First Person Singular
Thrilling Wonder Stories – October 1950
(1950)*
Eric Frank Russell

Edham was a trained interplanetary pioneer, but even he and his chosen mate were unable to make their world a fit place to live in!

-

CHAPTER I – New Planet

	The new planet could be seen as a dark disk surrounded by a glowing nimbus. Its halo was created by the small red sun burning far behind it. There were other spheres in this same locality, some with many satellites and one—a glorious sight—with multicolored rings. Sensed by the instruments, although not from this angle evident to the eyes, was a dangerous belt of rocks rushing helter-skelter through the void and forming the reef of the stars.

	Quivering and red-tailed, the long particle-scarred space-ship had tilted high above the reef and was now heading for the nimbus. There was another smaller paler halo near to the objective, sharing its orbit, indicative of an almost airless moon.

	Seated behind the bow observation port, Captain Rafel twisted around as Edham came into the cabin. He said, "I summoned you forward, thinking you might like first view. It has just expanded sufficiently for straight vision." He pointed into the sparkling darkness. "There it is."

	Taking a seat beside the commander, Selected Granor Edham looked at the thin circle shining upon the backdrop of creation. The picture was unsatisfactory in that it told little. All the same it meant enough. It was a dim, ghostly lamp marking the end of his trail.

	It represented the purpose for which he had been chosen and, for all he knew, the specific function for which he had been conceived and born. That faraway light, pale, wan and beckoning, surrounded the hidden fact of fate. It marked the site of death or glory. It was the cradle—or the grave.

	His young, strong and decidedly stubborn features did not change expression while his gaze remained leveled forward. Rafel was watching him and he was aware of the scrutiny but this had nothing to do with his grim phlegmaticism. Either he was peculiarly insensitive or had superb control of his emotions, for he gave Rafel nothing to go by. His face remained set, just a little cold, a little forbidding, and his eyes were steady, unwinking.

-

	Rafel said quietly, "We'll be there in about two hundred tempors by the clock." He waited for comment, watching, watching. There was no remark, not even the quirk of an eyebrow. The other's countenance might have been carved in rock. Rafel went on, his manner verging upon the paternal, "You speak but seldom. Once I saw you smile and that I shall always remember. I have never heard you laugh."

	"I do my laughing inside myself."

	"But not often," pursued Rafel. "Not as frequently as others do."

	"Not all are the same," Edham observed.

	"Of course not. There are differences. So long as we can lay claim to be individuals there must be differences. Therefore some laugh and some weep."

	In the same even unaccentuated tones, Edham asked, "Have you wept?"

	Rafel leaned back in his air-cushioned seat and eyed the stars. He had thin aquiline features and the large luminous optics of the highly intelligent. The eyes were upon the stars without seeing them.

	"Six times or perhaps seven. Please do not ask me when, where or why."

	"I have not the slightest desire to do so. One cannot seize part of another man's heart." For the first time Edham showed hint of expression, no more than a narrowing of the eyes, a slight hardening of the jaw muscles. "But if ever the time comes to weep for me it would be well to remember something."

	"Such as?"

	"I shall be laughing."

	Rafel said soberly, "I hope you will, I hope you will." He hesitated, continued, "No one sees himself truly pictured in the mirror of another's mind. Sometimes one is given to wonder how one looks.

	"Has one the faults and virtues of which he is conscious or do his fellows see some faults as virtues, some virtues as faults? Do others see additional faculties not apparent to their possessor? I am the captain of my ship but what sort of a captain am I to my crew—good, bad or indifferent?"

	"It is of little consequence. The shape is set."

	"Bear with me. I am leading up to something. Do you mind if I put a personal question?"

	"I mind nothing," said Edham. "Would I be where I am, going where I'm going, if I had cares, susceptibilities?"

	"You are treading my conversational path a little ahead of me," Rafel told him. "What I would like to ask you is this—have you ever suspected yourself of unsociability?"

	"I do not suspect it—I know it." Edham turned his head, looked straight at him. "During and since childhood I have not mixed quite as others have mixed and such mixing as I have done has been done self-consciously. Sometimes I have wondered whether it is an inferiority complex or sheer unsociability.

	"I console myself with the thought that I am not anti-social. I like and enjoy my fellows—providing there are not too many at one time. I have never liked crowds." His dark gray orbs studied Rafel? "Why do you ask?"

	The other gave him a slow smile. "You console yourself because you think your character at fault or suspect that others consider it faulty. Is it a true flaw?" He waved his hand at the enveloping cosmos. "In the big cities, perhaps. Out here, no! Out here it is a virtue."

	Edham said nothing.

	"You are a Selected Granor," Rafel pointed out. "A chosen son born under the sun called Di. Selection is not based on idle whims. It is a careful sifting from the mass of Di's children, a sorting out of the hardy pioneering types, the ones who may be restless, out-of-place, unsocial in the cities.

	"But on the loneliest frontiers—ah!" He spread expressive hands. "There, they come into their own. They are independent, self-reliant, they do not mourn for the comfort of the crowd."

	Edham offered no remark.

	"In the College of Granors is a great obelisk bearing eighteen hundred honored names," Rafel mused reminiscently. "I have read them as doubtless you have read them. Every man-jack was much like you."

	"That is gratifying." Edham offered it with glum humor as if he were laughing inside of himself. His gray eyes met Rafel's again. "Because every man-jack is dead."

	The nimbus had grown to sky-filling size and had resolved itself to an atmosphere heavily clouded. There was a blaze of crimson light and an awful roaring and a frantic scattering of thunderheads as the space-ship came cautiously through the blanket. A huge saucerlike object, fat in its center, thin at the edge, the ship lowered amid a spume of fire.

	Jungle below sent up trunks and fronds and greeny reaching arms. Steam came from it and vegetable warmth and cloying odors mingled with the stench of noisome things rotting in the dark. Living shapes came up with the vapor and the smells, flying, fluttering, flapping away, some dexterously, some with the ungainly awkwardness of creations ill-conceived, some with shrill screechings or harsh cries.

	Other entities that could not fly, land-bound and raging, slung or blundered through the undergrowth and howled their hatred at each other and at the monster in the air.

-

	For a little while the vessel hung half a mile above hell, uncountable miles below heaven. The superheated clouds it had thrust aside had now swung back together, closing the gap and sending down a torrent of warm rain.

	The downpour made an angry rattle on the space-ship's topside and Venturis bellowed and the jungle screamed. More clouds in the distance, black and bloated, were drifting to the aid of their fellows, rumbling from time to time and casting vivid shafts across the sky.

	Planetary Surveyor John was in the underbelly blister when Edham joined him. Together they looked down upon the wetness and the tangled green.

	"You can blame me for this," said Jolin. "I pronounced it possible. Every time I declare a planet to be possible the decision fidgets within my conscience."

	"That is natural," Edham soothed. "Since you will not live long enough to see the end result you must feel the weight of uncertainty. But why worry? No man can do more than his best."

	"I have seen failures," Jolin observed moodily. "That is the curse of it. Failures can and do become apparent swiftly enough to damn my judgment. The successes are long-term ones, so long that they will be known only to my grandsons' grandsons."

	"It is frustrating," agreed Edham. "What a pity that we have never achieved that time-travel which Kalteniel is so fond of depicting in his visi-scrolls. You could then go forward many centuries and see precisely where you have done well, where you have erred."

	"Kalteniel irks me now and again." Jolin shook his head in mild condemnation. "Take his supposedly more plausible stories of space-travel. He dumps people here, dumps them there, keeps them alive in spite of every adverse circumstance, makes them perform all sorts of antics as if the fundamental problem of existence were no problem at all. Life isn't so resilient. It's precarious. It is balanced by margins incredibly fine. If it were otherwise you and I would have different jobs."

	Edham offered no comment.

	"We are life-forms delicately held within ten million tiny and elusive circumstances," Jolin went on. "One small item, one seemingly insignificant feature, can create the bias that kills. On one otherwise innocent world it is the existence in its atmosphere of an exceedingly minute trace of gas with accumulative properties.

	"On another it is an unsuspected undetected virus in the water." He glanced at the other. "A few Di-born plants grew erratically but clung to life on Theta Ten. Far more would not. They lacked only a vague trace of copper in the earth."

	"Who can measure the unknown?" said Edham.

	"And the same is true in reverse." Jolin nodded toward the jungle. "In the Di-system some of those plants might flourish, others might contrive to exist by changing form to suit slightly different conditions—but many might wither and die for lack of one titanium atom in each ten thousand molecules of soil—or for lack of something else equally dispersed."

	"I have been told all this," Edham reminded. "I do not fear the death of metabolic imbalance. By all accounts it comes insidiously, without pain." Cold-eyed, he studied the world beneath.

	"But I do dislike the notion of involuntary change. Admittedly one survives when gradually altered by Nature to fit the new framework but one cannot be sure of the manner of one's change or the picture it presents in the end. There are so many possibilities, some of them repulsive."

	"Yes." Jolin admitted it solemnly. "It is that I would find the most repugnant—alteration out of recognition. It is death which is not death. It is severance from one's own kind plus the torment of being something strange and new amid older unchanged life-forms that hate the strange and new. It is utter loneliness." He shuddered without shame. "I could not bear it."

