Wind Between the Worlds

(by Lester del Rey)’ I

It was hot in the dome of the Bennington matter transmitter building. The metal shielding walls seemed to catch the rays of the sun and bring them to a focus there. Even the fan that was plugged in nearby didn’t seem to help much. Vie Peters shook his head, knocking the mop of yellow hair out of his eyes. He twisted his lanky, angular figure about, so the fan could reach fresh territory, and cursed under his breath.

Heat he could take. As a roving troubleshooter for Teleport Interstellar, he’d worked from Rangoon to Nairobibut always with men. Pat Trevor was the first of the few women superintendents he’d met. And while he had no illusions of masculine supremacy, he’d have felt a lot better in shorts or nothing right now.

Besides, a figure like Pat’s couldn’t be forgotten, even though denim coveralls were hardly supposed to be flattering. Cloth

stretched tight across a woman’s hips had never helped a man concentrate on his work.

She looked down at him, grinning easily. Her arm came up to toss her hair back, leaving a smudge on her forehead to match one on her nose. She wasn’t exactly pretty; her face had too much honest intelligence for that. But the smile seemed to illumine her gray eyes, and even the metal shavings in her brown hair couldn’t hide the red highlights.

“One more bolt, Vie,” she told him. “Pheooh! I’m melting… . So what happened to your wife?”

He shrugged. “Married a lawyer right after the divorce. Last I knew, they were doing fine. Why not? It wasn’t her fault. Between hopping all over the world and spending my spare time trying to get on the moon rocket they were building, I wasn’t much of a husband. Funny, they gave up the idea of going to the moon the same day she got the divorce.”

Unconsciously, his lips twisted. He’d grown up before DuQuesne discovered the matter transmitter, when reaching the other planets of the Solar System had been the dream of most boys. Somehow, that no longer seemed important to people, now the world was linked through Teleport Interstellar with races all across the galaxy.

Man had always been a topsy-turvy race. He’d discovered gunpowder before chemistry, and battled his way up to the atom bomb in a scant few thousand years of civilization, before he had a worldwide government. Most races, apparently, developed space travel thousands of years before the matter transmitter and long after they’d achieved a genuine science of sociology.

DuQuesne had started it by investigating some obscure extensions of Dirac’s esoteric mathematics. To check up on his work, he’d built a machine, only to find that it produced results beyond his expectations; matter in it simply seemed to disappear, releasing energy that was much less than it should have been, but still enough to destroy the machine.

DuQuesne and two students had analyzed the results, checked the math again, and come up with an answer they didn’t believe. But when they built two such machines, carefully made as nearly identical as possible, their wild idea had proved true; when the machines were turned on, anything in them simply changed placeseven though the machines were miles apart.

One of the students gave the secret away, and DuQuesne was forced to give a public demonstration. Before the eyes of a number

of world-famous scientists and half a hundred reporters, a full ton of coal changed places with a ton of bricks in no visible time. Then, while the reporters were dutifully taking down DuQuesne’s explanation of electron waves that covered the universe and identity shifts, something new was added. Before their eyes, in the machine beside them, a round ball appeared, suspended in midair. It had turned around twice, disappeared for a few seconds, and popped back, darting down to shut off the machines.

For a week, the papers had been filled with the attempts to move the sphere from the machine, crack it open, or at least distract it long enough to cut the machines on again. By the end of that time, it was obvious that more than Earth science was involved. Poor DuQuesne was going crazy with a combination of frustration and crackpot publicity.

Vic’s mind had been filled with Martians then, and he’d managed to be on the outskirts of the crowd that was present when the sphere came to life, rose up, cut on the machine, and disappeared again. He’d been staring at where it had been when the Envoy had appeared. After that, he’d barely had time to notice that the Envoy seemed to be a normal human before the police had begun chasing the crowd away.

The weeks that followed had been filled with the garbled hints that were enough to drive all science fiction fans delirious, though most of the world seemed to regard it as akin to the old flying saucer scare. The Envoy saw the President and the Cabinet. The Envoy met with the United Nations. The Envoy was admittedly a robot! India walked out; India came back. Congress protested secret treaties. General Autos held a secret meeting with United Analine. The Envoy would address the world in English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese.

There were hundreds of books on that period now, and most schoolboys knew the speech by heart. The Galactic Council had detected the matter transmittal radiation. By Galactic Law, Earth had thus earned the rights to provisional status in the Council through discovery of the basic principle. The Council would now send Betzian engineers to build transports to six planets scattered over the galaxy, chosen as roughly comparable to Earth’s culture. The transmitters used for such purposes would be owned by the Galactic Council, as a nonprofit business, to be manned by Earth people who would be trained at a school set up under DuQuesne.

In return, nothing was demanded. And no further knowledge

would be forthcoming. Primitive though we were by the standards of most worlds, we had earned our place on the Councilbut we could swim up the rest of the way by ourselves.

Surprisingly, the first reaction had been one of wild enthusiasm. It wasn’t until later that the troubles began. Vie had barely made his way into the first engineering class out of a hundred thousand ap-licants. Now, twelve years after graduation …

Pat’s voice cut in on his thoughts. “All tightened up here, Vie. Wipe the scowl off and let’s go down to check.”

She collected her tools, wrapped her legs around a smooth pole, and went sliding down. He yanked the fan and followed her. Below, the crew was on standby. Pat lifted an eyebrow at the grizzled, cadaverous head operator. “Okay, Amos. Plathgol standing by?”

Amos pulled his six-foot-two up from his slump and indicated the yellow standby light. Inside the twin poles of the huge transmitter that was tuned to one on Plathgol a big, twelve-foot diameter plastic cylinder held a single rabbit. Matter transmitting was always a two-way affair, requiring that the same volume be exchanged. And between the worlds, where different atmospheres and pressures were involved, all sending was done in the big capsules. One-way handling was possible, of coursethe advance worlds could do it safelybut it involved the danger of something materializing to occupy the same space as something elseeven air molecules; when space cracked open under that strain, the results were catastrophic.

Amos whistled into the transport-wave interworld phone in the code that was universal between worlds where many races could not vocalize, got an answering whistle, and pressed a lever. The rabbit was gone, and the new capsule was faintly pink, with something resembling a giant worm inside.

Amos chuckled in satisfaction. “Tsiuna. Good eating. I got friends on Plathgol that like rabbit. Want some of this, Pat?”

Vie felt his stomach jerk at the colors that crawled over the tsiuna. The hot antiseptic spray was running over the capsule, to be followed by supersonics and ultraviolets to complete sterilization. Amos waited a moment and pulled out the creature.

Pat hefted it. “Big one. Bring it over to my place and I’ll fry it for you and Vie. How’s the Dirac meter read, Vie?”

“On the button.” The 7 percent power loss was gone now, after a week of hard work locating it. “Guess you were rightthe reflector was off angle. Should have tried it first, but it never happened before. How’d you figure it out?”

She indicated the interworld phone. “I started out in anthropology, Vie. Got interested in other races, and then found I couldn’t talk to the teleport engineers without being one, so I got sidetracked to this job. But I still talk a lot on anything Galactic policy won’t forbid. When everything else failed, I complained to one Ecthinbal operator that the Betz II boys installed us wrong. When I got sympathy instead of indignation, I figured it could happen. Simple, wasn’t it?”

He snorted and waited while she gave orders to start business. Then, as the loading cars began to hum, she fell behind him, moving out toward the office. “I suppose you’ll be leaving tonight, Vie? I’ll miss youyou’re the only troubleshooter I’ve met who did more than make passes.”

“When I make passes at your kind of girl, it won’t be a one-night stand,” he told her. “And in my business, it’s no life for a wife.”

But he stopped to look at the building, admiring it for the last time. It was the standard Betz II design, but designed to handle the farm crops around, and bigger than any earlier models on Earth. The Betz II engineers knew their stuff, even if they did look like big slugs with tentacles and with no sense of sight. The transmitters were in the circular center, surrounded by a shield wall, a wide hall all around, another shield, a circular hall again, and finally the big outside shield. The two opposite entranceways spiraled through the three shields, each rotated thirty degrees clockwise from the entrance portal through the next shield. Those shields were of inerted matter that could be damaged by nothing less violent than a hydrogen bomb directly on themthey refused to soften at less than ten million degrees Kelvin. How the Betzians managed to form them in the first place, nobody knew.

Beyond the transmitter building, however, the usual offices and local transmitters across Earth had not yet been built; that would be strictly of Earth construction, and would have to wait for an off season. They were using the nearest building, an abandoned store a quarter mile away, as a temporary office. Pat threw the door open and then stopped suddenly.

“Ptheela!”

A Plathgolian native sat on a chair with a bundle of personal belongings around her, her three arms making little marks on something that looked like a used pancake. The Plathgolians had been meat-eating plants once. They still smelled high to Earth noses, and

their constantly shedding skin resembled shaggy bark, while their heads were vaguely flowerlike.

Ptheela wriggled one of her three arms. “The hotel found it had to decorate my room,” she whistled in Galactic Code. Many of the other races could not vocalize, but the whistling Code could be used by all, either naturally or with simple artificial devices. “No other roomand all the hotels say they’re full up. Plathgolians stink, I guess. So I’ll go home when the transmitter is fixed.”

“With your trade studies half done? Don’t be silly, Ptheela. I’ve got a room for you in my apartment. How are the studies, anyhow?”

For answer, the plant woman passed over a newspaper, folded to one item. “What trade? Your House of Representatives just passed a tariff on all traffic through Teleport!”

Pat scanned the news, scowling. “Damn them. A tariff! They can’t tax interstellar traffic. The Galactic Council won’t stand for it; we’re still only on approval. The Senate will never okay it!”

