Doorway In The Sky

By Ralph Williams

THE THING in the sky circled unobserved about the Earth. It may have just been there, as the Moon is there, and as stars are there. Or it may have been waiting.

Below in New Mexico, men prepared to launch the first manned rocket—

During the take-off, the three men of the crew lay on their acceleration couches, as helpless as the mice that had preceded them, while the rocket piloted itself.

Tiny steel teeth gnawed stolidly and harmlessly at a tape, springing back weakly when they met resistance, transforming the punched patterns in the tape into electrical impulses which activated various relays. The perforated tape gave commands: "Do this and then do that, and if so-and-so happens, then do thus—"; and the activated relays denoted acceptance and readiness to perform these commands. A certain altitude was reached and the ship, knowing this, altered its course to the east as instructed by the tape. The first stage was dropped, as the tape directed, at the exact instant the last few drops of fuel in its tanks were exhausted, and then the second. A few minutes later, the ship realized it had attained the goal set by the tape. With a final triumphant clacking of relays, it shut off the engine.

The human crew now took over, devising new tasks for the machines. McKay, moving clumsily without the accustomed restraint of gravity, and feeling an inward queasiness which became acute when he moved his eyes suddenly, took sights on the stars and on landmarks on the Earth below. Brown pushed switches which activated small flywheels to turn the ship. Goodrich, the captain, performed further calculations on the navigator's figures, and from these prepared another tape which he fed into the autopilot. By the time this was done, it was a few minutes less than an hour after take-off time, and the ship was halfway around the globe from its point of departure.

At the proper moment, the captain tripped the firing switch.

The engine caught with a whoosh, slamming the men back into their couches, and the autopilot nibbled precisely at the tape, clucking abstractedly to itself. After seventeen seconds it shut off the engine again. The rocket was now in a roughly circular orbit, a little over five thousand miles from the Earth's center, one thousand miles above its surface.

The other thing in the sky was now only five hundred miles above them; but the men in the rocketship did not know this, and might not have cared if they had known. They were busy with a more urgent problem.

The weightlessness, sudden heavy acceleration, and weightlessness again had been too much for Brown. He was suddenly and violently sick, groping blindly for a container. Goodrich thrust it against the man's face. He reached for another container and followed suit.

After a while, the convulsions began to wear themselves out. The men wiped at their streaming eyes and slimy faces. Goodrich saw that they had almost circled the Earth, their takeoff point was coming up over the horizon. There was a tiny squeaking in his headphones.

"Bubbemeck, this is Thumbtack. Bubbemeck, Bubbemeck, Thumbtack calling. Do you hear me? Is something wrong? Bubbemeck, this is Thumbtack. Give us a count, over."

Goodrich spat, wiped his mouth, and plugged in his mike. "Thumbtack Control, Bubbemeck," he said. "Do you hear me now?"

"I hear you fine now. Is everything O.K.?"

"O.K. now," Goodrich said. He paused. "We were sick," he said reluctantly.

"Boger." There was a long pause. "Did you know you were off course? We have you about twenty minutes ahead of schedule and thirty degrees off course. Also too high. We've been trying to get you for twenty minutes, since we got your first track."

"Roger, wait." Goodrich turned to McKay. The navigator shook his head negatively and pointed at the forward view screen. The coast of California stood clear and sharp ahead of them, but New Mexico was stI’ll only a thin line on the horizon. Goodrich nodded. "Get a fix," he said.

He clicked the mike switch. "Thumbtack, Rubberneck. There must be a mistake. We're just coming up over the visual horizon now, on course as nearly as we can tell."

"Roger. Well, we have a good track on you, I don't see how we could be mistaken—" the voice broke off. "Just a minute," it said presentiy. "I think we're getting another track now . . . that's it, we've got you O.K. now, right on course. The first track was a bogey." There was another pause. "Mr. Welsh wants to talk to you now."

Welsh was the project engineer. For several minutes Goodrich answered his technical questions about the operation of the rocket

They were almost over the station now, the Earth spinning westward beneath them. In their two-hour orbit, another twenty minutes would take them out of radio range.

"How about our final course correction data?" Goodrich asked. "Have you got that worked up yet?"

"Just a minute," Welsh said. "I'll check."

The minute stretched out. "Thumbtack, Rubberneck," Goodrich said. "You stI’ll there?"

"Thumbtack," the operator's voice said. 'Wait. They're working on a new angle here. We'll have something for you in just a minute."

Goodrich waited, wondering vaguely what the new angle was. Rubberneck had been planned down to the last second for six months now, and so far had cost a little over a bI’llion dollars. The worst of his nausea was gone, but it had left him feeling limp and beat-up, and not too bright.

A new voice came on the radio. "Goodrich?" it asked.

"This is Goodrich."

"Captain Bartell here. We're going to have to change your course, want you to vector in on that bogey. We have to get a look at that thing, this is more important than Rubberneck. It may change our whole planning on Highjump. You understand that, don't you?"

"Yes, sir," he said. "I see. We'll do what we can. We hadn't planned any major maneuvers, though. How about fuel?"

"You'll have enough. We grossed you out on fuel, since you wouldn't be carrying cargo this trip, and we wanted a good safety factor tI’ll we have a chance to check fuel consumption figures.

"In any event, your landing reserve isn't important. I want you to close with this thing . . . uh, let's see, let's call it 'Bertha' ... I want you to close with Bertha and make an identification, even if you have to bum your last drop and sit up there until we get up and bring you back down. Do you have that?"

"Boger."

"O.K., now here's what you're to do. We're going to vector you in on Bertha. Close to visual range. We get a good sharp return on this thing, but it may be physically quite small, and possibly it's a natural satellite no one ever happened to notice. If it is, we need it. Make fast to it, go aboard and establish possession . . . put down some sort of marker and get pictures. Get as much data as you can as to size, composition, et cetera, and report . . . let's see, make that report: 'Bertha condition Able.' Do you have that? 'Bertha condition Able.' Now acknowledge."

Goodrich printed carefully on his log: nat sat—Able. "Bub-berneck, Boger," he said.

"Good. Now there's a chance it may not be natural, it may be an artificial satellite. Our intelligence is good, but it isn't perfect, and it's just possible somebody has beat us to the punch. If so, we want to know who. Use discretion here, try to avoid observation, and above all don't provoke an incident;

but make positive identification if at all possible, and get all you can in the way of pictures, stuff like that. If you're fired on, report: 'Baker.' Take evasive action, draw as much fire as possible without endangering your mission, and try to keep contact until further advised. Good luck, boy." "Roger," Goodrich said.

McKay and Brown had been listening wide-eyed.

"Well," McKay said. "You think there's really some there, or have they just got us chasing flying saucers?"

"I don't know, but I don't think I like it," Brown said. "You know what that means when they say: 'Good luck, boy.' That means you better check and see if your beneficiary is current."

Goodrich flipped an impatient hand at them. "Break it off," he said. "You can figure it all out later. Now give me a hand to copy this stuff, well be out of range in a minute." He snapped the mike switch. "Go ahead, Thumbtack," he said. "We're ready to copy."

They picked up Bertha as a faint point of light below and somewhat behind them, but without radar of their own they had no way of knowing exactly how far away.

The satellite was artificial.

The men studied it wordlessly. It did not look like the product of an Earthly technology, Goodrich thought, although he could assign no specific reason for this feeling. Apparently spherical, and about the size of a dime on the view screen without magnification, it might have been ten feet across and a few hundred yards away, or a hundred feet and a mile. They seemed to be below and somewhat behind it, but overtaking, the relative bearing changing by about one degree per minute. There were hints of hatches or ports on its surface, and various protuberances which might have been antenna or telescopic gear.

Or, Goodrich thought, if it was extraterrestrial, they might even be weapons, the strange unguessable weapons of science fiction.

"O.K.," he said. "Let's get to work here. Swing the ship and get the nose camera working." He turned to his perforator. "How do you set up an evasive course on a rocket?" he asked McKay. "You got any ideas?"

The navigator shrugged. "We can't zigzag, all we can do is go in the direction we're pointed. I'd say, since we want to use the nose camera anyway, just point her a couple of degrees off a collision course and set up a tape with random accelerations, that should foul up their firing data some, and if they're looking this way, we could be past and gone the other way before they could swing on us—maybe."

"Yeah, maybe," Goodrich said. "All they have to do is be ready to catch us going away on the other side, if they can see us at all they can see which way we're pointed." He scratched thoughtfully at his chin. "Well, I guess that's the best we can do, though. When they built this thing, they didn't think we'd have to fight anybody with it, just get up here was all they were thinking about." He punched a tape and fed it into the autopilot and sat with his thumb on the firing switch, watching the satellite.

The control station was sliding over the horizon behind them now; they would soon lose contact. He had better report what they had, he thought, in case they were not there when they came around again. But what did they have? Well, there was no evidence, really, only a feeling—

"Thumbtack, this is Bubberneck," he said. "Visual contact Bertha condition King. I say again. Bertha condition King. Over."

The answer came faintly but promptly. "Thumbtack, Boger. Maintain contact and continue to investigate. Acknowledge." "Bubberneck, Boger. Out."

Bertha was abeam them now, relative to Earth. Goodrich gave thought to the problem of fixing its range and relative velocity.

"Get me a couple of timed fixes on Bertha, Mac," he said. "How about the pictures? I'll have to swing the ship." "Let the pictures go, for now, we've got a few. Get the

fixes and then swing the ship to one eighty azimuth, zero inclination. I'm going to fire a three foot-second blast and see what happens." He punched a new tape for the evasive action, keeping a wary eye on the sphere, with a runner on the front end for the three foot-second blast. If their move provoked Bertha to action, all he had to do was trip the switch again and keep right on going.

"O.K. on the fixes," McKay said. He juggled the flywheel controls and the ship swung gently about. He took another observation. "One eighty azimuth, zero inclination, on heading," he said. "Ready to fire."

Goodrich punched the firing switch once. There was a single sharp jolt.

"Now get me range and speed," he said. He studied the sphere narrowly, thumb on the firing switch. It spun slowly, oblivious to their activity.

"I make it twelve hundred yards range, about one foot-second relative velocity now," McKay said.

"O.K." Goodrich rubbed at his chin. Twelve hundred yards range made Bertha's diameter around eighty feet. Big. There could be a lot inside a sphere that size. '

He glanced down at the Earth. The North Adantic seaboard beneath them was dark now, they would be in the shadow in a few more minutes.

"O.K." he said. "Let's get a few more pictures while we can.

They swung the ship again to bring the nose camera to bear and took pictures until they swung into the shadow. "Secure the cameras," Goodrich said.

Bertha hidden in darkness for the thirty-six minutes they took to pass through the shadow was not a comfortable companion. Goodrich could make out the sphere at times, as it occluded the stars, and after a while he began to get a panicky feeling it was closing in on him.

"Take a look at Bertha, Mac," he said. "Does she look any bigger to you?"

The navigator studied the screen carefully. "I believe it is," he said slowly.

It was an uneasy idea. He watched the screen carefully, measuring with his eye the span between stars obscured by the sphere. The image was growing larger, he was sure.

"You know, Mac," he said, "does it strike you funny that we haven't seen a sign of life from that thing? Do you suppose they might not know we're here?"

"Well, no. If it's a satellite, they're probably crammed with radar and optical gear, so it isn't very likely they'd miss us. Just because we can't see anything happening on the outside, that doesn't mean they aren't busy on the inside. They could be tracking and photographing every move we make, and we'd never know it."

"StI’ll you'd think they'd make some sort of signal, try to establish contact."

"Why? Have we?"

Goodrich blinked. "By golly, that's right," he said. "We've been so busy watching them, we never thought of it." He thought for a moment. "We could use the bow landing light for a blinker, I suppose. Either of you fellows know the international code for 'identify yourselves'?"

"QRA, I think," Brown said. "Interrogatory."

Goodrich manipulated the landing light switch several times. They watched the shadowy sphere for a reply. There was none.

"Maybe the landing light's not working," McKay said. "Turn her on for a minute, I'll swing the ship and see if we get a reflection off Bertha."

The sphere suddenly brightened in the bow screen, dimmed again as they swung past, and then brightened again as McKay centered the beam. It was closer, about seven or eight hundred yards, Goodrich guessed.

He worked the switch again, spelling out "QRA?" very slowly. There was no response.

"Maybe she's derelict," Brown said. "You see those little circles? I'm pretty sure those are direct view ports, but I don't see any lights behind them."

"Could be," Goodrich said. "On the other hand, those circles could be television cameras. And maybe they just don't want to talk to us. They may want to keep us guessing." Whoever it is, they would want to keep 'em guessing.

They were more than halfway through the shadow now. For the rest of the time, Goodrich kept the landing light on Bertha. Occasionally he flashed a signal with the switch. Bertha stI’ll gave no sign of life.

When they came out into the sunlight again, Bubberneck was directly ahead of Bertha, leading by about five hundred yards.

"Take a look at that little bulge about the middle, just coming into sight, "McKay said presendy. "What's it look like to you?"

"Which one?" Goodrich asked.

"The one just below that stub mast, or whatever it is, that slants up a little. I've been watching it for a while, it looks like a hatch to me, and it looks like it might be half-open. You can see better when it comes around farther."

"Yeah," Goodrich said. "It does look like it might be a hatch," he admitted.

"I think it is a hatch," McKay said positively. "Next time it comes around, watch the shadow when the sun hits at the angle from this side."

The men watched and fed the camera. The sphere hung there. It showed no sign of life. Goodrich kept his thumb on the firing switch. The coast of California showed a thin line on the horizon and grew rapidly into shape below them. He looked at Brown. The captain could not leave the ship, and the navigator was of almost equal importance. The second officer was the spare-parts man. "We could drop our pressure and let you out the hatch," Goodrich said. "Bring you back in the same way. I guess these suits are good enough to stand it."

"They're supposed to be," Brown said. "It's different in a decompression chamber, though. If anything goes wrong, they can get you out." He ran his fingers through his hair and stared at the sphere. "I wish we had a line," he said. "If I miss, it's a long way down."

"You don't have to go," Goodrich said. "It's up to you."

"Yeah, I know, I know. What if he starts something when I'm halfway across?"

'We'd have to haul out and leave you."

"That's what I thought . . . well, O.K., I guess. We can't disappoint all that brass. Give me a hand getting fixed up here, will you, Mac?"

"Thumbtack, Rubberneck," Goodrich said into his mike. "We're going to try it."

"Good boy. This won't be forgotten."

"I'll bet it won't," Brown said. "Not by me, anyway."

He slid his helmet on and secured it to his pressure suit. McKay helped him lash a spare oxygen bottle to his midriff, and two more on his back in such fashion that he could get at them readily, but they would not interfere with his movements. "Take it easy on that oxygen at first, tI’ll you get the feel of it," he said. "I don't think you’ll need very much push, that's just in case." McKay and Goodrich put on their own helmets. All three plugged into the intercom.

"O.K.," Goodrich said. "I'm going to depressurize now." He felt the pressure suit stiffen and constrict on' his arms and legs. McKay released the hydraulic seal of the hatch and swung it open.

"Her© I go," Brown said. 'Watch for my hand signals." He pulled himself to the hatch opening and balanced gingerly on its edge, holding himself steady with one hand. He flexed and straightened his legs slowly several times, getting the feel of it, and then let go and jumped strongly away. McKay and Goodrich watched tensely.

The thrust of Brown's legs had not been exactly in line with his center of gravity, and he began to cartwheel slowly. He was also slightly off on his line of flight. It was soon obvious he would miss the sphere, but they could not be sure if he realized this. They could see him twisting his head about and making futile swimming motions with his arms and legs, trying to orient himself. After about a minute he stopped moving and lay quietly. He apparendy got his bearings, for they saw him manipulate the oxygen bottle and he began to spin slowly in the opposite direction. He lay quiet for a moment again, then again used the bottle and this time kI’lled almost all his spin. By this time he was a good halfway to his target.

He made no further move until he was almost on the verge -of passing the sphere, or so it appeared to Goodrich, and then suddenly his course altered. It was too far to see exactly what he was doing, but he must have used the oxygen bottle again.

McKay spoke for the first time: "I believe the ldd's going to make it."

Brown's green-clad figure was sharp now against the white of the sphere. It suddenly exhibited Violent activity, to what end was not immediately clear, and then the watchers made out that he had struck the sphere and was sliding over its surface, scrabbling for a handhold.

He found one and lay quiet for a while, and the rotation of the sphere carried him around out of their sight. When he reappeared, they could see. that he was cautiously working his way over the surface toward what they had thought might be a hatch.

The radio broke in impatiendy: "Bubbemeck, this is Thumbtack. Do you have anything to report? Over."

"Thumbtack, Bubbemeck," Goodrich said. "We have a man aboard Bertha now. Wait."

Brown reached the hatch and disappeared. Apparendy it was open, as they had suspected. For ten minutes nothing happened.

"Bubbemeck, this is Thumbtack," the radio said. "Hasn't your man reported yet? Over."

"He can't report," Goodrich said shortly, "No radio. Wait."

Five more minutes went by. Goodrich's hands were getting numb and his belly and chest hurt him. His eyes tended to blur unless he focused carefully.

"We're getting close to the limit on these suits," he said. "If he don't show up in a few minutes, we're going to have to pressurize."

They were coming around to the terminator again, in another eight minutes they would be in darkness. If he's -^ot out by then, Goodrich thought—

"Hey," McKay said suddenly. "I think I saw that hatch move. Yeah, there he is, he's coining out now." Goodrich could see Brown now. He moved out onto the surface and stopped a few feet from the hatch.

"He's making himself fast to that stub mast," McKay said. "I think he's going to signal us." Apparently the navigator's eyes were holding up better than Goodrich's. "He's waving all clear now," McKay said. "By golly, I think he's waving us in. What do you make of it?"

"I can't see," Goodrich said. He thought briefly. "We've got to do something pretty quick. You're sure he's waving us in?"

"It looks that way to me."

"O.K., I'm going to ask permission from Control to go in and pick him up." He switched on his mike. "Thumbtack, this is Rubberneck," he said. "Our man signals all clear, wants us to move in. Request permission to approach Bertha. Over."

"Thumbtack, Roger. Wait."

"Wait, hell! Get on the ball down there!" Goodrich burst out. "We've had thirty minutes in these suits now, we won't last forever."

There was a moment of stunned silence.

"Roger, Rubberneck, use your own discretion."

"Rubberneck, Roger out." He slapped the switch viciously over to intercom. "O.K., Mac, you’ll have to con me in. I can't see well enough to judge distances. I'm not going to fire, going to blow off fuel and let the pump pressure drive us in. Line us up on her now."

The engineer clutched the flywheels in and the ship swung until its nose bore on the sphere. There were manual controls for emergency. Goodrich cut out the autopilot and punched the fuel switch, leaving the ignition off. The ship began to drift toward the sphere.

"O.K.," McKay said. "Cut her now tI’ll! turn over."

He swung the ship again until the stern view screen centered on the sphere. His own eyes were giving him trouble now, but they were much closer, he could see the target well enough to center it.

"O.K.," he said. "Now blow again."

Bertha had rotated twice while they were maneuvering, and the hatch was almost directly beneath them. McKay could make out Brown's figure scrambling back inside to get in the clear. The sphere swelled slowly until it fI’lled the whole view screen.

"Cut her!" McKay said. There was a grinding jar as the rocket and the sphere collided. Goodrich and McKay unbuckled and started to climb out the 'hatch. They looked up toward the sphere and saw Brown, blue in the face and with blood running from his nose, slithering down over the skin of the rocket. He motioned them violently back and scrambled inside, fumbling to plug into the intercom. McKay helped him.

"Let's get some pressure on this can!" he said through chattering teeth. "Don't worry about the ship, I've got her tied down."

McKay dogged the hatch and the pressure began to come up. "O.K.," Goodrich said. "I guess we can get these helmets off now." McKay helped Brown with his.

"Boy, that was rough," the second officer said. "Next time; somebody else can have it." He lay back on his acceleration couch. "No rush now," he said presently. "Bertha's abandoned, and I've got the ship made fast. There was a tie-down cable fast to a ring by the hatch. I hooked it into one of the

second-stage couplings." He stripped off his gloves and stared curiously at his hands. They were a puffy white, mottled by dark blotches where capI’llaries had broken. Blood oozed from under the fingernails. "I'll bet I'm like that all over," he said.

"I suppose so," Goodrich said. His vision was clearing now, but he felt as if he had been beaten all over his body, very carefully, with a rubber hose. His own fingernails felt as if they had been drown out with pincers.

"What makes you think it's abandoned?" he asked.

"Well, I went in through that hatch, it must be an air lock, there's another hatch just inside, and that's open, too. It gives out onto a sort of corridor. I couldn't see very well in there, there's no light, but I think that corridor runs around the hull like a belt. I felt along it a way, and as near as I could make out it goes on at least halfway around, with doors opening on it. Some of those were open too, the whole thing's wide open, no air. And it just feels dead. I came back to the hatch then and banged on the deck a couple of times with that oxygen bottle, didn't get any sign of life at all."

Goodrich frowned. "I don't see it," he said. "Why would anyone put this thing up here, go to all that trouble, and then leave it?"

"I don't think anyone put it up here," Brown said eamesdy. "What I mean is, I think it came from another planet. Listen, there were controls in that air lock, I could see pretty well in there, but they were different. You know, you climb in a Jap plane, or a German plane, or a Russian plane, things are different but a wheel is a wheel, a handle is a handle, and a dial has pointers on it and figures, even if they're different figures. This thing, everything is different. You take that tie-down cable by the hatch; it's a tie-down cable all right, you can see that; but it's not laid like a rope, and it's not braided either, it's got scales. Now who ever heard of a steel cable with scales like a snake?"

"You might be right about it being extraterrestrial," Goodrich said. "Myself, I've had that feeling too, ever since we first spotted it." He hesitated. "The trouble is, it stI’ll doesn't figure. If it came from another planet, why bring it all that way, and then leave it?"

"Maybe they just finished with it," McKay said. "Maybe they finished whatever work they needed it for, an observation post, say; and just figured it was easier to leave it than to take it back. Or maybe they died. We don't know, that thing might have been here just like that for a couple thousand years, there's nothing here, no weather or anything, to change it."

