By The Rules
Other Worlds Science Stories – October 1950
(1950)*
Randall Garrett
(as by Davis Gordon)

Never interfere with the progress (or lack of it) of the inhabitants of another world, even if interference means you are marooned.

-

	THE jet-black cigar of metal floated in toward the bluish glare of the star, and photo-recorders were clicking. The man at the space cruiser's controls watched carefully, keeping the glowing orb in the crosshairs of the forward plate.

	The star showed signs of "going nova." Data must be recorded on the primary activity of the process so that the extent of its effect could be ascertained.

	Two thousand kilometers from the ship, a huge sphere of gray material spun through the void. As the ship neared the gray matter, relays deep within its shell clicked, and finally, one last switch slammed into its socket. Then—the bomb exploded.

	The glare was not noticeable at any great distance and the detector at Ledor recorded the explosion as a mere pip. To Kiv Stanlor, however, it was no mere pip, as he saw the blinding light only a few milliseconds before the shock touched the ship. The hundred-meter space cruiser spun, twisted frantically as if trying to dodge the awful forces pressing against it, then shot off at an angle. Inside, gauge needles leaped, slammed against their stops and stayed there. The interstellar drive flashed on at maximum intensity, and its hyperdimensional field flickered on and off thousands of times per second. The ship roared into the blackness of space, the pilot unconscious in its control room—for even a solid vodium hull and several hundred kilometers of space afford only slight protection when forty thousand kilograms of matter become pure raw energy almost instantaneously.

	On through the galactic night sped the cruiser, increasing by thousands of light years the tremendous distance between itself and the center of the great disk of stars that was the Galaxy.

	Within the hull, the powerful radiation had left only a few of the electronic meters in working order. One of these, labeled "FUEL", dropped steadily as the days passed, then, as the needle touched a red number near the zero mark, a cutoff functioned automatically and the great atomic motors died. The ship coasted on at a slow three-quarters light speed as the hyperdimensional field flicked off.

-

	Kiv Stanlor lifted his head uneasily from the angle made by the wall and the floor, and touched his sticky skull experimentally to assure himself that no part of it had been flattened to fit into the corner. The stickiness, he soon discovered, was blood.

	He got to his feet by sheer physical effort, and walked over to the medical locker, opened it, removed a hypo from the rack and shot five cc's of SK-8 into the vein in his arm. He stood there for a moment, allowing the powerful restorative to flow through his system. Radiation sickness caused waves of nausea to sweep over him. He sank, exhausted, into the seat before the complex control panel.

	The board presented an almost humorous variety of conflicting information. Among other things, the ship was accelerating at eight hundred gravities at a negative speed of six parsecs per hour. Kiv smiled, then busied himself with the equipment that still remained in working order.

	He had no way of knowing how long the drive had been off as the chronometer was completely unreliable. The fuel supply had run so low that the drive had cut out automatically, leaving only a few milligrams of it in the converters. There had been no reason to fill the fuel reserve when he left Ledor Base, as he had planned to be gone only a few days at most, and there had been more than enough fuel for that.

	He opened the panel to the drive mechanism, and located the short which had caused the energy to bypass the control panel and throw on the drive. Within an hour, the drive was ready to function.

	Again dizziness overtook him. He returned to the medical locker, shook a white capsule from one of the vials, placed it on his tongue and swallowed it with a few gulps of water. The dizziness left, and in its stead came almost overpowering weariness. He made his way to the sleeping compartment and sank, exhausted, into its luxurious softness.

	More days passed. Kiv knew only of hunger and thirst—occasional food and liter after liter of water were his only wants. During the heavy, lethargic sleep, his body healed; his radiation-weakened tissues rebuilt themselves and grew stronger. He awoke, weak, but whole again.

	The cruiser drifted or through space, aimless, blind. Kiv worked against time to repair the screens and vision plates. Without them, the pitifully small bit of fuel in the converter was worse than useless. If the defenseless ship were to be caught in the field of some nearby sun—

	Most of the circuits, he found, were only superficially damaged. He experienced only once a sense of complete disaster. As he went through the circuits of the R-beam transceiver, he checked tube after tube. Those that were hopelessly lost, he replaced from the emergency locker. Then he switched power into the circuit. There was no response. That meant—

	The crystalline plastoid "brain" had been burned out. There was absolutely no way to contact a patrol base. The "memories" impressed on the tiny fragment of plastic were completely erased, and only they could "remember" the exact location in space of the nearest Galactic base and its position with respect to the ship. Only those memories could aim the communication beam and direct it accurately through thousands of light years of emptiness. There was no way of returning home.

	He sat still for a moment, thinking darkly of the years that might stretch ahead, and of the sudden death from the heat of some giant sun. Then, he thought, "back to work on the plate circuits."

-

	The screen showed the nearest star to be only a little over five light years distant; an average yellow-white with eleven planets, at least two of which were habitable. The despondency which had floated beneath the surface of his mind washed away. By carefully nursing what little fuel there was left, he could make it.

	He pointed the ship toward the Star, set her course, and flicked on the drive. Outside the viewplate, the Stars began to move majestically by.

	In space, nothing can move faster than light. The field of the drive, however, throws a ship into hyperspace, where, although the speed of light is still tops, the spatio-temporal relationships are such that a change of position of a few kilometers in hyperspace means a change of millions of kilometers in normal space. The hyperspace field causes a slight warping of normal space—not much, but enough to cause the field to be inherently unstable for any long period of time. When this effect had been discovered, millions of years before, it seemed to eliminate the hyperspace field as a method of interstellar travel. How could a ship travel in hyperspace if the field which kept it there only held for a few microseconds?

