Last Blast
Astounding Science Fiction – November 1952
(1952)*
Eric Frank Russell
illustrated by Orban

in object can be stolen fairly successfully, ordinarily—but there is something that seems very easy indeed to steal—and is about as safe as a stolen rattlesnake.

-

	The blow was delivered in a manner full of logic and devoid of sentiment, that is to say, suddenly and without warning. It was a hundred or a thousand times more fearsome than the latest hell-bomb but took longer to demonstrate the fact. Nobody opposed it or tried to strike back for the plain reason that nobody knew they'd been hit.

	And when realization came, it was too late—as had been intended.

	A rather appalling simplicity was the outstanding characteristic of the unknown enemy's technique. One long, silvery cigar came out of the sky, dropped seven bombs in planned positions and went away. It wasn't noticed. At minimum altitude of twenty miles and lowest velocity of four thousand eight hundred per hour, the thing remained too high and fast to be discovered by the naked eye. Neither did radar screens register its passing. They were not alerted because in orthodox thought there was nothing for which to watch. The world was at peace, without fear, and had been for more than half a century.

	The bombs landed and burst without spectacular brilliance or tremendous noise or detectable concussion. They looked as formidable as so many bottles of stale beer tossed overboard by an irresponsible spacehand for they were nothing but small, brittle spheres containing a thin, slightly cloudy liquid. The spheres hit Earth arid shattered. The liquid splashed around.

	This spread of droplets was the beginning of the end, creating the certitude that humankind would pass out not with a bang but with a whimper. The greatest scoop in history for any journalist able to see the shape of things to come. But no newspaper mentioned it the next day. No radio network voiced one excited word about it. They didn't know. They didn't suspect. They had been killed—but needed time to die.

	Humanity remained untroubled for at least a little while when every second counted and every split-second added long steps to the march of death. Some folk worried but it was about health, babies, taxes, stocks and shares; other folk, hopes of heavenly salvation, anything but poison from the skies.

	The first to gripe was Barton Maguire, a farmer in Iowa. The last to react were the seven human beings on the Moon. Maguire's surly complaints served as the original warning. One of the Lunar seven made the final move.

-

	Men on the Moon were no novelty. Twenty successive landings had boiled away a world's capacity for amazement. A feat is remarkable only the first time. Do it again and it reduces to pretty good. Twenty times becomes ordinary.

	Only a ship on Venus or Mars would bring a repeat of those wild international celebrations of sixteen years ago. Such another whoopee had yet to come and by the looks of things there would be a long wait. Thirty million miles come to more than a hop, skip and jump.

	Meanwhile men had to be content with a satellite as their sole cosmic plaything. The group on the Moon were there because the playing had begun. Their task was not complicated, not immensely difficult, but it was valuable as a source of essential data. They were extracting a sample of the new toy.

	To this purpose they had considerable tonnage of equipment ferried over in four loads. Within an air-tight sanctuary, shaped like an inverted ice-cream cone, they worked upon a minor crater that had no name, tended a nuclear engine and serviced a drill that brought up a constant succession of cores each of which told a story. An expert could cast a sharp eye over these cylinders of extraterrestrial plasma and declare that to the limit of the bore the Moon was made thus and so. Later, analysts would use them to list its riches in hydrocarbonates and metallic ores, if any.

	Seven men consorting cheek by jowl under a dunce's cap and parted from the rest of humanity by a quarter million miles. There were moments when it irked; times when the engine moaned and the drill churned and the great rig trembled to its peak far beyond allotted hours—because men must battle the immediate task lest instead they battle each other.

	Wilkin, government metallurgist, was the least sociable of the bunch. A gaunt, elderly individual with pale eyes fronted by steel-rimmed glasses, he had the dreary pessimism of the liverish and nursed the resentment of one handed a young man's job when near retirement. Somewhere back in the stuffy haunts of bureaucracy his tongue had stabbed a superior. The Moon was his sentence.

	Liveliest of the lot was Yarbridge, thickset, tow-haired—the radio operator; a one-time ham who gloried in running a station where none had been run before. The small but powerful transmitter-receiver was his personal juju complete with call-name of Yarboo. He had an advantage over the rest—he had the comfort of his god and a thousand invisible friends behind the god. He had been conditioned to the company of voices in the dark. About the only thing he missed was the morning mail with its QSL cards.

	The busiest and, therefore, the least touchy man was James Holland, tall, gangling, freckled. Though the youngest member of the party he was quiet, thoughtful, studious. He had to be. As the atomechanic he'd spent four years studying nuclear engines and reckoned he'd devote another forty to absorbing latest advances.

	Some fast brainwork had been required to learn how to cope with the contraption he'd got here, for it was way ahead of anything he'd seen at the International Power Institute—one quarter the size, one eighth the mass, and it ran on thorium. It resembled a pair of Diesels coupled nose to nose with the hot-stuff cased between the fan-drives. Probably it would be out of date within a year. Holland tended to pore over books and blueprints in determination to keep up with the times.

	The remaining quartet were curiously alike in many respects, big-chested, hard-eyed, untidy, ruthlessly expert at various card games and lavishly supplied with adjectives. All four had made a career from sticking pins in Earth's heart for the big oil companies. They knew how to do it and did it well, vituperatively but efficiently.

-

	The day the bombs dropped there were forty-six cores lying outside the Moon-dome. They reposed in a neat row, placed in order of extraction, each tagged at both ends with a plastic numeral by way of double check. The quantity of them indicated a bore-depth of nine hundred twenty feet. The nuclear engine moaned soft and low while the drill rotated and sank slowly, ever so slowly, toward the thousand mark.

	An untouched case of whisky atop a small mountain of sealed food patiently bided this first celebration-point. At one thousand feet a bottle would be broached, some sort of petty celebration organized. There were twelve bottles in the case but that didn't mean a probing limit of twelve thousand feet. The drive would continue so long as the engine could rotate the lengthening mass of steel tube, so long as a ship could bring more shafts, more cutting-heads, more whisky.

	Ambling to the dome's center point, Yarbridge eyed a white ring where the turning shaft had been touched with chalk at a measured point. He kept quiet while a driller timed the ring's descent to ground level. The chalk circle disappeared and the other put his watch away.

	"How's she going?" asked Yarbridge, not really caring.

	"Cool and steady." The driller bit a ragged end from a thumbnail. "What's the latest from over there?"

	"Gale warning in the Atlantic. Vesuvius is spewing skyhigh and the Italians are evacuating the area around it. A Czech stratoliner has crashed. Seventy dead, no survivors. They were burned alive."

	"Humph! Nothing ever happens." He put spit on a finger, used it to make a wet ring on the shaft. "Luck!"

	"What's that for? Hoping to hit a gold reef?"

	"Hoping we don't have to change a cutter too soon."

	Yarbridge nodded. He could see what it meant. Real sweat. They'd have to haul up most of a thousand feet of stuff, detach it section by section to get at the worn head. Then fix a new cutter and reverse the whole process, linking up section by section as the toothy bit went down. It would have to be done again and again and again but nobody was yearning for it.

	In short time he tired of studying the shaft and started what they had come to call the Sing Sing hitch, namely, a bored, aimless walk to and fro or around the rim of the circular space in which they were confined. Day and night some fidgety soul was performing this trek. When two did it simultaneously and passed each other for the tenth time, each generated mild thoughts of mayhem.

	He wouldn't have been mooching but for the home planet's Asiatic face. The great hemispherical antenna atop the dome did not trap much worth having when confronted by Chinese, Malays and Dyaks. Caterwaulings from Shanghai, tin prices from Singapore and a little boogie from Tokyo. The thousand with the kit to beam him were concentrated around the corner and temporarily silent. These were the siesta hours of his electronic god.

-

	Finally he sat on a packing case near the engine, watched Holland check over the linked generator that provided heat, power and light. It struck him as faintly ironic that they could and did use electric razors while millions on Earth lacked the juice to run them.

	"James," he said, "why am I like the Moon?"

	Holland turned a freckled face toward him. "Don't you know?"

	"Perhaps," said Yarbridge, "it's because I'm bored." He brooded a moment, asked, "Aren't you?"

	"No."

	"Why not?"

	The other thought a while, said slowly, "Like you, I have an interest. But mine doesn't wax and wane with exterior conditions. It remains constant."

	"I guess you're right. Maybe I've become too dependent upon a box of tricks. I should have learned to play poker."

	"Fat lot of money you'd have coming at the end of this," opined Holland. "Those four would have stripped you."

	"Or I might get their wads." 

	"I doubt it."

	"Yes, and so do they judging by the number of times they've wanted me to join them." He glanced around. "Where's old Sourpuss? Hiding in a crate?"

	Nodding toward the trap in the dome's wall, Holland informed, "Put on a headpiece and went out for another look at the last core. He muttered something about that inch-wide striation of red dirt being ferrous oxide."

	"What does that signify?"

	"Nothing of importance. It isn't worth digging up. Too thin and too deep."

	"The truth is that he doesn't give a darn for that core or any other," suggested Yarbridge. "He's escaping six faces that give him the gripes. A two hours' supply of oxygen means that temporarily he can get away from it all. Why doesn't he join the Foreign Legion?"

	"He's an old dog compelled to learn new tricks," said Holland solemnly. "As a young one in the same fix, I sympathize with him."

	"They ought to let him go home," Yarbridge commented. "They ought to send us a guitar player in his place. Or, better still, half a dozen slinky brunettes from the chorus line. Rumor has it there are twenty more points selected for further test bores. If so, we'll be stuck here quite a spell."

	"Suits me. I'm out of mischief, perfecting my education and making money fast." He gave a sly grin. " Being neither married nor brunette-starved, I can afford to wait."

	Yarbridge stood up, stretched himself, made a face. "Oh, well, shortly the sunny side."

	The other knew what he meant. They were swinging away from Earth's dark hemisphere and round to her illuminated face. That meant an additional diversion in circumstances where each one was precious, to be savored to the utmost. Some intelligent official back home had seen fit to include in their equipment a small telescope, only x200, with four-inch object lens. It had proved considerably a morale-booster. Men could and did stare through it for hours, drinking the scene with avid thirst, and telling each other thumping lies about the wealth of detail to be discerned in their own back yards.

	They cleaned, polished and fondled the spyglass, treating it with loving care, for it made the faraway seem near. It provided illusionary comfort. Soon it would reverse that role and create realistic pain. It sharpened any eye in search of peace and beauty—but magnified turmoil and tragedy with equal impartiality.

-

	A direct pointer to coming trouble was not immediately recognized as such either by the seven on the Moon or the teeming masses of Earth. Even specialized minds summoned to deal with it were motivated more by curiosity than alarm. It formed a minor item in a news bulletin picked up from KDTH at Dubuque, Iowa.