"I suppose so," Goodrich said. "The thing is, though, we have to try and find out." He glanced at his watch. "We'll have to wait tI’ll we get around and contact Control on it, and report. Way it looks to me, though, we'll have to look it over better, we can't just leave it like this."

Brown shook his 'head. "I don't know," he said. "I don't know if I can take any more in that pressure suit."

"Well, with a little rest we should be good for another ten minutes or so. You can stay here and take it easy, there's a flashlight in the survival kit, I'll take that and take a quick look around myself."

"I hate to chicken out on you, captain," Brown said. "I just don't think I could do much good, I've just about shot my wad, and that's ft. For a while there, jumping across, I didn't know if I'd make it or not. Five 'hundred yards is a long way to jump, with a thousand miles to fall if you miss."

"That's O.K.," Goodrich said. "You've done your share, you sit here and take it easy."

They swung around within radio range of the ground station again.

"Thumbtack, this is Bubberneck," Goodrich said. "Bertha condition Zebra. Apparently derelict. I say again, apparently derelict. We are now tied up to Bertha. There is an open hatch. Do you wish us to investigate the interior? Over."

There was the usual acknowledgment and pause. "Another committee meeting," McKay said. Goodrich grunted,

"Bartell here again," the radio said. "How are those pressure suits doing, can you stand any more? Tell you what, Goodrich, you know the situation, just use your own discretion. Get what you can, but don't endanger the rocket or your crew."

"Rubberneck, Roger. We will investigate further and advise in fifteen minutes. Out"

"We're getting valuable now," McKay said judiciously.

"O.K., boys," Goodrich said. "Let's go."

They bled off the air and opened the hatch. The rocket had taken up the rotation of the sphere, so that it appeared to hang nose-down under the slight pseudogravity of centrifugal force. Goodrich went first and McKay and Brown followed, hopping up from the hatch and catching the line from the sphere. They went hand over hand along the line and pulled themselves into the airlock. At most, Goodrich estimated they had fifteen minutes in the pressure suits to work with. He motioned McKay off in one direction along the corridor and pulled himself along a life line attached to the inner wall in the other direction, with Brown following him. The outer wall was corrugated, apparendy a walkway, and there were doors set in the sidewalls. This ship was meant to spin, he thought, so that the outer skin would be the deck. The rotation it had now was just enough to give him orientation, not enough to walk under.

One of the doors was ajar. He pulled it open and flashed his light around. It gave the impression of being living quarters of some kind, what seemed to be a bunk frame was folded against the bulkhead, and there were panels that hinted at lockers. He tried one of these panels but could not make out how it opened, if it did.

He hurried on along the corridor, trying doors at random, flashing his light around inside, feeling a growing uneasiness.

The place had an empty but well-swept feel about it. It did not fit with the hatches swinging ajar and the dead dark air-lessness.

They came to a passageway intersecting at right angles. Goodrich paused and oriented himself. Using the axis of rotation as a reference, the hatch and the main corridor were on the equator of the sphere. At the north polar axis, he remembered, there was a bulge and a cluster of external gear, hinting at a concentration of navigational gear within.

Remembering something he had once read, he grasped Brown's arm and pushed his helmet against the other man's.

"Can you hear me?" he asked.

The answer was thin and reedy, they were under only partial pressure in the helmets, but understandable.

"O.K.," Goodrich said. "I'm going to leave you here. You — keep your helmet shoved up against the wall of this passage. If you hear three bangs, get back and get out of the lock, cut the cable and stand off about five hundred yards in the rocket. If I don't signal in thirty minutes, fire up and go home. _ I don't like the feel of this, it feels fishy, I'm going to look around a little more, but I don't want to take a chance losing the rocket."

He found the flight deck at the end of the cross passage, a circular compartment about ten feet across. There were recognizable seats surrounded by clusters of completely unfamiliar equipment, but no acceleration couches. He flashed the light around, studying the equipment. The same air of unused readiness characterized this place. A bank of small, round, oblong, and tubular gray glass surfaces caught his eye. Above two of them, greenish-tinted cards were neatly pasted. Tangled purple symbols fluoresced softly on the t. cards as his flashlight caught them. Correction cards, Goodrich thought, for instrument calibration.

He bent closer to study a row of tiny beads. There seemed to be an amber glint deep inside one of them. He turned the flashlight off. The light, just a bare glint, was stI’ll there.

Why should an abandoned ship, have power?

A sudden flash of reflected light off the panel startled him.
He glanced back over his shoulder and saw the passage be-
hind him outlined in a glow of fight and he had a sudden
f" 23
sick feeling that this was it, the trap had sprung. Then he saw that the glow was the reflection of a light being carried along the corridor, and stI’ll hidden from him by the curve. A moment later McKay came into view.

"Looks dead," he said. "I followed that corridor all the way around."

"I want you to see something." Goodrich moved back to where he had seen the panel light. It was now purple. He shoved his helmet against McKay's. "What color is that light?" he asked.

"Looks purple to me," McKay said. 'What do you think it is?"

"I don't know, but I don't like it. It was amber a minute ago." He pulled himself over to a wall and banged three times on it with the metal flashlight. "Come on, let's get out of here." He started to move toward the passage.

Lights flashed on in the passage and flight deck.

He stopped, bewildered by the sudden glare, and glanced back at the control position. There was another light beside the first now, also purple. As he watched, another winked on, and a thin red line began to climb up one of the tubes.

Bertha was coming alive.

"Listen!" McKay said. "Do you hear something?" A thin sound, just on the edge of audibility, built up quickly to a heavy boom. It was a voice. "Ibj b'kirac," it said. "Nqaroq!"

"Pressure!" Goodrich said. 'We're getting pressure in here!" There were six purple lights on the panel, and green dots and red lines were crawling on the glass surfaces he had thought of as indicating instruments.

The hatch, he thought suddenly, if we've got pressure, the hatch must be closed—

"Get below and see if Brown made it out the hatch," he told McKay. "If he didn't, see if you can get it open and get out with him, he knows what to do."

"How about you?"

"Never mind me. We're committed now, 111 stay here and meet these people, whoever they are; but I want that rocket in the clear. Now move!"

"Uirqsebusa!" the strange voice said. "Uirqsebusar

McKay jumped and flew down the passage clumsily, shoving himself off the curve with his hands.

The voice spoke again: "Uirq-sebusa! Uirqsebusa!" This time, Goodrich localized the sound as coming from what might have been a speaker in the overhead. He started to move back to the control position, looking for something that might be a microphone, and found he could not

"Bimsqik erikusic!" the voice warned. "Uirqsebusar'

He could not move. He kicked out involuntarily, startled at the resistance, and flew back against the bulkhead He found he could not push himself away from it again.

"Bimsqik erikusic!" the voice repeated.

He stI’ll could move sidewise along the wall. He pushed himself along carefully until he reached the passage and found it clear. He could not move back inside the compartment, but he could move about freely in the passage.

They don't want me in there, he thought. He waited, just inside the passage, watching. The green dots and red lines and purple lights were steady now.

There was a scuffling sound in the passage behind him. It was McKay and Brown, coming back up.

"The hatch was closed when I got there, captain," Brown said. "Mac came along and we tried to get it open. There seems to be some sort of controls there, but they don't answer. I think they're disabled, maybe on a safety interlock of some kind."

"It might not be a safety interlock," Goodrich said. "The hatch might be locked, to keep us in." He told them about the barrier to the flight deck.

McKay tried it and was impressed. "This is pretty hot stuff," he said thoughtfully. "You know what that is? That's one of those force screens you read about, only they're not supposed to be possible. You ask me, we've ran into something really big here."

"Bigger than we are, anyway," Goodrich agreed. "Brown, suppose you get back below to that hatch and keep an eye on it. Mac, take another scout around and see if anybody or anything has come out in the open yet. I'll stay here and watch these instruments, if anything else is going to happen it might show on them."

For half an hour, nothing did happen. McKay returned and reported no sign of life in any of the open compartments. "I did find the galley though, I think," he said. "I looked in one compartment and it shot a kind of cookie and a bottle at me." He showed Goodrich a round brownish cake and a flexible transparent container fI’lled with colorless fluid.

"Might be," Goodrich said. "On the other hand, maybe you just found the janitor's locker. That might be soap and window cleaner."

McKay looked at the objects doubtfully. "They could be," he agreed. "Anything happen up here?" "Not a thing."

"You know, I don't like this. Maybe we could break that hatch open. You think we ought to give it a try?"

Goodrich shook his head. "Let's wait a few minutes longer. Whoever's running this show knows we're here. Let them show their hand first."

Their oxygen was running low, and it occurred to them to test the'air for breathability. They took off their helmets.

McKay nibbled at the cake. "Tastes O.K.," he said. There was a nipple in one end of the flexible container. He put it in his mouth and squeezed out a few drops, rolling diem around his tongue. "Water," he said. "Just plain water." He frowned. "Water, food, air, power; but nobody at home, this whole thing just sitting here waiting for us—I don't get it. You think we might have just happened in while they were out for a little stroll?"

Goodrich frowned thoughtfully. "I don't know what to think, Mac."

"It doesn't add up." McKay agreed. "I’ll swear to one thing, though, this ship wasn't built on Earth, at least not present-day Earth." He thought for a moment. "Hey, how about that, you think there might be something to this Atlantis business? This thing could have been up here for twenty thousand years, it wouldn't show any change. What do you think?"

Goodrich shook his head. "That doesn't fit either. People who could build a thing like this wouldn't just vanish off the Earth and not leave anything but chipped flint arrowheads. There is one possibility—" he broke off. "Look at that!" he said sharply.

A new red line had begun to slide up one of the tubes on the instrument panel. There was a slight lurch. "Uk b'kauq," the speaker boomed. "C'queta!"

Outside, the line holding the rocket had suddenly uncoupled itself and snaked up to coil about two bitts. The rocket drifted slowly away. A rosy glow sprang out all around Bertha, deepened. She swung out of her orbit, slowly at first, then faster, catapulting outward from the Earth and the Sun, rising at an angle to the plane of the ecliptic.

Inside, the men felt only the first lurch. They waited tensely, but it was not repeated.

"The rocket," McKay said. That was the rocket! The line must have parted."

Goodrich nodded. "We're stuck now, even if we do get out the hatch."

"Well," McKay said. "At least Bertha can't go very far, I looked her over pretty good and I didn't see any sign of rocket or jet tubes. Sooner or later, somebody will get up here and get us out. If the three bears don't come home first, that is."

"Maybe Bertha doesn't need rockets," Goodrich said. "How about that force-field thing? That's pretty advanced, it wouldn't fit with just rockets."

"Yeah, that's right," McKay said thoughtfully. "They might even have acceleration whipped. If they have, we wouldn't even know if we were moving. I wish whoever is running this show would come on out and let us get a look at them."

"Well, I'll tell you," Goodrich said. "I don't think anybody is running it. I think it's all automatic. I think maybe Bertha was put here just for us to find.

"Suppose that somewhere in the universe, there's a race that has space travel, maybe even faster than light. They get around and explore hundreds of suns, thousands of planets, and now and then they find one with intelligent life. Now there's a chance that any planet with intelligent life may develop space travel also, and naturally our galactic spacemen want to know about it if they do, At the same time, there's an awful lot of planets in the universe, they can't establish a regular watch over all of them.

"So here's Bertha. They leave her sitting here, maybe a year ago, maybe five hundred years ago, maybe fifty thousand years ago. As long as nothing happens, Bertha just stays here, year in and year out, swinging around and around the Earth every two hours and twenty minutes, all loaded and ready to go, the door open, waiting.

"Down on the Earth, men chip flints, and then they build carts, and then they build ships, and then they build aircraft, and Bertha stI’ll sits here. Finally then, they build a rocket capable of escape velocity. They bust their guts to get up into a free-fall orbit, and there's Bertha, waiting, with the door open. Any race curious enough to develop wheels and wings, that's all the bait they need, just an open door in the right place.

"You get it? The right food, the right water, the right air, the right temperature, it's all just too pat. A super mousetrap—"

McKay nodded. "It could be. On the other hand, it might not be, we don't know, all we can do is guess. Now supposing—"

"Kefqs c'qetar the speaker interrupted.

Bertha had now reached a point several million miles above the orbit of Mars. The reddish glow suddenly changed to purple.

"Kefqs c'qeta!" the speaker said again. Bertha vanished.

~J4ere oCie 'WJe

By Fox B. Holden I

KBUGEB was quiet, sitting there, watching the screen, and for a long time neither of us spoke. You could hear the soft hum of tie ion drive and it got to be sort of a muted thunder. You wondered if maybe, somehow, in the awful silence of the Big Dark there were any other ears that heard it, and the wondering framed the question for you again.

The question was in Kruger's mind, too. Maybe in a harder, cooler, more scientific sense than it was in mine, but I knew it was there. And in the silence between us we watched the orange-green sphere grow bigger by the second.

Kruger spoke, finally. "Wes," he said, "111 even make eight to five. Eight to five she's as dead as a doornail. So you lose, but think of being the first man in history to make a bet on life on Mars, knowing that in less than an hour it's bound to be paid off one way or another! How Tsout that!"

If he'd been anything but a government-commissioned scientist at the threshold of an historic achievement, the quipping might have been bravado. But two years of training and study were paying off, and we had he-man danger reduced to a pretty unromantic minimum. No, it wasn't bravado because there was no genuine fear within us. Something else; I can't name it.

I pulled a wadded-up five-dollar bI’ll out of my pants pocket and tossed it onto the screen. It looked funny ... a five-dollar bI’ll sitting on Mars like that. And in a second it was joined by another fiver and three singles.

"Who'll hold the stakes?" Kruger said.

"You. You hold 'em—be more fun winning that way. How about a reading, huh? Better get ready to twist this barrel around—"

"Such a product of environment you are. Always in a hurry. .. He picked the money up with exaggerated slowness, pocketed it ceremoniously, and then looked for a second at the sbreen. Then the ready grin on his squarish, young-old face faded a little, and then it disappeared altogether. "But I suppose you're right. Got a cigarette?"

"On the comp-panel."

"Yeah." I waited for him to light it, lit one myself. "Ready, kid?"

He grunted. We twisted her.

Tail-first, ion stream cutting the Big Dark like a white-hot rapier, we started—down. There was an up and a down, now, and Mars was at the bottom.

We bumped.

Then Kruger dumped out our drive potential, and it was all over. For a few seconds, anyway, it was all over.

Kruger started in with the Physical Check equipment then and I focused the screen. It was as though the whole business were a routine that we'd done for half our lives. And we had to keep it that way—not for the efficiency side of the book; hell, we had five years if we needed it It was because Space Medicine said so—the whiz kids in Psychiatrics. "Keep it on a 'pass the salt basis,'" were the orders, "and you'll keep all your buttons. Otherwise, pffut!"

I guess they were right. The newspaper, radio and TV boys back home would be going pffut about the trip with habitual regularity—but we couldn't. Brother, the tons of newsprint and ink they'd be chucking around while we passed the salt!

I focused, and started a slow, full circle. I jacked in the ship's dicto and talked cryptic things onto its tape. Terse little things our confreres in science would later decipher into a complete picture of an infinite, rolling expanse of desert at twilight, with a sun the size of a shirt button almost directly overhead, letting the far-off ridges of dull green vegetation get swallowed up in the darkling night.

And then I stopped the circle. I was about two hundred degrees around, and I locked the screen in, and then hollered at Kruger.

He brought me the lens-plates I asked for, helped me mike them in over the screen. They played hell with the nice focus I had, but there wasn't any mistaking what they blew up for us.

"Pay me, kid!" I said.

They were domes—mile upon incredible mile of polished domes, each maybe a fifth high as wide. They skirted the ridge of a long, gendy curving vegetation-line, and were probably less than twenty miles away. Our preoccupation in getting the E-M-l down in one piece was the only excuse I could think of for not having spotted them on the way in.

"Not so fast, Gaylord ... I stI’ll say dead as a doornail . . . help me break out the suits and get die track ready, huh?"

"Think we need 'em?"

"Almost pure CO-2 out there, just like the books all said in Astronomy 1. The P-C makes geniuses of us right down the line. You coming?"

"I want my money."

"Pass the salt and come on!"

They met us halfway. Their vehicle was essentially the same as our own; broad, flat tracks over bogies slung on an efficient torsion-bar suspension—wide, light-weight chassis fitted with a tear-drop canopy of crystal transparency. But traveling with a lot less noise, and with almost twice the speed. Kruger said, "I guess I owe you eight bucks."

"Maybe they're robots. Long-dead civilization. Only the machines remain to traverse the wind-whipped sands. . . ."

"Stop, you're chI’lling my marrow!"

"Want to try the radio?"

"Minute . . . hold on, looks as if they're stopping!"

"Obviously want us there. Truce-parley in the desert-look, getting out,' I think. Come on, club this diing on the flanks, will you?"

Kruger had his boot flat to the floor as it was, and we were tossing up sand on both sides like a miniature tornado. Typically Earth-style—lots of noise, lots of splash, all show and no go.

It seemed as if we kept them waiting for an hour, but it
was actually less than ten minutes before Kruger had us up
alongside. ¹

"You think they know all about radio and such, I hope? Because brother, I'm not going to take this goldfish bowl off to hear them utter the Secret of the Universe itself. . . ."

"Hey, hey—they're wearing suits and helmets themselves. What the hell . . . you don't suppose you-know-who has us beat-"

"Nuts, you owe me eight bucks! Come on, let's get out of here."

We climbed down out of the track. And there we were, facing them, wondering a little foolishly what the intelligent thing was to do.

All three were taller than Max's six-one by several inches. Thinner, too. Their skin was whiter, and they looked smarter. Aside from that they might have been a welcoming committee from home. Except that there were no weapons at their sides, and as far as Kruger and I could see, none dangling from their vehicle.

There were three of them, and all at once I could see one of them move his mouth, and quite fantastically heard his deep-throated voice in my ear-plugs. Fantastically, that is, in German.

"Wir—wir sind nicht Deutsch—" I heard Max stammer. He was turning a pale shade of mauve. "François, peut-être?"

"Non—" I managed. "Américaine—nous parlons anglais—" "Excellent! And we welcome you, men of Earth, United States of America, and trust you had a pleasant voyage! We must apologize for our inability to have distinguished your nationality at once. But our records have never been as complete as we might wish." And then the three of them made gracious little bows, and Kruger and I just stood there like a couple of clowns. "I am called Kell-IIf, and to my right and left respectively are Ghoro Elder and Juhr-IV." And then there was a little pause . . . Kruger and I got die drift that it was our turn after a while.

"Dr. Max Kruger, Washington, and my technician, Wesley Latham, gentlemen. We hope you forgive our—our awkwardness, but I think you will understand our amazement. To be frank, we had not expected to find life on the fourth planet And I'm afraid even less, had we expected such intimate knowledge of ourselves to exist beyond our own sphere. We are—we are greatly appreciative of your cordiality, gende-men."

And that, for Kruger, was a speech. For me it would have been a major oration under the circumstances, but I felt a little better when I detected the hint of a smile at the comers of Kell-III's thin, sensitive-looking lips.

"Allow us to escort you to the Primary Enclosure, gende-men. We wish to see to your comfort, following which, if it is your pleasure, we shall be more than happy to summon a quorum of the Teachers to assist you in launching the preliminary stages of your research. If you will follow our vehicle, gentlemen."

They bowed again, and waited until we had clambered aboard our track before turning and re-entering their own.

Kruger fumbled around for the ignition switch, maused the gears and made a mess of getting us started up.

"I don't believe it" was all I could get out of him for a full two minutes.

"The University of California must have a new expansion program going," I said. "And you don't get your money back."

"I don't believe it."

"That's been our trouble all along, back home," I said. "We've got all the capacity anybody needs to believe anything. We just use it on the wrong stuff. Give this thing a boot, doc. We don't want them to think we're slow. . . ."

The magnificent structure which Kell-III had called the Primary Enclosure was perhaps five full miles in diameter and little less than one at its maximum height. Inside it there was a city that only poets could have designed; men of practical science, perhaps never. Art and life had never been so exquisitely blended on Earth.

And about it all there was an aura of the perfect peace that the city itself bespoke—and a quietness. It was the quietude, I think, that kept Kruger and myself from taking deeper breaths. People thronged the deep green of the generous parks, the flaring sweep of the overhead ramps that twined fantastically between this towering spire and the next, the wide, immaculate thoroughfares. They were everywhere, clad in colorful toga-like garments, and each, it seemed, with a gentle manner. They would halt briefly as we walked among them behind Kell-III and his aides, but there were the same gentle, courteous bows that we'd met out on the desert; not stares, not shouts, not the mobbing so often bred by unbridled curiosity.

But even with the pleasant murmur of their low, soft voices there was the quietness, and I asked Kruger if he noticed it too. It was awkward, carrying our bulging helmets beneath our stI’ll-suited arms, but having them off at least gave us back the individuality of our voices, and that helped a littie. We had to work to breathe; it was evident that the people here had adapted down to a bare minimum of oxygen before resorting to the Enclosures, but their artifical atmosphere had an invigorating tang, and that helped, too.

"They're just a little surprised, I guess," Kruger said in his best sotto voce. "Either that, or—well, hell, I guess we can allow for a few little differences from ourselves! They could as easily have been bug-eyed octopods with soul-tearing screams for normal voices, after all. I wouldn't worry about it."

"I wish we'd get to it, though. These—these Teachers, whoever they are. I've got questions—"

"You and the big rush! But I've got a few of my own. Better do it their way, though. It'll be good for your ulcers, Wes."

"Believe that when I see it," I answered him.

Our panorama of the city widened as we started up the gently inclining ramp that circled the tower-like structure in which Kell-III and the others apparendy intended to bI’llet us. Here Kruger voiced a thought that had just started whipping around in my own head. "Not many vehicles," he said. "Either they're conserving power and fuel to beat the devil, or else they just don't gad about very much. . . ."

"Maybe they're not the type," I said. "Maybe that track of theirs is a special-occasions-only affair—you notice we didn't drive over here. Parked as soon as we got inside. It could answer a lot of my worries."

"About their quietness, is that what you mean?"

"Yeah. It gets me. Max."

"Relax—pass the salt or something. . . ."