Ptheela whistled doubtfully, and Vie nodded. “They will. I’ve been expecting this. A lot of people are sick of Teleport.”

“But we’re geared to Teleport now. The old factories are torn down, the new ones are useless to us without interstellar supplies. We can’t get by without the catalysts from Ecthinbal, the cancer-preventative from Plathgol. And who’ll buy all our sugar? We’re producing fifty times what we need, just because most planets don’t have plants that separate the levo from the dextro forms. All Hades will pop!”

Ptheela wiggled her arms again. “You came too early. Your culture is unbalanced. All physics, no sociologyall eat well, little think well.”

All emotion, little reason, Vie added to himself. It had been the same when the industrial revolution came along. Old crafts were uprooted and some people were hurt. There were more jobs, but they weren’t the same familiar ones. Now Plathgol was willing to deliver a perfect Earth automobile, semi-assembled and just advanced enough to bypass Earth patent laws, for half a ton of sugar. The Earth auto industry was gone. And the motorists were mad because Plathgol wasn’t permitted to supply the improved, ever-powered models they made for themselves.

Banks had crashed, industries had folded, men had been out of

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been accepted while it was still bringing new wonders. Now there was a higher standard of living than ever, but not for the groups who

had controlled the monopolies. And too many remembered the wrenching and changing they’d had forced on them.

Also, it hadn’t proved easy to accept the idea of races superior to Man. What was the use of making discoveries when others already knew the answers? A feeling of inferiority had turned to resentment, and misunderstandings between races had bred contempt here. Ptheela was kicked out of her hotel roomand a group had tried to poison the “hideous” Betz II engineers last year.

In an off-election year, politics could drop to the lowest level.

“Maybe we can get jobs on Plathgol,” he suggested bitterly.

Ptheela whistled doubtfully. “Pat could, if she had three husbands engineers must meet minimum standards. You could be a husband, maybe.”

Vie kept forgetting that Plathgol was backward enough to have taboos and odd customs, even though Galactically higher than Earth, having had nearly a million years of history behind her to develop peace and amity.

The televisor connecting them with the transmitter building buzzed, and Amos’ dour face came on. “Screwball delivery with top priority, Pat. Professor named Douglas wants to ship a capsule of lunar vacuum for a capsule of Ecthinbal deep-space vacuum. Common sense says we don’t make much shipping vacuums by the pound!”

“Public service, no charge,” Vie suggested, and Pat nodded. Douglas was a top man at Caltech and his goodwill testimony might be useful sometime. “Leave it on, AmosI want to watch this. Douglas has some idea that space fluctuates, somehow, and he can figure out where Ecthinbal is from a sample. Then he can figure how fast an exchange force works, whether it’s instantaneous or not. We’ve got the biggest Earth transmitters, so he uses us.”

As he watched, a big capsule was put in place by loading machines and the light changed from yellow to red. A slightly greenish capsule replaced the other. Amos signaled the disinfection crew and hot spray hit it, to be followed by the ultrasonics. Something crackled suddenly, and Amos made a wild lunge across the screen.

The big capsule popped, crashing inward and scattering glass shards in a thousand directions. Pressure glass! It should have carried a standard code warning for cold sterilization and no supersonics.

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Pat’s cry brought him back. There were sudden shrieks coming from the televisor. Men in the building were clinging frantically to

anything they could hold, but men and bundles ready for loading were being picked up violently and sucked toward the transmitter. As Vie watched, a man hit the edge of the field and seemed to be sliced into nothingness, his screams cut off, half-formed. Death was inevitable to anything caught in the edge of the field.

A big shard of glass had hit the control wiring, forcing together and shorting two bus bars, holding them together by its weight. It was wedged in firmly and the transmitter was locked into continuous transmit. And air, with a pressure of fifteen pounds per square inch, was running in and being shipped to Ecthinbal, where the pressure was barely an ounce per square inch! With that difference, pressure on a single square foot of surface could lift over a ton. The poor devils in the transmitter building didn’t have a chance.

He snapped off the televisor as Pat turned away, gagging. “When was the accumulator charged?”

“It wasn’t an accumulator in that installation,” she told him weakly. “The whole plant uses an electron-pulse atomotorgood for twenty years of continuous operation.”

Vie swore and made for the door, with Pat and Ptheela after him. The transmitter opening took up about two hundred square feet which meant somewhere between fifty and five hundred thousand cubic feet of air a second were being lost. Maybe worse.

Ptheela nodded as she kept pace with him. “I think the tariff won’t matter much now,” she whistled.

II

Vic’s action in charging out had been pure instinct to get where the trouble lay. His legs churned over the ground, while a wind at his back made the going easier.

Then his brain clicked over, and he dug his heels into the ground, trying to stop. Pat crashed into him, but Ptheela’s arms lashed out, keeping him from falling. As he turned to face them, the wind struck at his face, whipping up grit and dust from the dry ground. Getting to the transmitter building would be easybut with the wind already rising, they’d never be able to fight their way back.

It had already reached this far, losing its force with the distance, but still carrying a wallop. It was beginning to form a pattern, marked by the clouds of dust and debris it was picking up. The arrangement of the shields and entrances in the building formed a perfect suction device to set the air circling around it counterclockwise, twisting into a tornado that funneled down to the portals. Men and

women near the building were struggling frantically away from the center of the fury. As he watched, a woman was picked up bodily, whirled around, and gulped down one of the yawning entrances. The wind covered her cries.

Vie motioned Pat and Ptheela and began moving back, fast. Killing himself would do no good. He found one of the little hauling tractors and pulled them onto it with him, heading back until they were out of the worst of the rising wind. Then he swung to face Ptheela.

“All right, now what? Galactic rules be damned, this is an emergency, and I need help!”

The shaggy Plathgolian made an awkward gesture with all three arms, and a slit opened in her chest. “Unprecedented.” The word came out in English surprisingly, and Pat’s look mirrored his; they weren’t supposed to be able to talk. “You’re right. If I speak, I shall be banished by our council from Plathgol for breaking security. But we can communicate more fully this way, so ask. I may know more we’ve had the Teleport longerbut remember that your strange race has a higher ingenuity quotient.”

“Thanks.” Vie knew what the five husbands back on her home planet meant to her; they were not only a mark of status, but a chance to have stronger and more capable offspring. But he’d worry about that after he could stop worrying about his own world. “What happens next?”

She dropped back to the faster, if less precise, Galactic Code for that. As he knew, the accidental turning on of the transmitter had keyed in the one on Ecthinbal automatically to receive, but not to transmit; the air was moving between Earth and Ecthinbal in oneway traffic. The receiving circuit, which would have keyed in the Ecthinbal transmit circuit had not been shorted. Continuous transmittal had never been used, to her knowledge; there was no certainty about what would happen. Once started, no outside force could stop a transmitter; the send and stop controls were synchronous, both tapped from a single crystal, and only that proper complex wave form could cut it off. It now existed as a space-strain, and the Plathgolians believed that this would spread, since the outer edges transmitted before matter could reach the center, setting up an unbalanced resonance that would make the field grow larger and larger. Eventually, it might spread far beyond the whole building. And, of course, since the metal used by the Betz II engineers could not be cut or damaged, there was no way of tunneling in.

“What about Ecthinbal?” Pat asked.

Ptheela spread her arms. “The same, in reverse. The air rushes in, builds up pressure to break the capsule, and then rushes outin a balanced stream, fortunately, so there’s no danger of crowding two units of matter in one unit of space.”

“Then I guess we’d better call the Galactic Envoy,” Vie decided. “All he’s ever done is to sit in an office and look smug. Now”

“He won’t come to help. He is simply an observer. Galactic Law says you must solve your own problem or die.”

“Yeah.” Vie looked at the cloud of dust being whirled into the transmitter building. “And all I need is something that weighs a couple dozen tons per cubic footwith a good crane attached.”

Pat looked up suddenly. “Impossible. But how about one of the small atom-powered army tanksthe streamlined ones? Flavin could probably get you one.”

Vie stamped on the pedal, swinging the little tractor around sharply toward the office. The wind was stronger already, but still endurable. He clicked the televisor on, noticing that the dust seemed to disappear just beyond the normal field of the transmitter. It must be starting to spread out.

“How about it?” he asked Ptheela. “If it spreads, won’t it start etching into the transmitter and the station?”

“No. Betz II construction. Everything they built in has some way of grounding out the effect. We don’t know how it works, but the field won’t touch anything put in by the Betzians.”

“What about the hunk of glass that’s causing the trouble?”

For a moment she looked as if she were trying to appear hopeful. Then the flowerlike head seemed to wilt. “It’s inside the casingprotected from the field.”

Pat had been working on the private wire to Chicago, used for emergencies. She was obviously having trouble getting put through to Flavin. The man was a sore spot in Teleport Interstellar. He was one of the few political appointees; nominally, he was a go-between for the government and the Teleport group, but actually he was simply a sop to bureaucratic conventions. Finally Pat had him on the screen.

He was jovial enough, as usual, with a red spot on each cheek which indicated too many luncheon drinks. A bottle stood on the desk in

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Pat disregarded the frown Vie threw her and began outlining the situation. The panic in her voice didn’t require much feigning, Vie

guessed. Flavin blustered at first, then pressed the hold button for long minutes. Finally, his face reappeared.

“Peters, you’ll have full authority, of course. And I’ll get a few tanks for you, somehow; I have to work indirectly.” Then he shrugged and went rueful. “I always knew this sinecure would end. I’ve got some red slips here that make it look as if you had a national disaster there.”

