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Goodwin, Tom - The Cold Equations (v5.0 html)
7/27/2005

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Goodwin, Tom -
The Cold Equations (v5.0 html)

THE UNIVERSE DOESN'T CARE

A pilot is on an emergency mission to a
planet whose colony is doomed if he doesn't get there fast. He
has just enough fuel to reach the planet—then he finds that he has a
stowaway, a young girl wanting to be with her brother on the colony. If
the pilot spaces the girl, the ship will barely make it to the planet.
If he does not, the ship will crash and both of them as well as the
colony will die. What will he do? This story rocked science
fiction when it first appeared.

Also in this volume is Godwin's
long-unavailable novel The Survivors, which poses another
problem in survival: If hostile aliens have marooned you and hundreds
of other people on a nearly uninhabitable planet, how do you not only
manage to endure, but to get revenge as well?

This is a massive volume by a master of
science fiction adventure, with added dimensions of speculation and
cold, hard realism.

Publisher's Note: The novel The
Survivors has been published separately.

"['The Cold Equations'] is one of the most
popular and controversial hard sf stories of the last fifty years. ..."

—David G. Hartwell, The Ascent of Wonder

"The touchstone story for hard-core science
fiction is Tom Godwin's 'The Cold Equations'."

—James Gunn, The Road to Science Fiction, Vol. Ill

"[Tom Godwin's SF] exhibited a fine clarity
of conception, and considerable narrative verve. ..."

—John Clute, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

"The impact [of 'The Cold Equations' on
publication] was immediate .... The impact of the story . . . remains
the same now as then."

—Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss,The Astounding-Analog Reader

Cover art by Clyde Caldwell

Trade

This is a work of fiction. All the
characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any
resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

First printing, April 2003

Distributed by Simon Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 0-7434-3601-6

Copyright 2003 by Tom Godwin

All rights reserved, including the right to
reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

http://www.baen.com

Production by Windhaven Press

Auburn, NH

Electronic version by WebWrights

http://www.webwrights.com

The Cold Equations

Table of Contents

PREFACE

THE SURVIVORS

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

THE HARVEST

BRAIN TEASER

MOTHER OF INVENTION

—AND DEVIOUS THE LINE OF
DUTY

EMPATHY

NO SPECIES ALONE

THE GULF BETWEEN

1

2

3

4

5

THE COLD EQUATIONS

AFTERWORD: SOMETIMES
IT ALL JUST WORKS

AFTERWORD

Preface

by Barry Malzberg

The title story of
this volume, "The Cold Equations," is perhaps the most famous and
controversial of all science fiction short stories. When it first
appeared in the August 1954 issue of Astounding, it generated
more mail from readers than any story previously published in the
magazine. Since then, it has been reprinted thousands of times (almost
all college courses on science fiction routinely include it on reading
lists). It has been the basis of a television movie and a Twilight
Zone episode, and prior to that had been adapted for radio and
television many, many times.

Its impact remains. In
the late l990's it was the subject of a furious debate in the
intellectually ambitious (or simply pretentious; you decide) New
York Review of Science Fiction
in which the story was anatomized as anti-feminist, proto-feminist,
hard-edged realism, squishy fantasy for the self-deluded, misogynistic
past routine pathology, crypto-fascist, etc., etc. One correspondent
suggested barely-concealed pederasty.

The debaters' affect
over a story more than four decades old was extraordinary, and the
debate did not end so much as it kind of expired from exhaustion.
Godwin's adoptive daughter, Diane Sullivan, said in conclusion that
Godwin himself had always felt women were "To be loved and protected"
and A.J. Budrys in a similarly funerary tone noted that " 'The Cold
Equations' was the best short story that Godwin ever wrote and he
didn't write it."

But, of course, he
did. I'll have more to say about the history of the short story in my
afterword (see below), but for now that's enough. Here, in one volume,
are the best writings of Tom Godwin. It begins with his most popular
novel, The Survivors, and closes with his legendary story,
"The Cold Equations."

THE SURVIVORS

Editor's
note: This is my personal favorite of all of Godwin's writings. Some of
my fondness for this short novel, I'll admit, is perhaps simply
nostalgia. The first two science fiction novels I ever read were Robert
Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy and . . . this
one. Between them, the
two stories instilled a love of science fiction in a thirteen-year-old
boy which has now lasted for more than four decades. But leaving that
aside, I think this story more than any other captures those themes
which recur constantly in Godwin's fiction: the value of courage and
loyalty.

Godwin
had a grim side to him, which is reflected in The Survivors as it is in
most of his stories, but—also as in most—it is ultimately a story of
triumph. More so, in some ways, than in any other science fiction novel
I've ever read.

Eric Flint

Part 1

For seven weeks the Constellation
had been plunging through hyperspace with her eight thousand colonists;
fleeing like a hunted thing with her communicators silenced and her
drives moaning and thundering. Up in the control room, Irene had been
told, the needles of the dials danced against the red danger lines day
and night.

She lay in bed and listened to the muffled,
ceaseless roar of the drives and felt the singing vibration of the
hull. We should be almost safe by now, she thought. Athena
is only forty days away.

Thinking of the new
life awaiting them all made her too restless to lie still any longer.
She got up, to sit on the edge of the bed and switch on the light. Dale
was gone—he had been summoned to adjust one of the machines in the
ship's X-ray room—and Billy was asleep, nothing showing of him above
the covers but a crop of brown hair and the furry nose of his ragged
teddy bear.

She reached out to straighten the covers,
gently, so as not to awaken him. It happened then, the thing they had
all feared.

From the stern of
the ship came a jarring, deafening explosion. The ship lurched
violently, girders screamed, and the light flicked out.

In the darkness she heard a rapid-fire thunk-thunk-thunk
as the automatic guard system slid inter-compartment doors shut against
sections of the ship suddenly airless. The doors were still thudding
shut when another explosion came, from toward the bow. Then there was
silence; a feeling of utter quiet and motionlessness.

The fingers of fear enclosed her and her mind
said to her, like the cold, unpassionate voice of a stranger: The
Gerns have found us.

The light came on
again, a feeble glow, and there was the soft, muffled sound of
questioning voices in the other compartments. She dressed, her fingers
shaking and clumsy, wishing that Dale would come to reassure her; to
tell her that nothing really serious had happened, that it had not been
the Gerns.

It was very still
in the little compartment—strangely so. She had finished dressing when
she realized the reason: the air circulation system had stopped working.

That meant the
power failure was so great that the air regenerators, themselves, were
dead. And there were eight thousand people on the Constellation
who would have to have air to live . . .

The Attention
buzzer sounded shrilly from the public address system speakers that
were scattered down the ship's corridors. A voice she recognized as
that of Lieutenant Commander Lake spoke:

"War was declared
upon Earth by the Gern Empire ten days ago. Two Gern cruisers have
attacked us and their blasters have destroyed the stern and bow of the
ship. We are without a drive and without power but for a few emergency
batteries. I am the Constellation's only surviving officer and
the Gern commander is boarding us to give me the surrender terms.

"None of you will
leave your compartments until ordered to do so. Wherever you may be,
remain there. This is necessary to avoid confusion and to have as many
as possible in known locations for future instructions. I repeat: you
will not leave your compartments."

The speaker cut off. She stood without moving
and heard again the words: I am the Constellation's only
surviving officer . . .

The Gerns had killed her father.

He had been
second-in-command of the Dunbar expedition that had discovered the
world of Athena and his knowledge of Athena was valuable to the
colonization plans. He had been quartered among the ship's officers—and
the Gern blast had destroyed that section of the ship.

She sat down on the
edge of the bed again and tried to reorient herself; to accept the fact
that her life and the lives of all the others had abruptly,
irrevocably, been changed.

The Athena Colonization Plan was ended. They
had known such a thing might happen—that was why the Constellation
had been made ready for the voyage in secret and had waited for months
for the chance to slip through the ring of Gern spy ships; that was why
she had raced at full speed, with her communicators silenced so there
would be no radiations for the Gerns to find her by. Only forty days
more would have brought them to the green and virgin world of Athena,
four hundred light-years beyond the outermost boundary of the Gern
Empire. There they should have been safe from Gern detection for many
years to come; for long enough to build planetary defenses against
attack. And there they would have used Athena's rich resources to make
ships and weapons to defend mineral-depleted Earth against the
inexorably increasing inclosure of the mighty, coldly calculating
colossus that was the Gern Empire.

Success or failure
of the Athena Plan had meant ultimate life or death for Earth. They had
taken every precaution possible but the Gern spy system had somehow
learned of Athena and the Constellation. Now, the cold war was
no longer cold and the Plan was dust . . .

* * *

Billy sighed and
stirred in the little-boy sleep that had not been broken by the blasts
that had altered the lives of eight thousand people and the fate of a
world.

She shook his shoulder and said, "Billy."

He raised up, so small and young to her eyes
that the question in her mind was like an anguished prayer: Dear
God—what do Gerns do to five-year-old boys?

He saw her face, and the dim light, and the
sleepiness was suddenly gone from him. "What's wrong, Mama? And why are
you scared?"

There was no reason to lie to him.

"The Gerns found us and stopped us."

"Oh," he said. In
his manner was the grave thoughtfulness of a boy twice his age, as
there always was. "Will they—will they kill us?"

"Get dressed, honey," she said. "Hurry, so
we'll be ready when they let Daddy come back to tell us what to do."

* * *

They were both ready when the Attention
buzzer sounded in the corridors. Lake spoke, his tone grim and bitter:

"There is no power
for the air regenerators and within twenty hours we will start
smothering to death. Under these circumstances I could not do other
than accept the survival terms the Gern commander offered us.

"He will speak to you now and you will obey
his orders without protest. Death is the only alternative."

Then the voice of the Gern commander came,
quick and harsh and brittle:

"This section of
space, together with planet Athena, is an extension of the Gern Empire.
This ship has deliberately invaded Gern territory in time of war with
intent to seize and exploit a Gern world. We are willing, however, to
offer a leniency not required by the circumstances. Terran technicians
and skilled workers in certain fields can be used in the factories we
shall build on Athena. The others will not be needed and there is not
room on the cruisers to take them.

"Your occupation
records will be used to divide you into two groups: the Acceptables and
the Rejects. The Rejects will be taken by the cruisers to an Earth-type
planet near here and left, together with the personal possessions in
their compartments and additional, and ample, supplies. The Acceptables
will then be taken on to Athena and at a later date the cruisers will
return the Rejects to Earth.

"This division will
split families but there will be no resistance to it. Gern guards will
be sent immediately to make this division and you will wait in your
compartments for them. You will obey their orders promptly and without
annoying them with questions. At the first instance of resistance or
rebellion this offer will be withdrawn and the cruisers will go their
way again."

* * *

In the silence
following the ultimatum she could hear the soft, wordless murmur from
the other compartments, the undertone of anxiety like a dark thread
through it. In every compartment parents and children, brothers and
sisters, were seeing one another for the last time . . .

The corridor
outside rang to the tramp of feet; the sound of a dozen Gerns walking
with swift military precision. She held her breath, her heart racing,
but they went past her door and on to the corridor's end.

There she could faintly hear them entering
compartments, demanding names, and saying, "Out—out!"
Once she heard a Gern say, "Acceptables will remain inside until
further notice. Do not open your doors after the Rejects have been
taken out."

Billy touched her on the hand. "Isn't Daddy
going to come?"

"He—he can't right now. We'll see him pretty
soon."

She remembered what
the Gern commander had said about the Rejects being permitted to take
their personal possessions. She had very little time in which to get
together what she could carry . . .

There were two
small bags in the compartment and she hurried to pack them with things
she and Dale and Billy might need, not able to know which of them, if
any, would be Rejects. Nor could she know whether she should put in
clothes for a cold world or a hot one. The Gern commander had said the
Rejects would be left on an Earth-type planet but where could it be?
The Dunbar Expedition had explored across five hundred light-years of
space and had found only one Earth-type world: Athena.

The Gerns were
almost to her door when she had finished and she heard them enter the
compartments across from her own. There came the hard, curt questions
and the command: "Outside—hurry!" A woman said something in pleading
question and there was the soft thud of a blow and the words:
"Outside—do not ask questions!" A moment later she heard the woman
going down the corridor, trying to hold back her crying.

Then the Gerns were at her own door.

She held Billy's
hand and waited for them with her heart hammering. She held her head
high and composed herself with all the determination she could muster
so that the arrogant Gerns would not see that she was afraid. Billy
stood beside her as tall as his five years would permit, his teddy bear
under his arm, and only the way his hand held to hers showed that he,
too, was scared.

The door was flung open and two Gerns strode
in.

They were big, dark
men, with powerful, bulging muscles. They surveyed her and the room
with a quick sweep of eyes that were like glittering obsidian, their
mouths thin, cruel slashes in the flat, brutal planes of their faces.

"Your name?" snapped the one who carried a
sheaf of occupation records.

"It's"—she tried to swallow the quaver in her
voice and make it cool and unfrightened—"Irene Lois Humbolt—Mrs. Dale
Humbolt."

The Gern glanced at the papers. "Where is your
husband?"

"He was in the X-ray room at—"

"You are a Reject. Out—down the corridor with
the others."

"My husband—will he be a—"

"Outside!"

It was the tone of
voice that had preceded the blow in the other compartment and the Gern
took a quick step toward her. She seized the two bags in one hand, not
wanting to release Billy, and swung back to hurry out into the
corridor. The other Gern jerked one of the bags from her hand and flung
it to the floor. "Only one bag per person," he said, and gave her an
impatient shove that sent her and Billy stumbling through the doorway.

She became part of
the Rejects who were being herded like sheep down the corridors and
into the port airlock. There were many children among them, the young
ones frightened and crying, and often with only one parent or an older
brother or sister to take care of them. And there were many young ones
who had no one at all and were dependent upon strangers to take their
hands and tell them what they must do.

When she was
passing the corridor that led to the X-ray room she saw a group of
Rejects being herded up it. Dale was not among them and she knew, then,
that she and Billy would never see him again.

* * *

"Out from the ship—faster—faster—"

The commands of the
Gern guards snapped like whips around them as she and the other Rejects
crowded and stumbled down the boarding ramp and out onto the rocky
ground. There was the pull of a terrible gravity such as she had never
experienced and they were in a bleak, barren valley, a cold wind
moaning down it and whipping the alkali dust in bitter clouds. Around
the valley stood ragged hills, their white tops laying out streamers of
wind-driven snow, and the sky was dark with sunset.

"Out from the ship—faster—"

It was hard to walk
fast in the high gravity, carrying the bag in one hand and holding up
all of Billy's weight she could with the other.

"They lied to us!" a man beside her said to
someone. "Let's turn and fight. Let's take—"

A Gern blaster
cracked with a vivid blue flash and the man plunged lifelessly to the
ground. She flinched instinctively and fell over an unseen rock, the
bag of precious clothes flying from her hand. She scrambled up again,
her left knee half numb, and turned to retrieve it.

The Gern guard was already upon her, his
blaster still in his hand. "Out from the ship—faster."

The barrel of his blaster lashed across the
side of her head. "Move on—move on!"

She staggered in a
blinding blaze of pain and then hurried on, holding tight to Billy's
hand, the wind cutting like knives of ice through her thin clothes and
blood running in a trickle down her cheek.

"He hit you," Billy
said. "He hurt you." Then he called the Gern a name that five-year-old
boys were not supposed to know, with a savagery that five-year-old boys
were not supposed to possess.

When she stopped at
the outer fringe of Rejects she saw that all of them were out of the
cruiser and the guards were going back into it. A half mile down the
valley the other cruiser stood, the Rejects out from it and its
boarding ramps already withdrawn.

When she had
buttoned Billy's blouse tighter and wiped the blood from her face the
first blast of the drives came from the farther cruiser. The nearer one
blasted a moment later and they lifted together, their roaring filling
the valley. They climbed faster and faster, dwindling as they went.
Then they disappeared in the black sky, their roaring faded away, and
there was left only the moaning of the wind around her and somewhere a
child crying.

And somewhere a voice asking, "Where are we?
In the name of God—what have they done to us?"

She looked at the
snow streaming from the ragged hills, felt the hard pull of the
gravity, and knew where they were. They were on Ragnarok, the
hell-world of 1.5 gravity and fierce beasts and raging fevers where men
could not survive. The name came from an old Teutonic myth and meant: The
last day for gods and men.
The Dunbar Expedition had discovered Ragnarok and her father had told
her of it, of how it had killed six of the eight men who had left the
ship and would have killed all of them if they had remained any longer.

She knew where they
were and she knew the Gerns had lied to them and would never send a
ship to take them to Earth. Their abandonment there had been intended
as a death sentence for all of them.

And Dale was gone and she and Billy would die
helpless and alone . . .

"It will be dark—so soon." Billy's voice shook
with the cold. "If Daddy can't find us in the dark, what will we do?"

"I don't know," she said. "There's no one to
help us and how can I know—what we should do—"

She was from the
city. How could she know what to do on an alien, hostile world where
armed explorers had died? She had tried to be brave before the Gerns
but now—now night was at hand and out of it would come terror and death
for herself and Billy. They would never see Dale again, never see
Athena or Earth or even the dawn on the world that had killed
them . . .

She tried not to cry, and failed. Billy's cold
little hand touched her own, trying to reassure her.

"Don't cry, Mama. I guess—I guess everybody
else is scared, too."

Everyone
else . . .

She was not alone.
How could she have thought she was alone? All around her were others,
as helpless and uncertain as she. Her story was only one out of four
thousand.

"I guess they are, Billy," she said. "I never
thought of that, before."

She knelt to put
her arms around him, thinking: Tears and fear are futile weapons; they
can never bring us any tomorrows. We'll have to fight whatever comes to
kill us no matter how scared we are. For ourselves and for our
children. Above all else, for our children . . .

"I'm going back to find our clothes," she
said. "You wait here for me, in the shelter of that rock, and I won't
be gone long."

Then she told him what he would be too young
to really understand.

"I'm not going to
cry any more and I know, now, what I must do. I'm going to make sure
that there is a tomorrow for you, always, to the last breath of my
life."

* * *

The bright blue
star dimmed and the others faded away. Dawn touched the sky, bringing
with it a coldness that frosted the steel of the rifle in John
Prentiss's hands and formed beads of ice on his gray mustache. There
was a stirring in the area behind him as the weary Rejects prepared to
face the new day and the sound of a child whimpering from the cold.
There had been no time the evening before to gather wood for fires—

"Prowlers!"

The warning cry came from an outer guard and
black shadows were suddenly sweeping out of the dark dawn.

They were things
that might have been half wolf, half tiger; each of them three hundred
pounds of incredible ferocity with eyes blazing like yellow fire in
their white-fanged tiger-wolf faces. They came like the wind, in a
flowing black wave, and ripped through the outer guard line as though
it had not existed. The inner guards fired in a chattering roll of
gunshots, trying to turn them, and Prentiss's rifle licked out pale
tongues of flame as he added his own fire. The prowlers came on,
breaking through, but part of them went down and the others were
swerved by the fire so that they struck only the outer edge of the area
where the Rejects were grouped.

At that distance
they blended into the dark ground so that he could not find them in the
sights of his rifle. He could only watch helplessly and see a
dark-haired woman caught in their path, trying to run with a child in
her arms and already knowing it was too late. A man was running toward
her, slow in the high gravity, an axe in his hands and his cursing a
raging, savage snarl. For a moment her white face was turned in
helpless appeal to him and the others; then the prowlers were upon her
and she fell, deliberately, going to the ground with her child hugged
in her arms beneath her so that her body would protect it.

The prowlers passed
over her, pausing for an instant to slash the life from her, and raced
on again. They vanished back into the outer darkness, the farther
guards firing futilely, and there was a silence but for the distant,
hysterical sobbing of a woman.

It had happened within seconds; the fifth
prowler attack that night and the mildest.

* * *

Full dawn had come
by the time he replaced the guards killed by the last attack and made
the rounds of the other guard lines. He came back by the place where
the prowlers had killed the woman, walking wearily against the pull of
gravity. She lay with her dark hair tumbled and stained with blood, her
white face turned up to the reddening sky, and he saw her clearly for
the first time.

It was Irene.

He stopped, gripping the cold steel of the
rifle and not feeling the rear sight as it cut into his hand.

Irene . . . He
had not known she was on Ragnarok. He had not seen her in the darkness
of the night and he had hoped she and Billy were safe among the
Acceptables with Dale.

There was the sound of footsteps and a
bold-faced girl in a red skirt stopped beside him, her glance going
over him curiously.

"The little boy," he asked, "do you know if
he's all right?"

"The prowlers cut up his face but he'll be
all right," she said. "I came back after his clothes."

"Are you going to look after him?"

"Someone has to
and"—she shrugged her shoulders—"I guess I was soft enough to elect
myself for the job. Why—was his mother a friend of yours?"

"She was my daughter," he said.

"Oh." For a
moment the bold, brassy look was gone from her face, like a mask that
had slipped. "I'm sorry. And I'll take care of Billy."

* * *

The first
objection to his assumption of leadership occurred an hour later. The
prowlers had withdrawn with the coming of full daylight and wood had
been carried from the trees to build fires. Mary, one of the volunteer
cooks, was asking two men to carry her some water when he approached.
The smaller man picked up one of the clumsy containers, hastily
improvised from canvas, and started toward the creek. The other, a big,
thick-chested man, did not move.

"We'll have to have water," Mary said.
"People are hungry and cold and sick."

The man continued to squat by the fire, his
hands extended to its warmth. "Name someone else," he said.

"But—"

She looked at
Prentiss in uncertainty. He went to the thick-chested man, knowing
there would be violence and welcoming it as something to help drive
away the vision of Irene's pale, cold face under the red sky.

"She asked you to get her some water," he
said. "Get it."

The man looked
up at him, studying him with deliberate insolence, then he got to his
feet, his heavy shoulders hunched challengingly.

"I'll have to
set you straight, old timer," he said. "No one has appointed you the
head cheese around here. Now, there's the container you want filled and
over there"—he made a small motion with one hand—"is the creek. Do you
know what to do?"

"Yes," he said. "I know what to do."

He brought the
butt of the rifle smashing up. It struck the man under the chin and
there was a sharp cracking sound as his jawbone snapped. For a fraction
of a second there was an expression of stupefied amazement on his face
then his eyes glazed and he slumped to the ground with his broken jaw
setting askew.

"All right," he said to Mary. "Now you go
ahead and name somebody else."

* * *

He found that
the prowlers had killed seventy during the night. One hundred more had
died from the Hell Fever that often followed exposure and killed within
an hour.

He went the half
mile to the group that had arrived on the second cruiser as soon as he
had eaten a delayed breakfast. He saw, before he had quite reached the
other group, that the Constellation's Lieutenant Commander,
Vincent Lake, was in charge of it.

Lake, a tall, hard-jawed man with pale blue
eyes under pale brows, walked forth to meet him as soon as he
recognized him.

"Glad to see you're still alive," Lake
greeted him. "I thought that second Gern blast got you along with the
others."

"I was visiting midship and wasn't home when
it happened," he said.

He looked at Lake's group of Rejects, in
their misery and uncertainty so much like his own, and asked, "How was
it last night?"

"Bad—damned bad," Lake said. "Prowlers and
Hell Fever, and no wood for fires. Two hundred died last night."

"I came down to
see if anyone was in charge here and to tell them that we'll have to
move into the woods at once—today. We'll have plenty of wood for the
fires there, some protection from the wind, and by combining our
defenses we can stand off the prowlers better."

Lake agreed. When the brief discussion of
plans was finished he asked, "How much do you know about Ragnarok?"

"Not much,"
Prentiss answered. "We didn't stay to study it very long. There are no
heavy metals here, or resources of any value. We gave Ragnarok a quick
survey and when the sixth man died we marked it on the chart as
uninhabitable and went on our way.

"As you probably
know, that bright blue star is Ragnarok's other sun. Its position in
the advance of the yellow sun shows the season to be early spring. When
summer comes Ragnarok will swing between the two suns and the heat will
be something no human has ever endured. Nor the cold, when winter comes.

"I know of no
edible plants, although there might be some. There are a few species of
rodent-like animals—they're scavengers—and a herbivore we called the
woods goat. The prowlers are the dominant form of life on Ragnarok and
I suspect their intelligence is a good deal higher than we would like
it to be. There will be a constant battle for survival with them.

"There's another
animal, not as intelligent as the prowlers but just as dangerous—the
unicorn. The unicorns are big and fast and they travel in herds. I
haven't seen any here so far—I hope we don't. At the lower elevations
are the swamp crawlers. They're unadulterated nightmares. I hope they
don't go to these higher elevations in the summer. The prowlers and the
Hell Fever, the gravity and heat and cold and starvation, will be
enough for us to have to fight."

"I see," Lake
said. He smiled, a smile that was as bleak as moonlight on an arctic
glacier. "Earth-type—remember the promise the Gerns made the Rejects?"
He looked out across the camp, at the snow whipping from the frosty
hills, at the dead and the dying and a little girl trying vainly to
awaken her brother.

"They were
condemned, without reason, without a chance to live," he said. "So many
of them are so young . . . and when you're young
it's too soon to have
to die."

* * *

Prentiss
returned to his own group. The dead were buried in shallow graves and
inventory was taken of the promised "ample supplies." These were only
the few personal possessions the Rejects had been permitted to take
plus a small amount of food the Gerns had taken from the Constellation's
stores. The Gerns had been forced to provide the Rejects with at least
a little food—had they openly left them to starve, the Acceptables,
whose families were among the Rejects, might have rebelled.

Inventory of the
firearms and ammunition showed the total to be discouragingly small.
They would have to learn how to make and use bows and arrows as soon as
possible.

With the first
party of guards and workmen following him, Prentiss went to the
tributary valley that emptied into the central valley a mile to the
north. It was as good a camp site as could be hoped for; wide and
thickly spotted with groves of trees, a creek running down its center.

The workmen
began the construction of shelters and he climbed up the side of the
nearer hill. He reached its top, his breath coming fast in the gravity
that was the equivalent of a burden half his own weight, and saw what
the surrounding terrain was like.

To the south,
beyond the barren valley, the land could be seen dropping in its long
sweep to the southern lowlands where the unicorns and swamp crawlers
lived. To the north the hills climbed gently for miles, then ended
under the steeply sloping face of an immense plateau. The plateau
reached from western to eastern horizon, still white with the snows of
winter and looming so high above the world below that the clouds
brushed it and half obscured it.

He went back
down the hill as Lake's men appeared. They started work on what would
be a continuation of his own camp and he told Lake what he had seen
from the hill.

"We're between
the lowlands and the highlands," he said. "This will be as near to a
temperate altitude as Ragnarok has. We survive here—or else. There's no
other place for us to go."

An overcast
darkened the sky at noon and the wind died down to almost nothing.
There was a feeling of waiting tension in the air and he went back to
the Rejects, to speed their move into the woods. They were already
going in scattered groups, accompanied by prowler guards, but there was
no organization and it would be too long before the last of them were
safely in the new camp.

He could not be
two places at once—he needed a subleader to oversee the move of the
Rejects and their possessions into the woods and their placement after
they got there.

He found the man
he wanted already helping the Rejects get started: a thin, quiet man
named Henry Anders who had fought well against the prowlers the night
before, even though his determination had been greater than his
marksmanship. He was the type people instinctively liked and trusted; a
good choice for the subleader whose job it would be to handle the
multitude of details in camp while he, Prentiss, and a second subleader
he would select, handled the defense of the camp and the hunting.

"I don't like
this overcast," he told Anders. "Something's brewing. Get everyone
moved and at work helping build shelters as soon as you can."

"I can have most
of them there within an hour or two," Anders said. "Some of the older
people, though, will have to take it slow. This gravity—it's already
getting the hearts of some of them."

"How are the children taking the gravity?" he
asked.

"The babies and
the very young—it's hard to tell about them yet. But the children from
about four on up get tired quickly, go to sleep, and when they wake up
they've sort of bounced back out of it."

"Maybe they can adapt to some extent to this
gravity." He thought of what Lake had said that morning: So many of
them are so young . . . and when you're young it's
too soon to have to die.
"Maybe the Gerns made a mistake—maybe Terran children aren't as easy to
kill as they thought. It's your job and mine and others to give the
children the chance to prove the Gerns wrong."

He went his way
again to pass by the place where Julia, the girl who had become Billy's
foster-mother, was preparing to go to the new camp.

It was the
second time for him to see Billy that morning. The first time Billy had
still been stunned with grief, and at the sight of his grandfather he
had been unable to keep from breaking.

"The Gern hit
her," he had sobbed, his torn face bleeding anew as it twisted in
crying. "He hurt her, and Daddy was gone and then—and then the other
things killed her—"

But now he had
had a little time to accept what had happened and he was changed. He
was someone much older, almost a man, trapped for a while in the body
of a five-year-old boy.

"I guess this is
all, Billy," Julia was saying as she gathered up her scanty possessions
and Irene's bag. "Get your teddy bear and we'll go."

Billy went to his teddy bear and knelt down
to pick it up. Then he stopped and said something that sounded like "No."
He laid the teddy bear back down, wiping a little dust from its face as
in a last gesture of farewell, and stood up to face Julia empty-handed.

"I don't think I'll want to play with my
teddy bear any more," he said. "I don't think I'll ever want to play at
all anymore."

Then he went to
walk beside her, leaving his teddy bear lying on the ground behind him
and with it leaving forever the tears and laughter of childhood.