	The solution proved to be a better method of interstellar travel than a strictly hyperspace method could possibly be. The field flashes on and stays on only for the microseconds that it is stable, then goes dead just long enough for space to become normal again, thereby returning the ship to normal space. Then, the field again flickers on. The succession is repeated thousands of times per second. The ship's velocity remains constant at three-quarters light speed, but in the short span of time the field is on, the ship moves millions of times farther than it does during the equally short time that it is off. Since hyperspace is completely empty of matter the plates are totally black part of the time; the rest of the time, they reflect the stars of normal space. Thus, these jumps, which occupy as little time as they do, seem to cause the stars in the plates to move smoothly, the nearer ones moving more rapidly than the more distant ones.

	Kiv watched the plate before him. The yellow star was growing visibly brighter. He should make it in about forty minutes at the speed he was moving.

	Assuring himself that the course was set, he leaned back in the control chair. One thing puzzled him. From what infernal section of space had that son of a nameless bomb come? The sector of the galaxy where he had found the thing was fairly well frequented by Patrol ships; as a matter of fact, there was a Patrol base at Kelmar IV, only eighteen light-years from where he had encountered the spacemine. It suddenly dawned on him why the base had been located there. It was a result of the Kelmar Revolt of four hundred thousand years before. The revolt had been instigated by a race of intelligent beings, members of a highly unstable civilization, which had been pushed upwards too rapidly by the coming of the Galactics. They used the science forced upon them in a feeble attempt to control the Galaxy.

	It was because of the Kelmar Uprising that the Galactic government had made the "No Contact Rule": No Galactic shall, through any means, make himself known to, or give aid or hindrance to, any civilization below the third level of progression. The rule carried no penalty for disobedience, nor did it need to be enforced. No Galactic would think of disobeying a perfectly just and justified rule, which was as much for the welfare of such low-leveled civilizations as for the welfare of his own.

	Placed there by the defending forces of Kelmar, the bomb which Kiv had hit evidently had been floating in an orbit around Kelmar itself, held there for millenia by the star's tenuous gravitational field, waiting to explode when a ship came near.

	Satisfied with his own explanation Kiv looked back at the growing orb in the forward plate.

	Minutes later, its fuel exhausted by the last-minute braking, the cruiser screamed into the atmosphere and buried itself deep into the surface of the third planet of the now-huge yellow star, braced for this shock, definitely weaker than that of the bomb, Stanlor grasped the rear of the control seat as the deceleration tried to force him to the forward control panel. Outside, the bedrock of the planet roared in torture as the incredibly hard vodium hull ground it to powder. Then, abruptly, motion ceased.

	The physical shock of landing was replaced suddenly by the mental shock of alien thoughts—unshielded! The planet was inhabited!

	A quick analysis brought further realization that the thoughts were not beamed, but broadcast indiscriminately; therefore, the civilization must, of necessity, be no higher than the second level of progression.

	He searched rapidly through the maze of his conflicting thoughts. Was his presence known?

	Nearby, he detected a few wisps of: "... falling star! Big one, too, and ..."—"... probably hit somewhere out in the desert ..." and one, "... Money, money, money—oh, RATS! Too late." Otherwise, nothing.

	So far as they knew, his ship had been nothing more than a meteor—the situation offered hope and at the same time killed it. With a civilization of fairly intelligent beings, it was possible to build the equipment necessary to synthesize the fuel he needed. However, he could not tell them of his need, nor even help them make his precious fuel by undercover action, for that would violate the "No Contact" rule.

	Odd, he thought, that Rule 1434 of the Galactic Code should be forcibly brought to his mind twice in this situation. The reason for its instigation had caused his present plight, and the rule itself prevented his escape. Still, there must be some way—

	First, he must conceal the whereabouts of the ship. If reports of the "meteor" reached the right persons, some sort of scientific group might decide to investigate.

-

	The hot Arizona sun made the road look like glass shimmering just ahead of the speeding car. Lou Scott squinted his eyes at the glaring ribbon and hummed softly to himself.

	"California here I come—Hmm hmmm hmm hmm—started from—"

	He reached up with one hand and lowered the sunshade a little more to protect his eyes from the direct rays of the setting sun.

	"Ought to make it to San Diego by ten," he thought. Then for a bath, a bed, and a good night's sleep. Good thing I thought to bring an extra suit—this one looks as though I'd slept in it."

	His gaze shifted suddenly to the figure ahead, standing at the side of the road.

	Was he hitch-hiking? The figure presented a thumb.

	The powerful Buick slowed and stopped a few feet from the bronzed man standing by the road.

	"Ride, buddy?" inquired Lou, "I'm headed for 'Dago."

	"Thanks, I thought I'd never get a ride."

	The hitch-hiker opened the rear door and got in, closing it behind him. Lou put the car in gear, and drove on down the highway. His lack of attention to the man in the back seat was abnormal. He hadn't even noticed that the man had been nearly naked.

	Kiv Stanlor absorbed in minute detail the mind of the man in the driver's seat. He noticed his manner of dress and appearance and decided that hypnotism was insufficient for purposes of clothing. He leaned back in the seat, opened the suitcase sitting beside him and began to rummage through it.

-

	Lou Scott walked into a San Diego hotel, still humming.

	"Now for that bath and bed. I wish I'd thought to bring an extra suit. The one I'm wearing looks like it's been slept in."

	That night, a stratoliner took off for New York with a passenger who had failed to procure a ticket, but no one seemed to care.

