====================== The Day the Earth Stood Still and Other SF Classics by Harry Bates ====================== Copyright (c)2005 by Jean Marie Stine Renaissance www.renebooks.com Science Fiction --------------------------------- NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Duplication or distribution of this work by email, floppy disk, network, paper print out, or any other method is a violation of international copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines and/or imprisonment. --------------------------------- *THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL* *& Other SF Classics* By *HARRY BATES* Selected and Introduced by Jean Marie Sine A Renaissance E Books publication ISBN 1-58873-572-9 All rights reserved Copyright 1934, '35, '40 Street and Smith, renewed 2005 by Jean Marie Stine This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission. For information: Publisher@renebooks.com *PageTurner Editions/Futures Past Science Fiction* -------- *INTRODUCTION* Harry Bates (1900-1981) probably had no idea he was penning a story that would become a legend and spawn one of the most celebrated science fiction movies of all time when in 1940 he wrote "Farewell to the Master," which would be filmed a decade later as _The Day the Earth Stood Still_ (1951). Bates was probably just attempting to write a well-told, thought-provoking story that would captivate science fiction readers and bring him a check from his editor by return mail. That he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams is no surprise, for Bates already had a series of now classic science fiction tales to his credit. As the creator and first editor of _Astounding_, the second science fiction magazine to emerge from the pulps (and today renamed _Analog_), he had, with collaborator and assistant editor Desmond W. Hall, written the infamous Hawk Carse stories, which helped redefine sf from the stodgy, almost academic presentation it had developed in Hugo Gernsback's pioneering _Amazing Stories_ into a fast-moving, vividly colorful art form that piled wonder on wonder and adventurous incident on adventurous incident. Bates, who had begun _Astounding_ in 1930, left it when the magazine was sold in 1933 to freelance, and his writing had grown up with the field, under the tenure of _Astounding_'s next two editors, F. Orlin Tremaine and then John W. Campbell, a man of such vision that during the first three years of his assuming control of the magazine he discovered almost every major writer who dominated the field over the next three decades (Heinlein, Asimov, de Camp, etc.) and completely changed the direction of science fiction toward a mature, philosophic fiction based on reasoning and scientific principles. Under first Tremaine's and then Campbell's influence, Bates had made a quantum jump, producing a trio of sophisticated plays-on-ideas that stood traditional science fiction ideas on their head and were greeted by the kind of reader acclaim that marks the emergence of stories destined to be ranked among the classics of any field. The first of these was "A Matter of Size" (1934), the second, "Alas, All Thinking" (1935), and then after a hiatus of five years during which Bates was occupied with editorial work, he produced his magnum opus, "Farewell to the Master" (1940) AKA "The Day the Earth Stood Still" -- for which he would posthumously receive the coveted Balrog Award (1983). All three stories appear in this collection. Later, Bates would pen several equally adroit science fictional tales, including "The Experiment of Dr. Sarconi" (1940), "A Matter of Speed" (1941), "The Triggered Dimension" (1953), and "Death of a Sensitive" (1954). However, it is for "Farewell to the Master" and its haunting last line, and the poignant, equally-haunting film based on the story, that long-time science fiction fans remember Harry Bates. Jean Marie Stine -------- *CONTENTS* *CONTENTS* NOTE: Each section is preceded by a line of the pattern CH000, CH001, etc. You may use your reader's search function to locate section. CH000 CHAPTER I CH001 CHAPTER II CH002 CHAPTER III CH003 CHAPTER IV CH004 CHAPTER V CH005 CHAPTER VI CH006 CHAPTER VII CH007 ALAS, ALL THINKING! CH008 CHAPTER II CH009 CHAPTER IV CH010 CHAPTER V CH011 CHAPTER VI CH012 CHAPTER VII CH013 CHAPTER VIII CH014 CHAPTER IX CH015 A MATTER OF SIZE CH016 CHAPTER I CH017 CHAPTER II CH018 CHAPTER III CH019 CHAPTER IV CH020 CHAPTER V CH021 CHAPTER VI CH022 CHAPTER VII CH023 CHAPTER VIII * * * * -------- *THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL* (Original title: Farewell to the Master) CH000 *CHAPTER I* From his perch high on the ladder above the museum floor, Cliff Sutherland studied carefully each line and shadow of the great robot, then turned and looked thoughtfully down at the rush of visitors come from all over the Solar System to see Gnut and the traveler for themselves and to hear once again their amazing, tragic story. He himself had come to feel an almost proprietary interest in the exhibit, and with some reason. About half are distinctly He had been the only freelance picture reporter on the Capitol grounds when the visitors from the Unknown had arrived, and had obtained the first professional shots of the ship. He had witnessed at close hand every event of the next mad few days. He had thereafter photographed many times the eight-foot robot, the ship, and the beautiful slain ambassador, Klaatu, and his imposing tomb out in the center of the Tidal Basin, and such was the continuing news value of the event to the billions of persons throughout habitable space, he was there now once more to get still other shots and, if possible, a new "angle." This time he was after a picture which showed Gnut as weird and menacing. The shots he had taken the day before had not given quite the effect he wanted, and he hoped to get it today; but the light was not yet right and he had to wait for the afternoon to wane a little. The last of the crowd admitted in the present group hurried in, exclaiming at the great pure green curves of the mysterious time-space traveler, then completely forgetting the ship at sight of the awesome figure and great head of the giant Gnut. Hinged robots of crude manlike appearance were familiar enough, but never had Earthling eyes lain on one like this. For Gnut had almost exactly the shape of a man-a giant, but a man-with greenish metal for man's covering flesh, and greenish metal for man's bulging muscles. Except for a loincloth, he was nude. He stood like the powerful god of the machine of some undreamed-of scientific civilization, on his face a look of sullen, brooding thought. Those who looked at him did not make jests or idle remarks, and those nearest him usually did not speak at all. His strange, internally illuminated red eyes were so set that every observer felt they were fixed on himself alone, and he engendered a feeling that he might at any moment step forward in anger and perform unimaginable deeds. A slight rustling sound came from speakers hidden in the ceiling above, and at once the noises of the crowd lessened. The recorded lecture was about to be given. Cliff sighed. He knew the thing by heart; had even been present when the recording was made, and met the speaker, a young chap named Stillwell. "Ladies and gentlemen," began a clear and well-modulated voice-but Cliff was no longer attending. The shadows in the hollows of Gnut's face and figure were deeper; it was almost time for his shot. He picked up and examined the proofs of the pictures he had taken the day before and compared them critically with the subject. As he looked, a wrinkle came to his brow. He had not noticed it before, but now, suddenly, he had the feeling that since yesterday something about Gnut was changed. The pose before him was the identical one in the photographs, every detail on comparison seemed the same, but nevertheless the feeling persisted. He took up his viewing glass and more carefully compared subject and photographs, line by line. And then he saw that there was a difference. With sudden excitement, Cliff snapped two pictures at different exposures. He knew he should wait a little and take others, but he was so sure he had stumbled on an important mystery that he had to get going, and quickly folding his accessory equipment he descended the ladder and made his way out. Twenty minutes later, consumed with curiosity, he was developing the new shots in his hotel bedroom. What Cliff saw when he compared the negatives taken yesterday and today caused his scalp to tingle. Here was a slant indeed! And apparently no one but he knew! Still, what he had discovered, though it would have made the front page of every paper in the Solar System, was after all only a lead. The story, what really had happened, he knew no better than anyone else. It must be his job to find out. And that meant he would have to secrete himself in the building and stay there all night. That very night; there was still time for him to get back before closing. He would take a small, very fast infrared camera that could see in the dark, and he would get the real picture and the story. He snatched up the little camera, grabbed an aircab and hurried back to the museum. The place was filled with another section of the ever-present queue, and the lecture was just ending. He thanked Heaven that his arrangement with the museum permitted him to go in and out at will. He had already decided what to do. First he made his way to the "floating" guard and asked a single question, and anticipation broadened on his face as he heard the expected answer. The second thing was to find a spot where he would be safe from the eyes of the men who would close the floor for the night. There was only one possible place, the laboratory set up behind the ship. Boldly he showed his press credentials to the second guard, stationed at the partitioned passageway leading to it, stating that he had come to interview the scientists; and in a moment was at the laboratory door. He had been there a number of times and knew the room well. It was a large area roughly partitioned off for the work of the scientists engaged in breaking their way into the ship, and full of a confusion of massive and heavy objects-electric and hot-air ovens, carboys of chemicals, asbestos sheeting, compressors, basins, ladles, a microscope, and a great deal of smaller equipment common to a metallurgical laboratory. Three white-smocked men were deeply engrossed in an experiment at the far end. Cliff, waiting a good moment, slipped inside and hid himself under a table half buried with supplies. He felt reasonably safe from detection there. Very soon now the scientists would be going home for the night. From beyond the ship he could hear another section of the waiting queue filing in-the last, he hoped, of the day. He settled himself as comfortably as he could. In a moment the lecture would begin. He had to smile when he thought of one thing the recording would say. Then there it was again-the clear, trained voice of the chap Stillwell. The foot scrapings and whispers of the crowd died away, and Cliff could hear every word in spite of the great bulk of the ship lying interposed. "Ladies and gentlemen," began the familiar words, "the Smithsonian Institution welcomes you to its new Interplanetary Wing and to the marvelous exhibits at this moment before you." A slight pause. "All of you must know by now something of what happened here three months ago, if indeed you did not see it for yourself in the telescreen," the voice went on. "The few facts are briefly told. A little after 5:00 P.M. on September 16th, visitors to Washington thronged the grounds outside this building in their usual numbers and no doubt with their usual thoughts. The day was warm and fair. A stream of people was leaving the main entrance of the museum, just outside in the direction you are facing. This wing, of course, was not here at that time. Everyone was homeward bound, tired no doubt from hours on their feet, seeing the exhibits of the museum and visiting the many buildings on the grounds nearby. And then it happened. "On the area just to your right, just as it is now, appeared the time-space traveler. It appeared in the blink of an eve. It did not come down from the sky; dozens of witnesses swear to that; it just appeared. One moment it was not here, the next it was. It appeared on the very spot it now rests on. "The people nearest the ship were stricken with panic and ran back with cries and screams. Excitement spread out over Washington in a tidal wave. Radio, television, and newspapermen rushed here at once. Police formed a wide cordon around the ship, and army units appeared and trained guns and ray projectors on it. The direst calamity was feared. For it was recognized from the very beginning that this was no spaceship from anywhere in the Solar System. Every child knew that only two spaceships had ever been built on Earth, and none at all on any of the other planets and satellites; and of those two, one had been destroyed when it was pulled into the Sun, and the other had just been reported safely arrived on Mars. Then, the ones made here had a shell of a strong aluminum alloy, while this one, as you see, is of an unknown greenish metal. "The ship appeared and just sat here. No one emerged, and there was no sign that it contained life of any kind. That, as much as any single thing, caused excitement to skyrocket. Who, or what, was inside? Were the visitors hostile or friendly? Where did the ship come from? How did it arrive so suddenly right on this spot without dropping from the sky." "For two days the ship rested here, just as you now see it, without motion or sign that it contained life. Long before the end of that time the scientists had explained that it was not so much a spaceship as a space-time traveler, because only such a ship could arrive as this one did-materialize. They pointed out that such a traveler, while theoretically understandable to us Earthmen, was far beyond attempt at our present state of knowledge, and that this one, activated by relativity principles, might well have come from the far corner of the Universe, from a distance which light itself would require millions of years to cross. "When this opinion was disseminated, public tension grew until it was almost intolerable. Where had the traveler come from? Who were its occupants? Why had they come to Earth? Above all, why did they not show themselves? Were they perhaps preparing some terrible weapon of destruction? "And where was the ship's entrance port? Men who dared go look reported that none could be found. No slightest break or crack marred the perfect smoothness of the ship's curving ovoid surface. And a delegation of high-ranking officials who visited the ship could not, by knocking, elicit from its occupants any sign that they had been heard. "At last, after exactly two days, in full view of tens of thousands of persons assembled and standing well back, and under the muzzles of scores of the army's most powerful guns and ray projectors, an opening appeared in the wall of the ship, and a ramp slid down, and out stepped a man, godlike in appearance and human in form, closely followed by a giant robot. And when they touched the ground the ramp slid back and the entrance closed as before. "It was immediately apparent to all the assembled thousands that the stranger was friendly. The first thing he did was to raise his right arm high in the universal gesture of peace-but it was not that which impressed those nearest so much as the expression on his face, which radiated kindness, wisdom, the purest nobility. In his delicately tinted robe he looked like a benign god. "At once, waiting for this appearance, a large committee of high-ranking government officials and army officers advanced to greet the visitor. With graciousness and dignity the man pointed to himself, then to his robot companion, and said in perfect English with a peculiar accent, 'I am Klaatu,' or a name that sounded like that, 'and this is Gnut.' The names were not well understood at the time, but the sight-and-sound film of the television men caught them and they became known to everyone subsequently. "And then occurred the thing which shall always be to the shame of the human race. From a treetop a hundred yards away came a wink of violet light and Klaatu fell. The assembled multitude stood for a moment stunned, not comprehending what had happened. Gnut, a little behind his master and to one side, slowly turned his body a little toward him, moved his head twice, and stood still, in exactly the position you now see him. "Then followed pandemonium. The police pulled the slaver of Klaatu out of the tree. They found him mentally unbalanced; he kept crying that the devil had come to kill everyone on Earth. He was taken away, and Klaatu, although obviously dead, was rushed to the nearest hospital to see if anything could be done to revive him. Confused and frightened crowds milled about the Capitol grounds the rest of the afternoon and much of that night. The ship remained as silent and motionless as before. And Gnut, too, never moved from the position he had come to rest in. "Gnut never moved again. He remained exactly as you see him all that night and for the ensuing days. When the mausoleum in the Tidal Basin was built, Klaatu's burial services took place where you are standing now, attended by the highest functionaries of all the great countries of the world. It was not only the most appropriate but the safest thing to do, for if there should be other living creatures in the traveler, as seemed possible at that time, they had to be impressed by the sincere sorrow of us Earthmen at what had happened. If Gnut was still alive, or perhaps I had better say functional, there was no sign. He stood as you see him during the entire ceremony. He stood so while his master was floated out to the mausoleum and given to the centuries with the tragically short sight-and-sound record of his historic visit. And he stood so afterward, day after day, night after night, in fair weather and in rain, never moving or showing by any slightest sign that he was aware of what had gone on. "After the interment, this wing was built out from the museum to cover the traveler and Gnut. Nothing else could very well have been done, it was learned, for both Gnut and the ship were far too heavy to be moved safely by any means at hand. "You have heard about the efforts of our metallurgists since then to break into the ship, and of their complete failure. Behind the ship now, as you can see from either end, a partitioned workroom has been set up where the attempt still goes on. So far its wonderful greenish metal has proved inviolable. Not only are they unable to get in, but they cannot even find the exact place from which Klaatu and Gnut emerged. The chalk marks you see are the best approximation. "Many people have feared that Gnut was only temporarily deranged, and that on return to function might be dangerous, so the scientists have completely destroyed all chance of that. The greenish metal of which he is made seemed to be the same as that of the ship and could no more be attacked, they found, nor could they find any way to penetrate to his internals-but they had other means. They sent electrical currents of tremendous voltages and amperages through him. They applied terrific heat to all parts of his metal shell. They immersed him for days in gases and acids and strongly corroding solutions, and they have bombarded him with every known kind of ray. You need have no fear of him now. He cannot possibly have retained the ability to function in any way. "But-a word of caution. The officials of the government know that visitors will not show any disrespect in this building. It may be that the unknown and unthinkably powerful civilization from which Klaatu and Gnut came may send other emissaries to see what happened to them. Whether or not they do, not one of us must be found amiss in our attitude. None of us could very well anticipate what happened, and we all are immeasurably sorry, but we are still in a sense responsible, and must do what we can to avoid possible retaliations. "You will be allowed to remain five minutes longer, and then, when the gong sounds, you will please leave promptly. The robot attendants along the wall will answer any questions you may have. "Look well, for before you stand stark symbols of the achievement, mystery, and frailty of the human race." The recorded voice ceased speaking. Cliff, carefully moving his cramped limbs, broke out in a wide smile. If they knew what he knew! For his photographs told a slightly different story from that of the lecturer. In yesterday's a line of the figured floor showed clearly at the outer edge of the robot's near foot; in today's, that line was covered. Gnut had moved! Or been moved, though this was very unlikely. Where was the derrick and other evidence of such activity? It could hardly have been done in one night, and all signs so quickly concealed. And why should it be done at all? Still, to make sure, he had asked the guard. He could almost remember verbatim his answer, "No, Gnut has neither moved nor been moved since the death of his master. A special point was made of keeping him in the position he assumed at Klaatu's death. The floor was built in under him, and the scientists who completed his derangement erected their apparatus around him, just as he stands. You need have no fears." Cliff smiled again. He did not have any fears. Not yet. -------- CH001 *CHAPTER II* A moment later the big gong above the entrance doors rang the closing hour, and immediately following it a voice from the speakers called out, "Five o'clock, ladies and gentlemen. Closing time, ladies and gentlemen." The three scientists, as if surprised it was so late, hurriedly washed their hands, changed to their street clothes and disappeared down the partitioned corridor, oblivious of the young picture man hidden under the table. The slide and scrape of the feet on the exhibition floor rapidly dwindled, until at last there were only the steps of the two guards walking from one point to another, making sure everything was all right for the night. For just a moment one of them balanced in the doorway of the laboratory, then he joined the other at the entrance. Then the great metal doors clanged to, and there was silence. Cliff waited several minutes, then carefully poked his way out from under the table. As he straightened up, a faint tinkling crash sounded at the floor by his feet. Carefully stooping, he found the shattered remains of a thin glass pipette. He had knocked it off the table. That caused him to realize something he had not thought of before: A Gnut who had moved might be a Gnut who could see and hear-and really be dangerous. He would have to be very careful. He looked about him. The room was bounded at the ends by two fiber partitions which at the inner ends followed close under the curving bottom of the ship. The inner side of the room was the ship itself, and the outer was the southern wall of the wing. There were four large high windows. The only entrance was by way of the passage. Without moving, from his knowledge of the building, he made his plan. The wing was connected with the western end of the museum by a doorway, never used, and extended westward toward the Washington Monument. The ship lay nearest the southern wall, and Gnut stood out in front of it, not far from the northeast corner and at the opposite end of the room from the entrance of the building and the passageway leading to the laboratory. By retracing his steps he would come out on the floor at the point farthest removed from the robot. This was just what he wanted, for on the other side of the entrance, on a low platform, stood a paneled table containing the lecture apparatus, and this table was the only object in the room which afforded a place for him to lie concealed while watching what might go on. The only other objects on the floor were the six manlike robot attendants in fixed stations along the northern wall, placed there to answer visitors' questions. He would have to gain the table. He turned and began cautiously tiptoeing out of the laboratory and down the passageway. It was already dark there, for what light still entered the exhibition hall was shut off by the great bulk of the ship. He reached the end of the room without making a sound. Very carefully he edged forward and peered around the bottom of the ship at Gnut. He had a momentary shock. The robot's eyes were right on him!-or so it seemed. Was that only the effect of the set of his eyes, he wondered, or was he already discovered? The position of Gnut's head did not seem to have changed, at any rate. Probably everything was all right, but he wished he did not have to cross that end of the room with the feeling that the robot's eyes were following him. He drew back and sat down and waited. It would have to be totally dark before he essayed the trip to the table. He waited a full hour, until the faint beams from the lamps on the grounds outside began to make the room seem to grow lighter; then he got up and peeped around the ship once more. The robot's eyes seemed to pierce right at him as before, only now, due no doubt to the darkness, the strange internal illumination seemed much brighter. This was a chilling thing. Did Gnut know he was there? What were the thoughts of the robot? What could be the thoughts of a man-made machine, even so wonderful a one as Gnut? It was time for the cross, so Cliff slung his camera around on his back, went down on his hands and knees, and carefully moved to the edge of the entrance wall. There he fitted himself as closely as he could into the angle made by it with the floor and started inching ahead. Never pausing, not risking a glance at Gnut's unnerving red eyes, moving an inch at a time, he snaked along. He took ten minutes to cross the space of a hundred feet, and he was wet with perspiration when his fingers at last touched the one-foot rise of the platform on which the table stood. Still slowly, silently as a shadow, he made his way over the edge and melted behind the protection of the table. At last he was there. He relaxed for a moment, then, anxious to know whether he had been seen, carefully turned and looked around the side of the table. Gnut's eyes were now full on him! Or so it seemed. Against the general darkness, the robot loomed a mysterious and still darker shadow that, for all his being a hundred and fifty feet away, seemed to dominate the room. Cliff could not tell whether the position of his body was changed or not. But if Gnut were looking at him, he at least did nothing else. Not by the slightest motion that Cliff could discern did he appear to move. His position was the one he had maintained these last three months, in the darkness, in the rain, and this last week in the museum. Cliff made up his mind not to give away to fear. He became conscious of his own body. The cautious trip had taken something out of him-his knees and elbows burned and his trousers were no doubt ruined. But these were little things if what he hoped for came to pass. If Gnut so much as moved, and he could catch him with his infrared camera, he would have a story that would buy him fifty suits of clothes. And if on top of that he could learn the purpose of Gnut's moving-provided there was a purpose-that would be a story that would set the world on its ears. He settled down to a period of waiting; there was no telling when Gnut would move, if indeed he would move that night. Cliff's eyes had long been adjusted to the dark and he could make out the larger objects well enough. From time to time he peered out at the robot-peered long and hard, till his outlines wavered and he seemed to move, and he had to blink and rest his eyes to be sure it was only his imagination. Again the minute hand of his watch crept around the dial. The inactivity made Cliff careless, and for longer and longer periods he kept his head back out of sight behind the table. And so it was that when Gnut did move he was scared almost out of his wits. Dull and a little bored, he suddenly found the robot out on the floor, halfway in his direction. But that was not the most frightening thing. It was that when he did see Gnut he did not catch him moving! He was stopped as still as a cat in the middle of stalking a mouse. His eyes were now much brighter, and there was no remaining doubt about their direction: he was looking right at Cliff! Scarcely breathing, half hypnotized, Cliff looked back. His thoughts tumbled. What was the robot's intention? Why had he stopped so still? Was he being stalked? How could he move with such silence? In the heavy darkness Gnut's eyes moved nearer. Slowly but in perfect rhythm the almost imperceptible sound of his footsteps beat on Cliff's ears. Cliff, usually resourceful enough, was this time caught flat-footed. Frozen with fear, utterly incapable of fleeing, he lay where he was while the metal monster with the fiery eyes came on. For a moment Cliff all but fainted, and when he recovered, there was Gnut towering over him, legs almost within reach. He was bending slightly, burning his terrible eyes right into his own! Too late to try to think of running now. Trembling like any cornered mouse, Cliff waited for the blow that would crush him. For an eternity, it seemed, Gnut scrutinized him without moving. For each second of that eternity Cliff expected annihilation, sudden, quick, complete. And then suddenly and unexpectedly it was over. Gnut's body straightened and he stepped back. He turned. And then, with the almost jerkless rhythm which only he among robots possessed, he started back toward the place from which he came. Cliff could hardly believe he had been spared. Gnut could have crushed him like a worm-and he had only turned around and gone back. Why? It could not be supposed that a robot was capable of human considerations. Gnut went straight to the other end of the traveler. At a certain place he stopped and made a curious succession of sounds. At once Cliff saw an opening, blacker than the gloom of the building, appear in the ship's side, and it was followed by a slight sliding sound as a ramp slid out and met the floor. Gnut walked up the ramp and, stooping a little, disappeared inside the ship. Then, for the first time, Cliff remembered the picture he had come to get. Gnut had moved, but he had not caught him! But at least now, whatever opportunities there might be later, he could get the shot of the ramp connecting with the opened door; so he twisted his camera into position, set it for the proper exposure, and took a shot. A long time passed and Gnut did not come out. What could he be doing inside? Cliff wondered. Some of his courage returned to him and he toyed with the idea of creeping forward and peeping through the port, but he found he had not the courage for that. Gnut had spared him, at least for the time, but there was no telling how far his tolerance would go. An hour passed, then another, Gnut was doing something inside the ship, but what? Cliff could not imagine. If the robot had been a human being, he knew he would have sneaked a look, but, as it was, he was too much of an unknown quantity. Even the simplest of Earth's robots under certain circumstances were inexplicable things; what, then, of this one, come from an unknown and even unthinkable civilization, by far the most wonderful construction ever seen-what superhuman powers might he not possess? All that the scientists of Earth could do had not served to derange him. Acid, heat, rays, terrific crushing blows-he had withstood them all; even his finish had been unmarred. He might be able to see perfectly in the dark. And right where he was, he might be able to hear or in some way sense the least change in Cliff's position. More time passed, and then, some time after two o'clock in the morning, a simple homely thing happened, but a thing so unexpected that for a moment it quite destroyed Cliff's equilibrium. Suddenly, through the dark and silent building, there was a faint whir of wings, soon followed by the piercing, sweet voice of a bird. A mocking bird. Somewhere in the gloom above his head. Clear and full-throated were its notes; a dozen little songs it sang, one after the other without pause between-short insistent calls, twirrings, coaxings, cooings-the spring love song of perhaps the finest singer in the world. Then, as suddenly as it began, the voice was silent. If an invading army had poured out of the traveler, Cliff would have been less surprised. The month was December; even in Florida the mocking birds had not vet begun their song. How had one gotten into that tight, gloomy museum? How and why was it singing there? He waited, full of curiosity. Then suddenly he was aware of Gnut, standing just outside the port of the ship. He stood quite still, his glowing eyes turned squarely in Cliff's direction. For a moment the hush in the museum seemed to deepen; then it was broken by a soft thud on the floor near where Cliff was lying. He wondered. The light in Gnut's eyes changed, and he started his almost jerkless walk in Cliff's direction. When only a little away, the robot stopped, bent over, and picked something from the floor. For some time he stood without motion and looked at a little object he held in his hand. Cliff knew, though he could not see, that it was the mocking bird. Its body, for he was sure that it had lost its song forever. Gnut then turned, and without a glance at Cliff, walked back to the ship and again went inside. * * * * Hours passed while Cliff waited for some sequel to this surprising happening. Perhaps it was because of his curiosity that his fear of the robot began to lessen. Surely if the mechanism was unfriendly, if he intended him any harm, he would have finished him before, when he had such a perfect opportunity. Cliff began to nerve himself for a quick look inside the port. And a picture; he must remember the picture. He kept forgetting the very reason he was there. It was in the deeper darkness of the false dawn when he got sufficient courage and made the start. He took off his shoes, and in his stockinged feet, his shoes tied together and slung over his shoulder, he moved stiffly but rapidly to a position behind the nearest of the six robot attendants stationed along the wall, then paused for some sign which might indicate that Gnut knew he had moved. Hearing none, he slipped along behind the next robot attendant and paused again. Bolder now, he made in one spurt all the distance to the farthest one, the sixth, fixed just opposite the port of the ship. There he met with a disappointment. No light that he could detect was visible within, there was only darkness and the all-permeating silence. Still, he had better get the picture. He raised his camera, focused it on the dark opening, and gave the film a comparatively long exposure. Then he stood there, at a loss what to do next. As he paused, a peculiar series of muffled noises reached his ears, apparently from within the ship. Animal noises-first scrapings and pantings, punctuated by several sharp clicks, then deep, rough snarls, interrupted by more scrapings and pantings, as if a struggle of some kind were going on. Then suddenly, before Cliff could even decide to run back to the table, a low, wide, dark shape bounded out of the port and immediately turned and grew to the height of a man. A