make them revered, feared and admired. The majesty that went with command, Lieutenant Nord Corbett well knew, came from mutual respect and not from living in a half-world of distant glory.

He quickly noted as he sat at the head of the table, there was still no trace of irking boredom on the alert faces of his ten officers. He looked for evidence of dullness every night at this time. An officer bored with the monotony of spacing was a terrible hazard because he could easily infect others with his own morose discontent.

The steward was at his elbow. From an intricately carved, large silver bowl he pulled a shining metal can, nested in ice. "A lettuce and tomato salad, sir?" Then apologetically, "That's all we have left now."

Nord Corbett nodded. The salad as it emerged from the can looked garden fresh, even to tiny beads of moisture on the crisp leaves.

Nord looked down the table at Ensign Munroe, finance and supply officer. "Fresh canned stores are about gone now, aren't they?" He ladled dressing on the bright green and red vegetables.

"Yes, sir. We'll be on dry stores in about another week," Munroe answered, "unless, of course, we pass a ship going Earthwards with fresh food."

"Then we'll be on them for the rest of the trip," Nord announced, "we won't pass any ships until we approximate Lanvin."

"We'll only have to eat dry stores for about five or six more months," Ensign Lesnau, the astrogation officer, prophesied.

Hardman, the executive officer, chuckled. "Did you hear that, gentlemen? Please note, Mr. Lesnau announces an ETA for Lanvin plus or minus one month. I'd suggest, captain," he looked at Nord, "you might have Dr. Stacker teach him astrogation."

The laughter that circled the table at the thought of the space surgeon teaching astrogation was as euphoric as a synthetic comedy. Even after one hundred and two days of spacing he still couldn't believe it; the warm thought cloaked his mind these smiling officers were on his first command—Terrestrial Spaceship FFT-i 36. Their holds were filled with agricultural supplies from the Colonial Office on Earth to Lanvin: Planet IV, Sun 3, Sirius System. His feeling of responsibility for the safe execution of this task was like the joy of a father with a new son.

"Captain," Hardman interrupted his reverie, "you missed a good story. Just before dinner, Munroe was telling me about the most original crime on earth."

"You mean in space," Munroe corrected; he turned to the captain. "My brother tells the story that when he was junior instrument officer on the Explorer II, some loose-minded spaceman held up the paymaster when they were five light-years from the nearest planet. He knew he couldn't get off the ship with the money. He-just thought it would be a good idea."

"Well, it would be a good idea, if he could get by with it," Nord admitted. "Think how much currency those big ships carry. It would make a man fabulously rich."

"Not just big ships. Do you have any idea how much I have in my safe for the District Base at Lanvin?" Munroe asked.

Bickford, the air officer, leaned forward eagerly. "How much do you carry?"

"I've got a million stellarsl"

"A million stellars!" Bickford's pale, blue eyes almost extruded. "Why, that's a hundred million dollars."

Munroe nodded. "Captain, Mr. Bickford knows elementary finance. Why can't he be supply officer for a while and let me be air officer?"

"That's a good idea," Lesnau thought aloud. "I'll be space surgeon, too. A complete rotation of all officers. I've been worried about how Mr. Bickford handles the air anyway. He's careless with our chlorophyl. You know air is rather important to us."

"That last is a super-nova of understatement," Dr. Stacker announced.

Bickford leaned across the table, his almost colorless, pale-blue eyes were like tiny, venomous slits. "What do you mean I don't handle the air properly?" His voice was a rasping growl.

"Now, Mr. Bickford, don't get spacey," Nord Corbett cautioned softly. "You know you were only being kidded."

"Don't like to be kidded about my detail," he answered testily. "Go on with the story." He jerked his thin head towards Munroe.

"That's about all there was to it. Of course he was caught and sent to the hospital." He turned to Dr. Stacker. "What kind of illness is that anyway?"

The space surgeon put down his fork. "I would diagnose such a case as being a psychopath."

"Just what is a psychopath?" Nord asked.

"A psychopath is a person with a mental defect which prevents him from learning by experience. Such personalities are usually brilliant, able to learn readily, but when it comes to living with others they are social failures. They are like children, mere emotional infants. Their conduct is ruled solely by impulse. They will think over an idea for a second and then act without considering the consequences to themselves or others. The professional criminal, the pathological liar, the billionaire's son who is repeatedly fined for dropping his yacht into a city, the swindler, kleptomaniac, pyro-maniac and moral degenerate are all psychopaths."

"What causes them?" Nord inquired, "and why let them on ships anyway?"

Stacker sighed. "I wish I could answer it all for you." He pulled a package of cigarettes from his pocket, touched the stud on the label, pulled out a lighted cigarette. He inhaled deeply. "The psychopath can only be explained as a vestigial remnant of man's evolutionary development. It is normal for an infant to live solely by impulse, but as mentality develops he leams to make adjustments to life without the origin of too many conflicts. If, however, we lack the ability to learn how to live with others then we will act as a very intelligent animal would act." He flicked ashes on the tray. "Just remember, captain, it is a mental condition which is a stage in man's phylogenetic development."

"Well, how can you tell a psychopath from a normal lug?" Hard-man interposed.

"That's easy," Lesnau broke in, "we're not normal. Those on Earth are. If we were normal, do you think we'd be out here ten light-years from home?"

"The files in the Bureau of Spatial Medicine," the space surgeon answered Hardman's question, "maintain accurate records of all illnesses, arrests, domestic difficulties and any other symptom of maladjustment. All ships have physicians aboard who are trained in psychiatry. We make every effort to keep the Service free from the danger of the psychopath."

"Why are they so dangerous?" Hardman asked with a laugh. "Seems to me they are rather absurd."

"I can see the danger," Nord said slowly. "I wonder how much of an item they are in the cause of ships that don't return?"

"I would say they were a tremendous factor," the medical officer answered. "Think how easily one man could wreck this ship. If he gained access to the tube banks, he could substitute a worn tube and throw our astrogation out of kilter. If he got into the chlorophyl banks, he could infect them and cause asphyxiation; if he could gain access to the bleeder valves he could release all our air into space. If he kept one suit of armor, he would then control the ship," he paused, looked around the table, "and be rich for life."

Hardman looked at the captain. "I hope you keep all the keys around your neck." When the laughter subsided he addressed the doctor again. "Are all men carefully checked?" He indicated Bick-ford with a nod. "I mean men like political appointees such as Mr. Bickford."

Bickford's pointed chin quivered angrily. "What's the matter with my mind?" he snarled with trembling fury. "Just because I'm not a graduate of the Spatial Academy is no reason to pick on me." He pounded the table angrily. "My cousin who is manager of Synthetic Air got me this job. I was given a highly specialized course in air management." His pale-blue eyes glared at Dr. Stacker. "Just because you silly space surgeons didn't have any reason to examine me doesn't mean my mind isn't as good as yours. You're all just jealous because I have rich relatives. Well," he laughed hysterically, "my mind is just as good as anyone's at this table."

The officers sat stiffly erect in embarrassed silence as they pretended to ignore Bickford's uncalled-for, infantile expression of anger. They waited, fumbling with the silverware, gaze fixed on the waxen roselike flowers in the center of the table. The wardroom was so quiet that when one of the stewards placed a serving spoon in the dessert bowl, the click of the silver was startlingly explosive.

"I don't think there is anything the matter with your mind; nor does anybody else." Nord eased the gathering tension. But he felt cold on the inside, as if Pluto's turgid bitter winds were blowing out from his body and through his clothing. His hands and feet felt cold, even his brain seemed frozen as he watched Bickford's thin fingers pluck for a cigarette.

He turned to Dr. Stacker, who was observing the air officer with clinical detachment. "You're the ship's athletic officer, who should I put my money on tonight?"

"I won't commit myself."

"Gentlemen, shall we go on the recreation deck and watch the semifinals? Cooks, stewards and waiters are expected to beat the ship's repair force. It's going to be a good game of laska ball."

Laska ball was an extremely fast, excellent exercise. It was a modified form of basket ball, played on an elliptical court in which the captains could control the location of their team's basket. It was a well-adapted sport for the limited recreational space of small ships.

Nord Corbett forced himself to sit through the first half of the game, but not even the electrical speed of the game, the rocketing ball flashing through the oscillating, flickering basket could remove his vague apprehension.

A cold cloud of worry shadowed his mind until he fell asleep.

At 0500, an hour before his usual rising time, Latham, Officer-of-the-Watch, called him.

"Captain, the lattice shows a small cloud of meteoric dust approximately seventy-five thousand kilosecs in diameter. The density is point zero zero four. I get a spectral classification of Fe dash one-three-nine-four dash alpha nine three delta over six. It is located seventy-two light-minutes from our course at one thirty-six degrees above the axial plane. May I have your permission to decelerate to chart the cloud?"

"I'll be out in a few minutes."

He dressed himself quickly with smooth fluid motion. He paused for a moment before opening the panel leading from his flight quarters to the captain's gallery. Visions of his vessel's sleek, silver sides and streamlined length washed the background of his mind like a welcome dream. The Bureau of Ships called it a Dispatch Freighter, but no captain commanding a mighty thousand-meter exploring battleship would ever experience the soul-satisfying thrill his ship filled him with. A wave of pure contentment filled him as his eyes ran over the narrow welded seams of the ivory-dyed bulkhead. He paused there to listen to his ship: the soft whisper of the muffled air ducts was as soothing as a muted lullaby. The thin, tiny creak of the outer hull responding to its airless environment was as thrilling as a triumphant, stellar symphony. A frown of perplexity flickered between his gray eyes as he sniffed the air.

The atmosphere seemed slightly tainted. It lacked the heady, tingling, euphoric quality the conditioners normally imparted to the ship's atmosphere. One of the tubes working the negatron must have blown during the night. He realized he couldn't depend on Bickford and that he would have to be watched closely. The thought flashed through his mind of the consequences if Bickford were to be careless. What if he got sloppy and something did go wrong with their air? He had once seen the results of slow asphyxiation in an attack transport. He forced the unwelcome memory from his mind.

He stepped out on the gallery.

"Good morning," Nord said as the watch officer snapped to attention.

Three meters below him the helmsmen were bent over the green-lighted circular telegator screen. The tiny red and amber lights over the instrument banks imparted a soft, restful gloom to the darkened bridge.

He walked the length of his gallery. On the right brushing his sleeve were the telepanels: the spy plates hated alike by officers and crew. The plates which brought him visual contact with all compartments of the ship and which he never used except in drills. On his left at waist-high level were the master's meters, duplicates of the instrument banks on the bridge deck below.

'Midship, in front of his own telegator screen, he paused, adjusted the magnification of the tiny green light indicating their course and which speared the exact center of the screen. He measured the circumference of the dot with a micrometer of sodium light, ran off the difference in the calibrator.

"Latham," he leaned over the rail.

Latham stepped forward of the steering gang, looked up. "Yes, captain."

"Three-millionths of a millimeter in ten million miles is not very much angulation, but in fourteen light-years it amounts to several hundred miles of unnecessary travel. You are off your course," he made it sound like a joke between old friends, "three point two angstrom units."

He stepped over to the lattice, checked the dimensions of the nebulous cloud on the screen. A quick glance at the map above his head showed the cloud had never been charted. Under high magnification he could see the lazy whirling of its vortex. He set drift spots on the larger lumps in the periphery, ran up the time scale to see how near it lay on their course.

"Divert twenty-three angstroms on an axial plane—"

"But don't you want to decelerate and study the cloud for the astrographic office?" Latham asked in bewildered surprise.

Nord smiled indulgently. "It would take us a full month to decelerate, jockey back. Then we'd have to start accelerating again and it would take almost three months to come back to terminal velocity. The time loss would be almost four months. Just chart the cloud and let the office worry about the details."

He looked at the air instruments. He studied them so long he was aware he was being watched by the men below. He straightened, checked all the instruments before he leaned over the rail to clasp his hands in what appeared to be benign unconcern.

Just as the 0600 gong announced the change in watch he spoke up. "Mr. Latham, give me your air readings."

"Yes, sir." Latham stepped to the air board. "Pressure in the ship, steady at seven-seventy mm; mean temperature twenty degrees, three degrees fluctuation downwards at 2300. Humidity fifty-two per cent. Air motion: forty meters per minute with seven-meter variation every fourteen seconds. Composition of arterial air: oxygen eighteen point four three per cent, carbon dioxide point eight three per cent. Excess negative ions to the order of—"

"That's enough." Nord turned back and looked again at his own board. Something was the matter. What had Bickford neglected to do now? His voice took on cold purpose. "Summon Mr. Bickford for me, please."

Corbett turned abruptly, went into his flight quarters. The steward had already made up his bunk and the compartment was now as neat as that distant day on Earth he had moved into it. He drew a cup of coffee from a gleaming canister, sipped slowly. It would be a good idea to have Hardman check the entire air system from venous intake to arterial outflow. On second thought, he resolved to do it himself.

He was reading the master log when his yeoman entered the office. "Dr. Stacker and Mr. Hardman request permission to speak to the captain."

"Morning, gentlemen," Nord greeted them; he waved to the canister and cups, shoved a cigarette box across his desk. "Help yourself to morning coffee, then toss me your mind."

Hardman turned to Dr. Stacker, his face drawn and cold. "You tell him, Doc."

The space surgeon lit a cigarette, watched the smoke spiral towards the venous duct. "A lad playing laska ball last night fractured a patella. I had a corpsman up all night watching him because sometimes the bone plastic causes pain. He called me at 2315 that the sick bay temp had dropped four degrees."

"What of that? You have your own thermostatic control," Corbett told him.

"That's true," Stacker admitted, "but I usually maintain ship's temp. When the drop came I didn't know whether it came on order from the senior watch officer or ... or—"

Nord understood the hesitation. The doctor did not want to be an informer. "You mean," he suggested helpfully, "you wondered if the air officer might be careless."

Stacker nodded. "You saw his act last night at dinner. That is not the action of a normal man. That anger was a paranoid reaction to his hatred for all of us and particularly for you. In you he sees the authority he hates so much. That scene crystallized in his mind the determination of what he intended to do to the ship."

Nord felt again as if Pluto's frigid winds were blowing out from the center of his being. Dread like a black frozen cloud enveloped his mind. "What did he intend to do?" His voice was voder cold.

"I don't know." The doctor admitted his ignorance in a tight, hushed voice.

Nord was aware of the unperceived worry that flowed over the space surgeon's mind, knew it mirrored his own vague premonition of impending catastrophe. "Go on," he prodded gently.

"I went down to his cabin to investigate. You see I've felt Bickford was a psychopath. No reason, you understand," he explained apologetically, "sensed it, an intuitive reaction rather than something of real diagnostic import. He's always been most affable to me, a bit eccentric, but his conduct in the mess except for some vulgar characteristics has been exemplary."

"He seemed O.K. to me," Nord said. "I've made it a point to look for personality change at dinner. He never seemd sour like so many officers do when they get space weary. I never trusted him much," he admitted hesitantly. "I felt that was pure friction between opposing personalities; it seemed to me he was always trying to impress me with his influential relatives."

"They are influential," Dr. Stacker pointed out, "otherwise they could never have gotten him aboard without a psychosomatic examination. When he reported I asked him for permission to contact the Public Health Bureau which maintains medical files on all citizens. He refused. I thought he might have something in his record he was ashamed of and was overly sensitive about it. I asked to examine him myself and he said it wasn't necessary. Well," the physician shrugged his shoulders, "you can't examine a civilian in a military ship against his wishes. After we left lunar quarantine I watched him closely, but as he seemed to adapt to ship's routine I thought I might be wrong. I knew he was money mad, feels wealth will give him the security he lacks. Last night he heard about the wealth on board and because he felt we were not giving him the honor and deference he thought his position warranted he resolved to do something about it and show us how good his mind was.

"He went down to air treatment and got drunk."

"Got drunk!" Nord looked stunned. "Why? How? On what?"

"He used the alcohol showers in air treatment as his bar. Entrance to the chlorophyl banks is through an alcohol bath. The bath is necessary to remove bacteria from the armor, otherwise you would infect the chlorophyl which is about a thousand times more sensitive to infection than a chick embryo.

"I found Bickford clinically intoxicated, he'd passed out in his cabin. I did a blood alcohol on him and found he had four point three milligrams per cent—that's enough alcohol in the blood to make anyone dead drunk. I'm afraid, captain, in having his party he must have infected the chlorophyl. Our oxygen is going down and C0₂ is rising."

"That means recharging the tanks." Hardman slapped the arm of his chair violently.

Infected chlorophyl! The spaceman's one great dread. It wasn't the danger of asphyxiation that worried Nord. They had plenty of fresh media to recharge the tanks. But, until the new stuff grew sufficiently to handle the vitiated air, they would have to live from stored oxygen. That meant curtailment of recreational activity and with limited exercise came deterioration of morale. His mind leaped to the crew.

They would be forced to lay in their bunks for hours on end looking at the curving overhead. Corrosion of the spirit from such confinement was the one exciting cause for that most dreaded of all spatial afflictions: Spaceneuroses; the overmastering, unreasoning anxiety syndrome. The claustrophobia that destroyed the very fabric of the mind and that could easily—if long continued—wreck the ship.

And Bickford did it

Didn't the fool realize his life, too, depended on air? He looked down at the open log on his desk. He closed the book with a snap that strained its metal hinges and wrinkled the sheets of its plastic pages.

He forced his voice to be steady. "Where is Bickford now?" "He's outside waiting to see you," Hardman answered. "The doctor sobered him up."

Bickford's almost colorless, pale-blue eyes darted a quick apprehensive glance at Dr. Stacker before he turned to stare insolently at the captain. His slack mouth looked as if nature had painted it on his thin, inmature face. He jerked his head at the scribespeech on the captain's desk, aimlessly wiped flecks of saliva from his narrow, pointed chin with a pink silk handkerchief which he quickly thrust into his uniform pocket.

"Mr. Bickford," Nord's voice was ominously calm, "did you check air this morning?"

"Why of course I did," he snapped irritably. He tilted his head, sniffed loudly through his narrow nose. "Seems O.K. to me."

"Did you go to air treatment after the game last night?"

Bickford jerked the handkerchief from his pocket, nervously wiped foamy saliva from his twitching mouth. "I think I did. I turned down the temp five or six degrees, thought the ship too hot."

"A little while later, the medical officer went to your cabin and found that you had been drinking. Do you deny this?" Nord's voice trembled from manifest control.

Bickford forced a weak smile to his lips. He blew a short, explosive whistle of self-congratulation. "I was really drunk in my cabin last night. I was just really flooded."

"This is no time for humor, Mr. Bickford. When we planet, I shall charge you with being drunk on duty, carelessness and incompetence and recommend your dismissal from the civilian branch of the Spatial Service."

Bickford shrugged his narrow shoulders. "So what," he answered truculently. His voice became edged with triumph. "My cousin is general manager of Synthetic Air. That's the company who installed the conditioner aboard this ship. He got me assigned to this job over you academy boys. You're jealous of me. I'll tell him what you've done to me and he'll have the Bureau of Personnel really burn you up. You all thought I was dumb. Told me last night I was crazy. I'll show you how smart I was last night." He started to laugh: a harsh, treble, nerve-chilling laugh. "This is a good joke on you, Corbett. When the green goo goes sour, what're you going to do?"

Nord felt an icy vortex swirl around his heart. He leaned forward, damp palms clasping the arms of his chair. He knew already what the man was going to say.

Bickford wiped tears of exultant laughter from his pale eyes. Stared derisively at the officers. "What're you going to do now? We don't have any extra stock or media aboard. We don't have any more of anything to recharge your tanks."

"Whatl" Hardman leaped to his feet. Nord placed a restraining hand on his executive officer's arm.

Bickford sneered at his startled expression. "I thought that would get you." He looked down at the captain. "While you were checking the ship at Lunar Quarantine, I traded all our reserve stock of chlorophyl powder and nutrient media for a set of bench tools. I made the deal with the captain of Mr. Brockway's yacht. Do you know who Mr. Brockway is? He's one of the richest men on the inner planets. You see, I intended to go into business on Lanvin—"

"You?" Hardman gurgled. "In business?"

"I was going to make beautiful doll furniture. But now I'm going to be one of the richest men on Lanvin," he said triumphantly. "When I learned how much money we had aboard the ship I decided then to show you how brilliant I really was." He looked at them patronizingly. "I'm going to take the money designed for the base."

"How will you do that?" Corbett's voice was so calm it was unreal.

Bickford laughed unpleasantly. "I'm going to make a chlorine generator. It's easy to make, just electrolysis of salt water. I'm going to put that into the air system. While you all are being finished, I'll live in space armor. Then I will land the ship on Dynia, that's Planet II, and take the shuttle across to Lanvin."

"But now we know all about it, and we're going to lock you up," Nord said slowly. "Didn't you realize we would know almost instantly when the air went bad?"

The realization of what he had said revealed itself in his widened eyes. His head shook from side to side as he started to whimper. "I never thought of that when I spit into the banks last night."

Hardman came forward, cold deadly purpose etched in the lines about his grim mouth and bitter eyes. Nord knew what he was about to do, knew it would have to be done. Hardman was half a meter from Bickford before he spoke. "This is for the crew," he said and his fist came up like a rocket.

Bickford took the blow, rocked under it, caught the second on his mouth and then Corbett and the doctor were between them, shoving them apart.

"The idiot should be chucked in space," Hardman roared.

Stacker was wiping Bickford's crimson mouth. Corbett released Hardman's arm. "He's a sick man," he said heavily. "Go back to your duty. I'll have Dr. Stacker act as air officer. We'll keep Bickford under armed guard in the sick bay for the remaining seven months of the voyage."

"Seven monthsl Without airl" Hardman's voice became high with the tension of near-hysteria. Then noticing Nord's level cold eyes he apologized. "I'm sorry, sir. I must have lost my temper."

"I understand. We'll forget what happened. Now let's see what we can do about the air." He turned to the doctor. "Take care of the patient. I'll meet you down in air control." He looked at the chronometer. It was 0640. It seemed like hours. "I'll be there in fifteen minutes," he finished abruptly.

Corbett glanced down at the glowing tip of his cigarette. This is what came from having a psychopath aboard. Incidents like this were never discussed at the academy. Departments were always handled smoothly by brisk, efficient men always alert to serve the ship. Not even in fiction were there problems like this unwelcome thing. There, the personalities were always good, pure men at war against mythical creatures, invidious planets, self-centered, unpredictable novas or militant civilizations; never at war against their own personal environment because of the stupidity of politicians who insisted that unexamined, potentially insane men be made a part of the ship's company.

Stacker was sitting, feet propped on the air officer's desk, studying the "Handbook of Air Management" when Nord walked in. He stood up at once. "I've got Bickford in the brig ward. He's perfectly safe now. Can't harm himself or anyone else." He touched buttons on the desk top and as the drawers slid out pointed at their contents. "Looks like a rat's nest. He's collected everything in this ship that wasn't welded."

"Never mind Bickford. What can we do about the air?"

"Not very much," Stacker said diagnostically. "You know how this ship handles air?"

"Vaguely. I don't know too much about it. Air management is so vital it's always handled by an officer or civilian specializing in clinical industry." There was no apology for his ignorance. It wasn't his job to know air any more than he was required to know how to practice planetary epidemiology.

"The air system in this ship was designed, installed and maintained by Synthetic Air, Incorporated, of Great Kansas. The system uses a modified form of rebreather technic; that is, the unused oxygen is returned to the ship.

"Starting from the venous ducts located in all compartments the air is pulled over a precipitron which removes all dust, oil and water droplets and other curd. It then goes into the separator where the excess oxygen is removed; this passes directly back into the ship's arterial system.

"The remaining atmosphere containing nitrogen and carbon dioxide is then sterilized by passage over plates heated to five hundred degrees, the gases are then cooled and sucked into the ship's lungs.

"These lungs are chlorophyl banks. They are large glassite cylinders filled with synthetic chlorophyl. This is a very delicate substance with no immune property at all and becomes infected readily. Just look at the stuff crosseyed and it starts to decay. Nature protects her chlorophyl by means of the cell membrane but here we use it in its pure protoplasmic state.

"In each tank are actinic generators. As the carbon dioxide trickles up from below, photosynthesis converts the carbon dioxide into carbohydrates. Oxygen is a by-product. It's sucked into the negatron, humidified and pushed by blowers through the arterial system."

"Very concise, doctor," Nord said. "Let's go in and check your new detail."

Air treatment was located on the third deck, just aft the crew's galley in the central section of the ship. The mechanical part of the system was a miracle of chromium and gleaming surgical white. Air sucked through snaking ducts sounded shrilly defiant; the whirring screams of the blowers were the overtones of thin-edged menace. The ducts were shiny with beady sweat and the compartment's cold, dry air was icily chilly.

The air crew stood around with tight, strained faces. Above all the many activities of the ship, they knew how much the thin thread of life depended on their proper performance of duty. When the captain and the doctor walked in, worry lifted from their strong faces and they turned to hide the relief from fear.

"Let's see the banks." Nord shouted above the keening scream of air. He could not help but notice the shining confidence they felt in him.

The chlorophyl banks were normally guarded by locked doors which opened from the alcohol showers. A ten-minute alcohol shower on the impervious lightweight armor lessened considerably any danger of infecting the chlorophyl banks. Sterile precautions were now unnecessary because the two doors were already partly open.

The space surgeon pointed to a cup by the sump in the deck of the shower. Nord nodded. "Maybe we're lucky he did get drunk or perhaps we wouldn't have caught him before he started putting chlorine into the air system."

Stacker shook his head. "He was too resentful of authority. Long before he would have gotten to that point he would have told you about it in one way or another. He would have had to brag about his mind. The chances are, though, he would have knocked you out some night, taken the keys to the bleeder valves and released all the air in space."

"Nice guy to have around the house." Nord forced a smile. He gestured towards the inner door. "Shall we go in?"

Normally the four meter vats were glistening green cylinders. Where vitiated air entered from below—because of higher carbon dioxide content—the thick media was a brilliant, leafy green which shaded to a faint glaucous yellow at the top. The compartment should have had the sharp, earthy fragrance of jungle vegetation.

A spasm of despair made Nord wince as he walked into the compartment. The bottom of the cylinders was covered with a thick sediment of sepia-colored muck; ocherous splotches and shafts of putrid yellow matter filled the vats. The surface was a jaundiced froth which bubbled over the top and lay on the metal deck like careless, yolky splotches of sickly yellow paint. The warm, humid air was stifling and the odor of decay was a nauseating stench.

"Whew." Stacker wrinkled his nose in disgust.

Corbett nodded silently, wiped his sweaty brow. He turned to the air chief who walked into the compartment.

"Did you find any?" Stacker asked eagerly.

"There isn't so much as a can of spare stuff left anywhere," the chief said.

Dr. Stacker turned away and Nord sensed he did not care to discuss a patient's illness with a crew member. "We didn't expect to find any spare media. While Mr. Bickford is ill the space surgeon will be acting air officer." He turned to the physician, waved towards the sick-looking drums. "Can we do anything with this stuff? Re-sterilize it or something?"

The doctor shook his head sadly. "Dump it in space," he suggested with a wan smile.

"Not yet." Corbett hesitated to dump anything in space except as a last resort. "It's still converting some air." He led the way into Bickford's former office, prowled about the office nervously, studied the air instruments, walked slowly back to the desk, leaned on the corner.

"C0₂ content has gone up a tenth of a point in the last hour. Hadn't you better start using the chemical removers?"

"We won't use those until the per cent gets much higher. Not until it reaches two point five or even three."

"I just noticed we have five thousand kilos of oxygen stored in the bulkheads." A shade of bitterness crept into his voice. "At least he left us that."

Dr. Stacker started figuring with stylus and pad. "The average man," he calculated, "uses an average of five kilos of oxygen in twenty-four hours. We have fifty men. That means twenty days of normal oxygen supply."

"Which is what the bureau says will be normal for all ships."

"Why not try and make it back to Earth. We're only one hundred and three days out."

"I've thought of it," Corbett admitted. "I refused to chart a cloud just a few hours ago because it would take so long to reach terminal velocity once we went back to extropic drive. At our present velocity we couldn't divert at better than a hundred angstroms of angular radius. It would take almost two months to complete our turn and then we'd have to start decelerating for Earth. If we slow and turn, we couldn't reach terminal velocity before having to decelerate again. As far as space time is concerned it's as far one way as it is the other."

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "Might as well keep on, then." His level voice was so impersonal Nord could not help but feel admiration for him.

"Do you have any idea how we might augment our air supply? Maybe," he suggested, "changing the rate of air flow, temp or number of charged ions might help us. You know," the captain admitted candidly, "I don't even know why we change the rate of air flow or charge the air. I once did but I've long since forgotten."

Stacker pulled a plastic cigarette case from his pocket, touched the stud, offered the lighted cigarette to the captain. "It'll probably be our last one," he said, taking one for himself.

"In a general way," he said, answering the question, "it might be said that moist air is depressing and enervating while dry air is tonic and stimulating. Metabolism slows in warm air, speeds up in cool air. It is also known that air motion is a factor of tremendous importance in ventilation in that it contributes to our sense of well-being and comfort. The pat of a current of air upon the skin stimulates the cutaneous sensory fibers, acts directly on metabolism and the vasomotor system.

"Air currents as low as three-hundredths meter per second will give a perceptible stimulus to the sensory nerves around the skin and mouth. The variation of air flow and temperature is stimulating and explains the preference of open windows over mechanical systerns of air conditioning. This variation is why there is no sensation of stuffiness in modern ships.

"We treat the air here so that it has an ionic content of ten to the sixth per cc of negative ions. Positive ions increase the respiratory rate, B.M.R. and blood pressure. Negative ions produce a feeling of exhilaration and sublime health." He inhaled deeply, let smoke trickle slowly from his nose. "I'd recommend we increase our temperature by five or six degrees, slow down air motion and require all men not actually needed to remain in their bunks. Of course all exercise, smoking, even loud talking will have to be forbidden. I'll change the diet so we'll have a low specific dynamic action, use less oxygen that way. Make the men more groggy, too. We can string out our oxygen another ten days."

Nord squeezed out his cigarette in Bickford's ash tray. "And after that?"

" 'Good spacemen never die,' " he quoted a line from the song of the space corps softly, " 'they just travel far.'" "Will it be bad towards the end?"

The doctor looked down at his polished nails. "Very," he whispered, "We'll gasp out our last breath hating the day we were born. It'll not be easy because we'll have so long to know it's coming."

"In fifteen days I'll have the crew write their final letters. I want to write one to my mother and you'll want to write one to your fiancee. You were going to marry when we earthed."

"Isn't there a chance we might cross another ship?"

"There isn't a ship for another three months at least."

"Well we won't be around to see it." Stacker forced a thin laugh. "When the end comes, Bickford will really be happy. But he could have done a lot worse things if he'd had more time to think about them. But this will be bad enough."

Nord looked at him steadily. "You'll spare us a bad finale."

"You mean, you actually want me to . . . to . . ." He stopped talking abruptly, looked at the captain with narrowed eyes.

Nord knew the doctor did not wish to make him commit himself. He lifted his head, gaze steady, and his voice was like the muffled roll of an organ. "Mercy," he said, "can only be the gift of the strong."

Stacker stood up, held out his hand. "Will you tell me when you've set the dead lights?"

Nord nodded. "I'll turn them on myself and call you." Abruptly they shook hands.

"And the condemned, thanks to the psychopath, ate a hearty meal."

Nord realized the inevitableness of their situation. He had an evanescent desire to go to the brig ward and wreathe Bickford in a flame pistol but he realized even as he thought it, how stupid an act it would be. It would be like trying to take revenge on nature. The psychopath was nothing more or less than an evolutionary attempt to make man learn to use his brain for the benefit of others and not to live out a life of selfish purpose.

Their situation was a result of Bickford and he was a result of man's groping attempts to use his mind. How little all that philosophy would help them now. Nord projected his mind ahead, saw himself at the last, coughing against the thin, lifeless air; he saw his crew looking at him with sightless, staring eyes as they slumped wearily down to die on the cold, metal deck.

He saw his ship, hurtling through space, taking a course tangent to Lanvin. The grim dead lights would shine on her bow, telling of their fate. The outer port would be open to make entrance by the investigating party an easy matter.

Some distant day, months from now, they would board the ship, study the log, cremate their remains. They would cradle the ship, open the holds, remove the freight. New tractors would till Lanvin's fresh, fallow soil and earthly vegetables would grow there.

Their names would be engraved on a bronze plaque in company with thousands of other spacemen who had died, that men might see the stars and beyond. Even though they did die, they had made their little contribution to the cause of man. New things would grow in new places: other than that, man could have no object for his existence. New things to grow in new places.

Lanvin, Planet IV., Sun 3, Sirius System is a terrestrial-like planet. It has three large continents and well over a million islands dot its shallow seas. It is a tourist's mecca, a farmer's paradise.

The Space Yard of the Force is located on Centralia, largest of the land masses. The commercial lines land on Desdrexia; they claim the climate is better there. Actually it is just as hot on either of the continents. But Mount Helithon is on Desdrexia. The sight of that seventy-five-thousand-meter mountain rising from the silky, sanded plain, its pinnacle shimmering like a crimson diamond, made too beautiful a picture for the teleposters. The commercial psychologists couldn't afford to pass it up.

Lanvin has no satellite so the quarantine station was located on Mount Helithon. Dr. Leland Donaldson was Quarantine Officer for the Public Health Service. Because he passed pratique on commercial and government vessels he knew all officials of the big companies and the local brass hats of the service.

He called Admiral Gates, crusty commandant of the yard, invited him to his lofty station for some beer. Not Lanvin's synthetic stuff, but real, old-fashioned beer from Earth.

The admiral looked over his foamy mug at the quarantine officer. His thick jaws crunched on a salt stick. His wrinkled eyes held a glitter like freshly cut steel. He liked Donaldson but sometimes he wondered if he didn't like his beer better.

"Has the 136 left yet?" Donaldson asked after their second stein.

"The 136," the admiral hesitated. "That's young Corbett's ship. They're Earthing tomorrow."

"Did you go aboard her?"

"Me? Go aboard her?" The admiral looked shocked. "Why should I? I have a staff to do that sort of thing, you know. They brought out a lot of stuff for the Colonial Office. Tractors, you know, harrowers, things they use to make things grow in the ground, seeds and well, you know." He waved his stein about the room, slopping some of the beer on Donaldson's tesselated floor.

"Seeds," Donaldson started to laugh.

"Why laugh," Admiral Gates snorted testily. "One of my lieutenants went aboard, came back reporting the ship was spotless, decks like polished glass. Not even so much as a hull scratch. Outer skin a bit burned but perfectly normal. But perfectly normal, you know. He said he left you one patient, chap by the name of Bickley or Bikeford or something. Civilian, politician. You know about that sort of thing. The lieutenant said, Corbett would go places in the Service, had fertile imagination, fertile, you know."

"Fertile," Donaldson chirped. "Then you don't know?"

"Then I don't know what?" Admiral Gates' eyes grew frosty. "Of course I don't know. How should I know? What should I know?"

Donaldson told him. "About a hundred days out from Earth, they were just reaching terminal velocity and their chlorophyl went sour and started to decay."

"No trouble there, ships always carry spare stuff. It's electron fever that gets me. Hate the stuff, you know, high speed, space-free electrons going through the skin. It's bad." He shivered and rubbed the wrinkled, red skin of his face. His brows puckered and his lids closed to tiny slits. "Why did their chlorophyl go bad?"

"They had a psychopath aboard. A civilian who was placed in charge at the last minute to manage their air. Had a record of police arrests a mile long, family shipped him out here hoping he would turn over a new leaf or something." Donaldson snorted rudely, "As if a psychopath would. This guy got mad at the ship and all inside it and spit in their chlorophyl. It got infected but quick!"

"But they had spare stuff."

"They didn't though," Donaldson pointed out. "Bickford gave it all away. Traded it all for some tools or something to gain favor with some rich dodo. They were really in a spot."

"A psychopath aboard," the admiral shook his head. "That's bad. They're dangerous. They crawl into positions of responsibility and then when you need 'em they blow up, tear your ship to little meteors. Happens too often. The space surgeons should be more careful. They didn't have any spare chlorophyl, you say. Their own lungs were going bad." He took a big swallow of beer. Then he exploded. "Then how in the name of Great Space did they get here?"

"Well," Donaldson spoke slowly, as if tasting every word. "Their stuff was decaying fast. They couldn't recharge their tanks. Asphyxiation was shaking hands with the boys. The space surgeon was set to make things easy at the end with poison in the food or something. Then the skipper's fertile imagination comes through with a roar."

"Don't say 'skipper/" Admiral Gates interrupted petulantly,

"hate the word. Makes me think of sail boats, sea and water, things like that, you know. Go ahead, tell the story," he wagged his finger, "but if Corbett has done something wrong, I want the report in writing and officially and not over beer."

"Well, the captain," Donaldson said in an annoyed tone, "got together with Stacker, the ship's space surgeon, and they put half their crew to sleep with narcotol, left them that way for weeks, I guess. Cut down oxygen expenditure, you see."

"And," Admiral Gates shouted.

"The rest of them turned gardener."

"What! You said gardener!"

"They turned gardeners but big. They pulled their sewage tanks, dried the stuff in the ship's ovens, spread the slew over the recreation deck. They rigged actinic generators over that, shunted their venous air straight through that room and planted seed in their synthetic ground. They had hydroponic gardens all over the ship."

"Would it grow fast enough to convert carbon dioxide to oxygen?"

"Well it did," the port doctor said succinctly. "They were having fresh, green vegetables from their own garden by the time they planeted at quarantine."

The wrinkles around the admiral's eyes unfolded. "Maybe it's a good thing to have a psychopath aboard, keeps a guy on his toes, you know. Corbett claimed a five-hour delay over Central Sea after leaving quarantine wash. Wanted to empty and clean ship. Makes him a better captain. Yep, it's a good thing—"

"It's a good thing he did have a fertile imagination, or else you would be writing letters to his family."

Lieutenant Nord Corbett stood at attention before the blue-iced eyes of the admiral. Through the port behind the commandant he could see his cradled ship. The ground crew had finished the hull polish and in the glare from Lanvin's hot, white sun it glittered like a platinum flame.

"May I have my clearance for Earth, sir?"

The admiral's bushy brows furrowed. "Ready to blow; taking back fifty passengers, you know. Got plenty of water and air?" He rumbled. "Checking them all in?"

"I'll try through one of the Wolf 359 planets," said Redkirk.

He switched on the automatic caller and punched the button that would cause the beam to be aimed at one of Sol's closer neighbors across about eight light-years of space. There was no need to worry about adjusting for the position of any planet not hidden by the star; the best beam achieved by man would spread at that distance to blanket the whole planetary system. Even subspace waves had their limitations, although Redkirk's job was made possible by the fact that their time lag at that distance was imperceptible.

Redkirk's face became intent as the answer bleated in from Wolf 359. He made manually the last fine adjustments to tune out a slight fuzziness left in the signal by the automatic correctors, and looked up at the screen from which he had temporarily displaced the Lunar operator.

He was thin enough to seem tall even while sitting down.*The effect was increased by a leanness in his features; he had a long, pointed chin, arched nose, and hollow cheeks. Straight yellow hair was combed back from his high forehead, along the left side of which ran a long, narrow scar. Except for this white mark, his face was tanned to the dusty gold shade often seen in blond people who do not bum red.

Had it not been for the tan, anyone examining him at the moment would have thought him a sick man. The lines from nose to the corners of his mouth were deep grooves. If the wrinkles around his eyes suggested laughter, the frown-creases between them spoke of pain.

Here he comes, thought Redkirk, as he brought into perfect focus on his main screen the image of a nonhuman.

The distant operator was chunky, tentacled, and rounded, with several hooded eyes. Behind him, the scene was flat and shadowless, which in this case meant to Redkirk that it was as dim as might be preferred by beings in the system of an M8 red star.

He keyed off a sequence of universal signals. After a moment, the tentacled one replied with a similar standard message.

"He can get them," Redkirk told the Lunar operator as soon as he got him back on the screen. "Get your party onl"

A few minutes later, he had an Earthman on screen One and another from the Centaurian colonies showing on Two—the beam picked up by his receiver and the one he was transmitting. He listened a while to make sure everything meshed, and caught fragments of a conversation about something or other to be sent back to Sol in the next interstellar ship.

Redkirk flicked a finger at the Lunar man as the latter withdrew from the main screen to attend to other affairs. Then he leaned back in the chrome and leather chair, thinking idly of the years he had spent piloting such ships as the two men were discussing.

Oh, well, he thought, I had it for a while and I shouldn't gripe at having to stay here spinning around Mars. Many a good man would like nothing better than to have a shift at the main interstellar station of the Solar System.

Demand for the job did not worry him, however, for he recalled that the company owed it to him for the rest of his life if he chose to keep it.

He had been on the desk about an hour of his four-hour shift, during which the tiny satellite would move around the spaceward side of Mars and back to intersect the orbit ahead of the planet. In another hour, Johnny would come in with coffee, and two hours after that, Gamier would relieve him.

"Not that I'm anxious about it," he murmured. "I'd stay a day at a time, if they'd let me."

He switched the main screen to a view through the exterior scanner and focused in a view of Mars. Half of the mottled red planet showed above the jagged horizon of Phobos. He knew that if he watched the ruddy disk long enough, it would give the impression of rotating backward upon its axis. The speed of the tiny moon was such that it made better than three revolutions in a Martian day. Redkirk manipulated the controls to scan the sky, and other viewers set along a band about the satellite came into action. Against the black void, the stars shone hotly, watching, waiting, drawing his consciousness out of reality toward them.

A series of beeps signaled a call from the Lunar station. Redkirk snapped out of his reverie and replied.

"Got a nice one this time," Oberhof told him. "Mr. Secretary Rawlins of the Solar State Department, wants to talk to Ambassador Morelli."

"All right," said Redkirk agreeably. "Where is he?"

"Only aboard the space liner his, SL-3-525, which is presumably" —he referred to a note before him—"about three-quarters of the way to Procyon right now."

"Oh, fine!" groaned Redkirk, rolling his eyes upward. "How about sending the message to be recorded on Procyon V and held for Morelli's arrival?"

Oberhof grimaced.

"That's what I said. No go. He wants him in person, so they can use a scrambled signal and exchange dope in private." Redkirk chuckled.

"How private can you get, shouting for light-years through space in this day and age? Well, I'll see if I can pick them up."

He switched beam C to the direction of Procyon, expecting little trouble in sweeping the volume of space containing the ship. Unless the latter had moved fantastically off course, the spread of the beam would catch it as well as the planets of Procyon. The trouble was that a moving ship in subspace drive often had difficulty in picking up signals sent after it by a process resembling its own method of propulsion. Any little maladjustment or interference, even a thin cloud of cosmic dust, was enough to prevent reception.

Redkirk set a tape to beeping out a repetitive call signal, and glanced up to meet Oberhof's eye.

"If it doesn't work," he promised, "I'll get Procyon V to tell them to call me."

"Fair enough," said Oberhof. "I'll let you know if His Nibs objects to doing it that way."

"Any time," said Redkirk. "I'll be out of touch with you for a couple of hours soon, but you can pick me up again when we swing around Mars."

The Lunar operator hesitated, and the other saw his shoulder move as if he had dropped his hand from the cut-off switch.

"What kind of shift do you pull?" he asked Redkirk. "I haven't been on the station long enough to know everybody yet."

"About four hours, once in sixteen. Actually, it's figured according to the time it takes Phobos to get around its orbit. Pretty near to what you pull, isn't it?"

"Yeah," said Oberhof, "but I heard that you . . . uh, you used to be a pilot, didn't you?"

Redkirk grinned, and some of the traces of pain disappeared from his thin face.

"You mean you've been hearing stories of how I piled up a Martian liner on the Lake of the Sun?"

Oberhof managed to look polite and curious at the same time.

"Well . . . they say you got it pretty bad, and being it was mechanical failure, you could have a pension."

"So why do I work at Phobos?" finished Redkirk. "But why not? A man's got to do something."

The Lunar operator seemed about to ask further questions, but manners got the better of interest, and he switched off after a few aimless remarks.

Redkirk tried the ship's code signal at intervals, but failed to get an answer.

"They wouldn't leave their receiver off out there," he muttered to himself. "I must be running into some dust or other interference."

He had to put the problem aside when a call boomed up from the surface of Mars. The Solar Exploration Department, in the person of the regional office in Sand City—now beneath the position of Phobos—wanted to contact its current expedition on Pluto.

Redkirk ran his finger down the row of buttons marking beam settings for Solar System bodies, found "Pluto," and put out an automatically aimed call.

Within the planetary system, the possible error due to the mechanism's not precisely matching the motion of the planet was trifling, and he had an answer coming back before he had time to think about any correction.

"Your headquarters on Mars wants to talk," he told the square-faced man who appeared on his main screen.

The latter grimaced slightly, then nodded as if resigned to wasting time that might be better employed in the long overlooked task of studying the frigid planet.

"Put them through," he said. "If they're willing to talk to the assistant chief, I'll try to tell them what they want to hear. Tell them you have Hodges; the boss is out on the ice."

Redkirk checked the Martian operator, and presently had a two-way conversation flowing through Three and Four. Seeing that the relay of the series of routine messages through Six and Eight had been completed, leaving those screens blank, he switched off his C and D beams. Except for a few minutes when he had to arrange film recording of more such messages from some asteroid station to be re-transmitted to Martian townships as Phobos circled into a favorable position for it, he listened in to the beam from Pluto.

The report was weighted with statistics and technical requisitions until the square-faced Hodges withdrew from the screen in order to show his superiors an example of the party's boring toward the planet's surface through ice and frozen gases.

Redkirk followed with eager interest the process of thermite' drilling a well down through strata of congealed substances. The film recording of the first blast revealed an unearthly kaleidoscope of colors on the dark surface of the planet from whose position Sol was merely a bright star. Then, artificial lights showed the space-suited figures preparing for further penetration. Subsequent scenes displayed samples of the walls as the passage probed downward.

Redkirk was sorry when the directors on Mars were brought up to date with a view of the bottom of the digging. Switching off after the communciation had been completed, he realized that for a quarter of an hour he had forgotten where he was.

"Comfortable little hole, though," he murmured, gazing about at his eight-by-ten office. "Lot warmer than Pluto."

The quiet sough of the air-conditioning unit had heightened his imagination of nonexistent, freezing blasts of wind whipping across the chill waste on the screen. He decided he was just as happy to hear Johnny clattering coffee cups in the outer office.

A moment later, his young assistant thrust his head inside. "Got time for coffee, Harry?" he asked.

"Fill 'er up!" called Redkirk. "I've just been talking to Pluto, and I need something to warm my bones."

Johnny brought in the coffee and sat with his on the corner of the stand-by desk after handing Redkirk a full cup.

"Much doing?" he asked.

"Nothing special," answered his chief. "Except one for a spaceship almost to Procyon. I can't pick them up."

He thought a moment, savoring the hot liquid.

"Johnny," he directed, "look up the Iris in the Solarian Register, and see if her code signal is really . . . uh . . . SL-3-525. Maybe Luna didn't have it right."

The youth took down a volume from the shelf of such reference books and leafed through it, holding his coffee cup in one hand. When he found the ship on the list, the call signal was correct.

"Then I'm just not hitting her," said Redkirk. "Luna won't be on our necks for a while, till we come out from behind Mars, but I'd like to have something to tell Oberhof by then."

"Why don't you relay through some Procyon planet?"

"Oh, there's some big jet on our end. Oberhof thinks it's diplomatic and secret."

He frowned over the problem until Johnny went out to refill their cups. Deciding that he would contact Procyon only as a last resort, Redkirk pressed the button that would aim his A beam at Pluto.

"Could you do me a little favor?" he greeted the square-faced Hodges when the latter appeared.

"Sure," said the explorer woodenly. "Want me to run down to the comer for a beer or a blonde?"

Redkirk repressed a grin, realizing vaguely what a lonely life the other was leading at the moment, and explained his situation.

"Either they're not able to pick up my signal," he concluded, "or something is screening me out. Remember last month when you had trouble getting Phobos because a flock of asteroids distorted your beam?"

"Well, I'll see what I can do," promised Hodges. "Don't forget— I haven't the power you have at that big station."

"If you can just get them to call me," said Redkirk, "it will tell what the score is."

The man on Pluto nodded and faded out. Five or ten minutes went by before he reappeared. His broad face showed a trace of excitement.

"By golly, I picked up a weak answer!" he exclaimed. "I can just about focus a blurry image. What do you want me to tell them?"

"Have them give me a call," directed Redkirk.

He waited, scanning the instrument that would report any reception too faint to appear as sound or picture. One needle, after a while, wavered reluctantly. That was all.

He adjusted the same antenna for Pluto, as a check, and Hodges came in clear and strong.

"I can't pick them up," said Redkirk. "Now, listen, and tell me if you can do this—call the Lunar station and let them know you have the his. Then relay if they can't catch her signal. I'm out of it both ways, at least till Phobos swings further around Mars."

He sat back after Hodges had faded out, grinning at the feeling of having pulled strings all around the System. He doubted that Oberhof could pick up the ship's beam; whatever was damping it before it reached Phobos would probably take care of Earth also.

In a few minutes, he discovered that he was not entirely cut off from the operation. Hodges worked manfully to feed the images through Pluto to Luna at one end and the Iris at the other, and Redkirk's receiver picked up the beam relayed inward from the frigid planet.

Ambassador Morelli was a blurry white face with dark blurs for eyes and black hair. Evidently, however, he was recognizable to his superior, for the conversation continued quite a while.

"Wish I could figure out what he's talking about," murmured the Phobos operator.

Morelli, in stilted, guarded phrases which he chose like a man selecting a life insurance policy, indicated where the "information" desired might be found. That is, he seemed to be naming a place— Redkirk did not believe the Department could employ so many people with such curious cognomens.

Well, if it is a code, it's probably none of my business, he thought regretfully.

He decided that he was getting to be a busybody, and was relieved when the time came to send some of the transcribed messages down to the Martian cities. This kept him intermittently busy for some time.

Shortly after the last message was cleared, a call came across the System from Venus. Someone had to speak to Altair VII about certain Altairian microorganisms desired for urgent medical research. Since it turned out to be a conference hookup with several personages at the terminal screens, Redkirk and the Altairian operator kept in constant contact on a companion beam to monitor the transmission.

The Altairian struck Redkirk as being oddly human in movements and bodily attitudes despite a strikingly unhuman physique. There was no actual separation of head from body, and the numerous short, one-sectioned arms ending in powerful claws suggested that the distant being had evolved from something that had crawled. His skin gleamed, between areas of warty protuberances, with brown and golden tints reminiscent of either polished leather or some metallic substance.