-

	Kiv Stanlor leaned back in the chair and mulled over the facts he had acquired. Outside the window of the hotel room the evening traffic of Manhattan muttered, thirty stories below. Mentally, too, it muttered. From it, the random products of thousands of minds could be heard.

	The knowledge that had come to him through his mental prying and visual observation built up a picture that seemed more and more ridiculous. This society was built on a system of seeming paradoxes. For one thing, they had discovered and were using a crude form of atomic energy, which indicated a mathematical ability approaching that of most fourth stage civilizations. Yet, their mental and moral discipline was practically nil. They used only ten per cent of their brains. They knew more of their environment than they knew of themselves, and the systems of government they had evolved were almost fantastic.

	All in all, it boiled down to one thing: Material knowledge—high fourth or low fifth stage development. Mental knowledge—low second stage development. The conclusion was inevitable, and impossible, for it violated all psychohistorical precedent. It was totally illogical that any civilization could so develop. And he thought wryly, at the rate they seemed to be going, they wouldn't develop much further. They had perfected a means of killing each other and didn't seem to be able to keep themselves from doing it. It made a good problem to think about, but what could he do about it if he solved the problem? He was unable to help them even to get the fuel he badly needed, much less do so for purely altruistic reasons. Even if he could justify giving them the ability and knowledge necessary to construct the apparatus that was needed, the result would probably be the destruction of the entire race. Morally, they weren't ready, even for the things they had, much less the things he could give them.

	His duty to his race required two things: (1) That he return to Ledor as soon as possible with the data he had been sent to get, and (2) that he obey the Galactic Law.

	By the time his absence was discovered, the primary symptoms of the embryonic nova would have disappeared, and only through them could the extent of its damage and its exact date of detonation be determined. It would be about eighty years before the star was due to explode, but—could he get back in time?

	He could, of course, get the isotope he needed by restoring the inert ninety per cent of the race's brains to use and, in time, teach them the technology required to make it. Aside from the fact that knowledge of the Galactics at this point in their history would give this race an incurable inferiority complex, he would be breaking the "No Contact" rule. A thing he could not, absolutely could not, do! 

	Still, somewhere on the fringe of consciousness, the answer hung, elusive, shadowy, unreachable as yet—

-

	During the months that followed, Kiv Stanlor delved further into the history and psychology of the race. Piece by piece, seemingly irrelevant facts fitted into odd corners of the still incomplete problem. He absorbed the histories, the legends, and the myths of the race, and in them he found minute bits of information that built up into a pattern. It required nearly a year of searching and discarding of false knowledge before the solution evolved itself, before the facts built themselves into a picture of truth that could not be discarded. On that day, Kiv set to work in confidence. He didn't rush blindly into his planned course of action. He had discarded carefully and with painstaking consideration everything which came to light that seemed to disprove his final hypothesis. Biological similarity?—Parallel evolution on habitable planets was not uncommon. Besides, the nearest similar animal was just enough different to account for such evolutionary aberrations. Unlike nearly every other case of its kind, only one genus had evolved.

	With equally indisputable logic he discarded the other objections which he himself brought forth. If the true facts fit logically into a lie, are the facts false?—or the lie, true?

	Viewpoint makes a lot of difference. From one position, a thing may look totally incomprehensible, and from another, ridiculously simple. The Galaxy is lens-shaped, but from Earth, it looks like nothing more or less than a curved band of foggy whiteness. One has to get outside it to see what it really looks like. Problems like these require the opposite viewpoint. One has to get inside them to see what they really look like. When Kiv Stanlor got "inside" his problem, the paradoxes resolved themselves into logical pieces of a beautifully logical pattern. With this pattern in mind, Kiv began a campaign that had odd effects on the human race. He had known from the first that he was incapable of hypnotizing everyone with whom he must come in contact, therefore, he must be careful and subtle in his actions.

	His first move took him back to the buried spaceship. The bit of crystalline plastoid in the useless R-beam was, in effect, a new-born primitive brain, erased of all memories by the radiation which had struck it. On this brain Stanlor impressed a certain complex web of thought impressions—a web which would act as a key.

	The bit of "brain" was incorporated in a circuit somewhat similar to the R-beam, in that it broadcast on the unimaginably tiny wavelength of thought, which is propagated at speeds so great as to be almost instantaneous. When he powered the circuit, the apparatus gave out a soft, warm hum. All over the Earth, the blocked-off ninety per cent of the human brain became ready for use. The effects were not immediately apparent, as the new clarity of thinking seemed so natural that the average man didn't even notice it.

	"From a tiny snowball, the makings of an avalanche began to manifest themselves."

	Kiv Stanlor began to plot Phase 2 of his plan.

-

	Deep beneath the mountains of New Mexico, a black-haired young man in the gray coverall uniform of the Federation Research Service walked through well-lighted, lead-lined corridors. He turned into a niche in the side of the corridor and stood, as the scanner recorded his eye cone patterns, x-rayed his six feet of strong brown body, and checked his bone structure against previous photographs—a pause—click! The door before him slid open smoothly.

	"I think I've got it, Keith," he said to the man behind the desk. "If I do, we have an atomic fuel which will take us right out of the stratosphere. The moon will only be a jumping-off spot."

	Keith smiled, running a hand through black hair.

	"Fine. Let's see the reports."

	The other man handed him the sheaf of papers he carried in his hand.

	"There's the whole thing. Johnson's in the mechanics' lab now, working out a motor that'll take the stuff. He says it'll be four to six months before we get the bugs worked out."

	Keith Sorensen took the sheaf, looked through it. "Okay, I'll check 'em. Where'll you be about five, Craig?"

-

	The door of Craig Stanley's office clicked smoothly open, permitting Keith Sorensen to enter.