terrible fear swept over Cliff, even before he knew what the shape was. In the next second Gnut appeared in the port and stepped unhesitatingly down the ramp toward the shape. As he advanced it backed slowly away for a few feet; but then it stood its ground, and thick arms rose from its sides and began a loud drumming on its chest, while from its throat came a deep roar of defiance. Only one creature in the world beat its chest and made a sound like that. The shape was a gorilla! And a huge one! Gnut kept advancing, and when close, charged forward and grappled with the beast. Cliff would not have guessed that Gnut could move so fast. In the darkness he could not see the details of what happened-all he knew was that the two great shapes, the titanic metal Gnut and the squat but terrifically strong gorilla, merged for a moment with silence on the robot's part and terrible, deep, indescribable roars on the other's; then the two separated, and it was as if the gorilla had been flung back and away. The animal at once rose to its full height and roared deafeningly. Gnut advanced. They closed again, and the separation of before was repeated. The robot continued inexorably, and now the gorilla began to fall back down the building. Suddenly the beast darted at a manlike shape against the wall, and with one rapid side movement dashed the fifth robot attendant to the floor and decapitated it. Tense with fear, Cliff crouched behind his own robot attendant. He thanked Heaven that Gnut was between him and the gorilla and was continuing his advance. The gorilla backed farther, darted suddenly at the next robot in the row, and with strength almost unbelievable picked it from its roots and hurled it at Gnut. With a sharp metallic clang, robot hit robot, and the one of Earth bounced off to one side and rolled to a stop. Cliff cursed himself for it afterward, but again he completely forgot the picture. The gorilla kept falling back down the building, demolishing with terrific bursts of rage every robot attendant that he passed and throwing the pieces at the implacable Gnut. Soon they arrived opposite the table, and Cliff now thanked his stars he had come away. There followed a brief silence. Cliff could not make out what was going on, but he imagined that the gorilla had at last reached the corner of the wing and was trapped. If he was, it was only for a moment. The silence was suddenly shattered by a terrific roar, and the thick, squat shape of the animal came bounding toward Cliff. He came all the way back and turned just between Cliff and the port of the ship. Cliff prayed frantically for Gnut to come back quickly, for there was now only the last remaining robot attendant between him and the madly dangerous brute. Out of the dimness Gnut did appear. The gorilla rose to its full height and again beat its chest and roared its challenge. And then occurred a curious thing. It fell on all fours and slowly rolled over on its side, as if weak or hurt. Then panting, making frightening noises, it forced itself again to its feet and faced the oncoming Gnut. As it waited, its eye was caught by the last robot attendant and perhaps Cliff, shrunk close behind it. With a surge of terrible destructive rage, the gorilla waddled sideward toward Cliff, but this time, even through his panic, he saw that the animal moved with difficulty, again apparently sick or severely wounded. He jumped back just in time-the gorilla pulled out the last robot-attendant and hurled it violently at Gnut, missing him narrowly. That was its last effort. The weakness caught it again; it dropped heavily on one side, rocked back and forth a few times, and fell to twitching. Then it lay still and did not move again. * * * * The first faint pale light of the dawn was seeping into the room. From the corner where he had taken refuge, Cliff watched closely the great robot. It seemed to him that he behaved very queerly. He stood over the dead gorilla, looking down at him with what in a human would be called sadness. Cliff saw this clearly; Gnut's heavy greenish features bore a thoughtful, grieving expression new to his experience. For some moments he stood so; then as might a father with his sick child, he leaned over, lifted the great animal in his metal arms, and carried it tenderly within the ship. Cliff flew back to the table, suddenly fearful of yet other dangerous and inexplicable happenings. It struck him that he might be safer in the laboratory, and with trembling knees he made his way there and hid in one of the big ovens. He prayed for full daylight. His thoughts were chaos. Rapidly, one after another, his mind churned up the amazing events of the night, but all was mystery; it seemed there could be no rational explanation for them. That mocking bird. The gorilla. Gnut's sad expression and his tenderness. What could account for a fantastic melange like that! Gradually full daylight did come. A long time passed. At last he began to believe he might yet get out of that place of mystery and danger alive. At 8:30 there were noises at the entrance, and the good sound of human voices came to his ears. He stepped out of the oven and tiptoed to the passageway. The noises stopped suddenly and there was a frightened exclamation and then the sound of running feet, and then silence. Stealthily Cliff sneaked down the narrow way and peeped fearfully around the ship. There Gnut was in his accustomed place, in the identical pose he had taken at the death of his master, brooding sullenly and alone over a space traveler once again closed tight and a room that was a shambles. The entrance doors stood open and, heart in his mouth, Cliff ran out. A few minutes later, safe in his hotel room, completely done in, he sat down for a second and almost at once fell asleep. Later, still in his clothes and still asleep, he staggered over to the bed. He did not wake up till midafternoon. -------- CH002 *CHAPTER III* Cliff awoke slowly, at first not realizing that the images tumbling in his head were real memories and not a fantastic dream. It was recollection of the pictures which brought him to his feet. Hastily he set about developing the film in his camera. Then in his hands was proof that the events of the night were real. Both shots turned out well. The first showed clearly the ramp leading up to the port as he had dimly discerned it from his position behind the table. The second, of the open port as snapped from in front, was a disappointment, for a blank wall just back of the opening cut off all view of the interior. That would account for the fact that no light had escaped from the ship while Gnut was inside. Assuming Gnut required light for whatever he did. Cliff looked at the negatives and was ashamed of himself. What a rotten picture man he was to come back with two ridiculous shots like these! He had had a score of opportunities to get real ones-shots of Gnut in action-Gnut's fight with the gorilla-even Gnut holding the mocking bird-spine-chilling stuff!-and all he had brought back was two stills of a doorway. Oh, sure, they were valuable, but he was a Grade A ass. And to top this brilliant performance, he had fallen asleep! Well, he'd better get out on the street and find out what was doing. Quickly he showered, shaved, and changed his clothes, and soon was entering a nearby restaurant patronized by other picture and newsmen. Sitting alone at the lunch bar, he spotted a friend and competitor. "Well, what do _you_ think?" asked his friend when he took the stool at his side. "I don't think anything until I've had breakfast," Cliff answered. "Then haven't you heard?" "Heard what?" fended Cliff, who knew very well what was coming. "You're a fine picture man," was the other's remark. "When something really big happens, you are asleep in bed." But then he told him what had been discovered that morning in the museum, and of the world-wide excitement at the news. Cliff did three things at once, successfully-gobbled a substantial breakfast, kept thanking his stars that nothing new had transpired, and showed continuous surprise. Still chewing, he got up and hurried over to the building. Outside, balked at the door, was a large crowd of the curious, but Cliff had no trouble gaining admittance when he showed his press credentials. Gnut and the ship stood just as he had left them, but the floor had been cleaned up and the pieces of the demolished robot attendants were lined up in one place along the wall. Several other competitor friends of his were there. "I was away; missed the whole thing," he said to one of them. "What's supposed to be the explanation for what happened?" "Ask something easy," was the answer. "Nobody knows. It's thought maybe something came out of the ship, maybe another robot like Gnut. Say-where have you been?" "Asleep." "Better catch up. Several billion bipeds are scared stiff. Revenge for the death of Klaatu. Earth about to be invaded." "But that's -- " "Oh, I know it's all crazy, but that's the story they're being fed; it sells news. But there's a new angle just turned up, very surprising. Come here." He led Cliff to the table where stood a knot of people looking with great interest at several objects guarded by a technician. Gus pointed to a long slide on which were mounted a number of short dark-brown hairs. "Those hairs came off a large male gorilla," Gus said with a certain hard-boiled casualness. "Most of them were found among the sweepings of the floor this morning. The rest were found on the robot attendants." Cliff tried to look astounded. Gus pointed to a test tube partly filled with a light amber fluid. "And that's blood, diluted-gorilla blood. It was found on Gnut's arms." "Good Heaven!" Cliff managed to exclaim. "And there's no explanation?" "Not even a theory. It's your big chance, wonder boy." Cliff broke away from Gus, unable to maintain his act any longer. He couldn't decide what to do about his story. The press services would bid heavily for it-with all his pictures-but that would take further action out of his hands. In the back of his mind he wanted to stay in the wing again that night, but-well, he simply was afraid. He'd had a pretty stiff dose, and he wanted very much to remain alive. He walked over and looked a long time at Gnut. No one would ever have guessed that he had moved, or that there had rested on his greenish metal face a look of sadness. Those weird eyes! Cliff wondered if they were really looking at him, as they seemed, recognizing him as the bold intruder of last night. Of what unknown stuff were they made-those materials placed in his eye sockets by one branch of the race of man which all the science of his own could not even serve to dysfunction? What was Gnut thinking? What could be the thoughts of a robot-a mechanism of metal poured out of man's clay crucibles? Was he angry at him? Cliff thought not. Gnut had had him at his mercy-and had walked away. Dared he stay again? Cliff thought perhaps he did. He walked about the room, thinking it over. He felt sure Gnut would move again. A Mikton ray gun would protect him from another gorilla-or fifty of them. He did not yet have the real story. He had come back with two miserable architectural stills! He might have known from the first that he would stay. At dusk that night, armed with his camera and a small Mikton gun, he lay once more under the table of supplies in the laboratory and heard the metal doors of the wing clang to for the night. This time he would get the story-and the pictures. If only no guard was posted inside! -------- CH003 *CHAPTER IV* Cliff listened hard for a long time for any sound which might tell him that a guard had been left, but the silence within the wing remained unbroken. He was thankful for that-but not quite completely. The gathering darkness and the realization that he was now irrevocably committed made the thought of a companion not altogether unpleasant. About an hour after it reached maximum darkness he took off his shoes, tied them together and slung them around his neck, down his back, and stole quietly down the passageway to where it opened into the exhibition area. All seemed as it had been the preceding night. Gnut looked an ominous, indistinct shadow at the far end of the room, his glowing red eyes again seemingly right on the spot from which Cliff peeped out. As on the previous night, but even more carefully, Cliff went down on his stomach in the angle of the wall and slowly snaked across to the low platform on which stood the table. Once in its shelter, he fixed his shoes so that they straddled one shoulder, and brought his camera and gun holster around, ready on his breast. This time, he told himself, he would get pictures. He settled down to wait, keeping Gnut in full sight every minute. His vision reached maximum adjustment to the darkness. Eventually he began to feel lonely and a little afraid. Gnut's red-glowing eyes were getting on his nerves; he had to keep assuring himself that the robot would not harm him. He had little doubt but that he himself was being watched. Hours slowly passed. From time to time he heard slight noises at the entrance, on the outside-a guard, perhaps, or maybe curious visitors. At about nine o'clock he saw Gnut move. First his head alone; it turned so that the eyes burned stronger in the direction where Cliff lay. For a moment that was all; then the dark metal form stirred slightly and began moving forward-straight toward himself. Cliff had thought he would not be afraid much-but now his heart stood still. What would happen this time; With amazing silence, Gnut drew nearer, until he towered an ominous shadow over the spot where Cliff lay. For a long time his red eyes burned down on the prone man. Cliff trembled all over; this was worse than the first time. Without having planned it, he found himself speaking to the creature. "You would not hurt me," he pleaded. "I was only curious to see what's going on. It's my job. Can yon understand me? I would not harm or bother you. I ... I couldn't if I wanted to! Please!" The robot never moved, and Cliff could not guess whether his words had been understood or even heard. When he felt he could not bear the suspense any longer, Gnut reached out and took something from a drawer of the table, or perhaps he put something back in; then he stepped back, turned, and retraced his steps. Cliff was safe! Again the robot had spared him! Beginning then, Cliff lost much of his fear. He felt sure now that this Gnut would do him no harm. Twice he had had him in his power, and each time he had only looked and quietly moved away. Cliff could not imagine what Gnut had done in the drawer of the table. He watched with the greatest curiosity to see what would happen next. As on the night before, the robot went straight to the end of the ship and made the peculiar sequence of sounds that opened the port, and when the ramp slid out he went inside. After that Cliff was alone in the darkness for a very long time, probably two hours. Not a sound came from the ship. Cliff knew he should sneak up to the port and peep inside, but he could not quite bring himself to do it. With his gun he could handle another gorilla, but if Gnut caught him it might be the end. Momentarily he expected something fantastic to happen-he knew not what; maybe the mocking bird's sweet song again, maybe a gorilla, maybe-anything. What did at last happen once more caught him with complete surprise. He heard a sudden muffled sound, then words-human words-every one familiar. "Gentlemen," was the first, and then there was a very slight pause. "The Smithsonian Institution welcomes you to its new Interplanetary Wing and to the marvelous exhibits at this moment before you. It was the recorded voice of Stillwell! But it was not coming through the speakers overhead, but much muted, from within the ship. After a slight pause it went on, "All of you must ... must -- " Here it stammered and came to a stop. Cliff's hair bristled. That stammering was not in the lecture! For just a moment there was silence; then came a scream, a hoarse man's scream, muffled, from somewhere within the heart of the ship; and it was followed by muted gasps and cries, as of a man in great fright or distress. Every nerve tight, Cliff watched the port. He heard a thudding noise within the ship, then out the door flew the shadow of what was surely a human being. Gasping and half stumbling, he ran straight down the room in Cliff's direction. When twenty feet away, the great shadow of Gnut followed him out of the port. Cliff watched, breathless. The man-it was Stillwell, he saw now-came straight for the table behind which Cliff himself lay, as if to get behind it, but when only a few feet away, his knees buckled and he fell to the floor. Suddenly Gnut was standing over him, but Stillwell did not seem to be aware of it. He appeared very ill, but kept making spasmodic futile efforts to creep on to the protection of the table. Gnut did not move, so Cliff was emboldened to speak. "What's the matter, Stillwell?" he asked. "Can I help? Don't be afraid. I'm Cliff Sutherland-you know, the picture man." Without showing the least surprise at finding Cliff there, and clutching at his presence like a drowning man would a straw, Stillwell gasped out, "Help me! Gnut ... Gnut -- " He seemed unable to go on. "Gnut what?" asked Cliff. Very conscious of the fire-eyed robot looming above, and afraid even to move out to the man, Cliff added reassuringly, "Gnut won't hurt you. I'm sure he won't. He doesn't hurt me. What's the matter? What can I do?" With a sudden accession of energy, Stillwell rose on his elbows. "Where am I?" he asked. "In the Interplanetary Wing," Cliff answered. "Don't you know?" Only Stillwell's hard breathing was heard for a moment. Then hoarsely, weakly, he asked: "How did I get here?" "I don't know," said Cliff "I was making a lecture recording," Stillwell said, "when suddenly I found myself here ... or I mean in there -- " He broke off and showed a return of his terror. "Then what?" asked Cliff gently. "I was in that box-and there, above me, was Gnut, the robot. Gnut! But they made Gnut harmless! He's never moved!" "Steady, now," said Cliff. "I don't think Gnut will hurt you." Stillwell fell back on the floor. "I'm very weak," he gasped. "Something-Will you get a doctor?" He was utterly unaware that towering above him, eyes boring down at him through the darkness, was the robot he feared so greatly. As Cliff hesitated, at a loss what to do, the man's breath began coming in short gasps, as regular as the ticking of a clock. Cliff dared to move out to him, but no act on his part could have helped the man now. His gasps weakened and became spasmodic; then suddenly he was completely silent and still. Cliff felt for his heart; then looked up to the eyes in the shadow above. "He is dead," he whispered, The robot seemed to understand, or at least to hear. He bent forward and regarded the still figure. "What is it, Gnut?" Cliff asked the robot suddenly. "What are you doing? Can I help you in any way? Somehow I don't believe you are unfriendly, and I don't believe you killed this man. But what happened? Can you understand me? Can you speak? What is it you're trying to do?" Gnut made no sound or motion, but only looked at the still figure at his feet. In the robot's face, now so close, Cliff saw the look of sad contemplation. Gnut stood so several minutes; then he bent lower, took the limp form carefully-even gently, Cliff thought-in his mighty arms, and carried him to the place along the wall where lay the dismembered pieces of the robot attendants. Carefully he laid him by their side. Then he went back into the ship. Without fear now, Cliff stole along the wall of the room. He had gotten almost as far as the shattered figures on the floor when he suddenly stopped motionless. Gnut was emerging again. He was bearing a shape that looked like another body, a larger one. He held it in one arm and placed it carefully by the body of Stillwell. In the hand of his other arm he held something that Cliff could not make out, and this he placed at the side of the body he had just put down. Then he went to the ship and returned once more with a shape which he laid gently by the others; and when this last trip was over he looked down at them all for a moment, then turned slowly back to the ship and stood motionless, as if in deep thought, by the ramp. Cliff restrained his curiosity as long as he could, then slipped forward and bent over the objects Gnut had placed there. First in the row was the body of Stillwell, as he expected, and next was the great shapeless furry mass of a dead gorilla-the one of last night. By the gorilla lay the object the robot had carried in his free hand-the little body of the mocking bird. These last two had remained in the ship all night, and Gnut, for all his surprising gentleness in handling them, was only cleaning house. But there was a fourth body whose history he did not know. He moved closer and bent very low to look. What he saw made him catch his breath. Impossible!-he thought; there was some confusion in his directions; he brought his face back, close to the first body. Then his blood ran cold. The first body was that of Stillwell, but the last in the row was Stillwell, too; there were two bodies of Stillwell, both exactly alike, both dead. Cliff backed away with a cry, and then panic took him and he ran down the room away from Gnut and yelled and beat wildly on the door. There was a noise on the outside. "Let me out!" he yelled in terror. "Let me out! Let me out! Oh, hurry!" A crack opened between the two doors and he forced his way through like a wild animal and ran far out on the lawn. A belated couple on a nearby path stared at him with amazement, and this brought some sense to his head and he slowed down and came to a stop. Back at the building, everything looked as usual, and in spite of his terror, Gnut was not chasing him. He was still in his stockinged feet. Breathing heavily, he sat down on the wet grass and put on his shoes; then he stood and looked at the building, trying to pull himself together. What an incredible melange! The dead Stillwell, the dead gorilla, and the dead mocking bird-all dying before his eyes. And then that last frightening thing, the second dead Stillwell whom he had not seen die. And Gnut's strange gentleness, and the sad expression he had twice seen on his face. As he looked, the grounds about the building came to life. Several people collected at the door of the wing, above sounded the siren of a police copter, then in the distance another, and from all sides people came running, a few at first, then more and more. The police planes landed on the lawn just outside the door of the wing, and he thought he could see the officers peeping inside. Then suddenly the lights of the wing flooded on. In control of himself now, Cliff went back. He entered. He had left Gnut standing in thought at the side of the ramp, but now he was again in his old familiar pose in the usual place, as if he had never moved. The ship's door was closed, and the ramp gone. But the bodies, the four strangely assorted bodies, were still lying by the demolished robot attendants where he had left them in the dark. He was startled by a cry behind his back. A uniformed museum guard was pointing at him. "This is the man!" the guard shouted. "When I opened the door this man forced his way out and ran like the devil!" The police officers converged on Cliff. "'Who are you? What is all this?" one of them asked him roughly. "I'm Cliff Sutherland, picture reporter," Cliff answered calmly. "And I was the one who was inside here and ran away, as the guard says." "What were you doing?" the officer asked, eyeing him. "And where did these bodies come from?" "Gentlemen, I'd tell you gladly-only business first," Cliff answered. "There's been some fantastic goings on in this room, and I saw them and have the story, but"-he smiled-"I must decline to answer without advice of counsel until I've sold my story to one of the news syndicates. You know how it is. If you'll allow me the use of the radio in your plane-just for a moment, gentlemen-you'll have the whole story right afterward-say in half an hour, when the television men broadcast it. Meanwhile, believe me, there's nothing for you to do, and there'll be no loss by the delay." The officer who had asked the questions blinked, and one of the others, quicker to react and certainly not a gentleman, stepped toward Cliff with clenched fists. Cliff disarmed him by handing him his press credentials. He glanced at them rapidly and put them in his pocket. By now half a hundred people were there, and among them were two members of a syndicate crew whom he knew, arrived by copter. The police growled, but they let him whisper in their ears and then go out under escort to the crew's plane. There, by radio, in five minutes, Cliff made a deal which would bring him more money than he had ever before earned in a year. After that he turned over all his pictures and negatives to the crew and gave them the story, and they lost not one second in spinning back to their office with the flash. More and more people arrived, and the police cleared the building. Ten minutes later a big crew of radio and television men forced their way in, sent there by the syndicate with which he had dealt. And then a few minutes later, under the glaring lights set up by the operators and standing close by the ship and not far from Gnut-he refused to stand underneath him-Cliff gave his story to the cameras and microphones, which in a fraction of a second shot it to every corner of the Solar System. Immediately afterward the police took him to jail. On general principles and because they were pretty blooming mad. -------- CH004 *CHAPTER V* Cliff stayed in jail all that night-until eight o'clock the next morning, when the syndicate finally succeeded in digging up a lawyer and got him out. And then, when at last he was leaving, a Federal man caught him by the wrist. "You're wanted for further questioning over at the Continental Bureau of Investigation," the agent told him. Cliff went along willingly. "The decision has already been made-the tip's yours. The pouring will be started at once." "Thank you, sir," said Cliff-and calmly asked more, "And will you be so kind as to authorize me to be present outside the building tonight? Just outside. I've a feeling something's going to happen." "You want still another scoop, I see," said Sanders not unkindly, "then you'll let the police wait while you transact your business." "Not again, sir. If anything happens, they'll get it at once." The chief hesitated. "I don't know," he said. "I'll tell you what. All the news services will want men there, and we can't have that; but if you can arrange to represent them all yourself, it's a go. Nothing's going to happen, but your reports will help calm the hysterical ones. Let me know." Cliff thanked him and hurried out and phoned his syndicate the tip free-then told them Sanders' proposal. Ten minutes later they called him back, said all was arranged, and told him to catch some sleep. They would cover the pouring. With light heart, Cliff hurried over to the museum. The place was surrounded by thousands of the curious, held far back by a strong cordon of police. For once he could not get through; he was recognized, and the police were still sore. But he did not care much; he suddenly felt very tired and needed that nap. He went back to his hotel, left a call, and went to bed. He had been asleep only a few minutes when his phone rang. Eyes shut, he answered it. It was one of the boys at the syndicate, with peculiar news. Stillwell had just reported, very much alive-the real Stillwell. The two dead ones were some kind of copies; he couldn't imagine how to explain them. He had no brothers. For a moment Cliff came fully awake, then he went back to bed. Nothing was fantastic any more. -------- CH005 *CHAPTER VI* At four o'clock, much refreshed and with an infrared viewing magnifier slung over his shoulder, Cliff passed through the cordon and entered the door of the wing. He had been expected and there was no trouble. As his eyes fell on Gnut, an odd feeling went through him, and for some obscure reason he was almost sorry for the giant robot. Gnut stood exactly as he had always stood, the right foot advanced a little, and the same brooding expression on his face; but now there was something more. He was solidly incased in a huge block of transparent glasstex. From the floor on which he stood to the top of his full eight feet, and from there on up for an equal distance, and for about eight feet to the left, right, back, and front, he was immured in a water-clear prison which confined every inch of his surface and would prevent the slightest twitch of even his amazing muscles. It was absurd, no doubt, to feel sorry for a robot, a man-made mechanism, but Cliff had come to think of him as being really alive, as a human is alive. He showed purpose and will; he performed complicated and resourceful acts; his face had twice clearly shown the emotion of sadness, and several times what appeared to be deep thought; he had been ruthless with the gorilla, and gentle with the mocking bird and the other two bodies, and he had twice refrained from crushing Cliff when there seemed every reason that he might. Cliff did not doubt for a minute that he was still alive, whatever that "alive" might mean. But outside were waiting the radio and television men-he had work to do. He turned and went to them and all got busy. An hour later Cliff sat alone about fifteen feet above the ground in a big tree which, located just across the walk from the building, commanded through a window a clear view of the upper part of Gnut's body. Strapped to the limbs about him were three instruments-his infrared viewing magnifier, a radio mike, and an infrared television eye with sound pickup. The first, the viewing magnifier, would allow him to see in the dark with his own eyes, as if by daylight, a magnified image of the robot, and the others would pick up any sights and sounds, including his own remarks, and transmit them to the several broadcast studios which would fling them millions of miles in all directions through space. Never before had a picture man had such an important assignment, probably-certainly not one who forgot to take pictures. But now that was forgotten, and Cliff was quite proud, and ready. Far back in a great circle stood a multitude of the curious-and the fearful. Would the plastic glasstex hold Gnut? If it did not, would he come out thirsting for revenge? Would unimaginable beings come out of the traveler and release him, and perhaps exact revenge? Millions at their receivers were jittery-those in the distance hoped nothing awful would happen, yet they hoped something would, and they were prepared to run. In carefully selected spots not far from Cliff on all sides were mobile ray batteries manned by army units, and in a hollow in back of him, well to his right, there was stationed a huge tank with a large gun. Every weapon was trained on the door of the wing. A row of smaller, faster tanks stood ready fifty yards directly north. Their ray projectors were aimed at the door, but not their guns. The grounds about the building contained only one spot-the hollow where the great tank was-where, by close calculation, a shell directed at the doorway would not cause damage and loss of life to some part of the sprawling capital. * * * * Dusk fell; out streamed the last of the army officers, politicians and other privileged ones; the great metal doors of the wing clanged to and were locked for the night. Soon Cliff was alone, except for the watchers at their weapons scattered around him. Hours passed. The moon came out. From time to time Cliff reported to the studio crew that all was quiet. His unaided eyes could now see nothing of Gnut but the two faint red points of his eyes, but through the magnifier he stood out as clearly as if in daylight from an apparent distance of only ten feet. Except for his eyes, there was no evidence that he was anything but dead and unfunctionable metal. Another hour passed. Now and again Cliff thumbed the levels of his tiny radio-television watch-only a few seconds at a time because of its limited battery. The air was full of Gnut and his own face and his own name, and once the tiny screen showed the tree in which he was then sitting and even, minutely, himself. Powerful infrared long-distance television pickups were even then focused on him from nearby points of vantage. It gave him a funny feeling. Then, suddenly, Cliff saw something and quickly bent his eye to the viewing magnifier. Gnut's eyes were moving; at least the intensity of the light emanating from them varied. It was as if two tiny red flashlights were turned from side to side, their beams at each motion crossing Cliff's eyes. Thrilling, Cliff signaled the studios, cut in his pick-ups, and described the phenomenon. Millions resonated to the excitement in his voice. Could Gnut conceivably break out of that terrible prison" Minutes passed, the eye flashes continued, but Cliff could discern no movement or attempted movement of the robot's body. In brief snatches he described what he saw. Gnut was clearly alive; there could be no doubt he was straining against the transparent prison in which he had at last been locked fast; but unless he could crack it, no motion should show. Cliff took his eye from the magnifier-and started. His unaided eye, looking at Gnut shrouded in darkness, saw an astonishing thing not yet visible through his instrument. A faint red glow was spreading over the robot's body. With trembling fingers he readjusted the lens of the television eye, but even as he did so the glow grew in intensity. It looked as if Gnut's body was being heated to incandescence, He described it in excited fragments, for it took most of his attention to keep correcting the lens. Gnut passed from a figure of dull red to one brighter and brighter, clearly glowing now even through the magnifier. And then he moved! Unmistakably he moved! He had within himself somehow the means to raise his own body temperature, and was exploiting the one limitation of the plastic in which he was locked. For glasstex, Cliff now remembered, was a thermoplastic material, one that set by cooling and conversely would soften again with heat. Gnut was melting his way out! In three-word snatches, Cliff described this. The robot became cherry-red, the sharp edges of the ice-like block rounded, and the whole structure began to sag. The process accelerated. The robot's body moved more widely. The plastic lowered to the crown of his head, then to his neck, then his waist, which was as far as Cliff could see. His body was free! And then, still cherry-red, he moved forward out of sight." Cliff strained eyes and ears, but caught nothing but the distant roar of the watchers beyond the police lines and a few low, sharp commands from the batteries posted around him. They, too, had heard, and perhaps seen by telescreen, and were waiting. Several minutes passed. There was a sharp, ringing crack; the great metal doors of the wing flew open, and out stepped the metal giant, glowing no longer. He stood stock-still, and his red eyes pierced from side to side through the darkness. Voices out in the dark barked orders and in a twinkling Gnut was bathed in narrow crisscrossing rays of sizzling, colored light. Behind him the metal doors began to melt, but his great green body