So far as I'm concerned the test was a

success. We know that of all the machines in the engine

room, the most important to the monster was the electric

dynamo. He must have worked in a frenzy of terror while

we were at the doors."

"Of course, it's easy to see what he did," Permous said.

"Once he had the power he increased the electronic 
ten
sions of the door to their ultimate."


60
A.E. vaa�


"The main thing is this," Smith chimed in. "He works 
with vibrations only so far as his special powers are con-cemed, 
and the energy must come from outside himself. 
Atomic energy in its pure form, not being vibration, he can't 
handle any differently than we cam"

Kent said glumly "The main point in my opinion is that 
he stopped us cold. What's the good of knowing that his control 
over vibrations did it? If we can't.break through those 
doors with our atomic disintegrators, we're finished."

Morton shook his head. "Not finished--but we'll have to 
do some planning. First, though, I'll start these engines. It'll 
be harder for him to get control of them when they're 
rlmnlng."

He pulled the master switch back into place with a jerk. 
There was a hum, as scores of machines leaped into violent 
life in the engine room a hundred feet below. The noises sank 
to a steady vibration of throbbing power.

Three hours later, Morton paced up and down before the 
men gathered in the salon. His .dark hair was uncombed; the 
space pallor of his strong face emphasized rather than detracted 
from the outrlua aggressiveness of his jaw. When 
he spoke, his deep voice was crisp to the pointof sharpness:

"To make sure that our plans are fully co-ordinated, I'm 
going to ask each expert in rum to outline his part in the 
overpowering of this creature. Pennons first!"

Pennons stood up briskly. He was not a big man, Morton 
thought, yet he looked big, perhaps because of his air of 
authority. This man knew engines, and the history of engines. 
Morton had heard him trace a machine through its 
evolution from a simple toy to the highly complicated modem 
instrument. He had studied machine development on a 
hundred planets; and there was literally nothing fundamental 
that he didn't know about mechanics, k was almost weird to 
hear Pennons, who could have spoken for a thousnd hours 
and still only have touched upon his subject, say with absurd 
brevity:

"We've'set dp a relay in the control room to start and stop 
every engine rhythmically. The trip lever will work a hundred 
times a second, and the effect will be to create vibrations 
of every description. There is just a possiblity that one 
or more of the machines will burst, on the principle of soldiers 
crossing a bridge in step--you've heard that old story, 
no doubt--but in my opinion there is no real danger of a 
break of that tough metal. The main purpose is simply to 
in

BLACK DESTROYER 61


terfere with the interference of the creature, and smash 
through the doors."

"Gourlay next!" barked Morton. . 

Gourlay climbed lazily to his feet. He looked sleepy, as if 
he was somewhat bored by the whole proceedings, yet Morton 
knew he loved people to think him lazy, a good-for-nothing 
slouch, who spent his days in slumber and his nights 
catching forty winks. His tide was chief communication 
engineer, 'bUt his knowledge extended to every vibration 
field; and he was probably, with the possible exception of 
Kent, the fastest thinker on the ship. His voice drawled out, 
and--Morton noted--the very deliberate assurance of it had 
a soothing effect on the menmanxious faces relaxed, bodies 
learned back more restfully:

"Once inside," Gourlay said, "we've rigged up vibration 
screens of pure force that should stop nearly. 'everything he's 
got on the ball. They work on the principle of reflection, so 
that everything he sends will be reflected back to him. In 
addition, we've got plenty of spare electric energy that we'll 
just feed him from mobile copper cups. There must be a limit 
to his capacity for handling power with those insulated 
nerves of his."

"Selenski!" called Morton.

, The chief pilot was already standing, as he had anticipated 
Morton's call. And that, Morton reflected, was the man. His 
nerves had that rocklike steadiness which is the first requirement 
of the master controller of a great ship's movements; 
yet that very steadiness seemed to rest on dynamite ready to 
explode at its owner's volition. He was not a man of great 
'learning, but he "reacted" to stimuli so fast that he always

seemed to be anticipating.

"The impression I've received of the plan is that it must be 
cumulative. Just when the creature thinks that he can't 
stand any more, another thing happens to add to his trouble 
and confusion. When the uproar's at its height, I'm supposed 
to cut in the anti-accelerators. The commander thinks with 
Gunlie Lester' that these creatures will know nothing about 
an. ti-acceleration. It's a development, pure and simple, of the 
science of interstellar flight, and couldn't have been developed 
in any other way. We think when the creature feels 
the first effects of the anti-accelerationmyou all remember 
the caved-in feeling you had the first month--it won't know 
what to think or do."

"Korita next."


62
fi.. E. v


"I can only offer you encouragement," said the archeologist, 
"on the basis of my theory that the monster has all the 
characteristics of a criminal of the early ages of any civilization, 
complicated by an apparent reversion to primitivcaess. 
The suggestion has been made by Smith that his knowledge 
of science is puzzling, and could only mean that we are dealing 
with an actual inhabitant, not a descendant of the inhabitants 
of the dead city we visited. This would ascribe a virtual 
immortality to our enemy, a possibility which is borne out 
by his ability to breathe both oxygen and chlorineor 
neither--but even that makes no difference. He comes from 
a certain age in his civilization; and he has sunk so low that 
his ideas are mostly memories of that age.

"In spite of all the powers of his body, he lost his head in 
the elevator the first morning, until he remembered. He 
placed himself in such a position that he was forced to reveal 
his special powers agaln vibrations. He. bungled the 
mass murders a few hours ago. In fact, his whole record is 
one of the Iow cunning of the primitive, egotistical mind 
which has little or no conception of the vast organization 
with which it is confronted.

"He is like the ancient German soldier who felt superior 
to the elderly Roman scholar, yet the latter was part of a 
mighty civilization of which the Germans of that day stood 
in awe.

"You ny suggest that the sack of Rome by the Germans 
in later years defeats my argument; however, modern historians 
agree that the 'sack' was an historical accident, and 
not history in the true sense of the word. The movement of 
the 'Sea-peoples' which set in against the Egyptian civilization 
from 1400 B.C. succeeded only as regards the Cretan 
island-realm--their mighty expeditions against the Libyan 
and Phoenician coasts, with the accompaniment of Viking 
fleets, .failed as those of the Huns failed against the Chinese 
Empire. Rome would have been abandoned in any event. 
Ancient, glorious Samarra was desolate by the tenth century; 
Pataliputra, Asoka's great capital, was an immense and 
com
pletely uninhabited waste of houses when the Chinese tra'. 
� der Hsinan-tang visited it about A.D. 635.

"We have, then, a primitive, and that primitive is now 
oat in space, completely outside of his natural habitat. I sa': 
let's go in and win."

One of the men grumbled, as Korita finished: "You cnn 
talk about the sack of Rome being an accident, and about


BIkCK DESTROYER
63


this fellow being a primitive, but the facts are facts. It looks 
to me as if Rome is about to fall again; and it won't be no 
primitive that did it, either. This guy's got plenty of what it 
takes."

Morton smiled grimly at the man, a member of the crew. 
"We'll see about that--right now!"


In the blazing brilliance of the gigantic machine shop, 
Coeurl .slaed. The forty-foot, cigar-shaped spaceship was 
nearly finished. With a grunt of effort, he completed the 
laborious installation of the drive engines, and paused to survey 
his craft.

Its interior, visible through the .one aperture in the outer 
wall,.was pitifully small. There was literally room for nothing 
but the engines---and a narrow space for himself.

He plunged frantically back to work as he, 'heard the approach 
of the. men, and the sudden change'in the tempest-like 
thunder of the engines--a rhythmical off-and-on hum, 
shriller in tone, sharper, more nerve-racking than the deep-throated, 
steady throb that had preceded it. Suddenly, 
there were the atomic disintegrators again at the massive 
outer doors.

He fought them off, but never wavered from his task. Every 
mighty muscle of his powerful body strained as he carried 
great loads of tools, machines and 'instruments, and 
dumped them into the bottom of his makeshift ship. There 
was no time to fit anything into place, no time for anything 
--no time--no time.

The thought pounded at his reason. He felt strangely 
weary for the first time in his long and vigorous existence. 
With a last, tortured heave, he jerked the gigantic sheet of 
metal into the gaping aperture of the ship--and stood there 
for a terrible minute, balancing it precariously.

He knew the doors were going down. Half a dozen dis-integators 
concentrating on one point were irresistibly, 
though slowly, eating away the remaining inches. With a 
gasp, he released his mind from the doors and concentrated 
every ounce of his mind on the yard-thick outer wall, toward 
which the blunt nose of his ship was pointing.

His body cringed from the surging power that flowed 
from the electric dynamo through his ear tendrils into 
that resisting wall. The whole inside of him felt on fire, and 
he knew that he was dangerously close to carrying his ultimate 
load.


64
E. vas Voax

And still he stood there, shuddering with the aful pain,

holding the unfastefied metal plate with hard-clenched

tentacles. His massive head pointed as in dread fascination

at that bitterly hard wall.

He heard one of the engine-room doors crash inward.

Men shouted; disintegrators rolled forward, their raging

pOWer unchecked. Coeurl heard the floor of the engine room

hiss in protest, as those beams of atomic, energy., t. or,e 
,ev
erything in their path to bits. The machines roltea closer;

cautious footsteps sounded behind them. In a minute they

would be at the flimsy doors separating the engine room

from the machine shop.

Suddenly, Coeurl was satisfied. With a snarl of hate, a 
vin
dictive glow of feral eyes, he ducked into his litde craft, and

pulled the metal plate down into' place as if it were a 
hatch
way.

His ear tendrils hummed, as he softened the edges of the

surrounding metal. In a.nnstan.t, theePal;;vers tp

Welded--it was part ot ms stop, a 
,,

of a whole that was solid opaque metaa except for two

parent areas, one in the front, one in the rear..

His tentacle embraced the power drive with almost 
sen
suous tenderness. There was a forward sr ge. o his frag, ile

machine, straight at the great outer wau ot me macnme

shops. The nose of the forty-foot craft touchedand the

wall dissolved in a glittering shower of dust
and then he

Coeurl felt the barest retarding movement;
space,

kicked the nose of the machine out into the cold of

twisted it about, and headed back in the direction from

ich the bi shiv had been coming all these hours.

whi,c in sgace xnor stood in the jagged holdthat yawned

vsu or'
�
' lobe. 'l'he men ann

in the lower reaches of the gxganuc g
.

the rear shi grew nUe: Th.e, the ?en. were

g
,P - ,-- ---:-- ;s maze ota mousana


u,--- - ,, - '- -' --ediblv too smau now ,

Dortholes. The ball snram: met
,,

dividual portholes to, be.vis?le. �... a tiny aim, redaish ball

Almost stralgllt aneacl, Doeur: aaw

--his own sun, he realized. He headed toward it at full speed.

There were Caves where he could hide and with other

coeurls build secretly a spaceship in which they could reach

lanets safeivnow that he knew how.

other p! .
- ',   
o,,,,nv of acceleration, yet he
His 
boa? acnefi o):,,3,n
- He glancea back, half in
dared not et 
up for a sn?. .. .o .... u. 

:
terror. The globe was still mere, a tany aot m gttt a

BLACK DESTROYER 65

mense blackness of space. Suddenly it twinkled and wasgone.

For a brief moment, he had the empty, frightened impression 
that just before it disappeared, it mored. But he 
could see nothing. He could not escape the belief that they 
had shut off all their lights, and were sneaking up on him 
in the darkness. Worried and uncertain, he looked through 
the forward transparent plate.

A tremor of dismay shot through him. The dim red sun 
toward which he was heading was not growing larger. It 
was becoming smaller by the instant, and it grew visibly 
tinier during the next five minutes, became a pale-red dot in 
the sky--and vanished like the ship.

Fear came then, a blinding surge of it, that swept through 
� his being and left him chilled with the sense of the uno 
lmown. For minutes, he stared frantically into the space 
ahead, searching .for some landmark. But ,only the remote 
stars glimmered there, unwinking po'mis against a velvet 
background of unfathomable distance.

� Wait! One of the points was growing larger. With every 
muscle and nerve tense, Coeurl watched the point becomin..g 
a dot, a round ball of lightmred light. Bigger, bigger, at 
grew. Suddenly, the red light shimmered and turned white--and 
there, before him, was the great globe of the spaceship,

ii lights glaring from every porthole, the very ship which a 
few minutes before he had watched vanish behind him.

Something happened to Coeurl in that moment. His brain 
was spinning like a flywheel, faster, faster, more incoherently. 
Suddenly, the wheel flew apart into a million ach-hag 
fragments. His eyes almost started from their sockets 
as, like a maddened animal, he raged in his small quarters.

His tentacles clutched at precious instruments and flung 
theTM insensately; his paws smashed in fury at the very walls 
of his ship. Finally, in a brief flash of sanity, he knew that he 
couldn't face the inevitable fire of atomic disintegrators.

It was a simple thing to create the violent disorganization 
that freed every drop of id from his vital organs. 
They found him lying dead in a little pool of phosphorus. 
"Poor pussy," said Morton. "I wonder what he thought 
when he saw us appear ahead of him, after his own sun dis�
appeared. Knowing nothing of anti-accelerators, he couldn't 
know that we could stop short in space, whereas it would 
take him more than three hours to decelerate; and in the 
meantime he'd be drawing farther and farther away from 
where he wanted to go. He couldn't know that by. stopping,


66
' 1' v,

we flashed past him at millions of miles a second. Of course,

he didn't have a chance once he left our ship. The whole

world must have seemed topsy-turvy."

� - -- .athv" he heard Kent say behind

�'We've ota )ob--to every cac in that miserable

him.
g

world."
softly: "That should be simple. Th.ey.are

Korita murmured

but primitives; and we have merely to sit down, and they

toughest nut we eve,r, had to crack. He had everything 
needed to defeat us

Morton smiled as Korita interrupted blandly: Ex y, 
my dear Smith, except that he reacted according to the bio-1o 
ical impulses of his type. His defeat was already foreshadowed 
when we uncrrifgly a, alyzed him as a cr'nninal from 
a certain era of his civilization.

"It was history, honorab,l,e .Mr.. Smith, our knowledge of

' the .Japanese archeologist, 
history that defeated him, said

reverting to the ancient politeness of his race.


by R0, A. HEINLEIN


Fev vriters bare made more brilliant debuts, or folloved 
them up more triumphantly, than Heinlein. A retired naval 
officer, be is also a trained engineer, and intimately knows 
the oorlds of' science, politics, business and the proessions. 
Together vitb de Camp be turned the scientists in science 
fiction from cardboard figures into real human beings--as you 
� are about to see.


Trm crm rapped loudly for order. Gradually the catcalls 
and boos died away ag several serf-appointed Sergeant-at-ams 
persuaded a few hot-headed individuals to sit down. 
The speaker on the rostrum by the chairman seemed unaware 
of the disturbance. His bland, faindy insolent face was impassive. 
The chairman turned to the speaker and addressed 
him in a voice in which anger and annoyance were barely 
restrained.

"Dr. Pinero"Mthe "Doctor" was faintly stressed--"I must 
apologize to you for the unseemly outburst during your remarks. 
I am surprised that m3/colleagues should so far forget 
the dignity proper to men of science as to interrupt a speaker, 
no matter"--he paused and set his mouth--"no matter how 
great the provocation." Pinero smiled in his face, a smile that 
was in some way an open insult. The chairman visibly controlled 
his temper and continued: "I am anxious that the 
program be concluded decently and in order. I want you to 
finish your remarks. Nevertheless, I must ask you to refrain 
from affronting our intelligence with ideas that any 
educated man knows to be fallacious. Please confine yourself 
to your discoverymrf you have made one."

Pinero spread his fat, white hands, palms down. "How 
can I possibly put a new idea into your heads, if I do not 
first remove your delusions?"

l: The audience stirred and muttered. Someone shouted 
:. from the rear of the hall: "Throw the charlatan out! We've 
-' had enough."

The chairman pounded his gavel.

"Gendemen! Please["


68
RoBraT A. Hznon

Then to ?inero, "Must I remind you that you are not s

member of this bodY, and that we did not invite you?"

Pinero's eyebrows lifted. '*So? I seem to remember an

invitation on the letterhead of the Academy."

The chairman chewed his lower lip before replying. "True.

I wrote that invitation myself. But it was at the request of

one of the trustees--a fine, public-spited,,gendeman, but

not a scientist, not a member of the Academy.

Pinero smiled his irritating smile. "So? I should have

guessed. Old Bidwell, not so, of Am.alglomaet..ed &ifneIasUr

ance? And he wanted his trained seals
xpo

fraud, yes For if I can tell a man the day of his own death,

no one will buy his pretty policies. But how can you 
ex
pose me, if you will not listen to me first? Even supposing

rou had the wit to understand me? Bah! He has sent jackals

to tear down a lion." He deliberately ruffled his back on

them.

The muttering of the crowd swelled and took on a 
vi
cious tone. The chairman cried vainly for order. There arose

a figure in the front row.

"Mr. Chairman?

The chairman grasped the opening and shouted: 
"Gende
men! Dr. van ghein $mitt has the floor." The commotion

died away.

The doctor cleared his throat, smoothed the forelock of

his beautiful white hair, and thrust one hand into a side

pocket of his smartly tailored trousers. He assumed his

women's-club manner.
. �

"Nix. Chairman, fellow members of ,the AadTheYxfhtS 
ence, let us have tolerance. Even a muraerer nas. 

say his say before the State exacts its tribute. Shall we do

less? Even though one may be intellectually certain of the

verdict? I grant Dr. Pinero every consideration that should

. �
this au
bod to any unaffxliated colleague,

be venby gust .Y �� , ��"ge

ga   c,, 
t ,.   a 
ghdv m Pmero s direction w.
even 
tnoun ---. Vv
-. sli= ....
may not be familmr 
with the umversity which b. estowed
his'degree. If what-he has to say 
is. false, it cannot harm us.
If whathe has to say is 
true, we should know it" HIS 
mel
low, cultivated voice rolled on, soothing and calming.. "If
the 
eminent doctor's manner appears a trifle inurbane of our
tastes, we must bear 
in mind that the .doctor may be from a nlace, or 
a stratum, not so meti.culous, in, these ,matters.. Now

ur good friend and benefactor has asaea ns to near tins 
per
- LIFE-LINE
69


son and carefully assess the merit of his claims. Let ns do so

with dignity and decorum."

He sat down to a rumble' of applause, comfortably aware

that he had enhanced his reputation as an intellectual leader.

Tomorrow the papers would again mention the good sense

and persuasive personality of "America's Handsomest 
Uni
versity President." Vho knovs; maybe now old Bidwell

would come through with that swimming-pool donation.

When the. applause had ceased, the chairman turned to

where the center of the disturbance sat, hands folded over

his little round belly, face serene.

"VCill you continue, Dr. Pinero?"

"Why should I?"

The chairman, shrugged his shoulders. "You came for 'that

purpose."
"S

Pinero arose.
Lrue. So very ture. But .was I wise to

come? Is there anyone here who has an open'mind, who can

stare a bare fact in the face without blushing? I think not.

Even that so-beautiful gentleman who asked you to hear me

out has already judged me and condemned me. He seeks

order, not truth. Suppose truth defies order, will he accept

it? Will you? I think not. Still, if I do not speak, you will

win your point by default. The little man in the street will

think that you little men have exposed me, Pinero, as a

hoaxer, a pretender.

"I will repeat my discovery. In simple language, I have 
in
vented a technique to tell how long a man w;2l live. I can

give you advance billing of the Angel of Death. I can tell

you when the Black Camel will kneel at your door. In five

minutes' time, with my apparatus, I can tell any of you how

many grains of sand are still left in your hour-glass." He

paused and folded his arms across his chest. For a moment

no one spoke. The audience grew restless.

Finally the chairman intervened, "You aren't finished,

Dr. Pinero?"

"What more is the;e to say?"

"You haven't told us how your discovery works."

' Pinero's eyebrows shot up. "You suggest that I should

mm over the fruits of my work for children to play with?

This is dangerous knowle'dge, my friend. I keep it for the

man who understands it, myself." He tapped his chest.

"How are we-to know that you have anything back of

your wild claims?"


70
ROB.RT A. HEnL,n


"So simple..You send a committee to watch me demonstrate. 
If it works, fine. You admit it nd tell the worm so. 
If it does not work, I am discredited, and will apologize. 
Even I, Pinero, will apologlze."


A slender, stoop-shouldered man stood up in the back of 
the hall. The chair recognized him snd he spoke.

"Mr. Chairman, how can the eminent doctor seriously propose 
such a course? Does he expect us to wait around for 
twenty or thirty years for someone to die and prove his 
claims?"

Pinero ignored the chair and answered direcdy.

"PfuLt Such nonsense[ Are you so ignorant of statistics 
that you do not know that in any large group there is at least 
one who will die in the immediate future? I make you a proposition. 
Let me test each one of you in this room, and I will 
name the man who will die within the fortnight, yes, and the 
day and hour of his death." He glanced fiercely around the 
room. "Do you accept?"

Another figure got to his feet, a portly man who spoke in 
measured syllables. "I, for one, cannot countenance such an 
experiment. As a medical man, I have noted with sorrow the 
plain marks of serious heart trouble in many of our elder colleagues. 
If Dr. Pinero knows those symptoms, as he may, 
were he to select as his victim one of their number, the man 
so selected would be likely to die on schedule, whether the 
distinguished speaker's mechanical egg timer works or not."

Another speaker backed him up at once. "Dr. Shepard 
right. Why should we waste time on voodoo tricks? It is m? 
belief that this person who calls himself Dr. Pinero wants to 
use this body to give his statements authority. If we participate 
in this farce, we play into his hands. I don't know whxr 
his racket is, but you can bet that he has figured out some 
way to use us for advertising his schemes. I move, Mr. Chairman, 
that we proceed with our regular business."

The motion carried by acclamation, but Pinero did not 
sit down. Amidst cries of "Order! Order? he shook his untidy 
head at them, and had his say,

"Barbarians! Imbeciles! Stupid dolts! Your kind have 
blocked the recognition of every great discovery since time 
began. Such ignorant canaille are enough to start Galileo 
spinning in his grave. That fat fool down there twiddling his 
elk's tooth calls himself a medical man. Witch doctor would 
be a better term! That little bald-headed runt over there--You! 
You style yourself a philosopher, and prate about life


. LIFE-'LINE
71

and tmae in your neat categories. What d�you know of either 
one? How can you ever learn when you won't examine the 
truth when'yod have a chance? Bah!" He spat upon the 
stage. "You call this an Academy of Science. I call it an undertakers' 
convention, interested only m embalming the 
ideas of your red-blooded predecessors."

He paused for breath and was grasped on each side by 
two members of the platform committee and rushed out the 
wings. 'Several reporters arose hastily from the press table 
and followed him. The chairman declared the meeting adjourned.


The newspapermen caught up with Pinero as he was go'lng 
out'by the stage door. He walked with a light, springy 
step, and whistled a little tune. There was no trace of the 
belligerence he had shown a moment befoe. They crowded

about him, "How about an interwew, doc?   What 
d'yuh
think 
of modern educanon?   You certainly 
told 'em. What
are your 
views on life after death?   Take off your 
hat, doc,
and look at 
the birdie."
He grinned at 
them all. "One at a tn-ne, boys, and not so fast. I used to 
be a newspaperman myself. How about coming up to 
my place?'?
A few minutes 
later they were trying to find places to sit down in 
Pinero's messy bed-hying room, and lighting his cigars. Pinero looked 
around and beamed. "What'll it be, boys? Scotch or 
Bourbon?" When that was taken care of he got down to 
business. "Now, boys, what do you want to know?"
"Lay it 
on 
the line, doc. Have you got something, or haven't you?"
"Most 
assuredly I 
have something, my young friend."
"Then tell us 
how it works. That guff you handed the profs won't get 
you anywhere now."
"Please, my dear 
fellow. It is my invention. I expect to make some money 
with ir. Would you have me give it away m the first 
person who asks for k?"
"See here, doc, 
you've got to give us something ff you expect to get 
a break in the morning papers. What do you use? A crystal ball?"