	"This looks better, Craig. That last batch would have tossed the whole bunch of us right out of here—and about half of New Mexico with us."

	Craig Stanley looked at Keith and grinned sheepishly.

	"If you hadn't found the error in calculation, we'd have tried it too. On the surface, it looked good—too good."

	"Everybody can make little mistakes. Look at Einstein; when he finally got the Universal Field Theory down pat, he found a slip-up in some of his previous work that might have been important sometime."

	"Yeah, but my—"

	"Forget it I Say, it's nearly six—let's go down to George's for dinner and take on a couple afterward. I want to double check this stuff, and I want to do it over a Martini."

	"You're on!"

-

	Red O'Hanahan pushed his heavily muscled body over in his booth to make way for the two men.

	"Keith! Craig! Sit down! What Christmas present did you get that brings such a rosy glow to your faces?"

	They sat down, Keith next to the big Irishman, Craig across the table from him.

	"The glow," said Keith stretching himself to his full, lithe six feet, "comes not from the Christmas cheer you suggest. Actually—" he peered conspiringly over his shoulder, and lowered his voice to a whisper "—actually, it's caused by atomic power!"

	"Oh?" Red's face was a perfect blank. "You mean you've found a way to make venusium edible?"

	Craig leaned across the table. "No, but we've found a way to take you clear out of this world."

	"Aha! So far, the two best ways I've found are: (a) enough plutonium in one place, and (b) enough alcohol in the right place. Have you found a better method?"

	"It's nothing, really," murmured Keith calmly. "Craig's just found the fuel for atomic rockets."

	Red put out a freckled hand for his drink, did a double take and said, "Hey! You aren't kidding, are you? Well, I'll be—" He turned toward the bar. "George! Bring over three of 'em—double!"

	As the bartender called out the order, Red looked back at Craig.

	"So we've finally got it. When do we leave?"

	"Johnson says it'll be four to six months before he'll have all the bugs out of the motors—May or June, somewhere in there. Then we'll have to put the thing in a ship."

	Keith looked at Red, caution in his eyes. "Naturally, not a word of this to anyone. We've got to make a report to the Federation Government, first. Even then, the Co-ordinator might ask us to keep it quiet."

	"Hell, I don't get leave for another eight months, how could I get word out of this hole in the ground?"

	George appeared, bringing with him a tray full of Martinis.

	"Workin' hard, boys?" He set the glasses on the table. "How's everything comin'?"

	"George," observed Keith, "the plant personnel would be unable to think at all, except for your kind administrations."

	George smiled indulgently. Atomic engineers were a screwy bunch. He wiped the table carefully, picked up the change they had laid down for the drinks and walked back to the bar.

	"You know," Red said, "it's amazing, the things that have happened in the past twenty years. Atomic power—world peace—formation of the Terran Federation—things we wouldn't have thought possible when we were kids. Now, in 1967, we're ready to make it to the moon in person."

	"Oh, really not too amazing." Keith stuck a cigarette in his mouth, offered one to Craig. "Technical knowledge has been accelerating for the past three hundred years. As for the rocket, we knew it was coming, ever since the United States Army sent one there in '55. All we needed was a way to get enough energy in a small enough space so that we could make it without the terrific acceleration that the use of a chemical fuel gave."

	Red frowned, flicked a bit of dust from the gold Safety Engineering emblem on the lapel of his gray gabardine uniform and said: "Technological advancement is a matter of discovery, and ingenuity puts them together to make a gadget that's worthwhile and useful. Discovery of a principle requires hard work and knowledge, unless it is found by accident, as, I'll admit, a few have been. But ingenuity rests entirely on the clarity of thinking in the human mind. It seems to me that human brainpower has increased considerably lately. I could quote thousands of examples. One that hits me in particular is the sudden clarity with which the human race saw the entire world problem fifteen years ago and every nation on Earth—without a dissenting vote, mind you—agreed to the formation of the Federation. Cannibalism has completely disappeared from the practices of our more primitive peoples, since they saw there was no reason for its continuation, and much reason for its discontinuation. Twenty years ago, a Negro couldn't get a job worth anything anywhere in the United States. Now, the Representative of the United States is a Negro—elected simply because the citizens realized he was the best man for the job.

	"The point I'm driving at is this: Somehow we've all become a darn sight more clear in our thinking in the last ten years—and a lot more idealistic. Why?"

	Sorensen poured his drink down his throat thirstily before answering.

	"I've been thinking on that, too. Look—I was a sophomore at Tech before I had the background for calculus. Now, in the new school system, the kids are breezing right through it at the age of fourteen; by the time they're twenty, tensor calculus is a snap. I can't see why it seemed so hard when I took it as it seems so perfectly simple now." He looked at Craig who was staring intently at his own glass, a speculative smile on his lips. "What do you think about it, Craig?"

	Craig looked up from his study. "I think it's really pretty obvious. We've simply learned to use our potentialities. All along, we've had the ability to do these things—we just didn't use that ability.

	"At the turn of the last century, the cathode tube was well enough on the way to have made television possible at the same time radio became common. The potentialities were there—we simply didn't use 'em. The same thing was true of the atomic piles of twenty years ago. With the pile they had at Oak Ridge, they could have built the fuel we have been working on. Oh, it would have been a lot more dangerous, sure, but the point I'm driving at is that they had the potentialities, and didn't have the foggiest idea of how they could be used.

	"It's the same way with our mental possibilities—we just learned how to use the possibilities, finally, after a couple of thousands of generations of being on the wrong track." He smiled then, "At least that's the way I had it figured."