His hand reached for the bottle, just as his eyes met Vic’s accusing look. He shook his head, grinned ruefully again, and put the bottle away in a drawer, untouched. “I’m not a fool entirely, Peters. I can do a little more than drink and chase girls. Probably be no use to you, but the only reason I drink is boredom, and I’m not bored now. I’ll be out shortly.”

In his own field, Flavin was apparently good. The tank arrived by intercity teleport just before he did. They were heavy, squat affairs, super-armored to stand up under a fairly close atomic bomb hit, but small enough to plunge through the portals of the transmitter building. Flavin came up as Vie and Pat were studying them. His suit was designed to hide most of his waistline, but the fat of his jowls shook as he hurried up, and there was sweat on his forehead, trickling down from under his toupee.

“Two, eh? Figured that’s what I’d get if I yelled for a dozen. Think you can get inand what’ll you do then?”

Vie shrugged. He’d been wondering the same thing. Still, if they could somehow ram the huge shard of glass and crack it where it was wedged into the wiring inside the shielding, it might release the shorted wires. That should effect an automatic cutoff. “That’s why I’m with the driver. I can extemporize if we get in.”

“Right,” Pat agreed quickly. She caught a hitch in her coveralls and headed for the other tank. “And that’s why I’m going with the other.”

“Pat!” Vie swung toward her. But it wasn’t a time for stupid chivalry. The man or woman who could do the job should do it. He gave her a hand into the compact little tank. “Luck, then. We’ll need it.”

He climbed into his own vehicle, crowding past the driver and wriggling into the tiny observer’s seat. The driver glanced back, then reached for the controls. The motor hummed quietly under them, making itself felt by the vibration of the metal around them. They began moving forward, advancing in low gear. The driver didn’t like it, as he stared through his telescreen, and Vie liked it even less from

the direct view through the gun slit. Beside them, the other tank got into motion, roughly paralleling them.

At first it wasn’t too bad. They headed toward the north portal, traveling cautiously, and the tank seemed snug and secure. Beside him, Vie saw a tree suddenly come up by its roots and head toward the transmitter. It struck the front of the tank, but the machine went on, barely passing the shock through to the two men.

Then the going got rough. The driver swore at the controls, finding the machine hard to handle. It wanted to drift, and he set up a fixed correction, only to revise it a moment later. The tank began to list and pitch. The force of the wind increased by the square inversely as they cut the distance. At fifty feet, the driver’s wrists were white from the tiny motions needed to overcome each tilt of the wind.

Vie swallowed, wondering at the nerve of the man driving, until he saw blood running from a bitten lip. His own stomach was pitching wildly. ‘Try another ten feet?” the driver asked.

“Have to.”

“Not bad guts for a civilian, fellow. Okay, here we go.”

They crawled by inches now. Every tiny bump threatened to let the force of the wind hit under them and pitch them over. They had to work by feeling, praying against the freak chance that might overcome all their caution. Vie wiped his forehead and wiped it again before he noticed that the palm of his hand was as damp as his brow.

He wondered about Pat, and looked for her. There was no sight of the other machine. Thank God, she’d turned back. But there was bitterness in his relief; he’d figured Pat was one human he could count on completely. Then he looked at the driver’s wider view from the screen, and sick shock hit him.

The other tank had turned turtle and was rolling over and over, straight toward the portal! As he looked, a freak accident bounced it up, and it landed on its treads. The driver must have been conscious; only consummate skill accounted for the juggling that kept it upright then. But its forward momentum was still too strong, and it lurched straight toward the portal.

Vie jerked his mouth against the driver’s ear, pointing frantically. “Hit it!”

The driver tensed, but nodded. The shriek of the insane wind was

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ward, pushing Vie down in his webbed and padded seat. The chances they were taking now with complete disregard seemed surely fatal,

but the driver moved more smoothly with a definite goal. The man let the wind help him pick up speed, jockeying sidewise toward the other tank. They almost turned turtle as they swung, bucking and rocking frantically, but the treads hit the ground firmly again. They were drifting across the wind now, straight toward the nose of the other tank.

Vie was strained forward, and the shock of sudden contact knocked his head against the gun slit. He hardly felt it as he stared out. The two tanks struggled, forcing against each other, while the portal gaped almost straight ahead. “Hit the west edge and we have a chance,” Vie yelled in the driver’s ear. The man nodded weakly, and his foot pressed down harder on the throttle. Against each other, the two tanks showed little tendency to turn over, but they seemed to be lifted off the ground half the time.

Inch by slow inch, they were making it. Pat’s tank was well beyond the portal, but Vic’s driver was sweating it out, barely on the edge. He bumped an inch forward, reversed with no care for gears, and hitched forward and back again. They seemed to make little progress, but finally Vie could see the edge move past, and they were out of the direct jet that was being sucked into the portal.

A new screen had lighted beside the driver, and Pat’s face was on it, along with the other driver. The scouring of the wind made speech impossible over the speakers, but the man motioned. Vie shook his head, and indicated a spiral counterclockwise and outward, to avoid bucking against the wind, with the two tanks supporting each other.

They passed the south portal somehow, though there were moments when it seemed they must be swung in, and managed to gain ten feet outward on the turn. The next time around, they had doubled that, and it began to be smoother going. The battered tanks lumbered up to their starting point eventuallyand a little beyond, since the rising wind had forced everyone farther back.

Vie crawled from the seat, surprised to find his legs stiff and weak; the ground seemed to reel under him. It was some comfort to see that the driver was in no better shape. The man leaned against the tank, letting the raw wind dry the perspiration on his uniform. “Bro-other! Miracles! You’re okay, mister, but I wouldn’t go in there again with the angel Michael.”

Vie looked at the wind maelstrom. Nobody else would go in there, either. Getting within ten feet of the portal was begging for death, even in the tankand it would get worse. Then he spotted Pat opening the tank hatch and moved over to help her out. She was bruised

and more shaky than he, but the webbing over the seat had saved her from broken bones. He lifted her out in his arms, surprised at how light she was. His mind flickered over the picture of her tank twisting over, and his arms tightened around her. She seemed to snuggle into them, seeking comfort.

Her eyes came up, just as he looked at her. She lifted her face, and he met her lips in a firm, brief contact. “You scared hell out of me, Pat.”

“Me, too.” She was regaining some color, and motioned him to put her down. “I guess you know how I feel about what you did in there.”

Flavin cut off any answer Vie could have made, waddling up with his handkerchief out, mopping his face. He stared at them, gulped, and shook his head. “Lazarus twins,” he growled. “Better get in the carthere’s a drink in the right door pocket.”

Vie lifted an eyebrow and Pat nodded. They could use it. They found the car and chauffeur waiting farther back. He poured her a small jigger and took one for himself before putting the bottle back. But the moment’s relaxation over cigarettes was better than the drink.

Flavin was talking to the tank drivers, and a small roll changed hands, bringing grins to their faces. For a political opportunist, he seemed a lot more of a man than Vie had expected. Now he came back and climbed in beside them. “I’ve had the office moved back to Benningtonthe intercity teleport manager offered us space.” The locally owned world branches of intercity teleport were independent of Teleport Interstellar, but usually granted courtesy exchanges with the latter. “They’ll be evacuating the city next, if I know the Governor. Just got a cease-and-desist ordercame while you were trying to commit suicide. We’re to stop transmitting at once!”

He grunted at Vic’s grimace and motioned the chauffeur on, just as a call reached them. Vie shook his head at the driver and looked out to see Ptheela ploughing along against the wind, calling to them. The plant woman’s skin was peeling worse than ever.

Flavin followed Vic’s eyes. “You aiming to have that ride with us? The way Plathies stink? Damned plants, you can’t trust ‘em. Probably mixed up in this trouble. I heard …”

“Plathgol rates higher in civilization than we do,” Pat stated flatly.

“Yeah. A million years stealing culture we had to scratch up for

ourselves in a thousand. So the Galactic Council tells us we’ve got to rub our noses to a superior race. Superior plants! Nuts!”

Vie opened the door and reached for Pat’s hand. Flavin frowned, fidgeted, then reached out to pull them back. “Okay, okay. I told you that you were in charge here. If you want to ride around smelling Plathieswell, you’re running things. But don’t blame me if people start throwing mud.” He had the grace to redden faintly as Ptheela came up finally, and changed the subject hastily. “Why can’t we just snap a big hunk of metal over the entrances, to seal them up?”

“Too late,” Ptheela answered, sliding down beside Pat, her English drawing a surprised start from Flavin. “I was inspecting those two tanks, and they’re field-etched where they touched. That means the field is already outside the building, though it will spread more slowly without the metal to resonate it. Anyhow, how could you get metal plates up?”

“How long will the air last?” Pat asked.

Vie shrugged. “If it keeps increasing, a month at breathing level, maybe. Fortunately the field doesn’t spread downward much, with the Betzian design, so it won’t start working on the earth itself. Flavin, how about getting the experts here? I need help.”

“Already sent for them,” Flavin stated. They were heading toward the main part of Bennington now, ten miles from the station. His face was gray, and he no longer seemed to notice the somewhat pervasive odor of Ptheela. They drew up to a converted warehouse finally, and he got out, starting up the steps just as the excited cries of a newsboy reached his ears. He flipped a coin and spread the extra before them.

Word had spread quickly. It was all over the front page, with alarming statements from the scientists first interviewed and soothing statements from later ones. No Teleport Interstellar man had spoken, but an interview with one of the local teleport engineers had given the basic facts, along with some surprisingly keen guesses as to what would happen next.

But above everything was the black headline:

BOMB TRANSMITTER SAYS PAN-ASIA!

