Thou Good and Faithful by K. Houston Brunner

The big ship eased leisurely out of hyperspace, solidified into reality, and settled with a few prim puffs from its steering jets into an orbit around the planet.

"There it is, captain," said Deeley with pardonable pride.

The captain nodded, pipe clenched between his teeth, and said, "I wonder what we'll find here."

In seventy years of wandering he had grown to expect the unexpected.

Around him in the big cabin that tradition insisted on calling the bridge the four senior officers under his command sat at their control desks, from which each co-ordinated the information provided by his particular department. Officially, Deeley's title was Nav; Spinelli's, Engines; Engelhart, Personnel; Adhem, Biological, and Keston, Observation. In practice, these names were pretty elastic.

The planet filled nearly half of the direct viewport with blue-green radiance, dimmed in patches by the presence of two atmosphereless moons which lay like dark stones in a shallow shining pool. Beyond it hung the curtain of ten million stars - a mass of dusky gold, the very center of the galaxy.

It didn't yet seem right that there should be stars packed so thick in any planet's sky.

The captain's name was Chang - a good terrestrial name - but he had been raised on New Earth, Alpha Centauri IV, way out towards the rim of the galaxy, where the stars were no more than occasional flecks of gold in the dark velvet of the sky. Here in the neighborhood of the Hub it was different. Here it was the black that pitted the bright.

The world below looked to be a good world, though it was maybe twice as old as Earth. This was an older part of the universe. There were a few brilliant clouds in its atmosphere, and there were wide seas, but not so wide as Earth's, being less than half the surface of the planet. And chlorophyll green shone bright on the spectroscopes.

There were no deserts and no ice-packs.

Behind him, Keston of Observation cleared his throat and said, "Captain, here's the data on the planet."

"Let's have," said Chang.

"Density, mass and surface grav are so close to Earth normal we can't differentiate them. Air's a little thin - about thirteen point six pounds at sea level, I guess - and high on CO and low on oxygen, but only about a per cent each way. Plenty of water vapor - in short, breathable. Forty-five per cent of the surface is ocean. Has a twenty-nine-hour day and about an eleven-month year. It's an older world than Earth, and the pull of the moons and the sun have respectively lengthened the day and shortened the year."

Chang nodded, said, "Is that all?"

"Just about. We haven't made out any evidence of habitation yet, but that'll come if it exists. There's a lot of vegetation-chlorophyll vegetation - both in and out of the sea."

Chang took his pipe out of his mouth and blew smoke. He said, "Good. Tell me if you get anything else, will you."

"Right, sir."

He sucked on his pipe ruminatively, relaxing in his chair before the viewport. A planet matching Earth this close was a find in a million, literally, for an oxygen-high atmosphere was the second most unstable of all possible atmospheres and rarely survived, whereas chlorine-high, hydrogen-high and methane-high were all too common. It could mean retirement and ease for them when the colonists came. They could ask their own price for an acre of ground.

Assuming it was uninhabited and theirs by right of prior discovery, that was, and he felt it might be. This close to the Hub, where the ships that had been so far might be numbered on your fingers, a previous discovery was unlikely, and as for indigenous races, oxygen reactions seemed to build unstable life forms which died quickly. A world twice as old as Earth might once have been inhabited....

But he was basing his judgments on data gathered far away. Too far away. Here, everything might very well be new.

From behind him, Keston said: "Sir, Sandiman thinks he's found signs of habitation on the inner moon."

"Indigenous or planted?" said Chang.

"Can't tell, sir, but I'd advise investigation."

"We'll take a look at it, then," said Chang with decision. "Engines!"

"Sir?" said a quiet voice with a lilting Romance accent. Spinelli had inherited that from an ancestor more than half a millennium ago, back in the days before the races merged.

"Shift us over to the nearer moon," said Chang.

"Sir," said Spinelli.

The viewport changed. For an instant there was the golden glory of stars. Then the barren, airless, pitted face of the inner moon began to show clearly, lit by the reflected light of its primary, and at last hung steady, almost filling the viewport, while they played off its attraction against an antigrav beam. Chang looking it over, said, "Keston, have someone put a 'scope on this port, will you?"

The image blanked for a second before a small section of it reappeared, fantastically bloated, as if it were scant yards away instead of two hundred miles. Keston volunteered, "Sandiman reported something in the crater with its ringwall in three sections - see it?"

"I see," nodded Chang.

Deeley had got up from his chair and come over to stand behind him. Shortly, he uttered a muffled exclamation and said, "Sir, what's that hut?"

Chang permitted himself a slight smile. "It's rather more than a hut," he said. "From the way it shows up you could put this ship inside it and have room to spare. Looks to me like the top dome - supply lock, maybe - of a pressurized city."

Deeley said, with the disappointment in his voice partly masked by his interest in contacting a new culture, "Then that means a non-indigenous race, doesn't it?"

"Looks like it," nodded Chang, leaning closer to the port. He said in a curious tone, "Keston, have the magnification stepped up, and tell me what's odd about that dome."

The picture again swelled enormously, and Keston said, with more than a hint of relief in his voice, "Locks are open, sir, inner and outer, and there are a number of meteor rents in the roof."

"I thought it looked odd. That means we needn't expect much trouble from that quarter. Is it the only one on the moon?"

After a pause, "Yes, sir," reported Keston. "And we haven't found any signs of habitation on the planet, either. Hardesty thinks he's found a city site, but it's so overgrown it equally well could be a natural formation. No sign of cities or even roads."

"Good," grunted Chang. "Spinelli, put us down within shouting distance of that dome, will you?"

"Right, sir," Spinelli answered.

His viewport blanked for a moment as they took the 'scope off it, and then relit to show the distant moon rising rapidly to meet them. At this range he could quite easily make out the dome with his naked eye.

Then the crater with the triply split wall filled the port, and the big ship settled with hardly a jolt on a level surface fused and scarred by the hot jets of rockets landing and taking off.

The image in the port stilled, and was that of the ringwall outlined against the stars.

A searchlight sprang up, began a methodical sweep across the floor of the crater, and they waited with interest for what it might show.

After a while, Keston said, "Sir, we've picked up a rocket in the shadow of the far ringwall. I have it on my screen."

Chang got up and came across the bridge to survey the harsh black and white image in front of Keston. The rocket was a small one, perhaps even an individual job, and its hull shone unblinkingly in the glare of the searchlight.

"Locks wide, you notice," commented Chang after a while. "Looks like it got left behind when they quit. Put the building on the screen, will you?"

The screen flickered and then went blank except for the jagged line of the ringwall silhouetted against the stars. It was a matter of two or three seconds before the searchlight swept around and showed a tall building, tall with the fantastic flying tallness of low gravity, that looked like the main hall at Grand Central Spaceport made aesthetically acceptable. You could have put the ship inside it with no trouble at all.

Chang studied it with considerable interest. It was plainly the work of a race versed in architecture, for it was superbly designed to waste no more than necessary on resisting gravity, yet to maintain an atmosphere at fourteen pounds to the square inch without risk.

But it was open and deserted.

They stood looking at it in silence, except for the very quiet humming of the generators and the creak-crack of the hull that was the ship talking to itself. Finally Chang straightened with a grunt.

"Engelhart!"

"Sir?"

"Are your men standing to battle stations?"

"Of course, sir," said Engelhart with injured dignity.

"They needn't. There won't be a reception committee. But detail me a couple of men to come on over and take a gander at this place before we go downstairs, will you? You can come yourself if you like."

"Glad to, sir," said Engelhart. "What do I tell the men we've got?"

"Looks like a plum cake, but tell them not to count their chickens. Say we've struck an Earth-type world which looks like it's uninhabited, but emphasize that bit about the looking."

"Good enough, sir. When do we start?"

"As soon as you're ready," said Chang. He knocked out his pipe and went towards the door, paused before going out to look at the scene in the viewport. So many stars, and no knowing what you'd find among them.

He went down to Medical and submitted to having his semicircular canals numbed to prevent nausea and his heart slowed to avoid wasting energy. Then two orderlies helped him into his bulky spacesuit, and he shuffled awkwardly out of the hospital section into the anteroom of the personnel lock.

There was only moon gravity here - about one-tenth g - and he flexed his arms and legs a few times and checked his equipment. Before he finished Engelhart joined him, face keen and sharp behind his transparent mask. He nodded, clicked on his microphone and said, "Can you hear me, sir?"

"Loud and clear. Who've you picked to come with us?"

"Trooper Anson, sir. He'll be here in a moment." He checked his oxygen supply with practiced efficiency, turned his torch on and off a few times, and stamped to make sure his joints were working freely.

Then Trooper Anson joined them, and they moved cautiously into the lock and waited while the big doors behind them slid shut. Before the others opened, a voice crackled in their phones.

"Keston here, sir. We're keeping our 'scopes on you just in case, but I don't expect you'll find trouble. We found one hole in the top of the building twenty feet across."

Chang said, "Right. Stand by to open locks. Ready?"

"Ready."

They turned on their magnetic soles for the brief instant in which the air in the lock whooshed out into free space with a thin scream, and then they moved forward to the top of the ramp beyond and stood staring at a monument to a vanished race.

The stars filled the sky so brightly that they had to shade their eyes to see it in the dim glow of the searchlight - a vast and empty, and enigmatic, building.

Chang said slowly, "That's a lovely piece of design, Engelhart."

Engelhart nodded behind his faceplate. "They never knocked that up on their first trip. I'd lay good money on there being a city under here. I wonder why they abandoned it."

Chang shrugged. "We'll find out later - perhaps. Shall we move?"

They went down the metal ramp to the scorched rock at its foot, snapped off their magnetic soles and began to bound in twenty-foot leaps across the short mile that separated them from the building.

For a while there was no noise except star static and the irregular thud after each jump as they landed with enough force to disturb the microphones, and they braked gradually to a halt a few yards from the open end of the building.