"No, not quite. 
Would you like to see my apparatus?" "Sure. Now we're 
getting somewhere."
He ushered them 
into an adjoining room, and waved his hand. "There 
it is, boys." The mass of equipment that met

their eyes vaguely resembled a medico's office X-ray gear; 
Beyond the obvious fact that it uset electrical power, and 
that some of the dials were calibrated in familiar terms, a

casual inspection gave no clue to ks actual Use.

"What's the principle, doc?"

Pinero pursed his lips and considered. "No doubt you are 
all fam'fliar with the truism that life is electrical in nature.

vWoLl ., truism isn't worth a damn, but it will help to give

&"ie of the principle. You have also been: told .that 
tie is a fourth dimension. Maybe you believe at,. per?aps 
not. It has been said so many times that it has ceased to nave 
any meaning. It is simply a cliche that Windbags use to impress 
fonls. But I want you to try to visualize it now, and 
try to feel it emotionally."

He stepped up to one of the reporters. "Supposewe tak. e 
you as an example. Your name is Rogers, is it not? Very wen, 
Rogers, you are a space-time event having duration four.ways. 
You are not quite six feet tall, you are about twenty mclaes 
wide and perhaps ten inches thick. In time, there stretches 
behind you more of this space-time event, reaching to, per-has, 
1905, of which we see a cross section here at right anrl
to the time axis, and as thick as the present. At the far 
nd is a baby, smelling of sour milk and drooling its breakfast 
on its bib. At the other end lies, perhaps, an old man some

altlace

in the 1980s. Imagine this space-tnne event, wh/c.h ,we 
Rogers, as a long pink worm, contin, uo. us through .the 
years. It stretches past us here in 1939, and me cross section 
we see appears as a single, discreet body. But that is illusion. 
There is physical continuity t this pink worm, enduring 
through the .years. Asa ma.tter o.f fact:er.e.isPehY, mSil 
cai continuity in this concept to me enure race, x,, u v

worms branch off from other pink worms. In this fashion 
the race is like a vine whose branches intertwine and send 
out shoots. Only by taking a cross section of the vine would 
we fall into the error of believing that the shoodets Were discreet 
mmvau �

He paused and looked around at their faces. One of them, 
a dour, hard-bitten chap, put in a word.

."That's all very pretty, Pinero, if true, but where does that 
get you?"

pine'ro favored him with an unresenfful smile. "Patience, 
my friend. I asked you to think of life as electrical. Now 
think of our long, pink worm as a iondurtor of elertricity. 
You have heard, perhaps, of the fact that electrical engineers


LIE-LINE 7

can, by bertain measurements, predict the exact location of a

break in a transatlantic cable wkh0ut ever .leaving the shore.

I do the same with 'oUr pink worms. By applying my. 
'in
struments to the cross section here in this room I can tell

where the break occurs; that is to say, where death takes

place. Or, if you like,. I can reverse the cbrmections and tell

you the date of your birth. But that is uninteresting; you 
al
ready know it."

The dour .individual sneered. "I've caught you, doc. If

what you say about the race being like a vine of pink worms

is true, you can't tell birthdays, .because the connection with

the race is continuous at birth. Your electrical conductor

reaches on back through the mother into a man's remotest

ancestors,"

' . .

r
l

Pine o beamed.
True,-and clever, my friend. But you

have pushed the analogy too far. It is not done in he precise

manner in which one measures the length of an electrical 
con
ductor. In some ways it is more like measuring the length of

a long corridor by bouncing an echo off the far end. At birth

there is a sort of twist in the corridor, and, by proper 
calibra
tion, I can detect the echo from that twist."

"Let's see you prove it."

"Certainly, my dear friend. Will you be a subject?"

One of the others spoke up. "He's called your bluff, Luke.

Put up or shut up."

"I'm game. What do I do?"

"First write the date of your birth on a sheet of paper, and

hand it to one of your colleagues."

Luke complied. "Now what?"

"Remove your outer clothing and step upon these scales.

Now tell me, were you ever very much thinner, or very

much fatter, than you are now? No? What did you weigh at

birth? Ten pounds? A fine bouncing baby boy. They don't

come so big any more."

"What is all this flubdubbery?"

"I am trying to approximate the average cross section of

our long pink conductor, my dear Luke. Now will you seat

yourself here? Then place this dectrode in your mouth. No,

it will not hurt you; the voltage is quite low, less than one

micro-volt, but I must have a good connection." The doctor

left him and went behind his apparatus, where he lowered

a hood over his head before touching his controls. Some of

the exposed dials came to life and a low humming came from


74
RosERr .. HIglNLEIN



the machine. It stopped and the doctor popped out of his 
little hide-away.

"I get sometime in February, 1902. VCho has the piece of 
paper with the date?"

It was produced and unfolded. The custodian read, "Feb-mary 
22, 1902."

The stillness that followed was broken by a voice from 
.the edge of the little group. "Doc, can I have another drink?"

The tension relaxed, and several spoke at once: "Try k 
on me, doc." "Me first, doc; I'm an orphan and really want to 
know." "How about it, doc? Give us all a little loose play."

He smilingly complied, ducking in and out of the hood 
like a gopher from its hole. When they all had twin slips of

paper to prove the doctor's skill, Luke broke a long silence. 
"How about showing how you predict death, Pinero?" 
"If you wish. Who will try it?"

No one answered. Several of them nudged Luke forward. 
"Go ahead, smart guy. You asked for ir." He allowed himself 
to be seated in the chair. Pinero changed some of the 
switches, then entered the hood. When the humming ceased 
he came out, rubbing his hands briskly together.

"Well, that's all there is to see, boys. Got enough for a 
story?"

"Hey, what about the prediction? When does Luke get 
his 'thirty'?"

Luke faced him. "Yes, how about k?"

Pinero looked pained. "Gentlemen, I am surprised at your 
I give that information for a fee. Besides, it is a professional 
confidence. I never tell anyone but the client who consults 
me."

"I don't mind. Go ahead and tell them."

"I am very sorry, I really must refuse. I only agreed to 
show you how; not to give the results."

Luke ground the butt of his cigarette into the floor. "It's 
a hoax, boys. He probably looked up the age of every 
porter in town just to be ready to pull this. It won't wash, 
Pinero."

Pinero gazed at him sadly. 'Are you married, my friend?"

"Do you have anyone dependent on you? Any close relatives?"

"No. Why? Do you want to adopt me?"

Pinero shook his head. "I am very sorry for you, my dear 
Luke. You will die before tomorrow."


. LIFE-LINE
75

DEATH PUNCHF TIME CLOCK

T:.. within twenty minutes of Pinero's strange prediction,

nnons was.. struck by a falling' sign while w2lldng dowll Broadway 
towara the otices of the Daily Herald where he was 
em
ployed.
'
'
'

Dr. Pinero declined to comment but confirmed the story that

he had predicted Timons' death by means of his so-called 
ehrono
vitameter. Chief of Police Roy .... .


Does the FUTURE worry you??????

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fortunetellers-
Consult

Da. Hveo Pmo, Bio-Consultant

He will h.elp you plan for the future by infallible 
� 8CINIC METHODS

No Hocus-Pocns

No "Spirit" Messages 
$10,000 Bond posted in forfeit to back our predictions 
Circula on request

SANDS of TIME, Inc.

Majestic Bldg., Suite 700 
(adv.)


Legal Notice

To whom it may concern, greetings; I, John Cabot W'mthrop 
III, of the firm of Winthrop, Winthrop, Ditmars and Winthrop, 
Attorneys-at-law, do affzrm that Hugo Pinero of this city did hand 
to me ten thousand dollars in lawful money of the United States, 
and did instruct me to place it in escrow with a chartered bank of 
my selection with escrow instructions as follows:

The entire bond shall be forfeit, and shall forthwith be paid to 
the first client of Hugo Pinero and/or Sands of Time, Inc. who 
shall exceed his life tenure as predicted by Hugo Pinero by one 
per centum, or to the estate of the first client who shall fail of such 
p. redicted tenure in a like amount, whichever occurs first in point of 
tlmeo

Subscribed and sworn, 
John Cabot Winthrop IlL

Subscribed and sworn to before 
me this 2nd day of April, 1939. 
Albert M. Swanson

Notary Public in and for this 
county and State. My commission 
expires June 17, 1939.


76


RoBot A. Hzz

"Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Radio Audience, let's go to 
press! Flash! Hugo Pinero, the Miracle Man from Nowhere, 
has made his thousandth death prediction without anyone 
claiming the reward he offered to the first person who 
catches him failing to call the turn. With thirteen of his 
clients already dead, it is mathematically certain that he has 
a private line to the main office of the Old Man with the 
Scythe. That is one piece of news I don't want to know about 
before it happens. Your coast-to-coast correspondent will 
zot be a client of Prophet Pinero"


The judge's watery barkone cut through the stale air of 
the courtroom. "Please, Mr. Weems, let us return to our 
subject. This court granted your prayer for a temporary restraining 
order, and now you ask that k be made permanent. 
In rebuttal, Dr. Pinero claims that you have presented no 
cause and asks that the injunction be lifted, and that I order 
your client to cease from attempts to interfere wkh what 
Pinero describes as a simple, hwful business. As you are not 
addressing a jury, please omit the rhetoric and tell me in 
plain language why I should not grant his prayer."

Mr. Weems jerked his chin nervously, making his flabby 
gray dewlap drag across his high stiff collar, and resumed: 
"May k please the honorable court, I represent the 
pub
liC-'

"Just a moment. ! thought you were appearing for Ama]-gamated 
Life Insuranci."

"I am, your honor, in a formal sense. In a wider sense I represent 
several other of the major assurance, fiduciary and 
financial institutions, their stockholders and policy holders, 
who constitute a'majority of the citizenry. In addition 
we feel that we protect the interests of the entire population, 
unorganized, inarticulate and otherwise unprotected."

"I thought that I represented the public," observed the 
judge dryly. "I am afraid I must regard you as appearing for 
your client of record. But continue. What is your thesis?"

The elderly barrister attempted to swallow his Adam's 
apple, then began again: "Your honor, we contend that there 
are two separate reasons why this injunction should be made 
permanent, and, further, that each reason is sufficient alone. 
"In the first phce, this person is engaged in the practice

soothsaying, an occupation proscribed both in common la' 
and statute. He is a common formneteller, a vagabond charlatan 
who preys on the gullibility of the public. He


. LIFE-LINE
77

� cleverer than the ordinary gypsy palm reader, astrologer or 
table tipper, and to the same extent more dangerous. He 
makes false 'claims of modem scintitic methods to give a 
spurious .dignity to the thaumatnrgy. We have here in court 
leading representatives of the Academy of Science to give 
expert witness as to the absurdity of his claims.

"In the second place, even if this person's claims were 
me--granting for the sake of argument such an absurdity" 
--Mr. Weems permitted himself a thin-lipped smile--"we 
contend that his activities are contrary to the public interest 
in general, and unlawfully injurious to the interests of my 
client in particular. We are prepared to produce numerous 
exluqits with the legal custodians to prove that this person 
did publish, or cause to have published, utterances urging 
th& public to 'dispense with the Priceless boon of life insurance 
to the great deteriment of their weN.are and to the financial 
damage of my client."

Pinero arose in his place. "Your honor, may I say a few 
words?"

"What is it?"

"I believe I can simplify the situation if permitted to make 
a brief analysis."

"Your honor," put in Weems, "this is most irregular." 
"Patience, Mr. Weems. Your interests will be protected. It 
seems to me that we need more light and less noise in this 
matter. If Dr. Pinero can shorten the proceedings by speaking 
at this time, I am inclined to let him. Proceed, Dr. Pin-ere."

"Thank you, your honor. Taking the last of Mr. Weems' 
points first, I am prepared to stipulate that I published the 
utterances he speaks

"One moment, doctor. You have chosen to act as your own 
attorney. Are yon sure you are competent to protect your 
own interests?"

"I am prepared to chance it, your hgnor. Our friends here 
can easily prove what I snpulate.

"Very well. You may proceed."

"I will stipulate that many persons have canceled life-inSUrance 
policies as a result thereof, but I challenge them to 
show that anyone so doing has suffered any loss or damage.' 
therefrom. It is true that the Amalgamated has lost business 
through my activities, but that is the natural result of my 
discovery, which has made their policies as obsolete as 
the bow and arrow. If an injunction is granted on that


78
ROBEgT A. HEINLEIN


ground, I shall set up a coal-oil-lamp factory, and then 
ask for an iniunction against the Edison and General Electric 
companies to forbid them to manufacture incandescent 
bulbs.

"I will stipulate that I am engaged in the business of 
mak
. ing predictions of death, but I deny that I am practicing 
magic, black, white or rainbow-colored. If to make predictions 
by methods of scientific accuracy is illegal, then the 
actuaries of the Amalgamated have been guilty for years, 
in that they predict the exact percentage that will die each

Mnal

ear in any given large group. I predict death retail; the 
gamated predicts it wholesale. If their actions are legal, 
how can mine be illegal?

"I admit that it makes a difference whether I can do what

I claim, or not; and I will stipulate that the so-called expert 
witnesses from the Academy of Science will testify that I 
cannot, But they know nothing of my method and cannot 
give truly expert testimony on it--"

"Just a moment, doctor. Mr. Weems, is it true that your 
expert witnesses are not conversant with Dr. Pinero's theory 
and methods?"

Mr. Weems looked worried. He drummed on the table 
top, then answered, "Will the court grant me a few moments' 
indulgence?"

"Certainly."

Mr. Weems held a hurried whispered consultation with 
his cohorts, then faced the bench. "We have a procedure 
to suggest, your honor. If Dr. Pinero will take the stand and 
explain the theory and p.ractice of his alleged method, then 
these distinguished scienusts will be able to advise the court 
as to the validity of his claims."

'The Judge looked inquiringly at Pinero, who responded:

"I will not willingly agree to that. Whether my process is 
true or false, it would be dangerous to let it fall into the 
hands of fools and quacks"--he waved his hand at the group 
of professors seated in the front row, paused and smiled 
malicionsly--"as these gendemen know quite well. Furthermore, 
it is not necessary to know the process in order to 
prove that it will work. Is it necessary to understand the 
complex 'miracle of biological reproduction in order to observe 
that a hen lays eggs? Is it necessary for me to re-educate 
this entire body of self-appointed custodians of wisdom 
--cure them of their ingrown superstitions--in order to 
prove that my predictions are correct?



:i, '
- LIFFLINE 
79

,' There are but two ways of forming an bpinion in science.

One is the scientific method; the Other, the scholastic. One

can judge.from experiment, or one can blindly accept 
author
ity. To the scientific mind, experimental prOOf is 
all-impor
txt, and theory is merely a convenience hi description, tb be

jnnked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, 
author
ity is everything, and facts are junked when they do not fit

theory laid down by authority.

"It-is-this point of view--academic minds dinging 

oysters to disproved theories--that has blocked every 
ad
vance of knowledge in history. I am prepared to prove my

method by experiment, and, like Galileo in another court, I

insist, 'It still moves!'

"Once before I offered such proof to this same body of

'self-styled .experts, and they rejected it. I renew my offer;

let me measure the life length of the members of the 
Acad
emy of Science. Let them appoint a conmittee to judge the

results. I will seal my findings in two sets of envelopes; on

the outside of each envelope in one set will appear the name

of a member; on the inside, the date of his death. In the

other envelopes I will place names; on the outside I will place

dates. Let the committee place the envelopes in a vault, then

meet from time to time to open the appropriate envelopes.

In such a large body of men some deaths may be expected,

if Amalgamated actuaries can be trusted, every week or two.

In such a fashion they will accumulate data very rapidly to

prove that Pinero is a liar, or no."

He stopped, and thrust out his chest until it almost canht

up with his little round belly. He glared at the sweating

savants. "Well?"

The judge raised his eyebrows, and caught Mr. Weems'

eye. "Do you accept?"

"Your honor, I think the proposal highly improper--"

The judge cut him short. "I warn you that I shall rule

against you ff you do not accept, or propose an equaIly 
rea
sonable method of arriving at the truth."

Weems opened his mouth, changed his mind, looked up

and �down the faces of the learned witnesses, and faced the

bench. "We accept, your honor."

"Very well. Arrange the detailsbetween you. The 
tem
porary injunction is lifted, and Dr. Pinero must not be 
mo
lested in the pursuit of his business. Decision on the 
peti
tion for permanent injunction is reserved without prejudice

the accumulation of evidence. Before we leave this


80
RoBzmr A. HZILEn 
' ....

matter I wish to comment on the theory implied by you, Mr. 
Weems, when you claimed damage to your client. There has 
grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the 
notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit 
out of the public for a number of years, the government 
and the courts are charged with the duty of g.uaranteeing 
such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances 
and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine 
is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals 
nor corporations have any right to come into court 
and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned 
back."

Bidwell grunted in annoyance. "Weems, if you can't think 
up anything better than that, Amalgamated is going to need 
a new chief attorney. It's been ten weeks since you lost the 
injunction, and that little wart is coining money hand over 
fist. Meantime, every insurance firm in the country's going 
broke. Hoskins, what's our loss ratio?"

"It's hard to say, Mr. Bidwell. It gets worse every day. 
We've paid off thirteen big policies this week; all of them 
taken out since Pinero started operations."

A spare little man spoke up. "I say, Bidwell, we aren't accepting 
any new applicants for United, until we have time 
to check and be sure that they have not consulted Pinero. 
Can't we afford to wait until the scientists show him up?"

Bidwell snorted. "You blasted optimist! They won't show 
him up. Aldrich, can't you face a fact? The fat little pest 
has something; how, I don't know. This is a fight to the finish. 
If we wait, we're licked." He threw his cigar into a 
cus
h

idor, and bit savagely into a fresh one. "Clear out of here, 
of you! I'll handle this my own way. You, too, Aldrich. 
United may wait, but Amalgamated won't."

Weems cleared his throat apprehensively. "Mr. Bid-well, 
I trust you will consult me before embarking on any 
major change in policy?"

BidWell grunted. They filed out. When they were all gone 
and the door closed, Bidwell snapped the SWkch of the interoffice 
announcer. "O.K.; send him in."

The outer door opened. A slight, dapper figure stood for 
a moment at the threshold. His small, dark eyes glanced 
quickly about the room before he entered, then he moved 
up to Bidwell with a quick, soft tread. He spoke to BidweB 
in a flat, emotionless voice. His face remained impassive

cept for the live, animal eyes. "You wanted to talk to me?"


LIFE-LINE


"Yes."

"What's the proposition?"

"Sit down, and we'll ialk."


81


Pinero met the young couple at the door of his inner office. 
"Come in, my dears, come in. Sit down. Make yourselves 
at home. Now tell me, what do you want of Pinero? Surely 
such young people are not nxious about the final roll call?"

The-boy's pleasant young face showed slight confusion. 
"Well, you see, Dr.' Pinero, I'm Ed Hartley and this is my 
.wife, Betty. We're going to have . . . that is, Betty is expect-mga 
baby and, well--"

Pinero smiled benignly. "I'underand. You want to know 
how long. you will live in order to make the best possible 
� provision for the youngster. Quite wise. Do you both want

readings,, or l'ust .y ourself".
.

The gbrl answered, "Both of us, we thifik2'

Pinero beamed at her. "Quite so. I agree. Your reading

p.resents certain technical difficulties at this time, but I can

gve you some information now. Now come into my 
labora
tory, my dears, and we'll commence."

He rang for their case histories, then showed them

into his workshop. "Mrs. Hardey first, please, ff you will

go behind that screen and remove your shoes and your outer

clothing, please."

He turned away and made 'some minor adjustments of his

-epparatus. Ed nodded to his wife, who slipped behind the

screen and reappeared almost at once, dressed in a slip. 
Pin
ero glanced up.

"This way, my dear. First we must weigh you. There.

Now take your place on the stand. This electrode in your

mouth. No, Ed, you mustn't touch her while she is in the 
cir
cuit. It won't take a minute. Remain quiet."

He drove under the machine's hood and the dials sprang

into life. Very shordy he came out, with a perturbed look on

his face. "Ed, did you touch her?"

"No, doctor." Pinero .ducked back again and remained

a little longer. When he came out this time, he told the girl

to get down and dress. He turned to her husband..

"Ed, make yourself ready."

"W'hat's Betty's reading, doctor?"

"There is a little difficulty. I want to test you first."

When he came out from taking the youth's reading, his

face was more troubled than ever. Ed inquired as t6 his 
trou

82
RosEax A. HzILEII

ble. Pinero shrugged his shoulders and brought a smile to

his lips..
- ---- bo" &- little mechanical

"Nothinff to concern you, my . y..

--:--a;--nt I think But I shan't be able to gve you,.wu

m'aulu�� ' 
;' '- "-a to overhaul my machine.

your readings tomy. i snau n.u

Can you come back tomorrow?"

"/hy, I think so. Say, I'm sorry about your machine. I

hope it isn't serious."

"It isn't, I'm sure. Will you come back intomy office and

risk for a bit?"

"Thank you, doctor. You are very kind."

"But, Ecl, I've got to meet Ellen."

pinero turned the full force of his personality on her.

,,
' ou erant me a few moments, my dear young lady?

Won.y ?   
,f -Toun folks' company. I get

I am old, ann dire me p,* ,, Z ? 
end- into his

very little of it. Please. He nuogea mem g y

office and seated them. Then he ordered lemonade and

cookies sent in, offered them cigarettes and lit a cigar.

Forty minutes later lcd listened entranced, while Betty

was quite evidently acutely nervous arid anxious to leave, as

the doctor spun out a story concerning his adventures as a

young man in Terra del Fuego. When the doctor stopped to

relight his cigar, she stood up.

"Doctor, we really must leave. Couldn't we hear the rest

tomorrow�"
'

tomorrow."

"Tomorrow? There will not be time

"But you haven't time today, either. Your secretary has 
rurlff five times." . �inures>,,

,,m "-'- -'ou are me mst a iew more ii111, �

"I really can't today, doctor. I have an appointment.

'Inaere is someone waiting for me."

"There is no way to induce you?"

"I'm araid not. Come, Ed."

After they had gone, the .doctor stepped to the wludow

and stared out over the city. presently, he picked out

tiny figures as they left the office building. He. watched

thm hurry to the corner, wait for the lights to chaag�

then start across the street. When they were p.a.E way

across, there came the scream of a siren. The two ilrle 
lg
utes hesitated, started back, stopped and''med' Then thc

was uuon them� As the car slammed to a stop, they

car -   
*neath it ao longer two 6guces, but 

shS[3
oWe(I 
lip I{)lll UC

�  . unorganized heap 
of clothing.
ply a 
Imap   *-m the window. 
Then

- Presendy the doctor turned away

LIFE-LINE


he picked up hs phone and spoke to hs secretary.

"Cancel my appointments for the rest of the day   No.

�
. . No one   I don't 
care;.dancel them."
Then he 
sat down in his chair. His cigar Went out. Long after dark 
he held it, still unlighte&

Pinero sat 
down at hs dining table and contemplated the 
gourmet's luncheon spread before him. He had ordered 
this meal with particular care, and had come home a little 
early in order to enjoy it fully.

Somewhat later he let a few drops of fior d'Alpini roll 
around his tongue and trickle down hs throat The heavy, 
fragrant sirup warmed his mouth and reminded him of the 
lkde mountain flowers for which it was named. He sighed. 
'It had been a good meal, an exquisite meal and had justified 
the exotic liqueur

His musing was interrupted by a d'thrbance at the front 
door. The voice of his elderly maidservant was raised in 
remonstrance. A heavy male voice interrupted her. The 
commotion moved down the hall and the dining-room door 
was pushed open.

"Mia Madonna! Non si puo entrare! The master is eating!"

"Never mind, Angela. I have time to see these gendemen. 
You may go."

Pinero faced the surly-faced spokesman of the intruders. 
"You have business with me; yes?"

"You bet we have. Decent people have had enough of your

damned nonsense."

"And so?"

The caller did not answer at once. A smaller, dapper individual 
moved out from behind him and faced Pinero.


"We might as well begin." The chairman of the 
commit
tee placed a key in the lock box and opened it. "Wenzell, will

you help me pick out today's envelopes?" He was 
inter
rupted by a touch on his arm.

"Dr. Baird, you are wanted on the telephone."

"Very well. Bring the instrmnent here."

When it was fetched he placed the receiver o his ear.