"Do you happen to speak Solarian?" Redkirk asked him, having glanced again at the beams focused on screens One and Two.

"Some."

The answering voice boomed slightly, and Redkirk realized that it was produced by the vibrating membranes of air sacs that swelled out below the wide, blubbery jaws.

"I have never been to Altair in person," said the Earthman. "Would you have time to show me an outside view near your station?"

"What . . . purpose?"

"Just curiosity," Redkirk told him. "I want to see what things look like in the light of a white, Class A star. Sol is G, you know, and yellow."

"Last part slow again?"

Redkirk repeated.

"I'll show you scenes of Solarian planets, if you like," he offered in conclusion. "Would like," the Altairian assured him.

He faded from the screen and Redkirk took the opportunity to consult his list of filed films for what he needed. While searching for scenes of Mars and Earth, he had the outside scanner pick up the part of the crescent of Mars that showed above the jagged horizon of Phobos, and sent it out through screen Four.

He chose a few representative scenes of Martian deserts and of mountains, oceans, and cities of Earth, and fed them into the series as he watched what the other operator sent back—stealing a second here and there to check on the main business going through.

Even with reception automatically adapted to human vision, the landscape of Altair seemed bright and shadowless. The glare of the white star burned down upon great expanses of flat land covered by low-growing shrubs with pale, fleshy leaves. In the distance, several mountain peaks glittered, some of them smoking with evidence of volcanic action.

Even an ocean scene made Redkirk feel hot, as if he were exposed to the glare of Earthly tropics. He decided that there was good reason for the Altairians he saw swimming to sport such heavy hides.

The distant operator had just switched in a view of one of his system's satellites, not unlike the scarred face of Luna, when the conference broke up.

Redkirk hastily brought the private showing to an end. Before switching off, he thanked the Altairian.

"Most pleasure," the other assured him in drumming tones. "If call again, ask for Delki Loori-Kam-Dul."

"Thank you, I will. I am Redkirk . . . Red-kirk . . . yes, that's right."

He punched a button to record the number of the station's film copy of the transmission for the commercial department or other future reference, and cut the beam. He also made a mental note of a new acquaintance, sixteen light-years away in the constellation Aquila.

He leaned back in his swivel chair for a few moments, thinking about the harsh surface of the planet he had just seen. He was aroused from his reverie when a call beeped in from Luna.

"Sayl I've been waiting to come in line with you again," he greeted Oberhof. "I wanted to ask you about that message."

"The one to the Iris? You wouldn't want me to give away diplomatic secrets, would you?"

Redkirk's eyebrows went up.

"Was it that hush-hush?" he demanded, incredulously. Oberhof put on a knowing expression and shifted his ground. "Later, if I think I'm not being spied on," he muttered. "Right now, I think you better take this call." "Who's it for?" asked Redkirk.

"A personal for you," replied the Lunar operator. "From a . . . uh . . . Mrs. Nina Redkirk, of Earth. There's also a film. Shall I send that on my B band while you talk?"

"Shootl" said Redkirk.

He cut in his recorder via screen Five, then leaned back to take the personal on his main screen. In a moment, the features of a young woman with reddish hair and a pert nose came in clearly.

"Hello, Nina," said Redkirk.

She smiled, a shade too cheerfully, for he could see concern in her eyes.

"Harry! It's good to see you! How is everything?"

"Same as ever," he answered easily. "You know by now what it's like at a station like Phobos. Tell me about you—that's what I'm interested in."

"Oh . .. you know ... gosh, it's funny how I can make a call like this and then forget everything I was going to say! Did the man on Luna tell you I'm sending movies I took of Barry?"

"I'm recording them right now. That Oberhof isn't one to waste time."

They talked of a few other matters—Barry's schooling, the new puppy, and the like.

"We'll have to cut this," said Redkirk. "I'm getting a signal. Now, don't forget to call me every so often. And keep those movies of Barry coming; they're swell!"

Nina said good-by hurriedly, and Redkirk cut the screen. He glanced at Five, saw that the film had been recorded, and keyed off a routine acknowledgment to Luna. Receiving no return call, he assumed that Oberhof was busy.

He had had no incoming signal, but the sight of Nina had made him wonder how long he could keep up the pretense of gaiety. Earth suddenly seemed so far away that he could hardly believe he had been bom there.

A real signal made his head snap up. He realized that he had been sitting there staring sightlessly at the controls for several minutes. He brought the call to the main screen and discovered that it was a simple relay from Canalopolis on the red planet inward to Earth.

Oberhof showed his face briefly during the operation.

"I'll call you back in a little while," he told Redkirk.

The latter pressed a button that would remove the record of Nina's film from the file and focus the pictures on his screen. He grinned faintly as he saw Barry romping with a gangling puppy on a lawn of green Earth grass, and felt a pang of loneliness as his six-year-old son sawed off the first slice of a large birthday cake.

When the film had run off, he sat quietly for some minutes before Oberhof's signal came in.

Redkirk shook himself and answered.

"Now zero-beat that rasping voice of yours and say something!" he ordered Oberhof. "What was the big rumpus?"

The other operator grinned and wagged his head.

"Don't know as I ought to tell you. Top secret. A real emergency call out to the depths of space!"

"Come on.'" demanded Redkirk.

"Well, to give you a quick schematic—Morelli lit off for Procyon without turning in the combination to his office wall safe. Left it with his wife and forgot to tell her it had to be taken in to the department instanter."

"Yeah-?"

"That's all."

"No secret papers? No urgent instructions?" Oberhof sucked in his lower lip and shrugged.

Redkirk looked around at his communications office, at the dials and switches and instruments. He thought of the powerful generators outside, of the delicate and marvelous mechanisms that could direct a beam across light-years of subspace.

"Might have known," he murmured. "If Earth were exploding, they'd have put through the message by routine recording."

"I would like to send him a personal bill for the complete cost of that little chat," growled Oberhof.

"Take it easy," said Redkirk, grinning. "Maybe we'll save the world next time."

He glanced over his shoulder as the door opened.

"Watch that blood pressure," he advised. "I'll have to cut off now; here comes my relief."

Oberhof waggled a finger at him and faded out. Redkirk looked over his shoulder.

"Ready, Harry?" asked chubby Ed Gamier from the doorway.

"As good a time as any," agreed Redkirk. "Everything looks quiet for a few minutes. Johnny out there?"

"Yeah. We'll be right in."

Redkirk ran an eye over his board. The screens were dead and all his traffic for the watch had been cleared. He pulled out the operator's log and signed it after glancing at the time.

Then he heard Johnny and Gamier coming in, and turned his head to watch them maneuvering the wheelchair through the door.

Redkirk put one hand against the edge of the control desk and swiveled himself around as Gamier pushed the conveyance over to him. Johnny prepared to help him from one chair to the other.

"Dunno how you do it," remarked Gamier, steadying the wheelchair with a broad-fingered hand as he watched Johnny lift his chief effortlessly in the light gravity of Phobos. "Honest, I don't. After a crack-up like that, I think I'd crawl away an' let somebody take care of me the rest of my life."

Redkirk got his hands on the grips of the wheels and pivoted to face Gamier. He looked up at the relief operator with a grin on his lean, tanned face.

This was his lite while Earth and Jupiter warred and others filled themselves with glory.

"... We hope, of course, there'll be no emergencies. As far as we know the Mars-inferior area is clear of Jovian craft. But in case anything does happen ..."

The instructions about the liferoids now. Move quickly, stay calm. He was telling them—the men who'd seen the real thing. Them.

There was one over there skirting space madness—eyes too big for his face and he kept swallowing his Adam's apple over and over again. Spaceman first class Eddington—Ben recalled his name from the Form 6. Then the man from Telenews, leaning forward, staring at nothing and dangling his camera between his knees, the pale, gray little man who had maybe seen too much. Beyond him two space guards—rugged flat-staring weary bulls of men—with their prisoner.

Ben's gaze stopped on the prisoner. It was the first Jovian he had ever seen at close range. In the artificial gravity which matched Earth's he had made himself tall and elongated. He had worked his protoplasmic form into the shape of an Earthman. They were the Jovians—the shameless imitators. The color stripes on this one marked him as one of their space pilots.

"... so if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask them. Military Space Transport will try to make your trip to Earth as quick and comfortable as possible."

The whirring began as the blast-off energy was generated. Ben went down the line, checking the straps of the acceleration cradles. The nose of the ship rose slowly into launching position and when the ship's gravity was switched on the sensation of tilting-disappeared.

Ben came to the Jovian, and began to tighten his straps. He looked up and saw a grin cross the mushy face. The prisoner kept himself in Earthman's shape by strict order—and by threat of one of the guards' acid guns.

Only acid from one of the squat hard spiky Jovian plants could hurt a Jovian—that or something violent like an explosion. Bullets or rays passed through their protoplasm harmlessly. Ben looked away from the Jovian's grin. He tried not to shudder.

"Just relax when the acceleration warning bell rings," he muttered. His litany. Same trips, same kinds of faces, same words all the time. Combat men—going back. Only the Jovian made this run a little different.

He stole another glance upward. The Jovian was still grinning at him. This time he did shudder. You had to shudder, just thinking about them. Jovians had no bones, no innards. They were just blobs of stuff. Within the tremendous gravity of their own planet they spread themselves flat on the surface or formed hemispheres.

They could take any form they wished within several hours. They could make clever pseudodactyls for fingers and then duplicate almost anything made in the system. They'd copied Earth's spaceships, Earth's weapons—and now Earth's old talent for war.

The Jovian's pseudo-voice came, sleazy and whispering, to Ben's ears. He used the manner and jargon of an Earthman space pilot. "Kid, you got no idea what a hot space-rock this little boy is. Me, I've pffted more Earth guys than Beethoven has notes."

Ben didn't answer and didn't look up.

The Jovian laughed. "You squares won't be holding Xyl very long."

Ben heard one of the beefy guards growl, "Shut up, Xyl."

Then the warning note sounded and Ben finished his checkup quickly. He hustled forward to the crew compartment and his own acceleration chamber. He ticked on the interviz and saw Captain Mace's battered mug grinning at him.

He said, "All clear back there, sir."

"Hang on, kiddo," said Mace. Then his image vanished.

Mace had had it, too. He'd been in battle-hulls before the Space Surgeon sent him to transports. He had medals he never wore—a spacebag full.

Ben relaxed in the floating web of straps and springs. The starting bell rang hollowly. The usual terrible roar cut into the silence. It became louder and louder until Ben thought—as he always did— that he wouldn't be able to stand it any longer. Then it drifted away.

He felt himself pressed into the cradle and felt the characteristic stomach tug. His head swam. He knew that the ship was already far into space....

Moments later his head cleared again and the cradle swung back to center. He waited quietly until he heard the clear bell, then extricated himself and went through the door to the waist. He glanced at the passengers, and all were more or less normal.

The little, gray Telenews man was already lighting a cigarette. The two space guards were stretching themselves and Xyl was staring at his straps, wondering how to undo them with his pseudodactyls and probably wishing he could change form instantaneously to get out of them. Most of the others were stirring in one way or another. A bridge game was being started toward the rear.

Wait—Eddington the gaunt Spaceman l/c was still strapped down. Ben frowned and started toward him. Then he saw that he was perfectly conscious. His eyes were moving. He was staring at the Jovian prisoner. Unmistakable slow burning hate was in his eyes.

Ben went to him. "Feeling all right, fella?"

The starved eyes swung slowly until they fastened on Ben's. Ben felt worse in moments like this when combat men looked at him and studied him. He knew what they saw—a medium-sized guy in a blue spaceman's uniform with the vanes of rocket personnel on his chest.

Gray eyes, sandy hair, faintly freckled face. But none of that hardness around the jaw—none of those space wrinkles near the eyes. It was pretty clear what he really was—a spacegoing headwaiter. That was about the size of it.

And this gaunt stringy-cheeked Eddington said to him, "Look, buddy, go take a walk for yourself. I'm busy." Then he resumed staring at the Jovian.

"You don't like him, eh?" said Ben.

Eddington spoke softly. "I hate 'em. I hate all of 'em. Like you could never understand. I did two Earth years in one nf their prisons. Their slimy arms poking all over me, cutting me open sometimes and—and—" He swallowed his larynx. He looked at Ben again. "Go on, beat it, will ya?"

Ben shrugged and turned, went forward again.

It was very puzzling for a man to know how he should feel. He know about the Jovians—second hand, of course—and he shuddered like everybody else when he heard about the things they did to prisoners. But was it cruelty? They had no conception of pain-no real emotions outside of dim hate and a kind of heavy humor. The only thing they feared was death—and they were never quite articulate enough to explain just exactly why they feared that.

The thing was complicated enough for a philosopher, let alone a two-bit space steward.

He went into Control and saw Captain Mace and the co-pilot, Lieutenant Washam, at the panel. He stepped to the galley to make coffee. He couldn't get Eddington off his mind. The gaunt veteran was up to something, something troublesome, only Ben didn't know exactly what to do about it.

He glanced through the plastibubble and looked at all the blackness of space, the pinpoints of stars. Worlds to conquer—the Jovian war had already brought about the development of photo-corpuscular power, and there were whispers that Space Force ships had made it beyond Pluto. A whole Universe to be met and grappled with—

And here stood Ben Harlow, making coffee. He shook his head bitterly.

"Ben," Captain Mace called abruptly. "You got a minute?"

"Yes, sir?" Ben looked up from the hot plate. Mace was beckoning. He went over to the panel as Lieutenant Washam, who was young and blond and very poised and correct, took over the controls.

Mace swiveled around in his chair. He was still grinning but his eyes were serious. "Ben, I don't want you to worry, or anything like that—but you'd better know that a Viz came in from patrol headquarters a few minutes ago. So you can be ready to take care of the passengers, just in case."

"What was the Viz about, Captain?"

Mace jerked his thumb at space in general. "Couple of Jovian fighters slipped in through Mars-inferior. That's the report, anyway. The teledars are fingering for 'em now."

Ben smiled dryly. "Be just my luck never even to get a look at a Jovian fighter."

"You'd like to see a little action, huh?" Mace's grin almost disappeared and he looked at Ben very steadily. "It's no fun, Ben. Space-war is no fun at all."

"I know that," Ben said. "I can figure about how bad it is. Just the same—"

"Don't ever look for it," Mace said earnestly. "Don't ever."

Ben didn't answer. He just looked back. Mace met his stare for a moment or so, then swung around to the controls again. Ben went back to the galley.

The transport roared through space. Its rockets flamed and the red disc of Mars behind it became a spot. Earth and Mars were degrees out of conjunction now and the ship cross-orbited. The bright, golden blob of the sun was to the left and had the usual illusory look of moving in a trajectory across the heavens.

After awhile Ben made supper, filled the first tray and pushed back into the passenger compartment with it. The group looked quiet enough, content enough. The four bridge players still sat cross-legged in the after portion. Several viewed minifilms in their laps. The Telenews man wrote silently on a small steno-machine. The beefy guards were smoking. Xyl, the Jovian prisoner, had his leg forms drawn up between his arms and sat with the guards, grinning at everybody and everything.

Eddington was on the edge of his bunk—on the very edge. He was glaring across the aisle at the Jovian. He moved only his fingers, resting them along the lock of his space-bag and drumming them steadily.

Ben frowned at him for a moment, then began to pass out the food. A dish and a knife and a fork to each man. No tasteless concentrates or synthetics on transport ships—this was a cushy job, a soft job. Out there in Interplan right now gaunt raw-nerved men were swearing because they had to live on pills.

Ben glanced back at Eddington every once in awhile. It was an instinct as much as anything that told Ben something wasn't quite right—maybe it was just long subconscious understanding of human behavior in these surroundings. Anyway he felt compelled to do this.

That was how it happened that he saw Eddington open his space bag, lean forward, crouch and reach into it with his eyes still on the Jovian across the aisle.

Ben moved fast. He whirled, knocking his supper tray on a stanchion and spilling it all over a non-rated colonel with a clipped white mustache. He sprang down the aisle and across it. He still didn't know exactly what Eddington was up to—he didn't have to know exactly. The look in the man's smoking eyes was enough.

He reached Eddington at about the time Eddington reached the Jovian. The thin spaceman had moved with hungry animal speed— too fast for the big space guards. They'd been staring out the ports, paying little attention, keyed only to move if the prisoner tried something funny. They weren't expecting trouble from across the aisle, from one of their own guys.

Ben slammed into Eddington's shoulder and knocked him aside. He remembered that in that moment a kind of insane laugh came from the Jovian.

Eddington found his balance again and turned and faced Ben. His eyes were wider. The lids had peeled back showing the dead-white cornea around the dark pupils. It seemed that his face was nothing but eyes.

He said to Ben, "Why, you lousy little rear-line punk!"

Ben looked at him quietly, looked at the thing in his hand and then back into his eyes again and said, "Take it easy, Eddington."

One of the space guards started to get up.

Ben said, "I'll handle it."

The space guard grunted and sat down again.

"One of these chicken-livered guys, huh?" Eddington said to Ben. "Love the Jovians. Love everybody. National be-kind-to-the-enemy week. Yeah, I know."

"Eddington, you'd better sit down and take it easy," said Ben.

Eddington took a step forward. He dropped the thing in his hand, and it clattered on the floor. He said, "I know your kind, brother."

"Careful, Eddington," said Ben.

Eddington came at him, swinging. His left came first in a wide loop and Ben stepped inside of it. Ben wasn't much of a boxer. He didn't like fighting either. It choked him up inside and usually made him feel sick afterward.

But he lashed out just the same. He had to. It was his job. This thing happening right here, right now, was just an extension of his job. He felt his fist slam into Eddington's midsection. He felt the force of the blow all the way up to his elbow.

Eddington whooshed with pain but his right was already on its way, following the left-handed swing Ben had caught on his shoulder. The right struck Ben's cheek. Ben heard a sound—clok.'—in his own head and for just an instant his vision blurred. But it was surprising how little actual pain there was to the blow. Maybe later it would hurt. Right now it seemed only annoying.

Meanwhile Eddington, face twisted with agony, was falling back from the punch to his middle. Ben swung an uppercut at the man's sharp chin. It missed. Eddington saw him off balance and jabbed at his face. The jab smashed Ben's lips against his teeth and his teeth cut the lips on the inside. But it didn't blur things as the last one had. That midsection punch had taken something out of Eddington.

Ben braced himself and cocked his right fist as a man cocks a pistol for firing. He fired the fist at Eddington.

He knew the instant it landed that it would do the trick. There was that kind of a solid final sound to it. And the pain in his knuckles and up along his forearm was excruciating.

Eddington, quietly and without twitch or gesture, fell flat on his face.

Ben stared at his skinned knuckles. He held his right fist in his left hand and stood there for a moment, breathing hard. Then he looked around. The other passengers were still silent. They merely sat and stared at what had happened. No exclamations, no congratulations, no approval or disapproval, not even a whispered comment. Not much of a fight to them, Ben supposed. They had seen worse, much worse.

He heard the deep voice of one of the space guards. Speaking to the prisoner. "Sit down, you."

He turned and looked and saw that Xyl had tried to get up. Xyl was staring at Ben. For just a passing instant it seemed to Ben that there was a kind of gratitude in the Jovian's eyes. But that was impossible, he guessed. According to all the dope he'd ever heard, Jovians didn't feel things like gratitude.

Ben lifted and then dropped his shoulders in something akin to a shrug. He looked down and saw. that Eddington was stirring, moaning. He stepped past Eddington, and retrieved the thing he'd dropped. Then he moved forward again and stood with his legs spread and waited for consciousness to come back to the gaunt spaceman.

Eddington finally made it to his hands and knees. He rested like that with his face toward the floor. He shook his head and spat several times. Then he looked up and glared at Ben.

Ben said, "Don't do it again, Eddington—do you hear me? Don't do it again I"

Eddington blinked and didn't answer. Ben turned to go forward. He'd need methiolate for those knuckle scratches and maybe Eddington could use some of the stuff in the first-aid kit, too.

He might behave after this or he might not—he was on the edge of a kind of madness, no question about that. The others, the guards especially, would keep a close eye on him now. But Ben still worried about it. It was his baby, this situation, and he worried about it.

He found the first-aid kit in the racks and tucked away the little souvenir he'd taken from Eddington. He turned and canie back into the waist again. Eddington was back in his place. He was rubbing his jaw and looking rueful.

Ben got halfway down the aisle—

The space ship lurched suddenly and he was slammed to the left. When it lurched like that, too quickly for its artificial gravity to follow, something was wrong—very wrong. His shoulder and arm hit the bulkhead. The protruding knob of something stabbed him viciously. Hot pain went the length of his arm. And through it all he heard the sound of an explosion, of tearing metal.

Ben acted from his spine, not his brain. He didn't stop to wonder exactly what had happened—in a broad way that was clear. This was an attack of some kind. The ship had been struck. He heard the air whoosh through the hole in the hull, disappear forever into space, and he began to feel the terrible cold.

He caught the screeching sound of the oxy-renewer forward, near the control deck. That would send enough atmosphere through the compartment to keep a man conscious a few seconds. The emergency heaters were already glowing, cutting into the dark cold of space. But they wouldn't last forever either.

Ben turned and staggered again toward the forward part of the ship. The tremendous air pressure of the atmosphere from the oxy-renewer tried to shove him back. He squinted to protect his eyes from it and kept his stare on the plate-mesh switch, which was on the emergency panel just beside the control deck door.

Once he reached that switch they'd be safe—for a while, anyway. The hull of the ship was built in three layers and the middle layer consisted of a series of magnetic plates which moved automatically, when the switch was thrown to any aperture in the hull.

"Got to make it, got to make it!" he kept telling himself desperately, hypnotically. Sudden weariness bogged his feet, weakened his knees. It was getting colder. Things swam in his vision.

The ship was rocking and swerving in space. He could tell that by the way the artificial gravity lagged each change of direction-giving him a weird, floating, dreamlike sensation. Once lurching in a complete circle, he was able to glimpse the other passengers.

Two of the bridge players near the rear were missing—they'd been blown through the hole, probably. Now, frozen to the hardness of metal, they'd just keep traveling in space in their original direction. Forever, probably. Most of the others had been thrown about considerably. One of the big space guards was flat on his face, wedged between two piles of baggage.

The Telenews man had a twisted blood-soaked leg and sat there, staring at it stupidly. The Jovian prisoner, Xyl, was experiencing the only terror he knew—the fear of death. He was trying to flatten himself against the bulkhead.

Ben swung around again, nearly lost balance, recovered, then gave himself one tremendous push forward. He reached the panel.

His hand closed on the mesh switch—he lost consciousness just as he closed it.

He couldn't have been out long. He was on his knees and his face was slumped against the bulkhead between the waist and control deck when he opened his eyes. He got up unsteadily. The air was tighter. The wailing of the oxy-renewer had stopped.

He turned. He put his shoulder blades and palms to the bulkhead. He stood there, panting, and his eyes took everything in. The passengers were milling about. Some were just recovering from anoxia. A few were muttering. Several were moaning. They were very confused.

"All right, back to your seats everybody," Ben said.

They stared at him vaguely.

"I said back to your seats/"

He was a little startled at the firmness of his own voice. He was even more startled at how quickly they moved to obey.

They went back to their seats and then they sat there, staring at him. He pointed to the guard on the floor and to the Telenews man. "See what you can do. I'll be back in a second with plasma."

He stepped into Control. He stepped once more, forward—and then he stopped short. His eyebrows rose and without willing it he stepped back again.

Control was a shambles. Something—probably a nuclear shell-had come through the hull and exploded. Both Captain Mace and Lieutenant Washam were slumped over the panel. Mace's red head was twisted at an angle no living head could possibly assume. The grin was still on it.

Mace's hand rested on the panel, where it had fallen, on the mesh-switch. That explained why there was air and warmth in the Control room. Beside Mace, Lieutenant Washam was slumped back in his seat and his cropped blond head was split down the middle as though by an axe.

Ben felt sickness at his palate. He swallowed, and tried not to think about it.

He grabbed plasma from the racks and stumbled back into the passenger compartment. It seemed to him that he was now in more of a daze than he had been just before losing consciousness.

In the waist he took a deep breath and got to work. Some of the others were trying to move the guard who lay face down on the deck. He stopped that. He pushed them away and examined the man quickly and thoroughly.

He set up a plasma bottle, hung it on someone's outstretched hand, inserted the needle. Then he moved quickly to the Telenews man. More plasma—and plenty of narcophine, too.

Funny, Ben thought, most of these combat boys knew first aid— knew it better than he did. Yet they'd been undecided—even a little stupid about the whole thing. Maybe it was the shock—maybe the suddenness of everything. Well, he couldn't worry about that, now. He had something to tell them. This was going to be the toughest little speech of all.

He went forward and stood by the door to Control, and said, "May I have your attention, please."

He flushed slightly as they all turned blank stares upon him. What a fool thing—what a stuffy thing to say! Anybody worth his salt, any real leader, would have used other words, another tone of voice. Ben didn't know just what words or what tone—but he knew that he had been wrong.

Well, he had their attention.

He cleared his throat. He looked around. He was too embroiled within his own thoughts, his own doubts, really to see anything. He moistened his lips. "There's been trouble in Control. Both of our pilots have been hit. They're dead."

Complete silence, still the blank stares.

Ben said, "Uh—" and then he couldn't think of anything else to say. Stoppage. He swallowed hard.

He said, "We seem to be all right for the time being. An attacking spaceship can't possibly turn back for another pass before a matter of hours." Sure, he was telling them. He'd never seen an attacking spaceship, not even the one that had just attacked. They had. They'd seen it all.

He kept talking with a kind of insane determination. "The problem is to land—somewhere, if we can't make the Earth spaceport. We've got to get in somehow."

Another long silence and then a scarred construction sergeant said in a croaking voice: "Okay. What do we do?"

The meaning of it didn't hit Ben right away. The fact that one of the combat men had asked him what to do. Come to think of it it had sounded almost like sarcasm. Maybe, maybe not—Ben wasn't sure.

He asked, "Anybody here know how to land a spaceship?"

They took their blank stares away from his this time and turned them upon each other. Several shook their heads. Two nuclear gunners faced each other and shrugged.

Ben's eyes swung across the lot of them—and then landed on Xyl, the Jovian.

They stopped.

"You."

Ben pointed at him.

Xyl had resumed man-shape again. Either he had quieted down by himself or the remaining guard had threatened him with an acid gun. He sat far back in the seat. He turned his expressionless eyes on Ben and his mushy voice, cast incongruously in a breezy space pilot's idiom, sounded.

"What's up? Why give me the big finger and the boiled eye, kid?"

"You're a space pilot," Ben said. "You can get us on course. And you can land this thing."

Xyl threw back the blob of his head and laughed. When he brought his head down again, he had stopped laughing. His face was flaccid. "Do you think I'd get you stupid jerks out of a hole? When did I take out citizenship papers for planet number three? Don't be silly."

"Okay," said Ben. "Suit yourself. Our rations will last maybe a week. You Jovians need food like anybody else. But even if we had food we're off course and the chances are maybe a million to one we'll hit Earth or any other planet. We're in a fair way to be space derelicts. You know that, don't you?"

Xyl thought it over. He gave no sign of thinking, such as cocking his head or frowning or squinting. But he was silent, clearly thinking it over. He looked up finally. He rose. The guard rose with him.

He said to Ben, "Come on kid, let's take a look at the driver's office."

There was the messy business first of moving the bodies of Mace and Washam. Ben called others in to help. He noticed that they sprang pretty quickly when he called them—even the bird colonel with the clipped white mustache. He noticed that when they had finished doing something they looked to him for further instructions.

Xyl worked at the navigation table until he found the course. He said curtly, "Okay," out of the side of his mouth, then poured himself into the seat and began to manipulate the instruments. Ben. and the guard stood behind him. Once he turned and grinned and then he laughed in a crazy way—more to himself than to the others.

The guard was a beefy man with bluish jowls and shortcropped black hair. His voice was a strident bass. He turned to Ben and said, "I don't like it. I don't like it one damn bit."

"Me, either," Ben said. He scratched his cheek. He shifted his stance. Seemed to him the backs of his knees prickled. He watched and waited.

Hard to tell what was happening. The big burning eye of the sun was still to the left, so they seemed to be on course. Xyl, controlling, merely sat most of the time and watched dials and indicators. Once in awhile he pushed a button, moved a scale. He could be taking them out into eternal nothing for all Ben knew. He dropped that suspicion only when he saw the bright oval of Earth begin to grow in the front plates.

Ben said to the guard, "He's on course."

The guard said, "Yeah."

And Ben knew by the tone of the guard's voice that they were both thinking the same thing. Xyl might be going to Earth, all right, but he might just deliberately forget to decelerate. He might hang the nose on a course to Earth's big fat bosom—and just keep going. That might appeal to his sense of humor.

Ben said, "There's nothing we can do about it. We've got to take the chance he'll bring us in. We've got to stand here and wait." The guard said, "Yeah." Both shifted their feet again.

They neared Earth. They could see the continents and the oceans and the night shadow line moving against the planet's rotation. It was in the Atlantic. The telesight showed, enlarged, their own target—the state of New Mexico in the North American continent where the spaceport lay.

"So far so good," said Ben.

The guard merely nodded this time.

Once Xyl turned his face to Ben. That insane grin was still on it. He looked steadily and impudently at Ben for a moment, then said, "How come you saved my life from that combat-loony character, boy?"

If Ben had been able to find the words to explain it he probably wouldn't have liked the sound of them anyway. For an answer he shrugged.

Xyl said, "I see," and turned back to the controls.

The image of Earth filled the front plates before Xyl readied for his orbit turn. Again he looked at the other two. His wise-cracking manner was gone now. His dead pan was still there.

"In the cradles," he said. He reached for the lever that would tilt his own control seat into a vertical, spring-supported affair. He pressed the warning bell for the passengers.

Ben and the guard took two of the cradles in the crew quarters. They could watch Xyl from there. They could see him manipulate the controls like an organist at a six-part fugue. They could hear him swear—they could see the times when he was puzzled and unsure.

Ben called across the aisle to the guard. "He doesn't know this type of ship. He's running on a prayer." "Yeah," the guard said. He watched Xyl flatly.

The ship's gravity lagged the change of direction and the cradles swung gently as it curved to the left to enter a standard orbit. They heard the faint hiss of the decelerators, still on low. Then there was a swing over to the right and the ship was on a wide involute spiral around the earth.

From his cradle Ben could see the third planet's surface move by. The ship, still at space-speed, curved around to center lightside. The sun glared in through the port windows.

Ben heard the creaking and felt the terrible heat first. He recognized it immediately. He brought his head up fast. "We've hit atmosphere!" he yelled at Xyl. "Your coolers! Get 'em on!"

Xyl pounced on the cooling switch. The hull plates kept creaking—the tech manual didn't recommend switching the coolers on with more than 250 C. on the outside plates. Ben looked up and eyed the patched shell hole anxiously.

Then the roar of the decel jets pounded in his ears. He was jolted. He felt himself swing in the cradle. He felt the straps bite into his limbs and body. He swore. A hardened space pilot could decel this fast with a cargo of freight—but not with passengers. Then he laughed a little crazily. Those passengers back there would be lucky if they landed alive and here he was worrying about their comfort.

The roar got louder. It filled everything everywhere. It became one overwhelming mass of vibration. Ben began to get sick and dizzy. He tightened his lips. First time he'd had landing or blast-off sickness in ages. He swore again and forced himself to relax.

Blackness came suddenly and washed over him like a breaker.

The roar was still all about him when he awoke. He came to with most of his senses and the blurred objects in his sight came quickly into focus. He was still in the cradle. Xyl was still at the fore-plates, hunched over the control console. Earth loomed beyond him. Earth close and solid—Ben could see the shadow side of a mountain range, could even make out faintly the greener areas. The whole of it seemed to slam toward the ship.

Too fast—he's going too fast, Ben thought.

The guard across the way yelled. "Hey—look out!"

There was a crash.

Conrad Krogson, Supreme Commander of War Base Three of Sector Seven of the Galactic Protectorate stood at quaking attention before the visiscreen of his space communicator. It was an unusual position for the commander. He was accustomed to having people quake while he talked.

"The Lord Protector's got another hot tip that General Carr is still alive!" said the sector commander. "He's yelling for blood; and if it's a choice between yours and mine, you know who will do the donating!"

"But, sir," quavered Krogson to the figure on the screen, "I can't do anything more than I am doing. I've had double security checks running since the last time there was an alert, and they haven't turned up a thing. And I'm so shorthanded now that if I pull another random purge, I won't have enough techs left to work the base."

"That's your problem, not mine," said the sector commander coldly. "All that I know is that rumors have got to the Protector that an organized underground is being built up and that Carr is behind it. The Protector wants action now. If he doesn't get it, heads are going to roll!"

"I'll do what I can, sir," promised Krogson.

"I'm sure you will," said the sector commander viciously, "because I'm giving you exactly ten days to produce something that is big enough to take the heat off me. If you don't, I'll break you,. Krogson. If I'm sent to the mines, you'll be sweating right alongside me. That's a promise!"

Krogson's face blanched.

"Any questions?" snapped the sector commander. "Yes," said Krogson.

"Well don't bother me with them. I've got troubles of my own!" The screen went dark.

Krogson slumped into his chair and sat staring dully at the blank screen. Finally he roused himself with an effort and let out a bellow that rattled the windows of his dusty office.

"Schninkle! Get in here!"

A gnomelike little figure scuttled in through the door and bobbed obsequiously before him. "Yes, commander?"

"Switch on your thinktank," said Krogson. "The Lord Protector has the shakes again and the heat's onl"

"What is it this time?" asked Schninkle.

"General Carr," said the commander gloomily, "the ex-Number Two."

"I thought he'd been liquidated."

"So did I," said Krogson, "but he must have slipped out some way. The Protector thinks he's started up an underground."

"He'd be a fool if he didn't," said the little man. "The Lord Protector isn't as young as he once was and his grip is getting a little shaky."

"Maybe so, but he's still strong enough to get us before General Cart gets him. The Sector Commander just passed the buck down to me. We produce or elsel"

"We?" said Schninkle unhappily.

"Of course," snapped Krogson, "we're in this together. Now let's get to work! If you were Carr, where would be the logical place for you to hide out?"

"Well," said Schninkle thoughtfully, "if I were as smart as Carr is supposed to be, I'd find myself a hideout right on Prime Base. Everything's so fouled up there that they'd never find me."

"That's out for us," said Krogson. "We can't go rooting around in the Lord Protector's own backyard. What would Can's next best bet be?"

Schninkle thought for a moment. "He might go out to one of the deserted systems," he said slowly. "There must be half a hundred stars in our own base area that haven't been visited since the old empire broke up. Our ships don't get around the way they used to and the chances are mighty slim that anybody would stumble on to him accidentally."

"It's a possibility," said the commander thoughtfully, "a bare possibility." His right fist slapped into his left palm in a gesture of sudden resolution. "But by the PlanetsI At least it's something! Alert all section heads for a staff meeting in half an hour. I want every scout out on a quick check of every system in our area!"

"Beg pardon, commander," said Schninkle, "but half our light ships are red-lined for essential maintenance and the other half should be. Anyway it would take months to check every possible hideout in this area even if we used the whole fleet."

"I know," said Krogson, "but we'll have to do what we can with what we have. At least I'll be able to report to sector that we're doing something.' Tell Astrogation to set up a series of search patterns. We won't have to check every planet. A single quick sweep through each system will do the trick. Even Carr can't run a base without power. Where there's power, there's radiation, and radiation can be detected a long way off. Put all electronic techs on double shifts and have all detection gear double-checked."

"Can't do that either," said Schninkle. "There aren't more than a dozen electronic techs left. Most of them were transferred to Prime Base last week."

Commander Krogson blew up. "How in the name of the Bloody Blue Pleiades am I supposed to keep a war base going without technicians? You tell me, Schninkle, you always seem to know all the answers."

Schninkle coughed modestly. "Well, sir," he said, "as long as you have a situation where technicians are sent to the uranium mines for making mistakes, it's going to be an unpopular vocation. And, as long as the Lord Protector of the moment is afraid that Number Two, Number Three, and so on have ideas about grabbing his job—which they generally do—he's going to keep his fleet as strong as possible and their fleets so weak they aren't dangerous. The best way to do that is to grab techs. If most of a base's ships are sitting around waiting repair, the commander won't be able to do much about any ambitions he may happen to have. Add that to the obvious fact that our whole technology has been on a downward spiral for the last three hundred years and you have your answer."

Krogson nodded gloomy agreement. "Sometimes I feel as if we were all on a dead ship falling into a dying sun," he said with rare candor. His voice suddenly altered. "But in the meantime we have our necks to save. Get going, Schninkle!" Schninkle bobbed and darted out of the office.

Ill

It was exactly ten o'clock in the morning when Sergeant Dixon of the Imperial Space Marines snapped to attention before his commanding officer.

"Sergeant Dixon reporting as ordered, sirl" His voice cracked a bit in spite of his best efforts to control it.

The colonel looked at him coldly. "Nice of you to drop in, Dixon," he said. "Shall we go ahead with our little chat?"

Kurt nodded nervously.

"I have here," said the colonel, shuffling a sheaf of papers, "a report of an unauthorized expedition made by you into Off Limits territory."

"Which one do you mean, sir?" asked Kurt without thinking. "Then there has been more than one?" asked the colonel quietly. Kurt started to stammer.

Colonel Harris silenced him with a gesture of his hand. "I'm talking about the country to the north, the tableland back of the Twin Peaks."

"It's a beautiful place!" burst out Kurt enthusiastically. "It's . . . it's like Imperial Headquarters must be. Dozens of little streams full of fish, trees heavy with fruit, small game so slow and stupid that they can be knocked over with a club. Why, the battalion could live there without hardly lifting a finger!"

"I've no doubt that they could," said the colonel.

"Think of it, sirl" continued the sergeant. "No more plowing details, no more hunting details, no more nothing but taking it easy!"

"You might add to your list of 'no mores,' no more tech schools," said Colonel Harris. "I'm quite aware that the place is all you say it is, sergeant. As a result I'm placing all information that pertains to it in a 'Top Secret' category. That applies to what is inside your head as well!"

"But, sirl" protested Kurt. "If you could only see the place—"

"I have," broke in the colonel, "thirty years ago."

Kurt looked at him in amazement. "Then why are we still on the

plateau?"

"Because my commanding officer did just what I've just done, classified the information 'Top Secret.' Then he gave me thirty days' extra detail on the plows. After he took my stripes away that is." Colonel Harris rose slowly to his feet. "Dixon," he said softly, "it's not every man who can be a noncommissioned officer in the Space Marines. Sometimes we guess wrong. When we do we do something about itl" There was the hissing crackle of distant summer lightning in his voice and storm clouds seemed to gather about his head. "Wipe those chevrons offl" he roared.

Kurt looked at him in mute protest.

"You heard me!" the colonel thundered.

"Yes-s-s, sir," stuttered Kurt, reluctantly drawing his forearm across his forehead and wiping off the three triangles of white grease paint that marked him a sergeant in the Imperial Space Marines. Quivering with shame, he took a tight grip on his temper and choked back the angry protests that were trying to force their way past his lips.

"Maybe," suggested the colonel, "you'd like to make a complaint to the I.G. He's due in a few days and he might reverse my decision. It has happened before, you know."

"No, sir," said Kurt woodenly.

"Why not?" demanded Harris.

"When I was sent out as a scout for the hunting parties I was given direct orders not to range farther than twenty kilometers to the north. I went sixty." Suddenly his forced composure broke. "I couldn't help it, sir," he said. "There was something behind those peaks that kept pulling me and pulling me and"—he threw up his hands—"you know the rest."

There was a sudden change in the colonel's face as a warm human smile swept across it, and he broke into a peal of laughter. "It's a hell of a feeling, isn't it, son? You know you shouldn't, but at the same time there's something inside you that says you've got to know what's behind those peaks or die. When you get a few more years under your belt you'll find that it isn't just mountains that make you feel like that. Here, boy, have a seat." He gestured toward a woven wicker chair that stood by his desk.

Kurt shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, stunned by the colonel's sudden change of attitude and embarrassed by his request. "Excuse me, sir," he said, "but we aren't out on work detail, and—"

The colonel laughed. "And enlisted men not on work detail don't sit in the presence of officers. Doesn't the way we do things ever strike you as odd, Dixon? On one hand you'd see nothing strange about being yoked to a plow with a major, and on the other you'd never dream of sitting in his presence off duty."

Kurt looked puzzled. "Work details are different," he said. "We all have to work if we're going to eat. But in the garrison, officers are officers and enlisted men are enlisted men and that's the way it's always been."

Still smiling, the colonel reached into his desk drawer, fished out something, and tossed it to Kurt. "Stick this in your scalp lock," he said.

Kurt looked at it, stunned. It was a golden feather crossed with a single black bar, the insignia of rank of a second lieutenant of the Imperial Space Marines. The room swirled before his eyes.

"Now," said the older officer, "sit down!"

Kurt slowly lowered himself into the chair and looked at the colonel through bemused eyes.

"Stop gawking!" said Colonel Harris. "You're an officer now! When a man gets too big for his sandals, we give him a new pair-after we let him sweat a while!"

He suddenly grew serious. "Now that you're one of the family you have a right to know why I'm hushing up the matter of the tableland to the north. What I have to say won't make much sense at first. Later I'm hoping it will. Tell me," he said suddenly, "where did the battalion come from?"

"We've always been here, I guess," said Kurt. "When I was a recruit, Granddad used to tell me stories about us being brought from some place else a long time ago by an iron bird, but it stands to reason that something that heavy can't fly!"

A faraway look came into the colonel's eyes. "Six generations," he mused, "and history becomes legend. Another six and the legends themselves become tales for children. Yes, Kurt," he said softly, "it stands to reason that something that heavy couldn't fly so we'll forget it for a while. We did come from some place else though. Once there was a great empire, so great that all the stars you see at night were only part of it. And then, as things do when age rests too heavily on them, it began to crumble. Commanders fell to fighting among themselves and the Emperor grew weak. The battalion was set down here to operate a forward maintenance station for his ships. We waited but no ships came. For five hundred years no ships have come," said the colonel somberly. "Perhaps they tried to relieve us and couldn't, perhaps the Empire fell with such a crash that we were lost in the wreckage. There are a thousand perhapses that a man can tick off in his mind when the nights are long and sleep comes hard! Lost . . . forgotten . . . who knows?"

Kurt stared at him with a blank expression on his face. Most of what the colonel had said made no sense at all. Wherever Imperial Headquarters was, it hadn't forgotten them. The I.G. still made his inspection every year or so.

The colonel continued as if talking to himself. "But our operational orders said that we would stand by to give all necessary maintenance to Imperial warcraft until properly relieved, and stand by we have."

The old officer's voice seemed to be coming from a place far distant in time and space.

"I'm sorry, sir," said Kurt, "but I don't follow you. If all these things did happen, it was so long ago that they mean nothing to us now."

"But they do!" said Colonel Harris vigorously. "It's because of them that things like your rediscovery of the tableland to the north have to be suppressed for the good of the battalion! Here on the plateau the living is hard. Our work in the fields and the meat brought in by our hunting parties give us just enough to get by on. But here we have the garrison and the Tech Schools—and vague as it has become—a reason for remaining together as the battalion. Out there where the living is easy we'd lose that. We almost did once. A wise commander stopped it before it went too far. There are still a few signs of that time left—left deliberately as reminders of what can happen if commanding officers forget why we're here!" "What things?" asked Kurt curiously.

"Well, son," said the colonel, picking up his great war bonnet from the desk and gazing at it quizzically, "I don't think you're quite ready for that information yet. Now take off and strut your feather. I've got work to dol"

At War Base Three nobody was happy. Ships that were supposed to be light-months away carrying on the carefully planned search for General Carr's hideout were fluttering down out of the sky like senile penguins, disabled by blown jets, jammed computers, and all the other natural ills that worn out and poorly serviced equipment is heir to. Technical maintenance was quickly going mad. Commander Krogson was being noisy about it.

"Schninkle!" he screamed. "Isn't anything happening any place?"

"Nothing yet, sir," said the little man.

"Well make something happen!" He hoisted his battered brogans onto the scarred top of the desk and chewed savagely on a frayed cigar. "How are the other sectors doing?"

"No better than we are," said Schninkle. "Commander Snork of Sector Six tried to pull a fast one but he didn't get away with it. He sent his STAP into a plantation planet out at the edge of the Belt and had them hypno the whole population. By the time they were through there were about fifteen million greenies running around yelling 'Up with General Card' 'Down with the Lord Protector!' 'Long Live the People's Revolution!' and things like that. Snork even gave them a few medium vortex blasters to make it look more realistic. Then he sent in his whole fleet, tipped off the press at Prime Base, and waited. Guess what the Bureau of Essential Information finally sent him?"

"I'll bite," said Commander Krogson.

"One lousy cub reporter. Snork couldn't back out then so he had to go ahead and blast the planet down to bedrock. This moming he got a three-line notice in Space and a citation as Third Rate Protector of the People's Space Ways, Eighth Grade."

"That's better than the nothing we've got so far!" said the commander gloomily.

"Not when the press notice is buried on the next to last page right below the column on 'Our Feathered Comrades'," said Schninkle, "and when the citation is posthumous. They even misspelled his name; it came out Snark!"

As Kurt turned to go, there was a sharp knock on Colonel Harris' door.

"Come in!" called the colonel.

Lieutenant Colonel Blick, the battalion executive officer, entered with an arrogant stride and threw his commander a slovenly salute. For a moment he didn't notice Kurt standing at attention beside the door.

"Listen, Harrisl" he snarled. "What's the idea of pulling that clean-up detail out of my quarters?"

"There are no servants in this battalion, Blick," the older man said quietly. "When the men come in from work detail at night they're tired. They've earned a rest and as long as I'm CO. they're going to get it. If you have dirty work that has to be done, do it yourself. You're better able to do it than some poor devil who's been dragging a plow all day. I suggest you check pertinent regulations!"

"Regulations!" growled Blick. "What do you expect me to do, scrub my own floors?"

"I do," said the colonel dryly, "when my wife is too busy to get to it. I haven't noticed that either my dignity or my efficiency have suffered appreciably. I might add," he continued mildly, "that staff officers are supposed to set a good example for their juniors. I don't think either your tone or your manner are those that Lieutenant Dixon should be encouraged to emulate." He gestured toward Kurt and Blick spun on one heel.

"Lieutenant DixonI" he roared in an incredulous voice. "By whose authority?"

"Mine," said the colonel mildly. "In case you've forgotten I am still commanding officer of this battalion."

"I protest!" said Blick. "Commissions have always been awarded by decision of the entire staff."

"Which you now control," replied the colonel.

Kurt coughed nervously. "Excuse me, sir," he said, "but I think I'd better leave."

Colonel Harris shook his head. "You're one of our official family now, son, and you might as well get used to our squabbles. This particular one has been going on between Colonel Blick and me for years. He has no patience with some of our old customs." He turned to Blick. "Have you, colonel?"

"You're right, I haven't!" growled Blick. "And that's why I'm going to change some of them as soon as I get the chance. The sooner we stop this Tech School nonsense and put the recruits to work in the fields where they belong, the better off we'll all be. Why should a plowman or a hunter have to know how to read wiring diagrams or set tubes. It's nonsense, superstitious nonsense. You!" he said, stabbing his finger into the chest of the startled lieutenant. "You! DixonI You spent fourteen years in the Tech Schools just like I did when I was a recruit. What for?"

"To learn maintenance, of course," said Kurt.

"What's maintenance?" demanded Blick.

"Taking stuff apart and putting it back together and polishing jet bores with microplanes and putting plates in alignment and checking the meters when we're through to see the job was done right. Then there's class work in Direc calculus and subelectronics and-"

"That's enough!" interrupted Blick. "And now that you've learned all that, what can you do with it?"

Kurt looked at him in surprise. "Do with it?" he echoed. "You don't do anything with it. You just learn it because regulations say you should."

"And this," said Blick, turning to Colonel Harris, "is one of your prize products. Fourteen of his best years poured down the drain and he doesn't even know what fori" He paused and then said in an arrogant voice, "I'm here for a showdown, Harris!" "Yes?" said the colonel mildly.

"I demand that the Tech Schools be closed at once and the recruits released for work details. If you want to keep your command, you'll issue that order. The staff is behind me on thisl"

Colonel Harris rose slowly to his feet. Kurt waited for the thunder to roll, but strangely enough it didn't. It almost seemed to him that there was an expression of concealed amusement playing across the colonel's face.

"Some day, just for once," he said, "I wish somebody around here would do something that hasn't been done before."

"What do you mean by that?" demanded Blick.

"Nothing," said the colonel. "You know," he continued conversationally, "a long time ago I walked into my C.O.'s and made the same demands and the same threats that you're making now. I didn't get very far, though—just as you aren't going to—because I overlooked the little matter of the Inspector General's annual visit. He's due in from Imperial Headquarters Saturday night, isn't he, Blick?"

"You know he is!" growled the other.

"Aren't worried, are you? It occurs to me that the I.G. might take a dim view of your new order."

"I don't think he'll mind," said Blick with a nasty grin. "Now will you issue the order to close the Tech Schools or won't you?"

"Of course not!" said the colonel brusquely.

"That's final?"

Colonel Harris just nodded.

"All right," barked Blick, "you asked for it!"

There was an ugly look on his face as he barked, "Kane! Simmons! Arnettl The rest of you! Get in here!"

The door to Harris' office swung slowly open and revealed a group of officers standing sheepishly in the anteroom.

"Come in, gentlemen," said Colonel Harris.

They came slowly forward and grouped themselves just inside the door.

"I'm taking overl" roared Blick. "This garrison has needed a house cleaning for a long time and I'm just the man to do itl"

"How about the rest of you?" asked the colonel.

"Beg pardon, sir," said one hesitantly, "but we think Colonel Blick's probably right. I'm afraid we're going to have to confine you for a few days. Just until after the I.G.'s visit," he added apologetically.

"And what do you think the I.G. will say to all this?"

"Colonel Blick says we don't have to worry about that," said the officer. "He's going to take care of everything."

A look of sudden anxiety played across Harris' face and for the first time he seemed on the verge of losing his composure.

"How?" he demanded, his voice betraying his concern.

"He didn't say, sir," the other replied. Harris relaxed visibly.

"All right," said Blick. "Let's get moving!" He walked behind the desk and plumped into the colonel's chair. Hoisting his feet on the desk he gave his first command.

"Take him away!"

There was a sudden roar from the far corner of the room. "No you don't!" shouted Kurt. His battle-ax leaped into his hand as he jumped in front of Colonel Harris, his muscular body taut and his gray eyes flashing defiance.

Blick jumped to his feet. "Disarm that man!" he commanded. There was a certain amount of scuffling as the officers in the front of the group by the door tried to move to the rear and those behind them resolutely defended their more protected positions.