But I couldn't relax, even after we'd been left to ourselves about five stories up in one of the most gracefully appointed suites I'd ever been in. I could only think of the way the ancient Britons must have felt in their first contact with the civilization of old Marco Polo's discovery—their first sight of fine glassware, their first touch of silk, first scent of delicate perfume. . . .

Kell-III told us he'd be back after we'd had food and sleep, and Max was saying if the sleeping period was as generous as the portions of food that had been sent in we might come out of the whole thing alive after all. "But I didn't think it'd be anything like this," he sighed. He already was stripped to the waist and stretched out on one of the low, wide couches, rubbing his eyes.

"You liked it better when we were the only frogs in the pond!"

"Oh, go to sleep! And if you can't do that, think of meat least pity a man who had his five bucks all counted. You don't snore, do you?"

"Softly, but not well."

"G'night, kid," he said, and I let it go at that. I told myself this was the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco, and that everything would be put back together the way I'd left it four months ago when I woke up, and tried one of the couches for size. It fit, and if Max snored louder than I did, I didn't hear him for ten hours.

He turned, pulled his khaki shirt on, cinched die broad belt at his waist.

"Doc, it's time to bow out." I said it quietiy, and I tried to make it hard and level.

He didn't even rum around. "It's time to bow out when I say so. We've been working eight hours at a stretch, eight for sleep, and eight more for work again. Starting today it's nine, six and nine. And itll be ten, four and ten if I think it's necessary." He turned to me. "Got it?" He could have said, "That's an order," but he didn't have to. His face was stI’ll friendly, but his eyes were hard, and it meant that Dr. Max Kruger was stI’ll running the show.

"Yeah, all right," I said. "Sure."

"I'm sorry about what's happening to them, naturally. But in our own interests, we've got to get as much as we can while we can. And if they want to stick with us up to their last ten minutes, that's up to them, and we'll be happy for their services—period."

Yes, it was logic. The government hadn't spent almost a bI’llion bucks on us to throw away what few breaks we might get. We had to squeeze out every nickel's worth of information we could. It wasn't our dough. The money had bought us the equipment to do a grade-A job the first time out—money that the scientists back home had wrangled with Congress for God-knows-how-long to get. They had bought us a little over five years in Space; five years of food, of air to breathe, of fuel to bum. If we could complete the job in five months instead of five years, then we were expected to bring back the change. Men at their first time at bat in Space weren't in a position to waste as much as a flashlight battery. Whatever we saved, the next expedition in the E-M-l would have.

And that included wear and tear on the ship itself. Jobs like the E-M-l took five years to build, and right now, pending the outcome of its maiden voyage, it was the only one Earth owned.

I added it all up in my head, fast, and added it up again.

And the way it's done on Earth, two and two always come out to four.

"You'd give 'em ten minutes. I like that—that's generous."

"Listen, Latham—"

"Sorry, Max. Forget it and let's go."

He looked at me that hard way again, started to say something, and didn't. I picked up my dicto and started to go.

"Don't go away mad, kid!" The smile was back on his face, but it looked as if it had been pasted there.

"No," I said. "No. Wouldn't think of it, Kid. But let's just be sure, since we're going to be on this new hopped-up schedule, that we don't miss anything. Let's be sure to get it all down. All the things there are to know about these people that aren't in their books, aren't on their recording tapes . . . I hope you know where to look, Max. See you in nine hours." I went out, my staff was waiting for me, and we went to work.

During the last three months I tried to find one Martian, as I walked among their ever-thinning numbers on the broad thoroughfares and in the great, wide parks, and worked with them in closer proximity—I tried to find one who might come up to me and say, "Earthman, we are dying. Go home, that we might do it in peace, and by ourselves. Leave us; we are not hosts to strangers who can return to homes abounding with life, while we ourselves daily enter our graves. Go home, Earthman!"

I tried to find one, and I could not, and I thought of the situation reversed. ...

And when we did at length go, on a day of their last days, it would be only for eight months—four for the trip home, four for the next expedition with its Development Survey experts, planning their carnival of buy and sell, stake and claim before the dead of Mars were cold in their great tombs.

It made me sick inside, and I could not look Lya squarely in the face; I could not look Kell-III in the face and say something traditional and noble like "We will carry on, be at rest."

For I knew my people would be dancing over his sandswept sepulchre, with comic-books for sale. . . .

And at length, as it had to, the day came.

Kell-III had told Kruger, and thank God, Kruger had had enough presence of mind to act as though it were a terrible shock, and to profess that we had had no idea, or we would certainly not have imposed on such gracious hospitality. But he had the right words, and all the words Earthmen know so well how to use when their minds think one thing and their tongues are quite sincerely saying another.

It was all transparent enough to Kell-III of course—hadn't he and his people studied us to the point where our shortcomings were painfully obvious? Quite typically, he accepted Kruger's moving sympathies as though they were genuine. Even to that, Kell-III and his people remained the flawless hosts.

- The winding ramps, the broad streets, the soft parks were silent with their ever-dwindling throngs as the people of Mars who stI’ll lived sought their temples.

The shallow lakes were stI’ll, and the green beaches had long since been empty; the time of living was nearly over.

Somehow, after the Teachers and their aides had made their apologies—oh yes, apologies—had come to us one by one during the last weeks to wish us good luck with our new venture in quest of the stars, had said good-by and then melted, one by one, day by day, into the silent processions, I managed to see Lya for a final time.

There was not much. There was no way to say all the words I'd planned so carefully, for I was not a Martian, and my skI’ll to say such words was inadequate.

"I am sorry. Learned One," I said.

And there was again a smile on her face; once more, a smile of some inner gratitude, and, I like to think, of understanding of my inadequacy, and of forgiveness for it.

"Do not be, Wesley Latham," she said. And for a moment it was hard for me to see her. "Know that much of your share is left; that the next five hundred thousand years are yours, and that we are glad for you. A Jtappy future, Mr. Latham."

Her smile was radiant as she said it, and she was smiling stI’ll as she left to follow the others.

Then I found Kruger, and together we made our way to the track.

I tried not to hear the blast of our engine as it started, succeeded in not looking back as we left the Enclosures and headed for the E-M-l.

It took us less than an hour to reach her, and an hour was just gone by the time we had the track aboard and were ready to blast off.

There was the low moaning of the cold wind among the dunes as it raced to play its invisible game of blind-man's-buff among them, and little clouds of sand whirled with it to make the Enclosures dimly veiled things seven hundred thousand years and twenty miles behind us.

"Let's get aboard," I said. "Let's get out of here."

"Wes," I heard Max say, "I can't watch a people die any easier than you. ..

We didn't say anything more, but just clambered in and blasted clear.

I hoped that back in the Enclosures, Martian hymns drowned us out as though we'd never existed.

The visiscreen was a black velvet tapestry studded with all the jewelry Nature wore for men to see, and I was thankful that Kruger wasn't trying to make small talk. I wouldn't have answered him and I think he knew it. It went on that way for a week or so.

After that I guess he couldn't take it, or maybe he'd been thinking thoughts of his own, but finally he opened up, and I found my own voice. "Underneath you think I'm quite a louse," he said.

"When you're dead I hope somebody builds a hot-dog stand on your grave."

"Or a branch of the stock exchange, I know. Probably somebody will. And I won't be able to stop it, Wes."

He tamed his face a little from the computer panels, helped himself to one of my cigarettes. The hardness I'd expected to see wasn't there, and I started feeling mixed up again.

"You'd like me to ditch the ship night-side, square in the middle of the Pacific, wouldn't you, laddie?"

The thought's occurred to mel That way at least it'd be five years before they could get back up there, before the leeches could get their claws in—"

"It would be romantic, anyway," Max said, almost as though he were actually considering the idea. "Romantic as hell. But life goes on. It goes on, and we've got to bring her in, Wes."

"And be heroes?"

"And be heroes."

I got a little bit profane. But Max wasn't getting sore, because I guess he knew how close I was to going pffut. "All right," I said finally. "Okay. So it's not our fault they're dying-dead . . . but the one time in our lives we're in a position to do something decent for that mob back home, whether they like it or not, and we re stI’ll going to do the thing their way. Take your logic and your damn budget and your Development Survey ghouls and go to hell. Step right up, ladies and gendemen, genu-ine Martian real estate, just vacated. And in addition, a roller-coaster in the back yard, every home should have one—"

He let me go on like that for I don't know how long. We were just loafing through the Big Dark, and I finally yelled at him to boot the thing in the rear and get us home and get it over with. And he just gave me that grin.

"Always in a hurry," he said.

"Me? I'm the guy who wants them to have the privacy of their own—death, for a while .. . remember? But I guess that's one of those romantic ideas."

"Kind of. Kind of. It won't be very romantic cooped up in here with me for the next five years, though."

I looked at him, and that damn grin was stI’ll there. I noted that our speed indicator hadn't climbed a centimeter.

"Speed control got jammed, somehow," Max said seriously. "Going to take us a hell of a while to get back all right. Better get 'em on the UHF, kid. Tell them five years. Tell them we're both lousy mechanics, and we're sorry as hell." And now the grin was a smile.

. . . much of your share is left—a happy future, Mr. Latham. . . .

I opened my mouth but nothing came out. "Shut up and pass the salt," said Max.

Operation

By Clifford D. Simak

OLD CREEPY was down in the control room, sawing lustily on his screeching fiddle. On the sun-blasted plains outside the Mercurtian Power Center, the Roman Candles, snatching their shapes from Creepy's mind, had assumed the form of Terrestrial hI’llbI’llies and were cavorting through the measures of a square dance. Inside the refrigeration room, Mathilde, the cat, stared angrily at the slabs of frozen beef above her head, felt the cold of the place and meowed sofdy.

Up in the office, at the peak of the great photocell that was the center. Curt Craig stared angrily across the desk at Norman Page.

One hundred miles away, Knut Anderson, incased in a cumbersome photocell space suit, stared incredulously at what he saw inside the space warp.

The communication bank snarled warningly and Craig swung about in his chair, lifted the handset off the cradle and snapped recognition into the mouthpiece.

"This is Knut, chief," said a voice, badly blurred by radiations.

"Yes," yelled Craig. "What did you find?" "A big one," said Knut's voice. "Where?"

"I'll give you the location."

Craig snatched up a pencil, wrote rapidly as the voice spat and crackled at him.

"Bigger than anything on record," shrI’lled Knut's voice. "Space busted wide open and twisted all to hell. The instruments went nuts."

"Well have to slap a tracer on it," said Craig, tensely. "Take a lot of power, but we've got to do it If that thing starts to move—"

Knut's voice snapped and blurred and sputtered so Craig couldn't hear a word he said.

"You come back right away," Craig yelled. "It's dangerous out there. If you get too close to that thing—"

Knut interrupted, his voice wallowing in the wail of tortured beam. "There's something else, chief. Something funny. Damn funny—"

The voice pinched out.

Craig shrieked into the mouthpiece. "What is it, Knut? What's funny?"

He stopped, astonished, for suddenly the crackle and hissing and whistle of the communications beam was gone.

His left hand flicked out to the board and snapped a toggle. The board hummed as tremendous power surged into the call. It took power—lots of power—to maintain a tight beam on Mercury. But there was no answering hum, no indication the beam was being restored.

Something had happened out there! Something had snapped the beam.

Craig stood up, white-faced, to stare through the ray filter port to the ashy plains. There was nothing to get excited about —not yet anyway. He had to wait for Knut to get back. It wouldn't take long. He had told Knut to start at once, and those puddle jumpers could travel.

But what if Knut didn't come back? What if that space warp had moved? The biggest one on record, Knut had said. Of course, there always were a lot of them one had to keep an eye on, but very few big enough to really worry about. Little whirlpools and eddies where the space-time continuum was wavering around, wondering which way it ought to jump.

Not dangerous, just a bother. Had to be careful not to drive a puddle jumper into one. But a big one, if it started to move, might engulf the plant-Outside, the Candles were kicking up the dust, shuffling and hopping and flapping their arms. For the moment they

were mountain folk back in the hI’lls of Earth, having them a hoe down. But there was something grotesque about them— like scarecrows set to music.

The plains of Mercury stretched away to the near horizon, rolling plains of bitter dust. The Sun was a monstrous thing of bright-blue flame in a sky of inky black, ribbons of scarlet curling out like snaky tentacles.

Mercury was its nearest to the Sun—a mere twenty-nine million miles distant, and that probably explained the warp. The nearness to the Sun and the epidemic of sunspots. Although the sunspots may not have had anything to do with it. Nobody knew.

Craig had forgotten Page until the man coughed, and then he turned away from the port and went back to the desk.

"I hope," said Page, "that you have reconsidered. This project of mine means a lot to me."

Craig was suddenly swept with anger at the man's persist-' ence.

"I gave you my answer once," he snapped. "That is enough. When I say a thing, I mean it."

"I can't see your objection," said Page flady. "After all, these Candles—"

"You're not capturing any Candles," said Craig. 'Your idea is the most crackpot, from more than one viewpoint, that I have ever heard."

"I can't understand this strange attitude of yours," argued Page. "I was assured at Washington—"

Craig's anger flared. "I don't give a damn what Washington assured you. You're going back as soon as the oxygen ship comes in. And you're going back without a Candle."

"It would do no harm. And I'm prepared to pay well for any services you—"

Craig ignored the hinted bribe, leveled a pencil at Page.

"Let me explain it to you once again," he said. Til explain it very carefully and in full, so you will understand.

"The Candles are natives of Mercury. They were here first.

They were here when men came, and they'll probably be here long after men depart. They have let us be and we have let them be. And we have let them be for just one reason—one damn good reason. You see, we don't know what they could do if we stirred them up. We are afraid of what they might do."

Page opened his mouth to speak, but Craig waved him into silence and went on.

"They are organisms of pure energy: things that draw their life substance directly from the Sun—just as you and I do. Only we get ours by a roundabout way. They're a lot more efficient than we are by that very token, for they absorb their energy direct, while we get ours by chemical processes.

"And when we've said that much—that's about all we can can say. Because that's all we know about them. We've watched those Candles for five hundred years and they stI’ll are strangers to us."

"You think they are intelligent?" asked Page, and the question was a sneer.

"Why not?" snarled Craig. "You think they aren't because Man can't communicate with them—just because they didn't break their necks to talk with men.

"Just because they haven't talked doesn't mean they aren't intelligent. Perhaps they haven't communicated with us because their thought and reasoning would have no common basis for intelligent communication with mankind. Perhaps it's because they regard Man as an inferior race—a race upon which it isn't even worth their while to waste their time."

"You're crazy," yelled Page. "They have watched us all these years. They've seen what we can do. They've seen our space ships; they've seen us build this plant; they've seen us shoot power across millions of miles to the other planets."

"Sure," agreed Craig, "they've seen all that. But would it impress them? Are you sure it would? Man, the great architect! Would you bust a gut trying to talk to a spider, or an orchard oriole, or a mud wasp? You bet your sweet life you wouldn't. And they're great architects, every one of them."

Page bounced angrily in his chair. "If they're superior to us," he roared, "where are the things they've done? Where are their cities, their machines, their civilizations?"

"Perhaps," suggested Craig, "they outlived machines and cities mI’llennia ago. Perhaps they've reached a stage of civilization where they don't need mechanical things."

He tapped the pencil on the desk.

"Consider this. Those Candles are immortal. They'd have to be. There'd be nothing to kI’ll them. They apparently have no bodies—just balls of energy. That's their answer to their environment. And you have the nerve to think of capturing some of them! You, who know nothing about them, plan to take them back to Earth to use as a circus attraction, a sideshow drawing card—something for fools to gape at!"

"People come out here to see them," Page countered. "Plenty of them. The tourist bureaus use them in their advertising."

"That's different," roared Craig. "If the Candles want to put on a show on home territory, there's nothing we can do about it. But you can't drag them away from here and show them off. That would spell trouble and plenty of it!"

"But if they're so damned intelligent," yelped Page, "why do they put on those shows at all? Just think of scraething and presto!—they're it. Greatest mimics in the Solar System. And they never get anything right. It's always cockeyed. That's the beauty of it."

"It's cockeyed," snapped Craig, "because man's brain never fashions a letter-perfect image. The Candles partem themselves directly after the thoughts they pick up. When you think of something you don't give them all the details—your thoughts are sketchy. You can't blame the Candles for that They pick up what you give them and fI’ll in the rest as best they can. Therefore camels with flowing manes, camels with four and five humps, camels with horns, an endless parade of screwball camels—if camels are what you are thinking of."

He flung the pencil down angrily.

"And don't you kid yourself the Candles are doing it to amuse us. More than likely they believe we are thinking up all those swell ideas just to please them. They're having the time of their lives. Probably that's the only reason they've tolerated us here—because we have such amusing thoughts.

"When Man first came here they were just pretty colored balls rolling around on the surface, and someone called them Roman Candles because that's what they looked like. But since that day they've been everything Man has ever thought of."

Page heaved himself out of the chair.

"I shall report your attitude to Washington, Captain Craig."

"Beport and be damned," growled Craig. "Maybe you've forgotten where you are. You aren't back on Earth, where bribes and boot-licking and bulldozing will get a man almost anything he wants. You're at the power center on the Sunward side of Mercury. This is the main source of power for all the planets. Let this power plant fail, let the transmission beams be cut off and the Solar System goes to hell!"

He pounded the desk for emphasis.

"I'm in charge here, and when I say a thing-it stands, for you as well as anyone. My job is to keep this plant going, keep the power pouring out to the planets. And I'm not letting some half-baked fool come out here and make me trouble. While I'm here, no one is going to stir up the Candles. We've got plenty of trouble without that."

Page edged toward the door, but Craig stopped him.

"Just a little word of warning," he said, speaking sofdy. "If I were you, I wouldn't try to sneak out any of the puddle jumpers, including your own. After each trip the oxygen tank is taken out and put into the charger, so it'll be at first capacity for the next trip. The charger is locked and there's just one key. And I have that."

He locked eyes with the man at the door and went on.

There's a little oxygen left in the jumper, of course. Half an hours supply, maybe. Possibly less. After that there isn't any more. It's not nice to be caught like that. They found a fellow that had happened to just a day or so ago over near one of the Twilight Belt stations."

But Page was gone, slamming the door.

The Candles had stopped dancing and were rolling around, drifting bubbles of every hue. Occasionally one would essay the formation of some object, but the attempt would be halfhearted and the Candle once more would revert to its natural sphere.

Old Creepy must have put his fiddle away, Craig thought. Probably he was making an inspection round, seeing if everything was all right. However, there was little chance that anything could go wrong. The plant was automatic, designed to run with the miriimum of human attention.

The control room was a wonder of clicking, chuckling, chortling, snicking gadgets—gadgets that kept the flow of power directed to the substations on the Twilight Belt, that kept the tight beams from the substations centered exacdy on those points in space where each must go to be picked up by the substations circling the outer planets.

Let one of those gadgets fail;—let that spaceward beam sway as much as a fraction of a degree—Curt shuddered at the thought of a beam of terrific power smashing into a planet —perhaps into a city. But the mechanism had never failed; it never would. It was foolproof and a far cry from the day when the planet had charged monstrous banks of converters to be carted to the outer worlds by lumbering space ships.

This was really free power, easy power, plentiful power: power carried across millions of miles on Addison's tight-beam principle; free power to develop the farms of Venus, the mines of Mars, the chemical plants and cold laboratories on Pluto.

Down there in the control room, too, were other gadgets as equally important; the atmosphere machine, for example, which kept the air mixture right, drawing on those tanks of liquid oxygen and nitrogen and other gases brought across space from Venus by the monthly oxygen ship; the refrigerating plant, the gravity machine, the water assembly.

Craig heard the crunch of Creepy's footsteps on the stairs and turned to the door as the old man shuffled into the room.

"Earth just rounded the Sun," the old man said. The Venus station took up the load."

Craig nodded. That was routine. When one planet was cut off by the Sun, the substations of the nearest planet took off on an extra load, diverted part of it to the first planet's stations, carrying it until it was clear again.

He arose from the chair and walked to the port, stared out across the dusty plains. A dot was moving across the near horizon-a speedy dot, seemed to leap across the dead, gray wastes.

"Knut's coming!" he yelled to Creepy.

Creepy hobbled for the doorway. Til go down to meet him. Knut and me are having a game of checkers as soon as he gets in."

"First," said Craig, "tell him I want to see him." "Sure," said Creepy.

Craig tried to sleep but couldn't. He was worried. It was nothing definite, for there seemed no cause to worry. The tracer placed on the big warp revealed that it was moving slowly, a few feet an hour or so, in a direction away from the center. No other large ones had shown up in the detectors. Everything, for the moment, seemed under control. But there were just little things: vague suspicions and wonderings, snatches here and there that failed to fall into the pattern.

Knut, for instance. There wasn't anything wrong with Knut, of course, but while he had talked to him he had sensed something. An uneasy feeling that lifted the hair on the nape of his neck, made the skin prickle along his spine. Yet nothing one could lay one's hands on.

Page, too. The damn fool probably would try to sneak out and capture some Candles and then there'd be all hell to pay.

Funny, too, how Knut's radios, both in his suit and in the jumper, had gone dead. Blasted out, as if they had been raked by a surge of energy. Knut couldn't explain it, wouldn't try. He just shrugged his shoulders. Funny things always were happening on Mercury.

Craig gave up trying to sleep, slid his feet into slippers and walked across the room to the port. With a flip of his hand he raised the shutter and stared out.

Candles were rolling around. Suddenly one of them materialized into a monstrous whiskey botde, lifted in the air, tilted, liquid pouring to the ground.

Craig chuckled. That would be Old Creepy day dreaming in a dry moment.

A furtive tap came on the door, and Craig wheeled. For a tense moment he crouched, listening as if expecting an attack. Then he laughed softly to himself. He was jumpy, and no fooling. Maybe what he needed was a drink.

Again the tap, more insistent, but stI’ll furtive.

"Come in," Craig called.

Old Creepy sidled into the room. "I hoped you wasn't asleep," he said.

"What is it, Creepy?" And even as he spoke, Craig felt himself going tense again. His nerves were all shot to hell.

Creepy hitched forward.

"Knut," he whispered. "Knut beat me at checkers. Six times hand-running! I didn't have a chancel" Craig's laugh exploded in the room.