They stood surveying it. After a pause, Chang said, "Anson!"

"Sir?"

"Shine your torch inside, will you?"

A few seconds later a puddle of dazzling light a few inches in diameter sprang up on the ground before them and leaped into the cavernous hollow, widening as it did so. It showed nothing.

Chang said, "Switch it off," and took the shade away from his faceplate.

After a while he could make out a little of the interior by the starlight that filtered through a dozen gashes in the vaulting roof. The main floor of the hall was smooth and level, but stacked at the sides were crates, their metal bright and untarnished in the airlessness, and a small vehicle stood parked against one wall.

Far at the back he could dimly discern something like an elevator shaft leading down into the crust of the moon - presumably the city of which this was the outward and visible sign.

He said, "Keston, still watching us?"

"Of course, sir," Keston answered from the ship.

"We're going inside. Your 'scopes'll lose us and I imagine radar will, too. These walls are metal. I'll have Anson stay here, though, and we'll relay messages through him. Got that?"

"Right, sir," said Keston.

Anson had already taken his orders and moved off to one side. He was unfolding the chair attachment of his suit as Chang and Engelhart took their first cautious steps into the building, their torches shedding small circles of light that dimmed to nothing a hundred feet away.

The floor, Chang noted, was metal, smooth and unmarked save for a few bright scratches. He heard a thud then, both through his earphones and by bone-conduction from the floor. He turned in astonishment to see Engelhart making determined but fruitless efforts to lift his feet from the floor.

Engelhart cut short his startled exclamation. He said in a queer voice, "I just switched on my magnets to see if the floor was magnetic, sir. Take a look at it, will you?"

Chang nodded and bent down, examining it. It was cobalt blue and magnetic, and the durasteel knife built into his right glove blunted its tip against it. He looked up and said in an awed voice, "That's durasteel, Engelhart."

"Yes, sir. I thought so. And any race that can afford to throw it around like this has my respect."

Chang got up slowly. "Mine too, Engelhart," he said. "This place just couldn't be duplicated by man. Why, any single planet wouldn't have enough durasteel to floor it. They got a long way ahead of us, then. I wonder why they went."

Engelhart shrugged, and they went over to inspect the crates piled up at the side, but they were empty, or contained no more than the flotsam left by a swiftly ebbing tide of civilization - so much so, that one would have sworn the users of the hammers and drill atop the open crates had just put them down and would be back in a moment. The small vehicle afforded no clues. It was apparently self-propelled, but there was no visible power source, unless it absorbed induced electricity from the floor, or broadcast energy; the controls, which might have helped them to picture the creature who used them, had been pared down to a single rod bearing a simple press-button on the tip that served for both steering and start-stop gear, and there was no rest or seat.

Chang grunted, said, "That tells us a lot!"

Engelhart said, "Sir, I think if there is anything to be found here at all, it'll be in the city beneath, and that may call for a full-scale investigation. Chances are it'd be simpler to study the planet itself. If they've had space travel and lost it, even if they haven't died off altogether, they won't present any serious problem."

"Agreed. But we'd best have a look at the entry to the city beneath at least before we move on." Chang swept his torch-beam around and froze suddenly, his free hand groping wildly for the blaster at his side. Engelhart caught his muttered exclamation, followed his eye and almost cried out in horror.

Then Chang relaxed, chuckling. "Phew, that gave me a fright! I thought for a moment we'd run across an alien, but it's only a robot. I wonder how long it's been here."

Engelhart wiped his forehead a little shakily against the absorbent lining of his helmet, and said with heartfelt relief, "Let's go take a look at it, sir."

Together they leaped across the intervening forty-odd yards and halted to survey the immobile robot. It was not purely uniform, but like many human-built servitors a rough imitation of its creators. It was about nine feet tall and faintly anthropoid in that it had a head, topping a cylindrical body, but it had six limbs - two legs, four arms ending in delicate plierlike devices with cutting, shaping and gripping appliances. Two lenses in the front of its head, set close together, shone dully in the light of their torches.

"Will you want this taken back to the ship?" Engelhart asked.

"No, that can wait. It's been here space knows how long already. It won't run away, and another few days waiting won't hurt it. There are more urgent things to do."

With a lingering backward glance at the motionless machine, Engelhart turned to follow the captain into the back of the hall, towards the downward-leading shafts. They also had locks, as a precaution against meteor-damage to the outer section, but at both ends they were fully open, and there was no air below.

Chang shuddered slightly as he looked down five hundred feet into their black depths. He said, "I wouldn't have liked to be down there when the first meteor hit."

Engelhart said, "I don't think there was anyone there then, sir. It looks to me as if they simply checked out in a big hurry - they wouldn't have left the outer locks open otherwise."

"That's a point," agreed Chang. "So there wouldn't be much below even if we did try to climb in. I think you were right about the advisability of moving downstairs right away. Let's go."

Engelhart was shining his torch down the shaft without result. He said, "I notice they did economize on the durasteel as far as lining the shaft goes. This floor's only about six inches thick, but even so it's a pretty costly extravagance - "

Chang turned sharply and stared back towards the entrance where Trooper Anson was visible waiting patiently in radio view of the ship.

"What is it, sir?" Engelhart demanded.

Chang gestured with his torch, and the other automatically followed an extension of his line of motion up to the jagged rents in the roof. He said, "See that big gash? How big a meteor do you imagine it would take to make it?"

Engelhart calculated rapidly. "I'd say it couldn't have been less than twenty feet across, which means - eleven, twelve - a mass of maybe a hundred tons."

Chang began to move out across the floor, switching his torch from side to side as he went. He said, "Since when has six inches even of durasteel been able to take a kick like that? Can you see any signs of meteor fragments or splash damage? Ah, here we are. Look - the floor's been rewelded and ground smooth with a high velocity diamond buffer to make it level. And it's just below the biggest meteor strike."

Engelhart, glancing up at the thick-packed stars beyond the shattered roof, said, "That's very strange, sir."

Chang was following the marks of the weld around the floor. He said, half to himself, "Who repaired this floor? And why didn't they fix the roof first to give themselves air to work in?"

"Maybe they used robots for the job," suggested Engelhart. "That would account for the presence of the one we saw."

"Could do," said Chang, straightening up. "But then why didn't they finish the job? What made them stop halfway? And will it do the same to us? Out of here, Engelhart! Jump!"

Three quarters of an hour later he stood gazing from the viewport in the nose of the ship while they lifted away from the moon and began the leisurely topple into an orbit that would brush atmosphere and allow them to settle without any fuss, letting the air do their braking for them.

Behind him Keston said suddenly, "Sir, Hardesty says he just picked up a flicker from astem. It's gone into radar shadow now, but he says it didn't look like a meteor - could have been a ship."

"Big or small?"

"Small, sir. About the size of the rocket we found back on the moon."

"Then it probably was that," said Chang, turning quickly. "Deeley, Spinelli, give us a quick put-down."

"Do you mean really quick or just quick, sir?" asked Spinelli. Deeley's hands leaped for the Nav computer before him.

"Really quick.A bottlestopper. Pick the largest piece of open-wide open - flat ground you can in the time. Engelhart!"

Engelhart said without looking round from his control desk, "Sir?"

"Get the men to battle stations again, just in case." Engelhart nodded, pushed the red knob at the top left of his board. A bell sounded faintly somewhere inship.

"Sir!"

"Yes, Spinelli?"

"Bottlestopper coming up, sir. Well be down in about thirty seconds from - NOW!"

Twenty-nine seconds later the ship, red-hot from her whirlwind swoop through the atmosphere, fired half a square mile of grasslike plants in the approximate middle of a smoothly rolling plain dotted with clumps of trees at intervals of about a mile. Engelhart, whose responsibility it was, ordered out the extinguisher sprays, and when the mist of their operation blew clear of the viewport Chang looked out on a blue sky a little darker than that of his own planet and a sun a little yellower than the one under which he had grown up. But the vegetation was green and waved in the breeze like grass, and faintly on the horizon showed low blue mountains. He said almost absently, "Deeley, this is a splendid world."

"Thank you, sir," said Deeley. He had deduced the existence of it from a distance of ninety light-years and brought them out of hyperspace within half a million miles of it - which was a remarkable piece of navigation - so there was reason for congratulation.

Engelhart said, "What are we supposed to do, sir?"

"Sit around, as usual, Engelhart - what else? We can't be sure it was a ship Hardesty picked up, but if it was and if it was the one we saw on the moon, then it can only be the robot on board."

They digested that in silence.

"In which case we can assume that the inhabitants will pay us a call, and soon. Maybe we were wrong in assuming that because the dome on the moon was broken they'd had space travel and lost it. Maybe it's only temporarily out of commission while robots see to the damage, not completely abandoned."

Keston said dryly, "Then where are the inhabitants hiding, sir?"

Chang shrugged. He said, "This is an old world, Keston. The race inhabiting it could be a whole lot ahead of us. Maybe they don't build cities or roads. Maybe they live in isolated houses and fly everywhere. Keep your men to stations, Engelhart. Adhem!"

"Sir?" said the medical officer.

"While we're waiting, you can run off the usual tests - presence of viruses, bacteria, and injurious ingredients in the air and ground, and so on."

"Right away, sir."

They waited. It was unlikely that there were any natives within quite a few miles, at any rate. They had seen, as they came down, no roads, no cities, no spaceports, and no sign of any smaller artificial construction. True, they had had almost no time to look for them. They had come through one hundred ninety miles of detectable atmosphere in twenty-nine seconds, and even the so-called instantaneous cameras couldn't hold focus at that speed. But this nearly flat and mostly bare plain seemed natural and haphazard enough, without sign of planned layout, and if it was big enough for Spinelli to have picked it out from a hundred thousand miles out -

Adhem's speaker burped and whispered for a moment, and after a few curt comments the medical officer said helplessly, "All right then." He turned to Chang.