"Hello   Yes; 
speaking   What? . . . No, 
we 'have
heard nothing   Destroyed the
machine, you say 
....
Dead! How? . . . No! 
No statement. None at all   Call
me later."
He slammed the instrument 
down 
and pushed 
it from

him.

"Wat's up?'

'%Vho's .dead now?"

d held u one hand "Quiet, gentlemen, please! Pinero

Ba
P
'
'   e"

was 
mdered a few momenm ago at nm nora 
�

"Mdered!"
"at 't a. A
ut the s
e te vand broke to 
s oce and ashd his appara."
No 
one 
ke at fir. e 
commiee 
members glanced around at each oer. No one 
seemed om to be e to co--mt.

Fy one spoke up. "Get 
it out."

"Get what 
out?"
"Pero's envelope. It 
s m ere, t9o. I 
ye en
d located it,-and slowly tore xt 
opera He olded e gle sht of 
pa
er sca
ed i
"WEB? w;th it.
"One een 
p.m... �
� too y.
ey 
took N 
sence.
e dmic was 
broken 
by a member acroe ruble from Bd 
rcg for 
e lock box. Bakd teosed a 
hand.
"
at do you want?"
"My predi
ion. It's erwe're 

eref
"y, yes."

e're e'
"Let's have 
them."
ad placed 
bo hah& ov the 
box. He held the eye of
B
.' , ' . but did not eak. He 
cked h lips.
I COe OX llauuu
'
he did not eak. e mm opposite relied back 
Mto a
'
"ou're ri hr, of 
coe,'' he said.

"
M m

that wastebasket." Bad's voice w low

B g d
ed, but ea y.
ce ted it and dped c lier on thc g.
He ac pi   gre h. He tore h a
placed e bas,et on me ram
dozen envelopes ao, set a match to them, and &opped em e basket. en he ed teMg
a double hand-f at a e, md fed the e eay. e smoke made
ened a wiBoow, vvn
up .an yp,   from h; looked do and ok.
Bed  . 7 .  ,,
P 'TTM raid I've m ths ruble op.

THER BREATHER 
ly ToI)om


Sturgeon noas born Edoard Hamilton Waldo, and librarians 
the world over stubbornly list him under that name, although 
Tbe.odore Sturgeon bas been bis real and only name since 
his legal adoption in boyhood. He bas worked for Fortune, 
managed a luxury hotel in the West Indies, run a bulldozer. 
One of the few real artists modern science fiction has produced, 
be bas been anthologized more often than any other 
s.f. writer. , ,


rr was ';Thfi .Seashell." It ,wouldhave to be "The Seashell.'' 
I wrote it first as a short story, and' It"was turned down. 
Then I made a novelette out of it, and then a novel. Then a 
short short. Then a three-line gag. And it still wouldn't sell. 
It got to be a fetish with me, rewriting that "Seashell." 
After a while editors got so used to it that they turned it 
down on sight. I had enough rejection slips from that number 
alone to paper every room in the house of tomorrow. So 
when it sold--well, it was like the death of a friend. It hit 
me. I hated to see it go.

It was a play by that time, but I hadn't changed it much. 
Still the same pastel, froo-froo old "Seashell" story, about 
two children who grew up and met each other only three 
times as the years went on, and a little seashell that changed 
hands each time they met. The plot, if any, doesn't matter. 
The dialogue was--well, pastel. Naive. Unsophisticated. 

Very pretty, and practically salesproof. But it just happ.ened 
to ring the bell with an earnest young reader for Assocmted 
Television, Inc., who was looking for something about that 
length that could be dubbed "artistic"; something that would 
not require too much cerebration on the part of an audience, 
so that said audience could relax and appreciate the new 
polychrome technique of tdevision transmission. You know; 
pastel.

As I leaned back in my old relic of an armchair that night, 
and watched the streamlined version of my slow-moving 
brainchild, I had to admire the way they put it over. In spots 
it was almost good, that "Seashell." Well suited for the 
occasion, too. It was a full-hour program given free to a per-85


TnEors

fume house by Associated, to try out the new color 
trans
mission as an advertising medium. I liked the first o acts,

I do say so as sho't. It ws at the h-h0 mk that

I got my flrck on the ch. It was a two-mute st for

e adverfisg plug.

A m and elegt couple were seen smndg on mble

' an daborate eater lobby. 'Says she to he:

eps m
.
�
,,

"d how o you e e play, . Robson.

Says he to she: "It ."

Just e that. Like y rao-te!evision 5ener, I was us

to pavffie, my, aenon to a plug. at ?ay

sna led e up my chak. Mter a, it w my play, even

a Pas "e Seashen." ey coddn't do that to me.

But e gkl sm'g cy out of my tdevion set 't

seem to mind. She said sweedy, "I thk so, too."

He w lookg dushay down into her eye. He said:

"at goes for yo t, my de. What is that perfme you

e usg?"
,
�

�
"Berbelo? Doux ves. at do you th of t.

He said, You hed what I sd about &e pla[.

I &'t wt for &e r of &e'phg, &e auon 
idenca
tlon, and act three. I headed for my viphone and &ed 
As
sociated. I was bg up. en ek pea-faced 
kch
board gkl flashed on my screen I stopped: "Get me Gr.

So it up!" ,
,,

. ' s e bu, Mr. HamPton, she sg to

Mr Gr  k

"
,,win ho 
a
S,
"None of at, Dorothe, I 
roarea. 
gone to high school teer; as 
a maer of fact I had
her the 
ob wi Gr, who was Aochted's heafi script

n. "I don't care who's tkg to Gr
. Cut off and put

me tough. He can't do that to me. 
I' me, that's what I
do. I'g break e 
compmy, I'"
"Take k e, 
Ted," she said. "at's e 
maer wi' eye,one of a redden, 
anay? you muow,
bb wi G now 
N old 
Berbelot hseN. Seer':' he .to sue 
sSOClatCo, too. v n a
BV t I 
s przcdcy Mcohcrent. "Bcrbcl, heyS' I'
e h
, too. e rat! e d-- at e you hugg tP"
"He wanm to me you? she giggle& "d I' bet w. too, to shut Sclot up. You know, 
this might n to rely {Y{ Before I cod ot she sitchcJ me over to

ETH, ER BREATHER 87

As'he answered he was wiping his heaVy jowls with a 
handkerchief. "Well?" he asked in a shaken voice.

"What are you, a wise guy?" I bellowed. "What kind' of a 
stunt is that you pulled on the commercial Plug on m7 play? 
Whose idea was that, anyway? Berbelot's? What the--"

"Now, Hamilton," Griff said easily, "don't excite yourself 
this way." I could see his hands trembling---evidendy old 
Berbelot had laid it on thick. "Nothing untoward has occurred. 
You must be mistaken. I assure you--"

"You pompous old sociophagus," I growled, wasting a

� swell two-dollar word on him, "don't call me a liar. I've been 
listening to 'that program and I know what I heard. I'm going 
to sue you. And Berlpelot. And ff you try to pass the buck 
onto the. actors in that plug skit, I'll sue them, too. And if 
you make any moe cracks about me being mistaken, I'm 
going to come up there 'and feed you your teeth. 'Then I'll 
sue you personally as well as Associated."

I dialed out and went back to my television set, fuming. 
The program was going on as if nothing had happened. As I 
cooled--and I cool slowly--I began to see that the last half 
of "The Seashell" was even better than the first. You know, 
it's poison for a writer to fall in love with his own stuff; 
but, by golly, sometimes you turn out a piece that really 
has something. You try to be critical, and you can't be. The 
Ponta Delgada sequence in "The Seashell" was like that.

The girl was on a cruise and the boy was on a training 
ship. They met in the Azores Islands. Very touchin, g. The 
last time they saw each other was before they were m their 
teens, but in the meantime they had had their dreams. Get 
the idea of the thing? Very pastel. And they did do it nicely. 
The shots of Ponta Deigada and the scenery of the Azores 
were swell. Came the moment, after four minutes of ickey 
dialogue, when he gazed at her, the light of true, mature love

dawning on his young face.

She said shyly, "Well--"

Now, his lines, as written--and I should know!--went: 
"Rosalind . . . it is you, then, isn't k? Oh, I'm afraid'--he 
g. rasps her shoulders---"afraid that it can't be real. So many 
tmes I've seen someone wh6 might be you, and it has never 
been . . . Rosalind, Rosalind, guardian angel, reason for living, 
beloved . . . beloved--" Clinch.

Now, as I say, it went off as written, up to and including 
the clinch. But then came the payoff. He took his lips from 
hers, buried his face in her hair and said clearly: "I hate your


88
THzool SxvRGzota

guts." And that" .-" was the most perfectly 
enunci
ated present participle of a four-letter verb I have ever heard.


Just what happened after that I couldn't tell you. I went

haywire, I guess. I scattered two hundred and twenty 
dol
lars' worth of television set over all three rooms of my 
apart
ment. Next thing I knew I was in a 'press tube, hurtling 
to
ward the three-hundred-story skyscraper that housed 
As
sociated Television. Never have I seen one of those 'press

cars, forced by compressed air through tubes under the city,

move so slowly, butit might have been my imagination. If I

had anything to do with it, there was going to be one dead

script boss up there.

And who should I run into on the 229th floor but old

Berbelot himself. The perfume king had blood in his eye.

Through the haze of anger that surrounded me, I began to

realize that things were about to be very tough on Griff.

And I was quite ready to help out all I could.

Berbelot saw me at the same instant, and seemed to read

my thought. "Come on," he said briefly, and together we

ran the gantlet of secretaries and assistants and burst into

Griff's office.

Griff rose to his feet and tried to look dignified, with

little success. I leaped over his glass desk and pulled the wings

of his stylish open-necked collar together until he began

squeaking.

Berbelot seemed to be enjoying k. "Don't kill him, 
Hamil
ton,'' he said after a bit. "I want to."
'

I let the script man go. He sank down to the floor, gasping. 
He was like a scared kid, in more ways than one. It was 

funny.

We let him get his breath. He climbed to his feet, sat down 
at his desk, and reached out toward a battery of push buttons. 
Berbelot snatched up a Dow-metal paper knife and hacked 
viciously at the chubby hand. It retreated.

"Might I ask," said Griff heavily, "the reason for this

O ' '

.unprovoked r wdlness.

Berbelot cocked an eye at me. "Might he?"

"He might tell us what this monkey business is all about," 
I said.

Griff cleared his throat painfully. "I told both you . . 
er . . . gentlemen over the phone that, as far as I knov 
there was nothing amiss in our interpretation of your pla,. 
Mr. Hamilton, nor in the commercial section of the broa.i


. ETHER BREATHER 89

'cast, Mr. Berbelot. After your protests over the wire, I 
made it a point to see the second half of the broadcast my-serf. 
Nothing was wrong. And as ithis is the first commercial 
color broadcast, it has been recordedl If you are not satisfied 
with my statements, you are welcome to see the recording 
yourselves, immediately."

VV'hat else could we want? It occurred to both of us that 
Griff was really up a tree; that he was telling the truth as far 
as he knew it, and that he thought we were both screwy. 
I began to think so myself.

Berbelot said, "Griff, didn't you hear that dialogue near 
the end, when those two kids were by that sea wail?"

Griff nodded.

."Think back how," Berbelot went on. "What did the 
bdy say to the. girl when he put his muzzle into her hair?"

"'I love you,' '" said Griff serf-couscio's!y, and blushed. 
"He said it twice."

Berbelot and I looked at each other. "Let's see that recording," 
I said.

Well, we did, in Griff's luxurious private projection room. 
I hope I never have to live through an hour like that again. 
If it weren't for the fact that Berbelot was seeing the same 
thing I saw, and feeling the same way about it, I'd have reported 
to an alienist. Because that program came off Griff's 
projector positively shimmering with innocuoosness. My 
script was A-l; Berbelot's plugs were right. On that plug 
that had started everything, where the man and the girl were

gabbing in the theater lobby, the dialogue went like this: 
"And }iow do you like the play, Mr. Robinson?"

"Utterly charming . .. and that goes for you, too, my 
dear. What is that perfume you are using?"

"Berbelot's Doux Raves. What do you think of it?"

"You heard what I said about the play."

Well, there you are. And by the recording, Griff had been 
right about the repetitious three little words in the Azores 
sequence. I was floored.

After it was over, Berbelot said to Griff: "I think I can 
speak for Mr. Hamilton when I say that if this is an act-aal 
recording, we owe you an apology; also when I say that we 
do not accept your evidence until we have compiled our 
own. I recorded that program as it came over my set, as I 
h.,::: recorded all my advertising. We will see you tomor-roy. 
and we will bring that sound film. Coming, 
Hamil
tOr:"


90
TI-mOOa Sxtrac. ex



I nodded and we left, leaving Griff to chew his lip.


I'd like to skip briefly over the last chapter of that evening's 
nightmard Berbelot picked up a camera expert on the 
way, and we had the films developed within an hour after 
we arrived at the fantastic "house that perfume built." And 
if I was crazy, so was Berbelot; and if he was, then so was 
the camera. So help me, that blasted program came out on 
Berbelot's screen exactly as it had on my set and his. If anyone 
ever took a long-distance cussing out, it was Griff that 
night. We figured, of course, that he had planted a phony 
recording on us, so that we wouldn't sue. He'd do the same 
thing in court, too. I told Berbelot so. He shook his head.

"No, Hamilton, we can't take it to court. Associated 
gave me that broadcast, the first color commercial, on condition 
that I sign away their responsibility for 'incomplete, 
or inadequate, or otherwise unsatisfactory performance.'

They didn't quite trust that new apparatus, you know." 
"Well, I'll sue for both of us, then," I said. 
"Did they buy all rights?" he asked.

"Yes . . . damn! They got me, too! They have a legal 
right to do anything they want." I threw my cigarette into 
the electric fire, and mapped on Berbelot's big television set,

tuning it to Associated's XZB.

Nothing happened.

"Hey! Your set's on the bum? I said. Berbelot got up and 
began fiddling with the dial. I was wrong. There was nothing 
the matter with Se set. It was Associated. All of their stations 
were off the air--all four of them. We looked at each

other.

"Get XZW," said Berbelot. "It's an Associated affaliate, 
under cover. Maybe we can--"

XZW blared out at us as I spun the dial. A dance program, 
the-new five-beat stuff. Suddenly the announcer stuck his 
face into the transmitter.

"A bulletin from Iconoscope News Service," he said conversationally. 
'FCC has clamped down on Associated Television 
and its stations. They are off the air. The reasons were 
not given, but it is surmised that k has to do with a little 
strong language used on the world premiere of Associated's 
new color transmission. That is all."

"I expected that," smiled Berbelot. "Wonder how Griff'll 
alibi himself out of that? If he tries to use that recording of


ETHER BREATHER 91

his, I'll most cheerfully turn mine over to 'the government, 
and we'll have him for periury."

"Sorta tough on Associated, isn't it[" I said.

"Not particularly. You know these big corporations. Associated 
gets millions out of their four networks, but those 
millions are just a drop in the bucket compared with the 
other pies they've got their fingers in. That color technique, 
for instance. Now that they can't use it for a while, how 
many Other outfits will miss the chance of bidding for the 
method and equipment? They lose some advertising contracts, 
and they save by not operating. They won't even fed 
it. I'll bet you'll see color transmission within forty-eight 
hours over a rival network."

He was right. TWo days later Cineradio .had a color 
broadcast scheduled and all hell brokeloose. What they'd 
done to the Berbelot hour and my "Seashell" was. really tame.

The program Was sponsored by one of' the antigravity 
industries--I forget which. They'd hired Raouls Stavisk, the 
composer, to play one of the ancient Gallic operas he'd 
exhumed. It was a piece called "Carmen" and had been prat-tic.ally 
fo.rgottefi for two centuries. News of it had created 
qmte a mr among music lovers, although, personally, I don't 
go for it. It's too barbaric for me. Too hard to listen to, when 
you've been hearing five-beat all your life. And those old-timers 
had never heard of a quarter tone.

Anyway, it was a big affair, televised right from the huge 
Citizens' Auditorium. It was more than half full--there were 
about 130,000 people there. Practically all of the sdect highbrow 
music fans from that section of the city. Yes, 130,000 
iPairs of eyes saw that show in the flesh, and countless mil-ions 
saw it on their own sets; remember that.

Those that saw it at the Auditorium got their money's 
worth, from what I hear. They saw the complete opera; saw 
it go off as scheduled. The coloratura, Maria Jeff, was in 
perfect voice, and Stavisk's orchestra rendered the ancient 
tones perfectly. So what?

So, those that saw it at home saw the first half of the program 
the same as broadcast---of course. But---and get this--they 
saw Maria Jeff, on a close-ul, in the middle of an aria, 
throw back her head, stop singing, and shout raucously: 
"The hell with this! Whip it up, boys!"

They heard the orchestra break out of that old two-four 
musiem"Habafiera," I think they called it--and slide into a 
wicked old-time five-beat song about "alco-pill Alice," the


92
Tooa Saeaco

girl who .didn't believe in eugenics. They saw her ep 
lightly about the stage, shedding her costumenot that I 
blame her for that; it was supposed to be authentic, and must 
have been warm. But there was a certain something about 
the way she did it.

� I've never seen or heard of anything like it. First, I thought 
that it was part of the opera, because from what I learned 
in school I gather that the ancient people used to go in for. 
things like that. I wouldn't know. But I knew it wasn't opera 
when old Stavisk himself jumped up on the stage and started 
dancing with the prima donna. The televisors flashed around 
to the audience, and there the), were, every one of them, 
dancing in the aisles. And I mean dancing. Wow!

Well, you can imagine the trouble that that caused. Cin-eradio, 
Inc., was flabbergasted when the), were shut down 
FCC like Associated. So were 130,000 people who had seen 
the opera and thought it was good. Every last one of them 
denied dancing in the aisles. No one had seen Stavisk jump 
on the stage. It just didn't make sense.

Cineradio, of course, had a recording. So, it turned out, did 
FCC. Each recording proved the point of its respective 
group. That of Cineradio, taken by a sound camera right 
there in the auditorium, showed a musical program. FCC's, 
photographed right off a government standard receiver, 
showed the riot that I and millions of others had seen over 
the air. It was too much for me. I went out to see Berbelot. 
The old boy had a lot of sense, and he'd seen the beginning 
of this crazy business.

He looked pleased when I saw his face on his house televisor. 
"Hamilton!" he exclaimed. "Come on in! I've been 
phoning all over the five downtown boroughs for you!" He 
pressed a button and the foyer door behind me closed. I was 
whisked, up into his rooms. That combination foyer and ele-.vator 
of his is a nice gadget.

"I guess I .don't have to ask you why you came," he said 
as we shook hands.."Cineradio certainly pulled a boner, hey?"

"Yes and no," I said. "I'm beginning to think that Griff was 
right when he said .that, as far as he knew, the program was 
on the up and up. But if he was right, what's it all about? 
How can a program reach the transmitters in perfect shape, 
and come out of every receiver in the nation like a practical 
joker's idea of paradise?"

"It can't," said Berbelot. He stroked his chin thoughtfully. 
"But it did. Three times."


ETHER BREATHER
93

"Three? Vi/hen--"

"Just now, before you got in. The secretary of state was

making a speech over XZM, Consolidated Atomic, you

know; XZM grabbed the :color equipment from Cineradio as

soon as they were blacked out by FCC. Well, the honorable

secretary droned on as usual for just twelve and a half 
min
utes. Suddenly he stopped, grinned into the transmitter, and

said, 'Say, have you heard the one about the traveling farmer

and the salesman's daughter?'"

"I have," I said. "My gosh, don't tell me he spieled it?"

"Right,'? said Berbelot. "In detail, over the unsullied 
air
waves. I called up right away, but couldn't get through.

XZM's nmnk lines were jammed. A very worried-looking

switchboard girl hooked up I don't know how many lines

together and announced into them: 'I you people are calling

up about the secretary's speech, there is noing wrong with

it Now please et off the lines""
�


Well, I sa,d, let s see what we've got. First, the 
broad
casts leave the studios as scheduled and as written. Shall we

accept that?"

"Yes,: said Berbelot. "Then, since so far no 
black-and
white broadcasts have been affected, we'll consider that this

strange behavior is limited to the polychrome technique."

How about the recordings at the studios. They were in

polychrome, and they weren't affected."


Berbelot pressed a button, and an automatic serving table

rolled out of its niche and stopped in front of each of us.

We helped ourselves to smokes and drinks, and the table

returned to its place.

"Cineradio's wasn't a television recording, Hamiltom It

was a sound camera. As for Associated's . . . I've got it!

Griff's recording was transmitted to his recording machines

by wire, from the studios! It didn't go out on the air at all?

"You're right. Then we can assume that the only programs

affected are those in polychrome, actually aired. Fine,. but

where does that get us?"

"Nowhere," admitted Berbelot. "But maybe we can find

out. Come with me.'"

We stepped into an elevator and dropped three floors. "I

don't know if you've heard that I'm a television bug," ssid

my host. "Here's my lab. I flatter myself that a more 
com
plete one does not exist anywhere."

I wouldn't doubt it. I never in my life saw a hyout like

that. It was part museum.and part workshop. It had in it a


94
THEODORE STURGEON


COpy of a genuine relic of each and every phase of television 
down through the years, right from the old original scan-ning-disk 
sets down to the latest three-dimensional atomic 
jobs. Over in the corner was an extraordinarily complicated 
mass of apparatus which I recognized as a pol�chrome transmitter. 


"Nice job, isn't it?" said Berbelot. "It was developed in 
here, y. ou know, by one of the lads who won the Berbelot 
scholarship." I hadn't known. I began to have real respect 
for this astonishing man.

"Just how does it work?" I asked him.

"Hamilton," he said testily, "we have work to do. I would 
be talking all night if I told you. But the general idea is thdt 
the vibrations sent out by this transmitter are all out of phase 
with each other. Tinting in the receiver is achieved by certain 
blendings of these out-of-phase vibrations as they leave 
this rig. The effect is a sort of irregular vibrationma vibration 
in the electromagnetic waves themselves, resulting in a 
totally new type of wave which is still receivable in a standard 
set."

"I see," I lied. "Well, what do you plan to do?" 

"I'm going to broadcast from here to my country place up 
north. It's eight hundred miles away from here, which ought 
to be sufficient. My signals will be received there and automatically 
returned to us by wire." He indicated a receiver 
standing close by. "If the. re is any difference between what 
we send and what we get, we can possibly fred out just what 
the trouble is."

"How about FCC?" I asked. "Suppose--it sounds funny to 
say it--but just suppose that we get the kind of strong talk 
that came over the air during my 'Seashell' number?"

Berbelot snorted. "That's taken care of. The broadcast will 
be directional. No receiver can get it but mine."

What a man. He thought of everything. O.., I said. 
"Let's go."

Berbelot threw a couple of master switches and we sat 
flown in front of the receiver. Lights blazed on, and through 
a bank of push buttons at his elbow, Berbelot maneuvered 
the transmitting cells to a point above and behind the receiver, 
so that we could see and be seen without turning our 
heads. At a nod froTM Berbelot I leaned forward and switched 
on the receiver.

Berbelot glanced at his watch. "If things work out right, it


ETHER BREATHER 95

will be between ten and thirty minutes before we get any

interference." His voice sounded a little metallic. I realized 
� that it was coming from the eceiver s he spoke.

The images cleared on the view-creen as the set warmed 
up.. It gave me an odd sensation. I saw Berbelot and myself 
s.mng side by sideiust as if we were sitting in front of a 
mrror, except that the images were not reversed. I thumbed 
my nose at myself, and my image returned the compliment.

Berbelot said: "Go easy, boy. If we get the same kind 
of interferende the .others got, your image will make 
some
thing out of that." He chuckled. 

"Damn right," said the receiver.

Bexbelot and I stared at each other, and back at the screen. 
Berbelot's face.wasthe same, but mine had a vicious sneer 
on it. Berbelot calmly checked with his watch. "Eight forty-six," 
he said. "Less .time each broadcast. Pretty soon the 
interference will start with the broadcast, if' thi keeps up."

"Not unless you start broadcasting on a regular schedule," 
said Berbelot's image.

It had apparently dissociated itself completely from Bet-helot 
himself. I was floored.

Berbelot sat beside me, his face frozen. "You see?" he whispered 
to me. "It takes a minute to catch up with itself. Till 
it does, it is my image."