	"Experts from the Department of Agriculture at Washington are flying to the farm of Barton Maguire, near Dubuque. In an interview Maguire said that a field has developed grass-rot."

	It was forgotten before the succeeding item had been voiced halfway through. KDTH began to fade. Yarbridge searched around, picked up a lively performance of "La Cumparsila " from Rio de Janeiro, hummed in off-key accompaniment. Wilkin lay nearby on his oxygen-inflated mattress and frowned through his spectacles. Two drillers off duty played cards with deadly earnestness.

	Two days later WCBM at Baltimore, made intermittent by static, let go half a sentence. "... Eminent botanists and biologists rushed by the United Nations Food Commission to the farm of Barton Maguire, in Iowa."

	James Holland, having a turn at the telescope, removed his attention, said to nobody in particular, "Who's this Maguire? I'm sure I've heard his name before."

	"There are millions of them," grunted a driller. He planted a queen on his opponent's nine, confiscated both cards. "They swarm out of the ground every St. Patrick's Day."

	Letting it pass, Holland had another look at Earth. In full sunlight it was a spectacle of which one could never tire, a vision infinitely more satisfying than the other planets or the host of stars. And it kept steady, without faltering behind a shivering atmosphere. The chief snag was that if one stared too intently and too long one began to imagine things. The brain gained ascendancy over the eyes, forcing them to detect a nonexistent dot in mid-Atlantic and call it a liner. Or convert a line to a road and conjure vehicles along it.

	He was again at the 'scope next day when Yarbridge brought in a voice that for some time had been dimly muttering, "Yarboo! Come in Yarboo!" It boosted to fair strength. For a couple of minutes Yarbridge and the other slapped backs, chewed technicalities, exchanged love to Margaret for love to Jeannie, swapped a couple of corny insults. Then again Holland's attention was drawn away as the distant ham spoke more, seriously and in lower tones.

	"Something fishy is going on. Lot of rumors flying around. They say that troops have been rushed north with flame throwers. A guy told me he'd been turned back by the National Guard outside Dubuque. He thinks a flying saucer has landed and the authorities are keeping it quiet. You can take that as bunk. How many saucers have you found up there?"

	"None," said Yarbridge.

	"It's bound to happen some day," ventured the other. "But I don't believe it's happened yet. This saucer stuff is a lot of scuttlebutt. All the same, there's a general feeling of suspicion that something is going on and we're not being told. See if you can raise a station farther north—maybe you'll be given a hair-raiser."

	"You could do that yourself." Digging a small book out of a breast pocket, Yarbridge consulted it. "There are a dozen or more in and around Dubuque."

	"Hah! You're telling me? Their cards are stuck on my wall. Try getting them!"

	"You mean they're not operating?"

	"Definitely not!" A pause, then, "That's why I say there's something peculiar afoot. If anything of national or international interest were taking place up there, they'd be bawling all over the bands. But they aren't. You know what that means!"

	"Shut down and sealed by official order."

	"That's how it looks—and I don't like it."

	"Me neither." Yarbridge glanced at an Earth-chronometer ticking to one side of his rig. "Will you be around at eighteen hours G.M.T.?"

	"Yes, if I'm not in clink."

	"All right. I'll let you know what I find."

-

	He added a bit more, switched off, turned in his swivel seat and said to Holland, "I've known that boy for ten years. He's as excitable as a porcelain Buddha and doesn't tell tales for the fun of it. Furthermore, all the hams in Dubuque won't drop dead on the same day."

	A hairy driller passing by caught the last remark, stopped and informed, "They might, if they were holding a weekly meeting and some nut let go a bomb. Years ago we lost a complete crew that way during a native revolt."

	Ignoring it, Yarbridge went on, "Can you see anything extraordinary in Iowa?"

	"What, with this glass?" Holland made a disparaging gesture. "We need one umpteen times the size."

	"I suppose so." He switched on, resumed probing the ether. "If we can't use our eyes, we'll have to depend on our ears. I'll try bringing in Jerry, who lives at—"

	He broke off as his slow-motion dial hit a peaky point and a Canadian voice came out the speaker: "... At Ottawa this morning. After a hurried meal the Russian delegation left by air for Iowa, having refused press interviews. Circles close to the United States Government say that an exchange of agricultural technologists has been arranged and that an American party flew to Omsk last night."

	Holland got up from the 'scope, put hands on lean hips and said, "That's Iowa again."

	"I know." Yarbridge sounded a little grim. "How about adding another heater or two? I feel cold."

	"You'll be colder if major ructions take place across there," remarked Wilkin, morbidly gratified. "Fine fix we'll be in, cut off from the rest."

	"Why should there be trouble?" asked Yarbridge with a touch of defiance. "We have outgrown world wars. There hasn't been so much as a diplomatic clash for half a century. Everyone is peaceful and happy these days."

	"Are they?" Wilkin cocked a sardonic eyebrow.

	"They darned well ought to be!"

	"Ought and is are different words," Wilkin pointed out.

	"You should know!" snapped Yarbridge.

	"What do you mean by that?" His pale eyes narrowing behind his glasses, Wilkin sat up.

	Hurriedly Holland chipped in. "If people had: the patience to wait for the heaters, there'd be no need to warm up their tempers." He started off toward the switchboard, adding, "I can take a hint. I'll turn them on at once. No rest for the wicked."

	It served to crack up the acrimonious byplay. It was a conversational gambit frequently adopted by a third party when two men showed signs of rubbing each other the wrong way. Strange conditions breed strange conventions, including that of drowning other people's differences in one's own sorrows.

	Here, the problem of how to live together perforce had been solved, haphazardly but adequately. On Earth it was soon to prove unsolvable. The unknown enemy had complicated it beyond solution merely by shifting its crux from the brain to the belly.

-

	Possession of power creates a peculiar hiatus in the reasoning part of the brain. There's one lesson that authority is mentally incapable of learning, namely, that truth will out. The more determinedly and persistently truth is thrust down the well, the bigger the bounce when finally she emerges.

	By the end of a week authority still wore a pin on its lips but the Lunar seven had learned via Yarbridge and a hundred hams, that . Iowa was under martial law and its state lines held by troops against all but those holding official permits to cross. Also that the German and Brazilian armies had been partially mobilized with the consent of the United Nations. The Australian Government had voted itself powers unheard-of except in time of war. Planes and unspecified supplies were being rushed to south China for reasons not stated.

	Two more days and the stubborn secrecy of the powers-that-be was bust wide open by the sheer necessity of world-wide publicity. This point marked the second step forward in the natural march of events foreseen by those who had provided the root cause.

	Yarbridge could have picked up the official announcement from any professional radio station in any known language. By luck he got it from WBAX at Wilkes-Barre.

	"A previously unknown phenomenon afflicting the holding of Farmer Barton Maguire, outside Dubuque, Iowa, has been found by experts to be caused by the presence of a filterable virus that is responsible for the ultra-rapid decomposition of chlorophyll. The same virus has also appeared in Brazil, Germany, mid-Russia, China, Pakistan and Rhodesia. Its origin is unknown."

	"Well, that's a consolation," commented Yarbridge as the faraway announcer paused for breath. "I'd expected something worse."

	"You couldn't!" contradicted Wilkin.

	WBAX continued with: "This disease can be spread by contact and borne from one place to another by animals or birds. The government, therefore, prohibits all movements of livestock whether near an affected area or not. Dogs, cats and other domestic creatures must be kept under control. Any found wandering loose will be destroyed on sight without compensation to owners."

	"They're becoming tough," observed a driller, thoughtfully. "It can't be for nothing—the public wouldn't stand for it." He pulled at an ear, finished, "I reckon it's serious."

	"Shut up and listen," ordered Yarbridge.

	"Under the Emergency Powers Act of 1988 the government takes authority to seize any property found to be contaminated and use thereon any measures that may be deemed necessary to destroy the virus. All citizens are required to report affected areas without delay to the nearest post office, police station or military camp. Failure to do so is punishable by a fine of one thousand U.N. dollars or one year's imprisonment."

	"Hell's bells!" the driller ejaculated. "Sounds like they're scared."

	"Sh-h-h!"

-

	"The following description of symptoms has been issued for the benefit of the public," went on WBAX. "First occurs a bleaching of green leaves which turn gray and dry within forty-eight hours. They are then brittle and lifeless, will readily crumble between the fingers. The process spreads from point of origin in a rapidly increasing circle, destroying plant life over a progressively greater area. The inside of such an area is not dangerous since the virus remains active only at the rim where it can continue to feed on chlorophyll. The rim, therefore, is the danger point; pending arrival of expert assistance the rim should be thoroughly burned by any means at hand and then given similar treatment at any point where advance is found to continue. The Department of Agriculture assures listeners that there is no reason for undue apprehension and that every effort is being made to find a satisfactory method of combating this menace."

	Wilkin wiped his glasses and said, "That last lullaby tells two things. One, that they regard it as a genuine menace. Two, that they haven't found what they call a satisfactory method of dealing with it."

	"They will," assured Yarbridge.

	"Will they?" asked Wilkin.

	"You like to think they won't, eh?" inquired the driller, glowering at him.

	"I see things as they are and not as I'd prefer to see them," answered Wilkin, stiffly. "My dream world has long been dead."

	"The real one is alive. It will go on living."

	"The former is factual; the latter hypothetical."

	The other let his fists dangle. "When a guy turns to ten-dollar words, I give up."

	He went away, sadly shaking his head in the manner of one usable to cope with an idiot. Wilkin finished shining his glasses, carefully fitted them on his nose, eyed Holland as if inviting further comment.

	Holland obliged with, "One thing they didn't tell us."

	"What's that?"

	"Rate of spread."

	"Yes," agreed Wilkin. He fiddled his fingers, watched himself doing it. "They didn't tell us."

	"Maybe they forgot," offered Yarbridge. "Or didn't think it especially important."

	"It could be five inches a month," ventured Holland. "It could be twenty miles per day."

	"Now don't start giving me the willies," Yarbridge protested.

	"If you want a real headache," suggested Wilkin, "go to bed and think it over. Take away chlorophyll and see what's left."

	"It means nothing to me. I don't eat the lousy stuff."

	"You're lucky," said Wilkin in the same even tone. "You should survive as the last man."

	Yarbridge scowled, said to Holland, "What is he talking about?"

	"Something that may never happen."

	"I might have guessed it." He sniffed his contempt.

	"Or may," said Wilkin.

	"There are the oceans," Holland told him, "full of fish."

	"How nice!" said Wilkin. He lay down, closed his eyes.