Blick's face grew so purple that he seemed on the verge of apoplexy. "Major Kane," he demanded, "place that man under restraint!"

Kane advanced toward Kurt with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. Keeping a cautious eye on the glittering ax head, he said in what he obviously hoped to be a placating voice, "Come now, old man. Can't have this sort of thing, you know." He stretched out his hand hesitantly toward Kurt. "Why don't you give me your ax and we'll forget that the incident ever occurred."

Kurt's ax suddenly leaped toward the major's head. Kane stood petrified as death whizzed toward him. At the last split second Kurt gave a practiced twist to his wrist and the ax jumped up, cutting the air over the major's head with a vicious whistle. The top half of his silver staff plume drifted slowly to the floor.

"You want it," roared Kurt, his ax flicking back and forth like a snake's tongue, "you come get it. That goes for the rest of you, too!"

The little knot of officers retreated still farther. Colonel Harris was having the time of his life. "Give it to 'em, son!" he whooped.

Blick looked contemptuously at the staff and slowly drew his own ax. Colonel Harris suddenly stopped laughing.

"Wait a minute, Blick!" he said. "This has gone far enough." He turned to Kurt.

"Give them your ax, son."

Kurt looked at him with an expression of hurt bewilderment in his eyes, hesitated for a moment, and then glumly surrendered his weapon to the relieved major.

"Now," snarled Blick, "take that insolent puppy out and feed him to the lizards!"

Kurt drew himself up in injured dignity. "That is no way to refer to a brother officer," he said reproachfully.

The vein in Blick's forehead started to pulse again. "Get him out of here before I tear him to shreds!" he hissed through clenched teeth. There was silence for a moment as he fought to regain control of himself. Finally he succeeded.

"Lock him up!" he said in an approximation to his normal voice. "Tell the provost sergeant I'll send down the charges as soon as I can think up enough."

Kurt was led resentfully from the room.

"The rest of you clear out," said Blick. "I want to talk with Colonel Harris about the I.G."

There was a saying in the Protectorate that when the Lord Protector was angry, stars and heads fell. Commander Krogson felt his wabble on his neck. His far-sweeping scouts were sending back nothing but reports of equipment failure, and the sector commander had coldly informed him that morning that his name rested securely at the bottom of the achievement list. It looked as if War Base Three would shortly have a change of command.

"Look, Schninkle," he said desperately, "even if we can't give them anything, couldn't we make a promise that would look good enough to take some of the heat off us?"

Schninkle looked dubious.

"Maybe a new five-year plan?" suggested Krogson.

The little man shook his head. "That's a subject we'd better avoid entirely," he said. "They're still asking nasty questions about what happened to the last one. Mainly on the matter of our transport quota. I took the liberty of passing the buck on down to Logistics. Several of them have been . . . eh . . . removed as a consequence."

"Serves them right!" snorted Krogson. "They got me into that mess with their 'if a freighter and a half flies a light-year and a half in a month and a half, ten freighters can fly ten light-years in ten months!' I knew there was something fishy about it at the time but I couldn't put my finger on it."

"It's always darkest before the storm," said Schninkle helpfully.

VII

"Take off your war bonnet and make yourself comfortable," said Colonel Harris hospitably.

Blick grunted assent. "This thing is sort of heavy," he said. "I think I'll change uniform regulations while I'm at it."

"There was something you wanted to tell me?" suggested the colonel.

"Yeah," said Blick. "I figure that you figure the I.G.'s going to bail you out of this. Right?" "I wouldn't be surprised."

"I would," said Blick. "I was up snoopin' around the armory last week. There was something there that started me doing some heavy thinking. Do you know what it was?"

"I can guess," said the colonel.

"As I looked at it it suddenly occurred to me what a happy coincidence it is that the Inspector General always arrives just when you happen to need him."

"It is odd, come to think of it."

"Something else occurred to me, too. I got to thinking that if I were C.O. and I wanted to keep the troops whipped into line, the easiest way to do it would be to have a visible symbol of Imperial Headquarters appear in person once in a while."

"That makes sense," admitted Harris, "especially since the chaplain has started preaching that Imperial Headquarters is where good marines go when they die—if they follow regulations while they're alive. But how would you manage it?"

"Just the way you did. I'd take one of the old battle suits, wait until it was good and dark, and then slip out the back way and climb up six or seven thousand feet. Then I'd switch on my landing lights and drift slowly down to the parade field to review the troops." Blick grinned triumphantly.

"It might work," admitted Colonel Harris, "but I was under the impression that those rigs were so heavy that a man couldn't even walk in one, let alone fly."

Blick grinned triumphantly. "Not if the suit was powered. If a man were to go up into the tower of the arsenal and pick the lock of the little door labeled 'Danger! Absolutely No Admittance,' he might find a whole stack of shiny little cubes that look suspiciously like the illustrations of power packs in the tech manuals."

"That he might," agreed the colonel.

Blick shifted back in his chair. "Aren't worried, are you?"

Colonel Harris shook his head. "I was for a moment when I thought you'd told the rest of the staff, but I'm not now."

"You should be! When the I.G. arrives this time I'm going to be inside that suit. There's going to be a new order around here and he's just what I need to put the stamp of approval on it. When the Inspector General talks, nobody questions!"

He looked at Harris expectantly, waiting for a look of consternation to sweep across his face. The colonel just laughed.

"Blick," he said, "you're in for a big surprise!"

"What do you mean?" said the other suspiciously.

"Simply that I know you better than you know yourself. You wouldn't be executive officer if I didn't. You know, Blick, I've got a hunch that the battalion is going to change the man more than the man is going to change the battalion. And now if you'll excuse me—" He started toward the door. Blick moved to intercept him.

"Don t trouble yourself," chuckled the colonel, "I can find my own way to the cell block." There was a broad grin on his face. "Besides, you've got work to do."

There was a look of bewilderment in Blick's face as the erect figure went out the door. "I don't get it," he said to himself. "I just don't get itl"

VIII

Flight Officer Ozaki was unhappy. Trouble had started two hours after he lifted his battered scout off War Base Three and showed no signs of letting up. He sat glumly at his controls and enumerated his woes. First there was the matter of the air conditioner which had acquired an odd little hum and discharged into the cabin oxygen redolent with the rich ripe odor of rotting fish. Secondly, something had happened in the complex insides of his food synthesizer and no matter what buttons he punched, all that emerged from the ejector were quivering slabs of undercooked protein base smeared with a raspberry-flavored goo.

Not last, but worst of all, the ship's fuel converter was rapidly becoming more erratic. Instead of a slow, steady feeding of the pluto-nite ribbon into the combustion chamber, there were moments when the mechanism would falter and then leap ahead. The resulting sudden injection of several square millimicrons of tape would send a sudden tremendous flare of energy spouting out through the rear jets. The pulse only lasted for a fraction of a second but the sudden application of several G's meant a momentary blackout and, unless he was strapped carefully into the pilot seat, several new bruises to add to the old.

What made Ozaki the unhappiest was that there was nothing he could do about it. Pilots who wanted to stay alive just didn't tinker with the mechanism of their ships.

Glumly he pulled out another red-bordered IMMEDIATE MAINTENANCE card from the rack and began to fill it in.

Description of item requiring maintenance: "Shower thermostat, M7, Small Standard."

Nature of malfunction: "Shower will deliver only boiling water."

Justification for immediate maintenance: Slowly in large block letters Ozaki bitterly inked in "Haven't had a bath since I left base!" and tossed the card into the already overflowing gripe box with a feeling of helpless anger.

"Kitchen mechanics," he muttered. "Couldn't do a decent repair job if they wanted to—and most of the time they don't. I'd like to see one of them three days out on a scout sweep with a toilet that won't flush!"

It was a roomy cell as cells go but Kurt wasn't happy there. His continual striding up and down was making Colonel Harris nervous.

"Relax, son," he said gently, "you'll just wear yourself out."

Kurt turned to face the colonel who was stretched out comfortably on his cot. "Sir," he said in a conspiratorial whisper, "we've got to break out of here."

"What for?" asked Harris. "This is the first decent rest I've had in years."

"You aren't going to let Blick get away with this?" demanded Kurt in a shocked voice.

"Why not?" said the colonel. "He's the exec, isn't he? If something happened to me, he'd have to take over command anyway. He's just going through the impatient stage, that's all. A few days behind my desk will settle him down. In two weeks he'll be so sick of the job he'll be down on his knees begging me to take over again."

Kurt decided to try a new tack. "But, sir, he's going to shut down the Tech Schools!"

"A little vacation won't hurt the kids," said the colonel indulgently. "After a week or so the wives will get so sick of having them underfoot all day that they'll turn the heat on him. Blick has six kids himself and I've a hunch his wife won't be any happier than the rest. She's a very determined woman, Kurt; a very determined woman I"

Kurt had a feeling he was getting no place rapidly. "Please, sir," he said earnestly, "I've got a plan." "Yes?"

"Just before the guard makes his evening check-in, stretch out on the bed and start moaning. I'll yell that you're dying and when he comes in to check I'll jump him!"

"You'll do no such thing!" said the colonel sternly. "Sergeant Wetzel is an old friend of mine. Can't you get it through your thick head that I don't want to escape? When you've held command as long as I have you'll welcome a chance for a little peace and quiet. I know Blick inside out and I'm not worried about him. But, if you've got your heart set on escaping, I suppose there's no particular reason why you shouldn't. Do it the easy way though. Like this." He walked to the bars that fronted the cell and bellowed, "Sergeant Wetzel! Sergeant Wetzel!"

"Coming, sir!" called a voice from down the corridor. There was a shuffle of running feet and a gray scalp-locked and extremely portly sergeant puffed into view.

"What will it be, sir?" he asked.

"Colonel Blick or any of the staff around?" questioned the colonel.

"No, sir," said the sergeant. "They're all upstairs celebrating."

"Good!" said Harris. "Unlock the door, will you?"

"Anything you say, colonel," said the old man agreeably and produced a large key from his pouch and fitted it into the lock. There was a slight creaking and the door swung open.

"Young Dixon here wants to escape," said the colonel.

"It's all right by me," replied the sergeant, "though it's going to be awkward when Colonel Blick asks what happened to him."

"The lieutenant has a plan," confided the colonel. "He's going to overpower you and escape."

"There's more to it than just that!" said Kurt. "I'm figuring on swapping uniforms with you. That way I can walk right out through the front gate without anybody being the wiser."

"That," said the sergeant, slowly looking down at his sixty-three-inch waist, "will take a heap of doing. You're welcome to try though."

"Let's get on with it then," said Kurt, winding up a round-house swing.

"If it's all the same with you, lieutenant," said the old sergeant, eying Kurt's rocklike fist nervously, "I'd rather have the colonel do any overpowering that's got to be done."

Colonel Harris grinned and walked over to Wetzel.

"Ready?"

"Readyl"

Harris' fist traveled a bare five inches and tapped Wetzel lightly on the chin.

"Oof!" grunted the sergeant cooperatively and staggered back to a point where he could collapse on the softest of the two cots.

The exchange of clothes was quickly effected. Except for the pants —which persisted in dropping down to Kurt's ankles—and the war bonnet—which with equal persistence kept sliding down over his ears—he was ready to go. The pants problem was solved easily by stuffing a pillow inside them. This Kurt fondly believed made him look more like the rotund sergeant than ever. The garrison bonnet presented a more difficult problem but he finally achieved a partial solution. By holding it up with his left hand and keeping the palm tightly pressed against his forehead, it should appear to the casual observer that he was walking engrossed in deep thought.

The first two hundred yards were easy. The corridor was deserted and he plodded confidently along, the great war bonnet wabbling sedately on his head in spite of his best efforts to keep it steady. When he finally reached the exit gate, he knocked on it firmly and called to the duty sergeant.

"Open up! It's Wetzel."

Unfortunately, just then he grew careless and let go of his headgear. As the door swung open, the great war bonnet swooped down over his ears and came to rest on his shoulders. The result was that where his head normally was there could be seen only a nest of weaving feathers. The duty sergeant's jaw suddenly dropped as he got a good look at the strange figure that stood in the darkened corridor. And then with remarkable presence of mind he slammed the door shut in Kurt's face and clicked the bolt.

"Sergeant of the guard!" he bawled. "Sergeant of the guard! There's a thing in the corridor!"

"What kind of a thing?" inquired a sleepy voice from the guard room.

"A horrible kind of a thing with wiggling feathers where its head ought to be," replied the sergeant.

"Get its name, rank, and serial number," said the sleepy voice.

Kurt didn't wait to hear any more. Disentangling himself from the headdress with some difficulty, he hurled it aside and pelted back down the corridor.

Lieutenant Dixon wandered back into the cell with a crestfallen look on his face. Colonel Harris and the old sergeant were so deeply engrossed in a game of "rockets high" that they didn't even see him at first. Kurt coughed and the colonel looked up.

"Change your mind?"

"No, sir," said Kurt. "Something slipped."

"What?" asked the colonel.

"Sergeant Wetzel's war bonnet. I'd rather not talk about it." He sank down on his bunk and buried his head in his hands.

"Excuse me," said the sergeant apologetically, "but if the lieutenant's through with my pants I'd like to have them back. There's a draft in here!"

Kurt silently exchanged clothes and then moodily walked over to the grille that barred the window and stood looking out.

"Why not go upstairs to officers' country and out that way?" suggested the sergeant, who hated the idea of being overpowered for nothing. "If you can get to the front gate without one of the staff spotting you, you can walk right out. The sentry never notices faces, he just checks for insignia."

Kurt grabbed Sergeant Wetzel's plump hand and wrung it warmly. "I don't know how to thank you," he stammered.

"Then it's about time you learned," said the colonel. "The usual practice in civilized battalions is to say 'Thank You.'"

"Thank youl" said Kurt.

"Quite all right," said the sergeant. "Take the first stairway to your left. When you get to the top, turn left again and the corridor will take you straight to the exit."

Kurt got safely to the top of the stairs and turned right. Three hundred feet later the corridor ended in a blank wall. A small passageway angled off to the left and he set off down it. It also came to a dead end in a small anteroom whose farther wall was occupied by a set of great bronze doors. He turned and started to retrace his steps. He had almost reached the main corridor when he heard angry voices sounding from it. He peeked cautiously around the corridor. His escape route was blocked by two officers engaged in acrimonious argument. Neither was too sober and the captain obviously wasn't giving the major the respect that a field officer usually commanded.

"I don't care what she said!" the captain shouted. "I saw her first."

The major grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him back against the wall. "It doesn't matter who saw her first. You keep away from her or there's going to be trouble!"

The captain's face flushed with rage. With a snarl he tore off the major's breechcloth and struck him in the face with it.

The major's face grew hard and cold. He stepped back, clicked his calloused heels together, and bowed slightly.

"Axes or fists?"

"Axes," snapped the captain.

"May I suggest the armory anteroom?" said the major formally. "We won't be disturbed there."

"As you wish, sir," said the captain with equal formality. "Your breechcloth, sir." The major donned it with dignity and they started down the hall toward Kurt. He turned and fled back down the corridor.

In a second he was back in the anteroom. Unless he did something quickly he was trapped. Two flaming torches were set in brackets on each side of the great bronze door. As flickering pools of shadow chased each other across the worn stone floor, Kurt searched desperately for some other way out. There was none. The only possible exit was through the bronze portals. The voices behind him grew louder. He ran forward, grabbed a projecting handle, and pulled. One door creaked open slightly and with a sigh of relief Kurt slipped inside.

There were no torches here. The great hall stood in half-darkness, its only illumination the pale moonlight that streamed down through the arching skylight that formed the central ceiling. He stood for a moment in awe, impressed in spite of himself by the strange unfamiliar shapes that loomed before him in the half-darkness. He was suddenly brought back to reality by the sound of voices in the anteroom.

"Hey! The armory door's open!"

"So what? That place is off limits to everybody but the CO." "Blick won't care. Let's fight in there. There should be more room."

Kurt quickly scanned the hall for a safe hiding place. At the far end stood what looked like a great bronze statue, its burnished surface gleaming dimly in the moonlight. As the door swung open behind him, he slipped cautiously through the shadows until he reached it. It looked like a coffin with feet, but to one side of it there was a dark pool of shadow. He slipped into it and pressed himself close against the cold metal. As he did so his hipbone pressed against a slight protrusion and with a slight clicking sound, a hanged middle section of the metallic figure swung open, exposing a dark cavity. The thing was hollow!

Kurt had a sudden idea. "Even if they do come down here," he thought, "they'd never think of looking inside this thing!" With some difficulty he wiggled inside and pulled the hatch shut after him. There were legs to the thing—his own fit snugly into them— but no arms.

The two officers strode out of the shadows at the other end of the hall. They stopped in the center of the armory and faced each other like fighting cocks. Kurt gave a sigh of relief. It looked as if he were safe for the moment.

There was a sudden wicked glitter of moonlight on axheads as their weapons leaped into their hands. They stood frozen for a moment in a murderous tableau and then the captain's ax hummed toward his opponent's head in a vicious slash. There was a shower of sparks as the major parried and then with a quick wrist twist sent his own weapon looping down toward the captain's midriff. The other pulled his ax down to ward off the blow but he was only partially successful. The keen obsidian edge raked his ribs and blood dripped darkly in the moonlight.

As Kurt watched intently he began to feel the first faint stirrings of claustrophobia. The Imperial designers had planned their battle armor for efficiency rather than comfort and Kurt felt as if he were locked away in a cramped dark closet. His malaise wasn't helped by a sudden realization that when the men left they might very well lock the door behind them. His decision to change his hiding place was hastened when a bank of dark clouds swept across the face of the moon. The flood of light that poured down through the skylight suddenly dimmed until Kurt could barely make out the pirouetting forms of the two officers who were fighting in the center of the hall.

This was his chance. If he could slip down the darkened side of the hall before the moon lighted up the hall again, he might be able to slip out of the hall unobserved. He pushed against the closed hatch through which he entered. It refused to open. A feeling of trapped panic started to roll over him but he fought it back. "There must be some way to open this thing from the inside," he thought.

As his fingers wandered over the dark interior of the suit looking for a release lever, they encountered a bank of keys set just below his midriff. He pressed one experimentally. A quiet hum filled the armor and suddenly a feeling of weightlessness came over him. He stiffened in fright. As he did so one of his steel shod feet pushed lightly backwards against the floor. That was enough. Slowly, like a child's balloon caught in a light draft, he drifted toward the center of the hall. He struggled violently but since he was now several inches above the floor and rising slowly it did him no good.

The fight was progressing splendidly. Both men were master ax-men and in spite of being slightly drunk were putting on a brilliant exhibition. Each was bleeding from a dozen minor slashes but neither had been seriously axed as yet. Their flashing strokes and counters were masterful, so masterful that Kurt slowly forgot his increasingly awkward situation as he became more and more absorbed in the fight before him. The blond captain was slightly the better axman but the major compensated for it by occasionally whistling in cuts that to Kurt's experienced eye seemed perilously close to fouls. He grew steadily more partisan in his feelings until one particularly unscrupulous attempt broke down his restraint altogether.

"Pull down your guard!" he screamed to the captain. "He's trying to cut you below the belt!" His voice reverberated within the battle suit and boomed out with strange metallic overtones.

Both men whirled in the direction of the sound. They could see nothing for a moment and then the major caught sight of the strange menacing figure looming above him in the murky darkness.

Dropping his ax he dashed frantically toward the exit shrieking: "It's the Inspector General!"

The captain's reflexes were a second slower. Before he could take off Kurt poked his head out of the open face port and shouted down, "It's only me, Dixon! Get me out of here, will you?"

The captain stared up at him goggle-eyed. "What kind of a contraption is that?" he demanded. "And what are you doing in it?"

Kurt by now was floating a good ten feet off the floor. He had visions of spending the night on the ceiling and he wasn't happy about it. "Get me down now," he pleaded. "We can talk after I get out of this thing."

The captain gave a leap upwards and tried to grab Kurt's ankles. His jump was short and his outstretched fingers gave the weightless armor a slight shove that sent it bobbing up another three feet.

He cocked his head back and called up to Kurt, "Can't reach you now. We'll have to try something else. How did you get into that thing in the first place?"

"The middle section is hinged," said Kurt. "When I pulled it shut it clicked."

"Well, unclick itl"

"I tried that. That's why I'm up here now."

"Try again," said the man on the floor. "If you can open the hatch, you can drop down and I'll catch you."

"Here I cornel" said Kurt, his fingers selecting a stud at random. He pushed. There was a terrible blast of flame from the shoulder jets and he screamed skywards on a pillar of fire. A microsecond later he reached the skylight. Something had to give. It did!

At fifteen thousand feet the air pressure dropped to the point where the automatics took over and the face plate clicked shut. Kurt didn't notice that. He was out like a light. At thirty thousand feet the heaters cut in. Forty seconds later he was in free space. Things could have been worse though, he still had air for two hours—

Flight Officer Ozaki was taking a cat nap when the alarm on the radiation detector went off. Dashing the sleep out of his eyes, he slipped rapidly into the control seat and cut off the gong. His fingers danced over the controls in a blur of movement. Swiftly the vision screen shifted until the little green dot that indicated a source of radiant energy was firmly centered. Next he switched on the pulse analyzer and watched carefully as it broke down the incoming signal into components and sent them surging across the scope in the form of sharp-toothed sine waves. There was an odd peak to them, a strength and sharpness that he hadn't seen before.

"Doesn't look familiar," he muttered to himself, "but I'd better check to make sure."

He punched the comparison button and while the analyzer methodically began to check the incoming trace against the known patterns stored up in its compact little memory bank, he turned back to the vision screen. He switched on high magnification and the system rushed toward him. It expanded from a single pin point of light into a distinct planetary system. At its center a giant dying sun expanded on the plate like a malignant red eye. As he watched, the green dot moved appreciably, a thin red line stretching out behind it to indicate its course from point of first detection. Ozaki's fingers moved over the controls and a broken line of white light came into being on the screen. With careful adjustments he moved it up toward the green track left by the crawling red dot. When he had an exact overlay, he carefully moved the line back along the course that the energy emitter had followed prior to detection.

Ozaki was tense. It looked as if he might have something. He gave a sudden whoop of excitement as the broken white line intersected the orange dot of a planetary mass. A vision of the promised thirty-day leave and six months' extra pay danced before his eyes as he waited for the pulse analyzer to clear.

"Home!" he thought ecstatically. "Home and unplugged plumbing!"

With a final whir of relays the analyzer clucked like a contented chicken and dropped an identity card out of its emission slot. Ozaki grabbed it and scanned it eagerly. At the top was printed in red, "Identity Unknown," and below in smaller letters, "Suggest check of trace pattern on base analyzer." He gave a sudden whistle as his eyes caught the energy utilization index. 927! That was fifty points higher than it had any right to be. The best tech in the Protectorate considered himself lucky if he could tune a propulsion unit so that it delivered a thrust of forty-five per cent of rated maximum. Whatever was out there was hot! Too hot for one man to handle alone. With quick decision he punched the transmission key of his space communicator and sent a call winging back to War Base Three.

Commander Krogson stormed up and down his office in a frenzy of impatience.

"It shouldn't be more than another fifteen minutes, sir," said Schninkle.

Krogson snorted. "That's what you said an hour agol What's the matter with those people down there? I want the identity of that ship and I want it now."

"It's not Identification's fault," explained the other. "The big analyzer is in pretty bad shape and it keeps jamming. They're afraid that if they take it apart they won't be able to get it back together again."

The next two hours saw Krogson's blood pressure steadily rising toward the explosion point. Twice he ordered the whole identification section transferred to a labor battalion and twice he had to rescind the command when Schninkle pointed out that scrapings from the bottom of the barrel were better than nothing at all. His fingernails were chewed down to the quick when word finally came through.

"Identification, sir," said a hesitant voice on the intercom. "Well?" demanded the commander. "The analyzer says—" The voice hesitated again. "The analyzer says what?" shouted Krogson in a fury of impatience.

"The analyzer says that the trace pattern is that of one of the old Imperial drive units."

"That's impossible!" sputtered the commander. "The last Imperial base was smashed five hundred years ago. What of their equipment was salvaged has long since been worn out and tossed on the scrap heap. The machine must be wrong!"

"Not this time," said the voice. "We checked the memory bank manually and there's no mistake. It's an Imperial all right. Nobody can produce a drive unit like that these days."

Commander Krogson leaned back in his chair, his eyes veiled in deep thought. "Schninkle," he said finally, thinking out loud, "I've got a hunch that maybe we've stumbled on something big. Maybe the Lord Protector is right about there being a plot to knock him over, but maybe he's wrong about who's trying to do it. What if all these centuries since the Empire collapsed a group of Imperials have been hiding out waiting for their chance?"

Schninkle digested the idea for a moment. "It could be," he said slowly. "If there is such a group, they couldn't pick a better time than now to strike; the Protectorate is so wobbly that it wouldn't take much of a shove to topple it over."

The more he thought about it, the more sense the idea made to Krogson. Once he felt a fleeting temptation to hush up the whole thing. If there were Imperials and they did take over, maybe they would put an end to the frenzied rat race that was slowly ruining the galaxy—a race that sooner or later entangled every competent man in the great web of intrigue and power politics that stretched through the Protectorate and forced him in self-defense to keep clawing his way toward the top of the heap.

Regretfully he dismissed the idea. This was a matter of his own neck, here and now!

"It's a big IF, Schninkle," he said, "but if I've guessed right we've bailed ourselves out. Get hold of that scout and find out his position."

Schninkle scooted out of the door. A few minutes later he dashed back in. "I've just contacted the scout!" he said excitedly. "He's closed in on the power source and it isn't a ship after all. It's a man in space armor! The drive unit is cut off and it's heading out of the system at fifteen hundred per. The pilot is standing by for instructions."

"Tell him to intercept and capture!" Schninkle started out of the office. "Wait a second; what's the scout's position?" Schninkle's face fell. "He doesn't quite know, sir." "He what?" demanded the commander.

"He doesn't quite know," repeated the little man. "His astrocom-puter went haywire six hours out of base."

"Just our luck!" swore Krogson. "Well tell him to leave his transmitter on. We'll ride in on his beam. Better call the sector commander while you're at it and tell him what's happened."

"Beg pardon, commander," said Schninkle, "but I wouldn't advise it."

"Why not?" asked Krogson.

"You're next in line to be sector commander, aren't you, sir?" "I guess so," said the commander.

"If this pans out you'll be in a position to knock him over and grab his job, won't you?" asked Schninkle slyly.

"Could be," admitted Krogson in a tired voice. "Not because I want to, though—but because I have to. I'm not as young as I once was and the boys below are pushing pretty hard. It's either up or out—and out is always feet first."

"Put yourself in the sector commander's shoes for a minute," suggested the little man. "What would you do if a war base commander came through with news of a possible Imperial base?"

A look of grim comprehension came over Krogson's face. "Of course! I'd ground the commander's ships and send out my own fleet. I must be slipping; I should have thought of that at once!"

"On the other hand," said Schninkle, "you might call him and request permission to conduct routine maneuvers. He'll approve as a matter of course and you'll have an excuse for taking out the full fleet. Once in deep space you can slap on radio silence and set course for the scout. If there is an Imperial base out there, nobody will know anything about it until it's blasted. I'll stay back here and keep my eyes on things for you."

Commander Krogson grinned. "Schninkle, it's a pleasure to have you in my command. How would you like me to make you Devoted Servant of the Lord Protector, Eighth Chss? It carries an extra shoe ration coupon!"

"If it's all the same with you," said Schninkle, "I'd just as soon have Saturday afternoons off."

XII

As Kurt struggled up out of the darkness, he could hear a gong sounding in the faint distance. Bong/ Bong/ BONG.' It grew nearer and louder. He shook his head painfully and groaned. There was light from some place beating against his eyelids. Opening them was too much effort. He was in some sort of a bunk. He could feel that.

But the gong. He lay there concentrating on it. Slowly he began to realize that the beat didn't come from outside. It was his head. It felt swollen and sore and each pulse of his heart sent a hammer thud through it.

One by one his senses began to return to normal. As his nose re-assumed its normal acuteness it began to quiver. There was a strange scent in the air, an unpleasant sickening scent as of—he chased the scent down his aching memory channels until he finally had it cornered—rotting fish. With that to anchor on he slowly began to reconstruct reality. He had been floating high above the floor in the armory and the captain had been trying to get him down. Then he had pushed a button. There had been a microsecond of tremendous acceleration and then a horrendous crash. That must have been the skylight. After the crash was darkness, then the gongs, and now fish—dead and rotting fish.

"I must be alive," he decided. "Imperial Headquarters would never smell like this!"

He groaned and slowly opened one eye. Wherever he was he hadn't been there before. He opened the other eye. He was in a room. A room with a curved ceiling and curving walls. Slowly, with infinite care, he hung his head over the side of the bunk. Below him in a form-fitting chair before a bank of instruments sat a small man with yellow skin and blue-black hair. Kurt coughed. The man looked up. Kurt asked the obvious question.

"Where am 17"

"I'm not permitted to give you any information," said the small man. His speech had an odd slurred quality to Kurt's ear. "Something stinks!" said Kurt.

"It sure does," said the small man gloomily. "It must be worse for you. I'm used to it."

Kurt surveyed the cabin with interest. There were a lot of gadgets tucked away here and there that looked familiar. They were like the things he had worked on in Tech School except that they were cruder and simpler. They looked as if they had been put together by an eight-year-old recruit who was doing his first trial assembly. He decided to make another stab at establishing some sort of communication with the little man.

"How come you have everything in one room? We always used to keep different things in different shops." "No comment," said Ozaki.

Kurt had a feeling he was butting his head against a stone wall. He decided to make one more try. "I give up," he said, wrinkling his nose, "where'd you hide it?" "Hide what?" asked the little man. "The fish," said Kurt. "No comment." "Why not?" asked Kurt.

"Because there isn't anything that can be done about it," said Ozaki. "It's the air conditioner. Something's haywire inside." "What's an air conditioner?" asked Kurt. "That square box over your head."

Kurt looked at it, closed his eyes, and thought for a moment. The thing did look familiar. Suddenly a picture of it popped into his mind. Page 318 in the "Manual of Auxiliary Mechanisms."

"It's fantasticl" he said.

"What is?" said the little man.

"This." Kurt pointed to the conditioner. "I didn't know they existed in real life. I thought they were just in books. You got a first echelon kit?"

"Sure," said Ozaki. "It's in that recess by the head of the bunk. Why?"

Kurt pulled the kit out of its retaining clips and opened its cover, fishing around until he found a small screwdriver and a pair of needle-nose pliers.

"I think I'll fix it," he said conversationally.

"Oh no you won't!" howled Ozaki. "Air with fish is better than no air at all." But before he could do anything, Kurt had pulled the cover off the air conditioner and was probing into the intricate mechanism with his screwdriver. A slight thumping noise came from inside. Kurt cocked his ear and thought. Suddenly his screwdriver speared down through the maze of whirring parts. He gave a slow quarter turn and the internal thumping disappeared.

"See," he said triumphantly, "no more fish!"

Ozaki stopped shaking long enough to give the air a tentative sniff. He had got out of the habit of smelling in self-defense and it took him a minute or two to detect the difference. Suddenly a broad grin swept across his face.

"It's going awayl I do believe it's going away!"

Kurt gave the screwdriver another quarter of a turn and suddenly the sharp spicy scent of pines swept through the scout. Ozaki took a deep ecstatic breath and relaxed in his chair. His face lost its pallor.

"How did you do it?" he said finally. "No comment," said Kurt pleasantly.

There was silence from below. Ozaki was in the throes of a brain storm. He was more impressed by Kurt's casual repair of the air conditioner than he liked to admit.

"Tell me," he said cautiously, "can you fix other things beside air conditioners?"

"I guess so," said Kurt, "if it's just simple stuff like this." He gestured around the cabin. "Most of the stuff here needs fixing. They've got it together wrong."

"Maybe we could make a dicker," said Ozaki. "You fix things, I answer questions—Some questions that is," he added hastily.

"It's a deal," said Kurt who was filled with a burning curiosity as to his whereabouts. Certain things were already clear in his mind. He knew that wherever he was he'd never been there before. That meant evidently that there was a garrison on the other side of the mountains whose existence had never been suspected. What bothered him was how he had got there.

"Check," said Ozaki. "First, do you know anything about plumbing?"

"What's plumbing?" asked Kurt curiously.

"Pipes," said Ozaki. "They're plugged. They've been plugged for more time than I like to think about."

"I can try," said Kurt.

"Good!" said the pilot and ushered him into the small cubicle that opened off the rear bulkhead. "You might tackle the shower while you're at it."

"What's a shower?"

"That curved dingbat up there," said Ozaki pointing. "The ermostat's out of whack."

"Thermostats are kid stuff," said Kurt, shutting the door.

Ten minutes later Kurt came out. "It's all fixed."

"I don't believe it," said Ozaki, shouldering his way past Kurt. 2 reached down and pushed a small curved handle. There was the isfying sound of rushing water. He next reached into the little ower compartment and turned the knob to the left. With a hiss needle spray of cold water burst forth. The pilot looked at Kurt th awe in his eyes.

"If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have believed it! That's two swers you've earned."

Kurt peered back into the cubicle curiously. "Well, first," he said, iow that I've fixed them, what are they for?" Ozaki explained briefly and a look of amazement came over Kurt's :e. Machinery he knew, but the idea that it could be used for mething was hard to grasp.

"If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have believed it!" he said slowly, lis would be something to tell when he got home. Home! The essing question of location popped back into his mind. "How far are we from the garrison?" he asked. Ozaki made a quick mental calculation. "Roughly two light-seconds," he said. "How far's that in kilometers?"

Ozaki thought again. "Around six hundred thousand. I'll run off e exact figures if you want them."

Kurt gulped. No place could be that far away. Not even Imperial eadquarters! He tried to measure out the distance in his mind in rms of days' marches but he soon found himself lost. Thinking suldn't do it. He had to see with his own eyes where he was. "How do you get outside?" he asked.

Ozaki gestured toward the air lock that opened at the rear of the

"I want to go out for a few minutes to sort of get my bearings." Ozaki looked at him in disbelief. "What's your game, anyhow?" he demanded.

It was Kurt's turn to look bewildered. "I haven't any game. I'm just trying to find out where I am so I'll know which way to head to get back to the garrison."

"It'll be a long cold walk." Ozaki laughed and hit the stud that slid back the ray screens on the vision ports. "Take a look."

Kurt looked out into nothingness, a blue-black void marked only by distant pin points of light. He suddenly felt terribly alone, lost in a blank immensity that had no boundaries. Down was gone and so was up. There was only this tiny lighted room with nothing underneath it. The port began to swim in front of his eyes as a sudden strange vertigo swept over him. He felt that if he looked out into that terrible space for another moment he would lose his sanity. He covered his eyes with his hands and staggered back to the center of the cabin.

Ozaki slid the ray screens back in place. "Kind of gets you first time, doesn't it?"

Kurt had always carried a little automatic compass within his head. Wherever he had gone, no matter how far afield he had wandered, it had always pointed steadily toward home. Now for the first time in his life the needle was spinning helplessly. It was an uneasy feeling. He had to get oriented.

"Which way is the garrison?" he pleaded.

Ozaki shrugged. "Over there some place. I don't know whereabouts on the planet you come from. I didn't pick up your track until you were in free space."

"Over where?" asked Kurt.

"Think you can stand another look?"

Kurt braced himself and nodded. The pilot opened a side port to vision and pointed. There, seemingly motionless in the black emptiness of space, floated a great greenish gray globe. It didn't make sense to Kurt. The satellite that hung somewhat to the left did. Its face was different, the details were sharper than he'd ever seen them before, but the features he knew as well as his own. Night after night on scouting detail for the hunting parties while waiting for sleep he had watched the silver sphere ride through the clouds above him.

He didn't want to believe but he had to!

His face was white and tense as he turned back to Ozaki. A thousand sharp and burning questions milled chaotically through his mind.

"Where am I?" he demanded. "How did I get out here? Who are you? Where did you come from?"

"You're in a spaceship," said Ozaki, "a two-man scout. And that's all you're going to get out of me until you get some more work done. You might as well start on this microscopic projector. The thing burned out just as the special investigator was about to reveal who had blown off the commissioner's head by wiring a bit of plutonite into his autoshave. I've been going nuts ever since trying to figure out who did it!"

Kurt took some tools out of the first echelon kit and knelt obediently down beside the small projector.

Three hours later they sat down to dinner. Kurt had repaired the food machine and Ozaki was slowly masticating synthasteak that for the first time in days tasted like synthasteak. As he ecstatically lifted the last savory morsel to his mouth, the ship gave a sudden leap that plastered him and what remained of his supper against the rear bulkhead. There was darkness for a second and then the ceiling lights flickered on, then off, and then on again. Ozaki picked himself up and gingerly ran his fingers over the throbbing lump that was beginning to grow out of the top of his head. His temper wasn't improved when he looked up and saw Kurt still seated at the table calmly cutting himself another piece of pie.

"You should have braced yourself," said Kurt conversationally. "The converter's out of phase. You can hear her build up for a jump if you listen. When she does you ought to brace yourself. Maybe you don't hear so good?" he asked helpfully.

"Don't talk with your mouth full, it isn't polite," snarled Ozaki.

Late that night the converter cut out altogether. Ozaki was sleeping the sleep of the innocent and didn't find out about it for several hours. When he did awake it was to Kurt's gentle shaking.

"Hey!" Ozaki groaned and buried his face in the pillow.

"Hey!" This time the voice was louder. The pilot yawned and tried to open his eyes.

"Is it important if all the lights go out?" the voice queried. The import of the words suddenly struck home and Ozaki sat bolt upright in his bunk. He opened his eyes, blinked, and opened them again. The lights were out. There was a strange unnatural silence about the ship.

"Good Lord!" he shouted and jumped for the controls. "The power's off."

He hit the starter switch but nothing happened. The converter was jammed solid. Ozaki began to sweat. He fumbled over the control board until he found the switch that cut the emergency batteries into the lighting circuit. Again nothing happened.

"If you're trying to run the lights on the batteries, they won't work," said Kurt in a conversational tone.

"Why not?" snapped Ozaki as he punched savagely and futilely at the starter button.

"They're dead," said Kurt. "I used them all up."

"You what?" yelled the pilot in anguish.

"I used them all up. You see, when the converter went out I woke up. After a while the sun started to come up and it began to get awfully hot so I hooked the batteries into the refrigeration coils. Kept the place nice and cool while they lasted."

Ozaki howled. When he swung the shutter of the forward port to let in some light he howled again. This time in dead earnest. The giant red sun of the system was no longer perched off to the left at a comfortable distance. Instead before Ozaki's horrified eyes was a great red mass that stretched fromriorizon to horizon.

"We're falling into the sun!" he screamed.

"It's getting sort of hot," said Kurt. "Hot" was an understatement. The thermometer needle pointed at a hundred and ten and was climbing steadily.

Ozaki jerked open the stores compartment door and grabbed a couple of spare batteries. As quickly as his trembling fingers would work, he connected them to the emergency power line. A second later the cabin lights flickered on and Ozaki was warming up the space communicator. He punched the transmitter key and a call went arcing out through hyper-space. The vision screen flickered and the bored face of a communication tech, third class, appeared.

"Give me Commander Krogson at once!" demanded Ozaki.

"Sorry, old man," yawned the other, "but the commander's having breakfast. Call back in half an hour, will you?"

"This is an emergency! Put me through at once!"

"Can't help it," said the other, "nobody can disturb the Old Man while he's having breakfast."

"Listen, you knucklehead," screamed Ozaki, "if you don't get me through to the commander as of right now, I'll have you in the uranium mines so fast that you won't know what hit you!"

"You and who else?" drawled the tech.

"Me and my cousin Takahashi!" snarled the pilot. "He's Reclassification Officer for the Base STAP."

The tech's face went white. "Yes, sir!" he stuttered. "Right away, sir! No offense meant, sir!" He disappeared from the screen. There was a moment of darkness and then the interior of Commander Krogson's cabin flashed on.

The commander was having breakfast. His teeth rested on the white tablecloth and his mouth was full of mush.

"Commander Krogsonl" said Ozaki desperately.

The commander looked up with a startled expression. When he noticed his screen was on he swallowed his mush convulsively and popped his teeth back into place.

"Who's there?" he demanded in a neutral voice in case it might be somebody important.

"Flight Officer Ozaki," said Flight Officer Ozaki.

A thundercloud rolled across the commander's face. "What do you mean by disturbing me at breakfast?" he demanded.

"Beg pardon, sir," said the pilot, "but my ship's falling into a red sun."

"Too bad," grunted Commander Krogson and turned back to his mush and milk.

"But, sir," persisted the other, "you've got to send somebody to pull me off. My converter's dead!"

"Why tell me about it?" said Krogson in annoyance. "Call Space Rescue, they're supposed to handle things like this."

"Listen, commander," wailed the pilot, "by the time they've assigned me a priority and routed the paper through proper channels, I'll have gone up in smoke. The last time I got in a jam it took them two weeks to get to me. I've only got hours left!"

"Can't make exceptions," snapped Krogson testily. "If I let you skip the chain of command, everybody and his brother will think he has a right to."

"Commander," howled Ozaki, "we're frying in here!"

"All right. All right!" said the commander sourly. "I'll send somebody after you. What's your name?"

"Ozaki, sir. Flight Officer Ozaki."

The commander was in the process of scooping up another spoonful of mush when suddenly a thought struck him squarely between the eyes.

"Wait a second," he said hastily, "you aren't the scout who located the Imperial base, are you?"

"Yes, sir," said the pilot in a cracked voice.

"Why didn't you say so?" roared Krogson. Flipping on his intercom he growled, "Give me the Exec." There was a moment's silence.

"Yes, sir?"

"How long before we get to that scout?" "About six hours, sir." "Make it three!" "Can't be done, sir."

"It will be done!" snarled Krogson and broke the connection. The temperature needle in the little scout was now pointing to a hundred and fifteen.

"I don't think we can hold out that long," said Ozaki. "Nonsense!" said the commander and the screen went blank.

Ozaki slumped into the pilot chair and buried his face in his hands. Suddenly he felt a blast of cold air on his neck. "There's no use in prolonging our misery," he said without looking up. "Those spare batteries won't last five minutes under this load."

"I knew that," said Kurt cheerfully, "so while you were doing all the talking I went ahead and fixed the converter. You sure have mighty hot summers out here!" he continued, mopping his brow.

"You what?" yelled the pilot, jumping half out of his seat. "You couldn't even if you did have the know-how. It takes half a day to get the shielding off so you can get at the thing!"

"Didn't need to take the shielding off for a simple job like that," said Kurt. He pointed to a tiny inspection port about four inches in diameter. "I worked through there."

"That's impossible!" interjected the pilot. "You can't even see the injector through that, let alone get to it to work on!"

"Shucks," said Kurt, "a man doesn't have to see a little gadget like that to fix it. If your hands are trained right, you can feel what's wrong and set it to rights right away. She won't jump on you any more either. The syncromesh thrust baffle was a little out of phase so I fixed that, too, while I was at it."

Ozaki still didn't believe it but he hit the controls on faith. The scout bucked under the sudden strong surge of power and then, its converter humming sweetly, arced away from the giant sun in a long sweeping curve.

There was silence in the scout. The two men sat quietly, each immersed in an uneasy welter of troubled speculation.

"That was closel" said Ozaki finally. "Too close for comfort. Another hour or so and—!" He snapped his fingers.

Kurt looked puzzled. "Were we in trouble?"

"Trouble!" snorted Ozaki. "If you hadn't fixed the converter when you did, we'd be cinders by now!"

Kurt digested the news in silence. There was something about this superbeing who actually made machines work that bothered him. There was a note of bewilderment in his voice when he asked: "If we were really in danger, why didn't you fix the converter instead of wasting time talking on that thing?" He gestured toward the space communicator.

It was Ozaki's turn to be bewildered. "Fix it?" he said with surprise in his voice. "There aren't a half a dozen techs on the whole base who know enough about atomics to work on a propulsion unit.

When something like that goes out you call Space Rescue and chew your nails until a wrecker can get to you."

Kurt crawled into his bunk and lay back staring at the curved ceiling. He had thinking to do, a lot of thinking!

Three hours later the scout flashed up alongside the great flagship and darted into a landing port. Flight Officer Ozaki was stricken by a horrible thought as he gazed affectionately around his smoothly running ship.

"Say," he said to Kurt hesitantly, "would you mind not mentioning that you fixed this crate up for me? If you do, they'll take it away from me sure. Some captain will get a new gig and I'll be issued another clunk from Base junkpile."

"Sure thing," said Kurt.

A moment later the flashing of a green light on the control panel signaled that the pressure in the lock had reached normal.

"Back in a minute," said Ozaki. "You wait here."

There was a muted hum as the exit hatch swung slowly open. Two guards entered and stood silently beside Kurt as Ozaki left to report to Commander Krogson.

XIII

The battle fleet of War Base Three of Sector Seven of the Galactic Protectorate hung motionless in space twenty thousand kilometers out from Kurt's home planet. A hundred tired detection techs sat tensely before their screens, sweeping the globe for some sign of energy radiation. Aside from the occasional light spatters caused by space static, their scopes remained dark. As their reports filtered in to Commander Krogson he became more and more exasperated.

"Are you positive this is the right planet?" he demanded of Ozaki.

"No question about it, sir."

"Seems funny there's nothing running down there at all," said Krogson. "Maybe they spotted us on the way in and cut off power.

I've got a hunch that—" He broke off in mid sentence as the red top-priority light on the communication panel began to flash. "Get that," he said. "Maybe they've spotted something at last."

The executive officer flipped on the vision screen and the interior of the flagship's communication room was revealed.

"Sorry to bother you, sir," said the tech whose image appeared on the screen, "but a message just came through on the emergency band."

"What does it say?"

The tech looked unhappy. "It's coded, sir." "Well, decode it!" barked the executive.

"We can't," said the technician diffidently. "Something's gone wrong with the decoder. The printer is pounding out random groups that don't make any sense at all."

The executive grunted his disgust. "Any idea where the call's coming from?"

"Yes, sir; it's coming in on a tight beam from the direction of Base. Must be from a ship emergency rig, though. Regular hyper-space transmission isn't directional. Either the ship's regular rig broke down or the operator is using the beam to keep anybody else from picking up his signal."

"Get to work on that decoder. Call back as soon as you get any results." The tech saluted and the screen went black.

"Whatever it is, it's probably trouble," said Krogson morosely. "Well, we'd better get on with this job. Take the fleet into atmosphere. It looks as if we are going to have to make a visual check."

"Maybe the prisoner can give us a lead," suggested the executive officer.

"Good idea. Have him brought in."

A moment later Kurt was ushered into the master control room. Krogson's eyes widened at the sight of his scalp lock and paint.

"Where in the name of the Galactic Spirit," he demanded, "did you get that rig?"

"Don't you recognize an Imperial Space Marine when you see one?" Kurt answered coldly.

The guard that had escorted Kurt in made a little twirling motion at his temple with one finger. Krogson took another look and nodded agreement.

"Sit down, son," he said in a fatherly tone. "We're trying to get you home, but you're going to have to give us a little help before we can do it. You see, we're not quite sure just where your base is."

"I'll help all I can," said Kurt.

"Fine!" said the commander, rubbing his palms together. "Now just where down there do you come from?" He pointed out the vision port to the curving globe that stretched out below.

Kurt looked down helplessly. "Nothing makes sense, seeing it from up here," he said apologetically.

Krogson thought for a moment. "What's the country like around your base?" he asked.

"Mostly jungle," said Kurt. "The garrison is on a plateau though, and there are mountains to the north."

Krogson turned quickly to his exec. "Did you get that description?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Get all scouts out for a close sweep. As soon as the base is spotted, move the fleet in and hover at forty thousand!"

Forty minutes later a scout came streaking back.

"Found it, sir!" said the exec. "Plateau with jungle all around and mountains to the north. There's a settlement at one end. The pilot saw movement down there but they must have spotted us on our way in. There's still no evidence of energy radiation. They must have everything shut down."

"That's not good!" said Krogson. "They've probably got all their heavy stuff set up waiting for us to sweep over. We'll have to hit them hard and fast. Did they spot the scout?"

"Can't tell, sir."

"We'd better assume that they did. Notify all gunnery officers to switch their batteries over to central control. If we come in fast and high and hit them with simultaneous fleet concentration, we can vaporize the whole base before they can take a crack at us."

"I'll send the order out at once, sir," said the executive officer.

The fleet pulled into tight formation and headed toward the Imperial base. They were halfway there when the fleet gunnery officer entered the control room and said apologetically to Commander Krogson, "Excuse me, sir, but I'd like to suggest a trial run. Fleet concentration is a tricky thing and if something went haywire— we'd be sitting ducks for the ground batteries."

"Good idea," said Krogson thoughtfully. "There's too much at stake to have anything go wrong. Select an equivalent target and we'll make a pass."

The fleet was now passing over a towering mountain chain.

"How about that bald spot down there?" said the exec, pointing to a rocky expanse that jutted out from the side of one of the towering peaks.

"Good enough," said Krogson.

"All ships on central control!" reported the gunnery officer.

"On targetl" reported the tech on the tracking screen. "One. Two. Three. Four—"

Kurt stood by the front observation port watching the ground far below sweep by. He had been listening intently but what had been said didn't make sense. There had been something about batteries—the term was alien to him—and something about the garrison. He decided to ask the commander what it was all about but the intentness with which Krogson was watching the tracking screen deterred him. Instead he gazed moodily down at the mountains below him.

"Five. Six. Seven. Ready. FIRE!"

A savage shudder ran through the great ship as her ground-pointed batteries blasted in unison. Seconds went by and then suddenly the rocky expanse on the shoulder of the mountain directly below twinkled as blinding flashes of actinic light danced across it. Then as Kurt watched, great masses of rock and earth moved slowly skyward from the center of the spurting nests of tangled flame. Still slowly, as if buoyed up by the thin mountain air, the debris began to fall back again until it was lost from sight in quick-rising mushrooms of jet-black smoke. Kurt turned and looked back toward

Commander Krogson. Batteries must be the things that had torn the mountains below apart. And garrison—there was only one garrison!

"I ordered fleet fire," barked Krogson. "This ship was the only one that cut loose. What happened?"

"Just a second, sir," said the executive officer, "I'll try and find out." He was busy for a minute on the intercom system. "The other ships were ready, sir," he reported finally. "Their guns were all switched over to our control but no impulse came through. Central fire control must be on the blink!" He gestured toward a complex bank of equipment that occupied one entire corner of the control room.

Commander Krogson said a few appropriate words. When he reached the point where he was beginning to repeat himself, he paused and stood in frozen silence for a good thirty seconds.