* * *

The overcast
deepened, and at midafternoon dark storm clouds came driving in from
the west. Efforts were intensified to complete the move before the
storm broke, both in his section of the camp and in Lake's. The
shelters would be of critical importance and they were being built of
the materials most quickly available; dead limbs, brush, and the
limited amount of canvas and blankets the Rejects had. They would be
inadequate protection but there was no time to build anything better.

It seemed only a
few minutes until the black clouds were overhead, rolling and racing at
an incredible velocity. With them came the deep roar of the high wind
that drove them and the wind on the ground began to stir restlessly in
response, like some monster awakening to the call of its kind.

Prentiss knew
already who he wanted as his other subleader. He found him hard at work
helping build shelters; Howard Craig, a powerfully muscled man with a
face as hard and grim as a cliff of granite. It had been Craig who had
tried to save Irene from the prowlers that morning with only an axe as
a weapon.

Prentiss knew
him slightly—and Craig still did not know Irene had been his daughter.
Craig had been one of the field engineers for what would have been the
Athena Geological Survey. He had had a wife, a frail, blonde girl who
had been the first of all to die of Hell Fever the night before, and he
still had their three small children.

"We'll stop with
the shelters we already have built," he told Craig. "It will take all
the time left to us to reinforce them against the wind. I need someone
to help me, in addition to Anders. You're the one I want.

"Send some young
and fast-moving men back to last night's camp to cut all the strips of
prowler skins they can get. Everything about the shelters will have to
be lashed down to something solid. See if you can find some experienced
outdoorsmen to help you check the jobs.

"And tell Anders
that women and children only will be placed in the shelters. There will
be no room for anyone else and if any man, no matter what the excuse,
crowds out a woman or child I'll personally kill him."

"You needn't bother," Craig said. He smiled
with savage mirthlessness. "I'll be glad to take care of any such
incidents."

Prentiss saw to
it that the piles of wood for the guard fires were ready to be lighted
when the time came. He ordered all guards to their stations, there to
get what rest they could. They would have no rest at all after darkness
came.

He met Lake at
the north end of his own group's camp, where it merged with Lake's
group and no guard line was needed. Lake told him that his camp would
be as well prepared as possible under the circumstances within another
hour. By then the wind in the trees was growing swiftly stronger,
slapping harder and harder at the shelters, and it seemed doubtful that
the storm would hold off for an hour.

But Lake was
given his hour, plus half of another. Then deep dusk came, although it
was not quite sundown. Prentiss ordered all the guard fires lighted and
all the women and children into the shelters. Fifteen minutes later the
storm finally broke.

It came as a
roaring downpour of cold rain. Complete darkness came with it and the
wind rose to a velocity that made the trees lean. An hour went by and
the wind increased, smashing at the shelters with a violence they had
not been built to withstand. The prowler skin lashings held but the
canvas and blankets were ripped into streamers that cracked like rifle
shots in the wind before they were torn completely loose and flung into
the night.

One by one the
guard fires went out and the rain continued, growing colder and driven
in almost horizontal sheets by the wind. The women and children huddled
in chilled misery in what meager protection the torn shelters still
gave and there was nothing that could be done to help them.

The rain turned
to snow at midnight, a howling blizzard through which Prentiss's light
could penetrate but a few feet as he made his rounds. He walked with
slogging weariness, forcing himself on. He was no longer young—he was
fifty—and he had had little rest.

He had known, of
course, that successful leadership would involve more sacrifice on his
part than on the part of those he led. He could have shunned
responsibility and his personal welfare would have benefited. He had
lived on alien worlds almost half his life; with a rifle and a knife he
could have lived, until Ragnarok finally killed him, with much less
effort than that required of him as leader. But such an action had been
repugnant to him, unthinkable. What he knew of survival on hostile
worlds might help the others to survive.

So he had
assumed command, tolerating no objections and disregarding the fact
that he would be shortening his already short time to live on Ragnarok.
It was, he supposed, some old instinct that forbade the individual to
stand aside and let the group die.

The snow stopped
an hour later and the wind died to a frigid moaning. The clouds
thinned, broke apart, and the giant star looked down upon the land with
its cold, blue light.

The prowlers came then.

They feinted
against the east and west guard lines, then hit the south line in
massed, ferocious attack. Twenty got through, past the slaughtered
south guards, and charged into the interior of the camp. As they did so
the call, prearranged by him in case of such an event, went up the
guard lines:

"Emergency guards, east and west—close in!"

In the camp,
above the triumphant, demoniac yammering of the prowlers, came the
screams of women, the thinner cries of children, and the shouting and
cursing of men as they tried to fight the prowlers with knives and
clubs. Then the emergency guards—every third man from the east and west
lines—came plunging through the snow, firing as they came.

The prowlers
launched themselves away from their victims and toward the guards,
leaving a woman to stagger aimlessly with blood spurting from a severed
artery and splashing dark in the starlight on the blue-white snow. The
air was filled with the cracking of gunfire and the deep, savage
snarling of the prowlers. Half of the prowlers broke through, leaving
seven dead guards before them. The others lay in the snow where they
had fallen and the surviving emergency guards turned to hurry back to
their stations, reloading as they went.

The wounded
woman had crumpled down in the snow and a first aid man knelt over her.
He straightened, shaking his head, and joined the others as they
searched for injured among the prowlers' victims.

They found no injured; only the dead. The
prowlers killed with grim efficiency.

* * *

"John—"

John Chiara, the
young doctor, hurried toward him. His dark eyes were worried behind his
frosted glasses and his eyebrows were coated with ice.

"The wood is
soaked," he said. "It's going to be some time before we can get fires
going. There are babies that will freeze to death before then."

Prentiss looked at the prowlers lying in the
snow and motioned toward them. "They're warm. Have their guts and lungs
taken out."

"What—"

Then Chiara's eyes lighted with comprehension
and he hurried away without further questions.

Prentiss went on, to make the rounds of the
guards. When he returned he saw that his order had been obeyed.

The prowlers lay
in the snow as before, their savage faces still twisted in their dying
snarls, but snug and warm inside them babies slept.

* * *

The prowlers
attacked again and again and when the wan sun lifted to shine down on
the white, frozen land there were five hundred dead in Prentiss's camp:
three hundred by Hell Fever and two hundred by prowler attacks.

Five hundred—and that had been only one night
on Ragnarok.

Lake reported over six hundred dead. "I
hope," he said with bitter hatred, "that the Gerns slept comfortably
last night."

"We'll have to
build a wall around the camp to hold out the prowlers," Prentiss said.
"We don't dare keep using up what little ammunition we have at the rate
we've used it the last two nights."

"That will be a
big job in this gravity," Lake said. "We'll have to crowd both groups
in together to let its circumference be as small as possible."

It was the way
Prentiss had planned to do it. One thing would have to be settled with
Lake: there could not be two independent leaders over the merged
groups . . .

Lake, watching
him, said, "I think we can get along. Alien worlds are your specialty
rather than mine. And according to the Ragnarok law of averages, there
will be only one of us pretty soon, anyway."

All were moved
to the center of the camp area that day and when the prowlers came that
night they found a ring of guards and fires through which they could
penetrate only with heavy sacrifices.

There was warmth
to the sun the next morning and the snow began to melt. Work was
commenced on the stockade wall. It would have to be twelve feet high so
the prowlers could not jump over it and, since the prowlers had the
sharp claws and climbing ability of cats, its top would have to be
surmounted with a row of sharp outward-and-downward projecting stakes.
These would be set in sockets in the top rail and tied down with strips
of prowler skin.

The trees east
of camp were festooned for a great distance with the remnants of canvas
and cloth the wind had left there. A party of boys, protected by the
usual prowler guards, was sent out to climb the trees and recover it.
All of it, down to the smallest fragment, was turned over to the women
who were physically incapable of helping work on the stockade wall.
They began patiently sewing the rags and tatters back into usable form
again.

The first
hunting party went out and returned with six of the tawny-yellow
sharp-horned woods goats, each as large as an Earth deer. The hunters
reported the woods goats to be hard to stalk and dangerous when
cornered. One hunter was killed and another injured because of not
knowing that.

They also
brought in a few of the rabbit-sized scavenger animals. They were all
legs and teeth and bristly fur, the meat almost inedible. It would be a
waste of the limited ammunition to shoot any more of them.

There was a
black barked tree which the Dunbar Expedition had called the lance tree
because of its slender, straightly outthrust limbs. Its wood was as
hard as hickory and as springy as cedar. Prentiss found two amateur
archers who were sure they could make efficient bows and arrows out of
the lance tree limbs. He gave them the job, together with helpers.

The days turned
suddenly hot, with nights that still went below freezing. The Hell
Fever took a constant, relentless toll. They needed adequate
shelters—but the dwindling supply of ammunition and the nightly prowler
attacks made the need for a stockade wall even more imperative. The
shelters would have to wait.

He went looking for Dr. Chiara one evening
and found him just leaving one of the makeshift shelters.

A boy lay inside
it, his face flushed with Hell Fever and his eyes too bright and too
dark as he looked up into the face of his mother who sat beside him.
She was dry-eyed and silent as she looked down at him but she was
holding his hand in hers, tightly, desperately, as though she might
that way somehow keep him from leaving her.

Prentiss walked beside Chiara and when the
shelter was behind them he asked, "There's no hope?"

"None," Chiara said. "There never is with
Hell Fever."

Chiara had changed. He was no longer the
stocky, cheerful man he had been on the Constellation,
whose brown eyes had smiled at the world through thick glasses and who
had laughed and joked as he assured his patients that all would soon be
well with them. He was thin and his face was haggard with worry. He
had, in his quiet way, been fully as valiant as any of those who had
fought the prowlers. He had worked day and night to fight a form of
death he could not see and against which he had no weapon.

"The boy is
dying," Chiara said. "He knows it and his mother knows it. I told them
the medicine I gave him might help. It was a lie, to try to make it a
little easier for both of them before the end comes. The medicine I
gave him was a salt tablet—that's all I have."

And then, with
the first bitterness Prentiss had ever seen him display, Chiara said,
"You call me 'Doctor.' Everyone does. I'm not—I'm only a first-year
intern. I do the best I know how to do but it isn't enough—it will
never be enough."

"What you have
to learn here is something no Earth doctor knows or could teach you,"
he said. "You have to have time to learn—and you need equipment and
drugs."

"If I could have
antibiotics and other drugs . . . I wanted to get a
supply from the
dispensary but the Gerns wouldn't let me go."

"Some of the
Ragnarok plants might be of value if a person could find the right
ones. I just came from a talk with Anders about that. He'll provide you
with anything possible in the way of equipment and supplies for
research—anything in the camp you need to try to save lives. He'll be
at your shelter tonight to see what you want. Do you want to try it?"

"Yes—of course."
Chiara's eyes lighted with new hope. "It might take a long time to find
a cure—maybe we never would—but I'd like to have help so I could try.
I'd like to be able, some day once again, to say to a scared kid, 'Take
this medicine and in the morning you'll be better,' and know I told the
truth."

The nightly
prowler attacks continued and the supply of ammunition diminished. It
would be some time before men were skilled in the use of the bows and
arrows that were being made; and work on the wall was pushed ahead with
all speed possible. No one was exempt from labor on it who could as
much as carry the pointed stakes. Children down to the youngest worked
alongside the men and women.

The work was
made many times more exhausting by the 1.5 gravity. People moved
heavily at their jobs and even at night there was no surcease from the
gravity. They could only go into a coma-like sleep in which there was
no real rest and from which they awoke tired and aching. Each morning
there would be some who did not awaken at all, though their hearts had
been sound enough for working on Earth or Athena.

The killing
labor was recognized as necessary, however, and there were no
complaints until the morning he was accosted by Peter Bemmon.

He had seen Bemmon several times on the Constellation;
a big, soft-faced man who had attached much importance to his role as a
minor member of the Athena Planning Board. But even on the Constellation
Bemmon had felt he merited a still higher position, and his
ingratiating attitude when before his superiors had become one of
fault-finding insinuations concerning their ability as compared with
his when their backs were turned.

This resentment
had taken new form on Ragnarok, where his former position was of
utterly no importance to anyone and his lack of any skills or outdoor
experience made him only one worker among others.

The sun was
shining mercilessly hot the day Bemmon chose to challenge Prentiss's
wisdom as leader. Bemmon was cutting and sharpening stakes, a job the
sometimes-too-lenient Anders had given him when Bemmon had insisted his
heart was on the verge of failure from doing heavier work. Prentiss was
in a hurry and would have gone on past him but Bemmon halted him with a
sharp command:

"You—wait a minute!"

Bemmon had a
hatchet in his hand, but only one stake lay on the ground; and his face
was red with anger, not exertion. Prentiss stopped, wondering if Bemmon
was going to ask for a broken jaw, and Bemmon came to him.

"How long," Bemmon asked, anger making his
voice a little thick, "do you think I'll tolerate this absurd
situation?"

"What situation?" Prentiss asked.

"This stupid
insistence upon confining me to manual labor. I'm the single member on
Ragnarok of the Athena Planning Board and surely you can see that the
bumbling confusion of these people"—Bemmon indicated the hurrying,
laboring men, women and children around them—"can be transformed into
efficient, organized effort only through proper supervision. Yet my
abilities along such lines are ignored and I've been forced to work as
a common laborer—a wood chopper!"

He flung the
hatchet down viciously, into the rocks at his feet, breathing heavily
with resentment and challenge. "I demand the respect to which I'm
entitled."

"Look," Prentiss said.

He pointed to
the group just then going past them. A sixteen-year-old girl was bent
almost double under the weight of the pole she was carrying, her once
pretty face flushed and sweating. Behind her two twelve-year-old boys
were dragging a still larger pole. Behind them came several small
children, each of them carrying as many of the pointed stakes as he or
she could walk under, no matter if it was only one. All of them were
trying to hurry, to accomplish as much as possible, and no one was
complaining even though they were already staggering with weariness.

"So you think
you're entitled to more respect?" Prentiss asked. "Those kids would
work harder if you were giving them orders from under the shade of a
tree—is that what you want?"

Bemmon's lips
thinned and hatred was like a sheen on his face. Prentiss looked from
the single stake Bemmon had cut that morning to Bemmon's white,
unblistered hands. He looked at the hatchet that Bemmon had thrown down
in the rocks and at the V notch broken in its keen-edged blade. It had
been the best of the very few hatchets they
had . . .

"The next time
you even nick that hatchet I'm going to split your skull with it," he
said. "Pick it up and get back to work. I mean work. You'll
have broken blisters on every finger tonight or you'll go on the
log-carrying force tomorrow. Now, move!"

What Bemmon had
thought to be his wrath deserted him before Prentiss's fury. He stooped
to obey the order but the hatred remained on his face and when the
hatchet was in his hands he made a last attempt to bluster:

"The day may come when we'll refuse to
tolerate any longer your sadistic displays of authority."

"Good," Prentiss
said. "Anyone who doesn't like my style is welcome to try to change
it—or to try to replace me. With knives or clubs, rifles or broken
hatchets, Bemmon—any way you want it and any time you want it."

"I—" Bemmon's
eyes went from the hatchet in his half raised hand to the long knife in
Prentiss's belt. He swallowed with a convulsive jerk of his Adam's
apple and his hatchet-bearing arm suddenly wilted. "I don't want to
fight—to replace you—"

He swallowed
again and his face forced itself into a sickly attempt at an
ingratiating smile. "I didn't mean to imply any disrespect for you or
the good job you're doing. I'm very sorry."

Then he hurried away, like a man glad to
escape, and began to chop stakes with amazing speed.

But the sullen
hatred had not been concealed by the ingratiating smile; and Prentiss
knew Bemmon was a man who would always be his enemy.

* * *

The days dragged
by in the weary routine, but overworked muscles slowly strengthened and
people moved with a little less laborious effort. On the twentieth day
the wall was finally completed and the camp was prowler proof.

But the spring
weather was a mad succession of heat and cold and storm that caused the
Hell Fever to take its toll each day and there was no relaxation from
the grueling labor. Weatherproof shelters had to be built as rapidly as
possible.

So the work of
constructing them began; wearily, sometimes almost hopelessly, but
without complaint other than to hate and curse the Gerns more than ever.

There was no
more trouble from Bemmon; Prentiss had almost forgotten him when he was
publicly challenged one night by a burly, threatening man named Haggar.

"You've bragged
that you'll fight any man who dares disagree with you," Haggar said
loudly. "Well, here I am. We'll use knives and before they even have
time to bury you tonight I'm goin' to have your stooges kicked out and
replaced with men who'll give us competent leadership instead of
blunderin' authoritarianism."

Prentiss noticed
that Haggar seemed to have a little difficulty pronouncing the last
word, as though he had learned it only recently.

"I'll be glad to accommodate you," Prentiss
said mildly. "Go get yourself a knife."

Haggar already
had one, a long-bladed butcher knife, and the duel began. Haggar was
surprisingly adept with his knife but he had never had the training and
experience in combat that interstellar explorers such as Prentiss had.
Haggar was good, but considerably far from good enough.

Prentiss did not
kill him. He had no compunctions about doing such a thing, but it would
have been an unnecessary waste of needed manpower. He gave Haggar a
carefully painful and bloody lesson that thoroughly banished all his
lust for conflict without seriously injuring him. The duel was over
within a minute after it began.

Bemmon, who had
witnessed the challenge with keen interest and then watched Haggar's
defeat with agitation, became excessively friendly and flattering
toward Prentiss afterward. Prentiss felt sure, although he had no
proof, that it had been Bemmon who had spurred the simple-minded Haggar
into challenging him to a duel.

If so, the sight
of what had happened to Haggar must have effectively dampened Bemmon's
desire for revenge because he became almost a model worker.

* * *

As Lake had
predicted, he and Prentiss worked together well. Lake calmly took a
secondary role, not at all interested in possession of authority but
only in the survival of the Rejects. He spoke of the surrender of the Constellation
only once, to say:

"I knew there
could be only Ragnarok in this section of space. I had to order four
thousand people to go like sheep to what was to be their place of
execution so that four thousand more could live as slaves. That was my
last act as an officer."

Prentiss
suspected that Lake found it impossible not to blame himself
subconsciously for what circumstances had forced him to do. It was
irrational—but conscientious men were quite often a little irrational
in their sense of responsibility.

Lake had two
subleaders: a genial, red-haired man named Ben Barber, who would have
been a farmer on Athena but who made a good subleader on Ragnarok; and
a lithe, cat-like man named Karl Schroeder.

Schroeder
claimed to be twenty-four but not even the scars on his face could make
him look more than twenty-one. He smiled often, a little too often.
Prentiss had seen smiles like that before. Schroeder was the type who
could smile while he killed a man—and he probably had.

But, if
Schroeder was a born fighter and perhaps killer, they were
characteristics that he expended entirely upon the prowlers. He was
Lake's right-hand man; a deadly marksman and utterly without fear.

One evening,
when Lake had given Schroeder some instructions concerning the next
day's activities, Schroeder answered him with the half-mocking smile
and the words, "I'll see that it's done, Commander."

"Not 'Commander,' " Lake said. "I—all of
us—left our ranks, titles and honors on the Constellation. The
past is dead for us."

"I see,"
Schroeder said. The smile faded away and he looked into Lake's eyes as
he asked, "And what about our past dishonors, disgraces and such?"

"They were left on the Constellation,
too," Lake said. "If anyone wants dishonor he'll have to earn it all
over again."

"That sounds fair," Schroeder said. "That
sounds as fair as anyone could ever ask for."

He turned away
and Prentiss saw what he had noticed before: Schroeder's black hair was
coming out light brown at the roots. It was a color that would better
match his light complexion and it was the color of hair that a man
named Schrader, wanted by the police on Venus, had had.

Hair could be
dyed, identification cards could be forged—but it was all something
Prentiss did not care to pry into until and if Schroeder gave him
reason to. Schroeder was a hard and dangerous man, despite his youth,
and sometimes men of that type, when the chips were down, exhibited a
higher sense of duty than the soft men who spoke piously of respect for
Society—and then were afraid to face danger to protect the society and
the people they claimed to respect.

* * *

A lone prowler
came on the eleventh night following the wall's completion. It came
silently, in the dead of night, and it learned how to reach in and tear
apart the leather lashings that held the pointed stakes in place and
then jerk the stakes out of their sockets. It was seen as it was
removing the third stake—which would have made a large enough opening
for it to come through—and shot. It fell back and managed to escape
into the woods, although staggering and bleeding.

The next night
the stockade was attacked by dozens of prowlers who simultaneously
began removing the pointed stakes in the same manner employed by the
prowler of the night before. Their attack was turned back with heavy
losses on both sides and with a dismayingly large expenditure of
precious ammunition.

There could be
no doubt about how the band of prowlers had learned to remove the
stakes: the prowler of the night before had told them before it died.
It was doubtful that the prowlers had a spoken language, but they had
some means of communication. They worked together and they were highly
intelligent, probably about halfway between dog and man.

The prowlers were going to be an enemy even
more formidable than Prentiss had thought.

The missing
stakes were replaced the next day and the others were tied down more
securely. Once again the camp was prowler proof—but only for so long as
armed guards patrolled inside the walls to kill attacking prowlers
during the short time it would take them to remove the stakes.

The hunting
parties suffered unusually heavy losses from prowler attacks that day
and that evening, as the guards patrolled inside the walls, Lake said
to Prentiss:

"The prowlers
are so damnably persistent. It isn't that they're hungry—they don't
kill us to eat us. They don't have any reason to kill us—they just hate
us."

"They have a reason," Prentiss said. "They're
doing the same thing we're doing: fighting for survival."

Lake's pale brows lifted in question.

"The prowlers
are the rulers of Ragnarok," Prentiss said. "They fought their way up
here, as men did on Earth, until they're master of every creature on
their world. Even of the unicorns and swamp crawlers. But now we've
come and they're intelligent enough to know that we're accustomed to
being the dominant species, ourselves.

"There can't be
two dominant species on the same world—and they know it. Men or
prowlers—in the end one is going to have to go down before the other."

"I suppose
you're right," Lake said. He looked at the guards, a fourth of them
already reduced to bows and arrows that they had not yet had time to
learn how to use. "If we win the battle for supremacy it will be a long
fight, maybe over a period of centuries. And if the prowlers win—it may
all be over within a year or two."

* * *

The giant blue
star that was the other component of Ragnarok's binary grew swiftly in
size as it preceded the yellow sun farther each morning. When summer
came the blue star would be a sun as hot as the yellow sun and Ragnarok
would be between them. The yellow sun would burn the land by day and
the blue sun would sear it by the night that would not be night. Then
would come the brief fall, followed by the long, frozen winter when the
yellow sun would shine pale and cold, far to the south, and the blue
sun would be a star again, two hundred and fifty million miles away and
invisible behind the cold yellow sun.

The Hell Fever
lessened with the completion of the shelters but it still killed each
day. Chiara and his helpers worked with unfaltering determination to
find a cure for it but the cure, if there was one, eluded them. The
graves in the cemetery were forty long by forty wide and more were
added each day. To all the fact became grimly obvious: they were
swiftly dying out and they had yet to face Ragnarok at its worst.

The old survival
instincts asserted themselves and there were marriages among the
younger ones. One of the first to marry was Julia.

She stopped to
talk to Prentiss one evening. She still wore the red skirt, now faded
and patched, but her face was tired and thoughtful and no longer bold.

"Is it true,
John," she asked, "that only a few of us might be able to have children
here and that most of us who tried to have children in this gravity
would die for it?"

"It's true," he said. "But you already knew
that when you married."

"Yes . . . I
knew it." There was a little silence. "All my life I've had fun and
done as I pleased. The human race didn't need me and we both knew it.
But now—none of us can be apart from the others or be afraid of
anything. If we're selfish and afraid there will come a time when the
last of us will die and there will be nothing on Ragnarok to show we
were ever here.

"I don't want it
to end like that. I want there to be children, to live after we're
gone. So I'm going to try to have a child. I'm not afraid and I won't
be."

When he did not reply at once she said,
almost self-consciously, "Coming from me that all sounds a little
silly, I suppose."

"It sounds wise and splendid, Julia," he
said, "and it's what I thought you were going to say."

* * *

Full spring came
and the vegetation burst into leaf and bud and bloom, quickly, for its
growth instincts knew in their mindless way how short was the time to
grow and reproduce before the brown death of summer came. The prowlers
were suddenly gone one day, to follow the spring north, and for a week
men could walk and work outside the stockade without the protection of
armed guards.

Then the new peril appeared, the one they had
not expected: the unicorns.

The stockade
wall was a blue-black rectangle behind them and the blue star burned
with the brilliance of a dozen moons, lighting the woods in blue shadow
and azure light. Prentiss and the hunter walked a little in front of
the two riflemen, winding to keep in the starlit glades.

"It was on the
other side of the next grove of trees," the hunter said in a low voice.
"Fred was getting ready to bring in the rest of the woods goats. He
shouldn't have been more than ten minutes behind me—and it's been over
an hour."

They rounded the
grove of trees. At first it seemed there was nothing before them but
the empty, grassy glade. Then they saw it lying on the ground no more
than twenty feet in front of them.

It was—it had been—a man. He was broken and
stamped into hideous shapelessness and something had torn off his arms.

For a moment there was dead silence, then the
hunter whispered, "What did that?"

The answer came
in a savage, squealing scream and the pound of cloven hooves. A
formless shadow beside the trees materialized into a monstrous charging
bulk; a thing like a gigantic gray bull, eight feet tall at the
shoulders, with the tusked, snarling head of a boar and the starlight
glinting along the curving, vicious length of its single horn.

"Unicorn!" Prentiss said, and jerked
up his rifle.

The rifles
cracked in a ragged volley. The unicorn squealed in fury and struck the
hunter, catching him on its horn and hurling him thirty feet. One of
the riflemen went down under the unicorn's hooves, his cry ending
almost as soon as it began.

The unicorn
ripped the sod in deep furrows as it whirled back to Prentiss and the
remaining rifleman; not turning in the manner of four-footed beasts of
Earth but rearing and spinning on its hind feet. It towered above them
as it whirled, the tip of its horn fifteen feet above the ground and
its hooves swinging around like great clubs.

Prentiss shot again, his sights on what he
hoped would be a vital area, and the rifleman shot an instant later.

The shots went true. The unicorn's swing
brought it on around but it collapsed, falling to the ground with
jarring heaviness.

"We got it!" the rifleman said. "We—"

It half
scrambled to its feet and made a noise; a call that went out through
the night like the blast of a mighty trumpet. Then it dropped back to
the ground, to die while its call was still echoing from the nearer
hills.

From the east
came an answering trumpet blast; a trumpeting that was sounded again
from the south and from the north. Then there came a low and muffled
drumming, like the pounding of thousands of hooves.

The rifleman's face was blue-white in the
starlight. "The others are coming—we'll have to run for it!"

He turned, and began to run toward the
distant bulk of the stockade.

"No!" Prentiss commanded, quick and harsh.
"Not the stockade!"

The rifleman kept running, seeming not to
hear him in his panic. Prentiss called to him once more:

"Not the stockade—you'll lead the unicorns
into it!"

Again the rifleman seemed not to hear him.

The unicorns
were coming in sight, converging in from the north and east and south,
the rumble of their hooves swelling to a thunder that filled the night.
The rifleman would reach the stockade only a little ahead of them and
they would go through the wall as though it had been made of paper.

For a while the
area inside the stockade would be filled with dust, with the squealing
of the swirling, charging unicorns and the screams of the dying. Those
inside the stockade would have no chance whatever of escaping. Within
two minutes it would be over, the last child would have been found
among the shattered shelters and trampled into lifeless shapelessness
in the bloody ground.

Within two minutes all human life on Ragnarok
would be gone.

There was only one thing for him to do.

He dropped to
one knee so his aim would be steady and the sights of his rifle caught
the running man's back. He pressed the trigger and the rifle cracked
viciously as it bucked against his shoulder.

The man spun and
fell hard to the ground. He twisted, to raise himself up a little and
look back, his face white and accusing and unbelieving.

"You shot me!"

Then he fell forward and lay without moving.

Prentiss turned
back to face the unicorns and to look at the trees in the nearby grove.
He saw what he already knew: they were young trees and too small to
offer any escape for him. There was no place to run, no place to hide.

There was
nothing he could do but wait; nothing he could do but stand in the blue
starlight and watch the devil's herd pound toward him and think, in the
last moments of his life, how swiftly and unexpectedly death could come
to man on Ragnarok.

* * *

The unicorns
held the Rejects prisoners in their stockade the rest of the night and
all the next day. Lake had seen the shooting of the rifleman and had
watched the unicorn herd kill John Prentiss and then trample the dead
rifleman.

He had already
given the order to build a quick series of fires around the inside of
the stockade walls when the unicorns paused to tear their victims to
pieces, grunting and squealing in triumph as bones crushed between
their teeth and they flung the pieces to one side.

The fires were
started and green wood was thrown on them, to make them smolder and
smoke for as long as possible. Then the unicorns were coming on to the
stockade and every person inside it went into the concealment of the
shelters.

Lake had already
given his last order: There would be absolute quiet until and if the
unicorns left; a quiet that would be enforced with fist or club
wherever necessary.

The unicorns
were still outside when morning came. The fires could not be refueled;
the sight of a man moving inside the stockade would bring the entire
herd charging through. The hours dragged by, the smoke from the dying
fires dwindled to thin streamers. The unicorns grew increasingly bolder
and suspicious, crowding closer to the walls and peering through the
openings between rails.