The ultimatum issued by Pan-Asia was filled with high-sounding phrases and noble justification, but its basic message was clear enough. Unless the loss of airair that belonged to everyonewas stopped and all future transmitting of all types halted, together with

all dealings with “alien antiterrestrials,” Pan-Asia would be forced to bomb the transmitters, together with all other resistance.

“Maybe …” Flavin began doubtfully, but Vie cut him off. His faith in mankind’s right to its accidental niche in the Galactic Council wasn’t increasing much.

“No dice. The field is a space-strain that is permanent, unless canceled by just the right wave form. The canceling crystal is in the transmitter. Destroy that, and the field never can be stopped. It’ll keep growing until the whole Earth is gone. Flavin, you’d better get those experts here fast!”

Ill

Vie sat in the car the next morning, watching the black cloud that swirled around the station, reaching well beyond the old office. His eyes were red, his face was gray with fatigue, and his lanky body was slumped onto the seat. Pat looked almost as tired, though she had gotten some sleep. Now she took the empty coffee cup and thermos from him. She ran a hand through his hair, straightening it, then pulled his head down to her shoulder and began rubbing the back of his neck gently.

Ptheela purred approvingly from the other side, and Pat snorted. “Get your mind off romance, Ptheela! Vic’s practically out on his feet. If he weren’t so darned stubborn, this should make him go to sleep.”

“Romance!” Ptheela chewed the idea and spat it out. “I’ve read the stories. All spring budding and no seed. A female should have pride from strong husbands and proven seeding.”

Vie let them argue. At the moment, Pat’s attention was soothing, but only superficially. His head went on fighting for some usable angle and finding none. The men who were supposed to be experts knew no more than he did. He’d swiped all the knowledge he could from Ptheela, without an answer. Plathgol was more advanced than Earth, but far below the Betz II engineers, who were mere servants of the top creatures of the Council.

No wonder man had resented the traffic with other worlds. For centuries he had been the center of his universe. Now, like the Tas-manians, he found himself only an isolated island of savages in a universe that was united in a culture far beyond his understanding. He’d never even conquered his own planets; all he’d dene was to build better ways of killing himself.

Now he was reacting typically enough, in urgent need of someone

even lower, to put him on middle ground, at least. He was substituting hatred for his lost confidence in himself. Why learn more about matter transmitting when other races knew the answers and were too selfish to share them?

Vie grumbled to himself, remembering the experts. He’d wasted hours with them, to find that they were useless for anything but argument. The names that had been towers of strength had proved no more than handles for men as baffled as he was. With even the limited knowledge he’d pried from Ptheela, he was far ahead of them and still farther behind the needs of the problem.

The gun Flavin had insisted he wear was uncomfortable, and he pulled himself up, staring at the crew of men who were working as close to the center of wind as they could get. He hadn’t been able to convince them that tunneling was hopeless. All they needed was a one-millimeter hole through the flooring, up which blasting powder could be forced to knock aside the glass shard. They refused to accept the fact that the Betz II shielding could resist the best diamond drills under full power for centuries. He shrugged. At least it helped the general morale to see something being done; he’d given in finally and let them have their way.

“We might as well go back,” he decided. He’d hoped that the morning air and sight of the station might clear his head, but the weight of responsibility had ruined that. It was ridiculous, but he was still in charge of things.

Flavin reached back and cut on the little television set. With no real understanding, he was trying to learn tolerance of Ptheela, but he felt more comfortable in front, beside the chauffeur.

Pat caught her breath, and Vie looked at the screen, where a newscast was showing a crowd in Denver tearing down one of the Earth-designed intercity teleports. Men were striking back at the menace blindly. A man stood up from his seat in Congress to demand an end to alien intercourse; Vie remembered the fortune in interstellar trading of levo-rotary crystals that had bought the man his seatand the transmitter-brought drugs that had saved him from death by cancer. He’d spouted gratitude, once!

There were riots in California, the crackpot Knights of Terra were recruiting madly, and murder was on the increase. Rain had fallen in

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country, caused by the unprecedented and disastrously severe low over Bennington. People were complaining of the air, already claim—

ing that they could feel it growing thinner, though that was sheer hysterical nonsense. The Galactic Envoy was missing.

The editorial of the Bennington Times came on last, pointing a finger at Vie for changing the circuits, but blaming it on the aliens who hoarded their knowledge so callously. There was just enough truth to be dangerous. Bennington was close enough to the transmitter to explain the undertone of lynch law that permeated the editorial.

“I’ll put a stop to that,” Flavin told Vie angrily. “I’ve got enough muscle to make them pull a complete retraction. But it won’t undo all of it.”

Vie felt the automatic, and it seemed less of a nuisance now. “I notice no news on Pan-Asia’s ultimatum.”

“Yeah. I hear the story was killed by Presidential emergency orders, and Pan-Asia has agreed to a three-day stayno more. My information isn’t the best, but I gather we’ll bomb it with our own bombs if it isn’t cleared up by then.”

Vie climbed out at the local station office, with the others trailing. In the waiting room, a vaguely catlike male from Sardax waited, clutching a few broken ornaments and a thin sheaf of Galactic credits. One of his four arms was obviously broken and yellow blood oozed from a score of wounds.

But he only shrugged at Vic’s whistled questions, and his answer in Code was unperturbed. “No matter. In a few moments, I ship to Chicago and then home. My attackers smelled strongly of hate, but I escaped. Waste no time on me, please.”

Then his whistle stopped at a signal from the routing office, and he hurried off, with a final sentence. “My attackers will live, I am told.”

Remembering the talons on the male’s hands, Vie grinned wryly. The Sardaxians were a peaceful race, but they were pragmatic enough to see no advantage in being killed. The mob had jumped on the wrong alien this time. But the others races…

He threw the door to his little office open, and the four went in. It wasn’t until he started toward his desk that he noticed his visitor.

The Galactic Envoy might have been the robot he claimed to be, but there was no sign of it. He was dressed casually in expensive tweeds, lounging gracefully in a chair, with a touch of a smile on his face. Now he got up, holding out a hand to Vie.

“I heard you were running things, Peters. Haven’t seen you since I helped pick you for the first-year class, but I keep informed.

Thought I’d drop by to tell you the Council has given official approval to your full authority over the Earth branch of Teleport Interstellar, and I’ve filed the information with the U.N. and your President.”

Vie shook his head. Nice of them to throw it all on his shoulders. “Why me?”

“Why not? You’ve learned all the theory Earth has, you’ve had more practical experience with more stations than anyone else, and you’ve picked Ptheela’s brains dry by now. Oh, yes, we know about that; it’s permissible in an emergency for her to decide to help. You’re the obvious man.”

“I’d rather see one of your high and mighty Galactic experts take over!”

The Envoy shook his head gently. “No doubt. But we’ve found that the race causing the trouble usually is the race best fitted to solve it. The same ingenuity that maneuvered this sabotageit was sabotage, by the waywill help you solve it, perhaps. The Council may not care much for your grab-first rule in economics and politics, but it never doubted that you represent one of the most ingenious races we have met. You see, there really are no inferior races.”

“Sabotage?” Pat shook her head, apparently trying to grasp it. “Who’d be that stupid?”

The Envoy smiled faintly. “The Knights of Terra are flowing with money, and they are having a very successful recruiting drive. Of course, those responsible had no idea of what risks they were taking for your planet. I’ve turned the details over, of course.”

There was no mistaking his meaning. The Knights of Terra had been a mere rabble of crackpots, without any financial power. But most of the industries forced from competition by the transmitters had been the largest ones, since they tended to lack flexibility. Some of their leaders had taken it in good grace, but many had fought tooth and nail, and were still fighting. There were enough men who had lost jobs, patent royalties, or other valuables due to the transmitters. Even though the standard of living had risen and employment was at a peak now, the period of transition had left bitter hatreds, and recruits for the hate groups should be easy enough to find for a well-heeled propaganda drive.

“Earth for Earth, and down with the transmitters,” Vie summed it

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“They’re stupid, of course. They forget that the transmitters can’t be removed without Council workers,” he said. “And when the Council revokes approval, it destroys all equipment and most books, while seeing that three generations are brought up without knowledge. You’d revert to semi-savagery and have to make a fresh start-up. Well, I’ll see you, Vie. Good luck.”

He left, still smiling. Flavin had been eyeing him with repressed dislike that came out now. “A helluva lot of nerve for guys who claim they don’t interfere!”

“It happened to us twice,” Ptheela observed. “We were better for it, eventually. The Council’s rules are from half a billion years of experience, with tremendous knowledge. We must submit.”

“Not without a fight!”

Vie cut in. “Without a fight. We wouldn’t have a chance. We’re babes in arms to them. Anyhow, who cares? All the Congressional babble in Hades won’t save us if we lose our atmosphere. But the so-called leaders can’t see it.”

The old ideasomething would turn up. Maybe they couldn’t turn off the transmitter from outside, and had no way of getting past the wind to the inside. But something would turn up!

He’d heard rumors of the Army taking over, and almost wished they would. As it stood, he had full responsibilityand nothing more. Flavin and the Council had turned things over to him, but the local cop on the beat had more power. It would be a relief to have someone around to shout even stupid orders and get some of the weight off his shoulders.

Sabotage! It couldn’t even be an accident; the cockeyed race to which he belonged had to try to commit suicide and then expect him to save it.

He shook his head, vaguely conscious of someone banging on the door, and reached for the knob. “Amos!”

The sour face never changed expression as the corpselike figure of the man slouched in. But Amos was dead! He’d been in the transmitter. They all realized it at once and swung toward the man.