	"I could," said Edham, "if absolutely necessary." He paused, added in the same flat voice, "For a while."

	Rafel changed the subject by appearing at the blister. "That is a fair sample down below. Most of the planet is the same. It spawns ferociously." He cupped his chin in his hand, regarded the tangle of life for a while, then said, "We cannot sit down in any old place. We'll search the world and make a landing in the most attractive spot."

	Edham said, "Or the least unattractive."

	He did "not smile when Rafel looked at him as if striving to discern what lay behind the mask. He was accustomed to the long penetrating gaze of those large eyes. As always it was an attempted estimating—and none can weigh the soul. So he met Rafel's questing orbs with a tantalizing blankness that provided inward amusement for himself but did not irritate the other.

	"Perhaps you are right," conceded Rafel. He shrugged and went away.

	Presently the Venturis lengthened their blasts to a multitude of fire-spears. The jungle leaves swayed and cowered while unseen forms beneath them sent up a cacophony of noise.

	The ship soared a mile higher, moved forward. The clouds stabbed it with hot forks.

-

CHAPTER II - Sphere of Wrath

	Paralleling the equator on a route where the sub-tropics merged into the temperate zone, the Disian vessel traveled at sedate pace. There was no need for great speed, no urgency. Accurate observation of the land was the prime purpose and one cannot find earthly sanctuary at high velocity. So the ship roamed on, circumnavigating the world four times while its crew watched and waited for a haven of gentleness in this domain of savagery.

	It was a sphere of wrath, hot, violent and seething with the sperm of a million things, great and small. Its clouds hung black and belly-bloated. Its trees climbed upon the bodies of their forebears as they fought hugely toward the blanketed sun.

	Its animal forms were drinkers of blood, eaters of meat, feeders upon alt other kinds, upon their own kind and upon their own young. They battled and copulated with an appalling frenzy, howling in labor, screaming in death and giving up their offal.

	There was a horrid pseudo-life even beneath the earth. In certain places the surface crawled and rolled and heaved while great fissures opened and steam burst forth. A river bent down into a hole and was spewed out boiling.

	Topless mountains volleyed meteor-streams that curved through the clouds and fired the jungle. The quivering surface emitted tremendous groans and the river hissed deafeningly and the mountains cannonaded again and again and again.

	The atmosphere was heavy, thick, moist and somehow enervating and invigorating at one and the same time. It was invisibly striated with smells—the odors of wood-rot, wet leaves, sulphur, steam, crushed funguses, burning bark, cooling lava, and decay.

	To search all this for a resting place was to seek a lesser hell and that they found on the fourth time round. There was a raised valley between rounded hills with slow-moving yellow rivers flowing at either side. The valley was broad and large—the hills silent, without inward fires. No steam arose from vents in the solidly founded ground.

	The trees, shrubs, vines and creepers were all present together with the hot-blooded things that hunted beneath them. The same smells came up, the same noises. But purely by contrast with other parts of the world the valley seemed a little more sheltered, a little more stable, a little less racked with the strains of competing life.

	Lowering his vessel, Captain Rafel took it along the valley with assault-beams blazing at full intensity. Every living thing beneath promptly resolved itself to an ash so fine that much hung suspended while some slowly settled.

	The trees and the tangles beneath the trees and the monsters who lurked in the tangles all became ash. From one end of the valley to the other, all ash. From hill-base to hill-base, nothing but thin unsolid stalks of ash quavering like new-born ghosts. The very ground was sterilized to a depth of twenty feet.

	They ripped a cloud and rain came down and laid the reluctant dust. Over a smaller central area of the valley they beam-baked the mud so formed and converted it to the hard cake of an emergency landing place. On this the ship sat, touching soil lightly, letting its weight be felt gradually and forming an earthy cup in which to rest.

	The crew emerged, six hundred strong. They knew exactly what to do and needed no orders. It was a familiar task—they had planted a Granor many times before.

	Dragging out their machines, the wall-builders began to cut huge stone blocks from the hills, to move them along and around the valley, to mount them one upon another and fuse them together. Heavily armed, the guarda squads patrolled beyond them near the burned rim of the jungle and kept hostile shapes at bay. Well inside the walls the prefab-erectors busied themselves assembling the sections of a small, compact house.

	The biological party divided itself, extracted from the ship's cargo space a load of Disian seeds, tubers, cuttings, shoots and baby plants. These they unwrapped with loving care and proceeded to set in the alien earth according to a scheme conceived long in the past and executed time and time again in places spread across half creation's span.

	Rafel hung around, watching. The wall arose and a raucous antagonism beyond the wall was quietened with a distant blast and the momentary shine of a beam. The house swung together, every addition making it more like a house. A quadruple row of tiny green growths already stretched from his feet to the base of the eastward wall. More plants, larger and darker, were being set beyond them.

	"This performance, I presume, has the boredom of repetition," suggested Edham, joining him.

	"Not at all. I look at today—but I see tomorrow." He glanced at the other, his eyes bright, luminous. "What do you see?"

-

	Edham thought a moment, said, "I am given to visualize a few lines from that ancient saga called The Granor of Theta Ten. Doubtless they are familiar to you." He carried on and recited them, speaking with a peculiar lack of emotion that somehow lent point to the words.

-
"They labor'd without rest or cease 
To make the land more fair, 
And builded him a place of peace 
Five thousand cubits square."
-

	"The verse is appropriate," said Rafel. "It cannot be otherwise since the technique has remained the same."

	"But not the tomorrows?"

	"Not the tomorrows," Rafel admitted with some reluctance. "Nature will not have us everywhere."

	"Nor have us exactly as we are."

	"Sometimes." Rafel felt that he was being pushed where he had no desire to go. "And sometimes not." He counter-pushed with a proposal. "Come with me and explore beyond the walls."

	"It is a useful idea," said Edham, betraying no hint of humor. "One should know one's neighbors."

	Getting two pairs of scout-wings from the ship they struggled into the harness, each tightening the other's buckles. The wings swept white and gleaming from their shoulders as they switched on the tiny propulsors and soared. There was a certain trickiness in using this personal mode of flight, each user's pleasure being proportionate to his own dexterity.

	Crossing the northward wall, already man-height and still growing, they floated wide-winged above the jungle's trees. Their closer approach made visible many things formerly hidden though others lurked lower and remained unseen. There were great worms in some tree-tops, sinuous, sliding, many-colored creatures that writhed up the trunks and lay along the branches and stared with beady unblinking eyes. There were other entities, barrel-bodied, beetle-browed, that swung from limb to limb and yelled at the winged forms above.

	"A-a-ah! A-a-ah!"

	And from faraway came the answering call of their fellows, red-eyed and toothy, "A-a-ah!"

	At one point where a rocky outcrop made a space of barrenness in the warring vegetation, there slumbered an eater too gigantic to be eaten. It was a slate-gray monstrosity, stupidly evil of face, massive of body, with a high serration running along it back. Its balloonlike belly shrank and filled as it breathed and its tail curved away through tree-gap after tree-gap. With tiny eyes closed it snored in a manner that shook the shrubs before its nose.

	Rafel had swooped daringly close to get a better look at the slumberer and as he curved upward on wide-set wings, coming low over a tree, a many-hued worm stabbed half its length at him from where it lay concealed in the foliage.

	So much swifter was his own reaction that he had time only to glimpse the soft elastic mouth and darting tongue before his beam sliced the thing in three. The parts fell near to the slate-gray sleeper and continued to jerk around with raw ends. The sleeper opened one eye, stared with dull disinterest at the squirming pieces, grunted deep down and closed the eye again.

	"That," remarked Rafel, unruffled, "is another item for my collection of cosmic incongruities—ambition in a worm."

	Edham said, "Sometimes I wonder whether anyone else has us similarly rated."

	"When we meet them—if ever we meet them—we shall not try to get them down our gullets," promised Rafel.

	"What else shall we do?"

	"We will allow them to swallow us." Rafel gave him a sly smile. "We have never found any difficulty in permitting the unavoidable."

	"Neither shall I." He did not smile back. "In a way I shall have complete control of this world—I shall sit upon it and permit everything." Edham deftly tilted against a side-current, swung straight. "Let us view this river."

	The westward waterway over which they skimmed was the broader of the two at either side of the valley. Slow-moving and sullen, its depths were yellow and full of life. Small shapes occasionally leaped from its undersurface to escape larger pursuers and now and again the big ones jumped amid a shower of drops to avoid the monstrous. Logs floated downstream past other half-submerged things that strove to look like logs.

	A black hook-beaked flyer fell from the clouds, coming silently on broad leathery surfaces, and plunged at Rafel while he was studying a log that had reptilian eyes. Edham sliced its head off in mid-air. The body shot straight to the water but did not touch it.

	Great jaws came out of the river and caught it at the last moment, then sank from sight. A few lazy bubbles arose. The log which had drawn Rafel's attention split at one end and yawned, exposing many teeth.

	"Here life is a phase—death an incident," Edham commented. "What a world!"

	"To face alone," added Rafel.

	Edham laughed without showing it.

-

CHAPTER III - Sanctuary

	The encampment was complete in every detail on the fortieth day. Its walls stood a hundred cubits high by ten cubits thick, solid, jointless, four-square, without a break except for one armor-plate door in the center of the side that faced south. The living house was finished and equipped.