The sun was
setting when one of the unicorns trumpeted; a sound different from that
of the call to battle. The others threw up their heads to listen, then
they turned and drifted away. Within minutes the entire herd was gone
out of sight through the woods, toward the north.

Lake waited and
watched until he was sure the unicorns were gone for good. Then he
ordered the All Clear given and hurried to the south wall, to look down
across the barren valley and hope he would not see what he expected to
see.

Barber came up
behind him, to sigh with relief. "That was close. It's hard to make so
many people stay absolutely quiet for hour after hour. Especially the
children—they don't understand."

"We'll have to leave," Lake said.

"Leave?" Barber asked. "We can make this
stockade strong enough to hold out unicorns."

"Look to the south," Lake told him.

Barber did so and saw what Lake had already
seen; a broad, low cloud of dust moving slowly toward them.

"Another herd of
unicorns," Lake said. "John didn't know they migrated—the Dunbar
Expedition wasn't here long enough to learn that. There'll be herd
after herd coming through and no time for us to strengthen the walls.
We'll have to leave tonight."

* * *

Preparations
were made for the departure; preparations that consisted mainly of
providing each person with as much in the way of food or supplies as he
or she could carry. In the 1.5 gravity, that was not much.

They left when
the blue star rose. They filed out through the northern gate and the
rear guard closed it behind them. There was almost no conversation
among them. Some of them turned to take a last look at what had been
the only home they had ever known on Ragnarok, then they all faced
forward again, to the northwest, where the foothills of the plateau
might offer them sanctuary.

They found their
sanctuary on the second day; a limestone ridge honey-combed with caves.
Men were sent back at once to carry the food and supplies left in the
stockade to the new home.

They returned,
to report that the second herd of unicorns had broken down the walls
and ripped the interior of the stockade into wreckage. Much of the food
and supplies had been totally destroyed.

Lake sent them
back twice more to bring everything, down to the last piece of bent
metal or torn cloth. They would find uses for all of it in the future.

* * *

The cave system
was extensive, containing room for several times their number. The
deeper portions of the caves could not be lived in until ventilation
ducts were made, but the outer caves were more than sufficient in
number. Work was begun to clear them of fallen rubble, to pry down all
loose material overhead and to level the floors. A spring came out of
the ridge not far from the caves and the approach to the caves was so
narrow and steep that unicorns could scramble up it only with
difficulty and one at a time. And should they ever reach the natural
terrace in front of the caves they would be too large to enter and
could do no more than stand outside and make targets of themselves for
the bowmen within.

Anders was in
charge of making the caves livable, his working force restricted almost
entirely to women and children. Lake sent Barber out, with a small
detachment of men, to observe the woods goats and learn what plants
they ate. And then learn, by experimenting, if such plants could be
safely eaten by humans.

The need for
salt would be tremendously increased when summer came. Having once
experienced a saltless two weeks in the desert Lake doubted that any of
them could survive without it. All hunting parties, as well as Barber's
party, were ordered to investigate all deposits that might contain salt
as well as any stream or pond that was white along the banks.

The hunting
parties were of paramount importance and they were kept out to the
limits of their endurance. Every man physically able to do so
accompanied them. Those who could not kill game could carry it back to
the caves. There was no time to spare; already the unicorns were
decreasing in numbers and the woods goats were ranging farther and
farther north.

At the end of
twenty days Lake went in search of Barber and his party, worried about
them. Their mission was one that could be as dangerous as any hunting
trip. There was no proof that humans and Ragnarok creatures were so
similar as to guarantee that food for one might not be poison for the
other. It was a very necessary mission, however; dried meat, alone,
would bring grave deficiency diseases during the summer which dried
herbs and fruits would help prevent.

When he located Barber's party he found
Barber lying under a tree, pale and weak from his latest experiment but
recovering.

"I was the
guinea pig yesterday," Barber said. "Some little purple berries that
the woods goats nibble at sometimes, maybe to get a touch of some
certain vitamin or something. I ate too many, I guess, because they hit
my heart like the kick of a mule."

"Did you find anything at all encouraging?"
Lake asked.

"We found four
different herbs that are the most violent cathartics you ever dreamed
of. And a little silvery fern that tastes like vanilla flavored candy
and paralyzes you stiff as a board on the third swallow. It's an hour
before you come back out of it.

"But on the good
side we found three different kinds of herbs that seem to be all right.
We've been digging them up and hanging them in the trees to dry."

Lake tried the
edible herbs and found them to be something like spinach in taste.
There was a chance they might contain the vitamins and minerals needed.
Since the hunting parties were living exclusively on meat he would have
to point out the edible herbs to all of them so they would know what to
eat should any of them feel the effects of diet deficiency.

He traveled
alone as he visited the various hunting parties, finding such travel to
be safer each day as the dwindling of the unicorns neared the vanishing
point. It was a safety he did not welcome; it meant the last of the
game would be gone north long before sufficient meat was taken.

None of the
hunting parties could report good luck. The woods goats, swift and
elusive at best, were vanishing with the unicorns. The last cartridge
had been fired and the bowmen, while improving all the time, were far
from expert. The unicorns, which should have been their major source of
meat, were invulnerable to arrows unless shot at short range in the
side of the neck just behind the head. And at short range the unicorns
invariably charged and presented no such target.

He made the
long, hard climb up the plateau's southern face, to stand at last on
top. It was treeless, a flat, green table that stretched to the north
for as far as he could see. A mountain range, still capped with snow,
lay perhaps a hundred miles to the northwest; in the distance it looked
like a white, low-lying cloud on the horizon. No other mountains or
hills marred the endless sweep of the high plain.

The grass was
thick and here and there were little streams of water produced by the
recently melted snow. It was a paradise land for the herbivores of
Ragnarok but for men it was a harsh, forbidding place. At that
elevation the air was so thin that only a moderate amount of exertion
made the heart and lungs labor painfully. Hard and prolonged exertion
would be impossible.

It seemed
unlikely that men could hunt and dare unicorn attacks at such an
elevation but two hunting parties were ahead of him; one under the grim
Craig and one under the reckless Schroeder, both parties stripped down
to the youngest, strongest men among all the Rejects.

He found
Schroeder early one morning, leading his hunters toward a small band of
woods goats. Two unicorns were grazing in between and the hunters were
swinging downwind from them. Schroeder saw him coming and walked back a
little way to meet him.

"Welcome to our breathtaking land," Schroeder
greeted him. "How are things going with the rest of the hunting
parties?"

Schroeder was
gaunt and there was weariness beneath his still lithe movements. His
whiskers were an untamed sorrel bristling and across his cheekbone was
the ugly scar of a half healed wound. Another gash was ripped in his
arm and something had battered one ear. He reminded Lake of a
battle-scarred, indomitable tomcat who would never, for as long as he
lived, want to relinquish the joy of conflict and danger.

"So far," he answered, "you and Craig are the
only parties to manage to tackle the plateau."

He asked about
Schroeder's luck and learned it had been much better than that of the
others due to killing three unicorns by a method Schroeder had thought
of.

"Since the
bowmen have to be to one side of the unicorns to kill them," Schroeder
said, "it only calls for a man to be the decoy and let the unicorns
chase him between the hidden bowmen. If there's no more than one or two
unicorns and if the decoy doesn't have to run very far and if the
bowmen don't miss it works well."

"Judging from your beat-up condition," Lake
said, "you must have been the decoy every time."

"Well—" Schroeder shrugged his shoulders. "It
was my idea."

"I've been
wondering about another way to get in shots at close range," Lake said.
"Take the skin of a woods goat, give it the original shape as near as
possible, and a bowman inside it might be able to fake a grazing woods
goat until he got the shot he wanted.

"The unicorns might never suspect where the
arrows came from," he concluded. "And then, of course, they might."

"I'll try it
before the day is over, on those two unicorns over there," Schroeder
said. "At this elevation and in this gravity my own method is just a
little bit rough on a man."

* * *

Lake found Craig and his men several miles to
the west, all of them gaunt and bearded as Schroeder had been.

"We've had
hell," Craig said. "It seems that every time we spot a few woods goats
there will be a dozen unicorns in between. If only we had rifles for
the unicorns . . ."

Lake told him of the plan to hide under woods
goats' skins and of the decoy system used by Schroeder.

"Maybe we won't have to use Schroeder's
method," he said. "We'll see if the other works—I'll give it the first
try."

This he was not
to do. Less than an hour later one of the men who helped dry the meat
and carry it to the caves returned to report the camp stricken by a
strange, sudden malady that was killing a hundred a day. Dr. Chiara,
who had collapsed while driving himself on to care for the sick, was
sure it was a deficiency disease. Anders was down with it, helpless,
and Bemmon had assumed command; setting up daily work quotas for those
still on their feet and refusing to heed Chiara's requests concerning
treatment of the disease.

Lake made the
trip back to the caves in a fraction of the length of time it had taken
him to reach the plateau, walking until he was ready to drop and then
pausing only for an hour or two of rest. He spotted Barber's camp when
coming down off the plateau and he swung to one side, to tell Barber to
have a supply of the herbs sent to the caves at once.

He reached the
caves, to find half the camp in bed and the other half dragging about
listlessly at the tasks given them by Bemmon. Anders was in grave
condition, too weak to rise, and Dr. Chiara was dying.

He squatted down
beside Chiara's pallet and knew there could be no hope for him. On
Chiara's pale face and in his eyes was the shadow of his own
foreknowledge.

"I finally saw
what it was"—Chiara's words were very low, hard to hear—"and I told
Bemmon what to do. It's a deficiency disease, complicated by the
gravity into some form not known on Earth."

He stopped to rest and Lake waited.

"Beri-beri—pellagra—we
had deficiency diseases on Earth. But none so fatal—so quickly. I told
Bemmon—ration out fruits and vegetables to everybody. Hurry—or it will
be too late."

Again he stopped to rest, the last vestige of
color gone from his face.

"And you?" Lake asked, already knowing the
answer.

"For me—too late. I kept thinking of
viruses—should have seen the obvious sooner. Just like—"

His lips turned up a little at the corners
and the Chiara of the dead past smiled for the last time at Lake.

"Just like a damned fool
intern . . ."

That was all,
then, and the chamber was suddenly very quiet. Lake stood up to leave,
and to speak the words that Chiara could never hear:

"We're going to need you and miss you—Doctor."

* * *

He found Bemmon
in the food storage cavern, supervising the work of two teen-age boys
with critical officiousness although he was making no move to help
them. At sight of Lake he hurried forward, the ingratiating smile
sliding across his face.

"I'm glad you're
back," he said. "I had to take charge when Anders got sick and he had
everything in such a mess. I've been working day and night to undo his
mistakes and get the work properly under way again."

Lake looked at
the two thin-faced boys who had taken advantage of the opportunity to
rest. They leaned wearily against the heavy pole table Bemmon had had
them moving, their eyes already dull with incipient sickness and
watching him in mute appeal.

"Have you obeyed Chiara's order?" he asked.

"Ah—no," Bemmon said. "I felt it best to
ignore it."

"Why?" Lake asked.

"It would be a
senseless waste of our small supply of fruit and vegetable foods to
give them to people already dying. I'm afraid"—the ingratiating smile
came again—"we've been letting him exercise an authority he isn't
entitled to. He's really hardly more than a medical student and his
diagnoses are only guesses."

"He's dead," Lake said flatly. "His last
order will be carried out."

He looked from
the two tired boys to Bemmon, contrasting their thinness and weariness
with the way Bemmon's paunch still bulged outward and his jowls still
sagged with their load of fat.

"I'll send West
down to take over in here," he said to Bemmon. "You come with me. You
and I seem to be the only two in good health here and there's plenty of
work for us to do."

The fawning
expression vanished from Bemmon's face. "I see," he said. "Now that
I've turned Anders's muddle into organization, you'll hand my authority
over to another of your favorites and demote me back to common labor?"

"Setting up work
quotas for sick and dying people isn't organization," Lake said. He
spoke to the two boys, "Both of you go lie down. West will find someone
else." Then to Bemmon, "Come with me. We're both going to work at
common labor."

They passed by
the cave where Bemmon slept. Two boys were just going into it, carrying
armloads of dried grass to make a mattress under Bemmon's pallet. They
moved slowly, heavily. Like the two boys in the food storage cave they
were dull-eyed with the beginning of the sickness.

Lake stopped, to
look more closely into the cave and verify something else he thought he
had seen: Bemmon had discarded the prowler skins on his bed and in
their place were soft wool blankets; perhaps the only unpatched
blankets the Rejects possessed.

"Go back to your caves," he said to the boys.
"Go to bed and rest."

He looked at Bemmon. Bemmon's eyes flinched
away, refusing to meet his.

"What few
blankets we have are for babies and the very youngest children," he
said. His tone was coldly unemotional but he could not keep his fists
from clenching at his sides. "You will return them at once and sleep on
animal skins, as all the men and women do. And if you want grass for a
mattress you will carry it yourself, as even the young children do."

Bemmon made no answer, his face a sullen red
and hatred shining in the eyes that still refused to meet Lake's.

"Gather up the blankets and return them,"
Lake said. "Then come on up to the central cave. We have a lot of work
to do."

He could feel Bemmon's gaze burning against
his back as he turned away and he thought of what John Prentiss had
once said:

"I know he's no good but he never has guts
enough to go quite far enough to give me an excuse to whittle him down."

* * *

Barber's men
arrived the next day, burdened with dried herbs. These were given to
the seriously ill as a supplement to the ration of fruit and vegetable
foods and were given, alone, to those not yet sick. Then came the
period of waiting; of hoping that it was all not too late and too
little.

A noticeable
change for the better began on the second day. A week went by and the
sick were slowly, steadily, improving. The not-quite-sick were already
back to normal health. There was no longer any doubt: the Ragnarok
herbs would prevent a recurrence of the disease.

It was, Lake
thought, all so simple once you knew what to do. Hundreds had died,
Chiara among them, because they did not have a common herb that grew at
a slightly higher elevation. Not a single life would have been lost if
he could have looked a week into the future and had the herbs found and
taken to the caves that much sooner.

But the disease had given no warning of its
coming. Nothing, on Ragnarok, ever seemed to give warning before it
killed.

Another week
went by and hunters began to trickle in, gaunt and exhausted, to report
all the game going north up the plateau and not a single creature left
below. They were the ones who had tried and failed to withstand the
high elevation of the plateau. Only two out of three hunters returned
among those who had challenged the plateau. They had tried, all of
them, to the best of their ability and the limits of their endurance.

The blue star
was by then a small sun and the yellow sun blazed hotter each day.
Grass began to brown and wither on the hillsides as the days went by
and Lake knew summer was very near. The last hunting party, but for
Craig's and Schroeder's, returned. They had very little meat but they
brought with them a large quantity of something almost as important:
salt.

They had found a
deposit of it in an almost inaccessible region of cliffs and canyons.
"Not even the woods goats can get in there," Stevens, the leader of
that party, said. "If the salt was in an accessible place there would
have been a salt lick there and goats in plenty."

"If woods goats care for salt the way Earth
animals do," Lake said. "When fall comes we'll make a salt lick and
find out."

Two more weeks
went by and Craig and Schroeder returned with their surviving hunters.
They had followed the game to the eastern end of the snow-capped
mountain range but there the migration had drawn away from them,
traveling farther each day than they could travel. They had almost
waited too long before turning back: the grass at the southern end of
the plateau was turning brown and the streams were dry. They got enough
water, barely, by digging seep holes in the dry stream beds.

Lake's method of
stalking unicorns under the concealment of a woods goat skin had worked
well only a few times. After that the unicorns learned to swing
downwind from any lone woods goats. If they smelled a man inside the
goat skin they charged him and killed him.

With the return
of the last hunters everything was done that could be done in
preparation for summer. Inventory was taken of the total food supply
and it was even smaller than Lake had feared. It would be far from
enough to last until fall brought the game back from the north and he
instituted rationing much stricter than before.

The heat
increased as the yellow sun blazed hotter and the blue sun grew larger.
Each day the vegetation was browner and a morning came when Lake could
see no green wherever he looked.

They numbered
eleven hundred and ten that morning, out of what had so recently been
four thousand. Eleven hundred and ten thin, hungry scarecrows who,
already, could do nothing more than sit listlessly in the shade and
wait for the hell that was coming. He thought of the food supply, so
pitifully small, and of the months it would have to last. He saw the
grim, inescapable future for his charges: famine. There was nothing he
could do to prevent it. He could only try to forestall complete
starvation for all by cutting rations to the bare existence level.

And that would be bare existence for the
stronger of them. The weaker were already doomed.

He had them all
gather in front of the caves that evening when the terrace was in the
shadow of the ridge. He stood before them and spoke to them:

"All of you know
we have only a fraction of the amount of food we need to see us through
the summer. Tomorrow the present ration will be cut in half. That will
be enough to live on, just barely. If that cut isn't made the food
supply will be gone long before fall and all of us will die.

"If anyone has
any food of any kind it must be turned in to be added to the total
supply. Some of you may have thought of your children and kept a little
hidden for them. I can understand why you should do that—but you must
turn it in. There may possibly be some who hid food for themselves,
personally. If so, I give them the first and last warning: turn it in
tonight. If any hidden cache of food is found in the future the one who
hid it will be regarded as a traitor and murderer.

"All of you, but
for the children, will go into the chamber next to the one where the
food is stored. Each of you—and there will be no exceptions regardless
of how innocent you are—will carry a bulkily folded cloth or garment.
Each of you will go into the chamber alone. There will be no one in
there. You will leave the food you have folded in the cloth, if any,
and go out the other exit and back to your caves. No one will ever know
whether the cloth you carried contained food or not. No one will ever
ask.

"Our survival on
this world, if we are to survive at all, can be only by working and
sacrificing together. There can be no selfishness. What any of you may
have done in the past is of no consequence. Tonight we start anew. From
now on we trust one another without reserve.

"There will be one punishment for any who
betray that trust—death."

* * *

Anders set the
example by being the first to carry a folded cloth into the cave. Of
them all, Lake heard later, only Bemmon voiced any real indignation;
warning all those in his section of the line that the order was the
first step toward outright dictatorship and a police-and-spy system in
which Lake and the other leaders would deprive them all of freedom and
dignity. Bemmon insisted upon exhibiting the emptiness of the cloth he
carried; an action that, had he succeeded in persuading the others to
follow his example, would have mercilessly exposed those who did have
food they were returning.

But no one
followed Bemmon's example and no harm was done. As for Lake, he had
worries on his mind of much greater importance than Bemmon's enmity.

* * *

The weeks
dragged by, each longer and more terrible to endure than the one before
it as the heat steadily increased. Summer solstice arrived and there
was no escape from the heat, even in the deepest caves. There was no
night; the blue sun rose in the east as the yellow sun set in the west.
There was no life of any kind to be seen, not even an insect. Nothing
moved across the burned land but the swirling dust devils and
shimmering, distorted mirages.

The death rate
increased with appalling swiftness. The small supply of canned and
dehydrated milk, fruit and vegetables was reserved exclusively for the
children but it was far insufficient in quantity. The Ragnarok herbs
prevented any recurrence of the fatal deficiency disease but they
provided virtually no nourishment to help fight the heat and gravity.
The stronger of the children lay wasted and listless on their pallets
while the ones not so strong died each day.

Each day thin
and hollow-eyed mothers would come to plead with him to save their
children. " . . . it would take so little to save
his
life . . . Please—before it's too
late . . ."

But there was so
little food left and the time was yet so long until fall would bring
relief from the famine that he could only answer each of them with a
grim and final "No."

And watch the
last hope flicker and die in their eyes and watch them turn away, to go
and sit for the last hours beside their children.

Bemmon became
increasingly irritable and complaining as the rationing and heat made
existence a misery; insisting that Lake and the others were to blame
for the food shortage, that their hunting efforts had been bungling and
faint-hearted. And he implied, without actually saying so, that Lake
and the others had forbidden him to go near the food chamber because
they did not want a competent, honest man to check up on what they were
doing.

There were six
hundred and three of them the blazing afternoon when the girl, Julia,
could stand his constant, vindictive, fault-finding no longer. Lake
heard about it shortly afterward, the way she had turned on Bemmon in a
flare of temper she could control no longer and said:

"Whenever your
mouth is still you can hear the children who are dying today—but you
don't care. All you can think of is yourself. You claim Lake and the
others were cowards—but you didn't dare hunt with them. You keep
insinuating that they're cheating us and eating more than we are—but your
belly is the only one that has any fat left on it—"

She never
completed the sentence. Bemmon's face turned livid in sudden, wild fury
and he struck her, knocking her against the rock wall so hard that she
slumped unconscious to the ground.

"She's a liar!"
he panted, glaring at the others. "She's a rotten liar and anybody who
repeats what she said will get what she got!"

When Lake
learned of what had happened he did not send for Bemmon at once. He
wondered why Bemmon's reaction had been so quick and violent and there
seemed to be only one answer:

Bemmon's belly was still a little
fat. There could be but one way he could have kept it so.

He summoned
Craig, Schroeder, Barber and Anders. They went to the chamber where
Bemmon slept and there, almost at once, they found his cache. He had it
buried under his pallet and hidden in cavities along the walls; dried
meat, dried fruits and milk, canned vegetables. It was an amount
amazingly large and many of the items had presumably been exhausted
during the deficiency disease attack.

"It looks," Schroeder said, "like he didn't
waste any time feathering his nest when he made himself leader."

The others said nothing but stood with grim,
frozen faces, waiting for Lake's next action.

"Bring Bemmon," Lake said to Craig.

Craig returned
with him two minutes later. Bemmon stiffened at the sight of his
unearthed cache and color drained away from his face.

"Well?" Lake asked.

"I
didn't"—Bemmon swallowed—"I didn't know it was there." And then
quickly, "You can't prove I put it there. You can't prove you didn't
just now bring it in yourselves to frame me."

Lake stared at
Bemmon, waiting. The others watched Bemmon as Lake was doing and no one
spoke. The silence deepened and Bemmon began to sweat as he tried to
avoid their eyes. He looked again at the damning evidence and his
defiance broke.

"It—if I hadn't
take it it would have been wasted on people who were dying," he said.
He wiped at his sweating face. "I won't ever do it again—I swear I
won't."

Lake spoke to Craig. "You and Barber take him
to the lookout point."

"What—" Bemmon's protest was cut off as Craig
and Barber took him by the arms and walked him swiftly away.

Lake turned to Anders. "Get a rope," he
ordered.

Anders paled a little. "A—rope?"

"What else does he deserve?"

"Nothing," Anders said. "Not—not after what
he did."

On the way out
they passed the place where Julia lay. Bemmon had knocked her against
the wall with such force that a sharp projection of rock had cut a deep
gash in her forehead. A woman was wiping the blood from her face and
she lay limply, still unconscious; a frail shadow of the bold girl she
had once been with the new life she would try to give them an almost
unnoticeable little bulge in her starved thinness.

* * *

The lookout
point was an outjutting spur of the ridge, six hundred feet from the
caves and in full view of them. A lone tree stood there, its dead limbs
thrust like white arms through the brown foliage of the limbs that
still lived. Craig and Barber waited under the tree, Bemmon between
them. The lowering sun shone hot and bright on Bemmon's face as he
squinted back toward the caves at the approach of Lake and the other
two.

He twisted to
look at Barber. "What is it—why did you bring me here?" There was the
tremor of fear in his voice. "What are you going to do to me?"

Barber did not
answer and Bemmon turned back toward Lake. He saw the rope in Anders'
hand and his face went white with comprehension.

"No!"

Ht threw himself back with a violence that
almost tore him loose. "No—no!"

Schroeder
stepped forward to help hold him and Lake took the rope from Anders. He
fashioned a noose in it while Bemmon struggled and made panting, animal
sounds, his eyes fixed in horrified fascination on the rope.

When the noose
was finished he threw the free end of the rope over the white limb
above Bemmon. He released the noose and Barber caught it, to draw it
snug around Bemmon's neck.

Bemmon stopped
struggling then and sagged weakly. For a moment it appeared that he
would faint. Then he worked his mouth soundlessly until words came:

"You won't—you can't—really hang me?"

Lake spoke to him:

"We're going to
hang you. What you stole would have saved the lives of ten children.
You've watched the children cry because they were so hungry and you've
watched them become too weak to cry or care any more. You've watched
them die each day and each night you've secretly eaten the food that
was supposed to be theirs.

"We're going to
hang you, for the murder of children and the betrayal of our trust in
you. If you have anything to say, say it now."

"You can't! I
had a right to live—to eat what would have been wasted on dying
people!" Bemmon twisted to appeal to the ones who held him, his words
quick and ragged with hysteria. "You can't hang me—I don't want to die!"

Craig answered him, with a smile that was
like the thin snarl of a wolf:

"Neither did two of my children."

Lake nodded to
Craig and Schroeder, not waiting any longer. They stepped back to seize
the free end of the rope and Bemmon screamed at what was coming,
tearing loose from the grip of Barber.

Then his scream
was abruptly cut off as he was jerked into the air. There was a
cracking sound and he kicked spasmodically, his head setting
grotesquely to one side.

Craig and
Schroeder and Barber watched him with hard, expressionless faces but
Anders turned quickly away, to be suddenly and violently sick.

"He was the
first to betray us," Lake said. "Snub the rope and leave him to swing
there. If there are any others like him, they'll know what to expect."

The blue sun
rose as they went back to the caves. Behind them Bemmon swung and
twirled aimlessly on the end of the rope. Two long, pale shadows swung
and twirled with him; a yellow one to the west and a blue one to the
east.

Bemmon was
buried the next day. Someone cursed his name and someone spit on his
grave and then he was part of the dead past as they faced the suffering
ahead of them.

Julia recovered,
although she would always wear a ragged scar on her forehead. Anders,
who had worked closely with Chiara and was trying to take his place,
quieted her fears by assuring her that the baby she carried was still
too small for there to be much danger of the fall causing her to lose
it.

Three times
during the next month the wind came roaring down out of the northwest,
bringing a gray dust that filled the sky and enveloped the land in a
hot, smothering gloom through which the suns could not be seen.

Once black
clouds gathered in the distance, to pour out a cloudburst. The 1.5
gravity gave the wall of water that swept down the canyon a far greater
force and velocity than it would have had on Earth and boulders the
size of small houses were tossed into the air and shattered into
fragments. But all the rain fell upon the one small area and not a drop
fell at the caves.

One single
factor was in their favor and but for it they could not have survived
such intense, continual heat: there was no humidity. Water evaporated
quickly in the hot, dry air and sweat glands operated at the highest
possible degree of efficiency. As a result they drank enormous
quantities of water—the average adult needed five gallons a day. All
canvas had been converted into water bags and the same principle of
cooling-by-evaporation gave them water that was only warm instead of
sickeningly hot as it would otherwise have been.

But despite the
lack of humidity the heat was still far more intense than any on Earth.
It never ceased, day or night, never let them have a moment's relief.
There was a limit to how long human flesh could bear up under it, no
matter how valiant the will. Each day the toll of those who had reached
that limit was greater, like a swiftly rising tide.

There were three
hundred and forty of them when the first rain came; the rain that meant
the end of summer. The yellow sun moved southward and the blue sun
shrank steadily. Grass grew again and the woods goats returned, with
them the young that had been born in the north, already half the size
of their mothers.

For a while
there was meat, and green herbs. Then the prowlers came, to make
hunting dangerous. Females with pups were seen but always at a great
distance as though the prowlers, like humans, took no chances with the
lives of their children.

The unicorns
came close behind the first prowlers, their young amazingly large and
already weaned. Hunting became doubly dangerous then but the bowmen,
through necessity, were learning how to use their bows with increasing
skill and deadliness.

A salt lick for
the woods goats was hopefully tried, although Lake felt dubious about
it. They learned that salt was something the woods goats could either
take or leave alone. And when hunters were in the vicinity they left it
alone.

The game was
followed for many miles to the south. The hunters returned the day the
first blizzard came roaring and screaming down over the edge of the
plateau; the blizzard that marked the beginning of the long, frigid
winter. By then they were prepared as best they could be. Wood had been
carried in great quantities and the caves fitted with crude doors and a
ventilation system. And they had meat—not as much as they would need
but enough to prevent starvation.

Lake took
inventory of the food supply when the last hunters returned and held
check-up inventories at irregular and unannounced intervals. He found
no shortages. He had expected none—Bemmon's grave had long since been
obliterated by drifting snow but the rope still hung from the dead
limb, the noose swinging and turning in the wind.

* * *

Anders had made
a Ragnarok calendar that spring, from data given him by John Prentiss,
and he had marked the corresponding Earth dates on it. By a
coincidence, Christmas came near the middle of the winter. There would
be the same rationing of food on Christmas day but little brown trees
had been cut for the children and decorated with such ornaments as
could be made from the materials at hand.

There was
another blizzard roaring down off the plateau Christmas morning; a
white death that thundered and howled outside the caves at a
temperature of more than eighty degrees below zero. But inside the
caves it was warm by the fires and under the little brown trees were
toys that had been patiently whittled from wood or sewn from scraps of
cloth and animal skins while the children slept. They were crude and
humble toys but the pale, thin faces of the children were bright with
delight when they beheld them.

There was the
laughter of children at play, a sound that had not been heard for many
months, and someone singing the old, old songs. For a few fleeting
hours that day, for the first and last time on Ragnarok, there was the
magic of an Earth Christmas.