"What does it all mean?" I gasped.

"Search me," said the perfume king.

We sat and watched. And so help me, so did our images. 
They were watching !

Berbelot tried a direct question. "Who are you?" he asked.

"Who do we look like?" said my image; and both laughed 
uproariously.

Berbelot's image nudged mine. "We've got 'em on the run, 
hey, pal?" it chorded.

"Stop your nonsense!" said Berbelot sharply. Surprisingly, 
the merriment died.

"Aw," said my image plaintively. "We don't mean any 
thing by it. Don't get sore. Let's all have fun. I'm having

fun?'

"Why, they're like kids!" I said.

"I think you're right," said Berbelot.

"Look," he said to the images, which sat there expectantly,

"Before we have any fun, I want you to tell me 
you are, and how you are coming through the receiver,


96
TIEODOaE STUaCEO

and how you messed up the three broadcasts before tiffs."

"Did we do wrong?'' asked my image innocently. The 
other one giggled.

"High-spirited sons o' guns, aren't they?" said Berbelot.

"Well, are you going to answer my questions, or do 1 turn 
the trarzrmitter o17" he asked the images.

They chorused frantically: "We'll tell! We'll tell! Please 
don't tam'f it off!"

"What On earth made you think of that?" I whispered to 
Berbelot.

"A stab in the dark," he returned. "Evidently they like 
coming through like this and can't do it any other way but

onthe polychrome wave."


"What do you want to know?" asked Berbelot's image, its

lip quivering.

"Who are you?"

"Us? We're . . � I don't know. You don't have a name for

us, so how can I tell you?"

"Where are 
you?"

"Oh, everywhere. We get around.,

Berbelot moved his hand impatiently toward the switch.

The images squealed: "Don't! Oh, please don't! This is

fun!"

"Fun, is it?" I growled. "Come on, give us the story, or

we'll black you out!"

My image said pleadingly: "Please believe us. It's the truth.

We're everywhere."

"What do you look like?" I asked. "Show yourselves as you

are!"

"We can't," said the other image, "because we don't 'look'

like anything. We just . . . are:that's a."

"We don't reflect light," supplementea my image.

Berbelot and I exchanged a puzzled glance. Berbelot said,

' e stumbled

"Either somebody s taking us for a nde or we v

on something utterly new and unheard .

"You certainly have," said Berbelot's image 'earnesdy.

"We've known about you for a long time--as you count

time"

"Yes," the other continued. "We knew about you some

;to hundred of your years ago. We had felt your vibrations

for a long time before that, but we never knew just who you

were until then."

"Two hundred years--" mused Berbelot. "That was about

the time of the first atomic-powered television sets."


ETHER BREATHER

97
"That's right!" said my image eagerly. "It touched our

brain currents and we could see and hear. We never could get

through o you until irecently} though, when you sent us that

stupid thing about a Seashell."

"None of that, now," I said angrily, while Berbelot

chuckled.


"How many of you are there?" he asked them.

"One, and many. We are finite and infinite. We have no 
size or shape as you know it. We just . . . are."

We ju swallowed that without comment. It was a bit big.

"How did you change the programs? How are you changing 
this one?" Berbelot asked.

"These broadcasts pass directly through our brain currents. 
Our thoughts change them as they pass. It was impossible 
before; we were aware, but we could not be heard. This new 
wave has let us be heard. Its convolutions are in phase with 
our being."

"How did you happen to pick that particular way of 
breaking through?" I asked. "I mean all that wisecracking 
business."

For the first time one of the images--Berbelot's looked 
abashed. "We wanted tO be liked. We wanted to come 
through to you and find you laughing. We knew how. Two 
hundred years of listening to every single broadcast, public 
and private, has taught us your language and your emotions 
and your ways of thought. Did we really do wrong?.'
"Looks 
as if we have walked into a cosmic sense of humor,'' 
remarked Berbelot to me.

To his image: "Yes, in a way, you did. You lost three huge 
companies their broadcasting licenses. You embarrassed exceedingly 
a man named Griff and a secretary of state. You" 
--he chuckled--"made my friend here very, very angry. 
That wasn't quite the right thing to do, now, was it?"

"No," said my image. It actually blushed. "We won't do it 
any more. We were wrong. We are sorry."

"Aw, skip it," I said. I was embarrassed myself. "Everybody 
makes mistakes."

"That is good of you," said my image on the television 
screen. "We'd like to do something for you. And you, too,


"Berbelot," said Berbelot. Imagine introducing yourself 
to a television set!

"You can't do anything for us," I said, "except to stop mess-mg 
up color televising."


98
Tnwoo Sxtcos


"You really want us to stop, then?" My image turned to 
Berbelot's. "We have done wrong. We have hurt their feelings 
and made them angry."

To us: "We will not bother you again. Good-by!"

"Wait a minute!" I yelped, but I was too late. The view-screen 
showed the same two figures, but they had lost their 
peculiar life. They were Berbelot'and. me. Period.

"Now look what you've done," snapped Berbelot.

He began droning into the transmitter: "Calling interrupter 
on polychrome wave! Can you hear me? Can you 
hear me? Calling--"

He broke off and looked at me disgustedly. "You dope,"

he said quietly, and I felt like going ff into a comer and 
bursting into tears.

Well, that's all. The. FCC trials reached a "person or per-sous 
mknown'' verdict, and color broadcasting became a 
universal reality. The world has never learned, until now, 
the real story of that screwy business. Berbelot spent every 
night for three months trying to contact that ether-intelli-gence, 
without success. Can you beat it? It waited two hundred 
years for a chance to come through to us, and then got 
its feelings hurt and withdrew!

My fault, of course. That admission doesn't help any. I 
wish I could do 
something-

LOOPHOLE


by ARTHUR C.' CLARKE


Clarke, a deceptively mild-mannered Englishman, bas been a 
science editor, a founding member of the British Interplanetary 
Society, one of the earliest radar technicians, and more 
recently, a scuba diver and film-maker. 1 don't know what bis 
I.Q. is, but suspect it tops any other in a notably brainy field.


From: President

To: Secretary,. Cotmcil of Scientists.

I' have been. informed that-xhe inhabitants of Earth have 
succeeded in releasing atomic energy and hav.e been making 
experiments veith rocket propulsion. This is Most serious. Let 
me have a full report immediately. And make it brief this 
time.

K.K. IV.


From: Secretary, Council of Scientists.

To: President.

The facts are as follows. Some months ago our instruments 
detected intense neutron emission from Earth, but an analysis 
of radio programs gave no explanation at the time. Three 
days ago a second emission occurred and soon afterwards all 
radio transmissions from Earth announced that atomic 
bombs were in use in the current war. The translators have 
not completed their interpretation, but it appears that the 
bombs are of considerable power. Two have so far been used. 
Some details of their construction have been released, but the 
elements concerned have not yet been identified. A fuller report 
will be forwarded as soon as possible. For the moment all 
that is certain is that the inhabitants of Earth have liberated 
atomic power, so far only explosively.

Very little is known concerning rocket research on Earth. 
Our astronomers have been observing the planet carefully 
ever since radio emissions were detected a generation ago. It 
is certain that long-range rockets of some kind are in existence 
on Earth, for there have been numerous references to 
them in recent military broadcasts. However, no serious attempt 
has been made to reach interplanetary space. When the 
wvr ends, it is expected that the inhabitants of the planet may


100
Aann. C.


carry out research in this direction. We will pay very careful 
attention to their broadcasts and the astronomical watch will 
be rigorously enforced.

From what we have inferred of the planet's technology, 
it should require about twenty years before Earth develops 
atomic rockets capable of crossing space. In view of this, k 
would seem that the time has come to set up a base on the 
Moon,-so that a close scrutiny can be kept on such experiments 
when they commence.

Trescon.


(Added in manuscript.)

The war on Earth has now ended, apparendy owing to the 
intervention of the atomic bomb. This will not affect the above 
arguments but k may mean that the inhabkants of Earth can devote 
themselves to pure research again more. quickly than expected. 
Some broadcasts have already pointed out the application of 
atomic power in rocket propulsion.

T.


From: President.

To: Chief of Bureau of Em-Planetary Security. (C.B.E.P.S.)

You have seen Trescon's minute. 

Equip an expedition to the satellite of Earth immediately. 
It is to keep a close watch on the planet and to report at once 
if rocket experiments are in progress.

The greatest care must be taken to keep our presence on 
the Moon a secret. You are personally responsible for this. 
Report to me at yearly intervals, or more often if necessary.

K.K. IV.


From: President.

To: C.B.E.P.S.

Where is the report on Earth?


From: C.B.E.P.S.

To: President.

The delay is regretted. It was caused by the breakdown of

the ship carrying the report.

There have been no signs of rocket experimentin during

the past year, and no reference to it in broadcasts from the

planet.
Ranthe.


LOOPHOLE
101




From: C.B.E.P.S.,

To: President.

You will .have seen my yearly'reports to your respected 
father on this subiect. There hae been no developments of 
interest for the past seven years, but the following message 
has just been received from our base on the Moon:

Rocket projectile, apparently atomically propelled, left 
Earth's atmosphere today fromm Northern land-nass, traveling 
into space for one quarter diameter of planet before 
returning under control.,

Ranthe.


From: President.

To: Chefxf Sthte.

� Your comments, please.


K.K.V.


From: Chief of State.

To: President.

This means the end of our traditional policy.

The only hope of security lies in preventing the Terrestrials 
fr6m making further advances in this direction. From 
what we know of them, this will require some over-whelm-ing 
threat.

Since its high gravity makes it impossible to land on the 
planet, our sphere of action is restricted. The problem was 
discussed nearly a century ago by Anvar, and I agree with. 
his conclusions. We must act immediately along those lines.

F.K.S.


From: President.

To: Secretary of State.

Inform the Council that an emergency meeting is convened 
for noon tomorrow.

K.K.V.


From: President;

To: C.B.E.P.S.

'Twenty battleships should be sufficient to put Anvar's 
plan into operation. Fortunately there is no need to arm them 
--yet. Report progress of construction to me weekly.

K.K.V.


102
AaTna C. CLmK


From: C.B.E.P.S.

To: President.

Nineteen ships are now completed. The twentieth is still 
delayed owing to hull failure and will not be ready for at 
least a month.

Ranthe.


From: President.

To: C.B.E.P.S

Nineteen will be sufficient. I will check the operational 
plan with you tomorrow. Is the draft of our broadcast ready 
yet?

K.K.V.


From: C.B.E.P.S.

To: President.

Draft herewith:

People of Earth!

We, the inhabitants of the planet you call Mars, have 
for many years observed your experiments towards achieving 
interplanetary travel. These experiments must cease. Our 
study of your race has convinced us that you are not fitted 
to leave your planet in the present state of y.o.ur civilization. 
The ships you now see floating above your crees are capable 
of destroying them utterly, and will do so unless you discon-tinne 
your attempts to cross space.

We have set up an observatory on your Moon and can 
immediately detect any violation of these orders. If you 
obey them, we will not interfere with you again. Otherwise, 
one of your cities will be destroyed every time we observe a 
rocket leaving the Earth's atmosphere.

By order of the President and Council of Mars.

Ranthe.


From: President.

To: C.B.E.P.S.

I approve. The translation can go ahead.

I shall not be sailing with the fleet, after all. You will report 
to me in detail immediately on your 
return.
K.K.V.


From: C.B.E.P.S.

To: President.

I have the honor to report the successful completion of


LOOPHOLE
103

'our mission. The voyage to Earth was uneventful: radio messages 
from the planet indicated that we were detected at a 
considerable' distance and 'great excitement had been &roused 
before our arrival. The fleet was dispersed according to plan 
and I broadcast the ultimatum. We left immediately and no 
hostile weapons were brought to bear against us.

I shall report in detail within two days.

Ranthe.


From: Secretary, Council of Scientists.

To: President.

The psychologists have completed their report, Which is' 
attached herewith,

� .As might be expected, our demandsat first infuriated this 
stubborn and hih-spirited race. The shock to their pride 
must have been cbnsiderable, for they believed themselves 
to be the only intelligent beings in the Universe.

However, within a few weeks there was a rather unexpected 
change in the tone of their statements. They had begun 
to realize that we were intercepting all their radio transmissions, 
and some messages have been broadcast directly 
to us. They state that they have agreed to ban all rocket experiments, 
in accordance with out wishes. This is as unexpected 
as it is welcome. Even ff they are trying to deceive 
us, we are perfectly safe now that we have established the 
second station just outside the atmosphere. They cannot 
possibly develop spaceships without our seeing them or detecting 
their tube radiation.

The watch on Earth will be continued rigorously, as instructed.

Trescon.


From: C.B.E.P.S.

To: President.

Yes, it is quite true that there have been no further rocket 
experiments in the last ten years. We certainly did not expect 
Earth to capitulate so easily!

I agree that the existence of this race now constitutes a 
permanent threat to our civilization and we are making experiments 
along the lines you suggest. The problem is a difficult 
one, owing to the great size of the planet. Explosives 
would be out of the question, and a radioactive poison of 
some kind appears to offer the greatest hope of success.


104
AI C. CLAR.


Fortunately, we now have an indeiinke time 'in which to 
complete this research, and I will report regularly.

Ranthe.

End of Document


From: Lieutenant Commander Henry Forbes, Intelligence

Branch, Special Space Corps.

To: Professor S. Maxton, Philological Department, University 
of Oxford.

Route: Transender II (via Schenectady.)

The above papers, with others, were found in the ruins 
of what is believed to be the capkal Martian city. (Mars 
Grid KL302895.) The frequent use of the ideograph for 
"Earth" suggests that they may be of special interest and it 
is hoped that they can be translated. Other papers will be 
following shortly.

H. Forbes, Lt/Cdr.


(Added in manuscript.)

Dear Max,

Sorry I've had no time to contact you before. I'll be seeing 
you as soon as I get back to Earth. '

Gosh! Mars is in a mess! Our co-ordinates were dead accurate 
and the bombs materialized fight over their cities, iust as the 
Mount Wilson boys predicted.

We're sending a lot of stuff back through the two small machines, 
but until the big transmitter is materialized we're rather 
restricted, and, of course, none of us can return. So hurry up 
wkh it!

I'm glad we can get to work on rockets again. I may be old-fashioned, 
but being squirted through space at the speed of light 
doesn't appeal to me!

Yours in haste,

Henry.


!-. T)MORROW'S CHILDREN

by POUL AD.tso'


Anderson is one of the very few full-time professional s.f. 
riters in existence: he began while still in college and bas 
been active ever since, leaving s.f. only for occasional forays 
into the mystery and historical-fiction fields. His difficult 
first name is not pronounced "Powl," or "Pool," but

proximately) "Po-ubl."


On the vorld's loom

Weave the. Norm doom,

.Nor may they guide it nor, change.

W agnei', 'Siegfried


� MILES up, it hardly showed. Earth was a cloudy green 
and brown blur, the vast vault of the stratosphere reaching 
changelesSly out to spatial infinities, and beyond the pulsing 
engine there was silence and serenity no man could ever 
touch. Looking down, Hugh Drummond could see the Mississippi 
glefiming like a drawn sword, and its slow curve 
matched the contours shown on his map. The hills, the sea, 
the sun and wind and rain, they didn't change. Not in less 
than a million slow-striding years, and human efforts flickered 
too briefly in the unending night for that.

Farther down, though, and especially where cities had 
� been-- The lone man in the solitary stratojet swore softly, 
bitterly, and his knuckles whitened on the controls. He was 
a big man, his gaunt rangy form sprawling awkwardly in the 
tiny pressure cabin, and he wasn't quite forty. But his dark 
hair was streaked with gray, in the shabby flying suit his 
shoulders stooped, and his long homely face was drawn 
into haggard lines. His eyes were black-rimmed and sunken 
with weariness, dark .and dreadful in their intensity. He's 
seen too much, survived too much, until he began to look 
like most other people of the world. Heir of the ages, he 
thought dully.

Mechanically, he went through the motions of following 
his course. Natural landmarks were still there, and he had 
powerful binoculars to help him. But he didn't use them 
much. They showed too many broad shallow craters, their 
105


106
POUL AlVDEaSOr


vitreous smoothness throwing back sunlight in the flat blank 
glitter of a snake's eye, the ground about them a churned 
and blasted desolation. And there were the worse regions of 
--deatlness. Twisted dead trees, blowing sand, tumbled skeletons, 
perhaps at night a baleful blue glow of fluorescence. 
The bombs had been nightmares, riding in on wings of fire 
and horror to shake the planet with the death blows of 
cities. But the radioactive dust was worse than any nightmare.

He passed over villages, even small towns. Some of them. 
were deserted, the blowing colloidal dust, or plague, or 
economic breakdown making them untenable. Others still 
seemed to be living a feeble half-life. Especially in the Midwest, 
there was a pathetic struggle to return to an agricultural 
system, but the insects and 
blights-
Drummond shrugged. After nearly two years of this, over 
the scarred and maimed planet, he should be used ro it. The 
United States had been lucky. Europe, 
now-
Der Untergang des Abemtlandes, he thought grayly. Spen-gler 
foresaw the collapse of a topbeavy civilization. He 
didn't foresee atomic bombs, radioactive-dust bombs, bacteria 
bombs, blight bombs--the bombs, the senseless inanimate 
bombs flying like monster insects over the shivering 
,world. So be didn't guess the extent of the collapse.

Deliberately he pushed the thoughts out of his conscious 
mind. He didn't want to dwell on them. He'd lived with 
them two years, and that was two eternities too long. And 
anyway, he was nearly home now.

The 'capital of the United States was below him, and he 
sent the stratojet slanting down in a long thunderous dive 
toward the mountains. Not much of a capital, the little town 
huddled in a valley of the Cascades, but the waters of the 
Potomac had filled the grave of Washington. Strictly speaking, 
there was no capital. The officers of the government 
wgre scattered over the country, keeping in precarious touch 
by plane and radio, but Taylor, Oregon, came as close to being 
the nerve center as any other place.

He gave the signal again on his transmitter, knowing with 
a faint spine-crawling sensation of the rocket batteries 
trained on him from the green of th6se mountains. When one 
plane could carry the end of a city, all planes were under suspicion. 
Not that anyone outside was supposed to know that 
that innocuous little town was important. But you never 
could tell. The war wasn't officially over. It might never be,


.TOMORRO,V'S CHILDREN 107

with sheer personal survival overriding the urgenc7 of treaties.

A light-beam transmitter gate him a cautious: "O.K. Can 
you land in the streetP"

It was a narrow, dUSty track between two wooden rows of 
houses, but Drummond was a good pilot and this was a good 
jet. "Yeah," he said. His voice had grown unused to speech.

He cut speed in a spiral descent until he was gliding with 
b. nly the faintest whisper of wind across his ship. Touching 
wheels to the street, he slammed on the brake and bounced 
to a halt. 
stiSe, nc.e struck at him like a physical blow. The engine

d, the sun beating down from a brassy blue sky on the

drabness of rude "temporary" houses, the total-seeming 
de
'sertion beneath the impassive mountains--Home* Huh 
.Drummond laughed, a short harsh bark with n0hing f 
humor in it, and swung open the cockpit'chnopy.

There were actually quite a few people, he saw, peering 
from doorways and side streets. They looked fairly well fed 
and dressed, many in uniform, they seemed to have put--pose 
and hope. But this, of course,-was the capital of the 
United States of America, the world's most fortunate country.

"Get out--quick!"

The peremptory voice roused Drummond from the introspection 
into which those lonely months had driven him. 
He looked down at a gang of men in mechanics' outfits, 
led by a harassed-looking man in captain's uniform 
of course, he said slowly. You want to hide the plane. And, 
naturally, a regular landing field would give you away."

"Hurry, get out, you infernal idiot! Anyone, anyone might 
come over and see"

"They wouldn't get unnoticed by an efficient detection 
system, and you still have that," said Drummond, sliding his 
booted legs over the cockpit edge. "And anyway, there 
won't be any more raids. The war's over."

�
"Wish I could believe that, but who are you to say? Get a

move on!"

The grease monkeys hustled the plane down the' street. 
With an odd feeling of loneliness, Drummond watched it 
go. After all, it had been his home for--how long?

The machine was stopped before a false house whose 
whole front was swung aside. A concrete ramp led 
down

108
J
PoLr AIRSON

ward, and Drunmond could see a cavernous immensity below. 
Light within it gleamed off silvery rows of aircraft.

"Pretty neat," he admitted. "Not that it matters any more. 
Probably it never did. Most of the hell came over on robot 
rockets. Oh, well." He fished his pipe from his jacket. Colonel's 
insignia glittered briefly as the garment flipped back.

"Oh... sorry, sir!" exclaimed the captain. "I didn't 
know

"'S O.K. I've gotten out of the habit of wearing a regular 
uniform. A lot of places I've been, an American wouldn't be 
very popular." Drummond stuffed tobacco into his briar, 
scowling. He hated to think how often he'd had to use the 
Colt at his hip, or even the machine guns in his plane, to save 
himself. He inhaled smoke gratefully. It seemed to drown 
out some of the bitter taste.

"General Robinson said to bring you to him when you arrived, 
sir," said the captain. "This way, please."


They went down the street, their boots scuffing up little 
acrid clouds of dust. Drummond looked sharply about him. 
He'd left very shortly after the two-month Ragnarok which 
had tapered off when the organization of both sides broke 
down too far to keep on making and sending the bombs, and 
maintaining order with famine and disease starting their 
ghastly ride over the homeland. At that time, the United 
States was a cityless, anarchic chaos, and he'd had only the 
briefest of radio exchanges since then, whenever he could get 
at a long-range set still in working order. They'd made remarkable 
progress meanwhile. How much, he didn't 
know, but the mere existence of something like a capital was 
sufficient proof.

Robinson-- ,His lined face twisted into a frown. He didn't 
know the man. He'd been expecting to be received by the 
President, who had sent him and some others out. Unless the 
others had-- No, he was the only one who had been in 
eastern Europe and western Asia. He was sure of that.

Two sentries guarded the entrance to what was obviously 
a converted general store. But there were no more stores. 
There was nothing to put in them. Drummond entered the 
cool dimness of an antechamber. The clatter of a typewriter, 
the Wac operating itM He gaped and blinked. That was--impossible! 
Typewriters, secretaries---hadn't they gone out 
wkh the whole world, two years ago? If the Dark Ages


ITOMORROW'S HILDREN 109

had returned to Earth, it didnt seem---right--that there 
shonld still be typewriters. It didn't fit, 
didn't-
He grew aware that the captain had opened the inner 
door for him. As he stepped in, he grew awarehow tiredhe 
was. His arm weighed a ton as h saluted the man behind 
the desk.

"At ease,,at ease," Robinson's voice was genial. Despite the 
five stars on his shoulders, he wore no tie or coat, and his 
round face was smiling. Still, he looked tough and competent 
underneath. TO run things nowadays, he'd have to be.

"Sit down, Colonel Drummond." Robinson gestured to a 
chair near his and the aviator collapsed into it, shivering. His 
haunted eyes traversed the office. It was almost well enough 
outfitted to be a prewa place.

Prewar!. A word like a word, cutting across history with 
a brality of murder, hazing everything in the past .until it 
was a vague golden, glow through drifting, red-shbt' black 
clouds. And--only two years. Only two years/ Surely sanity 
was meaningless in a world of such nightmare inversions. 
Why, he could barely remember Barbara and the kids. 
Their faces were blotted out in a tide of other visages--starved 
faces, dead faces, human faces become beast-formed 
with want and pain and eating throttled hate. His grief was 
lost in the agony of a world, and in some ways he had become 
a machine himself.

"You look plenty tired," said Robinson.

"Yeah . . . yes, sir--"

"Skip the formality. I don't go for it. We'll be working 
pretty close together, can't take time to be diplomatic."

"Uh-huh. I came over the North Pole, you know. Haven't 
slept sinee Rough time. But, if I may ask, you--" Drummond 
hesitated.

"I? I suppose I'm President. Ex officio; pro tem, or something. 
Here, you need a drink." Robinson got bottle and 
glasses from a drawer. The liquor gurgled out in a pungent 
stream. "Prewar Scotch. Till it gives out I'm laying o5 this 
modern hooch. Gamba/."