	The instrument shed stood near it, the tool shed adjoined it and the transparent house for incubating plants was right behind. Apart from that occupied by the space-ship, the rest of the area within the walls was a parade-ground for Disian plants in companies and battalions.

	Rafel had a schematic diagram spread across a table inside the house and his long slender forefinger shifted from point to point as he spoke.

	"As you know your main task will be to keep check on all this. Every plant-section must be covered not less than once in five days. Every stage of growth must be carefully noted. Any departure from the norm must be recorded in the fullest possible detail. Any failure to develop must likewise be entered.

	"Take especial note of comparative rates of progress for they are important. If the hard-fruited trees do well while the soft-fruiting bushes do not, we want to know in what way they differ, item by item, for such information is invaluable."

	"I have had all this at the training college," Edham remarked. "We may never know why some Di-plants flourish in alien conditions while others do not but it is sufficient to learn which can survive."

	"Exactly," agreed Rafel. "Where enough of them cling to existence, s© can we. It is essential to know in advance how many can live and of what kinds. That is real knowledge." He mused a little while over the graph. "I find it galling that we are reduced to animal status by one dismal fact—that any world can resist our settlement by resisting our digestive juices."

	"Kalteniel has the problem solved. His characters are never guilty of any animal function. Would that I were one of them."

	"That brings me to the most emphatic point." Rafel's great eyes looked straight and steadily into his. "This also is something you've had before, had it until you're sick of it, but before I go it must be said again. That is the strictest rule of Granor-planting—the Granor must not be left without being told again. Until such time as we return you will subsist solely upon foods of Di-origin."

	"I know, I know."

	"The stores we leave will last far beyond your fifth harvest—if there are any harvests. You are free to eke out your preserved supplies with fresh stuff grown within these walls—if any does grow." His voice grew sharp, authoritative. "But of the foods native to this world you must not eat!"

	His long schooling at the College of Granors made itself felt as Edham squared his shoulders and obediently echoed, "Of native fruits I must not eat."

	"Remember that—always remember," Rafel emphasized. "The food natural to this earth may be quite innocuous. Possibly you might wax fat upon it, more so than upon Di-foods. If so we are lucky indeed. But the time for testing the matter is not yet.

	"Be satisfied that already you are breathing alien air of unknown potentialities, that you are continually subjected to the rays of an alien sun with hidden powers, that you remain within alien gravitational and magnetic fields—and the total long-term effects of all these are pure guesswork until such time as you have eliminated the guesses.

	"So do not be venturesome or impatient. Remember that enough is enough and rest content with the hazards already imposed upon you."

	"Do you suspect me of excessive zeal?" asked Edham.

	"I have no suspicions—but I do have memories."

	"Of what?"

	"Of many things." He hesitated, went on, "My mind holds vivid pictures I would give much to forget. For example I see the Granor of the unnamed world near Arka. He suffered unanticipated disaster to his stores, became hungry and thirsty long before our return. And when we came back—"

	"Go on," urged Edham.

	"I remember his lonely distorted shape crawling into the dark as our ship lifted and cut him off forever from his kind. What he had was terrible, incurable and contagious. So he crept humbly into the dark and waited for the deeper darkness of the end. His name is upon the obelisk."

	"Where mine will never be," capped Edham. "I shall live and grow fat out of sheer spite."

	Rafel said severely, "There is nothing funny about it. There is nothing funny."

	"I am not jesting. I am trying only to reassure you."

	At that moment John came along to bid farewell and Rafel said to him, "He is attempting to comfort me."

	"It would be more logical if I were the subject of his solicitude," returned John morbidly. "The weight upon his spirit is equaled by the weight upon my mind."

	"Did you choose that unnamed world near Arka?" Edham asked him.

	"No, thank the broad heavens! That one was not my mistake."

	"Neither will this one be."

	"Now he's comforting you." Rafel spread his hands to indicate helplessness. "What can one do with a person who insists on giving what he is supposed to receive?"

	Gazing at the sky Edham suggested, "Leave him to his fearsome task of lazing around and permitting the unavoidable."

	John swallowed, said uneasily, "It's not going to be quite that." Then he changed his mind, hurriedly finished. "Farewell!" He shook hands and went, his features worried.

	"He's somewhat sensitive for a planetary surveyor," opined Edham, gazing after him.

	"He has seen too much," Rafel corrected. "As I have done." He too shook hands, returned to the ship, paused in its open lock to wag a warning finger and utter a final, "Remember!"

	The lock closed. Edham backed well away from the Venturis. Presently the tubes spouted fire and dust flew around and a great wave of warmth went through the walled area. Voices beyond the walls set up a chorus of hoots and screams.

	Slowly the vessel rose, teetering and repeatedly correcting its plane until it had gained stabilizing speed. The lone watcher stood there while it was reduced to a tiny shining circle entering a cloud. It vanished into a black belly. He sighed and sat upon a handy rock.

	"I am the Granor of the Green World, a seed of Di planted to discover just what happens to me. I am the lowliest tool of a super-agronomy, the test-piece, the fleshly nurseling among a million vegetable ones. If I live here my kind will live here. If I change my kind will change. If I die my kind will die. For better or for worse I am the Granor of the Green World."

	Beyond the walls, "A-a-ah! A-a-ah!"

-

	Of course the first night was the worst. The felon caged for life can hear and sometimes see evidence of the workaday world outside. The shipwrecked survivor upon a deserted island can scan the horizon hopefully, week by week, tempor by tempor. But one with an entire planet to himself knows an isolation that cannot be more complete. The Granor is alone, utterly alone.

	He lay on his air-cushioned bunk within the prefabricated house while the world's gloom thickened toward midnight and sleep refused to come. His mind insisted upon busying itself with calculations of tempors and velocities which would enable it to place the approximate position of the departing vessel.

	His eyes kept opening to stare at the pearls of condensation shining on the ceiling. He could have cleared these away at one turn of a handy switch but he had not noticed them because he was looking at an imaginary space-ship. All the time his ears were straining to catch outride noises, of which there were plenty.

	There had been a peculiar hush when the hidden sun went down and twilight came and coldness flowed in. The daytime noises had subsided—the night howlers had been slow to appear. Now, as the earth turned farther around from the warmth, the hairy things that shouted, "A-a-ah!" were silent and other creatures with different voices built up their own characteristic din.

	For almost a quarter tempor two of them—huge and invisible—fought with shrill screams and much flapping of bat-wings right over his roof. In the end one landed upon the roof, gasped and bubbled awhile, made many scratching scrabbling sounds before it took off and vanished into the dark. It left an acrid smell as of strange blood.

	Eastward, just outside the wall, a pair of unknown shapes of unknown tonnage battled tremendously, emitting piercing whistles at intervals and causing the faintest of tremors in the ground. Edham pressed a hand on the floor to sense the quivers, slight but discernible.

	To cap the rest the wind built itself up to a loud moan that sounded as if the world itself were registering its agony. Distant trees thrashed and great limbs broke loose and tattered objects flew through the air.

	The moan went up a hundred cycles where the airstream hit the wall, dropped lower as it sped across the planted area. Clouds rushed close-packed across the sky, seeming to be held in space while the earth rotated independently.

	As the tempors crept nearer to morning Edham dozed without really sleeping. He had fragmentary dreams of the great city of Dise upon the planet also called Dise beneath the sun name Di. At no time had he scorned the city, yet he had failed to enjoy it as others had enjoyed it.

	Now he wanted it. They had warned him at the college that it is natural to desire lost things when it is too late. He must conquer the yearning—but he wanted the city.

	Dawn found him heavy-eyed and restless. The hurricane had gone, the heat-meter's hand already had begun to move along its scale and the same bellowers were back with their sounds. Taking the top package from the nearest pile in his ground-level stockroom he opened it, ate a four-course breakfast.

	The torn wrappings lay across his knees while he ate and he could see the lettering—Sunup Meal 1. The sight did not please him despite his long training. This irritation was no more than evidence of an incongruity which for centuries had bedeviled the worthy tutors at the College of Granors, namely, that trainees are selected as natural pioneers—and men who are natural pioneers do not take kindly to regimentation.

	Thus he scowled at the lettering because he knew that when the correct tempor chimed he would open Noon Meal 1 and later Sundown Meal 1 and tomorrow Sunup Meal 2.

	He was being fed prepared fodder at prescribed times exactly like an exhibit in the zoo.

	Finishing, he got mild satisfaction out of burning the wrappings with their offending inscription. He went out to inspect the Di-nursery, hoping for work. Already there was a little for him to do. Limbs and pieces of bark and strips of frond and thousands of leaves ripped from outer trees lay scattered all over the place.

	Patiently he gathered this rubbish into the bare circle where the ship had squatted and beamed it to ash. That filled in his morning and after the noon meal he spent a couple of tempors tending plants that had suffered slight damage overnight.

	A short time before sunset he got out his wings, had an awkward job with the harness, which was not easy to fit single-handed. The tiny propulsor drove him to the top of the wall, where he strolled along its broad flat crest with pinions folded and gleaming.

	The toothy ones in the jungle snarled and gibbered in anger at the unearthly sight.