That night a
child was born to Julia, on a pallet of dried grass and prowler skins.
She asked for her baby before she died and they let her have it.

"I wasn't afraid, was I?" she asked. "But I
wish it wasn't so dark—I wish I could see my baby before I go."

They took the
baby from her arms when she was gone and removed from it the blanket
that had kept her from learning that her child was still-born.

There were two
hundred and fifty of them when the first violent storms of spring came.
By then eighteen children had been born. Sixteen were still-born, eight
of them deformed by the gravity, but two were like any normal babies on
Earth. There was only one difference: the 1.5 gravity did not seem to
affect them as much as it had the Earth-born babies.

Lake, himself,
married that spring; a tall, gray-eyed girl who had fought alongside
the men the night of the storm when the prowlers broke into John
Prentiss's camp. And Schroeder married, the last of them all to do so.

That spring Lake
sent out two classes of bowmen: those who would use the ordinary short
bow and those who would use the longbows he had had made that winter.
According to history the English longbowmen of medieval times had been
without equal in the range and accuracy of their arrows and such
extra-powerful weapons should eliminate close-range stalking of woods
goats and afford better protection from unicorns.

The longbows
worked so well that by mid-spring he could detach Craig and three
others from the hunting and send them on a prospecting expedition.
Prentiss had said Ragnarok was devoid of metals but there was the hope
of finding small veins the Dunbar Expedition's instruments had not
detected. They would have to find metal or else, in the end, they would
go back into a flint axe stage.

Craig and his
men returned when the blue star was a sun again and the heat was more
than men could walk and work in. They had traveled hundreds of miles in
their circuit and found no metals.

"I want to look to the south when fall
comes," Craig said. "Maybe it will be different down there."

They did not
face famine that summer as they had the first summer. The diet of meat
and dried herbs was rough and plain but there was enough of it.

Full summer came
and the land was again burned and lifeless. There was nothing to do but
sit wearily in the shade and endure the heat, drawing what
psychological comfort they could from the fact that summer solstice was
past and the suns were creeping south again even though it would be
many weeks before there was any lessening of the heat.

It was then, and by accident, that Lake
discovered there was something wrong about the southward movement of
the suns.

He was returning
from the lookout that day and he realized it was exactly a year since
he and the others had walked back to the caves while Bemmon swung on
the limb behind them.

It was even the
same time of day; the blue sun rising in the east behind him and the
yellow sun bright in his face as it touched the western horizon before
him. He remembered how the yellow sun had been like the front sight of
a rifle, set in the deepest V notch of the western hills—

But now, exactly a year later, it was not in
the V notch. It was on the north side of the notch.

He looked to the
east, at the blue sun. It seemed to him that it, too, was farther north
than it had been although with it he had no landmark to check by.

But there was no
doubt about the yellow sun: it was going south, as it should at that
time of year, but it was lagging behind schedule. The only explanation
Lake could think of was one that would mean still another threat to
their survival; perhaps greater than all the others combined.

The yellow sun
dropped completely behind the north slope of the V notch and he went on
to the caves. He found Craig and Anders, the only two who might know
anything about Ragnarok's axial tilts, and told them what he had seen.

"I made the
calendar from the data John gave me," Anders said. "The Dunbar men made
observations and computed the length of Ragnarok's year—I don't think
they would have made any mistake."

"If they didn't," Lake said, "we're in for
something."

Craig was watching him, closely,
thoughtfully. "Like the Ice Ages of Earth?" he asked.

Lake nodded and Anders said, "I don't
understand."

"Each year the
north pole tilts toward the sun to give us summer and away from it to
give us winter," Lake said. "Which, of course, you know. But there can
be still another kind of axial tilt. On Earth it occurs at intervals of
thousands of years. The tilting that produces the summers and winters
goes on as usual but as the centuries go by the summer tilt toward the
sun grows less, the winter tilt away from it greater. The north pole
leans farther and farther from the sun and ice sheets come down out of
the north—an Ice Age. Then the north pole's progression away from the
sun stops and the ice sheets recede as it tilts back toward the sun."

"I see," Anders
said. "And if the same thing is happening here, we're going away from
an ice age but at a rate thousands of times faster than on Earth."

"I don't know
whether it's Ragnarok's tilt, alone, or if the orbits of the suns
around each other add effects of their own over a period of years,"
Lake said. "The Dunbar Expedition wasn't here long enough to check up
on anything like that."

"It seemed to me
it was hotter this summer than last," Craig said. "Maybe only my
imagination—but it won't be imagination in a few years if the tilt
toward the sun continues."

"The time would
come when we'd have to leave here," Lake said. "We'd have to go north
up the plateau each spring. There's no timber there—nothing but grass
and wind and thin air. We'd have to migrate south each fall."

"Yes . . . migrate."
Anders's face was old and weary in the harsh reflected light of the
blue sun and his hair had turned almost white in the past year. "Only
the young ones could ever adapt enough to go up the plateau to its
north portion. The rest of us . . . but we haven't
many years, anyway.
Ragnarok is for the young—and if they have to migrate back and forth
like animals just to stay alive they will never have time to accomplish
anything or be more than stone age nomads."

"I wish we could
know how long the Big Summer will be that we're going into," Craig
said. "And how long and cold the Big Winter, when Ragnarok tilts away
from the sun. It wouldn't change anything—but I'd like to know."

"We'll start
making and recording daily observations," Lake said. "Maybe the tilt
will start back the other way before it's too late."

* * *

Fall seemed to
come a little later that year. Craig went to the south as soon as the
weather permitted but there were no minerals there; only the
metal-barren hills dwindling in size until they became a prairie that
sloped down and down toward the southern lowlands where all the
creatures of Ragnarok spent the winter.

"I'll try again to the north when spring
comes," Craig said. "Maybe that mountain on the plateau will have
something."

Winter came, and
Elaine died in giving him a son. The loss of Elaine was an unexpected
blow; hurting more than he would ever have thought possible.

But he had a
son . . . and it was his responsibility to do
whatever he could to
insure the survival of his son and of the sons and daughters of all the
others.

His outlook
altered and he began to think of the future, not in terms of years to
come but in terms of generations to come. Someday one of the young ones
would succeed him as leader but the young ones would have only
childhood memories of Earth. He was the last leader who had known Earth
and the civilization of Earth as a grown man. What he did while he was
leader would incline the destiny of a new race.

He would have to
do whatever was possible for him to do and he would have to begin at
once. The years left to him could not be many.

He was not
alone; others in the caves had the same thoughts he had regarding the
future even though none of them had any plan for accomplishing what
they spoke of. West, who had held degrees in philosophy on Earth, said
to Lake one night as they sat together by the fire:

"Have you
noticed the way the children listen when the talk turns to what used to
be on Earth, what might have been on Athena, and what would be if only
we could find a way to escape Ragnarok?"

"I've noticed," he said.

"These stories
already contain the goal for the future generations," West went on.
"Someday, somehow, they will go to Athena, to kill the Gerns there and
free the Terran slaves and reclaim Athena as their own."

He had listened
to them talk of the interstellar flight to Athena as they sat by their
fires and worked at making bows and arrows. It was only a dream they
held, yet without that dream there would be nothing before them but the
vision of generation after generation living and dying on a world that
could never give them more than existence.

The dream was
needed. But it, alone, was not enough. How long, on Earth, had it been
from the Neolithic age to advanced civilization—how long from the time
men were ready to leave their caves until they were ready to go to the
stars?

Twelve thousand years.

There were men
and women among the Rejects who had been specialists in various fields.
There were a few books that had survived the trampling of the unicorns
and others could be written with ink made from the black lance tree
bark upon parchment made from the thin inner skin of unicorn hides.

The knowledge
contained in the books and the learning of the Rejects still living
should be preserved for the future generations. With the help of that
learning perhaps they really could, someday, somehow, escape from their
prison and make Athena their own.

He told West of what he had been thinking.
"We'll have to start a school," he said. "This winter—tomorrow."

West nodded in
agreement. "And the writings should be commenced as soon as possible.
Some of the textbooks will require more time to write than Ragnarok
will give the authors."

A school for the
children was started the next day and the writing of the books began.
The parchment books would serve two purposes. One would be to teach the
future generations things that would not only help them survive but
would help them create a culture of their own as advanced as the harsh
environment and scanty resources of Ragnarok permitted. The other would
be to warn them of the danger of a return of the Gerns and to teach
them all that was known about Gerns and their weapons.

Lake's main
contribution would be a lengthy book: TERRAN SPACESHIPS; TYPES AND
OPERATION. He postponed its writing, however, to first produce a much
smaller book but one that might well be more important: INTERIOR
FEATURES OF A GERN CRUISER. Terran Intelligence knew a little about
Gern cruisers and as second-in-command of the Constellation he
had seen and studied a copy of that report. He had an excellent memory
for such things, almost photographic, and he wrote the text and drew a
multitude of sketches.

He shook his
head ruefully at the result. The text was good but, for clarity, the
accompanying illustrations should be accurate and in perspective. And
he was definitely not an artist.

He discovered
that Craig could take a pen in his scarred, powerful hand and draw with
the neat precision of a professional artist. He turned the sketches
over to him, together with the mass of specifications. Since it might
someday be of such vital importance, he would make four copies of it.
The text was given to a teen-age girl, who would make three more copies
of it . . .

Four days later Schroeder handed Lake a text
with some rough sketches. The title was: OPERATION OF GERN BLASTERS.

Not even
Intelligence had ever been able to examine a Gern hand blaster. But a
man named Schrader, on Venus, had killed a Gern with his own blaster
and then disappeared with both infuriated Gerns and Gern-intimidated
Venusian police in pursuit. There had been a high reward for his
capture . . .

He looked it over and said, "I was counting
on your giving us this."

Only the barest
trace of surprise showed on Schroeder's face but his eyes were intently
watching Lake. "So you knew all the time who I was?"

"I knew."

"Did anyone else on the Constellation know?"

"You were recognized by one of the ship's
officers. You would have been tried in two more days."

"I see," Schroeder said. "And since I was
guilty and couldn't be returned to Earth or Venus I'd have been
executed on the Constellation." He smiled sardonically. "And
you, as second-in-command, would have been my execution's master of
ceremonies."

Lake put the
parchment sheets back together in their proper order. "Sometimes," he
said, "a ship's officer has to do things that are contrary to all his
own wishes."

Schroeder drew a deep breath, his face somber
with the memories he had kept to himself.

"It was two
years ago when the Gerns were still talking friendship to the Earth
government while they shoved the colonists around on Venus. This
Gern . . . there was a girl there and he thought he
could do what he
wanted to her because he was a mighty Gern and she was nothing. He did.
That's why I killed him. I had to kill two Venusian police to get
away—that's where I put the rope around my neck."

"It's not what
we did but what we do that we'll live or die by on Ragnarok," Lake
said. He handed Schroeder the sheets of parchment. "Tell Craig to make
at least four copies of this. Someday our knowledge of Gern blasters
may be something else we'll live or die by."

* * *

The school and
writing were interrupted by the spring hunting. Craig made his journey
to the Plateau's snowcapped mountain but he was unable to keep his
promise to prospect it. The plateau was perhaps ten thousand feet in
elevation and the mountain rose another ten thousand feet above the
plateau. No human could climb such a mountain in a 1.5 gravity.

"I tried," he
told Lake wearily when he came back. "Damn it, I never tried harder at
anything in my life. It was just too much for me. Maybe some of the
young ones will be better adapted and can do it when they grow up."

Craig brought
back several sheets of unusually transparent mica, each sheet a foot in
diameter, and a dozen large water-clear quartz crystals.

"Float, from
higher up on the mountain," he said. "The mica and crystals are in
place up there if we could only reach them. Other minerals, too—I
panned traces in the canyon bottoms. But no iron."

Lake examined
the sheets of mica. "We could make windows for the outer caves of
these," he said. "Have them double thickness with a wide air space
between, for insulation. As for the quartz
crystals . . ."

"Optical
instruments," Craig said. "Binoculars, microscopes—it would take us a
long time to learn how to make glass as clear and flawless as those
crystals. But we have no way of cutting and grinding them."

Craig went to
the east that fall and to the west the next spring. He returned from
the trip to the west with a twisted knee that would never let him go
prospecting again.

"It will take
years to find the metals we need," he said. "The indications are that
we never will but I wanted to keep on trying. Now, my damned knee has
me chained to these caves . . ."

He reconciled
himself to his lameness and confinement as best he could and finished
his textbook: GEOLOGY AND MINERAL IDENTIFICATION.

He also taught a
geology class during the winters. It was in the winter of the year four
on Ragnarok that a nine-year-old boy entered his class; the silent,
scar-faced Billy Humbolt.

He was by far the youngest of Craig's
students, and the most attentive. Lake was present one day when Craig
asked, curiously:

"It's not often a boy your age is so
interested in mineralogy and geology, Billy. Is there something more
than just interest?"

"I have to learn
all about minerals," Billy said with matter-of-fact seriousness, "so
that when I'm grown I can find the metals for us to make a ship."

"And then?" Craig asked.

"And then we'd
go to Athena, to kill the Gerns who caused my mother to die, and my
grandfather, and Julia, and all the others. And to free my father and
the other slaves if they're still alive."

"I see," Craig said.

He did not
smile. His face was shadowed and old as he looked at the boy and beyond
him; seeing again, perhaps, the frail blonde girl and the two children
that the first quick, violent months had taken from him.

"I hope you
succeed," he said. "I wish I was young so I could dream of the same
thing. But I'm not . . . so let's get back to the
identification of the
ores that will be needed to make a ship to go to Athena and to make
blasters to kill Gerns after you get there."

Lake had a
corral built early the following spring, with camouflaged wings, to
trap some of the woods goats when they came. It would be an immense
forward step toward conquering their new environment if they could
domesticate the goats and have goat herds near the caves all through
the year. Gathering enough grass to last a herd of goats through the
winter would be a problem—but first, before they worried about that,
they would have to see if the goats could survive the summer and winter
extremes of heat and cold.

They trapped ten
goats that spring. They built them brush sunshades—before summer was
over the winds would have stripped the trees of most of their dry,
brown leaves—and a stream of water was diverted through the corral.

It was all work in vain. The goats died from
the heat in early summer, together with the young that had been born.

When fall came
they trapped six more goats. They built them shelters that would be as
warm as possible and carried them a large supply of the tall grass from
along the creek banks; enough to last them through the winter. But the
cold was too much for the goats and the second blizzard killed them all.

The next spring
and fall, and with much more difficulty, they tried the experiment with
pairs of unicorns. The results were the same.

Which meant they would remain a race of
hunters. Ragnarok would not permit them to be herdsmen.

* * *

The years went
by, each much like the one before it but for the rapid aging of the Old
Ones, as Lake and the others called themselves, and the growing up of
the Young Ones. No woman among the Old Ones could any longer have
children, but six more normal, healthy children had been born. Like the
first two, they were not affected by the gravity as Earth-born babies
had been.

Among the Young
Ones, Lake saw, was a distinguishable difference. Those who had been
very young the day the Gerns had left them to die had adapted better
than those who had been a few years older.

The environment
of Ragnarok had struck at the very young with merciless savagery. It
had subjected them to a test of survival that was without precedent on
Earth. It had killed them by the hundreds but among them had been those
whose young flesh and blood and organs had resisted death by adapting
to the greatest extent possible.

The day of the
Old Ones was almost done and the future would soon be in the hands of
the Young Ones. They were the ninety unconquerables out of what had
been four thousand Rejects; the first generation of what would be a new
race.

It seemed to
Lake that the years came and went ever faster as the Old Ones dwindled
in numbers at an accelerating rate. Anders had died in the sixth year,
his heart failing him one night as he worked patiently in his crude
little laboratory at carrying on the work started by Chiara to find a
cure for the Hell Fever. Barber, trying to develop a strain of herbs
that would grow in the lower elevation of the caves, was killed by a
unicorn as he worked in his test plot below the caves. Craig went
limping out one spring day on the eighth year to look at a new mineral
a hunter had found a mile from the caves. A sudden cold rain blew up,
chilling him before he could return, and he died of Hell Fever the same
day.

Schroeder was
killed by prowlers the same year, dying with his back to a tree and a
bloody knife in his hand. It was the way he would have wanted to
go—once he had said to Lake:

"When my time
comes I would rather it be against the prowlers. They fight hard and
kill quick and then they're through with you. They don't tear you up
after you're dead and slobber and gloat over the pieces, the way the
unicorns do."

The springs came
a little earlier each year, the falls a little later, and the
observations showed the suns progressing steadily northward. But the
winters, though shorter, were seemingly as cold as ever. The long
summers reached such a degree of heat on the ninth year that Lake knew
they could endure no more than two or three years more of the
increasing heat.

Then, in the
summer of the tenth year, the tilting of Ragnarok—the apparent
northward progress of the suns—stopped. They were in the middle of what
Craig had called Big Summer and they could endure it—just barely. They
would not have to leave the caves.

The suns started
their drift southward. The observations were continued and carefully
recorded. Big Fall was coming and behind it would be Big Winter.

Big
Winter . . . the threat of it worried Lake. How far
to the south would
the suns go—how long would they stay? Would the time come when the
plateau would be buried under hundreds of feet of snow and the caves
enclosed in glacial ice?

There was no way he could ever know or even
guess. Only those of the future would ever know.

On the twelfth
year only Lake and West were left of the Old Ones. By then there were
eighty-three left of the Young Ones, eight Ragnarok-born children of
the Old Ones and four Ragnarok-born children of the Young Ones. Not
counting himself and West, there were ninety-five of them.

It was not many
to be the beginnings of a race that would face an ice age of unknown
proportions and have over them, always, the threat of a chance return
of the Gerns.

The winter of
the fifteenth year came and he was truly alone, the last of the Old
Ones. White-haired and aged far beyond his years, he was still leader.
But that winter he could do little other than sit by his fire and feel
the gravity dragging at his heart. He knew, long before spring, that it
was time he chose his successor.

He had hoped to
live to see his son take his place—but Jim was only thirteen. Among the
others was one he had been watching since the day he told Craig he
would find metals to build a ship and kill the Gerns: Bill Humbolt.

Bill Humbolt was
not the oldest among those who would make leaders but he was the most
versatile of them all, the most thoughtful and stubbornly determined.
He reminded Lake of that fierce old man who had been his grandfather
and had it not been for the scars that twisted his face into grim
ugliness he would have looked much like him.

A violent storm
was roaring outside the caves the night he told the others that he
wanted Bill Humbolt to be his successor. There were no objections and,
without ceremony and with few words, he terminated his fifteen years of
leadership.

He left the
others, his son among them, and went back to the cave where he slept.
His fire was low, down to dying embers, but he was too tired to build
it up again. He lay down on his pallet and saw, with neither surprise
nor fear, that his time was much nearer than he had thought. It was
already at hand.

He lay back and
let the lassitude enclose him, not fighting it. He had done the best he
could for the others and now the weary journey was over.

His thoughts
dissolved into the memory of the day fifteen years before. The roaring
of the storm became the thunder of the Gern cruisers as they
disappeared into the gray sky. Four thousand Rejects stood in the cold
wind and watched them go, the children not yet understanding that they
had been condemned to die. Somehow, his own son was among them—

He tried feebly to rise. There was work to
do—a lot of work to do . . .

Part 2

It was early
morning as Bill Humbolt sat by the fire in his cave and studied the map
Craig had made of the plateau's mountain. Craig had left the mountain
nameless and he dipped his pen in ink to write: Craig Mountains.

"Bill—"

Delmont Anders entered very quietly, what he
had to tell already evident on his face.

"He died last night, Bill."

It was something
he had been expecting to come at any time but the lack of surprise did
not diminish the sense of loss. Lake had been the last of the Old Ones,
the last of those who had worked and fought and shortened the years of
their lives that the Young Ones might have a chance to live. Now he was
gone—now a brief era was ended, a valiant, bloody chapter written and
finished.

And he was the
new leader who would decree how the next chapter should be written,
only four years older than the boy who was looking at him with an
unconscious appeal for reassurance on his
face . . .

"You'd better
tell Jim," he said. "Then, a little later, I want to talk to everyone
about the things we'll start doing as soon as spring comes."

"You mean, the hunting?" Delmont asked.

"No—more than just the hunting."

He sat for a
while after Delmont left, looking back down the years that had preceded
that day, back to that first morning on Ragnarok.

He had set a
goal for himself that morning when he left his toy bear in the dust
behind him and walked beside Julia into the new and perilous way of
life. He had promised himself that some day he would watch the Gerns
die and beg for mercy as they died and he would give them the same
mercy they had given his mother.

As he grew older
he realized that his hatred, alone, was a futile thing. There would
have to be a way of leaving Ragnarok and there would have to be weapons
with which to fight the Gerns. These would be things impossible and
beyond his reach unless he had the help of all the others in united,
coordinated effort.

To make certain
of that united effort he would have to be their leader. So for eleven
years he had studied and trained until there was no one who could use a
bow or spear quite as well as he could, no one who could travel as far
in a day or spot a unicorn ambush as quickly. And there was no one,
with the exception of George Ord, who had studied as many textbooks as
he had.

He had reached
his first goal—he was leader. For all of them there existed the second
goal: the hope of someday leaving Ragnarok and taking Athena from the
Gerns. For many of them, perhaps, it was only wishful dreaming but for
him it was the prime driving force of his life.

There was so
much for them to do and their lives were so short in which to do it.
For so long as he was leader they would not waste a day in idle
wishing . . .

* * *

When the others were gathered to hear what he
had to say he spoke to them:

"We're going to
continue where the Old Ones had to leave off. We're better adapted than
they were and we're going to find metals to make a ship if there are
any to be found.

"Somewhere on
Ragnarok, on the northwest side of a range similar to the Craig
Mountains on the plateau, is a deep valley that the Dunbar Expedition
called the Chasm. They didn't investigate it closely since their
instruments showed no metals there but they saw strata in one place
that was red; an iron discoloration. Maybe we can find a vein there
that was too small for them to have paid any attention to. So we'll go
over the Craigs as soon as the snow melts from them."

"That will be in
early summer," George Ord said, his black eyes thoughtful. "Whoever
goes will have to time their return for either just before the prowlers
and unicorns come back from the north or wait until they've all
migrated down off the plateau."

It was something
Humbolt had been thinking about and wishing they could remedy. Men
could elude unicorn attacks wherever there were trees large enough to
offer safety and even prowler attacks could be warded off wherever
there were trees for refuge; spears holding back the prowlers who would
climb the trees while arrows picked off the ones on the ground. But
there were no trees on the plateau, and to be caught by a band of
prowlers or unicorns there was certain death for any small party of two
or three. For that reason no small parties had ever gone up on the
plateau except when the unicorns and prowlers were gone or nearly so.
It was an inconvenience and it would continue for as long as their
weapons were the slow-to-reload bows.

"You're supposed
to be our combination inventor-craftsman," he said to George. "No one
else can compare with you in that respect. Besides, you're not exactly
enthusiastic about such hard work as mountain climbing. So from now on
you'll do the kind of work you're best fitted for. Your first job is to
make us a better bow. Make it like a crossbow, with a sliding action to
draw and cock the string and with a magazine of arrows mounted on top
of it."

George studied the idea thoughtfully. "The
general principle is simple," he said. "I'll see what I can do."

"How many of us will go over the Craig
Mountains, Bill?" Dan Barber asked.

"You and I,"
Humbolt answered. "A three-man party under Bob Craig will go into the
Western Hills and another party under Johnny Stevens will go into the
Eastern Hills."

He looked toward
the adjoining cave where the guns had been stored for so long, coated
with unicorn tallow to protect them from rust.

"We could make
gun powder if we could find a deposit of saltpeter. We already know
where there's a little sulphur. The guns would have to be converted to
flintlocks, though, since we don't have what we need for cartridge
priming material. Worse, we'd have to use ceramic bullets. They would
be inefficient—too light, and destructive to the bores. But we would
need powder for mining if we ever found any iron. And, if we can't have
metal bullets to shoot the Gerns, we can have bombs to blast them with."

"Suppose,"
Johnny Stevens said, "that we never do find the metals to make a ship.
How will we ever leave Ragnarok if that happens?"

"There's another way—a possible way—of
leaving here without a ship of our own. If there are no metals we'll
have to try it."

"Why wait?" Bob Craig demanded. "Why not try
it now?"

"Because the odds would be about ten thousand
to one in favor of the Gerns. But we'll try it if everything else
fails."

* * *

George made,
altered, and rejected four different types of crossbows before he
perfected a reloading bow that met his critical approval. He brought it
to where Humbolt stood outside the caves early one spring day when the
grass was sending up the first green shoots on the southern hillsides
and the long winter was finally dying.

"Here it is," he said, handing Humbolt the
bow. "Try it."

He took it,
noting the fine balance of it. Projecting down from the center of the
bow, at right angles to it, was a stock shaped to fit the grip of the
left hand. Under the crossbar was a sliding stock for the right hand,
shaped like the butt of a pistol and fitted with a trigger. Mounted
slightly above and to one side of the crossbar was a magazine
containing ten short arrows.

The pistol grip
was in position near the forestock. He pulled it back the length of the
crossbar and it brought the string with it, stretching it taut. There
was a click as the trigger mechanism locked the bowstring in place and
at the same time a concealed spring arrangement shoved an arrow into
place against the string.

He took quick
aim at a distant tree and pressed the trigger. There was a twang as the
arrow was ejected. He jerked the sliding pistol grip forward and back
to reload, pressing the trigger an instant later. Another arrow went
its way.

By the time he
had fired the tenth arrow in the magazine he was shooting at the rate
of one arrow per second. On the trunk of the distant tree, like a
bristle of stiff whiskers, the ten arrows were driven deep into the
wood in an area no larger than the chest of a prowler or head of a
unicorn.

"This is better than I hoped for," he said to
George. "One man with one of these would equal six men with ordinary
bows."

"I'm going to
add another feature," George said. "Bundles of arrows, ten to the
bundle in special holders, to carry in the quivers. To reload the
magazine you'd just slap down a new bundle of arrows, in no more time
than it would take to put one arrow in an ordinary bow. I figured that
with practice a man should be able to get off forty arrows in not much
more than twenty seconds."

George took the
bow and went back in the cave to add his new feature. Humbolt stared
after him, thinking, If he can make something like that out of wood and
unicorn gut, what would he be able to give us if he could have
metal?

Perhaps George
would never have the opportunity to show what he could do with metal.
But Humbolt already felt sure that George's genius would, if it ever
became necessary, make possible the alternate plan for leaving Ragnarok.

* * *

The weeks
dragged into months and at last enough snow was gone from the Craigs
that Humbolt and Dan Barber could start. They met no opposition. The
prowlers had long since disappeared into the north and the unicorns
were very scarce. They had no occasion to test the effectiveness of the
new automatic crossbows in combat; a lack of opportunity that irked
Barber.

"Any other time, if we had ordinary bows," he
complained, "the unicorns would be popping up to charge us from all
directions."

"Don't fret," Humbolt consoled him. "This
fall, when we come back, they will be."

They reached the
mountain and stopped near its foot where a creek came down, its water
high and muddy with melting snows. There they hunted until they had
obtained all the meat they could carry. They would see no more game
when they went up the mountain's canyons. A poisonous weed replaced
most of the grass in all the canyons and the animals of Ragnarok had
learned long before to shun the mountain.

They found the
canyon that Craig and his men had tried to explore and started up it.
It was there that Craig had discovered the quartz and mica and so far
as he had been able to tell the head of that canyon would be the lowest
of all the passes over the mountain.

The canyon went
up the mountain diagonally so that the climb was not steep although it
was constant. They began to see mica and quartz crystals in the creek
bed and at noon on the second day they passed the last stunted tree.
Nothing grew higher than that point but the thorny poison weeds and
they were scarce.

The air was
noticeably thinner there and their burdens heavier. A short distance
beyond they came to a small rock monument; Craig's turn-back point.

The next day
they found the quartz crystals in place. A mile farther was the vein
the mica had come from. Of the other minerals Craig had hoped to find,
however, there were only traces.

The fourth day
was an eternity of struggling up the now-steeper canyon under loads
that seemed to weigh hundreds of pounds; forcing their protesting legs
to carry them fifty steps at a time, at the end of which they would
stop to rest while their lungs labored to suck in the thin air in
quick, panting breaths.

It would have
been much easier to have gone around the mountain. But the Chasm was
supposed to be like a huge cavity scooped out of the plateau beyond the
mountain, rimmed with sheer cliffs a mile high. Only on the side next
to the mountain was there a slope leading down into it.

They stopped for
the night where the creek ended in a small spring. There the snow still
clung to the canyon's walls and there the canyon curved, offering them
the promise of the summit just around the bend as it had been doing all
day.

The sun was hot
and bright the next morning as they made their slow way on again. The
canyon straightened, the steep walls of it flattening out to make a
pair of ragged shoulders with a saddle between them.

They climbed to the summit of the saddle and
there, suddenly before them, was the other side of the world—and the
Chasm.

Far below them
was a plateau, stretching endlessly like the one they had left behind
them. But the chasm dominated all else. It was a gigantic, sheer-walled
valley, a hundred miles long by forty miles wide, sunk deep in the
plateau with the tops of its mile-high walls level with the floor of
the plateau. The mountain under them dropped swiftly away, sloping down
and down to the level of the plateau and then on, down and down again,
to the bottom of the chasm that was so deep its floor was half hidden
by the morning shadows.