	The Irishman signalled once more to George, and turned back towards his companions.

	"That sounds good, Stanley, but—"

	Keith cut him off with a wave. "Look, chums, it is time I looked these"—he lifted the papers—"over again, and I wanted to do it over a drink. Do you mind?"

	O'Hanahan and Stanley nodded solemnly. "Yes, Mighty One," they murmured reverently. "May we be of assistance?"

	Keith pretended to glare, good humoredly, and pulled a pencil from a pocket in his comfortable gray coveralls. "Yeah—you can shut up!"

-

	Kiv Stanlor inspected the minds of his companions and smiled inwardly. As yet, the fuel wasn't good enough—	but with eighty Earth years to spare, he could afford to wait.

-

	The first passenger-carrying ship to Luna lifted from the launching pit in New Mexico February 3, 1968, and returned safely seven weeks later.

	By 1970, the caverns beneath Tycho crater housed over eight thousand people, and, by 1973, every atomic plant on Earth had been neutralized and dismantled. The Terran Federation Council had forbidden the erection of any atomic plants whatsoever on Earth itself. Beneath Tycho, eight separate plants were busily at work pouring out the unstable isotope that was powering man's exploration into space.

-

	George McGee pressed the button that lighted up his new full-vision sign.

	Red O'Hanahan looked up at the whiteness. " 'Nearest Bar Within 136,000 Miles' " he read. "Clever, George, clever."

	George leaned back in the chair behind the oar and looked up at the sign. "Thanks, chum, but I really can't take credit for it. I got the idea out of a book I picked up in the library—science-fiction, written about thirty years ago by some fellow named Smith."

	"Mmmhmm—My dad used to read that stuff when I was a kid. He still likes it, I guess."

	Keith Sorensen called across the room. "Mix us a couple of Lunar Loops, George. What's this about your dad?" He looked at Red as he walked toward the bar.

	George turned toward the robot behind him. "Get that, O'Rourke?"

	"Yes sir, two ell-ell's coming up," came the voice from the speaker.

	From behind the wall came a whirr of sound. A panel behind George slid open and two tall glasses filled with frothing liquid slid into view.

	Red took them from George—handed one to Keith. "I was just saying that my dad likes science-fiction."

	"Red, m'lad, do you mean to say you don't like it?"

	"I dunno, I never read any."

	"Try it sometime. Imaginative fiction can give you some darn good ideas on what the human race would like to have. Take O'Rourke, for instance. Robots were mentioned as far back as fifty or sixty years ago—as a matter of fact, it was a science-fiction writer who invented the word. He wrote a play about them.

	"Of course, the classical idea of a robot was all wrong. It kept insisting on humanoid construction, while O'Rourke fills the whole back room. He's a highly complex automatic mixing machine with a selective controlling brain. The same way with the robots in the nucleonics labs. Their only function is to obey intelligently the orders they're given on operating their own organs, that's all."

	O'Rourke's voice came from the wall. "Meanin' no harm, sir, but it's glad I am that I'm not built like you—t'would be no end of trouble to have to think about moving around and mixin' drinks at the same time." The equivalent of a chuckle issued from the speaker.

	"You're probably lucky at that," laughed Red. "And that Irish brogue built into you is better than my granddad's."

	"Thank you, sir. And may I mix you another?"

	"In honor of my new sign, they're on the house, boys," said George.

	"Fine," agreed Red, "but this time, O'Rourke, make it a Manhattan."

	"Same here," said Keith.

	Again O'Rourke whirred. The panel opened, disclosing a pair of crystal-clear plastic containers filled with amber liquid.

-

	"All I have to do to find you guys is to walk into the nearest bar," Craig's voice came from the doorway.

	Keith gestured laconically it the sign. "Naturally—this is the nearest bar you could walk to."

	Craig glanced up, read the sign. "Hmm—not exactly accurate, but it'll do for an approximation."

	Red grimaced. "There goes old precision brain—'Not exactly accurate' sez he. What do you want done? You want it listed to the nearest yard at apogee and perigee?"

	"It might be a good idea, then you might know how far you are from home."

	"Yuk! O'Rourke, make this yap a Manhattan so he'll shut up."

	Keith glanced down at his drink and admired the little glints of amber light that were refracted from the fluorescents. "How are we coming in the fuel tests, Craig—found anything new?"

	"Well, yes and no. The stuff I told you about yesterday seems to be a little better, but not much. Of course, what I'd like to find is some stuff that would really give us high power without so much gamma and wasted neutrons."

	Red looked philosophically at the glowing sign in the ceiling.

	"Craig, you asked me the other day what I thought the perfect energy supply would be. I've been thinking about it. 'Perfect', of course, implies a lot, and I don't think you could imagine a perfect one, but here's one that just about fills the bill:

	"It would have to be as compact as possible. It would give you energy in the form you wanted it, with little or no leakage as gamma rays or neutrons, which are not only useless but dangerous. It would have to be easily controlled, so you could shut it off or turn it on at will. On top of that, it would have to be cheap and fairly easy to manufacture. How's that?"

	"That's about what I had in mind. Keith, you're the mathematician; is such a fuel probable?"

	Keith's brow furrowed for a moment. "Probably even that is a little too perfect, but I have no doubt that it would be at least theoretically possible to synthesize some sort of stuff that would do almost that."

	"I'm glad to hear it. I've been toying with the idea of a near-perfect energy supply for some time now, and just lately I've been toying with what I think is the method of doing it. The idea came a few months back, and I believe I'm on a good lead, anyway."

	Keith looked up at the fluorescents. "There's one more thing you'd need for perfection—total mass conversion."