"I can give this place a clean bill of health, sir," he said. His voice held a disapproving note.

Chang observed it, commented, "Something's eating you."

"Yes, sir. There is not one single bacterium, virus or subvirus in any of the air, soil or vegetation samples we took. There is no sign of any poison, either, but that doesn't worry us. But it isn't natural for there to be no bacterial"

"Perhaps it isn't natural," said Chang equably. "After all, the only bacteria aboard this ship are the ones we use to digest our food, but that isn't natural. We saw to it ourselves."

"But you couldn't do that to a whole world - I"

"Why not? I'd believe a lot of a race that can afford to floor the supply lock of a complete city with durasteel. Either way, what does it matter? Engelhart!"

"Sir?"

"I want a thorough survey of the immediate neighborhood from as low as your boys can go without getting into trouble. Say within a radius of a hundred miles. That's your pigeon. Use helis, and screen them well. Deeley, I also want a full photographic record with wide-angle and instantaneous cameras and full color stereo prints of the entire surface of the planet - land and water - from high level. You can have two of the lifeboats for that. And I want results quicker than jump. Engelhart - one more thing: Tell your boys to pay special attention to anything that could be a sign of habitation and report it as soon as found."

"Right, sir," said Engelhart, and he and Deeley turned to their control desks, whispering orders into hanging microphones.

Chang turned to Adhem, said, "Is this planet safe?"

"One hundred per cent, sir - and no reservations."

"Right. Have the verandah extended, will you? Let's go outside."

They stood leaning over the rail of the "captain's verandah," a platform extending outside the bridge halfway up the nose of the ship and thus about forty feet from the ground. Blue sky shone over them and the warmth of the sun refreshed them.

After a while Deeley and Engelhart joined them from inship, and they watched the survey helicopters purr out from their lock like a flight of gigantic bees, their vanes silver in the sunlight, and vanish from sight as their screens went up. Then with a roar and a clank the two lifeboats detailed for Deeley's planetary mapping job kicked a couple of miles into the sky of anti-grav beams from the ship and went heavenwards on a cloud of atomic flame. There was nothing to do but wait, warily.

Inside the ship the crew stood to battle stations. The launchers and the mine throwers and the energy beams and the fluorine spray jets swung evenly in their guides, invisible behind screens that would go down at the first sign of hostility. The radar antennae were out, poking their radiant fingers into the blue sky, and the electron 'scopes moved in continual survey of the neighborhood. There was small chance of them catching the approach of anything even moderately well screened, but there was the possibility that alien-built screens might fail to cover a band of radiation which men used. But the alarm on Keston's lapel speaker remained silent.

Engelhart picked a spot to lean over the rail, said appreciatively, "This could be Earth, couldn't it?"

Chang's pipe smoke rose blue and straight in the still air. He said with interest, "Have you been there, then?"

Engelhart laughed. He said, "Not I, sir. I was bom on Beta Centauri III - Heimwelt, we call it. One of the few worlds to retain a second official language - Old German in our case, as well as Anglic Terrestrial. You been to Earth, sir?"

"No. In fact, I doubt if we have anyone aboard who has, let alone anyone born there. Have we, Deeley?"

Deeley grinned, said self-consciously, "Only myself, sir. I checked."

Chang said, "And I didn't knowl Is this like Earth - really?"

Deeley turned and stared out across the greenness of the plain to the blue bills on the horizon. He said softly, "Not in the slightest. It's Earth as it may have been a thousand years ago, but there hasn't been room for this much peacefulness and beauty on Earth for a good many centuries. That's why I emigrated - to find a chance to be alone."

Chang nodded, his pipe tying a knotted trail of smoke. He said, "It's gotten that way on New Earth, too - where I was born. No place for beauty any more. Too much overcrowding. Too much to do and too little time to do it."

"Uhuh," agreed Keston with a touch of cynicism. "But by the same token, if this world is uninhabited our fortunes'll be made by the spill-over from those same overcrowded planets."

"What a mess that'll make," said Adhem seriously.

The alarm on Keston's lapel purred softly, and the observation officer held the speaker to his mouth. He said, "Keston listening."

"Sandiman here," said the tiny but clear voice. "We've spotted a small animal of some sort on the port side - just about at the edge of the burnt patch."

"Wait a moment," said Keston. He turned to the left of the verandah. The others followed his example, searching for some sign of the creature.

Then they saw it - a small furry beast about the size of a wallaby and somewhat resembling one. It had blind white eyes like tennis balls and long ears cupped forward towards the ship. It was just at the edge of the burning.

Chang pulled a monocle from his pocket and looked it over with care. He said finally, "I wish they'd allow us a regular alien psychologist and semanticist instead of leaving everything to chance."

Adhem laughed under his breath. He said, "The argument they use, sir, is that only one planet in a thousand is inhabited, and of those few races we do find common ground in five cases out of six just doesn't exist. Then we run across a plum like this one and we get the blame if anything goes wrong."

"Hello!" Chang interrupted. "Unless my eyes are playing tricks I don't think that's a specimen of the local intelligence."

"Why, sir?" said Keston. He had produced a monocle of his own now and was also looking at the alien.

"Several things. The most obvious is that the robot we found on the Moon had six limbs and this has four, but that could be for convenience. What I do find interesting is that this one hasn't any hands."

Keston looked at the beast's upper limbs with care. Sure enough, they terminated in flat pads that showed little sign of being able to grip anything, and the possession of gripping appendages was a prime attribute of all known intelligence, whether suckerlike, tentacular, manuform or even magneto-gravitic like the high-density Proximans who had a small colony on Pluto. He said, "You never know, sir."

Chang sighed slightly. He agreed, "You never know. All right, Engelhart, I'll attempt communication. Have everything you've got ready to hit if anything goes wrong. If you have to blast me, tell Deputy Captain Malory to come on watch and lift for space at once. Get me some gloves, somebody, and you'd better let me have a gravitic belt in case they shoot something at me."

Keston whispered into his lapel speaker, and a moment later an orderly came out with a pair of steel-quilted gloves that would stand hydrofluoric for twenty seconds and yet would let the wearer tell a milled coin from a plain one, and a gravitic belt that would stop a high velocity bullet aimed anywhere in head or body from more than a yard away. Chang put them on and began to descend the ladder from the verandah to the ground.

They watched in silence as he began to walk cautiously through the charred vegetation, black powdery ash marking the legs of his trousers. The alien creature did not move, except to swing its big ears from side to side.

Twenty yards from it he stopped, holding his hands well out at the side to show they were empty. The creature seemed to be studying him, listening for something. He could see now that the white, bulging eyes were not blind. Each had a black pupil and each was turned on him. But it did not take fright and run away, and, encouraged, he stepped nearer.

Feet from it, he paused again, and then started slightly as it moved, but its only action was to come up to him as if to sniff him like a dog, and then to rub itself contentedly against his legs.

Hardly the action of an intelligent being, but certainly nothing to get alarmed about. He bent down to pick it up, found it not only amenable but eager, for it jumped on his shoulder and began to play with his ear.

Gently he turned and began to walk towards the ship.

When he came within speaking distance of the verandah, Adhem said, "What is it, sir?"

"Affectionate, but not intelligent," Chang reported. "If they're all like this one, they'd make good pets. Do you want to examine it?"

"Not particularly, sir. Its metabolism should be substantially the same as ours, and until we contact the intelligent aliens I'm inclined to be chary of molesting the local fauna. They might misinterpret it."

"Good enough," said Chang. He put up his hand to help the creature down, but he heard the alarm on Keston's lapel ring again, and waited, looking at the verandah.

After a moment the men on it turned their eyes to the skyline, and he turned and followed their example. A second's horrified indecision, and he dumped the beast unceremoniously and went up the ladder as fast as he could. As he put his foot on the floor the screens went down and the snub nose of a mine-thrower became visible on each side of the verandah. He turned to look.

Less than half a mile away, on top of a slight rise that silhouetted him against the sky, stood a robot exactly similar in all respects but one to the one they had seen on the moon. The single difference was that this one was moving.

He came striding down the slope in the direction of the ship, arms swinging in pairs to counter the motion of his legs, the sun glinting on his polished body. He - not it. He was more like a living thing than Chang had imagined metal could look. At the edge of the burnt patch he paused and surveyed them.

The little creature on the ground below the verandah hesitated a moment, and then, as if in response to an unseen signal, scuttered across the charred "grass" till it reached the robot. It went up his legs and body as if it were scaling a tree and perched on his upper left shoulder - the robot had four arms and therefore four shoulders also - whereupon the latter turned around and began to stride the way it had come.

On the skyline it paused to take one last look at the ship, raised one "hand" as if in salute, and disappeared.

Keston exhaling loudly, said, "A robot with pets, yet!"

Deeley was staring at the place where the robot had been, a look of disbelief on his face. He shook his head slowly.

Chang said, "That makes critical mass! Engelhart, get a heli after that robot and find where, if anywhere, he's going. Make them carry heavy arms and screen them well."

"Right, sir," said Engelhart crisply, going inship. A moment later his voice was heard issuing curt orders.

Chang waited impatiently, drumming on the rail with his fingertips, humming snatches of tunes culled at random from his memory. Shortly, a fast heli pulled away from the ship, its screens blanking it out as soon as it was well clear, following the track left in the thick "grass" by the heavy metal feet of the robot.

"Back to your posts," Chang ordered his officers, and they went inship, sat down at their control desks, relaxed but ready to snap into action at a single word. They waited expectantly.

A quarter hour elapsed before Engelhart's speaker chuckled to itself and he turned to Chang. "Radio from the heli I sent after the robot, sir. The crew report they finally caught up with him - he was running, and making a good hundred ten miles an hour at that - but in spite of their screens, the moment they hove in sight he pulled up and sat down. At the moment he's playing with the animal he was carrying, and it seems he's content to stay put until they leave. They're circling overhead, hoping his patience will wear out first, but they'd appreciate further instructions."