showed no change at all. Then the world seemed to come to an end-there was a deafening roar, everything before Cliff seemed to explode in smoke and chaos, his tree whipped to one side so that he was nearly thrown out. Pieces of debris rained down. The tank gun had spoken, and Gnut, he was sure, had been hit. Cliff held on tight and peered into the haze. As it cleared he made out a stirring among the debris at the door, and then dimly but unmistakably he saw the great form of Gnut rise to his feet. He got up slowly, turned toward the tank and suddenly darted toward it in a wide arc. The big gun swung in an attempt to cover him, but the robot side-stepped and then was upon it. As the crew scattered, he destroyed its breech with one blow of his fist, and then he turned and looked right at Cliff. He moved toward him, and in a moment was under the tree. Cliff climbed higher. Gnut put his two arms around the tree and gave a lifting push, and the tree tore out at the roots and fell crashing to its side. Before Cliff could scramble away, the robot had lifted him in his metal hands. Cliff thought his time had come, but strange things were yet in store for him that night. Gnut did not hurt him. He looked at him from arm's length for a moment, then lifted him to a sitting position on his shoulders, legs straddling his neck. Then, holding one ankle, he turned and without hesitation started down the path which led westward away from the building. Cliff rode helpless. Out over the lawns he saw the muzzles of the scattered field pieces move as he moved, Gnut-and himself-their one focus. But they did not fire. Gnut, by placing him on his shoulders, had secured himself against that-Cliff hoped. The robot bore straight toward the Tidal Basin. Most of the field pieces throbbed slowly after. Far back, Cliff saw a dark tide of confusion roll into the cleared area-the police lines had broken. Ahead, the ring thinned rapidly off to the sides; then, from all directions but the front, the tide rolled in until individual shouts and cries could be made out. It came to a stop about fifty yards off, and few people ventured nearer. Gnut paid them no attention, and he no more noticed his burden than he might a fly. His neck and shoulders made Cliff a seat hard as steel, but with the difference that their underlying muscles with each movement flexed, just as would those of a human being. To Cliff, this metal musculature became a vivid wonder. Straight as the flight of a bee, over paths, across lawns, and through thin rows of trees Gnut bore the young man, the roar of thousands of people following close. Above droned copters and darting planes, among them police cars with their nerve-shattering sirens. Just ahead lay the still waters of the Tidal Basin, and in its midst the simple marble tomb of the slain ambassador, Klaatu, gleaming black and cold in the light of the dozen searchlights always trained on it at night. Was this a rendezvous with the dead? Without an instant's hesitation, Gnut strode down the bank and entered the water. It rose to his knees, then waist, until Cliff s feet were under. Straight through the dark waters for the tomb of Klaatu the robot made his inevitable way. The dark square mass of gleaming marble rose higher as they neared it. Gnut's body began emerging from the water as the bottom shelved upward, until his dripping feet took the first of the rising pyramid of steps. In a moment they were at the top, on the narrow platform in the middle of which rested the simple oblong tomb. Stark in the blinding searchlights, the giant robot walked once around it, then, bending, he braced himself and gave a mighty push against the top. The marble cracked; the thick cover slipped askew and broke with a loud noise on the far side. Gnut went to his knees and looked within, bringing Cliff well up over the edge. Inside, in sharp shadow against the converging light beams, lay a transparent plastic coffin, thick walled and sealed against the centuries, and containing all that was mortal of Klaatu, unspoken visitor from the great Unknown. He lay as if asleep, on his face the look of godlike nobility that had caused some of the ignorant to believe him divine. He wore the robe he had arrived in. There were no faded flowers, no jewelry, no ornaments; they would have seemed profane. At the foot of the coffin lay the small sealed box, also of transparent plastic, which contained all of Earth's records of his visit-a description of the events attending his arrival, pictures of Gnut and the traveler, and the little roll of sight-and-sound film which had caught for all time his few brief motions and words. Cliff sat very still, wishing he could see the face of the robot. Gnut, too, did not move from his position of reverent contemplation-not for a long time. There on the brilliantly lighted pyramid, under the eyes of a fearful, tumultuous multitude, Gnut paid final respect to his beautiful and adored master. Suddenly, then, it was over. Gnut reached out and took the little box of records, rose to his feet, and started down the steps. Back through the water, straight back to the building, across lawns and paths as before, he made his irresistible way. Before him the chaotic ring of people melted away, behind they followed as close as they dared, trampling each other in their efforts to keep him in sight. There are no television records of his return. Every pick-up was damaged on the way to the tomb. As they drew near the building, Cliff saw that the tank's projectile had made a hole twenty feet wide extending from the roof to the ground. The door still stood open, and Gnut, hardly varying his almost jerkless rhythm, made his way over the debris and went straight for the port end of the ship. Cliff wondered if he would be set free. He was. The robot set him down and pointed toward the door-then, turning, he made the sounds that opened the ship. The ramp slid down and he entered. Then Cliff did the mad, courageous thing which made him famous for a generation. Just as the ramp started sliding back in he skipped over it and himself entered the ship. The port closed. -------- CH006 *CHAPTER VII* It was pitch dark, and the silence was absolute. Cliff did not move. He felt that Gnut was close, just ahead, and it was so. His hard metal hand took him by the waist, pulled him against his cold side, and carried him somewhere ahead. Hidden lamps suddenly bathed the surroundings with bluish light. He set Cliff down and stood looking at him. The young man already regretted his rash action, but the robot, except for his always unfathomable eyes, did not seem angry. He pointed to a stool in one corner of the room. Cliff quickly obeyed this time and sat meekly, for a while not even venturing to look around. He saw he was in a small laboratory of some kind. Complicated metal and plastic apparatus lined the walls and filled several small tables; he could not recognize or guess the function of a single piece. Dominating the center of the room was a long metal table on whose top lay a large box, much like a coffin on the outside, connected by many wires to a complicated apparatus at the far end. From close above spread a cone of bright light from a many-tubed lamp. One thing, half covered on a nearby table, did look familiar-and very much out of place. From where he sat it seemed to be a brief case-an ordinary Earthman's brief case. He wondered. Gnut paid him no attention, but at once, with the narrow edge of a thick tool, sliced the lid off the little box of records. He lifted out the strip of sight-and-sound film and spent fully half an hour adjusting it within the apparatus at the end of the big table. Cliff watched, fascinated, wondering at the skill with which the robot used his tough metal fingers. This done, Gnut worked for a long time over some accessory apparatus on an adjoining table. Then he paused thoughtfully a moment and pushed inward a long rod. A voice came out of the coffin-like box-the voice of the slain ambassador. "I am Klaatu," it said, "and this is Gnut." From the recording!-flashed through Cliff's mind. The first and only words the ambassador had spoken. But, then, in the very next second he saw that it was not so. There was a man in the box! The man stirred and sat up, and Cliff saw the living face of Klaatu! Klaatu appeared somewhat surprised and spoke quickly in an unknown tongue to Gnut-and Gnut, for the first time in Cliff's experience, spoke himself in answer. The robot's syllables tumbled out as if born of human emotion, and the expression on Klaatu's face changed from surprise to wonder. They talked for several minutes. Klaatu, apparently fatigued, then began to lie down, but stopped midway, for he saw Cliff. Gnut spoke again, at length. Klaatu beckoned Cliff with his hand, and he went to him. "Gnut has told me everything" he said in a low, gentle voice, then looked at Cliff for a moment in silence, on his face a faint, tired smile. Cliff had a hundred questions to ask, but for a moment hardly dared open his mouth. "But you," he began at last-very respectfully, but with an escaping excitement-"you are not the Klaatu that was in the tombs!" The man's smile faded and he shook his head. "No." He turned to the towering Gnut and said something in his own tongue, and at his words the metal features of the robot twisted as if with pain. Then he turned back to Cliff. "I am dying," he announced simply, as if repeating his words for the Earthman. Again to his face came the faint, tired smile. Cliff's tongue was locked. He just stared, hoping for light. Klaatu seemed to read his mind. "I see you don't understand," he said. "Although unlike us, Gnut has great powers. When the wing was built and the lectures began, there came to him a striking inspiration. Acting on it at once, in the night, he assembled this apparatus ... and now he has made me again, from my voice, as recorded by your people. As you must know, a given body makes a characteristic sound. He constructed an apparatus which reversed the recording process, and from the given sound made the characteristic body." Cliff gasped. So that was it! "But you needn't die!" Cliff exclaimed suddenly, eagerly. "Your voice recording was taken when you stepped out of the ship, while you were well! You must let me take you to a hospital! Our doctors are very skillful!" Hardly perceptibly, Klaatu shook his head. "You still don't understand," he said slowly and more faintly. "Your recording had imperfections. Perhaps very slight ones, but they doom the product. All of Gnut's experiments died in a few minutes, he tells me ... and so must I." Suddenly, then, Cliff understood the origin of the "experiments." He remembered that on the day the wing was opened a Smithsonian official had lost a brief case containing film strips recording the speech of various world fauna. There, on that table, was a brief case! And the Stillwells must have been made from strips kept in the table drawer! But his heart was heavy. He did not want this stranger to die. Slowly there dawned on him an important idea. He explained it with growing excitement. "You say the recording was imperfect, and of course it was. But the cause of that lay in the use of an imperfect recording apparatus. So if Gnut, in his reversal of the process, had used exactly the same pieces of apparatus that your voice was recorded with, the imperfections could be studied, canceled out, and you'd live, and not die!" As the last words left his lips, Gnut whipped around like a cat and gripped him tight. A truly human excitement was shining in the metal muscles of his face. "Get me that apparatus!" he ordered-in clear and perfect English! He started pushing Cliff toward the door, but Klaatu raised his hand. "There is no hurry," Klaatu said gently it is too late for me. What is your name, young man?" Cliff told him. "Stay with me to the end," he asked. Klaatu closed his eyes and rested; then, smiling just a little, but not opening his eyes, he added, "And don't be sad, for I shall now perhaps live again ... and it will be due to you. There is no pain -- " His voice was rapidly growing weaker. Cliff, for all the questions he had, could only look on, dumb. Again Klaatu seemed to be aware of his thoughts. "I know," he said feebly, "I know. We have so much to ask each other. About your civilization ... and Gnut's -- " "And yours," said Cliff. "And Gnut's," said the gentle voice again. "Perhaps ... some day ... perhaps I will be back -- " He lay without moving. He lay so for a long time, and at last Cliff knew that he was dead. Tears came to his eyes; in only these few minutes he had come to love this man. He looked at Gnut. The robot knew, too, that he was dead, but no tears filled his red-lighted eyes; they were fixed on Cliff, and for once the young man knew what was in his mind. "Gnut," he announced earnestly, as if taking a sacred oath, "I'll get the original apparatus. I'll get it. Every piece of it, the exact same things." Without a word, Gnut conducted him to the port. He made the sounds that unlocked it. As it opened, a noisy crowd of Earthmen outside trampled each other in a sudden scramble to get out of the building. The wing was lighted. Cliff stepped down the ramp. * * * * The next two hours always in Cliff's memory had a dreamlike quality. It was as if that mysterious laboratory with the peacefully sleeping dead man was the real and central part of his life, and his scene with the noisy men with whom he talked a gross and barbaric interlude. He stood not far from the ramp. He told only part of his story. He was believed. He waited quietly while all the pressure which the highest officials in the land could exert was directed toward obtaining for him the apparatus the robot had demanded. When it arrived, he carried it to the floor of the little vestibule behind the port. Gnut was there, as if waiting. In his arms he held the slender body of the second Klaatu. Tenderly he passed him out to Cliff, who took him without a word, as if all this had been arranged. It seemed to be the parting. Of all the things Cliff had wanted to say to Klaatu, one remained imperatively present in his mind. Now, as the green metal robot stood framed in the great green ship, he seized his chance. "Gnut," he said earnestly, holding carefully the limp body in his arms, "you must do one thing for me. Listen carefully. I want you to tell your master-the master yet to come-that what happened to the first Klaatu was an accident, for which all Earth is immeasurably sorry. Will you do that?" "I have known it," the robot answered gently. "But will you promise to tell your master-just those words-as soon as he is arrived?" "You misunderstand," said Gnut, still gently, and quietly spoke four more words. As Cliff heard them a mist passed over his eyes and his body went numb. As he recovered and his eyes came back to focus he saw the great ship disappear. It just suddenly was not there any more. He fell back a step or two. In his ears, like great bells, rang Gnut's last words. Never, never was he to disclose them till the day he came to die. "You misunderstand," the mighty robot had said. "I am the master." -------- CH007 *ALAS, ALL THINKING!* -------- CHAPTER I STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL. (This is dynamite! Be careful who sees it!) From: Charles Wayland. _To:_ Harold C. Pendleton, Chairman of the Human Salvage Section of the National Lunacy Commission. _Subject:_ Report on the conversations and actions of Harlan T. Frick on the night of June 7, 1963. _Method:_ I used the silent pocket dictograph you gave me; and my report is a literal transcription of the record obtained, with only such additions of my own as are needed to make it fully intelligible. _Special Notes:_ (a) The report, backed by the dictograph record, may be considered as one-third of the proof that your "amateur neurosis detective" Wayland is not himself a subject for psychopathic observation, since this fantastic report can be corroborated in all its details by Miles Matson, who was with us that night, and would be, I think, by Frick himself. (b) Pending any action by you, I have cautioned both Matson and Frick to maintain absolute silence with regard to the conversation and events covered. They may be trusted to comply. (c) So that you may follow the report more intelligently, I feel that it is necessary to say here, in advance, that Frick will be proved to be wholly sane, but that never again may his tremendous talents be utilized for the advancement of science. As his friend, I have to recommend that you give up all hope of salvaging him, and leave him to go his prodigal, pleasure-seeking way alone. You might think of him as a great scientist who has died. He is reasonable, but human, and I see his waste of his life as humanly reasonable. You will see, too. _Report:_ The amazing events of the evening started in a manner commonplace enough at the Lotus Gardens, where I had made a dinner engagement with Frick and our old mutual friend, Miles Matson, chemist and recent author of an amusing mathematical theory of inverse variables as applied to feminine curves, which Frick had expressed a desire to hear. I should have preferred to observe Frick alone, but was not sure that alone I would be able to hold the interest of his restless, vigorous mind for a third time within two weeks. Ten minutes of boredom and my psychological observations would come to a sudden end, and you would have to find and impress some one else to do your psychological sleuthing. I got to our reserved table fifteen minutes early, to get settled, set up the dictograph in my pocket, and review for the last time my plans. I had three valuable leads. I had discovered (see my reports of May 26th and May 30th) peculiar, invariable, marked emotional reactions in him when the words "brains," "human progress," and "love" were mentioned. I was sure that this was symptomatic. And I hoped to get nearer the roots of his altered behavior pattern by the common method of using a prepared and memorized list of words, remarks, and questions, which I would spring on him from time to time. I could only trust that Frick was not too familiar with psychoanalysis, and so would not notice what I was doing. I confess that for a moment while waiting I was swept with the feeling that it was hopeless, but I soon roused from that. One can do no more than try, and I was going to try my hardest. With another I might have been tempted to renege, but never with Frick. For he was my old friend of college days, and so eminently worth saving! He was still so young; had so much to give to mankind! I guessed once more at the things that might have altered his pattern so. A physicist, perhaps the most brilliant and certainly the most promising in the world, enters his laboratory after his graduation from college and for eleven years hardly so much as sticks his nose outside its door. All the while he sends from it a stream of discoveries, new theories, and integrations of old laws the like of which has never before been equaled; and then this same physicist walks out of his laboratory, locks the door, shuns the place, and for two years devotes himself with casual abandon to such trivialisms of the modern idler as golfing, clothes, travel, fishing, night clubs, and so on. Astounding is a weak word for this spectacle. I could think of nothing that would remotely suit. Miles Matson arrived a minute early-which was, for him, a phenomenon, and showed how the anticipation of dining with Frick had affected him. Miles is forty-five, short, solid, bald-but then I needn't describe him. "He'll come?" were his first words, before seating himself on the other side of the table. "I think so." I assured him, smiling a little at his apparent anxiety. He looked a little relieved, and fished from the jacket of his dinner clothes that abominable pipe he smokes whenever and wherever he pleases, and be damned to frowning headwaiters. He lighted it, took a few quick puffs, then leaned back, smiled, and volunteered frankly, "Charles, I feel like a little boy about to have dinner with the principal of his school." I could understand that, for most scientists would feet that way where Frick was concerned. I smiled, too, and chaffed him. "What-you and that pipe intimidated by a mere playboy?" "No-by the mystery behind the playboy," was his serious rejoinder. "What's your guess at the solution? Quick, before he comes," he asked earnestly. I shrugged my shoulders. Miles, of course, was not in my confidence. "Could it be a woman?" he went on. "I haven't heard of any one woman. A disappointment in his work? Some spoiled-child reaction? Is he crazy? What's made the change?" If I only knew! "Frick, further than any man alive, has touched out to the infinite unknowable," he continued almost grumbling; "and I want to know how such a man can trade his tremendous future for a suit of evening clothes!" "Perhaps he is just relaxing a little," I suggested with a smile. "Ah, of course-relaxing," he answered sarcastically. "For two years!" I knew at once Frick had heard what we had been saying, for at that moment I looked up and around just in time to see him, lean and graceful in his dinner clothes, his mouth twisted with amusement, stepping past the headwaiter to his place at the table. Miles and I rose; and we must have shown our confusion, for one simply did not mention that topic in Frick's hearing. But he showed no offense-indeed, he seemed in unusually good spirits-for he lightly acknowledged our greeting, waved us back in our places, and, seating himself, added to our dialogue, "Yes, for two years. And will for forty-two more!" This opening of the conversation threw me unexpectedly off stride, but I remembered to switch on the dictograph, and then seized the opportunity to ask what otherwise I would never have dared. "Why?" Still he showed no offense, but instead, surprisingly, indulged in a long low chuckle that seemed to swell up as from a spring of inexhaustible deliciousness. He answered cryptically, bubblingly, enjoying our puzzlement with every word. "Because Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. Because thought is withering, and sensation sweet. Because I've recovered my sense of humor. Because 'why' is a dangerous word, and makes people unhappy. Because I have had a glimpse of the most horrible cerebral future. Yes!" He laughed, paused for a moment, then said in a lower voice with dramatic impressiveness, "Would you believe it? I have terminated the genus Homo Sapiens." -------- CH008 *CHAPTER II* He was not drunk, and, as you will see, not crazy-though I would not have bet any money on it just then. His mood was only one of extraordinary good humor. Vastly amused at our reaction to his wild words, he allowed himself to shock us, and did it again and again. I might say here that it is my opinion that all the revelations of the night were, in the main, the result of Frick's sudden notion to shock us, and that no credit whatever is due me and my intended plan of psychological attack. Miles' face showed blank dismay. Frick ceased chuckling, and, his gray eyes gleaming, enjoyed our discomfiture in quiet for a moment. Then he added, "No. Strictly speaking, there is one piece of unfinished business. A matter of one murder. I was sort of dallying with the idea of committing it tonight, and finishing off the whole affair. Would you two like to be in on it?" Miles looked as if he would like to excuse himself. He coughed, smiled unhappily, glanced doubtfully at me. I at once decided that if Frick was going to attempt murder, I was going to be on hand to prevent it. I suppose that the desperate resolution showed in my face, for Frick, looking at me, laughed outright. Miles then revived enough to smile wanly at Frick and suggest he was joking. He added: "I'm surprised that any one with the brains you have should make so feeble a joke!" At the word "brains" Frick almost exploded. "Brains!" he exclaimed. "Not me! I'm dumb! Dumb as the greasy-haired saxophone player over there! I understand that I used to have brains, but that's all over; it's horrible; let's not think about it. I tell you I'm dumb, now-normally, contentedly dumb!" Miles did not know how to understand Frick any more than did I. He reminded him: "You used to have an I. Q. Of 248 -- " "I've changed!" Frick interrupted. He was still vehement, but I could see that he was full of internal amusement. "But no healthy person's intelligence can drop much in the course of a few years," Miles objected strongly. "Yes-I'm dumb!" Frick reiterated. My opportunities lay in keeping him on the subject. I asked him, "Why have you come to consider the possession of brains such an awful thing?" "Ah, to have seen what I have seen, know what I know!" he quoted. Miles showed irritation. "Well, then, let's call him dumb!" he said, looking at me. "To insist on such a stupid jest!" I took another turn at arousing Frick. "You are, of course, speaking ironically out of some cryptic notion that exists only in your own head; but whatever this notion, it is absurd. Brains in quantity are the exclusive possession of the human race. They have inspired all human progress; they have made us what we are today, masters of the whole animal kingdom, lords of creation. Two other things have helped-the human hand and human love; but even above these ranks the human brain. You are only ridiculous when you scoff at its value." "Oh, love and human progress!" Frick exclaimed, laughing. "Charles, I tell you brains will be the ruination of the human race," he answered with great delight. "Brains will be the salvation of the human race!" Miles contradicted with heat. "You make a mistake, a very common mistake, Miles," Frick declared, more seriously. "Charles is of course right in placing man at the top of creation, but you're very wrong in assuming he will always remain there. Consider. Nature made the cell, and after a time the cell became a fish; and that fish was the lord of creation. The very top. For a while. For just a few million years. Because one day a fish crawled out of the sea and set about becoming a reptile. He became a magnificent one. Tyrannosaurus Rex was fifty feet long, twenty high; he had teeth half a foot long, and feet armed with claws that were terrible. No other creature could stand against him; he had speed, size, power and ferocity; _he_ became the lord of creation. "What happened to the fish? He had been the lord of creation, but, well, he never got anywhere. What about Tyrannosaurus Rex? He, too, was the lord of creation, but he, alas, is quite, quite extinct. "Nature tried speed with the fish, then size with the saurians. Neither worked; the fish got stuck, the saurian died off. But did she quit experimenting at that? Not at all-she tried mobility, and we got the monkey. The first monkey swung from limb to limb screeching, 'I am the lord of creation!' and, by Jove, he was! But he could not know that one day, after a few millions of years, one of his poor relations would go down on the ground, find fire, invent writing, assume clothing, devise modern inconveniences, discover he had lost his tail, and crow, 'Behold, I am the lord of creation!' "Why did this tailless monkey have his turn? Because his makeup featured brains? You will bellow yes-but I hear Mother Nature laughing at you. For you are only her _latest_ experiment! The lord of creation! That you are-but only for a little while! Only for a few million years!" Frick paused, his eyes flashed, his nostrils distended contemptuously. "How dare man be so impertinent as to assume nature has stopped experimenting!" he exclaimed at length. In the quiet which followed this surprising outburst I could see Miles putting two and two together. But he took his time before speaking. He relighted his pipe and gave it a good, fiery start before removing it from his mouth and saying, almost in a drawl, "It amounts to this, then. Anticipating that nature is about to scrap brains and try again along new lines, you choose to attempt immortality by denying your own undoubted brains and trying to be the first to jump in the new direction." Frick only laughed. "Wrong again, Miles," he said. "I'm just standing pat." "To go back a little," I said to Frick; "it seems to me you're assuming far too much when you tell us that the human race is not the last, but only the most recent of nature's experiments." The man acted almost shocked. "But have you forgotten what I told you just a little while ago? I said I have _terminated_ the genus Homo Sapiens!" Miles snorted with disgust. I was alarmed. Miles tried sarcasm. "Have you and Mother Nature already decided, then, what the next lord of creation is to be?" "I myself have nothing to say about it," Frick replied with assumed naivete'. "Nor do I know what it will be. I could find out, but I doubt if I ever shall. It's much more fun not to know-don't you think? Though, if I had to guess," he added, "I should say she will feature instinct." This was too much for Miles. He started to rise, saying, as he pushed his chair back, "This is enough. You're either crazy or else you're a conceited fool! Personally, I think it's both!" But Frick held him with a gesture, and in a voice wholly sincere said, "Sit down, Miles; keep your shirt on. You know very well I neither lie nor boast. I promise to prove everything I have said." Miles resumed his seat and looked at Frick almost sneeringly as he went on, "You're quite right about my being a fool, though. I was one; oh, a most gorgeous fool! But I am not conceited. I am so little conceited that I offer to show you myself in what must surely be the most ridiculous situation that a jackass or a monkey without a tail has ever been in. I'll exchange my dignity for your good opinion; you'll see that I'm not crazy; and then we'll have the most intelligent good laugh possible to Genus Homo. Yes? Shall we?" Miles gave me a look which clearly expressed his doubt of Frick's sanity. Frick, seeing, chuckled and offered another inducement. "And I'll throw in, incidentally, a most interesting murder!" Our friend was completely disgusted. "We came here to eat," he said. "Let's get it over with." And with the words he picked up the menu which had been lying in front of him all this time. Frick looked at me. "I'm not hungry," he said. "Are you?" I wasn't. I shook my head. "Shall we two go, then?" I hesitated. I was not overanxious to accompany, alone, a madman on a mission of murder. But I caught Miles' eye, and like the noble he is, he said he'd come too. Frick smiled softly. Ten minutes later we had made the short flight along the north shore to Glen Cove, where Frick has his estate, and were escorted by him into a small, bare room on the second floor of the laboratory building which adjoins his beautiful home. While we stood there wondering, Frick went into an adjoining room and returned with two chairs, and then, in two more trips, with a third chair and a tray on which rested a large thermos bottle and a tea service for three. The chairs he arranged facing each other in an intimate group, and the tray he set on the floor by the chair he was to take himself. "First I have to tell a rather long story," he explained. "The house would be more comfortable, but this room will be more convenient." Frick was now a changed man. His levity of before was gone; tense, serious lines appeared on his rugged face; his great head lowered with the struggle to arrange thoughts that were difficult, and perhaps painful, to him. When he spoke, it was softly, in a voice likewise changed. My dictograph was still turned on. "Charles, Miles," Frick began, "forgive me for my conduct back in the Gardens. I had so much on my mind, and you were so smugly skeptical, that the inclination to overpower you with what I know was irresistible. I had not expected to make any of these revelations to you. I offered to on impulse; but do not fear, I shall not regret it. I think-I see now that I have been carrying a very heavy load. "What I have to say would fill a large book, but I will make it as short as I can. You will not believe me at first, but please be patient, for proof will eventually be forthcoming. Every single thing I said to you is true, even to the murder I must commit -- " He paused, and seemed to relax, as if tired. Unknown black shadows closed over my heart. Miles watched him closely, quite motionless. We waited. Frick rubbed the flat of his hand slowly over his eyes and forehead, then let it drop. "No," he said at length, "I have never been conceited. I don't think so. But there was a time when I was very proud of my intelligence. I worked; I accomplished things that seemed to be important; I felt myself a leader in the rush of events. Work was enough, I thought; brain was the prime tool of life; and with my brain I dared try anything. Anything! I dared try to assemble the equation of a device that would enable me to peer into the future! And when I thought I had it, I started the construction of that device! I never finished it, and I never shall, now; but the attempt brought Pearl to me. "Yes," he added, as if necessary that he convince himself, "I am certain that had I not attempted that, Pearl would not have come. Back through the ages she had somehow felt me out-don't ask me how, for I don't know-and through me chose to enter for a brief space this, our time. "I was as surprised as you would have been. I was working in this very room, though then it was twice as large and fairly cluttered with clumsy apparatus I have since had removed. I had been working feverishly for months; I was unshaven, red-eyed and dirty-and there, suddenly, she was. Over there, beyond that door at which I'm pointing. She was in a golden-glowing cylinder whose bottom hung two feet off the floor. For a moment she stood suspended there; and then the glow disappeared and she stepped through to the floor. "You do not believe me? Well, of course, I don't expect you to. But there will be proof. There will be proof. "I was surprised, but somehow I wasn't much frightened. The person of my visitor was not intimidating. She was just a barefooted young woman, very slender, of average height, clad in a shiny black shift which reached her knees. I cannot say she was well formed. Her body was too thin, her hips too narrow, her head too large. And she was miles from being pretty. Her hair and eyes were all right; they were brown; but her face was plain and flat, with an extraordinary and forbidding expression of dry intellectuality. The whole effect of her was not normal, yet certainly not weird; she was just peculiar, different-baroque. "She spoke to me in English! In non-idiomatic English with the words run together and an accent that was atrocious! She asked severely," 'Do you mind too much this intrusion of mine?'" "'Why-why no!' I said when I had recovered from the shock of the sound of her speech. 'But are you real, or just an illusion?' "'I do not know,' she replied. 'That is a tremendous problem. It has occupied the attention of our greatest minds for ages. Excuse me, sir.' And with these last words she calmly sat herself down on the floor, right where she was, and appeared to go off into deep thought! "You can imagine my astonishment! She sat there for a full two minutes, while I gaped at her in wonder. When she rose again to her feet she finished with, 'I do not know. It is a tremendous problem.' I began to suspect that a trick was being played on me, for all this was done with the greatest seriousness. "'Perhaps there is a magician outside,' I suggested. "'I am the magician,' she informed me. "'Oh!' I said ironically. 