	At a point near the corner where the wall right-angled northward a local objector waddled out of its hiding place, came right to the base of the impassable rampart and stood directly below him. Staring upward with red eyes that burned beneath projecting brows, it drummed resoundingly upon its chest, made deep grunting sounds and drooled saliva.

	Its attitude was challenging, an unmistakable invitation to come down and settle once for all the question of who was the superior life-form. Edham answered it by pausing in his walk, giving glare for glare and laughing inside of himself until the creature foamed with fury.

	At the height of its rage he calmly spread his wings, glided within the walls and out of its sight.

-

CHAPTER - IV Lonely Vigil

	There was little sleep that night either. He made a fitting end to an imperfect day by consuming Sundown Meal 1, recited his brief notes into his autorecorder, had a short time with a pictorialized story taken from his small library, then composed himself upon his bunk.

	Soon the rain came. It sounded as if someone high above were throwing away an unwanted ocean. He had never heard anything like it. The skies thundered and the ground thundered and the jungle bent over. There was alarm in his mind comparable to the noise in his ears for he had visions of tender sucklings being bombarded out of existence.

	Kalteniel would have countered this menace by shielding the whole area under a force-screen. A Granor has no such means available since he must rely upon what exists in reality rather than in the imagination.

	Disian science had produced effective power-beams, which could perform work or be concentrated destructively, but there was no known way in which to spread a beam without loss of power to the point of impotence. In grim fact there was nothing to discipline the torrent but the pumps.

	His restlessness soon turned to action. Getting a transparent waterproof sheath from a nearby hook he pulled it over himself like an upended sack, went out with his powerful handlight shining through the protecting material. The rain battered at him furiously and ran over the sheath in such a heavy stream that it blurred his vision.

	Despite this he made his way to the instrument shed wherein were his power-plant and the pumps which were connected with the area's irrigation system. The squat heavy atomic engine needed no starting for it was built to run continuously until due for replacement in several years' time. He put the six pumps into operation one by one, letting the engine take up the load in stages.

	Very soon their joint output meter registered eight aquabulks per millitempor, an accurate indication of the great quantity pouring from the clouds. He remained in the shed for part of the night, nursing the pumps, watching the meters and listening to the downpour.

	When eventually outside sounds were replaced by an amazing calm and the output meter showed a drop, he stopped the pumps, returned to the house, voiced a complaint into his autorecorder before laying down on his bunk.

	"I can switch from the house everything switchable excepting the pumps. This world being what it is, remote control of those would be a convenience."

	That was telling them. At some future time on some similar planet a Granor would be able to cope with a flood at the touch of a hand. They might even arrange it for him the trip after next—if he were still living at that time. If he were still ... Slumber stepped in and drove the speculation from his mind.

	He reposed flat on his back with eyes closed, his lungs sucking heavily at the alien air. Beyond the wall all was silent save for the patter of dislodged drops and the ripple of dying rivulets.

	Three weeks of backbreaking toil were needed to make good the damage. There is no Disian automaton capable of reviving and resetting the thousand infant plants which have been tormented almost to death. Each one had to be treated tenderly and by hand, its weak roots bedded firmly in the earth, its leaves fondled to erectness.

	He finished with sore fingers and a crick in the spine. Had all the growths suffered he could not have coped in time to save them. But the bulbs and tubers had squatted hidden and undisturbed while the baby trees had survived the overnight ordeal.

	Only the smallest, most delicate surface plants had been washed out and the major part of these he had been able to restore. Perhaps ten percent were beyond rescue. At least there had been no further disaster while the job was in hand.

	The midday the task was complete he bathed, gave his aching back some radiant heat treatment, consumed Noon Meal 22, dictated his notes to the autorecorder.

	"Sectors ten to eighteen have been reset. The loss numbers about one in ten. All other sectors remain rooted. The six end rows in sector nine are turning from green to yellow and their leaves show first signs of shriveling.

	"The whole of the trees in twenty-four to forty are advancing at above normal rate, appear healthy and vigorous and seem likely to grow much larger than their usual size. There is nothing to report about remaining sectors."

-

	Gazing absently at the mouthpiece into which he had spoken, he thought awhile, added, "I have examined myself in the mirror and see nothing unusual except that I look physically tired. To date my sleep has been inadequate. My weight has gone down by one twentieth. Doubtless these things will correct themselves in due course."

	The listening machine got no more than that, the bare facts. At the college his brevity often had been deplored. They liked garrulous Granors who filled in the picture with a wealth of detail. It did not matter that the babblers were compounding with an unnatural situation by talking to themselves, using spool after spool of recording tape for the pleasure of hearing their own voices.

	According to the tutors, much information of great value had been sorted out from such seemingly inconsequential chatter. Edham did not feel that he had yet got to the self-conversational stage or that he would ever get to it. So far as he was concerned, when the time came to pray for a voice it must be another's voice, different, new.

	A full day of lounging in the library, watching selections from pictorialized books, served to refresh him and take away the aches. The Disian breed recovers swiftly, is resilient. That is to say, the fleshly Disians.

	The vegetable ones varied for no known reason. Thus the yellowing plants in sector nine turned yellower and slowly released their frail hold on life while the burgeoning bodhi trees in twenty-four to forty continued to progress at rates almost detectable between successive sundowns.

	He took samples of the dying ones, dissecting them, subjecting thin slivers of cross-section to microscopic inspection, analysing the roots and the dirt in which they had been buried. The apparatus in the instrument shed was good enough for rough one-man estimates but not sufficiently delicate to detect and measure the merest traces of rare elements.

	Either the cause of the casualties was something too minute and elusive to identify with what he had available—or more probably it was beyond identification in the light of present-day knowledge. It might well be seated in improperly understood plant-psychology, the mysterious reasons why one growth made itself at home while another died rather than endure the strangeness.

	What little he did discover went into the notes. Characteristically all hazard and speculation were left out. The bare facts as usual. On the day the last member of the six rows was definitely dead and all the growths in sector twelve began to show first signs of surrendering the battle, he recorded the matter impassively.

	"The little ones in the westward rows of sector nine have gone without exception. The bushes in twelve are now sickening. The rest exist, some vigorously, some not, as per yesterday's report."

	Two months later, after he had beamed to dust the faded remnants of sector twelve, he sickened himself. The temperature of his blood arose, he perspired profusely, felt weak and muddle-minded. His digestive system went haywire.

	Frequent doses of the likeliest drugs had no effect. The disease put him on his back, too exhausted to weed the acres or carry out inspections, make notes or do anything else than let it run its course—to recovery or the end.

	Between spells of delirium he listened for outer disaster, wondering whether—if necessity proved dire enough—he could lift and thumb his attack-beam or crawl to the pumps. Experimentally he made two attempts to begin the crawl, failed both times.

	He was many five-day reports overdue when eventually the illness relaxed its hold. The rain had come almost every night and sometimes by day but never in a menacing torrent. The plants still stood undisturbed. He was alive though thin and lacking in strength. There was much for which to be thankful.

	The autorecorder got a curt uncomplaining description of his sickness, its symptoms, its progress. He did not bother to emphasize that he was breathing alien air, drinking distilled alien water but eating Disian food, that therefore the food was not to blame.

	Let the machine's future listeners draw their own conclusions—that was their job. His was to be the subject of the operation and tell how it felt, stage by stage, even though the knife sank deep. The Granor is a seed of his race. It is helpful to plant a seed that can talk, even though laconically.

-

	In the third year, when the bodhi trees fruited tremendously and became smothered with their typical golden balls of succulence, the ahbodhi trees produced a lesser load of distorted discolored objects that were repulsively sour to the taste.

	The two kinds were related, different varieties of the same species, yet one had spawned and the other miscarried. One had mastered circumstances, the other been mastered by them—almost like people.

	Edham got a thought-out of that, a dark suspicion. He did not record it because it was not yet a self-evident fact. But the notion kept circling tentatively in his mind, without hardening. It gained strength nearer the year's end when ten allied breeds of bushes produced crops as eatable as any on their home territory—but at different dates, in different sizes, shapes and colors.

	All tasted the same. All gave the same responses to his perhaps inadequate analysis. All provided a welcome freshness for his digestive juices and nourished him to the same extent. Yet all were different.

	"If I live my kind can live. If I live my kind will settle here, build new cities, a new world. They will have natural increase—but will that increase be natural? Will their children be the same?"

	No answer—no way of telling. It was entirely his own mystery, as unsatisfactory and frustrating as John's sad puzzle. So he held it in restraint without putting it aside, and gladly ate of such of the crop as was eatable. He had consumed Sunup Meal 1100 already and was more than eager for a change of diet.

	"I am now going out of count with the packaged food," he recorded, "by reason of using part of the crop. There are yet no signs of anything seeding apart from the usual influx of local weeds. The crop has to be protected not only from these but also from periodic attacks of flying things, occurring always during daylight tempors, never at night.

	"So far I have killed about four hundred raiders and lost little. There has been nothing to show why night-time flyers are not similarly attracted. I have examined myself and have been unable to detect any change except that my color remains heightened."

	Propagation eventually followed the same course as the fruiting, delays where there had been delays, intervals matching intervals, differences where there had been differences. Something in the rays of the concealed sun or the soil or the rain or the air was creating new varieties and thrusting a subtle wedge between existing ones to force them further apart.