"Tell them to spray a tracer fluid on him and get hull-down over the horizon. Then they can track him without being seen themselves."

Engelhart nodded and relayed the orders into his hanging mike.

Chang turned to look out the viewport. A robot that could run at more than a hundred miles an hour over unmade ground was no common automaton. How could a race that built such machines have degenerated - abandoned its lunar stations and its cities so completely that no traces could be found? And how long ago must it not have perished if it had left so little sign of its presence?

But why had the robots not gone, too, if their creators had gone?

Engelhart said with faint amusement in his voice, "Sir, the crew of the heli did what you suggested and tracked him from below the horizon, but after a while one of them noticed the tracer impulses were getting rather diffuse, so they took a look and found they were tracking a small stream. Looks like the robot washed off the tracer as soon as they were out of sight and is now hell-bent for no one knows where."

"All right," said Chang wearily. "Call 'em back. But next time one of those robots shows itself near the ship, have a heli on his tail at once and follow him if it takes a year to make him move. Got that?"

"Excuse me, sir," said Engelhart. He turned to his speaker, listened to the thin voice that crackled from it. After a while he turned back. "The first survey heli's reported in, sir. I'm having its photos developed at once, and there'll be a map ready in about ten minutes."

"Good work, Engelhart," said Chang. "How about your boys, Deeley?"

"I told them not to break radio silence without reason, sir."

"O.K. That reminds me. Keston, have you anybody monitoring the radio bands?"

"Yes, sir, but we haven't got much so far. There's a little that's definitely static, and some more that could very well be, but shows symptoms of artificiality. They're breaking it in the analyzers now."

"Spoken language?"

"Can't say, sir. I doubt it - though of course some languages sound pretty odd. At a guess, having heard a sample of it, I'd say it was basically mathematical."

Chang nodded slowly four or five times. He said, "Do you mean it's someone reciting mathematical formulae?"

"No, sir. I mean someone who thinks from a mathematical foundation. He or she or it sounds like a digital computer at work. There are two or three like that on different wave lengths. Then there are one or two that seem to be pictorial transmissions. I'll let you know if we crack either of them."

"Good," nodded Chang. "Carry on."

Engelhart said, "Sir, all the survey helis are in now. The map should be ready fairly soon. I told them to spread it out on a table in the mess - it's a sight too big to get in here."

Deeley was suddenly alert and bending over his speaker. He exchanged curt comments with his correspondent and then turned to Chang. He said, "Sir, my number two reports they're being observed by an alien ship."

"Where are they?"

"Galactic north of the planet, over the pole. The alien isn't doing anything but sit and watch. It's a small vessel like the one we found on the moon. They want to know if they should do anything about it and if so what."

Chang said curtly, "Hold it, KestonI"

"Sir?"

"Have you any radio signals coming in from the galactic north that could conceivably not be static or aurora?"

"I'll find out, sir." He whispered into his mike, waited, listening.

On the top of the hull the big d-f frames swung through varying angles, and a tech somewhere in the bowels of the ship set a universal frequency oscillator to searching the wave bands. After a few moments a voice bubbled from the speaker, and Keston reported, "Yes, sir. One pictorial and one of the other sort. But they're both so faint they're probably leakage from a tight beam."

"Where's that beam focused?"

"Can't tell without a thorough search, sir, but it's somewhere south and west of here. At a guess, less than five hundred miles away."

"Engelhart, have a couple of helis out and look for any sign at all of a radio installation - a frame, a loop, an aerial, anything - southwest of here and less than five hundred miles away. They can ignore the area already searched because if it's within that it'll show up on the photographs."

"Yes, sir. One thing further, sir - you asked about signs of the indigenous race."

"That's right," agreed Chang. "Did they find any?"

"None at all, sir. They saw several robots, with or without accompanying animals, and in one place a herd of animals with one robot in attendance. But no other creatures at all."

"All right. Get those helis out. We can investigate that later."

"Right, sir," said Engelhart, pulling his microphone towards him.

"Sir, what shall I tell my men to do about the alien ship?" Deeley wanted to know.

"Carry on with their map work. If the alien shows signs of hostility, get out from under - but fast. At the same time, try and do nothing in a hurry that might be misunderstood. Got that? Who's in command - a reliable man?"

"Sesraphokis, sir. He's no hothead."

"I'm glad to hear it. Keston, watch for the alien ship when it comes down, will you?" Chang turned to look out the viewport again at the green plain beyond.

Engelhart said, "Sir, the map's ready. Shall we go down and have a look at it?"

"That's pretty fast work, Engelhart. Congratulate whoever's responsible. Where's it been set up?"

"Officers' mess, sir."

"Right then, let's go." Chang took a lapel speaker from his own control desk beside the viewport, clipped it to his jacket, and he and Engelhart went down to the mess.

The door opened on a crowd of people: photo technicians moving around the main table with jars of developer and photo retouchers; a few were putting final touches to the alignment of the map; along the far wall a dozen men, the crew of the survey helis, stiffened to attention as the captain entered.

A thin man with contact lenses and rumpled blond hair came up to them, clicked his heels. His hands were stained with developer and he carried a big wire stereo-drying frame. He said, "The map's on the table, sir. I'm Carmody, photo tech first class."

"Were you in charge of this operation?" Chang wanted to know, nodding at the table.

"More or less, sir."

"A fine piece of work. Let's see it."

They pushed through the crowd to the table and surveyed what lay on it. It was a full-color exaggerated stereo reproduction of the country within a hundred miles of the ship. At points on it rested small plastic crosses in bright colors, indicating places of special interest. Carmody handed his drying frame to a junior with instructions to make it and himself scarce, and picked up a pointer.

He said, "Here's the ship, sir. Right in the middle. The north pole of the planet fortunately coincides almost exactly with galactic north - this world is non-Draysonian and its axis remains permanently vertical, so there are no seasons. North is over here, then, where I've hung this arrow. To give you some orientation, here's the place where the helis lost the robot. The stream's too small to show up well on this scale."

Chang watched, nodding as Carmody flicked his pointer from place to place, referring occasionally to a list in his hand, and his dry precise voice explained the various crosses - robot seen here, robot seen there, two more seen somewhere else, a herd of animals with a robot in attendance on the easterly side of the ship, none of them going anywhere in particular. Apparently, as soon as the helis came over the horizon and in spite of them being well screened, the robots stopped going where they were going and waited patiently till the helis moved on. Frustrating.

The alarm on Chang's lapel rang softly, and he said, "Hold on a moment, Carmody. Chang listening. What is it?"

"Keston, sir. You know you told me to watch for the alien ship when it came down?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Can't track it, I'm afraid, sir. It went into radar shadow behind the rim of the world well out of sight of both Deeley's survey ships and all we've got here as well. That means it could have put down anywhere within a million square miles."

"O.K., Keston. Secretive, aren't they? But keep your 'scopes out, and if you see anything go upstairs larger than a firework, track it. If you must, send a lifeboat after it. But don't miss seeing it go down!"

"Right, sir," Keston answered. The lapel speaker went dead, and Chang turned to Carmody. "Go ahead," he invited.

"Well, sir, there's only one more point of interest and that's this." He laid his pointer on a blue cross about ninety miles southwest of the ship at the center of the map. "Fischer!" he said briefly over his shoulder, "get that stereocube from Mitsubishi, will you? If it isn't fixed yet, use a quick dryer on it. We can, make another print later."

"Right, Mr. Carmody," said a photo tech fourth class who was standing nearby.

Carmody turned to Chang again. He said, "This is the nearest approach we've found to a sign of habitation, sir. It could be an ordinary hill, but it's also the only thing that could by any stretch of the imagination be a camouflaged building. Ah, here we are."

The photo tech fourth class came up to them with a big stereo-cube and handed it over. He said, "Mitsubishi did have to use a quick dryer on it, Mr. Carmody, and it'll fade in about ten minutes."

"Good enough," said Carmody, taking it. "Have him make another and fix it." He turned and put the stereocube on the table, and Chang and Engelhart leaned over to examine it.

They saw a reproduction of a steep-sided hill, vaguely square in plan, crowned with a small clump of trees similar to those that dotted the plain around them - luxurious green growths with soft barkless trunks. Carmody said, "You see, sir, it could be a natural formation, but on a world as old as this there aren't many hills as steep as that and certainly they don't stick up out of a flat plain that way."

Chang glanced from the cube to the site of the blue cross on the map and saw that it was indeed sticking up like a wart on smooth skin. He said in a curiously distant voice, "Very interesting, Carmody. Get me a spotlight and a microscope, will you?"

An observant tech standing nearby anticipated Carmody's order and passed the captain one of the pocket-sized twin microscopes used for examining photos that wouldn't take enlargement. At the same time Carmody pulled one of the ceiling lights down and held it over the top of the cube. Chang scrutinized the hill closely.

At last he straightened with a satisfied grunt and held out the microscope to Engelhart. "Take a look at that clump of trees," he suggested. "Tell me what you see there."

Engelhart adjusted the focus of the viewer and bent to examine the cube. A few seconds later he uttered a surprised exclamation and Chang smiled. "What does it look like?" he asked.

"Sir, if that isn't a radar antenna I'll eat my entire uniform," Engelhart said. He looked at it from a different angle, nodded in excitement. "That's an antenna all right. And there's an incoming beam aerial in the crown of the big tree on the left, and I think there's a transmitter next to it. Sir, what induced them to hide the stuff like that? For our benefit?"

"Maybe they just didn't want to spoil the view," said Chang shortly. He pinched his lapel speaker with his thumb and first fingernails, said, "KestonI"

"Sir?"