"Would you mind getting a fire-control tech in here to fix that obscenity bank?" he asked in a voice that put everyone's teeth on edge.

The other seemed to have something to say but he was having trouble getting it out. "Well?" said Krogson.

"Prime Base grabbed our last one two weeks ago. There isn't another left with the fleet."

"Doesn't look like much to me," said Kurt as he strolled over to examine the bank of equipment.

"Get away from there!" roared the commander. "We've got enough trouble without you making things worse."

Kurt ignored him and began to open inspection ports.

"Guard!" yelled Krogson. "Throw that man out of here!"

Ozaki interrupted timidly. "Beg pardon, commander, but he can fix it if anybody can."

Krogson whirled on the flight officer. "How do you know?"

Ozaki caught himself just in time. If he talked too much he was likely to lose the scout that Kurt had fixed up for him.

"Because he . . . eh . . . talks like a tech," he concluded lamely.

Krogson looked at Kurt dubiously. "I guess there's no harm in giving it a trial," he said finally. "Give him a set of tools and turn him loose. Maybe for once a miracle will happen."

"First," said Kurt, "I'll need the wiring diagrams for this thing."

"Get them!" barked the commander and an orderly scuttled out of the control, headed aft.

"Next you'll have to give me a general idea of what it's supposed to do," continued Kurt.

Krogson turned to the gunnery officer. "You'd better handle this."

When the orderly returned with the circuit diagrams, they were spread out on the plotting table and the two men bent over them.

"Got it!" said Kurt at last and sauntered over to the control bank. Twenty minutes later he sauntered back again.

"She's all right now," he said pleasantly.

The gunnery officer quickly scanned his testing board. Not a single red trouble light was on. He turned to Commander Krogson in amazement.

"I don't know how he did it, sir, but the circuits are all clear now."

Krogson stared at Kurt with a look of new respect in his eyes. "What were you down there, chief maintenance tech?"

Kurt laughed. "Me? I was never chief anything. I spent most of my time on hunting detail."

The commander digested that in silence for a moment. "Then how did you become so familiar with fire-control gear?"

"Studied it in school like everyone else does. There wasn't anything much wrong with that thing anyway except a couple of sticking relays."

"Excuse me, sir," interrupted the executive officer, "but should we make another trial run?" "Are you sure the bank is in working order?" "Positive, sir!"

"Then we'd better make straight for that base. If this boy here is a fair example of what they have down there, their defenses may be too tough for us to crack if we give them a chance to get set up!"

Kurt gave a slight start which he quickly controlled. Then he had guessed rightl Slowly and casually he began to sidle toward the semicircular bank of controls that stood before the great tracking screen.

"Where do you think you're going!" barked Krogson. Kurt froze. His pulses were pounding within him but he kept his voice light and casual.

"No place," he said innocently.

"Get over against the bulkhead and keep out of the way!" snapped the commander. "We've got a job of work coming up." Kurt injected a note of bewilderment into his voice. "What kind of work?"

Krogson's voice softened and a look approaching pity came into his eyes. "It's just as well you don't know about it until it's over," he said gruffly.

"There she is!" sang out the navigator, pointing to a tiny brown projection that jutted up out of the green jungle in the far distance. "We're about three minutes out, sir. You can take over at any time now."

The fleet gunnery officer's fingers moved quickly over the keys that welded the fleet into a single instrument of destruction, keyed and ready to blast a barrage of ravening thunderbolts of molecular disruption down at the defenseless garrison at a single touch on the master fire-control button.

"Whenever you're ready, sir," he said deferentially to Krogson as he vacated the controls. A hush fell over the control room as the great tracking screen brightened and showed the compact bundle of white dots that marked the fleet crawling slowly toward the green triangle of the target area.

"Get the prisoner out of here," said Krogson. "There's no reason why he should have to watch what's about to happen."

The guard that stood beside Kurt grabbed his arm and shoved him toward the door.

There was a sudden explosion of fists as Kurt erupted into action. In a blur of continuous movement he streaked toward the gunnery control panel. He was halfway across the control room before the pole-axed guard hit the floor. There was a second of stunned amazement, and then before anyone could move to stop him, he stood beside the controls, one hand poised tensely above the master stud that controlled the combined fire of the fleet.

"Hold it!" he shouted as the moment of paralysis broke and several of the officers started toward him menacingly. "One move and I'll blast the whole fleet into scrap!"

They stopped in shocked silence, looking to Commander Krogson for guidance.

"Almost on target, sir," called the tech on the tracking screen.

Krogson stalked menacingly toward Kurt. "Get away from those controls!" he snarled. "You aren't going to blow anything to anything. All that you can do is let off a premature blast. If you are trying to alert your base, it's no use. We can be on a return sweep before they have time to get ready for us."

Kurt shook his head calmly. "Wouldn't do you any good," he said. "Take a look at the gun ports on the other ships. I made a couple of minor changes while I was working on the control bank."

"Quit bluffing," said Krogson.

"I'm not bluffing," said Kurt quietly. "Take a look. It won't cost you anything." "On target!" called the tracking tech.

"Order the fleet to circle for another sweep," snapped Krogson over his shoulder as he stalked toward the forward observation port. There was something in Kurt's tone that had impressed him more than he liked to admit. He squinted out toward the nearest ship. Suddenly his face blanched!

"The gun ports! They're still closedl"

Kurt gave a whistle of relief. "I had my fingers crossed," he said pleasantly. "You didn't give me enough time with the wiring diagrams for me to be sure that cutting out that circuit would do the trick. Now . . . guess what the results would be if I should happen to push down on this stud."

Krogson had a momentary vision of several hundred shells ramming their sensitive noses against the thick chrome steel of the closed gun ports.

"Don't bother trying to talk," said Kurt, noticing the violent contractions of the commander's Adam's apple. "You'd better save your breath for my colonel."

"Who?" demanded Kiogson.

"My colonel," repeated Kurt. "We'd better head back and pick him up. Can you make these ships hang in one place or do they have to keep moving fast to stay up?"

The commander clamped his jaws together sullenly and said nothing.

Kurt made a tentative move toward the firing stud. "Easy!" yelled the gunnery officer in alarm. "That thing has hair-trigger action!" "Well?" said Kurt to Krogson. "We can hover," grunted the other.

"Then take up a position a little to one side of the plateau." Kurt brushed the surface of the firing stud with a casual finger. "If you make me push this, I don't want a lot of scrap iron falling down on the battalion. Somebody might get hurt."

As the fleet came to rest above the plateau, the call light on the communication panel began to flash again. "Answer it," ordered Kurt, "but watch what you say." Krogson walked over and snapped on the screen. "Communications, sir." "Well?"

"It's that message we called you about earlier. We've finally got the decoder working—sort of, that is." His voice faltered and then stopped.

"What does it say?" demanded Krogson impatiently.

"We still don't know," admitted the tech miserably. "It's being decoded all right but it's coming out in a North Vegan dialect that nobody down here can understand. I guess there's still something wrong with the selector. All that we can figure out is that the message has something to do with General Carr and the Lord Protector."

"Want me to go down and fix it?" interrupted Kurt in an innocent voice.

Krogson whirled toward him, his hamlike hands clinching and unclinching in impotent rage. "Anything wrong, sir?" asked the technician on the screen.

Kurt raised a significant eyebrow to the commander. "Of course not," growled Krogson. "Go find somebody to translate that message and don't bother me until it's done." A new face appeared on the screen.

"Excuse me for interrupting, sir, but translation won't be necessary. We just got a flash from Detection that they've spotted the ship that sent it. It's a small scout heading in on emergency drive. She should be here in a matter of minutes."

Krogson flipped off the screen impatiently. "Whatever it is, it's sure to be more trouble," he said to nobody in particular. Suddenly he became aware that the fleet was no longer in motion. "Well," he said sourly to Kurt, "we're here. What now?"

"Send a ship down to the garrison and bring Colonel Harris back up here so that you and he can work this thing out between you. Tell him that Dixon is up here and has everything under control."

Krogson turned to the executive officer. "All right," he said, "do what he says." The other saluted and started toward the door.

"Just a second," said Kurt. "If you have any idea of telling the boys outside to cut the transmission leads from fire control, I wouldn't advise it. It's a rather lengthy process and the minute a trouble light blinks on that board, up we go! Now on your way!"

XIV

Lieutenant Colonel Blick, acting commander of the 427th Light Maintenance Battalion of the Imperial Space Marines, stood at his office window and scowled down upon the whole civilized world, all twenty-six square kilometers of it. It had been a hard day. Three separate delegations of mothers had descended upon him demanding that he reopen the Tech Schools for the sake of their sanity. The recruits had been roaming the company streets in bands composed of equal numbers of small boys and large dogs creating havoc wherever they went. He tried to cheer himself up by thinking of his forthcoming triumph when he in the guise of the Inspector General would float magnificently down from the skies and once and for all put the seal of final authority upon the new order. The only trouble was that he was beginning to have a sneaking suspicion that maybe that new order wasn't all that he had planned it to be. As he thought of his own six banshees screaming through quarters, his suspicion deepened almost to certainty.

He wandered back to his desk and slumped behind it gloomily. He couldn't backwater now, his pride was at stake. He glanced at the water clock on his desk, and then rose reluctantly and started toward the door. It was time to get into battle armor and get ready for the inspection.

As he reached the door, there was a sudden slap of running sandals down the hall. A second later Major Kane burst into the office, his face white and terrified.

"Colonel," he gasped, "the I.G.'s here!"

"Nonsense," said Blick. "I'm the I.G. now!"

"Oh yeah?" whimpered Kane. "Go look out the window. He's here and he's brought the whole Imperial fleet with him!"

Blick dashed to the window and looked up. High above, so high that he could seem them only as silver specks, hung hundreds of ships.

"Headquarters does exist!" he gasped.

He stood stunned. What to do . . . what to do . . . what to do— The question swirled around in his brain until he was dizzy. He looked to Kane for advice but the other was as bewildered as he was.

"Don't stand there, man," he stormed. "Do something!"

"Yes, sir," said Kane. "What?"

Blick thought for a long silent moment. The answer was obvious but there was a short, fierce inner struggle before he could bring himself to accept it.

"Get Colonel Harris up here at once. He'll know what we should do."

A stubborn look came across Kane's face. "We're running things now," he said angrily.

Blick's face hardened and he let out a roar that shook the walls. "Listen, you pup, when you get an order you follow it. Now get!"

Forty seconds later Colonel Harris stormed into the office. "What kind of a mess have you got us into this time?" he demanded.

"Look up there, sir," said Blick, leading him to the window. Colonel Harris snapped back into command as if he'd never left

it.

"Major Kane!" he shouted.

Kane popped into the ofEce like a frightened rabbit.

"Evacuate the garrison at once! I want everyone off the plateau and into the jungle immediately. Get litters for the sick and the veterans who can't walk and take them to the hunting camps. Start the rest moving north as soon as you can."

"Really, sir," protested Kane, looking to Blick for a cue.

"You heard the colonel," barked Blick. "On your way!" Kane bolted.

Colonel Harris turned to Blick and said in a frosty voice: "I appreciate your help, colonel, but I feel perfectly competent to enforce my own orders."

"Sorry, sir," said the other meekly. "It won't happen again."

Harris smiled. "O.K., Jimmie," he said, "let's forget it. We've got work to do!"

It seemed to Kurt as if time was standing still. His nerves were screwed up to the breaking point and although he maintained an air of outward composure for the benefit of those in the control room of the flagship, it took all his will power to keep the hand that was resting over the firing stud from quivering. One slip and they'd be on him. Actually it was only a matter of minutes between the time the scout was dispatched to the garrison below and the time it returned, but to him it seemed as if hours had passed before the familiar form of his commanding officer strode briskly into the control room.

Colonel Harris came to a halt just inside the door and swept the room with a keen penetrating gaze. "What's up, son?" he asked Kurt.

"I'm not quite sure. All that I know is that they're here to blast the garrison. As long as I've got control of this," he indicated the

120 • space service

operate. You are hardly one to miss noticing that we have been throwing a little influence behind you occasionally."

The spaceman's gaze wavered momentarily. He had wondered a few times how he had managed to expand so rapidly. Hauling refined metals from the mines on Delthig II was standard, but out-system freighting from the fourth planet competed with some powerful interstellar companies.

Of course, the B. S. T. had power too, reflecting that which Terra had acquired by being at a spatial crossroads between the interior of the galaxy and the stars near the Edge. Ramsay usually thought of Fuller as lurking beside that crossroads, the biggest highwayman of all the Bureau.

"Now, then," continued the blond agent, "what can you tell me about Delthig III and its natives? I want to check our files."

"Well," said Ramsay, "the average Delthigan is half a foot taller than I am, wasp-waisted, with roundish, heavy shoulders. Arms and legs skinny but knotty, four each and three sections where we have two. Three mutually opposing digits for hands."

"Yes, I have the right file," agreed Fuller, checking.

"He'd have a sort of warty skin, gray with greenish tints. Three eyes, air vents like gills across the front of his face over a big shark mouth. Flappy ears set low on the side of his head, far back."

"What I'm interested in," said Fuller, "is political and economic information."

"Frankly," said Ramsay, "they won't have much to do with us. They're totalitarians, you know, and they make a point of resenting our having two planets in the system. Guess they have their troubles keeping every John Doe at least half-fed and spinning the grindstone with all four floppy hands."

"Overpopulated?"

"Badly. Local guess is five or six billion." "Other planets?"

"Nothing of use to them except ours, the fourth. Delthig II has good mines, but it's dead rock like the first. V and VI are little ice-balls circling way out back somewhere."

"So that they might be attracted to our colony?"

Ramsay hesitated, but decided that Fuller was quite capable of knowing a rumor from a trend.

"Talk is," he said, "that not only are they planning to throw us out, but they also are talking about spreading out-system."

"How much fact is in it?" asked Fuller, watching intently.

"I'm ready to sell out and leave," the spaceman told him simply. "Never saw a fat Delthigan yet; they're all run ragged keeping their glorious Planetary State in what they call 'readiness for activity.' "

"The old, old story," agreed Fuller. "Well, Tom, that does interest me. Their neighbors in space, Bormek, Ronuil, and other stars, are all good customers of Terra. The Bureau will have to do something. Letting Delthig import a few of the necessities of life might save a lot of trouble later."

Ramsay judiciously kept his mouth shut. Fuller's alert blue eyes studied him.

"In fact," said the B. S. T. man, "we are arranging a trade conference. Since you are practically on the spot, I knew you wouldn't mind hopping over to Delthig III to represent us—would you?"

"Oh ... no ... of course not," muttered Ramsay, unable to think of an excuse that would be good enough to fool Fuller.

That seemed to settle it. He tried various afterthoughts, stressing the fact the Delthigans had few manufactures except space cruisers and primitive projectile weapons, and that they considered themselves short of raw materials. Their money was a joke and their credit nonexistent, he pointed out, so that a del could hardly be spent at whatever discount anywhere but on Delthig III.

"They don't know what they're up against in the galaxy," he said, "but they have five billion down-trodden 'citizens' to expend in finding out. Not even the B. S. T. is going to buy them off!"

"No?" said Fuller. "Well, try it anyway. You never can tell what's for sale."

Leaving Ramsay groping for further objections, he smiled genially and cut off.

Six days later, that smile returned to haunt Ramsay, as he viewed it again on a film recording of further instructions Fuller had sent to the brand-new spaceport on Chika, the large inner room of Del-thig Ill's trio.

The spaceman had boarded one of his own ships a few hours after his talk with Fuller, bag, baggage, and secretary, leaving word for his general manager to divert all his other ships to Delthig III. In space, a message had reached him, warning that while the Del-thigans had agreed to an unofficial discussion, they had forbidden any Terran visit to the surface of their planet. Hence the hastily erected plastic domes beside a flat plain on Chika, where Ramsay landed and found the spare, white-haired man formerly of the B. S. T. information service on IV.

"Hane is the name, Mr. Ramsay. Heard you were to be in charge here. Your office and our quarters are in this pre-fab building, and this bubble over it is the main dome."

"What could you get in the secondary ones?" grunted Ramsay.

"Not much except barracks and space for storage. We had quite a time getting Terran workers over here from II in time to get this much laid out. The Delthigan representative is expected shortly."

Ramsay introduced Marie Furman, who was togged out in plaid slacks and jacket as if a trip to Chika were a sporting event. He glanced through the transparent plastic wall at the other domes. Beyond them were low hills, tinted green by traces of scanty vegetation.

"There is some air out there," Hane remarked, "but not enough for anything but mosses and a few other growths. By the way, we recorded a message for you from Mr. Fuller."

The instructions, Ramsay saw when he projected the film in the office set aside for him, consisted mainly of advice and a list of exotic exports Fuller was prepared to send to Delthig. Some, Hane had reported, had already arrived and been stored under the domes.

"So find out," Fuller's image advised near the end of the film, "what the Delthigans need and what they can give in return. Be liberal; the Bureau wants to establish cordial relations."

This won't work, you know," Ramsay muttered gloomily to himself as the film talked on. "You can't buy off that bunch. They'll take, but they won't pay. When they think they're strong enough to make trouble, out they'll come, like a swarm of bees!"

Fuller was reviewing some of his "bargains."

". . . And that new energy projector developed on Bormek V might have a military use that would make them happy. And don't forget the patents for the plastic pre-fab house, and the automatic kitchen, or the couple of hundred tons of bright dyes from Fegash —that last ought to get them if their culture is as dull and routine as you say."

Ramsay silently agreed as the picture of Fuller peered more closely at his list.

"Oh, yes," said the B. S. T. man, "I would personally be very happy to unload those twenty million cheap, one-channel telescreens from Vozaal VII that I had to take for . . . diplomatic reasons. They're a big bulge on my account, and—"

"Huh!" snorted Ramsay, turning off the projector with a disgusted flip of his finger. "Marie!"

His secretary appeared in the doorway to her small office.

"As soon as those techs get through to Fuller, remind me to tell him his pet gyp scheme is no good. The Delthigans have no television yet. Hane did say, didn't he, that we have a subspace set that will reach Bormek?"

"Yes, Mr. Ramsay. They promised to—"

A flare of light seeped in through the window of the one-story building. Ramsay rose, but found that the window was not designed to be opened. As he was craning his neck in a vain attempt to see the landing field, Hane entered.

"That will be the ship from Delthig," he said, rubbing his bristling chin. "Wish I'd got rid of this stubble, but we'd better see to them immediately, Mr. Ramsay. Officials of that government down there are apt to be impatient."

Ramsay nodded sourly, reminding himself that he was representing someone else and therefore expected to be prudent about taking personal offense. He followed Hane to a chamber at the other end of the building in which the air pressure and moisture content was a compromise between that of Delthig and conditions favored by Terrans. He found it too dry for comfort.

Presently, three Delthigans were ushered in, and escorted by Hane to places at the high table. They did not use chairs, so Ramsay perforce stood facing them.

Not very fair, he thought, seeing that they have four feet each against my two. Otherwise, though, they're a seedy-looking bunch/

The Delthigans were dressed in tunics of dull-colored, sleazy material, belted at their narrow waists with bands of something resembling straw. Their three-toed feet were wrapped in cloth puttees, but on the middle sections of their arms all wore several bands of metal enameled in bright colors. The spaceman guessed these to be insignia of rank.

During Hane's introductions, Marie slipped in with her notebook. Ramsay stared unhappily at the Delthigans, each of whom examined him suspiciously, first with one eye, then another, then yet another, turning his small, roundish head from side to side in the process. Ramsay noticed that his guests had vestigial crests of thickened skin atop their grayish skulls.

He breathed a sigh of relief when it developed that one of them, Puag Tukhi by name, spoke fair Terran, though with a hissing, clicking accent.

Marie brought Ramsay a list transcribed from Fuller's filmed message. He mentioned one or two items, but Puag Tukhi was bluntly direct.

"We see first new powder-maker from Bormek," he stated forth-rightly, fluttering two or three hands at the list.

"I... uh, described it, so to speak," murmured old Hane.

"Arrange a demonstration?" muttered Ramsay behind his hand.

"Oh, Mr. Fuller gave instructions for that. We have an old emergency rocket wire as a drone target. The Bormekian ship mounting the thing has been cruising an orbit around Chika. I . . . ah, alerted them."

"Just what does it do?" asked Ramsay.

"You'll see. We can watch on the telescreen over there."

Ramsay passed the invitation on, and they gathered around the instrument in the corner of the room. He noticed that the gray-green skin of the Delthigan beside him showed traces of quite hu-manoid perspiration, although he himself found the air dry enough to foreshadow a sore throat if he had to talk a great deal. Then Hane had a message sent out to the cruising ship, and Ramsay forgot personal discomfort for a time.

He supposed later that the Delthigans must have been fascinated, though they managed to repress any undue show of interest. As Hane explained it, the field projected by the new weapon drastically affected the affinity for each other of the molecules of any substance within its range. Its range, he read from notes in a small memo book, had not yet been successfully measured. It did not by any means cause actual disintegration, but any supplementary disturbance—a projectile or even a sudden acceleration—might produce disorganization.

They were treated to a clearly focused view of the target rocket as it entered the field, just as Hane finished remarking that the latter was ineffective if used too close to a sun.

"Watch, now!" he added. "They are going to attempt hitting it with a bullet from a modified rifle."

This, in space, required some doing. Eventually, however, as the Delthigans began to shuffle their many feet like a barnful of restless horses, the nose of the rocket seemed to spread out into a cloud of smoke.

"They promised, if that worked," said Hane, "that they would signal the radio controls to change course."

Sure enough, the stern jets of the little rocket flared briefly a moment later. Briefly, because the entire hull of faintly gleaming metal expanded into amorphous swirls of dust, some drifting off in what was to have been the new course but most continuing along the old curve.

"And what if it nothing disturpt while field on it?" asked Puag Tukhi.

"Probably be all right," guessed Ramsay. "Maybe a few air leaks." Hane switched off the telescreen and they regrouped at the conference table. Ramsay attempted to turn the talk to his list of possible imports—the thought of such a weapon in the hands of beings known to be contemplating military adventure gave him a chill.

Puag Tukhi, however, insistently brought the discussion back at every opportunity to one point: he was willing to "consider accepting" a number of the Bormekian "powder-makers" if suitable terms could be arranged. Suitable terms, he seemed to think, included Delthigan currency.

As time went on, he gradually modified these offers until they further included supplying Delthigan labor for the Terran mines on the second planet and the purchase of other items. Ramsay's throat got drier and drier while he strove to avoid concluding the agreement.

"You not want gif us only what you wantl" exclaimed the Delthigan finally, working his toothy shark-mouth unpleasantly.

"Not at alll" denied the Terran. "I merely wish you to appreciate all the possibilities."

"Appressshiate? Not know wordt."

"I want you to see all the best things. Look—suppose we have a little pause here, so each side can talk things over! We'll regulate the air in another room for you to be more comfortable in, and take it up again in half an hour or so."

After only two repetitions, the Delthigan got the drift and agreed reluctantly to a recess. The Terrans retreated to Ramsay's office, Marie pausing at her own desk.

His first action was to demand that the station operators get him a face-to-face call to J. Gilbert Fuller, on Bormek V.

"I don't like it a bit!" he said to the old man while they waited for the call to go through. "Let them have enough of those gadgets, and we'll find ourselves in the mines of Delthig II one fine day, and these squids out to conquer the stars."

"Dear, dear!" muttered Hane. "I do imagine they have something of the sort in mind. Still, Mr. Fuller ought to know what he means to do."

"That's the one thing that keeps me here at all," admitted the spaceman. "He's sharp, I know. And yet. . . he's never been in this system. Looking over the data on Bormek V is one thing; but it's another to see that self-perpetuating clique down there sweat-shopping their whole planet into an armed camp."

Marie Furman entered from her office, carrying a drinking glass and a small bottle.

"You'd better gargle with this, Mr. Ramsay," she said sympathetically.

He accepted gratefully and moved toward the small lavatory adjoining the office. As soon as he had his mouth full, his brunette secretary informed him that the operators had reached the Bormek station, only to learn that J. Gilbert Fuller had gone off on business of his own with no word except that he would be back presently.

Ramsay choked, as was doubtless intended, he realized. By the time he was physically capable of voicing the expressions that rose to his lips, he had regained a measure of censoring self-control.

"That's fine!" he groaned. "What'll I tell these squids?"

"Well.. . this is just a personal opinion, mind," said Hane, "but perhaps it would be best to strike a bargain with them."

"But those projectors!" objected the spaceman.

"Projector," Hane corrected. "Only one has arrived, so far."

"You could promise more, then sort of forget about them," suggested the girl.

"Too dishonest," Ramsay vetoed. "Not only that, but I don't want to be here when they yell 'foul.' Those octopuses are too touchy now. Imagine if they thought they'd been swindled!"

"True," agreed Hane. "I can't think of any excuse to turn them down."

Ramsay paced the office several laps without locating any inspiration.

"All right," he sighed finally. "I'll go back in there and try to palm off on them Fuller's precious telescreens and every other equivalent of glass beads he's sending. Maybe they'll draw the line at some of the junk. Then I can get insulted and back out!"

It seemed to Ramsay that the ensuing session with Puag Tukhi lasted one or two normal lifetimes. Long before the close, Marie had frankly curled up in a chair by the wall and gone to sleep. Hane retired to a seat by the telescreen in the corner an hour later, where he maintained a precarious position by jerking upright from time to time when his chin touched his chest. Even one of the Delthigans, despite censorious glares from his chief, rested his round head on the table and kept only one heavy-lidded eye open.

When at last Ramsay stumbled into his sleeping quarters, having seen the native officials off to their ship and called a pair of communications operators on night watch to carry Hane and Marie out, he was too exhausted to bother checking either the time or the contract.

It seemed only a few minutes before the persistent chime of the intercom visor beside his bed bullied him into wakefulness. He answered groggily, to discover that it was another day and someone wanted to know what to do with three shiploads of Vozaalian telescreens and one of scarlet dye from Fegash.

"Any of my interplanetary ships here?" he croaked.

"Five, Mr. Ramsay, including the Sprite that you came in."

"Load them all for Delthig III, and when they come back up, have them stand by in case the Delthigans bring cargo for IV. And keep a good record; I'm going to bill the B. S. T. for every bit of this!"

He cut off, then called the building guard with orders to wake Marie and Hane.

"If Ramsay can't sleep," he muttered, weaving toward his shower, "nobody sleeps! Ugh, my throat! I better gargle again."

At length, dressed in shirt and slacks, the latter tucked into high spaceman's boots, he went to his office. Hane and Marie, the latter still in slacks, appeared presently. The girl proved herself the efficient secretary when the breakfast she had ordered arrived a few minutes later.

"The first thing I want to check," said Ramsay, brushing toast crumbs from the handwritten agreement he had copied down the night before, "is where we wound up. I seem to remember something about scrap metal for the Delthig IV plants."

"Paug Tukhi offered to exchange old weapons for the Bormekian projectors," Hane recalled, "along with other scrap. That was just before his little speech about how such avaricious bargaining as yours would never be tolerated in his society."

"I was hoping he'd get mad and leave," said Ramsay.

It appeared that the Delthigans had even accepted Fuller's useless telescreens. They were to distribute all twenty million—if they could—and act as brokers for the Terrans.

Guess they didn't like that, Ramsay reflected, but it was better than having inieiioi aliens on their sacred planet/

The Delthigans had also contracted for the building of several hundred spaceships which, as Hane put it, might be delivered to them. In partial return for these, the thousands of Bormekian weapons ordered, and certain other items, they were to supply scrap metal and drafts of workers for Terran projects on II, IV, and Chika.

"I'm not sure I like that," said Ramsay. "They'll repossess both if they ever clip us; and I don't see how we'll get the cash balance out of them."

A few luxury articles such as dyestuffs and automatic household gadgets had been ordered. Ramsay shrewdly estimated that the amount of these would perhaps be sufficient to supply the upper crust of the Delthigan regime—certainly no more.

But the main thing was the projectors.

"They didn't really fight against the other junk," Ramsay commented. "That worries me. What in the world would they do with those telescreens? They just took them to get the weapons."

"If I know them at all," retorted Hane, "they will distribute the sets as evidence to their people of progress toward the better life most of them despair of ever seeing."

"And simply promise telecasts in the future," Marie put in. "They won't be responsible if it's the very far future."

"Exactly," agreed the old man, smiling at her. "And, if you'll pardoning my mentioning it, Ramsay, that is how they will pay us for the sets—in the far, far future."

Ramsay nodded.

"Well," he sighed, "I'd better send off a message to be filmed for Fuller if he still isn't back, and tell him about the agreement and their lack of telecasting. He might enter that on the books as an 'out' against the day they default. I hate to say so, but he's going to need some excuse this time."

Within a few days—reckoned by Terran standards because the satellite rotated once in its three-week journey around its planet— he began to suspect that his customers were leaning over backward to stay in the right. Ship after ship, Terran and Delthigan, arrived to discharge scrap metal and shuttle other goods down to Delthig III as fast as the big interstellar ships could be unloaded. One Delthigan official delivered a statement showing a staggering balance in dels banked under Ramsay's name, it being illegal for such a sum to be taken beyond the Planetary State's control.

"Things go so fast around here," Ramsay said to Hane, "that I wonder if they're just breaking up the telescreens and shooting them back as scrap."

"That was a fair theory," admitted the older man, "up to yesterday when those boys unloading found live shells to fit one of the junked cannon. Did you see where they were taking potshots at the hill out there?"

Ramsay snorted.

"The squids don't seem to care what they send. Have we got barracks up for the Delthigan labor gangs that arrived?"

"Yes," Hane chuckled. "I faced them with the alternative of sleeping out, so to speak, and they fell to with a will."

"Let's keep them here," suggested the spaceman.

He eyed the fast-growing settlement in his charge. It required a lot of labor to keep the spaceport unclogged.

"They were supposed to go to the mines on II," Hane reminded him, "as soon as they built barracks for more transients."

"I'd just as soon avoid that as long as we can. I can picture a horde of so-called 'laborers' running amuck when a Delthigan fleet approaches that planet. But here, they'd be some use."

"They'll work hard," Hane agreed. "They look well broken-in for that."

Slaves, thought Ramsay. That's what they amount to. Wish I had nothing to do with handling them.'

He could see the mottled, brownish face of Delthig III above the low hills of the moon. He wondered if a telescope would show the fires and lights of hard-driven factories on the night side. He caught himself imagining that malevolent, brooding eyes watched him from those shadows.

What's it like to live there? he wondered.

He tried to picture the hopeless drudgery of building a Planetary State on inadequate rations under the monotonous bludgeoning of propaganda designed to dull the senses to the lack of food, or clothing, or freedom, or pleasure, or the slightest respite from the slavery.

No wonder they woik so hard on the new domes, he thought. They must be happy to he even this far away from the surface.

"Have them put up more shelters," he said to Hane, "and quarter incoming gangs in them to take over the stevedoring. I can't ask our own men to go on short-handed any longer."

That noon, he tried to catch a nap in his room, but found himself too restless. Putting on a spacesuit, he made a tour of inspection out to the end of the expanding port, where a Delthigan ship was unloading more scrap.

"I wish I knew why they keep sending the stuff," he said to Marie in the office upon his return.

"I guess they call the guns obsolete now. Isn't that what they do when somebody builds a bigger one?"

"Bigger what?"

"Bigger anything. That horrid thing from Bormek made their guns obsolete."

"Yeah," he said, sitting down slowly, "but they usually don't throw away the old till they have twice as many of the new. And Fuller hasn't—thank goodness!—sent us any more of what Puag Tukhi calls 'powder-makers.'"

"Well, be that as it may," said his secretary, "I found out for you about the ship that parked here last night. You'll never guess!"

Ramsay ran the fingers of his left hand through his close-clipped black hair and looked up at her with an expression of forced patience.

"Oh, all right, then!" exclaimed Marie, tossing her head slightly. "I'll tell you before you start demanding again why somebody doesn't at least try to help you keep track of what goes on around here."

"Please do!" said Ramsay succinctly.

"It's a television station!"

He drummed his fingers on the desk.

"Very funny. Do I have to go find out for myself?"

"You could; I told them it would be all right to have some Delthigans extend a plastic tube out to the ship. And it's just what I said!"

"A television station?"

"Well, a ship sent direct from Bormek by Mr. Fuller that's outfitted to telecast programs. The man in charge, Mr. Neuberg, explained how they can send almost as far as your spaceport communicator, but entertainment, too."

Ramsay dropped both hands to the desk and slumped back in his chair. He shook his head slowly, resignedly.

"That's what I get," he murmured, "for telling him about unloading his telescreens when I griped about the projectors."

"I think it was awfully clever of Mr. Fuller to manage it so soon," said his secretary. "They've already made a local film to telecast to Delthig III. I'm in it!"

"When they don't get those projectors, they'll come up here and blow my head off," said Ramsay gloomily. "And he sends me a telecasting station! All wrapped up in a spaceship so it can skip out fast when the shooting starts!"

"They took pictures of me setting up an automatic stove and putting something in it to cook," said Marie. "Mr. Neuberg wanted to show things actually being sent to the Delthigans."

"I'd like to see it sometime," said Ramsay, when she waited expectantly for comment.

Marie brightened. She ran out to her desk and returned in a moment with a small telescreen.

"Where did you get that cracker box?" demanded Ramsay.

Marie smiled reminiscently and pushed back her dark hair after turning the set on.

"That's what we're sending to Delthig. One of the boys snitched one for me out of the last cargo."

"You leave 'the boys' alone!" ordered Ramsay severely.

"I couldn't have the boss stealing telescreens, could 1? What would Mr. Hane say? Oh, look! There I am now. Mr. Neuberg said he's going to repeat it with his other films until every Delthigan has seen it."

"That means almost fifteen million already," said Ramsay, glancing at a crude chart of the spaceport's traffic.

"Mr. Neuberg says more than that. This thing only receives on one channel, but it will still be a great novelty on Delthig III. He says there ought to be up to two hundred watchers to each set, maybe more."

Ramsay decided not to bother estimating mentally the percentage of the Delthigan population being titillated by Marie's conquest of an apple pie. He noticed that she wasted a lot of material, and hoped Neuberg's food locker held more apples.

"Mr. Neuberg said," she defended herself, "that I should set the machine to remove thick cores. It made a better picture, and he could demonstrate the garbage disposal attachment."

"I don't suppose you brought a piece of the pie back with you?" asked Ramsay hopefully. "Oh . . . they ate it all, huh?"

He watched the program give place to another film, a description of Terran home life. The film family's chief problem in life seemed to be whether to travel to Mars or Venus for Papa's vacation.

Here I sit half-starved on rations brought from the mining domes, thought Ramsay, and she doesn't even bring me a slice of the pie/

The door to his office was thrown open. Old Hane hustled in at an unprecedented pace. His scanty white hair was disheveled.

"Puag Tukhi is coming in for a landing!"

"What's the matter?" asked the spaceman.

"He didn't say, but he sounded disturbed over the radio. Do you think it might be, in a nutshell—the projectors?"

"Very likely," said Ramsay, groping for a good excuse.

They went outside the building to watch through the plastic side of the dome as the Delthigan ship landed. A pressurized truck trundled out to pick up the official, and trundled back to the dome with maddening deliberation. It halted to discharge its passenger at the entrance to the inner building.

Puag Tukhi restrained himself with obvious difficulty until they had gone inside. In Ramsay's office, rapid denunciation in hissing Delthigan began.

The others looked at each other helplessly.

Puag Tukhi stuttered into Terran.

"I stronger orderss haf to make protests!" he declaimed.

"What's wrong?" asked Ramsay innocently.

"Wronk! Will show what iss wronk!"

He bounded across the office on his four stringy-muscled legs to the telescreen. He switched it on.

"Thiss you gif us. But not ssay to haf picturess on! What trouble you make!"

The current program, Ramsay saw, was another in home economics starring his brunette secretary. This time, it featured an automatic vacuum cleaner that all but thought for itself.

"What's wrong with that?" he asked.

Puag Tukhi pulled himself together and wiped perspiration from around his chinless mouth. His three eyes glared and the greenish tone of his gray skin became more pronounced.

"Iss not to matter why iss wronk with it! I haf now my superiorss enough trouble to worry apout. Musst also explain to you? Instru-mentss were dissplay, not for use!"

Ramsay relaxed slightly. This was something he thought he could handle. It might even be useful in keeping the Delthigans' minds off other matters, such as nondelivery of Bormekian projectors, or holding laborers on Chika.

I'll push this as far as it will go, he decided. Now, how would Fuller do it?

"I do not recall any part of our agreement dealing with telecasting," he said smoothly.

Puag Tukhi stared straight at him, then turned his round head from side to side to examine the Terran through his other eyes. He opened his mouth twice, displaying numerous pointed teeth, before he succeeded in voicing an answer.

"That iss what I ssay.'" he complained. "Therefore, you musst not do thiss! Makes for me trouble. Serious trouble!"

"You admit you did accept our telescreens," asked Ramsay.

"Yess."

"And, as our agents, distributed them among your people?"

"Yess, yessl We musst, understand, gif them some sign of progress. They work . . . very hard."

"But television is communication," Ramsay pursued coolly. "That implies two parties, televiewer and telecaster. The receiver is useless without a telecast to receive. Correct?"

"Yess, but-"

"Therefore, your acceptance of our telescreens implied admitting our right to telecast to theml You see?"

Puag Tukhi hesitated. He gripped two of his three-fingered hands into a tight knot and ran a third raspingly over the thickened hide of his vestigial crest.

"Of course, if you like," said Ramsay jauntily, "we can stop the whole business. Keep the telescreens and I'll cancel the other shipments!"

That'll fix him/ he thought. He noticed Marie looking at him admiringly, and wished he had a mustache like Fuller's to stroke.

Then Puag Tukhi said something that shocked him out of his smugness.

"But why you do thiss to me? I haf made all things as agreet. For telescreens, millionss of dels paid. For fancy thingss to official class, I haf sent to Chika herdss of wronk-thinkink prisonerss to work—you not need count what you send backl And for Bormek powder-makerss, haf sent loadss of scrap gunss. You . . . you . . . they will put me in the mines/ Maybe with no teeth and one eye left! Why you make for me such trouble?"

Ramsay wondered if he sagged visibly.

They're getting them/ he thought, licking suddenly dry lips.

"I... uh ... I don't want to make ... trouble for you—"

He groped his way around a corner of his desk and sat down.

That Fuller/ He's been sending them the things direct from Bormek. It can't be anything else. That's why they're shipping discarded guns for scrap; otherwise they'd keep them. And ME he sends a telecaster. Does he want to get me killed?

"As I . . . uh, was saying," he stumbled on, "I'd be glad to hear of a way to take the heat off ... off you, Puag Tukhi, that is. There must be a way to ... ah, protect your interests."

Puag Tukhi sighed gustily, blowing out a little spray of moisture. Ramsay looked to Hane for help, but that gentleman gazed steadfastly out the window.

"Maybe—" Marie began in a subdued voice.

"Go on!" urged her employer.

"Well, back on Terra, they have that custom of giving equal time to both sides of a question. You know, like election speeches, and that sort of thing."

"That's it!" cried Ramsay. "You, Puag Tukhi, go back and tell your government that if they send us their own films up to Chika, we'll telecast them along with ours. Fair enough?"

The Delthigan regained some of his composure, and permitted Hane to escort him to the truck.

Ramsay immediately pounced upon the intercom. By good fortune, he learned, a line had been laid to the mobile television station. He asked for Neuberg.

"I'm Ramsay, in charge here," he introduced himself to a balding man with dark, expressive eyes set in a pudgy face.

"Ah, yes," the other beamed. "Don't worry about a thing, Mr. Ramsay. We're plastering that planet with pix twenty-four hours a day. Got films to last a month."

"Yeah ... well, I'm going to get a few more for you."

Long before he finished explaining, Neuberg began to shake his head disapprovingly. Ramsay paused when the man's jowls reached the quivering stage. Mr. Neuberg pointed out that he had a definite schedule to fill.

"But this is necessary!" shouted the spaceman.

"I sympathize with you, Mr. Ramsay, but I have strict orders from Mr. Fuller. He relies upon me to cany them out."

"But... oh, all right.' I'll get him to O.K. what I want. Will that satisfy you?"

"Entirely," answered Mr. Neuberg primly.

Ramsay flipped the switch and rubbed one hand across his face.

"That's an interstellar ship coming in," announced Hane, returning.

"Mariel" snapped Ramsay. "Come away from that window and get me a face-to-face with Fuller. Right now—before I pop off with apoplexy and cheat the Delthigans of their revenge!"

She sped out the door. Hane continued to watch out the window as Ramsay tramped about the office. He was still pacing ten minutes later, when the girl returned.

"They can't get him," she reported.

Ramsay reached her in two strides.

"What do you mean? Are communications out?"

"No, no; they got through to Bormek V for me. Mr. Fuller had stopped back and received your last message, but he went off again to arrange something else, and ... and ... the Bormekian operators can't reach him."

"Oh, fine.' Did they say he was doing anything about those projectors?"

"Yes, I asked. They said he ordered them sent directly to Delthig III to speed up delivery as much as possible."

The silence in the office became so marked that they could hear the working of the air lock outside as the truck came in off the field.

"I quit!" said Ramsay.

He turned to Hane.

"What ships of mine are out there?"

"There were two; but they blasted off for IV just before Puag Tukhi came." "When are more due in?"

"A fleet of four might be here by tomorrow night." Ramsay groaned.

"Worse than I thought! I can't quit before that squid will get back with his story and maybe even have their films on the way up here. They have cinemas; they must have something ready."

"Couldn't you explain to Mr. Neuberg?" asked Marie.

He looked at her.

"You know," he said thoughtfully, "you're much too pretty a girl to be just a secretary. I ought to make you an executive assistant."

"Why, thank you, Mr. Ramsay. I—"

"And the first execution you can go to will be Neuberg's—unless you can convince him Fuller sent me permission!" "But-"

"I tried to tell him, but he has his orders," said Ramsay, urging her toward the door with a firm grip on her arm. "Now, you try it. All you have to do is make him forget to ask for a look at the filmed message."

"I could offer to act in another demonstration."

"Good, good!" he approved, marching through her small office and easing her into the corridor.

He started her off down the corridor with a little shove. A short, sturdy young man wearing a space officer's cap rakishly slanted atop curly yellow hair stepped politely out of her way in his course up the hall. He approached Ramsay.

"I'm Donovan," he said. "Chief pilot of the Silver Comet from Cagsan IX. You Ramsay?"

"That's right."

"I got fifty million ears for you."

Ramsay looked at him.

"How's that, friend?" he queried.

Donovan stared back curiously. He flipped the pages of the manifest in his hand.

"Frozen corn. On the cob. Fifty million ears tabbed as a luxury item for ... lemme see here ... 'for government officials of Delthig III.'"

Ramsay shook his head slightly, and Donovan's face swam back into focus. "Mr. Fuller, of the B.S.T., said-"

Ramsay wearily turned away, reaching back to point at the office behind him.

"Tell Mr. Hane all about it," he pleaded. "I'm . . . it's my watch off. I believe I'll go lie down a little while—"

Just before he reached his quarters, he heard running footsteps behind him. One of the communications men caught up, waving a message memo.

"An alert from Delthig III, Mr. Ramsay." "Whatl"

"That high mucky-muck that was up here talked to them from his ship, and they sent a message saying they're shooting some movies up here by mail rocket."

"Oh," said Ramsay. "That will come under Mr. Neuberg's department. Take them to his ship when they land and let him figure out what to do with them. Er ... just a minute!"

"Yes, Mr. Ramsay?"

"You techs... ah, generally have something stowed away for every emergency. Happen to have anything to ... discourage a headache, if you see what I mean?"

The operator grinned and winked.

"I'll look around. Might be something in the files."

The next morning, awakened again by the chiming of the intercom beside his bed, Ramsay found that he had a real headache. The motion of sitting up in bed caused him to clutch frantically at his temples.

The bing-bing-bing persisted. When he reached for the visor, he managed to knock a large but empty bottle to the floor. He fumbled at the set until he had the video cut off, then answered the call.

"Ramsay?" demanded Hane's voice. "Are you there?"

"Mostly. What's up now?"

"We can't quite tell," said Hane, "but I think you had better get over to the office."

Ramsay switched off, wondering if he could get to the shower without dropping his head.

When he reached his office, he found Hane and Marie waiting, with a pair of television operators loitering in the background. Hane waited for Ramsay to ease himself tenderly into his chair, then gestured for the pair to tell their story.

Ramsay listened with growing dismay to the account of an audio message just received from Delthig III.

"And it sounded like Puag Tukhi, you say? But you're not sure?"

"No video, Mr. Ramsay," the operator shrugged. "Besides, like I say, he sort of got off the track after saying something about you making trouble."

"That," explained Hane, "was where he lapsed into his own vernacular, so to speak. I listened to the transcription, and one would have to be well versed in Delthigan to understand it."

"Why?" asked Ramsay. "Was he that excited?"

"I think he was cursing youl"

"What?"

"It was too fast for me to catch, and some of the words seemed very strange; but I judged mainly by his tone of voice."

Ramsay absorbed this with a poker face, and dismissed the operators to monitor the Delthigan communication band. When they left, he rested his head in his hands a moment before asking, "Either of you got any idea what we've done this time?"

"Everything seemed fine," said Marie blankly.

"We received another shipment of laborers," said Hane thoughtfully. "Whatever happened must have done so since they left the planet. Then, too, the Delthigan films for Neuberg came in by radio-controlled rocket."

"That was last night," Marie told Ramsay. "You . . . er, had that 'Don't Disturb' sign on your door, so we just took them over to Mr. Neuberg."

"What were they about?" asked Ramsay absent-mindedly.

"I don't know. He said he'd start using them right away—after I talked to him again, for a little while."

"There might be one on now," suggested Hane.

The girl walked over to where the cheap, one-channel set rested on a file cabinet. She turned it on, and in a few seconds Ramsay began to see what was happening.

By luck, they caught the end of a Delthigan propaganda film which Neuberg's technicians had evidently managed to project and relay. The language was too fast for Hane, the only one of them who knew any Delthigan, but the general import of the speeches was clear,

Those shots of factories/ thought Ramsay. No real workers ever looked that happy and dedicated to their jobs. And the farm scenes between ones of the old squid with the star-maps—looking at the stuff growing isn't filling any Delthigan bellies, but the whole thing is obviously a shot in the aim to try to convince them they're well off.

"I liked Mr. Neuberg's pictures better," Marie announced. "He actually had some made of all the things we're sending down there-telescreens, the gold and silver braid for the generals, and even a piece of cloth being colored bright red with some of that dye from Fegash."

Ramsay thought of the dingy gray loincloths of the laborers sent by Puag Tukhi. Even that official, he recalled, had worn a tunic of dull and sleazy goods.

What a deadJy parallel/ he thought.

"And did he show any projectors?"

"No," Marie told him, "there weren't any pictures of those, but he did film a good one of the old scrap dumps out behind the domes. He wants the Delthigans to know they're paying for all their imports."

"Paying, all right," murmured Ramsay, "but who down there is doing the receiving?"

"I saw some of them," remarked Hane. "Ones about household gadgets and food. He even had our charming executive assistant nibble on a couple of ears of corn."

"I don't suppose," commented Ramsay deliberately, "that anyone explained in the film that the cobs aren't edible?"

They looked at him blankly. He tried to imagine how it would feel to be a starved, overworked Delthigan, in a steel mill, say, and to witness a blithe being from some fabulous world of plenty toss aside food that had apparently barely been sampled. He decided that it would drive him frantic.

Hane ran a hand distractedly through his sparse white hair, comprehension lighting his old eyes.

"No wonder they are . . . displeased," he muttered.

"Displeased!" snorted Ramsay.

That Fuller and his outfit/ he thought. "Bureau of Slick Tricks" they call it, huh? Well, he's not as slick as I thought, but he sure got me in a hole/

He switched on his desk visor and demanded Neuberg. After a slight delay, the pudgy, cheerful face appeared.

"Look herel" Ramsay said sternly. "I want you to cut it out!" "I beg your pardon!"

"That mixing up Delthigan 'educational films' with corn on the cob! It makes their government look like chumps. Don't you realize that's bad for business?"

"Mr. Ramsay, am I to blame if they are a pack of chumps? I have my orders from Mr. Fuller, and—"

Something in Ramsay finally snapped. Half rising behind the desk, he thrust his flushed face close to the scanner.

"Cut it out, I tell you.'" he bellowed. "Or do you want me to come over there with a wrench and fix that chatterbox toy of yours so's it won't cast a picture past its own shadow?"

Neuberg's dark eyes widened. Without a word, he faded from the screen.

"Hane!" snapped the spaceman. "Get hold of the foreman of that Delthigan labor gang! Have them start searching through the scrap for live shells and pull out a couple of old guns to matchl"

"What are you going to do?" gasped Marie.

"If I were a general from that Planetary State down there," said Ramsay, "I'd be on my way up here now to censor those telecasts. But being the cat's-paw I am, I'm at least going to have the satisfaction of popping somebody before this place gets wiped off the face of Chika!"

Before Hane could reach the door, a siren somewhere in the dome wailed out in sudden urgency. The three in the office froze.

"That's an air leak!" exclaimed Ramsay. "Where's the spacesuit locker?"

He started for the door, but relaxed as the siren cut off. The visor on his desk emitted a series of bings. "Yeah?" he barked, flipping the switch.

"Everything under control, Mr. Ramsay," reported the communications operator who had found him the bottle "in the files" the previous night. "That telecasting ship took off without seeing that the connecting tube was sealed. Murphy's got it air-tight again."

Ramsay muttered something or other in reply and sprang to the window. He could not see the former position of Neuberg's ship, but the expressions of several men outside looking at where it had been confirmed the report.

"Turn that gadget back onl" he told Marie.

The telecast was still going. It flickered and faded as they watched, but steadied again. Neuberg was carrying out his orders—where Ramsay could not interfere.

"Uh ... I shall see about that ammunition," said Hane after a moment during which the air in the office seemed to vibrate silently.

He went out, looking grateful for the opportunity to escape Ramsay's presence.

The latter realized that he had been scowling across the room for some time when Marie spoke.

"Can I do something?" she asked timidly.

"Huh? Well, yeah. Go ride herd on those operators until they get a radio call through to the planet. If we can get hold of someone in authority, it might still be smoothed over."

Alone, he paced up and down the office for a while. When that failed to help, he sat at his desk with his head cradled carefully between both hands. He realized with surprise that his headache had disappeared.

The advantage of a good fright, he reflected. I only wish 1 could see Fuller here too/

He punched viciously at the intercom switch. Marie answered from the communications room. "Any luck?" he demanded. "Not yet."

"Then have them see if they can reach Fuller on Bormek V!"