'I understand everything now.' "'Or no, fate is the magician,' she went on as if in doubt. 'Or no, I am-A very deep problem-' Whereupon she sat down on the floor and again went off into meditation! "I stepped around her, examining her from all angles, and, since she was oblivious to everything outside of herself, I made a cursory examination of the thing she had come in on. It looked simple enough-a flat, plain, circular box, maybe four feet in diameter and six inches deep, made of a some sort of dull-green metal. Fixed to its center, and sticking vertically upward, was a post of the same stuff capped with a plate containing a number of dials and levers. Around the edge of the upper surface of the box was a two-inch bevel of what seemed to be yellow glass. And that was all-except that the thing continued to remain fixed in the air two feet off the floor! "I began to get a little scared. I turned back to the girl and again looked her over from all sides. She was so deep in her thoughts that I dared to touch her. She was real, all right! "My touch brought her to her feet again. "'You have a larger head than most men,' she informed me. "'Who are you, anyway?' I asked with increasing amazement. She gave me a name that it took me two days to memorize, so horrible was its jumble of sounds. I'll just say here that I soon gave her another-Pearl-because she was such a baroque-and by that name I always think of her. "'How did you get in?' I demanded. "She pointed to the box. "'But what is it?' I wanted to know. "'You have no name,' she replied. 'It goes to yesterday, to last year, to last thousand years-like that.' "'You mean it's a time traveler?' I asked, astounded. 'That you can go back and forth in time?' "'Yes,' she answered. 'I stopped to see you, for you are something like me.' "'You wouldn't misinform me?' I asked sarcastically, feeling I must surely be the victim of some colossal practical joke. "'Oh, no, I would not misinform you,' she replied aridly. "I was very skeptical. 'What do you want here?' I asked. "'I should like you to show me the New York of your time. Will you, a little?' "'If you'll take me for a ride on that thing, and it works, I'll show you anything you want,' I answered, still more skeptical. "She was glad to do it. "'Come,' she commanded. I stepped gingerly up on the box. 'Stand here, and hold on to this,' she went on, indicating the rod in the center. I did so, and she stepped up to position just opposite me, and very close. I was conscious of how vulnerable I was if a joke was intended. "'You must not move,' she warned me. I assured her I would not. 'Then, when do you want to go?' "'A week back,' I said at random, with, in spite of everything, a creeping sensation going up and down my spine. "'That will do,' she decided, and again she warned me not to move. Then her hands went to the controls. "A golden veil sprang up around us and the room grew dim through it, then disappeared. A peculiar silence came over me, a silence that seemed not so much outside of me as within. There was just a second of this, and then I was again looking into the room through the golden veil. Though it dimmed the light I could clearly make out the figure of a man stretched full length on the floor working on the under part of a piece of apparatus there. "'It's I!" I exclaimed, and every cell in my body leaped at the miracle of it. That this could be! That I could be standing outside of myself looking at myself! That last week had come back, and that I, who already belonged to a later time, could be back there again in it! As I peered, thoughts and emotions all out of control, I saw happen a thing that stilled the last thin voice of inward doubt. "The man on the floor rolled over, sat up, turned his face-my face-toward us, and, deep in thought, gently fingered a sore place on his head-from a bump that no one, positively, knew anything about. Trickery seemed excluded. "But a contradictory thing occurred to me. I asked Pearl, 'Why doesn't he see us, since he's looking right this way? I never saw anything at the time.' "It is only in the next stage toward arriving that we can be seen,' she explained with her hands still on the controls. 'At this moment I'm keeping us unmaterialized. This stage is extremely important. If we tried to materialize within some solid, and not in free space, we should explode. "Now, let us return,' she said. 'Hold still.' "The room disappeared; the peculiar silence returned; then I saw the room again, dim through the golden veil. Abruptly the veil vanished and the room came clear; and we stepped down on the floor on the day we had left. "My legs were trembling so as to be unreliable. I leaned against a table, and my amazing visitor, as it seemed her habit, sat down on the floor. "That was my introduction to Pearl." -------- CH009 *CHAPTER IV* Frick rose and walked to the far corner of the room and back. The thoughts in his mind were causing some internal disturbance, that was obvious. I prayed that my dictograph was working properly! When Frick sat down again he was calmer. Not for long could any emotion sweep out of control his fine mind and dominating will. With a faint smile and an outflung gesture of his arm he said, "That was the beginning!" Again he paused, and ended it with one of his old chuckles. "I showed Pearl New York. I showed her! "Charles, Miles, there is just too much," he resumed at a tangent, shaking his head. "There is the tendency to go off into details, but I'll try to avoid it. Maybe some other time. I want to be brief, just now. "Well, I got her some clothes and showed her New York City. It was a major experience. For she was not your ordinary out-of-towner, but a baroque out of far future time. She had learned our language and many of our customs; she was most amazingly mental; and yet, under the difficult task of orienting herself to what she called our crudeness, she exhibited a most delicious naivete. "I showed her my laboratory and explained the things I had done. She was not much interested in that. I showed her my house, others too, and explained how we of the twentieth century live. "'Why do you waste your time acquiring and operating gadgets?' she would ask. She liked that word 'gadgets'; it became her favorite. By it she meant electricity, changes of clothing, flying, meals in courses, cigarettes, variety of furniture, even the number of rooms in our homes. She'd say, 'You are a superior man for this time; why don't you throw out all your material luxuries so as to live more completely in the realms of the mind?' "I would ask her what standard she judged our civilization against; but whenever I did that she'd always go obscure, and say she guessed we were too primitive to appreciate the higher values. She consistently refused to describe the sort of civilization she had come from; though, toward the end, she began promising me that if I were a good guide, and answered all her questions, she might-only might-take me there to see it. You can imagine I was a good guide! "But meanwhile, I got nothing but my own inferences; and what an extraordinary set I acquired from her questions and reactions! You make your own set as I go along! "I showed her New York. She'd say, 'But why do the people hurry so? Is it really necessary for all those automobiles to keep going and coming? Do the people _like_ to live in layers? If the United States is as big as you say it is, why do you build such high buildings? What is your reason for having so few people rich, so many people poor?' It was like that. And endless. "I took her to restaurants. 'Why does everybody take a whole hour just to eat?' I told her that people enjoyed eating; it seemed not to have occurred to her. 'But if they spent only a few minutes at it they'd have that much more time for meditation!' I couldn't but agree. "I took her to a night club. 'Why do all those men do all the carrying, and those others all the eating?' I explained that the first were waiters, the latter guests. 'Will the guests have a turn at carrying?' I told her I thought so, some day. "'Is that man a singing waiter?' "'No, only a crooner.' "'Why do those men with the things make such an awful noise?' "'Because dance bands get paid for making it.' "'It must be awfully hard on them' I told her I hoped so. 'Are those people doing what you call dancing?' "'Yes.' "'Do you like to do it?' "'Yes.' "'The old ones, too?' "'I doubt it.' "'Then why do they do it?' I didn't know. At the end she asked me almost poignantly, 'Don't they _ever_ spend any time in meditation?' and I had to express my doubts. "In our little jaunts it became increasingly clear to her that there was very little meditation being done in New York. It was the biggest surprise that our civilization gave her. "However, she continued to indulge her peculiar habit of going off into meditation when something profound, or interesting, or puzzling came to her attention; and the most extraordinary thing about it was that she had to sit down at it, no matter where she was. If there was a chair handy, all right, but if not, she would plunk right down on the floor, or, outside, even in the street! This was not so bad when we were alone, but once it happened under Murphy's flagpole in Union Square as we stood observing the bellowings of a soap-box orator, and once again in Macy's, where we lingered a moment listening to a demonstrator with the last word possible in beauty preparations. It was quite embarrassing! Toward the end I grew adept in detecting signs of the coming descent and was fairly successful in holding her up! "In all the six days I spent showing Pearl New York, not once did she show any emotion other than that of intellectual curiosity; not once did she smile; not once did she so much as alter the dry expression on her face. And _this,_ my friends, was the creature who became a student and an exponent of love! "It bears on my main theme, so I will tell you in some detail about her experiences with love, or what she thought was love. "During the first three days she did not mention the word; and from what I know of her now, I can say with surety that she was holding herself back. During those three days she had seen one performance of 'Romeo and Juliet,' had read two romantic novels containing overwhelming love themes, had observed everywhere the instinct for young people to seek each other out, had seen two couples kiss while dancing, had seen the fleet come in and the sailors make for Riverside Drive, and had heard I don't know how many hours of crooning on radio broadcasts. "After all this, one day in my drawing-room, she suddenly asked me, 'What is this love that everyone is always talking about?' "Never dreaming of the part love was to play between us, I answered simply that it was nature's device to make mature humans attractive to each other and insure the arrival of offspring and the maintenance of the race. That, it seems, is what she thought it was, but what she couldn't understand was why everybody made such a to-do about it. Take kissing, for instance. That was when a mate and female pushed each other on the lips. Did they like that? I assured her they did. Was it, since they held it so long, a kind of meditation? Well, no, not exactly. Would I try it with her? "Don't smile yet, you two-that's nothing! Wait! Anyway, you wouldn't want me to spoil my chances of being taken for a visit to her own time, would you? "Well, we kissed. She stood on tiptoe, her dry face looking up at mine, her arms stiffly at her sides, while I bent down, my sober face looking down at hers, and my arms stiffly at my sides. We both pushed; our lips met; and we stayed that way a little. Then, almost maintaining contact, Pearl asked me, 'Is it supposed to sort of scrape?' I assured her it was-something like a scrape. After a moment she said, 'Then there's a great mystery here, somewhere-' And damned if she didn't squat right down on the floor and go off into a think! I couldn't keep a straight face, so I bounced out of the room; and when I returned several minutes later there she was still meditating on her kiss. _O tempora!_ "That kiss happened on the third day, and she stayed six, and for the remainder of her visit in our time she said not one thing more about this thing called love-which told me it was a mystery always on her mind, for she asked questions by the score about every other conceivable thing. "But I also knew from another thing. For the three days following that kiss she went innumerable times to my radio and tuned in dance and vocal programs whose songs would, of course, inevitably be about love. She fairly saturated herself with love's and above's, star's and are's, blue's and you's, June's and moon's. What a horrible flock of mangy cliche's must have come to flap around in her mental-all too mental-mind! What peculiar notions about love they must have given her! "But enough of that phase. You have an idea. You have seen Pearl in New York, tasting of love. Six nights to the very hour after she first appeared to me I stood again on the round base of the time traveler, and this time I accompanied her forward to her time. I do not know how far in the future that was, but I estimate it to be around three million years." -------- CH010 *CHAPTER V* Frick paused, rose, and, without asking us if we wanted any, served some cold tea from the thermos bottle by his chair. This time we were glad to have it. By then I was as close to fully believing as was, I think, Miles. We wasted little time over the tea, but, considerably refreshed and extremely eager with anticipations of what would follow, leaned forward and were again lost in Frick's extraordinary story. "The trip forward took what seemed to be only half a minute, and I believe it might have been instantaneous but for the time needed to bring the machine to a stop on exactly the right day. As before, the passage was a period of ineffable silence; but I was aware that all the time Pearl fingered the controls. Very suddenly I saw we were in a dimly-lighted room; with equal suddenness the golden screen vanished and normal daylight took its place. We had arrived. "I stepped off the traveler and looked curiously about. We were in a small place, the walls of which were partitions which projected perhaps ten feet up toward a very high ceiling. Everything I could see was made of an ugly, mud-yellow metallic substance, and everything seemed to be built on the square. Light entered from large windows on all sides. The section of the great room in which we had arrived was bare of everything but our traveler. I saw that this time it rested firmly on the floor-a very dirty floor. "I suppose it would be superfluous to paint the tremendous state of excitement and curiosity I was in. To be the only man of our time to have voyaged forward! To be the only one allowed to see the human race in marvelous maturity! What honor, glory, luck, that such an unmerited distinction should fall upon me! Every atom of my body was living and tingling at that moment. I was going to drink in and remember everything that crossed my senses. "I was full of questions at once, but Pearl had warned me not to talk. She had told me that there were several caretakers from whose sight I was to remain hidden; and now the first thing she did was to put her finger to her lips and peer down the corridor outside. She listened a moment, then stepped out and beckoned me to follow. "I did-and all but exclaimed out loud to see that the corridor was carpeted with fine dust fully an inch deep! "How could this be in an important building of so advanced an age? For surely that building was important, to house, as it did, so marvelous a device as the traveler! "But I had no time for wonderment, for Pearl led me rapidly toward the, far side of the great room. At our every step clouds of dust billowed out on each side, so that a hasty glance behind showed such diffusion of it that all there was hidden. The corridor was quite wide, and ran lengthwise of the building on one side of the center. At varying distances we passed doorways, all of them closed, and at the end we turned to the left, to come quickly to a high, wide door. It was open, and golden sunlight was shining through. For a second Pearl held me back while she peered around the edge, then, taking me by the hand, she led me out into our world of the future. "What would you have expected to see, Charles? You, Miles? Towering buildings, perhaps, transversed on their higher levels by aerial traffic ways? And crowds of people strangely mannered and curiously dressed? And mysteriously powered aerial carriers? And parks? And flowers? And much use of metal and synthetic marble? Well, of these there was nothing. My eyes looked out over a common, ordinary, flat, 1963 field. In the distance were some patches of trees; near by were some wild grass, low bushes, and millions of daisies; and that was all! "My first thought was that Pearl had made some mistake in our time of destination, and when I sought her face, and saw that this was only what she expected, I grew alarmed. She misread my thoughts, though, and saying 'Don't be afraid,' led me along a wide walk to a corner of the building, where she peeped around the edge, and, apparently satisfied with what she found, stepped forth and motioned me to follow. Then she spoke, 'Here we are,' she said. "Before me stretched the same sort of landscape as on the other quarter, except that here the immediate field was tenanted with a square block of large metallic boxes, six on a side, and each separated by about ten yards from its neighbors. "I suppose I stood there and gaped. I didn't understand, and I told Pearl as much. Her tone in replying came as near surprise as I ever heard it. "'Not understand?' she asked. 'What do you mean? Isn't this just what you expected?' "Eventually I found words. 'But where is your city?' I asked. "'There,' she answered with a gesture of her arm toward the boxes. "'But the people!' I exclaimed. "'They are inside.' "'But I-I-there's something wrong!' I stammered. 'Those things are no city, and they couldn't hold ten people apiece!' "'They hold only one apiece,' she informed me with dignity. "I was completely flabbergasted. 'Then-then your total population is -- ' "'Just thirty-six, out here; or, rather, thirty-five, for one of us has just died.' "I thought I saw the catch. 'But how many have you that aren't out here?' "'Just us younger ones-four, including myself,' she answered simply. She added, 'And, of course, the two who are not yet born.' "All before this had turned my head; her last statement came near turning my stomach. Clutching at straws, I blurted out: "'But this is just a small community; the chief centers of your population lie elsewhere?' "'No,' she corrected levelly, 'this is the only center of our civilization. All human beings are gathered here.' She fixed me with her dry gaze. 'How primitive you are!' she said, as a zoologist might, looking at a threadworm. 'I see that you expected numbers, mere numbers. But I suppose that a comparative savage like you might be expected to prefer quantity of life to quality of life. "'We have here quality,' she went on with noble utterance, '-the finest of the finest, for ten thousand generations. Nature has need of quantity in her lower orders, but in allowing the perfection of such towering supermen as are my friends out here she has indulged in the final luxury of quality. "'Nor is that all. With quality we have at last achieved simplicity; and in the apotheosis of humanity these two things are the ultimates.' "All I could do was mumble that simplicity was too weak a word.' Frick stopped here, laughed, and rose. "She had my mind down and its shoulders touching! And from that moment-I assure you, my friends-the whole thing began to amuse me." He took a few steps about the room, laughing silently; then, leaning with one shoulder against the wall, he went on, "Pearl was on an awfully high horse, there, for a moment, but she soon dismounted and considered what she might offer for my entertainment. She expressed polite regret that her civilization contained so little for me to see with my eyes. She implied that the vast quantities of intellectual activity going on would be far past my understanding. "I asked, then, if there was any way I might have a peep at their quality group in action; and to this she replied that her countrymen never came together in groups, and neither did they indulge in actions, but that it would be easy to show me one or two of the leading citizens. "I, of course, told her I did not want her to run a risk of getting in trouble, but she assured me there was no danger of that. The guardians of the place-they were the three other 'younger ones' she had just mentioned-were quiet somewhere, and as for the adults, 'They,' she said, 'will be able neither to see nor hear you.' "Well, she showed me two. And merciful heavens!" Frick laughed so that for a moment he could not go on. Miles by now was reflecting Frick's every mood, and would smile in anticipation when he laughed. I suppose I was doing the same. We were both completely under Frick's spell. "She escorted me openly across the field to the nearest box, and I remember that on the way I got a burr in my ankle which I stopped to remove. I found from close up that the boxes were about ten feet square and made of the same ugly yellow metal used in the big building. The upper part of each side had a double row of narrow horizontal slits, and in the middle of each front side there was a closely-fitted door. I was remembering Pearl's promise that they would be able neither to see nor hear me, so I was alarmed when without ceremony she opened the door and half pushed me in. "What I saw! I was so shocked that, as Pearl told me later, I gasped out an involuntary 'Oh!' and fairly jumped backward. Had she not been right behind me and held me, I might have run. As it was I remained, hypnotized by the sight before my eyes, trembling, and I think gagging. I saw a man, or some kind of a man. He sat right in front of me, nude from the waist up, and covered as the floor was covered from the waist down. How shall I adequately describe him! "He was in some ways like an unwrapped mummy, except that a fallen-in mummy presents a fairly respectable appearance. And then he was something like a spider-a spider with only three legs. And again, looking quickly, he was all one gigantic head, or at least a great mass on whose parchment surface appeared a little round two-holed knoll where the nose customarily is, lidded caverns where the eyes belong, small craters where the ears commonly are, and, on the under side, a horrible, wrinkled, half-inch slit, below which more parchment backed almost horizontally to a three-inch striated and, in places, bumpy pipe. "By not the slightest movement of any kind did the monster show he knew I was there. He sat on a high dais; his arms were only bones converging downward; his body, only half the usual thickness, showed every rib and even, I think, the front side of some of his vertebrae; and his pipe of a neck, unable alone to support his head, gave most of that job to two curved metal pieces that came out of the wall. "He had a musty smell. "And, final horror, the stuff that covered him to the waist was dust; and there were two inches of dust on the top of his head and lesser piles of it on every little upper surface! -------- CH011 *CHAPTER VI* "It was horrible; but I swear that as I stood there goggling at him he began to strike me funny. It grew on me, until I think I should have laughed in the old gent's face had I not been restrained by a slight fear that he might in some way be dangerous. "Goodness knows what all I thought of as I stood there. I know I eventually asked Pearl, for caution's sake, "'You're sure he can't see or hear me?' "She told me he could not. "I was not surprised; he looked too old for such strenuous activities. I scrutinized him, inch by inch. After a little I announced with conviction," 'He's dead! I'm sure of it!' "She assured me he was not. "'But look at the dust! He can't have moved for years!' "'Why should he move?' she asked. "That stopped me for a little. "'But-but,' I stammered eventually, 'he's as good as dead! He's not doing anything!' "'He certainly is doing something,' was her dignified correction. 'He's meditating.' "All I could think to say was 'Goodnight!' "At that, Pearl turned on me reproachfully. 'Your attitude is bestial,' she said. 'I have done you the honor of bringing you to witness the highest flowering of the human race, and you act like a pig. Life can hold nothing more beautiful than this man you see here; he is the ultimate in human progress, one who is in truth perfection, whose every taint of animal desire has been cleaned away, who is the very limit in the simplicity of his life and the purity of his thoughts and intentions.' "Not to miss anything she added, 'He embodies the extension of every quality that makes for civilization; he's reached the logical end of man's ambitious climb up from the monkey.' "'My Lord!' I said. 'Here's a dead end!' "'For myself, I sum it all in five words,' she went on nobly: 'He leads the mental life.' "After a little my emotions suddenly got out of control. 'Does-does he _like it?'_ I blurted out. But that was a mistake. I tried, 'Do you mean to imply he spends his life sitting here and thinking?' "'Pure living and high thinking,' she put it. "'No living, I'm thinking!' I retorted. 'What does he think of? "He is probably our greatest esthetician,' she answered proudly. 'It's a pity you can't know the trueness and beauty of his formulations.' "'How do you know they are beautiful?' I asked with my primitive skepticism. "'I can hear his thoughts, of course,' was the answer. "This surprising statement started me on another string of questions, and when I got through I had learned the following: This old bird and the others could not hear me think because my intellectual wave length was too short for their receivers; that Pearl, when talking and thinking with me, was for the same reason below their range; and that Pearl shared with the old guys the power of tuning in or out of such private meditations or general conversations as might be going on. "'We utilize this telepathic faculty,' Pearl added, 'in the education of our young. Especially the babies, while they are still unborn. The adults take turns in tutoring them for their cells. I, it happens, was a premature baby-only eleven months-so I missed most of my prenatal instruction. That's why I'm different from the others here, and inferior. Though they say I was bad material all the way back from conception.' "Her words made my stomach turn over, and the sight of that disproportioned cadaver didn't help it any, either. Still, I stood my ground and did my best to absorb every single detail. "While so engaged I saw one of the most fantastic things yet. The nasty little slit of a mouth under our host's head slowly separated until it revealed a dark and gummy opening; and as it reached its maximum I heard a click behind my back and jumped to one side just in time to see a small gray object shoot from a box fastened to the wall, and, after a wide arc through the air, make a perfect landing in the old gentleman's mouth! "'He felt the need for some sustenance,' Pearl explained. 'Those pellets contain his food and water. Naturally he needs very little. They are ejected by a mechanism sensitive to the force of his mind waves.' "'Let me out,' I said. "We went out into the clean, warm sunshine. How sweet that homely field looked! I sat down on the grass and picked a daisy. It was not one whit different from those of my own time, at home. "Pearl sat down beside me. "'We now have an empty cell,' she said, 'but one of our younger men is ready to fill it. He has been waiting until we installed a new and larger food receptacle-one that will hold enough for seventy-five years without refilling. We've just finished. It is, of course, the young of our community who take care of the elders by preparing the food pellets and doing what other few chores are necessary. They do this until they outgrow the strength of their bodies and can no longer get around-when they have the honor of maturity and may take their place in one of the cells.' "'But how in the devil do creatures like-like that in there, manage to have children?' I had to ask. "'Oh, I know what you mean, but you've got the wrong idea,' came her instant explanation. 'That matter is attended to while they are still comparatively young. From the very beginning the young are raised in incubators.' "I have always had a quick stomach-and she insisted on trying to prove it! "'With us, it takes fifteen months,' she went along. 'We have two under way at present. Would you like to see them?' "I told her that I would see them, but that I would not like it. 'But first,' I asked, 'if you don't mind, show me one other of these adults of yours. I-I-I can't get over it. I still can't quite believe it.' "She said she would. A woman. And at that we got up and she led me to the next cell. "I did not go in. I stood outside and took one look at the inmate through the door. Horrible! Female that she was, it was at that moment I first thought what a decent thing it would be-yes, and how pleasant-to hold each one of the necks of those cartoons of humankind in the ring of my two strong hands for a moment -- "But I was a trusted visitor, and such thoughts were not to be encouraged. I asked Pearl to lead on to the incubators. "We had left the block of cells and were rounding the corner of the building when Pearl stopped and pulled me back. Apparently she had gotten some thought warning just in time, for in a moment three outlandish figures filed out of the very door of the big building that we had been making for. All wore black shiny shifts like Pearl's, and they were, very obviously, young flowers of Genus Homo in full perfection. "The first was the size, but had not nearly the emaciated proportions, of the old esthetician, and his great bald head wobbled precariously on his outrageous neck as he made his uncertain way along. The second-a girl, I think-was smaller, younger, stronger, but she followed her elder at a respectful distance in the same awful manner. The third in the procession was a male, little more than a baby, and he half stumbled after the others in his own version of their caricature of a walk. "They walked straight out into the field; and do you know, that little fellow, pure monster in appearance, ugly as ultimate sin, did a thing that brought tears to my eyes. As he came to the edge of the walk and stepped off into the grass, he bent laboriously over and plucked a daisy-and looked at it in preoccupied fashion as he toddled on after the others! "I was much relieved that they had not discovered us, and so was Pearl. As soon as they were a safe distance away, she whispered to me," 'I had to be careful. They all can see, and the two younger ones still can hear.' "'What are they going to do out there?' I asked. "'Take a lesson in metaphysics,' she answered, and almost with her words the first one sat down thoughtfully out in the middle of the field-to be followed in turn by the second and even the little fellow! "'The tallest one,' Pearl informed me, 'is the one who is to take a place in the vacant cell. He had better do it soon. It's becoming dangerous for him to walk about. His neck's too weak.' "With care we edged our way up and into the building, but this time Pearl conducted me along the corridor on the other side. The dust there was as thick as in the first, except along the middle, where many footprints testified to much use. We came to the incubators. "There I saw them. I saw them; I made myself look at them; but I tell you it was an effort! I-I think, if you don't mind, I won't describe them. You know-my personal peculiarity. They were wonderful. Curvings of glass and tubes. Two, in them. Different stages. I left right away; went back to the front door; and in a few minutes felt better. "Pearl, of course, had to come after me and try to take me back; and I noticed an amusing thing. The sight of those coming babies had had a sort of maternal effect on her! I swear it! For she _would_ talk about them; and before long she timidly-ah, but as dryly as ever!-suggested that we attempt a kiss!-only she forgot the word and called it a scrape. Ye gods! Well, we scraped-exactly as before-and that, my friends, was the incident which led straight and terribly to the termination of the genus Homo Sapiens! "You could never imagine what happened. It was this, like one-two-three: Pearl and I touched lips; I heard a soft, weird cry behind me; I wheeled; saw, in the entrance, side by side, the three creatures I had thought were safely out in the field getting tutored; saw the eldest's face contort, his head wobble; heard a sharp snap; and then in a twinkling he had fallen over on the other two; and when the dust had settled we saw the young flowers of perfect humanity in an ugly pile, and they lay still, quite still, with, each one, a broken neck! "They represented the total stock of the race, and they were dead, and I had been the innocent cause! "I was scared; but how do you think their death affected Pearl? Do you think she showed any sign of emotion? She did not. She ratiocinated. She was sorry, of course-so her words said-the tallest guy had been such a beautiful soul!-a born philosopher!