The fiery, smoky brew iolted Drummond to wakefulness. 
Its glow was pleasant in his empty stomach. He heard Robinson's 
voice with a surrealistic sharpness:

"Yes, I'm at the head now. My predecessors made the mistake 
of sticking together, and .of traveling a good deal in trying 
to pull the country back into shape. So I think the 
sick

11o


ness got the President, and I know it got several others. Of 
course, there was no means of holding an election. The 
armed forces had almost the only organization left, so we 
had to run things. Berger was in charge, but he shot himself 
when he learned he'd breathed radiodust. Then the eom-mand 
fell to me. I've been lucky."

"I see." It didn't make much difference. A few dozen more 
deaths weren't much, when over half the world was gone. 
"Do you expect to--continue lucky?" A brutally blunt question, 
maybe, but words weren't bombs.

"I do." Robinson was firm about that. "We've learned by 
experience, learned a lot. We've scattered the army, broken 
it into small outposts at key points throughout the country. 
For quite a while, we stopped travel altogether except for 
absolute emergencies, and then with elaborate precautions. 
That smothered the epidemics. The microorganisms were 
bred to work in crowded areas, you know. They were almost 
immune to know medical techniques, but without hosts 
and carriers they died. I guess natural bacteria ate up most 
of them. We still take care in traveling, but we're fairly safe

now."

"Did any of the others come back? There were a lot like 
me, sent out to Zee what really had happened to the world." 
"One did, from South America. Their situation is similar 
to ours, though they lacked our tight organization and have 
gone further toward anarchy. Nobody else returned but

you.'

It wasn't surprising. In fact, it was a cause-for astonishment 
that anyone had come back. Drummond had volunteered 
after the bomb erasing St. Louis had taken his family, 
not expecting to survive and not caring much whether 
he did. Maybe that was why he had.

'You can take your time in writing a detailed report," 
said Robinson, "but in general, how are things over there?"

Drummond shrugged. "The war's over. Burned out. Europe 
has gone back to savagery. They were caught between 
America and Asia, and the bombs came both ways. Not 
many survivors, and they're starving animals. Russia, from 
what I saw, has managed something like you've done here, 
though they're worse off than we. Naturally, I couldn't find 
out much there. I didn't get to India or China, but in 
Russia I heard rumors-- No, the world's gone too far into 
disintegration to carry on war."

"Then we can come out in the open," said Robinson softly.


Potr ANI)ERSON


TOMORROW'S CHILDREN 111

"We can really start rebuilding. I don't think there'll ever be 
another war. Drummond. I think the memory of this one 
� will be carved .too deeply on the race for us ever to forget."

"Can you shrug it off that easily?"'
�


"No, no, of course not. Our culture hasn't lost its 
conti
nuity, but it's had a terrific setback. We'll never wholly get

over it. But--we're on our way up again."

The general rose, glancing at his watch. "Six o'clock.

Come on, Drummond, let's get home."

,,Home?,,

"Yes, y u 11 stay wth me. Man, you look like the original

zombie. You'll need a month or more of sleeping betwee- n

clean sheets, of home cooking and home atmosphere. My

wife will be glad to have you; we see almost no new faces.

And' as long as we.'ll work together, I'd like to keep you

handy. The shortage 9f competent men is terrific.,,


They went ]down the street, an aide following. Drummond 
was again conscious of the weariness aching in every bone 
and fiber of him. A home--after two years of ghost towns, 
of shattered chimneys above blood-dappled snow, of flimsy 
lean-tos housing starvation and death.

"Your plane will be mighty useful, too," said Robinson. 
"Those atomic-powered craft are scarcer than hens' teeth 
used to be." He chuckled hollowly, as at a rather grim joke. 
"Got you through close to two years of flying without needing 
fuel. Any other trouble?"

"Some, but there were enough spare parts." No need to 
tell of those frantic hoUrS and days of slaving, of desperate 
improvisation with hunger and plague stalking him who 
stayed overlong. He'd had his troubles getting food, too, des-fpite 
the plentiful supplies he'd started out with. He'd fought

or scraps in the winters, beaten off howling maniacs who 
would have killed him for a bird he'd shot or a dead horse 
he'd scavenged. He hated that plundering, and would not 
have cared personally ff they'd managed to destroy him. But 
he had a mission, and the mission was all he'd had left as a focal 
point for his life, so he'd clung to it with fanatic intensity.

And now the job was over, and he realized he couldn't rest. 
He didn't dare. Rest would give him time to remember. 
Maybe he could find surcease in the gigantic work of reconstruction. 
Maybe.

"Here we are," said Robinson.

Drummond blinked in new amazement. There was a car,


112
POrL ANDERSON

camouflaged under brush, with a military chauffeur--a cart 
And in pretty fair shape, too.

"We've got a few oil wells going again, and a small 
patched-up refinery," explained the general. "It furnishes 
enough gas and oil for what traffic we have."

They got in the rear seat. The aide sat in front, a rifle 
ready. The car started down a mountain road.

"W-here to?" asked Drummond a little dazedly.
Robinson 
smiled. "Personally," he said, "I'm almost the 
only lucky man on Earth. We had a summer cottage on Lake 
Taylor, a few miles from here. My wife was there when the 
war came, and stayed, and nobody came along till I brought 
the head offices here with me.Now I've got a home all to 
myself."

"Yeah. Yeah, you're lucky," said Drummond. He looked 
out the window, not seeing the sun-spattered woods. Presently 
he asked, his voice a little harsh: "How is the country 
really doing now?"

"For a while it was rough. Damn rough. When the cities 
went, our transportation, communication, and distribution 
systems broke down. In fact, our whole economy disintegrated, 
though not all at once. Then there was the dust and 
the plagues. People fled, and there was open fighting when 
overcrowded safe places refUSed to take in any more refugees. 
Police went with the cities, and the army couldn't do 
much patrolling. We were busy fighting the enemy troops 
that'd flown over the Pole to invade: We still haven't goen 
them all. Bands are roaming the country, hungry and desperate 
outlaws, and there are plenty of Americans who 
turned to banditry when everything else failed. That's why 
we have this guard, though so far none have come this way.

"The insect and blight weapons just about wiped out our 
crops, and that winter everybody starved. We checked the 
pests with modern methods, though it was touch and go for 
a while, and next year got some food. Of course, with no 
distribution as yet, We failed to save a lot of people. And 
farming is still a tough proposition. We won't really have the 
bugs'licked for a long time. If we had a research center as 
well equipped as those which produced the things-- But 
we're gaining. We're gaining."

"Distribution--" Drummond rubbed his chin. "How about 
railroads? Horse-drawn vehicles?"

"We have some railroads going, but the enemy was as careful 
to dust most of ours as we were to dust theirs. As for


TOMORROW'S CHILDREN
113


'horses, they were nearly all eaten that first winter. I know 
personally of only a dozen. They're on my place; I'm trying 
to breed enough to be' of use; but"--Robinson smiled 
wryly--"by the time we've raised that many, the factories

should have been going quite a spell."

"And so now--?"

"We're over the worst. Except for outlaws, we have the 
population fairly well controlled. The civilized people are 
fairly well fed, with some kind of housing. We have machine 
shops, small factories, and the like going, enough to 
keep our transportation and other mechanism 'level.' Pres-endy 
We'll be able to expand these, begin actually increasing 
what we have. In another five years or so, I guess, we'll be integrated 
enough to drop martial law and hold a general elec-tio
A big job ahead, but a good one."

The car halted t9 let a cow lumber over the road, a calf 
trotting at her heels. She was gaunt and shaggY, and skittered 
nervously from the vehicle into the brush.

"Wild," explained Robinson. "Most of the real wild life was 
killed off for food in the last two years, but a lot of farm 
animals escaped when their owners died or fled, and have 
run free ever since. They--" He noticed Drummond's fixed 
gaze. The pilot was looking at the calf. Its legs were half the 
normal length.

"Mutant," said the general. "You find a lot such animals. 
Radiation from bombed or dusted areas. There are even 
a lot of human abnormal births." He scowled, worry clouding 
his eyes. "In fact, that's just about our worst problem. 
It--"

The car came out of the woods onto the shore of a small 
lake. It was a peaceful scene, the quiet waters like molten 
gold in the slanting sunlight, trees ringing the circumference 
and all about them the mountains. Under one huge pine 
stood a cottage, a woman on the porch.

It was like one summer with Barbara--Drummond cursed 
under his breath and followed Robinson toward the little 
budding. It wasn't, it wasn't, it could never be. Not ever 
again. There were soldiers guarding this place from chance 
marauders, and-- There was an odd-looking flower at his 
foot. A daisy, but huge and red and irregularly formed.

A squirrel chittered from a tree. Drummond saw that its 
face was so blunt as 'o be almost human.

Then he was on the porch, and Robinson was introducing 
him to "my wife Elaine." She was a nice-looking young


PO/L ANo.}tsoN


woman with eyes that were sympathetic on Drummond's 
exhausted face. The aviator tried not to notice that she was

pregrmnt.


He was led inside, and reveled in a hot bath. Afterward

there was supper, but he was numb with sleep by then, and

hardly noticed it when Robinson put him to bed.


Reaction set in, and for a week or so Drummond went 
about in a haze, not much good to himself or anyone else. 
But it was surprising what plenty of fod and sleep could 
do, and one evening Robinson came home to find him scribbling 
on sheets of paper.

"Arranging my notes and so on," he explained. "I'll write 
out the complete report in a month, I guess."

"Good. But no hurry." Robinson settled tiredly into an 
armchair. "The rest of the world will keep. I'd rather 
you'd just work at this off and on, and join my staff for 
your main job."

"O.K. Only what'll I do?"

"Everything. Specialization is gone; too few surviving 
specialists and equipment. I thinlr your chief task will be to

head the census bureau."

"Eh?"

Robinson grinned lops!dedly. "You'll be the census bureau, 
except for what few assistants I can spare you." He leaned 
forward, said earnestly: "And it's one of the most impor-rant 
jobs there is. Youl do for this country what you did 
for central Eurasia, only in much greater detail. Drurmnond, 
we have to krw'w."

He took a map from a desk drawer and spread it out. 
"Look, here's.the United States. I've marked regions known 
to be uninhabitable in red." His fingers traced out the ugly 
splotches. "Too many of 'em, and doubtless there are others 
we haven't found yet. Now, the blue X's are army posts." 
They were sparsely scattered over the land, near the centers 
of-population groupings. "Not enough of those. It's all we 
can do to control the more or less well-off, orderly people. 
Bandits, enemy troops, homeless refugees--they're still 
running wild, skulking in the backwoods and barrens, and 
raiding whenever they can. And they spread the plague. We 
won't really have it licked till everybody's settled down, 
and that'd be hard to enforce. Drummond, we don't even 
have enough soldiers to start a feudal system for protection.


TOMORROW. 'S CHILDREN 11

The plague spread like a prairie' fire in those concentrations 
of men.

"We have to knorr. We have to know how many people 
survived--half the population, a third, a quarter, whatever 
it is. We have to know where they are, and how they're fixed 
for supplies, so' we can start up an equitable distribution system. 
We have to find all the small-town shops and labs and 
libraries still standing, and rescue their priceless contents 
before looters or the weather bear us to it. We have to locate 
doctors and engineers and other professional men, and put 
them to work rebuilding. We have to find the outlaws and 
round them up. Ve-- I could go on forever. Once we have 
all that information, we can set up a master plan for redistributing, 
population,, agriculture, industry, and the rest 
most efficiently, for getting the country .back under civil authority 
and police, for opening regular transportation, and 
communication channels--for getting the nation back' on its 
feet."

"I see," nodded Drummond. "Hitherto, just surviving and 
hanging on to what was left has taken precedence. Now 
you're in a position to start expanding, if you know where 
and how much to expand."

"Exactly." Robinson rolled a cigarette, grimacing. "Not 
much tobacco left. What I have is perfectly foul. Lord, that 
war was crazy["

"All wars are," said Drummond dispassionately, "but technology 
advanced to the point of giving us a knife to cut our 
throats with. Before that, we were just beating our heads 
against the wall. Robinson, we can't go back to the old 
ways. We've got to start on a new track--a track of sanity."

"Yes. And that brings Ul>" The other man looked toward 
the kitchen door. They could hear the cheerful rattle of 
dishes there, and smell mouth-watering cooking odors. He 
lowered his voice. "I might as well tell you this now, but 
don't let Elaine know. She . . . she shouldn't be worried.

Drummond, did you see our horses?"

"The other day, yes. The colts"

"Uh-huh. There've been five colts born of eleven mares in 
the last year. Two of them were so deformed they died in a 
week, another in a few months. One of the two left has cloven 
hoofs and almost no teeth. The last one looks normal--so 
far. One out of eleven, Drummond."

"Were those horses near a radioactive area?"


116
pOtr Amzusos


"They must have been. They were rounded, up wherever 
found and brought here. The stallion was caug�t near the 
site of Portland, I know. But if he were the only one with 
mutated genes, it would hardly show in the first generation, 
would it? I understand nearly all mutations are Mendelian 
recessives. Even if there were one dominant, it would show 
in all the colts, but none of these looked alike."

"Hm-m-m--I don't know much about genetics, but I do 
know hard radiation, or rather the secondary charged par-tides 
it produces, will cause mutation. Only mutants are 
rare, and tend to fall into certain patterns---"

"Were rare!" Suddenly Robinson was grim, something 
coldly frightened in his eyes. "Haven't you noticed the animals 
and plants? They're fewer than formerly, and... 
well, I've not kept count, but at least half those seen or killed . 
have something wrong, internally or externally."


Drummond drew heavily on his pipe. He needed something 
to hang onto, in a new storm of insanity. Very quietly,

he said:

"In my college biology course, they told me the vast majority 
of mutations are unfavorable. More ways of not doing 
something than of doing it. Radiation might sterilize an animal, 
or might produce several degrees of genetic change. 
You could have a mutation so violently lethal the possessor 
never gets born, or soon dies. You could have all kinds of 
more or less handicapping factors, or just random changes 
not making much difference one way or the other. Or in a 
few cases you might get something actually favorable, but 
you couldn't really say the possessor is a true member of the 
species. And favorable mutations themselves usually involve 
a price in the partial or total loss of some other function.

"Right." Robinson nodded heavily. "One of your jobs on 
the census will be to try and locate any and all who know 
genetics, and send them here. But your real task, which only 
you and I and a couple of others must know about,-the job 
overriding all other considerations, will be to find the 
human mutants."

Drummond's throat was dry. "There've been a lot of 
them?" he whispered.

"Yes. But we don't know how many or where. We only 
know about those people who live near an army post, or 
have some other fairly regular intercourse with us, and 
they're .only a few thousand all told. Among them, the


.TOMORROW'S CHILDREN 117

birth rate has gone down to about half the prewar ratio. And

over half the births they do have are abnormal."

"Over half--"

"Yeah. Of course, the violently different Ones soon die, or 
are put in an institution we've set up in the Alleghenies. But 
what can we do with viable forms, if their parents still love 
them? A kid with deformed or missing or abortive organs, 
twisted internal structure, a tail, or something even worse 
....well, it'll havre a tough time in life, but it can generally 
survive. And perpetuate itself--"

"And a normal-looking one mighi have some mmotice-able 
quirk, or a characteristic that won't show up for years. 
Or even a normal one might be carrying recessives, and pass

themon- God!" The exclamatioh was half blasphemy, half 
� prayer. "But h. ow'd it happen? People weren't all near 
atom
hit areas."

"Maybe not, though a lot of survivtr escaped from the 
outskirts. But there was that first year, with everybody on 
the move. One could pass near enough to a blasted region to 
be affected, without knowing it. And that damnable radio-dust, 
blowing on the.wind. It's got a long half-life. It'll be 
active for decades. Then, as in any collapsing culture, 
promis
cuity was common. Still is. Oh, it'd spread itself, all right." 
"I still don't see why it spread itself so much. Even here--" 
"Well, I don't know why it shows up here. I suppose a lot 
of the local flora and .fauna came in from elsewhere. This 
plfice is safe. The nearest dusted region is three hundred miles 
off, with mountains between. There must be many such islands 
of comparatively normal conditions. We have to find 
them too. But elsewhere--"

"Soup's on," announced Elaine, and went from the kitchen 
to the dining room with a loaded tray.

The men rose. Grayly, Drummond looked at Robinson 
and said tonelessly: "O.K. I'll get your information for you. 
We'll. map mutation areas and safe areas, we'll check on our 
population and resources, we'll eventually get all the facts 
you want. But--what are you going to do then?"

"I wish I knew," said Robinson haggardly. "I wish I 
knew."


Winter lay heavily on the north, a vast gray sky seeming 
frozen solid over the rolling white plains. The last three winters 
had come early and stayed long. Dust, colloidal dust of 
the bombs, suspended in the atmosphere and cutting down


118
Porn. ADERSO


the solar constant by a deadly percent or two. There had 
even been a few earthquakes, set off in geologically unstable 
parts of the world by bombs planted right. Half California 
had been ruined when a sabotage bomb started the San An-dreas 
Fault on a major slip. And that kicked up still more 
dust.

Fimbulwinter, thought Drummond bleakly. The doom 
of the prophecy. But no, ve're suriing. Though maybe not 
aS 
mel-
Most people had gone south, and there overcrowding had 
made starvation and disease and internecine struggle the nor-real 
aspects of life. Those who'd stuck it out up. here, and had 
luck with their pest-ridden crops, were better off.

Drummond's jet slid above the cratered black ruin of the 
Twin Cities. Tliere was still enough radioactivity to melt the 
snow, and the pit was like a skull's empty eye socket. The 
man sighed, but he was becoming calloused to the sight of 
death. There was so much of it. Only the struggling agony 
of life mattered any more.

He strained through the sinister twilight, swooping low 
over the unending fields. Burned-ouv hulks of farmhouses, 
bones of ghost towns, sere deadness of dusted land but 
he'd heard travelers speak of a fairly powerful community 
up near the Canadian border, and it was up to him to find it.

A lot of things had been up to him in the last six months. 
He'd had to work out a means of search, and organize his 
fexv, overworked assistants into an efficient staff, and go out 
on the long hunt.

They hadn't covered the country. That was impossible. 
Their few planes had gone to areas chosen more or less at 
random, trying to get a cross section of conditions. They'd 
penetrated wildernesses of hill and plain and forest, establishing 
contact with scattered, still demoralized out-dwellers. 
On the whole, it was more laborious than anything else. Most 
were patheticall glad to see any symbol of law and order 
and the paradisical-seeming "old days." Now and then there 
was danger and trouble, when they encountered wary or 
sullen or outright hostile groups suspicious of a government 
they associated with disaster, and once there had even been a 
pitched battle with roving outlaws. But the work had gone 
ahead, and now the preliminaries were about over.

Preliminaries-- It was a bigger job to find out exacdy how 
matters stood than the entire country was capable of undertaking 
right now. But Drummond had enough facts for 
re

TOMORROW'S CHILDREN
119

liable extrapolation. He and his staff had collected most of

the essential data and begun correlating it. By questioning,

by observation, by seeking and 'finding, by any means that

came to hand they'd.filled their .notebooks. And in .the

sketchy outlines of a Chinese drawing, and with the same

stark realism, the truth was there,

lust this one more tlace, and I'll go bome[ thought Drummond 
for the--thonsandth?--time. His brain was getting 
into a rut, treading the same terrible circle and finding no 
way out. Robinson waon't like vbat I tell him, but there it is. 
And darkly, slowly: Barbara, maybe it waas best you and the 
kids vent as you did. Quickly, cleanly, not even xknoving it. 
This isn't much of a oorld. It'll never be our waorld again.

He saw the place he sought, a huddle of buildings near the 
][rozen shores of the Lake.of the Woods, and his jet murmured 
toward the white ground. The stories he'd heard of 
this town weren't overly encouraging, 'but' he supposed he'd 
get out all right. The others had his data anyway, so it didn't 
matter.


By the time he'd landed in the clearing iust outside the 
village, using the jet's skis, most of the inhabitants were there 
waiting. In the gathering dusk they were a ragged and wild-looking 
bunch, clumsily dressed in whatever scraps of cloth 
and leather they had. The bearded, hard-eyed men were 
armed with clubs and knives and a few guns. As Drummond 
got out, he was careful to keep his hands away from his 
own automatics.

"Hello," he said. "I'm friendly."

"Y' better be," growled the big leader. "Who are you, 
where from, an' why?"

"First," lied Drummond smoothly, "I want to tell you I 
have another man with a plane who knows where I am. If 
I'm not back ia a certain time, he'll come with bombs. But we 
don't intend any harm or interference. This is just a sort of 
social call. I'm Hugh Drummond of the United States 
Army."

They digested that slowly. Clearly, they weren't friendly 
to the government, but they stood in. too much awe of aircraft 
and armament to be openly hostile. The leader spat. 
"How long you staying?"

"Just overnight, ff you'll put me up. I'll. pay for it." He 
held up a small pouch. "Tobacco."

Their eyes gleamed, and the leader said, "You'll stay with 
me. Come on."


120
POVL AERSO


Drummond gave him the bribe and went with the group. 
He didn't like to spend snh priceless luxuries thus freely, 
but the job was more important. And the boss seemed. 
thawed a little by the frag]:ant brown flakes. He was sniffing 
them greedily.

',Been smoking bark an' grass," he confided. "Terrible." 
"Worse than that," agreed Drummond. He turned up his 
jacket collar and shivered. The wind starting to blow was 
bitterly cold.

"Just what y' here for?" demanded someone else.

"Well, just to see how things stand. We've got the government 
started again, and are patching things up. Bur we hve 
to know where folks are, what they need, and so on."

"Don't want nothing t' do with the gov'ment," muttered 
a woman. "they hrung all this on us."

"Oh, come now. We didn't ask to be attacked." Mentally, 
Drummond crossed his fingers..He neither knew nor cared 
who was to blame. Both sides, letting mutual fear and friction 
mount to hysteria-- In fact, he wasn't sure the United States 
hadn't sent out the first rockets, on orders of some panicky 
or aggressive officials. Nobody was alive who admitted 
knowing.

"It's the iedgment o' God, for the sins o' our leaders," persisted 
the woman. "The plague, the fire-death, all that, ain't 
it foretold in the Bible? Ain't we living in the last days o' the 
world?"

"Maybe." Drummond was glad to stop before a long low 
cabin. Religious argument was touchy at best, and with a lot 
of people nowadays it was dynamite.


They entered the rudely furnished but fairly comfortable 
structure. A good many crowded in with them. For all 
their suspicion, they were curious, and an outsider in an aircraft 
was a blue-moon events these days.

Drummond's eyes flickered unobtrusively about the room, 
noticing details. Three women--that meant a return to concubinage. 
Only to be expected in a day of few men and 
strong-arm rule. Ornaments and utensils, tools and weapons 
of ood quality--yes, that confirmed the stories. This wasn't 
exactly a bandit town, but it had waylaid travelers and 
raided other places when times were hard, and built up a sort 
of dominance Of the surrounding country. That, too, was 
common.

There was a dog on the floor nursing a litter. Only three


TOMORROW'S CHILDREN
121

pups, and one of those was bald, one lacked ears, and one

had more toes than it should. Among the wide-eyed children

present, there were' several two years old or less, and with

almost no obvious exceptions, they were als0 different.

Drummond sigh'ed heavily and sat down. In a way, 
this clinched it. He'd known for a long time, and finding 
mutation here, as far as any place from atomic destruction, 
was about the last evidence he needed.

� He had to get on friendly terms, or he wouldn't find out 
much about things like population, food production, and 
whatever else there was to know. Forcing a smile to stiff lips, 
he took a flask from his jacket. "Prewar rye," he said. "Who 
wants a nip?"

"Do we? The answer barked out in a dozen voices and 
words..The flask circulated, men pawing and cursing and 
grabbing to get ar it. Their bomebre�o must be pretty bad, 
thought Drummond wryly.

The chief shouted an order, and one of his women got 
busy at the primitive stove. "Rustle you a mess o' chow," he 
said heartily. "An' my name's Sam Buckman."

"Pleased to meet you, Sam." Drummond squeezed the 
hairy paw hard. He had to show he wasn't a weakling, a 
conniving city slicker.

"What's it like, outside?" asked someone presently. "We 
ain't heard for so long--"

"You haven't missed much," said Drummond between 
bites. The food was pretty good. Briefly, he sketched conditions. 
"You're better off than most," he finished.