Time passed. A report came back from Bormek to the effect that Mr. Fuller was expected there very soon.

Delthig III radio stations maintained an ominous silence.

Ramsay took presently to making short excursions around the outside of the building, peering through the plastic dome at the space-suited figures of Hane and some Delthigans out at the heaps of scrap metal, or up into the dark sky.

Finally, Hane returned to report that two cannon had been loaded and put in charge of Terrans from among the spaceport personnel.

"The Delthigans seemed only too willing to help me," he told Ramsay. "One wonders if they are not somewhat resentful toward their present masters."

"One wonders what's wrong with them if they're notl" retorted the spaceman.

Bing-bing-bing-bing/

He switched his televisor on, and saw Marie's pale face.

"The techs say they've picked up a ship approaching in a landing orbit," she reported breathlessly.

"How many?" asked Ramsay, beckoning to Hane.

"Only one, but it's acting funny, not sticking to a smooth curve, they say."

"Evasive action!" he guessed. "Hane, tell your men out there to be ready. Marie, you'd better get back here in case something happens."

He switched off and ran to the window, but nothing was to be seen. After putting through a brief call, Hane joined him.

"Maybe we can stall a few hours," said Ramsay. "When my four ships get in tonight, we can fold our domes and silently run away."

Bing-bing-bing-bing/

"Now what?" he demanded of the operator whose image he found on the screen.

"We have Mr. Fuller for you now."

"No!" exclaimed Ramsay with heavy sarcasm. "What did he stop flitting around for—to hear me make my will? Put him on!"

He agonized through several seconds of coalescing images as the various operators handling the interstellar call withdrew themselves. Then Fuller's bland face looked out at him.

"Well, well!" said the B. S. T. agent heartily. "Heard you were trying to get me. I was rounding up a few things on the next planet. Everything going all right?"

Ramsay opened his mouth, closed it, and brought both fists down on the edge of his desk.

Where should f begin? he asked himself. Shall f tell him what a mess he's made while I try to think up a good name, or shall I call him the first thing that occurs to me?

Fuller ran one hand over his golden, slightly wavy hair. Ramsay thought that he looked a little tired, as if he really had been hustling from one planet to another.

"One little detail seems to have gone wrong," the spaceman said, biting off his words carefully. "Somehow, the Delthigans seem to have taken offense."

"To what?" asked Fuller calmly.

"To me in particular and Terrans in general. There is a ship maneuvering at us now. Don't be surprised if this call is cut off suddenly. You sent a gentleman named Neuberg—"

The door was flung open. Marie ran in.

"It landed!" she shrilled. "The Delthigan ship. Some of the men took the truck out to it while the others covered it with the cannon." "Hold on!" Ramsay grunted to Fuller.

He bounded across to the window, callously flipped Hane to one side and the girl to the other, and peered out. The pressurized truck was just coming out of the air lock. As he watched, five figures alighted. The trio of four-legged ones marched briskly toward the entrance of the building. They were dressed plainly, even for Delthigans.

"Those are no ambassadors," said Ramsay. "Hatchet-men is more like it. Marie, Hane, get out of here!" "No!" protested the girl.

"Go get help!" Ramsay rephrased it, which sent her running through the outer office and into the corridor.

"I'll make sure those guns are ready," said Hane with unusual verve. "If they make trouble, they'll never take off!"

Left alone, Ramsay became aware of a plaintive demand for information emanating from his desk instrument. Fuller was close to betraying concern as he vainly attempted to see something besides the wall behind Ramsay's chair.

The spaceman seized the visor and turned it around, treating Fuller to a clear view of the doorway as the three Delthigans churned through it.

They clumped to a halt. The one in the middle, a lean individual with a jagged scar climbing up over his crest from between his right and center eyes, stepped forward.

"Ramsay, the Terran?" he demanded, in an accent as bad as that of Puag Tukhi.

If it's the last thing I do, Ramsay promised himself, I'm going to punch that middle eye right through the back of his skull/ I'm fed up with these squids/

He moved forward, clenching his fist. The Delthigan apparently misunderstood the gesture for one of assent.

"I am Yil Khoff," he said. "Ssent we are to discuss trade contract."

Ramsay heard Fuller murmur behind his back, "Find out what they want." He unclenched his fist and waited.

"We haf decited not want all thingss comink. You can ssend big shipss . . . big shiploadss grain foodss?"

"Tell him 'yes,' " advised Fuller from Bormek V.

"It can be arranged," said Ramsay warily. "What about the projectors?"

"Pro-jek-torss?"

"Powder-makers."

"Not want; will gif back. But not ssend for mines more workerss." "But you are going to pay? We have an agreement!" "Don't worry about it," said a small voice behind Ramsay. The Delthigans twitched their flappy ears and eyed the spaceman askance. Yil Khoff laboriously attempted to explain. "We not bound by promiss of former gufferment." "Former government/"

Ramsay stepped back to lean one hand on his desk. "We know . . . iss hard to tell to persson like you. Will maybe not unterstand, but we haf by force new rulerss made." "A revolution!" breathed Ramsay.

He saw two wrench-bearing operators coming through Marie's office, followed by Hane and the girl. He waved them inside.

"They had a revolution," he announced, and his face felt queer to him until he realized that he was smiling.

"Not know word," admitted Yil Khoff after a futile consultation with his companions.

"You threw out the old officials?" Ramsay prompted.

"Threw outt?"

"Deposed . . . replaced—?"

"We shot them!" said Yil Khoff firmly. "Was very mad-makink how they from you got such wunderful thingss, but we still started. For what? For big promiss! Nothing more behind!"

Ramsay glanced at the desk visor beside his elbow. Fuller blandly returned his smile.

"Mr. Hane," said Ramsay, "will you see that our friends have a comfortably dry room in which to rest until we can discuss new arrangements?"

"Gladly," beamed Hane.

"Perhaps you might even scare up some of that frozen com. I don't imagine all of it got through to Delthig III."

One of the communications men winked. He and his friend slipped out hastily. Hane led the visitors in their wake as Ramsay turned to face Fuller.

"This is all very interesting," said the B. S. T. man, "but it costs a lot of credits. You just don't get someone in a face-to-face across two light-years and then casually tell them to hold on while you settle another matter."

"Aw, the B. S. T. can afford it," retorted Ramsay. "You'll get it back in this system, if I know you!"

"We expect to," said Fuller. "I should like to make sure of it, however, by having you and Hane handle the trading—at a good commission, of course."

Ramsay, seeing his elderly assistant returning through the outer office, relayed the offer, remembering that he had profited enormously the last time he had assisted Fuller and the Bureau.

"I should say . . . ah, grab it!" replied Hane, nodding to the B. S. T. man. "Incidentally, Mr. Ramsay's other executive assistant seems to be much admired on Delthig III."

"Me?" asked Marie.

"Yil Khoff says every soul down there is talking about kitchen movies."

"There's an idea for you," Fuller told Ramsay. "Give her a share and let her handle the household gadgets."

"Thank you, Mr. Fuller," said Marie. "I thought I was going to have to marry him to get a share of his income."

"Huhl" grunted Ramsay, grinning at her. "That might be arranged yet. I'll see how much you cut into my commission."

He turned back to Fuller.

"Seriously," he said, "you had me scared there for a while. I'm just as glad they did have an uprising down there, even though I don't see how they carried it through. Now I won't have to move my spaceline to another system."

"No, you can stay as our agent till you own Delthig," chuckled Fuller. "Honestly, now, Ramsay, what did you think would happen on Delthig III when the poor, oppressed, downtrodden mass of slaves got a glimpse of life via television."

Ramsay stared.

He reached out, turned the visor to face his chair, and slowly walked around the desk to sit down. Marie and Hane came to stand behind him.

"So you had a hand in it," murmured Ramsay. "With those telescreens you were so conveniently stuck withl So nice that they only had one channel, so it didn't even matter if the Delthigans put up a station of their own!"

"The Vozaalians are inclined to be hasty in their designs for mass-produced items," said Fuller complacently.

"Wasn't it taking quite a chance, though?" asked Ramsay.

"The Delthigans were bound to make trouble sooner or later," said Fuller, looking so satisfied that Ramsay half-expected him to thrust out a tongue and lick his chops. "A Planetary State has nowhere to go but out. It seemed only prudent to supply the little push that would cause the trouble to fall on their own heads."

Ramsay sighed and shook his head admiringly.

"No wonder they were so hopping mad about those telecasts of Neuberg's. Man, but those films must have been more subversive than termites!"

"How does it feel to start a revolution?" asked old Hane.

Fuller smiled and shrugged.

solar System frontier guard: Thomas Jordan

Where there is peace or war there are

guardians standing to protect the helpless. In companies

or alone they must keep an endless and

fearless watch. So did Thomas Jordan

learn to live.

Steel Brother

BY GORDON R. DICKSON "We stand on guard."—Motto of the Frontier Force.

". . . Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow and never continueth in one stay—"

The voice of the chaplain was small and sharp in the thin air, intoning the words of the burial service above the temporary lectern set up just inside the transparent wall of the landing field dome. Through the double transparencies of the dome and the plastic cover of the burial rocket the black-clad ranks could see the body of the dead stationman, Ted Waskewicz, lying back comfortably at an angle of forty-five degrees, peaceful in death, waxily perfect from the hands of the embalmers, and immobile. The eyes were closed, the cheerful, heavy features still held their expression of thoughtless dominance, as though death had been a minor incident, easily shrugged off; and the battle star made a single blaze of color on the tunic of the black uniform.

"Amen." The response was a deep bass utterance from the assembled men, like the single note of an organ. In the front rank of the Cadets, Thomas Jordan's lips moved stiffly with the others', his voice joining mechanically in their chorus. For this was the moment of his triumph, but in spite of it, the old, old fear had come back, the old sense of loneliness and loss and terror of his own inadequacy.

He stood at stiff attention, eyes to the front, trying to lose him-150 self in the unanimity of his classmates, to shut out the voice of the chaplain and the memory it evoked of an alien raid on an undefended city and of home and parents swept away from him in a breath. He remembered the mass burial service read over the shattered ruin of the city; and the government agency that had taken him—a ten-year-old orphan—and given him care and training until this day, but could not give him what these others about him had by natural right—the courage of those who had matured in safety.

For he had been lonely and afraid since that day. Untouched by bomb or shell, he had yet been crippled deep inside of him. He had seen the enemy in his strength and run screaming from his space-suited gangs. And what could give Thomas Jordan back his soul after that?

But still he stood rigidly at attention, as a Guardsman should; for he was a soldier now, and this was part of his duty.

The chaplain's voice droned to a halt. He closed his prayerbook and stepped back from the lectem. The captain of the training ship took his place.

"In accordance with the conventions of the Frontier Force," he said, crisply, "I now commit the ashes of Station Commandant First Class, Theodore Waskewicz, to the keeping of time and space."

He pressed a button on the lectern. Beyond the dome, white fire blossomed out from the tail of the burial rocket, heating the asteroid rock to temporary incandescence. For a moment it hung there, spewing flame. Then it rose, at first slowly, then quickly, and was gone, sketching a fiery path out and away, until, at almost the limits of human sight, it vanished in a sudden, silent explosion of brilliant light.

Around Jordan, the black-clad ranks relaxed. Not by any physical movement, but with an indefinable breaking of nervous tension, they settled themselves for the more prosaic conclusion of the ceremony. The relaxation reached even to the captain, for he about-faced with a relieved snap and spoke to the ranks.

"Cadet Thomas Jordan. Front and center."

The command struck Jordan with an icy shock. As long as the buiial service had been in progress, he had had the protection of anonymity among his classmates around him. Now, the captain's voice was a knife, cutting him off, finally and irrevocably, from the one security his life had known, leaving him naked and exposed. A despairing numbness seized him. His reflexes took over, moving his body like a robot. One step forward, a right face, down to the end of the row of silent men, a left face, three steps forward. Halt. Salute.

"Cadet Thomas Jordan reporting, sir."

"Cadet Thomas Jordan, I hereby invest you with command of this Frontier Station. You will hold it until relieved. Under no conditions will you enter into communications with an enemy nor allow any creature or vessel to pass through your sector of space from Outside."

"Yes, sir."

"In consideration of the duties and responsibilities requisite on assuming command of this Station, you are promoted to the rank and title of Station Commandant Third Class."

"Thank you, sir."

From the lectern the captain lifted a cap of silver wire mesh and placed it on his head. It clipped on to the electrodes already buried in his skull, with a snap that sent sound ringing through his skull. For a second, a sheet of lightning flashed in front of his eyes and he seemed to feel the weight of the memory bank already pressing on his mind. Then lightning and pressure vanished together to show him the captain offering his hand.

"My congratulations, commandant."

"Thank you, sir."

They shook hands, the captain's grip quick, nervous and perfunctory. He took one abrupt step backward and transferred his attention to his second in command.

"LieutenantI Dismiss the formation!"

It was over. The new rank locked itself around Jordan, sealing up the fear and loneliness inside him. Without listening to the barked commands that no longer concerned him, he turned on his heel and strode over to take up his position by the sally port of the training ship. He stood formally at attention beside it, feeling the weight of his new authority like a heavy cloak on his thin shoulders. At one stroke he had become the ranking officer present. The officers— even the captain—were nominally under his authority, so long as their ship remained grounded at his Station. So rigidly he stood at attention that not even the slightest tremor of the trembling inside him escaped to quiver betrayingly in his body.

They came toward him in a loose, dark mass that resolved itself into a single file just beyond saluting distance. Singly, they went past him and up the ladder into the sally port, each saluting him as they passed. He returned the salutes stiffly, mechanically, walled off from these classmates of six years by the barrier of his new command. It was a moment when a smile or a casual handshake would have meant more than a little. But protocol had stripped him of the right to familiarity; and it was a line of black-uniformed strangers that now filed slowly past. His place was already established and theirs was yet to be. They had nothing in common any more.

The last of the men went past him up the ladder and were lost to view through the black circle of the sally port. The heavy steel plug swung slowly to, behind them. He turned and made his way to the unfamiliar but well-known field control panel in the main control room of the Station. A light glowed redly on the communications board. He thumbed a switch and spoke into a grill set in the panel.

"Station to Ship. Go ahead." Overhead the loudspeaker answered. "Ship to Station. Ready for take-off."

His fingers went swiftly over the panel. Outside, the atmosphere of the field was evacuated and the dome slid back. Tractor mechs scurried out from the pit, under remote control, clamped huge magnetic fists on the ship, swung it into launching position, then retreated.

Jordan spoke again into the grill.

"Station clear. Take-off at will."

"Thank you, Station." He recognized the captain's voice. "And good luck."

Outside, the ship lifted, at first slowly, then faster on its pillar of flame, and dwindled away into the darkness of space. Automatically, he closed the dome and pumped the air back in.

He was turning away from the control panel, bracing himself against the moment of finding himself completely isolated, when, with a sudden, curious shock, he noticed that there was another, smaller ship yet on the field.

For a moment he stared at it blankly, uncomprehendingly. Then memory returned and he realized that the ship was a small courier vessel from Intelligence, which had been hidden by the huge bulk of the training ship. Its officer would still be below, cutting a record tape of the former commandant's last memories for the file at Headquarters. The memory lifted him momentarily from the morass of his emotions to attention to duty. He turned from the panel and went below.

In the triply-armored basement of the Station, the man from Intelligence was half in and half out of the memory bank when he arrived, having cut away a portion of the steel casing around the bank so as to connect his recorder direct to the cells. The sight of the heavy mount of steel with the ragged incision in one side, squatting like a wounded monster, struck Jordan unpleasantly; but he smoothed the emotion from his face and walked firmly to the bank. His footsteps rang on the metal floor; and the man from Intelligence, hearing them, brought his head momentarily outside the bank for a quick look.

"Hil" he said, shortly, returning to his work. His voice continued from the interior of the bank with a friendly, hollow sound. "Congratulations, commandant."

"Thanks," answered Jordan, stiffly. He stood, somewhat ill at ease, uncertain of what was expected of him. When he hesitated, the voice from the bank continued.

"How does the cap feel?"

Jordan's hands went up instinctively to the mesh of silver wire on his head. It pushed back unyieldingly at his fingers, held firmly on the electrodes.

"Tight," he said.

The Intelligence man came crawling out of the bank, his recorder in one hand and thick loops of glassy tape in the other.

"They all do at first," he said, squatting down and feeding one end of the tape into a spring rewind spool. "In a couple of days you won't even be able to feel it up there."

"I suppose."

The Intelligence man looked up at him curiously.

"Nothing about it bothering you, is there?" he asked. "You look a little strained."

"Doesn't everybody when they first start out?"

"Sometimes," said the other, non-committally. "Sometimes not. Don't hear a sort of humming, do you?"

"No."

"Feel any kind of pressure inside your head?" "No."

"How about your eyes? See any spots or flashes in front of them?" "No!" snapped Jordan.

"Take it easy," said the man from Intelligence. "This is my business." "Sorry."

"That's all right. It's just that if there's anything wrong with you or the bank I want to know it." He rose from the rewind spool, which was now industriously gathering in the loose tape; and un-clipping a pressure-torch from his belt, began resealing the aperture. "It's just that occasionally new officers have been hearing too many stories about the banks in training school, and they're inclined to be jumpy."

"Stories?" said Jordan.

"Haven't you heard them?" answered the Intelligence man. "Stories of memory domination—stationmen driven insane by the memories of the men who had the Station before them. Catatonics whose minds have got lost in the past history of the bank, or cases of memory replacement where the stationman has identified himself with the memories and personality of the man who preceded him."

"Oh, those," said Jordan. "I've heard them." He paused, and then, when the other did not go on: "What about them? Are they true?"

The Intelligence man turned from the half-resealed aperture and faced him squarely, torch in hand.

"Some," he said bluntly. "There's been a few cases like that; although there didn't have to be. Nobody's trying to sugar-coat the facts. The memory bank's nothing but a storehouse connected to you through your silver cap—a gadget to enable you not only to remember everything you ever do at the station, but also everything anybody else who ever ran the Station did. But there've been a few impressionable stationmen who've let themselves get the notion that the memory bank's a sort of a coffin with living dead men crawling around inside it. When that happens, there's trouble."

He turned away from Jordan, back to his work.

"And that's what you thought was the trouble with me," said Jordan, speaking to his back.

The man from Intelligence chuckled—it was an amazingly human sound.

"In my line, fella," he said, "we check all possibilities." He finished his resealing and turned around.

"No hard feelings?" he said.

Jordan shook his head. "Of course not."

"Then I'll be getting along." He bent over and picked up the spool, which had by now neatly wound up all the tape, straightened up and headed for the ramp that led up from the basement to the landing field. Jordan fell into step beside him.

"You've nothing more to do, then?" he asked.

"Just my reports. But I can write those on the way back." They went up the ramp and out through the lock on to the field.

"They did a good job of repairing the battle damage," he went on, looking around the Station.

"I guess they did," said Jordan. The two men paced soberly to the sally port of the Intelligence ship. "Well, so long."

"So long," answered the man from Intelligence, activating the sally port mechanism. The outer lock swung open and he hopped the few feet up to the opening without waiting for the little ladder to wind itself out. "See you in six months."

He turned to Jordan and gave him a casual, offhand salute with the hand holding the wind-up spool. Jordan returned it with training school precision. The port swung closed.

He went back to the master control room and the ritual of seeing the ship off. He stood looking out for a long time after it had vanished, then turned from the panel with a sigh to find himself at last completely alone.

He looked about the Station. For the next six months this would be his home. Then, for another six months he would be free on leave while the Station was rotated out of the line in its regular order for repair, reconditioning, and improvement.

If he lived that long.

The fear, which had been driven a little distance away by his conversation with the man from Intelligence, came back. If he lived that long. He stood, bemused.

Back to his mind with the letter-perfect recall of the memory bank came the words of the other. Catatonic—cases of memory replacement. Memory domination. Had those others, too, had more than they could bear of fear and anticipation?

And with that thought came a suggestion that coiled like a snake in his mind. That would be a way out. What if they came, the alien invaders, and Thomas Jordan was no longer here to meet them? What if only the catatonic hulk of a man was left? What if they came and a man was here, but that man called himself and knew himself only as—

Waskewicz/

"No!" the cry came involuntarily from his lips; and he came to himself with his face contorted and his hands half-extended in front of him in the attitude of one who wards off a ghost. He shook his head to shake the vile suggestion from his brain; and leaned back, panting, against the control panel.

Not that. Nof ever that. He had surprised in himself a weakness that turned him sick with honor. Win or lose; live or die. But as Jordan—not as any other.

He lit a cigarette with trembling fingers. So—it was over now and he was safe. He had caught it in time. He had his warning. Unknown to him—all this time—the seeds of memory domination must have been lying waiting within him. But now he knew they were there, he knew what measures to take. The danger lay in Was-kewicz's memories. He would shut his mind off from them—would fight the Station without the benefit of their experience. The first stationmen on the line had done without the aid of a memory bank and so could he.

So.

He had settled it. He flicked on the viewing screens and stood opposite them, very straight and correct in the middle of his Station, looking out at the dots that were his forty-five doggie mechs spread out on guard over a million kilometers of space, looking at the controls that would enable him to throw their blunt, terrible, mechanical bodies into battle with the enemy, looking and waiting, waiting, for the courage that comes from having faced squarely a situation to rise within him and take possession of him, putting an end to all fears and doubtings.

And he waited so for a long time, but it did not come.

The weeks went swiftly by; and that was as it should be. He had been told what to expect, during training; and it was as it should be that these first months should be tense ones, with a part of him always stiff and waiting for the alarm bell that would mean a doggie signaling sight of an enemy. It was as it should be that he should pause, suddenly, in the midst of a meal with his fork halfway to his mouth, waiting and expecting momentarily to be summoned; that he should wake unexpectedly in the nighttime and lie rigid and tense, eyes fixed on the shadowy ceiling and listening. Later—they had said in training—after you have become used to the Station, this constant tension will relax and you will be left at ease, with only one little unobtrusive corner of your mind unnoticed but forever alert. This will come with time, they said.

So he waited for it, waited for the release of the coiled springs inside him and the time when the feel of the Station would be comfortable and friendly about him. When he had first been left alone, he had thought to himself that surely, in his case, the waiting would not be more than a matter of days; then, as the days went by and he still lived in a state of hair-trigger sensitivity, he had given himself, in his own mind, a couple ot weeks—then a month.

But now a month and more than a month had gone without relaxation coming to him; and the strain was beginning to show in nervousness of his hands and the dark circles under his eyes. He found it impossible to sit still either to read, or to listen to the music that was available in the Station library. He roamed restlessly, endlessly checking and rechecking the empty space that his doggies' viewers revealed.

For the recollection of Waskewicz as he lay in the burial rocket would not go from him. And that was not as it should be.

He could, and did, refuse to recall the memories of Waskewicz that he had never experienced; but his own personal recollections were not easy to control and slipped into his mind when he was unaware. All else that he could do to lay the ghost, he had done. He had combed the Station carefully, seeking out the little adjustments and conveniences that a lonely man will make about his home, and removed them, even when the removal meant a loss of personal comfort. He had locked his mind securely to the storehouse of the memory bank, striving to hold himself isolated from the other's memories until familiarity and association should bring him to the point where he instinctively felt that the Station was his and not the other's. And, whenever thoughts of Waskewicz entered in spite of all these precautions, he had dismissed them sternly, telling himself that his predecessor was not worth the considering.

But the other's ghost remained, intangible and invulnerable, as if locked in the very metal of the walls and floor and ceiling of the Station; and rising to haunt him with the memories of the training school tales and the ominous words of the man from Intelligence. At such times, when the ghost had seized him, he would stand paralyzed, staring in hypnotic fascination at the screens with their silent mechanical sentinels, or at the cold steel of the memory bank, crouching like some brooding monster, fear feeding on his thoughts —until, with a sudden, wrenching effort of the will, he broke free of the mesmerism and flung himself frantically- into the duties of the Station, checking and rechecking his instruments and the space they watched, doing anything and everything to drown his wild emotions in the necessity for attention to duty.

And eventually he found himself almost hoping for a raid, for the test that would prove him, would lay the ghost, one way or another, once and for all.

It came at last, as he had known it would, during one of the rare moments when he had forgotten the imminence of danger. He had awakened in his bunk, at the beginning of the arbitrary ten-hour day; and lay there drowsily, comfortably, his thoughts vague and formless, like shadows in the depths of a lazy whirlpool, turning slowly, going no place.

Then—the alarm.'

Overhead the shouting bell burst into life, jerking him from his bed. Its metal clangor poured out on the air, tumbling from the loudspeakers in every room all over the Station, strident with urgency, pregnant with disaster. It roared, it vibrated, it thundered, until the walls themselves threw it back, seeming to echo in sympathy, acquiring a voice of their own until the room rang—until the Station itself rang like one monster bell, calling him into battle.

He leaped to his feet and ran to the master control room. On the telltale high on the wall above the viewer screens, the red light of number thirty-eight doggie was flashing ominously. He threw himself onto the operator's seat before it, slapping one palm hard down on the switch to disconnect the alarm.

The Station is in contact with the enemy.

The sudden silence slapped at him, taking his breath away. He gasped and shook his head like a man who has had a glassful of cold water thrown unexpectedly in his face; then plunged his fingers at the keys on the master control board in front of his seat-Up beams. Up detector screen, established now at forty thousand kilometers distance. Switch on communications to Sector Headquarters.

The transmitter purred. Overhead, the white light flashed as it began to tick off its automatic signal. "Alert! Alert! Further data follows. Will report."

Headquarters has been notified by Station.

Activate viewing screen on doggie number thirty-eight.

He looked into the activated screen, into the vast arena of space over which the mechanical vision of that doggie mech was ranging. Far and far away at top magnification were five small dots, coming in fast on a course leading ten points below and at an angle of thirty-two degrees to the Station.

He flicked a key, releasing thirty-eight on proximity fuse control and sending it plunging toward the dots. He scanned the Station area map for the positions of his other mechs. Thirty-nine was missing—in the Station for repair. The rest were available. He checked numbers forty through forty-five and thirty-seven through thirty to rendezvous on collision course with enemy at seventy-five thousand kilometers. Numbers twenty to thirty to rendezvous at fifty thousand kilometers.

Primary defense has been inaugurated.

He turned back to the screen. Number thirty-eight, expendable in the interests of gaining information, was plunging towards the ships at top acceleration under strains no living flesh would have been able to endure. But as yet the size and type of the invaders were still hidden by distance. A white light flashed abruptly from the communications panel, announcing that Sector Headquarters was alerted and ready to talk. He cut in audio.

"Contact. Go ahead, Station J-49C3."

"Five ships," he said. "Beyond identification range. Coming in through thirty-eight at ten point thirty-two."

"Acknowledge," the voice of Headquarters was level, precise, emotionless. "Five ships—thirty-eight—ten—thirty-two. Patrol Twenty, passing through your area at four hours distance, has been notified and will proceed to your station at once, arriving in four hours, plus or minus twenty minutes. Further assistance follows. Will stand by here for your future messages."

The white light went out and he turned away from the communications panel. On the screen, the five ships had still not grown to identifiable proportions, but for all practical purposes, the preliminaries were over. He had some fifteen minutes now during which everything that could be done, had been done. Primary defense has been completed.

He turned away from the controls and walked back to the bedroom, where he dressed slowly and meticulously in full black uniform. He straightened his tunic, looking in the mirror, and stood gazing at himself for a long moment. Then, hesitantly, almost as if against his will, he reached out with one hand to a small gray box on a shelf beside the minor, opened it, and took out the silver battle star that the next few hours would entitle him to wear.

It lay in his palm, the bright metal winking softly up at him under the reflection of the room lights and the small movements of his hand. The little cluster of diamonds in its center sparked and ran the whole gamut of their flashing colors. For several minutes he stood looking at it; then slowly, gently, he shut it back up in its box and went out, back to the control room.

On the screen, the ships were now large enough to be identified. They were medium-sized vessels, Jordan noticed, of the type used most by the most common species of raiders—that same race which had orphaned him. There could be no doubt about their intentions, as there sometimes was when some odd stranger chanced upon the Frontier, to be regretfully destroyed by men whose orders were to take no chances. No, these were the enemy, the strange, suicidal life form that thrust thousands of attacks yearly against the little human empire, who blew themselves up when captured and wasted a hundred ships for every one that broke through the guarding stations to descend on some unprotected city of an inner planet and loot it of equipment and machinery that the aliens were either unwilling or unable to build for themselves—a contradictory, little-understood and savage race. These five ships would make no attempt to parley.

But now, doggie number thirty-eight had been spotted and the white exhausts of guided missiles began to streak toward the viewing screen. For a few seconds, the little mech bucked and tossed, dodging, firing defensively, shooting down the missiles as they approached. But it was a hopeless fight against those odds and suddenly one of the streaks expanded to fill the screen with glaring light.

And the screen went blank. Thirty-eight was gone.

Suddenly realizing that he should have been covering with observation from one of the doggies further back, Jordan jumped to fill his screens. He brought the view from forty in on the one that thirty-eight had vacated and filled the two flanking screens with the view from thirty-seven on his left and twenty on his right. They showed his first line of defense already gathered at the seventy-five-kilometer rendezvous and the fifty-thousand-kilometer rendezvous still forming.

The raiders were decelerating now, and on the wall, the telltale for the enemy's detectors flushed a sudden deep and angry purple as their invisible beams reached out and were baffled by the detector screen he had erected at a distance of forty thousand kilometers in front of the Station. They continued to decelerate, but the blockage of their detector beams had given them the approximate area of his Station; and they corrected course, swinging in until they were no more than two points and ten degrees in error. Jordan, his nervous fingers trembling slightly on the keys, stretched thirty-seven through thirty out in depth and sent forty through forty-five forward on a five-degree sweep to attempt a circling movement.

The five dark ships of the raiders, recognizing his intention, fell out of their single-file approach formation to spread out and take a formation in open echelon. They were already firing on the advancing doggies and tiny streaks of light tattooed the black of space around numbers forty through forty-five.

Jordan drew a deep and ragged breath and leaned back in his control seat. For the moment there was nothing for his busy fingers to do among the control keys. His thirties must wait until the enemy came to them; since with modern automatic gunnery the body at rest had an advantage over the body in motion. And it would be some minutes before the forties would be in attack position. He fumbled for a cigarette, keeping his eyes on the screens, remembering the caution in the training manuals against relaxation once contact with the enemy had been made. But reaction was setting in.

From the first wild ringing command of the alarm until the present moment, he had reacted automatically, with perfection and precision, as the drills had schooled him, as the training manuals had impressed upon him. The enemy had appeared. He had taken measures for defense against them. All that could have been done had been done; and he knew he had done it properly. And the enemy had done what he had been told they would do.

He was struck, suddenly, with the deep quivering realization of the truth in the manuals' predictions. It was so, then. These inimical others, these alien foes, were also bound by the physical laws. They as well as he, could move only within the rules of time and space. They were shorn of their mystery and brought down to his level. Different and awful, they might be, but their capabilities were limited, even as his; and in a combat such as the one now shaping up, their inhumanness was of no account, for the inflexible realities of the universe weighed impartially on him and them alike.

And with this realization, for the first time, the old remembered fear began to fall away like a discarded garment. A tingle ran through him and he found himself warming to the fight as his forefathers had warmed before him away back to the days when man was young and the tiger roared in the cool, damp jungle-dawn of long ago. The blood-instinct was in him; that and something of the fierce, vengeful joy with which a hunted creature turns at last on its pursuer. He would win. Of course he would win. And in winning he would at one stroke pay off the debt of blood and fear which the enemy had held against him these fifteen years.

Thinking in this way, he leaned back in his seat and the old memory of the shattered city and of himself running, running, rose up again around him. But this time it was no longer a prelude to tenor, but fuel for the kindling of his rage. These are my fear, he thought, gazing unseeingly at the five ships in the screens, and I will destroy them.

The phantasms of his memory faded like smoke around him.

He dropped his cigarette into a disposal slot on the arm of his seat, and leaned forward to inspect the enemy positions.

They had spread out to force his forties to circle wide, and those doggies were now scattered, safe but ineffective, waiting further directions. What had been an open echelon formation of the raiders was now a ragged, widely dispersed line, with far too much space between ships to allow each to cover his neighbor.

For a moment Jordan was puzzled; and a tiny surge of fear of the inexplicable rippled across the calm surface of his mind. Then his brow smoothed out. There was no need to get panicky. The aliens' maneuver was not the mysterious tactic he had half-expected it to be; but just what it appeared, a rather obvious and somewhat stupid move to avoid the flanking movement he had been attempting with his forties. Stupid—because the foolish aliens had now rendered themselves vulnerable to interspersal by his thirties.

It was good news, rather than bad, and his spirits leaped another notch.

He ignored the baffled forties, circling automatically on safety control just beyond the ships' effective aiming range; and turned to the thirties, sending them plunging toward the empty areas between ships as you might interlace the fingers of one hand with another. Between any two ships there would be a dead spot—a position where a mech could not be fired on by either vessel without also aiming at its right- or left-hand companion. If two or more doggies could be brought safely to that spot, they could turn and pour down the open lanes on proximity control, their fuses primed, their bomb loads activated, blind bulldogs of destruction.

One-third, at least, should in this way get through the defensive shelling of the ships and track their dodging prey to the atomic flare of a grim meeting.

Smiling now in confidence, Jordan watched his mechs approach the ships. There was nothing the enemy could do. They could not now tighten up their formation without merely making themselves a more attractive target; and to disperse still further would negate any chance in the future of regaining a semblance of formation.

Carefully, his fingers played over the keys, gentling his mechs into line so that they would come as close as possible to hitting their dead spots simultaneously. The ships came on.

Closer the raiders came, and closer. And then—bare seconds away from contact with the line of approaching doggies, white fire ravened in unison from their stem tubes, making each ship suddenly a black nugget in the center of a blossom of flame. In unison, they spurted forward, in sudden and unexpected movement, bringing their dead spots to and past the line of seeking doggies, leaving them behind.

Caught for a second in stunned surprise, Jordan sat dumb and motionless, staring at the screen. Then, swift in his anger, his hands flashed out over the keys, blasting his mechs to a cruel, shuddering halt, straining their metal sinews for the quickest and most abrupt about face and return. This time he would catch them from behind. This time, going in the same direction as the ships, the mechs could not be dodged. For what living thing could endure equal strains with cold metal?

But there was no second attempt on the part of the thirties, for as each bucked to its savage halt, the rear weapons of the ships reached out in unison, and each of the blasting mechs, that had leaped forward so confidently, flared up and died like little candles in the dark.

Numb in the grip of icy failure, Jordan sat still, a ramrod figure staring at the two screens that spoke so eloquently of his disaster— and the one dead screen where the view from thirty-seven had been, that said nothing at all. Like a man in a dream, he reached out his right hand and cut in the final sentinel, the watchdog, that mech that circled closest to the Station. In one short breath his strong first line was gone, and the enemy rode, their strength undiminished, floating in toward his single line of twenties at fifty thousand with the defensive screen a mere ten thousand kilometers behind them.

Training was strong. Without hesitation his hands went out over the keys and the doggies of the twenties surged forward, trying for contact with the enemy in an area as far from the screen as possible. But, because they were moving in on an opponent relatively at rest, their courses were the more predictable on the enemy's calculators and the disadvantage was theirs. So it was that forty minutes later three ships of the alien rode clear and unthreat-ened in an area where two of their mates, the forties and all of the thirties were gone.

The ships were, at this moment, fifteen thousand kilometers from the detector screen.

Jordan looked at his handiwork. The situation was obvious and the alternatives undeniable. He had twenty doggies remaining, but he had neither the time to move them up beyond the screen, nor the room to maneuver them in front of it. The only answer was to pull his screen back. But to pull the screen back would be to indicate, by its shrinkage and the direction of its withdrawal, the position of his Station clearly enough for the guided missiles of the enemy to seek him out; and once the Station was knocked out, the doggies were directionless, impotent.

Yet, if he did nothing, in a few minutes the ships would touch and penetrate the detector screen and his Station, the nerve center the aliens were seeking, would lie naked and revealed in their detectors.

He had lost. The alternatives totaled to the same answer, to defeat. In the inattention of a moment, in the smoke of a cigarette, the first blind surge of self-confidence and the thoughtless halting of his by-passed doggies that had allowed the ships' calculators to find them stationary for a second in a predictable area, he had failed. He had given away, in the error of his pride, the initial advantage. He had lost. Speak it softly, speak it gently, for his fault was the fault of one young and untried. He was defeated.

And in the case of defeat, the actions prescribed by the manual were stern and clear. The memory of the instructions tolled in his mind like the unvarying notes of a funeral bell.

"When, in any conflict, the forces of the enemy have obtained a position of advantage such that it is no longer possible to maintain the anonymity of the Station's position, the commandant of the Station is required to perform one final duty. Knowing that the Station will shortly be destroyed and that this will render all remaining mechs innocuous to enemy forces, the commandant is commanded to relinquish control of these mechs, and to place them with fuses primed on proximity control, in order that, even without the Station, they may be enabled to automatically pursue and attempt to destroy those forces of the enemy that approach within critical range of their proximity fuse."

Jordan looked at his screens. Out at forty thousand kilometers, the detector screen was beginning to luminesce slightly as the detectors of the ships probed it at shorter range. To make the manual's order effective, it would have to be pulled back to at least half that distance; and there, while it would still hide the Station, it would give the enemy his approximate location. They would then fire blindly, but with cunning and increasing knowledge and it would be only a matter of time before they hit. After that—only the blind doggies, quivering, turning and trembling through all points of the stellar compass in their thoughtless hunger for prey. One or two of these might gain a revenge as the ships tried to slip past them and over the Line; but Jordan would not be there to know it.

But there was no alternative—even if duty had left him one. Like strangers, his hands rose from the board and stretched out over the keys that would turn the doggies loose. His fingers dropped and rested upon them—light touch on smooth polished coolness.

But he could not press them down.

He sat with his arms outstretched, as if in supplication, like one of his primitive forebears before some ancient altar of death. For his will had failed him and there was no denying now his guilt and his failure. For the battle had turned in his short few moments of inattention, and his underestimation of the enemy that had seduced him into halting his thirties without thinking. He knew; and through the memory bank—if that survived—the Force would know. In his neglect, in his refusal to avail himself of the experience of his predecessors, he was guilty.

And yet, he could not press the keys. He could not die properly— in the execution of his duty—the cold, correct phrase of the official reports. For a wild rebellion surged through his young body, an instinctive denial of the end that stared him so undeniably in the face. Through vein and sinew and nerve, it raced, opposing and blocking the dictates of training, the logical orders of his upper mind. It was too soon, it was not fair, he had not been given his chance to profit by experience. One more opportunity was all he needed, one more try to redeem himself.

But the rebellion passed and left him shaken, weak. There was no denying reality. And now, a new shame came to press upon him, for he thought of the three alien vessels breaking through, of another city in flaming ruins, and another child that would run screaming from his destroyers. The thought rose up in him, and he writhed internally, torn by his own indecisions. Why couldn't he act? It made no difference to him. What would justification and the redeeming of error mean to him after he was dead?

And he moaned a little, softly to himself, holding his hands outstretched above the keys, but could not press them down.

And then hope came. For suddenly, rising up out of the rubble of his mind came the memory of the Intelligence man's words once again, and his own near-pursuit of insanity. He, Jordan, could not bring himself to expose himself to the enemy, not even if the method of exposure meant possible protection for the Inner Worlds. But the man who had held this Station before him, who had died as he was about to die, must have been faced with the same necessity for self-sacrifice. And those last-minute memories of his decision would be in the memory bank, waiting for the evocation of Jordan's mind.

Here was hope at last. He would remember, would embrace the insanity he had shrunk from. He would remember and be Waske-wicz, not Jordan. He would be Waskewicz and unafraid; though it was a shameful thing to do. Had there been one person, one memory among all living humans, whose image he could have evoked to place in opposition to the images of the three dark ships, he might have managed by himself. But there had been no one close to him since the day of the city raid.

His mind reached back into the memory bank, reached back to the last of Waskewicz's memories. He remembered.

Of the ten ships attacking, six were down. Their ashes strewed the void and the remaining four rode warily, spread widely apart for maximum safety, sure of victory, but wary of this hornet's nest which might still have some stings yet unexpended. But the detector screen was back to its minimum distance for effective concealment and only five doggies remained poised like blunt arrows behind it. He—Waskewicz—sat hunched before the control board, his thick and hairy hands lying softly on the proximity keys.

"Drift in," he said, speaking to the ships, which were cautiously approaching the screen. "Drift in, you. Driftl"

His lips were skinned back over his teeth in a grin—but he did not mean it. It was an automatic grimace, reflex to the tenseness of his waiting. He would lure them on until the last moment, draw them as close as possible to the automatic pursuit mechanisms of the remaining doggies, before pulling back the screen.

"Drift in," he said.

They drifted in. Behind the screen he aimed his doggies, pointing each one of four at a ship and the remaining one generally at them all. They drifted in.

They touched.

His fingers slapped the keys. The screen snapped back until it barely covered the waiting doggies. And the doggies stirred, on proximity, their pursuit mechs activated, now blind and terrible fully armed, ready to attack in senseless directness anything that came close enough.

And the first shells from the advancing ships began to probe the general area of the Station asteroid.

Waskewicz sighed, pushed himself back from the controls and stood up, turning away from the screens. It was over. Done. All finished. For a moment he stood irresolute; then, walking over to the dispenser on the wall, dialed for coffee and drew it, hot into a disposable cup. He lit a cigarette and stood waiting, smoking and drinking the coffee.

The Station rocked suddenly to the impact of a glancing hit on the asteroid. He staggered and slopped some coffee on his boots, but kept his feet. He took another gulp from the cup, another drag on the cigarette. The Station shook again, and the lights dimmed. He crumpled the cup and dropped it in the disposal slot. He dropped the cigarette on the steel floor, ground it beneath his boot sole; and walked back to the screen and leaned over it for a final look.

The lights went out. And memory ended.

The present returned to Jordan and he stared about him a trifle wildly. Then he felt hardness beneath his fingers and forced him-seit to look down.

The keys were depressed. The screen was back. The doggies were on proximity. He stared at his hand as if he had never known it before, shocked at its thinness and the lack of soft down on its back. Then, slowly, fighting reluctant neck muscles, he forced himself to look up and into the viewing screen.

And the ships were there, but the ships were drawing away.

He stared, unable to believe his eyes, and half-ready to believe anything else. For the invaders had turned and the flames from their tails made it evident that they were making away into outer space at their maximum bearable acceleration, leaving him alone and unharmed. He shook his head to clear away the false vision from the screen before him, but it remained, denying its falseness. The miracle for which his instincts had held him in check had come —in the moment in which he had borrowed strength to deny it.

His eyes searched the screens in wonder. And then, far down in one corner of the watchdog's screen and so distant still that they showed only as pips on the wide expanse, he saw the shape of his miracle. Coming up from inside of the Line under maximum bearable acceleration were six gleaming fish-shapes that would dwarf his doggies to minnows—the battleships of Patrol Twenty. And he realized, with the dawning wonder of the reprieved, that the conflict, which had seemed so momentary while he was fighting it, had actually lasted the four hours necessary to bring the Patrol up to his aid.

The realization that he was now safe washed over him like a wave and he was conscious of a deep thankfulness swelling up within him. It swelled up and out, pushing aside the lonely fear and desperation of his last few minutes, filling him instead with a relief so all-encompassing and profound that there was no anger left in him and no hate—not even for the enemy. It was like being bom again.

Above him on the communications panel, the white message light was blinking. He cut in on the speaker with a steady hand and the dispassionate, official voice of the Patrol sounded over his head.

"Patrol Twenty to Station. Twenty to Station. Come in Station. Are you all right?" He pressed the transmitter key.

"Station to Twenty. Station to Twenty. No damage to report. The Station is unharmed."

"Glad to hear it, Station. We will not pursue. We are decelerating now and will drop all ships on your field in half an hour. That is all."

"Thank you, Twenty. The field will be clear and ready for you. Land at will. That is all."

His hand fell away from the key and the message light winked out. In unconscious imitation of Waskewicz's memory he pushed himself back from the controls, stood up, turned and walked to the dispenser in the wall, where he dialed for and received a cup of coffee. He lit a cigarette and stood as the other had stood, smoking and drinking. He had won.

And reality came back to him with a rush.

For he looked down at his hand and saw the cup of coffee. He drew in on the cigarette and felt the hot smoothness of it deep in his lungs. And terror took him twisting by the throat.

He had won? He had done nothing. The enemy ships had fled not from him, but from the Patrol; and it was Waskewicz, Waskewicz, who had taken the controls from his hands at the crucial moment. It was Waskewicz who had saved the day, not he. It was the memory bank. The memory bank and Waskewicz!

The control room rocked about him. He had been betrayed. Nothing was won. Nothing was conquered. It was no friend that had broken at last through his lonely shell to save him, but the mind-sucking figment of memory-domination sanity. The memory bank and Waskewicz had seized him in their grasp.

He threw the coffee container from him and made himself stand upright. He threw the cigarette down and ground it beneath his boot. White-hot, from the very depths of his being, a wild anger blazed and consumed him. Puppet, said the mocking voice of his conscience, whispering in his ear, Puppeti Dance, Puppet/ Dance to the tune of the twitching strings/ "No!" he yelled. And, borne on the white-hot tide of his rage, the all-consuming rage that burnt the last trace of fear from his heart like dross from the molten steel, he turned to face his tormentor, hurling his mind backward, back into the life of Waskewicz, prisoned in the memory bank.

Back through the swirling tide of memories he raced, hunting a point of contact, wanting only to come to grips with his predecessor, to stand face to face with Waskewicz. Surely, in all his years at the Station, the other must sometime have devoted a thought to the man who must come after him. Let Jordan just find that point, there where the influence was strongest, and settle the matter, for sanity or insanity, for shame or pride, once and for all.

"Hi, Brotherl"

The friendly words splashed like cool water on the white blaze of his anger. He—Waskewicz—stood in front of the bedroom mirror and his face looked out at the man who was himself, and who yet was also Jordan.

"Hi, Brother!" he said. "Whoever and wherever you may be. Hi!"

Jordan looked out through the eyes of Waskewicz, at the reflected face of Waskewicz; and it was a friendly face, the face of a man like himself.

"This is what they don't tell you," said Waskewicz. "This is what they don't teach in training—the message that, sooner or later, every stationman leaves for the guy who comes after him.

"This is the creed of the Station. You are not alone. No matter what happens, you are not alone. Out on the rim of the empire, facing the unknown races and the endless depths of the universe, this is the one thing that will keep you from all harm. As long as you remember it, nothing can affect you, neither attack, nor defeat, nor death. Light a screen on your outermost doggie and turn the magnification up as far as it will go. Away out at the limits of your vision you can see the doggie of another Station, of another man

FOR THE public • l8l

"When will it be, Davey?" Her voice held promise of happiness in its lilting richness. "I've never waited so impatiently."

He swallowed, hating to see the grinding crash of all their dreams. "It won't be, might never be, Roberta."

She leaned closer to her screen. So close she blanked out the details of the laboratory behind her. "You mean our marriage was forbidden?" Her lovely eyes widened in bewildered wonder. "But David. Why? Was it you? Me?"

He fumbled for a cigarette to hide the terrible burst of frustrated anger filling his mind. He forced sardonic laughter through his tight mouth. "The marital division of the bureau gave us a clean pratique. It was the"—he spit out the words—"the Bureau of Public Health, Epidemiology Divisionl"

"What! But David," startled surprise flickered between her level brows.

"They had good reason," he admitted, forcing himself to put it into words. "You see I'm to go to Exotic Disease Control." - "Ohhhhh! David no!" She capped her mouth with a long slender hand as her face became gaunt and pale. "Not again. Not that—" Her voice trailed off into a clicking whisper.

He tore a strip of tape from the scribe talk, transliterated the message slowly, realizing as he did so, he was reciting what might well be his own epitaph. " 'From: Director General, Public Health. To: All Personnel. Dr. James Craig, Commander in the Public Health, Senior Medical Officer, Exotic Disease Control, Lunar Station, died this morning while entering a disease ship. He willfully entered this ship, well aware of its hazards. His conduct was in keeping with the highest traditions of the Public Health Service. Signed: Gumnes, Director General.'

"Now listen. It's right on the same tape. Saving money," he explained bitterly. " 'Personal transfer order: Commander David Munroe, Planetary Epidemiologist, upon reporting to Commander Sigmund Russell, Planetary Epidemiologist, you will take command of Exotic Disease Control to fill out the term of the late Dr. James Craig. This transfer is for the public'

'"From: Personnel Division: In accordance with Directive 43,

Paragraph B of the rules and regulations of the Public Health Service which states that personnel assigned extra-hazardous duty as exemplified by Exotic Disease Control may not be married; you, Dr. David Munroe, are informed that your request for permission to marry Dr. Roberta Wallace is denied until such time as you have completed your newly assigned tour of duty. This denial is for the public'"

"How long will you be there?" Roberta asked in a tight, hushed voice.

"I'll have about four months. I've been there twice, you know. No one," he said slowly, "has come back a third time."

She tried to sound matter-of-fact. "That's what comes from being a good doctor. Mediocrity does have its compensations." She forced a smile. "Just think, it'll be double pay with a bonus. Oh! Dave, if only you don't have to go prowling around in some derelict. That is what gets them all."

"Someone has to see where the ship came from," he pointed out. "It's for the public."

"If you do get a derelict showing dead lights, just take the organisms and never mind trying to clean the ship for some big company. Don't try and be a hero."

He laughed at her advice. "That's all you ever do. Just open the ship at the landing room air lock, take a sample of the organisms. See if they are the lethal cause. If they are, you just turn them over to the bacteriochemists for classification. You let the pharmacology crew work out the antigen. Then you pull the log to see where the ship had been, sterilize it, turn it over to the Colonial Office."

"Promise me you won't go tramping around inside one of those ships," she insisted.

"That's sure death; particularly if the cause of the dead lights is bacterial. That's what killed Craig, I understand. They brought in a ship from the Mycops nucleus. The bacteria thrived on ultraviolet radiation. They were evolved in an atmosphere that was intensely ionized and extremely hot. I understand the planet is extremely rich in radium. He sterilized himself in an acid shower, covered himself with a flame blanket, but when he bivalved his suit in his quarters one of them must have still been alive. He was dead within an hour. They volatilized the ship." He shook his head. "Nope, I can assure you I won't go exploring into a derelict. Do I look as though I were dropped on my head as an infant?"

She ignored his humor. "Let me talk to the Director," she suggested tenderly. "I'm doing some work for his Bureau; maybe he'll listen to me and give you new orders."