-but it had happened; there was nothing to do about it except remove the bodies, and now it was up to her alone to look after the incubators and that cemetery of thinkers. "'But first,' she said, 'I'd better take you back to your time.' "'But no,' I said, and I invented lots of reasons why I'd better stay a little. Now that there was no one to discover my presence I more than ever did not want to go. There were a hundred things I wanted to study-the old men, how they functioned, the conditions of the outside world, and so on-but particularly, I confess, I wanted to examine the contents of that building. If it could produce a time traveler, it must contain other marvels, the secrets of which I might be able to learn and take back home with me. "We went out into the sun and argued, and my guide did a lot of squatting and meditating, and in the end I won out. I could stay three days. "On the afternoon of the first day something went wrong with the incubators, and Pearl came hurrying to tell me in her abstracted fashion that the two occupants, the last hopes of the human race, were dead. "She did not know it, but I had done things to the mechanisms of the incubators. "I had murdered those unborn monsters. Charles, Miles, let's have some more tea." -------- CH012 *CHAPTER VII* Frick went over to the thermos bottle, poured for us, returned it to the floor, and resumed his chair. We rested for several minutes, and my dictograph shows that again not a word was spoken. I will not try to describe my thoughts except to say that the break in the tension had found me in need of the stimulation I was given. When Frick resumed, it was suddenly, with unexpected bitterness and vehemence. "Homo Sapiens had become a caricature and an abomination!" he exclaimed. "I did not murder those unborn babies on impulse, nor did I commit my later murders on impulse. My actions were considered; my decisions were reached after hours of the calmest, clearest thinking I have ever done; I accepted full responsibility, and I still accept it! I want now to make a statement which above all I want you to believe. It is this. At the time I made up my mind to destroy those little monsters, and so terminate Genus Homo, I expected to bring Pearl back to live out her years in our time. That was the disposition I had planned for her. Her future did not work out that way. To put it baldly, Mother Nature made the most ridiculous ass of all time out of me; but remember, in justice to me, that the current of events got changed _after_ my decision. "I have said that Pearl took the death of the race's only young stock in her usual bland manner. She certainly did; but, as I think back over those days, it seems to me she did show a tiny bit, oh, a most infinitesimal amount, of feeling. That feeling was directed wholly toward me. You may ask how she could differ temperamentally-and physically-from those others, but I can only suggest that the enigma of her personal equation was bound up in the unique conditions of her birth. As she said, she may have been 'bad material' to start with. Then, something had gone wrong with an incubator; she was born after only eleven months; was four months premature; had received remote prenatal tutoring for that much less time; and had functioned in a different and far more physical manner much earlier, and with fewer built-in restraints, than the others. "It was this difference in her, this independence and initiative, that caused her to find the time traveler, the unused and forgotten achievement of a far previous age. It was this difference that allowed her to dare use it in the way we know. And it was this difference-now I am speaking chiefly of her _physical_ difference-that gave rise in me to the cosmic ambitions which took me from farce to horror, and which I will now try to describe. "Toward the evening of the second day we sat out on the wild grass before that corroboree of static philosophers and discussed the remaining future of the human race. "I argued, since there was no one else to look after them now, and since they could live only as long as she lived, it was clear that the best thing-and, in the event of accident to her, the most humane thing-would be for me to kill them all as painlessly as possible and take her back to my time to live. I need not mention the impossibility of there being any more descendants from them. "But for the only time during all the period I knew her she refused to face the facts. She wouldn't admit a single thing; I got nowhere; argue and plead as I would, all she would say, over and over, was that it was a pity that the human race had to come to an end. I see now that I was dense to take so long to get what she was driving at. When I did finally get it I nearly fell over backward in the grass. "My friends, she was delicately hinting that I was acceptable to her as the father of a future race! "Oh, that was gorgeous! I simply couldn't restrain my laughter; I had to turn my back; and I had a devil of a time explaining what I was doing, and why my shoulders shook so. To let her down easily, I told her I would think it over that night and give her my decision in the morning. And that was all there was to it at the time. "Now comes the joke; now comes the beginning of my elevation to the supreme heights of asshood, and you are at liberty to laugh as much as you please. That night, under the low-hung stars of that far future world, I _did_ decide to become the father of a future race! Yes-the single father of ultimate humanity! "That night was perhaps the most tremendous experience of my life. The wide thinking I did! The abandoned planning! What were not the possibilities of my union with Pearl! She, on her side, had superb intellectuality, was the product of millions of years' culture; while I had emotion, vitality, the physicalness that she and the withered remains of her people so lacked! Who might guess what renaissance of degenerated humanity our posterity might bring! I walked, that night; I shouted; I laughed; I cried. I was to become a latter-day god! I spent emotion terrifically; it could not last till dawn; morning found Pearl waking me, quite wet with dew, far out in the hills. I had settled everything in my mind. Pearl and I would mate, and nature would take her course; but there was one prime condition. There would have to be a housecleaning, first. Those cartoons of humanity would have to be destroyed. They represented all that was absurd and decadent; they were utterly without value; they were a stench and an abomination. Death to the old, and on with the new! "I told Pearl of my decision. She was not exactly torrid with gratitude when she heard me say I would make her my wife, but she did give some severely logical approval, and that was something. She balked, however, at my plan to exterminate her redoubtable exponents of the mental life. She was quite stubborn. "All that day I tried to convince her. I pointed out the old folks' uselessness; but she argued they were otherwise; that usefulness gives birth to the notion of beauty; that, therefore, beauty accompanies usefulness; and that because the old gentlemen were such paragons of subjective beauty they were, therefore, paragons of usefulness. I got lost on that airy plane of reasoning. I informed her that I, too, was something of an esthetician, and that I had proved to myself they smelled bad and were intolerable; and how easy it would be to exterminate them!-how slender their hold on life! "Nothing doing. At one time I made the mistake of trying vile humor. Here's a splendid solution of the in-law problem! As if she could be made to smile! She made me explain what I had meant! And this seemed to give her new thinking material, and resulted in her going down into squat-thinks so often that I was almost ready to run amuck. I suppose there must be a great unconscious loyalty to race in humans, for even in that attenuated time Pearl, unsentimental as she always was, doggedly insisted that they be allowed to live out their unnatural lives. I never did persuade her. I forced her. Either they had to go or I would. Late that night she gave me her permission. I awoke the morning of the fourth day in glorious high spirits. This was the day that was to leave me the lord of creation! I was not at all disturbed that it entailed my first assuming the office of high executioner. I went gaily to meet Pearl and asked her if she had settled her mind for the work of the day. She had. As we breakfasted on some damnable stuff like sawdust we talked over various methods of extermination. "Oh, I was in splendid spirits! To prove to Pearl that I was a just executioner, I offered to consider the case of each philostatician separately and to spare any for whom extenuating circumstances could be found. We started on the male monster of my first day. Standing before him in his cell I asked Pearl," 'What good can you say of this alleged esthetician?' "'He has a beautiful soul,' she claimed. "'But look at his body!' "'You are no judge,' she retorted. 'And what if his body does decay?-his mind is eternal.' "'What's he meditating on?' "Pearl went into a think. After a moment she said, 'A hole in the ground.' "'Can you interpret his thoughts for me?' I asked. "'It is difficult, but I'll try,' she said. After a little she began tonelessly, 'It's a hole. There is something-a certain something about it-Once caught my leg in one-I pulled. Yes, there is something ineffable. So-called matter around-air within-Holes-depth-moisture-leaks-juice -- Yes, it is _the idea_ of a hole -- Hole-inverse infinity-holiness -- ' "'That'll do!' I said-and pulled the receptacle of all this wisdom suddenly forward. There was a sharp crack, like the breaking of a dry stick, and the receptacle hung swaying pendulously against his ribs. 'Justice!' I cried. "The old woman was next. 'What's there good about her?' I asked. "'She is a mother,' Pearl replied. "'Enough!' I cried, and the flip of my arm was followed by another sharp crack. 'Justice to the mother who bore Homo Sapiens! Next!' "The next was an awful-looking wreck-worse than the first. 'What good can you say of him?' I asked. "'He is a great scientist.' "'Can you interpret his thoughts?' "Pearl sunk and thunk. 'Mind force-' she said tonelessly. 'How powerful-mm-yes, powerful-Basis of everything living-mm-really is everything-no living, all thinking-in direct proportion as it is not, there is nothing. Mm, yes, everything is relative, but everything together makes unity-therefore, we have a relative unit-or, since the reverse is the other half of the obverse, the two together equal another unity, and we get the equation: a relative unit equals a unit of relativity-Sounds as if it might mean something. Einstein was a primitive. I agree with Wlyxzso. He was a greater mind than Yutwexi. And so it is proved that mind always triumphs over matter -- ' "'Proved!' I said-and crack went his neck! 'Justice!' I cried. 'Next!' "The next, Pearl told me, was a metaphysician. 'Ye gods' I cried; 'don't tell me that among this lot of super-metaphysicians there is a specialist and an ultra. What's he thinking?' "But this time poor Pearl was in doubt. 'To tell the truth we're not sure whether he thinks or not,' she said, 'or whether he is alive or dead. Sometimes we seem to get ideas so faint that we doubt if we really hear them; at others there is a pure blank.' "'Try,' I ordered. 'Try hard. Every last dead one must have his chance to be killed.' "She tried. Eventually she said, 'I really think he is alive-Truth-air-truth firmly rooted high in air-ah, branching luxuriantly down toward earth-but never touching, so I cannot quite reach the branches, though I so easily grasp the roots -- ' "Crack! went his neck. "I cracked a dozen others. It got easier all the time. Then, Pearl presented me to the prize of the collection. He had a head the size of a bushel basket. "'What good can you say of him?' "'He is the greatest of us all, and I do beg that you will spare him,' was her reply. 'I don't know what his specialty is, but every one here regarded him so highly!' "'What is he thinking?' I asked. "'That's it,' she replied. 'No one knows. From birth he has never spoken; he used to drool at the mouth; no one has been able to detect any sign of cerebration. We put him in a cell very early. One of us gave an opinion that he was a congenital hydrocephalic idiot, but that was an error of judgment, for the rest of us have always been sure that his blankness is only apparent. His meditations are simply beyond our gross sensibilities. He no doubt ponders the uttermost problems of infinity.' "'Try,' I said. 'Even he gets his chance.' "Pearl tried, and got nothing. Crack! went his neck. "And so it went. One by one, with rapid dispatch, and with a gusto that still surprises me when I think of it, I rid the earth of its public enemies. By the time the sun was high in the heavens the job was complete, and I had become the next lord of creation! -------- CH013 *CHAPTER VIII* "The effect of the morning's work sent Pearl into a meditation that lasted for hours. When she came out of it she seemed her usual self; but inside, as I know now, something was changed, or, let us say, accelerated; and when this acceleration had reached a certain point my goosish ambition was ignominiously cooked. Ah, and very well cooked! Humorous and serious-I was well done on both sides! "But realization of my final humiliation came late and suddenly. My thoughts were not at all on any danger like that, but on millions of darling descendants in whose every parlor would hang my picture, when Pearl came out of her extended trance. "I had decided to be awfully nice to her-a model father even if not the perfect lover-so it was almost like a courtier that I escorted her out on the field and handed her over to a large stone, where she promptly sat and efficiently asked what I wanted. I imagined she showed a trace of disappointment when I told her I only wished to talk over some arrangements relative to our coming civilization; but she made no remark, let me paint a glowing picture of the possibilities, and agreed with me on the outlines of the various plans I had formed. "I was in a hurry. I asked her if she desired to slip back to my time to have the ceremony performed. "This offer was, I thought, a delicate gesture on my part. She came back with what amounted to a terrific right to the heart. She said severely," 'Yes, Frick, I will marry you, but first, you must court me.' "Observe, now, Miles, and you, Charles, my rapid ascent to asshood's most sublime peak. Countless other men have spent their lives trying to attain that dizzy height; a few have almost reached its summit, but it remained for me, the acting lord of creation, to achieve it. For-there was nothing else to do about it-I began to court her! "'Hold my hand,' she said-and I held her hand. She thought. 'Tell me that you love me,' she required. I told her that I loved her. 'But look at me when you say it,' she demanded-and I looked into her fleshless face with the thin lips that always reminded me of alum and said again that I loved her. Again she took thought, and I got the impression that she was inspecting her sensations. 'Kiss me,' she ordered; and when I did she slid to the ground in a think! "'There are mysteries in there somewhere,' she said when I pulled her up. 'I shall have to give a great deal of thought to them.' "I was in a hurry! I told her-Lord forgive me!-that she was clearly falling in love with me! And within herself she found something-I can't imagine what-that encouraged the idea. I struck while the iron was-well, not at absolute zero. "'Oh, come on,' I urged her. 'You see how we love each other: let's get married and get it over with.' "'No. you'll have to court me,' she answered, and I'll swear she was being coy. 'And court me for a long time, too,' she added. 'I found out all about it, in your time. It takes months.' "This was terrible! 'But why wait? Why? We love each other. Look at Romeo and Juliet! Remember?' "'I liked that young man Rudy better,' she came back at a tangent. "'You mean the man in the night club?' I asked. "'Yes,' she answered. 'He seemed to be singing just to me. "'Not singing-crooning!' I corrected irritably. "'Yes, crooning,' she allowed. 'You croon to me, Frick.' "Imagine it! Me, of all people; she, of all people; and out in the middle of that field in broad daylight! "But did I croon? I crooned. You have not seen me at the heights yet! "'More,' she said abstractedly. 'I think I feel something.' "I crooned some more. "'Something with love and above in it,' she ordered. "I made up something with love and above in it. "'And something with you and true,' she went on. "I did it. "'Now kiss me again.' "And I did that! "Thank Heaven she flopped into another think! I escaped to the woods while she was unconscious, and did not see her again till the next day. "My friends, this was the ignoble pattern of my life for the two weeks that followed. "I suffered; how I suffered! There I was, all a-burning to be the author of a new civilization, luxuriating in advance at thought of titanic tasks complete; and there she was, surely the most extraordinary block to superhuman ambition that ever was, forever chilling my ardor, ruthlessly demanding to be courted! I held hands with her all over that portion of time; I gazed into her eyes at the tomb of old Hydrocephalus himself; I crooned to her at midnight; and I'll bet that neighborhood was pitted for years in the places she suddenly sat down to meditate on in the midst of a kiss! "She had observed closely-all too closely-the technique of love overtures here in our time, and noted particularly the effect on the woman, so she must needs always be going off into a personal huddle to see if, perhaps, she was beginning to react in the desired manner! "Ah, there was brains! How glad I am that I'm dumb! "I began to lose weight and go around tired. I saw that our courtship could go on forever. But she saved me with an idea she got out of one of those novels she had read. She told me one rainy morning, brightly, that it might be a good thing if we did not see each other for a couple of months. She had so very, very much to think over, and, incidentally, how sorry she was for her poor countrymen who had died without dreaming life could hold such wealth of emotional experience as she had accumulated from me! "By then I was as much as ever in a rush to get my revised race off under their own power, but I was physically so exhausted that my protests lacked force, and I had to give in. So we made all arrangements and had our last talk. It was fully understood that I was to come back in two months and take her as my bride. She showed me how to operate the traveler. I set the controls, and in a matter of a minute I was back here in this room. "But I tricked her. That is, in a sense. For I didn't wait two months. The idea occurred to me to straddle that period in the traveler-so in only another minute I was materializing in the time two months away that I was to call back and claim her! I was thankful for that machine, for the long ordeal had left my body weak and my nerves frazzled, and I don't know how I could have stood so long a delay. You see, I was in such a hurry! "Ah, had I known! The catastrophe was already upon me! Note its terrible, brief acceleration! "When I arrived, all was exactly as before. The great building was as dusty, the community as deserted, the block of cells just as morbid as when I left. Only the fields had changed. I found Pearl sitting before the tomb of Hydrocephalus, meditating. "'I'm surprised to find you back so soon,' were her words of greeting. 'It seemed only a week.' "'Did you have a good time, my Pearl-of-great-price?' I asked tenderly. (She had come to insist on that name. Once, near despair, I had used it with a different meaning, and afterward she required me to lash myself with it whenever I addressed her.) "'It was a period of most interesting integration,' she replied. 'In fact, it has been a precious experience. But I have come to realize that we were hasty in terminating the noble lives of my fellow men.' "This was ominous! I made her go for a walk in the fields with me. Three times on the way out she found things I lightly mentioned to be problems requiring immediate squatting and meditating! "I sensed that this was the crisis, and it was. I threw all my resources into an attempt to force immediate victory. I held her hands with one of mine, hooked my free arm around her waist, placed my lips to hers and crooned, 'Marry me right now, darling! I can't wait! I love you, I adore you, I am quite mad over you'-and damn it, at the word mad she squatted! "I picked her up and tried it again, but like clockwork, on the word mad she went down again. Oh, I was mad over her, all right! "I was boiling! You see, I had to hurry so! She was changing right under my nose! "I fairly flew back to the time machine. I was going to learn once and for all what my future with regard to a potential human race was to be. I set its dials one year ahead. "This time I found Pearl in the vacant cell. She was distinctly older, dryer, thinner, and her head was larger in size. She sat on the dais as had the others; and there was a light dust on her clothing -- "'It is strange that you should come at this moment,' she said in a rusty voice. 'I was thinking of you.' "With the last word she closed her eyes-so she should not see me, only think of me. I saw that the food box was full. Despair in my heart, I went back to the traveler. "For a long time I hesitated in front of it. I was close to the bottom. The change had happened so quickly! To Pearl it took a year, to me, only an hour; yet her acts were as fixed, her character as immutable, as if they had been petrified under the weight of a millennium. "I nerved myself for what I had to do. Suddenly, recklessly, I jumped on the traveler, set it for seventy years ahead, and shot forth into time. "I saw Pearl once more. I hardly recognized her in the monster who sat on the dais in her cell. Her body was shriveled. Her head had grown huge. Her nose had subsided. Her mouth was a nasty, crooked slit. She sat in thick dust; and there was an inch of it where there had once been brown hair, and more on every little upper surface. "She had a musty smell! "She had reverted to type. She had overcome the differentness of her start and was already far down the nauseating road which over-brained humanity has yet to go. "As I stood looking at her, her eyelids trembled a little, and I felt she knew I was there. It was horrible; but worse was to come. The mouth, too, moved; it twisted; opened; and out of it came an awful creak. "'Tell me that you love me.' "I fled back to my time!" -------- CH014 *CHAPTER IX* Frick's long narrative had come to a close, but its end effect was of such sudden horror that Miles and I could not move from the edges of our chairs. In the silence Frick's voice still seemed to go on, exuberant, laughing, bitter, flexing with changing moods. The man himself sat slumped back in his chair, head low, drained of energy. We sat this way long minutes, each with his thoughts, and each one's thoughts fixing terribly on the thing we knew Frick was going to do and which we would not ask him not to do. Frick raised his head and spoke, and I quivered at the implication of his words. "The last time she had food for only five years," he said. Out of the depths of me came a voice, answering, "It will be an act of mercy." "For you," Frick said. "I shall do it because she is the loathsome last." He got up; fixed us in turn with bitter eyes. "You will come?" he asked. We did not answer. He must have read our assent in our eyes. He smiled sardonically. He went over to the door he had pointed out, unlocked it with a key from his pocket, pulled its heavy weight open, entered, switched on a light. I got up and followed, trembling, Miles after me. "I had the traveler walled up," Frick said. "I have never used it since." I saw the machine. It was as he had described it. It hung in nothingness two feet off the floor! For a moment I lacked the courage to step on, and Frick pushed me up roughly. He was beginning to show the excitement which was to gather such momentum. Miles stepped up promptly, and then Frick himself was up, hands on the controls. "Don't move!" he cried-and then the room was dim goldenness, then nothing at all, and I felt permeated with fathomless silence. Suddenly there was the goldenness again, and just as suddenly it left. We were in a small dark room. It was night. I wondered if she knew we were coming. We went to her silently, prowlers in infinity, our carpet the dust of ages. A turn, a door-and there was field land asleep under the pale wash of a gibbous moon. A walk, a turn-and there were the thirty-six sepulchers of the degenerate dead. One, not quite dead. I was as in a dream. Through the tall grass we struck, stealthily, Frick in the van like a swift-stalking animal. Straight through the wet grass he led us, though it clung to our legs as if to restrain us from our single purpose. Straight among those silent sepulchers we went. Nature was nodding; her earth stretched out everywhere oblivious; and the ages to come, they did not care. Nor cared the mummied tenants of each tomb around us. Not now, with their heads resting on their ribs. Only Frick did, very much. He was a young humanity's agent because of an old one's degradation. Splendidly, he was judge and executioner. He slowed down before the sepulcher where was one who was yet alive. He paused there; and I prayed. An intake of breath, and he pulled open the door and entered. Dreadfully, Miles, then I, edged in after. The door swung closed. The tomb was a well of ink. Unseen dust rose to finger my throat. There was a musty smell! I held my breath, but my heart pounded on furiously. Ever so faintly through the pressing silence I heard the pounding of two others. Could it be possible that a fourth heart was weakly beating there? Faint sounds of movement came from my left. An arm brushed my side, groping. I heard a smothered gasp; I think it was from Miles. Soon I had to have air, and breathed, in catches. I waited, straining, my eyes toward where, ahead, there might have been a deeper blackness through the incessant gloom. Silence. Was Frick gathering courage? I could feel him peering beside me there, afraid of what he had to see. I knew a moment when the suspense became intolerable, and in that moment it was all over. There was a movement, a scratch, a match sputtered into light; for one eternal second I looked through a dim haze of dust on a mummied monstrosity whose eyelids moved!-and then darkness swept over us again, and there was a sharp crack, as of a broken stick, and I was running wildly with Death itself at my heels through that graveyard in a race to the building where lay our traveler, In minutes we were back in our own time; in a few more Frick had blown up the traveler and I was out of the laboratory making for the Sound, sharp on my mind, as I went, the never-to-be-forgotten picture of Miles as he had raced behind me blurting, "She blinked! Oh, she blinked!" and that other, striding godlike in the rear, a little out of his head at the moment, who waved his arms over that fulfilled cemetery and thundered -- _"Sic transit gloria mundi!"_ -------- CH015 *A MATTER OF SIZE* CH016 *CHAPTER I* THOUGH his head was as stuffed with cotton, the details of the scene in his New York laboratory that night came back with insistent clearness. It was long past the turn of the clock, and he had been working for hours on a monograph on the Mutrantian Titans, which would establish indubitably the biological brotherhood of those colossi of Saturn's Satellite Three with the genus Homo of Earth. He was deeply immersed, and the muted night murmurs of the great city around and below washed unheeded through his cars. Then something, perhaps a slight motion, an extraneous noise, caused him to look up-and there, within the lamplight on the far side of his desk, stood the most amazing figure of a man that he, ethnologist though he was, had ever seen. His visitor wore sandals and a loose-fitting blue robe. He stood ill at ease, a slight, enigmatic smile on his face. That man! He could see him now, as clear in every point as if he were present. The head was massive, the cranium oval, and not one hair adorned its smooth and shining surface. Beneath the deep corrugations of the forehead the face sloped gently backward past a snub nose as far as the mouth, where it fell sharply away, leaving but the merest excuse of chin and lower jaw. The neck was long, the shoulders sloping; the whole apparition was grotesque. But he was not tempted to smile. No one could have looked into that man's face and smiled. The eyes, large, light, and piercing, would have prevented that. "You are Doctor Arthur Allison," the man had said. "I've come a long way to see you." "You're certainly not from Earth." Allison said, gaping, stating the fact rather than asking it. "No. "Then"-he could not restrain the question-"then, for Heaven's sake tell me, are you sport or typical?" The other smiled. "Always the scientist, I see! I am typical." Allison rose in amazement and went around the side of the desk. "But-but that can hardly be!" he exclaimed. "The solar system's been pretty thoroughly explored, and no race such as yours has ever been discovered." The stranger's smile faded. "That discovery has been reserved for you," he said significantly. He paused. "May I come to the point of my visit?" "Please do. I-I'm tremendously interested. Will you sit down?" "Thank you-no. There is not much time." He locked the ethnologist with his eyes. "I am the emissary of a people unknown to you," he began. "Our abode lies within the solar system a reasonable distance away, and for sufficient reasons no uninvited man of your race has ever laid questioning eyes on it, and no man of your generation but you ever will. Our racial strain is cousin to yours, but our science and civilization are ahead by more than 40,000 years. Our powers exceed what might be your wildest imaginings. In terms of death, for instance, we could, in fourteen days, destroy every trace of crustal life on Earth and all her tributary planets; or we could, in that same space of time, reduce every single vertebrate to a state of impotent slavery. "We would never do these things, however. We have neither the need nor the desire; we are not human, and not, of course, so stupid. Our self-determined developmental cycle will not bring us into intimate contact with you Earthmen for tens of thousands of years, and meanwhile we will remain as we are, aloof and inaccessible, happy within reason and practically self-sufficient. "You note that I say 'practically'. Once in every twenty-five years we invite one carefully chosen Earthman to do us a service. You without knowing it, have ever since your graduation from college been our most promising candidate. We have had you under observation for seven years, have investigated your ancestors back for ten generations, and in heredity, manhood, intellect, and achievement you are all that we ask; so it is to you, alone of your generation, that I come now to offer this highest honor that could fall to a man of your time. "I may not tell you what your service to us will be. You must trust me implicitly, obey me blindly. You will come to no danger or hurt. You must leave with me immediately, for a destination and by a route that will be kept secret from you. You will be gone four months. Those four months will be the high point of your intellectual, scientific, and, I might add, emotional life. Are you ready?" "You make an extraordinary request!" the ethnologist said, when he found words. "Ours is an extraordinary race," was the instant answer. "If I refuse?" "I could use force, and you'd be just as valuable to us under coercion as without; but I won't. You will not refuse. Not one of the men that has ever been approached has refused." "Has this 'service' anything to do with my specialty?" The man's eyes showed the faintest trace of amusement. "I may say," he replied. "It is applied and very, very practical ethnology." "I shall be returned here without hindrance when this service is done?" "Of course; and you may bring back with you all the knowledge of our science that you can absorb and retain." Allison considered a moment. He asked, "May I see your feet?" The out-worlder smiled. He sat on a chair and removed one sandal, exposing a foot such as no man on Earth had ever yet possessed. The big toe was very large, and was flanked by another only a little bit smaller. The three outer toes were vestigial. Here was the foot of the human race, thousands of years in the future. Allison's eyes bulged. The knowledge there would be! As if reading his mind the stranger said, "Your Mr. Wells said it long ago. 