	Confused with having half his attention on the radio and only half on this erratic conversation, Yarbridge demanded, "Look here, what has fish got to do with it? Why bring them up?"

	Wilkin did not bother to reply.

	Holland said, "Oh, forget it," and strolled toward his engine.

	"This can't go on for another couple of years," informed Yarbridge, speaking to thin air. "Not when guys go off the beam after four months."

	He reached for his microphone, called a person named Jerry without enthusiasm—and without result.

-

	At the thousand-foot mark the barber shop quartet didn't sound so hot and the whisky lacked zip. The celebration had all the joyous verve of a wake held around a frowning corpse. For one thing, they'd been delayed by need to replace a cutter. For another, there were those shenanigans next door, a quarter million miles away.

	So they finished the bottle, listened while four cold sober drillers bellowed a bawdy song, put on one or two artificial grins, told one or two unfunny anecdotes. Then somehow they broke it up before properly begun, returned in silence to duty or to bed.

	Men were quiet after that, speaking when necessary, tending to hang around the radio receiver or play with the 'scope. Faces became set. The nuclear engine gave out its low whine; the drill went round and round, was drawn up, forced down, rotated again. More cores were stacked outside without anyone knowing or caring whether they held dirt or diamonds. The task had been reduced to a job and the job to a mere function.

	As the days drifted by the radio told that the British, Dutch and Belgian governments had brought in a complicated system of food rationing. The United States authorities took control of all cereals and fixed the retail price of bread. Canada followed suit. In the Argentine a million men slaved to build along the northern frontier something described as the Fire Curtain. The Ukrainian Republic made heated protest to the United Nations about what it called infringement of rights of sovereignty, but nothing was said about what had raised Ukrainian bile.

	Obviously a thin, bedraggled veil of censorship continued to obscure the international scene. The dunkers of truth were still on the job. But Moon-listeners found significance in the occasional use of new words apparently coined on the spur of the moment and thrust into news bulletins.

	"A gun battle took place in Milan early this morning when strong forces of Italian police surrounded a warehouse and trapped a band of chow-jackers. Eighteen were killed, more than forty captured. The police lost six."

	New York state troopers grabbed a bunch of beefleggers. The British sent to jail a smooth gentleman described as a burp-baron. Not to be outdone, the Germans raided a noisy plant in the Black Forest wherein large humans and large canines were cooperating in the production of dog-burgers.

	"Hear that?" exclaimed Yarbridge. "How do guys like those get away with it?"

	"They didn't," someone pointed out.

	"What I mean is where's the money in it?"

	"At the right time, in the right place and in the right conditions there is money in dead rats," Wilkin opined.

	"If I remember correctly," put in Holland, seriously, "they actually did eat rats during the siege of Paris."

	"Go easy, will you?" Yarbridge thinned his lips. "My stomach can stand only so much."

	"Be thankful that you're not in the part of Asia where they have two or three thousands to the square mile," advised Wilkin. "You would stand for something a good deal worse there. Or better, according to your gastronomic viewpoint."

	"Such as what?"

	"Stiffburgers."

	"What?"

	"Mock-pork—the dead feeding the living."

-

	Yarbridge yellowed around the jaw-line. An off-duty driller—apparently asleep—opened a dark eye and stared at Wilkin. He maintained the gaze while he mulled things over, then rolled off his mattress, lumbered across and spoke in a deep rumble.

	"I've had too much of you, you four-eyed runt!" He jerked a thumb skyward. "I've a wife and three kids over there. I've worry enough without you trying to be funny. Keep your noisy trap shut, see? "

	"I wasn't trying to be funny," Wilkin denied. He wiped his glasses, peered at the big bulk without visible intimidation. "My only daughter is in Iowa."

	"More shame to you then, acting the way you do. Hold your teeth together if you want to keep them."

	Another driller came along, glanced from one to another, said, "Something wrong, Hank?"

	"Nothing much, Joe. Only that I'm working myself up to break a certain gab's neck."

	"What'll that buy you?"

	"Satisfaction," informed Hank.

	James Holland said soothingly, "Not all folk worry the same way. Some nurse it; some let it go bang; some hope for the best; some expect the worst."

	"All right," conceded Hank. "Then he can switch fast from type four to type one."

	"Thus shaping myself in your image," said Wilkin. Displaying unexpected nerve, he came to his feet, faced the other. "Why should I?"

	"Because, Granpop, I've got this." His opponent showed a knobby fist half the size of a ham. "And I'm not particular about—"

	Wilkin opened a hand, revealed vest-pocket automatic three inches long. "I've got this—and I'm not finicky either." He waited a moment, his pale eyes level, then ended, "We've free speech here. You're not taking it away. Beat it, you hairy bum!"

	The other studied him calculatingly, up and down, then spat on the ground, turned and headed for the mid-section. Joe went with him. Wilkin reposed on his oxygen bag.

	"You blundered there," Holland told him. "He's bothered about his family, as is natural. Some people are touchy when worried."

	"So am I," said Wilkin.

	"You look it," scoffed Yarbridge. "In my opinion—"

	He shut up as Holland nudged him. The latter continued, "Anyway, this is no place to wave a gun around."

	"It will be!" Wilkin promised.

-

	The third inevitable step began when the Indian delegate to the United Nations Assembly made a long, impassioned speech that might have been cribbed from the late nineteen thirties. It was upon the same subject: the haves and have-nots. It ended the same way—with an implied threat. It produced the same reaction: open pacification and secret preparation.

	Dr. Francisca, chairman of the assembly, dexterously employed a procedural quibble to avoid a vote on the plain issue of who should give what to whom. He had a wary eye on the have-nots, present in full strength and ready to vote as one man. The danger of a complete split was avoided for twenty-four hours. At the end of that time India withdrew from the United Nations. China followed. So did every other nation whose crops could not keep pace with its needs.

	Joe saw the first flash on Earth's dark side. The little telescope wasn't popular when Earth resembled a great black ball against a blinding Sun, but occasionally it was used as the terminator approached. He was staring through it in the angled blaze of false twilight when he spotted a flash on Earth's sickle of darkness. Then another and another.

	Quietly he left the 'scope, shook Yarbridge awake and whispered, "I've just seen lights over there."

	"What of it? Why spoil my sleep?"

	"Nobody's seen them before."

	"Maybe they weren't looking. There isn't a constant watch as you know quite well."

	"I've got a queer feeling about them. They were mighty big flashes."

	Yarbridge emitted an imitation snore.

	Nearby, Holland stirred, awoke, propped himself on an elbow, asked, "What's the matter now?"

	"I don't know," said Joe. "I can't be sure. I want this tramp to check up on the radio."

	"Well, what makes you think something may be wrong?"

	"I've just seen three great glares on Earth's dark strip."

	"Meteors," suggested Holland.

	"Do you think so?"

	"Could be." He eyed the other. "What else?"

	"Atom bombs," said Joe.

	"Nuts!"

	"Why not?"

	"They aren't that crazy."

	"How can we tell?" Joe asked. "We know only what we hear. And that isn't enough."

	"You're morbid."

	"Maybe I am," said Joe, doggedly, "but I saw what I saw. Aren't you interested?"

	"No."

	The other frowned. "Why not?"

	"Because I've swallowed a pill that you've yet to take. You'll have to gulp it down sooner or later and whether you like it or not."

	"Meaning—?"

	"There's nothing we can do. Positively nothing!"

	Musing it with much reluctance, Joe finally admitted, "Yes, that's it. Until the ship comes we're trapped. We've got to sit here and watch. We've got to eat our fingers down to the knuckles and—"

	Raising an irritated face from where he was lying, Wilkin harshed, "Then go gnaw them some place else. I need sleep even if you don't."

	"Earth's dying," said Joe, taking no notice. "The drills are still and the derricks are down and the fields are aflame—and none of you care. Technicians! Bigbrains! And none of you care!"

	"Get some shuteye, Joe," advised Holland. "A few sparks in a glass don't signify the crack of doom."

	"All right." Resignedly he turned to leave, added with strange positiveness, " But we'll have that sleepy-eyed lunk at his bawl-box before breakfast—and we'll see who's right and who's wrong."

	Yarbridge responded with another snore, a real one this time.

	Reclining full length, James Holland stared at the stars visible through the transparency of the dome's conical cap. A blue one kept winking at him alongside the circular rim of the overhead antenna. After a while he closed his eyes but found it impossible to sleep. His brain droned drearily, "There's nothing we can do, nothing we can do."

	In the small hours he ceased to court slumber, rolled off his mattress, crept silently past the others' feet and had a long look through the telescope.

-

	There was a babble of insistent voices right across the ether, singsong ones, guttural ones, determined ones, hysterical ones. Ignoring the play of languages none could understand, Yarbridge felt around with his dials, picked up a station that did not identify itself with any call-sign or locale but was rapidly transmitting a series of figures in plain English.

	It went on, "The first group of numbers will report for service by six o'clock this evening, the second group tomorrow, the third the day after. Unless he is totally blind or is certified under the Mental Deficiency Act, the failure of any citizen to report will result in the issue of a warrant for his arrest. This is the Federal Broadcasting Service radiating simultaneously from all stations."

	"By hokey!" said Yarbridge. "Sounds like they've taken over the whole shebang from coast to—"

	He broke off as the faraway voice continued, "Indian and Chinese forces crossed their borders in great strength at noon yesterday and are attempting to seize the Burmese rice-bowl and such wheat-growing areas of central Russia as the virus has not yet reached. A report that Germany is about to invade the Black Earth region of the Ukraine has been energetically denied in Berlin. The Italians indignantly repudiate a French accusation that they are preparing to attack the uncontaminated agricultural area of southeast France. In view of the serious international situation the President has declared a state of emergency and assumed all the powers to which he is entitled thereunder. His midnight speech emphasized that the time has come to honor our—"

	The announcer ceased in mid-sentence. They waited a minute for him to resume but he didn't. Even the sizzle of background noise had gone.

	Yarbridge turned a strained face over one shoulder, remarked to the small audience, "That's war—without saying so."

	"I could have told you several hours ago," said Joe.

	"I'd have bet on it a couple of weeks ago," capped Wilkin.

	"How long is it since that virus stuff was first mentioned?" a driller inquired.

	Consulting his logbook, Yarbridge informed, "Forty-seven days."

	"And how long before the ship is due?"

	"Thirty-two."

	"Think it'll come?"

	It was a shocking question.

	Yarbridge passed a hand through tousled hair and growled, "Why not?"

	"The ship isn't one of those thinking machines they have in stories," the other pointed out. "Men order it to be sent and other men bring it."

	"Well?"

	"Suppose they become too busy?"

	"That's hardly—"

	"Or the ship gets busted wide open?"

	"There are two ships," Yarbridge reminded.