"But I could always beat him before," the old man insisted. "I even let him beat me every so often to keep him interested, so he would play with me. And tonight I was all set to take him to a cleaning—"

Creepy's face twisted, his mustache quivering.

"And that ain't all, by cracky. I felt, somehow, that Knut had changed and—"

Craig walked close to the old man, grasped him by the shoulder. "I know," he said. "I know just how you felt." Again he was remembering how the hair had crawled upon his skull as he talked to Knut just a while ago.

Creepy nodded, pale eyes blinking, Adam's apple bobbing.

Craig spun on his heel, snatched up his shirt, started peeling off his pajama coat.

"Creepy," he rasped, "you go down to that control room. Get a gun and lock yourself in. Stay there until I get back. And don't let anyone come in!"

He fixed the old man with a stare. "You understand. Don't let anyone get in! Use your gun if you are forced to use it. But see no one touches those controls!"

Creepy's eyes bugged and he gulped. "Is there going to be trouble?" he quavered.

"I don't know," snapped Craig, but I'm going to find out"

Down in the garage, Craig stared angrily at the empty stall. Page's jumper was gone!

Grumbling with rage, Craig walked to the oxygen-tank rack. The lock was undamaged, and he inserted the key. The top snapped up and revealed the tanks—all of them, nesding in rows, stI’ll attached to the recharger lines. Almost unbelieving, Craig stood there, looking at the tanks.

All of them were there. That meant Page had started out in the jumper with insufficient oxygen. It meant the man would die out on the blistering wastes of Mercury.

Craig swung about away from the tanks, and then stopped, thoughts spinning in his brain. There wasn't any use of hunting Page. The damn fool probably was dead by now. Sheer suicide, that was what it was. Sheer lunacy. And he had warned him, too!

And he, Craig, had work to do. Something had happened out there at the space warp. He had to lay those tantalizing suspicions diat rummaged through his mind. There were some things he had to be sure about. He didn't have time to go hunting a man who was already dead, a damn fool who had committed suicide. The man was nuts to start with. Anyone who thought he could capture Candles—

Savagely, Craig closed one of the line valves, screwed shut the tank valve, disconnected the coupling and lifted the tank out of the rack. The tank was heavy. It had to be heavy to stand a pressure of two hundred atmospheres.

As he started for the jumper, Mathilde, the cat, strolled down the ramp from the flopr above and walked between his legs. Craig stumbled and almost fell, recovered his balance with a mighty effort and cursed Mathilde with a fluency born of practice.

"Me-ow-ow-ow," said Mathilde conversationally.

There is something unreal about the Sunward side of Mercury, an abnormality that is sensed rather than seen.

There the Sun is nine times larger than seen from Earth, and the tiiermometer never registers under six hundred fifty degrees Fahrenheit. Under that terrific heat, accompanied by blasting radiations hurled out by the Sun, men must wear photocell space suits, must ride in photocell cars and live in the power center, which in itself is little more than a mighty photocell. For electric power can be disposed of, while heat and radiation often cannot be.

There the rock and soil have been crumbled into dust under the lashing of heat and radiations. There the horizon is near, always looming just ahead, like an ever-present brink.

But it is not these things that make the planet so alien. Rather, it is the strange distortion of lines, a distortion that one sometimes thinks he can see, but is never sure. Perhaps the very root of that alien sense is the fact that the Sun's mass makes a straight line an impossibility, it is a stress that bends magnetic fields and stirs up the very structure of space itself.

Curt Craig felt that strangeness of Mercury as he zoomed across the dusty plain. The puddle jumper splashed through a small molten pool, spraying it out in sizzling sheets—a pool of lead, or maybe tin.

But Craig scarcely noticed. At the back of his brain pounded a thousand half-formed questions. His eyes, edged by crow's-feet, squinted through the filter shield, following the trail left by Knut's returning machine. The oxygen tank hissed softly and the atmosphere mixer chuckled. But all else was quiet.

Looking back once Craig noticed a Candle—a big blue one. It seemed to be following him. But he soon forgot all about it Craig glanced at the notation of the space warp's location. Only a few miles distant. He was almost there.

There was nothing to indicate what the warp might be, although the instruments picked it up and charted it as he drew near. Perhaps if a man stood at just the right angle he might detect a certain shimmer, a certain strangeness, as if he were looking into a wavy mirror. But otherwise there probably would be nothing pointing to its presence. It was hard to know just where one stopped or started. Hard to keep from walking into one, even with instruments.

Curt shivered as he thought of the spacemen who had walked into just such warps in the early days. Daring mariners of space who had ventured to land their ships on the Sunward side, had dared to take short excursions in their old-type space suit. Most of them had died, blasted by the radiations spewed out by the Sun, literally cooked to death. Others had walked across the plain and disappeared. They had walked into the warps and disappeared as if they had melted into thin air. Although, of course, there wasn't any air to melt into—hadn't been for many million years.

On this world, all free elements long ago had disappeared. Those elements that remained, except possibly far underground, were locked so stubbornly in combination that it was impossible to blast them free in any appreciable quantity. That was why liquid air was carted clear from Venus.

The tracks in the dust and rubble made by Knut's machine were plainly visible, and Craig followed them. The jumper topped a slight rise and dipped into a slight depression. And in the center of the depression was a queer shifting of light and dark, as if one were looking into a tricky mirror.

That was the space warp!

Craig glanced at the instruments and caught his breath.

Here was a space warp that was really big. StI’ll following the tracks of Knut's machine, he crept down into the hollow, swinging closer and closer to that shifting, almost invisible blotch that marked the warp.

Here Knut's machine had stopped, and here Knut had gotten out to carry the instruments nearer, the blotchy tracks of his space suit like furrows through the powdered soil. And there he had come back . . . and stopped and gone forward again. And there—

Craig jerked the jumper to a halt, stared in amazement and horror through the filter shield. Then, the breath sobbing in his throat, he leaped from the seat, scrambled frantically for a space suit.

Outside the car, he approached the dark shape huddled on the ground. Slowly he moved nearer, the hands of fear clutching at his heart. Beside the shape he stopped and looked down. Heat and radiation had gotten in their work, shriveling, blasting, desiccating—but there could be no doubt.

Staring up at him from where it lay was the dead face of Knut Anderson!

Craig straightened up and looked around. Candles danced upon the ridges, swirling and jostling, silent watchers of his grim discovery. The one lone blue Candle, bigger than the rest, had followed the machine into the hollow, was »nly a few rods away, rolling resdessly to and fro.

Knut had said something was funny. He had shouted it, his voice raspy and battered by the screaming of powerful radiations. Or had that been Knut? Had Knut already died when that message came through?

Craig glanced back at the sand, the blood pounding in his temples. Had the Candles been responsible for this? And if they were, why was he unmolested, with hundreds dancing on the ridge? And if this was Knut, with dead eyes staring at the black of space, who was the other one—the one who came back?

Candles masquerading as human beings? Was that possible?

Mimics the Candles were—but hardly as good as that. There was always something wrong with their mimicry—something ludicrously wrong.

He remembered now the look in the eyes of the returned Knut—that chI’lly, deadly look—the kind of look one sometimes sees in the eyes of ruthless men. It was a look that had sent cold chI’lls chasing up his spine. And Knut, who was no match for Creepy at checkers, had taken six games straight.

Craig looked back at the jumper again. The Candles stI’ll danced upon the hI’lls, but the big blue one was gone.

Some subde warning, a nasty little feeling between his shoulder blades, made Craig spin around to face the warp. Just in front of the warp stood a man, and for a moment Craig stared at him, frozen, speechless, unable to move.

For the man who stood in front of him, not more than forty feet away, was Curt Craig!

Feature for feature, line for line, that man was himself: a second Curt Craig—as if he had rounded a comer and met himself coming back.

Bewilderment roared through Craig's brain, a baffling bewilderment. He took a quick step forward, then stopped. For the bewilderment suddenly was edged with fear, a knifelike sense of danger.

The man raised a hand and beckoned, but Craig stayed rooted where he stood, tried to reason with his muddled brain. It wasn't a reflection, for if it had been a reflection it would have shown him in a space suit, and this man stood without a space suit. And if it were a real man, it wouldn't be standing there exposed to the madness of the Sun. Such an action would have spelled sure and sudden death.

Forty feet away—and yet within that forty feet, perhaps very close, the power of the warp might reach out, might entangle any man who crossed that unseen deadline. The warp was moving, at a few feet an hour, and this spot where he now stood, with Knut's dead body at his feet, had a few short hours ago been within the limit of the warp's influence.

The man stepped forward, and as he did,' Craig stepped

back, his hands dropping to the gun butts. But with the guns half out he stopped, for the man had disappeared. He had simply vanished. There had been no puff of smoke, no preliminary shimmering as of matter breaking down. The man just simply wasn't there. But in his place was the big blue Candle, rocking to and fro.

Cold sweat broke out upon Craig's forehead and trickled down his face. For he knew he had trodden very close to death—perhaps to something even worse than death. Wildly he swung about, raced for the puddle jumper, wrenched the door open, hurled himself at the controls.

Craig drove like a madman, the Cold claws of fear hovering over him. Twice he almost met disaster, once when the jumper bucked through a deep drift of dust, again when it rocketed through a pool of molten tin.

Craig gripped the wheel hard and slammed the jumper up an incline slippery with dust.

Damn it, the thing that had come back as Knut was Knut. It knew the things Knut knew, it acted like Knut. It had his mannerisms, it talked in his voice, it actually seemed to think the way Knut would think.

What could a man—what could mankind do against a thing like that? How could it separate the original from the duplicate? How would it know its own?

The thing that had come back to the Center had beaten Creepy at checkers. Creepy had led Knut to believe he was the old man's equal at the game, although Creepy knew he could beat Knut at any time he chose. But Knut didn't know that—and the thing masquerading as Knut didn't know it. So it had sat down and beaten Creepy six games hand-running, to the old man's horror and dismay.

Did that mean anything or not?

The blue Candle had assumed Craig's shape. It had tried to lure him to the warp. Apparently the Candles were able to alter their electronic structures so they could exist within the warp. They lured Knut into the warp by posing as human beings, arousing his curiosity, and when he stepped into its influence it opened the way for their attack. They couldn't get a man inside a suit, because a suit was a photocell, and Candles were energy. In a game of that sort, the cell won every time.

It was clever of them, Craig thought. A Trojan horse method of attack. First they got Knut, and next they tried to get him. With two of them in the Center it would not have been so hard to have gotten Creepy.

He slapped the wheel a vicious stroke, venting his anger.

He skidded the jumper around a ravine head, slashed across the desert. First thing that had to be done was to find the one that was masquerading as Knut. First he had to find him and then figure out what to do with him.

But finding the Knut Candle was easier said than done. Craig and Creepy, clad in space suits, stood in the kitchen at the center.

"By cracky," said Creepy, "he must be here somewhere. He must have found him an extra-special hideout that we have overlooked."

Craig shook his head. "We haven't overlooked him. Creepy. We've searched this place from stem to stem. There isn't a crack where he could hide."

"Maybe," suggested Creepy, "he figured the jig was up and took it on the lam. Maybe he scrammed out the lock when I was up there guarding that control room."

"Maybe," agreed Craig. "I had been thinking of that. He smashed the radio—that much we know. He was afraid that we might call for help, and that means he may have had a plan. Even now he may be carrying out that plan."

The Center was silent, fI’lled with those tiny sounds that only serve to emphasize and deepen a silence: the faint cluck-cluck of the machines on the floor below, the hissing and distant chortling of the atmosphere mixer, the chuckling of the water synthesizer.

"Dang him,'' snorted Creepy, "I knew he couldn't do it. I knew Knut couldn't beat me at checkers honest—"

From the refrigerator came a frantic sound. "Me-ow—me-ow-ow-ow," it wailed.

Creepy moved for the refrigerator door, grabbing a broom as he went. "It's that dang Mathilde cat again," he said. "She's always sneakin' in there—every chance she gets."

Craig had leaped forward and snatched his hand away from the door lever. "Wait!" he said.

Mathilde yodeled pitifully.

"But, that Mathilde cat-"

"Maybe it isn't Mathilde," Craig rasped grimly.

From the doorway leading out into the corridor came a low purring rumble. The two men whirled about. Mathilde was standing across the threshold, rubbing with arched back against the jamb, plumed tail waving. From inside the refrigerator came a scream of savage feline fury.

Creepy's eyes slitted and the broom clattered to the floor. "But, there's only one Mathilde!"

"Of course, there's only one Mathilde," snapped Craig. "One of these is her. The other is Knut, or the thing that was Knut."

The lock signal rang shrI’lly, and Craig stepped swifdy to a port, flipped the shutter up.

"It's Page," he shouted. "Page is back again!"

He turned from the port, face twisted in disbelief. Page had gone out five hours before—without oxygen. Yet here he was, back again. No man could live for over four hours without oxygen.

Craig's eyes hardened, and furrows came between his brows. "Creepy," he said suddenly, "you open the inner lock. Pick up that cat. Don't let her get away."

Creepy made a sour face, then shuffled down the ramp to the lock. He swung open the door and reached down and scooped up Mathilde. Mathilde purred loudly, dabbing at his suit-clad fingers with dainty paws.

Page stepped out of the jumper and strode across the garage toward Craig, his boot heels ringing on the floor.

From behind the space-suit visor, Craig regarded him angrily. "You disobeyed my orders," he snapped. "You went out and caught some Candles."

"Nothing to it. Captain Craig," said Page. "Docile as so many kittens. Make splendid pets."

He whisded sharply, and from the open door of the jumper rolled two Candles, a red one and a green one. They lay just outside the jumper, rolling back and forth.

Craig regarded them appraisingly.

"Cute little devils," said Page good-naturedly.

"And just the right number," said Craig.

Page started, but quickly regained his composure. "Yes, I think so, too. I'll teach them a routine, of course, but I suppose the audience reactions will bust that all to hell once they get on the stage."

Craig moved to the rack of oxygen tanks and snapped up the lid. "There's just one thing I can't understand," he said. "I warned you you couldn't get into this rack. And I warned you that without oxygen you'd die. And yet here you are."

Page laughed. "I had some oxygen hid out. Captain. I anticipated something just like that."

Craig lifted one of the tanks from the rack, held it in his arms. "You're a liar, Page," he said calmly. "You didn't have any other oxygen. You didn't need any. A man would die if he went out there without oxygen—die horribly. But you wouldn't—because you aren't a manr

Page stepped swiftly back, but Craig cried out warningly. Page stopped, as if frozen to the floor, his eyes on the oxygen tank. Craig's finger grasped the valve control.

"One move out of you," he warned grimly, "and 111 let you have it. You know what it is, of course. Liquid oxygen, pressure of two hundred atmospheres. Colder than the hinges of space."

Craig grinned ferociously. "A dose of that would play hell with your metabolism, wouldn't it? Tough enough to keep going here in the dome. You Candles have lived out there on the surface too long. You need a lot of energy, and there isn't much energy here. We have to screen it out or we would die ourselves. And there's a damn sight less energy in liquid oxygen. You met your own environment, all right; you even spread that environment pretty wide, but there's a limit to it."

'You'd be talking a different tune," Page declared bitterly, "if it weren't for those space suits."

"Sort of crossed you up, didn't they," said Craig. 'We're wearing them because we were tracking down a pal of yours. I think he's in the refrigerator."

"A pal of mine—in a refrigerator?"

"He's the one that came back as Knut," said Craig, "and he turned into Mathilde when he knew we were hunting for him. But he did the job too well. He was almost more Mathilde than he was Candle. So he sneaked into the refrigerator. And he doesn't like it."

Page's shoulders sagged. For a moment his features seemed ' to blur, then snapped back into rigid lines again.

"The answer isthat you do the job too well," said Craig. "Right now you yourself are more Page than Candle, more man than thing of energy."

"We shouldn't have tried it," said Page. "We should have waited until there was someone in your place. You were too frank in your opinion of us. You held none of the amused contempt so many of the others held. I told them they should wait, but a man named Page got caught in a space warp—"

Craig nodded. "I understand. An opportunity you simply couldn't miss. Ordinarily we're pretty hard to get at. You can't fight photocells. But you should strive for more convincing stories. That yam of yours about capturing Candles—"

"But Page came out for that purpose," insisted the pseudo Page. "Of course, he would have failed. But, after all, it was poetic justice."

"It was clever of you," Craig said softly. "More clever than you thought. Bringing your side-kicks in here, pretending you had captured them, waiting until we were off our guard."

"Look," said Page, "we know when we are licked. What are you going to do?"

"We'll turn loose the one in the refrigerator," Craig told him. "Then well open up the locks and you can go."

"And if we don't want to go?"

"We'd turn loose the liquid oxygen," said Craig. "We have vats of the stuff upstairs. We can close off this room, you know, rum it into a howling helL You couldn't live through it. You'd starve for energy."

From the kitchen came a hideous uproar, a sound that suggested a roll of barbed wire galloping around a tin roof. The bedlam was punctuated by cries from Creepy.

Down the ramp from die kitchen came a swirling ball of fur, and after it came Creepy, whaling lustily with his broom. The ball of fur separated, became two identical cats, tails five times normal size, backs bristling, eyes glowing with green fury.

"I jus' got tired of holding that dang ol' Mathilde—" Creepy panted.

"I know," said Craig. "So you chucked her into the refrigerator with the other cat"

"I sure did," confessed Creepy, "and hell busted loose right underneath my nose."

"All right," snapped Craig. "Now, Page, if youTl tell us which one of those is yours—"

Page spoke sharply and one of the cats melted and flowed. Its outlines blurred and it became a Candle, a tiny, pale-pink Candle.

Mathilde let out one soul-wrenching shriek and fled.

"Page," said Craig, "we've never wanted trouble. If you are willing, we'd like to be your friends. Isn't there some way?"

Page shook his head. "No, Captain. We're poles apart. I and you have talked here, but we've talked as man to man rather than as a man and a person of my race. Our differences are too great our minds too far apart"

He hesitated, almost stammering. "You're a good egg, Craig. You should have been a Candle."

"Creepy," said Craig, "open up the lock."

Page turned to go, but Craig called him back. "Just one thing more. A personal favor. Could you tell me what's at the bottom of this?"

"It's hard to explain," said Page. "You see, my friend, it's a matter of culture. That isn't exacdy the word, but it's the nearest I can express it in your language.

"Before you came we had a culture, a way of life, a way of thought, that was distinctly our own. We didn't develop the way you developed, we missed this crude, preliminary civilization you are passing through. We started at a point you won't reach for another million years.

"We had a goal, an ideal, a place we were heading for. And we were making progress. I can't explain it, for—well, there just are no words for it. And then you came along—"

"I think I know," said Craig. "We are a disturbing influence. We have upset your culture, your way of thought. Our thoughts intrude upon you and you see your civilization turning into a troupe of mimics, absorbing alien ideas, alien ways."

He stared at Page. "But isn't there a way? Damn it, do we have to fight about this?"

But even as he spoke, he knew there was no way. The long role of Terrestrial history recorded hundreds of such wars as this: wars fought over forms of faith, over terminology of religion, over ideologies, over cultures. And the ones who fought those wars were members of the same race—not members of two races separated by different origins, by different metabolisms, by different minds.

"No," Craig answered himself, "there is no way. Some day, perhaps, we will be gone. Some day we will find another and a cheaper source of power and you will be left in peace. Until that day—" He left the words unspoken.

Page turned away, headed for the lock, followed by the two big Candles and the little pink one.

Ranged together at the port, the two Terrestrials watched the Candles come out of the lock. Page was stI’ll in the form of a man, but as he walked away the form ran together and puddled down until he was a sphere.

Creepy cackled at Craig's elbow. "By cracky," he yelped, "he was a purple one!"

Craig sat at his desk, writing his report to the Solar power board, his pen traveling rapidly over the paper:

—they waited for five hundred years before they acted. Perhaps this was merely caution or in the hope they might find a better way. Or it may be that time has a different value for them than it has for us. In an existence which stretches into eternity, time would have but little value.

For all those five hundred years they have watched and studied us. They have read our minds, absorbed our thoughts, dug out our knowledge, soaked up our personalities. Perhaps they know us better than we know ourselves. Whether their crude mimicry of our thoughts is merely a clever ruse to make us think they are harmless or whether it reflects differing degrees of the art of mimicry—the difference between a cartoon and a masterpiece of painting— I cannot say. I cannot even guess.

Heretofore we have never given thought to protect ourselves against them, for we have considered them, in general, as amusing entities and little else. Whether or not the cat in the refrigerator was the Candle or Mathilde I do not know, but it was the cat in the refrigerator that gave me the idea of using liquid oxygen. Undoubtedly there are better ways. Anything that would swifdy deprive them of energy would serve. Convinced they will try again, even if they have to wait another five hundred years, I urgendy suggest—

He stopped and.laid down the pen.

The wastebasket in the corner moved slightly and Mathilde slunk out, tail at half mast. With a look of contempt at Craig, she stalked to the door and down the ramp.

Creepy was tuning up his fiddle, but only half-heartedly. Creepy felt badly about Knut. Despite their checker arguments, the two had been good friends.

Craig considered the things he'd have to do. He'd have to go out and bring in Knut's body, ship it back to Earth for burial. But first he was going to sleep. Lord, how he needed sleep!

He picked up the pen and proceeded with his writing:

—that every effort be bent to the development of some convenient weapon to be used against them. But to be used only in defense. A program of extermination, such as has been carried out on other planets, is unthinkable.

To do this it will be necessary that we study them even as they have studied us. Before we can fight them we must know them. For the next time their method of attack undoubtedly will be different.

Likewise we must develop a test, to be applied to every person before entering the Center, that will reveal whether he is a Candle or a man.

And, lasdy, every effort should be made to develop some other source of universal power against the day when Mercury may become inaccessible to us.

He reread the report and put it down.

They won't like that," he told himself. "Especially that last paragraph. But we have to face the truth."

For a long time Craig sat at his desk, thinking. Then he arose and went to the port.

Outside, on the bitter plains of Mercury, the Candles had paired off, two and two, were monstrous dice, rolling in the dust. As far as the eye could see, the plains were fI’lled with galloping dominos.