	Nevertheless he noted every item, patiently set the seed, drove off the winged monsters whose bellies yearned for the grains as much as for the fruits. Aware by training that what he had eaten of this his first crop, though of Di-origin, was alien grown, he watched himself more frequently for secondary effects. There were none visible and when one did come it caught him unknowing, unsuspicious.

	He was winged for one of his boredom-breaking strolls around the wall and a pleasant exchange of insults with his neighbors when a black thing came down from the sky, intent on plunder. Many a seed was being coddled by the ash of such a visitor but this time he did not wait for it to land before dissolving it in smoke.

	A sudden unfamiliar feeling swept irresistibly over him. His veins swelled, his eyes blazed, he spread his wings and bulleted upward to meet it. The creature died halfway down from a cloud and as he beamed it he heard a yell of triumph in his own voice.

	Sitting on top of the wall, pinions folded, the midjoints pointing high above his shoulders, legs dangling down on the jungle side, he pondered the phenomenon. It was unwonted bellicosity. That any Disian can display belligerence was not in itself surprising. No kind can settle a thousands worlds without taking the offensive whenever the occasion demanded it. The point was that he had displayed uncontrolled animosity at the drop of a meal wrapper without real need to do so. It was lack of self-discipline. It was unreason.

	The subject stewed in his mind a full tempor, during which he gave grave consideration to the possible state of his liver, his gall bladder, his kidneys or, alternatively, the subtler effect upon his mentality of three years of isolation.

	Before he had finished his speculations the chest-drummer or its twin brother shambled out of the jungle shadows, stood directly below him, glared up red-eyed and roared its hate. On other days when this had happened he'd contented himself with an answering mock-glare guaranteed to make the creature put over an interesting exhibition of animal frenzy. This time his own eyes blazed. He bent forward—and spat upon it.

-
CHAPTER V - The Sound of a Voice

	For a considerable time afterwards he was broody, introspective, frequently consulted the mirror. There was no physical change that he could pin down as more than imaginary. The hair on his head seemed thicker, more wiry, harder to subdue. His eyes held a constant hint of aggressiveness—or so he fancied. He could not be sure.

	Sheer self-discipline kept him away from the walls while he concentrated upon the plants, his progress reports and the potentially alterable phenomenon of his own body. On four occasions he bit his lips as he beamed a flying raider, coolly, carefully, with determined disregard of that part of him which screamed for closer battle.

	Nothing of this went into the auto-recorder, not a jot, not a hint. All the transformations he could perceive were duly noted but not those only half-seen or dimly suspected.

	With the end of winter and the coming of spring the rising tide of his blood swamped his restraint. Day after day, tempor after tempor, he had paced his enclosure from one end to the other, to and fro, to and fro, like a caged animal. The skies retained their everlasting gray but the fresher air was cool and warm by turns. Putting on his wings he soared to the wall, strolled along its crest.

	A slate-colored colossus, resembling that monstrous sleeper of long ago, was standing close to the base on the southern side and rubbing its back against the stone to scrape off unseeable parasites. The process created loud rasping sounds and sent up an odor of pungent hide.

	Standing directly above it and looking down into the smell, Edham felt his mouth open of its own accord and he bawled an ugly name at it. The monster ceased its scratching, looked stupidly around in every direction but upward. He called it again. It discovered him, focused eyes incongruously small in so tremendous a head.

	Releasing an angry snort of such power that he could feel the wind of it many cubits above, the thing reared itself against the wall, tried to claw him down, found him out of reach by more than a man-length. It gave another snort of imbecilic disappointment, fell back to ground with a rousing thud. Its stench was strong, acrid.

	For the first time since his almost forgotten trip with Rafel the winged Edham left the enclosure. With no thought of rules and regulations and temporarily forgetful of past training he spread his pinions and dived off the wall—outward. His bold swoop carried him straight across the other's serrated back, his feet touching it in passing. It twisted with twenty-ton clumsiness, clawed at him and missed. Behemoth swiping a wasp.

	Edham landed lightly in thick grass. His opponent snuffled eagerly and charged. He soared again at the very last instant, his eyes afire. The thing tossed its head as its own momentum carried it beneath him, touched a foot. He beamed away the tip of its tail as it passed. The jungle was full of spectators, howling and hooting at the pair of them. The tree-tops quivered and gave forth noises.

	Coming down into the grass once more he whirled around in readiness for another charge. His lungs were big, his breath came fast and some strange appetite within him was satiating itself upon he knew not what.

	The slate-gray nightmare had lumbered around in a small circle, snuffling all the while. Finding him, it fixed tiny eyes upon him, expanded its nostrils to keep his scent and launched itself forward. The ponderous beat of its oncoming feet resounded far through the ground and vibrated up the trees to where the hidden audience stank and gibbered.

	With wings folded Edham waited for the creature to be almost upon him. He remained stock still until he could see the wetness upon a huge misshapen tooth. Then he sprang aside. Too much tonnage carried the other on, unable to swerve. He rayed away another section of its tail.

	By now the peculiar hunger within him had gone. He opened wings to soar, found himself anchored. A weirdly patterned worm in the undergrowth had coiled itself around one ankle. It had beady unblinking eyes that watched him fixedly as coil after coil came slithering through the grass.

	The slate-gray monster came back thunderously, cheered on by the crowd. Edham chopped the worm at random, arose sluggishly with the severed portion still clinging as if unconscious of its loss. The slate-gray monster was almost upon him.

	For an awful moment he thought he was not going to make it. Power poured through the propulsor and his wings swept wide while the beady-eyed thing clung raw-ended and tried to summon its missing length.

	Dragging it with him he went up, frantically shaking his leg. It dropped off barely in time to save him and sudden release of the burden caused him to shoot skyward almost from under the twenty-tonner's nose.

-

	This close escape eased the peculiar gnawing inside him. Gaining the wall he sat on its top, drew long relieved breaths and perspired. There were queer disconnected thoughts running through his mind, the inconsequential notions of an uneasy sleep.

	"Life is beautiful because of death, like light in the darkness. To battle is to live and to live is to be not-dead. I must fight or be dead. I must live. A Granor must live."

	He looked down upon his recent opponent, now snorting around defeatedly, and echoed in bemused manner, "A Granor? What is a Granor?"

	Then he stood up and yelled at the jungle, "I am Man! Look, I am Man!"

	The jungle screamed back, "A-a-ah!"

	The ship's return was like the occurrence of a major miracle. True, after most of six years it should have been expected or at least hoped for. But six years can be six tempors or as many centuries, according to the circumstances. By the time it came back it was to Edham little more than the figment of a half-forgotten dream.

	He stiffened with incredulity when the clouds were blown apart and the vessel appeared. A multitude of emotions electrified his being while he watched the shining thing come down. A conflicting mixture of surly resentment and ecstatic anticipation took hold of him as though somehow he had become two individuals in one body, each reacting in its own way. The vision of the ship had precipitated a sort of spiritual schizophrenia.

	Rafel was first out. His big luminous eyes alive with pleasure he seized Ed-ham's hand, winced at the power of its grasp.

	"Here we are, not merely up to time, but early." His hands went to either side of the other's shoulders, patting them, estimating their width. "My, but you look splendid! You're bigger, broader, heavier and it's all muscle. This place must suit you. Jolin will be overjoyed."

	"Jolin," murmured Edham, looking around.

	"He's not with us this trip," Rafel went on. "No point in him judging the same planet twice. He has gone with Razudiel to look over a new system beyond Neo-Dise."

	"So?" said Edham, staring at the ship.

	"Well, aren't you pleased to see us?" Rafel regarded him more carefully. "You never did say much but now you seem almost speechless." His smile followed quickly, full of sympathy. "I guess you're a little overwhelmed by company and the sound of a voice."

	"The sound of a voice," repeated Edham, speaking as if from far away.

	Taking his arm, Rafel led him toward the ship. "The first part of your task—the stage of silence—is ended. The worst is over. The next will be shorter and sweeter—if the medicos pass you."

	"If," said Edham.

	"There seems little likelihood that they won't," encouraged Rafel. "I have never seen a Granor looking in such excellent trim."

	"I am not fattening myself for the kill," Edham assured. "And what is more I am laughing." He nodded toward the wall. "As I have laughed at them, loud, long and often." He paused, licked his lips, added with strange satisfaction, "They do not like me laughing."

	Sobering, Rafel became thoughtful as he took Edham into the ship, handed him over to the medicos.

	There were six of these examiners, tall, coldly professional, white-coated. Stripping him they went over him cell by cell, made him breathe down a tube so that the contents of his lungs bubbled into an inverted bottle, took blood samples from various parts of him, took hair and nail clippings, even a skin section.

	They rayed him, studied his insides upon a fluorescent screen from four different angles, discussed his spleen in incomprehensible jargon. They photographed the lining of his stomach with a button camera at the end of a flexible tube, used a powerful light beam and a magnaglass to examine his tongue, throat and epiglottis. They asked a hundred questions.

	"You have a seed molar. Did the first one expel itself in normal manner or did you have to extract it?"

	"When did you first observe the appearance of body-hair?"

	"Did you make a note of it in your autorecorder?"

	"Did it appear simultaneously in all places where now evident, or did it start in one place and spread from there?"

-

	He asked, "Does hair matter?"