	"So what? There's a war on. They're parked side by side, like stiffs in a morgue. Whatever wallops one will wallop both."

	"The walloping won't be easy," put in Holland. "They've got formidable defenses over there."

	"What, after fifty years of peace? They never had enough even when they were having wars."

	Joe chipped in with, "How about asking the spaceport to confirm date of arrival?"

	Glooming at his instruments, Yarbridge said nothing.

-

	"What's come over you?" persisted Joe. Suspicion grew into his beefy features. "You're here to maintain contact, aren't you? How about raising the spaceport?"

	"I can try," said Yarbridge.

	"Try? What d'you mean, try?" Joe glanced around at the listeners, added, "How long since you last spoke to the spaceport?"

	"Nine days."

	"Haven't you called since then?"

	"Dozens of times. No reply."

	"No reply," echoed Joe. He swallowed hard, stared at his feet, manifestly could think of nothing more to say.

	Wilkin studied him with pale, calculating eyes.

	"And you didn't tell us," broke in another driller, with unconcealed ire. "These fancy mechanics knew we're cut off but didn't tell us. We're too dim to understand. We're only oil boys, see? "

	Holland said, "Now don't start dividing us into rival trade unions just because four of you happen to share the same skill. We're all in this together. The spaceport has something better to do than chat and hold our hands day after day. We've gone many a full week without speaking to it."

	"Not when it's being called," retorted the other.

	"Radio apparatus isn't infallible," said Yarbridge, not very convincingly. "They may have a technical hitch."

	"I always thought you guys were too clever to have hitches."

	"I wish to heaven we were!" said Holland, fervently. He rubbed a freckled chin, glanced toward the engine steadily droning on the farther side.

	The others followed his gaze and went silent. They knew what he meant. The engine and its coupled generator provided light and they could dispense with that if necessary. Also power for the drill, the radio, the cooker and other items they could do without in a pinch. Also warmth via the numerous heaters placed equidistantly around the perimeter. They couldn't live through the Lunar nights without warmth. And finally oxygen by electrolysis of Moon-water eighty feet down. They couldn't survive without oxygen.

	Frankly alarmed, one asked, "How much jollop have you got for that contraption?"

	"You mean thorium oxide?"

	"Yes."

	" Sufficient for a couple of years."

	"Then all you have to do is keep her going?"

	"That's all," agreed Holland, straight-faced.

	The other looked him up and down as if seeking an invisible joke at his own expense. Then he moved away to tend the drill.

	Yarbridge used his mike. "Yarboo calling Booster One. Come in Booster One. Come in Booster One!"

	He wasted his breath.

-

	As the days rolled by they developed a tendency to ignore the radio most times or treat it with open skepticism when the temptation to listen became too much. The thousand friends behind Yarbridge's god had shrunk to little more than a dozen, the technical qualifications of the missing ones having drawn them into the detection and communications services of the armed forces.

	The few survivors told little, though they could have said much. But they did not dare. Vertical beam antenna were now prohibited and their calls were monitored. They spoke briefly and pointlessly, with the extreme wariness of those peculiarly susceptible to the capital charge of disseminating information that might be useful to an enemy.

	Yarbridge said wearily to Holland one day, "This is grim. Doesn't matter whether I get George in Memphis or Jules in Toulouse, he can't tell me so much as whether it's raining because somebody across the battle line might need that datum."

	"If there are any battle lines," said Holland. He pawed his freckles, went on, "What beats me is that in all that gabble nobody mentions who's fighting whom."

	"Everyone is fighting everyone," opined Wilkin, coming up behind him. "What else do you expect?"

	"And when they do see fit to tell anything you get less than half of it," Yarbridge continued. "Listen to this."

	He turned the volume control, brought up a British voice that had been murmuring almost indistinguishably: "... And several more robot planes were shot down over London last night. The rest of the country—"

	Switching off, he said, "There's a sample. He doesn't say how many. He doesn't say who sent them. He doesn't say what happened to the bomb loads when the planes dropped or what damage was caused."

	"Of course he doesn't say," put in Wilkin. "In fact it's a wonder he says anything at all. But it won't be for much longer."

	"Why?"

	"The lights are going down, across the world. Would you squat there and count them out loud for the benefit of an unimportant gang upon the Moon?"

	"Who says we're unimportant?" inquired Hank, joining them and displaying aggressiveness.

	"I do," Wilkin informed. "Who cares for someone looking out the top window when there's a free-for-all in the street?"

	"It can't last," decided the other, not caring to argue the point. "They haven't got the stuff. Half a century back they'd have been using supersonic missiles and all kinds of other gadgets. These days they haven't got 'em. Armaments have hit an all-time low."

	"Who told you that?" inquired Wilkin.

	"Everybody knows it."

	"Do they?" He put on a lopsided smile. "Pity we can't ask them today."

	Hank scowled, edged nearer the radio and rasped at Yarbridge, "Unimportant or not, we're entitled to know what's happened to our wives and kids. Why doesn't the spaceport—"

	It was a gag, for as he got alongside Wilkin he swung a huge fist into the metallurgist's face and grunted with the force of the blow. Wilkin crashed one way while his glasses flew the other. The thing was done with such suddenness that Hank was astride the victim and frisking his pockets before the others had time to interfere. Breathing heavily, he came erect holding the little automatic.

	"I never did like sneery guys with guns." His eyes challenged them as beside him Wilkin sat up and held hands to features. He moved over to Yarbridge. "All right, Porky, get busy and raise the spaceport."

	"How?"

	"He asks me how!" His big hand gave the other's shoulder a shove. "You know how. Let's see you do it—and fast!"

	Yarbridge obliged, then said, "There you are. I can call until my tonsils drop out. Now let us see you do better."

	"How can I tell that you're calling them in the right place?" He pointed to the dials. "Or, for that matter, that you're correctly tuned to get anybody on that set?"

	"How do I know when a cutter is due to be swapped?" asked Yarbridge.

	"Don't be funny with me!" A pulse was beating heavily in his forehead. "If the drill goes bust while I stand here a month, I'm going to—"

	"You're going to do nothing we don't like," interjected Holland. "And you'd better give me that gun."

	"You crazy?"

	"Not yet."

	"Me, neither," assured Hank. "So you can go take a walk."

	"Thanks," said Holland. "I will." Shoving hands deep in pockets he ambled away, his lips pursed in a silent whistle.

-

	Thirty seconds later the engine stopped. The drill ceased its weary grinding. The lights went out and there was no illumination save through the transparent peak of the otherwise opaque dome. The U-tubes set in the wall no longer fizzed and bubbled. No oxygen trickled into the interior and no hydrogen poured outside.

	Hank crossed the circular area with a bull-like rush, gestured with the automatic. "Start her up."

	"Sorry."

	"I said start her up!"

	"Do it yourself."

	He examined the engine from end to end, seeking visible evidence of how to do it. Once or twice he toyed momentarily with a lever, stud or switch but thought better of it. He had all the layman's near-superstitious fear of hot-stuff.

	"It's your job, not mine." He flourished the weapon again. "Go to it."

	"I'm on strike," Holland informed. "My union has called me out."

	"If you don't do as you're told, "Spotty-pan, I'll put a slug through your bean."

	"Well," hazarded Holland, thoughtfully, "that might be one way to get her operating. But I doubt it."

	The other drillers had clustered around by now and one demanded, "What's the big idea, cutting the engine?"

	"He's trying to show us who's boss," Hank growled. "And I won't have it. No kid's going to push me around."

	"There's nothing for it but to make him see sense," put in Joe. He rolled up his sleeves, revealed brawny arms.

	"That'll take you a couple of minutes," Holland pointed out.

	"So what?"

	"You won't have that long."

	Joe took a hurried step backward. "No? Why won't we?"

	Glancing significantly at the engine which could be trusted to remain quiescent for a million years, Holland advised, "Wait and see."

	"Give him the gun, Hank," said Joe, nervously.

	"Go on, give it him," urged the rest as panic mounted.

	"I think he's a liar," declared Hank, mulish. "I think he's taking us for a ride. He wouldn't lounge there easylike if something were about to happen."

	"I'm hoping it won't." Holland ostentatiously consulted his wrist watch. "Because I'm betting that your nerves will crack before mine." Extracting a handkerchief, he mopped his forehead, had another look at the watch.

	It was an effective gesture. The driller alongside Hank decided that more waiting would be unendurable. He made a snatch at the gun, got it, strove to twist it out of the other's grip. Stubborn to the last, Hank hung on. The remaining pair suddenly made up their minds and joined the fray, ignoring Hank's grunts and curses. The disputed weapon emitted a thin, hard crack and planted a slug in the dirt, between stamping feet. It came loose. One of them tossed it toward the onlooker who was still doing his best to maintain a phony expression of strained anxiety.

	"Start her up! For Pete's sake start her up!"

	The struggle ceased by mutual consent and all four tried to urge him with their eyes. He did things including several that weren't necessary and some they couldn't see. The engine moaned. He let in the generator clutch. The lights came on. The U-tubes bubbled and gassed.

	"You big, awkward hophead!" one of them rumbled at Hank. "Why can't you leave well alone? Think we haven't got troubles enough? "

	They went back to the drill. Hank stared a while at his own hands, opening and closing the fingers, favored Holland with a look of dark suspicion, then lumbered after the others.

	Holland made for his sleeping space, picked up his helmet, checked the pressure in its little oxygen cylinder. He fitted the headpiece while Wilkin sat grimly nursing a split lip and Yarbridge watched in silence. Exiting via the double trap, he trudged through fine gray Lunar dust, past the stack of cores and at a suitable spot fired the gun until it was empty. Then he hurled it into the distance.

	Returning, he removed the helmet, carefully placed it on its rack, lay down and studied the overhead circle of transparency. Wilkin still offered no remark.

	After a while, Yarbridge said, "You were lucky to get away with that. I don't know that I'd have had the nerve to try it."

	"Comes easier when you've done it once or twice before," Holland informed. "A few years ago I was compelled to learn that one needn't always be completely without means of defense. In the last resort there's often one thing that can be used and effectively."

	"Such as what?"

	"The other fellow's ignorance."

	"Suppose he isn't ignorant?"

	"Then it's your hard luck." He smiled to himself, went on, "But everybody is ignorant by one standard if not by another. I'd be a prize sucker for a radio gag if you could think up a good one."

	"I guess so," agreed Yarbridge who had never given a thought to this aspect of his own ability.

	He made up for lost time by commencing forthwith to examine the possibilities. As weeks and months rolled on and the situation worsened a crafty scheme or two might prove useful. Indeed, technical knowledge plus sharp wits might decide between life and death.