And every pair, at every toss, were rolling sevensl

By Poul Anderson

"YES, YOU XL FIND almost anything man has ever imagined, somewhere out in the Galaxy," I said. "There are so damned many millions of planets, and such a fantastic variety of surface conditions and of life evolving to meet them, and of intelligence and civilization appearing in that life. Why, I've been on worlds with fire-breathing dragons, and on worlds where dwarfs fought things that could pass for the goblins our mothers used to scare us with."

Laird nodded. "Uh-huh," he answered, in that oddly slow and soft voice of his. "I once let a genie out of a botde."

"Eh? What happened?"

"It kI’lled me."

I opened my mouth to laugh, and then took a second glance at him and shut it again. He was just too dead-pan serious about it. Not poker-faced, the way a good actor can be when he's slipping over a tall one—no, there was a sudden misery behind his eyes, and somehow it was mixed with the damnedest cold humor.

I didn't know Laird very well. Nobody did. He was out most of the time on Galactic Survey, prowling a thousand eldritch planets never meant for human eyes. He came back to the Solar System more rarely and for briefer visits than anyone else in his job, and had less to say about what he had found.

A huge man, six-and-a-half feet tall, with dark aquiline features and curiously brI’lliant greenish-gray eyes, he was middle-aged now though it didn't show except at the temples. He was courteous enough to everyone, but shortspoken and slow to laugh. Old friends, who had known him thirty years before when he was the gayest and most reckless officer in the Solar

Navy, thought something during the Revolt had changed him more than any psychologist would admit was possible. But he had never said anything about it, merely resigning his commission after the war and going into Survey.

We were sitting alone in a corner of the lounge. The Lunar branch of the Explorers' Club maintains its building outside the main dome of Selene Center, and we were sitting beside one of the great windows, drinking Centaurian sidecars and swapping the inevitable shop-talk.

"Come again?" I said.

He laughed, without much humor. "I might as well tell you," he said. "You won't believe it, and even if you did it'd make no difference. Sometimes I tell the story—alcohol makes me feel like it. I start remembering old times . . ."

He settled farther back in his chair. "Maybe it wasn't a real genie," he went on. "More of a ghost, perhaps. That was a haunted planet. They were great a million years before man existed on Earth. They spanned the stars and they knew things the present civilization hasn't even guessed at. And then they died. Their own weapons swept them away in one burst of fire, and only broken ruins were left—ruins and desert, and the ghost who lay waiting in that bottle.

"It was—let me see—thirty-three years ago now, when I was a bright young lieutenant with bright young ideas. The Revolt was in full swing then, and the Janyards held all that region of space, out Sagittari way, you know. Things looked bad for Sol then—I don't think it's ever been appreciated how close we were to defeat. They were poised to drive right through our lines with their battiefleets, slash past our frontiers, and hit Earth itself with the rain of hell that had already sterilized a score of planets. We were fighting on the defensive, spread over several million cubic light-years, spread horribly thin. Oh, bad!

"Vwyrdda—New Egypt—had been discovered and some excavation done shortly before the war began. We knew about as much then as we do now. Especially, we knew that the so-called Valley of the Gods held more relics than any other spot on the surface. I'd been quite interested in the work, visited the planet myself, even worked with the crew that found and restored that gravitomagnetic generator—the one which taught us half of what we know now about g-m fields.

"It was my young and fanciful notion that there might be more to be found, somewhere in that labyrinth. And from study of the reports I even thought I knew about what and where it would be: one of the weapons that had novaed suns, a million years ago.

'The planet was far behind the Janyard lines, but mili-
tarily valueless. They wouldn't garrison it, and I was sure that
such semibarbarians wouldn't have my idea, especially with
victory so close. A one-man sneakboat could get in readily
enough—it just isn't possible to blockade a region of space;
too damned inhumanly big. We had nothing to lose but me,
and maybe a lot to gain, so in I went. «

"I made the planet without trouble and landed in the Valley of the Gods and began work. And that's where the fun started."

Laird laughed again, with no more mirth than before.

There was a moon hanging low over the hI’lls, a great scarred shield thrice the size of Earth's, and its chI’ll white radiance fI’lled the Valley with colorless light and long shadows. Overhead flamed the incredible sky of the Sagittarian regions, thousands upon thousands of great blazing suns swarming in strings and clusters and constellations strange to human eyes, blinking and glittering in the thin cold air. It was so bright that Laird could see the fine patterns of his skin, loops and whorls on the numbed fingers that groped against the pyramid. He shivered in the wind that streamed past him, blowing dust devils with a dry whisper, searching under his clothes to sheathe his flesh in cold. His breath was ghostly white before him, the bitter air felt liquid when he breathed.

Around him loomed the fragments of what must have been a city, now reduced to a few columns and crumbling walls held up by the lava which had flowed. The stones reared high in the unreal moonlight, seeming almost to move as the shadows and the drifting sand passed them. Ghost city. Ghost planet. He was the last life that stirred on its bleak surface. But somewhere above that surface—

What was it, that descending hum high in the sky, sweeping closer out of stars and moon and wind? Minutes ago the needle on his gravitomagnetic detector had wavered down in the depths of the pyramid. He had hurried up and now stood looking and listening and feeling his heart turn stiff.

■No, no, no. Not a Janyard ship, not now. It was the end of everything if they came.

Laird cursed with a hopeless fury. The wind caught his mouthings and blew them away with the scudding sand, buried them under the everlasting silence of the valley. His eyes traveled to his sneakboat. It was invisible against the great pyramid— he'd taken that much precaution, shoveling a low grave of sand over it—but if they used metal detectors the deception was valueless. He was fast, yes, but almost unarmed; they could easily follow his trail down into the labyrinth and locate the vault.

Lord, if he had led them here—if his planning and striving had only resulted in giving the enemy the weapon which would destroy Earth—

His hand closed about the butt of his blaster. SI’lly weapon, stupid popgun—what could he do? Decision came. With a curse, he whirled and ran back into the pyramid.

His flash lit the endless downward passages with a dim bobbing radiance, and die shadows swept above and behind and marched beside—the shadows of a million years closing in to smother him. His boots slammed against the stone floor, thud-thud-thud. The echoes caught the rhythm and rolled it boomingly ahead of him. A primitive terror rose to drown his dismay; he was going down into the grave of a thousand mI’llennia, the grave of the gods, and it took all the nerve he had to keep running and never look back. He didn't dare look back.

Down and down and down, past this winding tunnel, along this ramp, through this passageway into the guts of the planet —a man could easily get lost here. A man could wander in the cold and the dark and the echoes tI’ll he died. It had taken him weeks to find his way into the great vault, and only the clues given by Murchison's report had made it possible at all. Now—

He burst into a narrow antechamber. The door he had blasted open leaned drunkenly against a well of night. It was fifty feet high, that door. He fled past it like an ant and came into the pyramid storehouse.

His flash gleamed off metal, glass, substances he could not identify that had lain sealed against a million years tI’ll he came to wake the machines. What they were, he did not know. He had energized some of the units, and they had hummed and flickered, but he had not dared experiment. His idea had been to rig an antigrav unit which would enable him to haul the entire mass of it up to his boat. Once he was home, the scientists would take over. But now—

He skinned his teeth in a wolfish grin and switched on the big lamp he had installed. White light flooded the tomb, shining darkly back from the monstrous bulks of things he could not use, the wisdom and techniques of a race which had spanned the stars and moved planets and endured for fifty million years. Maybe he could puzzle out the use of something before the enemy came. Maybe he could wipe them out in one demoniac sweep—just like a stereofilm hero, jeered his mind—or maybe he could simply destroy it all, keep it from Janyard hands.

He should have provided against this. He should have rigged a bomb, to blow the whole pyramid to hell—

With an effort, he stopped the frantic racing of his mind and looked around. There were paintings on the walls, dim with age but stI’ll legible, pictographs meant perhaps for the one who finally found this treasure. The men of New Egypt were shown, hardly distinguishable from humans: dark of skin and hair, keen of feature, tall and stately and robed in living light. He had paid special attention to one representation. It showed a series of actions, like an old time comic-strip: a man talcing up a glassy object, fitting it over his head, throwing a small switch. He had been tempted to try it, but— gods, what would it do?

He found the helmet and slipped it gingerly over his skull. It might be some kind of last-ditch chance for him. The thing was cold and smooth and hard: it settled on his head with a slow massiveness that was strangely . . . living. He shuddered and turned back to the machines.

This thing now with the long coil-wrapped barrel—an energy projector of some sort? How did you activate it? Hell-fire, which was the muzzle end?

He heard the faint banging of feet, winding closer down the endless passageways. Gods, his mind groaned. They didn't waste any time, did they?

But they hadn't needed to. A metal detector would have located his boot, told them that he was in this pyramid rather than one of the dozen others scattered through the valley. And energy tracers would spot him down here.

He doused the light and crouched in darkness behind one of the machines. The blaster was heavy in his hand.

A voice hailed him from outside the door. "It's useless, Sol-man. Come out of there!"

He bit back a reply and lay waiting.

A woman's voice took up the refrain. It was a good voice, he thought irrelevantly, low and well modulated, but it had an iron ring to it. They were hard, these Janyards, even their women led troops and piloted ships and kI’lled men.

"You may as well surrender, Solman. All you have done has been to accomplish our work for us. We suspected such an attempt might be made. Lacking the archealogical records, we couldn't hope for much success ourselves, but since my force was stationed near this sun I had a boat lie in an orbit around the planet with detectors wide open. We trailed you down, and let you work, and now we are here to get what you have found."

"Go back," he bluffed desperately. "I planted a bomb. Go back or 111 set it off."

The laugh was hard with scorn. "Do you think we wouldn't know it if you had? You haven't even a space suit on. Come out with your hands up or we'll flood the vault with gas."

Laird's teeth flashed in a snarling grin. "All right," he shouted, only half aware of what he was saying. "All right, you asked for id"

He threw the switch on his helmet.

It was like a burst of fire in his brain, a soundless roar of splintering darkness. He screamed, half crazy with the fury that poured into him, feeling the hideous thrumming along every nerve and sinew, feeling his muscles cave in and his body hit the floor. The shadows closed in, roaring and rolling, night and death and the wreck of the universe, and high above it all he heard—laughter.

He lay sprawled behind the machine, twitching and whimpering. They had heard him, out in the tunnels, and with slow caution they entered and stood over him and watched his spasms jerk toward stI’llness.

They were tall and well-formed, the Janyard rebels—Earth had sent her best out to colonize the Sagittarian worlds, three hundred years ago. But the long cruel struggle, conquering and building and adapting to planets that never were and never could be Earth, had changed them, hardened their metal and frozen something in their souls.

Ostensibly it was a quarrel over tariff and trade rights which had led to their revolt against the Empire; actually, it was a new culture yelling to life, a thing bom of fire and loneliness and the great empty reaches between the stars, the savage rebellion of a mutant child. They stood impassively watching the body until it lay quiet. Then one of them stooped over and removed the shining brass helmet.

"He must have taken it for something he could use against us," said the Janyard, turning the helmet in his hands; "but it wasn't adapted to his sort of life. The old dwellings here

looked human, but I don't think it went any deeper than their skins."

The woman commander looked down with a certain pity. "He was a brave man," she said.

"Wait—he's stI’ll alive, mam! He's sitting up!"

Daryesh forced the shaking body to hands and knees. He felt its sickness, wretched and cold in throat and nerves and muscles, and he felt die roiling of fear and urgency in the brain. These were enemies. There was death for a world and a civilization here. Most of all, he felt the horrible numbness of the nervous system, deaf and dumb and blind, cut off in its house of bone and peering out through five weak senses.

Vwyrdda, Vwyrdda, he was a prisoner in a brain without a telepathy transceiver lobe. He was a ghost reincarnated in a thing that was half a corpse!

Strong arms helped him to his feet. "That was a foolish thing to try," said the woman's cool voice.

Daryesh felt strength flowing back as the nerves and muscular and endocrine systems found a new balance, as his mind took over and fought down the gibbering madness which had been Laird. He drew a shuddering breath. Air in his nostrils after—how long? How long had he been dead?

His eyes focused on the woman. She was tall and handsome. Ruddy hair spI’lled from under a peaked cap, wide-set blue eyes regarded him frankly out of a face sculptured in clean lines and strong curves and fresh young coloring. For a moment he thought of Ilorna, and the old sickness rose . . . then he throttled it and looked again at the woman and smiled.

It was an insolent grin, and she stiffened angrily. "Who are you, Solman?" she asked.

The meaning was clear enough to Daryesh, who had his— host's—memory patterns and linguistic habits as well as those of Vwyrdda. He replied steadily, "Lieutenant John Laird of the Imperial Solar Navy, at your service. And your name?"

"You are exceeding yourself," she replied with frost in her voice. "But since I will wish to question you at length ... I

am Captain Joana Rostov of the Janyard Fleet. Conduct your-■"self accordingly."

Daryesh looked around him. This wasn't good. He hadn't the chance now to search Laird's memories in detail, but it was clear enough that this was a force of enemies. The rights and wrongs of a quarrel ages after death of all that had been < Vwyrdda meant nothing to him, but he had to leam more of the situation, and be free to act as he chose. Especially since Laird would presently be reviving and start to resist.

The familiar sight of the machines was at once steadying and unnerving. There were powers here which could smash planetsi It looked barbaric, this successor culture, and in any event the decision as to the use of this leashed hell had to be his. His head lifted in unconscious arrogance. His! For he was the last man of Vwyrdda, and they had wrought the machines, and the heritage was his.

He had to escape.

Joana Rostov was looking at him with an odd blend of hard
suspicion and half-frightened puzzlement. "There's something ,

wrong about you, Lieutenant," she said. "You don't behave like a man whose project has just gone to smash. What was that helmet for?"

Daryesh shrugged. "Part of a control device," he said easily. "In my excitement I failed to adjust it properly. No matter. There are plenty of other machines here."

"What use to you?"

"Oh—all sorts of uses. For instance, that one over there is a nucleonic disintegrator, and this is a shield projector, and—"

"You're lying. You can't know any more about this than we do."

"Shall I prove it?"

"Certainly not. Come back from there!"

Coldly, Daryesh estimated distances. He had all the superb psychosomatic coordination of his race, the training evolved through millions of years; but the subcellular components would be lacking in this body. StI’ll—he had to take the chance.

He launched himself against the Janyard who stood beside him. One hand chopped into the man's larynx, the other grabbed him by the tunic and threw him into the man beyond. In the same movement, Daryesh stepped over the falling bodies, picked up the machine rifle which one had dropped, and slammed over the switch of the magnetic shield projector with its long barrel.

Guns blazed in the dimness. Bullets exploded into molten spray as they hit that fantastic magnetic field. Daryesh, behind it, raced through the door and out the tunnel.

They'd be after him in seconds, but this was a strong long-legged body and he was getting the feel of it. He ran easily, breathing in coordination with every movement, conserving his strength. He couldn't master control of the involuntary functions yet—the nervous system was too different—but he could last for a long while at this pace.

He ducked into a remembered side passage. A rifle spewed a rain of slugs after him as someone came through the magnetic field. He chuckled in the dark. Unless they had mapped every labyrinthine twist and turn of the tunnels, or had life-energy detectors, they'd never dare trail him. They'd get lost and wander in here tI’ll they starved.

StI’ll, that woman had a brain. She'd guess he was making for the surface and the boats, and try to cut him off. It would be a near thing. He settled down to running.

It was long and black and hollow here, cold with age. The air was dry and dusty, little moisture could be left on Vwyrdda. How long has it been? How long has it been?

John Laird stirred back toward consciousness, stunned neurones lapsing into familiar pathways of synapse, the pattern which was personality fighting to restore itself. Daryesh stumbled as the groping mind flashed a random command to his muscles, cursed, and willed the other self back to blank-ness. Hold on, Daryesh, hold on, a few minutes only-He burst out of a small side entrance and stood in the tumbled desolation of the valley. The keen tenuous air raked his sobbing lungs as he looked wildly around at sand and stone and the alien stars. New constellations—Gods, it had been a long time! The moon was larger than he remembered, flooding the dead landscape with a frosty argence. It must have spiraled close in all those uncounted ages.

The boat! Hellblaze, where was the boat?

He saw the Janyard ship not far away, a long lean torpedo resting on the dunes. But it would be guarded—no use trying to steal it. Where was this Laird's vessel, then?

Tumbling through a confusion of alien memories, he recalled burying it on the west side . . . No, it wasn't he who had done that but Laird. Damnation, he had to work fast. He plunged around the monstrous eroded shape of the pyramid, found the long mound, saw the moon-gleam where the wind had blown sand off the metal. What a clumsy pup this Laird was.

He shoveled the sand away from the airlock, scooping with his hands, the breath raw in throat and lungs. Any second now they'd be on him, any instant, and now that they really believed he understood the machines—

The lock shone dully before him, cold under his hands. He spun the outer dog, swearing with a frantic emotion foreign to old Vwyrdda, but that was the habit of his host, untrained psychosomatically, unevolved— There they came!

Scooping up the stolen rifle, Daryesh fired a chattering burst at the group that swarmed around the edge of the pyra-mid.'They tumbled like jointed dolls, screaming in the death-white moonlight. Bullets howled around him and ricocheted off the boat hull.

He got the lock open as they retreated for another charge. For an instant his teeth flashed under the moon, the cold grin of Daryesh the warrior who had ruled a thousand suns in his day and led the fleets of Vwyrdda.

"Farewell, my lovelies," he murmured, and the remembered syllables of the old planet were soft on his tongue.

Slamming the lock behind him, he ran to the control room, letting John Laird's almost unconscious habits carry him along.

He got off to a clumsy start. But then he was climbing for the sky, free and away—

A fist slammed into his back, tossed him in his pilot chair to the screaming roar of sundered metal. Cods, 0 gods, the Janyards had fired a heavy ship's gun; they'd scored a direct hit on his engines and the boat was whistling groundward again.

Grimly, he estimated that the initial impetus had given him a good trajectory, that he'd come down in the hI’lls about a hundred miles north of the valley. But then he'd have to run for it, they'd be after him like beasts of prey in their ship— and John Laird would not be denied. Muscles were twitching and sinews tightening and throat mumbling insanity as the resurgent personality fought to regain itself. That was one • batde he'd have to have out soon!

Well—mentally, Daryesh shrugged. At worst, he could surrender to the Janyards, make common cause with them. It really didn't matter who won this idiotic littie war. He had other things to do.

Nightmare. John Laird crouched in a wind-worn cave and looked out over hI’lls lit by icy moonlight. Through a stranger's eyes, he saw the Janyard ship landing near the down-glided wreck of his boat, saw the glitter of steel as they poured out and started hunting . . . hunting him.

Or was it him any longer? Was he more than a prisoner in his own skull? He thought back to memories that were not his, memories of himself thinking thoughts that were not his own—himself escaping from the enemy while he, Laird, whirled in a black abyss of half-conscious madness. Beyond that, he recalled his own life, and he recalled another life which had endured a thousand years before it died. He looked out on the wilderness of rock and sand and blowing dust, and remembered it as it had been, green and fair, and remembered that he was Daryesh of Tollogh, who had ruled over whole planetary systems in the Empire of Vwyrdda. And at the same time he was John Laird of Earth, and two streams of thought flowed through the brain, listening to each other, shouting at each other in the darkness of his skull.

A million years! Horror and loneliness and a wrenching sorrow were in the mind of Daryesh as he looked upon the ruins of Vwyrdda. A million years ago!

Who are you? cried Laird. What have you done to me? And even as he asked, memories which were his own now rose to answer him.

It had been the Erai who rebelled, the Erai whose fathers came from Vwyrdda, the fair but who had been strangely altered by centuries of environment. They had revolted against the static rule of the immortals, and in a century of warfare they had overrun half the Empire and rallied its populations under them. And the Immortals had unleashed their most terrible powers, the sun-smashing ultimate weapons which had lain forbidden in the vaults of Vwyrdda for ten million years. Only—the Erai had known about it. And they had had the weapons, too.

In the end, Vwyrdda went under, her fleets broken and her armies reeling in retreat over ten thousand scorched planets. The triumphant Erai had roared in to make an end of the mother world, and nothing in all the mighty Imperial arsenals could stop them now.

Theirs was an unstable culture, it could not endure as that of Vwyrdda had. In ten thousand years or so, they would be gone, and the Galaxy would not have even a memory of that which had been. Which was small help to us, thought Laird grimly, and realized with an icy shock that it had been the thought of Daryesh.

The Vwyrddan's mental tone was, suddenly, almost conversational, and Laird realized what an immensity of trained effort it must have taken to overcome that loneliness of a million years. "See here. Laird, we are apparently doomed to occupy the same body tI’ll one of us gets rid of the other, and it is a body which the Janyards seem to want. Rather than fight each other, which would leave the body helpless, we'd better cooperate."

"But—Lord, man! What do you think I am? Do you think I want a vampire like you up there in my brain?"

The answer was fierce and cold. "What of me, Laird? I, who was Daryesh of Tollogh, lord of a thousand suns and lover of noma the Fair, immortalized noble of the greatest empire the universe has ever seen—I am now trapped in the half-evolved body of a hunted alien, a million years after the death of all which mattered. Better be glad I'm here, Laird. I can handle those weapons, you know."

The eyes looked out over the bleak windy hI’llscape, and the double mind watched distance-dwarfed forms clambering in the rocks, searching for a trail. "A hell of a lot of good that does us now," said Laird. "Besides, I can hear you thinking, you know, and I can remember your own past thoughts. Sol or Janya, it's the same to you. How do I know you'll play ball with me?"

The answer was instant, but dark with an unpleasant laughter. 'Why—read my mind, Laird! It's your mind too, isn't it?" Then, more soberly: "Apparendy history is repeating itself in the revolt of the barbarians against the mother planet, though on a smaller scale and with a less developed science. I do not expect the result to be any happier for civilization than before. So perhaps I may take a more effective hand than I did before."

It was ghosdy, lying here in the wind-grieved remnants of a world, watching -the hunters move through a bitter haze of moonlight, and having thoughts which were not one's own, thoughts over which there was no control. Laird clenched his fists, fighting for stability.

Man, they say, is a time-binding animal. But only the mighty will and yearning of Vwyrdda had ever leaped across the borders of death itself, waited a million years that that which was a world might not die out of all history.