Amos shook off their remarks. “Nothing surprising, just common sense. When I saw the capsule start cracking, I jumped for one headed for Plathgol, set the delay, and tripped the switch. Saw some glass shooting at me, but I was in Plathgol next. Went out and got me a mess of tsiunathey cook fair to middling, seeing they never tried it before they met us. Then T showed ‘em my pass, came back through Chicago, took the local here, and went home; I figured the old woman would be worried. Nobody told me about the extent of

the mess till I saw the papers. Common sense to report in to you, then. So here I am.”

“How much did you see of the explosion?” Pat asked.

“Not much. Just saw it was crackingtrick glass, no temperature tolerance. Looked like Earth color.”

It didn’t matter. It added to Vic’s disgust to believe it was sabotage, but didn’t change the picture otherwise. The Council wouldn’t change its decision. They treated a race as a unit, making no exception for the behavior of a few individuals, whether good or bad.

Another knock on the door cut off the vicious cycle of hopelessness. “Old home week, evidently. Come in!”

The uniformed man who entered was the rare example of a fat man in the pink of physical condition, with no sign of softness. He shoved his bulk through the doorway as if he expected the two stars on his shoulders to light the way and awe all beholders. “Who is Victor Peters?”

Vie wiggled a finger at himself, and the general came over. He drew out an envelope and dropped it on the desk, showing clearly that acting as a messenger was far beneath his dignity. “An official communication from the President of the United States!” he said mechanically, and turned to make his exit back to the intercity transmitters.

It was a plain envelope, without benefit of wax or seals. Vie ripped it open, looked at the signature and the simple letterhead, and checked the signature again. He read it aloud to the others:

” ‘To Mr.’dammit, officially I’ve got a doctor’s degree!’to Mr. Victor Peters, nominally’oof!’in charge of the Bennington branch of Teleport Interstellar’I guess they didn’t tell him it’s nominally in charge of all Earth branches. Umm … ‘You are hereby instructed to remove all personnel from a radius of five miles minimum of your Teleport branch not later than noon, August 21, unless matters shall be satisfactorily culminated prior to that time. Signed, Homer Wilkes, President of the United States of America.’”

“Bombs!” Pat shuddered, while Vie let the message fall to the floor, kicking it toward the wastebasket. “That’s what it has to mean. The foolsthe damned fools! Couldn’t they tell him what would happen? Couldn’t they make him see that it’ll only make turning the transmitter off impossibleforever?”

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Ptheela. “Maybe he had no choiceeither he does it or some other power does it.”

Then he came to his feet, staring at Vie. “My God, that’s tomorrow noon!”

IV

Vie looked at the clock later and was surprised to see that it was already well into the afternoon. The others had left him, Ptheela last when she found there was no more knowledge she could contribute. He had one of the electronic calculators plugged in beside him and a table of the so-called Dirac functions propped up on it; since the press had discovered that Dirac had predicted some of the characteristics that made teleportation possible, they’d named everything for him.

The wastebasket was filled, and the result was further futility. He shoved the last sheet into it, and sat there, pondering. There had to be a solution! Man’s whole philosophy was built on that idea.

But it was a philosophy that included sabotage and suicide. What did it matter any…

Vie jerked his head up, shaking it savagely, forcing the fatigue back by sheer will. There was a solution. All he had to do was find it before the stupidity of war politics in a world connected to a Galaxy-wide union could prevent it.

He pulled the calculator back, just as Flavin came into the room. The man was losing weight, or else fatigue was creating that illusion. He dropped into a chair as Vie looked up.

“The men evacuated from around the station?” Vie asked.

Flavin nodded. “Yeah. Some of the bright boys finally convinced them that they were just wasting time, anyhow. Besides, the thing is still spreading and getting too close for them. Vie, the news gets worse all the time. Can you take it?”

“Now what? Don’t tell me they’ve changed it to tomorrow morning?”

“Tomorrow hell! In two hours they’re sending over straight blockbusters, radar controlled all the way. No atomicsyetbut they’re jumping the gun, anyhow. Some nut convinced Wilkes that an ordinary eight-ton job might just shake things enough to fracture the glass that’s holding the short. And Pan-Asia is going completely wild. I’ve been talking to Wilkes. The Generalissimo over there probably only wanted to make a big fuss, but the people are scared silly, and they’re preparing for quick war.”

Vie nodded reluctantly and reached for the Benzedrine he’d hoped to save for the last possible moment, when it might carry him all the

way through. What difference did it make? Even if he had an idea, he’d be unable to use it because a bunch of hopheads were busy picking themselves the station as a site for target practice.

“And yet …” He considered it more carefully, trying to figure percentages. There wasn’t a chance in a million, but they had to take even that one chance. It was better than nothing.

“It might just workif they hit the right spot. I know where the glass is, and the layout of the station. But I’ll need authority to direct the bomb. Flavin, can you get me President Wilkes?”

Flavin shrugged and reached for the televisor. He managed to get quite a ways up by some form of code, but then it began to be a game of nerves and brass. Along his own lines, he apparently knew his business. In less than five minutes, Vie was talking to the President. For a further few minutes, the screen remained blank. Then another face came on, this time in military uniform, asking quick questions, while Vie pointed out the proper target.

Finally the officer nodded. “Good enough, Peters. We’ll try it. If you care to watch, you can join the observersMr. Flavin already knows where they will be. How are the chances?”

“Not good. Worth trying.”

The screen darkened again and Flavin got up. The thing was a wild gamble, but it was better to jar the building than to melt its almost impregnable walls. Even Betz II metal couldn’t take a series of hydrogen bombs without melting, though nothing else could hurt it. And with that fury, the whole station would go.

They picked up Pat and moved out to Flavin’s car. Vie knew better than to try to bring Ptheela along. As an alien, she was definitely taboo around military affairs. The storm had reached the city now, and dense clouds were pouring down thick gouts of rain, leaving the day as black as night. The car slogged through it, until Flavin opened the door and motioned them out into a temporary metal shelter.

Things were already started. Remote scanners were watching the guided missiles come down, and mechanical eyes were operating in the bombs, working on infrared that cut through the rain and darkness. It seemed to move slowly on the screen at first, but picked up apparent speed as it drew near the transmitter building. The shielding grew close, and Pat drew back with an involuntary jerk as it hit and the screen went blank. Dead center.

But the remote scanners showed no change. The abrupt bieak m the airmotion where the transmitter field began, outside the shielding, still showed. Another bomb came down, and others, each spaced

so as to hit in time for others to be turned back if it worked. Even through the impossible tornado of rotating fury, it was super-precision bombing.

But the field went on working, far beyond the shielding, pulling an impossible number of cubic feet of air from Earth every second. They stopped watching the screen shown by the bomb-eyes at last, and even the Army gave up.

“Funny,” one observer commented. “No sound, no flash when it hits. I’ve been watching the remote scanners every time instead of the eye, and nothing happens. The bomb just disappears.”

Pat shook herself. “The fieldthey can’t hit it. They go right through the field, before they can hit. Vie, it won’t matter if we do atom-bomb the station. It can’t be reached.”

But he was already ahead of her. “Fine. Ecthinbal will love that. The Ecthindar wake up to find exploding atomic bombs coming at them through the transmitter. They’ve already been dosed with our chemical bombs. Now guess what they’ll have to do.”

“Simple.” It was the observer who got that. “Start feeding atom bombs into their transmitters to us. We get keyed in to receive automatically, right? And we receive enough to turn the whole planet radioactive.”

Then he shouted hoarsely, pointing through a window. From the direction of the station, a dazzle of light had lanced out sharply, and was now fading down. Vie snapped back to the remote scanner and scowled. The field was still working, and there was no sign of damage to the transmitter. If the Ecthindar had somehow snapped a bomb into the station, it must have been retransmitted before full damage.

The Army man stared sickly at the station, but Vie was already moving toward the door. Pat grabbed his arm, and Flavin was with them by the time they reached the waiting car. “The Bennington office,” Vie told the driver. “And fast! Somebody has to see the Ecthindar in a hurry, if it’ll do any good.”

“f m going too, Vie,” Pat announced. But he shook his head. Her lips firmed. “I’m going. Nobody knows much about Ecthinbal or the Ecthindar. You call in Code messages, get routine Code back. We can’t go there without fancy pressure suits, because we can’t breathe their air. And they never leave. But I told you I was interested in races, and I have been trying to chitchat with them. I know some thingsand you’ll need me.”

He shook his head again. “They’ll probably welcome us with open armsfirearms! It’s enough for one of us to get killed. If I fail, Amos

can tryor Flavin. If he failswell, suit yourself. It won’t matter whether they kill me there or send through bombs to kill me here. But if one of us can get a chance to explain, it may make some difference. I dunno. But it may.”

Her eyes were hurt, but she gave in, going with him silently as he stepped into the local Bennington unit and stepped out in Chicago, heading toward the Chicago Interstellar branch. She waited patiently while the controlmen scouted out a pressure suit for him. Then she began helping him fasten it and checking his oxygen equipment. “Come on back, Vie,” she said finally.

He chucked a fist under her chin lightly and kissed her quickly, keeping it casual with a sureness he couldn’t feel. “You’re a good kid, Pat. I’ll sure try.”

He pulled the helmet down and clicked it shut before stepping into the capsule and letting the seal shut. He could see her swing to the interstellar phone, her lips pursed in whistled code. The sound was muffled, but the lights changed abruptly, and her hand hit the switch.

There was no noticeable time involved. He was simply on Ecthinbal, looking at a faintly greenish atmosphere, observable only because of the sudden change, and fifty pounds seemed to have been added to his weight. The transmitter was the usual Betz II design, and everything else was familiar except for the creature standing beside the capsule.