The line of his mouth grew hard and chiseled at this threat to his masculine ego. "Roberta, you'll do no such thing. Look, I have a lot of work to do. I'll call you before I go over to Exotic."

"No, don't." She touched the corners of her eyes with a handkerchief. "I'll be here waiting for you when you return. Just return, that's all I'm warning you. Besides," she managed a smile, "I've got work to do, too."

"Once I get to Exotic, I can't call you, you know."

"That's better, it won't interfere with what I'm doing. I'm trying to set up a pharmacologic formula for chitinizing the skin of the beryllium workers in the mines of Nebos. Of course it has to be reversible so they can come back to their families. Besides," she laughed reflectively, "we should be saving our money. Just think when you come back you'll get a year's vacation. Let's settle on Zercan. I hear it's a gorgeous planet. I'll be a housewife and cook your meals right from cans like a real twentieth-century wife and you can practice medicine. Oh! David, do be careful."

He cut off the phone, hating himself for the emotionalism that made the globus form in his throat; realized the trajectory of such thoughts was causing mental trauma sufficient to make him a physical coward.

He clicked his jaws, drew up a scribe bank, dictated his will. He was removing his personal effects from the desk when Dr. Russell walked in.

"Personnel hated to do this to you," Russell informed him after their formal greeting, "but there was just no one else in the area with youT experience who hadn't already been there twice. You were the nearest."

"It's for the public," Dave pointed out.

"Just don't venture beyond the landing rooms of any dead ships chasing unclassified bacteria," he cautioned, "and I'm sure you'll come through. Remember, don't risk your life for nothing."

Dave thought the warning was excessive. "You want to be briefed on this station?"

"I had a similar duty on Meissner. Fill out any gaps for me." He clicked details on his fingers. "Lunar Operations routes the ship to your station. You check the ship's surgeon with the analyzer and if everything is all right the ship is granted pratique for Earth."

"If feature correlation is in excess of aging difference, check eye grounds. Some of these tramp freighters can do wonders with illegal plastic surgeons. They drag in contraband and all kinds of organisms."

"I'll remember that. If the ship has a doubtful itinerary, cradle and your ground crew decontaminate the ship and its cargo and the junior medics examine the personnel. They report deviants to you for whatever action you decide."

"Whenever you have a doubt, send it to Exotic," Dave insisted.

The blonde-haired secretary appeared on the phone. "Exotic Disease Control on 4; can you take the call?"

Dave flicked switches on his desk. "Munroe, Ninth Lunar Quarantine. You want me?"

"This is Thurman, chief of ratings at Exotic, sir. I called Operations and they referred me to you. The Canaberra is here, medical officer is a Dr. Blackbem. We started the routine hull wash but he refuses to let my crew in to decontaminate the hold areas. Dr. Nissen is examining the crew now. And, sir," Thurman appeared worried, "the Starry Maid is over us demanding that we remove some patients at once. Their doctor is most insistent."

"What's the Starry Maid?"

Russell leaned forward, blanked the phone. "That's the private yacht of Mr. Latham Nordheimer."

Dave whistled. "Where," he whispered, "would he have been to pick up anything needing Exotic?"

Russell shrugged. "He's got a socialite playboy for a medical officer. He couldn't tell the difference between simple acne and malignant space burn. He's my idea of what a high-grade moron would be with no intelligence. He's crazy about Nordheimer's daughter but whether it's mutual or not I don't know. Because he is so intellectually inferior he's like all dim brains; dangerous when crossed. He loves his power as medical man to one of Solar's richest men. He'd like nothing better than to turn in a doctor for a missed diagnosis."

"Nice boy to talk back to," Dave unblanked the phone. "Thurman, tell Dr. Blackbern I ordered you to enter the ship. If he questions this order further, call the Duty Officer of the Guard and request the riot Marines. I'll back you up."

"Shall I remove the patients from the Starry Maid?"

"No. They might have something contagious. Let them stew in their own impatience. We're the Public Health Service not animals to be ordered about."

He cut off the phone, poured two cups of coffee. "I'm not going to get high blood pressure for some rich man." Dave grinned at Russell. "Have you ever noted that a rich man becomes paranoid; starts thinking he is above the people?"

Russell's laugh was as soothing as balm on a space boil. "Just the same I admire your courage telling the mighty Nordheimer to wait. It's always a comfort, though, to know the Bureau will back us up for the public."

Dave finished his coffee. He picked up the phone, announced to the station the transfer of authority. He turned off the phone, locked the tape box, handed over the keys to Dr. Russell. "It's all yours now. Would you have your steward pack my clothes and ship them to the Personnel Desk in the Bureau? I'll pick them up there if I come out of Exotic."

"Will do." At the panel leading to the mobile ramp Russell placed a comforting hand on Dave's shoulder. "Good luck, Munroe. Stay out of derelicts and I'll try not to send you anything green."

Exotic Disease Control is located on the northern edge of Mare Capsicum. The station is as functional as a lathe and with just about the same amount of beauty. It consists of a group of hemispherical buildings arranged concentrically around the metallic cradling table.

It lacks the dynamic architecture that makes Lunar Quarantine Stations so outstanding. Exotic Control was designed solely for isolating the new bacteria, viruses, fungi and yeasts with which mankind infects himself from the distant, biologically unexplored planets.

The little brown house, as the doctors refer to the isolation hospital, is located here. It is in its wards that passengers and spacemen, who have become infected, wait until their disease is cured or—! It is a part of the cost of spatial exploration; man would have it no other way.

At Exotic Disease Control are located the esoteric pathologists, the virologists, bacterio-chemists, pharmacologists. Here, too, are located the planetary cartographers and ecologists, ceaselessly studying the characteristics of the better planets so they can be certified for colonization.

When Dave alighted from the lunar car, the crew about the dirty freighter dropped chemical lines, greeted him with brazen clanging of metal as they clapped bronzed sheathed hands on the armor of his metal-covered shoulders.

The medical division, the landing gangs, the sterile squads and the decontamination crews followed him into the Administration Building. "It's good to be back here again," Dave said when he had thrown back his glassite helmet.

At this palpable lie, all the men let out a whoop of laughter. He stilled it with raised hand. "I don't need to enlarge on our responsibility to the public. They trust us to prevent disease reaching Earth.

"We'll work here now just as we did the last time I was here. I alone will investigate ships from any of the outer nuclei, or those that have questionable disease in any way. I will make all primary diagnosis and do autopsies on those remains found in ships. No one is to risk his life doing something that is my duty. These are my orders."

Dr. Blackbern shouldered his way through the group about Dave. "Cute talk you boys make. Very lovely prattle about the care the public gets, but how about me, us? We're a part of the public, too. I've been here now for three hours and all I've heard is talk, talk, talk."

His dark face, stained by the tarnish of his beard, was sarcastically malevolent. "We've got a fortune in skins out there we want to take to Earth. One of your medics came aboard, jerked about all of our crew."

"Before you got here," Nissen, the pathologist, interposed, "I went aboard to see Blackbem's men. Nordheimer was getting so impatient I began to worry about what he might do to you."

"I don't think he can hurt me officially," Dave said easily. "What about the crew?"

"Orya fever, ninety-five per cent morbidity rate. Bacterioscope reveals it in their blood; profound toxemia on the hemospectroscope. They'll all have to stay in isolation until cure is effected. The inner fittings of the ship will have to be burned. I checked the pelts but they can be decontaminated in the gas house."

"You don't touch that ship or those pelts." Blackbem's face flamed with anger. "I've got a right to talk, too. I'm telling you I'm going to Earth to sell those skins—"

"Shut up!" Dave's voice was suddenly explosive. "I run this station—"

"Why you little test-tube washer." Blackbem's arm swept out, pushed the men back, away from him. He came forward, a black, enraged animal, fists like lead ingots whirling madly. Dave saw it, saw the frustrated hysteria in the man, sidestepped the blow with the ease of a professional dancer, for all that he was incased in heavy armor. He caught the raging man's arm, whirled him over his shoulder to fall stunned and helpless at his feet.

He winked at the grinning men. "He didn't know that we test-tube washers, softies that we are, have to exercise at 3-Gs one hour every day." He looked at Blackbem's stupefied face. "Get up," he ordered curtly, "we're medical men, not marines."

Blackbern crawled heavily to his feet. His venomous eyes were more respectful. "You going to check my ship," he hesitated, added grudgingly, "sir?"

Dave flicked the wrist switch of his armor. Gears whined in its metallic flanks as it bivalved. He stepped out, shook the creases out of his uniform. "I'm going to check the spacemen first."

The patients, thin, wasted caricatures of men, lay in their bunks in the isolation ward, watched him with anxious expressions in their deeply socketed eyes.

Corpsmen, clad in contagion-free gowns, were setting up the steri-banks. Nurses were briskly inserting needles into the veins of the cubital fossa, sterilizing their blood, adding amino acids to the nutrient to speed recovery.

He stopped by one of the bunks. "When did you first get sick?"

The spaceman's voice was a harsh croak. "About six weeks out of Halseps. Nothing but processed food to eat. Air went foul. Too much work . . . holding the ship together. No medicines ... air ducts corroded through ... no circulation—" The voice trailed off into sleep.

It was the typical story of a tramp freighter. He continued with his ward rounds: offered the cheering confidence of an early recovery to the patients; cautioned corpsmen against carelessness.

Before he was through, a messenger came to him with a note from Thurman: "Nordheimer has just put through a call to the Chancellor's Office protesting his needless delay."

Dave swore softly, balled the note, dropped it in the flame chute of a decontagion basket. He turned to Dr. Nissen: "Conduct the Guard Office, tell them what we have here. They may want to hold the captain for improper conduct. When the skins are clean, call the Finance Division of the Colonial Office so they can arrange an auction for the skins. I'm going out to check the ship."

The interior of the Canaberra was a rotten, rusted mess. Eroded hull plates allowed air seepage so the atmosphere generators were constantly overloaded. In consequence of the lowered oxygen tension the men had suffered debilitating, chronic anoxemia. Air ducts were fouled so that circulation of even vitiated air was impossible. The sewage disposal plant had broken down and filthy sludge filled the under decks.

He shuddered to think of the social conditions at the periphery of man's empire. The crew's quarters were a stifling miasma; it was a wonder any of them lived to make Earth. The holds of the ship were filled with untreated nalyor skins, which in spite of their filthy condition radiated the glowing platinum beauty which made them the most beautiful pelt ever seen in the astrosphere.

Dave summoned Blackbern. "I'm condemning your ship. It will be taken to the hulk yard and broken up. You may protest this action before the Domain Board. This condemnation is for the public." He ignored the vituperative response.

The ground crew attached cables to the overtop shackles and tugs lifted the freighter from the cradle.

Instantly, it seemed, the sleek lines of the Starry Maid appeared over the cradling table. Its polished hull gleamed like living flame.

The landing crew grabbed anchoring lines, passed terminal hooks through the ground eyelets. Winches in the landing compartments of the yacht turned, tightening the lines, and as power was released from the gravity plates the ship fell slowly into the bassinet.

The landing lock opened and two figures came down the ramp.

Dave blinked his eyes.

Never had he seen such space armor. The helmets were domes of jet; the wearer could see out through the uni-transparent metal but he couldn't see within the cover. A red cross of inlaid rubies flamed brilliantly on the chest of one of the figures. A blaze of diamonds monogramed J. N. flickered on the left breast of the other armored figure. Scrolls of gold foamed over the arms and shoulders of the armor.

"I'm Dr. Mortimer J. Mortimer, Senior Surgeon of Nordheimer & Company and Medical Officer of the yacht—"

"Which of you is which?" Dave looked from one dome to the other. How in the name of deep space could they expect him to know which of the slender figures was speaking?

The figure with the jeweled medical cross stepped forward. "I wish to protest our long delay. A hulk like that freighter should not be seen ahead of Mr. Nordheimer. I want you to bring up litters and remove our patients at once."

Dave listened to the contentious voice with amused incredulity. "Look, Doc," he said after a long pause, "this is Exotic Disease

Control. If you think you have something serious enough for isolation, then it must be serious enough to warrant potential quarantine of the entire ship. Suppose we see the patients first."

Dave walked up the ramp. As the panels closed the diamond-monogramed figure disappeared into another compartment. Dave watched curiously as the other figure stepped into a metal frame which unhinged the armor. At the sight of its ornate, padded interior he wondered with a perverse sense of humor if the motors of the suit weren't gold-plated and the air ducts lined with platinum.

"Whatcha got?" he asked after introducing himself.

Dr. Mortimer }. Mortimer's arrogant face puckered into a haughty frown. "Now really. I don't know. I'm not a planetary epidemiologist. That's your field."

"What're their symptoms?"

"It's a loathsome thing; changes their personality." Dr. Mortimer J. Mortimer delicately touched the waves of his beautiful blond hair. "I'll tell you about them as we go to their quarters."

He led the way through corridors tesselated with fabulously beautiful paneling, over carpeting as soft as rubberoid foam. Intricately engraved doors opened at their approach, whispered softly as they closed behind them.

"It had an insidious onset. They became weak; at first we thought it sheer laziness, so many spacemen are, you see. It's a big problem on many of our outer nuclei freighters. You'd be surprised at all the difficulty our captains have with the bums. I have an entire department just—"

"Never mind the economics of your job," Dave cut in sharply, "how about your patients now?"

Dr. Mortimer J. Mortimer turned, stared insolently at Dave. "The malaise I was speaking of appeared like laziness. I insisted the captain work them harder. I realized they were ill with some strange malady when they started developing a rather alarming glossitis. Their mouths and tongues were inflamed; dysphagia was quite pronounced. They are now having difficulty in even swallowing water. Then their skins started turning that loathsome green color. I knew it was serious and of course isolated them at once; had a special air filter rigged, it's really quite a work of engineering art. I'm thinking of writing a paper on it for publication in the Journal of Spatial Medicine."

"What? The air filter or the men's illness?" Dave did not even try to hide the derision in his voice.

Dr. Mortimer J. Mortimer ignored the scom in Dave's voice. "Their hair got brittle and started falling out and their nails became ridged. As you will see they are wasting rapidly from a profound toxemia. We must have them off at once. I can assure you none of us have become infected."

They passed through the crew's quarters, stopped abruptly at its welded door. Some spacemen wheeled up a portable lock, started fastening it to the paneling.

"How've you been feeding these men?" Dave wondered.

"I put a corpsman in with them, gave them processed food. Of course I haven't gone in there. I couldn't risk infecting Mr. Nord-heimer or Janith with anything."

Dave wheeled in the yacht's diagnostic equipment; exquisite medical instruments which made him writhe with professional envy.

The warm odor of congestion, like an unaired gymnasium, filled his nostrils. The bunk rooms were packed to the ceiling with sweating, miserable, palpably ill men.

He examined their yellow-green skin carefully; looked long at their reddened, swollen tongues. All of them were afflicted with the same type of disease. He examined blood under the bacterioscope. No organism caused their illness; the toxemia came from the waste of their own bodies. They were weak from sheer anemia. He raised his head from the hemiglobinometer, dark fury in his eyes.

Dr. Mortimer J. Mortimer was leaning against the bulkhead, oblivious to the hostile stares of the men. "Well? What do they have, Munroe?" he asked indifferently.

"Chlorosis! Simple spatial anemia. Due to lack of protein in their diet."

"That's what I told him," a gray-haired spaceman muttered angrily. "Processed food is all they gave that bunch. We regulars ate good, them got nothing."

Dr. Mortimer J. Mortimer straightened abruptly. "You don't certainly expect them to eat like Mr. Nordheimer or the officers."

"By deep space," the spaceman growled, "they should be fed something besides bread and vitamin tablets, even if they are working their way back to Earth." He looked at Dave. "And we could have a doctor on this ship, too."

Dave knew the spaceman's knowledge of hematology had not been learned from textbooks. It had been learned the hard way; from dietary experience in deep, black space. If Dr. Mortimer J. Mortimer had not been so indifferent to the health of the crew, he would have insisted that they be fed a more adequate diet; aborted the illness before it ever started. He recalled what Dr. Russell had said about the moronic mind of the Starry Maid's medical officer.

"I want to speak to the owner," Dave said.

"I hardly believe Mr. Nordheimer would care to speak to you," Dr. Mortimer J. Mortimer said rudely. "After all, you know he just doesn't see anybody."

"I'm not just anybody." Dave's eyes narrowed angrily. "I'm speaking for the public. I insist on seeing him."

"The public," Mortimer laughed scornfully. "Mr. Nordheimer is not interested in the public—"

"But I am," Dave broke in, fury in his voice. "I'll see him if I have to tear these bulkheads down with my bare hands."

Dr. Mortimer stepped back at the sight of Dave's icy, angry face. He darted a quick look at the smirking spacemen. "You public employees certainly have a hypertrophied sense of responsibility." He tittered self-consciously at his clinical analysis. "Very well, I'll take you to see Mr. Nordheimer, but mind you don't expect a kind reception." There was condescending mockery in his voice. "At least you'll see the grand salon and that is more than most people ever do."

Dave followed the slender doctor to the grand salon of the ship.

He stopped abruptly as he stepped in. Eyes widened in unashamed, breathless wonder. Never had he seen such an impressive sight.

He was looking at the Macro-Mafintic Falls of Zaragahn, Sirius' great planet. He recognized it from teleposters. Now he was looking at its captured reality. It was the most magnificent sight he had ever seen; unutterably breath-taking in its majestic beauty.

Mountains, glittering with snow, vanished into an illusory horizon, water from a mighty river burst forth to fall for twenty-five thousand meters into a narrow, tortuous canyon. But three-quarters of the way down, up-sweeping wind caught the watery shaft, tore it into mist, whirled it cyclonically upwards. Electrostatic charges formed on the droplets to be neutralized by vivid electric discharges, and through the mist jagged lightning flashed ceaselessly and the deep-throated rumble of thunder echoed in the mountains.

Dave had heard the sight of the Falls rivaled the splendor of Sirius' incredible, tumultuous prominences. He could believe that now.

Man lacked the multiple perceptive ability so necessary to appreciate the tremendous forces in a solar storm. His sensual comprehension could not grasp and hold for cerebration the magnitude of the incredible, flaming vortices that writhed and twisted millions of miles above Sirius' churning surface.

The Macro-Mafintic Falls can be adequately appreciated for all its majestic worth. It captures perception through senses that are instinctively familiar. Man has crawled on the slopes of mountains; felt the vibrating wonder of their creation. He has seen clouds form, felt the coolness of their mist; been thrilled by their rain. He has seen and felt and feared the lightning; trembled with wonder at the crack of thunder. He has built dams; listened with smug satisfaction as a tamed river roared its spilling protest. This, then, was but the infinite magnification of an age-old experience.

He looked on in wonder. The Falls seemed to strike on a churning violet cloud that billowed and swirled over a foundation of lightning before it fell into the incredible gorge.

The room was built on a promontory jutting out over a wide, deep chasm. A fireplace, burning golden apple wood, crackled behind him and the air was spicy with the tangy, piny freshness of high mountains.

Dave walked to the rail, looked up at the snow-capped peaks. Impossible to believe this sublime scene was but the three-dimensional art of a photographer. It was too dynamic. The flashing lightning, the rumble of thunder, the roar of the Falls muted by distance was too real.

It required actual mental effort for him to realize he was not standing on a real rock on Zaragahn looking at the Falls; instead he was in the grand salon of a sumptuous yacht, now resting in the landing cradle of Exotic Disease Control.

"Are you sight-seeing," an irritable voice snapped, "or did you want to see me?"

Dave whirled and in a flash was conscious of Mortimer's condescending sneer and the thin, vulture face of Mr. Nordheimer regarding him with cynical, beady black eyes.

"I've just examined your crewmen," Dave announced flatly.

"That's kind of you," rasped Nordheimer, "now take them off so we can Earth. I've waited here long enough."

Dave faced the fabulously wealthy, almost omnipotent Nordheimer with the slightest trickle of fear welling within him. Stories of his greedy love of power had seeped into the smallest colonies of Earth's empire.

He had once hurled the might of his private spatial force on a planet because it failed to recognize his economic power. It was whispered that on the planets of the periphery he was worshiped as a god, a devil, an emperor; that one planet was his arsenal of empire, devoted exclusively to the manufacture of weapons to keep him in power. That some day he intended to be the master of the world.

"No!" Dave said, "their illness is not infectious; they do not need to be removed."

There was a tormenting moment of intense nervous tension in the room. Lightning from the Falls tinted the walls vivid violet and the roll of thunder, like an oncoming storm, was a menacing rumble.

Nordheimer settled deeply into a low, spun-metal divan. Corrugated lids closed slowly over his venomous eyes. A cynical smile curled at the corners of his thin, bloodless lips. "My doctor said their illness was infectious; that is enough for me. I tell you now. Take those men off and at once. That is an order."

"Nol" Dave's voice was curtly emphatic. "Your men suffered from protein starvation; they became anemic with a disease as old as Earthly immigration Chlorosis. You picked those men from some planet, brought them back here to save yourself the cost of a regular crew. I will inform the Immigration officers of this and they will remove and treat your men."

Nordheimer's brows met in a satanic V. His thin, irritable face reddened ominously. "You infer my doctor was wrong."

"Your doctor," Dave answered, turning to Dr. Mortimer J. Mortimer, "is an incompetent moron."

"You can't say that about me." Mortimer started forward.

"Shut upl" Nordheimer growled. "He's probably right." He looked up at Dave, slowly, without moving his eyes from those of the doctor, reached out for a platinum-trimmed glass. A clawlike hand brought the glass to his mouth, he sipped slowly, hypnotic eyes looking steadily into Dr. Munroe's. "Do you refuse to take those men off this ship?" The glass was held close to his mouth.

"I do," Dave said steadily. "Exotic Disease Control is run for the public; not for the whims of privileged groups."

'The public." Nordheimer snorted. "Who cares about them anyway—"

"The Public Health Service," Dave retorted angrily.

Nordheimer set the glass down, pulled a wallet from his pocket, extracted a thick sheaf of hundred stellar notes. "Take this and buy yourself a present. I'll—"

Dave started towards the door. "I will release you at once, Immigration will expect you in thirty minutes."

"Come back here." Nordheimer whirled to Mortimer. "Summon the captain."

"What's the matter, Father; found something you can't buy?"

They turned at the throaty voice. Janith Nordheimer was standing in an open panel. Dave recognized her from the numerous picture magazines. She stepped out, walking the length of the compartment with a lazy, free stride. Viewing her this way, Dave could appreciate the groomed perfection she represented. She sauntered to a taboret, touched a pedal on the tesselated deck with the toe of a diamond-encrusted shoe.

"Hate that view," she said as multiple panels formed to screen the view of the Falls. She rested her elbows on the back of a chair, regarded Dave, an insolent expression in her dark, sophisticated eyes.

"Protecting the insensate mob, watching the helpless public; you must have studied the manual of the Juvenile Planeteers. I understand they do things like good deeds and such."

Mortimer snickered, clapping his hands together happily. "Mun-roe," he giggled. "Munroe the Noble."

The captain of the yacht came in at that moment. "You sent for me, sir?"

"Yeah." Nordheimer jerked his head at Dave. "This bacteria engineer orders me, me to take my ship over to Immigration and have them put those patients in bed and I would have to pay for that, besides having all of the hoi polloi on Earth knowing where I'd been."

"Yes, sir," the captain said deferentially. "You will remember, sir, I advised you that landing at Exotic Disease Control, unless we had some really infectious disease, was dangerous—"

"Who cares about it being dangerous," Nordheimer sneered. "Toss this germ mechanic—"

"Germ mechanic." Dr. Mortimer discharged a bellow of laughter. "That's a good one, yes sir, that's really a good one, germ mechanic. I'll have to remember that one—"

"Shut up when I'm talking," Nordheimer rumbled. He turned back to the captain. "Toss him off the ship, and I don't bother whether he has armor or not—"

"We're too close to Earth for that now, sir," the captain interposed cautiously. "All he has to do is to raise his hand, speak into his wrist communicator and we'd be blasted by the Guard before we could raise the Chancellor's Office."

Janith Nordheimer chuckled. "But he would be blasted, too."

"That's right," the captain admitted, "but he is at Exotic Disease Control. The doctors of the Public Health Service ordered here are conditioned to expect death. It is part of their duty. I'm sure the doctor would rather die by a neutron blast than by a disease he is sure to get from some derelict from the outer nuclei."

The Nordheimers looked at him with new-formed respect in their widened eyes. "We'll go to Immigration," Nordheimer said hastily. He whirled on Dave. "Understand one thing, you mention one word of this conversation officially and I'll have your job."

"Why, Mr. Nordheimer," Dave hoped his expression showed astonished wonder, "I didn't know you needed employment."

The last thing he heard as he started down the corridor to the lock was Janith's taunting laugh and her sneering admonition he had better be very, very careful from now on.

He told the doctors and the chief about the scene. "The Old Boy is a power," Dr. Nissen pointed out in a worried voice. "He has lots of rocks in the sky, he can control Planetary Congress and they dictate to the Chancellor."

"But they are all afraid of the public." He shrugged his broad shoulders. "Well, there's nothing to do about it now. Let's go on to Blackbern's patients." He stopped, placed a hand on Nissen's shoulder. "Of the two personalities, I admire Blackbern's stupid ruthlessness much more than the calculating cruelty of the Teutonic-minded Nordheimer."

Dave was in the A & R checking welds in his armor when Operations summoned him on the phone. "Get on the closed channel, the Director of the Inner Port wishes to speak to you privately."

Dave made the contact in his office. "This is Munroe, Exotic Disease Control. Duty Officer requested I contact you on the closed channel."

"Can your side be seen or heard in?" the director asked cautiously.

Dave read off his settings. The director seemed satisfied, for he said at once, "Nordheimer is mad at you. He put pressure on the Chancellor, the cabinet met in secret session and is drafting a bill to limit the power of the Public Health Service. Nordheimer said he'd just be satisfied if they get rid of you. What happened?"

"I made him wait while I took care of some sick patients from a freighter."

"He's spreading some nasty tales about you. Something about accepting a bribe and insulting his daughter and calling his medical officer an incompetent fool—"

Dave laughed. "The last part is true. However, when I went aboard I was wearing an open wrist phone, everything that was said is a matter of record. I sent it to the Earth Office with my own comments."

"If they can't get you legally, he'll do it some other way."

"I've been expecting something," Dave admitted. "But all they can do is kill me."

"Don't be so resigned," the director snapped.

Three days later as the setting Earth was casting long shadows across the crater floor his dread was crystallized into reality.

He was standing by the ramp talking with the senior medical officer of an exploring battleship which had just slid out of the velvety sky to unload a pet for bacterial evaluation.

He laughed as the brontosaurus-like creature in its glassite cage was wheeled down the freight ramp. A thought flashed through his mind, amusing in its perversity. Nordheimer should have such an animal for his doctor.

The gong of the phone in his helmet was startlingly explosive. "Duty Officer on Operations Channel." He muttered a hasty excuse to the doctor, walked over to the portable screen, plugged his phone jack.

"Duty Officer speaking. The Marston, a freighter, lost for over two years, has been found out near Pluto. The ship is owned by Astrosphere, one of the Nordheimer companies. Nordheimer requests a complete inner examination of the ship.

"The Public Health Service said an emphatic no. They could see no reason for risking valuable personnel. The company officials went to the Secretary of Spatial Commerce, stated the Marston had been sent on a voyage of commercial exploration and it was essential that not only the log be secured but the condition of the cargo be determined and the salvage possibilities of the ship. You'd have to go deep inside and make a determine. This order is for the public."

Dave flicked off the phone with a wry grin. So this is how Brother

Nordheimer acts when he's crossed. He realized with cold objectivity this action on Nordheimer's part was essential if he wished to continue in economic power.

Nordheimer could not attack him with his secret police; their altercation had been made public now and the mass of the people would rebel against such a militant action. He was doing it cleverly, by seeing that he went into a ship with a high death potential.

He checked his armor minutely. Ran in new air lines, lights, communication circuits, even replaced the bearings on the blowers. He remembered Blackbern's crack about broken welds; never left his armor alone. He charged his own physiology with every known immune vaccine, serum and bacterin. He spent his free time studying Pyter's Index of Extraterrestrial Diseases.

When Operations called, announcing the tugs would cradle the freighter within an hour, he felt himself as ready for battle against the Unknown as he would ever be.

Dave armored himself, summoned the various crews who would help him make primary entrance, walked blithely out to the landing cradle.

He was not surprised to see the two armored figures of Dr. Mortimer J. Mortimer and Janith Nordheimer watching him, taunting smiles on their derisive faces. It intrigued him that they would leave off blank helmets to be certain he would see and recognize them; know to the fullness the bitterness of certain defeat at their hands. He would have felt let down if they had not been there.

He hid his galling frustration behind a mask of insouciant laughter. "Hail, Nordheimer. I who am about to die and stuff salute you." There was mockery in his derisive salute.

"I'll pull you from this detail if you'll agree to be conditioned to work for father." Janith directed her voice on a light beam so it could not be heard by her companion.

"Thanks for the offer," Dave said quietly. "But you see I'm a physician."

People from lunar stations were assembling about the cradle in a vast semicircle; gathering with the morbid fascination only impending catastrophe or violent death can induce. Dave looked at them in their varied armor, could not help but laugh at the neuroses which motivated such behavior.

He turned on the open communication circuit so all could hear him. "Now hear this." He raised his voice, realizing as he shouted that he was betraying tension; instantly channeled his mind into precise, frigid patterns. "Now hear this," he ordered quietly, as if directing one of his crews. "No one is to cross the limiting lights set by the tower. This order is for your protection." He looked at Janith and Mortimer. "This order is for you, too. Get back at once."

He walked to the landing cradle as tugs appeared overhead holding the Marston in the grip of unyielding tractors. In the bluish Earth-set the vast, insensate freighter was ominously menacing. Dave looked up at its corroded, curving sides and could not help but shudder at the thought of the grisly things he would find in its black interior.

The steri-crew was wheeling up vortex guns, tractor banks, flame generators, acid lines and the tools necessary to make entrance to a derelict. Dave was aware a hush had settled over the crowd. The thin, distant murmur of noise from a thousand communicators had become a portentous silence now.

They were waiting with avid interest for that breathless moment when he opened the locks and entered the ship. They could hardly wait to hear what he would say about his findings. He knew some of them were growling impatiently at his cautious preparations, grumbling at his exterior inspection.

The chief rolled up the portable bacterial wagon. Dave stood still as the medical kit's tractors and repellers were balanced, brought to focus on his back. He took a few steps to test its drag. "Lighten it by fifty kilos," he directed. "I might have to climb and, chief, set the automatic neutral so I can step around and back without unfo-cusing. I don't want to chase the thing over the lunarscape to find a test tube."

He walked slowly up the ramp, moved along the blackened, rusted keel. In some distant past the ship had rested on a planet's earthy surface; frozen earth cracked off at his touch.

Instantly he melted the dirt with a hand torch. A crumb of dust, loaded with an unknown virus, could settle in a joint of his metal shoes, infect the station. He took tweezers, teased off a few clumps, put them in solution, centrifuged, read the organic indicator on the bacterioscope, sighed with relief. The stuff was sterile. The actinic power of solar radiation had killed any organisms clinging to the ship. He took a larger sample for the geologists, turned to the landing room.

He took hold of the recessed handle, turned and pulled. The door was frozen closed. "Set up a vortex, center it on the door, pull the door and as the air explodes out turn to full temp."

He stepped back, turned on his suit to full reflection so as to avoid external heating. The crew aimed their whirling flames at the door, tractors penciled at the handle, the door tore open with a grinding vibration, felt even through his cushioned shoes. Air expanded out, was caught in the whirling vortex, heated instantly to its ultimate limit.

Dave stood on the deck of the entrance lock. He flashed his light on the rusting bulkheads, on winches oxidized by time, on armor, long since obsolete. He looked at the ship's design on the wall, studied the passages, corridors, location of offices and holds. He went back out, picked up a power cable, plugged it into the ship's emergency line. The ammeter showed a tremendous drain, but no lights flashed in the compartment, nor did his own circuits break with overload.

He pushed the handle of the winch to see if he had power there, but the handle crumbled to flaky dust in his grip. He took a scalpel from his mobile kit, scraped at the door and the metal cracked and peeled with brittle weakness. "The interior metal is about as strong as tin foil." He made the announcement surprised at his own calmness. "Call for the consulting metallurgists."

He found the automatic log, the device which recorded all the captain's orders, messages and directives to his crew, unfastened it from its niche, dropped it in a sterilizing bath, handed it out to Thurman. "I noticed their last entry was they were leaving the Cepheus nucleus. That's a hard white area, so we can expect a most virulent type of organism. Flame before opening."

"Are you really going inship?" Thurman asked anxiously.

"I must, it is orders."

He pushed on the door leading inship and the panel crashed inwards. The metal had the tensile strength of decayed wood.

Curiosity had not erased his natural fear or conquered his vague apprehension.

As he walked gingerly up the long corridor he had the spine-tingling sensation that someone was watching him and that at any moment one of the panels would slide back and someone would step out and ask what he was doing in their ship.

"I feel crazy," he said aloud.

"You all right, sir?" It was Thurman's voice, it sounded faint, alarmingly faint.

He shivered with expectation as he rounded the corridor and started up the ramp towards the fifth deck. He felt the tug of the kit behind him suddenly slacken and he whirled abruptly to see his mobile unit careening madly back down the ramp. It hit the bulkhead, crashed through its friable metal, vanished into the cave it created.

At the same instant he was aware that his light was growing steadily dimmer and the air in his suit was stifling. He looked at the instruments on his left wrist. He could feel the pulsating throb of laboring motors in his shoes. They were pulling current, acting as though they were being shorted out.

That was what had happened to his kit. The tubes had blown from an unexpected surge. Every instinct told him he should go back and tell the Director General of the Public Health Service to shove his activity into deepest space and keep it there. The discipline that came from years of training was greater than instinctual protective mental mechanisms.

He stopped in the center of the corridor to adjust his air machine. He turned off his laboring motors and set the emergency bellows in his suit's flanks. As long as he walked they would circulate air, but he couldn't stand still.

Then his lights went out.

He stopped, petrified with fearful, startled surprise. He started gropingly to retrace his steps, trying to remember each turn he had made when he became conscious that the bulkheads, the overhead, even the deck were emitting a faint golden glow and as his eyes became dark-adapted he discovered that he could see perfectly well. He forced himself to continue up the ramp and through the corridors. He came to it!

The panel he dreaded, hoped to reach. The entrance to the crew's quarters.

He pushed through the friable panel. Stopped! Abruptly!

Sweat oozed from his brow, dripped down his back. Sweat formed on the palms of his hands, made them damp in their sheathed gloves. Nausea gripped him. The crew, all of them, were here!

They weren't the macabre, decayed sight he had expected to find, actually hoped to find. They laid in their plastic bunks and their unclothed bodies were semitransparent and they glowed with a lambent flickering radiance. Their features were vaguely discernible. He experienced the eerie sensation they were turning their heads, observing his every action.

He forced himself to the side of the bunk. Pushed out his sheathed hand, touched one of the things. Instantly he felt a shock. A shock as though an intense surge of pure energy had leaped through his entire organism and stultified his brain. It was painful in its intensity, exquisitely pleasant in its cortical suggestion.

But the touch itself had done something of unutterable wonder to the body.

The light playing through the human remains flickered violently, vibrated with intense nervous energy as though his touch had disturbed a primal balance. Then, the body vanished in a flash of coruscating fire and a tiny ball of flame, almost microscopic in size, burned on the plastic bed frame.

He touched another body, watched it coalesce into condensed living energy, felt the same orgiastic sensation ripple through his brain. He started to laugh, was aware that he was laughing, looked at his hand, giggling at the flame which leaped from the metal sheathing his fingers.

"The ultimate bacterial form; the pure electric protein. I've found it," he shouted. "Bacteria of pure energy." He jumped up and down, clapping his hands in joyous abandon at the concept of his thought, distantly aware of his euphoric insanity. He knew, too, that what he had found was a long-anticipated discovery.

It was a mathematical certainty it would be found. The medical physicists had expected to find such a life form as soon as they realized the verity of atomic energy. A life principle that by-passed the usual organic methods of existence, took their energy, without clumsy digestion, absorption, detoxification and evacuation, directly from the primal source. It was the ultimate of bacterial evolution.

He knew in the deep wells of his mind that his actions now were a result of short circuits in the thalamic synapses, that the pyramidal cells of his cortex were being subjected to an intense radiation. Just as it had drained the current from his motors, shorted out the intricate hookups in his medical kit, it was even now destroying the delicate fabric of his mind.

The living neutrons of coalescing flame whirling in semiorganic patterns were absorbing the energy pouring into the ship. They were multiplying in number, growing in strength. They would ooze forth through the metal their activity had decayed, fall on the landing platform and there, subjected to the intense solar radiation, they would utterly destroy his station and all that it meant.

Through the cloying mist forming through his mind the basic pattern of normal conduct was still able to assert itself. He remembered the publicl

Dave stared down incredulously at the lambent flame eroding the fresh metal of his armored hands. He experienced a rising fury that a sentient bacterium should so fog his mind. Thalamic rage, instinctive rather than intuitive, surged through him.

He pulled the steri-gun from its sheath, pointed its needle muzzle at the deck, squeezed the grip. Livid flame struck the deck, splashed about his feet, tore through the friable metal, volatilized girders weakened by disease, tore through the next deck, fountained on the one beneath that, bumed out through the ship to volcano on the metal landing platform, in a burst of energy that lit up the lunarscape.

He looked down through the gaping hole, turned his tortured vision to the flaming erosion of his hand. Slowly, deliberately, as though he were drunk and had to carefully reason out each motion, he transferred the gun, pointed it at the infected arm and convulsively fisted the hilt.

There was a long, long moment of unbearable pain, of agony so great it taxed his wavering sanity to experience the tremendous burst of impulses bombarding his mind. The dark curtain of shock was shrouding his brain as he leaped into the hole he had blasted.

He opened his eyes into instant, alert consciousness. He turned his head, integrating himself with his surroundings. Dr. Nissen with a corps of nurses were watching him with that professional detachment which comes from years of practice. Nissen slowly came over to his bed, withdrew an infusion needle from his leg.

Then he experienced the impact of memory. He raised his arms, looked down at the right hand. He had not expected it to be there, was actually surprised to see it. He flexed the fingers, rubbed their tips across the coverings of the bed.

He knew then it was a cleverly grafted prosthesis, as good, well almost as good, as his own arm and hand had been.

"How long?" He was surprised at the timbre of his voice.

"Three weeks," Nissen replied. "We did the surgery at once; kept you out until we were sure the grafts took."

"Grafts?"

"You burned your feet off with your steri-pistol." "Oh-"

Nissen sat on the edge of the bed. "We got a classification on the stuff. It's an organism, lives by synergism, derives energy of existence direct from photonic energy. It'll live and multiply on anything with a metallic or electrical structure."

"What did you do with the ship?"

"We sent it into the sun. You made quite a name for yourself. Hero, you know, trying to destroy yourself for humanity. Nord

208 • SPACE SERVICE

is capable of only certain color changes. The skin might turn brown, due to the presence of melanin, one of the normally found pigments. Or it might turn any one of the colors seen in the degradation of hemoglobin. You know, those fascinating hues which change from dark blue to green to yellow, which we all saw adorning your left eye last year.

"No," he continued, without giving Tom a chance to explain how he got that shiner, "we could never expect to see a man turn, say, an aquamarine blue. There just isn't a precursor for that color in the body. So we'll never see an exotic disease where the skin is aquamarine or we'll never see a disease where a man reacts outside of the normal limitations of response."

"So that's it," mused Tom. "Yes, what is it?" He turned around as a knock came at the door.

It was one of the crew members. "Sorry to interrupt, sir, but I'd like to have Dr. Edwards take a look at me. My skin is kind of a funny color."

Edwards turned around. Like the Bay of Naples on a sunny day, or Lake Superior in July, the man's skin was a beautiful vivid aquamarine blue.

Bob's jaw dropped. He had just said that such a color couldn't possibly occur, yet here it was! Tom couldn't help smiling at Bob's obvious discomfiture. "Dr. Edwards," he asked archly, "wouldn't you say that Slawson's skin is aquamarine blue?"

"Yes," answered Bob—and you could see he hated to admit it— "I guess you could call it that."

"My, my," said Tom, "I didn't realize that 'never' was such a short time!"

Bob wasn't annoyed by Tom's sly digs—he deserved them; but he was immediately preoccupied with the medical problem which had just slapped him in his distinguished face. He pondered for a few minutes, meanwhile making little smacking sounds with his lips. Finally he reached over and flipped on the switch of the intraship communication system.

"Schultz—come up to the radio room as fast as you can get here."

"Yes, sire," replied Schultz, with his usual exaggerated pseudo-deference.

While waiting for Schultz, Bob turned to the crewman, standing there patiently. "How do you feel, Slawson?"

"Not too bad, sir," he replied; you could see that he wasn't going to dramatize his illness. "I noticed that I was a little short of breath when I walked up, but outside of that I'm O.K."

Dr. Wilhelm Schultz then dashed in. He checked any questions he might have had at a signal from Edwards, who continued his questioning.

"When did you first notice that your skin was this color?"

"Just a few minutes ago. Just after I got back in the ship."

Three pairs of eyebrows were immediately elevated; could Minotaur be dangerous, in spite of the negative laboratory tests?

"Oh, you were outside?" asked Bob, mildly. He wasn't going to let his anxiety to get the facts influence the judicious manner of getting a history.

"Yes, sir," answered Slawson. "When we got the word that we could go outside, that it was all clear, I just went out and walked around the ship. I... I hope that was all right, sir," he added apologetically.

"That was all right, Slawson," Bob replied. "But it looks as if we doctors were all wrong. What do you think about this, Schultzie?"

"It looks pretty obvious that he got his bee-ootiful pigmentation from outside, all right. Going to take precautions?"

"You're right, Dutchman. Kelly, please order that the ship be sealed, immediately." Bob waited a moment until Tom had finished snapping his brisk, crisp orders into the intercom mike. "Then you'd better have all the circulating air in the ship triple-filtered; use the emergency bank of precipitrons, too."

"All right, Bob," assented Tom, as he stood up. "But what was that you were saying about it being impossible for a man to turn blue? Boy, are you going to have some explaining to do!"

"Get out of here," grinned Bob. "Go take care of your tin can."

When Tom left, Bob, immediately got back to business. "Sit down, Slawson, and let's go into this a little further. What did you do when you left the ship? Try to remember everything—no matter how trivial."

Slawson sat down; he leaned forward, with his elbows on his knees, knitting his brows in concentration. "Let's see, now. I was all by myself—I was the only one off duty at the time. I went out through the air lock, closing the inner door after me and leaving the outer door open. I took a few steps so I was out of the shadow of the ship and just looked around. I remember thinking how good it was to see the sun . . . the suns, I mean . . . after that storm we had." He broke off his narrative momentarily, to ask, "Is that the sort of stuff you want to hear, sir?"

"Go ahead, boy; you're doing fine," Bob assured him.

"Then I just sort of wandered around the ship, looking at the plants and stuff. My hobby is botany, sir," he added, shyly. "I squatted down on the ground to see if there were any insects like ants or earthworms. But a worm isn't an insect, is it?" he asked confusedly.

"The earthworm, Lumbricus tenestiis, is a member of the phylum Annelida. Get on with your story," snapped Schultz.

"Yes, sir," answered Slawson meekly; he was, strangely, apparently consoled by this fact of taxonomy. "Well, I didn't see anything on the ground, so I walked around a little more. I wasn't more than twenty or twenty-five meters from the ship at any time. Then I saw some flowers that were just budding out and went over to look at them. They weren't as pretty as our own flowers... no odor, either—"

This remark was immediately seized upon by Edwards. "No odor, eh? So you smelled them? What did these flowers look like?"

"Yes, sir—I just took a little bitty sniff. And I didn't look at them very closely, so I can't tell you much about them. There were seven petals with dentate edges, of a sort of chartreuse color. There were seven stamens with large lobulated anthers. The leaves were lanceolate, with stipules."

Schultz looked at Edwards. "So he didn't look at them closely, says he. What kind of a botanical lecture would he have given us if he had looked at them?"

"Let him alone, Schultz," said Bob. "He's interested, so he can't help being observant. What else did you do, Slawson?"

"That's all, sir. I was sort of cold, so I thought I'd come back to the ship and get a jacket and see if one of the boys wanted to go out for a walk. When I opened my locker I noticed the color of my skin, so I reported to you immediately."

Bob looked at Schultz, inquiringly. "Looks like we have our clue, doesn't it? Let's go down to the lab and go to work. Come on, Slawson."

The three men made their way to the laboratory, where they found Thomas, the pathologist. This was to be expected—he was never far or long away from his beloved, immaculate laboratory. As the three entered he was looking through a microscope.

"Gentlemen," he greeted them in his precise way. "When I heard the order to seal ship I thought you might be suspicious of the air, so I began to do another check. What do you suspect?"

Instead of answering, Bob merely stepped from in front of Slawson, made that casual gesture which means, "Look what we have herel"

Thomas' face was a study in pleasure—the pleasure of being presented with a new, interesting problem. "Well!" he said. "Most unusual. And you think that this coloration comes from the air?"

Bob shrugged. "All we know is that he apparently got it outside. It might be from a flower—but we can't afford to take any chances." He smiled wryly. "Seems as how Minotaur is not the safe, peaceful planet we thought."

"What did you find in the air, Dave?" Schultz asked the pathologist.

"I found a few granules of what might be pollen, but very few, not over three per cubic meter. It seems rather doubtful that we could get a reaction like this from airborne pollen," he answered. "But let's see what we can find out about Slawson. Any particular tests that you have in mind?"

Bob pursed his lips thoughtfully. "We'd better have the usual blood count, and urinalysis. And ... let's see ... you have a spectroscope, as I recall—we'd better see what that shows. And I'd better get Livingston here to do a skin biopsy so we can tell where the color is." He stepped to the intercom and called the surgeon.

By the time Livingston arrived Thomas and his efficient assistants had the specimens and were beginning the analysis. Slawson meekly obeyed the order to get undressed and lay down on the operating table, prepared to submit himself to the tender mercies of the surgeon.

"Do you want this skin specimen rrom any particular site?" Jack asked.

Bob looked at the recumbent Slawson again. "Roll over, please," he asked. From scalp to toes, front and back the crewman was blue, definitely and unequivocally blue. His hair and nails weren't colored; his pupils looked black, but all the rest was blue, blue, blue.

"Guess it doesn't make any difference, Jack. Snatch a piece of hide from wherever your little fiendish heart desires."

"O.K.—we'll take it off the abdomen, then." Moving with the rapid dexterity which comes from long practice, Livingston soon had an area of the skin anaesthetized, a section of the skin snipped out, the wound closed and the specimen handed to a technician. He turned from the table and bumped into Mandel, who had quietly wandered in to see what was going on.

"What have we here?" he asked.

"You figure it out, chum," the surgeon replied. "Let's see what a hot-shot diagnostician you can be."

"Hm-m-m, the differential diagnosis of a blue skin. Let me think." As he looked at Slawson, who was enjoying all this attention, he whistled softly between his teeth.

Bob pricked up his ears at the tune. "What's that you're whistling, Irv?"

The psychiatrist smiled. "That's an old, old song—one popular in the twentieth century. It was called 'Am I Blue.' " He looked at Slawson again and said, "Well, there are several things we'd have to consider here. There's the possibility of methemoglobinemia or sulfhemoglobinemia. It might be just a cyanosis, but he wouldn't be as comfortable as he is, if that were the case. And outside of that, the pixies might have given him some Trypan blue intravenously."

By this time Kelly had completed his duties with the ship and was lounging in the doorway of the lab. He shook his head. "That jargon you grave-robbers talk beats me. And what, if my ignorance isn't hanging out, could Trypan blue be?"

"Trypan blue? That's one of the so-called vital dyes which used to be used in research. You could inject it intravenously or intra-peritoneally into a rat and he'd turn a beautiful blue. It's not effective by mouth, though, so Slawson couldn't have drunk it. You're sure, Slawson, that you didn't turn blue just to annoy us doctors?"

Slawson grinned back at the little psychiatrist. "No, sir!"

Thomas had been listening to this little by-play. "We don't have any Trypan blue aboard, anyway. The closest thing we have to it is methylene blue—and that stains only one of the fluids."

Schultz sighed. "How well I know that. I took some once in my first year in medical school."

His comment was interrupted by a thump and crash. They turned around to see Slawson lying on the floor. He had apparently tried to sit up on the edge of the table and had fallen over in a dead faint.

Bob reached him first. His practiced fingers found the radial pulse. "Wow! His heart is going better than one forty! We'd better get some oxygen into him immediately."

In less time than it takes to tell it, Slawson was in bed in the sick bay, being given oxygen through a mask.

Bob checked the patient's pulse again. "It's coming down a little now. He must have had a terrific anoxemia; we couldn't see it because of h^s color. I wish that he had complained a little more— but all he said was that he was a little short of breath." He turned from the bed to speak to the man on duty. "Keep a close eye on him and if there's any change, call me immediately. If you can't reach me, call Dr. Schultz."

Bob made his way back to the laboratory, deeply immersed in his thoughts. What to do about Slawson? Was it necessary to return to all the precautions taken when they first landed? Was he going to get the same disease? Why hadn't the others turned blue? And what would the outcome be? His disciplined mind abruptly cut off these unproductive thoughts. He had a job to do; he didn't know what his results would be, but he could at least do something.

He entered the lab; Thomas and his assistants were still busy with the various specimens.

"Has he been cross-matched for transfusion?" Bob asked.

The pathologist pointed to a 500 cc. flask of blood standing in a pan of warm water. "That's compatible, if you want to use it," he answered.

"Guess we'd better," Edwards mused. "His blood certainly isn't carrying enough oxygen; maybe this will help. Give it to him as soon as you can, will you? Mr. Kelly," he »aid—the navy man entered silently, carrying a sheet of paper—"what's this?"

"We got our answer from Earth. You'll love it."

Tom took the message.

BUIPSH. 0820451735. MERCY MINOTAUR CONGRATS SOLVING PROBLEM EXPONE. FRING EXPTHREE BLASTF 08204517OO DUE MINOTAUR 1IXX45XXXX WELDONE STARK COMBUTPSH

Edwards gave an exaggerated shudder and handed the message back to Kelly. "The way you navy boys can louse up the language. Translate it, please—I'm afraid I understand what it means."

"O.K. stupe. 'Bureau of Interplanetary Ships; August 20, 2245; message sent at 1735 to Ship Mercy on Planet Minotaur. Congratulations on solving the problem of Expedition I. For your information and guidance Expedition III blasted off today at 1700 and is due on Minotaur the latter part of November—no specified time. Well done, our good and faithful servants.' Signed by Bottle Beak Stark, Commander of the Bureau of Interplanetary Ships."