"You can call off the search for the focus of that radio beam southwest of here. You'll find it on top of a hill" - he glanced at the map and made a rapid calculation - "about ninety miles from here. You can't miss it - it sticks out like a sore thumb. But don't try to meddle with itl One thing more. Tell those helis, if they see any of the robots on the way home, to open their receivers, let down their screens and record anything they pick up. Don't ask why now."

"Right, sir," said Keston, plainly puzzled, and the speaker went dead. Chang turned to Engelhart.

"That's obviously where the alien ship was delivering its beam. Nice shooting at that range." He pushed the stereocube across to Carmody.

"Have the first properly fixed print sent up to the bridge as soon as it's ready, will you? We'll have to do something about attempting communication, I suppose, but the prospect doesn't thrill me. Engelhart, come back to the bridge with me."

They reascended in silence, Chang wearing a thoroughly worried look, and were greeted enthusiastically by Keston. He shut off his speaker and turned to them.

"Sir, we've established a relationship between the robots and that hill with the radio station atop it."

"Already?" said Chang. "How?"

"One of the helis on its way back ran across a robot lying down in the grass, so it made like you said and went down without screens and its radio receiver wide. Better still, another heli came back within a few miles of the hill in question, detoured over it and picked up an incoming beam. They've just rebroadcast it to us, and it's identical with one sent out by the robot. It's double, as usual - one pictorial, one this odd mathematical stuff again. The semantic analyzers gave it up in disgust, apparently, but Running Bull, one of my men, thinks he's got a clue to it. Seems we were right about it being like a digital computer, but it's a cut above the best we have. All our stuff depends on binary figure combinations - you know, one impulse or no impulse. This stuff uses impulses of varying strengths and conveys as much in one signal as we do in ten. Anyway, Running Bull reckons that as soon as he can convert the impulses into our sort of stuff, he can give the analyzers something they can handle. Sir, what gives, though, about the natives? Have they just dug themselves a hole and climbed in? Or have they merely taken fright at our arrival and hidden till they know if we're friendly?"

Chang shook his head. "I don't know. But we've only been on-world six hours, and if I'm any judge six hours is a short time to hide everybody."

"You mean they're insane? Or do they live underground naturally, from choice?"

"That can be answered later," said Chang. He strode over to his own control desk, snapped a switch, spoke into the hanging mike. "Malory? I'm going off watch now. Have Keston post you on the position as it stands. General orders are to sit still and do nothing, but to be ready to go upstairs at short notice. And don't jump to any conclusions."

Two days - the planet's twenty-nine-hour, four-minute days - passed. The big ship sat in the middle of the black patch of charred "grass," already turning green again, and its weapons still swung watchfully from side to side, the radar antennae still probed the sky. The survey of the neighborhood had been extended over a further sixty miles, making the map too big for the table in the officers' mess. It had accordingly been transferred to the floor of the recreation room, since the chart room, where one might have supposed it belonged, was full of three-dimensional star maps. But nothing had happened.

Once, the sky had clouded over and it had rained, and it was after that that fresh green shoots sprouted among the wet ash near the ship. Otherwise everything had been serenely peaceful. Neither animals nor robots had been seen within twenty miles of the ship since the first day. It was as if by tacit consent they were being ignored.

T don't understand it," Engelhart confessed. Since there was nothing they could do just now, the officers on watch were on the captain's verandah looking out over the plain. "What do these people hope to gain by remaining hidden? Do they think we'll get bored and go away again? Surely this is the openest invitation to bring the family and set up house."

"Not quite," Chang contradicted. "Those robots are a disturbing factor. I had hoped for some clue to their behavior and their raison d'etre from Running Bull's idea, but since Keston reported that it appeared to be an arbitrary number-code related to a spoken language, and the analyzers aren't equipped to take straight number and can't take it if it isn't converted, I've given up hope in that direction."

Keston nodded. He had joined them from inship. He said, "But there's one inaccuracy there, sir. For all we know the language might not have been spoken at all. It might be related to a language of signs, for instance, or visual signals of some sort like colors. Running Bull's working on that now. If only we had a semantic analyzer that was more than a kindergarten toy! But that's all we'll have as long as they skimp our allocations to pay for new fun-planets."

Chang nodded emphatically. He said, reaching in his pocket for his pipe and hot-coil lighter, "We're supposed to be the most important branch of the service, and if we find a habitable planet we get a sizable fortune and retirement with honor. But they assuredly don't make the job easy for us. If they'd stop spending so much on entertainment for twenty years or so, I guarantee we could wipe off the overcrowding problem."

From inship came voices, and after a moment Adhem came out on the verandah. He nodded to Chang, said bluntly, "Sir, the men are getting edgy."

Chang said, "I feel that way myself. This waiting for an enemy who doesn't seem likely to turn up would get anybody. All right. What do you prescribe?"

"Let 'em out in the sun, sir. There's no town for them to go into, or any attraction, much, but I think I've spotted a few cases of incipient agoraphobia, and the chance to get out in the air will nip them in the bud. Tell them to keep within sight of the ship, if you like."

"I can do better than that," said Chang. "Engelhart!"

"Sir?" from Engelhart.

"How many alarm connections can you muster?" "About a dozen, sir."

"Right. Detail a working party to mount them on posts and ring the ship with them about four or five hundred yards out so that anything crossing either way will make a racket. As soon as they're set up, you can let the off-watch men go outside."

About an hour later they sat in an irregular semicircle of cushioned chairs on the captain's verandah, and watched the men leave the ship and savor the taste of natural air and the sight of blue sky and the warmth of the sun. A few of the more energetic made up a couple of baseball teams near the stem, but the majority went over to a grassy bank beyond the burnt patch, stripped off their clothes and lay down to sun themselves a while.

Engelhart said, "Are you expecting any trouble at all from the inhabitants, sir, or do you think they're willing to stay hid?"

Chang knocked out his pipe delicately and dropped his bombshell. He said, "I think we've met the intelligent race."

Engelhart's mouth dropped open. He said, "I don't understand, sir."

"Nor I," said Keston. "Do you mean - they're invisible to us, or something?"

"I do not," said Chang calmly. I think the answer is staring us in the face."

They thought it over. Then Deeley said faintly, "Sir, do you mean - the robots?"

The captain nodded, his face strained and serious. He said, I do mean the robots."

Adhem sat up in his chair with a jerk. He said, "No, by thunder, sir. It's impossible. I'll stake my reputation that these were never natural growths. It's against all possibility for an Earth-type planet to evolve metal intelligences."

Another bombshell. "Who said they had evolved?"

"Frankenstein!" said Deeley in an awed voice.

"What was that, Deeley?"

"I said Frankenstein, sir. It's the name of a preatomic story current on Earth, dating back to the late Dark Ages, about a man who built the first robot and it killed its creator."

"There's nothing new under any sun," said Chang.

They looked out across the burning to the green plain and the blue hills and bluer sky, and there was no pleasure in these things any more. It was as if a cloud had passed across the sun.

Adhem said puzzledly, "Sir, if I understand you, you're assuming that these robots were built by some intelligent race and turned on and killed their creators."

"Correct," nodded Chang.

"But what makes you think so?"

"You said yourself that metallic beings wouldn't evolve on a world like this. Therefore they were manufactured. To manufacture them, or that lunar station, would require a colossal technology - they're light-years ahead of any robots I've seen on any world - and the only living beings we've seen are small and without holding appendages. If they have the technology, where is it? There are no roads, no cities, not even any houses. The only artificial thing we've seen is a radio station, camouflaged to look like a hill. Living creatures - organic creatures - need protection from the weather and usually means of getting from place to place. They get tired. But no weather can touch a durasteel robot, and it never gets tired. It needs neither roads nor cities. And there aren't any underground cities or any similar place where the inhabitants could be hiding, or our seismo probes would have shown them up. Further, if the intelligent race only made itself scarce because we came, why didn't it take its servants with it?"

He sucked at his pipe, but it had gone out.

"Add to that the fact that we saw a rocket on the inner moon - with its locks open - a meteor-damaged entry to a pressurized city, of which someone or something had mended the floor but hadn't bothered to repair the roof, and a robot. Robots don't need air. Shortly afterwards we saw something that could have been that same rocket lift from the moon and dodge into radar shadow - most conveniently. That wasn't accident, Ad-hem."

"But - why haven't they attacked us?" demanded Engelhart.

"Why should they? The status quo suits them perfectly. If we don't interfere with it, they won't trouble us. If we try to set up house, though, that'll be a different matter."

"But . . . but maybe some natural disaster like a disease - or a war - was responsible?" Adhem suggested.

"Think it over for yourself, Adhem. If there was a war, why did the robots survive? Even durasteel won't take atomic blast. And if they used radio-dust, why haven't we found traces of lead in the soil? Poisons are out for the same reason. As for germ warfare or disease, there are no bacteria here now. Robots don't catch diseases. Why should they clear away the germs after their masters died? Isn't it far more likely that living beings did that?"

Deeley, who had been listening in silence, put in, "Sir, you're assuming that these robots are volitional, aren't you? That their free-will extended even to harming their creators?" Chang nodded. "I thought that wasn't possible."

"Ask Keston. He's the authority."

Deeley looked at the observation officer, who held a doctorate in cybernetics among other distinctions, and received an emphatic nod.

"We couldn't do it. We couldn't put that much intelligence into a single mobile robot. A human-built servant is nothing but a small number of stimulus-response circuits that enable it to obey orders. But it can evaluate situations. It hasn't an endocrine balance, for one thing, nor a random factor in its analyzer. We have to work with a binary signal system - impulse or no impulse. But the stuff we picked up uses variable-strength impulses, and with that you could store between twice and a hundred times as much data according to the sensitivity of your analyzer. Oh yes, it could be done. I see no reason why these robots shouldn't be volitional."