'Think of the new knowledge!"" The words were a light in Allison's brain. He turned away. The stranger replaced the sandal and rose. "Think of the new knowledge!" he repeated. The ethnologist turned to him. "What is your name?" he said. The other smiled. "I am sometimes called Jones," he replied. And they were the last words that had been spoken. Allison remembered that he, too, had smiled; that he had spontaneously held out his hand in tacit acceptance; that as his palm touched the out-worlder's there had been a sharp sting as of a needle; and then all his senses had left him, and he sank down and down into oblivion. For one and a half Earth hours Allison lay logy on the immaculate white cot, only the changing expression of his opened eyes telling of the chaos within. Then slowly and by insensible degrees his delirium became more physical, and he strained at the broad cloth bands that held him down, tossed within their narrow confines, muttered gibberish in three languages. A thousand horrific menaces disputed his long way up to a consciousness, each a nightmare shape spawned out of unknown frustrations in the abysmal unconscious. By twos and by threes he battled them-all the long dark arms, the fire eyes, the scale-skinned, and the amorphous, and those worse ones without name or substance which enveloped him with intangible oppression. It was most unfair, for no combat was ever decisive; always the shapes eluded him; and indeed they changed their identity as he faced them and were never twice the same. Except three. Three there were that remained a little apart, but which came again and were always clear and undistorted. First was the out-worldly stranger. Then the blue-eyed girl. And the last the interminable rows of doll faces, each a likeness of his own; each one himself. As the hours passed and he fought upward it became increasingly necessary to identify these recurring images. They were somehow enormously important. They were bound with his life, or had been, or would be; it was very obscure which, and they were all a mystery and a menace in their own fashion. To trap their secret he constructed colossal edifices of metaphysical cunning, performed prodigies of deduction, all the while he swam oceans, plunged through fire, sank through bottomless ooze in his running fight with the demons that beset him; but always at the moment of knowing he would forget what he was looking for and have to begin all over. Who was the out-worldly stranger? Who, the blue-eyed girl? Those rows of doll faces-why were they his faces? Why was each one himself? He would try new cunning. He would close his eyes for a long while, then open them suddenly, and he'd know. The man on the immaculate white cot closed his eyes and lay still; and then began the long, deep sleep that was to restore him to himself. * * * * Allison awoke gently and lay quiet a moment, dully wondering where he might be and how he had arrived there. The room was unfamiliar, with its close, square walls and the peculiar but soothing soft amber haze that filtered evenly from horizontal tubes set well up near the ceiling. There was no trace of a window, but a metal-framed door showed indistinctly in the wall at his right. He turned toward it-and found himself restrained. A surge of alarm ran through his veins and brought him fully awake. He arched upward and discovered that a broad cloth band had been passed over his chest and another over his thighs. His arms were free, and his exploring bands soon found a buckle which was easily loosened. He sat up and released his legs, then was at once out of bed and making for the door. He found it locked. "Not so good," he thought, pushing back his shock of yellow hair and turning and surveying the room. But at the head of the bed was a small table-the only other article of furniture. Placed opposite under the ceiling were grilles which he decided were for ventilation. The walls looked like marble, cream-colored, and apparently synthetic. He turned back to the door; pounded on it; yelled out: "Hey, Jones"; listened. He couldn't be sure, but he thought he heard a faint answering noise outside. He repeated his call; but no one came, and, irritated, he went back to the cot and sat on its edge, head in hands, until "Jones" should come and release him. It was clear he had been anesthetized, and he supposed he couldn't complain, for it had been part of their agreement that both route and destination be kept secret; but how deucedly promptly the man had acted! And how long he must have been unconscious! A quarter-inch growth of beard scratched the palms held to his cheeks! Well, no doubt he had arrived. The ethnologist rose from the cot and stalked about the room. He was not over-congratulating himself for the sheeplike docility with which he had acceded to the out-worlder's amazing offer. There were a hundred questions to ask, and hardly one had been answered; there were affairs of importance to be put in order before leaving Earth, and not one had been attended to. Confound Jones, for the outrageous promptness of his action! Where was he now, anyway? Again he banged on the door and yelled, and again it was fruitless. He resumed his pacing. "Jones!" Of all names for the out-worlder to go by! Practical, though, of course. His real name was probably Ugktbgubx, or some such jaw breaker. Would match his face -- The Earthman stopped short. Into his stream of consciousness had floated a figment that would not be identified. Something about a girl, blue-eyed and beautiful. And something else-connected with her-rows and rows-frightening-himself there, somehow -- It sank and was gone. He sat again on the cot, tense, "open," delicately fishing it back up. It came-went-came clearly. Interminable rows of doll faces-But why were they his faces? Why was each one himself? A thrill of fear swept up his back. Had something been done to him while he was unconscious? Later: Why the emotion, why the fear that accompanied that memory? Still later: Why that flash that something may have been done to me while I was unconscious? He hung suspended, fishing for answers that would not come. Gradually the image faded, leaving in its place an intangible feeling of oppression. He got up and walked to throw off the spell; muttered, "God help Jones if he did monkey with me!" There was a noise at the door, and, turning, he beheld the massive bald head that never could he forget. Smiling, Jones entered. "You are recovered?" he asked cordially. An exclamation of anger rose to Allison's lips-and died there. Behind the out-worlder stood a girl. She was clad in a simple, loose-flowing crimson robe, gathered at the waist. She was blue-eyed and beautiful. Jones beckoned to her. "Doctor Allison," he said, "let me present our Miss CB-301 -- " -------- CH017 *CHAPTER II* Allison did not distinguish himself for ease of manner in that introduction, for he was wondering how it could be that this girl, whom he was now meeting for the first time, could be the very one whose image already dimly lurked in his memory. None of his awkwardness was to be charged to any romantic "falling for" her; no mistake is to be made about that. A score of girls had hitherto found he was quite immune-though a psychoanalyst might have discovered that what be called "a scientific disinterest in the sex" could be reduced to the absurd fact that he was simply a little afraid of them. The ethnologist, becoming aware that Miss So-and-So had said "How do you do!" in the most conventional of Earth fashions, in turn nodded and mumbled something himself. Jones smiled broadly and, stepping to the door, begged to be excused, saying he was overwhelmed with work. "Miss CB-301 speaks your language perfectly," he said, "and will explain such things as are permitted. I'll be back presently." And the door clicked closed behind him, leaving an off-balanced young ethnologist very much alone with an unabashed young maiden with freckles on her nose and the light of admiration in her eyes. Allison stood stiffly uncomfortable. Who could have thought that this would happen? And so suddenly? Confound that Jones again; he was certainly one fast worker. What should he say to the female? Nice day? No-better, flattery. He complimented her on the lack of accent in her speech. It suggested unusual brains in one so young. "Oh, but no-I'm really terribly dumb!" the young thing gushed sincerely. "I could hardly get through my fourth-dimensional geometry! But English is easier. Don't you think so?" Yes; he certainly thought so. He warmed toward her a little. "Then let me congratulate you," he said, "for admitting your dumbness. I'm not accustomed to such extraordinary modesty on the part of women. I may say I find it very becoming." The girl smiled her delight, and Allison smiled, too. Then, struck by an unpleasant thought, her face took on a woebegone look. "I'm an atavism," she said. What was the polite comment on that? The ethnologist in Allison rose to the surface. "Let me see your feet," he said with sudden eagerness. "Oh, no-don't ask that! Please!" She shrank from him. "Why not?" he demanded. "Because they're so ugly!" the girl exclaimed wretchedly. "I don't want you to see them! Ever!" "Sit down and take off your sandals!" he ordered. After all, she was only a kid, and her reluctance was unwarranted and foolish. Tremblingly the girl obeyed, and Allison looked down upon as beautiful a pair of five-toed feet as he had ever seen. Extremely interesting, so complete a divergence from what must be the present racial type. He smiled, and she, seeing, felt better and hastened to put her sandals on again. "After all," she said rising, "even though I am an atavism, you're a primitive, and-and-well, it could be terribly thrilling!" She looked up at him adoringly-hopefully. Allison laughed. He was all at his ease now with the young thing, and, it must be repeated, he was thoroughly immune. "It sounds as if you're proposing," he said. "We're to be married," she confided. "I hope you don't mind too much." This was ominous and led to a sudden terrible suspicion. "Is this why I was brought from Earth-to marry you?" he demanded angrily. "Oh, no! Not just for me!" she answered; then, as if conscious of having made a slip, she added quickly; "I saw you when they brought you in and asked then. You see, you're the only man I've ever met who is like me. I never felt funny about anyone else the way I feel funny about you." He was reassured, but it left the problem of rebuffing her. He had done nothing to commit himself, and it was just her hard luck if she had to go and "feel funny" where one so hopeless as he was concerned. He had better nip her romantic notions in the bud. "Young lady, I like you very much," he said, "but my interest is largely ethnological. I'm sorry, but it can never be anything more. I-I'll be a-a big brother to you," he concluded asininely. The girl was hurt, and her face fell. It was very awkward for a moment. Allison affected a cheeriness he did not feel. "Come," he said, "tell me about your people. Do they all look like the man who brought me here? Are you the only one of your kind in the whole country?" She brightened a little. "Yes," she replied; "I'm the only one like you. You wouldn't care for the others at all. Look-I'll show you." She lifted her left wrist and showed him, strapped thereto, what looked like an enameled wristwatch with a large bezel; only the dial of this was blank, and radiating from the sides were five gnurled stems. "Do you have these on Earth?" she asked. He admitted they did not. "Look," she said, turning her body at an angle and adjusting the stems. As Allison looked, close by her side, the dial took on an opalescent glow, and dimly there appeared on it threads and shadows which under her adjustments cleared into a picture, animated-the heads and figures of half a dozen women. "Television," he said. "You're receiving this from a broadcasting studio." "No," she corrected; "a search-beam, portable. I can focus it at a distance on whatever I choose. It passes through almost anything." Allison marveled. "But that's not the point," she objected, "Look at those women. Do you find them more beautiful than I?" He certainly did not. They were, each one, the feminine counterpart of the man Jones. Their necks were as columnar, their shoulders as sloped, and their heads were nothing less than disgusting, considering that they belonged to bodies of what is commonly called the "fair sex." They had wide faces, flat, with bulging foreheads and utterly degenerated jaws, with a rim of thin hair that circled their craniums as might a fringed girdle, an egg. Allison shuddered. "I pass!" he said. The girl probably did not understand his words, but she read aright the expression on his face. "You see!" she cried triumphantly, as if it were thereby decided that he was to marry her. "That is part of the line of waiting brides to be. You've got to marry one of us!" "Well, I'm not going to marry one of you!" the ethnologist exclaimed angrily. "Why do you say I do?" he demanded, the ominous suspicion again taking shape in his mind. "Why? Why?" he repeated, following her as she backed away. The girl was on the verge of tears. "I can't tell you, and I won't!" she said. "But it's a shame, 'cause I thought it would be so easy and nice! Because you're a primitive." Allison turned away; there was no satisfaction to be had from her. She was a throwback, all right. He suddenly wanted very much to see the man called Jones. He had plenty of explanations coming to him, and it seemed to him he'd been treated rather shabbily so far. He turned back to the girl. "Miss-Miss -- " He came to a stop. "Pardon me-what is your name again?" "Miss CB-301 -- " "Ah, yes. May I call you Miss Brown? Uh-Miss Brown, will you go find Mr. Jones-the man who introduced us? I want to see him at once. "Or maybe I can go to him?" he quickly suggested. "Oh, no, you can't do that. I'll go bring him here." She seemed a little afraid of her primitive. She added, more brightly: "I think I want to see him myself." "Will you lend me that search-beam till you get back?" She hesitated, as if she should not, then, pathetically eager to please him, she unstrapped and placed it about his left wrist. She's beautiful, all right, he thought, as she fastened it on. Hair, and plenty of it, nice and dark and tastefully drawn through that jeweled clasp at the nape of her neck. Those other women's! She tapped on the door, and it was opened by a brown-robed figure outside. For a moment she looked softly into Allison's eyes, and then she was gone. What had she meant by saying he had to marry "one of us"? Had to! Yes, Jones had plenty of explanations piling up. The ethnologist sat on the edge of the cot and held up his wrist. What a marvel of ingenuity the little device was! Tentatively he turned the stem she had first touched. The dial glowed, then meaningless shadows appeared on it. The slightest movement of his body changed these shadows for new ones. He turned other stems and go through what seemed to be a wall. Delicately he manipulated in the attempt to probe beyond. The blurred figure of a man appeared, came clearer, and then Allison got a shock. The image that lay on the glowing round dial was point for point his own. In his amazement, he moved, and the man was gone. Pulse throbbing, he fished him back. No doubt about it-the outlines were fuzzy, but the resemblance was there. All over-size, shoulders, head, proportions, clothing. Even the room he occupied was identical. He stood leaning against the wall, arms folded, looking in angry fashion straight ahead, and on his face was a short thatch of yellow beard. Out of Allison's unconscious came the memory he had had before. Interminable rows of doll faces. Each face his own face, and each one, somehow, himself. Mystery lay all around him. Jones, so strangely in out of the night. His extraordinary offer. The sudden unconscious journey. The unknown out-world civilization that hemmed him in. The rows of doll faces with their freight of fear. This man who looked so like himself. What devil's work could be under way? There was a movement on the glowing dial. The door of the room opened, and the man known as Jones entered, followed by a surgeon-like figure in white smock and helmet who pushed before him a rubber-wheeled table. At sight of them the man left the wall and advanced menacingly. They talked, and Jones' manner was wholly conciliatory. Then, suddenly, it was over. Jones stepped to the man's side and touched him lightly on the shoulder with the palm of his band. He slumped to the floor, from which in businesslike fashion he was picked up, laid on the table and wheeled out through the door. Allison stared with amazement. It was the same trick that had been worked on him. The shoulder instead of the hand. The men were gone from the dial. He set himself quickly to picking them up again. Angling his body slightly did it. They had paused outside the door. They moved; grew blurred; he found a stem that brought them sharper again. He followed them down a square corridor into which many doors were set at equal distances on each side. As they progressed they dwindled to the size of match heads, but he found the way to make them larger. Other figures passed by, two in white smocks and helmets, others in colored gowns, their ugly beads fully exposed; and as Allison looked at them, his group was gone. An anxious moment, then he found them. They were a little lower to one side, descending in an elevator. Lost them! Again his heart stood still while he felt them out. It was as if that unconscious man on the table-that man who so resembled him-were he himself. Where were they taking him? What was to be done with him, all unresisting? There passed an interval during which a jumble of walls, shadows, people, strange apparatus, and blurs were all that came to his dial. Once, even, a conical green bush, or perhaps it was a tree. Then Allison by pure chance found his men again. An imposing picture lay on the dial when he had brought them to size and clarity. They stood waiting behind a low railing at one end of a large auditorium. Behind them, the other side of the railing, half a hundred rows of seats, laced by aisles, rose upward to the ceiling, and every seat was occupied by men and women of the strange race whose prisoner he was. In front of them, the focal point of every eye in that vast gathering, was a glittering cage, within which rested two chairs, meshed by wires together, and placed in front of a complicated battery of scientific apparatus whose nature Allison didn't know. Quickly, with perfect coordination, the ensuing scene took place. The table bearing the unconscious man was wheeled within the cage, and he was removed and made to sit upright in one of the chairs. At the same time a woman of the race, escorted by an official, entered the space within the railing from a doorway to the right and was conducted to the other chair. She was touched, palm on shoulder, by Jones, and immediately slumped back unconscious. Metallic headbands attached to the chairs were fastened about their foreheads. Then all left the cage and the door was closed. Jones went to a large panel to one side and threw a switch, and for one instant a glow of varicolored light flooded the cage. When it had died he and the others reentered, freed the two subjects, and, in a way Allison could not catch, revived them. Then the handsome young man with the blond hair and the ugly woman with the fringed bald head and corrugated brow proceeded out of the cage to a small desk by the railing, where they stopped, looked deeply at each other, and in full view of the assembled thousands kissed each other ardently on the mouth. Idols of Pluto! Allison was flabbergasted, but, more than that, he was nauseated. For that blond young man who so disturbingly resembled him was subtly, somehow, himself. He, too, felt he had kissed that woman. For a moment he could not look, and when he did he found the actors gone. The audience, however, remained, and most of them were smiling. What could it all mean? The ethnologist let his wrist fall, brushed his forehead, tried to consider. Should he confront Jones with this new knowledge when he saw him? If he were slated to figure in such proceedings himself, it would surely be as scientist rather than subject. And just as surely, in spite of his subconscious feeling of oppression, the man he had been following could have no relation to him. Speaking out to Jones would get the girl in trouble. As he was thinking, the man himself entered in his quick and quiet way. Allison rose, with care keeping his left wrist to his side. "Doctor Allison," the out-worlder said without preamble, "may I ask if you feel any-uh-sentimental inclination toward the young lady I introduced you to?" "It happens I do not," the ethnologist answered sharply. The question irritated him. "May I in turn ask when I'm to be allowed to leave this room?" he asked. The other made an appealing gesture. "Please," he said, "you've only just regained consciousness." He made a promise. "I'll see to it that you leave within fifteen minutes." "It would seem that my arrival is of not quite the importance you led me to anticipate," Allison said with bitterness. The out-worlder smiled inscrutably. "On the contrary," he objected, "it is. You've caused a tremendous excitement. Thousands are now busy with the preparations to receive you." Was he alluding to anything in connection with the scene in the auditorium? How could he sound him without betraying the girl? There seemed no way. "Exactly what is the nature of this service you've asked me to render?" he asked at last. The other was at the door. "I'll tell you when I come back," Jones promised. "But I might say, for the time being, that it is of vital importance to the fecundity of our race." And with these cryptic words, before Allison could recover, Jones was gone. -------- CH018 *CHAPTER III* Sitting on the cot, Allison tried to bring to order his scattered thoughts. He felt his position grew moment by moment more dangerous, but why, it was difficult to discover. Jones had as yet made no overt act, nor had he done anything that might be construed as contrary to their agreement. The fellow was not very likable, but then he was an out-worlder, of unpleasant face and figure, and Allison well knew how wrong superficial estimates of such characters were apt to be. He had always acted friendly, even if he was a trifle-to him-high-handed and abrupt. The girl could not be charged against him, for she was acting largely on her own. Allison rather liked her, anyway. She was a credit. What else was there? Well, the scene he had witnessed by means of the search-beam. But in itself that was only interesting and amusing, except, perhaps, to the blond chap concerned. It was just the confusion of the fellow's resemblance to himself that summoned those nameless fears. He could conclude that somebody, very much like himself, had simply undergone some sort of scientific ceremony ending with a kiss. But that was not a ceremonial kiss-it was shamelessly ardent. Could there be love-mating-between two such opposites? A wedding, perhaps, since it was public. A wedding! Jones' last words, anent his "service," still rang in his cars. "It is of vital importance to the fecundity of our race." No forced marriage of his to one of those top-heavy heads-even to Miss Brown-would have any effect on that. Another remark of Jones. His "service" had to do with "applied and very, very practical ethnology." The worst was certainly those interminable rows of doll faces. He could never have actually seen them, surely; they would have to be symbols of the unconscious, standing for something else. But what else? And why the resemblance of that young fellow to himself-and, therefore, to the doll faces? That could not be coincidence. Allison gave it up. He knew only that a nameless oppression sat on his heart, and that he, who had seldom been afraid, was now afraid. He was roused by a light knock on the door. He rose; Miss Brown entered; and some one in brown closed the door behind her. She was smiling radiantly and held in her hands a curious fruit something like a very large soft-skinned sapodilla. "Eat it," she said. "It is very nourishing and very good." Allison thanked her, broke it and gave her half. He found it good indeed. He had not realized he was so hungry. She watched him with an expression of joy that would not come off -- "Why do you smile so?" he asked. "You weren't feeling so cheerful when you left." She laughed and shook her head, and would not tell him. "You'll find out!" she promised. Something occurred to Allison, and he sat on the cot and pulled the girl gently down by his side. The watch-like search-beam was still adjusted to the auditorium, and he turned his wrist delicately in various directions till he found it again. "What is that place?" he asked. She gave him a look of fright. "Please don't ask!" she begged. "I can't tell you! I-I'll get in awful trouble!" "From Jones?" She nodded. He debated whether to ask her the explanation of what he had witnessed and decided it was useless. He peered into the dial of the instrument. Her soft hand came to take it away, but he guarded it with his own and kept on looking. He touched a stein, and the picture came clearer. The audience was there as before, and the space within the railing empty; but, as he watched, two familiar figures entered from a doorway on the left, and between them rolled a third on the wheeled table. Jones and his surgeon-like accessory were bringing in another victim. The girl reached forth her hand again. "Please don't!" she pleaded softly. "I shouldn't have let you have it, only-only -- " "In a minute!" he cried irritably, keeping her hand away. The figures had started for the cage. As before, the man was placed in one chair and a native woman, promptly entering, in the other. She was anesthetized, and both were fitted with the headbands. Then all left. Jones pulled the switch, and there was the expected burst of varicolored light. Allison kept his eyes glued to the man, unable to make him out through the glass, fearful, deep down, of what he might see. Jones and the others reentered the cage. The man and woman were revived; freed, went out; and far away in his little room in the building Allison started with shock. The man who had emerged, the man who even then was kissing ardently that ugly woman-he, too, looked like himself. Prickles of fear ran all over the Earthman's body. "Who was that man?" he demanded of the girl. "Who was it?" he repeated, roughly grasping her arms. She shook her head and sobbed out she dared not tell. He let her go, rose and paced about the room. After a little she came to him. "Don't be mad with me," she pleaded softly. "I'll tell you some of it-a little." She paused, gathering courage, then said: "That instrument's the way we make people fall in love with each other here. It does something in their heads." Allison stood still, struck with amazement at her words. She pulled his sleeve; took his bands. "Arthur," she said tenderly. "Arthur." He looked down at her. "Don't be mad," she went on, smiling a little, "but we will marry. You will love me. I just arranged it with Mr. Jones. He's coming up for us next. Though I didn't have to be made to fall in love with you. Arthur -- aren't you listening? We'll be so happy, and then you won't have to marry one of those ugly other women, and then you'll never want to go back to your horrid Earth! Never!" For some time Allison looked at her; then he freed his hands and turned toward the door. "Sister, I'm checking out!" She suspected what he meant. "What are you going to do?" she cried. "You can't go away! Mr. Jones won't let you!" "Miss 891-X, you've no idea how good I am at handling guys like that. I'm a primitive, you know." He felt worlds better, already. It was the waiting, a helpless prisoner facing the unknown, that had got him so down before. Now he had made a decision, and the promise of action, even of conflict, tuned him to his old accustomed pitch. But the girl would fight to keep him. She threw herself on his chest and begged and pleaded. "But Arthur," she said, "you'll like it after you're changed. You'll never know any difference, except that you'll love me. Don't you see?" He held her off. "Miss Brown, I'm sorry, but I don't want to like to be any other way than I am now. You go down to that damn machine; get 'em to make you fall in love with some nice local boy." A noise was heard at the door. At once he jumped and wedged his body behind it. "Hide! Here they are!" he whispered. "Quick! Under the bed! There may be trouble." Trembling, the girl obeyed. Allison stepped back. Jones entered, and his hooded assistant followed with the wheeled table and closed the door. The ethnologist wasted no time. "Jones," he said, "it's all off. You will kindly arrange to send me back to Earth." The out-worlder showed less surprise than Allison expected. "But my dear Doctor Allison," he objected, "you can't mean to change your mind now. You are here; thousands of our scientists are assembled; we've come even now to conduct you to the place where your service is to begin." He drew close. Allison turned a little, and watched him like a hawk. Jones continued, soothingly: "Your trepidations are natural, but in a few minutes you'll be laughing at yourself for ever having entertained them. You just see." He raised his right hand to clap Allison in good-fellow manner on the shoulder, but the pat never landed. Quick as a cat the Earthman wheeled and caught his wrist. The man, surprised, persisted, and he was strong; but Allison was stronger, and, clasping his left arm about the other's body, putting all his power behind short, savage jabs, he forced the hand back in toward its owner's chest. "Take-some of-your own-medicine-doctor!" The hand turned, and without a word Jones slumped to the floor, unconscious. At once Allison was leaping toward the assistant, and before the fellow knew what had happened he lay sprawling on the floor beside the other. Harmless as he had seemed, the ethnologist took no chances. He reached for the relaxed right arm of Jones and pressed its palm into the prone man's arm. He went limp immediately. Allison rose. "Act two," he said. "And two curtains." He looked under the cot and laughed to see the way the wide-eyed girl there was trembling. "Come Out, Miss 23-PDQ," he said. "The war's over." She pushed out and stood up. He went and knelt over Jones. "Ingenious little weapons you have hereabouts," he commented. A thin, rubberish sack lay flat in the man's palm, and from it led a tube to a short, hollow-tipped needle placed projecting from the lower end of the heel, just out of reach of the fingers. The instrument stuck there of itself. He pulled it off and placed it in his own right palm. "They'll kill you!" the girl said, tears in her eyes. "I hope not," he answered lightly. "I'll be moving pretty fast." He laughed. "You should know how I escaped from the Mutrantian Titans!" "Is anybody outside that door?" he asked, pointing. She nodded. He went to it, took position on one side and knocked. The door opened slightly, and a hand, wrist, and sleeve showed. Allison touched the hand with the heel of his right palm-and pulled an unconscious, white-clad attendant into the room. He laid him neatly by the others and looked again at the needle. "Aye, ingenious!" he said. "How are you going to get away?" the girl asked. For answer, he queried: "Where's your space port?" "Oh, it's way over on the other side of the city. They'd catch you." "Do you have air-cars?" She nodded. "Where can I get one? On the roof, maybe?" "Yes," she said reluctantly. "There are stairs down the hall," she added, indicating. This looked promising. Allison was sure he could work anything that could fly. He searched the three men, finding no weapon; then, suggesting that Miss Brown turn her back, he exchanged clothes with the assistant in white. The helmet was much too large, but he remedied that by padding it with a strip torn off the hem of the attendant's robe. With this in hand he stood for a moment before the slender girl. He remembered the search-beam; removed it and strapped it again on her wrist. She had remained surprisingly passive. "You must get out of here!" he warned her. Her eyes were full of tears. He took her in his arms and kissed her lips. "Good-by, little one," he murmured. "Good, good luck to you!" He put on the helmet. Only his square shoulders might give him away outside. He would depress them as much as possible. He stepped to the partly opened door-and then at last she spoke. "Oh, Arthur," she cried, "be careful! Get safe away! But don't forget me! Come back to me some day, if you can! I'll be here always, waiting!" Allison squeezed her hand, then turned and went out. Sweet girl, he thought. He liked her very much, -------- CH019 *CHAPTER IV* Only one man was in sight, a man in brown like one Allison had overcome, and he was approaching along the way Allison himself had to go. Walking rapidly, eyes straight ahead, he passed him without attracting attention. The corridor was of the kind he had seen with the search-beam. Scores of doorways, identical with the one he had left, lined both its sides. Ahead might be the elevator, if he was headed in the right direction. He was, and he came to it quickly-and had there a bad moment. On drawing abreast, the car came level with his floor, and off stepped two men clad like himself, trundling another wheeled table between them. One called after him a barbarous-sounding phrase, but he continued on, affecting not to bear. An open spiral staircase showed at his left, and with relief he turned in and started up. He would like to have run, but did not dare. He might meet some one. As he climbed he wondered how many poor victims were being taken unconscious to that scientific hymeneal altar. Those fellows had enjoyed their marriage kiss! In his mind he could hear them at their love-making. "How brightly shine the stars on your incomparable scalp tonight!" "How lovely that line where your lips kiss your neck!" Ugh! He shuddered and climbed faster, passed the landing next above, and continued up to where a closed door barred his way. He opened it, stepped through, and found himself on the roof. It was daylight, and a small sun shone warmly. Blinking in its sudden glare, he made out that he was in the middle of a large flat open area floored with pink marble. In several scattered places were other roof doors like the one he had emerged from, and straight ahead stood a row of transparent objects that had to be the air-cars. One massive-headed man in purple was loitering near them, but he was the only person in sight. Allison strode casually over to the nearest car, studying it closely as he went. It, like the others, was small, hardly five feet high, with open sides and streamlined shells of a stuff like glass, front and back. Within was one wide seat, in front of which were three control levers which led to a boxed space below. It rested on three splayed legs. And that was all there was. No motive device was apparent, and there were no wings or vanes whatever. Allison was not pleased to have a witness to his first flight, but he stepped into the nearest car without hesitation and gingerly raised the lever he guessed would be the elevator. The car lifted. Slight pulls on another lever turned the nose of his craft, and the third gave forward velocity. It was extremely simple. A glance at the man below showed that he wasn't even looking. Boldly, now, Allison ordered the controls, and within a minute he was climbing silently a hundred feet above the edge of the roof to where other air-cars like elongated soap bubbles were scattered through the sky above. Below, and shrinking as he climbed, lay a beautiful city. Broad ribbons of white streets stretched away to all sides, and within them lay low, curved, and angled buildings, each its own delicate pastel tint. Greens, blues, yellows, and purples, octagons of pink, and open green plazas everywhere between. It was not large, but it was such a place as modern architects back on Earth were still dreaming of. On the far side should he the space port, according to the poor little girl of the numbers. Allison anxiously searched, but could spot nothing that looked like one-no great open place sprinkled with silver ovaloids that would be the ships. There was one silver shape well off on the right, but it was far too big for a space ship, he told himself. Still, he'd have a look. He turned his car and speeded up. As he drew closer he saw that it was a ship, and, to his astonishment, that he knew it. It was the one belonging to the Mutrantian Titans. Two years before, Earth, in making overtures for the friendship of Saturn's somewhat backward Satellite Three, had caused to be made and presented as a gift to its government a space ship of tremendous size after the famous RV-3 model, so popular with her own private owners. The ship below was unmistakably that model, and, from its size, could only be the one presented to the Mutrantians. What could its presence here mean? Were some of the Titans, like himself, here as instruments in the schemes of the ultrascientists? Allison reached the ship and hovered high overhead. She lay alone in a large circular area, bare except for several scattered rows of long, buff-colored buildings with rounded tops. This was the space port after all; the buildings were hangars, and their local craft must all be housed inside. He lowered, circled, studied that bit of terrain. Everything depended on the raid he was about to make. How should he go about it? The scene was peaceful enough in appearance, and he could not at his altitude make out a single figure; but he had a great respect for the danger potential of a people so advanced in science. What were the space ships inside those hangars like? Had he not been a bit too cocky in his assurance that he could navigate one? They might operate by entirely different principles from those he was familiar with-like the air-car he was in, for instance. He might stand like a child before an atomic engine in the presence of their motivating device. As he hesitated, a preposterous idea invaded his mind. He rejected it at once, but it returned, and soon, as he faced it, he began to glow with the possibilities. Why not try for the Mutrantian ship? He was at least thoroughly familiar with it, and its operation was automatic in flight and foolproof. The one great problem was the matter of size. The ship had been made to a scale ten times that of the Earthmen's, and that meant that such a comparative midget as he might face extraordinary difficulties making the trip in it. In the cool stillness five thousand feet in the air Allison laughed. He had the answer for that. It would be the Titan ship, by all means. He much preferred it, now. But first he had to get it, and that might not be so easy. Especially if one of the Titans was inside. He lowered the elevating lever and dropped cleanly down. At three thousand feet, even at one, no guard or other field attendant showed. The port looked deserted. "I can make a pretty good guess why," Allison told himself with a grin. "Big reception over in town. Thousands getting ready for the appearance of one Doctor Arthur Allison, pick of Earth! "Earth's dumb-bells!" he corrected. He lowered still more; hovered motionless fifty feet over the mammoth length of silver. A fifth of a mile, it lay stretched out. It was three hundred feet in the beam. He set his ship in a glide down and around the gently curving flank. The ground rose to meet him; the side turned sheer. He saw that the midship port was open. A gangway from the field reached up and touched its lower lip. There was still no sign of any one about. He lowered his car to the yawning forty-foot-wide cavern; peered; turned his ship and