"That dumb jerk!" said Schultz. "Does he think that this planet is safe just because we've solved one problem? Can't he realize what an unnecessary risk those guys are taking?" He ignored the fact that he was in much greater danger than those he was worrying about; after all, exposure to exotic disease was in line of duty for him. "Bob, shouldn't we radio Stark to call them back?"

Bob turned to Kelly. "We can't do that, can we?"

"You're right," he answered. "They'd be way outside the Heavi-side layer by now and they couldn't either receive or transmit unless the rockets were shut off. Too much ionization from the blast. We'll just have to wait until they hit atmosphere here and warn them off."

"No, by God," said Bob grimly, "we'll just have to get this mess cleaned up before they get here—and hope that we don't run into any more in the meantime. How're we doing, Davey? Have you found out what causes blue boys?"

"1 think we're on the track," replied Thomas. "The oxygen-combining power is way down, though not totally absent. There are definite changes in the absorption spectrum of the hemoglobin. There is the typical pattern of methemoglobin plus a band near line F. I'd say . .. now, mind you, this is only a guess ... that Slawson had absorbed a blue chromogen with an unstable radical which splits off to cause methemoglobinemia."

"Wow," said Tom. "And you docs were giving the navy hell for talking technicalese. How about you translating now?"

"Dr. Schultz—will you teach the kindergarten while I look through the spectroscope?" requested Bob, in his most formal manner.

"Gladly, my dear Dr. Edwards," replied Schultz, equally formally. "Now pay attention, you nauseating lump of ignorance. Hemoglobin is a complex combination of iron and protein which acts as the oxygen carrier of the blood. In the presence of oxygen it absorbs it to form oxyhemoglobin; in the absence of oxygen it gives up the oxygen to form reduced hemoglobin. The oxygen attaches or detaches itself easily. Is that clear so far?"

Kelly inclined his head, reverently. "Your words of wisdom are a blessing to my ears."

"I'm glad you appreciate me. To continue: certain chemicals, including the nitrites, acetanilid and nitrobenzene, cause the formation of a stable hemoglobin compound called methemoglobin. When this happens, the blood no longer can carry oxygen."

"So that's it," said Tom. "In other words, the guy is actually smothering, even though he can still breathe."

"A most astute observation, my dear Kelly," said Schultz, condescendingly. "To continue; methemoglobin makes the blood turn a brownish-red. The patient himself gets a dusky blue look, due to the lack of oxygen. And then when you get the further addition of another color, which Death-House Davey has not yet identified, then you get a lovely color like Slawson did."

Tom shook his head. "Thank you, no. I'll stick to the same old flesh color—it sort of runs in the Kelly family. Seriously, Schultzie, what about Slawson's chances? Is this going to be—serious?" You could see that Kelly meant, but didn't have the nerve to say, "fatal."

Schultz shrugged. "No one can say, Tommy. We're going to do our best to see that it isn't, of course. But we'll just have to wait and see."

Edwards interrupted. "Tom, would you send one of the crewmen out to get some of those flowers that Slawson was sniffing on?"

"O.K., Bob. Should he wear a spacesuit or can he go out raw?"

"I imagine if he just wore a respirator and put the flowers in a tightly closed container he'd be all right. Isn't that what you'd say, Thomas?" he appealed to the pathologist, who nodded his assent.

While Kelly left on this errand, Tom turned again to Livingston. "Jack, would you see that he gets that blood? And observe him closely to see how he responds. Better get another blood specimen before you pull the needle out. And now, Davey, let's see what we can do to identify this color."

Schultz and Mandel struck up one of those desultory medical conversations—a mixture of anecdotes about interesting cases, statements of opinion and defense of those opinions. Thomas and Edwards worked diligently, goldberging a filtration apparatus for separation of the color from the blood. They were interrupted, after a while, by the return of the crew member who had been sent out for the flowers.

"Well, did you get them?" asked Bob.

"Sir, I went out, but I didn't think I ought to try to get them just then. I wasn't sure about those animals."

"Animals!" The four doctors uttered the words simultaneously. They looked at each other, momentarily baffled and indecisive about this new and unexpected exigency.

Edwards made his mind up first. "Davey, hold the fort; we won't be gone long. The rest of us will go up to the dome and get a look at these beasties."

They hurriedly made their way to the observation dome at the top of the ship, adding Kelly to their number as they passed down the corridors. They entered the observation room, with Tom closing the airtight door carefully. The hull plates were open, and the sunlight streamed in, warmly. It took but a moment to raise the air pressure in the room and to inflate the elastic, transparent bubblelike dome. There were enough observation chairs for all of them, so the four of them were quickly elevated to the top of the dome. They each had a pair of binoculars and eagerly scanned the surrounding terrain.

"Do you see anything?"

"No, that vegetation is too dense."

And it was dense. When they first landed on this little plateau, it was quite barren; but now, since the terrific storm of a few days ago, the vegetation had sprung up unbelievably fast. The ground as far as they could see was a lush green. The leaves of the various plants danced adagio in the gentle breeze. It was almost as if they could see them grow, they seemed so full of fresh, new life. Some of the plants, which had leaves like a giant dandelion and a shoot like a huge asparagus stalk, were now shoulder high. It was from a clump of these that the first-seen Minotauran emerged.

"Look!! Look!! There's one ... no, two ... of them now!" The navy man's keen eyes had spotted them first. "Holy dying Dinah! Aren't they a couple of beauties?"

Picture a four-legged animal with a body the same size as a St. Bernard dog, with disproportionately short, bowed legs like a dachshund. Give him a hairless, wrinkled gray-green skin, and a long, graceful neck like a camel, emerging from powerful shoulders. Put a head with long jaws on that neck; large yellow eyes, no external ears and a placid expression, for features. And finally, on the anterior surface of the long neck, imagine a rugose, lobulated mass of flesh reminiscent of the wattles of a turkey. There you will have, at first glance, the dominant inhabitant of the planet Minotaur.

"Wow—I wonder if they're as peaceful as they look. Look at those jaws! Mandel, you're our biologist—d'you think they're carnivorous?"

"No, Bob, I wouldn't say so," Irv answered, judiciously. "On Earth most of the carnivores, with the exception of the dog family, tend to be short jawed. Your long-jaws, like the horse and cow, are usually vegetarians."

As if to confirm this observation, one of the Minotaurans sat down on his haunches, reached up with his forelimbs and began pulling leaves off the plant and stuffing them in his capacious mouth. He sat there, quietly and contemplatively, giving himself over to the joys of mastication.

"Look at the color changes in that gadget on his neck! What do you suppose that's for?" asked Schultz.

And the colors were changing; various shades of red were playing over the surface. A broad, horizontal band of scarlet, followed by a light pink, would travel down the length of the colored area. This would be replaced by a vermilion, which would seem to pulsate, gently, alternately deepening and lightening in shade.

"Hm-m-m," said Mandel, slowly. "That's a puzzler. In most animals a colored organ is usually a sex character. The comb and wattles of the rooster, and the crest of those Venusian marsupials are examples. But those are pretty static—they change with the season, and don't flicker like a sign-painter's nightmare. Look . . . look there!"

The seated animal had turned to face the other one, who had come up on it from behind. And now the colors did start to appear. Bands of purple, splotches of green, tremulous irregular areas of yellow, tumbled across and up and down the necks of those weird beasts for several seconds. Then, with one accord, the two animals faced the ship and began walking slowly toward it.

"It looks like they've just realized there's something strange here and are coming over to investigate us," remarked Kelly. "They don't seem to be particularly afraid."

"That's right," retorted Edwards, "and they don't seem to be awfully curious either. Placid sort of brutes, aren't they?"

"Do you think we ought to go out and meet them?" asked Schultz.

"Should we roll out the red plush carpet and invite them in for tea?"

"That might not be a bad idea," answered Bob. "We might at least try to find out if they're intelligent or not. Just because they look like the zoo doesn't mean that they can't be smart people. After all, you don't have to be anthropomorphic to be intelligent."

Bob thought for a few seconds. "Schultz, would you and Mandel be willing to go out and see what you can do to find out something about them? We can have a couple of the boys with rocket guns all ready to let them have it, if they make any hostile moves."

The internist and the psychiatrist looked at each other, as if trying to read the other's mind. There was no thought of criticizing Edwards for not offering to go out with them; it was tacitly understood that in most cases, his job as synthesist involved letting others collect data for him. Bob was always ready to run any risk necessary in the line of duty. He wasn't shirking in this case; he was functioning as he should.

Schultz was the first to speak. "My mother told me never to volunteer for anything, but the way you put it—might just as well. O.K. with you, Irv?"

The little psychiatrist shrugged. "Why not? They can't be any worse than navy officers or surgeons."

Zip—down went the observation chairs and the men dashed out as soon as pressure could be equalized and the door opened. Their precipitous dash toward the air lock was halted by Livingston, whom they met in the corridor.

"Bob," he asked, "could you take a look at Slawson? The blood has just about all run in and he doesn't seem to be getting any results at all. His color hasn't improved and he's still pretty dyspneic in spite of the oxygen."

Edwards hesitated. He didn't want to forego the interesting experience of observing the inhabitants of Minotaur in their first contact with humans. On the other hand, he'd probably never see a blue man again—and if Slawson didn't soon make a change for the better, he wouldn't be seeing this blue man for long.

"O.K., Jack, I'll be right with you. Tom, will you make arrangemerits to have the boys covered? And you'd better carry a respirator around your neck; I don't think it'll be necessary to wear it unless you have the irresistible urge to sniff a posy."

"O.K., Bobbie," said Schultz. "If we make out all right with these critters, we'll try to line up a date for you, too. It wouldn't be any worse than some of those dogs I've seen you out with." And he fled down the corridor before Bob could think of a retort.

When Edwards entered the sick bay with the surgeon at his heels, he was greatly perturbed. Livingston had understated the seriousness of the patient's condition. A glance at the gauge on the oxygen tank showed that the gas was flowing as fast as possible—as yet Slawson was breathing in deep, shuddering, laboring gasps. His skin was still blue, of course—but underlying that color was the dusky bluish-purple that means insufficient oxygenation of the blood.

Bob picked up the stethoscope which lay on the nearby table and set the tips in his ears. He placed the bell on Slawson's chest, glanced down at his watch and counted for fifteen seconds. "About 140," he reported. "I can barely count it; heart sounds are rather muffled, too."

He slipped the stethoscope around to the bases of the lungs and listened intently for a few seconds. "He's getting some moist rales in the bases, too. Did you give him any atropine?"

"No," answered Jack, "I thought I'd wait until you saw him. Oh my—if only he had something simple like a rupture of the middle meningeal artery, I'd know what to do. But this beats me."

"You're not the only one," retorted Bob, absently. "Well, it looks as if we'll just have to fall back on the old-fashioned approach. It's funny, but when we get stuck on a baffler like this, we have to use the methods of five or six hundred years ago."

Bob sat down on a bunk and stroked his chin. "Eliminate, sedate and put the part at rest," he mused. "He doesn't need sedation-he's practically knocked out now. And how can we put the blood at rest—that's just foolish. And so, to eliminate—Jack, how did he act when the blood started to run in?"

"It seemed to do him some good for about the first five minutes.

His respiration slowed down and I thought his color lightened up a little. But then he went right back to where he is now."

"Hm-m-m." A few moments of silence supervened, while Edwards pulled at his lower lip. "Jack, how does this sound as a working hypothesis? Slawson inhaled pollen from a flower. The pollen is a complex protein which is partially broken down in the body. It breaks down into two parts, one of which causes the blue coloration, the other which causes the methemoglobinemia."

"D'you think it's a true methemoglobinemia?" interrupted the surgeon.

"It doesn't make too much difference," answered Edwards. "We know that there's a stable hemoglobin compound formed, and the red blood cells aren't carrying oxygen. Soooo—we take out the blood that isn't working and replace it with some that will. How does that sound to you?"

Livingston considered the matter for a few moments. "What can we lose? He can't last this way much longer. How much blood do you think we ought to give him?"

"Let's make it five liters, to start with. I'm sure we have that much in the blood bank. You get set up to cut down on a vein and we'll bleed him while the transfusion is running in the other arm."

Just then the intercom in the hallway outside the sick bay piped up. "Testing—Mandel testing."

Bob cocked an ear at the sound. "Tom must have turned the intercom on so we could all hear what the greeting committee has to say. Good idea. Well, I'll go up and get the blood while you get going on the phlebotomy."

As Bob walked into the lab he found Thomas and his assistants still working on their analysis of the mysterious blue blood. It wasn't with undivided attention, however; you could see that all of them were also extremely interested in the intercom.

"We're approaching the animals," said Mandel's voice. "They apparently have no fear of us. They're both sitting on their haunches looking at us and occasionally at each other. The color changes in that organ on the neck are phenomenal, and that's just happened since they caught sight of us. I wonder if that couldn't be.their means of communication?"

That's a nice conjecture, thought Edwards. We communicate by vibrations of one frequency and wave-length range—why can't the Minotaurans communicate on a different band of vibrations? A little inconvenient on a dark night perhaps—but so is talking and hearing in a boiler factory.

Mandel's voice broke into his thoughts again. "One of the animals is wearing a sort of rope sling over his shoulders and has a stone ax or hammer hanging from it. They're intelligent, I guess, at least to the stage where they have artifacts."

The voice of the irrepressible Schultz interrupted. "Irv, I feel silly. What is the proper procedure in greeting these characters?"

Bob grinned. That clown Schultz—what a man! Well, this wasn't raking care of Slawson.

"We're going to try to replace five liters of blood," he told Thomas, as he took the blood from the refrigerator. "This is all the same batch, isn't it?"

"That's right—that'll be compatible," answered the pathologist. "We have nothing new to report here. It will probably take hours before we can get this worked out. How is the patient?"

"Not so good," answered Bob, as he loaded the flasks of blood on a tray. "I don't even know if this idea will work, but there's nothing else that I can see to do. Give me a call if you have anything to report."

As Bob walked back toward the sick bay he heard tne intercom .again. "One of the animals has just plucked some leaves off a bush and is holding them out to us. Is that meant to be a gesture of friendship?"

Why does everything have to happen at once? thought Bob. Here was an experience which could happen to few men, that of meeting and greeting the strange inhabitants of a new planet—and at the same time to be caught with one of the screwiest medical conditions ever seen. But the doctor's conditioning asserted itself—the patient always comes first. So without further thought about what was going on outside the ship he and Livingston set about their sanguinary tasks of replacing Slawson's useless blood.

Withdraw 100 cc., replace 100 cc; observe; repeat. Repeat again and again. They worked rapidly; they didn't attempt to adhere to the usual rate of two or three drops a second. But it took time. More than an hour had elapsed by the time the flask had been emptied of good blood and replaced with the bluish liquid that had been in Slawson's veins.

This business of transferring blood was not too difficult, of course. The task was sufficiently mechanical so they could keep one ear open for the reports of the men outside the ship. They heard Mandel describe the peculiar hands of the Minotaurans—ten pairs of opposable thumbs on each forelimb. The medial pair was the largest, the next pair slightly smaller; each succeeding pair of digits diminished in size, the most lateral being tiny. The animals walked on the knuckles of the first three or four pairs of digits, the remainder being kept clear of the ground. They had, as far as could be determined, no sense of hearing, although it was possible that they might be conscious of vibrations in objects which they touched.

They seemed peculiarly unpugnacious. They were not fearful, either; they seemed curious about the humans, but in a rather placid sort of way. Mandel inferred that these animals—or were they people?—had no natural enemies and hence had little use for the emotion of fear.

The two doctors who were caring for Slawson knew fear; they were very much afraid that one of the members was going to meet Death on Minotaur. It wouldn't be the same sort of death that the members of Expedition I had met. It was going to be quicker, more merciful —but just as inevitable unless something could be done.

Edwards, who had been listening to the stricken man's heart action, stood up with a sigh. "It's just no go. I thought for a while that those transfusions would do the trick, but he's just as bad as he was before we started. I wonder—could it be that he got so much pollen into him that he couldn't absorb it all? Then, maybe, when we gave him the blood we got rid of some of the pollen but he absorbed some more again."

"It sort of acts like that," Livingston confirmed. "If that's the case we might have to give him transfusions until hell freezes over—and I don't think we have that much blood available."

"We don't," said Bob. "That was the last of his type. Of course we might get some donors from the crew, but type B, Rh negative is quite rare. And besides, if this anoxemia persists for much longer he's going to have some permanent brain damage. In that case, it might be kinder if he didn't survive."

"If we only had more time," muttered Jack. "I'll bet that we could find some substance which would have a greater affinity for the pollen than the pollen does for hemoglobin."

"You mean like the preference that bacteria have for the sulphon-amides instead of para-amino-benzoic acid?" asked Bob.

"That's the idea; but those things can't be found out in an hour, even with the equipment we have aboard. I guess that it means that we just keep pouring the oxygen into him and hope for the best. Hey, did you hear that?"

It was Mandel's voice. "We have established some sort of communication with the pictures we've drawn on the sand. It's hard for them to see directly below them and Schultz and I are both getting tired squatting. I believe it would be perfectly safe for us to bring them aboard ship, where we can show them some photographs and maybe movies. Tom, Bob, what do you think?"

It was Bob who made the decision and spoke first. "You're in a better position to decide that than I am. If you think it's O.K., and if they'll follow you, come ahead. O.K. with you, Kelly?"

"If you say so, Bob. But just to be on the safe side, I'm going to keep them covered while they're aboard—unobtrusively, of course."

"All right. But tell your men not to go trigger-happy on us. No shooting unless there's a direct order from either you or me. And Irv-"

"Yes, Bob."

"Better take 'em on a sort of orientation tour of the ship first. I don't know if they'll understand anything, but it should be impressive. We'll wait here in the sick bay for you; Slawson has to be watched."

Perhaps fifteen minutes elapsed before they heard the peculiar slow clicking noise that they would always associate with the walk of the Minotaurans. Bob and Jack had filled in that quarter-hour doing useless little things for their patient, all to no avail. He was getting progressively weaker, and would probably not even survive the visit of their strange guests. They looked up to see the Minotaurans entering the room.

The one who carried the stone ax entered first, followed by his compatriot, then by Schultz and Mandel.

Schultz, as would be expected, performed the introductions with a flourish. "Boys, meet Tom and Jack. Tom and Jack, meet the boys."

The Minotaurans were oblivious of this travesty of courtesy, of course. They grazed at the two doctors with their large limpid yellow eyes, while their neck-organs turned a pleasing shade of chartreuse.

Then their eyes fell on the unconscious blue body of Slawson. With one accord they moved slowly toward the bed and gazed at him for a long moment. Then the larger of the two Minotaurans faced the other and began to manifest all possible color combinations in the mass of tissue which adorned his neck. Reds, greens, yellows, violets, flashes of orange, bands and flecks, stripes and spots —it was a veritable pageant of color. It seemed to make sense to the other, for he swung about on his hind legs and left the room.

"Now, what?" asked Bob. "What do you suppose got into him?"

"Should I follow him?" asked Kelly, sticking his head around the edge of the door.

"If you don't mind, let's just wait and see what happens," counseled Mandel. "I have a sneaking suspicion that these boys know what's going on here. They seem to have an instinct of intuition that far surpasses ours. That boy will be back shortly, I'll bet anything."

So they waited, impatiently. Stone-Ax sat on his haunches and gazed at them, placidly. It was rather embarrassing, like trying to be polite to a foreigner who doesn't speak your language. You couldn't make polite conversation; you couldn't ask how business conditions were in his country, or how many children he had.

Mandel had given an excellent description; one thing he hadn't mentioned, though, was that the Minotauran had a peculiar and pleasant body odor. Bob had to sniff and think for several minutes before he could identify the elusive scent. Why, it's lilac, of course, he thought. Wouldn't you know it would be a color, too?

His thoughts were interrupted by the clicking pad, pad of the other Minotauran, returning. He wasn't exactly hurrying, but you could tell that he wasn't loitering by the wayside, either. He entered the room and everyone was startled to see that he carried a half-dozen nondescript flowers in his mouth.

"Oh, oh—more flowers," said Jack, excitedly. "Shall we try to stop him?"

Bob had a sudden intuition. "No, let's not. He can't do anything to hurt poor Slawson—I'm afraid he's beyond that stage. Let's see what they're going to do."

Stone-Ax took the flowers in one of his polydactyl appendages, then with the other arm pointed to the oxygen mask strapped to Slawson's face. He then pointed to his own face and made a gesture which apparently signified removal.

"I guess he wants us to take the oxygen mask off," said Schultz. "Should I, Bob?"

"Go ahead; we can put it back in a few seconds, if necessary."

The mask was removed. The Minotauran extended his hind legs so his forelimbs were over the level of the bed, then unhesitatingly thrust the flowers in front of Slawson's nose and mouth. There was a breathless silence in the room. For a moment nothing happened; then Slawson's stertorous breathing suddenly halted—and he gave a mighty sneeze! The flowers were left there for a few seconds longer, then were thrown to the floor. Then both of these strange beings turned toward the men, gave a curious little inclination of their necks, and, with unaltered dignity, left the room.

The men were too thunderstruck by this strange performance to make any move to delay their departure. With open mouths they looked at each other, at the patient and back at each other again.

"That's the strangest thing I've ever seen." Schultz was the first to break the silence. "What do you suppose that signified—a religious gesture, or what?"

"I don't think so," retorted Bob. "Look at Slawson."

They looked at the still unconscious man. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the blue color was fading from his skin. And as it faded the labored, gasping respiration slowed down. He seemed to relax, or sink into a more comfortable and relaxed state. He no longer had to fight for his oxygen and was now ready to rest and recuperate.

Tom felt the patient's pulse. "It's slower," he said simply. "One hundred twenty—no, one hundred eight." He put the stethoscope in his ears and listened to the heart, then the lungs. "Heart action is full and strong and the lungs are practically clear."

"What'll we do about those animals?" asked Livingston. "Shouldn't we try to thank them, or . . . or—" He broke off; how can you thank someone you can't talk to? How can you do a return favor for a person whose needs or likes are totally beyond your knowledge?

"Just skip it, for now," said Bob slowly. "I have a hunch that those boys will be back after a while. And we'll try to do something for them, some day." And he left the room.

It wasn't until time for the last meal of the day that Edwards rejoined the group. They were still talking about the Minotaurans and their miraculous cure of an apparently hopeless disease, when Bob entered the room.

"You know, Tom," he began, "I'm afraid that I'm going to have to retract some of my dogmatic statements. You remember I told you that there couldn't be any exotic diseases. Well, I was wrong; you all saw how wrong I was. Slawson wouldn't have lived, either, if it hadn't been for the help of... of... shall we say, the natives. We were helpless. But it still proves one of the oldest of medical beliefs— that for every disease there is, somewhere, a cure, if only we can find it."

He smiled. "And maybe this also goes to prove that old school of medical thought, homeopathy, was right when they said 'Similia similibus curantur.' Like cures like; the disease caused by the pollen of one flower can be cured by the pollen of another flower.

"Well anyhow, Expedition III can now land here with the assurance that they won't run the risk of turning blue. Of course, something else might come up in the meantime—but let's hope not.

"We've got a lot of work lined up for ourselves on this planet. We have to find out more about the natives, how they live, what they die

to learning about Mars, said that they'd never see Dave Kort again.

But for three successive summers after he had quit his job as helper among them, he showed up, tattered, filthy, thinned to a scarecrow, but grinning.

Young Joe Dayton, fresh from Earth and full of Mars-wonder, asked him a stock question that third summer. The answer was laconic. "Oh—I know the country. I get along."

But at the fourth winter's end, Dave Kort did not return. No one ever saw him again, nor found among the ruins and the quiet pastel hues of Mars the dried thing that had been Kort. Somewhere drifting dust had buried it. No one had quite understood him in life. If any affection had been aimed at him, it was for a story, not a man. The man died but the story thrived.

Dave Kort had lived off this wilderness, alone and with sketchy artificial aids, for three Martian years—almost six by Earth reckoning. It was quite a feat. For one thing, the open air of Mars has a pressure of only one-ninth of the terrestrial, and above ground it contains but a trace of oxygen.

How Kort had turned the trick was not completely inconceivable.

In making starch from carbon-dioxide and moisture under the action of sunlight, the green plantlife of Mars produces oxygen just as Earthly vegetation does. But instead of freezing it lavishly to the air, many of those Martian growths, hoarding the essentials of life on a dying world, compress their oxygen into cavities in stem and root and underground capsule, to support later a slow tissue-combustion like that of warm-blooded animals, thus protecting their vitals from cold and death.

Despoiling these stores of oxygen with a pointed metal pipette attached to a greedily sucking compressor was a known means of emergency survival on Mars. Thus you could laboriously replenish the oxygen flasks for your air-hood. Simple—yes. But tedious, grinding, endless, Dayton could imagine.

Food and shelter were also necessary. But under thickets there is a five-foot depth of fallen vegetation, dry, felty, slow to decay in this climate, accumulating autumn after autumn for Martian centuries. In this carpet are those oxygen-holding capsules and roots, often broken, freeing their contents for the spongy surrounding material to hold. There, too, grow much green algae—simpler plants of the same function. There are the fruit and seed-pods of the surface growths, sheltered from cold. And there, the remaining animal life has retreated.

Fuzzy, tawny things that twitter; fat, mammal-like excavators that never care to see the sky, and many-jointed creatures that resemble Earthly ants only in their industry and communal skills. Above ground they build their small, transparent air-domes—bubble-like structures formed of hardened secretion from their jaws. There they shelter their special gardens and sun their young.

So, for a man able to borrow methods unlike his human heritage, there were ways to keep alive in the raw Martian wilds.

Once, Lorring, the physician, said to Joe Dayton, "Kort must have burrowed, too—like a bear. Is that human? Of course the tip of the Syrtis Major triangle here at Port Laribee is far north. But even if he could have gotten all the way to the tropics, the nights are still bitter. Even so, the big question is not how he lived like he did, but why?"

Yes, this was a point which Dayton had often wondered about, frowning with thick, dark brows, while his wide mouth smiled quizzically above a generous jaw. What had impelled Kort to a solitude far deeper than that of an old-time hermit or desert-rat? Had he been a great child lumbering by instinct through the misfit fogs of his mind to a place where he felt at peace?

Dayton favored another explanation as the main one.

"Why, Doc?" he said to Lorring, as they played cards in the rec-hall. "The answer is in all of us, here. Or we would never have come to Mars. Where was there ever such a place of history, enigma, weird beauty, fascination to men? You can't be neutral. Hating Mars, you'd never stay. Half loving it, like most of us, you would—for a while. Loving it, you'd want a much closer look than is possible at Port Laribee, from which we sally forth like rubbernecks. Too bad that Mars is too rough for men, in the long run. Too bad that the Martians are extinct. Once there were even machines to maintain a better climate."

Other specialists were within hearing. They laughed, but they knew what Dayton meant. They'd seen the dun deserts, the great graven monoliths, dust-scoured, the heaps of rust. Being here had the charm of a quest for ancient treasure, marked by the mood of death.

Parsons, the metallurgist, said: "Funny, but I remember Kort's posture—bent, just like the figures in the bas-reliefs. Though Martian skeletal structure was far different. That sounds as if part of Mars sneaked into Kort's body, doesn't it? Hell, there's no pseudo-science here! Plodding through dust, and at low gravity, you just naturally develop that posture as a habit. Now call me nuts."

"You're nuts, Parsons," Kettrich, the biologist, obliged.

Not many days later, Frank Terry and his son came to Port Laribee. Bringing a seven-year-old boy—a bright little guy named Will-to unlivable Mars, marked the elder Terry at once as a screwball.

Was the mother dead or divorced? Was Terry a remittance man, exiled by his family? He seemed to have enjoyed the good things. ... Such curiosity was bad taste. Forget it.

"We like the sound of the place," Frank Terry explained. "We thought we'd take some photographs, really get friendly with the place. ..."

His listeners foresaw the withering of Terry's familiar enthusiasm, and his departure within a week. Except maybe Dayton guessed differently. The intellectual Terry was not much like Dave Kort. Yet perhaps a kinship showed in a certain expression, as if their natures had the same basis.

During the next Martian year, Dayton and the observatory crew saw the sporting-goods-store sheen vanish utterly from these two. They carried less and less equipment with each succeeding sally into the wilderness. Dried lichen, stuffed inside their air-tight garments, soon served them as additional insulation against cold.

From their lengthening jaunts they brought back the usual relics —golden ornaments, carvings, bits of apparatus that had not weathered away. And the usual photographs of blue-green thickets, war-melted cities, domes celled like honeycombs, suggesting a larval stage in the life-cycle of the ancients, and of country littered with shattered crystal—much Martian land had once been roofed with clear quartz, against the harshening climate.

Frank Terry became bearded and battered. Will ceased to be a talkative, sociable youngster. Still devoted to his father, he turned shy, sullen, and alert in a new way.

He had a pet like an eight-inch caterpillar, though it was not that at all. It was warm-blooded, golden-furred, intelligent. It had seven beady eyes. It crept over the boy's shoulders, and down inside his garments, chirping eerily. Except for his father it was the only companion the boy wanted.

So summer ended, and the dark blue sky was murked by angry haze. Vitrac, chief scientist, said, "You're not going out again, are you, Terry?"

The kid gave the real answer, "Let's go, Dad. I want to. Besides, Digger is homesick."

The next morning, when the equinoxial storm closed in, the Terrys had vanished.

Joe Dayton led the search party. He found nothing. Mars is small but still vast. Its total surface equals all the land on Earth. Since the first men had come, not one in a thousand of its square miles had been touched by human boots.

Wandering explorers found Frank Terry's mummy late that spring, in a deep part of Syrtis Major, with old ocean salt around it. When they brought it to Port Laribee it was not completely dried out. So Terry must have survived through the winter.

The boy must surely be dead, too. But stories drifted back to the Port—of holes found in the felted soil, and of a small, heavily-burdened figure that scampered away at the sight of a man.

The general opinion was that this was pure romancing, to intrigue the tourists who came out that year in their bright, excited crowds, charmed by the Red Planet yet sheltered from it, equipped from shops recommended by the most debonair of space wanderers—if such existed. Many were eager to stay, girls among them, bright-faced, sure, with the thrill in their eyes and voices. Ah, yes—but how long would they have lasted in this too rich and rough a strangeness?

Joe Dayton shrugged, sad that his opinion had to be so mean. There were soberer arrivals, too. Relatives of Port Laribee staffmembers, mostly. Willowby's wife. Doc Lorring's small daughter, Tillie, sent out for a visit. Among the tourists there were a few additional kids.

There was also the lost Frank Terry's elder brother, Dolph Terry, big, but prim beneath an easy smile. Also there was a Terry girl, Doran by name. She did not seem much like either of her brothers— the mystical wanderer, Frank Terry, nor the slightly stuffed-shirted Dolph. She was much younger than either of them, sun-browned, a bit puzzled at being on another world, not terribly pretty, but quick with good-humored shrugs and friendly chuckles whenever she could put aside her worry about her nephew.

Dayton had some belief in the tales from the wilderness. For he'd known young Will Terry. Besides, beneath the ineptness of kids, he recognized an adaptability beyond that of adults. So his work was cut out for him.

"After all, William was Frank's son," Dolph told Dayton. "Frank was—what he was. But my sister and I are here to see that the boy is located. Perhaps he can still have a normal childhood."

"We'll do what we can," Dayton replied, smiling crookedly to dampen the man's naive and assertive air.

For the last half of the long summer the search went on, many visitors taking brief part, ranging well beyond the short tractor lines which encompassed the tourist's usual view of Mars.

Dolph Terry was dogged, but clumsy and irritable. His sister's rugged cheerfulness and interest in her surroundings pleased Dayton.

Still, at the end—due as much as anything to sheer luck—it was Joe Dayton who captured Will Terry single-handed. It was almost autumn again. Joe flushed the scampering figure from a thicket. The boy's limp was to Dayton's advantage. He made a flying tackle, and the savage, grimy thing that was an eleven-year-old human, was fighting in his grasp.

His crooned words, finding their way through the thin texture of two air-hoods and the tenuous atmosphere between, did not soften the ferocity of those pale eyes. Such eyes can be like a blank mask, anyway—not unintelligent, but expressive of a different thought-plane.

"Easy, Will—easy, fella," Dayton said. "You couldn't last much longer out here. Your compressor must be nearly worn out."

Reassurance failed. "Lemme gol" the boy snarled blurredly, his speech rusted by solitude. Helped by his father, he had learned the tricks of survival, here. His dimmed past was so different from his present life that perhaps it seemed fearfully alien to him. As he bore the struggling boy to the tractor-vehicle, Dayton had the odd idea that a Martian, trapped by a man, might behave like this.

He recalled old yarns of boys raised by wolves or apes. Here was the same simple loss of human ways—not by soul-migration, but the plain molding of habit by a bizarre environment.

At the Port Laribee hospital, Will Terry was at first least disturbed when left alone. But his whimpers at night reminded Dayton of the mewling of a Martian storm.

Dolph Terry cursed the waiting for an Earth-liner and the lack of a psychiatrist on Mars. Doran had no luck, either, at making friends with Will. Meanwhile the tempests began.

But Doran had an idea. Visitors were still awaiting passage home, among them children.

"Kids are kids, Joe," she told Dayton. "They may be able to reach Will. I talked it over with Doc Lorring."

She was right. Gradually, then more quickly, the trapped-lynx glare faded from Will's eyes as he accepted the scared but fascinated companionship of the other youngsters in the hospital. He still had Digger. At last he let the others pet the fuzzy creature. The strangeness dimmed on both sides. Kid-brashness returned. Perhaps in the whimsy and fantasy of children, that could accept even the humanizing of beast and beetle, Will and his new friends found a common denominator for his life on Mars. He became a hero. Doran and Joe overheard some of his bragging.

"Sure I can work an air-compressor. Dad showed me. He used to say that Mars was home. I'm going back."

One morning Will was gone from the hospital. It came out that a hospital orderly had been diverted from watchfulness for a minute by other children. Two air-hoods, Mars-costumes, and compressors were gone. Also another boy named Danny Bryant.

The complaint of Lorring's own tomboy eight-year-old completed the picture, "They didn't want me alongl"

That day the savage wind moaned and the dust trains across the sky were tawny. Danny Bryant's folks were near hysteria. In all the foolishness of boys, there seemed nothing to equal this. Dolph Terry seemed to wonder blankly what sort of wily thing his brother had sired and trained. The visitors who had been charmed by Mars were sullen and tense. The remaining kids were scared and solemn.

Doran's eyes were big with guilt and worry. "My idea caused the trouble, Joe," she told Dayton. "I've got to do something. I've got to follow Will and bring those boys back. I can live out there if Will can."

Dayton eyed her thoughtfully. It did not seem like such a tragedy to him, except, of course, for the Bryants. He could understand this love for the wild Martian desert.

"Marry me, Doran, and we'll go together," Joe Dayton said.

So that was how it was. Dolph might think his whole family mad. Vitrac, chief scientist, who performed the ceremony, might think so too.

Joe and Doran ranged far ahead of the other searchers. Sometimes, in the hiss of the tempest, they thought they heard the weeping of a child. So they blundered through dust-drifts and murk, following what always proved a false lead.

The first night fell, a shrieking maelstrom of deathly cold, black as a pocket. An inflatable tent would have been a hardship for chill-stiffened fingers to set up in such a wind. They had no such burden. They burrowed beneath a thicket instead, into the layer of dry vegetation. For this there were no better tools than their heavy gloves. They dug deep, kicking the felty stuff behind them to plug the entrance, shutting out even the wail of the storm.

"The strangest honeymoon, ever!" Doran laughed.

Musty air was trapped around them, high in oxygen-content. To enrich it further they slashed hollow root-capsules with their knives. A little warmth was being generated in those roots. Above was the additional insulation and airseal of drifting dust.

Joe could breathe here without an air-hood, and hold his wife close in savage protection and regret and apology for the soft, man-made luxuries that should be, especially now, and were not. Instead they were in darkness, under Martian soil and dead leaves. A grub's paradise. Ancient beings of the Red Planet might have lived like this when the need arose, but it was an existence far off the beaten track for humans.

"When we get back I'll make it all up to you, Doran," Joe kept insisting.

There was a fear in him—of conforming for too long to the demands of this weird environment and of somehow losing a human heritage.

"I'm reading your mind, Joe," Doran laughed. "Don't worry. We both love the smell of coffee and bacon, too much. And music, and nice furniture, and walks in the park. We're not like Frank was, or young Will perhaps still is. No, this will make us want such things more—tie us tighter to Earth."

At dawn they blundered on. During their third night underground they were raided while they slept. Some chocolate bars and other food-concentrates disappeared. And a pencil of Joe's. Their two-way radio would no longer work. The chuckling, chirping inquisitive creatures of the Martian soil had crept into its case and broken it.

Thus the Daytons, out of contact with Port Laribee, did not hear how Danny Bryant staggered back, dazed, frost-bitten, and half-smothered, to his parents' arms.

The storm ended after five days. The small sun blazed in the steely sky, which seemed as brittle as frozen air. There was a sharp lifting of mood. Go back to Port Laribee? The Daytons were tempted. But they had not yet found the boys. Besides, they were far afield. And with much of their supplies used up or stolen, the work of mere survival consumed time and energy and slowed travel. So it was almost as well to push on, wasn't it?

It seemed that they were always using pointed pipette and compressor to refill oxygen flasks from the hollow parts of vegetation. At dawn they collected hoar-frost crystals, wrung from the arid atmosphere by the nocturnal cold, for drinking water. They ate underground fruit and the starchy pulps of certain roots. Wary of poison, they tasted untried things cautiously.

Mars hogs that tunneled in an eternal blind search for food were fair game in the darkness beneath the thicket leaf-carpets. Dayton had a tiny ato-stove that served for their meager cooking.

Weeks passed and a strange life-pattern was set as the Daytons moved south, deeper into broadening Sytris Major. Maybe it was a bit warmer. Some paper-dry growths were still blue-green. More were brown from the winter dryness. Necessities were harder to find.

Sometimes, among the pastel-tinted thickets and low hills, there were patches of real Martian desert, red and lifeless.

Night followed exhausting day, and how welcome was the warmth of a burrow where one could nurse the frostbites acquired in the frigid dawn.

Several times footprints, large-booted but short-paced, led the Daytons on, only to be lost in rocky ground and lichen.

Twice Joe and Doran crossed the war-fused wrecks of huge cities. Fallen hothouse roofs littered the ruins. The piles of rust must have been irrigation pumps, space-ship ramps, climate-controlled apparatus.

In tower, storehouse, and avenue were the skeletons, with their odd, vertical ribs to house huge lungs.

Some devices still worked. Joe found a rod, probably of corrosion-resistant platinum. He pressed its stud and for an instant, before it became useless, it flashed fire that melted part of a fanciful wall-carving.

The struggle to survive harshened further. Once it was bitter water, oozing up from some deep irrigation pipe, that staved off death by thirst.

Several times oxygen was obtained only by lying prone over a teeming colony of the chitinous creatures whose instinct was to roof with a protecting airdome of gluten, anything that promised to be food. These Mars ants—ordinarily to be avoided—admitted air to the domes they built from their deepest buried tunnels and chambers.

Often Joe looked at his wife, knowing that they both had changed. They were tattered, and a little like the bas-relief figures. They were Dave Kort, and Frank and Will Terry over again. Doran's teeth were very white in a face browned by sunshine filtered only by the rare Martian air. She was very thin, but there was an oblique charm in her features. Or had his very conceptions of beauty altered subtly, conforming to a now-familiar environment?

Thinking back to Port Laribee and Earth itself was often like recalling substanceless dreams, so different were such memories. And was the fading of revulsion for even the scurrying builders of the air-domes occasion for deeper fear because it represented the loss of another part of one's natural self?

Joe often worried. Others had been drawn to Mars too, eager to search out the mysteries of its past and people—all of this an intriguing fabric—but most Earthmen had the sense to realize in time that it was a graveyard world, unfit for humans. For to live the life of Mars you had to stop being human. Conditioning grimed into you like the red dust.

Nor was the trap just imaginary. The most frightening part was knowing that Doran was with child. Damn the pulse-beats of life that had no regard for circumstances!

Joe could be glad only that she remained human enough to be pettish and optimistic by turns.

"We can't get back, can we, Joe?" she'd say. "But maybe it'll be all right. It's a long time, yet."

Should they try to hole up, somewhere? That wasn't much good, either. Even in spring there wouldn't be enough resources in one place to sustain life for long. They had to keep moving. So when again they saw those boot-tracks, they felt free to follow.

Milder days came. At noon the temperature reached fifty degrees, F. The country brightened in pastel beauty after the vemal storms. There were gorgeous flowerlike growths. The tracks would vanish and appear again, seeming to mark no single trail but a series of excursions from somewhere among the hills to the south.

Once Doran and Joe heard a thin halloo or scream of defiance.

One of their two air-compressors quit beyond repair, making it twice the job to fill their oxygen flasks. This could be fatal, now.

Soon after they entered the hill-gorges there was a rock-fall, too close to be a thing of accident or coincidence. Later there was a swift-dying flicker that turned a spot of dust incandescent.

Later that afternoon, amid blue-shadows from towering monoliths, Joe met an attack as sudden and savage as a bobcat's. The creature sprang down at him from a ledge, clawing, kicking, striking with a knife. Joe had a bad time until his greater strength won.

Doran helped hold her nephew down. Will Terry was battered, hardened, scarred —scarcely recognizable with his teeth bared.

But, oddly, Joe knew just what to say to soothe him.

"Will, you can see that we're like you. Maybe we don't want to be, but we are, now. We can't drag you back again to Port Laribee."

The kid relaxed a little. His pale eyes turned puzzled but wary.

"About the other boy, Will—Danny Bryant?" Doran asked.

Will's lip curled. "He was weak and dumb," he said, fumbling with unused words. "I took him back long ago."

"You did fine, Will," Joe said. "Now what have you found here in the hills? You've been camping in one place for a while. Show us."

Joe had to use harsh command against the sullenness still in the boy. He did so bluntly, driven by grim hope and need. Thus, before sunset, Doran and he found something they needed. "Dad wanted such a place," the kid said, half-proudly.

It was less than optimism promised—just a small, deep valley, pretty as a painting, but quietly forbidding, too. Joe had seen others almost like it. Martian growths clogged it, sprouting new blue-green leaves. The ruins were far less damaged than in the cities. There were countless little domes of the ant-creatures, indicating some underground water.

Nimbly Will led the way downward and across the valley to a stout structure. It was not very unusual, just another relic in a region away from the fiercest path of war. Here might have been a last refuge, after the death of millions, the breakdown of machinery, and the rapid worsening of Martian climatic conditions. Crystal roofs lay shattered around the ornate central massiveness. But one wing with thick glaze still stood—sealable.

Doran's eyes lighted as she and Joe and her nephew went into the deserted interior through the double doors of an airlock which some last, fleeing Martian had not closed.

Hardy wilderness plants had intruded into this hothouse but there still were troughs of soil, proving that this had been a garden sealed against cold, a place of fruit and flower.

"We might try to use this, Joe," Doran said, her voice thin in the heavy stillness.

He nodded. But his gratitude was tinged with scared and bitter overtones. He hurried to explore the central edifice, which must have been closed before the kid came, for the preservation of things inside was good. There were odd cyclindrical cells, niches dark and dusty, cubicles piled with metal boxes. There was even what seemed a kind of machine-shop.

And there was a valve which, from the footprints in the dust, Will had tried to turn. Joe accomplished this now with a levering metal bar. Out in the dry hothouse pool a spout jetted rusty water.

"The underground storage cisterns are intact," Joe was soon explaining. "I prayed there'd be some."

Joe Dayton was grateful, yet not happy.

Grimly he began again the bitter toil of survival, the others helping. Like bizarre harvesters they tore up great bundles of roots and stalks and piled them inside the hothouse. Briefly the blue sunset shadows were long, over that weird, beautiful valley. Then the dusk came, and the faint frost haze of the always frigid nights.

"We'd better hurry before we freeze," Joe growled irritably. "When we get a lot of this stuff inside we'll tramp on it to break the oxygen-capsules. By morning there should be breathable atmosphere under this roof. Later, vegetation planted inside will keep it fresh."

Joe Dayton's mood now had a taint of despair. Forced to try to settle in this place, he felt more than ever trapped. More than ever he felt as if the souls of those eon-dead beings depicted on carven walls that Phobos, the nearer moon, now illuminated, had been crowding into his human flesh and brain to push his own ego out. No, it was not witchcraft—it was simpler. Mars had shaped its ancient inhabitants. Now it was working on Earthly material with the same subtle, ruthless fingers.

When the task in the hothouse was finished, Joe went with his wife and nephew to burrow again away from the cold, and to eat and to sleep all in the manner which Mars compelled.

Joe wanted Doran and his child to keep their human ways. His child. That was his worst thought, now.

His mind pictured Will—tattered, wild, strange in thought and feeling. He had lived his first years on Earth. So how would it be with a child born on Mars? Joe cursed into his burry beard—cursed the distance to Port Laribee which might as well not be there at all, so out of reach was it, so ineffectual, and so soon probably to be left deserted. Though bone weary, Joe did not sleep well that quiet night.

The next day, bathed and smiling, Doran still did not look quite Earthly to him. She was browned by Martian sun but the real difference that had come into her strong beauty was a thing of multiple detail, like the mark of persons used to the sea contrasted with those born to the plains—but deeper.

Scrubbed fairly clean, Will remained an urchin of Mars. Also scrubbed, and shaved, Joe felt more comfortable. Yet he knew that basically this restored nothing.

A day later he was wandering around outside the hothouse, trying to plan needed agricultural projects, when a faint scrape of pebbles made him wheel warily.

"People! Rescue!" were his first eager thoughts. But then he saw that the three figures, two large and one small, were creatures attuned to Mars in the same way as himself, and as helpless.

Yet when old friends were recognized, in spite of the deep changes, Joe Dayton felt a joyous lift.

"Doc Lorring!" he shouted. "Kettrich. And Tillie. Hey! Hey, Doran! Will! Come here!"

Doc Lorring's tomboy daughter, a bit younger than Will, showed a grinning dirty face through a battered air-hood, and said "Hi."

"We were trying to follow you most of the time, Dayton," Lorring stammered. "We hoped to find you and Doran, and maybe the Terry boy. But our tractor broke down, and we had to live off the land. While we still had the vehicle there didn't seem much reason why Tillie shouldn't come along. We'd begun to give up hope of finding any of you alive."

Minutes were spent questioning and explaining. They all went into the sealed hothouse. Kettrich, the biologist, had even saved a little coffee.

"For a celebration, if we ever located any of you missing ones," he said to Joe and Doran.

Kettrich sighed and went on, "Chief Vitrac, Lorson, and a dozen others are the only old-timers left at the Port. The others have all gone, with Dolph Terry and the tourists. Humans are about done with Mars though I suppose a few will trickle out here from time to time."

With contemplative relish Doran sipped coffee brewed with crudely filtered water on an ato-stove. She smiled like any woman who has her man, and has found a place and a purpose.

"Not for humans," she mused. "That's one way of putting it. Still, it doesn't necessarily mean us. Let's face facts," she continued. "A natural selection was going on all the time. Thousands of people left, disgusted. A very few stayed grimly, or got trapped. On Earth I never thought much about Mars, but now I've been here so long. We're different, perhaps proudly so. Oh, we still like the things that Earth-people like, maybe more than ever. But the Old Ones here also had their comforts. We have Earth flesh and bone, we'll never be like them that way, and I'm glad. You can either say that Terrans are supremely adaptable, or that we are no longer quite human, and that there are Martians again. Because one has to be that to really live here, doesn't one? Mars won't be left wasted and sad. We're some of its first new people. Among the explorers there must be others. More and more will come. Gradually, through the centuries, we'll build Mars back toward what it was."

Dayton stared at his wife, then down at the ancient flagging, then at the others. Tillie tittered. She was as brown as Will Terry and almost as attached to the Red Planet. Around her mended glove a fuzzy creature twined, chirping. Will and Tillie were children of Mars.

Doran's assessment of a situation in plain talk took away its dread for Joe, giving his Mars-love a chance. He began to feel at home. "Is my wife talking sense?" he asked puzzledly.

were stowed: "Nicholson on Martian Verbs," "The New Oxford Venusian Dictionary," the ponderous six-reeler "Deutsche-Gany-mediche Konversasionslexikon" published long ago and far away in Leipzig. The later works were there, too: "The Tongues of the Galaxy—An Essay in Classification," "A Concise Grammar of Cephean," "The Self-Pronouncing Vegan II Dictionary"—scores of them, and, of course, the worn reel of old Machiavelli's "The Prince."

Enough of that! Alen combed out his small, neat beard and stepped onto the southbound corridor. He transferred to an east-bound at the next intersection and minutes later was before the Rector's lay secretary.

"You'd better review your Lyran irregulars," said the secretary disrespectfully. "There's a trader in there who's looking for a cheap herald on a swindling trip to Lyra VI." Thus unceremoniously did Alen learn that he was not to be ejected from the Order but that he was to be elevated to Journeyman. But as a herald should, he betrayed no sign of his immense relief. He did, however, take the secretary's advice and sensibly reviewed his Lyran.

While he was in the midst of a declension which applied only to inanimate objects, the voice of the Rector—and what a mellow voice it was!—floated through the secretary's intercom.

"Admit the novice, Alen," said the Master Herald.

A final settling of his robes and the youth walked into the Rector's huge office, with the seal of the Order blazing in diamonds above his desk. There was a stranger present; presumably the trader —a black-bearded fellow whose rugged frame didn't carry his Vegan cloak with ease.

Said the Rector: "Novice, this is to be the crown of your toil if you are acceptable to—?" He courteously turned to the trader, who shrugged irritably.

"It's all one to me," growled the blackbeard. "Somebody cheap, somebody who knows the cant of the thievish Lyran gem peddlers, above all, somebody at once. Overhead is devouring my flesh day by day as the ship waits at the field. And when we are space-borne, my imbecile crew will doubtless waste liter after priceless liter of my fuel. And when we land the swindling Lyrans will without doubt make my ruin complete by tricking me even out of the minute profit I hope to realize. Good Master Herald, let me have the infant cheap and I'll bid you good day."

The Rector's shaggy eyebrows drew down in a frown. "Trader," he said sonorously, "our mission of galactic utilitarian culture is not concerned with your margin of profit. I ask you to test this youth and, if you find him able, to take him as your Herald on your voyage. He will serve you well, for he has been taught that commerce and words, its medium, are the unifying bonds which will one day unite the cosmos into a single humankind. Do not conceive that the College and Order of Heralds is a mere aid to you in your commercial adventure."