The Ecthindar might have been a creation out of green glass, coated with a soft fur, and blown by a bottle-maker who enjoyed novelty. There were two thin, long legs, multijoined, and something that faintly resembled the pelvis of a skeleton. Above that, two other thin rods ran up, with a double bulb where lungs might have been, and shoulders like the collar pads of a football player, joined together and topped by four hard knobs, each with a single eye and orifice. Double arms ran from each shoulder, almost to the ground.

He expected to hear a tinkle when the creature moved, and was surprised when he did hear it, until he realized the sound was carried through the metal floor, not through the thin air.

The creature swung open the capsule door after some incomprehensible process that probably served to sterilize it. Its Galactic Code

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the floor. The air was too thin to transmit sound normally. “We greet you, Earthman. Our mansions are poor, but yours. Our lives

are at your disposal.” Then the formal speech ended in a sharp whistle. “Literally, it would seem. We die.”

It didn’t fit with Vic’s expectations, but he tried to take his cue from it. “That’s why I’m here. Do you have some kind of a ruler? Umm, good. How do I get to see this ruler?” He had few hopes of getting to see the ruler, but it never did any harm to try.

The Ecthindar seemed unsurprised. “Of course, I shall take you at once. For what other purpose is a ruler but to serve those who wish to see it. ButI trespass on your kindness in the delaybut may I question whether a strange light came forth from your defective transmitter?”

Vie snapped a look at it and nodded slowly. “It did.”

Now the ax would fall. He braced himself for it, but the creature ceremoniously repeated his nod.

“I was one who believed it might. It is most comforting to know my science was true. When the bombs came through from you, we held them in an instant shield, since we had expected some such effort on your part to correct your transmitter. But in our error, we believed them radioactive. We tried a new negative aspect of space to counteract them. Of course, it failed, since they were only chemical. But I had postulated that some might have escaped from receiver to transmitter, being negative. You are kind. You confirm my belief. And now, if you will honor my shoulder with the touch of your hand, so that my portable unit will transport us both …”

Vie reached out and the scene shifted at once. There was no apparent transmitter, and the trick beat anything he had heard from other planets. Perhaps it was totally unrelated to the teleport machine. But he had no time to ask.

A door in the little room where they were now opened, and another creature came in, this time single from pelvis to shoulders, but otherwise the same. “The ruler has been requested,” it whistled. “That which the ruler is shall be yours, and that which the ruler has is nothing. May the ruler serve?”

It was either the most cockeyed bit of naivete” or the fanciest run-around Vie had found, but totally unlike anything he’d been prepared for. He gulped and began whistling out the general situation on Earth.

The Ecthindar interrupted politely. “That we know. And the converse is truewe too are dying. We are a planet of thin air, and that little is chlorine. Now from a matter transmitter comes a great rush of oxygen, which we consider poison. Our homes around are burned

in it, our plant life is dying of it, and we are forced to remain inside and seal ourselves off. Like you, we can do nothingthe wind from your world is beyond our strength.”

“But your science…”

“Is beyond yours, true. As is our average intelligence. We run from an arbitrary lowest of one to a highest of two relatively, however, while you run from perhaps a low of an eighth to a high of nearly three, as we figure. We lack both your very lows and your genius levelsome of you are more intelligent than any of us, though very few. But you are all adaptable, and we are too leisurely a race for that virtue.”

Vie shook his head, but perhaps it made good sense. “But the bombs …”

A series of graceful gestures took place between the two creatures, and the Ruler turned back to Vie.

“The ruler had not known, of course. It was not important. We lost a few thousand people whom we love. But we understood. There is no anger, though it pleases us to see that your courtesy extends across space to us in commiseration. May your dead pass well.”

That was at least one good break in the situation. Vie felt some of his worry slide aside to make room for the rest. “Then I don’t suppose … Well, then, have you any ideas on how we can take care of this mess… .”

There was a shocked moment, with abrupt movements from the two creatures. Then something came up in the Ruler’s hands, vibrating sharply. Vie jumped backand froze in mid-stride, to fall awkwardly onto the floor. A chunk of ice seemed to form in his backbone and creep along his spine, until it touched his brain. Death or paralysis? It was all the samehe had air for only an hour more. The two creatures were fluttering at each other and moving toward him when he blacked out.

V

His first feeling was the familiar, deadening pull of fatigue as his senses began to come back. Then he saw that he was in a tiny room and that Pat lay stretched out beside him!

He threw himself up to a sitting position, surprised to find that there were no aftereffects to whatever the Ruler had used. The darned fool, coming through after him! And now they had her, too.

Surprisingly, her eyes snapped open, and she sat up beside him. “Darn it, I almost fell asleep waiting for you to revive. It’s a good

thing I brought extra oxygen flasks. Your hour is about up. How’d you insult them?”

He puzzled over it while she changed his oxygen flask and he did the same for her. “I didn’t. I just asked whether there wasn’t some way we could take care of this trouble.”

“Which meant to them that you suspected they weren’t giving all the help they couldafter their formal offer when you came over. I convinced them it was just that you were still learning Code, whatever you said. They’re nice, Vie. I never really believed other races were better than we are, but I do nowand it doesn’t bother me at all.”

“It’d bother Flavin. He’d have to prove they were sissies or something. How do we get out?”

She pushed the door open, and they stepped back into the room of the Ruler, who was waiting for them. It made no reference to the misunderstanding, but inspected him, whistled approval of his condition, and plunged straight to business.

“We have found part of a solution, Earthman. We diebut it will be two weeks before our end. First, we shall set up a transmitter in permanent transmit, equipped with a precipitator to remove our chlorine, and key it to another of your transmitterswhichever one you wish. Ecthinbal is heavy but small, and a balance will be struck between the air going from you and the air returning. The winds between stations may disturb your weather, but not seriously, we hope. That which the Ruler is, is yours. A lovely passing.”

It touched their shoulders, and they were back briefly in the transmitter, to be almost instantly back in the Chicago branch. Vie was still shaking his head.

“It won’t workthe Ruler didn’t allow for the way our gravity falls off and our air thins out a few miles higher up. We’d end up with maybe four pounds pressure, which isn’t enough. So we both die-two worlds on my shoulders instead of one. Hell, we couldn’t take that offer from them, anyhow. Pat, how’d you convince them to let me go?”

She had shucked out of the pressure suit and stood combing her hair. “Common sense, as Amos says. I figured engineers consider each other engineers first and aliens second, so I went to the head engineer instead of the Ruler. He fixed it up somehow. I guess I must have sounded pretty desperate, at that, knowing your air would give out after an hour.”

They went through the local intercity to Bennington, and on into

Vic’s office, where Flavin met them with open relief and a load of questions. Vie let Pat answer, while he mulled over her words. Somewhere, there was an idealet the rulers alone and go to the engineers. Some obvious solution that the administrators would try to understand, run into their preconceptions, and be unable to use? He shoved it around in his floating memory, but it refused to trigger an idea.

Pat was finishing the account of the Ecthindar offer, but Flavin was not impressed. Ptheela came in, and it had to be repeated for her, with much more enthusiastic response.

“So what?” Flavin asked. “They have to die, anyhow. Sure, it’s a shame, but we have our own problems. Heywait. Maybe there’s something to it It’d take some guts and a little risk, but it might work.”

Flavin considered it while Vie waited, willing to listen to any scheme. The man took a cigar out and lit it carefully, his first since the accident; he’d felt smoking used up the air. “Look, if they work their transmitter, we end up with a quarter of what we need. But suppose we had four sources. We connect with several oxygen-atmosphere worlds. Okay, we load our transmitters with delayed-action atom bombs and send one sample capsule to each world. After that, they either open a transmitter to us with air, or we really let them have it. They can livea little poorer, maybe, but still live. And we’re fixed for good. Congress and the President would jump at it.”

“That all?” Vie asked.

Flavin nodded, just as Vic’s fist caught him in the mouth, spilling him onto the floor. The man lay there, feeling his jaw and staring up at Vie. Then the anger was gone, and Vie reached down to help him up.

“You’re half a decent guy and half a louse,” he told Flavin. “You had that coming, but I should have used it on some of the real lice around. Besides, maybe you have part of an idea.”

” ‘Sail right, no teeth lostjust the first cigar I’ve enjoyed in days.” Flavin rubbed his jaw gingerly, then grinned ruefully. “I should have known how you feel. But I believe in Earth first. What’s this big idea of yours?”

“Getting our air through other planets. Our air. It’s a routing job. If we can set up a chain so the air going out of one transmitter in a station is balanced by air coming in another in the same station, there’d be a terrific draft; but most of it would be confined in the station, and there wouldn’t be the outside whirlwind to keep us from

getting near. Instead of a mad rush of air in or out of the building, there’d be only eddy currents outside of the inner chamber. We’d keep our air, and maybe have time to figure out some way of getting at that hunk of glass.”

“Vie! You honey!” Pat’s shoulders straightened. But Flavin shook his head.

“Won’t work. Suppose Wilkes was asked to permit us to route through like that for another planet-he’d have to turn it down. Too much risk, and he has to consider our safety first.”

“That’s where Pat gave me the tip. Engineers get used to thinking of each other as engineers instead of competing racesthey have to work together. They have the same problems and develop the same working habits. If I were running a station and the idea was put to me, I’d hate to turn it down, and I might not think of the political end. I’ve always wanted to see what happened in continuous transmittal; I’ll be tickled pink to get at the instrument rolls in the station. And a lot of other engineers will feel the same.”

“We’re already keyed to Plathgol on a second transmitter in there,” Pat added. “They could send to us, though the other four transmitters were out of duty. And the Ecthindar indicated they had full operation when it happened, so they’re keyed to five other planets that could trigger them to transmit. But they don’t connect to Plathgol, as I remember the charts.”

“Bomb dropping starts in about four hours,” Flavin commented. “Atomic, this time. After that, what?”