-

	The ship did not come, neither on the appointed day nor a fortnight later. They required the extra two weeks to incubate to point of vocal expression the opinion that it would never arrive.

	Other data supported this dread thought. The telescope had enough power to reveal numerous and sinister markings on Earth's land surface though not with clarity sufficient to determine their true nature. The instrument had to be used with imagination that might be over- or under-exercised according to the individual.

	And night after night, day after day, brilliant flashes had been observed on the mother-globe, waxing and waning until finally they ceased.

	Only seven stations could be heard across the full widths of the long, medium, short and ultra-short bands. They were unintelligible, radiating high-speed but very weak signals in code. A week later there were four. Ten days afterward there was one. Then that, too, went off the air. The ether was silent. Earth rolled along her appointed course, a black ball on the night side, a shining picture on the day side, and gave forth no single voice.

	At that point they took stock of food supplies. Originally enough packaged meals and emergency rations had been dumped to last seven men for twenty months and nearly a third of that time had now passed. If they reduced consumption to the minimum and rigorously prevented all waste, the seven might live another sixteen months.

	That much being known, the arithmetic of the situation became obvious to each man, though he kept it strictly to himself, coddling it within the secret recesses of his own mind. If one died, so much the better for the rest; they'd make out another eighteen or nineteen months. If two went under, the survivors would gain a further spell of life. Three deaths would permit the remaining four to eat until the engine stopped—and beyond that, if they could.

	The environment was beginning to force a distorted picture into each mind, making it see that the others were not men with mouths, but mouths with men around them.

	But this hidden reaction betrayed its presence in indirect ways. The hairy-chested quartet stopped the drill to cut down power consumption and—as they theorized—help eke out the precious reserve of hot-stuff. Holland noted the deed, deduced its purpose and did not bother to tell them that disintegration was held at a uniform rate regardless of power used. It could not be speeded up without danger nor slowed without ceasing to provide exploitable energy. Their action was futile.

	One day Joe caught him away from the rest, sidled up, said, "I've been thinking."

	"It's a healthy occupation," Holland approved.

	"What if this gadget packs in?"

	"Then it's my responsibility to get it going again."

	"Yes, I know." He glanced around to make sure none were within hearing. "We're stuck here quite a spell. If anything happens to you, we're sunk."

	"That's what I like about it," said Holland.

	"I don't," declared Joe with some emphasis. "If you fall sick at the wrong time, it'll mean the end."

	"Very true. So on no account must I become ill." He eyed the other shrewdly. "It might help if we reserved some whisky for an emergency. The way it's evaporating out of sealed bottles there won't be any left pretty soon."

	"It isn't me—it's the others," said Joe.

	"It would be!" indorsed Holland.

	Joe blinked and went on, "Anyway, what I want to say is this: that it's your duty to teach someone else to handle this groan-machine. One isn't enough. We need another who knows how."

	"Such as yourself?"

	"I could learn."

	"I don't doubt it," said Holland.

	"Well, why shouldn't you show somebody?"

	"I may come to regret it—if one can have regrets in one's sleep;"

	"What d'you mean by that?"

	"If your thinking has been taken far enough, you know darned well what I mean."

	"Smart, aren't you?" spat Joe, momentarily vicious.

	"The circumstances compel me to be," assured Holland blandly. Crossing fingers, he held them under Joe's nose. "This is me. Don't you forget it!"

	Yarbridge came across as Joe stamped away. "He looks sour. You been rubbing him the wrong way?"

	"He's just applied for the post of assistant atomechanic. I turned him down."

	"Did you tell him you've been instructing me?"

	"No." He pondered briefly, explained, "Three of us have completely different qualifications whereas the other four are and always have been birds of a feather. Each of those four knows what the others are doing and why they're doing it, at any given moment. They understand each other in a way they can't understand us. Our methods and functions defeat them. No matter how irrational it may be, people often tend to dislike what they're unable to understand."

	"All the same, if there's a split in this group it's of their own making," Yarbridge observed.

	"Yes, but we mustn't blame them for it. The division is in some ways as natural as the sunrise. So, if I'd told him I'd picked you instead of a driller as standby mechanic, it might aggravate matters."

	Yarbridge gestured toward the food stack. "I fear they'll be more than aggravated by the time we've eaten most of the way down that. Sooner or later somebody's going to make us put on a local version of what's happened on Earth."

	"While there's life there's hope," said Holland.

	"Of what? A miracle?"

	"A ship."

	"That would be a miracle," declared Yarbridge, flatly.

	He was wrong. In due time a ship came, deliberately and without benefit of supernatural forces.

-

	It was ten months since those in the dome had first heard mention of the virus and by now they'd almost forgotten its existence. Events that followed had overshadowed the cause, like a prolonged riot in which none can recall who or what started it.

	The food stack now stood at less than half its original height. The drill remained sunk to the best part of two thousand feet, its drive-gears motionless, its shaft red-brown with a fine layer of rust. The engine droned and shuddered, the lights still burned, the numerous heaters gave protection against night's exterior low of -150°C. Moon-water still surrendered its oxygen and maintained the breath of life. The radio remained serviceable but had not been in operation for weeks.

	Four oxygen-inflated beds were lined together on the perimeter, three more at the opposite side. This sleeping arrangement was symbolic of psychological antagonisms that, no man wished to boost to a crisis yet no man was able to cure. Civilized conditioning persisted enough to hold the issue in precarious suspense at least for a little while longer, though each man knew deep in his soul that a time might come when one would starve to death while another sat and watched unmoved.

	They were loafing around, four at one side and three at the other, each indulging the vacuous occupation of deciding what he could do with most if only it were there. Conscious of his age, physique, and the shape of things to come, Wilkin yearned for his lost gun. Hank ached for his wife and kids but refused to show it or mention it. Yarbridge's need was no more than a familiar voice seeking him out and calling him in. Holland's choice, vividly and tantalizingly depicted in his mind, was a two-gallon can of pineapple juice, cold or warm.

	And the ship came.

	It screamed overhead and howled into the distance and turned in a wide sweep and came back with a rising roar. The sounds cut off. The dome trembled slightly as great tonnage sat itself outside.

	Hank stood up with little beads of moisture on his forehead. He had the expression of a sleepwalker. The others came to their feet seeking visible confirmation that all ears had heard the same.

	"The ship!" said Yarbridge on a note of incredulity. "It can't be anything else but the ship!"

	"Didn't make that sort of noise last time," observed Wilkin, unwilling to jump to conclusions. He felt vaguely around his pockets as if looking for something without knowing what. "Maybe it's a different one."

	"Sounded different to me," confirmed Joe. "Bigger and faster."

	"I'll take a look." Holland picked up his helmet.

	A loud knocking sounded on the double-trap before he had time to fit the headpiece. He dumped it, went to the trap with six pairs of eyes watching, manipulated the locks.

	The three who entered were not human.

	Gray uniformed, gray-blue skinned and hairless, they came into the dome with the casual, unsurprised air of neighbors wanting to borrow the mower. They had two arms and two legs apparently formed of cords and cartilage rather than muscle and bone, for they bent in a curve from end to end instead of at a mid-joint. The six fingers of each hand were similarly bendable and jointless.

	Apart from these noteworthy features of strange coloring and rubber skeletons they approximated to human appearance. Their mouths looked natural, their eyes were of human type, their ears normal enough though somewhat large. All three stood a couple of inches above Holland, the tallest of his group. All three were bald and hat less.

-

	Wilkin was the first to break the silence. He peered over the tops of his glasses as if to insure that they were not causing an optical illusion, and said, "Who are you?"

	"That doesn't matter," responded the foremost of the trio. "Does it?"

	"Where did you learn to speak English?" put in Holland, having expected communication by means of signs and gestures. He felt behind to check that he wasn't flat on his mattress and deep in a ridiculous dream. His hand prodded Yarbridge's paunch.

	"On your own world of course. Where else could we learn it?"

	"Can you take us back there?" inquired Hank, single-mindedly dismissing everything in favor of one aim.

	"We have come for that purpose." The alien glanced around, noting everything but not curious. "We intend to leave with the minimum of delay. Do whatever is necessary before you depart and do it quickly."

	It wasn't a request. It wasn't an order. It was a plain statement of plain fact, devoid of either politeness or authority. Somehow it created a cold impression that the speaker was not in the habit of asking or telling, but rather of presenting a realistic case and awaiting the inevitable result. An inhuman, unemotional mind concerned only with facts.

	They packed in a hurry, their minds filled with a thousand questions postponed by the glorious vision of escape. It did not occur to any of them to view the newcomers as enemies or treat them with hostility. They had no data to go upon. So far as they were concerned the Martians—or whoever they were—had turned up at long last and at the most opportune time.

	Each bearing a pack of personal belongings, they donned helmets, followed the three from the dome. Holland, the last out, switched off the nuclear engine, fastened the double-trap. Filing aboard a vessel several times the size of those with which they were familiar, they were conducted to a large cabin and left to themselves. The ship boosted immediately afterward, plunged toward Earth.

	Nobody talked much. Shock of alien contact plus inward speculation of what was awaiting at the other end kept them fairly silent until the landing. The trip had taken fourteen hours, less than half the time they'd required on the outward journey nearly a year ago.

	An alien not identifiable as one of those already seen appeared at the cabin, said, "We are grounded and you may leave. Follow me." Conducting them to the long ramp leading from the air lock, he pointed outward. "You will find food and accommodation in that camp. We'll summon you when required."

-

	Descending the ramp, they set feet on bare brown earth, paused to survey their surroundings. Straight ahead stood a large collection of hutments typical of an army training center. To the left were the outskirts of a medium-sized town. Mountains loomed in the far background and a small river flowed on the right.

	"Where's this?" Yarbridge glanced around, noted that no alien had stayed with them. "Anyone recognize the place?"

	"We can find out." Hoisting his pack, Holland started forward." We've got tongues in our heads."

	Hank moved up alongside him, recent differences forgotten. "What did that guy mean about calling us when wanted? Does he think we're going to squat in this dump until somebody whistles to us like dogs? "

	Holland shrugged, offered no comment.

	"If so, he's got another think coming," Hank went on. "I'm more than grateful for the hitch from up there but that doesn't mean I've got to wait for the official thank-you ceremony. I'm going home and fast! What's the use of making for this camp? "

	"Before you know which way to go and how to get there, you've got to find out where you are."

	"You may be a thousand miles from home," Yarbridge contributed. "With all the world to pick from you can't expect those aliens to dump you in your own back yard."

	"I don't care if it's a million miles. I'll make it if I have to crawl it. I've a wife and kids."

	"I had a daughter," said Wilkin, dull-toned. "And I doubt whether I'll ever see her again."