What is the personality? It is not a thing, discrete and material; it is a pattern and a process. The body starts with a certain genetic inheritance and meets all the manifold complexities of environment. The whole organism is a set of reactions between the two. The primarily mental component, sometimes called the ego, is not separable from the body but can in some ways be studied apart.

The scientists had found a way to save something of that which was Daryesh. While the enemy was blazing and thundering at the gates of Vwyrdda, while all the planet waited for the last battle and the ultimate night, quiet men in laboratories had perfected the molecular scanner so that the partem of synapses which made up all memory, habit, reflex, instinct, the continuity of the ego, could be recorded upon the electronic structure of certain crystals. They took the pattern of Daryesh and of none other, for only he of the remaining Immortals was willing. Who else would want a pattern to be repeated, ages after he himself was dead, ages after all the world and all history and meaning were lost? But Daryesh had always been reckless, and Horna was dead, and he didn't care much for what happened.

Ilorna, Horna! Laird saw the unforgotten image rise in his memory, golden-eyed and laughing, the long dark hair flowing around the lovely suppleness of her. He remembered the sound of her voice and the sweetness of her hps, and he loved her. A million years, and she was dust blowing on the night wind, and he loved her with that part of him which was Daryesh and with more than a little of John Laird . . . O Iloma. . .

And Daryesh the man had gone to die with his planet, but the crystal pattern which reproduced the ego of Daryesh lay in the vault they had made, surrounded by all the mightiest works of Vwyrdda. Sooner or later, sometime in the infinite future of the universe, someone would come; someone or something would put the helmet on his head and activate it. And the pattern would be reproduced on the neurones—the mind of Daryesh would five again, and he would speak for dead Vwyrdda and seek to renew the tradition of. fifty million years. It would be the will of Vwyrdda, reaching across time— But Vwyrdda is dead, thought Laird frantically.

Vwyrdda is gone. This is a new history. You've got no business telling us what to do!

The reply was cold with arrogance. "I shall do as I see fit. Meanwhile, I advise that you he passive and do not attempt to interfere with me."

"Cram it, Daryeshl" Laird's mouth drew back in a snarl. "I won't be dictated to by anyone, let alone a ghost."

Persuasively, the answer came, "At the moment, neither of us has much choice. We are hunted, and if they have energy trackers—yes, I see they do—they'll find us by this body's thermal radiation alone. Best we surrender peaceably. Once aboard the ship, loaded with all the might of Vwyrdda, our chance should come."

Laird lay quietly, watching the hunters move closer, and the sense of defeat came down on him like a falling world. What else could he do? What other chance was there?

"All right," he said at last, audibly. "AH right. But 111 be watching your every thought, understand? I don't think you can stop me from committing suicide if I must."

"I think I can. But opposing signals to the body will only neutralize each other, leave it helplessly fighting itself. Relax, Laird, lie back and let me handle this. I am Daryesh the warrior, and I have come through harder battles than this."

They rose and began walking down the hI’llside with arms lifted. Daryesh's thought ran on, "Besides—that's a nice-looking wench in command. It could be interesting!"

His laughter rang out under the moon, and it was not the laughter of a human being.

"I can't understand you, John Laird," said Joana.

"Sometimes," replied Daryesh lighdy, "I don't understand myself very well—or you, my dear."

She stiffened a little. "That will do, Lieutenant. Remember your position here."

"Oh, the devil with our ranks and countries. Let's be live entities for a change."

Her glance was quizzical. "That's an odd way for a Sol-man to phrase it."

Mentally, Daryesh swore. Damn this body, anyway! The strength, the fineness of coordination and perception, half the senses he had known, were missing from it. The gross brain structure couldn't hold the reasoning powers he had once had. His thinking was dull and sluggish. He made blunders the old Daryesh would never have committed. And this young woman was quick to see them, and he was a prisoner of John Laird's deadly enemies, and the mind of Laird himself was tangled in thought and will and memory, ready to fight him if he gave the least sign of—

The Solarian's ego chuckled nastily. Easy, Daryesh, easy!

Shut up! his mind snapped back, and he knew drearily that his own trained nervous system would not have been guilty of such a childishly emotional response.

"I may as well tell you die truth, Captain Rostov," he said aloud. "I am not Laird at all. Not any more."

She made no response, merely drooped the lids over her eyes and leaned back in her chair. He noticed abstractedly how long her lashes were—or was that Laird's appreciative mind, unhindered by too much remembrance of Ilorna?

They sat alone, the two of them, in her small cabin aboard the Janyard cruiser. A guard stood outside the door, but it was closed. From time to time they would hear a dull thump or clang as the heavy machines of Vwyrdda were dragged aboard —otherwise they might have been the last two alive on the scarred old planet.

The room was austerely furnished, but there were touches of the feminine here and there: curtains, a small pot of flowers, a formal dress hung in a half-open closet. And the woman who sat across the desk from him was very beautiful, with the loosened ruddy hair streaming to her shoulders and the brI’lliant eyes never wavering from his. But one slender hand rested on a pistol.

He took a cigarette from the box on her desk—Laird's habits again—and lit it and took a slow drag of smoke into his lungs.

AH right, Daryesh, go ahead. I suppose your idea is the best, if anything can be made to work at all. But I'm listening, remember.

"I am all that is left of this planet," he said tonelessly. "This is the ego of Daryesh of Tollogh, Immortal of Vwyrdda, and in one sense I died a million years ago."

She remained quiet, but he saw how her hands clenched and he heard the sharp small hiss of breath sucked between the teeth.

Briefly, then, he explained how his mental pattern had been preserved, and how it had entered the brain of John Laird.

"You don't expect me to believe that story," she said contemptuously.

"Do you have a he cletector aboard?"

"I have one in this cabin, and I can operate it myself." She got up and fetched the machine from a cabinet. He watched her, noticing the grace of her movements. You died long ago, llorna—you died and the universe will never know another like you. But 1 go on, and she reminds me somehow of you.

It was a small black thing that hummed and glowed on the desk between them. He put the metal cap on his head, and took the knobs in his hands, and waited while she adjusted the controls. From Laird's memories, he recalled the principle of the thing, the measurement of activity in separate brain centers, the precise detection of the slight extra energy needed in the higher cerebral cortex to invent a falsehood.

"I have to calibrate," she said. "Make up something I know to be a lie."

"New Egypt has rings," he smiled, "which are made of Limburger cheese. However, the main body of the planet is a delicious Camembert—"

"That will do. Now repeat your previous statements."

Relax, Laird, damn it—blank yourself! I can't control this thing with you interfering. . .

Finally, it was over. He saw her visibly relaxing, and inwardly he smiled. It was so easy, so easy. They were such children in this later age. All he had to do was hand her a smooth lie which fitted in with the propaganda that had been her mental environment from birth, and she could not seriously think of him as an enemy.

The blue gaze lifted to his, and the hps were parted. "You will help us?" she whispered.

Daryesh nodded. "I know the principles and construction and use of those engines, and in truth there is in them the force that molds planets. Your scientists would never work out the half of all that there is to be found. I will show you the proper operation of them all." He shrugged. "Naturally, I will expect commensurate rewards. But even altruistically speaking, this is the best thing I can do. Those energies should remain under the direction of one who understands them, and not be misused in ignorance. That could lead to unimaginable catastrophes."

Suddenly she picked up her gun and shoved it back into its holster. She stood up, smiling, and held out her hand.

Lying in the dark, he began the silent argument with Laird anew. "Now what?" demanded the Solarian.

"We play it slow and easy," said Daryesh patiently—as if the fool couldn't read it directly in their common brain. 'We watch our chance, but don't act for a while yet. Under the pretext of rigging the energy projectors for action, well arrange a setup which can destroy the ship at the flick of a switch. They won't know it. They haven't an inkling about subspatial flows. Then, when an opportunity to escape offers itself, we throw that switch and get away and try to return to Sol. With my knowledge of Vwyrddan science, we can turn the tide of the war. It's risky—sure—but it's the only chance I see. And for heaven's sake let me handle matters. You're supposed to be dead."

"And what happens when we finally setde this business? How can I get rid of you?"

"Frankly, I don't see any way to do it. Our patterns have become too entangled. The scanners necessarily work on the whole nervous system. We'll just have to learn to live together." Persuasively: "It will be to your own advantage. Think, man! We can do as we choose with Sol. With the Galaxy. And 111 set up a life-tank and make us a new body to which well transfer the pattern, a body with all the intelligence and abilities of a Vwyrddan, and I'll immortalize it. Man, you'll never die!"

The mind is an intricate thing. It can conceal facts from itself, make itself forget that which is painful to remember, persuade its own higher components of whatever the subconscious deems right. Rationalization, schizophrenia, autohyp-nosis, they are but pale indications of the self-deception which the brain practices. And the training of the Immortals included full neural coordination; they could consciously utilize the powers latent in themselves. They could by an act of conscious will stop the heart, or block off pain, or split their own personalities.

Daryesh had know his ego would be fighting whatever host it found, and he had made preparations before he was scanned. Only a part of his mind was in full contact with Laird's. Another section, split off from the main stream of consciousness by deliberate and controlled schizophrenia, was thinking its own thoughts and making its own plans. Self-hypnotized, he automatically reunited his ego at such times as Laird was not aware; otherwise there was only subconscious contact. In effect a private compartment of his mind, inaccessible to the Solarian, was making its own plans.

That destructive switch would have to be installed to satisfy Laird's waking personality, he thought. But it would never be thrown. For he had been telling Joana that much of the the truth—his own advantage lay with the Janyards, and he meant to see them through to final victory.

It would be simple enough to get rid of Laird temporarily. Persuade him that for some reason it was advisable to get dead drunk. Daryesh's more controlled ego would remain conscious after Laird's had passed out. Then he could make all arrangements with Joana, who by that time should be ready to do whatever he wanted.

Psychiatry—the methods of treating schizophrenia could, with some modifications, be applied to suppressing Daryesh's extra personality. He'd blank out that Solarian . . . permanently.

And after that would come his undying new body, and centuries and mI’llennia in which he could do what he wanted with this young civilization.

The demon exorcising the man. ... He grinned drowsily. Presendy he slept.

The ship drove through a rught of stars and distance. Time was meaningless, was the position of the hands on a clock, was the succession of sleeps and meals, was the slow shift in the constellations as they gulped the light-years.

On and on, the mighty drone of the second-order drive fI’lling their bones and their days, the round of work and food and sleep and Joana. Laird wondered if it would ever end. He wondered if he might not be the Flying Dutchman, outward bound for eternity, locked in his own skull with the thing that had possessed him. At such times the only comfort was in Joana's arms. He drew of the wild young strength of her, and he and Daryesh were one. But afterward—

We're going to join the Grand Fleet. You heard her, Daryesh. She's making a triumphal pilgrimage to the gathered power of Janya, bringing tlie invincible weapons of Vwyrdda to tier admiral.

All right, all right. Laird. But take it easy. We liave to get the energy devices installed first. We'll have to give them enough of a demonstration to allay their suspicions. Joana's the only one aboard here who trusts us. None of her officers do.

The body and the double mind labored as the slow days passed, directing Janyard techicians who could not understand what it was they built. Laird, drawing on Daryesh's

102

memories, knew what a giant slept in those coils and tubes and invisible energy-fields. Here were forces to trigger the great creative powers of the universe and turn them to destruction: distorted space-time, atoms dissolving into pure energy, vibrations to upset the stability of force-fields which maintained order in the cosmos. Laird remembered the ruin of Vwyrdda, and shuddered.

They got a projector mounted and operating, and Daryesh suggested that the cruiser halt somewhere that he could prove his words. They picked a barren planet in an uninhabited system and lay in an orbit fifty thousand miles out. In an hour Daryesh had turned the facing hemisphere into a sea of lava.

"If the dis-fields were going," he said absent-mindedly, "I'd pull the planet into chunks for you."

Laird saw the pale taut faces around him. Sweat was shining on foreheads, and a couple of men looked sick.

"Nothing they have can stop us," murmured an officer dazedly. "Why, this one ship, protected by one of those space-warp screens you spoke of, sir—this one little ship could sail in and lay the Solar System waste."

Daryesh nodded. It was entirely possible. Not much energy was required, since the generators of Vwyrdda served only as catalysts releasing fantastically greater forces. And Sol had none of the defensive science which had enabled his world to hold out for a while. Yes, it could be done.

He stiffened with the sudden furious thought of Laird: That's it, Daryesh! That's the answer.

The thought-stream was his own too, flowing through the same brain, and indeed it was simple. They could have the whole ship armed and armored beyond the touch of Janya. And since none of the technicians aboard understood the machines, and since they were now wholly trusted, they could install robot-controls without anyone's knowing.

Then the massed Grand Fleet of Janya—a flick of the main switch and man-kI’lling energies would flood the cruiser's interior, and only corpses would remain aboard . . . dead men and the robots that woiild open fire on the Fleet. This one ship could ruin all the barbarian hopes in a few bursts of incredible flame. And the robots could then be set to destroy her as well, lest by some chance the remaining Janyards managed to board her.

And we—we can escape in the initial confusion, Daryesh. We can give orders to the robot to spare the captains gig, and we can get Joana aboard and head for Sol! There'll he no one left to pursue!

Slowly, the Vwyrddan's thought made reply: A good plan. Yes, a bold stroke. We'll do it!

Later, when Laird slept, Daryesh thought that the young man's scheme was good. Certainly he'd fall in with it. It would keep Laird busy tI’ll they were at the Grand Fleet rendezvous. And after that it would be too late. The Janyard victory would be sealed. All he, Daryesh, had to do when the time came was keep away from that master switch. If Laird tried to reach it their opposed wills would only result in nullity—which was victory for Janya.

He liked this new civilization. It had a freshness, a vigor and hopefulness which he could not find in Laird's memories of Earth. It had a tough-minded purposefulness that would get it far. And being young and fluid, it would be amenable to such pressures of psychology and force as he chose to apply.

Vwyrdda, his mind whispered. Vwyrdda, we'll make them over in your image. You'll live again!

The Grand Fleet! A million capital ships and their auxiliaries lay marshaled at a dim red dwarf of a sun, massed together and spinning in the same mighty orbit. Against the incandescent whiteness of stars and the blackness of the old deeps, armored flanks gleamed like flame as far as eyes could see, rank after rank, tier upon tier, of titanic sharks swimming through space: guns and armor and torpedoes and bombs and men to smash a planet and end a civilization. The sight was too big, imagination could not make the leap, and the human mind had only a dazed impression of vastness beyond vision.

This was the great spearhead of Janya, a shining lance poised to drive through Sol's thin defense lines and roar out of the sky to rain hell on the seat of empire. They can't really be human any more, thought Laird sickly. Space and strangeness have changed them too much. No human being could think of destroying Man's home. Then, fiercely: All right, Daryesh. This is our cliance!

Not yet, Laird. Wait a while. Wait tI’ll we have a legitimate excuse for leaving the ship.

Well—come up to the control room with me. 1 want to stay near that switch. Lord, Lord, everything that is Man and me depends on us now!

Daryesh agreed with a certain reluctance that faintly puzzled the part of his mind open to Laird. The other half, crouched deep in his subconscious, knew the reason: It was waiting the posthypnotic signal, the key event which would trigger its emergence into the higher brain-centers.

The ship bore a tangled and unfinished look. All its conventional armament had been ripped out and the machines of Vwyrdda installed in its place. A robot brain, half-alive in its complexity, was gunner and pilot and ruling intelligence of the vessel now, and only the double mind of one man knew what orders had really been given it. Wlien the main switch is thrown, you will flood the ship with ten units of disrupting radiation. Then, when the captains gig is well away, you will destroy this fleet, sparing only that one boat. When no more ships in operative condition are in range, you wiU activate the disintegrators and dissolve this whole vessel and aU its contents to basic energy.

With a certain morbid fascination, Laird looked at that switch. An ordinary double-throw knife type—Lord of space, could it be possible, was it logical that all history should depend on the angle it made with the control panel? He pulled his eyes away, stared out at the swarming ships and the greater host of the stars, lit a cigarette with shaking hands, paced and sweated and waited.

Joana came to him, a couple of crewmen marching solemnly behind. Her eyes shone and her cheeks were flushed and the turret light was like molten copper in her hair.

"Daryesh!" Laughter danced in her voice. "Daryesh, the high admiral wants to see us in his flagship. Hell probably ask for a demonstration, and then I think the fleet will start for Sol at once with us in the van. Daryesh—oh, Daryesh, the war is almost over!"

Now! blazed the thought of Laird, and his hand reached for the main switch. Now—easily, casually, with a remark about letting the generators warm up—and then go with her, overpower those guardsmen in their surprise and head for home!

And Daryesh's mind reunited itself at that signal, and the hand froze . . . No!

What? But-

The memory of the suppressed half of Daryesh's mind was open to Laird, and the triumph of the whole of it, and Laird knew that his defeat was here.

So simple, so cruelly simple—Daryesh could stop him, lock the body in a conflict of wills, and that would be enough. For while Laird slept, while Daryesh's own major ego was unconscious, the trained subconscious of the Vwyrddan had taken over. It had written, in its self-created somnambulism, a letter to Joana explaining the whole truth, and had put it where it would easily be found once they started looking through his effects in search of an explanation for his paralysis. And the letter directed, among other things, that Daryesh's body should be kept under restraint until certain specified methods known to Vwyrddan psychiatry—drugs, electric waves, hypnosis—had been applied to eradicate the Laird half of his mind.

Janyard victory was near.

"Daryesh!" Joana's voice seemed to come from immensely far away; her face swam in a haze and a roar of fainting consciousness. "Daryesh, what's the matter?"

Grimly, the Vwyrddan thought: Give up, Laird. Surrender to me, and you can keep your ego. VU destroy that letter. See, my whole mind is open to you now—you can see that I mean it honestly this time. Yd rather avoid treatment if possible, and I do owe you something. But surrender now, or be wiped out of your own brain.

Defeat and ruin—and nothing but slow distorting death as reward for resistance. Laird's will caved in, his mind too chaotic for clear thought. Only one dull impulse came: 1 give up. You win, Daryesh.

The~collapsed body picked itself off the floor. Joana was bending anxiously over him. "Oh, what is it, what's wrong?"

Daryesh collected himself and smiled shakily. "Excitement will do this to me, now and then. I haven't fully mastered this alien nervous system yet. I'm all right now. Let's go."

Laird's hand reached out and pulled the switch over.

Daryesh shouted, an animal roar from the throat, and tried to recover it, and the body toppled again in a stasis of locked wills.

It was like a deliverance from hell, and stI’ll it was but the inevitable logic of events, as Laird's own self reunited. Half of him stI’ll shaking with defeat, half realizing its own victory, he thought savagely:

None of them noticed me do that. They were paying too much attention to my face. Or if they did, we've proved to them before that it's only a harmless regulating switch. And— the lethal radiations are already flooding us! If you don't cooperate now, Daryesh, I'll hold us here tI’ll we're both dead!

So simple, so simple. Because, sharing Daryesh's memory, Laird had shared his knowledge of self-deception techniques. He had anticipated, with the buried half of his mind, that the Vwyrddan might pull some such trick, and had installed a posthypnotic command of his own. In a situation like this, when everything looked hopeless, his conscious mind was to surrender, and then his subconscious would order that the switch be thrown.

Cooperate, Daryesh! You're as fond of living as 1. Cooperate, and let's get the hell out of here! Grudgingly, wryly: You win. Laird.

The body rose again, and leaned on Joana's arm, and made its slow way toward the boat blisters. The undetectable rays of death poured through them, piling up their cumulative effects. In three minutes, a nervous system would be mined.

Too slow, too slow. "Come on, Joana, Run!"

"Why—" She stopped, and a hard suspicion came into the faces of the two men behind her. "Daryesh—what do you mean? What's come over you?"

"Ma'm .. ." One of the crewmen stepped forward. "Ma'm, I wonder ... I saw him pull down the main switch. And now he's in a hurry to leave the ship. And none of us really know how all that machinery ticks."

Laird pulled the gun out of Joana's holster and shot him. The other gasped, reaching for his own sidearm, and Laird's weapon blazed again.

His fist leaped out, striking Joana on the angle of the jaw, and she sagged. He caught her up and started to ran.

A pair of crewmen stood in the corridor leading to the boats. "What's the matter, sir?" one asked.

"Collapsed—radiation from the machines—got to get her to a hospital ship," gasped Daryesh.

They stood aside, wonderingly, and he spun the dogs of the blister valve and stepped into the gig. "Shall we come, sir?" asked one of the men.

"No!" Laird felt a little dizzy. The radiation was streaming through him, and death was coming with giant strides. "No—" He smashed a fist into the insistent face, slammed the valve back, and vaulted to the pilot's chair.

The engines hummed, warming up. Fists and feet battered on the valve. The sickness made him retch.

O Joana, if this kI’lls you—

He threw the main-drive switch. Acceleration jammed him back as the gig leaped free.

Staring out the ports, he saw fire blossom in space as the great guns of Vwyrdda opened up.

My glass was empty. I signalled for a refI’ll and sat wondering just how much of the yam one could believe.

"I've read the histories," I said slowly. "I do know that some mysterious catastrophe annihilated the massed fleet of Janya and turned the balance of the war. Sol speared in and won inside of a year. And you mean that you did it?"

"In a way. Or Daryesh did. We were acting as one personality, you know. He was a thoroughgoing realist, and the moment he saw his defeat he switched wholeheartedly to the other side."

"But—Lord, man! Why've we never heard anything about this? You mean you never told anyone, never rebuilt any of those machines, never did anything?"

Laird's dark, worn face twisted in a bleak smile. "Certainly. This civilization isn't ready for such things. Even Vwyrdda wasn't, and it'll take us millions of years to reach their stage. Besides, it was part of the bargain."

"Bargain?"

"Just as certainly. Daryesh and I stI’ll had to live together, you know. Life under suspicion of mutual trickery, never trusting your own brain, would have been intolerable. We reached an agreement during that long voyage back to Sol, and used Vwyrddan methods of autohypnosis to assure that it could not be broken."

He looked somberly out at the lunar night. "That's why I said the genie in the bottle kI’lled me. Inevitably, the two personalities merged, became one. And that one was, of course, mostly Daryesh, with overtones of Laird.