“No chance. They’ll go straight through, and the Ecthindar can neutralize thembut one is pretty sure to start blasting here and carry through in full action. Then there’ll be no other transmitter in their station. Just a big field on permanent receive.”

“Then we’d better find a route from Ecthinbal to Plathgol and get a lot of permissionspronto!” Flavin decided. “And we need all the charts we can find.”

The engineers at the Chicago branch were busy shooting dice when the four came through the intercity transmitter. Ptheela had asked to accompany the three humans, and her offer was welcome. More precisely, two engineers were playing. There was no one else in the place, and no sign of activity. Word of the proposed bombing had leaked out and the engineers had figured that answering bombs would come blasting back through all Earth teleports. They knew what Earth governments would have done and didn’t know of the Ecthindar philosophy. The engineers had passed the word to other

employees, and only these two were left, finishing a feud of long standing in the time left.

“Know anything about routing?” Vie asked. He’d already looked in the big barnlike building just outside the main shell, now empty of its normal crew. When they indicated no knowledge, he chased them out on his Teleport Interstellar authority and took over. He had no need of more engineers, and they were cynical enough about the eventual chances there to leave gladly. Vie had never had any use for Chicago’s manager and the brash young crew he’d built up; word shouldn’t have gone beyond the top level. If it leaked out to the general public, there’d be panic for miles around.

But Chicago’s routing setup was the best in the country, and he needed it. Now how did he go about getting a staff trained to use it?

“Know how to find things here?” Flavin asked Pat. He accepted her nod, and looked surprised at Ptheela’s equally quick assent. Then he grinned at Vie and began shucking off his coat. “Okay, you see before you one of the best traffic managers that ever helped pull a two-bit railroad out of the red, before I got better offers in politics. I’m good. You get me the dope, Vie can haggle on the transmitter phones, and I’ll route it.”

He was good. His mind could look at the complicated interlocking block of transmitter groups and jump to the next step without apparent thoughtand he had to have information only once before engraving it on his mind. It was a tough nut, since the stations housed six transmitters, keyed to six planets eachbut in highly varied combinations; each world had its own group of tie-ins with planets. Routing was the most complicated job in the work.

Plathgol was handled by Ptheela, who was still in good standing until her council was informed of her breaking the Law by talking to Vie. There was no trouble there. But trouble soon developed. The Ecthinbal station had been keyed to only two other planets when the accident happened, it turned out. Vromatchk was completely cold on the idea and flatly refused. Ee, the other, seemed difficult.

It surprised Vie, because it didn’t fit with Pat’s theories of engineers at all. He scowled at the phone, then whistled again. “All right, no matter. Your zeal is commendable. Now put an engineer on!”

The answering whistle carried a fumbling uncertainty of obvious surprise. “Ihow’d you know? I gave all the right answers.”

“Sure. Right off the Engineer Rule Sheet posted over the transmitter. No real engineer worries that much about themhe has more things to think of. Put the engineer on.”

The answer was obstinate. “My father’s asleep. He’s tired. Call later.”

The connection went dead at once. Vie called Ecthinbal while clambering into the big pressure suit. He threw the delay switch and climbed into the right capsule. A moment later, an Ecthindar was moving the capsule on a delicate-looking machine to another transmitter. Something that looked like a small tyranosaurus with about twenty tentacles instead of forelegs was staring at him a second later, and he knew he was on Ee.

“Take me to the engineer!” he ordered. “At once.”

The great ridges of horny substance over the eyes came down in a surprisingly human scowl. But the stubbornness was less certain in person. The creature turned and led Vie out to a huge shack outside. In answer to a whooping cry, a head the size of a medium-large car came out of the door, to be followed by a titanic body. The full-grown adult was covered with a thick coat of ropy hair.

“Where from?” the Ee engineer whistled. “WaitI saw a picture. Earth? Come in. I hear you have quite a problem down there.”

Vie nodded. It came as a shock to him that the creature could probably handle the whole station by itself, as it obviously did, and quite efficiently, with that size and set of tentacles. He stated the problem quickly.

The Looech, as it called itself, scratched its stomach with a row of tentacles and pondered. “I’d like to help you. Oh, the empress would have fits, but I could call it an accident. We engineers aren’t really responsible to governments, after all, are we? But it’s the busy season. I’m already behind, since my other engineer got in a duel. That’s why the pup was tending while I slept. You say the field spreads out on continuous transmit?”

“It does, but it wouldn’t much, if there isn’t too long a period of operation.”

“Strange. I’ve thought of continuous transmittal, of course, but I didn’t suspect that. Why, I wonder?”

Vie started to give Ptheela’s explanation of unbalanced resonance between the vacuum of the center and the edges in contact with matter, but dropped it quickly. “I’ll probably know better when I can read the results from the instruments.”

The Looech grumbled to itself. “I suppose you wouldn’t send me

the readingswe’re about on a Galactic level, so it wouldn’t strain the law too much.”

Vie shook his head. “If I can’t complete the chain, there won’t be any readings. I imagine you could install remote cutoffs fairly easily.”

“No trouble, though nobody ever seemed to think of them. I suppose it could be covered under our emergency powers, if we stretch them a little. Oh, blast you. Now I won’t sleep for worrying about why it spreads. When will you begin?”

Vie grinned tightly as they arranged the approximate time and let the Looech carry him back to the capsule. He flashed through Ecthinbal and climbed out of the Chicago transmitter to find Pat looking worriedly at the capsule, summoned by the untended call announcer.

“You’re right, Pat,” he told her. “Engineers run pretty much to form. Tell Flavin we’ve got Ee.”

But there were a lot of steps to be taken still. He ran into a stumbling block at Noral, and had to wait for a change of shifts, before a sympathetic engineer cut the red tape to clear him. And negative decisions here and there kept Flavin jumping to find new routes.

They almost made it, to find a decision had been reversed on them by some authority who had gotten word of the deal. That meant that other authorities would probably be called in, with more reverses, in time. Once operating, the engineer could laugh at authority, since the remote cutoff could be easily hidden. But time was running out. There were only twenty-seven minutes left before the bombs would be finally ordered dropped, and it would take fifteen to countermand their being dropped.

“Give me that,” Flavin ordered, grabbing the phone. “There are times when it takes executives instead of engineers. We’re broken at Seloo. Okay, we don’t know where Seloo ships.” His Galactic Code was halting, but fairly effective. The mechanical chirps from the Seloo operator leaped to sudden haste. A short pause was followed by an argument Vie was too tired to catch until the final sentence of assent. Then Pat took over, to report shortly to Flavin. “Enad to Brjd to Teeni clear.”

“Never heard of Brjd,” Vie commented.

Flavin managed a ghost of a swagger. “Figured our lists were only partial and we could stir up another link. Here’s the final list. I’ll get

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until we see how it works.”

It was a maze, but the list was complete; from Earth to Ecthinbal, Ee, Petzby, Noral, Szpendrknopalavotschel, Seloo, Brjd, Teeni, and finally through Plathgol to Earth. Vie whistled the given signal and the acknowledgments came through. It was in operation. And Flavin’s nod indicated Wilkes had confirmed it and held off the bombs.

Nothing was certain, still; it might or might not do the trick. But the tension dropped somewhat. Flavin was completely beaten. He hadn’t had decent exercise for years, and running from communications to routing had been almost continual. He flopped over on a shipping table. Ptheela bent over him and began massaging him with deft strokes of her arms. He grumbled, but gave in, then sighed gratefully.

“Where’d you learn that?”

She managed an Earth giggle. “Instinct. My ancestors were plants that caught animals for food. We had all manner of ways to entice themnot just odor and looks. I can feel exactly how your body feels in the back of my head. Umm, delicious!”

He struggled at that picture, his face changing color. Her arms moved slowly, and he relaxed. Finally he reached for a cigar. “I’ll have nightmares, I’ll betbut it’s worth it. Oh-oh, some of the rulers are catching on, and don’t like it!”

The minimum staff left in Bennington was reporting by normal televisor contact, but while things seemed to be improving, they couldn’t get near enough to be sure. The tornado around the city was abating, they thought, but Earth’s weather patterns were slow to change, once thoroughly upset. The field was apparently collapsing as the air was fed inside it, but very slowly.

Ptheela needed no sleep, but Flavin was already snoring. Pat shook her head as Vie started to pull himself up on a table. She led him outside to the back of one of the sheds, where a blanket lay on a cot, apparently used by one of the supervisors. She pushed him toward it. As he started to struggle at the idea of using the only soft bed, she dropped onto it herself and pulled him down.

“Don’t be silly, Vie. It’s big enough for both, and it’s better than those tables.”

It felt like pure heaven, narrow through it was. But his body was too tired to respond properly. The tension remained, reminding him that nothing was sure yet. Beside him, Pat stirred restlessly. He rolled over, pulling himself closer to her, off the hard edge of the cot, his arm over and around her.

For a moment, he thought she was protesting, but she merely turned over to face him, settling his arm back. In the half-light, her eyes met his, wide and serious. Her lips trembled briefly under his, then clung firmly. Her body slid against him, drawing tighter, and his own responded, reaching for the comfort and end of tension hers could bring.

It was automatic, almost unconscious, and yet somehow warm and personal, with an edge of tenderness all the cloudiness of it could not dull. Then she lay relaxed in his arms while his own muscles released themselves to the soft comfort of the cot. She smiled faintly, pushing his hair back.

“I’m glad it’s you, Vie,” she said softly. Then her eyes closed as he started to answer, and his own words disappeared into a soft fog of sleep.