	"Shut up, Misery!" growled Hank.

	Passing through the main gates they went to the first hut. It contained forty Chinese, men and women, who eyed them with blank indifference. They tried the second. That held a weird mixture of races including a half-naked brown man with a bone through his nose.

	"Anyone know English?" called Holland.

	A trembling oldster came from the back. He had a long, untended beard and hot but rheumy eyes.

	"I do, my son."

	"What goes here?"

	"What goes?" He had a moment of muddled mystification before his lined features cleared. "Ah, my son, you seek enlightenment?"

	"That is the idea," agreed Holland. "More or less."

	"You are inspired," informed the other, grasping him by the arm. "For you have come to the right place and the right person. I have been privileged to save the world. I saved it upon my knees, a sinner crying at the gates of heaven. I prayed while the city fell and children screamed and the unrepentant died." The grip tightened, the eyes grew hotter. "Until finally my voice was heard and help came from the skies. Listen, my son, if you, too, will have the grace—"

	"Sorry, dad, some other time." Holland pulled gently away.

	They transferred attention to the third hut, leaving the oldster querulously mumbling in his beard. Outside the door of this adjoining place a big brawny man stood watching their approach.

	He rasped as they reached him, "Another bunch, eh? Where did they find you? "

	"On the Moon," Holland told him.

	"So?" He studied them from beneath bushy brows, then offered, "Some folk don't know when they're well off. Why didn't you stay there?"

	"Would you?"

	"Hah! You bet your shirt I would!" He spat on the ground. "Unless I could find a way to drop it on this alien mob that has darned near wiped out humanity."

-

	Hank pushed forward, his beefy features working. "It doesn't look wiped out to me."

	"It wouldn't," agreed the other, giving him a calculating up and down. "We're all here in this camp and in that town. All sixty thousand of us. There aren't any more except a scattered few being found and dragged in like you."

	"There aren't any more?" Hank had difficulty in understanding it. "You mean—?"

	"The world is empty save for this collection of racial remnants." He waved a hand to indicate the local area. "This is us—Homer Saps."

	"You sure you know what you're talking about?" asked Yarbridge.

	"I ought to, mister. I've been here most of a month." He gave them another shrewdly estimating look-over, went on, "My name's Deacon. I'm an Australian, not that that means anything these days. If you fellows are wanting some place to bunk, you'd better come in here. We've room for ten and we'd rather have you than a gang of half-wild, half-witted Dyaks or Hottentots."

	They followed him inside. Spring beds were lined against both walls, each with a cupboard and arms-rack. A tattered and faded military notice in English flapped behind the door. Some thirty men, mostly white, observed their entrance apathetically. One of them had the broad, flat features and monkish haircut of an Eskimo.

	Slinging his pack onto a vacant bed, Holland inquired, "Just where are we?"

	"Outside a place called Kaystown in Alberta. It jumped up in two or three years after someone struck oil. Nearest dump of any size was Lethbridge."

	"Was?"

	"Half of it's flat and the rest is empty."

	He sat on the springs, stared at the wall, subconsciously noted that the windows needed washing. After a while, he asked, "How do you know these aliens caused it all?"

	"They told me so."

	"They openly boasted of it?"

	"No, I can't say they bragged," admitted Deacon with a mite of reluctance. He looked as though he'd have enjoyed another forceful spit had he been outside. "They're neither conscience-stricken nor triumphant. They mentioned it as an accomplished fact, like saying that two and two make four."

	"I wonder," mused Holland.

	"You wonder what?"

	"Whether they're opportunists. Whether they're kidding. Maybe they're cashing in on a ready-made situation. Maybe they're grabbing the discredit in order to establish psychological mastery."

	"You think they mightn't have done it?" Deacon's features hardened.

	"It's possible."

	"Won't pay you to talk that way around here."

	"Why not?"

	"You've had it easy on the Moon, little as you may know it. You've not tasted what most folk down here have experienced. And they're touchy, see? They don't like these aliens and they won't be amiable toward anyone who does like them." He leaned forward.

	"There's hatred all around, long, fierce, all-consuming. If you sniff, you can smell it. If you look, you can see it."

	"Then why don't they do something about it? Sixty thousand against one ship—heck, they could swamp it!"

	"The idea has been stewed until it's boiled to rags," Deacon informed. "For one thing, they have weapons and we haven't. For another, what they've done before they can do again."

	"What are you getting at?"

	"They dropped a virus. It ate green stuff at faster than walking pace. It killed the grass and everything that lives on grass directly or indirectly. But it left the seeds lying below ground. So now they're coming up; the grass is returning. All that those rubber-legged caricatures need do is sling out another dose of poison. That would wipe out the new crop and the only seeds still down would be the ones that refused to germinate. It would mean finish!"

	One of the listeners put in, "Besides, what's the use of jumping the ship unless we can catch them all together? We can't. They've a flock of little boats constantly roaming the world."

	"And there are plenty more aliens wherever they've come from," contributed another.

	"Do you know where they came from?" Holland asked Deacon.

	"Nowhere around this neck of the cosmos. Some faraway star that hasn't a number, much less a name. That's what they say."

	"Hm-m-m!" He pondered it for quite a time, then remarked, "So they're a long, long way from home. I'd like to know more about them."

	"You'll know plenty before you're through," Deacon promised. "For myself, I'd like to see them at the seventh layer of the seventh hell!"

-

	The summons came late next morning. One alien appeared armed with no more than blank indifference to the looks with which he was greeted. He went from hut to hut until he found the seven.

	"Come with me."

	Hank bristled forthwith. "Who does he think he—?"

	He closed his trap as Holland jogged him with a sharp elbow. "Let's not become noisy just yet."

	The alien stood watching them with blue, humanlike eyes. His strangely colored and impassive face gave no indication of whether he had heard the brief exchange.

	Holland went out with Yarbridge close behind. The others hesitated, then followed. They walked to the ship without further remark, trailed their guide to a cabin in the nose occupied by four more of his kind.

	Without preamble the biggest of the four picked on Joe and asked, "What is your profession?"

	"Boring engineer," informed Joe. "A driller, like these." He indicated the other three.

	"Driller of what?"

	Joe explained it more fully.

	"So four of you do the same thing." The other thought it over, turned to the guide, said, "They should interest Klaeth, he being a geologist. Take them to him."

	Yarbridge's turn came next. Admitting that he was a radio operator he was rewarded by being sent to interview an alien named Ygath. Then Wilkin was questioned.

	"Ah!" exclaimed the alien. "A metallurgist, no less. That is gratifying. Mordan has been hoping to find one such as you."

	Wilkin was conducted elsewhere. He followed his guide gloomily, his pale eyes dull behind his glasses. That left Holland as the last for treatment.

	"And you?"

	"Atomechanic."

	"That tells us nothing. Just what do you do?"

	"I tend and service atomic-powered engines."

	"What do you mean by atomic-powered?"

	Holland's back hairs gave a twitch but he permitted no surprise to show in his features. "It is power derived from the controlled decomposition of certain unstable elements or compounds."

	"Metals?"

	"Certain rare metals or their oxides."

	"You had better stay here," declared the other. "I shall deal with you myself." He switched to a sibilant language as he addressed one of his companions who went away, returned in short time with a wad of papers.

	"These are the documents you require, Drhan," he said, handing, them over.

-

	Scanning them rapidly, Drhan nodded approval, pointed to a tubular chair, told Holland, "You will sit there." When he was seated Drhan studied him a while, frankly trying to estimate his intelligence and capabilities. Finally he informed, "It was as well that we picked you and your friends off that dead satellite. You are all technicians and we are badly in need of technicians."

	"Why?"

	"Because we have acquired a world replete with things we do not understand."

	"Indeed?" Holland cast a significant glance at the huge and complicated instrument board beneath the bow observation port. "Yet you're miles ahead of us there."

	"You think so?"

	"That's how it looks."

	"It would," agreed Drhan. "But appearances can be deceptive. We are backward in many branches of science. A ship such as this is something we might not have developed of our own accord for centuries to come. Fortunately, others did the job for us. We have gained a big advance by proxy." Without bothering to explain in greater detail he indulged another unconcealed summing up of his listener. "Now these others teach us how to build ships and run them. In return we permit them to eat."

	"You permit them?" Holland sat up, feeling cold.

	"Yes." The gray-blue face remained blank. "Though backward in some respects we are advanced in others. Like everyone else, we have developed weapons characteristic of the subjects in which we excel. Ours are effective, as you have seen for yourself. We do not destroy people. We are content to destroy food and leave people to obliterate themselves in the battle for the remaining crumbs. We persuade the opposition to slaughter itself."

	"That must save you an awful lot of bother and heartache," remarked Holland.

	If the other perceived the sarcasm he did not show it, for he added with the air of one stating an obvious and incontrovertible fact, "Take away food and you take away life. No more is necessary, no more need be done."

	"Why deprive us of ours? What have we done to you?"

	The question did not accord with Drhan's alien logic because he had to mull it quite a time before he said, "You have done nothing to us. Why should you? How could you? We want your world because we need it. We have taken it because it would not have been given had we asked for it. We struck effectively and without warning because that is the best guarantee of success. Surely you can see the sense of that?"

	"I can," admitted Holland, grimly.

	Drhan went on, "Far, far in the past we stood urgently in need of another world reasonably similar to our own but could do nothing about it until we acquired ships. Then for four hundred of your years we searched the cosmos around us before we found one and seized it. In due time we had to have another. It took us twice as long to discover. Now we must have a third. There aren't many that fit our specification; they're rather rare. It has required almost two thousand years to find this one of yours."

	"Two thousand? Do you live that long?"

	"Of course not. Those two thousand years cover many expeditions sent out generation after generation."

-

	"Do your people know that you've found this world?"

	"Not yet. Not until some of us return to tell them. We have no means of sending signals so far. The ship will have to go back with precise details of location." His eyes gazed shrewdly into Holland's and for the first time his face showed the faintest glimmer of a smile. "From the viewpoint of your kind that is something worth knowing, as doubtless you have decided. It means that if you can permanently disable this vessel you will escape our attentions for another two thousand years. Doesn't it?"

	"The idea is not without attraction," Holland admitted.

	"Therefore I suggest that you discourage any hotheads from trying," advised Drhan. "There are few of you left. It would be a pity if there were none."

	"Why leave any at all in the first place? You could have killed off the scattered survivors."

	"And thus destroy the knowledge we must acquire?" He motioned toward the wad of papers lying on his desk. "Already we have done much exploring. And what have we found? That this world is full of ingenious machines some of which we understand, some of which we think we understand, and others of which we know nothing. But they are ours by right of conquest. They are a valuable part of our inheritance. We must learn to use them, know how they operate right down to basic principles. How are we to learn these things without waste of time? "

	"How do you expect?"