	"Most certainly."

	"Why?"

	They became evasive. "Hair upon the body is not a normal feature of our kind—and every change matters."

	"So I have changed?"

	The chief examiner said, "Look, everyone alters from birth to death."

	"As I have?"

	"This is a routine investigation and not a debate," reminded the examiner. "Leave it to us to decide which physical phenomena are significant and which are not."

	Edham said, "Don't bellow at me."

	"I am not bellowing. I spoke in perfectly ordinary tones." He gestured to an assistant. "Have a look at his ears."

	They went over the ears, presently put down upon a form the words, Aural sense preternaturally sharpened.

	A bit later, "How did you acquire those scars on the calf-muscle of your right leg?"

	He stared down at the leg, twisting himself to see the marks. "Fighting a wild thing. It clawed me."

	They were tempted to ask why he had not beamed it before it got that near but refrained. Such questions were for the psychoanalysts.

	In due time the latter had their turn and put it to him, "Is your hand-projector still energized and efficient?"

	"Yes."

	"Why didn't you use it?"

	"I please myself. I am an individual."

	"We have not the slightest desire to challenge your rights as such," soothed the other. "We are merely interested in your reasons for doing whatever you saw fit to do. We cannot and would not force you to give an explanation."

	"You'd have a hot time trying," assured Edham, involuntarily tightening his fist.

	The expert was very observant. Calmly he regarded the fist, estimated the degree of muscular contraction, the amount of mental tension behind it. Edham forced the hand to open, the fingers to relax. The other was not deceived.

	"Have you been beyond the walls?"

	"Yes."

	"Have you actually landed outside the walls?"

	"Yes."

	"Often?"

	"Yes."

	"Knowing that it was contrary to instructions?"

	"Yes."

	"And dangerous?"

	Edham said nothing.

	The expert wrote down a couple of little squiggles meaning, Co-operative with reluctance—but truthful, before he went off on another tack.

	"Members of the crew are checking over the state of the plantation and condition of the ramparts. Beyond the wall they have found a bloodthirsty looking creature, thick-furred, with striped markings. It is dead. It appears to have expired recently, in mid-spring, claws extended, mouth open."

	He stared at Edham, who remained silent. He placed an object on his desk. "It was pierced by four of those."

	The object was a long slender arrow.

	"It is well-made," commented the expert. "Skillfully constructed with a needle-sharp metal head. The bow from which it came must have been powerful."

	"It was," Edham acknowledged indifferently.

	"Did you shoot this creature from the wall-top or were you in the outside grass?"

	"The grass."

	"A bow, a bow and arrows," commented the other, poking the pointed and feathered shaft away from him. "He uses a primitive type of weapon in lieu of a modern beam-projector." His gaze lifted, he surveyed Edham curiously. "It would be nice to learn the logic on which such a preference is based."

	Edham said, "The targets are just as primitive. They struggle with what they've got, what they can make themselves."

	"I see." The leading questioner glanced at his silently listening fellows, returned his attention to Edham. "You cannot manufacture a projector which needs all the craft of an experienced armorer—but you can make a bow. You derive satisfaction from that?"

	"Yes."

	"Why?"

	Both his fists hardened and whitened as Edham leaned forward and snapped, 'I am Man!"

	"That will be all," said the other.

-

CHAPTER VI - The Redhead

	Edham never saw the reports. Written conclusions invariably are withheld from the Granor. His only clue lay in the length of the deliberations and the frequent summoning of Rafel, who looked a mite more solemn at each successive visit. It was evident that there was some difference of opinion, some profound uncertainty which made the question of triumph or failure highly debatable.

	Eventually he would know their decision from what they did with him. If he had changed in manner not to their liking but had nothing contagious, they would put a black mark against the planet and take him home.

	If he were afflicted with something unwanted, incurable and uncontrollable, they would abandon him along with his accursed world and add his name to those upon the obelisk. But if failure were not yet certain and success a possibility, no matter how remote, they would push him into the second stage of his task.

	It was four days before he knew. In that time the crew had attended to all repairs, overhauled the engine and pumps, installed a remote control for the latter, supplied fresh spools for his autorecorder, recharged his beam, supplied new wings and propulsion, landed a huge load of packaged meals, all duly numbered. They did not touch the plants. The living would go on living—the dead stay dead.

	There were eight females with the crew. Moving around together in a lithe colorful bunch, they explored the house, the instrument shed, the plantation. In single file they trotted along the wall-top, chattering like birds, laughing in lilting tones and exclaiming from time to time over the few exotic flowers visible in the jungle.

	All were young, strong, well-shaped. All studied Edham with clear frank eyes at every opportunity, weighing him up, estimating him. For his part he tried to avoid them. Their presence was closely linked with his fate. He was acutely conscious of the fact and embarrassed by the uncertainty of his position.

	In the late afternoon of the fourth day Rafel came to him. "The conference is over. I am more than glad to hear the end of it. Yours has been a difficult case."

	"I know. I am hairy."

	Rafel did not smile. He went on, "They say you have changed and in all probability will continue to do so. The purely physical features of it are innocuous. They are nothing to worry about, nothing to fear. Indeed, some of them are advantageous."

	"Come to the worst," Edham suggested impatiently.

	"It is the psychological shift that has them bothered. They detect an abnormal combativeness which, in theory, could grow until it becomes completely irrational."

	"This life of mine is abnormal. What do they expect? The dullness of a routine worker in Dise?"

	"All your troubles and trials have been taken into account," said Rafel. "After considering everything—even the impetuosity of the pioneer, even boredom—they find more bellicosity than can be explained, more than is natural or necessary. It is the little extra you have absorbed from this bellicose world. You may continue to absorb it. At saturation point—if you live to reach it—where will you be?"

	"Sitting around and not permitting everything," Edham answered. "And laughing."

	Letting it pass Rafel continued, "Anyway, the second stage of this planet-probing task is shorter, less trying. You should come to no great harm if we carry on awhile. Besides we would deserve to lose a world if we let go of it at the first setback." He looked straight at Edham. "Do you want to be taken home while the going is still good?"

	Edham said in level tones, "To return voluntarily would be to return in disgrace, to be pointed out as the Granor who came back screaming. Do you think I would enjoy that? How would you like a bust on the nose?"

	"There you go again:" said Rafel shrugging good-humoredly. "Well, the die is cast. It is for you to go through the second stage."

	"With whom?"

	"Of the eight Companions who have seen you and looked over this place, six have volunteered."

	"Two don't like me, eh?"

	"Not necessarily," denied Rafel. "For some reason which is beyond my mere male mind there are always two who want to see the next place. No matter how many Companions I take out, invariably I return with two—eagerly awaiting yet another world."

	"Feminine curiosity," ventured Edham.

	"The six have taken first pick as is the right of their sex. It is now your turn."

	"Which six?"

	Rafel nodded toward somewhere behind the other's back. "They are over there. The pair of transgalactic tourists are in the ship."

	Without looking around Edham said, "If the tall, slender one with the flaming hair is among them—"

	"The redhead. So be it. You have chosen your Companion as she has chosen you." Rafel eyed the sky. "I will perform the ceremony of association this evening if you are agreeable. We will depart at the fourth tempor of tomorrow."

-

	With the morning they were summoned to the vessel, the Granor and his Companion.

	Rafel began with, "We are ready to boost. Is there anything you desire, anything you wish to ask before we go?"

	"No," replied Edham.

	"Are you satisfied with each other?" He smiled as he read the answer in their faces. "We shall return in about three and a half years. I hope then to find evidence in favor of systematic settlement.

	"If so, a time may come when more Disians share your world, building it to greatness." His gaze shifted from one face to the other. "You will have much honor."

	"Darn the honor," said Edham. "Give me the fun."

	Trying to frown his disapproval, Rafel found it far from easy. He switched the subject. "Any alterations in yourselves will be the results of or adjustment to local conditions. Comparatively speaking it will be slow, insidious. It cannot have the swiftness and extremism of radical mutation." He stopped, rubbed his forehead while he sought around for further words.

	"Meaning our children?" Edham prompted.

	Rafel seized upon it gratefully. "We could learn more of real significance from your children than we can ever learn from you. Apart from other yet undetected peculiarities this planet has a deal of radioactivity. What does it mean to our kind? What might it do?" He spread helpless hands. "We don't know."

	"All in good time," offered Edham.

	"Your children are very much to be desired—by us," Rafel went on. "Nevertheless I advise you not to have any unless desired by you."

	The redhead put in tartly, "The Ancient College of Granors' Companions is not a consortium for the stupid and—"

	Hurriedly, Rafel countered her. "I am reminding you that Dise imposes no duty upon you in this particular respect. You are completely free to please yourselves."

	"That goes for me, too," she said, blandly shoving him off balance.

	Recovering he stood up, made his voice serious. "Except in one respect—you will eat nothing native to this world. It is strictly forbidden. When the time comes to try subsisting on local products, you will be informed."

	"Boxed-up meals." She sighed regretfully. "Enriched, concentrated, reduced, fastened down and caged. I took a tedious course on them—How to Make Packaged Food Interesting. Oh, well." She patted her flaming hair, tucked a curl behind her ear. "There are other interests."

	Eyeing her somewhat askance Rafel avoided the subject, held out his hand.