	"Sure," said Craig, "obviously. Why?"

	"Funny thing. I've been working on a little thing that would give almost total conversion if you could find the right stuff to work it on."

	Craig sat bolt upright. "WHAT?"

	"Wait a second," said Keith, "I didn't say it could be controlled—and I didn't say the stuff would be possible to make—but it sounds okay on paper anyway."

	"Could I—I mean—would you let me look over your figures?"

	"Sure. Come on down to the office."

-

	The smooth dropping of the elevator brought them into a lead-lined corridor that greatly resembled the one back on Earth. That is, except for the softly glowing dots from the Bronson field tubes which dotted the sides, generating the neutron-stopping field that protected human life against intense radioactivity that even lead could only weaken a little. The only purpose of the walls was to allow the inhabitants enough time to escape if the field should happen to collapse.

	They entered a door marked: 

Keith L. Sorensen
Head
Department or Mathematics

	Keith pulled open a desk drawer and withdrew a notebook filled with tight-packed rows of little symbols. Craig and Red grabbed it eagerly and sat together on the couch on the other side of the desk from Sorensen.

	After a few minutes, the Irishman leaped up excitedly.

	"Keith, I'm not an expert on protection for nothing. I've been useless around here long enough! The Bronson Field protects you from a neutron bombardment that would kill you in about five minutes if you were exposed to it. Even lead won't protect you because in about twenty minutes to half an hour, it would become too radioactive to be of any use.

	"Now, you know how a Bronson field works—a paragravitic effect that stops a neutron cold in its tracks, then drifts off into space, harmlessly, too slow even to bother Pu-239. With a little modification, the field could, I believe, be arranged simply to repel neutrons, tossing them right back into the reaction instead of letting them escape. In addition, we could collapse the neutrons so that they would be completely converted. I think if Craig can make the stuff you have figured out, I can, with your help fix up a good method of controlling it and converting it almost one hundred percent!"

	During O'Hanahan's outbreak Craig had been studying the notebook, hearing the Irishman with only half an ear. Finally, he glanced up.

	"There's only one trouble—this would give you something that I for one wouldn't know how to control, or what to do with—pure atomic energy!—not heat, or electromagnetic waves, or anything we'd be able to control for sure, but pure binding energy without anything to bind!"

	Red looked puzzled. "I don't get it. What—"

	"Look, I'll give, you a weak analogy: Gravity is the stuff that holds matter together. It's the atomic binding force, so to speak, rather than the nuclear binding force I'm talking about. Now—would you know exactly what to do with pure gravity?"

	"Mmm—I see. There'd be a lot of nice things you could think about, but you don't have any notion at all how matterless gravity would work—right?"

	"You've got the idea. It's something we won't know what to do with until we have it—and even then we might not succeed."

	Kiv thought: "Somehow, they must realize the importance of this. Somehow, I must—"

	His mind flashed out, penetrating the consciousness of the other two, forging their thoughts together into cohesive mental action.

	Keith Sorensen looked up from his desk, his dark eyes flashing.

	"Due to the difference in our training, not any one of us can find the answer to this. Not one of us can realize, in any short time, the potentialities of this thing. Therefore, I suggest that each of us work on it in his own field, working out the whole thing to his own satisfaction. Only in that way can we ever realize what we are driving at."

	The others looked at him. Craig spoke.

	"You're right. Red, you work on that force field and I'll figure out as best I can the fuel that we need. If it isn't impossible, we'll find it."

	Kiv relaxed mentally. That should do it. They had the completed problem in their grasp—it was all there. If they would only correlate it, he would be home in a short time.

-

	"So far," said Sorensen, "the theory is perfect. If everything checks, we've got it."

	The three men walked into the dimly lighted corridor that led to the elevator. The armed guard stopped them.

	"Sorry, sir," he spoke to Keith, "the Council has issued an order that a triple alert be enforced. There seems to be an emergency because of the Reversists on Earth. You will have to submit to complete ID processes."

	Kiv was aware of the potentialities of the guard's statement. The Reversists were a group of violent reactionaries who find never accepted the Terran Federation. They had not responded entirely to his mind treatment and were violently nationalistic. For an instant, shock stole into his system. Was it possible that interbreeding had taken place to some slight extent in the far distant past? Logic came forward. Interbreeding had, undoubtedly taken place—but the Law of Primitive Survival would take care of that possibility. Therefore, the rebellion was due to some other cause.

	Mutation. He hoped there was not too much of it—

	The ID process was thorough. X-rays, eye-cone patterns, fingerprints, skin texture, all the normal tests, and some that were not. Evidently security was taking no chances.

	That finished, they proceeded into the elevator, and dropped four thousand feet through the Lunar crust. The elevator slowed, and stopped.

	Craig Stanley said: "If only it works. If it doesn't—"

	He pressed the combination of the intricate lock before him. They entered the corridor that led through the massive shielding that protected the nucleonics lab. Here, the output of the Bronson barrier tubes was not a dim glow—it was a brilliant glare that lighted the whole hallway. They entered the control room.

	"Well," Craig said, "this is it."

	He pressed the button that actuated the vision screen. Before him the screen glowed with varicolored lights, then the scene clarified. The speaker in the wall clicked into action, and the robot voice spoke:

	"Yes, sir?"

	"Get ready for the experiment we carried out yesterday, Alphaten."

	"Yes, sir." Relays began to function. Through the screen, the three men could see the metalloid arms moving and the belts shifting the positions of various pieces of apparatus.

	"Red." Craig's voice was clipped, indicative.

	The Irishman walked over to the newly-built control panel and activated the controlling field. The experiment proceeded.