nosed through. Beyond the port lock, seventy feet within, he sunk to a landing and stepped out. He was within, but not safe. There might be a Mutrantian, or a guard. He would have to reconnoiter. For ten minutes he disappeared into the dark bowels of the ship, and when he emerged he was dragging the limp form of a man, whom he placed on the top of the gangway. There had been a guard. A few seconds later he had returned to his car and ascended the forward wall. Faintly, he saw what he wanted. Hovering motionless, he reached out and pushed bard on two buttons the size of saucers. Behind him the two massive lock doors knifed closed, enveloping him within pitchy darkness. Then, with extreme of caution, foot by foot, he directed his car ahead. After a little he turned right, toward where a dim light came from the control room, far up in the nose of the ship. More rapidly now he proceeded, through the long, longitudinal passageway and into the Gargantuan reach of wanly lighted control room. He climbed higher, and aimed for the panel of huge disks that were the control buttons. Hoveringly their side, he reached out and pushed at three he knew. The floor started rapidly to rise. The ship was lifting. With all the skill he had, he met the floor. -------- CH020 *CHAPTER V* Allison did not gloat at his luck in getting off, for it was far from certain that he would be able to win clear. Thousands of people would see the ship rise, and that would bring quick action. He had no idea what the offensive weapons of the natives might be. At the worse, they might bring him down with some destroying ray; but he counted on their not doing that. He was supposed to be a valuable property and they unquestionably would want to take him alive. He could afford to chance their powers. In his comparatively diminutive size, and faced by the danger of quick discovery, it had been impossible to investigate the stores of the ship before taking off, but in this he did not take so great a chance as may he thought. There were, primarily, only the factors of air, temperature, food, water, starting power, and navigation, and in all of these the probabilities were in his favor. He was so tiny that there should be enough air in the craft to last him for a long trip even if the air-renewers were idle. The temperature was maintained automatically. As for food and water, the ship would at least have the "iron rations" and reserve tanks of water which interplanetary flying regulations required ships at all times to carry against emergency. That the ship had the necessary starting power was already proved by the fact that she had lifted and her acceleration was being maintained. She was of the more recent type that utilized solar rays in transit, and there was therefore no concern over energy once she had got out into the airless void where the sun's rays shone always burning hot. Navigation was all but automatic and would not concern him until he was sure he was out of the atmosphere. His immediate concern was light, and to get it be would use the unusual tool provided to his hand-the air-car. It would be a space ship within a space ship. It would serve him for the transportation. He laughed at his audacity in having thought of it. Carefully he took off, and rose into the dangerous dimness that enveloped him on all sides. One error with the controls and he might dash into a wall, or the ceiling, and the end of his career as a scientist-adventurer would be a hundred-foot fall to the floor of what would turn out to be his coffin. He knew about where the switch was, but the multiplied height and the darkness made finding it critical. It was necessary to control his air-car with one hand while he felt with the other over the surface of the wall. It took a little time, but eventually he found it. Using all his strength, he turned it on. At sight of the vast control room under full light he got a new sense of his audacity-and his insignificance. Around him stretched a chamber three hundred feet long, and fully two thirds that in width and height. He had lived with the Mutrantians, and so had experience with interiors multiplied in size, but these dimensions for the control room of a space ship took his breath away. The chart table alone reached thirty feet up from the floor. Only an air-car would so much as enable him to get around. He decided to investigate the food situation while the ship was getting out of the atmosphere. Carefully turning his car, the ethnologist glided down to within ten feet of the floor, and from that height skimmed back through the doorway into the corridor, where he came to a stop amidships, on the port side, in front of the galley door. Here, for the first time, he had trouble. The door was closed, and there was the job of opening it. He found the handle, a curved, thick, iron bar more than a yard long, without difficulty, but all the strength of his right arm would not serve to lift it. He rested a moment and thought it over. Any tools he might find up in the tool locker would be far too heavy for him to work with from the car, so he decided to use the car itself. Delicately maneuvering, he got the knobbed end of the handle hooked over the footboard of his car. Then, ready, he raised the elevator control of the car and at the same time directed its nose hard inward. The handle lifted and the door opened. "Problem and solution," he thought, pleased, pushing the door back with the nose of his craft as elephants were used to push circus freight cars around. Allison prided himself on his capacity to solve problems. Inside, there was again the need of finding the light switch, and this time, the room being in pitch darkness, he had far more trouble; but at length he found it and turned it on. No fresh provisions were in evidence anywhere, so he skimmed across to the row of gigantic lockers where canned food and water should be found. Every locker was closed, so once more Allison used the car to pry up one of the handles, this time pulling, instead of pushing. He found this harder-and more dangerous. For as the door started slowly to open under the force he was exerting, the end of the handle slipped off the floor board and he suddenly found himself hurtling at dizzying speed into the opposite wall. Only in the nick of time did he cut his controls and zoom, to lose momentum at the ceiling. "Phew!" he exclaimed. He realized that he was getting dull and tired. He could not have come out of that long period of enforced unconsciousness with much reserve of strength. He glided down to the locker and looked in. There were the cans, just as in the Earthmen's ships-rows and rows of giant tin containers, stacked a hundred feet to the ceiling. Synthetic food tablets, all of one kind, from the labels in English. With more care he opened the locker adjoining and found there similar cans of water. He felt considerably relieved. He was certain, at least, to eat and drink. He now flew back to the main cabin for the one last thing to be done. The ship until then had been flying outward blindly; it remained for him to set it on its course for Earth. He climbed his little craft over to the great chart table to the forward end of the room where were the banks of dials and the rows of colored buttons whereby the ship was controlled. A glance at a dial half as large as his ship showed a negligible amount of air outside, so he advanced thirty feet to hover like a humming bird in front of a green button with a large 1 on its face, and, feeling a little sentimental, reached out and pushed it in. Farther on he pushed in another, which would give him the ship's maximum acceleration. Then he glided to a landing on the immense flat top of the chart table and sat down. The rest was up to the ship's automatic navigator. It was equal to the job. Its ultra-sensitive receivers picked up and identified every major planetary body in the solar system and sent the information through an overlapping labyrinth of seventy-two circuits where every navigation factor of location, spatial relations, planetary gravital pulls, ship's speed and acceleration and deceleration, planetary speeds and orbits, ship's destination, and so forth, were second by second electrically arranged and coordinated into the necessary resultant course; and it put the ship on that course, and corrected infinitesimal strayings, and would without attention start deceleration at the proper time, and bring the ship gently to ground in a place reserved for it in Earth's great space port at New York. All that Allison had to do, therefore, was set the buttons for destination and acceleration. The ethnologist was tired and lay down where he was. He had done all that was possible. If his enemies followed and took steps to destroy him, it was too bad, but there was nothing he could do about it. This was a private ship and was equipped with no defensive screens or ray batteries. At that, death was preferable to life with his normal instincts so altered by their devilish ingenuity that he would be a happy slave to them for the rest of his days. A man had an inalienable right to his own personality, and as a free citizen of the Federation of Earth he was never going to submit to having his taken away. Miss Brown wasn't so bad, but what if they were to marry him to one of those chinless damsels? What of his career in ethnology, so brilliantly started? Well, the outcome was now in the hands of the gods. He was surprised at how fatigued he was. He was hungry and thirsty, too, but he'd have to attend to that later; he hadn't strength just now to undertake the task of getting stuff out of those gigantic tins; or even to go back in the darkness of the stern and seek out one of the mammoth beds that would be there. He would sleep where he was. He did sleep, a bearded doll on the chart table thirty feet up off the floor. He was almost the length of the sharp-pointed dividers a dozen yards away, and against the ruler that lay by his side he measured exactly six inches. Allison awoke stiff and aching but refreshed, and in high good humor. He seemed to have slept for some time and was not yet burned to a cinder by a heat-ray, or dissolved into nothingness by a disintegrator; the solar motors of the ship were whining faintly but evenly; and before him stretched an adventure such as no man had ever had before. He was going home. He was going to arrive safely. And he was going to descend spectacularly, in the greatest space ship ever built, with a story that would set three thousand million tongues awagging, and with a marvelous little air-car whose motive power was a mystery that all the physichemists of Earth would pounce happily on until they had its secret unraveled for Earth's own use. And on the way he would have the pleasure of meeting, with his wits, all the bizarre problems which his discrepancy to the size of the ship would bring. Buoyantly he jumped into his air-car and guided it to the galley; a drink first, and then food. But the water tins were twelve feet high, of tough, thick metal, sealed tight, and must have weighed, each one, several tons. Here was his first problem. The best solution lay in melting his way in with a hand heat-ray. He found one, a cylinder eight feet long and two thick, in one of the control-room tool lockers, after he had lifted up its lid with the help of his car. With lengths of rope he found there, and again aided by the lifting power of his car, he got the heat-ray out of the box and into the middle of the galley floor. Next problem: how to get aimed at the top edge of the bottom tin in one of the stacks. He flew back to the tool box and brought back, slung underneath, a seven-foot file. Then, changing the ropes to the heat-ray again, he lifted it to rest on the file; and after many trials, and getting out of his car each time to sight along the cylinder, he got it at approximately the angle he wanted. He had taken pains to leave the push-button switch facing upward, and now he vaulted to a seat on the rear end of the cylinder and worked his way up to it. When he got there he pushed to his feet and stepped on it with all his weight. A thin pinkish beam speared out, and a glow appeared on the side of the tin, a little lower than he had wanted. In seconds the metal melted, and before Allison could remove his foot a geyser of steam and scalding water shot out, spattering the floor in all directions. Some of it hit his arm, burning him painfully even through the sleeve, and causing him to lose his balance and slip to the floor. The heat over there was terrific, but when the water in the tin had cooled, he would be able to get a drink. He smiled, a little grimly. Opening that tin had taken three hours. While it was cooling he repeated the process on a tin of synthetic food in the locker adjoining, this time stepping briefly on and off the button several times, until he saw that the hole had been made. This took another hour. And still he couldn't approach the lockers. He wiped his forehead and sat down to wait. He was exhausted with his exertions and faint from lack of food. It was not quite the lark he had anticipated, pitting his wits against the problems that arose from his comparative lack of size. The little air-car might have meant the difference between life and death. He had called on it heavily for many hours, and had no means of knowing how much longer it would function without its energy giving out. Hereafter, he decided, he would use it as little as possible. He lay back, and before he knew it was asleep. When he awoke he found the tins cooled, and ate and drank, and then slept some more. And when he awoke for the third time the long, deadly monotonous routine of his journey began. There was nothing to do. The navigation of the ship was entirely automatic, so Allison could have no concern in that. The two tins he had opened had provided him with food and water that would last many times the probable duration of his trip back home. It was highly concentrated, predigested stuff, so that no time could be expended in its preparation. He had no duties. There were nowhere any books which might afford an opportunity for reading or translation. Even the solar engine, the automatic navigator, and other machinery were locked inaccessibly in the spaces above the ceiling and below the floor, so he could not watch and study them. Had he dared to use the air-car as much as he wanted, he might in time have opened almost every door, locker, and cubby in the space ship; but many of them, including the radio cubby, were locked, and a few others stubborn, so their contents, if any, could not be reached. Only too well had the big ship been cleaned and all accessories put away after the Mutrantian's arrival at that land of mystery. Men can spend their time sleeping, eating, working, and in recreation. Allison slept all he could; stretched out his meals of sandy, tasteless food tablets as long as he could. He made a bed under the chart table out of one of the coarse sheets from a Mutrantian bunk. He started a complicated mechanism which would enable him to hang suspended before the eyepiece of the telescope which gave vision of the outside, and from there manipulate its controls, some of them thirty feet away-to stop when it became apparent that it would take far longer than the duration of his journey to finish it. And also he, for four or five hours each day, continued his monograph on the Mutrantian Titans by scratching the words laboriously on the floor of the control room with the points of the hundred-pound dividers left on the chart table. For the rest of the time he prowled about the floor of the ship, investigating every corner like a rat without a hole. A toy man in those spaces, he skulked about, ran to keep in condition; paced up and down, integrating ethnological data stored in his memory. And dreamed of the day when the ship would alight on the welcome bosom of Earth, and he'd be freed of the intolerable burden of life under the handicap of surroundings so colossal. Days passed so, and weeks. The ship had long since been decelerating. The desire to get back into normal surroundings became an obsession in his mind. To sit at a table again! Friendly faces on the other side! Food, real food! And books, and work, and the theater, and human voices, and spring beds, and tools that would fit the hand, and things that he could lift! Mobility! Sometimes he thought of the crowded events of the few short hours in the strange civilization left behind. Jones. The beautiful girl of the numbers. She had really loved him. He hoped she had not got in trouble. Sometimes his thoughts were darker. Those two men-should he have made some wild quixotic attempt at their rescue? Perhaps there were yet others locked in those rooms. Why did those men so resemble him? And why that still-recurring image of the doll faces? Interminable rows of them. Each one with his own face, and each one, somehow, himself! Now he would never know. He was sitting thinking these thoughts in a corner of the control room one day when a jar, accompanied by a dull rumble, went over the ship, and her motors stopped. Allison sprang to his feet. He had landed! The journey was over! The great ship had brought him back at last to Earth! He ran to his little air-car, parked under the telescope mounting, and jumped inside. He would give his welcomers a surprise. He would open the port doors and skim nonchalantly out over their heads. Within seconds he was gliding down the corridor and turning left along the transverse passage to where the port-lock buttons were located. He pushed them, inner and outer in turn, and the huge metal doors slid back. Outside it was night, but a bright light flooded the wide opening. Fifty feet in the air, far above the heads of those who would be waiting, he skimmed out. But he never received the welcome he expected. A titanic figure stepped forth and blocked his way; a hand eight feet across stabbed out and grabbed his little car; a thumb and forefinger that were colossal reached in and plucked him out. For a second he was carried in dizzying flight through the air-and then he was dropped lightly into a Gargantuan side coat pocket. -------- CH021 *CHAPTER VI* Allison was stunned. All he could think was that he had landed on Saturn's Satellite Three and was again in the bands of the Mutrantian Titans. The ship, not obeying the button marked 3, had taken him back to the land where it was owned. He was in the hands of the enemy; they'd not forget the damage he had done in his spectacular escape from them a few months before. Tears of rage filled his eyes, that the long difficult journey had come to this. He had apparently been expected, and was being taken even now to the place where revenge would be taken. Out of the frying pan! He knew the Mutrantians. He could hardly hope to escape again, but the instinct for self-preservation was strong, and he set about seeing what might be done. The pocket he was in was deep; his upraised bands did not come within two feet of the top. But he thought he could make it. Grasping the canvas-like stuff he pulled himself up, inch by inch, until he got a grasp on the top edge, and then, straining mightily in the close press of the folds about him, he pulled himself up and got his arms hooked over, beneath the flap. No sooner was he there than there came a stunning pressure through the flap, and he was shaken violently back down. For a while he rested; and then, more quietly, he repeated the attempt. But the Titan was on his guard and again, more roughly, he was shaken down. Only now, for the first time, did panic sweep over him. As best he could he controlled his feelings and considered what to do. But what could any one do, with his insignificant size in that extraordinary position? He was being carried half a hundred feet from the ground; even if he could get out of the pocket, how could he hope to get down and away? With a knife he might do some minor damage to the Titan and then try to cut his way out-but his knife was gone. He had searched himself a dozen times on the space ship, for to have had one then would have saved him many hours of toil; but all his pocket things had been removed while he was unconscious. Nevertheless, almost automatically, by old habit, he started the search-and at what he found hope sprang to his heart and his nerves keyed to new possibilities. He still had the hypodermic. For the whole of the trip the little sack and needle, unneeded, had lain wrapped in a piece of bedding in his pocket. Carefully he got it out and uncovered it. It seemed in good order. If only it would have effect on a creature so large! He attached it in his palm. He could not use it as he was, for the coat pocket was swinging free from the Titan's body, and its tiny needle would never reach. He would have to bring his carrier's hand to the pocket, as before. To do it he set up a terrific commotion in the narrow space where he was. He bent and sprang and kicked and flung his arms about violently-and, as he had expected, from the other side of the pocket came a smothering pressure. Now was the time! Violently twisting his right arm free, he plunged its palm three times with all the strength he had at the nearest place the canvas pressed inward. At once the pressure from outside was removed; he had the sensation of falling, unsupported; and with a terrific jolt he came to a dead stop, dazed, bruised, and almost smothered. He twisted free of the cloth against his face and rested, listening. There was no sign of motion, now. Cautiously, then, he squirmed his way up to the top of the pocket and got out. He saw that he had brought the giant down on the sidewalk of an immense, deserted street-and, to his dismay, that he was lying on his left side, on top of the pocket which he had counted on to contain the air-car. Not having it would greatly lessen his chances of getting away; but there was nothing to be done about salvaging it. He could only set out on foot and travel as great a distance as possible before the unconscious Titan came to, or was discovered. His objective would be the space ship he had just left, for only that ship offered a way to get free of the planet. From the Titan's position Allison could tell the direction he had been going, and without further delay he started running back in the other direction. The street he was on was of fabulous proportions, and in spite of his former experiences among the Mutrantians he took in his surroundings with awe. The street, from curb to curb, was over one hundred and fifty yards in width, and the sidewalk he was on not less than fifty. On his side, hundreds of yards into the sky, towered one colossal building of many stories, and along the other was a hundred-foot fence, all of wooden planks ten feet wide. Electric street lamps shone like fixed star-shells at long intervals down the street to where, half a mile away, shone neon and other colored tubes marking an important intersection. Allison slowed down to a walk. A hundred yards ahead loomed the glass-and-metal canopy before the entrance of the great house he was passing, and just to one side, already outlining him in its powerful rays, was a street lamp. That meant danger. His safest course would be to get down into the street and pass by close to the curb. He crossed to the edge of the pavement and looked down. It was an eight-foot drop. Sitting first, then turning and holding by his hands, he lowered himself over the stone ledge and dropped to the street. From there, hugging close to the sheltering curb wall, he passed safely under the light and beyond in one long sprint; but as he slowed to a walk he began to worry how he ever would be able to cross the street he was coming to. If he had only been able to get his air-car! Two eyes of fire turned Allison's way in the distance and quickly grew to alarming proportions. Could they belong to some gigantic animal? He tried to scramble up over the curb onto the pavement; but it was too high, and, paralyzed by fear, he crouched low at its base, instead, and saw the eyes grow to the size of hogsheads, and grow and grow, devouring him with merciless light-till at the terrific speed of two hundred and fifty miles an hour they passed him with queer noises only twenty feet away, pulling him head over heels after in the wind displaced by their passage. As he picked himself up and looked back he saw a titanic bulk with one evil red eye diminish down the street. An automobile! That was strange. The Mutrantians had very few automobiles. Anyhow, he had again been lucky. It had not stopped for-or seen-the Titan he had left unconscious behind. He hurried on; alternated walking and running for a while. His victim might revive any second, for the tiny amount of fluid he had injected would hardly keep him under long, and he was still in his immediate vicinity. As he approached the intersecting street he saw other autos pass by there, and the shape of them was several times familiar. A fear that would not go down took possession of him, and gooseflesh rose all over his body as he hurried yet nearer. It was preposterous, it was too horribly fantastic, the fear he had; but there was no mistaking those body lines; and the glass-and-metal canopy before the entrance of the great house he still was passing-that, too, now that he thought of it, had looked familiar. He was very close to the street now, and seeing a ten-foot piece of newspaper in his way he picked it up and placed it over his bead. It seemed to him to be as heavy as stiff cardboard. Under cover of this, still hugging the protecting wall of the curb, he stole furtively nearer. People were passing colossi; but they wore the costumes of Earthmen! And the letters on that window high up way over there certainly looked like "Restaurant." Heart in his throat, Allison ventured closer and closer to the corner. The legend did read restaurant; the passing autos were of American make; the very newspaper that was his camouflage bore printing in a gigantic English! And up by the street lights were name plates such as he had seen a million times before-and the numbers on their faces told him that he was at Forty-ninth Street and First Avenue. He was back on Earth. In the heart of New York City. Of a New York grown colossal, in every dimension, and that had left him and him only far down from normal size. Or, more probable, it was his surroundings that were normal, and he reduced in size. What had Jones done to him? Why? Why? Stunned, stupid with shock, he stood there, until he came to full realization of his tragic plight. And then he sat down under his paper and cried. Allison sat there in the gutter for a long time, and for a while went quite out of his mind. A few yards away the night traffic of a great metropolitan artery streamed up and down, while be, the only one of his size on Earth, sat utterly helpless and hopeless under the miserable sheet of wind-blown newspaper that alone hid his degradation from the eyes of his kind. In gallant spirit he had taken up the out-worlder's offer and trusted him. When it seemed that he was to be betrayed he had with high, clear courage won free; run that great space ship back to Earth; and only now was he to see that it had all been for worse than nothing. The irony was a knife in his heart; and his shame, in that mouse-like size, was unendurable. The traffic thinned; store lights went out. The tears on the face of the miserable little atom under the paper dried away, and in their place came an expression of gaunt courage. Allison knew what he would do. He would kill Jones. That Jones would return for him, he had no doubts. He "knew too much," and the out-worlder would have either to recapture or destroy him. Already he had made the attempt-for who, other than some agent of his, could it have been that had kidnapped him from the space ship? He would come to Allison's laboratory, and Allison would be ready for him. Until then, only two men would ever see him as he was-his best friend, Doctor Heiler, the physicist who occupied the other half of the top floor where he lived and worked at 301 W. 22nd Street, and his old college mate Jack Peyton, a struggling writer who lived around the corner from First Avenue on Fiftieth Street. Peyton would have to know in order to take him to Heiler, for alone he could never get to the house where he lived without discovery, or into Heiler's quarters without great danger of running right into the out-worlder. It would be extremely difficult to so much as get to Peyton. The short block he lived north, twenty to the Earthman's mile, was over half a mile to him, and the night traffic along First Avenue, mainly trucks, was considerable. But Allison thought he could do it. Allison waited a while longer under his newspaper camouflage, then, making a hole in the middle of it for his eyes, advanced cautiously under it to the great round curve which was the curb corner itself, and sneaked around. There were then few passers-by-only the trucks, titanic monsters that shook the ground under his feet as they appeared at terrific speed and passed in a discordant jangle of sounds quite unlike those heard by normal cars. He walked at half speed and stopped still when, over the verge of the curb, he saw a pedestrian approach, or, down the street, a truck; and all that any one glancing his way might have seen was a sheet of old newspaper that occasional light gusts of wind was blowing along the gutter. He could not keep his eyes where his feet were stepping, and several times he tripped and fell, once over a stone in his path, and again over a twisted package that had contained cigarettes. From time to time he reached a parked automobile, and then he would run until he reached its farther side. He found he was getting hungry and, realizing what was yet before him, he at one place stopped with his paper over a banana peeling, lifted back, with an effort, one of its flaps, and ate briefly of the bit of pulpy fruit that remained in its end. It took him exactly thirty-seven minutes to walk that short block north, and by the time he had rounded the curb wall on Fiftieth Street and seen the vast stretch that still lay ahead of him he was growing tired. Peyton, being very poor, lived in one of the few old-fashioned cold-water tenement houses that remained in New York, a house on the north side of the street, with a stoop of half a dozen high brownstone steps. It being June, both doors should be open, and allow entrance into the dark, bare, smelly hall, halfway back, in which were steps which led upward, and which he would somehow have to climb to reach the second-story where his friend's room was. As he remembered it, the house was about one third the long east-west block from the corner-nearly a mile, to him. He hoped devoutly he would be able to recognize it. He crossed the hundred and fifty yards of street-width in one long sprint, and fetched up breathless on the other side. He got there just in time. A seventy-foot young man and a sixty-five foot young woman turned the corner and started west up the street. Under the street light, house-high over his head, he saw the man talking earnestly to the girl. Slowly, his great lips opened and closed, but no word could be heard. The vibration frequency of their tones was far too low for his tiny eardrums. Only low rumbles and a comic jabber of squeaks and squawks-overtones and errant noises made by imperfections in the vocal apparatus-reached his ears. And it was all that would ever reach his cars. Unless Doctor Heiler could make some instrument -- He waited for the two to get well ahead. They were probably sweethearts, he reflected bitterly. How could there ever be love for him-a circus side-show freak, whose toy proportions could only arouse vulgar gawks from the many and pity from the few! He was very proud, and pity he would never be able to endure. Quite, quite alone, a ludicrous watch charm of a man, he would live, until that time when his one purpose in life was realized and he free to end the whole ironic jest forever. He thought of the girl of the numbers. She had loved him. Somewhere in the solar system, in a place unknown and unattainable, she, a girl of his size, was perhaps thinking of him. She, alone of all others, held or could hold a place of warmth for him in her cheerful, lovely little heart. He held on to that thought, for it was good. But there was hard, bitter work ahead. He discarded his paper, walked and ran along the curb until he came to the building which he recognized as his destination. The curb there was his own height, and with a jump and vigorous press-up he rolled over the edge onto the pavement. Above him the two house doors stood open, but between rose five steps, each eight feet high. Inside, up to the second floor, there would be a score more. How was he to get up them? At his height of six inches he was exactly one seventeen-hundred and twenty-eighth of his old self, and his strength was in proportion. He weighed one and one half ounces. -------- CH022 *CHAPTER VII* Allison needed a ladder. He would try to make one. It called for two upright stems at least six feet long; but less than three shorter pieces for rungs, and cord. He set about scouring the vicinity of the house for things that would serve. It was very dark, but he was so close to the ground that anything not black could be easily discerned. Eighty yards from the southwest corner of the first step he found a fine long stick of straight tough stuff that would do for a rung. Its end was bulbous and charred. It was a used match. One hundred and twenty yards farther, near the curb, he found another, a little shorter, and carried it back to the first, and both to the step. Ten minutes later, over the edge of the curb in the street, he saw no less than two, only a few yards apart. He went down over the side and lifted them up, then climbed back and carried them, one under each arm, over to the others. Four would be enough, for the rungs. He still needed cord and uprights. He went forth and searched hard, but after fifteen minutes he had not found a thing. That pavement was kept all too clean. He sat down a moment to rest. What might be reasonably hope to find for uprights among the trifling litter of normal-sized human beings? Nothing that he could think of. He fared forth again. Bending low, and sometimes feeling with his finger tips, he searched the gutter and pavements of an immense area extending as far as four houses away; and after one hour and twenty minutes he returned lugging three hairpins and one long length of dirty white rope-string, he once would have called it-after him. It took all the strength he had to bend the hairpins to single length, and he might have failed altogether had he not been so fortunate as to find a pretty good crevice angling slightly from the straight side of one of the blocks that made the pavement's crevice that held securely to one side of the hairpin while he could apply leverage to the end of the other. In one of them, the shortest, he rebent a hook near one end. Harbingers of dawn were streaking the eastern sky as at last he started getting his materials together. It did not take long. The one length of rope, since he had no means of cutting it, could be carried in turn to all the rungs on one side, and then around to all those on the other. When he finished he had a heavy ladder five feet high, with four rungs each one foot wide. With an effort he carried and placed it against the first step. It