"Very well," growled the trader. He addressed Alen in broken Lyran: "Boy, how you make up Vegan stones of three fires so Lyran women like, come buy, buy again?"

Alen smoothly replied: "The Vegan triple-fire gem finds most favor on Lyran and especially among its women when set in a wide glass anklet if large, and when arranged in the Lyran 'lucky five' pattern in a glass thumb-ring if small." He was glad, very glad, he had come across—and as a matter of course memorized, in the relentless fashion of the Order—a novel which touched briefly on the Lyran jewel trade.

The trader glowered and switched to Cephean—apparently his native tongue. "That was well enough said, Herald. Now tell me whether you've got guts to man a squirt in case we're intercepted by the thieving so-called Customs collectors of Eyolf's Realm between here and Lyra?"

Alen knew the Rector's eyes were on him. "The noble mission of our Order," he said, "forbids me to use any weapon but the truth in furthering cosmic utilitarian civilization. No, master trader, I shall not man one of your weapons."

The trader shrugged. "So I must take what I get. Good Master Herald, make me a price."

The Rector said casually: "I regard this chiefly as a training mission for our novice; the fee will be nominal. Let us say twenty-five per cent of your net as of blastoff from Lyra, to be audited by Journeyman-Herald Alen."

The trader's howl of rage echoed in the dome of the huge room. "It's not fair!" he roared. "Who but you thievish villains with your Order and your catch-'em-young and your years of training can learn the tongues of the galaxy? What chance has a decent merchant busy with profit and loss got to learn the cant of every race between Sirius and the Coalsack? It's not fair! It's not fair and I'll say so until my dying breathl"

"Die outside if you find our terms unacceptable, then," said the Rector. "The Order does not haggle."

"Well I know it," sighed the trader brokenly. "I should have stuck to my own system and my good father's pump-flange factory. But no! I had to pick up a bargain in gems on Vega! Enough of this —bring me your contract and I'll sign it."

The Rector's shaggy eyebrows went up. "There is no contract," he said. "A mutual trust between Herald and trader is the cornerstone upon which cosmos-wide amity and understanding will be built."

"At twenty-five per cent of an unlicked pup," muttered black-beard to himself in Cephean.

None of his instructors had played Polonius as Alen, with the seal of the Journeyman-Herald on his brow, packed for blastoff and vacated his cell. He supposed they knew that twenty years of training either had done their work or had not.

The trader taking Alen to the field where his ship waited, was less wise. "The secret of successful negotiation," he weightily told his Herald, "is to yield willingly. This may strike you as a paradox, but it is the veritable key to my success in maintaining the profits of my good father's pump-flange trade. The secret is to yield with rueful admiration of your opponent—but only in unimportant details. Put up a little battle about delivery date or about terms of credit and then let him have his way. But you never give way a hair's breadth on your asking price unless—"

Alen let him drivel on as they drove through the outer works of the College. He was glad the car was open. For the first time he was being accorded the doffed hat that is the due of Heralds from their inferiors in the Order, and the grave nod of salutation from equals. Five-year-old postulants seeing his brow-seal tugged off their headgear with comical celerity; fellow-novices, equals a few hours before, uncovered as though he were the Rector himself.

The ceremonial began to reach the trader. When, with a final salutation, a lay warder let them through the great gate of the curtain wall, he said with some irritation: "They appear to hold you in high regard, boy."

"I am better addressed as 'Herald,'" said Alen composedly.

"A plague descend on the College and Order! Do you think I don't know my manners? Of course, I call a Herald 'Herald,' but we're going to be cooped up together and you'll be working for me. What'll happen to ship's discipline if I have to kowtow to you?"

"There will be no problem," said Alen.

Blackbeard grunted and trod fiercely on the accelerator.

"That's my ship," he said at length. "Starsong. Vegan registry-it may help passing through Eyolf's Realm, though it cost me overmuch in bribes. A crew of eight, lazy, good-for-nothing wastrels— Agh! Can I believe my eyes?" The car jammed to a halt before the looming ship and blackbeard was up the ladder and through the port in a second. Settling his robes, Alen followed.

He found the trader fiercely denouncing his chief engineer for using space drive to heat the ship; he had seen the faint haze of a minimum exhaust from the stern tubes.

"For that, dolt," screamed blackbeard, "we have a thing known as electricity. Have you by chance ever heard of it? Are you aware that a chief engineer's responsibility is the efficient and economical operation of his ship's drive mechanism?"

The chief, a cowed-looking Cephean, saw Alen with relief and swept off his battered cap. The Herald nodded gravely and the trader broke off in irritation. "We need none of that bowing and scraping for the rest of the voyage," he declared.

"Of course not, sir," said the chief. "O'course not. I was just welcoming the Herald aboard. Welcome aboard, Herald. I'm Chief Elwon, Herald. And I'm glad to have a Herald with us." A covert glance at the trader. "I've voyaged with Heralds and without, and I don't mind saying I feel safer indeed with you aboard."

"May I be taken to my quarters?" asked Alen.

"Your—?" began the trader, stupefied.

The chief broke in: "I'll fix you a cabin, Herald. We've got some bulkheads I can rig aft for a snug little space, not roomy, but the best a little ship like this can afford."

The trader collapsed into a bucket seat as the chief bustled aft and Alen followed.

"Herald," the chief said with some embarrassment after he had collared two crewmen and set them to work, "you'll have to excuse our good master trader. He's new to the interstar lanes and he doesn't exactly know the jets yet. Between us we'll get him squared away."

Alen inspected the cubicle run up for him—a satisfactory enclosure affording him the decent privacy he rated. He dismissed the chief and the crewmen with a nod and settled himself on the cot.

Beneath the iron composure in which he had been trained, he felt scared and alone. Not even old Machiavelli seemed to offer comfort or council: "There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things," said Chapter Six.

But what said Chapter Twenty-Six? "Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great."

Starsong was not a happy ship. Blackbeard's nagging stinginess hung over the crew like a thundercloud, but Alen professed not to notice. He walked regularly fore and aft for two hours a day greeting the crew members in their various native tongues and then wrapping himself in the reserve the Order demanded—though he longed to salute them man-to-man, eat with them, gossip about their native planets, the past misdeeds that had brought them to their berths aboard the miserly Starsong and their hopes for the future. The Rule of the College and Order of Heralds decreed otherwise. He accepted the uncoverings of the crew with a nod and tried to be pleased because they stood in growing awe of him that ranged from Chief Elwon's lively appreciation of a Herald's skill to Wiper

Jukkl's superstitious reverence. Jukkl was a low-browed specimen from a planet of the decadent Sirius system. He outdid the normal slovenliness of an all-male crew on a freighter—a slovenliness in which Alen could not share. Many of his waking hours were spent in his locked cubicle burnishing his metal and cleaning and pressing his robes. A Herald was never supposed to suggest by his appearance that he shared mortal frailties.

Blackbeard himself yielded a little, to the point of touching his cap sullenly. This probably was not so much awe at Alen's studied manner as respect for the incisive, lightning-fast job of auditing the Herald did on the books of the trading venture—absurdly complicated books with scores of accounts to record a simple matter of buying gems cheap on Vega and chartering a ship in the hope of selling them dearly on Lyra. The complicated books and overlapping accounts did tell the story, but they made it very easy for an auditor to erroneously read a number of costs as far higher than they actually were. Alen did not fall into the trap.

On the fifth day after blastoff, Chief Elwon rapped, respectfully but urgently, on the door of Alen's cubicle.

"If you please, Herald," he urged, "could you come to the bridge?"

Alen's heart bounded in his chest, but he gravely said: "My meditation must not be interrupted. I shall join you on the bridge in ten minutes." And for ten minutes he methodically polished a murky link in the massive gold chain that fastened his boat-cloak— the "meditation." He donned the cloak before stepping out; the summons sounded like a full-dress affair in the offing.

The trader was stamping and fuming. Chief Elwon was riffling through his spec book unhappily. Astrogator Hufner was at the plot computer running up trajectories and knocking them down again. A quick glance showed Alen that they were all high-speed trajectories in the "evasive action" class.

"Herald," said the trader grimly, "we have broken somebody's detector bubble." He jerked his thumb at a red-lit signal. "I expect we'll be overhauled shortly. Are you ready to earn your twenty-five per cent of the net?"

Alen overlooked the crudity. "Are you rigged for color video, merchant?" he asked. "We are."

"Then I am ready to do what I can for my client."

He took the communicator's seat, stealing a glance in the still-blank screen. The reflection of his face was reassuring, though he wished he had thought to comb his small beard.

Another light flashed on, and Hufner quit the operator to study the detector board. "Big, powerful and getting closer," he said tersely. "Scanning for us with directionals now. Putting out plenty of energy—"

The loud-speaker of the ship-to-ship audio came to life.

"What ship are you?" it demanded in Vegan. "We are a Customs cruiser of the Realm of Eyolf. What ship are you?"

"Have the crew man the squirts," said the trader softly to the chief.

Elwon looked at Alen, who shook his head. "Sorry, sir," said the engineer apologetically. "The Herald—"

"We are the freighter Starsong, Vegan registry," said Alen into the audio mike as the trader choked. "We are carrying Vegan gems to Lyra."

"They're on us," said the astrogator despairingly, reading his instruments. The ship-to-ship video flashed on, showing an arrogant, square-jawed face topped by a battered naval cap.

"Lyra indeed! We have plans of our own for Lyra. You will heave to—" began the officer in the screen, before he noted Alen. "My pardon, Herald," he said sardonically. "Herald, will you please request the ship's master to heave to for boarding and search? We wish to assess and collect Customs duties. You are aware, of course, that your vessel is passing through the Realm."

The man's accented Vegan reeked of Algol IV. Alen switched to that obscure language to say: "We were not aware of that. Are you aware that there is a reciprocal trade treaty in effect between the Vegan system and the Realm which specifies that freight in Vegan bottoms is dutiable only when consigned to ports in the Realm?"

"You speak Algolian, do you? You Heralds have not been underrated, but don't plan to lie your way out of this. Yes, I am aware of some such agreement as you mentioned. We shall board you, as I said, and assess and collect duty in kind. If, regrettably, there has been any mistake you are, of course, free to apply to the Realm for reimbursement. Now, heave to!"

"I have no intentions of lying. I speak the solemn truth when I say that we shall fight to the last man any attempt of yours to board and loot us."

Alen's mind was racing furiously through the catalogue of planetary folkways the Rule had decreed that he master. Algol IV—some ancestor-worship; veneration of mother; hand-to-hand combat with knives; complimentary greeting, "May you never strike down a weaker foe"; folk-hero Gaarek unjustly accused of slaying a cripple and exiled but it was an enemy's plot—

A disconcerted shadow was crossing the face of the officer as Alen improvised: "You will, of course, kill us all. But before this happens I shall have messaged back to the College and Order of Heralds the facts in the case, with a particular request that your family be informed. Your name, I think, will be remembered as long as Gaarek's—though not in the same way, of course; the Algolian whose hundred-man battle cruiser wiped out a virtually unarmed freighter with a crew of eight."

The officer's face was dark with rage. "You devil!" he snarled. "Leave my family out of this! I'll come aboard and fight you man-to-man if you have the stomach for it!"

Alen shook his head regretfully. "The Rule of my Order forbids recourse to violence," he said. "Our only permissible weapon is the truth."

"We're coming aboard," said the officer grimly. "I'll order my men not to harm your people. We'll just be collecting customs. If your people shoot first, my men will be under orders to do nothing more than disable them."

Alen smiled and uttered a sentence or two in Algolian.

The officer's jaw dropped and he croaked, after a pause: "I'll cut you to ribbons. You can't say that about my mother, you—" and he spewed back some of the words Alen had spoken.

^Calm yourself," said the Herald gravely. "I apologize for my disgusting and unheraldic remarks. But I wished to prove a point. You would have killed me if you could; I touched off a reaction which had been planted in you by your culture. I will be able to do the same with the men of yours who come aboard. For every race of man there is the intolerable insult that must be avenged in blood.

"Send your men aboard under orders not to kill if you wish; I shall goad them into a killing rage. We shall be massacred, yours will be the blame and you will be disgraced and disowned by your entire planet." Alen hoped desperately that the naval crews of the Realm were, as reputed, a barbarous and undisciplined lot-Evidently they were, and the proud Algolian dared not risk it. In his native language he spat again: "You devil!" and switched back into Vegan. "Freighter Starsong," he said bleakly, "I find that my space fix was in error and that you are not in Realm territory. You may proceed."

The astrogator said from the detector board, incredulously: "He's disengaging. He's off us. He's accelerating. Herald, what did you say to him?"

But the reaction from blackbeard was more gratifying. Speechless, the trader took off his cap. Alen acknowledged the salute with a grave nod before he started back to his cubicle. It was just as well, he reflected, that the trader didn't know his life and his ship had been unconditionally pledged in a finish fight against a hundred-man battle cruiser.

Lyra's principal spaceport was pocked and broken, but they made a fair enough landing. Alen, in full heraldic robes, descended from Starsong to greet a handful of port officials.

"Any metals aboard?" demanded one of them.

"None for sale," said the Herald. "We have Vegan gems, chiefly triple-fire." He knew that the dull little planet was short of metals and, having made a virtue of necessity, was somehow prejudiced against their import.

"Have your crew transfer the cargo to the Customs shed," said the port official studying Starsong's papers. "And all of you wait there."

All of them—except Alen—lugged numbered sacks and boxes of gems to the low brick building designated. The trader was allowed to pocket a handful for samples before the shed was sealed—a complicated business. A brick was mortared over the simple ironwood latch that closed the ironwood door, a pat of clay was slapped over the brick and the port seal stamped in it. A mechanic with what looked like a pottery blowtorch fed by powdered coal played a flame on the clay seal until it glowed orange-red and that was that.

"Herald," said the port official, "tell the merchant to sign here and make his fingerprints."

Alen studied the document; it was a simple identification form. Blackbeard signed with the reed pen provided and fingerprinted the document. After two weeks in space he scarcely needed to ink his fingers first.

"Now tell him that we'll release the gems on his written fingerprinted order to whatever Lyran citizens he sells to. And explain that this roundabout system is necessary to avoid metal smuggling. Please remove all metal from your clothes and stow it on your ship. Then we will seal that, too, and put it under guard until you are ready to take off. We regret that we will have to search you before we turn you loose, but we can't afford to have our economy disrupted by irresponsible introduction of metals." Alen had not realized it was that bad.

After the thorough search that extended to the confiscation of forgotten watches and pins, the port officials changed a sheaf of the trader's uranium-backed Vegan currency into Lyran legal tender based on man-hours. Blackbeard made a partial payment to the crew, told them to have a good liberty and check in at the port at sunset tomorrow for probable take-off.

Alen and the trader were driven to town in an unlikely vehicle whose power plant was a pottery turbine. The driver, when they were safely out on the open road, furtively asked whether they had any metal they wanted to discard.

The trader asked sharply in his broken Lyran: "What you do you get metal? Where sell, how use?"

The driver, following a universal tendency, raised his voice and lapsed into broken Lyran himself to tell the strangers: "Black market science men pay much, much for little bit metal. Study, use build. Politicians make law no metal, what I care politicians? But you no tell, gentlemen?"

"We won't tell," said Alen. "But we have no metal for you."

The driver shrugged.

"Herald," said the trader, "what do you make of it?"

"I didn't know it was a political issue. We concern ourselves with the basic patterns of a people's behavior, not the day-to-day expressions of the patterns. The planet's got no heavy metals, which means there were no metals available to the primitive Lyrans. The lighter metals don't occur in native form or in easily-split compounds. They proceeded along the ceramic line instead of the metallic line and appear to have done quite well for themselves up to a point. No electricity, of course, no aviation and no space flight."

"And," said the trader, "naturally the people who make these buggies and that blowtorch we saw are scared witless that metals will be imported and put them out of business. So naturally they have laws passed prohibiting it."

"Naturally," said the Herald, looking sharply at the trader. But blackbeard was back in character a moment later. "An outrage," he growled. "Trying to tell a man what he can and can't import when he sees a decent chance to make a bit of profit."

The driver dropped them at a boardinghouse. It was half-timbered construction, which appeared to be swankier than the more common brick. The floors were plate glass, roughened for traction. Alen got them a double room with a view.

"What's that thing?" demanded the trader, inspecting the view.

The thing was a structure looming above the slate and tile roofs of the town—a round brick tower for its first twenty-five meters and then wood for another fifteen. As they studied it, it pricked up a pair of ears at the top and began to flop them wildly.

"Semaphore," said Alen.

A minute later blackbeard piteously demanded fom the bathroom: "How do you make water come out of the tap? I touched it all over but nothing happened."

"You have to turn it," said Alen, demonstrating. "And that thing —you pull it sharply down, hold it and then release."

"Barbarous," muttered the trader. "Barbarous."

An elderly maid came in to show them how to string their hammocks and ask if they happened to have a bit of metal to give her for a souvenir. They sent her away and, rather than face the public dining room, made a meal from their own stores and turned in for the night.

It's going well, thought Alen drowsily: going very well indeed.

He awoke abruptly, but made no move. It was dark in the double room, and there were stealthy, furtive little noises nearby. A hundred thoughts flashed through his head of Lyran treachery and double-dealing. He lifted his eyelids a trifle and saw a figure silhouetted against the faint light of the big window. If a burglar, he was a clumsy one.

There was a stirring from the other hammock, the trader's. With a subdued roar that sounded like "Thieving villainsl" blackbeard launched himself from the hammock at the intruder. But his feet tangled in the hammock cords and he belly-flopped on the floor.

The burglar, if it was one, didn't dash smoothly and efficiently for the door. He straightened himself against the window and said resignedly: "You need not fear. I will make no resistance."

Alen rolled from the hammock and helped the trader to his feet. "He said he doesn't want to fight," he told the trader.

Blackbeard seized the intruder and shook him like a rat. "So the rogue is a coward too!" he boomed. "Give us a light, Herald."

Alen uncovered the slow-match, blew it to a flame, squeakily pumped up a pressure torch until a jet of pulverized coal sprayed from its nozzle and ignited it. A dozen strokes more and there was enough heat feeding back from the jet to maintain the pressure cycle.

Through all of this the trader was demanding in his broken Lyran: "What make here, thief? What reason thief us room?"

The Herald brought the hissing pressure lamp to the window. The intruder's face was not the unhealthy, neurotic face of a criminal. Its thin lines told of discipline and thought.

"What did you want here?" asked Alen.

"Metal," said the intruder simply. "I thought you might have a bit of iron."

It was the first time a specific metal had been named by any Lyran. He used, of course, the Vegan word for iron.

"You are particular," remarked the Herald. "Why iron?"

"I have heard that it possesses certain properties—perhaps you can tell me before you turn me over to the police. Is it true, as we hear, that a mass of iron whose crystals have been aligned by a sharp blow will strongly attract another piece of iron with a force related to the distance between them?"

"It is true," said the Herald, studying the man's face. It was lit with excitement. Deliberately Alen added: "This alignment is more easily and uniformly effected by placing the mass of iron in an electric field—that is, a space surrounding the passage of an electron stream through a conductor." Many of the words he used had to be Vegan; there were no Lyran words for "electric," "electron" or "conductor."

The intruder's face fell. "I have tried to master the concept you refer to," he admitted. "But it is beyond me. I have questioned other interstar voyagers and they have touched on it, but I cannot grasp it —But thank you, sir; you have been very courteous. I will trouble you no further while you summon the watch."

"You give up too easily," said Alen. "For a scientist, much too easily. If we turn you over to the watch, there will be hearings and testimony and whatnot. Our time is limited here on your planet; I doubt that we can spare any for your legal processes."

The trader let go of the intruder's shoulder and grumbled: "Why you no ask we have iron, I tell you no. Search, search, take all metal away. We no police you. I sorry hurted your arms. Here for you." Blackbeard brought out a palmful of sample gems and picked out a large triple-fire stone. "You not be angry me," he said, putting it in the Lyran's hand.

"I can't—" said the scientist.

Blackbeard closed his fingers over the stone and growled: "I give, you take. Maybe buy iron with, eh?"

"That's so," said the Lyran. "Thank you both, gentlemen. Thank you-"

"You go," said the trader. "You go, we sleep again." The scientist bowed with dignity and left their room.

"Gods of space," swore the trader. "To think that Jukkl, the Star-song's wiper, knows more about electricity and magnetism than a brainy fellow like that."

"And they are the key to physics," mused Alen. "A scientist here is dead-ended forever, because their materials are all insulators! Glass, clay, glaze, wood."

"Funny, all right," yawned blackbeard. "Did you see me collar him once I got on my feet? Sharp, eh? Good night, Herald." He gruntingly hauled himself into the hammock again, leaving Alen to turn off the hissing light and cover the slow-match with its perforated lid.

They had roast fowl of some sort or other for breakfast in the public dining room. Alen was required by his Rule to refuse the red wine that went with it. The trader gulped it approvingly. "A sensible, though backward people," he said. "And now if you'll inquire of the management where the thievish jewel-buyers congregate, we can get on with our business and perhaps be off by dawn tomorrow."

"So quickly?" asked Alen, almost forgetting himself enough to show surprise.

"My charter on Starsong, good Herald—thirty days to go, but what might not go wrong in space? And then there would be penalties to mulct me of whatever minute profit I may realize."

Alen learned that Gromeg's Tavern was the gem mart and they took another of the turbine-engined cabs through the brick-paved streets.

Gromeg's was a dismal, small-windowed brick barn with heavy-set men lounging about, an open kitchen at one end and tables at the other. A score of smaller, sharp-faced men were at the tables sipping wine and chatting.

"I am Journeyman-Herald Alen," announced Alen clearly, "with Vegan gems to dispose of."

There was a silence of elaborate unconcern, and then one of the dealers spat and grunted: "Vegan gems. A drug on the market. Take them away, Herald."

"Come, master trader," said Alen in the Lyran tongue. "The gem dealers of Lyra do not want your wares." He started for the door.

One of the dealers called languidly: "Well, wait a moment. I have nothing better to do; since you've come all this way I'll have a look at your stuff."

"You honor us," said Alen. He and blackbeard sat at the man's table. The trader took out a palmful of samples, counted them meaningfully and laid them on the boards.

"Well," said the gem dealer, "I don't know whether to be amused or insulted. I am Garthkint, the gem dealer—not a retailer of beads. However, I have no hard feelings. A drink for your frowning friend, Herald? I know you gentry don't indulge." The drink was already on the table, brought by one of the hulking guards.

Alen passed Garthkint's own mug of wine to the trader, explaining politely: "In my master trader's native Cepheus it is considered honorable for the guest to sip the drink his host laid down and none other. A charming custom, is it not?"

"Charming, though unsanitary," muttered the gem dealer—and he did not touch the drink he had ordered for blackbeard.

"I can't understand a word either of you is saying—too flowery. Was this little rat trying to drug me?" demanded the trader in Cephean.

"No," said Alen. "Just trying to get you drunk." To Garthkint in Lyran, he explained, "The good trader was saying that he wishes to leave at once. I was agreeing with him."

"Well," said Garthkint, "perhaps I can take a couple of your gauds. For some youngster who wishes a cheap ring."

"He's getting to it," Alen told the trader.

"High time," grunted blackbeard.

"The trader asks me to inform you," said Alen, switching back to Lyran, "that he is unable to sell in lots smaller than five hundred gems."

"A compact language, Cephean," said Garthkint, narrowing his eyes.

"Is it not?" Alen blandly agreed.

The gem dealer's forefinger rolled an especially fine three-fire stone from the little pool of gems on the table. "I suppose," he said grudgingly, "that this is what I must call the best of the lot. What, I am curious to know, is the price you would set for five hundred equal in quality and size to this poor thing?"

"This," said Alen, "is the good trader's first venture to your delightful planet. He wishes to be remembered and welcomed all of the many times he anticipates returning. Because of this he has set an absurdly low price, counting good will as more important than a prosperous voyage. Two thousand Lyran credits."

"Absurd," snorted Garthkint. "I cannot do business with you. Either you are insanely rapacious or you have been pitifully misguided as to the value of your wares. I am well known for my charity; I will assume that the latter is the case. I trust you will not be too downcast when I tell you that five hundred of these muddy, undersized out-of-round objects are worth no more than two hundred credits."

"If you are serious," said Alen with marked amazement, "we would not dream of imposing on you. At the figure you mention, we might as well not sell at all but return with our wares to Cepheus and give these gems to children in the streets for marbles. Good gem trader, excuse us for taking up so much of your time and many thanks for your warm hospitality in the matter of the wine." He switched to Cephean and said: "We're dickering now. Two thousand and two hundred. Get up; we're going to start to walk out."

"What if he lets us go?" grumbled blackbeard, but he did heave himself to his feet and turn to the door as Alen rose.

"My trader echoes my regrets," the Herald said in Lyran. "Farewell."

"Well, stay a moment," said Garthkint. "I am well known for my soft heart toward strangers. A charitable man might go as high as five hundred and absorb the inevitable loss. If you should return some day with a passable lot of real gems, it would be worth my while for you to remember who treated you with such benevolence and give me fair choice."

"Noble Lyran," said Alen, apparently almost overcome. "I shall not easily forget your combination of acumen and charity. It is a lesson to traders. It is a lesson to me. I shall not insist on two thousand.

I shall cut the throat of my trader's venture by reducing his price to eighteen hundred credits, though I wonder how I shall dare tell him of it."

"What's going on now?" demanded blackbeard. "Five hundred and eighteen hundred," said Alen. "We can sit down again." "Up, down—up, down," muttered the trader.

They sat, and Alen said in Lyran: "My trader unexpectedly indorses the reduction. He says, 'Better to lose some than all'—an old proverb in the Cephean tongue. And he forbids any further reduction."

"Come, now," wheedled the gem dealer. "Let us be men of the world about this. One must give a little and take a little. Everybody knows he can't have his own way forever. I shall offer a good, round eight hundred credits and we'll close on it, eh? Pilquis, fetch us a pen and ink!" One of the burly guards was right there with an inkpot and a reed pen. Garthkint had a Customs forms out of his tunic and was busily filling it in to specify the size, number and fire of gems to be released to him.

"What's it now?" asked blackbeard.

"Eight hundred."

"Take it!"

"Garthkint," said Alen regretfully, "you heard the firmness and decision in my trader's voice? What can I do? I am only speaking for him. He is a hard man but perhaps I can talk him around later. I offer you the gems at a ruinous fifteen hundred credits."

"Split the difference," said Garthkint resignedly.

"Done at eleven-fifty," said Alen.

That blackbeard understood. "Well done!" he boomed at Alen and took a swig from Garthkint's winecup. "Have him fill in 'Sack eighteen' on his paper. It's five hundred of that grade."

The gem dealer counted out twenty-three fifty-credit notes and blackbeard signed and fingerprinted the release.

"Now," said Garthkint, "you will please remain here while I take a trip to the spaceport for my property." Three or four of the guards were suddenly quite close.

"You will find," said Alen dryly, "that our standard of commercial morality is no lower than yours."

The dealer smiled politely and left.

"Who will be the next?" asked Alen of the room at large.

"I'll look at your gems," said another dealer, sitting at the table.

With the ice-breaking done, the transactions went quicker. Alen had disposed of a dozen lots by the time their first buyer returned.

"It's all right," he said. "We've been tricked before, but your gems are as represented. I congratulate you, Herald, on driving a hard, fair bargain."

"That means," said Alen regretfully, "that I should have asked for more." The guards were once more lounging in comers and no longer seemed so menacing.

They had a mid-day meal and continued to dispose of their wares. At sunset Alen held a final auction to clean up the odd lots that remained over and was urged to stay to dinner.

The trader, counting a huge wad of the Lyran manpower-based notes, shook his head. "We should be off before dawn, Herald," he told Alen. "Time is money, time is money."

"They are very insistent."

"And I am very stubborn. Thank them and let us be on our way before anything else is done to increase my overhead."

Something did turn up—a city watchman with a bloody nose and split lip.

He demanded of the Herald: "Are you responsible for the Ceph-ean maniac known as Elwon?"

Garthkint glided up to mutter in Alen's ear: "Beware how you answerl"

Alen needed no warning. His grounding included Lyran legal concepts—and on the backward little planet touched with many relics of feudalism, "responsible" covered much territory.

"What has Chief Elwon done?" he parried.

"As you see," the watchman glumly replied, pointing to his wounds. "And the same to three others before we got him out of the wrecked wineshop and into the castle. Are you responsible for him?"

"Let me speak with my trader for a moment. Will you have some wine meantime?" He signaled and one of the guards brought a mug.

"Don't mind if I do. I can use it," sighed the watchman.

"We are in trouble," said Alen to blackbeard. "Chief Elwon is in the 'castle'—prison—for drunk and disorderly conduct. You as his master are considered responsible for his conduct under Lyran law. You must pay his fines or serve his penalties. Or you can 'disown' him, which is considered dishonorable but sometimes necessary. For paying his fine or serving his time you have a prior lien on his services, without pay—but of course that's unenforceable off Lyra."

Blackbeard was sweating a little. "Find out from the policeman how long all this is likely to take. I don't want to leave Elwon here and I do want us to get off as soon as possible. Keep him occupied, now, while I go about some business."

The trader retreated to a corner of the darkening barnlike tavern, beckoning Garthkint and a guard with him as Alen returned to the watchman.

"Good keeper of the peace," he said, "will you have another?" He would.

"My trader wishes to know what penalties are likely to be levied against the unfortunate Chief Elwon."

"Going to leave him in the lurch, eh?" asked the watchman a little belligerently. "A fine master you have!"

One of the dealers at the table indignantly corroborated him. "If you foreigners aren't prepared to live up to your obligations, why did you come here in the first place? What happens to business if a master can send his man to steal and cheat and then say: 'Don't blame me—it was his doing!' "

Alen patiently explained: "On other planets, good Lyrans, the tie of master and man is not so strong that a man would obey if he were ordered to go and steal or cheat."

They shook their heads and muttered. It was unheard-of.

"Good watchman," pressed the Herald, "my trader does not want to disown Chief Elwon. Can you tell me what recompense would be necessary—and how long it would take to manage the business?"

The watchman started on a third cup which Alen had unostentatiously signaled for. "It's hard to say," he told the Herald weightily. "For my damages, I would demand a hundred credits at least. The three other members of the watch battered by your lunatic could ask no less. The wineshop suffered easily five hundred credits' damage. The owner of it was beaten, but that doesn't matter, of course." "No imprisonment?"

"Oh, a flogging, of course"—Alen started before he recalled that the "flogging" was a few half-hearted symbolic strokes on the covered shoulders with a light cane—"but no imprisonment. His Honor, Judge Krarl, does not sit on the night bench. Judge Krarl is a newfangled reformer, stranger. He professes to believe that mulcting is unjust—that it makes it easy for the rich to commit crime and go scot-free."

"But doesn't it?" asked Alen, drawn off-course in spite of himself. There was pitying laughter around him.

"Look you," a dealer explained kindly. "The good watchman suffers battery, the mad Cephean or his master is mulcted for damages, the watchman is repaid for his injuries. What kind of justice is it to the watchman if the mad Cephean is locked away in a cell unfined?"

The watchman nodded approvingly. "Well said," he told the dealer. "Luckily we have on the night bench a justice of the old school, His Honor, Judge Treel. Stern, but fair. You should hear him! 'Fifty credits! A hundred credits and the lashl Robbed a ship, eh? Two thousand credits!' " He returned to his own voice and said with awe: "For a murder, he never assesses less than ten thousand credits.'"

And if the murderer couldn't pay, Alen knew, he became a "public charge," "responsible to the state"—that is, a slave. If he could pay, of course, he was turned loose.

"And His Honor, Judge Treel," he pressed, "is sitting tonight? Can we possibly appear before him, pay the fines and be off?"

"To be sure, stranger. I'd be a fool if I waited until morning, wouldn't I?" The wine had loosened his tongue a little too far and he evidently realized it. "Enough of this," he said. "Does your master honorably accept responsibility for the Cephean? If so, come along with me, the two of you, and we'll get this over with."

"Thanks, good watchman. We are coming."

He went to blackbeard, now alone in his corner, and said: "It's all right. We can pay off—about a thousand credits—and be on our way."

The trader muttered darkly: "Lyran jurisdiction or not, it's coming out of Elwon's pay. The bloody fool!"

They rattled through the darkening streets of the town in one of the turbine-powered wagons, the watchman sitting up front with the driver and the trader and the Herald behind.

"Something's burning," said Alen to the trader, sniffing the air.

"This stinking buggy—" began blackbeard. "Oops," he said, interrupting himself and slapping at his cloak.

"Let me, trader," said Alen. He turned back the cloak, licked his thumb, and rubbed out a crawling ring of sparks spreading across a few centimeters of the cloak's silk lining. And he looked fixedly at what had started the little fire. It was an improperly covered slow-match protruding from a holstered device that was unquestionably a hand weapon.

"I bought it from one of their guards while you were parleying with the policeman," explained blackbeard embarrassedly. "I had a time making him understand. That Garthkint fellow helped." He fiddled with the perforated cover of the slow-match, screwing it on more firmly.

"A pitiful excuse for a weapon," he went on, carefully arranging his cloak over it. "The trigger isn't a trigger and the thumb-safety isn't a safety. You pump the trigger a few times to build up pressure, and a little air squirts out to blow the match to life. Then you uncover the match and pull back the cocking-piece. This levers a dart into the barrel. Then you push the thumb-safety which puffs coal-dust into the firing chamber and also swivels down the slow-match onto a touch-hole. Poof, and away goes the dart if you didn't forget any of the steps or do them in the wrong order. Luckily, I also got a knife."

He patted the nape of his neck and said, "That's where they carry 'em here. A little sheath between the shoulderblades—wonderful for a fast draw-and-throw, though it exposes you a little more than I like when you reach. The knife's black glass. Splendid edge and good balance.

"And the thieving Lyrans knew they had me where it hurt. Seven thousand, five hundred credits for the knife and gun—if you can call it that—and the holsters. By rights I should dock Elwon for them, the bloody fool. Still, it's better to buy his way out and leave no hard feelings behind us, eh, Herald?"

"Incomparably better," said Alen. "And I am amazed that you even entertained the idea of an armed jail-delivery. What if Chief Elwon had to serve a few days in a prison? Would that be worse than forever barring yourself from the planet and blackening the names of all traders with Lyra? Trader, do not hope to put down the credits that your weapons cost you as a legitimate expense of the voyage. I will not allow it when I audit your books. It was a piece of folly on which you spent personal funds, as far as the College and Order of Herald is concerned."

"Look here," protested blackbeard. "You're supposed to be spreading utilitarian civilization, aren't you? What's utilitarian about leaving one of my crewmen here?"

Alen ignored the childish argument and wrapped himself in angry silence. As to civilization, he wondered darkly whether such a trading voyage and his part in it were relevant at all. Were the slanders true? Was the College and Order simply a collection of dupes headed by cynical oldsters greedy for luxury and power?

Such thoughts hadn't crossed his mind in a long time. He'd been too busy to entertain them, cramming his head with languages, folkways, mores, customs, underlying patterns of culture, of hundreds of galactic peoples—and for what? So that this fellow could make a profit and the College and Order take a quarter of that profit. If civilization was to come to Lyra, it would have to come in the form of metal. If the Lyrans didn't want metal, make them take it.

What did Machiavelli say? "The chief foundations of all states-are good laws and good arms; and as there cannot be good laws where the state is not well armed, it follows that where they are well armed, they have good laws." It was odd that the teachers had slurred over such a seminal idea, emphasizing instead the spiritual integrity of the weaponless College and Order—or was it?

The disenchantment he felt creeping over him was terrifying.

"The castle," said the watchman over his shoulder, and their wagon stopped with a rattle before a large but unimpressive brick structure of five stories.

"You wait," the trader told the driver after they got out. He handed him two of his fifty-credit bills. "You wait, you get many, many more money. You understand, wait?"

"I wait plenty much," shouted the driver delightedly. "I wait all night, all day. You wonderful master. You great, great master, I wait—"

"All right," growled the trader, shutting him off. "You wait."

The watchman took them through an entrance hall lit by hissing pressure lamps and casually guarded by a few liveried men with truncheons. He threw open the door of a medium-sized, well-lit room with a score of people in it, looked in, and uttered a despairing groan.

A personage on a chair that looked like a throne said sharply, "Are those the star-travelers? Well, don't just stand there. Bring them in!"

"Yes, your honor, Judge Krarl," said the watchman unhappily.

"It's the wrong judge/" Alen hissed at the trader. "This one gives out jail sentences!"

"Do what you can," said blackbeard grimly.

The watchman guided them to the personage in the chair and indicated a couple of low stools, bowed to the chair and retired to stand at the back of the room.

"Your honor," said Alen, "I am Journeyman-Herald Alen, Herald for the trading voyage—"

"Speak when you're spoken to," said the judge sharply. "Sir, with the usual insolence of wealth you have chosen to keep us waiting. I do not take this personally; it might have happened to Judge Treel, who—to your evident dismay—I am replacing because of a sudden illness, or to any other member of the bench. But as an insult to our justice, we cannot overlook it. Sir, consider yourself reprimanded. Take your seats. Watchman, bring in the Cephean."

"Sit down," Alen murmured to the trader. "This is going to be bad."

A watchman brought in Chief Elwon, bleary-eyed, tousled and sporting a few bruises. He gave Alen and the trader a shamefaced grin as his guard sat him on a stool beside them. The trader glared back.

Judge Krarl mumbled perfunctorily: "Letbattlebejoinedamong theseveralpartiesinthisdisputeletnomanquestionourimpartialaward-ingofthevictoryspeaknowifyouyieldinsteadtoourjudgment. Well? speak up, you watchmenl"

The watchman who had brought the Herald and the trader started and said from the back of the room: "Iyieldinsteadtoyour honorsjudgment."

Three other watchmen and a battered citizen, the wineshop-keeper, mumbled in turn: "Iyieldinsteadtoyourhonorsjudgment."

"Herald, speak for the accused," snapped the judge.

Well, thought Alen, I can try. "Your Honor," he said, "Chief Elwon's master does not yield to your honor's judgment. He is ready to battle the other parties in the dispute or their masters."

"What insolence is this?" screamed the judge, leaping from his throne. "The barbarous customs of other worlds do not prevail in this court! Who spoke of battle—?" He shut his mouth with a snap, evidently abruptly realizing that he had spoken of battle, in an archaic phrase that harked back to the origins of justice on the planet. The judge sat down again and told Alen, more calmly: "You have mistaken a mere formality. The offer was not made in earnest." Obviously, he didn't like the sound of that himself, but he proceeded, "Now say 'Iyieldinsteadtoyourhonorsjudgment!' and we can get on with it. For your information, trial by combat has not been practiced for many generations on our enlightened planet."

Alen said politely: "Your Honor, I am a stranger to many of the ways of Lyra, but our excellent College and Order of Heralds instructed me well in the underlying principles of your law. I recall that one of your most revered legal maxims declares: 'The highest crime against man is murder; the highest crime against man's society is breach of promise.' "

Purpling, the judge snarled: "Are you presuming to bandy law with me, you slippery-tongued foreigner? Are you presuming to accuse me of the high crime of breaking my promise? For your information, a promise consists of an offer to do, or refrain from doing, a thing in return for a consideration. There must be the five elements of promiser, promisee, offer, substance, and consideration."

"If you will forgive a foreigner," said Alen, suddenly feeling the ground again under his feet, "I maintain that you offered the parties in the dispute your services in awarding the victory."

"An empty argument," snorted the judge. "Just as an offer with substance from somebody to nobody for a consideration is no promise, or an offer without substance from somebody to somebody for a consideration is no promise, so my offer was no promise, for there was no consideration involved."

"Your honor, must the consideration be from the promisee to the promiser?"

"Of course not. A third party may provide the consideration."

"Then I respectfully maintain that your offer was a promise, since a third party, the government, provided you with the considerations of salary and position in return for you offering your services to the disputants."

"Watchmen, clear the room of uninterested persons," said the judge hoarsely. While it was being done, Alen swiftly filled in the trader and Chief Elwon. Blackbeard grinned at the mention of a five-against-one battle royal, and the engineer looked alarmed.

When the doors closed, leaving the nine of them in privacy, the judge said bitterly: "Herald, where did you learn such devilish tricks?"

Alen told him: "My College and Order instructed me well. A similar situation existed on a planet called England during an age known as the Victorious. Trial by combat had long been obsolete, there as here, but had never been declared so—there as here. A litigant won a hopeless lawsuit by publishing a challenge to his opponent and appearing at the appointed place in full armor. His opponent ignored the challenge and so lost the suit by default. The

English dictator, one Disraeli, hastily summoned his parliament to abolish trial by combat."

"And so," mused the Judge, "I find myself accused in my own chamber of high crime if I do not permit you five to slash away at each other and decide who won."

The wineshop-keeper began to blubber that he was a peaceable man and didn't intend to be carved up by that black-bearded, bloodthirsty star-traveler. All he wanted was his money.

"Silence!" snapped the judge. "Of course there will be no combat. Will you, shopkeeper, and you watchmen, withdraw if you receive satisfactory financial settlements?"

They would.

"Herald, you may dicker with them."

The four watchmen stood fast by their demand for a hundred credits apiece, and got it. The terrified shopkeeper regained his balance and demanded a thousand. Alen explained that his black-bearded master from a rude and impetuous world might be unable to restrain his rage when he, Alen, interpreted the demand and, ignoring the consequences, might beat him, the shopkeeper, to a pulp. The asking price plunged to a reasonable five hundred, which was paid over. The shopkeeper got the judge's permission to leave and backed out, bowing.

"You see, trader," Alen told blackbeard, "that it was needless to buy weapons when the spoken word—"

"And now," said the judge with a sneer, "we are easily out of that dilemma. Watchmen, arrest the three star-travelers and take them to the cages."

"Your honor!" cried Alen, outraged.

"Money won't get you out of this one. I charge you with treason."

"The charge is obsolete—" began the Herald hotly, but he broke off as he realized the vindictive strategy.

"Yes, it is. And one of its obsolete provisions is that treason charges must be tried by the parliament at a regular session, which isn't due for two hundred days. You'll be freed and I may be reprimanded, but by my head, for two hundred days you'll regret that you made a fool of me. Take them away."

"A trumped-up charge against us. Prison for two hundred days," said Alen swiftly to the trader as the watchmen closed in.

"Why buy weapons?" mocked the blackbeard, showing his teeth. His left arm whipped up and down, there was a black streak through the air—and the judge was pinned to his throne with a black glass knife through his throat and the sneer of triumph still on his lips.

The trader, before the knife struck, had the clumsy pistol out, with the cover off the glowing match and the cocking piece back. He must have pumped and cocked it under his cloak, thought Alen numbly as he told the watchmen, without prompting: "Get back against the wall and turn around." They did. They wanted to live, and the grinning blackbeard who had made meat of the judge with a flick of the arm was a terrifying figure.

"Well done, Alen," said the trader. "Take their clubs, Elwon. Two for you, two for the Herald. Alen, don't argue! I had to kill the judge before he raised an alarm—nothing but death will silence his breed. You may have to kill too before we're out of this. Take the clubs." He passed the clumsy pistol to Chief Elwon and said: "Keep it on their backs. The thing that looks like a thumb-safety is a trigger. Put a dart through the first one who tries to make a break. Alen, tell the fellow on the end to turn around and come to me slowly."

Alen did. Blackbeard swiftly stripped him, tore and knotted his clothes into ropes and bound and gagged him. The others got the same treatment in less than ten minutes.

The trader bolstered the gun and rolled the watchmen out of the line of sight from the door of the chamber. He recovered his knife and wiped it on the judge's shirt. Alen had to help him prop the body behind the throne's high back.

"Hide those clubs," blackbeard said. "Straight faces. Here we go."

They went out, single file, opening the door only enough to pass. Alen, last in line, told one of the liveried guards nearby: "His honor, Judge Krarl, does not wish to be disturbed."

"That's news?" asked the tipstaff sardonically. He put his hand on the Herald's arm. "Only yesterday he gimme a blast when I brought him a mug of water he asked me for himself. An outrageous interruption, he called me, and he asked for the water himself. What do you think of that?"

"Terrible," said Alen hastily. He broke away and caught up with the trader and the engineer at the entrance hall. Idlers and loungers were staring at them as they headed for the waiting wagon.

"I wait!" the driver, told them loudly. "I wait long, much. You pay more, more?"

"We pay more," said the trader. "You start."

The driver brought out a smoldering piece of punk, lit a pressure torch, lifted the barn-door section of the wagon's floor to expose the pottery turbine and preheated it with the torch. He pumped squeak-ily for minutes, spinning a flywheel with his other hand, before the rotor began to turn on its own. Down went the hatch, up onto the seats went the passengers.

"The spaceport," said Alen. With a slate-pencil screech the driver engaged his planetary gear and they were off.

Through it all, blackbeard had ignored frantic muttered questions from Chief Elwon, who had wanted nothing to do with murder, especially of a judge. "You sit up there," growled the trader, "and every so often you look around and see if we're being followed. Don't alarm the driver. And if we get to the spaceport and blast off without any trouble, keep your story to yourself." He settled down in the back seat with Alen and maintained a gloomy silence. The young Herald was too much in awe of this stranger, so suddenly competent in assorted forms of violence, to question him.

They did get to the spaceport without trouble, and found the crew in the Customs shed, emptied of the gems by dealers with releases. They had built a fire for warmth.

"We wish to leave immediately," said the trader, to the port officer. "Can you change my Lyran currency?"

The officer began to sputter apologetically that it was late and the vault was sealed for the night—

"That's all right. We'll change it on Vega. It'll get back to you. Call off your guards and unseal our ship."

They followed the port officer to Starsong's dim bulk out on the field. The officer cracked the seal on her with his club in the light of a flaring pressure lamp held by one of the guards.

Alen was sweating hard through it all. As they started across the field he had seen what looked like two closely spaced green stars low on the horizon towards town suddenly each jerk up and towards each other in minute arcs. The semaphore!

The signal officer in the port administration building would be watching too—but nobody on the field, preoccupied with the routine of departure, seemed to have noticed.

The lights flipped this way and that. Alen didn't know the code and bitterly regretted the lack. After some twenty signals the lights flipped to the "rest" position again as the port officer was droning out a set of take-off regulations: bearing, height above settled areas, permissible atomic fuels while in atmosphere—Alen saw somebody start across the field toward them from the administration building. The guards were leaning on their long, competent-looking weapons.

Alen inconspicuously detached himself from the group around Starsong and headed across the dark field to meet the approaching figure. Nearing it, he called out a low greeting in Lyran, using the noncom-to-officer military form.

"Sergeant," said the signal officer quietly, "go and draw off the men a few meters from the star-travelers. Tell them the ship mustn't leave, that they're to cover the foreigners and shoot if—"

Alen stood dazedly over the limp body of the signal officer. And then he quickly hid the bludgeon again and strolled back to the ship, wondering whether he'd cracked the Lyran's skull.

The port was open by then and the crew filing in. He was last. "Close it fast," he told the trader. "I had to—"

"I saw you," grunted blackbeard. "A semaphore message?" He was working as he spoke, and the metal port closed.

"Astrogator and engineer, take over," he told them.

"All hands to their bunks," ordered Astrogator Hufner. "Blast-off immediate."

Alen took to his cubicle and strapped himself in. Blast-off deafened him, rattled his bones and made him thoroughly sick as usual.

After what seemed like several wretched hours, they were definitely space-borne under smooth acceleration, and his nausea subsided.

Blackbeard knocked, came in, and unbuckled him.

"Ready to audit the books of the voyage?" asked the trader.

"No," said Alen feebly.

"It can wait," said the trader. "The books are the least important part, anyway. We have headed off a frightful war." "War? We have?"

"You wondered why I was in such haste to get off Lyra, and why I wouldn't leave Elwon there. It is because our Vegan gems were most unusual gems. I am not a technical man, but I understand they are actual gems which were treated to produce a certain effect at just about this time."

Blackbeard glanced at his wrist chronometer and said dreamily: "Lyra is getting metal. Wherever there is one of our gems, pottery is decomposing into its constituent aluminum, silicon, and oxygen. Fluxes and glazes are decomposing into calcium, zinc, barium, potassium, chromium, and iron. Buildings are crumbling, pants are dropping as ceramic belt-buckles disintegrate—"

"It means chaosl" protested Alen.

"It means civilization and peace. An ugly clash was in the making." Blackbeard paused and added deliberately: "Where neither their property nor their honor is touched, most men live content."

" 'The Prince,' Chapter 19. You are—"

"There was another important purpose to the voyage," said the trader, grinning. "You will be interested in this." He handed Alen a document which, unfolded, had the seal of the College and Order at its head.

Alen read in a daze: "Examiner 19 to the Rector—final clearance of Novice—"

He lingered pridefully over the paragraph that described how he had "with coolness and great resource" foxed the battle cruiser of the Realm, "adapting himself readily in a delicate situation requiring not only physical courage but swift recall, evaluation and application of a minor planetary culture."

Not so pridefully he read: "—inclined towards pomposity of manner somewhat ludicrous in one of his years, though not unsuccessful in dominating the crew by his bearing—"

And: "—highly profitable disposal of our gems; a feat of no mean importance since the College and Order must, after all, maintain itself."

And: "—cleared the final and crucial hurdle with some mental turmoil if I am any judge, but did clear it. After some twenty years of indoctrination in unrealistic non-violence, the youth was confronted with a situation where nothing but violence would serve, correctly evaluated this, and applied violence in the form of a truncheon to the head of a Lyran signal officer, thereby demonstrating an ability to learn and common sense as precious as it is rare."

And, finally, simply: "Recommended for training."

"Training?" gasped Alen. "You mean there's more?"

"Not for most, boy. Not for most. The bulk of us are what we seem to be: oily, gun-shy, indispensable adjuncts to trade who feather our nest with percentages. We need those percentages and we need gun-shy Heralds."

Alen recited slowly: "Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised."

"Chapter 14," said blackbeard mechanically. "We leave such clues lying by their bedsides for twenty years, and they never notice them. For the few of us who do—more training."

"Will I learn to throw a knife like you?" asked Alen, repelled and fascinated at once by the idea.

"On your own time, if you wish. Mostly it's ethics and morals so you'll be able to weigh the values of such things as knife-throwing."

"Ethics! Morals!"

"We started as missionaries, you know."

"Everybody knows that. But the Great Utilitarian Reform—"

"Some of us," said blackbeard dryly, "think it was neither great, nor utilitarian, nor a reform."

It was a staggering idea. "But we're spreading utilitarian civilization!" protested Alen. "Or if we're not, what's the sense of it all?"

Blackbeard told him: "We have our different motives. One is a sincere utilitarian; another is a gambler—happy when he's in danger