"Yeah. Mebbe so." Sam Buckman scratched his tangled 
beard. "What I'd give fr a razor blade---! It ain't easy, 
though. The first year we weren't no better off 'n anyone 
else. Me, I'm a farmer, I kept some ears o' corn an' a little 
wheat an' barley in my pockets all that winter, even though 
I was starving. A bunch o' hungry refugees plundered my 
place, but I got away an' drifted up here. Next year I took an 
empty farm here an' started over."

Drummond doubted that it had been abandoned, but said 
nothing. Sheer survival outweighed a lot of considerations.

"Others came an' serried here," said the leader reminiscently. 
"We farm together. We have to; one man couldn't 
live by hisself, not with the bugs an' blight, an' the crops 
sproutm into all new kmds, an the outlaws aroun. Not

any up here, though we &d beat off some enemy troops 
last winter." He glowed with pride at that, but Drummond



122
POUL ANDERSON


wasn't particularly impressed. A handful of freezing 
starve
ling conscripts, lost and bewildered in a foreign enemy's

land, with no hope of ever getting home, weren't 
formida
ble.

"Things getting better, though," said Buckman. "We're

heading up." He scowled blackly, and a palpable chill crept

into the room. "If 'twern't for the births--"

"Yes--the births. The new babies. Even the stock an'

plants." It was an old man speaking, his eyes glazed with near

madness. "It's the mark o' the beast. Satan is loose in the

world--"

"Shut up!" Huge and bristling with wrath, Buckman

launched himself out of his seat and grabbed the oldster by

his scrawny throat. "Shut up 'r I'll bash y'r lying head in.

Ain't no son o' mine being marked by the devil."

"Or mine--   Or 
mine--" The rumble of voices ran
about 
the cabin, sullen and afraid.
"It's 
God's jedgrnent, I tell you!" The woman was shrilling 
again. "The end o' the world is near. Prepare f'r the second 
coming--"
"An' 
you shut up too, Mag Schmidt," snarled Buckman. He 
stood bent over, gnarled arms swinging loose, hands flexing, 
little eyes darting red and wild about 
the room. "Shut y'r trap an' keep it shut. I'm still boss here, an' 
if you don't like it you can get out. I still don't 
think that gunny-looking brat o' y'rs fell in the 
lake by accident."
The woman shrank back, lips tight. The 
room filled with a crackling silence. One of the babies began to 
cry. It 
had two heads.
Slowly and heavily, Buckman 
turned to Drummond, who sat immobile against the wall. "You 
see?" he asked dully. "You see how it is? Maybe it is 
the curse o' God. Maybe the world is ending. I dunno. I 
just know there's few enough babies, an' most o' them deformed. 
Will it go on? Vill all our kids be monsters? Should we . 
. . kill these an' hope we get some human babies? What 
is it? What to' do?
Drummond rose. He felt a weight 
as of centuries on his shoulders, the weariness, 
blank and absolute, of having seen that smoldering panic 
and heard that desperate 
appeal too often, too often.
"Don't kill them," he said. "That's 
the worst kind of murder, and anyway it'd do no good at 
all. It comes from the bombs, and you can't stop it. You'll 
go right on having such children, so you might as 
well 
get 
used 
to 
it."


TOMORROW'S CHILDREN
123

By atomic-powered stratojet it wasn't far from Minnesota

to Oregon, and Drummond landed in Taylor about noon the

next day, This time there was' no hurry to get his machine

under cover, and up on the mountain was a raw scar of earth

w. here a new airfield Was slowly being built. Men were 
get
rang over their terror of the sky. They had another fear to

face now, and it was one from which there was no hiding.

Drummond walked slowly down the icy main street to 
the central office. It was numbingly cold, a still, relentless 
intensity of frost eating through clothes and flesh and bone. 
It wasn't much better inside. Heating systems were still 
poor improvisations.

"You're back!" Robinson met him in the antechamber,

suddenly galvanized with eagerness. He had grown thin and 
� nervous, bolting ten years older, but impatience blazed from

him. "How is it? How is it?"

Drummond held up a bulky notebo�k. '"All here," h6 said 
grimly. "All the facts we'll need. Not formally correlated 
yet, but the picture is simple enough."

Robinson laid an arm on his shoulder and steered him into 
the office. He felt the generals hand shaking, but he'd sat 
down and had a drink before business came up again.

"You've done a good job," said the leader warmly. "When 
the country's organized again, I'll see you get a. medal for 
this. Your men in the other phnes aren't in yet."

"No, they'll be gathering data for a long time. The job 
won't be finished for years. I've only got a general outline 
here, but it's enough. It's enough." Drummond's eyes were 
haunted again.

Robinson felt cold at meeting that too-steady gaze. He 
whispered shakily: "Is it--bad?"

"The worst. Physically, the country's recovering. But 
biologically, we've reached a crossroads and taken the wrong 
fork."

"What do you mean? What do you mean?"

Drummond let him have it then, straight and hard as a 
bayonet thrust. "The birth fate's a little over half the prewar," 
he said, "and about seventy-five per cent of all births 
are mutant, of which possibly two-thirds are viable and presumably 
fertile. Of course, that doesn't include late-maturing 
characteristics, or those undetectable by naked-eye �bserva-tion, 
or the mutated recessive genes that must be carried by a 
lot of otherwise normal zygotes. And it's everywhere. There 
are no safe places."


124
PouL ANvEasos


"I see," said Robinson after a long time. He nodded, like a 
man struck a stunning blow and not yet fully aware of it. "I 
see. The reason--"

� "Is obvious," '

"Yes. People going through radioactive areas--"

"Why, no. That would only account for a few. But--"

"No matter. The fact's there, and that's enough. We have 
to decide what to do about it."

"And soon." Drummond's iaw set. "It's wrecking our culture. 
We at least preserved our historical continuity, but even 
that's going now. People are going crazy as birth after 
birth is monstrous. Fear of the unknown, striking at minds 
still stunned by the war.and its immediate aftermath. Frustration 
of parenthood, perhaps the most basic instinct there 
is. It's leading to infanticide, desertion, despair, a cancer ar 
the root of society. We've got to act."

"How? How?" Robinson stared numbly at his hands.

"I don't know. You're the leader. Maybe an educational 
campaign, though that hardly seems practicable. Maybe 
an acceleration of your program for re-integrating the 
country. Maybe-- I don't know."


Drummond stuffed tobacco into his pipe. He was near the 
end of what he had, but would rather take a few good 
smokes than a lot of niggling puffs. "Of course," he said 
thoughtfully, "it's probably not the end of things. We 
won't know for a generation or more, but I rather imagine 
the mutants can grow into society. They'd better, for 
they'll outnumber the humans. The thing is, if we iust let 
matters drift there's no telling where they'll go. The situation 
is unprecedented. We may end up in a culture of specialized 
variations, which would be very bad from an evolutionary 
standpoint. There may be fighting between mutant types, or 
with humans. Interbreeding may produce worse freaks, particularly 
when accumulated recessives start showing up. 
Robinson, if we want any say at all in what's going to happen 
in the next few centuries, we have to act quicldy. Otherwise 
it'll snowball out of all control."

"Yes. Yes, we'll have to act fast. And hard." Robinson 
straightened in his chair. Decision firmed his countenance, 
but his eyes were staring. "We're mobilized," he said. "We 
have the men and the weapons and the organization. They 
won't be able to resist."

The ashy cold of Drummond's emotions stirred, but it was


T. OMORROW?S CHILDREN 125

with a-horrible wrenching of fear. "What are you getting 
at?" he snapped.

"Racial death. All mutants and their parents .to be sterilized 
whenever and wherever detected."

"You're crazy? Drummond sprang from his chair, 
grabbed Robinson's shoulders across the desk, and shook 
him. "You... why, it's impossible! You'll bring revolt, 
civil war, final collapse!"

"Not .ff we go about it right.'" There were little beads of 
SWeat studding the general's forehead. "I don't like it any 
better than you, but it's got to be done or the' human race is 
finished. Normal births a minority--" He surged to his feet, 
gasping. "I've thought a long time about this. Your hcts only 
confirmed my suspicious. This tears it. Can't you see? Evolu~. 
tion has to proceed slowly. Life wasn't meant for such a 
storm of change, Unless we can save the true human stock, 
it'll be absorbed and differentiation will Eohtinue till humanity 
is a collection of freaks, probably intersterile. Or . . . 
there must be a lot of lethal recessives. In a large population, 
they can accumulate unnoticed till nearly everybody has 
them, and then start emerging all at once. That'd wipe us 
ont. It's happened before, in rats and other species. If we 
eliminate mutant stock now, we can still save the race. It 
won't be cruel. We have sterilization techniques which are 
quick and painless, not upsetting the endocrine balance. But 
k's got to be done." His voice rose to a raw scream, broke. 
"It's got to be done?

Drummond flapped him, hard. He drew a shuddering 
breath, sat down, and began to cry, and somehow that was 
the most horrible sight of all. "You're crazy," said the avh-tot. 
"You've gone nuts with brooding alone on this the hst 
six months, without knowing or being able to act. You've 
lost all perspective. 

"We can't use violence. In the first place, it would break 
our tottering, cracked culture irreparably, into a mad-dog 
finish fight. We'd not even win it. We're outnumbered, and 
we couldn't hold down a continent, eventually a planet. And 
remember what we said once, about abandoning the old 
savage way of settling things, that never brings a real settlement 
at all? We'd throw away a lesson our noses were 
rubbed in not three years ago. We'd return to the beast--to 
ultimate extinction.

"And anyway," he went on very quietly, "it wouldn't do 
a bit of good. Mutants would still be born. The poison is 
er

126
Pou. ANDERSON


erwhere. Normal lrents will give birth to mutants, 
some
where along the line. We iust have to accept that fact, and

live with it. The new human race will have to."

"I'm sorry." Robinson raised his face from his hands. It

was a ghasdy visage, gone white and old, but there was

calm on it. "I--blew my top. You're right. I've been thinking

of this, worrying and wondering, living and breathing k,

lying awake nights, and when I finally sleep I dream of it.

I . . � yes, I see your point. And you're right."

"It's O.K. You've been under a terrific strain. Three years

with never a rest, and the responsibility for a nation, and

now this-- Sure, everybody's entitled to be a little crazy.

We'll work out a solution, somehow."

"Yes, of course." Robinson poured out two stiff drinks and

gulped his. He paced restlessly, and his tremendous ability

came back in waves of strength and confidence. "Let me

see-- Eugenics, of course. If we work hard, we'll have the

nation tighdy organized inside of ten years. Then . . . well,

I don't suppose we can keep the mutants from interbreeding,

but certainly we can pass laws to protect humans and 
en
courage their propagation. Since radical mutations would

probably be intersterile anyway, and most mutants 
handi
capped one way or another, a few .generations should see

humans completely dominant again."

Drummond scowled. He was worried. It wasn't like 
Rob
inson to be unreasonable. Somehow, the man had acquired

a mental blind spot where this most ultimate of human 
prob
lems was concerned. He said slowly, "That won't work 
ei
ther. First, it'd be hard to impose and enforce. Second,' we'd

be repeating the old Herrenvolk notion. Mutants are 
in
ferior, mutants must be kept in their place--to enforce that,

especially on a majority, you'd need a full-fledged 
totalita
rian state. Third, that wouldn't work either, for the rest of

the world, with almost no exceptions, is under no such 
con
trol and we'll be in no position to take over that control

for a long time--generations. Before then, mutants will 
dom
inate everywhere over there, and if they resent the way 
we
treat their kind here, we'd better run for cover."

"You assume a lot. How do you know those hundreds or

thousands of diverse types will work together? They're less

like each other than like humans, even. They could be

played off against each other."

"Maybe. But that would be gong back onto the old

of
the road to Hell. 
Con

TOMORROW'S CHILDREN
127

versely, ff every not-quite-human is called a 'mutant', like a

separate class, he'll think he is, and act accordingly against

the lumped-together 'humans'. No, the only way to sanity

into survival--is to abandon class prejudice and race hate 
al
together, and work as individuals. We're all . . . well, 
Earth
lings, and subclassification is deadly. We all have to live 
to
gether, and might as well make the best of it."

"Yeah . . . yeah, that's right too."

."/Ma. yway, I repeat that all such attempts would be 
use
les All Earth is infected wkh mutation. It will be for a long

.lime. The purest human stock will still produce mutants."

"Y-yes, that's true. Our best bet seems to be to find all such

stock and withdraw it into the few safe areas left. It'll mean

a small human population, but a human one."

"I tell you, that's impossible" clipped Drummond. "There

is no safe place. Not one."
.

Robimon stopped pacing and looked at'him as at a physical 
antagonist. "That so?" he almost growled. "Why?"

Drummond told him, adding incredulously, "Surely you 
knew that. Your physicists must have measured the amount 
of it. Your doctors, your engineers, that geneticist I dug up 
for you. You obviously got a lot of this biological information 
you've been slinging at me from him. They must all 
have toldyou the same thing."

Robinson shook his head stubbornly. "It can't be. It's not 
reasonable. The concentration wouldn't be great enough."

"Why, you poor fool, you need only look around you. The 
plants, the animals-- Haven't there been any births in Taylor?''

"No. This is still a man's town, though women are trickling 
in and several babies are on the way--" Robinson's face 
was sudderfiy twisted with desperation. "E1aine's is due any 
time now. She's in the hospital here. Don't you see, our other 
kid died of the plague. This one's all we have. We want 
him to grow up in a world free of want and fear, a world of 
peace and sanity where he can play and laugh and become a 
man, not a beast starving in a cave. You and I are on our way 
out. We're the old generation, the one that wrecked the 
world. It's up to us to build it again, and then retire from it 
to let our children have it. The future's theirs. We've got to 
make it ready for them."

Sudden insight held Drummond motionless for long sec. 
onds. Understanding came, and pity, and an odd gentleness 
that changed his sunken bony face. "Yes," he murmured,


128
Pool AEasoN

"yes, I see. That's why yoU're working with all that's in you' 
to build a normal, healthy world. That's why you nearly 
went crazy when this threat appeared. That . . . that's why 
you can't, }ust can't comprehend--"

He took the other man's arm and guided him toward the 
door. "Come on," he said. "Let's go see how your wife's making 
out. Maybe we can get her some flowers on the way."


The silent cold bit at them as they went down the street. 
Snow crackled underfoot. It was already grimy with town 
smoke and dust, but overhead the sky was incredibly clean 
and blue. Breath smoked whitely from their mouths and nostrils. 
The sound of men at work rebuilding drifted faintly 
between the bulking mountains.

"We couldn't emigrate to another planet, could we?" asked 
Robinson, and answered himself: "No, we lack the organization 
and resources to settle them right now. We'll have to 
make out on Earth. A few fe spots---there must be others 
besides this one--to house the true humans till the mutation 
period is over. Yes, we can do'it."

"There are no safe places," insisted Drummond. "Even if 
there were, the mutants would still outnumber us. Does your 
geneticist have any idea how this'il come out, biologically 
speaking?"

"'He doesn't know. His specialty is still largely unknown/ 
He can make an intelligent guess, and that's all."

"Yeah. Anyway, our problem is to learn to live with the 
mutants, to accept anyone as--Earthling--no matter how he 
looks, to quit thinking anything was ever settled by violence 
or connivance, to build a culture of individual sanity. 
Funny," mused Drummond, "how the impractical virtues, 
tolerance and sympathy and generosity, have become the 
fundamental necessities of simple survival. I guess it was always 
true, but it took the death of half the world and the 
end of a biological era to make us see that simple little fact.. 
The job's terrific. We've got half a million years of brutality 
and greed, superstition and prejudice, to lick in a few generations. 
If we fail, mankind is done. But we've got to try."

They found some flowers, potted in a house, and Robinson 
bought them with the last of his tobacco. By the time he 
reached the hospital, he was sweating. The sweat froze on 
his face as he walked.

The hospital was the town's biggest building, and fairly 
well equipped. A nurse met them as they entered.


TOMORROW'S CHILDREN
129

"I was just going to send for you, .General Robinson," she

.said. "The baby's on the way."

"How .'.. is she?"

"Fine, so far. Just wait here, please."

Drummond sank into a chair and with haggard eyes 
watched Robinson's jerky pacing. The poor guy. Why is it 
expectant fathers are supposed to be so funny? It's like laughing 
at a man on the rack. I know, Barbara, l know.

."They have some anaesthetics," muttered the general. 
"They . . . Elaine never was very strong."

"She'll be all right." It's a[terward that worries me. 
"Yeah-- Yeah-- How long, though, how long?"

"Depends. Take it asy. Vith a wrench, Drummond made 
a sacrifice .to a 'man he liked. He filled his pipe and handed 
'it over. "Here, you need a smoke." .

"Thanks." Robinson puffed raggedly. .

The slow minutes passed, and Dfurhmond wondered 
vaguely what he'd do when--it--happened. It didn't have to 
happen. But the chances were all against such an easy solution. 
He was no psychologist. Best just to let things happen 
as they would.

The waiting broke at last. A doctor came out, seeming an 
inscrutable high priest in his white garments. Robinson stood 
before him, motionless.

"You're a brave man," said the doctor. His face, as he re--moved 
the mask, was stern and set. "You'll need your 
cour

"She" It was hardly a human sound, that croak.

"Your wife is doing well. But the baby--"

A nurse brought out the little waing form. It was a boy. 
But his limbs were rubbery tentacles terminating in boneless 
digits.

Robinson looked, and something went out of him as he 
stood there. When he turned, his face was dead.

"You're lucky," said Drummond, and meant it. He'd seen 
too many other mutants. "After all, if he can use those hands 
he/Il get along all right. He'll even have an advantage in certain 
types of work. It isn't a deformity, really. If there's

nothing else, you've got a good kid."

"If/You can't tell with mutants."

"I know. But you've got guts, you and Elaine. You'll seer 
this through, together." Briefly, Drummond felt an utter 
personal desolation. He went on, perhaps to cover that 
emptiness:


130
POL ANDERSON


"I see .why you didn't understand the problem. You

vouldn't. It was a psychological bloc, suppressing a fact you

didn't dare face. That boy is really the center of your life.

You couldn't think the truth about him, so your 
subcon
scious iust refused to let you think rationally on 'that subiect

at all.

"Now you know. Now you realize there's no safe place,

not on all the planet. The tremendous incidence of mutant

births in the first generation could have told you that alone.

Most such new characteristics are recessive, which means

both parents have to have it for it to show in the zygote. But

genetic changes are random, except for a tendency to fall

into roughly similar patterns. Four-leaved clovers, for 
in
stance. Think how vast the total number of such changes

must be, to produce o many corresponding changes in a

couple of years. Think how many, many recessives there

must be, existing only in gene patterns till their mates show

up. We'll just have to take our chances of something really

deadly accumulating. We'd never know till too late."

"The dust--"

"Yeah. The radiodust. It's colloidal, and uncountable other

radiocolloids were formed when the bombs went off, and

orclln,ry dirt gets into unstable isotopic forms near the

craters. And there are radiogases tOo, probably. The poison

is all over the world by now, spread by wind and air 
cur
rents. Colloids can be suspended'indefinitely in the 
atmos
phere.

"The concentration isn't too high for life, though a 
physi
cist told me he'd measured it as being very near the safe limit

and there'll probably be a lot of cancer. But it's everywhere.

Every breath we draw, every crumb we eat and drop we

drink, every clod we walk on, the dust is there. It's in the

stratosphere, dear on down to the surface, probably a good

distance below. We could only escape by sealing ourselves in

air-conditioned vaults and wearing spacesuits whenever we

got out, and under present conditions that's impossible.

haMtltetitOeerceiorsajobaefOr,e btnCclee a charged particle

g p ty
g
moving fast before

its electromagnetic effect causes physico-chemical changes, 
and then that particular chromosome has to enter into reproduction. 
Now the charged particles, and the gamma rays 
producing still more, are everywhere. Even at the comparatively 
Iow concentration, the odds favor a given organism 
having so many cells changed that at least one will give rise


TOMORROW'S CHILDREN
131


to a mutant. There's even a good chance of like recessives 
meeting in the first genqration, as we've seen. Nobody's safe, 
no place is free."

"The geneticist thinks some true humans Will continue." 
"A few, probably. After all, the radioactivity isn't too concentrated, 
and it's burning itself out. But it'll take fifty or a 
hundred-years for the process to drop to insignificance, and 
by then the pure stock will be way in the minority. And 
thereql still be all those unmatched recessives, waiting to 
show up."

"You were right. We should never have created science. 
It brought the twilight of the race."

"I never said that. The race brought its own destruction, 
.through misuse' of science. Our culture was scientific anyway, 
in all except its psychological basis. It's up to us to take 
that last and hardest step. If we do, thq' race may yet survive.''

Drummond gave Robinson a push toward the inner door. 
"You're exhausted, beat up, ready to quit. Go on in and see 
Elaine. Give her my regards. Then take a long rest before 
going back to work. I still think you've got a good kid?

Mechanically, the de Iacto President of the United States 
left the room. Hugh Drummond stared after him a moment, 
then went out into the street.


T tAT ONLY A MOTHER 
by JUDITH


Miss Merril, mother of tv�o daughters and grandmother oje 
Kevin Israel MacDonald (aged 1), is best known for her

series of annual anthologies, THE YEAR'S BEST S F nov 
in its eighth year. Her preoccupations as a vriter are rna-ternal, 
romantic and houseiifely--all movingly apparent in 
this lrst story.


MAR6ARET REACI4D over to the other side of the bed where 
Hank should have been. Her hand patted the empty pillow, 
ald then she came altogether awake, wondering that the old 
habit should remain after so many months. She tried to curl 
up, cat-style, to hoard her own warmth, found she couldn't 
do it any more, and climbed out of bed with a pleased awareness 
of her increasing clumsy bulkiness.

Morning motions were automatic. On the way through 
the kitchenette, she pressed the button that would start 
breakfast cooking--the doctor had said to eat as much breakfast 
as she could---and tore the paper out of the facsimile 
machine. She folded the long sheet carefully to the "National 
News" section, and propped it on the bathroom shelf 
to scan while she brushed her teeth.

No accidents. No direct hits. At least none that had been 
officially released for publication. Now, Maggie, don't get 
started on that. No accidents. No hits. Take the nice 
paper's vord for it.

The three clear chimes from the kitchen announced that 
breakfast was ready. She set a bright napkin and cheerful colored 
dishes on the table in a futile attempt to appeal to a 
faulty morning appetite. Then, when there was nothing more 
to prepare, she went for the mail, allowing herself the full 
pleasure of prolonged anticipation, because today there 
would surely be a letter.

There was. There were. Two bills and a worried note 
from her mother: "Darling, why didn't you write and tell 
me sooner? I'm thrilled, of course, but, well one hates to

132


, THAT (SNLY A MOTHER
133


mention these things, but are you certain the doctor was 
right? Hank's been around all that uranium or thorium or 
whaterer it is all thse years; and I know you say he's a

signer, not a techrdcian, and he doesn't get near anything 
that might be dangerous, but you know he used to, back at 
Oak Ridge. Don't you think . . . well, of course, I'm just 
being a foolish old woman, and I don't want you to get upset. 
You know much more about it than I do, and I'm sure 
your doctor was right. He should know . . ."

Margaret made a face over the excellent coffee, and caught 
herself refolding the paper to the medical news.

Stop it Maggie stop it! The radiologist said Hank's job 
couldn't have exposed him. nd the bombed area eve drove 
past .... Nb, no. Stop it, no'w! Read the social notes or the 
recipes, .Maggie girl.

A well-known geneticist, in the m, edical news, said that 
it was. possible to tell with absolute ertainty, at five months, 
whether the child would be normal, or at least whether the 
mutation was likely to produce anything freakish. The worst 
cases, at any rate, could be prevented. Minor mutations, of 
course, displacements in facial features, or changes in brain 
structure could not be detected. And there had been some 
cases recently, of normal embryos with atrophied limbs that 
did not develop beyond the seventh or eighth month. But, 
the doctor concluded cheerfully, the ;orst cases could now 
be predicted and prevented.