	"That those who know will teach us."

	"Or what?"

	"There is no 'or' about it," assured Drhan with all the positiveness of experience. "The will to resist weakens as the body shrivels and the belly becomes bloated with hunger. We know. We have seen it happen again and again." 

	"Unmoved?"

	Once more his mind had to plow through unaccustomed labyrinths to catch the question and try to pin it down. And then he could not devise a satisfactory answer.

	With mild complaint, he said, "I don't comprehend. The issue is a simple one, namely, we or you. The result is perfectly proper and natural: the weak become subject to the strong."

	"And the stupid to the clever?" suggested Holland.

	"It is the same thing," declared Drhan. Picking up the papers, he sought through them, his fingers bending either way with equal facility. "Now, we have here several reports of certain great power machines devoid of visible fuel supplies. I presume that these are the atomic mechanisms of which you speak?"

	"Probably."

	"Then you will explain them to us."

	Obediently Holland got on with the job of explaining.

-

	Deacon made the springs squeak as he sat up and asked, "They try to pick your brains?"

	"That was their purpose," conceded Yarbridge. "They know something of radio but haven't got as far as frequency modulation, let alone stereoscopic T.V. and suchlike stuff. They're just emerging from the spark-signal stage."

	"How much did you tell them?"

	"A fat lot. I can't hand out in one day what took me about three years to acquire."

	"Don't tell 'em anything," Deacon ordered, making it sound authoritative. "Feed them a lot of useless guff instead. That's what I did. I was sitting with a ton of food in the loneliest part of Northern Territory when one of their little boats picked me up. I'd been prospecting in happy ignorance of what was happening elsewhere. I'd found a dollop of slaty flakes in a river bed and knew I'd struck osmiridium. Think I told them all that? Not on your life! I misled them up the garden path. You do the same if you want peace!"

	"It's not so easy for us," put in Joe. "We can't kid them our drills bring up lots of little brass Buddhas."

	"Say you go round poking for fresh water. Make it sound scientific and say you plant a drill wherever a hazel twig jerks around. That'll get them playing with bits of stick."

	"You don't credit them with much intelligence, do you?" inquired Holland.

	"Do you?" Deacon countered aggressively. 

	"Certainly."

	"You would!" said Deacon, beginning to dislike Holland and not hesitating to show it. He glanced around the hut, found moral support in many faces. "I bet you think them a good deal sharper than what is left of your own kind?"

	"Not necessarily."

	"Backing out, eh?"

	"Not at all. I say I don't think them dopey."

	"Meaning you think we are dopey?"

	"When you consider the present state of affairs there is much to be said for that theory," said Holland. "But I don't agree with it. Not just yet."

	"Not here, you don't," observed Deacon, pointedly. "On that ship it may be different. Perhaps you change your mind to suit the company you keep. How much have you been telling them of what you know? "

	"As much as can be told in a few hours."

	"A Kahsam!" pronounced Deacon, gaining color.

	Low murmurs sounded around the hut. Men fidgeted, rubbed their knuckles, eyed Holland with antagonism; all but the one who resembled an Eskimo and didn't know a word of English.

	Holland began, " Not knowing what a Kahsam is supposed to be, I—"

	"I'll tell you." Deacon stood up, walked heavily to the other's bedside. "First wise-boy they took on board was a bleary little goat named Kahsam, a professor of languages from some snoot college. He spent a fortnight teaching them English and was tickled to bits because they learned so fast. He was overjoyed to help those who'd filled his college with corpses."

	"Did he know that at the time?"

	"Shut up and listen, will you? He did his stuff for two weeks and thought himself mighty cute. When they'd finished with him they dumped him in one of the most comfortable apartments in town, gave him a food priority certificate."

	"That was nice," said Holland, lying back and surveying the other's angry features.

	"First chance that came along we pulled him to pieces," informed Deacon, displaying savage satisfaction. "His playmates haven't missed him yet." Licking thick lips, he added with sinister meaning, "Since then we've got a name for any guy who willingly and persistently collaborates with the enemy. He's a Kahsam. A traitor to his kind is a Kahsam. Sooner or later he goes the same way."

	"I wouldn't care for that," admitted Holland, rubbing his freckles and grinning upward.

	Irritated further by this airiness, Deacon went on, "I invited you and your bunch in here so as to keep other types out. That means I've a duty to warn you when you're sticking out your necks. You've an equal duty to take notice and not try us too far." He paused a moment, added, "Because what I've said isn't just talk!"

	With that he returned to his bed-space, lay down and scowled at the roof. Other men studied him in silence, now and again frowned at the culprit. The Eskimo gazed steadily at nothing while Wilkin blinked at him through thick glasses and the four drillers proceeded to deal a worn and filthy pack of cards.

-

	After a while Holland sighed introspectively, went out for a breath of night air and a look at the stars. A minute later Yarbridge joined him.

	"That Deacon is a natural ringleader," whispered the radio operator.

	"I know."

	"He's a decent enough guy providing you don't offend his sense of what's right."

	"True, brother, true."

	"Then why try making an enemy of him?"

	"I need enemies."

	"Jumping jiminy!" said Yarbridge, low-voiced. "We're in enough of a mess without stirring up more."

	"Worry not nor weep tears of dire despair," advised Holland, patting him on the back. "I am the Kahsam, not you."

	"It's nothing to joke about," Yarbridge insisted, looking serious. "These survivors are jumpier than a flea in a hot oven and they can't be blamed for it. They've seen, heard and felt things that we avoided while on the Moon. They are pinned down here with too little to do and they can't escape because a man must eat while on the run."

	"I am not lacking in imagination," Holland reminded.

	"Then why don't you use some of it? If you insist on flaunting treachery in their faces, you're liable to beat it to the ship six yards ahead of a lynching party."

	"You must have precognition," said Holland, patting him again. "Such a fate is my purpose, my desired aim."

	Staring at him in the starlight, Yarbridge muttered, "I'll keep you out of trouble whether you like it or not."

	"How?"

	"First time you're not around I'll warn them that you're going off your nut."

-

	The warning was effective for a time. He went to the ship every morning, returned to the hut each evening and was met with uneasy suspicion rather than open hostility. Their ready acceptance of Yarbridge's diagnosis was natural in the strange circumstances for not a day passed without some man running amuck in the nearby town or some woman creating an hysterical scene as overtaxed nerves finally snapped. It was understood by everyone that at any time a man or woman might prove unable to take it, be calm today, completely crazy tomorrow.

	Thus the mental conditioning born of the situation impelled them to treat him much as one would a prospective lunatic and it was ten days before they found cause to revert to their original attitude. He entered the hut at dusk, sat on the end of his bed, spoke to Yarbridge.

	"I won't be here tomorrow."

	"How's that?"

	"They're flying me south."

	"Only you? Not the rest of us?"

	"Only me. I'm going down in one of their little lifeboats. They want samples of hot-stuff to take back to their own world."

	Erupting from his bed-space, Deacon loudly demanded, "Are you helping them get it?"

	"Of course. It's buried deep in an abandoned plant covering six square miles. They don't even know what to look for—so how can they dig it out without help?"

	"So much the better," said Deacon. "Left to themselves they'd never find it or recognize it when it was right in their rubbery mitts. But you have to open your dirty big trap!"

	Somewhat mordantly, Wilkin chipped in, "We've got to look at things as they are rather than as we'd like them to be. I don't see how we can get by without playing ball even if we play no more than we can help."

	"You wouldn't see," growled Deacon. "You're old and already half-dead behind those weak eyes." He put big fists on big hips. "Let me tell you something, mister: that virus can't live without food any more than we can. I got that straight from the rubber boys who invented the stuff. Twenty hours without chlorophyll kills it stone dead. Know what that means?"

	Staring stonily forward, Wilkin did not reply.

	"It means that this world has been virus-free for weeks, maybe some of it for months. If birds hadn't carted it around, it might have been free before then. The virus has eaten itself out of existence. Untouched seeds are coming up. North of the town are skeletal trees already forcing out new buds and leaves. There are acres of tiny shoots that will become badly thinned-out corn. When those lousy invaders beat it we shall be able to cope for keeps providing we can last out on canned stuff the first couple of months."

	"They know we can cope," Wilkin answered dully. " Mordan said so."

	"What else did he say?"

	"They'd leave us in cold storage, be gone two and a half years and come back in great strength with many ships. By that time we should have far more food growing around than sixty thousand can eat—and if we want to keep it we'd better have the bands out and the flags flying for them."

	"I'd as soon kiss a flock of crocodiles."

	"What alternative do you suggest?" invited Holland.

	"Not the one you've chosen," snapped Deacon, his complexion darkening. "I'll be a Kahsam for nobody."

	"I'm with you there," declared Hank, standing up and scowling at Holland.

	"Me, too," supported Joe. "Knuckling down can go too far. When a guy hands over atomic power for the asking, I reckon—"

-

	Yarbridge shot to his feet and flapped pudgy hands. "Quit snapping and snarling. What do you bums know of atomics? "

	"Not much," said Deacon. He jerked a heavy thumb in the general direction of the ship. "But it's more than those stinkers have any right to know. It's enough to tell me that atomic power is a gift too big for those we don't love."

	"You said it!" endorsed a dozen voices emphatically.

	"Furthermore," continued Deacon, encouraged without needing it, "you're a radio guy, not a nuclear specialist. So what do you know about it?"

	"The stuff is dangerous to handle. It has to be moved with tongs half the length of a flagpole or, better still, by remote control. What will it do to that crowd if in their innocence they start playing with it like sand?"

	Taken aback, Deacon eyed him uncertainly. "You think the radiations will burn them to crisps?"

	"I don't know for sure." Yarbridge gestured toward Holland, who was reposing carelessly on his bed and listening with academic interest. "But he does! And on the Moon he made a remark I haven't forgotten. He said that when you're without any other means of resistance you can take advantage of your opponent's ignorance."

	"So that's the idea!" Deacon stewed it a moment, said to Holland. "Why didn't you tell us instead of lolling around and watching us go on the boil?"

	"Because it is not the idea," Holland informed. "They know that radiation is highly lethal and that the stuff must be handled with extreme care. I told them."

	"You did?" Deacon seemed unable to believe his ears. Eventually he hoarsed, "There you are, men, a Kahsam!"

	"He's kidding us," suggested Yarbridge, bewildered and reproachful.

	"I told them," repeated Holland, irritatingly matter of fact. Putting feet on the floor he braced himself. "They took a steel safe out of one of the town's banks this morning and have lugged it on board as a suitable cupboard for samples."