	The two stood side by side watching the ship go up. It shrank as before, was swallowed up by a cloud, was gone.

	"And that is that," remarked Edham, sensing the loss and yet glad of it.

	"What now, Flabby?" she inquired.

	"I think that for a start—" His voice petered out, his eyes suddenly burned at her. "What was that you just called me?"

	She repeated it with annoying gusto, a smile on her oval face, and she turned slightly sidewise. A growl sounded low in his chest. He pounced at her, hands out, fingers wide. She was away like the wind, hair streaming.

	It was a full and arduous tempor before he cornered her by the southern wall. The laughter of their struggle brought answering howls and screams from the other side of the ramparts.

-

	More imaginative treatment of meals plus the comfort of her presence transformed the area into a haven of peace and satisfaction—for a time. Edham lazed around, ignored the jungle, enjoyed his new-found domesticity.

	The girl had a seemingly endless capacity for keeping him amused, occupying his attention, diverting his energies from former paths. When his spell of idleness wore off she found him numerous tasks and when she came to the end of those she invented new ones. He performed them all with the casual uncomplaining air of one who has known the weight of time on his hands.

	Now and again she tantalized him, apparently on sheer impulse born of some feminine quirk. Invariably he failed to notice that such occasions were carefully chosen.

	Thus, for example, there was that moment he stood at the west end, close by the wall, looking longingly at the top and sensing once more the urge to go out and do battle and shout with triumph until exhausted. His eyes were shining, his chest was out, brown-skinned with hairs upon it.

	She came silently behind him, noting every detail, and said, "See here, Rugbust, I—" Then she turned and fled for her life, long slender legs moving with the grace of a ballet-dancer's.

	Three jumps behind her he collided with the door of the instrument shed as she slammed it against him. He could hear her squealing with excitement. Scrambling onto the roof, his muscles bulged as he began to tear up a sheet and make a gap big enough to drop through. She came out and immediately he realized that he'd been fooled. Her wings had been hidden within. She emerged on white pinions, soared gracefully, waggled pink toes just beyond leaping distance from his head.

	Perforce he had to go back to the house, don his own wings. It was near nightfall before he got her at tremendous height in the base of a cloud, By then he was tired and hungry, precisely as she had calculated.

	None of this went into the autorecorder. The blithe waste of propulsor-power was part of the mating game and there were no dutiful confessions for the ears of others.

	They did not have a real difference until a hundred days later when he came in for the noon meal and found flowers upon the table. He glowered at the blooms, then at her.

	"Where did you get these?"

	"In the jungle." The reply was made with disturbing matter-of-factness as she placed a steaming dish upon the table and seated herself.

	"So you have been outside the walls without my knowledge while my attention was diverted elsewhere?"

	"Of course."

	"There are dangerous creatures in the jungle."

	"I know it."

	He was chewing his bottom lip and glowering at her now. "You could be torn to pieces."

	"So could you." Her eyes came up, faintly accusing and at the same time expressing the resignation of one who has tried in vain to control a mischievous child.

	"I know how to look after myself."

	"So do I."

	"Hah!" he exclaimed. "Hah!"

	She snapped at him. "All right, Fungus-front, go out and see for yourself. It's just over the south wall."

	Giving her a look he went out, investigated, came back and said, "You killed it while you had both feet on the ground. You beamed it face to face."

	"That's me," she admitted. "Man to man!"

	"It wasn't a man. Neither are you."

	Putting shapely elbows on the table she rested her chin in one hand and made her voice sugar-sweet. "What I like about you is your swift grasp of things."

	"Then how about this?" he retorted, making a quick grab across the table, fingers crooked for a coil of thick red hair.

	The snatch missed solely because the table jumped. The floor jumped with it. The house performed a brief jig. A dull cavernous rumbling sounded from east to west. The stony ramparts quivered along their full length. The rumble ended in a faraway crack.

	"What was that?" she asked, sitting erect, wide-eyed, startled.

	"A quake." He leaned back, stared at his grabbing hand while he cooled off. "They come once in a while. Elsewhere they're more frequent and much more violent. Elsewhere they're really something!"

	She thought it over for a while, said suddenly, "Do you believe in precognition?"

	"It is a subject that has been argued for a thousand years and will be for another thousand. I have no opinion about it." He studied her curiously. "Why do you ask?"

	"To take unnecessary risks is against the rules. Yet despite that, despite your training, despite my attempts to divert you, the jungle calls you—until you obey." Her long fingers toyed with each other nervously.

	"So last evening, when you thought yourself unobserved, you went outside with your bow. And this morning I went outside for flowers—the flowers you have never brought me."

	He flinched at that and began, "I would gladly bring them if you did not criticize the getting and—"

	"You misunderstand me. I am not criticizing you. Not any more." The hands folded. "You see I feel as you do—I yearn to go outside."

	"You do?"

	"The desire grows, encouraged by your bad example." Her gaze upon him was thoughtful, speculative. "Do you suppose that something may be impelling us to get accustomed to the jungle—while there is time?"

	It made him vaguely uneasy.

	"Instinct is a peculiar thing," she went on. "It comes to animals and birds as a mixture of precognition and ancestral memory and helps them survive." The steadiness of her gaze unsettled him as she finished, "Why do you crave the green hell?"

	"I get restless."

	"Why?"

	"Kind of have the fidgets sometimes."

	"Why?"

	"Oh, heck!" he said, giving it up.

	"Take me with you next time you go out," she pleaded. "Two together are safer than one—and I get such a wonderful feeling of freedom beyond the walls."

	It was his turn to come back with, "Why?"

	"Because I know that this world will take us only on its own terms. Not on ours but on its own. We must be ready."

	"My luck," he commented, making a mock-frown at the ceiling. "Just my luck. I need a Companion who is pink and soft and warm and understanding.

	I pick one and what do I get? A seer! A long-legged second-sighter! A prophet of disaster! A red witch!"

	"Think of the remarkable children we could have," she jibed. "With your hair and my magical powers. Furry demons."

	"Be quiet," he ordered. His shoulders hunched to rid themselves of a cold little shiver. There are jokes—and there are jokes.

-

CHAPTER VII - Rejected

	Disaster came in the midsummer of Edham's eighth year and his Companion's second. There was no warning, no preliminary sounding of some deep note of doom. Indeed at first there was nothing to show that an experiment was being ended in order that a new one might begin. All that happened was that the sun shone.

	It was the first time they had seen the sun from this planet's surface. Up to date there had been only the great blanket of cloud overhead, darkening or glowing and pouring heat by day, deepening the nights and hiding the stars. Always the fierce primary had been concealed.

	Now the clouds broke widely, revealing a bronze-blue sky in which the sun burned with awful vim and sent down stinging rays. Edham studied it through a dark glass, saw a great spot upon its tormented surface. The visual radio-scope in his instrument shed picked up a mass of flickering shadows and swiftly changing checkered patterns indicative of violent disturbances across all bands.

	By day and by night the heat was terrific. At first it did not bother the red-haired Companion. She came from Ultra-Dise, a planet far hotter than Dise itself, and thus was well fitted to endure the blaze. But as the sun burned on, week upon week, she began to wilt along with the barely surviving plants, along with the wilting jungle.

	In the seventh week the last tortured Disian plant gave up its eight-year-old battle and lay in the hot dust. Smoke from fires in the dehydrated jungle drifted over the walled area, brought with it a stench of burning flesh and hide. A small quake came, followed by another and another while still the orb flamed in the sky and the shrinking rivers steamed.

	With the death of the last bodhi tree the Companion's uncomplaining endurance ended. She posed taut but tired in the hot shadow of the instrument shed, looked across the barren area shimmering with heat-waves.

	"There is that deep cave we found in the mountainside far across the river. It is cool, comfortable and has water at its back. I think it might have been better had we moved there when first we discovered it."

	"A Granor does not desert his post for the sake of comfort." He wiped his forehead with the back of a hairy hand, kept his eyes away from the blazing thing in the sky.

	"I know, I know. I am with you while there is duty to be done." She surveyed the dust of their hopes. "There is now no post to desert—nothing but four walls. The alien sun has eaten everything. Are we going to let it consume us too?"

	"We should hang on and wait for Rafel," he said.

	"What—for at least another year and a half? Of what use to Rafel are whitened bones?"

	"We have enough food."

	"One cannot live on food alone. One must have water and sleep. One must have sleep." She eyed him slantwise. "How much have you slept?"

	"Little. It is too hot. We must suffer until the clouds come back."

	"Not me," she declared flatly. "What is left to merit the suffering? Nothing! Tonight I shall slumber peacefully in the cool of the cave even if I sleep alone, even if it is my last sleep on this world." With that she went for her wings.

	He remained, pondering gloomily. After a while he put on his wings and followed her—as she had known he would.

	They were asleep in the cave ten nights afterward when the great quake that shook their mountain range flattened the distant plantation's south wall, blocked the west river, created a great, shallow stinking lake which lapped close to the remaining ramparts. Thirsty monsters, half-crazed by heat, made the lake their drinking-place, the broken area their stamping-ground.

	Throughout the following week Edham battled more savage life-forms than he had tackled in any one year. Under the merciless sun he swooped down wide-winged, beamed them away from the house, rescued packages of food and took them to the cave. He made trips by night, expecting less opposition, but they were there in even greater numbers, red-toothed and eager for him.