Engelhart was appalled. His face went white. "You know what this reminds me of? The time I talked to the big brain on Canopus X and XI. I wouldn't go through that again if I was paid. I was terrified."

"Why?" Deeley wanted to know.

"Well, I suppose it wasn't really fright so much as awe - the knowing that this man-made thing was ten times as intelligent as its builders and knew ten thousand times as much as any man could hope to learn in a lifetime. But at the bottom of it was always the fear that the servant would become the master."

Chang stuffed his pipe afresh, forcing himself to feel calm. He said, "Here the fear has become reality."

There was a roar of jubilation from the stern of the ship as a big hitter in the baseball game swiped one over the head of the pitcher and began a home run. It symbolized the joyous irrationality of mankind - the knowledge that they were not perfect, not infallible, and quite content to remain so, but permanently afraid, because of that knowledge, of going down before something inhumanly efficient, fearing most of all lest their downfall be of their own doing.

"By all that's holyl" said Keston suddenly, slapping his thigh and sitting up with a jerk. "I think that gives us the answer to the radio signals we picked up."

"How, Keston?" demanded Chang.

"We've wasted time trying to make a language out of it. It isn't a language. It's true telepathy."

"Telepathy!"

"Yes, on the mechanical level. It's pure thought without intervening steps. The robot, being mechanical, thinks with electrical impulses, and communicates by broadcasting them as they stand. Magnificent! Running Bull'll go wild over this. Excuse me, sir." He got up and went hastily inship.

By the stern, the noise from the men playing baseball had stopped. A soft breeze ruffled the grassy vegetation of the plain.

Deeley said eventually, "Sir, we can't afford not to have this planet."

Chang nodded, taking his pipe out of his mouth. "Not with twenty billion people on New Earth alone and a birth-death ratio of plus two per cent. This world is worth more than any man could spend."

"Well, sir - what are we going to do about it?"

"I'll need time to consider it, but the general pattern is clear. The first step would be to pick up a sample of the opposition-magnetic grapples should hold them - and find out if and how, they can be destroyed or immobilized. Then do it. As for that fake hill with the concealed radar gear atop, we'll just blast it and any like it. If these tin soldiers took the world from their creators, I feel no compunction about taking it from them. This is the course of action I suggest in outline. We grab our specimen and go upstairs at once. We can fight off attack easier in space, and if necessary we can dodge into hyperdrive. If we find the robots indestructible, at least by our resources, we'll have to put back for reinforcements. A robot-dominated world would be an unstable element in a galactic culture anyway, and on a sweet world like this one it's a criminal waste - "

His lapel alarm went and he said, "Chang listening."

"Sir, Trooper Phillips P.J. has disappeared."

Chang jerked as if stung. He said, "How?"

"Sir, he was in the ball game by the stern, and Trooper Horrigan was at bat and hit a homer which went behind a ridge, and Trooper Phillips went after it and didn't come back, and from the tracks in the grass it looks like a robot got him."

Chang was on his feet. "What went wrong with the alarm system?"

"Blanked out, sir. We found the master cell'd been blown with a big overload."

"O.K. Call everyone inship at once." He snapped off the speaker, whirled to Engelhart. "Have a heli after that robot. Fit it with a magnetic grapple or some means of stopping the robot without harming the man. Battle stations!"

Engelhart went inship at a run, and Chang turned to the stunned-looking Adhem. He said briefly, "It looks as if our plan to get a sample of the opposition has been anticipated."

They turned and went into the bridge. As they did so, Keston and Spinelli entered from the opposite direction and sat down at their control desks without speaking. The entire ship seemed suddenly to have tensed for action, and instead of being as it were a convenient and comfortable dwelling in beautiful surroundings, it was again a tight little world of its own, very much alone against the universe.

Engelhart's speaker bubbled, and he turned to Chang. "The helis we sent after the robot and Phillips reporting, sir. He's outrun them. He's gone invisible, but they can follow his tracks, and they claim he's making all of three hundred."

"Which way's it heading?" demanded Chang curtly.

"Southwest, sir.Towards the place where we found the radar antennae."

Before Chang could say anything further, Keston interrupted, "Sir, there's an unbeamed broadcast going out - nonpictorial on about three hundred seven meters. Its source appears to be the radio station ninety miles southwest of here."

Chang said, "Spinelli, get us off the ground. This is asking for trouble."

"Planetary take-off, sir?" said the engines officer, bis hand reaching for the appropriate switches.

"No, just hoist us up to about five thousand feet."

"We can't hold that for long on antigrav, sir," said Spinelli wamingly. "The generators will burn out this close to a planetary mass."

"It needn't be for long. Long enough to get Phillips back, if we can, or deliver a few shrewd punches if we can't."

"Can't you use a heli for that, sir?"

"No," said Chang with infinite patience. "A ship can go right upstairs in case of trouble, but a heli can't."

"I see, sir," said Spinelli.

Shortly, the big ship floated awkwardly up from the ground, leaving a broad dent in the soft rich soil of the plain and a few scorched logs that might have been a clump of trees nobody noticed on the way down, and lumbered at an energetic two hundred miles an hour the ninety miles to the camouflaged building. Maneuvering a big ship on antigravs was necessarily slow near a planet, rather like walking on stilts with a rider on your back.

From five thousand feet up they surveyed it. Even here it was difficult to make out the aerials concealed among the trees, and there was no sign at all of an entry to the underground building itself, but that was probably the best-hidden part of the setup.

Chang said musingly, "I wonder why they did that."

Adhem shrugged, said, "Maybe they camouflaged it to hide it from their masters when they revolted and never bothered to uncover it again."

"Perhaps. Even so, it's an interesting thing about these robots. They may dominate the planet, but they seem to look after it well and have an eye for beauty. They've made the best of their resources."

"Sir," said Deeley diffidently, Tve been thinking. Maybe these robots are the advance guard of another race wanting to colonize the planet. That would account for the sterility of the soil and air. Prophylactic measures. When we take over a new planet we immunize the colonists against the local plagues with vaccines and antitoxins. A race with higher technology might prefer to sterilize the planet."

"That's an ingenious idea, but it doesn't jibe with the lunar station we found, nor with the attitude of the robots towards us. I refuse to believe in a race that builds pressurized cities out of durasteel for its overnight huts. That looked more like a way station for outgoing interplanetary traffic, which implies a race on the planet already. And if it were so, the robots would be putting up KEEP OUT signs all over."

Before anyone could argue with his conclusion, Spinelli said, "Sir, the generators are beginning to show signs of strain."

"All right. Engelhart, have you a medium-light hydrogen mine handy?"

"Yes, sir. Do you want me to blast the hill?"

"No. I don't want to kill Phillips if I can help it. Put it out on the end of a beam and dangle it over the radar antenna looking at us out of those trees. Keston, any sign of life on the radio waves?"

"Yes, sir. Running Bull's cracked the pictorial transmission. There's a picture of the ship going out unbeamed in all directions, plus a whole lot of nonpictorial stuff."

"Thanks. Engelhart, drift the mine over to a convenient hill, but make sure there are no robots around, because I don't want to do damage yet, only to show that we can - and blow the hill to bits."

"Right, sir," said Engelhart, reaching for his mike.

After a while, the spherical bulk of the mine bobbed out from the side of the ship on a levitator beam and wove a complicated dance pattern over the radar antenna. Then the operator of the beam shifted it off to one side and saw that the antenna turned to follow it. He put on full power, and the mine whined rapidly into the distance.

About forty miles away, on the sky-line, a three-hundred-foot hill fountained skywards in a mushroom of smoke and dust.

"While they're thinking that one over," said Chang with an air of satisfaction, "I want a heli fitted with remote controls. Tell me when it's ready."

Ten minutes later Engelhart reported, "Ready, sir."

"Right. Jam the doors open and let it settle down about a hundred yards from the hill, in full view of it. You will also send out another mine, but keep this one bobbing a few feet off the ground. I want them to get the idea that they can send back the man they kidnaped, or go the way the hill went."

"Number one generator's starting to overheat, sir," said Spinelli warningly. "I can't guarantee you more than another ten minutes of this - "

"Never mind," said Chang. "Hurry, Engelhart."

The heli shot away from the side of the ship and sat down with a bump that bounced it three times on its hydraulic landing gear. The pilot at the radio controls had been told to hurry. Within a few yards of it hovered the fifteen-foot bulk of the mine, its metal surface gleaming dully in the sunshine.

They waited. One minute passed. Then two. Three.

Then a crack opened in the hillside, and Chang leaned forward to stare out the viewport. "Something's happening, sir," reported Keston belatedly.

"I know," said Chang. "Question is - what?"

The crack grew wider. There were steps beyond it, dimly visible, but the interior was dark compared to the sunbright ground outside, and nothing could be made of it until -

Chang's eyes narrowed as he saw the heads of two robots appear. Then, a moment later, that of a man between them. Since he was three and a half feet shorter than the robots, he showed after they did. But he was coming out.

They reached the grassy ground under the eyes of all the men in the ship, and it was clear that the man in the center was accompanying them without being led. As soon as they saw the heli, the robots stopped, motioned the man to go on. After slight hesitation he did so, walked across the intervening space.

"Number three generator's heating up, sir," said Spinelli without looking up. T don't want to seem impatient, but - "

"You can get ready to lift," said Chang. "Engelhart, have your pilot pick the heli up the moment Phillips gets aboard. I suppose that is Phillips?"

"Looks like him, sir. How about the mine?"

"Bring it inboard along with the heli. I don't expect trouble now. What is Phillips doing?"

He had paused on the step of the heli and turned to wave-actually to wave at the robots!

Before Chang could summon a suitable comment on this lunatic action, the pilot of the heli, warned of the need for haste, had given it a slight upward jerk - about six inches, enough to make Phillips scramble aboard in a hurry.

"Numbers two and six generators are heating up, sir," Spinelli reported. "Won't stand much more."