"Oh, it isn't so horrible. We retain the memories of our separate existences, and the continuity which is the most basic attribute of the ego. In fact. Laird's life was so limited, so blind to all the possibilities and wonder of the universe, that I don't regret him very often. Once in a while I stI’ll get nostalgic moments and have to talk to a human. But I always pick one who won't know whether or not to believe me, and won't be able to do much of anything about it if he should."

"And why did you go into Survey?" I asked, very sofdy.

"I want to get a good look at the universe before the change. Daryesh wants to orient himself, gather enough data for a sound basis of decision. When we—I—switch over to the new immortal body, there'll be work to do, a galaxy to remake in a newer and better pattern by Vwyrddan standardsl It'll take mI’llennia, but we've got all time before us. Or I do—what do I mean, anyway?" He ran a hand through his gray-streaked hair.

"But Laird's part of the bargain was that there should be as nearly normal a human life as possible until this body gets inconveniently old. So—" He shrugged. "So that's how it worked out."

We sat for a while longer, saying little, and then he got up. "Excuse me," he said. "There's my wife. Thanks for the talk."

I saw him walk over to greet a tall, handsome red-haired woman. His voice drifted back: "Hello, Joana—"

They walked out of the room together in perfecdy ordinary and human fashion.

I wonder what history has in store for us.

Behind the Black fJeUa

By L. Bon Hubbard

THE LANDING prison ship hovered a space above the field as though arrested by the titanic hatde in progress below, but in reality only waiting for the assembly of a securing crew.

The Crystal Mines, beyond the mystery of the Black Nebula and in a world unlike anything anywhere in space outside, rippled in the waves of heat and shuddered under the rapid impact of fast-firing arc cannon. A desolate and grim outpost, the last despair of convicts for seventy-five years, the latest hope of a fuel-starved empire of space, racked continually by attack.

The Crystal Mines, where disgraced officers came to battle through their last days against forces which had as yet defied both analysis and weapon. Heartbreak and misery and war beneath a roof of steel and upon strangely quivering ground, amid vapors and gasses which put commas and then periods to the fives of the luckless criminals sent here as a punishment transcending in violence even slow execution.

Gedso Ion Brown stood at the port in awed silence, caught by the unleashed fury in the scene below and forgetting even the danger and mystery of their course into this place. For here below had come to being things more strange than any described in the folklore of any planet in a setting which he realized no man could adequately describe.

Below were metal blocks, the mine barracks and offices, sufficient to house half a million men. They crept up the side of a concave cliff like a stairway until they nearly touched the embedded edge of the mine roof. Curving down into the white stones of the valley was a spun silica wall a hundred meters high, studded at thirty-pace intervals by cannon turrets. The mine, the roof, the wall, all were contained in an immense

111 cavern Which was reached through a hundred-and-eighty-kilometer runnel seven kilometers in diameter.

The light had no apparent source, seeming to exude from cliffs and ceiling and ground, possibly from the perfectly formed, sharp boulders, the size of ships, strewn everywhere, lodged everywhere, even hanging from the ceiling. These were a translucent white and constituted the product of the mine.

Up and down the wall went the lashing trajectories of the arc cannon, raking over the scorched and smoking ground, reaching in hysterical fury at the lumbering attackers.

Gedso Ion Brown put a pocket glass to his eye and looked wonderingly at the scene. He had heard here and there through space that such things had existed. He had reserved judgment for one could never tell what tale might next crawl through the vast spaces of the Empire. But the descriptions he had heard, probably because no man ever came back from the Crystal Mines unless he was high officer, had been gross underestimates.

Gedso Ion Brown was not of delicate constitution and he had been near too many batdes to become shaky about anything. Further, nervousness was not part of his temperament. But he did not care to look at those things.

The spaceship was settling down to the charred landing field with its miserable cargo and Gedso Ion Brown turned back to his pinched cabin, one of the only two which had no leg irons included, to pack his slender belongings. A littie later he shuffled down a gangway and put his trunk on the ground and looked about for someone to tell him where his quarters were. But there was no one interested in him and so he stood with his baggy uniform blowing about his ungainly body, feeling unwelcome and forlorn.

A mass gangway to his right, like a leg of a rusty beetie, was crowded with the sullen freight brought here each trip. Convicts, emaciated and ragged and chafed by irons, were being herded into trucks by surly and ruthless guards. He was not a prepossessing figure, Gedso Ion Brown. He was a full two meters tall and he weighed two and one-half times as much as another the same size for he had been born on Centaur One of Vega to pioneer Earth parents and Vega's Centaur. One has a gravity two and one-half times that of Earth. A shuffling gait, a forward cant to his disproportioned head and thick, round shoulders minimized his appearance.

Life to him had always been a travail. At his Earth engineering school he had been dubbed a "provincial lout" and he had earned it for he crushed whatever chair he sat upon and in an unthinking moment might pull a door off its hinges if the catch held a second too long—and then stand looking stupidly and embarrassedly at the thing he held by the knob. Awkward and ungainly and shy, Gedso Ion Brown had never made much way in the Extra-Territorial Scienticorps, getting his promotion by number and so progressing alone and ignored in a service vast enough to swallow even his unhandsome bulk.

People generally thought him stupid, basing their conclusions upon his social disgraces, but this was not fair. In his line Gedso was alert enough and it is doubtful if more than two or three men knew of that trick of his of glancing at a page and mentally photographing the whole of it. In such a way Gedso studied. In such a way did he hide his only shining light. He had two vices—apples and puzzles—and the only baggage he had placed in the freight room contained nothing else.

The arc cannon crackled with renewed ferocity and he looked away from the things he could see lumbering beyond the far wall. Convinced at last that his arrival was going unremarked, he tucked the heavy trunk under his arm and shuffled toward the P.C.

A trusty orderly jabbed his back with a juice wand. "You're blocking the way."

Gedso looked at the narrow, evil face.

"Would you please tell the commander that I would like to see himr"

"What's your name? What do you want to see him about?"

"My name is Brown. Gedso Ion Brown. I'm a technician in the E-T.S. I've been ordered here."

The orderly looked startled and then weak. He nearly dropped his juice wand as he whipped to attention. "I . . . I am s-s-s-sorry, sir. The c-c-commander will be informed immediately, s-s-s-sir." He dived into the post and came skidding back to attention. "The commander will see you immediately, sir. I ... I did not have any idea you were a technician, sir. I did not see your insignia, sir."

Gedso said mildly, "Will you watch my trunk?" and went on inside.

The secretary, a convict soldier with the chevrons of master sergeant on his blouse, opened the door into an inner room.

Jules Drummond, captain general of the Administrative Department's Extra-Territorial Command Corps, looked sourly up from the manifests of the newly arrived space vessel. He was a thin, dark gentieman, very tall and very military. There was a look of hawk cruelty about him, a look so common to E-T.C.C. commanders and intensified in General Drummond.

He looked for a full minute at Gedso and then said, "So you are a technician, are you?" With intentional rudeness he looked back at the manifest and left Gedso standing there. After a while he snapped, "Sit down."

Gedso squirmed in discomfort and looked at the frail chairs. He pretended to ease into one, but held himself up from it.

'Where are your orders?" said Drummond.

Gedso fumbled through the baggy pockets of his tunic, found three apples and a core, but, much to his embarrassment, no orders. Faltering he said, "I guess—I must have packed them. I’ll get them." He went out and got them from his trunk and brought them back.

Drummond again ordered him to sit down. It did not occur to Gedso to resent such treatment. He was only nominally under orders from General Drummond, for the Scienticorps

114

was too important and too powerful to be ordered about by E-T.C.C. officers.

Acidly, Drummond threw the orders on the desk before him. "Two months ago I phoned for a technician. The foolsl they know what the catalyzer from these mines is worth. They know how important it is that we work unhampered. Political fools, bungling the affairs of the Empire! They send me prisoners on their last leg with disease instead of workmen and artisans! They send me drunkards and worse for officers. I beg for a technician! A real technician to do something about this continual warfare! I tell them that day by day it grows worse and that it is only a question of time before all of us will be devoured alive!"

"I am a technician, sir," ventured Gedso timidly. "I'd like to do what I can to^ielp."

Drummond seared him with a glare which took in the soiled and wrinkled slacks, the oversized tunic with its too-short sleeves.

"The final decadence of Empire," said Drummond nastily.

Gedso seemed to miss the insult. "If you could get somebody to tell me what is wrong—"

"What would you do about it?" said Drummond. "I’ll send an engineer. Now get out of here!"

Gedso slipped as he rose from the chair and sat back with his full weight. It splintered to atoms under him and the whole post shook. Scarlet and confused, Gedso backed up through the door.

The orderly was a mental chameleon. When he dropped Gedso out of the passenger truck before the isolated little hut reserved for Extra-Territorial Scienticorps men in case they might come to inspect, the orderly did not offer to help Gedso with his trunk or even go so far as to hope that Gedso was comfortable. The orderly who, after the fashion of orderlies, had had an ear glued to the wall of Drummond's office, hurried away to spread, after the fashion of orderlies, his commander's opinion of the latest addition to the staff of the Crystal Mines.

That this was true was indicated by the attitude of the third-rank combat engineer who slouched up to the hut two hours later and found Gedso lying on the hard bunk eating an apple.

All his life, Blufore, the third-rank engineer, had heard tales of the technicians of the E-T.S., but only twice before today had he seen a technician first class in the flesh and not until today had he spoken to one of the "miracle men." Glorified in song and story, in spacecast and rumor, E-T.S. technicians, "trouble shooters of our far-flung lifelines," "magicians in khaki," "test-tube godlings." seemed to have a right to awe. There were twenty-seven thousand of them spread out amid a hundred and eighty-five trI’llion beings, things and men who held down the habitable spots of space, and a technician first class was, reputedly, never sent to duty unless everything was gone awry. Blufore had come ready to discard the flying rumors and bad opinions of this technician, for he knew that the technician's presence was the Grand Council's most scathing criticism of a military administrator.

Blufore saw the ungainly hulk of Gedso Ion Brown sprawled upon the bed. Blufore saw the apple and a core upon the floor. Blufore saw no test tubes or sen-ant monsters. And when Blufore heard the mild, almost stuttering voice bid him, "Come in," Blufore reacted as would any man experiencing the downfall of a god.

Gedso looked nearsightedly at Blufore as the man sat down. Gedso did not like the swaggering, boasting expression on Blufore's face or the precision of Bhifore's fancifully cut uniform.

"I came to give you the data on this mess," said Blufore. "But there's nothing anybody can do which hasn't already been done. I know because as a combat engineer I've tried every form of repelling force known without result on the 'things.' Now what do you want to know?"

Gedso was not offended. He swung down his feet and cupped his chin and looked at Blufore. "Just what are these 'things?"

"Monsters, maybe. Living tanks. Some of them weigh a hundred and fifty tons, some three hundred. Some have a front that is all bone mouth. Some have eighty to a hundred and twenty legs. Some are transparent. Some are armor-plated. There have been as many as five thousand dead before the wall, making a wall of their own, and the others have kept right on coming. I suppose half a million of them have been kI’lled by arc cannon in the past five or six years. Sometimes the push is so bad from the back that the dead are shoved like a shield right up to and through the wall and the things behind start grabbing soldiers. We lose about two hundred men a week."

"How long has this present battle lasted?" said Gedso.

"Seventy-five years. Since the day the Terrestrial Exploration Command moved in here and found the crystals. First we fought them with ranked space tanks. Then with a force field. Then with fire guns. And now with arc cannon. They can be kI’lled, yes. But that never stops them. Their attacks are in greater or lesser ferocity, but are spaced evenly over a period of time. Intense for an Earth week. Slack for an Earth week. Intense for an Earth week. Over and over. This is a slack period. They have broken through the wall just once, yesterday. They've been at this attack for seventy-five years."

"You don't know what they are, then?"

"Nobody knows and nobody ever will," said Blufore.

"Is there anything else peculiar about this place?" asked Gedso.

"Peculiar! You must have seen it from the outside. You come through a wall of ink a thousand light-years long and high and three light-years thick. And inside the Black Nebula there are no stars or space as we know it, but gigantic shapes, dark and vague. And the space has force in it which heats a ship scorching hot and knocks it around like a cork in a dynamo. And you come in here through a tunnel to get to a chamber which is light but has no sun, where the most valuable catalyst ever found lies all over and even sticks from the ceiling. Peculiar! The mystery of this continued, seventy-five-year attack is nothing compared to the bigger mystery."

Gedso said, "Are there any other tunnels leading out from this chamber?"

"I suppose there may be. It is too dangerous to scout. And there is no need to go beyond."

"I see," said Gedso.

"And within another month we will probably have to abandon this place," said Blufore, in a lower tone. "The wall out there was high enough once. Now it isn't. The arc cannon have less and less effect upon the 'things.' Each weapon has at first been adequate and then has become useless. And now there is no weapon to replace the arc cannon. Well have to abandon the Crystal Mines and the Empire can go to hell for its catalysts. And, between us, I can't say as I particularly care."

"I see," said Gedso, blinking his eyes like a sleepy pelican grown elephant size.

"That's all I can tell you," said Blufore. "Thank you," said Gedso.

Gedso put a couple of apples in his pocket and shuffled out into the gaseous light. He stood for a little while listening to the arc cannon crackle and blast and then moved slowly toward the wall, stepping off the road when cars and line trucks dashed by.

He climbed a stairway up to an observation post and hesitated near the top when he saw an army lieutenant and a signalman there.

"No visitors allowed," snapped the lieutenant.

"Excuse me," said Gedso and backed down.

He went to the outer wall and climbed to a command post there which he made certain was empty. He wiped his glasses and gazed through the dome out across the broken plain.

Somehow he could not get the "things" in focus at all and, for him, they moved as gigantic blurs, agleam with the savage fight of exploding electricity from the arc cannon. The

The arc cannon's twin electrodes thrust outward, weighty because of the repelling magnet between which kicked the center of the arc half a kilometer in a broadening egg-shaped line. Stewie, or so read the letters on his back below the number, fitted a big fuse into the clips and sat down on the cannon ledge, hands grasping levers. His bright, brown eyes peered through the reducing glass which served as a sight and Gedso, behind him, found that he also could see through it

The attack was developing out front as the "things" lumbered forward, breasting a force field and treading shakingly upon the flaming ground. Turrets to the right and left were blasting away. Stewie put his weapon into operation by the flip of a switch.

An arc made a loop about a meter in diameter and then, as it heated up, began to leap outward like a stretched band. The noise grew and grew and the brI’lliance of the arc, though cut by the glare shield, became hurtful to the eyes.

The "things" had pushed in a salient before this turret, but now into either side of that one in advance the arc began to play. Seen in the reduction glass, its outlines were almost clear. A great blob. No legs. A mouth with horizontal bone lining which now ground together, opened and shut. The thing came on, flanked on either side by a different sort.

Gedso blinked when he saw that the arc, gauged around six bI’llion kilo-volts and five thousand amperes, had no perceptible effect upon the gigantic target. As the "things" came on there were fourteen of them linked abreast by the arc. Force field. Flaming earth white tongued with heat. Six bI’llion—

Gedso looked at Stewie and saw how white the little fellow was getting around the mouth.

"Stop," snarled Stewie. "Stop, you waddling blankety blank blanksl Take it you hell-gulping blobs of stink. Stopr

On came the salient With the casual precision of well-trained troops, "things" to the right and left fought forward to keep the flanks of the bulge covered. Arcs from turrets all up and down the line gave the sight a jumpy, yellow glare. Behind the salient an I’llimitable mass was gathering, ready to rush through any break.

There was no sound but the crackle of arcs and the hiss of the white-heated ground. Pushing over crystalline boulders the size of houses as a man might roll a pebble underfoot, the legions pressed forward.

Sweat was dripping from Stewie. His thumb was easing the range expertly.

A quarter of a kilometer. Half of that. A hundred meters. Fifty meters. Ten meters. In the reduction sight the heads of the foremost fI’lled the field. Eyeless, expressionless. Gaping caverns of mouths.

Stewie was almost depressed to the limit of the weapon. He was swearing in high-pitched gibberish at the wall men in his immediate vicinity.

The bulge was against the wall. The wall trembled. Fulminating acid was suddenly dumped from huge caldrons on either side of each turret. The torrents splashed devastatingly upon the ranks.

The wall began to shake and then teeter backward.

A scale fI’lled the whole field of the reduction sight. With a crunch the top of the turret sagged, showering Gedso and the gunner with shivered splinters of transparent shell-proof, heat-proof, failure-proof battleglass.

Stewie's ledge swept down and die electrodes of the cannon swooped up with savage fury. A huge spot on a scale was visible, taking the full impact of the concentrated fire.

Gedso let drive with a' blasting wand. This and the arc had the sudden effect of lashing the scale spot into flame. It moved on. The flame spread out. It became roasting hot in the turret and Stewie ducked under a floorplate, tugging anxiously at Gedso's shoelace to get him down. The floorplate clanked into space and Gedso flipped on a fingernail torch. Stewie was trying to grin, but he was racked by shudders.

There were flecks of lather in the corners of his mouth and a not-quite-sane light in his eyes.

The wall began to sway anew and then, with earthquake abruptness, shook like the dice in a cup about the dog cell. Gedso put a hand out and pinned Stewie to the far wall to ease the strain of the shock. There was a final crash and then quiet descended save for the far-off snap-snap-snap of mobile guns.

"They're through," said Stewie, steadying his voice with an effort. "They're between us and the barracks; they're being fought by tanks and pI’llboxes." A shudder took hold of him and he fought it off. "That's what's been happening more and more often for two months. They care less and less about arc cannon. First time, four years ago, arc cannon stopped 'em like mowing down weenies at a picnic. Now well get a new weapon, maybe, and it will last a couple of years. All we do is toughen them upl One weapon. The next. And what the hell's the use of it?"

There was a lurch and then another and Stewie whispered, dead-eyed, "The 'things' heard us and they're looking for us. Ssshh!"

They sat in silence, shaken now and then, hearing stones and spun silica crush under weight.

Gedso took out the two apples and gave one to Stewie who repressed a nervous giggle and bit avidly into it. The gesture had not been intended as a demonstration of aplomb, but Stewie took it that way and appreciated it.

Ninety-three minutes later, by Gedso's watch, all movement in the rubbish ceased. The snap-snap-snap dwindled away.

There was silence.

They waited a little time and then Gedso went to work. Stewie was stricken with awed respect at the sight of the seemingly commonplace Gedso pushing out of the rubble like a superdrive tank, so much amazed, in fact, that he nearly forgot to follow. When Gedso was on top of the blasted remains he made sure all was clear and then, reaching down, snagged Stewie's collar and yanked him forth like a caught minnow.

The break had not been without damage to the inner defenses, for two towers spread their disassembled parts upon the ground and a rampart was crushed like a slapped cardboard box. A thousand-yard section of the outer wall had been smashed and lay like an atomized dust pile.

A clearing crew, bulling a dead "thing" behind four huge tractors, stopped work to stare in surprise at the pair who had erupted from the debris.

Gedso and Stewie picked their way over the scored and littered ground, depressed by the fumes arising from the mountainous dead "things." A silica-spinning sled almost knocked them down as it rushed to the repair of the defenses and as they leaped out of the way an officer spotted the convict uniform. Stewie was snatched up and cast into the arms of a straggler patrol which flashed away without any attention to Gedso's protest.

That evening—or at the beginning of the third period— Gedso sat at the table in his quarters eating his dinner out of a thermocan and gazing thoughtfully at the murky shadows in the far corner of the room. He was intent upon his problem to such an extent that he only occasionally remembered to take a bite.

New weapons. Year-in and year-gone combat engineers had invented new means of knocking down the menacing legions. And certainly, with the power available, there seemed no more lethal weapon than the arc cannon—for here it was evolved to a point over the horizon from weapons used in the remainder of space. The invention of another weapon, even if that could be accomplished would not prove wholly efficacious for it would only last two or three years and then yet another would have to be compounded.

His door was thrust inward and General Drummond stood there looking at him. Drummond's eyes were bloodshot and his mouth twitched at the right comer.

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Gedso was confused by the unusualness of the visit and hastened to leap up—spI’lling the thermocan's gravy across the bare boards.

Drummond flung himself into a chair. *Tm worn out. Worn outl The responsibility, the greatness of the command, the rotten character of aid—" He looked fixedly at Gedso. "When will your new weapon be ready?"

"I ... I don't think I am going to build one," faltered Gedso. "There is nothing better than an arc cannon."

Drummond sagged. "Served by fools! Strangled in red tape! The most valuable command in the Empire left with no attention to its need!" He straightened up and looked at Gedso, addressing him direcdy.

"You were sent here to invent a new weapon," said Drummond harshly. "You are going to invent it. I know I cannot command an E-T.S. officer unless in a situation where my command itself is threatened with extinction. The command is threatened. I, General Drummond, have the power to demand of you a means of stopping the attackers. If I do not receive one in a very few days, I shall be forced to accomplish your recall."

Gedso looked straight at him and said, "I do not think a new weapon can be evolved. I must ask for means to inspect this entire area—"

"Blufore intimated," said Drummond, "that you did not intend to set to work immediately. That is why I came here. Your interference today on the outer defenses caused a breach to be made in them. I have the full report from an officer and gunners in flanking turrets who saw you go there. You interfered with a gunner on duty. I did not intend to submit these signed affidavits if you had actually worked out a means of improving our defenses. My procedure is correct and not to be questioned. Here are your copies of my demand for a new technician. The originals will be facsimile-transmitted within the hour."

Drummond rose and looked at Gedso. He threw the papers on the table, where the gravy immediately stained them, and started out

"Wait" said Gedso, "tell me what happened to the gunner!"

"That is a military matter and is in no way within your province." Drummond again would have left, but an arm shot across the doorway—Gedso had moved with such swiftness that Drummond could not believe the heavy fellow had crossed the room.

"You mean you are going to punish him?"

Drummond replied, "It is to be regretted that we cannot punish all those who affect our operations in so summary a manner."

'You are going to execute him?"

"That is the penalty."

Gedso faltered, but only for a moment. "If ... if you will drop that sentence, I will guarantee to bring peace to these mines in five days."

Drummond knew he had a winning card. "I can suspend the sentence until you do, if we must bargain for what is actually a duty. That is a very wild offer," he added, "in the light that peace has not been brought to this place in seventy-five years of constant endeavor by the greatest engineers of the Empire."