	"That's right," endorsed a gaunt, blue-jowled man at the other end of the hut. "I saw them carting it away and wondered—"

	"They're not having it all their own way," asserted Deacon, veins swelling in his neck. "Without this dirty Kahsam they'll be stumped!"

	So saying, he made a mad-bull rush for the traitor's bed-space. A dozen others jumped with him. Anticipating this, Holland had come to his feet, ready and prepared even while looking casual. Now he leaped the Eskimo, bed and all, shot through the door into outer darkness. He ran for the ship, moving in long, lithe strides that heavier men would find hard to overtake.

	Behind him occurred the precise sort of delay for which he had hoped. Fury is impetuous, possessed of no time or inclination for thought; therefore the enraged dozen attempted the impossible by trying to get through the door in a solid bunch. They jammed together, cursing vividly, until Deacon, Hank and a couple of others tore themselves free by main force and raced after the fugitive. Forty or fifty from neighboring huts emerged and joined the chase on general principles.

	It was most of a mile to the space vessel and Holland made it two hundred yards ahead of a skinny but whipcord-muscled pursuer who had shown a surprising turn of speed. A bright light bloomed above the ship's lowered ramp as an alien guard detected the oncoming rush of feet. Holland ran up the ramp and through the open lock unopposed by the guard. Two more guards appeared, motioned him farther inward before they joined the third at the lock.

	The one who had switched the light bawled, "Hold it!" About to mount the ramp, the skinny runner paused, glanced behind in search of support, glowered up at the guard. The rest of the pack arrived, milled around and oathed while each waited for someone to bell the cat.

	"Go away," ordered the guard.

	Deacon planted a big boot on the ramp, told him, "We want that louse you've just taken aboard."

	"What've you got against lice?" called a voice from the back. "He's a stinking Kahsam!"

	"Go away," repeated the guard, not interested in reasons or causes.

	For a moment it seemed as if Deacon were about to take the lead and thus precipitate the general rush, but he thought better of it when the guard produced a high-pressure hand-spray. His companions continued to fidget around murmuring oaths and threats.

	His eyes gleaming as he scowled up toward the ship's light, Deacon said to the guard, "All right, you can keep the dirty scut and welcome. And we mean keep him for good!"

	"Go away," repeated the guard, impassively.

-

	They went slowly and defiantly, balked of their prey and voicing their disappointment with lavish use of adjectives. Standing behind an observation port, Holland watched them depart, then spoke to Drhan and Ygath at his side.

	"They're in an ugly mood. It is hard for people to be coldly realistic after many highly emotional experiences."

	"I suppose so," commented Drhan. He scratched a large ear with a flexible finger. "It is well that you have kept telling us of rising danger to yourself and that we held the lock open as you requested."

	"We could have foreseen it without being told," remarked Ygath, "had we known the importance of this atomic power."

	"Naturally they don't like us taking the biggest thing they've got," agreed Drhan. "I might feel the same way myself if the Shadids grabbed our best biological weapons." He glanced at Holland, went on, "Therefore we're so much the more indebted to one mentally capable of looking facts in the face. And that in turn creates a minor problem."

	"Meaning me?" Holland asked.

	"Yes. We cannot take you with us. We dare not leave you here, especially since we want your services when we return."

	Ygath suggested, "We can establish him with adequate food supplies either on the other side of this world or upon the satellite. He would be beyond reach of petty vengeance and should be safe enough until we return. Then he'll have our protection."

	"Don't let it bother you," said Holland. "You can dump me here."

	"What, after that scene outside?"

	"I know my own kind. You're departing in two days' time. By then they'll have simmered down."

	"Are you certain?"

	"I'm fairly sure. They aren't without logic. They will realize that what has been done can't be undone. A few may argue that perhaps it's all for the best. The others will be soothed by your going even though you're coming back. Probably they'll get busy trying to plot a hot reception for you."

	"Which will be more than futile," Drhan assured.

	"I know it," agreed Holland.

	They eyed him, seeking a double meaning, found his features showing the confidence of one who knows himself to be on the winning side. It pleased them even though deep in their hearts each had a mite of sympathy for Deacon.

	Nobody likes a traitor, not even those who use him.

-

	Mid-morning two days later a repeated thrum of propulsors drew the attention of those in the camp and the nearest outskirts of the town. Assembling, they watched in sour silence while several lifeboats zoomed back to the mother-ship and were taken on board. The large vessel then belly-slid through sandy soil, flared and roared, made a bound, finished at an upward tilt on the side of a small hill four miles farther away. Its tubes ceased their bellowing.

	"Must be making ready to beat it," remarked Hank.

	"Can't be too soon for me," said Joe.

	"Wonder what's happened to Holland," Yarbridge ventured. He shifted restlessly, expecting vituperative reproof for mentioning the name. "Somehow I don't think he'll go with them."

	"They'll dump him some place else," suggested a burly, red-haired man. "The devil looks after his own."

	"I'd like to find him where he's planted," topped another, lending it menace.

	Several voices supported that. They continued to observe the vessel now made too small by distance for them to discern individual activity around it. Nobody had binoculars; in bygone weeks that now seemed aeons all such instruments had been confiscated for the use of armies now dead and gone.

	After most of an hour somebody reported, "One of them is coming this way. Maybe he wants to shake hands all round. No hard feelings and all that. It was just in fun. Rubber Boy loves Homer Sap."

	Shading his eyes with a hairy hand, Deacon stared lengthily. "It isn't one of them. It's the Kahsam, no less!"

	"He wouldn't dare," said the redhead incredulously.

	"He would and he is," Deacon asserted. Again he studied the distant figure tramping steadily toward them. "And I can guess why."

	"Why?" invited the other.

	"Bet you he's bringing a message from his lords and masters telling us what they'll do to us if we touch one hair of his precious head."

	"I'll take my chance on that," declared the redhead. He examined a clenched fist. It was big and raw-boned.

	"Lay off him, Lindsay," Deacon ordered. He cast a warning frown at all within hearing. "That goes for the rest of you, too. If the rubber boys are taking it skyward, we can well afford to wait until they're out of sight." His authoritative gaze went over each surly face. "Then we'll have him all to our little selves and what the eye doesn't see the heart won't grieve over!"

	"Yes, that makes sense," Lindsay admitted with reluctance. Shoving hands in pockets, he controlled his emotions.

	Following this cue, the others forced themselves to cool down. Presently Holland arrived at rapid pace, stopped a few yards from the mob and immediately in front of Deacon.

	"They're waiting for the last lifeboat," he informed. "When they've got it aboard they're going home."

	Nobody made remark. They stood together, hard-eyed, content to bide their time.

	Licking his lips, Holland went on, "All right, if that's the way you feel."

	He moved forward. "Me, I'm not going to stand when I can sit."

	"You'll neither stand nor sit pretty soon," screamed a nerve-strained voice at the back.

	"Shut up!" roared Deacon, glaring over the heads of the front ranks. He threw a meaningful glance toward the alien ship, pretended to consult the watch he didn't possess.

	They got it. Opening a path to permit Holland to pass, they closed in behind him, escorted him to the hut. Fifty crowded him. Three or four hundred massed outside the door. One man held a needle-sharp fishing spear made from a prong of a garden fork. Another carried a length of nylon cord scorched at both ends.

	Squatting on the end of his bed, Holland wearily rubbed his freckles, favored Yarbridge with a tired grin and said, "I suppose all these gloomy looking gumps resent me shoveling hot-stuff aboard by the ton?"

	"Well, haven't you?" inquired Yarbridge, hopefully.

	"I gave them enough."

	"One ounce is too much!" harshed Deacon, chipping in.

	"What can you do with a mere ounce?" Holland asked.

	"Close your gab!" advised Lindsay, scowling at him.

	"Or use it to say prayers," suggested another.

	A man outside called through the door, "The lifeboat's just come back. It won't be long now!"

	Everyone stared the same way: at Holland.

	He said to nobody in particular, "Naturally they wanted the whole works, blueprints, formulae, extraction techniques, samples of thorium, radium, uranium, plutonium, neptunium, the entire shebang. They wanted sufficient to enable them to set up in business way back home. I couldn't give it all—the stuff wasn't there."

	"But you gave all you could?" invited Deacon.

	"Yes, Beefy, I did. I gave them precisely enough. They will stash it in the safe and—"

-

	A light of near-blinding brilliance flashed through the west-side windows. Beyond the door a man howled like a hungry wolf. Then the ground shuddered. The hut gave four violent jerks, a sidewall cracked and let more light pour in. There was no sound other than that of witnesses outside.

	The bunch at the door ran west with one accord. Several in the hut chased after them. Deacon stood up, his heavy features mystified.

	"In the name of glory, what was that?"

	"I told you," said Holland. "I gave them enough."

	Making up his mind, Deacon rushed out, looked westward. The others pressed behind, gazed at an immense gout of vapor rising more than four miles away. It was monstrous, frightening despite its familiarity. Nothing could be seen of the alien ship. Swiveling on one heel, Deacon said in stifled tones, "That was your sweet trick."

	"I needed hate here to establish trust and confidence there," explained Holland. "I got it—and it worked."

	Turning his back upon him, Deacon bent down with elbows resting on knees. "You know what to do."

	Holland surveyed the proffered rear end. "Great as the temptation may be, I resist it. Not because I forgive you. I think we can arrange a wallop more effective."

	Coming up quickly, Deacon eyed him suspiciously. "Such as what?"

	"According to statistics they had on that ship," Holland continued, ignoring the question, "humanity clung to a basic convention even in its death throes, namely, women and children first. Result: we survivors number more females than males."

	"That's right," a voice endorsed. "About five to three."

	"If we double our number every thirty years, we'll be a formidable swarm before one thousand, let alone two thousand. And we aren't starting from trees and caves. We're starting with salvable parts of civilization and we still have the know-how." He jerked an indicative thumb toward the town. "Ten to one that somewhere in there are a couple of nuclear physicists and umpteen other experts who've been making like bricklayers while nosy aliens were around." He paused thoughtfully, finished, "And between the lot of us we must have learned some useful things about that ship. The next one just won't get this far. It will regret the attempt."

	"So did that one!" bawled a voice.

	It was like the snapping of a tense cord and brought a roar of triumphant cheers.

	When the noise had died down, Holland said, "Large families will help. So when we get around to lawmaking "—he studied Deacon, walked round him a couple of times looking him up and down as if inspecting a prime hunk of beef—"we'll have to make bachelordom illegal."

	Deacon flushed and let out an agonized yelp of, "Hey, you can't do that to me!"

	"We can," assured Holland amid surrounding laughter. "And what's more, we shall!"

	He was wrong there. Ten days before such a law was passed a buxom widow put the bee on Deacon.

The End