"Predicted and prevented." 14Ze predicted it, didn't .we? 
Hank and the others, they predicted it. But ve didn't prevent 
it. Vre could have stopped it in '46 and '47. No.w . . .

iargaret decided against the breakfast. Coffee had been 
enough for her in the morning for ten years; it would have 
to do for today. She buttoned herself into the interminable 
folds of material that, the salesgirl had assured her, was the 
only comfortable thing to wear during the last few months. 
With a surge of pure pleasure, the letter and newspaper forgotten, 
she realized she was on the next to the last button. 
It wouldn't be long now.

The city in the early morning had always been a special 
kind of excitement for her. Last night it had rained, and the 
sidewalks were still damp-gray instead of dusty. The air 
smelled the fresher, ro a city-bred woman, for the occasional 
pungency of acrid factory smoke. She walked the six blocks 
to work, watching the lights go out in the all-night 
ham

JJDrr Mmm


burger ioints, where the plate-glass walls were already catching 
the sun, and the lights go on in the dim interiors of cigar 
stores and dry-cleaning establishments.

The office was in a new Government building. In the rolo-vator, 
on the way up, she felt, as always, like a frankfurter 
roll in the ascending half of an old-style rotary toasting machine. 
She abandoned the air-foam cushioning gratefully at 
the fourteenth floor, and settled down behind her desk, at 
the rear of a 10ng row of identical desks.

Each morning the pile of papers that greeted her was a 
little higher. These were, as everyone knew, the decisive 
months. The war might be won or lost on these calculations 
as well as any others. The manpower office had switched 
her here when her old expediter's job got to be too strenuous. 
The computer was easy to operate, and the work was 
absorbing, if not as exciting as the old job. But you .didn't 
just stop working these days. Everyone who could do anything 
at all was needed.

lnd--she remembered the interview with the 
psychologist-I'm probably the unstable type. Wonder ohat sort ol* 
neurosis I'd get sitting home reading that sensational paper 
. . .

She plunged into the work without pursuing the thought.


February 18.

Hank darling,

Just a note--from the hospital, no less. I had a dizzy spell 
at work, and the doctor took it to heart. Blessed if I know 
what I'll do with myself lying in bed for weeks, just waiting 
rebut Dr. Boyer seems to think it may not be so long.

There are too many newspapers around here. More infanticides 
all the time, and they can't seem to get a jury to 
convict any of them. It's the fathers who do it. Lucky thing 
you're not around, in 
case-
Oh, darling, .that wasn't a very funny joke, was it? Write 
as often as you can, will you? I have too much time tO think. 
But there really isn't anything wrong, and nothing to worry 
about.

Write often, and remember I love you.

Maggie.


'THAT ONLY A MOTHER


135

SPECIAL .SERVICE TELEGRAM

February 21, 1953

22:04 LK37G

From: Tech. Lieut. H. Marvell

X47-016 GCNY

To:
Mrs. H. Marvell 
Women's Hospital 
New York City

HAD DOCT(SR'S GRAM STOP WILL ARRIVE FOUR 
OH TEN STOP SHORT LEAVE STOP YOU DID IT 
MAGGIE STOP LOVE HANK

February 25.

� Hank dea,

So you didn't see the baby either ,You'd think a place 
this size. would at least have visiplates on the incubators, so 
the fathers could get a look, even if the poor benighted 
mommas can't. They tell me I won't see her 'for another 
week, or maybe more---but of course, mother always warned 
me if I didn't slow my pace, I'd probably even have my babies 
too fast. Why must she always be right?

Did you meet that battle-ax of a nurse they put on here? 
I imagine they save her for people who've already had theirs, 
and don't let her get too near the prospectives--but a woman 
like that simply shouldn't be allowed in a maternity ward. 
She's obsessed with mutations, can't seem to talk about anything 
else. Oh, well, ours is all right, even ff it was in an 
unholy hurry.

I'm tired. They warned me not to sit up so soon, but I bad 
to write you. All my love, darling,

Maggie.


February 29.

Darling,

I finally got to see her! It's all true, what they say about 
new babies and the face that only a mother could love-Z-but 
it's all there, darling, eyes, ears, and noses--no, only one!-all 
in the right places. We're so lucky, Hank.

I'm afraid I've been a rambunctious patient. I kept telling 
that hatchet-faced female with the mutation mania that I 
wanted to see the'baby. Finally the doctor came in to "explain" 
everything to me, and talked a lot of nonsense, most


136
JuDrm MZRRIL .

of which I'm sure no one could have understood, any more 
than I did. The only thing I got out of it was that she didn't 
actually have to stay in the incubator; they just thought it 
Was "wiser."

I think I got a little hysterical at that point. Guess I was 
more worried than I was willing to admit, but I threw a 
small fit about it. The whole business wound up with one of 
those hushed medical conferences outside the door, an'd finally 
the Woman in White said: "Well, we might as well. 
Maybe it'll work out better that way."

I'd heard about the way doctors and nurses in these places 
develop a God complex, and believe me it is as true figuratively 
as it is literally that a mother hasn't got a leg to stand 
on around here.

I am awfully weak, still. 'I'll write again soon. Love,

Maggie.


March 8.

Dearest Hank,

Well the nurse was wrong if she told you that. She's an 
idiot anyhow. It's a girl. It's easier to tell with babies than 
with cats, and l know. How about Henrietta?

I'm home again, and busier than a betatron. They got 
everything mixed up at the hospital, and I had to teach myself 
how to bathe her and do iust about everything else. She's 
getting prettier, too. When can you get a leave, a real leave?

Love,

Maggie.


May 26.

Hank dear,

You should see her now--and you shall. I'm sending along 
a reel of color movie. My mother sent her those nighties 
with drawstrings all over. I put one on, and right now she 
looks like a snow-white potato sack with that beautiful, 
beautiful flower-face blooming on top. Is that me talking? 
Am I a doting mother? But wait t/Il you see her!


Jnly 0.

� . . Believe it or not, as yon like, but your daughter can talk, 
and I don't mean baby talk: Alice discovered it--she's a dental 
assistant in the WACs, you know--and xvhen she heard 
the baby giving out what I thought was a string of gibberish, 
she said the kid knew words and sentences, but couldn't say


-THAT ONLY 8 MOTHER
137

them clearly because she has no teeth yet. I'm taking her

to a speeqh specialist..


September 13. 
� . . We have a prodigy for real! Now that all her front 
teeth are in, her speech is perfectly clear and--a new talent 
now--she can sing! I mean really carry a tune! At seven 
months! Darling my world would be perfect ff you could 
only get home.


November 19. 
�.. at last. The little g6on was so busy being clever, it 
took her all this time to learn to crawl. The doctor says de-velopmen.t 
in these cases is always erratic . . .


SPECIAL SERVICE TELEGRAM

December 1, 1953

08:47 LK59F

From: Tech. Lieut. It.. Marvell

X47-016 GCNY

To:
Mrs. H. Marvell 
Apt. K-17 
504 E. 19 St. 
N.Y.N.Y.

WEEK'S LEAVE STARTS TOMORROW STOP WILL 
AIRPORT TEN OH FIVE STOP DON'T MEET ME 
STOP LOVE LOVE LOVE HANK


Margaret let the water run out of the bathinette until only 
a few inches were left, and then loosed her hold on the wriggling 
baby.

"I think it was better when you were retarded, young 
woman," she informed her daughter happily. "You can't 
crawl in a bathinette, you know."

"Then why can't I go in the bathtub?" Margaret was used 
to her child's volubility by now, but every now and then it 
caught her unawares. She swooped the resistant mass of pink 
flesh into a towel, and began to rub.

"Because you're too little, and your head is very soft, and 
bathtubs are very hard."

"Oh. Then when can I go in the bathtub?"

"When the outside of your head is as hard as the inside, 
brainchild." She reached toward a pile of fresh clothing. "I 
cannot she add. pinning a uare of


138 JumTH MEaRm

through the nightgown, "why a child of your intelligence 
can't learn to keep a diaper on the way other babies do. 
They've been used for centuries, you know, with perfectly' 
satisfactory results."

The child disdained to reply; she had heard it too often. 
She waited patiently until she had been tucked, clean and 
sweet-smelling, into a whke-painted crib. Then she favored 
her mother with a smile that inevitably made Margaret 
think of the first golden edge of the sun bursting into a rosy 
pre-dawn. She remembered Hank's reaction to the color pictures 
of his .beautiful daughter, and with the thought, realized 
how late it was.

"Go to sleep, puss. When you wake up, you know, your 
Daddy will be here."

"Why?" asked the four-year-old mind, waging a losing 
battle to keep the ten-month-old body awake.

Margaret went into the kitchenette and set the timer for 
the roast. She examined the table, and got her clothes from 
the closet, new dress, new shoes, new slip, new everything, 
bought weeks before and saved for the day Hank's telegram 
came. She stopped to pull a paper from the facsimile, 
and, with clothes and news, went into the bathroom, and 
lowered herself gingerly into the steaming luxury of a 
scented tub.

She glanced through the paper with indifferent interest. 
Today at least there was no need to read the national 
news. There was an article by a geneticist. The same geneticist. 
Mutations, he said, were increasing disproportionately. 
It was too soon for reCessives; even the first mutants, born 
near Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1946 and 1947 were not old 
enough yet to breed. But my baby's all right. Apparently, 
there was some degree of free radiation from atomic explosions 
causing the trouble. My baby's fine. Precocious, but 
normal. If more attention had been Paid to the first Japanese 
mutations, he said . . .

There was that little notice in the paper in the spring oje 
47. That vas vben Hank quit at Oak Ridge. "Only two or 
three per cent of those guilty of infanticide are being caught 
and punished in Japan today..." But MY BABY'S all 
right.

She was dressed, combed, and ready to the last light 
brush-on of lip paste, when the door chime sounded. She 
dashed for the door, and heard, for the first time in eighteen


. THAT ONLY A MOTHER 139

months the almost-forgotten sound of a key turning in the

lock before the chime had qui.te died away. 
"Hank!" 
"Maggie!"

And then there was nothing to say. So many days, so 
many months, of small news piling up, so many things to 
tell him, and now she just stood there, staring at a khaki uniform 
and a stranger's pale face. She traced the features with

� the finger of memory. The same highbridged nose, wide-set 
eyes, fine feathery brows; the same long jaw, the hair a little 
farther back now on the high forehead, the same tilted curve 
of his mouth. Pale . . . Of course, he'd been underground 
all this time. And strange, stranger because of lost familiarity 
than any nevcomer's face could be.

She had time to think all thatbefore his hand reached out 
to touch her, nd spanned the gap of .eighteen months. Now, 
again, 'there was nothing to say, because there was no need. 
They were together, and for the moment that was enough.


"Where's the baby?"

"Sleeping. She'll be up any minute."

No urgency. Their voices were as casual as though it were 
a daily exchange, as though war and separation did not exist. 
Margaret picked up the coat he'd thrown on the chair 
near the door, and hung it carefully in the hall closet. She 
went to check the roast, leaving him to wander through the 
rooms by himself, remembering and coming back. She found 
him, finally, standing over the baby's crib.

She couldn't see his face, but she had no need to.

"I think we can wake her just this once." Margaret 
pulled the covers down, and lifted the white bundle from 
the bed. Sleepy lids pulled back heavily from smoky brown 
eyes.

"Hello." Hank's voice was tentative.

"Hello." The baby's assuranoe was more pronounced. 
He had heard about it, of course, but that wasn't the 
same as hearing it. He turned eagerly to Margaret. "She 
really can--?"

"Of course she can, darling. But what's more important, 
she can even do nice normal things like other babies do, 
even stupid ones. Watch her crawl!" Margaret set the baby 
on the big bed.

For a moment young Henrietta lay and eyed her parents 
dubiously.


140
JUDITH MERRm

"Crawl?" she asked.

"That's the idea. Your Daddy is new around here, you

know. He wants to see you show off."

"Then put me on my tummy."

"Oh, of course:' Margaret obligingly rolled the baby over. 
"What's the matter?" Hank's voice was still casual, but an 
undercurrent in it began to charge the air of the room. "I 
thought they turned over first."

"This baby," Margaret would not notice the tension, "This 
baby does things when she wants to."

This baby's father watched with softening eyes while 
the head advanced and the body hunched up, propelling 
itself across the bed.

"Why the little rascal," he burst into relieved laughter.

"She looks like one of those potato-sack racers they used to 
"have on picnics. Got her arms pulled out of the sleeves

ready." He reached over and grabbed the knot at the bottom

of the long nightie.

'Tll do it, darling." Margaret tried to get there first.

"Don't be silly, Maggie. This may be your first baby, but 
I had five kid brothers." He laughed her away, and reached 
with his other hand for the string that closed one sleeve. He 
opened the sleeve bow, and groped for an arm.

"The way you wriggle," he addressed his child sternly, 
as his hand touched a moving knob of flesh at the shoulder, 
"anyone aught' think you were a worm, using,, your tummy 
to crawl on, instead of your hands and feet.

Margaret stood and watched, smiling. "Wait till you hear 
her sing, darling--"

His right hand traveled down from the shoulder to where 
he thought an arm would be, traveled down, and straight 
down, over firm small muscles that writhed in an attempt to 
move against the pressure of his hand. He let his tingers drift 
up again to the shoulder. With infinite care, he opened the 
knot at the bottom of the nightgown. His wife was standing 
by the bed, saying: "She can do 'Jingle Bells,' and--"

His left hand felt along the soft knitted fabric of the 
gown, up towards the diaper that folded, flat and smooth,

across the bottom end of his child. No wrinkles. No 
kick
ing. No . . .

"Maggie," He tried to pull his hands from the neat fold in 
the diaper, from the wriggling body. "Maggie." His throat 
was dry; words came hard, low and grating. He spoke very 
slowly, thinking the sound of each word to make himself


. THAT ONrLY A MOTHER
141

say it. His head was spinning, but he had to knoo before

he let it go. "Magg!e, why .... didn't you . . . tell me?"

"Tell' you what, darling?, Margaret's poise was the immemorial 
patience o pounds woman confronted with man's childish 
impetuosity. Her sudden laugh sounded fantastically easy 
and natural in that room; it was all clear to her now. "Is she 
wet? I didn't know."

She didn't knorr. His hands, beyond control, ran up and 
� down the soft-skinned baby body, -the sinuous, limbless 
body. Ob God, dear God--his head shook and his muscles 
contracted, in a bitter spasm of hysteria. His fingers tightened 
on his child--Ob God, she didn't knorr . . .


WALK TO THE WORLD


by ALGIS BUDRYS


Budrys, son of the exiled Lithuanian Consul General in the 
United States, shortened bis first name some,what for American 
consumption--it vas Algirdis. Like Poul Anderson, be 
turned to vriting vbile still in college, and although he held 
other jobs, never vorked seriously at any other trade until, 
in 1961, be became editor of Regency Books. From the very 
first, bis interest in s.[. bas been philosophical. A Budrys story 
is meant to entertain you, and does, but it is also meant to tell 
you something the author thinks is important.


WHENEVER IT rained on week-ends, my father would stand 
in front of the big window in the living room and face the 
wheat fields as they danced and rippled. He would look at 
the wheat, and beyond it at the mountains, with the big ashtray 
slowly filling beside him. His feet would carry him in 
a sort of shuffling dance, back and forth, and his hips would 
swing as though he were walking down the long road that 
ran through the fields to the mountains, and over and 
through the mountains to the city.

Those were the two things everybody noticed about 
my father: the way he loved to walk, and the way he 
smoked. He would set himself on the road, a pack of cigarettes 
in both pockets of the faded TSN jumper with the 
frayed sleeves, and he would stride along with the swaying 
hill man's gait he had learned on Earth, until one pack of 
cigarettes was gone. Then he' would turn around and come 
home.

I guess people wondered about him. During the week he 
would be working out in the fields like our neighbors, but 
even then he would stop the tractor on top of a rise, sometimes,' 
and stand up with one leg thrown around the gear 
levers to steady him, and look at the road going out to the 
mountains. He would put one of the expensive Earthside 
cigarettes between his lips and light a match one-handed, 
touching it to the cigarette without looking. Then he would 
sit down in the saddle again, and the converter would go 
Whee! for a minute, until he remembered to put the motor 
in gear, and then the tractor would roll down the other side 
142


� WALK TO THE WORLD
143

of the rise with the cultivator combing the earth behind it.


"John;" he said to me once, When Mom was in the kitchen 
and we were sitting in the living, room, "don't you ever wonder 
where the world is?"

"The world's right here, isn't it, Dad?" I said, wondering 
what he meant. "We're on it. It's the fourth planet from 
Wolf, and people have been on it for a hundred years."

He shook his head slowly, crossing his lean legs as he 
reached for a cigarette in his shirt pocket. "The world used 
to be here, son, when the first men came here, when the grass 
grew where the wheat grows now, when the wind rolled 
over this hill instead of splitting to go around the house. 
Before that, the world was on Centaurus, and before that--before 
Columbus--the world was America, and before that 
it was anywhere that wasn't plowed and tended."

He lit the cigarette and leaned back 'in the comfortable 
chair that surrounded him with foam and cloth. "But none of 
those places are the world now. They've become places like 
New York and Risley. New Jersey, and Leyport and Rog-ersville, 
Simbala and Kenton's Landing, and all of them are 
called Home. Home is a familiar place, son. Home is where 
the hearth is, Home is where you hang your hat. Home is 
where every wide space between the boards on the floor has 
a memory of a lost pin to be dug out, where every loose 
hinge on a door brings back the feel of a knob to be lifted 
before it can be turned. Home is where the cooking tastes 
just right." He stopped, and I could hear Mom washing the 
dishes.

"But when a place becomes Home, it stops being the 
world. Son, have you ever felt you'd like to go out and see 
the world?"

I thought about that for a minute. "You mean, the world 
is always somewhere else?"

"Something like that. The world is where the cracks in the 
floorboards are just places where dust gathers, places where 
the doors stick, where you have to put salt in your food, or 
put an extra piece of ice in your drink. You can see the world, 
John. You can ride the big ships, like I did, and find the 
world. You can see the new people, and hear the new voices. 
You can wear the strange clothes and live in the strange 
houses, and for a while you are seeing the world."

I remember the picture that hung from a nail in the attic, 
a picture of a young man in a black and silver uniform, proud


144
ALS BUDRYS


in his black boots and lieutenant's stripes, with litde crinkles 
at the corners of his eyes that were crows' feet now.

"And then, one day, you reach out in the dark for the light 
switch, and you find k without fumbling. You lift your feet 
so you won't trip oyer the place where the carpet has curled 
up at one edge," he went on. "Your friends come in from the 
big ships, looking for a good time, and you guide them to it. 
You tell them which drinks are the good drinks, and which 
prices are the right prices. When two people pass by in the 
street, murmuring exotic words, glamorous words, in the 
lilting, singing language of the strange, world, and you[ 
friends ask you, eyes glittering with intrigue, what mystery 
they were discussing, you can tell them they were talking 
about the price of socks." My father sighed. "As soon 
after that as you can, you leave your new home, and you 
seek the world anew."

"You mean, you can see the world, but you can't live in k

without its becoming Home."

"Not for very long, son."

My mother came out of the kitchen, drying her hands. 
"How's your homework coming along, Johnnie?" she 
asked. I wanted to stay and talk to my father about the 
world, but she looked at me as if. she knew I hadn't even 
started my history term paper, so I went upstairs and began 
working on it.


On sunny week-Ends, or even when it was just not raining, 
my father would get up very early in the morning and put 
On his jumper. He would eat breakfast alone in the kitchen, 
and then he would go to the cabinet where the cartons of 
cigarettes were kept, and fill his pockets. He would go out 
of the house, closing the door hard to wake me, and walk 
down the road. I sometimes went to the window and 
watched him. He would look straight ahead of him, ignoring 
the wheat, swinging his arms, a cigarette in one hand 
leaving jagged curves of smoke in the air beside him. '

At gupper time he would be back with dust on his shoes, 
his hair rumpled. He would hang u.p the jumper, wash his 
hands, and sit down to eat. Somemnes my mother would 
tease him, and he would grin and tease her back, but sometimes 
she was very quiet, and then he woul-d be quiet too.

Once, when he was gone, my mother saw me standing in 
front of the window, smoking a cigarette, one of the local 
brands my father wouldn't touch. She came over to me


WALK TO-THE WORLD 145

and put' an arm around me. "He likes to walk, doesn't he, 
Johnnie?" she said.

"He sure does," I answered., grinning.

"How about you, Johunie? Do you like' to walk, too?" 
For the first time I can remember, my mother's voice was 
anxious when she spoke to me.

"Shucks, Maw, I'm jest a little or country boy. Why should 
I want to go out and see the world?" 
� She shook her head. "You're Jack Gallery's son. Lieutenant 
John Gallery, Terrestrial Space Navy, Retired. And I retired 
him, Johnnie." She smiled, remembering.

"The first time I saw him, he was walking. He was striding 
up the path to the Port Director's office on Centaurus, 
his cap .way back on his head, his heels hitting the ground 
hard, and he was coming Off the ends of his toes, driving 
himself forward. His uniform was just. a day too long unpressed, 
and the trim was cracked and 131ackened.

"I was looking out of the window, instead of transcribing 
a new' set of directives like I should have been. I thought to 
myself, 'I wonder what's eating him!' The impatience trailed 
behind him and around him so thickly you could almost see


"In a few minutes he was standing over my desk in the 
outer office.

"'Would you tell the Port Director that Lieutenant Gallery 
of the Anzio would like to see him.'

"'You're the captain of this vessel?'


"'What do you wish to see the Port Director about?' I 
asked, although I knew the answer.

"'I want to submit a written request for review of a Condition 
of Vessel report,' he answered, and took a manila 
envelope from under his arm. His big knuckles were red and 
white, and there was a smudge of grease under one eye that 
gave him a glowering look.

"'Well, maybe I could give it to him,' I said. The lnzio 
had been red-lined the day before, and ordered to stand 
down until a new auxiliary drive could be fitted. Not even 
Jack Gallery could do anything about that.

guess he knew I was going to file his request and forget 
it, because he shook his head. 'I'll giv'e it to him myself,' he 
said.

"'Uh-huh. Look, Lieutenant, if you want to put yourself 
in a high sling, that's your business, and I'll tell the Director


you're here, but I transcribed that order myself, and I know 
thc dec,ion's aighr. Nobody, nd rhaclud Jck G-lc, 
gong to bust on the Po Dccmr of � v busy 
arion and conv h otherwise.'

"I saw h sr to smcr down, so I id ve gendy, 
'And Leurenantere s grease on your face. I don t k 
he'd ke ar on mp of yo second best unorm.'

" he never got to see the Port Dkector, but he did ke 
me out often enough to ve me an excuse to go to h al-mo
eve day when they brought h back to the Base 
Hoital a year later. He got the Medal of Honor for at 
wound of his, and e world it won for the Union.

"en he married me, he reed. He acted juke he did 
e te they red-lined h ship, but I finally convced h.

"d at's the way yo father ," my moer 'shed 
wkh a sigh. She squeezed my hand.

" tt's why you don't want me to take any long hes," 
I said; I'd been wonderg.

"I di' say that, Joie, I never said that." Her deep 
ey were ned away from me. Then she let go of my hd 
d wflked qfficy to the tchen.

I ood at the wdow, loog pae wheat at e 
mota, and far off, ju at e big rise the road makes before 
it dips dom to the vaey below o house, I saw my 
father, e faded jmper black agat the yeow du, 
wk

"I ye taken you up to e mountaintop, John. Now I m gong 
to show you e world," my father said.

The road fe away from us, blacktopped now, and went 
to the ci.

"at's S Ci," my father said, although he knew I 
ew.ar. "e road runs into S and becomes a eet. 
e e lds to e acepom"

I cod see the t white concrete pla on e other side 
of the buadin.

"e big ships lve the acepo and go to the m. 
Mo of em go Home, but some of them go out to find a 
world." He opped to light a cire.. e wd pused 
the jmper agast h back and fluerea ts open ront. I ne 
march flared aga his umb, and he mulcted, v sofdy, 
"Damnl"

"e ships go father eve day to find e world," my 
father confnued, "For whenever men go, they bund thek 
houses and lay thek eets, or they learn the sange 
lan

,WALK TO THE WORLD
147


guages, or they conquer the beings of these worlds, and the 
world becomes Home.'Y

"So this road leads to the world," I said, watching a ship, 
all black and gold, sunlit, threading its way into the sky.