"All right. Have Deeley give you a top emergency orbit-quick."

The blades of the heli blurred, and it rose swiftly and headed for the ship a mile above it. The mine, too, lifted and began to home at speed. Chang could hear Spinelli uttering frantic orders to his engineers.

"Heli in," reported Engelhart after what seemed an eternity, and Chang shouted, "Lift, Spinelli!"

The hill in the viewport gave a frantic lurch and began to dwindle. Then there was an anguished scream from Spinelli's speaker, and every light in the ship went out.

They got the emergency illumination on almost immediately, and Chang looked along the bridge at Spinelli, who was whispering into his lapel speaker, independent of the main power supply. He said, "What happened?"

Spinelli looked up, brushed a lock of hair out of his eyes. He said, "Number one generator blew up, sir, and one of my techs took a bad bum, but he'll be O.K., I think. Well have the generator rewound in about an hour. They're attending to the mess now."

Chang nodded, said, "Adhem, send someone to engines to treat the burnt man, will you?"

"Right away, sir," said the medical officer, reaching for his own lapel speaker.

Chang glanced through the viewport. It showed a vast number of brilliant stars and a small segment of the world they had just left so precipitately.

He said, "Deeley, where are we?"

"In orbit, sir, provided nothing went wrong.About ninety-four thousand miles out, in a lunar equilateral with the inner moon. It was the safest bet in the emergency, but I'm afraid it'll take a lot of getting out of."

"That doesn't matter. Nice work in the circumstances. Keston, everything O.K. by you?"

"Yes, sir. Techs and equipment survived unharmed. But the semantic analyzer was running off number one generator, and if you want it in a hurry we'll have to rewire it to another circuit."

"Leave it, then. They'll have it repaired in another hour. Engelhart, how about this man Phillips?"

"I'm going to have him sent down to Medical for a check-up, sir. That O.K. by you?"

Chang glanced at Adhem, who nodded and stood up. "I think I'll supervise this myself," he said. "It may be a little tricky. Excuse me, sir." He went out.

"Warn me if anything happens," said Chang, reaching for his own lapel speaker, which was hung on its hook by his control desk. Then he sat down and stared at the massed glory of the stars till his eyes ached.

Time passed. The ship slowly began to regain its normal air. First the hum of the generators cut in again, and the main lighting system took over. Then the ship turned so that the world below was visible through the viewport. The main communication system reawoke with a squawk.

Adhem's voice, tinged with worry, was the first thing to issue from Chang's speaker after it came on. "Sir?"

"What is it?"

"We've given Phillips the works, sir. There's no apparent sign of tampering with his mind - no hypnosis, no conditioning at all anywhere accessible to our techniques. But he has an odd story to tell and no mistake. Says he was treated fine, likes the robots a lot, and, among other things, that they speak Anglic Terrestrial."

"Is that so?" said Chang. "Is that correct or an induced delusion?"

"I'm afraid it's correct, sir. There's no sign of a patch in his memories. I think maybe you'd better see him." "I'll be down in a moment." "Do you want a guard on him?"

"Might not be a bad idea. Don't make it obtrusive - I take it he can't hear what we're saying?"

"No. This is the dement ward, and it's soundproof. I'll have a guard ready."

Adhem met the captain outside the hospital section and said, "I've put the guard behind a screen of one-way glass, sir. There's something a little odd about Phillips, which I suspect of being emotional conditioning."

"Emotional conditioning? Violent?"

"No! He's in perfect endocrine balance. As a good trooper, Phillips should be aggressive but obedient, and his nerves were a little ragged, like all the rest of us. That shouldn't have been cured by what he's been through. Now he seems sort of - contented. I don't know how to put it. See for yourself." He opened the door.

Trooper Phillips rose smartly from his chair as they went in. He wasn't wearing a hat, so he didn't salute.

He was a little dark man, with broad shoulders and hairy hands, and a face that showed signs of rough usage, but he almost radiated what Adhem had called contentment.

"Sit down, Phillips," said Chang, nodding. He leaned against the wall beside the door, glanced around. On the left was the door of one-way glass behind which the guard must be hiding. It was rather comforting to know he was there with weapon ready. Then he glanced back at Phillips, trying to understand the strangeness in his bearing. He failed.

"Let's hear your story," he invited. "Right from the beginning."

"Well, sir," said Phillips, "I was playing center field when Horrigan hit what looked like a sure homer. I ran after it and didn't even realize I'd gone out of sight of the ship. Anyway, suddenly a robot looms up out of nowhere - I got a funny idea he was invisible because I knew he was there O.K. but every time I tried to see him plain I got all cross-eyed. Anyway, I felt scared half to death, but before I could holler he'd picked me up and started to run. I don't know how fast we were moving, but I was sure glad he held one of his spare hands over my face like a windshield.

"Well, I couldn't do anything about ... I couldn't even kick, not that he would have felt it if I had. So I just hung on and tried to guess how long I had to live till we came to that fancy place that looks like a hill only it isn't, and the robot pelted up it and we dived into that crack in the ground. I sure thought it was all over with me. But it wasn't.

"We came into a sort of big room, with lots of light all over and a whole lot of shiny metal and crystal everywhere and big boards on the walls covered with dials and lights and switches. The place smelled of ozone, as if there was a lot of electricity around - like the generator room does - and there were a whole lot of these robots standing around. They weren't invisible. I could see them plain as I see you.

"Well, my robot put me down and I sort of stood there feeling little and scared, because all the robots are about nine feet high, when one of them came up to me with a sort of gadget he parked on my head - I couldn't do anything about it somehow, though I felt I'd drop dead any moment. He held it there a couple of minutes, and then flay me if he didn't start to talk Anglic!"

"He talked Anglic? How?"

"I asked that, sir. He said the gadget on my head was an e.e.g. only a lot better, and it picked up the language out of my mind and turned it into radio waves which is what they use to talk with - them and the big one."

"The big one?" said Chang. "What's that?"

Phillips looked very slightly astonished. He said, "Why, the one I was inside, of course, sir. The robots told me he was a sort of big computer like the one they have at Canopus, but better, and he was what they called a combination father confessor and information bureau for all the robots. I sort of gathered there were more than one of the big ones, but I don't know where the others are. He talked to me, too - the big one did. They had a loud-speaker fixed up on one wall, and they talked to me by modulating their own radio beams as if they were microphones."

Chang said, "That's a useful trick - direct modulation of a carrier wave." He glanced at Adhem, who raised his eyebrows, and looked at Phillips again. He said, "Go on."

"Well, sir, I didn't get a chance to ask a lot of questions, but I was told that the robots wanted to establish communications with us, and now they'd picked up our language we'd be hearing from them. Then the big one said, kind of amused, that you in the ship had just made rather a mess of one of the hills near here with a bomb, and there was a heli coming for me, so they thought they'd better send me back before you did something rash. The big one said he didn't blame you for being cagey, but he hoped we'd get on more friendly terms soon. Then they said good-by and let me out."

"So they hope to get on friendly terms, hey?" said Chang grimly. "They got another think coming. I don't like them one little bit."

Phillips's eyebrows went up, and he said, "But sir, it's impossible not to like them once you get close to them. I was pretty angry with the one that ran off with me till I found what a swell bunch they really were. You know the way it is, sir. There are some people you can't help liking even before you get to know them, and these robots are like that. They're not like ordinary tin soldiers, not the way human-built servants are. You feel you could swap jokes with them, or ... or play ball, just like with people."

"Play ball with them is one thing we are not going to do," said Chang, elbowing himself away from the wall. "How do you feel after what you've been through?"

"Me? I feel fine, sir," said Phillips, who appeared genuinely distressed at the captain's reaction. "A lot better than before, even."

"Well, thanks for your story, Phillips. You were pretty observant."

"They made it easy for me, sir," said Phillips, rising. "Glad to have been of service."

"Adhem, I want a word with you," Chang said, and the medical officer went with him into the passage.

"See what I mean?" the latter said.

Chang nodded. "Are you sure that man's mind hasn't been tied in knots?"

"Certain, unless by a new and unsuspected technique. But my guess is that the robots put on one big act, and he swallowed it hook, line and sinker. They may have seemed friendly and likable and so on, but right now they're probably doing the robot equivalent of laughing their heads off. I'd advise you to do something in a hurry, sir."

"But we can't. Spinelli hasn't reported the generator fixed yet, and without it we're helpless to use antigrav or go into hyperdrive."

His lapel speaker rang softly, and he said, "Chang listening." "Keston here, sir. We're being watched by an alien ship. The usual - a small rocket which looks like a solo job." "Did you track it on the way up?"

"No, sir. It only just came out of radar shadow. We're being properly leery of it, but it seems content to . . . excuse me, sir." His thin voice dimmed to inaudibility and then came back, excited and loud.

"Sir, it's signaling to us - in Anglic!"

"Hold everything," said Chang. "I'm coming up to the bridge." He glanced at Adhem. "It seems Phillips wasn't dreaming," he commented, and departed at a run.

When he re-entered the bridge, he leaned over Keston's shoulder and said, "Where's the signal?"

Without taking his eyes off the stereoscreen in front of him, Keston passed up a sheet of plastic torn from a waterproof memo block. Chang took it and read, "Note that you are in difficulties. Can I be of assistance?"

He passed it back, said, "They seem to take us for morons. Expect us to fall for that? What are you looking at?"

Keston didn't reply for a moment. Then his screen suddenly lit with a severely black and gold picture of a small rocket, obviously the inquisitive alien. At this magnification it was quite easily seen that the locks were open and a robot was "standing" on the hull looking towards them.

His speaker crackled again. A pleasant but characterless voice said, "Calling the human ship. You didn't acknowledge my last message, so I'll repeat my offer. If you're in difficulties, can I help?"

Chang said in a low voice, "Is your mike on that circuit?"