"My God!" Barber
said. "It must be over three miles under us to the bottom, on the
vertical. Ten miles of thirty-three percent grade—if we go down we'll
never get out again."

"You can turn back here if you want to,"
Humbolt said.

"Turn back?" Barber's red whiskers seemed to
bristle. "Who in hell said anything about turning back?"

"Nobody," Humbolt said, smiling a little at
Barber's quick flash of anger.

He studied the
chasm, wishing that they could have some way of cutting the quartz
crystals and making binoculars. It was a long way to look with the
naked eye . . .

Here and there
the chasm thrust out arms into the plateau. All the arms were short,
however, and even at their heads the cliffs were vertical. The morning
shadows prevented a clear view of much of the chasm and he could see no
sign of the red-stained strata that they were searching for.

In the southwest
corner of the chasm, far away and almost imperceptible, he saw a faint
cloud rising up from the chasm's floor. It was impossible to tell what
it was and it faded away as he watched.

Barber saw it,
too, and said, "It looked like smoke. Do you suppose there could be
people—or some kind of intelligent things—living down there?"

"It might have
been the vapor from hot springs, condensed by the cool morning air," he
said. "Whatever it was, we'll look into it when we get there."

The climb down
the steep slope into the chasm was swifter than that up the canyon but
no more pleasant. Carrying a heavy pack down such a grade exerted a
torturous strain upon the backs of the legs.

The heat
increased steadily as they descended. They reached the floor of the
valley the next day and the noonday heat was so great that Humbolt
wondered if they might not have trapped themselves into what the summer
would soon transform into a monstrous oven where no life at all could
exist. There could never be any choice, of course—the mountains were
passable only when the weather was hot.

The floor of the
valley was silt, sand and gravel—they would find nothing there. They
set out on a circuit of the chasm's walls, following along close to the
base.

In many places
the mile-high walls were without a single ledge to break their vertical
faces. When they came to the first such place they saw that the ground
near the base was riddled with queer little pits, like tiny craters of
the moon. As they looked there was a crack like a cannon shot and the
ground beside them erupted into an explosion of sand and gravel. When
the dust had cleared away there was a new crater where none had been
before.

Humbolt wiped
the blood from his face where a flying fragment had cut it and said,
"The heat of the sun loosens rocks under the rim. When one falls a mile
in a one point five gravity, it's traveling like a meteor."

They went on,
through the danger zone. As with the peril of the chasm's heat, there
was no choice. Only by observing the material that littered the base of
the cliffs could they know what minerals, if any, might be above them.

On the fifteenth
day they saw the red-stained stratum. Humbolt quickened his pace,
hurrying forward in advance of Barber. The stratum was too high up on
the wall to be reached but it was not necessary to examine it in
place—the base of the cliff was piled thick with fragments from it.

He felt the
first touch of discouragement as he looked at them. They were a
sandstone, light in weight. The iron present was only what the Dunbar
Expedition had thought it to be; a mere discoloration.

They made their
way slowly along the foot of the cliff, examining piece after piece in
the hope of finding something more than iron stains. There was no
variation, however, and a mile farther on they came to the end of the
red stratum. Beyond that point the rocks were gray, without a vestige
of iron.

"So that," Barber said, looking back the way
they had come, "is what we were going to build a ship out of—iron
stains!"

Humbolt did not
answer. For him it was more than a disappointment. It was the death of
a dream he had held since the year he was nine and had heard that the
Dunbar Expedition had seen iron-stained rock in a deep chasm—the only
iron-stained rock on the face of Ragnarok. Surely, he had thought,
there would be enough iron there to build a small ship. For eleven
years he had worked toward the day when he would find it. Now, he had
found it—and it was nothing. The ship was as far away as
ever . . .

But discouragement was as useless as
iron-stained sandstone. He shook it off and turned to Barber.

"Let's go," he said. "Maybe we'll find
something by the time we circle the chasm."

For seven days
they risked the danger of death from downward plunging rocks and found
nothing. On the eighth day they found the treasure that was not
treasure.

They stopped for
the evening just within the mouth of one of the chasm's tributaries.
Humbolt went out to get a drink where a trickle of water ran through
the sand and as he knelt down he saw the flash of something red under
him, almost buried in the sand.

He lifted it
out. It was a stone half the size of his hand; darkly translucent and
glowing in the light of the setting sun like blood.

It was a ruby.

He looked, and
saw another gleam a little farther up the stream. It was another ruby,
almost as large as the first one. Near it was a flawless blue sapphire.
Scattered here and there were smaller rubies and sapphires, down to the
size of grains of sand.

He went farther
upstream and saw specimens of still another stone. They were colorless
but burning with internal fires. He rubbed one of them hard across the
ruby he still carried and there was a gritting sound as it cut a deep
scratch in the ruby.

"I'll be damned," he said aloud.

There was only one stone hard enough to cut a
ruby—the diamond.

* * *

It was almost dark when he returned to where
Barber was resting beside their packs.

"What did you find to keep you out so late?"
Barber asked curiously.

He dropped a double handful of rubies,
sapphires and diamonds at Barber's feet.

"Take a look,"
he said. "On a civilized world what you see there would buy us a ship
without our having to lift a finger. Here they're just pretty rocks.

"Except the diamonds," he added. "At least we
now have something to cut those quartz crystals with."

* * *

They took only a
few of the rubies and sapphires the next morning but they gathered more
of the diamonds, looking in particular for the gray-black and ugly but
very hard and tough carbonado variety. Then they resumed their circling
of the chasm's walls.

The heat
continued its steady increase as the days went by. Only at night was
there any relief from it and the nights were growing swiftly shorter as
the blue sun rose earlier each morning. When the yellow sun rose the
chasm became a blazing furnace around the edge of which they crept like
ants in some gigantic oven.

There was no
life in any form to be seen; no animal or bush or blade of grass. There
was only the barren floor of the chasm, made a harsh green shade by the
two suns and writhing and undulating with heat waves like a nightmare
sea, while above them the towering cliffs shimmered, too, and sometimes
seemed to be leaning far out over their heads and already falling down
upon them.

They found no more minerals of any kind and
they came at last to the place where they had seen the smoke or vapor.

* * *

There the walls
of the chasm drew back to form a little valley a mile long by half a
mile wide. The walls did not drop vertically to the floor there but
sloped out at the base into a fantastic formation of natural roofs and
arches that reached almost to the center of the valley from each side.
Green things grew in the shade under the arches and sparkling
waterfalls cascaded down over many of them. A small creek carried the
water out of the valley, going out into the chasm a little way before
the hot sands absorbed it.

They stood and
watched for some time, but there was no movement in the valley other
than the waving of the green plants as a breeze stirred them. Once the
breeze shifted to bring them the fresh, sweet scent of growing things
and urge them to come closer.

"A place like that doesn't belong here,"
Barber said in a low voice. "But it's there. I wonder what else is
there?"

"Shade and cool water," Humbolt said. "And
maybe things that don't like strangers. Let's go find out."

They watched
warily as they walked, their crossbows in their hands. At the closer
range they saw that the roofs and arches were the outer remains of a
system of natural caves that went back into the valley's walls. The
green vegetation grew wherever the roofs gave part-time shade,
consisting mainly of a holly-leafed bush with purple flowers and a tall
plant resembling corn.

Under some of
the roofs the corn was mature, the orange-colored grains visible. Under
others it was no more than half grown. He saw the reason and said to
Barber:

"There are both
warm and cold springs here. The plants watered by the warm springs
would grow almost the year around; the ones watered by the cold springs
only in the summer. And what we saw from the mountain top would have
been vapor rising from the warm springs."

They passed
under arch after arch without seeing any life. When they came to the
valley's upper end and still had seen nothing it seemed evident that
there was little danger of an encounter with any
intelligent-and-hostile creatures. Apparently nothing at all lived in
the little valley.

Humbolt stopped
under a broad arch where the breeze was made cool and moist by the
spray of water it had come through. Barber went on, to look under the
adjoining arch.

Caves led into
the wall from both arches and as he stood there Humbolt saw something
lying in the mouth of the nearest cave. It was a little mound of orange
corn; lying in a neat pile as though whatever had left it there had
intended to come back after it.

He looked toward
the other arch but Barber was somewhere out of sight. He doubted that
whatever had left the corn could be much of a menace—dangerous animals
were more apt to eat flesh than corn—but he went to the cave with his
crossbow ready.

He stopped at
the mouth of the cave to let his eyes become accustomed to the darkness
inside it. As he did so the things inside came out to meet him.

They emerged
into full view; six little animals the size of squirrels, each of them
a different color. They walked on short hind legs like miniature bears
and the dark eyes in the bear-chipmunk faces were fixed on him with
intense interest. They stopped five feet in front of him, there to
stand in a neat row and continue the fascinated staring up at him.

The yellow one
in the center scratched absently at its stomach with a furry paw and he
lowered the bow, feeling a little foolish at having bothered to raise
it against animals so small and harmless.

Then he half brought it up again as the
yellow one opened its mouth and said in a tone that held distinct
anticipation:

"I think we'll eat you for supper."

He darted
glances to right and left but there was nothing near him except the six
little animals. The yellow one, having spoken, was staring silently at
him with some curiosity on its furry face. He wondered if some miasma
or some scent from the vegetation in the valley had warped his mind
into sudden insanity and asked:

"You think you'll do what?"

It opened its mouth again, to stutter, "I—I—"
Then, with a note of alarm, "Hey . . ."

It said no more and the next sound was that
of Barber hurrying toward him and calling, "Hey—Bill—where are you?"

"Here," he answered, and he was already sure
that he knew why the little animal had spoken to him.

Barber came up
and saw the six chipmunk-bears. "Six of them!" he exclaimed. "There's
one in the next cave—the damned thing spoke to me!"

"I thought so," he replied. "You told it we'd
have it for supper and then it said, 'You think you'll do what?' didn't
it?"

Barber's face showed surprise. "How did you
know that?"

"They're
telepathic between one another," he said. "The yellow one there
repeated what the one you spoke to heard you say and it repeated what
the yellow one heard me say. It has to be telepathy between them."

"Telepathy—"
Barber stared at the six little animals, who stared back with their
fascinated curiosity undiminished. "But why should they want to repeat
aloud what they receive telepathically?"

"I don't know.
Maybe at some stage in their evolution only part of them were telepaths
and the telepaths broadcasted danger warnings to the others that way.
So far as that goes, why does a parrot repeat what it hears?"

There was a
scurry of movement behind Barber and another of the little animals, a
white one, hurried past them. It went to the yellow one and they stood
close together as they stared up. Apparently they were
mates . . .

"That's the
other one—those are the two that mocked us," Barber said, and thereby
gave them the name by which they would be known: mockers.

* * *

The mockers were
fresh meat—but they accepted the humans with such friendliness and
trust that Barber lost all his desire to have one for supper or for any
other time. They had a limited supply of dried meat and there would be
plenty of orange corn. They would not go hungry.

They discovered
that the mockers had living quarters in both the cool caves and the
ones warmed by the hot springs. There was evidence that they hibernated
during the winters in the warm caves.

There were no
minerals in the mockers' valley and they set out to continue their
circuit of the chasm. They did not get far until the heat had become so
great that the chasm's tributaries began going dry. They turned back
then, to wait in the little valley until the fall rains came.

* * *

When the long
summer was ended by the first rain they resumed their journey. They
took a supply of the orange corn and two of the mockers; the yellow one
and its mate. The other mockers watched them leave, standing silent and
solemn in front of their caves as though they feared they might never
see their two fellows or the humans again.

The two mockers
were pleasant company, riding on their shoulders and chattering any
nonsense that came to mind. And sometimes saying things that were not
at all nonsense, making Humbolt wonder if mockers could partly read
human minds and dimly understand the meaning of some of the things they
said.

They found a
place where saltpeter was very thinly and erratically distributed. They
scraped off all the films of it that were visible and procured a small
amount. They completed their circuit and reached the foot of the long,
steep slope of the Craigs without finding anything more.

It was an
awesome climb that lay before them; up a grade so steep and barred with
so many low ledges that when their legs refused to carry them farther
they crawled. The heat was still very serious and there would be no
water until they came to the spring beyond the mountain's summit. A
burning wind, born on the blazing floor of the chasm, following them up
the mountain all day. Their leather canteens were almost dry when night
came and they were no more than a third of the way to the top.

The mockers had
become silent as the elevation increased and when they stopped for the
night Humbolt saw that they would never live to cross the mountain.
They were breathing fast, their hearts racing, as they tried to extract
enough oxygen from the thin air. They drank a few drops of water but
they would not touch the corn he offered them.

The white mocker
died at midmorning the next day as they stopped for a rest. The yellow
one crawled feebly to her side and died a few minutes later.

"So that's
that," Humbolt said, looking down at them. "The only things on Ragnarok
that ever trusted us and wanted to be our friends—and we killed them."

They drank the
last of their water and went on. They made dry camp that night and
dreams of cold streams of water tormented their exhausted sleep. The
next day was a hellish eternity in which they walked and fell and
crawled and walked and fell again.

Barber weakened
steadily, his breathing growing to a rattling panting. He spoke once
that afternoon, to try to smile with dry, swollen lips and say between
his panting gasps, "It would be hell—to have to die—so thirsty like
this."

After that he
fell with increasing frequency, each time slower and weaker in getting
up again. Half a mile short of the summit he fell for the last time. He
tried to get up, failed, and tried to crawl. He failed at that, too,
and collapsed face down in the rocky soil.

Humbolt went to him and said between his own
labored intakes of breath, "Wait, Dan—I'll go on—bring you back water."

Barber raised himself with a great effort and
looked up. "No use," he said. "My heart—too much—"

He fell forward again and that time he was
very still, his desperate panting no more.

* * *

It seemed to
Humbolt that it was half a lifetime later that he finally reached the
spring and the cold, clear water. He drank, the most ecstatic pleasure
he had ever experienced in his life. Then the pleasure drained away as
he seemed to see Dan Barber trying to smile and seemed to hear him say,
"It would be hell—to have to die—so thirsty like this."

He rested for
two days before he was in condition to continue on his way. He reached
the plateau and saw that the woods goats had been migrating south for
some time. On the second morning he climbed up a gentle roll in the
plain and met three unicorns face to face.

They charged at
once, squealing with anticipation. Had he been equipped with an
ordinary bow he would have been killed within seconds. But the
automatic crossbow poured a rain of arrows into the faces of the
unicorns that caused them to swing aside in pain and enraged
astonishment. The moment they had swung enough to expose the area just
behind their heads the arrows became fatal.

One unicorn
escaped, three arrows bristling in its face. It watched him from a
distance for a little while, squealing and shaking its head in baffled
fury. Then it turned and disappeared over a swell in the plain, running
like a deer.

He resumed his
southward march, hurrying faster than before. The unicorn had headed
north and that could be for but one purpose: to bring enough
reinforcements to finish the job.

* * *

He reached the caves at night. No one was up
but George Ord, working late in his combination workshop-laboratory.

George looked up at the sound of his entrance
and saw that he was alone. "So Dan didn't make it?" he asked.

"The chasm got him," he answered. And then,
wearily, "The chasm—we found the damned thing."

"The red stratum—"

"It was only iron stains."

"I made a little
pilot smelter while you were gone," George said. "I was hoping the red
stratum would be ore. The other prospecting parties—none of them found
anything."

"We'll try again next spring," he said.
"We'll find it somewhere, no matter how long it takes."

"Our time may not be so long. The
observations show the sun to be farther south than ever."

"Then we'll make
double use of the time we do have. We'll cut the hunting parties to the
limit and send out more prospecting parties. We're going to have a ship
to meet the Gerns again."

"Sometimes,"
George said, his black eyes studying him thoughtfully, "I think that's
all you live for, Bill: for the day when you can kill Gerns."

George said it
as a statement of a fact, without censure, but Humbolt could not keep
an edge of harshness out of his voice as he answered:

"For as long as I'm leader that's all we're
all going to live for."

He followed the
game south that fall, taking with him Bob Craig and young Anders.
Hundreds of miles south of the caves they came to the lowlands; a land
of much water and vegetation and vast herds of unicorns and woods
goats. It was an exceedingly dangerous country, due to the
concentration of unicorns and prowlers, and only the automatic
crossbows combined with never ceasing vigilance enabled them to survive.

There they saw
the crawlers; hideous things that crawled on multiple legs like
three-ton centipedes, their mouths set with six mandibles and dripping
a stinking saliva. The bite of a crawler was poisonous, instantly
paralyzing even to a unicorn, though not instantly killing them. The
crawlers ate their victims at once, however, ripping the helpless and
still living flesh from its bones.

Although the
unicorns feared the crawlers, the prowlers hated them with a fanatical
intensity and made use of their superior quickness to kill every
crawler they found; ripping at the crawler until the crawler, in an
insanity of rage, bit itself and died of its own poison.

They had taken
one of the powerful longbows with them, in addition to their crossbows,
and they killed a crawler with it one day. As they did so a band of
twenty prowlers came suddenly upon them.

Twenty prowlers,
with the advantage of surprise at short range, could have slaughtered
them. Instead, the prowlers continued on their way without as much as a
challenging snarl.

"Now why," Bob Craig wondered, "did they do
that?"

"They saw we had
just killed a crawler," Humbolt said. "The crawlers are their enemies
and I guess letting us live was their way of showing appreciation."

Their further
explorations of the lowlands revealed no minerals—nothing but alluvial
material of unknown depth—and there was no reason to stay longer except
that return to the caves was impossible until spring came. They built
attack-proof shelters in the trees and settled down to wait out the
winter.

They started north with the first wave of
woods goats, nothing but lack of success to show for their months of
time and effort.

When they were
almost to the caves they came to the barren valley where the Gerns had
herded the Rejects out of the cruisers and to the place where the
stockade had been. It was a lonely place, the stockade walls fallen and
scattered and the graves of Humbolt's mother and all the others long
since obliterated by the hooves of the unicorn legions. Bitter memories
were reawakened, tinged by the years with nostalgia, and the stockade
was far behind them before the dark mood left him.

The orange corn was planted that spring and
the number of prospecting parties was doubled.

The corn
sprouted, grew feebly, and died before maturity. The prospecting
parties returned one by one, each to report no success. He decided,
that fall, that time was too precious to waste—they would have to use
the alternate plan he had spoken of.

He went to George Ord and asked him if it
would be possible to build a hyperspace transmitter with the materials
they had.

"It's the one
way we could have a chance to leave here without a ship of our own," he
said. "By luring a Gern cruiser here and then taking it away from them."

George shook his head. "A hyperspace
transmitter might
be built, given enough years of time. But it would be useless without
power. It would take a generator of such size that we'd have to melt
down every gun, knife, axe, every piece of steel and iron we have. And
then we'd be five hundred pounds short. On top of that, we'd have to
have at least three hundred pounds more of copper for additional wire."

"I didn't realize it would take such a large
generator," he said after a silence. "I was sure we could have a
transmitter."

"Get me the
metal and we can," George said. He sighed restlessly and there was
almost hatred in his eyes as he looked at the inclosing walls of the
cave. "You're not the only one who would like to leave our prison. Get
me eight hundred pounds of copper and iron and I'll make the
transmitter, some way."

Eight hundred pounds of
metal . . .  On Ragnarok that was like asking for
the sun.

The years went
by and each year there was the same determined effort, the same lack of
success. And each year the suns were farther south, marking the coming
of the end of any efforts other than the one to survive.

In the year
thirty when fall came earlier than ever before, he was forced to admit
to himself the bleak and bitter fact: he and the others were not of the
generation that would escape from Ragnarok. They were Earth-born—they
were not adapted to Ragnarok and could not scour a world of 1.5 gravity
for metals that might not exist.

And vengeance was a luxury he could not have.

A question grew in his mind where there had
been only his hatred for the Gerns before. What would become of the
future generations on Ragnarok?

With the
question a scene from his childhood kept coming back to him; a late
summer evening in the first year on Ragnarok and Julia sitting beside
him in the warm starlight . . .

"You're my son, Billy," she had said. "The
first I ever had. Now, before so very long, maybe I'll have another
one."

Hesitantly, not
wanting to believe, he had asked, "What some of them said about how you
might die then—it won't really happen, will it, Julia?"

"It . . . might."
Then her arm had gone around him and she had said, "If I do I'll leave
in my place a life that's more important than mine ever was.

"Remember me,
Billy, and this evening, and what I said to you, if you should ever be
leader. Remember that it's only through the children that we can ever
survive and whip this world. Protect them while they're small and
helpless and teach them to fight and be afraid of nothing when they're
a little older. Never, never let them forget how they came to be on
Ragnarok. Someday, even if it's a hundred years from now, the Gerns
will come again and they must be ready to fight, for their freedom and
for their lives."

He had been too
young then to understand how truly she had spoken and when he was old
enough his hatred for the Gerns had blinded him to everything but his
own desires. Now, he could see . . .

The children of
each generation would be better adapted to Ragnarok and full adaptation
would eventually come. But all the generations of the future would be
potential slaves of the Gern Empire, free only so long as they remained
unnoticed.

It was
inconceivable that the Gerns should never pass by Ragnarok through all
time to come. And when they finally came the slow, uneventful
progression of decades and centuries might have brought a false sense
of security to the people of Ragnarok, might have turned the stories of
what the Gerns did to the Rejects into legends and then into myths that
no one any longer believed.

The Gerns would have to be brought to
Ragnarok before that could happen.

* * *

He went to George Ord again and said:

"There's one kind of transmitter we could
make a generator for—a plain normal-space transmitter, dot-dash,
without a receiver."

George laid down the diamond cutting wheel he
had been working on.

"It would take
two hundred years for the signal to get to Athena at the speed of
light," he said. "Then, forty days after it got there, a Gern cruiser
would come hell-bent to investigate."

"I want the ones
of the future to know that the Gerns will be here no later than two
hundred years from now. And with always the chance that a Gern cruiser
in space might pick up the signal at any time before then."

"I see," George said. "The sword of Damocles
hanging over their heads, to make them remember."

"You know what would happen to them if they
ever forgot. You're as old as I am—you know what the Gerns did to us."

"I'm older than
you are," George said. "I was nine when the Gerns left us here. They
kept my father and mother and my sister was only three. I tried to keep
her warm by holding her but the Hell Fever got her that first night.
She was too young to understand why I couldn't help her
more . . ."

Hatred burned in
his eyes at the memory, like some fire that had been banked but had
never died. "Yes, I remember the Gerns and what they did. I wouldn't
want it to have to happen to others—the transmitter will be made so
that it won't."

* * *

The guns were
melted down, together with other items of iron and steel, to make the
castings for the generator. Ceramic pipes were made to carry water from
the spring to a waterwheel. The long, slow job of converting the
miscellany of electronic devices, many of them broken, into the
components of a transmitter proceeded.

It was five
years before the transmitter was ready for testing. It was early fall
of the year thirty-five then, and the water that gushed from the pipe
splashed in cold drops against Humbolt as the waterwheel was set in
motion.

The generator
began to hum and George observed the output of it and the transmitter
as registered by the various meters he had made.

"Weak, but it will reach the Gern monitor
station on Athena," he said. "It's ready to send—what do you want to
say?"

"Make it something short," he said. "Make it 'Ragnarok
calling.' "

George poised
his finger over the transmitting key. "This will set forces in motion
that can never be recalled. What we do here this morning is going to
cause a lot of Gerns—or Ragnarok people—to die."

"It will be the Gerns who die," he said.
"Send the signal."

"Like you, I
believe the same thing," George said. "I have to believe it because
that's the way I want it to be. I hope we're right. It's something
we'll never know."

He began depressing the key.

* * *

A boy was given
the job of operating the key and the signal went out daily until the
freezing of winter stopped the waterwheel that powered the generator.

The sending of the signals was resumed when
spring came and the prospecting parties continued their vain search for
metals.

The suns
continued moving south and each year the springs came later, the falls
earlier. In the spring of forty-five he saw that he would have to make
his final decision.

By then they
dwindled until they numbered only sixty-eight; the Young Ones gray and
rapidly growing old. There was no longer any use to continue the
prospecting—if any metals were to be found they were at the north end
of the plateau where the snow no longer melted during the summer. They
were too few to do more than prepare for what the Old Ones had feared
they might have to face—Big Winter. That would require the work of all
of them.

Sheets of mica
were brought down from the Craigs, the summits of which were deeply
buried under snow even in midsummer. Stoves were made of fireclay and
mica, which would give both heat and light and would be more efficient
than open fireplaces. The innermost caves were prepared for occupation,
with multiple doors to hold out the cold and with laboriously excavated
ventilation ducts and smoke outlets.

There were sixty of them in the fall of
fifty, when all had been done that could be done to prepare for what
might come.

* * *

"There aren't
many of the Earth-born left now," Bob Craig said to him one night as
they sat in the flickering light of a stove. "And there hasn't been
time for there to be many of the Ragnarok-born. The Gerns wouldn't get
many slaves if they should come now."

"They could use
however many they found," he answered. "The younger ones, who are the
best adapted to this gravity, would be exceptionally strong and quick
on a one-gravity world. There are dangerous jobs where a strong, quick
slave is a lot more efficient and expendable than complex, expensive
machines."

"And they would
want some specimens for scientific study," Jim Lake said. "They would
want to cut into the young ones and see how they're built that they're
adapted to this one and a half gravity world."

He smiled with the cold mirthlessness that
always reminded Humbolt of his father—of the Lake who had been the Constellation's
lieutenant commander. "According to the books the Gerns never did try
to make it a secret that when a Gern doctor or biologist cuts into the
muscles or organs of a non-Gern to see what makes them tick, he wants
them to be still alive and ticking as he does so."

Seventeen-year-old Don Chiara spoke, to say
slowly, thoughtfully:

"Slavery and
vivisection . . .  If the Gerns should come now
when there are so few
of us, and if we should fight the best we could and lose, it would be
better for whoever was the last of us left to put a knife in the hearts
of the women and children than to let the Gerns have them."

No one made any answer. There was no answer
to make, no alternative to suggest.

"In the future
there will be more of us and it will be different," he said at last.
"On Earth the Gerns were always stronger and faster than humans but
when the Gerns come to Ragnarok they're going to find a race that isn't
really human any more. They're going to find a race before which
they'll be like woods goats before prowlers."

"If only they don't come too soon," Craig
said.

"That was the chance that had to be taken,"
he replied.

He wondered
again as he spoke, as he had wondered so often in the past years, if he
had given them all their death sentence when he ordered the transmitter
built. Yet, the future generations could not be permitted to
forget . . . and steel could not be tempered
without first thrusting it
into the fire.

* * *

He was the last
of the Young Ones when he awoke one night in the fall of fifty-six and
found himself burning with the Hell Fever. He did not summon any of the
others. They could do nothing for him and he had already done all he
could for them.

He had done all
he could for them . . . and now he would leave
forty-nine men, women
and children to face the unknown forces of Big Winter while over them
hung the sword he had forged: the increasing danger of detection by the
Gerns.

The question came again, sharp with the
knowledge that it was far too late for him to change any of it. Did
I arrange the execution of my people?

Then, through
the red haze of the fever, Julia spoke to him out of the past; sitting
again beside him in the summer twilight and saying:

Remember me,
Billy, and this evening, and what I said to
you . . . teach them to
fight and be afraid of nothing . . . never let them
forget how they
came to be on Ragnarok . . .

She seemed very near and real and the doubt
faded and was gone. Teach them to
fight . . . never let them
forget . . .
The men of Ragnarok were only fur-clad hunters who crouched in caves
but they would grow in numbers as time went by. Each generation would
be stronger than the generation before it and he had set forces in
motion that would bring the last generation the trial of combat and the
opportunity for freedom. How well they fought on that day would
determine their destiny but he was certain, once again, what that
destiny would be.

It would be to walk as conquerors before
beaten and humbled Gerns.

Part 3

It was winter of
the year eighty-five and the temperature was one hundred and six
degrees below zero. Walter Humbolt stood in front of the ice tunnel
that led back through the glacier to the caves and looked up into the
sky.

It was noon but
there was no sun in the starlit sky. Many weeks before the sun had
slipped below the southern horizon. For a little while a dim halo had
marked its passage each day; then that, too, had faded away. But now it
was time for the halo to appear again, to herald the sun's returning.

Frost filled the
sky, making the stars flicker as it swirled endlessly downward. He
blinked against it, his eyelashes trying to freeze to his lower eyelids
at the movement, and turned to look at the north.

There the
northern lights were a gigantic curtain that filled a third of the sky,
rippling and waving in folds that pulsated in red and green, rose and
lavender and violet. Their reflection gleamed on the glacier that
sloped down from the caves and glowed softly on the other glacier; the
one that covered the transmitter station. The transmitter had long ago
been taken into the caves but the generator and waterwheel were still
there, frozen in a tomb of ice.

For three years
the glacier had been growing before the caves and the plateau's
southern face had been buried under snow for ten years. Only a few
woods goats ever came as far north as the country south of the caves
and they stayed only during the brief period between the last snow of
spring and the first snow of fall. Their winter home was somewhere down
near the equator. What had been called the Southern Lowlands was a
frozen, lifeless waste.

Once they had
thought about going to the valley in the chasm where the mockers would
be hibernating in their warm caves. But even if they could have gone up
the plateau and performed the incredible feat of crossing the
glacier-covered, blizzard-ripped Craigs, they would have found no food
in the mockers' valley—only a little corn the mockers had stored away,
which would soon have been exhausted.