-

	Thirty minutes later, the three pairs of eyes were focused on the screen. Two needle points neared each other. On them were microscopic bits of carefully weighed metal. The needle points stopped. A switch moved forward, and the entire screen was diffused with a bluish light. Suddenly, a violent shock made the scene in the screen shimmer.

-

	A few minutes later, the robot's voice came from the speaker:

	"I have calculated the weight loss of the material, sir, and within experimental error, the mass conversion was almost eighty-six percent total. Might I add my congratulations, sir? The control was almost perfect."

	Craig leaned back in the control chair. "Control almost perfect. Fine, but what can we do with it? Eighty-six percent of the stuff vanished and where did it go? There was undoubtedly a lot of energy released in there, but what did it do, why did only a part of it register on the screens and meters? All we seemed to get was a lot of heat."

	Keith looked thoughtful for a moment, then smiled. "At least we're better off than Hertz—we know that we're looking for a certain amount of energy—he wasn't sure what he was looking for."

	Red ran a freckled hand through his fiery mop and said, "Well, Craig, I guess we'd better make up a batch of it and work on this until we find out what we're working with. We'd better beetle it down to the doctor right away—this stuff probably doesn't pay much attention to lead or Bronson fields."

	"Sir," broke in the robot's voice, "shall I release the pressure?"

	"Pressure?" asked Craig blankly.

	"Yes, sir, according to my Sensitives, there is now a pressure in the laboratory of two thousand atmospheres."

	"Ye Gods!" He leaped to the control board. All the meters were normal except the one from which he had expected little information. The pressure gauge needle was jammed tight against the stop.

	"Alphaten, carefully open the release valve to the surface—just a fraction of a millimeter."

	"Yes, sir." There was a short pause. "Sir, the flow meters show nothing coming through the valve. Shall I open it a little wider?"

	"Go ahead."

	Another pause. "No response, sir."

	"Check your Sensitives. Are you sure there's nothing wrong with them?

	When the robot spoke again, there was as much surprise in its voice as, it was capable of registering:

	"Sir, my pressure Sensitive is overloaded. Evidently there was a great deal of pressure for a very short length of time, then, it vanished."

	There was a barely audible series of clicks, then:

	"I have repaired the Sensitive, sir. There is no pressure registering in the laboratory."

	Craig sat back down at the seat before the board. "Alphaten, let's try that again—and this time, watch the pressure."

-

	Four hours later, the three men were again seated in a booth in George's.

	Craig was speaking: "It was really just about what you could expect. The binding energy is pure force. What could you expect it to release but pure force? The other meters didn't register because they were meant to measure radiation, electrical energy, temperature, and so forth. The pressure gauge is a hypersensitive barometer used for measuring the tiny variations in pressure that occur during some nucleonic reactions. Therefore, the force would act on it."

	"You mean," Red interrupted, "that what we have is just plain push without anything pushing?"

	Keith laughed. "Something like that, though I rather imagine it's a little more complicated."

	Craig went on. "What it seems to be is simply an inversion of gravitation. Instead of pulling things toward it, the source of the effect pushes all matter away. It seems to dissipate itself as heat.

-

	The Galactic smiled, mentally. The comparison was poor, and in due time they would find that it was not one of the properties of the matter itself that caused the "push," but the manner of converting the matter. The thought of what might have happened if the other two had not accepted the ideas implanted in their brains was really not very funny. If they had used the more simple method—

	The next step must be carried out with the greatest of finesse.

-

	"Craig," said Sorensen, "how long would it take to make several kilograms of the stuff?"

-

	The next two weeks of busied activity were brought to a sudden stop when a breach in one of the walls of the lab rendered it useless. Something had gone wrong with the controls—what, they never established—and the sudden burst of the "pure force" had ruptured one of the entrance ports, the weakest spots in the walls of the nucleonics lab. Stanley and Sorensen, clad in Bronson tube protective space suits, were the first to enter the airless lab after the accident.

	"It looks like someone just pushed at it." Keith pointed at the crack.

	"Or hit it with a sledgehammer," agreed Craig.

	"The amount of the force depends on the rate of release and the distance from the object against which the force is directed," Keith mused. "It took only a little bit of the stuff to slug that hole in the wall—a few micrograms."

	Craig stepped around the wrecked door and went into the airless corridor toward the air lock. As Sorensen started to follow, he felt behind him the silent scream of metal on metal. He turned in time to see a force-weakened metal beam crash down on his skull.

-

	Red spun a half-smoked cigarette into the receptacle.

	"They ought to be through soon," he said.

	Craig nodded. "Odd request. I wonder why he wanted to be buried on Earth?"

	"Don't know. He had a ranch somewhere in Arizona—said he wanted to rest in the land he loved."

	The door panel to their right slid open, admitting an elderly man in the green gabardine of the medical service. He stood a moment, then:

	"You may see him now, if you like."

	They followed him into the pastel green of the medical operating room. Before them, sealed in a clear plastiglas case lay the frozen body of Keith Sorensen.

	As they looked, they grew aware that the physician was speaking:

	"—no need for an autopsy. The blow on the head was a glancing one, and no bones were broken. However, his medical record shows a heart condition that might very easily have killed him. The x-rays showed that his heart had very definitely been deformed—since birth, probably—and had ruptured. This, combined with the obvious symptoms of shock, was enough evidence to make out the death certificate. His request that his body be frozen and shipped back to Terra, though odd, is not unreasonable, and, due to his fine record and the marvelous work he has done, the Federal Government has granted that request. Oh, by the way—" he dropped his professional air and smiled sympathetically at the two men "—another of the requests that were in the envelope delivered to me upon his death was that four months after his death you are to open this box."