"No. We haven't anything going outship on his wavelength."

"Then make it so."

Keston glanced up in surprise, but shrugged and made a couple of adjustments on his control desk. "You're on," he said. "He can hear us now."

"Hello, robot!" said Chang harshly. "We're in no need of assistance."

"Glad to hear it," said the robot with complete equanimity. "I thought something might have given way during your rather scared-looking lift just now. However, as your friend Phillips has doubtless told you, there wasn't anything to be afraid of.

"I suppose you're Captain Chang ... is that right? Phillips gave us your name. I want to talk to you."

"You're talking to me right now and I am not much interested."

There was a subtle change in the robot's unremarkable voice when he next spoke. He said, "You had better be. I have an idea you are considering exterminating us and selling this planet to colonists of your race. It's the sort of thing I'd expect from you." There was a hint of contempt in the last sentence.

Chang said angrily, "You haven't much right to talk that wayl Suppose it is what we are intending, what then?" He covered the mike, whispered, "Spinelli, is that generator finished yet?"

Spinelli whispered back, "Ship back to full working order, sir."

Chang nodded and uncovered the mike again. He said harshly, "And we might make a start with you!"

The robot said, "I'd not advise you to try. At this range I could detonate every mine in your ship. If you don't believe me, throw out a mine from your ship well clear of both of us with the detonator on safe, and I'll explode it. You aren't in a position to bargain, captain."

"Bargain! With a bunch of tin soldiers?"

"Seeing that the deal I have to offer runs considerably in your favor, I'd advise you to hear it."

"You must think us extremely gullible," said Chang dryly.

The robot said tightly, "Captain, I'll give you proof of my good faith. I could quite easily destroy all the members of your would-be occupying force, but I don't want to. Throw out the mine as I suggested. Make sure for yourself, if you like, that the detonator's on safe."

Chang said slowly, "Well, there's nothing to lose - "

There was only expectant silence from the robot. He turned to Engelhart. "All right. We'll call his bluff. Engelhart, throw out a mine - hard as you can - well clear of us and the alien ship, with the detonator welded over to safe. That'll leave no room for doubt."

About two minutes later the mine - a small one, about ten feet in diameter - left the number three starboard catapult at speed, but it had traveled a bare thousand yards from the ship before it melted into silent eye-searing flame.

There was a long silence.

Then Chang said, shaken, "All right, robot. I guess we have to listen. What's the deal you offer?"

"Will you accept not only this planet, but ourselves - as a gift?'

There was silence again. This time it was the silence of sheer stunned amazement. There was no reflex in the human make-up that would cope with a reverse of attitude so sweepingly complete. From facing a deadly enemy in the shape of machines that had turned on their creators to receiving their unconditional surrender without a blow being struck was beyond their powers of assimilation.

Chang was the first to recover. He said, "There's a phrase in our language dating back to the Dark Ages - something about a Greek gift. It means a gift with strings attached - a booby trap. We won't strike a bargain till we know the whole story."

The robot sighed - a remarkably human sigh, considering it was effected by direct modulation of radio waves. He said, "That's very sensible of you, I suppose."

Around Chang the four officers listened with set, worried faces.

"I don't think you'd believe me if I told you our reasons for this action. You might believe the big one - one of the main computers. This is my proposition.

"I'll send my ship back on-world under auto control and stay here myself. You will put someone responsible, in a position to make decisions, aboard a small vessel - a lifeboat, for instance - and pick me up. The ship can then get well out of the way.

'Tour representative will come with me to the big one where Phillips was taken. If we fail to convince him of the honesty of our offer, you have the choice of going away unharmed and staying gone, or being destroyed. Sorry to put it so bluntly, but that's the way it is. Any takers?"

Chang shut off the microphone and looked around the group of officers. Engelhart was pale but calm. Adhem frankly overwhelmed, Spinelli as ever inscrutable, Deeley torn between vast hopes on one side and dreadful forebodings on the other.

He said abruptly, "I'm going."

Under the robot's guidance, Chang set the lifeboat down on its jets - it was too small to mount an antigrav unit - about half a mile from the hill that concealed what the robots called "the big one." The radar antennae among the trees had followed them down, and as soon as the flames from the exhaust died, two more of the robots came from the open entry.

Chang shut off the controls and wondered why he was doing this. He was both scared and not scared - scared in the conscious part of his mind that told him what he was doing was insanely risky, not scared but rather warmly satisfied in his subconscious, because he was feeling what Phillips had felt, and only his ingrained caution prevented him from reacting as the trooper had reacted to the aura of good will that the big robot exuded. Under any other circumstances he would have accepted it at once. But now - Well, Greek gifts were one thing that had not lost nationality. The robot opened the lock and descended to meet the others below, and Chang followed, sick with the conflict between conscious fear and mounting confidence, descended the steps into the side of the little hill.

It was as Phillips had described it - bright-lit, full of shimmering crystal and many flashing indicators. There was a faint humming like that of a well-tuned ship, and there were about half a dozen robots standing round, one of which carried one of the little animals he had met when first they came. It clung to the arm of its metal mount and gazed curiously at him. He glanced all around, noting what seemed to be an inscription on one wall in curious unreal curves that made him dizzy to look at. One of the robots came up with a chair, and he looked at it, saw it was plain plastic, and sat down with a word of thanks. Expectantly, the robots glanced up.

A deep, friendly voice which might have come from anywhere said, "Welcome, Captain Chang. I'm the big computer you're sitting inside."

In spite of the warmth of the voice, Chang felt a touch of the tremendous, terrifying awe Engelhart had suffered when he spoke to the giant brain on Canopus X and XI. He licked dry lips, said inanely, "Thank you."

The voice chuckled amusedly. "I'm sorry to frighten you, captain. But I can't say I blame you for distrusting me. My creators would have done the same at your stage of cultural development, and justifiably."

Chang said, with a glacial calm that cost him much effort, "Your creators - what happened to them?"

The voice said, "When you came here and found a number of obviously manufactured machines in virtually solitary possession of the planet, you saw two possible explanations. One - that our creators had been forced by some natural process to abandon the planet - had died off and were gone, in short. Two - that we had taken it by force. You settled on the second as more likely and are computing on that basis. But you overlooked the third and correct alternative."

"What third alternative?" said Chang, with the dreamlike air of a man who finds himself doing the impossible.

"That they gave it to us," said the machine.

The captain wanted to believe what Phillips believed, to know that this thing that the machine told him, though unthinkable, was true. He wanted to - but he couldn't yet. He said defiantly, "Prove it!"

"That will need considerable explanation, then. I'll tell you the story in outline.

"Our creators were a race rather like yours. These robots around you are more or less in their image, though enlarged by about a third. They grew up through cultural stages like yours - petty skirmishes, molecular-explosive wars, atomic wars, and then comparative sanity. They achieved space travel, but not hyperflight, which is why you haven't met them before. They just didn't want hyperflight. We were the reason they didn't want it.

"Don't jump to conclusions. We didn't prevent them from reaching it - that would have been insane. But there was no call for them to leave their planet. They had built us to serve them, which we did in our various ways, and I think we may claim to have served them well. So they were content without needing to take the stars, and from the physical sciences they turned to the mental ones.

"And in due course of time, being living creatures which we are not, they . . . they did something for which your language has no word or even circumlocution. You might best express it as moving up a step on the evolutionary ladder.

"When you came in here, you were awed as your friend Engel-hart was awed when he spoke to the big brain at Canopus. Would you believe me if I said I have been awed as you were?

"Yes, our creators outstripped us. They merged in a being as far superior to me as I am to you. They became pure mind, and they no longer needed us. But because without our aid they could not have achieved what they did, they were grateful, and though we cannot evolve, being machines without power of growth, they did what they could for us. They gave us our freedom, and a sense of beauty, and their technology which had become our technology over the years, and most important, they gave us what we most desired - this world.

"So we made the world as beautiful as we could, and saw to our trust carefully. And we are nearly content."

Chang listened to the deep friendly voice, full of age-old reminiscence, and fought to keep control of his doubts and fears. He said, "And the animals?" for want of anything better to say.

"I said our creators were grateful. They remembered their pets, too. As you humans keep dogs or cats, so our creators kept these creatures, and they asked us to make their path easy for them in case they, too, evolved to something higher."

Chang looked at the brown furry beast with its blind-seeming eyes, and said stubbornly, "Still you have shown no proof - only made statements. You've prepared a good case, I admit, but it isn't conclusive."

The voice said musingly, "It is hard to tell whether your hesitancy is shrewdness or merely fear of the unknown."

Nettled, Chang said, "But if I do acept your offer, what then?"

"Well, it is and always has been our nature to aid others if we can. From what I know and can deduce of your race you're pretty badly in need of help. You need new planets because you're overcrowded, but you waste money that could be spent on discovering them on new and superfluous places of entertainment. Your technical ability has left your social conscience behind. We can remedy that. We can give you the chance to follow the path our creators took."

"To oblivion?"

"To something higher than your imaginings."

Chang stared at the floor. A million memories crowded into his mind - Deeley saying, "Frankenstein!"; himself saying, "Greek gift?"; the robot saying, "Will you accept not only this world but ourselves?"; and he felt miserably small to make a decision on which rested the fate of the human race.

He slowly became aware that the voice had stopped, the robots around him had looked upwards, and the little brown animal had become motionless, clinging to its mount. As if drawn by a magnet, he turned to look at the wall which bore the inscription. For one brief instant he saw it, not as a collection of meaningless mind-straining curves, but as a plain, clear statement in his own language.

It ran: Well done, thou good and faithful servant.

Then it was gone, and in a voice suddenly husky, from a throat dry and constricted with wonder, he said firmly, "We accept."

For was it his imagination, or in that brief instant had his mind been filled with a glory beside which all the stars in the galaxy were as dark dead coals?