There was no
place for them to live but in the caves or as nomads migrating with the
animals. And if they migrated to the equator each year they would have
to leave behind them all the books and tools and everything that might
someday have given them a civilized way of life and might someday have
shown them how to escape from their prison.

He looked again
to the south where the halo should be, thinking: They should have made
their decision in there by now. I'm their leader—but I can't force them
to stay here against their will. I could only ask them to consider what
it would mean if we left here.

Snow creaked
underfoot as he moved restlessly. He saw something lying under the
blanket of frost and went to it. It was an arrow that someone had
dropped. He picked it up, carefully, because the intense cold had made
the shaft as brittle as glass. It would regain its normal strength when
taken into the caves—

There was the
sound of steps and Fred Schroeder came out of the tunnel, dressed as he
was dressed in bulky furs. Schroeder looked to the south and said, "It
seems to be starting to get a little lighter there."

He saw that it was; a small, faint paling of
the black sky.

"They talked
over what you and I told them," Schroeder said. "And about how we've
struggled to stay here this long and how, even if the sun should stop
drifting south this year, it will be years of ice and cold at the caves
before Big Spring comes."

"If we leave
here the glacier will cover the caves and fill them with ice," he said.
"All we ever had will be buried back in there and all we'll have left
will be our bows and arrows and animal skins. We'll be taking a one-way
road back into the stone age, for ourselves and our children and their
children."

"They know that," Schroeder said. "We both
told them."

He paused. They
watched the sky to the south turn lighter. The northern lights flamed
unnoticed behind them as the pale halo of the invisible sun slowly
brightened to its maximum. Their faces were white with near-freezing
then and they turned to go back into the caves. "They had made their
decision," Schroeder went on. "I guess you and I did them an injustice
when we thought they had lost their determination, when we thought they
might want to hand their children a flint axe and say, 'Here—take this
and let it be the symbol of all you are or all you will ever be.'

"Their decision was unanimous—we'll stay for
as long as it's possible for us to survive here."

* * *

Howard Lake
listened to Teacher Morgan West read from the diary of Walter Humbolt,
written during the terrible winter of thirty-five years before:

"Each morning
the light to the south was brighter. On the seventh morning we saw the
sun—and it was not due until the eighth morning!

"It will be
years before we can stop fighting the enclosure of the glacier but we
have reached and passed the dead of Big Winter. We have reached the
bottom and the only direction we can go in the future is up."

"And so," West
said, closing the book, "we are here in the caves tonight because of
the stubbornness of Humbolt and Schroeder and all the others. Had they
thought only of their own welfare, had they conceded defeat and gone
into the migratory way of life, we would be sitting beside grass
campfires somewhere to the south tonight, our way of life containing no
plans or aspirations greater than to follow the game back and forth
through the years.

"Now, let's go outside to finish tonight's
lesson."

Teacher West led
the way into the starlit night just outside the caves, Howard Lake and
the other children following him. West pointed to the sky where the
star group they called the Athena Constellation blazed like a huge
arrowhead high in the east.

"There," he
said, "beyond the top of the arrowhead, is where we were going when the
Gerns stopped us a hundred and twenty years ago and left us to die on
Ragnarok. It's so far that Athena's sun can't be seen from here, so far
that it will be another hundred and fifteen years before our first
signal gets there. Why is it, then, that you and all the other groups
of children have to learn such things as history, physics, the Gern
language, and the way to fire a Gern blaster?"

The hand of every child went up. West
selected eight-year-old Clifton Humbolt. "Tell us, Clifton," he said.

"Because,"
Clifton answered, "a Gern cruiser might pass by a few light-years out
at any time and pick up our signals. So we have to know all we can
about them and how to fight them because there aren't very many of us
yet."

"The Gerns will
come to kill us," little Marie Chiara said, her dark eyes large and
earnest. "They'll come to kill us and to make slaves out of the ones
they don't kill, like they did with the others a long time ago. They're
awful mean and awful smart and we have to be smarter than they are."

Howard looked
again at the Athena constellation, thinking, I hope they come just as
soon as I'm old enough to fight them, or even
tonight . . .

"Teacher," he asked, "how would a Gern
cruiser look if it came tonight? Would it come from the Athena
arrowhead?"

"It probably would," West answered. "You
would see its rocket blast, like a bright trail of fire—"

A bright trail
of fire burst suddenly into being, coming from the constellation of
Athena and lighting up the woods and hills and their startled faces as
it arced down toward them.

"It's them!"
a treble voice exclaimed and there was a quick flurry of movement as
Howard and the other older children shoved the younger children behind
them.

Then the light vanished, leaving a dimming
glow where it had been.

"Only a meteor,"
West said. He looked at the line of older children who were standing
protectingly in front of the younger ones, rocks in their hands with
which to ward off the Gerns, and he smiled in the way he had when he
was pleased with them.

Howard watched
the meteor trail fade swiftly into invisibility and felt his heartbeats
slow from the first wild thrill to gray disappointment. Only a
meteor . . .

But someday he might be leader and by then,
surely, the Gerns would come. If not, he would find some way to make
them come.

* * *

Ten years later
Howard Lake was leader. There were three hundred and fifty of them then
and Big Spring was on its way to becoming Big Summer. The snow was gone
from the southern end of the plateau and once again game migrated up
the valleys east of the caves.

There were many
things to be done now that Big Winter was past and they could have the
chance to do them. They needed a larger pottery kiln, a larger workshop
with a wooden lathe, more diamonds to make cutting wheels, more quartz
crystals to make binoculars and microscopes. They could again explore
the field of inorganic chemistry, even though results in the past had
produced nothing of value, and they could, within a few years, resume
the metal prospecting up the plateau—the most important project of all.

Their weapons
seemed to be as perfect as was possible but when the Gerns came they
would need some quick and certain means of communication between the
various units that would fight the Gerns. A leader who could not
communicate with his forces and coordinate their actions would be
helpless. And they had on Ragnarok a form of communication, if trained,
that the Gerns could not detect or interfere with electronically: the
mockers.

The Craigs were
still white and impassable with snow that summer but the snow was
receding higher each year. Five years later, in the summer of one
hundred and thirty-five, the Craigs were passable for a few weeks.

Lake led a party
of eight over them and down into the chasm. They took with them two
small cages, constructed of wood and glass and made airtight with the
strong medusabush glue. Each cage was equipped with a simple air pump
and a pressure gauge.

They brought
back two pairs of mockers as interested and trusting captives, together
with a supply of the orange corn and a large amount of diamonds. The
mockers, in their pressure-maintained cages, were not even aware of the
increase in elevation as they were carried over the high summit of the
Craigs.

To Lake and the
men with him the climb back up the long, steep slope of the mountain
was a stiff climb to make in one day but no more than that. It was hard
to believe that it had taken Humbolt and Barber almost three days to
climb it and that Barber had died in the attempt. It reminded him of
the old crossbows that Humbolt and the others had used. They were thin,
with a light pull, such as the present generation boys used. It must
have required courage for the Old Ones to dare unicorn attacks with
bows so thin that only the small area behind the unicorn's jaw was
vulnerable to their arrows . . .

* * *

When the caves
were reached, a very gradual reduction of pressure in the mocker cages
was started; one that would cover a period of weeks. One pair of
mockers survived and had two young ones that fall. The young mockers,
like the first generation of Ragnarok-born children of many years
before, were more adapted to their environment than their parents were.

The orange corn
was planted, using an adaptation method somewhat similar to that used
with the mockers. It might have worked had the orange corn not required
such a long period of time in which to reach maturity. When winter came
only a few grains had formed.

They were saved for next year's seeds, to
continue the slow adaptation process.

By the fifth
year the youngest generation of mockers was well adapted to the
elevation of the caves but for a susceptibility to a quickly fatal form
of pneumonia which made it necessary to keep them from exposing
themselves to the cold or to any sudden changes of temperature.

Their
intelligence was surprising and they seemed to be partially receptive
to human thoughts, as Bill Humbolt had written. By the end of the
fifteenth year their training had reached such a stage of perfection
that a mocker would transmit or not transmit with only the unspoken
thought of its master to tell it which it should be. In addition, they
would transmit the message to whichever mocker their master's thought
directed. Presumably all mockers received the message but only the
mocker to whom it was addressed would repeat it aloud.

They had their
method of communication. They had their automatic crossbows for quick,
close fighting, and their long-range longbows. They were fully adapted
to the 1.5 gravity and their reflexes were almost like those of
prowlers—Ragnarok had long ago separated the quick from the dead.

There were eight
hundred and nineteen of them that year, in the early spring of one
hundred and fifty, and they were ready and impatient for the coming of
the Gerns.

Then the transmitter, which had been in
operation again for many years, failed one day.

George Craig had
finished checking it when Lake arrived. He looked up from his
instruments, remarkably similar in appearance to a sketch of the old
George Ord—a resemblance that had been passed down to him by his
mother—and said:

"The entire circuit is either gone or ready
to go. It's already operated for a lot longer than it should have."

"It doesn't matter," Lake said. "It's served
its purpose. We won't rebuild it."

George watched him questioningly.

"It's served its
purpose," he said again. "It didn't let us forget that the Gerns will
come again. But that isn't enough, now. The first signal won't reach
Athena until the year two thirty-five. It will be the dead of Big
Winter again then. They'll have to fight the Gerns with bows and arrows
that the cold will make as brittle as glass. They won't have a chance."

"No," George said. "They won't have a chance.
But what can we do to change it?"

"It's something
I've been thinking about," he said. "We'll build a hyperspace
transmitter and bring the Gerns before Big Winter comes."

"We will?"
George asked, lifting his dark eyebrows. "And what do we use for the
three hundred pounds of copper and five hundred pounds of iron we would
have to have to make the generator?"

"Surely we can
find five hundred pounds of iron somewhere on Ragnarok. The north end
of the plateau might be the best bet. As for the copper—I doubt that
we'll ever find it. But there are seams of a bauxite-like clay in the
Western Hills—they're certain to contain aluminum to at least some
extent. So we'll make the wires of aluminum."

"The ore would
have to be refined to pure aluminum oxide before it could be smelted,"
George said. "And you can't smelt aluminum ore in an ordinary
furnace—only in an electric furnace with a generator that can supply a
high amperage. And we would have to have cryolite ore to serve as the
solvent in the smelting process."

"There's a seam
of cryolite in the Eastern Hills, according to the old maps," said
Lake. "We could make a larger generator by melting down everything we
have. It wouldn't be big enough to power the hyperspace transmitter but
it should be big enough to smelt aluminum ore."

George considered the idea. "I think we can
do it."

"How long until we can send the signal?" he
asked.

"Given the extra
metal we need, the building of the generator is a simple job. The
transmitter is what will take years—maybe as long as fifty."

Fifty
years . . .

"Can't anything be done to make it sooner?"
he asked.

"I know," George
said. "You would like for the Gerns to come while you're still here. So
would every man on Ragnarok. But even on Earth the building of a
hyperspace transmitter was a long, slow job, with all the materials
they needed and all the special tools and equipment. Here we'll have to
do everything by hand and for materials we have only broken and
burned-out odds and ends. It will take about fifty years—it can't be
helped."

Fifty
years . . . but that would bring the Gerns before
Big Winter came
again. And there was the rapidly increasing chance that a Gern cruiser
would at any day intercept the first signals. They were already more
than halfway to Athena.

"Melt down the
generator," he said. "Start making a bigger one. Tomorrow men will go
out after bauxite and cryolite and four of us will go up the plateau to
look for iron."

* * *

Lake selected
Gene Taylor, Tony Chiara and Steve Schroeder to go with him. They were
well on their way by daylight the next morning, on the shoulder of each
of them a mocker which observed the activity and new scenes with
bright, interested eyes.

They traveled
light, since they would have fresh meat all the way, and carried herbs
and corn only for the mockers. Once, generations before, it had been
necessary for men to eat herbs to prevent deficiency diseases but now
the deficiency diseases, like Hell Fever, were unknown to them.

They carried no
compasses since the radiations of the two suns constantly created
magnetic storms that caused compass needles to swing as much as twenty
degrees within an hour. Each of them carried a pair of powerful
binoculars, however; binoculars that had been diamond-carved from the
ivory-like black unicorn horn and set with lenses and prisms of
diamond-cut quartz.

The foremost
bands of woods goats followed the advance of spring up the plateau and
they followed the woods goats. They could not go ahead of the goats—the
goats were already pressing close behind the melting of the snow. No
hills or ridges were seen as the weeks went by and it seemed to Lake
that they would walk forever across the endless rolling floor of the
plain.

Early summer
came and they walked across a land that was green and pleasantly cool
at a time when the vegetation around the caves would be burned brown
and lifeless. The woods goats grew less in number then as some of them
stopped for the rest of the summer in their chosen latitudes.

They continued
on and at last they saw, far to the north, what seemed to be an almost
infinitesimal bulge on the horizon. They reached it two days later; a
land of rolling green hills, scared here and there with ragged
outcroppings of rock, and a land that climbed slowly and steadily
higher as it went into the north.

They camped that
night in a little vale. The floor of it was white with the bones of
woods goats that had tarried too long the fall before and got caught by
an early blizzard. There was still flesh on the bones and scavenger
rodents scuttled among the carcasses, feasting.

"We'll split up now," he told the others the
next morning.

He assigned each
of them his position; Steve Schroeder to parallel his course thirty
miles to his right, Gene Taylor to go thirty miles to his left, and
Tony Chiara to go thirty miles to the left of Taylor.

"We'll try to
hold those distances," he said. "We can't look over the country in
detail that way but it will give us a good general survey of it. We
don't have too much time left by now and we'll make as many miles into
the north as we can each day. The woods goats will tell us when it's
time for us to turn back."

They parted
company with casual farewells but for Steve Schroeder, who smiled
sardonically at the bones of the woods goats in the vale and asked:

"Who's supposed to tell the woods goats?"

* * *

Tip, the black,
white-nosed mocker on Lake's shoulder, kept twisting his neck to watch
the departure of the others until he had crossed the next hill and the
others were hidden from view.

"All right, Tip," he said then. "You can
unwind your neck now."

"Unwind—all
right—all right," Tip said. Then, with a sudden burst of energy which
was characteristic of mockers, he began to jiggle up and down and chant
in time with his movements, "All right all right all right all right—"

"Shut up!" he commanded. "If you want to talk
nonsense I don't care—but don't say 'all right' any more."

"All right," Tip agreed amiably, settling
down. "Shut up if you want to talk nonsense. I don't care."

"And don't slaughter the punctuation like
that. You change the meaning entirely."

"But don't say all right any more," Tip went
on, ignoring him. "You change the meaning entirely."

Then, with
another surge of animation, Tip began to fish in his jacket pocket with
little hand-like paws. "Tip hungry—Tip hungry."

Lake unbuttoned
the pocket and gave Tip a herb leaf. "I notice there's no nonsensical
chatter when you want to ask for something to eat."

Tip took the herb leaf but he spoke again
before he began to eat; slowly, as though trying seriously to express a
thought:

"Tip hungry—no nonsensical."

"Sometimes," he
said, turning his head to look at Tip, "you mockers give me the
peculiar feeling that you're right on the edge of becoming a new and
intelligent race and no fooling."

Tip wiggled his whiskers and bit into the
herb leaf. "No fooling," he agreed.

* * *

He stopped for
the night in a steep-walled hollow and built a small fire of dead moss
and grass to ward off the chill that came with dark. He called the
others, thinking first of Schroeder so that Tip would transmit to
Schroeder's mocker:

"Steve?"

"Here," Tip answered, in a detectable
imitation of Schroeder's voice. "No luck."

He thought of Gene Taylor and called, "Gene?"

There was no answer and he called Chiara.
"Tony—could you see any of Gene's route today?"

"Part of it," Chiara answered. "I saw a herd
of unicorns over that way. Why—doesn't he answer?"

"No."

"Then," Chiara said, "they must have got him."

"Did you find anything today, Tony?" he asked.

"Nothing but pure andesite. Not even an iron
stain."

It was the same
kind of barren formation that he, himself, had been walking over all
day. But he had not expected success so soon . . .

He tried once again to call Gene Taylor:

"Gene . . . Gene . . . are
you there, Gene?"

There was no answer. He knew there would
never be.

* * *

The days became
weeks with dismaying swiftness as they penetrated farther into the
north. The hills became more rugged and there were intrusions of
granite and other formations to promise a chance of finding metal; a
promise that urged them on faster as their time grew shorter.

Twice he saw
something white in the distance. Once it was the bones of another band
of woods goats that had huddled together and frozen to death in some
early blizzard of the past and once it was the bones of a dozen
unicorns.

The nights grew
chillier and the suns moved faster and faster to the south. The animals
began to migrate, an almost imperceptible movement in the beginning but
one that increased each day. The first frost came and the migration
began in earnest. By the third day it was a hurrying tide.

Tip was
strangely silent that day. He did not speak until the noon sun had
cleared the cold, heavy mists of morning. When he spoke it was to give
a message from Chiara:

"Howard . . . last
report . . . Goldie is
dying . . . pneumonia . . ."

Goldie was Chiara's mocker, his only means of
communication—and there would be no way to tell him when they were
turning back.

"Turn back today, Tony," he said. "Steve and
I will go on for a few days more."

There was no answer and he said quickly,
"Turn back—turn back! Acknowledge that, Tony."

"Turning back . . ." the
acknowledgment came. " . . . tried to save
her . . ."

The message
stopped and there was a silence that Chiara's mocker would never break
again. He walked on, with Tip sitting very small and quiet on his
shoulder. He had crossed another hill before Tip moved, to press up
close to him the way mockers did when they were lonely and to hold
tightly to him.

"What is it, Tip?" he asked.

"Goldie is dying," Tip said. And then again,
like a soft, sad whisper, "Goldie is dying . . ."

"She was your
mate . . . I'm sorry."

Tip made a little whimpering sound, and the
man reached up to stroke his silky side.

"I'm sorry," he said again. "I'm sorry as
hell, little fellow."

* * *

For two days Tip
sat lonely and silent on his shoulder, no longer interested in the new
scenes nor any longer relieving the monotony with his chatter. He
refused to eat until the morning of the third day.

By then the
exodus of woods goats and unicorns had dwindled to almost nothing; the
sky a leaden gray through which the sun could not be seen. That evening
he saw what he was sure would be the last band of woods goats and shot
one of them.

When he went to it he was almost afraid to
believe what he saw.

The hair above its feet was red, discolored
with the stain of iron-bearing clay.

He examined it
more closely and saw that the goat had apparently watered at a spring
where the mud was material washed down from an iron-bearing vein or
formation. It had done so fairly recently—there were still tiny
particles of clay adhering to the hair.

The wind
stirred, cold and damp with its warning of an approaching storm. He
looked to the north, where the evening had turned the gray clouds
black, and called Schroeder:

"Steve—any luck?"

"None," Schroeder answered.

"I just killed a
goat," he said. "It has iron stains on its legs it got at some spring
farther north. I'm going on to try to find it. You can turn back in the
morning."

"No," Schroeder objected. "I can angle over
and catch up with you in a couple of days."

"You'll turn
back in the morning," he said. "I'm going to try to find this iron. But
if I get caught by a blizzard it will be up to you to tell them at the
caves that I found iron and to tell them where it is—you know the
mockers can't transmit that far."

There was a short silence; then Schroeder
said, "All right—I see. I'll head south in the morning."

Lake took a
route the next day that would most likely be the one the woods goats
had come down, stopping on each ridge top to study the country ahead of
him through his binoculars. It was cloudy all day but at sunset the sun
appeared very briefly, to send its last rays across the hills and
redden them in mockery of the iron he sought.

Far ahead of
him, small even through the glasses and made visible only because of
the position of the sun, was a spot at the base of a hill that was
redder than the sunset had made the other hills.

He was confident
it would be the red clay he was searching for and he hurried on, not
stopping until darkness made further progress impossible.

Tip slept inside
his jacket, curled up against his chest, while the wind blew raw and
cold all through the night. He was on his way again at the first touch
of daylight, the sky darker than ever and the wind spinning random
flakes of snow before him.

He stopped to look back to the south once,
thinking, If I turn back now I might get out before the blizzard
hits.

Then the other
thought came: These hills all look the same. If I don't go to the iron
while I'm this close and know where it is, it might be years before I
or anyone else could find it again.

He went on and did not look back again for
the rest of the day.

By midafternoon
the higher hills around him were hidden under the clouds and the snow
was coming harder and faster as the wind drove the flakes against his
face. It began to snow with a heaviness that brought a half darkness
when he came finally to the hill he had seen through the glasses.

A spring was at
the base of it, bubbling out of red clay. Above it the red dirt led a
hundred feet to a dike of granite and stopped. He hurried up the
hillside that was rapidly whitening with snow and saw the vein.

It set against
the dike, short and narrow but red-black with the iron it contained. He
picked up a piece and felt the weight of it. It was heavy—it was pure
iron oxide.

He called Schroeder and asked, "Are you down
out of the high hills, Steve?"

"I'm in the
lower ones," Schroeder answered, the words coming a little muffled from
where Tip lay inside his jacket. "It looks black as hell up your way."

"I found the iron, Steve. Listen—these are
the nearest to landmarks I can give you . . ."

When he had
finished he said, "That's the best I can do. You can't see the red clay
except when the sun is low in the southwest but I'm going to build a
monument on top of the hill to find it by."

"About you, Howard," Steve asked, "what are
your chances?"

The wind was rising to a high moaning around
the ledges of the granite dike and the vein was already invisible under
the snow.

"It doesn't look
like they're very good," he answered. "You'll probably be leader when
you come back next spring—I told the council I wanted that if anything
happened to me. Keep things going the way I would have. Now—I'll have
to hurry to get the monument built in time."

"All right," Schroeder said. "So long,
Howard . . . good luck."

He climbed to
the top of the hill and saw boulders there he could use to build the
monument. They were large—he might crush Tip against his chest in
picking them up—and he took off his jacket, to wrap it around Tip and
leave him lying on the ground.

He worked until
he was panting for breath, the wind driving the snow harder and harder
against him until the cold seemed to have penetrated to the bone. He
worked until the monument was too high for his numb hands to lift any
more boulders to its top. By then it was tall enough that it should
serve its purpose.

He went back to look for Tip, the ground
already four inches deep in snow and the darkness almost complete.

"Tip," he
called. "Tip—Tip—" He walked back and forth across the hillside in the
area where he thought he had left him, stumbling over rocks buried in
the snow and invisible in the darkness, calling against the wind and
thinking, I can't leave him to die alone here.

Then, from a bulge he had not seen in the
snow under him, there came a frightened, lonely wail:

"Tip cold—Tip cold—"

He raked the
snow off his jacket and unwrapped Tip, to put him inside his shirt next
to his bare skin. Tip's paws were like ice and he was shivering
violently, the first symptom of the pneumonia that killed mockers so
quickly.

Tip coughed, a wrenching, rattling little
sound, and whimpered, "Hurt—hurt—"

"I know," he said. "Your lungs hurt—damn it
to hell, I wish I could have let you go home with Steve."

He put on the
cold jacket and went down the hill. There was nothing with which he
could make a fire—only the short half-green grass, already buried under
the snow. He turned south at the bottom of the hill, determining the
direction by the wind, and began the stubborn march southward that
could have but one ending.

He walked until
his cold-numbed legs would carry him no farther. The snow was warm when
he fell for the last time; warm and soft as it drifted over him, and
his mind was clouded with a pleasant drowsiness.

This isn't so
bad, he thought, and there was something like surprise through the
drowsiness. I can't regret doing what I had to do—doing it the best I
could . . .

Tip was no longer coughing and the thought of
Tip was the only one that was tinged with regret: I hope he wasn't
still hurting when he died.

He felt Tip stir
very feebly against his chest then, and he did not know if it was his
imagination or if in that last dreamlike state it was Tip's thought
that came to him; warm and close and reassuring him:

No hurt no cold now—all right now—we sleep
now . . .

Part 4

When spring
came Steve Schroeder was leader, as Lake had wanted. It was a duty and
a responsibility that would be under circumstances different from those
of any of the leaders before him. The grim fight was over for a while.
They were adapted and increasing in number; going into Big Summer and
into a renascence that would last for fifty years. They would have half
a century in which to develop their environment to its fullest extent.
Then Big Fall would come, to destroy all they had accomplished, and the
Gerns would come, to destroy them.

It was his job to make certain that by then
they would be stronger than either.

* * *

He went north
with nine men as soon as the weather permitted. It was hard to retrace
the route of the summer before, without compasses, among the hills
which looked all the same as far as their binoculars could reach, and
it was summer when they saw the hill with the monument. They found
Lake's bones a few miles south of it, scattered by the scavengers as
were the little bones of his mocker. They buried them together, man and
mocker, and went silently on toward the hill.

They had
brought a little hand-cranked diamond drill with them to bore holes in
the hard granite and black powder for blasting. They mined the vein,
sorting out the ore from the waste and saving every particle.

The vein was
narrow at the surface and pinched very rapidly. At a depth of six feet
it was a knife-blade seam; at ten feet it was only a red discoloration
in the bottom of their shaft.

"That seems
to be all of it," he said to the others. "We'll send men up here next
year to go deeper and farther along its course but I have an idea we've
just mined all of the only iron vein on Ragnarok. It will be enough for
our purpose."

They sewed
the ore in strong rawhide sacks and then prospected, without success,
until it was time for the last unicorn band to pass by on its way
south. They trapped ten unicorns and hobbled their legs, with other
ropes reaching from horn to hind leg on each side to prevent them from
swinging back their heads or even lifting them high.

They had
expected the capture and hobbling of the unicorns to be a difficult and
dangerous job and it was. But when they were finished the unicorns were
helpless. They could move awkwardly about to graze but they could not
charge. They could only stand with lowered heads and fume and rumble.

The ore sacks
were tied on one frosty morning and the men mounted. The horn-leg ropes
were loosened so the unicorns could travel, and the unicorns went into
a frenzy of bucking and rearing, squealing with rage as they tried to
impale their riders.

The short
spears, stabbing at the sensitive spot behind the jawbones of the
unicorns, thwarted the backward flung heads and the unicorns were
slowly forced into submission. The last one conceded temporary defeat
and the long journey to the south started, the unicorns going in the
run that they could maintain hour after hour.

Each day they
pushed the unicorns until they were too weary to fight at night. Each
morning, rested, the unicorns resumed the battle. It became an expected
routine for both unicorns and men.

The unicorns
were released when the ore was unloaded at the foot of the hill before
the caves and Schroeder went to the new waterwheel, where the new
generator was already in place. There George Craig told him of the
unexpected obstacle that had appeared.

"We're
stuck," George said. "The aluminum ore isn't what we thought it would
be. It's scarce and very low grade, of such a complex nature that we
can't refine it to the oxide with what we have to work with on
Ragnarok."

"Have you produced any aluminum oxide at
all?"

"A little. We might have enough for the wire
in a hundred years if we kept at it hard enough."

"What else do you need—was there enough
cryolite?" he asked.

"Not much of
it, but enough. We have the generator set up, the smelting box built
and the carbon lining and rods ready. We have everything we need to
smelt aluminum ore—except the aluminum ore."

"Go ahead and finish up the details, such as
installing the lining," he said. "We didn't get this far to be stopped
now."

But the
prospecting parties, making full use of the time left them before
winter closed down, returned late that fall to report no sign of the
ore they needed.

Spring came
and he was determined they would be smelting aluminum before the summer
was over even though he had no idea where the ore would be found. They
needed aluminum ore of a grade high enough that they could extract the
pure aluminum oxide. Specifically, they needed aluminum
oxide . . .

Then he saw the answer to their problem, so
obvious that all of them had overlooked it.

He passed by
four children playing a game in front of the caves that day; some kind
of a checker-like game in which differently colored rocks represented
the different children. One boy was using red stones; some of the
rubies that had been brought back as curios from the chasm. Rubies were
of no use or value on Ragnarok; only pretty rocks for children to play
with . . .

Only pretty rock?—rubies and sapphires were
corundum, were pure aluminum oxide!

He went to
tell George and to arrange for a party of men to go into the chasm
after all the rubies and sapphires they could find. The last obstacle
had been surmounted.

The summer
sun was hot the day the generator hummed into life. The carbon-lined
smelting box was ready and the current flowed between the heavy carbon
rods suspended in the cryolite and the lining, transforming the
cryolite into a liquid. The crushed rubies and sapphires were fed into
the box, glowing and glittering in blood-red and sky-blue
scintillations of light, to be deprived by the current of their life
and fire and be changed into something entirely different.

When the time
came to draw off some of the metal they opened the orifice in the lower
corner of the box. Molten aluminum flowed out into the ingot mold in a
little stream; more beautiful to them than any gems could ever be,
bright and gleaming in its promise that more than six generations of
imprisonment would soon be ended.

* * *

The aluminum
smelting continued until the supply of rubies and sapphires in the
chasm had been exhausted but for small and scattered fragments. It was
enough, with some aluminum above the amount needed for the wire.

It was the
year one hundred and fifty-two when they smelted the aluminum. In eight
more years they would reach the middle of Big Summer; the suns would
start their long drift southward, not to return for one hundred and
fifty years. Time was passing swiftly by for them and there was none of
it to waste . . .