The harsh rasp of a buzzer woke him, while a light blinked on and off near his head. He shook some of the sleep confusion out of his thoughts and made out an intercom box. Flavin’s voice came over it sharply as he flipped the switch.

“Viewhere the hell are you? Never mind. Wilkes just woke me with his call. Vie, it’s helpedbut not enough. The field is about even with the building now. But it’s stopped shrinking, and we’re still losing air. There’s too much loss at Ecthinbal, and at Eethe engineer there didn’t get the portals capped right, and Ecthinbal can’t do anything. We’re getting about two thirds of our air back. And Wilkes can’t hold the pressure for bombing much longer! Get in here!”

VI

“Where’s Ptheela?” Vie asked as he came into the communication and transmitter room. She needed no sleep and should have been taking care of things.

“Goneback to Plathgol, I guess. Said something about an appeal. She was flicking out by the time I really woke up. Rats deserting the sinking ship, seems to methough I had her figured different. It just shows you can’t trust a plant.”

Vie swept his attention to the communicator panel. The phones were still busy. They were still patienteven the doubtful ones were now accepting things; but it couldn’t last forever. Even without the risk, the transmitter banks were needed for regular use. Many did not have inexhaustible power sources, either.

A new note cut in over the whistling now, and he turned to the

Plathgol phone, wondering what Ptheela wanted. The words were English. But the voice was different.

“Plathgol calling. This is Thlegaa, Wife of Twelve Husbands, Supreme Plathgol Teleport Engineer, Ruler of the Council of United Plathgol, and Hereditary Goddess, if you want the whole routine. Ptheela just gave me the bad news. Why didn’t you call on us before or isn’t our air good enough for you?”

“Hell, do you all speak English?” Vie asked, too surprised to care whether he censored his thoughts. “Your air always smelled good to me. Are you serious?”

The chuckle this time wasn’t a mere imitation. Thlegaa had her intonation down exactly. “Sonny, up here we speak whatever our cultural neighbors do. You should hear my French nasals and Hebrew rough-breathings. Now that you know we can speak, there’s no point in keeping the law against free communication. And I’m absolutely on the level. We’re pulling the stops off the transmitter housing. We run a trifle higher pressure than you, so we’ll probably make up your whole loss. But I’m not an absolute ruler, so it might be a good idea to speed things up. You can thank me later. Oh since she broke the law before it was repealed, Ptheela’s been exiled. So when you get your Bennington plant working, she’ll probably be your first load from us. She’s packing now.”

Flavin’s face held too much relief. Vie hated to disillusion him as the man babbled happily about knowing deep down all along that the Plathgolians were swell people. But he knew the job was a long ways from solved. With Plathgol supplying extra air, the field would collapse back to the inside of the single transmitter housing, and there should be an even balance of ingoing and outcoming air, which would end the rush of air into the station and make the circular halls passable, except for eddy currents. But getting into the inner chamber, where the air formed a gale between the two transmitters, was another matter.

Flavin’s chauffeur was asleep at the wheel of the car as they came out of the Bennington local office, but instinct seemed to rouse him, and the car cut off wildly for the Interstellar station. Vie had noticed that the cloud around it was gone, and a mass of people were grouped nearby. The wind that had been sucked in and around it to prevent even a tank getting through was gone now, though the atmosphere would nrobablv shnw sicm nf if-in -freak wppfhpr rpnnrte fr>r wppts

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after.

Pat had obviously figured out the trouble remaining, and didn’t

look too surprised at the gloomy faces of the transmitter crew who were grouped near the north entrance. But she began swearing under her breath, as methodically and levelly as a man. Vie was ripping his shirt off as they drew up.

“This time you stay out,” he told her. “It’s strictly a matter of muscle power against wind resistanceand a man has a woman beat there.”

“Why do you think I was cursing?” she asked. “Take it easy, though.”

The men opened a way for him. He stripped to his briefs and let them smear him with oil to cut down air resistance a final fraction. Eddy currents caught at him before he went in, but not too strongly. Getting past the first shielding wasn’t too bad. He found the second entrance port through the middle shield and snapped a chain around his waist.

Then the full picture of what must have happened on Plathgol hit him. Chains wouldn’t have helped when they pulled off the coverings from the entrancesthe sudden rush of air must have crushed their lungs and broken their bonesor whatever supported them no matter what was done. Imagine volunteering for sure death to help another world! He had to make good on his part.

He got to the inner portal, but the eddies there were too strong to go farther. Even sticking his head beyond the edge almost sucked him into the blast between the two transmitters. Then he was crawling out again.

Amos met him, shaking a gloomy head. “Never make it, Vie. Common sense. I’ve been partway in there three times with no luck. And the way that draft blows, it’d knock even a tractor plumb out of the way before it could reach that glass.”

Vie nodded. The tanks would take too long, anyhow, though it would be a good idea to have them called. He yelled to Flavin, who came over at a run, while Vie was making sure that the little regular office building still stood.

“Order the tanks, if we need them,” he suggested. “And get them to ship in a rifle, some hard-nosed bullets, an all-angle vise big enough to clamp on a three-inch edge, and two of those midget tele-sets for use between house and fieldquick.”

Amos stared at him, puzzled, but Flavin’s car was already roaring toward Bennington, with a couple of cops leading the way with open sirens. He was back with everything in twenty minutes.

Vie motioned to Amos questioningly and received an answering

nod. The man was old, but he must be tough to have made three tries inside. Pat was setting the midget pickup in front of the still-operating televisor between the transmitter chamber and the little office. Vie picked up the receiver and handed the rest of the equipment to Amos.

It was sheer torture fighting back to the inner entrance port, but they made it, and Amos helped to brace him with the chain while Vie clamped the vise to the edge of the portal and locked the rifle into it, somehow fighting it into place. In the rather ill-defined picture on the tiny set’s screen, he could see the shard of glass, out of line from either entrance, between two covering uprights. He could just see the rifle barrel, also. The picture lost detail in being transmitted to the little office and picked up from the screen for retransmittal back to him, but it would have to do.

The rifle was loaded to capacity with fourteen cartridges. He lined it up as best he could and tightened the vise, before pulling the trigger. The bullet ricocheted from the inner shield and headed toward the glassbut it missed by a good three feet.

He was close on the fifth trynot over four inches off. But clinging to the edge while he reset the vise each time before he pulled the trigger was getting harder, and the wind velocity inside was tossing the bullets off course.

He left the setting and fired four more shots in succession before he had to stop to rest. They were all close, but scattered. That could keep up all day, seemingly.

“Better let me try, Vie,” Amos shouted over the roar of the wind inside. “Been playing pool, making bank shots, more than thirty years. And I had a rifle in my hands long before that”

He pulled himself into place, made a trifling adjustment on the vise setting, and squeezed the trigger. Then he leaned against the rifle stock slightly, took a deep breath, let it out, and fired again. There was no sound over the roar of the windand then there was a sound, as if the gale in there had stopped to cough.

A blast of air struck them, picking them up and tossing them against the wall. Vie had forgotten the lag before the incoming air could be cut! And it could be as fatal as the inrush alone.

But it was dying as he struck. His flesh was bruised from the shock, but it wasn’t serious. Plathgol had managed to make their remote control cut out almost to the microsecond of the time when the flow to them had stopped, or the first pressure releasedand transmitter waves were supposed to be instantaneous.

He tasted the feeling of triumph as he crawled painfully back. With this transmitter off and the others remotely controlled, the whole business was over. Ecthinbal had keyed out automatically when Earth stopped sending. And from now on, every transmitter would have a full set of remote controls, so the trouble could never happen again.

He staggered out, unhooking the chain, while workmen went rushing in. Pat came through the crowd with a towel and a pair of pants, to begin wiping the oil off him while he tried to dress. Her grin was a bit shaky, and he knew it must have looked bad when the final counterblast whipped out.

Amos was busy cleaning himself off, and Vie grinned at him. “Good shooting, Amos. I guess it’s all solved.”

The old man nodded. “Sure. Took a little common sense, that’s all.”

From the crowd, the Galactic Envoy shoved through, holding out his hands to them and smiling. “Co-operative sense, you mean, and that’s not as common as it should be on any world. And, Amos, you’ll be glad to know you’re not under suspicion any longer. I have been able to furnish your government with a list of the real saboteurs, and they’re all in custody. As I told you, I’m only an observerbut a very good observer of all that goes on!”

“Figured I’d be on the list. Common sense when I was closest to the accident and got away,” Amos .said. He shrugged. “You going to let the guys who did it get regular Earth trials?”

“Certainly,” the Envoy answered. “It looks better. Nice work, Pat, Vie, Amosyou, too, Flavin. I wasn’t sure you had it in you. You solved itby finding you could co-operate with other worlds, which is the most mature way you could have solved it. So I consider that Plathgol and Earth have passed the final test, and are now full members, under Ecthinbal’s tutelage. We’re a little easier at lending a hand and passing information to proven planets. Congratulations! But you’ll hear all about it in the news when I make the full announcement. See you aroundI’m sure of that.”

He was gone, barely in time for Ptheela to come trooping up with six thin, wispy versions of herself in tow. She chuckled. “They promoted me before they banished me, Pat. Meet my six strong husbands. Now I’ll have the strongest seed on all Earth. Oh, I almost forgot. A present for you and Vie.”

Then she also was gone, leading her husbands toward Flavin’s car

while Vie stared down at a particularly ugly tsiuna in Pat’s hands. He grinned a bit ruefully.

“All right. I’ll learn to eat the stuff,” he told her. “I suppose 111 have to get used to it. Pat, will you marry me?”

She dropped the tsiuna into Amos’ hands as she came to him, her lips reaching up for his. It wasn’t until a month later that he found tsiuna tasted slightly better than chicken.

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