lacked three feet of reaching the top, but he had arranged for that. Grasping the remaining shorter hairpins he climbed his ladder to the top, pushed the hairpin over the edge of the step above, and followed up after. Then, using the hook on the shorter hairpins he pulled the ladder up after him. He had climbed the first step. In fifteen minutes he was in the open vestibule, dragging his hook and ladder after him in the long trip to mid-hall where the stairway to the upper floors was. Allison was never to forget the weary time he had climbing that new set of steps. Already tired to exhaustion, he had for eighteen more times to go through with the back-breaking routine of climbing eight inches upward-pushing his hook up and over, before, and with it pulling his heavy ladder up, after. Daylight came on apace, and through the dirty window, halfway up, revealed him as a tiny purposeful doll in a long white dress. When the last step had been surmounted, Allison sat right down where he was for a moment of rest. He needed it. His labors since leaving the space ship had been titanic, his emotions had taken their own heavy toll-and his metabolic rate was much higher in toy size than when normal. He got up refreshed, but already a little stiff. It occurred to him that he might be able to make enough noise on Peyton's door to rouse him from sleep; so, rather anxious, dragging his hook and ladder after him, he started down the long stretch of wooden planking to the rear, where his friend's room opened off the left. He arrived and knocked; then, suspecting that he had made pitifully little noise, he turned his back to the door and kicked hard with the heel of his shoe. There was no answer. As he had feared, he was unable to make himself heard. The crack under the door, however, was almost an inch-a foot-in depth, and, with considerable relief, he found he was able to squeeze in under it. There was much more light on the other side. There was enough for him to see at once that the couch which served his friend for a bed was covered with its usual daytime cover and was unoccupied. This was a major misfortune. He had never considered the possibility that his friend might not be there. He dropped his hook and ladder on the floor and looked around. Two windows, one in the back wall and one, partly opened, on the left, showed up a dirty and disordered room. Along the right wall was the unoccupied couch; in front of the remaining one a sink and a four-foot cupboard on whose top rested a gas plate; and between the windows stood a chair and flimsy card table which Peyton used as a desk. These made up most of the furnishings of the room. Allison walked over to the cupboard, the door of which stood slightly ajar. He was weak for food and hoped desperately that something loose might he lying around that he could eat. He was unable to pull the door open any farther, so he stepped right through the narrow opening above the one-foot board that formed its base. There was nothing there. Only a row of canned goods-baked beans and salmon, in six-foot tins. How he hated the sight of tins! He disappeared around the side of one and rummaged in the back, and when he came into view again he held five large stale crumbs in his left hand and was eating heartily from a six-inch piece of cheese in his right. He had found a baited mousetrap. And food had never tasted so good. Munching his cheese and gnawing with his side teeth one of the rock-hard crumbs he had found, he went over and sat down against one leg of the couch. His position was still precarious; chiefly in the matter of food. He had no air-car. What was he to do? As he ate and considered, Allison was suddenly aware of movement off under the far end of the couch to his right. Startled, he looked, and in the dimness he saw two unblinking eyes of yellow fire. It was Peyton's cat. He had utterly forgotten that Peyton had a cat. The hair rose on the back of his neck, and with one push he was on his feet. The cat at his movement bellied forward a few yards, a nerve-taut orange tiger, tail lashing. It was stalking him. And he was fair prey. Only shoulder-high to the cat would he stand; he'd be but one fiftieth its weight. Lighter than a mouse. He tried frantically to remember the cat's name, but for the life of him he couldn't. It bellied a little closer. Desperately he called out soothing cat talk; but words that at other times might have caused it to purr now had absolutely no effect. It was preposterous! That cat had been his friend; he had petted it a score of times; and now in his helpless size it no longer knew him and was preparing to take his life. For all of his human brains, he, weaponless, would not fare even so well as a mouse. With a thrill he remembered that he was not weaponless. Out came Jones' hypodermic, and in a second was fitted into his palm. It was a poor-enough weapon against the lightning speed of a cat's claw, but it would have to do. He advanced boldly against the cat. He would not have had time to reach the cupboard, and he had always found it safest, when possible, to attack. In this, brains showed. The cat, surprised, backed, circled, crouched again. He followed it up. Noiselessly it backed toward the door, crouched, circled from there. Allison could then have backed out through the crack under the door, but that would have got him nothing; and moreover a strange new elation had come to him-the lust to conquer. He felt, with that weapon, that he could win. Forward to the cat, then, he went; back and to the side it retreated, crouching every time it stopped. It clearly was disconcerted by his unexpected advance. At the wall under the card table it stood its ground, and Allison felt that that would be the place to see the end. He advanced to within its own length of it; stood ready, right arm out. The cat opened its mouth in a noiseless hiss, and he was drenched with the creature's breath. He gestured with his arm. The cat's front quarters lifted from the floor, and, ears flat, made a lightning swipe at his hand. It touched; the cat fell slowly to its side, and like that it was over. Allison brought up his forearm-numb, from the violence with which it had been hit back. His hand was slit deeply in two places, and dark blood was dripping copiously from the openings. But it had been better to take the cat's claws there than over his body. And it would have been his body if he had not forced the creature to make a swipe that was half defensive. He lost no time in tying up the cat with a piece of cord found under the sink; and then, staggering with fatigue, trembling all over with the reaction to the encounter, he was setting himself to think of a way to climb to the basin and get water out of the spigot, when to his overpowering joy he found a saucer of it nearly full, that had been left on the floor for the cat. He drank, as deeply as he dared, then washed and tended his wounds. Then, on the cat's own cushion under the couch, he lay down and slept. The sun showed mid-afternoon through the western window when he awoke. Terribly stiff, aching all over, he got up, saw that the cat still lay unconscious, sat a while in thought and then set to work. He did many curious things, all under the terrific handicap usual to the predicament of his size. He routed out a cardboard box that dental powder had come in; removed the corrugated paper inside; opened both ends of the box so that it could be pressed flat, and pushed box and paper under the hall door. He found some medical cotton and pushed that under; also a long unsharpened pencil. He did the same with a long piece of string, to which at one end he had tied several paper clips. He took a piece of manuscript paper from the table; wrote some large words on it; found some stamps and a razor blade-and pushed them under. Then he squeezed under himself and returned after nearly an hour. But then the sun had gone down, and he was exhausted again. He ate a little more of the mouse's cheese, drank some more water from the cat's saucer, and then lay down once more on the cushion and went to sleep. * * * * It was pitch dark when Allison awoke. He got up at once, released the still-unconscious cat, drank all the water he could hold, and pushed out under the door. He could not be sure, but after reconnoitering the second-floor hall he came to the conclusion that it was after midnight, and time for what he had in mind, so he returned to the hall door and dragged to the stairhead what he had secreted there. It was the tooth-powder box, now wrapped up, and within, visible through one end, the corrugated pasteboard, cotton, razor blade, string with the clips, and the long unsharpened pencil. The coast seemed clear; he pushed the box containing all this through the rungs of the banister to the main-floor landing below, then followed down himself by way of the steps-sitting, turning over the edge, letting himself down by his arms and then dropping all these eighteen times until he was at the bottom. There, he retrieved his box, filled it as before, and dragged it to the vestibule, where he cautiously surveyed the street. It was dark and obviously very late. Nothing stirred except the occasional trucks and taxis far down the corner of First Avenue. Assured, he pushed the box and its contents off onto the broad top step, lowered himself there, then pushed it off the side to the pavement and again followed down. Fifteen minutes later, dragging his box laboriously behind him, he arrived at a letter box precisely halfway in the block toward Second Avenue; and that was his destination. He proceeded to work with unhesitating efficiency. First he took the pencil out of the box and laid it on the ground. Then he removed the string and tied its free end to the base of the letter box. After four tries he succeeded in casting the clip-tied end over the top of the letter box; and when its weight had carried the string down on the other side climbed that string to the top. He sat, there a moment-a bloody, bearded, six-inch gnome, still in his dirty white dress-and after he was rested rose, tied the string by its middle to the letter-drop door, and slid down one string to the ground. And now had his string tied at one end of the base of the letter box, a slack length leading from there up to the letter-drop knob, and the long loose clip end hanging free. He tied the tooth-powder box to this clip end. Next, he stuck the pencil, head high, in a loop he made in the string attached, at both ends, and began, in the fashion of one tightening a tourniquet, to twist. He twisted it many scores of times, and when he had finished, the letter-drop door was held open. He rested a little; then once more climbed hand over hand to the top of the letter box. There, he rested again, then pulled up the tooth-powder box to position in the open mouth of the letter drop. And, that done, he got down in the mouth alongside his box, and took out the razor blade and cut both strings. The letter-drop door closed, and he and the little box fell down into the inside of the letter box. Fifteen minutes later he himself was in the little tooth-powder box, and it was closed, the outer paper gathered at the end and tied. He had mailed himself. How else was he to get to Doctor Heiler? There was no telling when Peyton would return; probably not for some time, from the window he had left open for the cat to get in and out by way of the fire escape. If Allison had waited, he might have starved, for he was none too sure that he would have been able to open one of those cans of beans, helpless and without tools as he was. It was better, anyway, that Peyton did not know. That would leave only Heiler. Snug in his cotton-padded box, Allison tried to sleep. Once more he was dog-tired. The acts that were casual nothings to normal people had required titanic energies on his part. He was lame all over, and his right arm, now that it was no longer being used, was beginning to ache intolerably. He thought back over the amazing events of the last twenty-four hours-Jones' agent, whom he had left lying unconscious back on Forty-ninth Street-the heart-bursting discovery that he had been reduced to a pitiful toy-his colossal labors in getting to Doctor Heiler. He had performed feats that once he would have called impossible; but now the worst was over. His friend would take him in; would guard his secret; and would help him prepare a way to kill without possible failure that traitor Jones when he should call on him once more. It was good that Heiler lived just down the hall from him. He would have perfect protection, and yet be close to his own laboratory. Sleep came gradually, and when it did it was filled with the face of Jones, and a lovely girl, his own size, whom he would never see again, and two men who looked remarkably like himself-and always, ever returning, doll faces, rows of them, each one identical with himself, and each one somehow himself. He was rudely awakened by the shock of his plunge into the postman's bag, and knew, then, it must be morning. There was no sleep after that. He rode; was jolted, rested, was jolted, rode, and rested some more, and then was off in a carrier's bag on the way to his own house. He could hear nothing, but could tell when he was being carried up the steps and given to the maid. She would now be carrying him up to his old friend Heiler. A pause, and he came to rest. Another pause, but Allison couldn't wait. He pushed aside the string and paper at the top end of the box and looked out. He was on the desk in his own laboratory. Fearfully he continued out and looked around. His high-backed swivel chair pivoted; a colossus was seated there. And the high-looming features of the colossus were those of the man called Jones. -------- CH023 *CHAPTER VIII* For a moment Allison crouched there, petrified. Then the great features above spread up in a smile, and that released him, and in instant wild panic he was scrambling back over the surface of the desk looking for a way to get down. Jones' hand came swooping through the air, but before it could close over him he had made one wild jump out beyond the edge of the table to the cord leading up to the reading lamp, had closed his arms about it and was sliding down its rough, wavy length. He was skinned and bleeding when he reached the floor, but at once he was away and looking for a place-any place-to escape into. Nothing nearby offered. The desk was placed forty yards out from the wall, and far to one side, in the corner, stood a high, heavy specimen cabinet. If he could make that! The colossal feet under the desk were moving; Jones' head and arm appeared into view above them. Allison seized his chance and ran with all his might over the hundred-yard open space to the cabinet. After him charged Jones; but he reached it safely and retired far under its base. Its height was such that he just had room to stand erect. He got out his hypodermic. He was cornered; but let Jones' fingers come near enough and he was as good as dead! Heart beating like a frightened mouse, Allison waited. What would his enemy do? Get the broom and sweep him out? Then bat him to death as one would a cockroach? He watched the man's feet. They lifted out of sight, lowered, slowly, one at a time, receded: he was returning to the desk. A pause, then the feet returned. Knees appeared, and hands; the man's head showed. He was wearing over his head and mouth an apparatus not unlike that of a telephone operator. Then Allison heard words, the first since he had left the other's civilization, weeks-it seemed years-before. The word-sounds were extremely attenuated; he could not recognize them as belonging to Jones. "Come out, Allison," they said. "I won't hurt you." "Come and get me!" the ethnologist challenged, hoping fervently that he would reach in and try. "All right; but throw out the hypodermic first," came the long drawn-out reply. "Like hell I will!" exclaimed Allison passionately. Jones knew! He was prepared! Despair seized him, He was lost. He waited to see what would happen next. Jones wasted no more words, but returned to the desk and occupied himself there in a manner Allison could not see. Then he returned, and knelt down again. "All right, 372, if you will," he said. What did these cryptic words mean? Allison waited, tense, far back under the cabinet. Jones' cupped hands lowered near the front edge; one was removed; and off the other stepped a tiny man, his own size. He wore a soft-green robe and sandals; was clean and freshly shaven; and in figure, face, and bearing he was another himself! He stepped under the front edge of the cabinet and looked around. Allison, amazed and frightened, cowered farther back. Jones' face appeared at the floor, watching. "I say, Allison, how are you?" exclaimed the double, seeing the other and starting heartily over to him. "Who are you?" Allison asked fearfully, backing still more. The fellow had his own voice! "372." The other laughed. "You're 793-though I know you aren't aware of it. But heavens, man-how you look!" Allison looked the wreck he was. His dress-like costume was torn and filthy; his arm was burned; his bands were skinned, swollen, raw, and bleeding, and on his face was a tangled, matted three-inch yellow beard. "Who are you?" Allison repeated, crouching, devouring him with bloodshot eyes, ready at a flash to run or strike, like a man cornered by his own ghost. "Come on out, old fellow, and I'll explain," said the double kindly. He made as if to grasp Allison's upper arm. "If you touch me, you die!" growled the ethnologist intensely, avoiding his hand. Jones' voice floated in. "Watch out! He has a hypodermic!" "Oh!" said the double and held himself with more caution. "Allison," he said seriously to the other, "you've been a damn fool. We're not here to hurt you. Come on out and -- " "Go away!" Allison interrupted, crouching lower, a wild light in his eyes. "Go away! Go away!" he replied shrilly, utter desperation in his voice. The double took a step back. "I think he is a little mad," he said to Jones. The two men faced each other tensely. They were the same person, except that one stood erect, fresh, confident, and in full health and strength, and the other was bruised, battered, bloody, spent, and crouched like a cornered rat about to spring. "Give me that needle," the double said. Allison's head went a little lower. His lips drew back over his teeth like an animal's. Without warning he jumped and struck out. Like a mongoose dodging a cobra the double leaped back, and his own right arm flashed forth, caught the other's by the wrist and held it. It was his fresh strength against the last reserves of the ethnologist's, and the balance was all for him. He twisted the wrist; the arm gave backward; and both fell to the floor, he on top. Carefully, still holding the wrist at the breaking point, he removed the sack and threw it out to Jones. Then he dragged his wildly threshing prisoner out in the open. Jones was waiting to relieve him. Gently, so as to give no hurt, he enfolded Allison in one hand, took the double up in the other, and carried both over to the desk. There he placed the two on the blotter, ringed them with his hands, and sat down. Allison at once shied away from the double. "I admire you, 793," Jones said. "But you've put me to an extraordinary amount of trouble." The ethnologist turned and looked up at him. "And look what you've done to me!" he yelled back, panting. "I accepted your offer in all good faith. I was to come to no harm. And the first thing I discovered was that I was just another victim whose mind you intended to pervert. Jones, you're the system's lowest, most treacherous skunk!" The out-worlder smiled a little; but Allison found it impossible to read his face when it was so big. The double at his side startled him, speaking up in defense. "No, no-you're all wrong! Let him explain." "Explain how he kept his agreement by reducing me to this size?" Allison retorted bitterly. "Who are you, anyway?" "Tell him," the double said to Jones. "Will you listen to what I have to say?" the out-worlder asked in his slow-creeping voice. "I don't see that I have any choice," Allison spat back. There was a pause. "I'll have to start far in the past," the colossus began at last. "Forty-five thousand years ago the human race was one, and lived only on Earth. One segment of that race, living on a great warm island in the South Pacific, developed a mighty civilization. You Earthmen of today who live in what you call the scientific age are but in the early groping stages of the civilization that was your forbears' at that time. "Among other things, the human race had perfected space ships and ventured out into the, void. It set up colonies on other planets suitable. And when the day predicted for centuries by its geologists came, and the great island that was its home began to sink under the surface of the sea, it was ready, and in thousands of space ships set forth, some for out-world portions of the solar system, and the rest to other and more stable parts of Earth. "There was but one blood. The Mutrantian Titans, who in your work under preparation will be held up as a cousin strain to that of Earthmen, are so in fact. They are the descendants of one colony of the Earthmen of forty-five thousand years ago. Their size resulted from local conditions which I need not go into. "I am of a race you would call pygmies; but we, for good reasons, deliberately reduced ourselves to that size. We have for a long time known how to do it. I, to attain my present size, for purposes of mixing among you Earthmen, simply underwent the reverse of the process. But I and my kind are of the human race. We are the descendants of another colony. "We have always been a small colony, for our environment did not encourage a great population. In time we were exposed to the dangers of inbreeding. We did the logical thing. Every so often we obtained from our brother colonies new stock, with varied and vigorous hereditary factors different from those in us. This new stock we scientifically infiltrated through our own; and so we kept the fecundity and the vigor of our strain -- " "Jones," interrupted Allison hotly, "you're lower than a dog to have taken me, and others like me, for use as studs in the series of matings which would be necessary for that result!" The out-worlder showed no anger. "There are no 'series of matings,' and won't be," he answered. "And you-Allison-were the only Earthman we took." "I have positive knowledge that you mated off other Earthmen while I was there," contradicted the ethnologist. "I know what you know," the other said. "Miss CB-301 voluntarily came and told me. But in spite of what you saw through the search-beam, you were the only Earthman concerned." "You're a liar!" Allison flung back. Still the out-worlder showed no sign of anger. Patiently he went on, "You learned a little, but not enough. When you escaped it became necessary to follow and bring you back, for we could not have you disseminating false information, or indeed any. It was thought most expedient to take you upon your arrival here. To that end I arranged for the private grounding of my space ship, which you had appropriated, and one of my men was there waiting. "You know what happened. You got away from him, and went I don't know where. But it was certain that you would try to return to your home, so I came here and waited for you. And, naturally, your friend, Doctor Heiler, was watched, and your suspicious package brought in to me. "Now," he concluded, "I am going to take you back." "I prefer to be destroyed." "You won't, later." "That's the damnable part of it! What, then, will you do with me?" "I will hold you to your part of our agreement." "Meaning, you'll force me to marry a never-ending series of your disgusting females with the prognathous foreheads-and like it." "You will mate only with one." "One is too many. I shall never arrive back there alive." "You will be watched," the colossus said significantly. He smiled a little. "It happens, though," he went on, "that I have promised you to Miss CB-301-Would that be so painful? She loves you. If," he added, "you could find it in your heart to love her, I think we might make an exception in your case and not force you by the means we have." Allison was in the man's power, why should he grant favors? He was skeptical. "Jones," he said, "I don't trust you and don't believe you. My mating with that girl-or any one of your women, no matter how prolific she might be-would have no effect whatever on the racial stock of a city like yours." Jones smiled. "Doctor Allison has already mated with 1722 of our women," he said. For a moment the ethnologist could not believe his cars. Then he dismissed the remark with an expression of irritation. "You talk crazy!" he said. "Do you not know," the out-worlder asked calmly, "that theoretically it is possible to divide in half the various molecules which make up an object and reassemble them to make two of that object, exactly like it, only smaller? Some day you Earthmen will learn to do it; but we can do it already. We can split objects into fifties, hundreds; we can do it with the living human body! "Shortly after Doctor Allison had come to us, he, the original 178-pound Doctor Allison, was split up into 1728 little ones, each identical with the original except in the matter of size. You are one of those little ones. Mr. 372, here, is another. You each weigh approximately one and a half ounces." A great light burst over Allison's mind. He saw again that fearful recurring image of the doll faces. Interminable rows of them. Each face his face, and every one _somehow himself._ They had been those doll faces! Sometime during the process he in the large size had become aware of the scene before him and had subconsciously remembered. He gaped foolishly at the out-worlder. The new vista of possibilities which his words had opened up was overpowering. Jones smiled. "Yes," he said, "1728 little ones, and 1722 are already mated with our women. "I'm sorry," he added, "but five died, for various reasons out of our control. When you all are eventually recombined, Doctor Allison will weigh several ounces less. I don't think he will mind, though, for he can more than make that up in one good meal." Allison still stood as if turned to stone. The man really did seem to be telling the truth. He must have been sincere all along. "You will recall," Jones went on, "that I promised Doctor Allison he would be returned here unharmed after four months. He will be. All your-well, brothers, now so happily married, will just before that time undergo the reverse of the process whereby we made them fall in love; and then all will be assembled. You will be one of them. I am in conscience bound to see that every one of his living partitions are present." The colossal face smiled. "Of course, for all that desire it, there will be a suitable ceremony of divorce." The smile faded. There was a pause. "Has it occurred to you," Jones asked, "that I am reasoning with you, not just snatching you? On the face of it, I might be telling the truth." Allison no longer doubted, but his thoughts were elsewhere. 1723 matings! That many homes, angles, environments! All parts of himself, later to be recombined into himself! "Think of the new knowledge!" Jones said. Was the man smiling? "Why hasn't anyone ever brought his knowledge back to Earth with him?" Allison asked with sudden sharp suspicion. "Before leaving, we removed it from their minds," came the frank, easy answer. "We'll of course do that with Doctor Allison too." So! Well, if he ever had that knowledge in one person, he'd come back with it! Somehow! Somehow. He hesitated, still shaken, thinking, a doll beside another doll on the great table over which leaned the colossus who had been his enemy. He felt a touch on his arm. It was 372 -- "Don't be deterred by thoughts of that ugly young atavism," the fellow said encouragingly. "They'll get you some one more beautiful than she." His face lighted up. "Personally, I've had the greatest of luck. I understand about the machine; but deep down I know right well there's something more than that between KS-971 and myself. It's beyond words. Even to see her! Her mouth! Her scalp-not a hair! Her high, wide, wrinkled forehead!" He'd been in the machine, all right. Allison still hesitated. So all his struggles had come to this! "Service." "Applied, and very, very practical ethnology." Yes, and one very, very widely applied ethnologist. There was that lovely girl of the numbers. She loved him. Even Jones had said she loved him. He was bruised and weary; he needed very much to have some one lovely and kind and warm "After all, you don't have any choice," the out-worlder reminded him. 793 shrugged. "All right," he said with a sigh. "If you will agree to enlarge Miss CB-301 to earth-size and permit her to return with me." Jones smiled. "As you wish," he said. He rose and picked up the two tiny men. He put them in a little box in his pocket and walked out of the door. THE END -------- PAGETURNER EDITIONS AWARD WINNING & NOMINEE STORIES AND AUTHORS People of the Darkness-Ross Rocklynne (Nebulas nominee author) When They Come From Space-Mark Clifton (Hugo winning author) What Thin Partitions-Mark Clifton (Hugo winning author) Eight Keys to Eden-Mark Clifton (Hugo winning author) The Toymaker & Other SF Stories-Raymond F. Jones The Alien -- Raymond F. Jones (Hugo nominee author) Sunday is 3000 Years Away & Other SF Classics -- Raymond F. Jones (Hugo nominee author) This Island Earth-Raymond F. Jones (Hugo nominee author) Renaissance-Raymond F. Jones Rat Race &Other SF Novelettes and Short Novels-Raymond F. Jones (Hugo nominee story) King of Eolim -- Raymond F. Jones (Hugo nominee author) Renegades of Time -- Raymond F. Jones (Hugo nominee author) Rat in the Skull & Other Off-Trail Science Fiction-Rog Phillips (Hugo nominee author) The Involuntary Immortals-Rog Phillips (Hugo nominee author) Inside Man & Other Science Fictions-H. L. Gold (Hugo winner, Nebula nominee) The Saga of Lost Earths (Cosmic Kalevala #1)-Emil Petaja (Nebula nominee author) The Star Mill -- Emile Petaja (Cosmic Kalevala #2)-Emil Petaja (Nebula nominee author) Women of the Wood and Other Stories-A. Merritt (Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame award) A Martian Odyssey & Other SF Classics-Stanley G. Weinbaum (SFWA Hall of Fame author) Dawn of Flame & Other Stories-Stanley G. Weinbaum (SFWA Hall of Fame author) The Black Flame -- Stanley G. Weinbaum Dawn of the Demigods or People Minus X -- Raymond Z. Gallun (Nebula nominee author) Scout-Octavio Ramos, Jr. (Best Original Fiction) Smoke Signals-Octavio Ramos, Jr. (Best Original Fiction winning author) The City at World's End-Edmond Hamilton The Star Kings-Edmond Hamilton (Sense of Wonder Award winning author) A Yank at Valhalla-Edmond Hamilton (Sense of Wonder Award winning author) STEFAN VUCAK'S EPPIE NOMINEE SPACE OPERA "THE SHADOW GODS SAGA" In the Shadow of Death Against the Gods of Shadow A Whisper from Shadow, Sequel (2002 EPPIE Award finalist) With Shadow and Thunder Through the Valley of Shadow, Sequel THE AGENT OF TERRA #1 The Flying Saucer Gambit #2 The Emerald Elephant Gambit #3 The Golden Goddess Gambit #4 The Time Trap Gambit NEMESIS: THE NEW MAGAZINE OF PULP THRILLS #1. Featuring Gun Moll, the 1920s Undercover Nemesis of Crime in "Tentacles of Evil," an all-new, complete book-length novel; plus a Nick Bancroft mystery by Bob Liter, "The Greensox Murders" by Jean Marie Stine, and a classic mystery short reprinted from the heyday of the pulps. #2 Featuring Rachel Rocket, the 1930s Winged Nemesis of Foreign Terror in "Hell Wings Over Manhattan," an all-new, complete book-length novel, plus spine-tingling science fiction stories, including EPPIE nominee Stefan Vucak's "Hunger," author J. D. Crayne's disturbing "Point of View," Hugo Award winner Larry Niven's "No Exit," written with Jean Marie Stine, and a classic novelette of space ship mystery by the king of space opera, Edmond Hamilton. Illustrated. (Illustrations not available in Palm). #3 Featuring Victory Rose, the 1940s Nemesis of Axis Tyranny, in Hitler's Final Trumpet," an all-new, complete book-length novel, plus classic jungle pulp tales, including a complete Ki-Gor novel. # 4 Featuring Femme Noir, the 1950s Nemesis of Hell's Restless Spirits, in an all new, book length novel, plus all new and classic pulp shudder tales, including "The Summons from Beyond" the legendary round-robin novelette of cosmic horror by H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, C.L. Moore, A. Merritt, and Frank Belknap Long. OTHER FINE CONTEMPORARY & CLASSIC SF/F/H A Million Years to Conquer-Henry Kuttner After the Polothians -- Stephen Brown Arcadia -- Tabitha Bradley Backdoor to Heaven -- Vicki McElfresh Buck Rogers #1: Armageddon 2419 A.D.-Philip Francis Nowlan Chaka: Zulu King-Book I. The Curse of Baleka-H. R. Haggard Chaka: Zulu King-Book II. Umpslopogass' Revenge-H. R. Haggard Claimed!-Francis Stevens Darby O'Gill: The Classic Irish Fantasy-Hermine Templeton Dracula's Daughters-Ed. Jean Marie Stine Dwellers in the Mirage-A. Merritt From Beyond & 16 Other Macabre Masterpieces-H. P. Lovecraft Future Eves: Classic Science Fiction about Women by Women-(ed) Jean Marie Stine Ghost Hunters and Psychic Detectives: 8 Classic Tales of Sleuthing and the Supernatural-(ed.) J. M. Stine Horrors!: Rarely Reprinted Classic Terror Tales-(ed.) J. M. Stine. J.L. Hill House on the Borderland-William Hope Hodgson Invisible Encounter and Other SF Stories -- J. D. Crayne Ki-Gor, Lord of the Jungle-John Peter Drummond Lost Stars: Forgotten SF from the "Best of Anthologies"-(ed.) J. M. Stine Metropolis-Thea von Harbou Mistress of the Djinn-Geoff St. Reynard Chronicles of the Sorceress Morgaine I-V -- Joe Vadalma Nightmare!-Francis Stevens Possessed!-Francis Stevens Ralph 124c41+ Hugo Gernsback The Cosmic Wheel-J. D. Crayne The Forbidden Garden-John Taine The City at World's End-Edmond Hamilton The Ghost Pirates-W. H. Hodgson The Girl in the Golden Atom -- Ray Cummings The House on the Borderland-William Hope Hodgson The Insidious Fu Manchu-Sax Rohmer The Interplanetary Huntress-Arthur K. Barnes The Interplanetary Huntress Returns-Arthur K. Barnes The Interplanetary Huntress Last Case-Arthur K. Barnes The Lightning Witch, or The Metal Monster-A. Merritt The Thief of Bagdad-Achmed Abdullah Women of the Wood and Other Stories-A. Merritt BARGAIN SF/F EBOOKS IN OMNIBUS EDITIONS (Complete & Unabridged) The First Lord Dunsany Omnibus: 5 Complete Books -- Lord Dunsany The First William Morris Omnibus: 4 Complete Classic Fantasy Books The Barsoom Omnibus: A Princess of Mars; The Gods of Mars; The Warlord of Mars-Burroughs The Second Barsoom Omnibus: Thuvia, Maid of Mars; The Chessmen of Mars-Burroughs The Third Barsoom Omnibus: The Mastermind of Mars; A Fighting Man of Mars-Burroughs The First Tarzan Omnibus: Tarzan of the Apes; The Return of Tarzan; Jungle Tales of Tarzan-Burroughs The Second Tarzan Omnibus: The Beasts of Tarzan; The Son of Tarzan; Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar-Burroughs The Third Tarzan Omnibus: Tarzan the Untamed; Tarzan the Terrible; Tarzan and the Golden Lion-Burroughs The Pellucidar Omnibus: At the Earth's Core; Pellucidar-Burroughs The Caspak Omnibus: The Land that Time Forgot; The People that Time Forgot; Out of Time's Abyss-Burroughs The First H. G. 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