The making of
ceramics was developed to an art, as was the making of different types
of glass. Looms were built to spin thread and cloth from woods goat
wool, and vegetables dyes were discovered. Exploration parties crossed
the continent to the eastern and western seas; salty and lifeless seas
that were bordered by immense deserts. No trees of any kind grew along
their shores and ships could not be built to cross them.

Efforts were
continued to develop an inorganic field of chemistry, with discouraging
results, but in one hundred and fifty-nine the orange corn was
successfully adapted to the elevation and climate of the caves.

There was
enough that year to feed the mockers all winter, supply next year's
seeds, and leave enough that it could be ground and baked into bread
for all to taste.

It tasted
strange, but good. It was, Schroeder thought, symbolic of a great
forward step. It was the first time in generations that any of them had
known any food but meat. The corn would make them less dependent upon
hunting and, of paramount importance, it was the type of food to which
they would have to become accustomed in the future—they could not carry
herds of woods goats and unicorns with them on Gern battle cruisers.

The lack of
metals hindered them wherever they turned in their efforts to build
even the simplest machines or weapons. Despite its dubious prospects,
however, they made a rifle-like gun.

The barrel of
it was thick, of the hardest, toughest ceramic material they could
produce. It was a cumbersome, heavy thing, firing with a flintlock
action, and it could not be loaded with much powder lest the charge
burst the barrel.

The flintlock
ignition was not instantaneous, the light-weight porcelain bullet had
far less penetrating power than an arrow, and the thing boomed and
belched out a cloud of smoke that would have shown the Gerns exactly
where the shooter was located.

It was an
interesting curio and the firing of it was something spectacular to
behold but it was a weapon apt to be much more dangerous to the man
behind it than to the Gern it was aimed at. Automatic crossbows were
far better.

Woods goats
had been trapped and housed during the summers in shelters where sprays
of water maintained a temperature cool enough for them to survive. Only
the young were kept when fall came, to be sheltered through the winter
in one of the caves. Each new generation was subjected to more heat in
the summer and more cold in the winter than the generation before it
and by the year one hundred and sixty the woods goats were well on
their way toward adaptation.

The next year
they trapped two unicorns, to begin the job of adapting and taming
future generations of them. If they succeeded they would have utilized
the resources of Ragnarok to the limit—except for what should be their
most valuable ally with which to fight the Gerns: the prowlers.

For twenty
years prowlers had observed a truce wherein they would not go hunting
for men if men would stay away from their routes of travel. But it was
a truce only and there was no indication that it could ever evolve into
friendship.

Three times
in the past, half-grown prowlers had been captured and caged in the
hope of taming them. Each time they had paced their cages, looking
longingly into the distance, refusing to eat and defiant until they
died.

To prowlers,
as to some men, freedom was more precious than life. And each time a
prowler had been captured the free ones had retaliated with a
resurgence of savage attacks.

There seemed
no way that men and prowlers could ever meet on common ground. They
were alien to one another, separated by the gulf of an origin on worlds
two hundred and fifty light-years apart. Their only common heritage was
the will of each to battle.

But in the spring of one hundred and
sixty-one, for a little while one day, the gulf was bridged.

* * *

Schroeder was
returning from a trip he had taken alone to the east, coming down the
long canyon that led from the high face of the plateau to the country
near the caves. He hurried, glancing back at the black clouds that had
gathered so quickly on the mountain behind him. Thunder rumbled from
within them, an almost continuous roll of it as the clouds poured down
their deluge of water.

A cloudburst
was coming and the sheer-walled canyon down which he hurried had
suddenly become a death trap, its sunlit quiet soon to be transformed
into roaring destruction. There was only one place along its nine-mile
length where he might climb out and the time was already short in which
to reach it.

He had
increased his pace to a trot when he came to it, a talus of broken rock
that sloped up steeply for thirty feet to a shelf. A ledge eleven feet
high stood over the shelf and other, lower, ledges set back from it
like climbing steps.

At the foot
of the talus he stopped to listen, wondering how close behind him the
water might be. He heard it coming, a sound like the roaring of a high
wind up the canyon, and he scrambled up the talus of loose rock to the
shelf at its top. The shelf was not high enough above the canyon's
floor—he would be killed there—and he followed it fifty feet around a
sharp bend. There it narrowed abruptly, to merge into the sheer wall of
the canyon. Blind alley . . .

He ran back
to the top of the talus where the edge of the ledge, ragged with
projections of rock, was unreachably far above him. As he did so the
roaring was suddenly a crashing, booming thunder and he saw the water
coming.

It swept
around the bend at perhaps a hundred miles an hour, stretching from
wall to wall of the canyon, the crest of it seething and slashing and
towering forty sheer feet above the canyon's floor.

A prowler was running in front of it,
running for its life and losing.

There was no
time to watch. He leaped upward, as high as possible, his crossbow in
his hand. He caught the end of the bow over one of the sharp
projections of rock on the ledge's rim and began to pull himself up,
afraid to hurry lest the rock cut the bowstring in two and drop him
back.

It held and he stood on the ledge, safe, as
the prowler flashed up the talus below.

It darted
around the blind-alley shelf and was back a moment later. It saw that
its only chance would be to leap up on the ledge where he stood and it
tried, handicapped by the steep, loose slope it had to jump from.

It failed and
fell back. It tried again, hurling itself upward with all its strength,
and its claws caught fleetingly on the rough rock a foot below the rim.
It began to slide back, with no time left it for a third try.

It looked up
at the rim of safety that it had not quite reached and then on up at
him, its eyes bright and cold with the knowledge that it was going to
die and its enemy would watch it.

Schroeder
dropped flat on his stomach and reached down, past the massive black
head, to seize the prowler by the back of the neck. He pulled up with
all his strength and the claws of the prowler tore at the rocks as it
climbed.

When it was
coming up over the ledge, safe, he rolled back from it and came to his
feet in one swift, wary motion, his eyes on it and his knife already in
his hand. As he did so the water went past below them with a thunder
that deafened. Logs and trees shot past, boulders crashed together, and
things could be seen surging in the brown depths; shapeless things that
had once been woods goats and the battered gray bulk of a unicorn. He
saw it all with a sideward glance, his attention on the prowler.

It stepped
back from the rim of the ledge and looked at him; warily, as he looked
at it. With the wariness was something like question, and almost
disbelief.

The ledge
they stood on was narrow but it led out of the canyon and to the open
land beyond. He motioned to the prowler to precede him and, hesitating
a moment, it did so.

They climbed
out of the canyon and out onto the grassy slope of the mountainside.
The roar of the water was a distant rumble there and he stopped. The
prowler did the same and they watched each other again, each of them
trying to understand what the thoughts of the other might be. It was
something they could not know—they were too alien to each other and had
been enemies too long.

Then a gust
of wind swept across them, bending and rippling the tall grass, and the
prowler swung away to go with it and leave him standing alone.

His route was
such that it diverged gradually from that taken by the prowler. He went
through a grove of trees and emerged into an open glade on the other
side. Up on the ridge to his right he saw something black for a moment,
already far away.

He was thirty feet from the next grove of
trees when he saw the gray shadow waiting silently for his coming
within them.

Unicorn!

His crossbow
rattled as he jerked back the pistol grip. The unicorn charged, the
underbrush crackling as it tore through it and a vine whipping like a
rope from its lowered horn.

His first
arrow went into its chest. It lurched, fatally wounded but still
coming, and he jerked back on the pistol grip for the quick shot that
would stop it.

The rock-frayed bow string broke with a
singing sound and the bow end snapped harmlessly forward.

He had
counted on the bow and its failure came a fraction of a second too late
for him to dodge far enough. His sideward leap was short, and the horn
caught him in midair, ripping across his ribs and breaking them,
shattering the bone of his left arm and tearing the flesh. He was
hurled fifteen feet and he struck the ground with a stunning impact,
pain washing over him in a blinding wave.

Through it,
dimly, he saw the unicorn fall and heard its dying trumpet blast as it
called to another. He heard an answering call somewhere in the distance
and then the faraway drumming of hooves.

He fought
back the blindness and used his good arm to lift himself up. His bow
was useless, his spear lay broken under the unicorn, and his knife was
gone. His left arm swung helplessly and he could not climb the limbless
lower trunk of a lance tree with only one arm.

He went
forward, limping, trying to hurry to find his knife while the drumming
of hooves raced toward him. It would be a battle already lost that he
would make with the short knife but he would have blood for his
going . . .

The grass
grew tall and thick, hiding the knife until he could hear the unicorn
crashing through the trees. He saw it ten feet ahead of him as the
unicorn tore out from the edge of the woods thirty feet away.

It squealed,
shrill with triumph, and the horn swept up to impale him. There was no
time left to reach the knife, no time left for anything but the last
fleeting sight of sunshine and glade and arching blue sky—

Something
from behind him shot past and up at the unicorn's throat, a thing that
was snarling black savagery with yellow eyes blazing and white fangs
slashing—the prowler!

It ripped at
the unicorn's throat, swerving its charge, and the unicorn plunged past
him. The unicorn swung back, all the triumph gone from its squeal, and
the prowler struck again. They became a swirling blur, the horn of the
unicorn swinging and stabbing and the attacks of the prowler like the
swift, relentless thrusting of a rapier.

He went to his knife and when he turned back
with it in his hand the battle was already over.

The unicorn
fell and the prowler turned away from it. One foreleg was bathed in
blood and its chest was heaving with a panting so fast that it could
not have been caused by the fight with the unicorn.

It must have
been watching me, he thought, with a strange feeling of wonder. It was
watching from the ridge and it ran all the way.

Its yellow
eyes flickered to the knife in his hand. He dropped the knife in the
grass and walked forward, unarmed, wanting the prowler to know that he
understood; that for them in that moment the gulf of two hundred and
fifty light-years did not exist.

He stopped
near it and squatted in the grass to begin binding up his broken arm so
the bones would not grate together. It watched him, then it began to
lick at its bloody shoulder; standing so close to him that he could
have reached out and touched it.

Again he felt
the sense of wonder. They were alone together in the glade, he and a
prowler, each caring for his hurts. There was a bond between them that
for a little while made them like brothers. There was a bridge for a
little while across the gulf that had never been bridged
before . . .

When he had
finished with his arm and the prowler had lessened the bleeding of its
shoulder it took a step back toward the ridge. He stood up, knowing it
was going to leave.

"I suppose the score is even now," he said
to it, "and we'll never see each other again. So good hunting—and
thanks."

It made a
sound in its throat; a queer sound that was neither bark nor growl, and
he had the feeling it was trying to tell him something. Then it turned
and was gone like a black shadow across the grass and he was alone
again.

He picked up
his knife and bow and began the long, painful journey back to the
caves, looking again and again at the ridge behind him and thinking: They
have a code of ethics. They fight for their survival—but they pay their
debts.

Ragnarok was
big enough for both men and prowlers. They could live together in
friendship as men and dogs of Earth lived together. It might take a
long time to win the trust of the prowlers but surely it could be done.

He came to
the rocky trail that led to the caves and there he took a last look at
the ridge behind him; feeling a poignant sense of loss and wondering if
he would ever see the prowler again or ever again know the strange,
wild companionship he had known that day.

Perhaps he
never would . . . but the time would come on
Ragnarok when children
would play in the grass with prowler pups and the time would come when
men and prowlers, side by side, would face the Gerns.

* * *

In the year
that followed there were two incidents when a prowler had the
opportunity to kill a hunter on prowler territory and did not do so.
There was no way of knowing if the prowler in each case had been the
one he had saved from the cloudburst or if the prowlers, as a whole,
were respecting what a human had done for one of them.

Schroeder
thought of again trying to capture prowler pups—very young ones—and
decided it would be a stupid plan. Such an act would destroy all that
had been done toward winning the trust of the prowlers. It would be
better to wait, even though time was growing short, and find some other
way.

The fall of
one hundred and sixty-three came and the suns were noticeably moving
south. That was the fall that his third child, a girl, was born. She
was named Julia, after the Julia of long ago, and she was of the last
generation that would be born in the caves.

Plans were
already under way to build a town in the valley a mile from the caves.
The unicorn-proof stockade wall that would enclose it was already under
construction, being made of stone blocks. The houses would be of
diamond-sawed stone, thick-walled, with dead-air spaces between the
double walls to insulate against heat and cold. Tall, wide canopies of
lance tree poles and the palm-like medusabush leaves would be built
over all the houses to supply additional shade.

The woods
goats were fully adapted that year and domesticated to such an extent
that they had no desire to migrate with the wild goats. There was a
small herd of them then, enough to supply a limited amount of milk,
cheese and wool.

The
adaptation of the unicorns proceeded in the following years, but not
their domestication. It was their nature to be ill-tempered and
treacherous and only the threat of the spears in the hands of their
drivers forced them to work; work that they could have done easily had
they not diverted so much effort each day to trying to turn on their
masters and kill them. Each night they were put in a massive-walled
corral, for they were almost as dangerous as wild unicorns.

The slow,
painstaking work on the transmitter continued while the suns moved
farther south each year. The move from the caves to the new town was
made in one hundred and seventy-nine, the year that Schroeder's wife
died.

His two sons
were grown and married and Julia, at sixteen, was a woman by Ragnarok
standards; blue-eyed and black-haired as her mother, a Craig, had been,
and strikingly pretty in a wild, reckless way. She married Will Humbolt
that spring, leaving her father alone in the new house in the new town.

Four months later she came to him to
announce with pride and excitement:

"I'm going to
have a baby in only six months! If it's a boy he'll be the right age to
be leader when the Gerns come and we're going to name him John, after
the John who was the first leader we ever had on Ragnarok."

Her words brought to his mind a question and
he thought of what old Dale Craig, the leader who had preceded Lake,
had written:

We have
survived, the generations that the Gerns thought would never be born.
But we must never forget the characteristics that insured that
survival: an unswerving loyalty of every individual to all the others
and the courage to fight, and die if necessary.

In any
year, now, the Gerns will come. There will be no one to help us. Those
on Athena are slaves and it is probable that Earth has been enslaved by
now. We will stand or fall alone. But if we of today could know that
the ones who meet the Gerns will still have the courage and loyalty
that made our survival possible, then we would know that the Gerns are
already defeated . . .

The era of
danger and violence was over for a little while. The younger generation
had grown up during a time of peaceful development of their
environment. It was a peace that the coming of the Gerns would
shatter—but had it softened the courage and loyalty of the younger
generation?

A week later he was given his answer.

He was
climbing up the hill that morning, high above the town below, when he
saw the blue of Julia's wool blouse in the distance. She was sitting up
on a hillside, an open book in her lap and her short spear lying beside
her.

He frowned at
the sight. The main southward migration of unicorns was over but there
were often lone stragglers who might appear at any time. He had warned
her that someday a unicorn would kill her—but she was reckless by
nature and given to restless moods in which she could not stand the
confinement of the town.

She jerked up
her head as he watched, as though at a faint sound, and he saw the
first movement within the trees behind her—a unicorn.

It lunged
forward, its stealth abandoned as she heard it, and she came to her
feet in a swift, smooth movement; the spear in her hand and the book
spilling to the ground.

The unicorn's
squeal rang out and she whirled to face it, with two seconds to live.
He reached for his bow, knowing his help would come too late.

She did the
only thing possible that might enable her to survive: she shifted her
balance to take advantage of the fact that a human could jump to one
side a little more quickly than a four-footed beast in headlong charge.
As she did so she brought up the spear for the thrust into the
vulnerable area just behind the jawbone.

It seemed the
needle point of the black horn was no more than an arm's length from
her stomach when she jumped aside with the lithe quickness of a
prowler, swinging as she jumped and thrusting the spear with all her
strength into the unicorn's neck.

The thrust
was true and the spear went deep. She released it and flung herself
backward to dodge the flying hooves. The force of the unicorn's charge
took it past her but its legs collapsed under it and it crashed to the
ground, sliding a little way before it stopped. It kicked once and lay
still.

She went to
it, to retrieve her spear, and even from the distance there was an air
of pride about her as she walked past her bulky victim.

Then she saw
the book, knocked to one side by the unicorn's hooves. Tatters of its
pages were blowing in the wind and she stiffened, her face growing
pale. She ran to it to pick it up, the unicorn forgotten.

She was
trying to smooth the torn leaves when he reached her. It had been one
of the old textbooks, printed on real paper, and it was fragile with
age. She had been trusted by the librarian to take good care of it.
Now, page after page was torn and unreadable . . .

She looked up at him, shame and misery on
her face.

"Father," she said. "The book—I—"

He saw that
the unicorn was a bull considerably larger than the average. Men had in
the past killed unicorns with spears but never, before, had a
sixteen-year-old girl done so . . .

He looked back at her, keeping his face
emotionless, and asked sternly, "You what?"

"I guess—I guess I didn't have any right to
take the book out of town. I wish I hadn't . . ."

"You promised to take good care of it," he
told her coldly. "Your promise was believed and you were trusted to
keep it."

"But—but I didn't mean to damage it—I didn't
mean to!" She was suddenly very near to tears. "I'm not a—a bemmon!"

"Go back to town," he ordered. "Tonight
bring the book to the town hall and tell the council what happened to
it."

She swallowed and said in a faint voice,
"Yes, father."

She turned
and started slowly back down the hill, not seeing the unicorn as she
passed it, the bloody spear trailing disconsolately behind her and her
head hanging in shame.

He watched
her go and it was safe for him to smile. When night came and she stood
before the council, ashamed to lift her eyes to look at them, he would
have to be grim and stern as he told her how she had been trusted and
how she had betrayed that trust. But now, as he watched her go down the
hill, he could smile with his pride in her and know that his question
was answered; that the younger generation had lost neither courage nor
loyalty.

* * *

Julia saved a
child's life that spring and almost lost her own. The child was playing
under a half-completed canopy when a sudden, violent wind struck it and
transformed it into a death-trap of cracking, falling timbers. She
reached him in time to fling him to safety but the collapsing roof
caught her before she could make her own escape.

Her chest and
throat were torn by the jagged ends of the broken poles and for a day
and a night her life was a feebly flickering spark. She began to rally
on the second night and on the third morning she was able to speak for
the first time, her eyes dark and tortured with her fear:

"My baby—what did it do to him?"

She
convalesced slowly, haunted by the fear. Her son was born five weeks
later and her fears proved to have been groundless. He was perfectly
normal and healthy.

And hungry—and her slowly healing breasts
would be dry for weeks to come.

By a
coincidence that had never happened before and could never happen again
there was not a single feeding-time foster-mother available for the
baby. There were many expectant mothers but only three women had young
babies—and each of them had twins to feed.

But there was
a small supply of frozen goat milk in the ice house, enough to see
young Johnny through until it was time for the goat herd to give milk.
He would have to live on short rations until then but it could not be
helped.

* * *

Johnny was a month old when the opportunity
came for the men of Ragnarok to have their ultimate ally.

The last of
the unicorns were going north and the prowlers had long since gone. The
blue star was lighting the night like a small sun when the breeze
coming through Schroeder's window brought the distant squealing of
unicorns.

He listened,
wondering. It was a sound that did not belong. Everyone was safely in
the town, most of them in bed, and there should be nothing outside the
stockade for the unicorns to fight.

He armed
himself with spear and crossbow and went outside. He let himself out
through the east gate and went toward the sounds of battle. They grew
louder as he approached, more furious, as though the battle was
reaching its climax.

He crossed
the creek and went through the trees beyond. There, in a small clearing
no more than half a mile from the town, he came upon the scene.

A lone
prowler was making a stand against two unicorns. Two other unicorns lay
on the ground, dead, and behind the prowler was the dark shape of its
mate lying lifelessly in the grass. There was blood on the prowler,
purple in the blue starlight, and gloating rang in the squeals of the
unicorns as they lunged at it. The leaps of the prowler were faltering
as it fought them, the last desperate defiance of an animal already
dying.

He brought up
the bow and sent a volley of arrows into the unicorns. Their gloating
squeals died and they fell. The prowler staggered and fell beside them.

It was
breathing its last when he reached it but in the way it looked up at
him he had the feeling that it wanted to tell him something, that it
was trying hard to live long enough to do so. It died with the strange
appeal in its eyes and not until then did he see the scar on its
shoulder; a scar such as might have been made long ago by the rip of a
unicorn's horn.

It was the prowler he had known nineteen
years before.

The ground
was trampled all around by the unicorns, showing that the prowlers had
been besieged all day. He went to the other prowler and saw it was a
female. Her breasts showed that she had had pups recently but she had
been dead at least two days. Her hind legs had been broken sometime
that spring and they were still only half healed, twisted and almost
useless.

Then, that
was why the two of them were so far behind the other prowlers.
Prowlers, like the wolves, coyotes and foxes of Earth, mated for life
and the male helped take care of the young. She had been injured
somewhere to the south, perhaps in a fight with unicorns, and her mate
had stayed with her as she hobbled her slow way along and killed game
for her. The pups had been born and they had had to stop. Then the
unicorns had found them and the female had been too crippled to
fight . . .

He looked for
the pups, expecting to find them trampled and dead. But they were
alive, hidden under the roots of a small tree near their mother.

Prowler pups—alive!

They were
very young, small and blind and helpless. He picked them up and his
elation drained away as he looked at them. They made little sounds of
hunger, almost inaudible, and they moved feebly, trying to find their
mother's breasts and already so weak that they could not lift their
heads.

Small chunks
of fresh meat had been left beside the pups and he thought of what the
prowler's emotions must have been as his mate lay dead on the ground
and he carried meat to their young, knowing they were too small to eat
it but helpless to do anything else for them.

And he knew why there had been the appeal in
the eyes of the prowler as it died and what it had tried to tell him: Save
them . . . as you once saved me.

He carried the pups back past the prowler
and looked down at it in passing. "I'll do my best," he said.

When he
reached his house he laid the pups on his bed and built a fire. There
was no milk to give them—the goats would not have young for at least
another two weeks—but perhaps they could eat a soup of some kind. He
put water on to boil and began shredding meat to make them a rich broth.

One of them
was a male, the other a female, and if he could save them they would
fight beside the men of Ragnarok when the Gerns came. He thought of
what he would name them as he worked. He would name the female Sigyn,
after Loki's faithful wife who went with him when the gods condemned
him to Hel, the Teutonic underworld. And he would name the male Fenrir,
after the monster wolf who would fight beside Loki when Loki led the
forces of Hel in the final battle on the day of Ragnarok.

But when the
broth was prepared, and cooled enough, the pups could not eat it. He
tried making it weaker, tried it mixed with corn and herb soup, tried
corn and herb soups alone. They could eat nothing he prepared for them.

When gray
daylight entered the room he had tried everything possible and had
failed. He sat wearily in his chair and watched them, defeated. They
were no longer crying in their hunger and when he touched them they did
not move as they had done before.

They would be
dead before the day was over and the only chance men had ever had to
have prowlers as their friends and allies would be gone.

The first
rays of sunrise were coming into the room, revealing fully the frail
thinness of the pups, when there was a step outside and Julia's voice:

"Father?"

"Come in, Julia," he said, not moving.

She entered,
still a pale shadow of the reckless girl who had fought a unicorn, even
though she was slowly regaining her normal health. She carried young
Johnny in one arm, in her other hand his little bottle of milk. Johnny
was hungry—there was never quite enough milk for him—but he was not
crying. Ragnarok children did not cry . . .

She saw the pups and her eyes went wide.

"Prowlers—baby prowlers! Where did you get
them?"

He told her
and she went to them, to look down at them and say, "If you and their
father hadn't helped each other that day they wouldn't be here, nor
you, nor I, nor Johnny—none of us in this room."

"They won't live out the day," he said.
"They have to have milk—and there isn't any."

She reached
down to touch them and they seemed to sense that she was something
different. They stirred, making tiny whimpering sounds and trying to
move their heads to nuzzle at her fingers.

Compassion came to her face, like a soft
light.

"They're so young," she said. "So terribly
young to have to die . . ."

She looked at Johnny and at the little
bottle that held his too-small morning ration of milk.

"Johnny—Johnny—"
Her words were almost a whisper. "You're hungry—but we can't let them
die. And someday, for this, they will fight for your life."

She sat on
the bed and placed the pups in her lap beside Johnny. She lifted a
little black head with gentle fingers and a little pink mouth ceased
whimpering as it found the nipple of Johnny's bottle.

Johnny's gray
eyes darkened with the storm of approaching protest. Then the other pup
touched his hand, crying in its hunger, and the protest faded as
surprise and something like sudden understanding came into his eyes.

Julia
withdrew the bottle from the first pup and transferred it to the second
one. Its crying ceased and Johnny leaned forward to touch it again, and
the one beside it.

He made his
decision with an approving sound and leaned back against his mother's
shoulder, patiently awaiting his own turn and their presence accepted
as though they had been born his brother and sister.

* * *

The golden
light of the new day shone on them, on his daughter and grandson and
the prowler pups, and in it he saw the bright omen for the future.

His own role
was nearing its end but he had seen the people of Ragnarok conquer
their environment in so far as Big Winter would ever let it be
conquered. The last generation was being born, the generation that
would meet the Gerns, and now they would have their final ally. Perhaps
it would be Johnny who led them on that day, as the omen seemed to
prophesy.

He was the
son of a line of leaders, born to a mother who had fought and killed a
unicorn. He had gone hungry to share what little he had with the young
of Ragnarok's most proud and savage species and Fenrir and Sigyn would
fight beside him on the day he led the forces of the hell-world in the
battle with the Gerns who thought they were gods.

Could the Gerns hope to have a leader to
match?

Part 5

John Humbolt,
leader, stood on the wide stockade wall and watched the lowering sun
touch the western horizon—far south of where it had set when he was a
child. Big Summer was over and now, in the year two hundred, they were
already three years into Big Fall. The Craigs had been impassable with
snow for five years and the country at the north end of the plateau,
where the iron had been found, had been buried under never-melting snow
and growing glaciers for twenty years.

There came
the soft tinkling of ceramic bells as the herd of milk goats came down
off the hills. Two children were following and six prowlers walked with
them, to protect them from wild unicorns.

There were
not many of the goats. Each year the winters were longer, requiring the
stocking of a larger supply of hay. The time would come when the
summers would be so short and the winters so long that they could not
keep goats at all. And by then, when Big Winter had closed in on them,
the summer seasons would be too short for the growing of the orange
corn. They would have nothing left but the hunting.

They had, he
knew, reached and passed the zenith of the development of their
environment. From a low of forty-nine men, women and children in dark
caves they had risen to a town of six thousand. For a few years they
had had a way of life that was almost a civilization but the inevitable
decline was already under way. The years of frozen sterility of Big
Winter were coming and no amount of determination or ingenuity could
alter them. Six thousand would have to live by hunting—and one hundred,
in the first Big Winter, had found barely enough game.

They would
have to migrate in one of two different ways: they could go to the
south as nomad hunters—or they could go to other, fairer worlds in
ships they took from the Gerns.

The choice was very easy to make and they
were almost ready.

In the
workshop at the farther edge of town the hyperspace transmitter was
nearing completion. The little smelter was waiting to receive the lathe
and other iron and steel and turn them into the castings for the
generator. Their weapons were ready, the mockers were trained, the
prowlers were waiting. And in the massive corral beyond town forty
half-tame unicorns trampled the ground and hated the world, wanting to
kill something. They had learned to be afraid of Ragnarok men but they
would not be afraid to kill Gerns . . .

The children
with the goats reached the stockade and two of the prowlers, Fenrir and
Sigyn, turned to see him standing on the wall. He made a little motion
with his hand and they came running, to leap up beside him on the
ten-foot-high wall.

"So you've been checking up on how well the
young ones guard the children?" he asked.

Sigyn lolled
out her tongue and her white teeth grinned at him in answer. Fenrir,
always the grimmer of the two, made a sound in his throat in reply.

Prowlers
developed something like a telepathic rapport with their masters and
could sense their thoughts and understand relatively complex
instructions. Their intelligence was greater, and of a far more mature
order, than that of the little mockers but their vocal cords were not
capable of making the sounds necessary for speech.

He rested his
hands on their shoulders, where their ebony fur was frosted with gray.
Age had not yet affected their quick, flowing movement but they were
getting old—they were only a few weeks short of his own age. He could
not remember when they had not been with him . . .

Sometimes it
seemed to him he could remember those hungry days when he and Fenrir
and Sigyn shared together in his mother's lap—but it was probably only
his imagination from having heard the story told so often. But he could
remember for certain when he was learning to walk and Fenrir and Sigyn,
full grown then, walked tall and black beside him. He could remember
playing with Sigyn's pups and he could remember Sigyn watching over
them all, sometimes giving her pups a bath and his face a washing with
equal disregard for their and his protests. Above all he could remember
the times when he was almost grown; the wild, free days when he and
Fenrir and Sigyn had roamed the mountains together. With a bow and a
knife and two prowlers beside him he had felt that there was nothing on
Ragnarok that they could not conquer; that there was nothing in the
universe they could not defy together . . .

* * *

There was a
flicker of black movement and a young messenger prowler came running
from the direction of the council hall, a speckle-faced mocker clinging
to its back. It leaped up on the wall beside him and the mocker, one
that had been trained to remember and repeat messages verbatim, took a
breath so deep that its cheeks bulged out. It spoke, in a quick rush
like a child that is afraid it might forget some of the words:

"You will
please come to the council hall to lead the discussion regarding the
last preparations for the meeting with the Gerns. The transmitter is
complete."