	He stepped over to the table on which Keith's belongings lay, and picked up a small metal cube about six centimeters to the side.

	"According to his letter—which, by the way, has been probated as a will—the box contains a time lock which will unlock four months after it has been set. He set it each morning at eight, therefore the box will open at eight o'clock on the morning of September 3. He has stipulated that there are to be no spectators except Patrick O'Hanahan and Craig Stanley, and that they are to lock themselves in one of their bedrooms at that time. When that time arrives, a stud will automatically protrude from the side of the box. To open the box, depress the stud. If, however, the stud is not pressed within an hour—by nine o'clock—the contents of the box will be automatically destroyed, as they will be if the box is tampered with at any time before that.

	"Gentlemen, the box is yours."

	Craig accepted the small metal cube and examined it minutely—there was not a seam of any kind on it. On one side, which Craig took to be the top, the initials KLS were set in a silvery metal, differing from the bluish-gray of the main body of the block.

	"It appears to be quite solid," he observed.

-

	Blackness. Cold, heavy, blackness—formless and without sensation—then, a swirling, as of a tenuous, faintly luminous gas. For an eternity the tenuous nothingness swirled, sluggishly at first, then more rapidly, until finally it burst, and the blackness returned. This blackness was not like the other; it seemed, somehow—lighter; not heavy, smothering, as it had been a hundred million centuries before. Then, slowly, came awareness. At first, it was only a driving determination, a determination to do—something! What? Wake up. Wake up! Wake up! Then it came loudly, screamingly, blasting across neural passageways, roaring through his brain: WAKE UP!—and he did.

	A complete neuronic check-up showed his body to be in almost perfect condition. The long refrigeration had slowed it down to an almost static condition, but otherwise—perfect.

	First, he thought, the heart. Have to work fast now. Getting warm. Stimulated by carefully sent motor impulses, the great double-walled heart began to throb, pushing the viscous blood through stiffened arteries. Then, the tiny energies of carbohydrate oxidation began to warm and feed him. After a time, he charged his body with the powerful life energies stored in his mighty brain—and the magnificent biological engine that was Kiv Stanlor's body became fully alive once more.

-

	Red O'Hanahan glanced at his wrist watch and said: "Two minutes. I wonder what's in the damned thing that he had to guard it so carefully?"

	Craig did not bother to answer the purely rhetorical question.

	The metallic block sat on the table before them, looking maddeningly useless and plain—resembling nothing more than a child's toy.

	Minutes went by, then: POP! From the monogrammed top, a small cylindrical section protruded about half a centimeter.

	Eagerly, Craig reached over and pushed it. He froze in that position as if paralyzed. Beside him, the big Irishman found himself unable to move a muscle.

	From the cube came a soft radiance, and in their fully awake minds ran a forced thought:

	My name is Kivlond Stanlor, citizen of the first class of this Galaxy. You knew me as Keith Sorensen. For reasons that I cannot reveal to you, I have taken the eight kilograms of isotope that we made for experimental purposes.

	This loss must not be revealed to anyone else.

	It was necessary that I plan the accident which seemed to kill me in order that I might return to Earth, and that my identity as Keith Sorensen might be unobtrusively done away with.

	If my plan succeeds—and I foresee no reason why it should not—I will be out of the Solar System by the time you activate this broadcaster.

	I am leaving this record in order that the knowledge which I have forced upon you be not used accidentally to destroy the entire terrestrial civilization. Upon my return, I shall report to my government of your existence, of which they have heretofore been ignorant. Do not fear this outside civilization, for you are part of it.

	Eight hundred thousand years ago, the luxury liner "Garnaveen" was making its usual trip to the planets of the star Sendar, from the planet Ledor VIII. Somehow, their instruments failed. They were thrown off course and went too near the Sayten sun, a white dwarf, which gives off radiation that has a peculiar effect on the mind. As they were reduced to a state of near idiocy, they were unable to control the ship, and eventually landed on your planet and established a colony. The present so-called "human beings" are the descendants of that group of survivors.

	In due time, you will rediscover the secret of interstellar travel of your own accord. When that time comes, you will be told of your relationship to the Galactics, and be admitted as members of our civilization.

	Now, as to the effects of the total destruction of matter—

	There followed a series of mathematical symbols and explanations.

	Now, a final warning: Due to the peculiar hypnotic effect of this type of communication, you will be unable to reveal any part of it. If you attempt it, mental semantic blocks will render your attempts useless, and repeated attempts will have a detrimental effect on your brain. Be careful! When this is over, GET AWAY FROM THIS BOX! Then, the thought became less cold. Don't take it so hard, fellows. Right afterward, I suggest you go down to George's for a quickie—have one for me, too.

	The thought ended, and the paralysis was removed as quickly as it had come. The two men leaped away from the table as the box dissolved in a flash of coruscating fire.

-

	Five hundred light years from Sol, Kiv picked up the tiny wave lengths of beamed thought in his memoryless R-beam. With these beamed thoughts to follow, it would be simple to locate the base from which they came. Once there, he could replace his blank crystal with an impressed one and return to Ledor to make his report. Included in that report would be the data pointing out that eight hundred thousand years on Terra since the shipwreck had robbed the inhabitants of the mental and physical training that made them true Galactics, but in spite of that—how could it possibly be an infraction of the "No Contact" rule to aid the survivors?

	Kiv smiled to himself—if the Garnaveen hadn't been found in eight thousand centuries, there was small chance of it being discovered now!

	Besides, he liked the people of Earth, and there is always an exception to any rule.

The End