	Thus the food stocks were laboriously reduced in loads pitifully small. The cost approximated one killing per package plus the risk of his own violent ending. The area swarmed with ferocious forms as did every place within easy reach of water. The world screamed for water and, having got it, wanted flesh.

	On something over his one hundredth trip he returned to the cave so borne down by his burden that he barely escaped the brown scalded tops of trees from which menacing worms had long vanished. At that point his propulsor expired. Too-frequent usage and heavy overloading had dried up the power source. The wings were useless.

	Food is more important than flight. Using his Companion's equipment he continued the trips, transported to the cave more than half the stock of the distant house before the second propulsor failed. They were landbound. They were at one with the animals, the things that crept through the shadows and could never reach the sky.

	It seemed a major blow to Edham since the remaining stores now were ten days' march away with every step disputed. To his Companion it was a secret relief. Now she had him close by and did not have to scan the skies at every flight, praying for his safe return.

	Both beam projectors continued to function long after clouds had reappeared to hide the sun and right through the raging winter. One petered out with the spring—the other eighty days later. They turned to bows, fought the reviving jungle, consumed its fruits, ate of its flesh, grew heavy yet more agile.

	They quaffed the undistilled water which seeped from the rock at the back of the cave and they did not fall ill, they did not die. Neither the water nor the food nor the past torment of that violent sun made them diseased or misshapen.

	No change was apparent to them except that the longer they knew the jungle the more it seemed like home—for they did not realize that they had developed a swift, abiding fury equal to its own.

-

	Eternal hope kept them from being completely absorbed by this world. No matter how powerfully surged the passions it induced within them they held fast to respective memories of Dise and Ultra-Dise and to the dream of being found on Rafel's return.

	Yet, strangely, along with the desire to be discovered lurked another frequently-repressed wish that neither mentioned to the other and that they denied even to themselves—the hope that discovery would not mean removal. This world had not yet taken them body and soul but it was establishing by insidious means a claim that grew stronger tempor by tempor, day by day.

	"I have found golden grain to the east, Bristle-body. I don't know how or why the animals have missed it. Big, beautiful heads of grain."

	"Probably it isn't fit to eat."

	"I tried it on myself a week ago."

	"You—" His deeply tanned face went taut. "You might have died."

	"So might you this morning when you fought that beast which we did not need for meat."

	"It was interested in the cave. I permit nothing near the cave." He bunched a fist. "I am Man!"

	"Then you can make me a stone grinder," she said. "If I had a grinder I could make flour and bread and cakes."

	"Cakes!" he spat. "In this place."

	"You'll see," she promised, not the least bit disturbed by his attitude. "Fruit cakes and meat patties. Real food!"

	"Forbidden food."

	"What else is there?"

	"The packages I took such pains to get."

	"They will not last. Eventually we shall have to subsist only on what this world has to offer and chance what it does to us. We might as well start now. I'm not afraid."

	"Not afraid but impetuous."

	She studied his heavily muscular body, clad in the colorful skin of some animal he had slaughtered, shifted her gaze to the powerful bow grasped in his right hand and said, "Listen to who's talking."

	"I will make a grinder and you can have your cakes," he agreed, conscious of unspoken accusations. "And may the stars preserve us!"

	"From what? From this world's fruits? We have been eating them already and flesh as well. Can more fruit do any worse?"

	"If their dangerous properties are accumulative we can step over the margin between enough and too much. Besides you and I might gorge ourselves to the limit of our capacity without ill effect upon ourselves but—but—"

	"Our children?"

	"Yes."

	She took a step toward him. "Do you wish for children?"

	"Do you?" he countered. "Of course."

	"No matter what they may be like—or not like?"

	"They would still be ours," she pointed out.

	"Unrecognizably perhaps."

	"I would always know my own regardless—and I am not afraid."

	"But as I have already said you are impetuous," he gave back more gently. "Wouldn't it be better first to wait for the vessel and learn our fate?"

	"Perhaps," she admitted relaxing.

	She watched him as he tightened his bow, watched him stride down the path from the cave and enter between the trees. Something far back in the trees screamed its anger at his coming while she still watched.

	"A-a-ah!"

-

	The great vessel from Dise—it was like some misty figment of a bygone dream. A phantom of the past, hoped for yet feared.

	A thing of dreams it seemed when at last it did come down. Deep in their cave at dead of night they heard a whine come through the sky and resolve itself to the thunderous roar of hot Venturis.

	They ran to the cave's mouth, saw a ring of crimson spears floating over the distant plantation. The spears shortened, went out. Thunder ceased. For a moment they gazed at each other like people who have seen the impossible come to pass.

	Edham got the tiny signal generator which he had rescued from the house, drew out its telescopic antenna, cranked the handle bemusedly. Somewhere over there, far away in the dark, loops were swinging to get his bearing. But his thoughts were not of that. They were of the threatening upheaval to his way of life.

	Winged members of the crew arrived and took them high above the trees, back to the ship. There was huge excitement and much congratulating before they were passed along to the examiners.

	The poking and prying was much longer, more tedious than before and almost unbearably irritating—but the decision came more quickly.

	Rafel summoned them before him. "The plantation has ceased to exist through no fault of yours. All Di-growths have long gone, this world having proved too much for them." His tones were solemn, regretful. "In the circumstances we must reject this planet. It is unsuitable for settlement." Then he added, "But I can comfort Jolin by telling him that he was not entirely wrong."

	Edham said, "How do you mean?"

	"I said this planet is of no use to us. Someday it may be. We have tried it too early, many centuries too early."

	"So it seems," commented Edham, dryly. "If we two can survive among the beasts, so can others."

	Rafel shot back at him, "In what shape?"

	There was no effective answer, no answer at all. Edham fidgeted with the sheer impotence of it, stared back at him, said nothing.

	"I have the examiners' report here," Rafel went on, eyeing the written scroll. "I am not permitted to give it to you in detail but I can state the conclusions. They say you may stay here or return to Dise—at your own choice."

	Silent up to that moment the redhead shrewdly noted his forced impassiveness, asked, "Suppose we elect to go back, what then?"

	With great reluctance, Rafel told her, "There must be no issue of your association."

	"So that's the snag. Always a Companion but never a mother."

	"I am sorry. Truly I am sorry. The basic law must be obeyed even when it thwarts the rights of individuals, and that law says Disians remain Disians now and forevermore. The law says un-Disians are non-Disians except when scientifically produced under proper control. Much as I would like to do so, for your sake it is beyond the power of a mere ship's commander to modify a basic law and—"

	"I prefer to stay," she interrupted. Her air was too positive, too decided to permit argument.

	Rafel's gaze moved inquiringly to Edham, who responded with, "Since you reject it this world is ours, entirely ours, every stick and stone of it ours! Who would surrender a world for the comfort of Dise?"

	"You sadden me," said Rafel. He sighed resignedly. "So be it. I shall put a red mark against this planet to indicate that it is not condemned for all time, that it may be suitable in the future." With slight emphasis, looking at Edham, he repeated. "The distant future."

	"I know what you mean," Edham assured. "And I do not care. A Granor does not care—can you believe that?"

	"Most certainly. To be a Granor one must not care—much."

	"Anyway I've a feeling about this," chipped in the Companion, blithely exercising her feminine precognition. "In the distant future to which you refer the next visit may be from here. What of the law of Dise then?"

	"They will permit the unavoidable," remarked Edham, giving Rafel no time to reply.

	Frowning a little Rafel shrugged it off. "We shall give you new wings, new beam projectors, anything else you may require. They will last awhile and be of some help. More than that I cannot do. When those things are exhausted there will be no further help and you will have to continue as best you can."

	"We have managed without them. We can do so again."

	"I know. I shall make a full report upon it. Your names will be honored in your respective colleges and you will be remembered."

	"While we hasten to forget," remarked Edham.

	It embarrassed Rafel. He covered up by saying, "May the eternal stars be with you," and went away.

	In due time Edham watched the ship go up and noted with only a hint of surprise that the finality of its departure created no emotion within him. There were queer insubstantial tentacles holding him to the dirt of this restless world, alienating him from that other world of his youth. His psychic shape had changed invisibly.

	It was geohypnosis, the cunning fascination of a sphere.

	The ship went through the clouds. In silence they used their new wings to transport equipment to the cave. The task was easier this time for the great vessel's blasting arrival and fiery departure had driven every hostile form from the vicinity.

	Three-walled, open-ended and dead beneath the twilight sky, the area that once had been a place of hope held them musing a little while on their final trip. In the days when it flourished and was thought of as a sometime-city the woman had blessed it with its future name. To please her he had carved it upon the wall now broken by one belly-heave of a world not yet ready for names or walls.

	He was gazing set-faced at the shattered name when she asked, "What is the matter?"

	"I am laughing."

	She grasped his hand. "Come—come with me."

	So together they fled from Para-Dise and set forth into the land and begat many children, all of their own shape but none truly of their kind.

	The first was a murderer.

	The second, his victim.

	The fifth had a yellow skin and tilted eyes.

	Only the tenth had red hair.

	The twelfth was born black.

	But the seed of this seed subdued and mastered the stormy world which some call Terra.

The End