"You can walk toward the mountains from our house," my 
father replied. "And stand here looking at Sky and the 
spaceport, and watch the ships going out. And that way, the 
road leads to the world." His eyes, too, were on the ship 
as if pushed through a cloud and broke out above it. "But, 
when you turn around, finally, and you see the road kinking 
through the wheat, then this road leads to Home." He 
coughed a little and threw the cigarette away. "Time to be 
getting back," ,he said.

We walked down the road, my father and I, his strides 
long and effortless, mine as long, but not as free and swinging. 
He had that walk from his father., he told me once, and 
I saw the old man, thin-bodied, in wash-bleached denims, 
crossing the pine-topped hills. That was the only way I pictured 
my grandfather, a picture of a man traveling over the 
top of the hills.


It wasn't long after that the purring, catlike car came over 
the mountains and to our house, bending the wheat away 
from the black and silver fenders. A uniformed man drove 
the car, and another man rode in the back, looking at the 
fields and the house. He was about as old as my father, with 
the same lines at the eyes, but he wore a vice-admiral's uniform 
on sagging shoulders and tightly over his stomach. My 
father met him and took him into the house while the driver 
cramped his car into a circle and went back over the mountains.

"Hello, Bill," my father said. He shook the admiral's hand 
warmly, but his eyes, warm too, had something strange in 
them. "What's brought you out here?"

"No hurry 'about that, Jack," the admiral said, and i 
thought his voice was too accustomed to giving orders, but 
I liked him nevertheless. "How's Marion? And your son? 
Lord, he's a man!" He shook my hand, and looked at my 
father. "He looks like you," he said, and I liked him even 
more, but still I was not sure if I always would.

My mother came into the room, and for a moment, when 
she saw the admiral, she hesitated at the threshold and looked 
at my father too rapidly for him to feel. But then she walked 
quickly across the room and rook the admiral's hand. "Bill!


148
Axxm BUDRYS


How are you? And you used to swear they'd Summary

Court you before you got too old to make snap decisions!" 
"Luck, I guess, Marion. And how're you?"

"Oh, fine," she said, and then she asked the same question 
my father had, in her own way. "Don't tell me they're giving 
you a week-end in the country along with the simply 
fabulous pay you must be drawing."

"You might say I was combining business with pleasure," 
he answered. "This is a beautiful house you have."

"Built it ourselves," my father said, and I could see that he 
and my mother knew their old friend well enough not to 
press him.

That was the way they spent the afternoon. Father 
showed him the land, and mother cooked supper. The admiral 
looked at everything, admiring the crop, enthusiastically 
praising the swimming in the valley stream, chuckling 
over the antics of the pups in the yard. Mother kept rattling 
pots in the kitchen, opening cabinets, closing drawers, 
thumbing the recipe book, busily. As I watched her and 
helped set the table, I saw she was keeping herself far too 
busy, even with a supper guest.

"Mom," I said, "do you think Dad'll be taking an extra 
long walk?"

"Getting pretty smart, aren't you?" she said, looking up 
from a low cabinet. She straightened up, sighing. "He's

getting pretty old-for hiking, isn't he?"

"It's hard to say."

"It is, isn't it, Johnny? Very hard." She said it so that it 
meant what it actually said. She went busily back to the 
grove.


Supper was a quiet meal. Every time either my mother, my 
father, or the admiral would raise their heads, I could see 
the uncertain looks in their eyes. Finally it was over, and we 
went into the living room. The admiral sat down facing the'. 
three of us.

"Jack, Marion, I've known you both for a long time, and 
there's no sense beating around," he said. Both mother and 
father sat quietly in their chairs, but they were quiet in different 
ways. "We used to think, back on Centaurus, that 
nothing would ever stop Jack Gallery." He said it matter of 
facdy, and I had never been so proud of my father before. 
"Well, nothing ever did," he went on. "You could have


WALK tO THE WORLD 149

stayed in the service, Jack. That wound wasn't anything big. 
When you retired, you were .still the champ."

And 'now you need the .champ again,.I .thought. Somewhere, 
something needs to be done.

I think my mother would have said something, but my 
father put out his hand and touched hers.

"What I'm going to tell you is a military secret, Jack.

You'll be going back to school soon, Young Jack. Remember 
. not to .talk about it."

Nobody had even called me that before.

"You know how we operate, Jack. The Union centers on 
Earth, and we send our ships in toward the center of the 
galaxy, fanning out so that we're gradually biting a chunk 
out of t-he g;lactic rim and making it ours." He leaned forward 
a bit. "Well, somebody else has the same idea."

"No!" my.father exclaimed, and the look on his face 
was eagerness. "I used to tell you that'd happen someday." 
The admiral nodded. My mother looked at my father, but I 
don't understand how I could know that, because her face 
was in a shadow.

"They're a little farther 'in than we are, and their ships 
seem to be slower, or else they're not hustling like we are. 
Anyway, the damnedest thing happened. One of our ships 
.grou.nded on a planet two days after they landed. Can you 
Lmagne that? Our ships buzzing around for months in that 
sector, and theirs doing the same thing, and not noticing 
each other?"

"Sounds like they've got an entirely different type of 
drive," my father said, "If that's true, then-their whole 
concept of electronics must be different. Are they humanoid?''

"Human, or so close to it the difference isn't apparent. 
And about that drive--You always were a jump ahead of 
me, weren't you?--you're right, and about their science, 
too."


"Okay then, what's your problem? We've got all kinds of

contact teams primed for just this situation," my father said. 
"They won't talk to us." 
"Hostile?"

"Hostile! They haven't even got sidearms on those ships. 
It's been something like a thousand years since they had a 
war, and that, from the little they tell us, was more of a


150
Amis BI$DRYS


ritualistic affair with fixed combat areas, umpires, and a 
pre
determined armistice date."

"Are you kidding?"

"I wish I was. Anytime somebody makes apass at them, 
they just go away and leave him alone. They figure space is 
plenty big enough for everybody." The admiral gripped the 
arms of his chair in frustration. "All of which is a fine and 
dandy way to live, but they're figuring to do just that to us. 
Turn around and go home."

"What on Earth for? Somebody accidentally fire something 
in their direction?"

"Not even that. Trouble is, their ships are privately operated. 
ff one of them decides the grass is greener on the other 
side of the galaxy, he just packs and takes off with the wife 
and kids and anybody else that feels like tagging along. They 
go where they please, just drifting around until they find a 
likely looking world, and then they settle on it, if the natives 
don't mind. If there's room, he sends out a call' for anybody 
else that's interested, they set up a trading colony, and after 
two or three hundred years the world's assimilated into their 
federation."

"Well, look, if this is just one tribe, or whatever, maybe 
thor government's not as huffy as they are. Not that I see 
why they shouldn't be friendlier themselves. Maybe they 
just feel they can't speak for the whole federation," my 
father said, puzzled.

"With humans, you could say that, but not with these 
cookies. Each and every one of them's a member of their 
government. What they've got, actually, is a perfectly coordinated 
anarchy, if you can imagine such a thing. They've 
got some kind of instantaneous communication, and every 
one of them carries a personal transceiver. Yeah--powered 
for interstellar distances, Everybody knows what everybody 
else is doing, and the system works fine, for them." The admiral's 
jaws clamped together. "So naturally, being S�lily 
pure and untrammeled, they refuse to have anything to do 
with anything as inherently aggressive as a military organ:-zillion.''

"Did you explain to them that our economic and social 
structure won't let k be handled any other way?"

"I did. They want to-know what we want with all that 
territory, then: Am I supposed to explain the paradoxes of 
human motives to these holier-than-thous?"


' WALK TO THE WORLD 151

I didn't have time to consider the paradoxes of military 
thinking, because I. realized, finally, what the admiral 
wanted. So did my father, and my mother must have 
guessed long before. '

"You want me to talk to them?" my father asked quietly. 
My mother didn't say anything.

"I'm not trying to say please, Jack. You're the man for 
the. job. If Jack Gallery can't explain it, it can't be done. If 
� we don't find some common ground, we'll lose them, and if 
we lose them, two thirds of our frontier is blocked off. We 
may not be little lambs of God, but we can't blast our way 
through them, and that's the only way they'll let us do it."

Oh, give yourself fifty years, admiral, I thought. Let 
fifty years of respect for the rights of another civilization 
hold you' baclr. Let the pressure build up, and then see if you

on t cut those peaceful strangers .to ribbons. The world 
lies beyond them, admiral, and wherever men go, the places 
they reach become home, so that the world is always somewhere 
else, and must be reached.

"What happens if I say no?" my father asked, still in an 
even voice. There was a sound from my mother's chair, the 
sound people make when they start to speak and then think 
better of it.


"We find somebody else that isn't as good," the admiral 
said.

"There's no sense telling you I don't know there's a lot to 
hold you back," the admiral said, and I hated him. "Think 
it over and let me know tomorrow."

My father took his eyes from the mountains. "Sure, Bill. 
I'll let you know."

Tell him now, I thought. Why not, why waste the Admiral's 
time, why hold back human progress? Tell him you'll 
.go out and look at this whole set of new worlds he's offer-mg 
you on a silver platter. You'll do it tomorrow anyhow. 
But all that time I was shouting inside, I was hoping he 
wouldn't.


My mother got up from the chair. How does a woman 
get up, what is it she does, that tells everyone in sight that 
there is something special, something dramatic, in this arising? 
The admiral's eyes locked on her, and my father's,

tOO.


152
ALGiS BJ)axrs


She walked into the kitchen. I heard her open the c,abinet, 
and when she came back the jumper was over her arm and 
the half-case of Earthside cigarettes was held out in front of

her.

"Here," she said. My father got up, his face half surprised, 
but half grateful, too. They stood together, the cigarettes 
and the jumper on the floor between them, and they didn't 
speak.

The admiral got to his feet. "You don't have to be that 
quick about it, Marion," he said, but his voice was relieved.

"Shut up," my mother said. "You got in a jam and you 
reached back in the files and pulled out the right folder. 
Well, he's yours. But I don't think he'll perform the way 
you'd like him to. He'll solve it all for you, all right, but it 
won't be the way you and Jack Gallery solved things twenty 
years ago."

"Marion! Don't take that attitude. You're just upset," the 
admiral said. My mother looked at him, and he dropped his 
eyes. My father didn't say anything. He put on the jumper 
and took the cigarettes out to the porch. The admiral went 
outside when my father came back in to say goodbye.

My mother and I watched the growling car escape from 
our yard.

"He'll be back in a few months," I said.

"Yes, he'll be back," my mother answered me. "Ten years 
ago, I wouldn't have let him go. Ten years ago he was still' 
like the admiral. He wanted to see the world."

Father had never told her about the search for the world, 
because she knew how he lek without needing words from 
him, but it surprised me to hear her using his exact phrase.

"The men of Earth go out," my mother said, "and they 
seek the world. The world must be new, unknown, an adventure, 
a thing to be discovered and conquered. But they 
come home, Johnnie, like he always came home from the 
mountains."

"But when you turn around, finally, this road leads to 
Home," my father had told me and I understood, at last, that 
sometimes you walk to the mountains and the world just 
for the sake of being able to turn around and come home.

"The admiral--did you notice how he talked, Johnnie? 
Either we push through them, or we stop dead. Remember?" 
my. mother asked. "But Jack and I were thinking about the 
thing the admiral never considered." She put an arm around 
my waist and held me strongly. "We can join them, Johnnie.


-WALK T) THE WORLD 153

They aren't very different from us, 'for they search for the 
world too. And we will go out to their worlds, and they will 
come to ours, for the world-is anYwhere, John, where you 
haven't been."

I thought of my father, talking to the strangers. They 
would understand each other, I thou�hr:


I]fisSed my mother, and looked at our home, which was 
warm and comfortable. How foolish, I thought, to go out 
to the world, i you will always come Home again.

"I'll'never walk to the mountains, Mom," I said, struck by 
my revelation, but Mother looked at me with eyes wiser 
than mine.


T


by Bmax, W. Amss


Aldiss, literary editor of the Oxford Mail, and more recently 
editor of Penguin's series of s.f. novels, is one of the most 
dedicated and serious science fiction riters. His art is intensely 
individual and rich in imagery--qualities vbicb 
helped him produce the Hugo-winning "Hothouse" stories.


mr xE xnvm T was ten years old, his machine was already 
on the fringes of his galaxy. T was not his name--the laboratory 
never considered christening him--but it was the 
symbol on the hull of his machine and it will suffice for a 
name. And again, it was not his machine; rather, he belonged 
to it. He could not claim the honourable role of 
pilot, nor even the.humbler one of passenger; he was a chattel 
whose seconds of utility lay two hundred years ahead.

He waited like a maggot in an apple at the centre of the 
machine as it fled through space and time. He never 
moved; the impulse to move did not present itself to him, 
nor would he have been able to obey if it had. T had been 
created leglesshis single limb was an arm, and the machine 
hemmed him in on all sides.

The machine nourished him by means of pipes which fed 
a thin stream of vitamins and proteins into his body. It circulated 
his blood by a tiny motor that throbbed in the starboard 
bulkhead like a heart. It removed his waste products 
by a steady syphoning process. It produced his supply of 
oxygen. It regulated T so that he neither grew nor wasted. 
It saw that he would be alive in two hundred years.

T had one reciprocal duty. His ears were filled perpetually 
with an even droning note, and before his lidless eyes 
there was a screen on which a red band travelled forever 
down a fixed green 'line. The drone represented (although 
not to T) a direction through space, while the red band 
indicated (akhough not to T) a direction in time. Occasionally, 
perhaps only once a decade, the drone changed pitch or 
the band faltered from its green line. These variations registered 
in T's consciousness as acute discomforts, and accordingly 
he would adjust one of the two small wheels by 
154


his hand, until conditions returned to normal and the even 
tenor of monotony was resumed..

Although T was aware of his ow life, loneliness was one 
of the innumerable concepts that his creators had arranged 
he should never sense. He lay passive, in an artificial contentment. 
His time was divided not by night or day, .or by 
waking or sleeping, or by feeding periods, but by silence or 
speaking. Part of the machine spoke to him at intervals, 
giving him' short monologues on duty and reward, and instructions 
as to the working of a simple apparards that would be 
required two centuries ahead. The speaker presented T with 
a carefully distorted picture of his environs. It made no 
reference to th,e inter-galactic night outside, nor to the fast 
backward seepage of time. The idea of motion was not a 
factor with' which to trouble an entombed thing like T. But 
it did refer to the Koax, and in reverent.terms, speaking also 
--but in' words filled with loathing--of that inevitable 
enemy of the Koax, Man. The machine informed T that he 
would be responsible for the complete destruction of Man.

Although T was utterly alone, the machine which carried 
him had company on its flight. Eleven other identical ma-chines--each 
occupied by beings similar to T-bured 
through the continuum. This continuum was empty and 
lightless and stood in the same relationship to the universe 
proper as a fold on a silk dress stands to the dress: when the �
sides of the fold touch, a funnel is formed by the surface of

the material inside the surface of the dress. Or you may 
liken it to the negativity of the square root of minus two, 
which has a positive value. It was a vacuum inside a vacuum. 
The machines were undetectable, piercing the dark like 
light itself and sinking through the hovering millenia like 
stones.

The twelve machines were built for an emergency by a 
non-human race so ancient that they had' abandoned the construction 
of other machinery aeons ago. They had progressed 
beyond the need of material assistancebeyond the 
need of corporal bodies--beyond the need at last of planets 
with which to associate their tenuous egos. They had come 
finally, in their splendid maturity, to call themselves only by 
the name of their galaxy, Koax. In that safe island of several 
million stars, they moved and had their being, and brooded 
over the coming end of the universe.

While they brooded, another race grew to seniority in a 
galaxy far beyond the meaning of distance. The new race,


156
BR W... ALDIS8


unlike the Koax, was extravert and warlike; it tumbled out 
among the stars like an explosion, and its name was Man. 
There came a time when this race, spreading from one infinitesimal 
planetary body, had multiplied, and filled its 
own galaxy. For a while it paused as if to catch its breath-the 
jump between the stars is nothing t.o the gulf between the 
great star cities--and then the time/space equations were 
formulated: Manstrode to the nearest galaxy armed with 
the greatest of ail weapons, Stasis. The temporal mass/ 
energy relationship that regulates the functioning of the universe, 
they found, might be upset in certain of the more 
sparsely starred galaxies by impeding their orbital revolution, 
causing, virtually, a fixation of the temporal factor--Stasis--whereby 
everything affected ceases to continue along 
the universal timeflow and ceases thereupon to exist. But 
Man had no need to use this devastating weapon; as on its 
bi-product, the Stasis drive, he swept from one galaxy to 
another, he found no rival, nor any ally. He seemed destined 
to be sole occupant of the universe. The innumerable 
planets revealed only that life was an accident. And then the 
Koax were reached.

The Koax were aware of Man before he knew of their 
existence, and their immaterial substance cringed to think 
that soon it would be torn through by the thundering drives 
of the Supreme Fleet.

They acted quickly. Materialising onto a bhck dwarf, a 
group of their finest minds prepared to combat the invader 
with every power possible. They had some useful abilities, 
of which being able to alter the course of suns was not the 
least. And so nova after nova flared into the middle of the 
Supreme Fleet. But Man came invincibly on, driving into the 
Koax like a cataclysm. From a small frightened tribe a few 
hundred strong, roaming a hostile earth, he had swelled into 
an unquenchable multitude, ruling the stars. As the Koax 
wiped out more and more ships, it was decided that their 
home must be eliminated by Stasis, and ponderous preparations 
were begun. The forces of Man gathered themselves for 
a massive final blow.

Unfortunately, a. Fleet Library Ship was captured intact 
by the Koax, and from it something of the long tangled history 
of Man was discovered. There was even a plan of the 
Solar System as it had been when Man first knew it. The 
Koax heard for the first time of Sol and its attendants. Sol



T 157

at this period, far across the universe, was a faintly radiating 
smudge with a diameter twice the size of the planetary system 
that had long ago girdled it. As it had expanded into 
old age, the planets had one by One been swallowed into its 
bulk; now even Pluto was gone to feed the dying fires.

The Koax finally developed a plan that would rid them 
entirely Of their foes. Since they were unable to cope in the 
present with the inexhaustible resources of Man, they 
.ev61ved in their devious fashion a method of dealing With 
him in .the far past, when he wasn't even there. They built a 
dozen machines that would slip through time and space and 
annihilate Earth before Man appeared upon it; the missiles 
would atrike, it was determined, during the Silurian age and 
reduce the planet to its component atoms. So 'T was born.

� "W.. e will have them,"-one of the greatest Koax announced 
aa traamph when the matter was thr.ashed out. "Unless these

ancient Earth records lie, and there is no reason why they 
should do, Sol 6riginally supported nine planets, before its 
degenerate stage set in. Working inwards, in the logical 
order, these were--I have the names here, thanks to Man's 
sentimentality--Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, 
Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury. Earth, you see, is the 
seventh planet in, or the third that was drawn into Sol in its 
decline. That is our target gentlemen, a speck remote in 
time and space. See that your calculations are accurate--that 
seventh planet must be destroyed."

There was no error� The seventh planet was destroyed. 
Man never had any chance of detecting and blasting T and 
his eleven dark companions, for he had never discovered the 
alien continuum in which they travelled.

The faint possibility of interception varied inversely with 
the distance the machines covered, for as they neared 
Man's first galaxy, time was rolled back to when he had first 
.spiralled tentatively up to the Milky Way, The machines bore 
m and back. It was growing early.

The Koax by now was a young race without the secret of 
deep space travel, dwindling away across the other side of 
the universe. Man himself had only a few old-type fluid fuel 
ships patrolling half a hundred systems. T still lay in his 
fixed position, waiting, waiting. His two centuries of existence-,the 
long wait--were almost ended. Somewhere in 
his cold brain was a knowledge that the climax lay close

now�


158
BRIAN W. ALDI$$


Not all of his few companions were as fortunate, for the

machines, perfect when they set out, developed flaws over

the long journey (the two hundred years of travel 
repre
sented a distance in space/time of some ninety-five hundred

million light years). The Koax were natural mathematical

philosophers, but they had long ago given up being 
me
chanics-otherwise they would have devised relay systems to

manage the job that T had to do. The nutrition feed in one

machine slowly developed an increasing rate of supply, and

the being died not so much from overeating as from growing

pains--which were very painful indeed as he swelled against

a steel bulkhead and finally sealed off the air vents with his

own bulging flesh. In another machine, a transistor failed,

shorting the temporal drive; it broke through into real space

and buried itself in an M-type variable sun. In a third, the

guide system came adrift and the missile hurtled on at an 
in
creasing acceleration until it burnt itself out and fried its 
oc
cupant. In a fourth, the occupant went quietly and 
unpre
dictably mad, and pulled a little lever that was not then due

to be pulled for another hundred years. His machine erupted

into fiery radioactive particles and destroyed two other 
ma
chines.

Whefi the Solar System was only a'few light years away,

the remaining machines switched off their main drive and

appeared in normal space/time. Only three of them had 
com
pleted the journey, T and two others.

They found themselves in a galaxy now devoid of life.

Only the great stars shone on their new planets, fresh, 
com
paratively speaking, from the womb of creation. Man had

long before sunk back into the primaeval mud, and the suns

and planets were nameless again. Over Earth, the mists of

the early Silurian age hovered, and in the shallows of its 
wa

ters molluscs and trilobites were the main expression of life.

The placid seas of Mars were also alive with half-sentient

things.

Meanwhile, T concentrated on the seventh planet. He

had performed the few simple movements necessary to

switch his machine back into the normal universe; now all

that was left for him to do was to watch a small pressure

dial. When the machine entered the atmospheric fringes of

the seventh planet, the tiny hand on the pressure dial would

begin to climb. When it reached a clearly indicated line on

the
T would turn a small wheel (this would release the


T
159

dampers--but T needed to know the How, not the Why). 
Then two more gauges would begin to register. When they 
both attained the same reading, T had to pull down the lit-de 
lever. The speaker had explained all this to him regularly. 
What it did not explain was what happened after the lever 
was down, but T knew very well that then Man would be 
destroyed, and that that would be good.

The seventh planet swung into position ahead of the blunt 
bows of T's machine, and grew in apparent magnitude. It 
was a young world, with a future about to be wiped forever 
off the slate of probability. As T entered its atmosphere, the 
hand began to climb the pressure dial. For the first time in 
his existence, something like exckement stirred in the fluid of 
T's brain. He neither saw nor cared for the panorama spread-Lng 
below, him, 'for the machine had not been constructed 
with ports..The dim instrument dials, were all his eyes had 
ever. rested on. He behaved exactly as the Koax had intended. 
When the hand reached top, he turned the damper 
wheel, and his other two gauges started to creep. By now 
he was plunging down through the stratosphere of the 
seventh planet. The load was planned to explode before impact, 
for as the Koax had no details about the planet's composition 
they had made certain that it went off before the 
machine struck and T was killed. The safety factor had been 
well devised. T pulled his last little lever twenty miles up. 
In the holocaust that immediately followed, he went out in 
a sullen joy.

T was highly successful. The seventh planet was utterly 
obliterated.

The other two machines did less brilliantly. One missed 
the Solar System entirely and went on into the depths of 
space, a speck with a patiently dying burden. The other was 
much nearer target. It swung in close to T and hit the sixth 
planet. Unfortunately, it detonated too high, and that planet, 
instead of being obliterated, was pounded into chunks of rock 
that took up erratic orbits between the orbits of the massive 
fifth planet and the eighth, which was a small body encircled 
by two tiny moons. The ninth planet, of course, was 
quite unharmed, it rolled serenely on, accompanied by ils 
pale satellite and carrying its load of elementary life form.

The Koax achieved what they had set out to do. They had 
calculated for the seventh planet and hit it, annihilating it 
utterly. But that success, of course, was already recorded on


160
BR W. A.mss

the only chart they had to go by, as they should have 
real
ised. So while the sixth was accidentally shattered, the 
� seventh disappeared--Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, 
Jupi
ter, the Asteroid planet, T's planet, Mars, Earth, Venus, Mer-cury-the 
seventh disappeared without trace.

On the ninth planer, the molluscs moved gently in the 
bright, filtering sunlight.