"Release him to me and I will do it in four days!"

"Wilder stI’ll. But—it is a bargain. If you fail, of course, the sentence goes back into effect. And now, if you will be so good as to step aside, I will relieve myself of your company."

Drummond left and Gedso wandered back to the table to stand there fingering the copies without being wholly aware of them. The folly of his statement was beginning to grow upon him and he could not clearly understand what strange emotional forces had so led him to stake his reputation. And then he remembered half-pint Stewie with the snub nose and the grin and sighed with relief. There was just a chance— Gedso dropped upon his knees beside his baggage and began to haul forth engineering treatises.

The scout ship vibrated nervously as her tubes warmed as though she shivered at the consideration of the cruise she was about to undertake or, again, in annoyance with the agitation and harshness in the voices of the group of men who stood at her side on the ground.

"It was my belief that you only intended an aerial examination of the mines," said Blufore haughtily.

Gedso's tone was patient. "The character of this area has never truly been determined. It will be necessary to go outside and perhaps even to the Black Nebula itself. Unless I am allowed to make the examination I cannot collect facts with which to work."

"I fail to see," said Blufore, "what an examination of 'outside' has to do with fashioning a weapon to stop these attacks. My orders are specific. I am to act for General Drummond and supervise the interests of his command. It is very unusual to let anyone have a scout and it is unheard of to penetrate 'outside' with such a shipl You have already wasted a day. And now you waste another and perhaps a scout as well."

The pilot, a dark-visaged officer who seemed to be made of roccI’ll from the way he smelled, reeled a trifle and said, "That finishes it. I can determine when and where I will take my ship and I'm not taking her 'outside' and I don't care if the E-T.S. complains until the end of spacel" So saying, he marched off.

"And I," said Blufore, "do not consider it.wise to expose a piece of government property to such danger and so refuse to accompany you, thus preventing our departure, for the orders are specific in that I am to accompany you."

"I am sorry you are afraid," said Gedso.

"Fear?" said Blufore, stung. "I have no knowledge of the meaning of fear, sir."

"Then you have to go with us or we cannot go?" said Gedso.

"Just so," said Blufore haughtily.

A much overburdened little man came up and began to dump bits of equipment through the hatch. Stewie looked pale after his ordeal with the penalty' bureau, but his eye was bright.

"What happened to the pilot?" said Stewie from the top of the ship.

"He quite definitely refused to go," said Gedso.

"And what is wrong with this guy?" said Stewie, pointing at Blufore with a disrespectful finger.

"If he doesn't go with us, our permission is canceled," replied Gedso.

Stewie went on dumping equipment in the hatch while Blufore, ignoring a convict gunner as a self-respecting combat engineer should, went on with the finale of obstructing Gedso.

Abruptly, Blufore's clear and melodious voice ceased and Blufore dropped heavily to the ground. The thermocan which Stewie had dropped on his head rolled a little way and then stopped.

Stewie glanced around to see if anyone had noticed and then said urgendy to Gedso, "Hand him up. The orders don't say nothing about what condition he has to be in to go, do

they?"

Gedso hesitated for a moment. "But the pilot—" "Even if I ain't touched one of these for years and years, I can stI’ll make 'em do tricks," said Stewie. "Hand him

upl"

Gedso handed up Blufore and they dropped him into

the hatch.

A few seconds later the scout ship was aloft.

When Blufore at last came around, several hours later, he received the vague impression that he was being shaken by demons and kicked by Fa/ men. But such was not the case. The scout cruiser was being battered about by a hurricane of bright-yellow wind and running from darkness into light with such rapidity that the change constituted an aching vibration.

Blufore, seeing a convict jacket on the man at the controls, thought himself the victim of an attempt at escape,

127

particularly since he himself was strongly strapped into an observer's seat. Then he caught sight of the technician.

Braced by four lashed lines which ended in eyebolts, Gedso was standing before the ports, busy with a big shiny box from which came a loud and continual sequence of clicks. Beyond Gedso, Blufore could see the towering vaguenesses of the "outside" and the aspect of this, combined with the space sickness caused by the violent and unsteady motion of the tiny craft, made Blufore very sorry for himself.

"Go back!" he whimpered. "Go back before we are torn apart!"

Stewie said, "Shall I hit him?"

Gedso was too intent on his work to answer.

Blufore subsided and resigned himself to an agonizing doom. He knew so well that two out of every three space freighters sent back from the Crystal Mines never arrived at all, were never heard from again, and it was thought that they vanished while traversing the Black Nebula. His only hope was that they would return to the mines in a short while. And then the ports went dark and stayed dark. They were within the Black Nebula. Blufore fainted, both from I’llness and terror.

He had no means of knowing how long they were inside the darkness for they were in the light when he came around. They could not have gone through for that would have taken many, many hours. Perhaps now they were going back to the mines. Perhaps even yet they might return alive from this. Then horror struck him down again. They swooped into a turn and the dread black mists shut off the light anew.

From a long way off Blufore heard the series of clicks and opened his eyes to the yellow hurricane once more.

"Want to go through again?" said Stewie to Gedso.

"One more time. I think we might possibly get some results if we keep it up long enough."

"You're the boss," said Stewie, swinging the cruiser back into the darkness.

Bunning the rim, stabbing into and out of the Black Nebula!

Like a couple of schoolboys amusing themselves playing with a high-tension wire. Blufore bethought himself of all those vanished ships and, with a groan, collapsed.

Gedso was giving Blufore a drink of something acrid when that officer next knew anything. But Blufore was too spacesick to swallow. He looked with tortured mien upon the fiend he had begun to conceive in Gedso. It was dark outside, and the cabin lights gave the technician a terrifying bulk.

"Are we—stI’ll inside it?" gulped Blufore.

"No. We are trying to find the entrance to the mines and it is somewhat difficult to do in the darkness."

Blufore tried to peer through the black port, but could see nothing. Yet Stewie was flying at full speed and without a sign of caution.

"You'll be all right soon," said Gedso sympathetically. . Blufore moaned, "111 never be—all right again. Never."

Hours later, in his quarters, Gedso hunched over a Black Nebula pilot, entrenched by stacks of transmographs and log tables, eating abstractedly upon an apple. Stewie sat in the corner on his black convict blankets, his eyes closed and his head thrown back, worn out, but not admitting anything of the kind. He would partially wake each time Gedso muttered into his study and then, hearing phrases meaningless to him, would relapse into his semi-slumber. Finally Stewie fell out full length and began to snore gendy. When he awoke again he was completely refreshed—and Gedso, even more deeply entrenched in scratch paper'and reference books and apple cores, was stI’ll working.

"You got an idea?" said Stewie.

"Perhaps," said Gedso. "But if we can get permission to go where we have to go, the recent excursion will be mild by comparison. Are you sure you wish to accompany me?"

"Don't gimme that," said Stewie, and he tagged the tower ing Gedso out across the parade ground.

Drummond was at his desk, drinking thick, green britt and waiting for a target upon which he could vent his frustrations.

"No!" said Drummond. "I have already heard in full how you went about your last trip. This is all complete nonsense! You have abused one of my very best combat engineers and you have overreached the authority you were given!"

"I accumulated certain data," said Gedso hesitantly. "Perhaps I may be able to do something if I am allowed to have a company of troops."

"You know as well as I that technicians have no power to command troops."

"But I want a company of engineers," said Gedso. "Just one company of armament engineers. This area has never been examined properly. We have gone outside and now we must go deeper into the tunnels."

"Nonsense. You would be engulfed by the 'things' before you had reached a point thirty kilometers hence. This is folly and stupidity! We must have a weapon and you have only two days left! The complaint has been transmitted and I intend to follow it with all vigor. Divise that weapon and I will do what I can to mitigate the severity of the reprimand you will certainly receive."

"Then you refuse to give me any further help?"

"I refuse to let you command this post, sir!"

Gedso looked uncomfortable and unhappy. He finally turned to the door and laid his hand on the knob. He was trying to think of something further to say, but failed. The door stuck and came off its shattered hinges before he could lessen the slight jerk he had given it Amid the ruins of glass he looked apologetically at the apoplectic general. Stewie got up from the orderly bench. "Did he refuse?" "Yes," said Gedso.

"You got any further ideas?" said Stewie. "I can appeal to my superiors—but they dislike technicians who have to resort to them."

"Well," said Stewie, wrinkling up his stub of a nose, "all

130

I can "say is that one way or the other 111 get it. I never did like those acid baths they use. How bad do you want to go on past the mines?"

"Unless we do, there won't be any mines within the year."

"And there won't be any Stewie in two days. Didn't you show him any facts?'"

"He wouldn't look at my data. These military men can think only in terms of weapons and he has been angry from the first. He says I'm stalling."

"Uh-uh," said Stewie with a thoughtfully half-closed eye upon a cargo ship which was landing. The ship was disgorging new tanks of the latest pattern. Soldiers were rolling them into line and, as fast as they were started up, were driving them toward the shops. Stewie grinned.

Gedso followed Stewie's gaze and then understood. Together they walked toward the ramp down which the tanks were being disgorged from the ship.

"Are they what you want?" said Stewie.

"They will do very well," said Gedso.

Stewie took a position at the bottom of the ramp and the next tank which came down stopped rolling just beside him. He climbed quickly to the turret and in an officious voice, began to give directions for its alignment in the column. Caring very littie, the convicts pushed.

Gedso climbed through the portway and, glancing over the rocket turbine, threw the fuel feeds and switches on. Stewie dropped down and into the driver's seat and touched the throttles, letting the tank creep forward. At the machine and fuel shops, Stewie paused beside the crystal chutes and the automatic loaders crammed the storage compartment full. At the armament shed a bundle of electric cartridges rattled into the magazine.

Then a footfall sounded upon the slope of the metal giant and the hatch was jerked open. A pair of officers' ironplast boots dropped into sight and a familiar face was thrust, witii startled expression, into Gedso's. And before a word had passed, General Drummond, inspecting new equipment as a good officer should, dropped down beside his trusty Blufore. Drummond was not as quick in sensing the situation.

"Very good, very good. Perhaps they appreciate us just a little after all, eh, Cascot? These seem well built and well armed. Far too comfortable, though, for their ere—Saints!"

Blufore had been trying to say something for seconds, but he had an abnormally strong hand over his mouth.

Drummond was thrust into a seat by Gedso's other hand and the hatch above slammed shut, leaving die place lighted only by the sparks which escaped the rocket turbines.

"What is this?" cried Drummond.

"I don't know," said Gedso, "of two officers who could be of more help. I hope you won't mind. I'm sorry, in fact. But the Scienticorps appropriated and commandeered this tank before it was receipted into your command. Therefore it is technically my command. I am sorry, but we have too much to do to be stopped. Please pardon us."

"Let us out of here this instant!" brayed Drummond. "I’ll have my guard tear you to bits! I’ll get you a court martial that they'll talk about for years. This is kidnapping!"

"This is necessity," said Gedso. "I am sorry. Drive, Stewie."

An astonished patrol on the outer wall gazed upon the spectacle of a charging tank which swifdy burned its way through the spun silica and raced into the rocky distance to be lost in the immensity where no tank or ship or division had ever ventured before.

At the far end of the vaulted chamber. Technician Brown, deaf to the violent stream of objection which stormed about him, consulted a chart of his own drawing.

"Ahead, over that hump," said Gedso, "there should be another tunnel, probably not more than two kilometers wide. You will need much power for the going will be very rough and the grade very steep."

"Aye, aye," said Stewie. "Why don't you bat those guys one and make 'em shut up?"

This speech from a convict gunner was entirely too much for General Drummond. His eyes dilated and his nostrils flared like those of a battle horse of Gerlon about to charge. Thus, Stewie had the desired quiet long enough to get the tank through a particularly rough area and climb the indicated hump.

There ahead was the passage which Gedso had predicted and Stewie spent a little breath in admiration. "Gee, how'd you know that that was going to rum up right there? You act like you'd been here before."

"No man has ever been here before," mourned Blufore, a-wallow in self-pity, "and no man will ever be again."

Drummond was given much satisfaction as soon as they started down into the mouth of the ascending tunnel for, in a space of instants, a weaving mass threw itself in their way. The "things" choked the channel and then swept back along its sides until both the advance and the retreat of the tank were covered. It was impossible to clearly make out their maneuvers or numbers, for one received only an impression of vague hugenes on the march as though mountains were moving.

Stewie looked alertly to Gedso for orders.

"Transfer gravity," said Gedso. "Perhaps they won't be able to rush across above for a moment!"

A new whining note cried through the ship, and the gym-bals in which the control room was suspended creaked as they allowed the room to invert. With a crunch the tank struck against the upper side of the tunnel and, scrambling for traction, began to run there. Below, the moving horde flowed ominously along, joined every moment by additional thousands.

"You'll never make it," said Drummond. "This crackpot-craving to explore will cost all of us our lives."

"Please," pleaded Stewie, "can't we jettison that Jonah?"

"There's a fork in the tunnel just ahead," said Gedso, studying his chart. "We go to the right."

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"Right or left," said Drummond, "you'll never make it, you clumsy lout!" He got up. "I order you to return instantly. If you do not obey. 111... I’ll have you shot!"

"Please," said Stewie, "can't I spring that under hatch and let him out?"

"We turn into the main tunnel here," said Gedso, pointing.

They entered a cavernous place, larger than the mines, larger than any interior so far seen. The weirdly glowing walls curved down to a crystal-strewn floor forty-three kilometers below them. Moving on the debris were the legions of "things," augmented in number until they congested the tunnel.

"Thank Jala they don't By," said Stewie. "How much farther do we have to go?"

"About seventy kilometers," said Gedso. "And then what do we do?"

"Then well probably run into the main body -of the 'things.'"

Stewie frowned for a short time, trying to figure out if Technician Brown meant to attack the main army with one flimsy tank. But thought was irksome to Stewie over a certain duration and he lost himself in the management of the tank.

After a little, the passage ahead became blocked, at least so far as Stewie could tell.

"Keep going," said Gedso. "There may be a narrow space at the top. That stuff up ahead will be moving and so don't lose control."

Approaching closer, the movement was perceptible, resembling a slow-motion avalanche. Reaching the upper rim and perceiving an opening, Stewie tried to make the tank climb straight up. But the traction was bad and with a lurch it fell backward to strike heavily upon the rocky slide. It spun on one track, fell over and, with racing turbines, clawed upward over the treacherous ground. Drummond dabbed at a cut on his forehead and glared in a promising way at Stewie's back.

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At the top they found themselves in close confines and had to pick their way through passes in the rock. They traveled several kilometers before they could again find clear travel and then only by using a steep wall as their roadway.

The "things" had been left behind for some little time, but now they came upon an isolated beast which scuttled down at them like a mountainous spider.

Stewie pressed the electrode triggers and the arc licked thunderously out to lock through the body. The "thing" closed over the tank, engulfing it and tearing it away from the wall. A gigantic maw was op'ened and they were sucked into it on the rush of air which, hurricanelike, spun them and toppled them down.

Gedso flashed on their flood lamps and the interior of the "thing" showed about them in dirty confusion. The tank settled to its gravity side and the tracks churned in the soggy

morass.

With a swift change of fuel feeds, Gedso brought the reactionary tubes into play and the tank slammed itself against the inside wall which indented and then snapped back into place, hurling them across to the far side.

"Hold on and try it again," said Gedso.

This time the reactionary blast let them gather momentum. There was a roaring sound as the inner lining of the "thing" ripped. The sides of the wound clamped down and held the tank fast. Stewie shortened the arc to minimum range and played it full blast upon the outside scale wall. Smoke obscured their vision through the ports.

"Try her traction now," said Gedso.

The turbine sparked and spewed out ozone. Slowly and then with a charging rush, the tank blasted through. Stewie steered for the high wall without a backward glance at the death agonies of the "thing."

Drummond was shaking and glassy-eyed, but he held to his nerve. "If you've learned enough," he said with acid-dripping words, "perhaps you might make it back."

"Too many waiting for us hack there now," said Gedso. "There are smaller tunnels they can block completely."

"Then what do you mean to do?" flared Drummond.

"Up this incline and through that slit," said Gedso to Stewie.

The tank scrambled up the wall and darted through.

It was as though they had come upon a conclave of the "things." Or an ambush. The place was packed with them and the walls were less than a thousand meters apart and not eighty meters high.

"Up!" said Gedso. "Reverse your gravity!" And then, "Hold on at the top here."

Below the "things" had awakened to the presence of the interloper and now began to tumble over one another and climb on backs to strike at the object above them. Other "tilings" poured into the cavern and, by sheer volume, the height steadily decreased.

Gedso was staring anxiously around the interior of the place into which they had come. Here the walls were not flat, but arranged in a regular pattern of hummocks. And at the end was one particular knoll, much bigger than the rest. The range to it was about two hundred and twenty meters.

With powerful hands Gedso poised the arc cannon and let drive at the hummock. The green-yellow streak lit up the crawling scene below.

"Advance on that target," said Gedso.

Stewie eased the tank forward, trying not to look at the thickening multitude which was coming up to them. Smoke was flying from the hummock and the top of it was becoming charred. As they approached they could see that it was a nub of something which, in gigantic volume, reached out beyond. The arc cannon ate steadily into it, biting off dozens of cubic meters a second, for the stuff appeared to be very soft and highly inflammable.

A feeler was touching the tank now and then, with decreasing intervals and increasing force.

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The arc cannon had started the hummock burning and now

it began to char under its own combustion, disappearing in smoke in cubic kilometers. Then the smoke volume was so great that not even the arc was visible in it.

A heavy blow against the tank knocked it loose. It was knocked about with swift ferocity in the sea of angry "things" until a maw spread apart and dashed them in.

They tumbled down a passage much larger than that of the "thing" which had taken them before and a bony structure, visible to their floodlights, reacted upon three of the occupants of the tanklike steel bars upon a prisoner.

Finally, bruised and shaken, they came to rest, half sunk in mire.

With a final sob of despair, Blufore hid his head in his hands and cried. Drummond looked steadily at Gedso.

With a shrug, Stewie said, "Well, we sure gave them a hell of a time while we lasted. There's enough air in the containers for maybe a day and after that—welL maybe he can digest armor plate."

Gedso sat down in the engineer's seat and stretched out his legs. He took an apple out of his pocket, polished it upon his sleeve and took a soul-satisfying bite. "I wouldn't worry too much," he said, glancing at his watch. "Well probably be out of here before that day is up."

"A lot of good that will do," said Drummond. "We'll never get back."

Gedso finished his apple and then composed himself. In a littie while he was asleep.

Some time later, at Gedso's order, the tank moved slowly up the way it had come and, much to everyone's—save Gedso's—surprise, there was no resistance to their return through the maw which gaped stiffly and made no effort to close even when they churned out over the lower jaw.

Although some smoke remained in the small cavern, only charred ruin marked where the hummock had been. And there were no "things" to bar their way, only sodden lumps strewn about in stiff attitudes.

Stewie guided them along the return route, but nowhere did they find anything alive. The contrast of this with their recent difficulties made even Drummond forget his quarrel, and Blufore gazed hopefully about.

"What's the meaning of this?" demanded Drummond, pointing out yet another vast pile of motionless "things" which lay open-mouthed in a tunnel, not even moving when ran over by the tank.

"That's the way things are," said Gedso indifferently.

"I . . . I'd like to know how they are," said Drummond.

"You'll probably get a copy of my report," said Gedso. "To the left here, Stewie."

"I probably won't get that for a long time," said Drummond, pouting. "I ought to know so as to regulate the activities in my command." He looked pleadingly at Gedso. "What did going 'outside' have to do with this?"

"Had to find out about the Black Nebula," said Gedso matter-of-factly. "Bight, Stewie. Bight and down."

"Well, damn it, what about the Black Nebula?"

Gedso turned toward him patiendy in surrender. "The Black Nebula isn't a barrier in the sky. I'm not sure what it is. A fold, perhaps. I don't know. I had to get pictures of this area from out there." He reached into his pocket and brought out a photomontage. "Beduced the pictures after they were taken with an inverted telephoto. Got this."

"Why, that looks like a leaf," said Drummond. "And what is that on the lea/?"

"A leaf," said Gedso, "and on the leaf, to you, a caterpI’llar worm."

"You mean this is a picture of the 'outside?"

"Yes. The Crystal Mines are in the liver of that worm and the crystals are so valuable because they are, of course, highly condensed cellular energy."

Drummond was round-eyed with awe. "Then . . . then I am the outpost command of a world beyond the Black Nebula, a world so gigantic that even a worm is thousands of kilometers long!"

"When I inspected the Black Nebula," said Gedso gendy, "I discovered that it was not a barrier in space, but a fold or some such thing. As I say, I don't know. I only know the effect. Ships approaching the Crystal Mines undergo a sort of transformation. The reason so many never return is because they fail to reverse that transformation and so hurtle through the hundreds of light-years forever, no larger than microscopic bullets."

"What's that?"

"Well, according to what we found, a diminution of size takes place. The worm is just an ordinary worm on an ordinary leaf. And the 'things' are just ordinary phagocytes. If we proceed in the future to bum out the heart of the worms we mine, then we will have to do no fighting. Because of a changed time factor a dead worm will last for years. And if we watch certain manifestations in the spaceships, we can get them to keep penetrating the Black Nebula until they are again restored to size. I took a chart of the interior of these worms out of a text on entymology, once I had determined the kind of worm it was—"

"Then—then my command—"

"Why, yes," said Gedso, "I think it is so. You need have no worries about your command. No more fighting, better conditions, more crystals mined—"

"But," gagged Drummond, deflated and broken, "but my command ... is just the liver of an ordinary worm . .. perhaps in a tree in some farmer's yard—"

Stewie grinned as he steered across the plane to the wall of the Crystal Mines. He took another glance at the haggard General Drummond and pulled up at the wall.

When fifty thousand convicts, the following day, cheered themselves to a frenzy carrying Gedso Ion Brown, Technician, Extra-Territorial Scienticorps, to his waiting transport. General Drummond was not there. In the dimness of his quarters, amid his presentation pistols and battle trophies, he heard the racking waves of triumphant sound sweep the mines again and again for minutes at a time.

General Drummond sank into a chair and cupped his face in his hands.

Wearily he repeated, "The guts ... of a worm."