* * *

The lathe was
torn down the next day and the smelter began to roar with its forced
draft. Excitement and anticipation ran through the town like a fever.
It would take perhaps twenty days to build the generator, working day
and night so that not an hour of time would be lost, forty days for the
signal to reach Athena, and forty days for the Gern cruiser to reach
Ragnarok—

In one hundred days the Gerns would be there!

The men who
would engage in the fight for the cruiser quit trimming their beards.
Later, when it was time for the Gerns to appear, they would discard
their woolen garments for ones of goat skin. The Gerns would regard
them as primitive inferiors at best and it might be of advantage to
heighten the impression. It would make the awakening of the Gerns a
little more shocking.

An
underground passage, leading from the town to the concealment of the
woods in the distance, had long ago been dug. Through it the women and
children would go when the Gerns arrived.

There was a
level area of ground, just beyond the south wall of town, where the
cruiser would be almost certain to land. The town had been built with
that thought in mind. Woods were not far from both sides of the landing
site and unicorn corrals were hidden in them. From the corrals would
come the rear flanking attack against the Gerns.

The prowlers, of course, would be scattered
among all the forces.

* * *

The generator
was completed and installed on the nineteenth night. Charley Craig, a
giant of a man whose red beard gave him a genially murderous
appearance, opened the valve of the water pipe. The new wooden turbine
stirred and belts and pulleys began to spin. The generator hummed, the
needles of the dials climbed, flickered, and steadied.

Norman Lake
looked from them to Humbolt, his pale gray eyes coldly satisfied. "Full
output," he said. "We have the power we need this time."

Jim Chiara
was at the transmitter and they waited while he threw switches and
studied dials. Every component of the transmitter had been tested but
they had not had the power to test the complete assembly.

"That's it," he said at last, looking up at
them. "She's ready, after almost two hundred years of wanting her."

Humbolt
wondered what the signal should be and saw no reason why it should not
be the same one that had been sent out with such hope a hundred and
sixty-five years ago.

"All right, Jim," he said. "Let the Gerns
know we're waiting for them—make it 'Ragnarok calling' again."

The
transmitter key rattled and the all-wave signal that the Gerns could
not fail to receive went out at a velocity of five light-years a day:

Ragnarok calling—Ragnarok
calling—Ragnarok calling—

It was the
longest summer Humbolt had ever experienced. He was not alone in his
impatience—among all of them the restlessness flamed higher as the slow
days dragged by, making it almost impossible to go about their routine
duties. The gentle mockers sensed the anticipation of their masters for
the coming battle and they became nervous and apprehensive. The
prowlers sensed it and they paced about the town in the dark of night;
watching, listening, on ceaseless guard against the mysterious enemy
their masters waited for. Even the unicorns seemed to sense what was
coming and they rumbled and squealed in their corrals at night,
red-eyed with the lust for blood and sometimes attacking the log walls
with blows that shook the ground.

The
interminable days went their slow succession and summer gave way to
fall. The hundredth day dawned, cold and gray with the approach of
winter; the day of the Gerns.

But no cruiser came that day, nor the next.

He stood
again on the stockade wall in the evening of the third day, Fenrir and
Sigyn beside him. He listened for the first dim, distant sound of the
Gern cruiser and heard only the moaning of the wind around him.

Winter was
coming. Always, on Ragnarok, winter was coming or the brown death of
summer. Ragnarok was a harsh and barren prison, and no amount of desire
could ever make it otherwise. Only the coming of a Gern cruiser could
ever offer them the bloody, violent opportunity to regain their freedom.

But what if the cruiser never came?

It was a
thought too dark and hopeless to be held. They were not asking a large
favor of fate, after two hundred years of striving for it; only the
chance to challenge the Gern Empire with bows and
knives . . .

Fenrir
stiffened, the fur lifting on his shoulders and a muted growl coming
from him. Then Humbolt heard the first whisper of sound; a faint,
faraway roaring that was not the wind.

He watched
and listened and the sound came swiftly nearer, rising in pitch and
swelling in volume. Then it broke through the clouds, tall and black
and beautifully deadly. It rode down on its rockets of flame, filling
the valley with its thunder, and his heart hammered with exultation.

It had come—the cruiser had come!

He turned and
dropped the ten feet to the ground inside the stockade. The warning
signal was being sounded from the center of town; a unicorn horn that
gave out the call they had used in the practice alarms. Already the
women and children would be hurrying along the tunnels that led to the
temporary safety of the woods beyond town. The Gerns might use their
turret blasters to destroy the town and all in it before the night was
over. There was no way of knowing what might happen before it ended.
But whatever it was, it would be the action they had all been wanting.

He ran to
where the others would be gathering, Fenrir and Sigyn loping beside him
and the horn ringing wild and savage and triumphant as it announced the
end of two centuries of waiting.

* * *

The cruiser
settled to earth in the area where it had been expected to land,
towering high above the town with its turret blasters looking down upon
the houses.

Charley Craig
and Norman Lake were waiting for him on the high steps of his own house
in the center of town where the elevation gave them a good view of the
ship yet where the fringes of the canopy would conceal them from the
ship's scanners. They were heavily armed, their prowlers beside them
and their mockers on their shoulders.

Elsewhere,
under the connected rows of concealing canopies, armed men were
hurrying to their prearranged stations. Most of them were accompanied
by prowlers, bristling and snarling as they looked at the alien ship. A
few men were deliberately making themselves visible not far away, going
about unimportant tasks with only occasional and carefully
disinterested glances toward the ship. They were the bait, to lure the
first detachment into the center of town . . .

"Well?" Normal Lake asked, his pale eyes
restless with his hunger for violence. "There's our ship—when do we
take her?"

"Just as soon
as we get them outside it," he said. "We'll use the plan we first
had—wait until they send a full force to rescue the first detachment
and then hit them with everything we have."

His black,
white-nosed mocker was standing in the open doorway and watching the
hurrying men and prowlers with worried interest: Tip, the
great-great-great-great grandson of the mocker that had died with
Howard Lake north of the plateau. He reached down to pick him up and
set him on his shoulder, and said:

"Jim?"

"The longbows
are ready," Tip's treble imitation of Jim Chiara's voice answered.
"We'll black out their searchlights when the time comes."

"Andy?" he asked.

"The last of us for this section are coming
in now," Andy Taylor answered.

He made his check of all the subleaders,
then looked up to the roof to ask, "All set, Jimmy?"

Jimmy Stevens' grinning face appeared over
the edge. "Ten crossbows are cocked and waiting up here. Bring us our
targets."

They waited,
while the evening deepened into near-dusk. Then the airlock of the
cruiser slid open and thirteen Gerns emerged, the one leading them
wearing the resplendent uniform of a subcommander.

"There they
come," he said to Lake and Craig. "It looks like we'll be able to trap
them in here and force the commander to send out a full-sized force.
We'll all attack at the sound of the horn and if you can hit their rear
flanks hard enough with the unicorns to give us a chance to split them
from this end some of us should make it to the ship before they realize
up in the control room that they should close the airlocks.

"Now"—he
looked at the Gerns who were coming straight toward the stockade wall,
ignoring the gate to their right—"you'd better be on your way. We'll
meet again before long in the ship."

Fenrir and
Sigyn looked from the advancing Gerns to him with question in their
eyes after Lake and Craig were gone, Fenrir growling restlessly.

"Pretty soon," he said to them. "Right now
it would be better if they didn't see you. Wait inside, both of you."

They went
reluctantly inside, to merge with the darkness of the interior. Only an
occasional yellow gleam of their eyes showed that they were crouched to
spring just inside the doorway.

He called to the nearest unarmed man, not
loud enough to be heard by the Gerns:

"Cliff—you and Sam Anders come here. Tell
the rest to fade out of sight and get armed."

Cliff
Schroeder passed the command along and he and Sam Anders approached. He
looked back at the Gerns and saw they were within a hundred feet of
the—for them—unscalable wall of the stockade. They were coming without
hesitation—

A pale blue
beam lashed down from one of the cruiser's turrets and a fifty-foot
section of the wall erupted into dust with a sound like thunder. The
wind swept the dust aside in a gigantic cloud and the Gerns came
through the gap, looking neither to right nor left.

"That, I
suppose," Sam Anders said from beside him, "was Lesson Number One for
degenerate savages like us: Gerns, like gods, are not to be hindered by
man-made barriers."

The Gerns
walked with a peculiar gait that puzzled him until he saw what it was.
They were trying to come with the arrogant military stride affected by
the Gerns and in the 1.5 gravity they were succeeding in achieving only
a heavy clumping.

They advanced
steadily and as they drew closer he saw that in the right hand of each
Gern soldier was a blaster while in the left hand of each could be seen
the metallic glitter of chains.

Schroeder smiled thinly. "It looks like they
want to subject about a dozen of us to some painful questioning."

No one else
was any longer in sight and the Gerns came straight toward the three on
the steps. They stopped forty feet away at a word of command from the
officer and Gerns and Ragnarok men exchanged silent stares; the faces
of the Ragnarok men bearded and expressionless, the faces of the Gerns
hairless and reflecting a contemptuous curiosity.

"Narth!" The
communicator on the Gern officer's belt spoke with metallic authority.
"What do they look like? Did we come two hundred light-years to view
some animated vegetables?"

"No,
Commander," Narth answered. "I think the discard of the Rejects two
hundred years ago has produced for us an unexpected reward. There are
three natives under the canopy before me and their physical perfection
and complete adaptation to this hellish gravity is astonishing."

"They could
be used to replace expensive machines on some of the outer world
mines," the commander said, "providing their intelligence isn't too
abysmally low. What about that?"

"They can surely be taught to perform simple
manual labor," Narth answered.

"Get on with
your job," the commander said. "Try to pick some of the most
intelligent looking ones for questioning—I can't believe these cattle
sent that message and they're going to tell us who did. And pick some
young, strong ones for the medical staff to examine—ones that won't
curl up and die after the first few cuts of the knife."

"We'll chain
these three first," Narth said. He lifted his hand in an imperious
gesture to Humbolt and the other two and ordered in accented Terran:
"Come here!"

No one moved and he said again, sharply, "Come
here!"

Again no one moved and the minor officer
beside Narth said, "Apparently they can't even understand Terran now."

"Then we'll
give them some action they can understand," Narth snapped, his face
flushing with irritation. "We'll drag them out by their heels!"

The Gerns
advanced purposefully, three of them holstering their blasters to make
their chains ready. When they had passed under the canopy and could not
be seen from the ship Humbolt spoke:

"All right, Jimmy."

The Gerns froze in midstride, suspicion
flashing across their faces.

"Look up on the roof," he said in Gern.

They looked, and the suspicion became gaping
dismay.

"You can be our prisoners or you can be
corpses," he said. "We don't care which."

The urgent hiss of Narth's command broke
their indecision:

"Kill them!"

Six of them
tried to obey, bringing up their blasters in movements that seemed
curiously heavy and slow, as though the gravity of Ragnarok had turned
their arms to wood. Three of them almost lifted their blasters high
enough to fire at the steps in front of them before arrows went through
their throats. The other three did not get that far.

Narth and the remaining six went rigidly
motionless and he said to them:

"Drop your blasters—quick!"

Their
blasters thumped to the ground and Jimmy Stevens and his bowmen slid
off the roof. Within a minute the Gerns were bound with their own
chains, but for the officer, and the blasters were in the hands of the
Ragnarok men.

Jimmy looked
down the row of Gerns and shook his head. "So these are Gerns?" he
said. "It was like trapping a band of woods goats."

"Young ones," Schroeder amended. "And almost
as dangerous."

Narth's face
flushed at the words and his eyes went to the ship. The sight of it
seemed to restore his courage and his lips drew back in a snarl.

"You fools—you stupid, megalomaniac
dung-heaps—do you think you can kill Gerns and live to boast about it?"

"Keep quiet,"
Humbolt ordered, studying him with curiosity. Narth, like all the
Gerns, was different from what they had expected. It was true the Gerns
had strode into their town with an attempt at arrogance but they were
harmless in appearance, soft of face and belly, and the snarling of the
red-faced Narth was like the bluster of a cornered scavenger-rodent.

"I promise
you this," Narth was saying viciously, "if you don't release us and
return our weapons this instant I'll personally oversee the
extermination of you and every savage in this village with the most
painful death science can contrive and I'll—"

Humbolt
reached out his hand and flicked Narth under the chin. Narth's teeth
cracked loudly together and his face twisted with the pain of a bitten
tongue.

"Tie him up, Jess," he said to the man near
him. "If he opens his mouth again, shove your foot in it."

He spoke to Schroeder. "We'll keep three of
the blasters and send two to each of the other front groups. Have that
done."

Dusk was
deepening into darkness and he called Chiara again. "They'll turn on
their searchlights any minute and make the town as light as day," he
said. "If you can keep them blacked out until some of us have reached
the ship, I think we'll have won."

"They'll be kept blacked out," Chiara said.
"With some flint-headed arrows left over for the Gerns."

He called Lake and Craig, to be told they
were ready and waiting.

"But we're having hell keeping the unicorns
quiet," Craig said. "They want to get to killing something."

He pressed
the switch of the communicator but it was dead. They had, of course,
transferred to some other wave length so he could not hear the
commands. It was something he had already anticipated.

Fenrir and
Sigyn were still obediently inside the doorway, almost frantic with
desire to rejoin him. He spoke to them and they bounded out, snarling
at three Gerns in passing and causing them to blanch to a dead-white
color.

He set Tip on
Sigyn's shoulders and said, "Sigyn, there's a job for you and Tip to
do. A dangerous job. Listen—both of you . . ."

The yellow
eyes of Sigyn and the dark eyes of the little mocker looked into his as
he spoke to them and accompanied his words with the strongest, clearest
mental images he could project:

"Sigyn, take
Tip to the not-men thing. Leave him hidden in the grass to one side of
the big hole in it. Tip, you wait there. When the not-men come out you
listen, and tell what they say.

"Now, do you both understand?"

Sigyn made a sound that meant she did but
Tip clutched at his wrist with little paws suddenly gone cold and
wailed, "No! Scared—scared—"

"You have to
go, Tip," he said, gently disengaging his wrist. "And Sigyn will hide
near to you and watch over you." He spoke to Sigyn. "When the horn
calls you run back with him."

Again she made the sound signifying
understanding and he touched them both in what he hoped would not be
the last farewell.

"All right, Sigyn—go now."

She vanished
into the gloom of coming night, Tip hanging tightly to her. Fenrir
stood with the fur lifted on his shoulders and a half snarl on his face
as he watched her go and watched the place where the not-men would
appear.

"Where's Freckles?" he asked Jimmy.

"Here," someone said, and came forward with
Tip's mate.

He set
Freckles on his shoulder and the first searchlight came on, shining
down from high up on the cruiser. It lighted up the area around them in
harsh white brilliance, its reflection revealing the black shadow that
was Sigyn just vanishing behind the ship.

Two more searchlights came on, to illuminate
the town. Then the Gerns came.

They poured
out through the airlock and down the ramp, there to form in columns
that marched forward as still more Gerns hurried down the ramp behind
them. The searchlights gleamed on their battle helmets and on the
blades of the bayonets affixed to their rifle-like long-range blasters.
Hand blasters and grenades hung from their belts, together with stubby
flame guns.

They were a
solid mass reaching halfway to the stockade before the last of them,
the commanding officers, appeared. One of them stopped at the foot of
the ramp to watch the advance of the punitive force and give the
frightened but faithful Tip the first words to transmit to Freckles:

"The full force is on its way, Commander."

A reply came, in Freckles' simulation of the
metallic tones of the communicator:

"The key
numbers of the confiscated blasters have been checked and the
disturbance rays of the master integrator set. You'll probably have few
natives left alive to take as prisoners after those thirteen charges
explode but continue with a mopping up job that the survivors will
never forget."

So the Gerns
could, by remote control, set the total charges of stolen blasters to
explode upon touching the firing stud? It was something new since the
days of the Old Ones . . .

He called
Chiara and the other groups, quickly, to tell them what he had learned.
"We'll get more blasters—ones they can't know the numbers of—when we
attack," he finished.

He took the
blaster from his belt and laid it on the ground. The front ranks of the
Gerns were almost to the wall by then, a column wider than the gap that
had been blasted through it, coming with silent purposefulness.

Two blaster
beams lanced down from the turrets, to smash at the wall. Dust billowed
and thunder rumbled as they swept along. A full three hundred feet of
the wall had been destroyed when they stopped and the dust hid the ship
and made dim glows of the searchlights.

It had no
doubt been intended to impress them with the might of the Gerns but in
doing so it hid the Ragnarok forces from the advancing Gerns for a few
second.

"Jim—black out their lights before the dust
clears," he called. "Joe—the horn! We attack now!"

The first
longbow arrow struck a searchlight and its glow grew dimmer as the
arrow's burden—a thin tube of thick lance tree ink—splattered against
it. Another followed—

Then the horn
rang out, harsh and commanding, and in the distance a unicorn screamed
in answer. The savage cry of a prowler came, like a sound to match, and
the attack was on.

He ran with
Fenrir beside him and to his left and right ran the others with their
prowlers. The lead groups converged as they went through the wide gap
in the wall. They ran on, into the dust cloud, and the shadowy forms of
the Gerns were suddenly before them.

A blaster beam cut into them and a Gern
shouted, "The natives!"
Other beams sprang into life, winking like pale blue eyes through the
dust and killing all they touched. The beams dropped as the first
volley of arrows tore through the massed front ranks, to be replaced by
others.

They charged
on, into the blue winking of the blasters and the red lances of the
flame guns with the crossbows rattling and strumming in answer. The
prowlers lunged and fought beside them and ahead of them; black
hell-creatures that struck the Gerns too swiftly for blaster to find
before throats were torn out; the sound of battle turned into a
confusion of raging snarls, frantic shouts and dying screams.

A prowler
shot past him to join Fenrir—Sigyn—and he felt Tip dart up to his
shoulder. She made a sound of greeting in passing, a sound that was
gone as her jaws closed on a Gern.

The dust
cloud cleared a little and the searchlights looked down on the scene;
no longer brilliantly white but shining through the red-black lance
tree ink as a blood-red glow. A searchlight turret slid shut and opened
a moment later, the light wiped clean. The longbows immediately
transformed it into a red glow.

The beam of
one of the turret blasters stabbed down, to blaze a trail of death
through the battle. It ceased as its own light revealed to the Gern
commander that the Ragnarok forces were so intermixed with the Gern
forces that he was killing more Gerns than Ragnarok men.

By then the
fighting was so hand to hand that knives were better than crossbows.
The Gerns fell like harvested corn; too slow and awkward to use their
bayonets against the faster Ragnarok men and killing as many of one
another as men when they tried to use their blasters and flame guns.
From the rear there came the command of a Gern officer, shouted high
and thin above the sound of battle:

"Back to the ship—leave the natives for the
ship's blasters to kill!"

The unicorns arrived then, to cut off their
retreat.

They came
twenty from the east and twenty from the west in a thunder of hooves,
squealing and screaming in their blood lust, with prowlers a black wave
going before them. They struck the Gerns; the prowlers slashing lanes
through them while the unicorns charged behind, trampling them, ripping
into them with their horns and smashing them down with their hooves as
they vented the pent-up rage of their years of confinement. On the back
of each was a rider whose long spear flicked and stabbed into the
throats and bellies of Gerns.

The retreat
was halted and transformed into milling confusion. He led his own group
in the final charge, the prearranged wedge attack, and they split the
Gern force in two.

The ship was suddenly just beyond them.

He gave the last command to Lake and Craig: "Now—into
the ship!"

He scooped up
a blaster from beside a fallen Gern and ran toward it. A Gern officer
was already in the airlock, his face pale and strained as he looked
back and his hand on the closing switch. He shot him and ran up the
ramp as the officer's body rolled down it.

Unicorn
hooves pounded behind him and twenty of them swept past, their riders
leaping from their backs to the ramp. Twenty men and fifteen prowlers
charged up the ramp as a warning siren shrieked somewhere inside the
ship. At the same time the airlocks, operated from the control room,
began to slide swiftly shut.

He was
through first, with Fenrir and Sigyn. Lake and Craig, together with six
men and four prowlers, squeezed through barely in time. Then the
airlocks were closed and they were sealed in the ship.

Alarm bells
added their sound to the shrieking of the siren and from the
multiple-compartment shafts came the whir of elevators dropping with
Gern forces to kill the humans trapped inside the ship.

They ran past
the elevator shafts without pausing, light and swift in the artificial
gravity that was only two-thirds that of Ragnarok. They split forces as
long ago planned; three men and four prowlers going with Charley Craig
in the attempt to take the drive room, Lake and the other three men
going with him in the attempt to take the control room.

They found the manway ladder and began to
climb, Fenrir and Sigyn impatiently crowding their heels.

There was
nothing on the control room level and they ran down the short corridor
that their maps had showed. They turned left, into the corridor that
had the control room at its end, and into the concentrated fire of nine
waiting Gerns.

Fenrir and
Sigyn went into the Gerns, under their fire before they could drop the
muzzles of their blasters, with an attack so vicious and unexpected
that what would have been a certain and lethal trap for the humans was
suddenly a fighting chance.

The corridor
became an inferno of blaster beams that cracked and hissed as they met
and crossed, throwing little chips of metal from the walls with
snapping sounds and going through flesh with sounds like soft tappings.
It was over within seconds, the last Gern down and one man still
standing beside him, the blond and nerveless Lake.

Thomsen and
Barber were dead and Billy West was bracing himself against the wall
with a blaster hole through his stomach, trying to say something and
sliding to the floor before it was ever spoken.

And Sigyn was
down, blood welling and bubbling from a wound in her chest, while
Fenrir stood over her with his snarling a raging scream as he swung his
head in search of a still-living Gern.

Humbolt and Lake ran on, Fenrir raging
beside them, and into the control room.

Six officers,
one wearing the uniform of a commander, were gaping in astonishment and
bringing up their blasters in the way that seemed so curiously slow to
Humbolt. Fenrir, in his fury, killed two of them as Lake's blaster and
his own killed three more.

The commander was suddenly alone, his
blaster half lifted. Fenrir leaped at his throat and Humbolt shouted
the quick command: "Disarm!"

It was
something the prowlers had been taught in their training and Fenrir's
teeth clicked short of the commander's throat while his paw sent the
blaster spinning across the room.

The commander stared at them with his
swarthy face a dark gray and his mouth still gaping.

"How—how did you do it?" he asked in heavily
accented Terran. "Only two of you—"

"Don't talk until you're asked a question,"
Lake said.

"Only two of
you . . ." The thought seemed to restore his courage, as
sight of the
ship had restored Narth's that night, and his tone became threatening.
"There are only two of you and more guards will be here to kill you
within a minute. Surrender to me and I'll let you go free—"

Lake slapped him across the mouth with a
backhanded blow that snapped his head back on his shoulders and split
his lip.

"Don't talk," he ordered again. "And never
lie to us."

The commander spit out a tooth and held his
hand to his bleeding mouth. He did not speak again.

Tip and
Freckles were holding tightly to his shoulder and each other, the
racing of their hearts like a vibration, and he touched them
reassuringly.

"All right now—all safe now," he said.

He called Charley Craig. "Charley—did you
make it?"

"We made it to the drive room—two of us and
one prowler," Charley answered. "What about you?"

"Norman and I have the control room. Cut
their drives, to play safe. I'll let you know as soon as the entire
ship is ours."

He went to
the viewscreen and saw that the battle was over. Chiara was letting the
searchlight burn again and prowlers were being used to drive back the
unicorns from the surrendering Gerns.

"I guess we won," he said to Lake.

But there was
no feeling of victory, none of the elation he had thought he would
have. Sigyn was dying alone in the alien corridor outside. Sigyn, who
had nursed beside him and fought beside him and laid down her life for
him . . .

"I want to look at her," he said to Lake.

Fenrir went
with him. She was still alive, waiting for them to come back to her.
She lifted her head and touched his hand with her tongue as he examined
the wound.

It was not
fatal—it need not be fatal. He worked swiftly, gently, to stop the
bleeding that had been draining her life away. She would have to lie
quietly for weeks but she would recover.

When he was
done he pressed her head back to the floor and said, "Lie still, Sigyn
girl, until we can come to move you. Wait for us and Fenrir will stay
here with you."

She obeyed and he left them, the feeling of
victory and elation coming to him in full then.

Lake looked at him questioningly as he
entered the control room and he said, "She'll live."

He turned to the Gern commander. "First, I
want to know how the war is going?"

"I—" The commander looked uncertainly at
Lake.

"Just tell the truth," Lake said. "Whether
you think we'll like it or not."

"We have all the planets but Earth, itself,"
the commander said. "We'll have it, soon."

"And the Terrans on Athena?"

"They're still—working for us there."

"Now," he
said, "you will order every Gern in this ship to go to his sleeping
quarters. They will leave their weapons in the corridors outside and
they will not resist the men who will come to take charge of the ship."

The commander made an effort toward defiance:

"And if I refuse?"

Lake
answered, smiling at him with the smile of his that was no more than a
quick showing of teeth and with the savage eagerness in his eyes.

"If you
refuse I'll start with your fingers and break every bone to your
shoulders. If that isn't enough I'll start with your toes and go to
your hips. And then I'll break your back."

The commander
hesitated, sweat filming his face as he looked at them. Then he reached
out to switch on the all-stations communicator and say into it:

"Attention,
all personnel: You will return to your quarters at once, leaving your
weapons in the corridors. You are ordered to make no resistance when
the natives come . . ."

There was a
silence when he had finished and Humbolt and Lake looked at each other,
bearded and clad in animal skins but standing at last in the control
room of a ship that was theirs; in a ship that could take them to
Athena, to Earth, to the ends of the galaxy.

The commander watched them, on his face the
blankness of unwillingness to believe.

"The
airlocks—" he said. "We didn't close them in time. We never thought you
would dare try to take the ship—not savages in animal skins."

"I know," Humbolt answered. "We were
counting on you to think that way."

"No one
expected any of you to survive here." The commander wiped at his
swollen lips, wincing, and an almost child-like petulance came into his
tone. "You weren't supposed to survive."

"I know," he said again. "We've made it a
point to remember that."

"The gravity, the heat and cold and fever,
the animals—why didn't they kill you?"

"They tried,"
he said. "But we fought back. And we had a goal—to meet you Gerns
again. You left us on a world that had no resources. Only enemies who
would kill us—the gravity, the prowlers, the unicorns. So we made them
our resources. We adapted to the gravity that was supposed to kill us
and became stronger and quicker than Gerns. We made allies of the
prowlers and unicorns who were supposed to be our executioners and used
them tonight to help us kill Gerns. So now we have your ship."

"Yes . . . you
have our ship." Through the unwillingness to believe on the commander's
face and the petulance there came the triumph of vindictive
anticipation. "The savages of Ragnarok have a Gern cruiser—but what can
they do with it?"

"What can we
do with it?" he asked, almost kindly. "We've planned for two hundred
years what we can do with it. We have the cruiser and sixty days from
now we'll have Athena. That will be only the beginning and you Gerns
are going to help us do it."

* * *

For six days
the ship was a scene of ceaseless activity. Men crowded it, asking
questions of the Gern officers and crew and calmly breaking the bones
of those who refused to answer or who gave answers that were not true.
Prowlers stalked the corridors, their cold yellow eyes watching every
move the Gerns made. The little mockers began roaming the ship at will,
unable any longer to restrain their curiosity and confident that the
men and prowlers would not let the Gerns harm them.

One mocker
was killed then; the speckle-faced mocker that could repeat messages
verbatim. It wandered into a storage cubicle where a Gern was working
alone and gave him the opportunity to safely vent his hatred of
everything associated with the men of Ragnarok. He broke its back with
a steel bar and threw it, screaming, into the disposal chute that led
to the matter converter. A prowler heard the scream and an instant
later the Gern screamed; a sound that died in its making as the prowler
tore his throat out. No more mockers were harmed.

One Ragnarok
boy was killed. Three fanatical Gern officers stole knives from the
galley and held the boy as hostage for their freedom. When their
demands were refused they cut his heart out. Lake cornered them a few
minutes later and, without touching his blaster, disemboweled them with
their own knives. He smiled down upon them as they writhed and moaned
on the floor and their moans were heard for a long time by the other
Gerns in the ship before they died. No more humans were harmed.

They
discovered that operation of the cruiser was relatively simple,
basically similar to the operation of Terran ships as described in the
text book the original Lake had written. Most of the operations were
performed by robot mechanisms and the manual operations, geared to the
slower reflexes of the Gerns, were easily mastered.

They could
spend the forty-day voyage to Athena in further learning and practice
so on the sixth day they prepared to depart. The unicorns had been
given the freedom they had fought so well for and reconnaissance
vehicles were loaned from the cruiser to take their place. Later there
would be machinery and supplies of all kinds brought in by freighter
ships from Athena.

Time was
precious and there was a long, long job ahead of them. They blasted up
from Ragnarok on the morning of the seventh day and went into the black
sea of hyperspace.

By then the
Gern commander was no longer of any value to them. His unwillingness to
believe that savages had wrested his ship from him had increased until
his compartment became his control room to him and he spent the hours
laughing and giggling before an imaginary viewscreen whereon the
cruiser's blasters were destroying, over and over, the Ragnarok town
and all the humans in it.

But Narth,
who had wanted to have them tortured to death for daring to resist
capture, became very cooperative. In the control room his cooperation
was especially eager. On the twentieth day of the voyage they let him
have what he had been trying to gain by subterfuge: access to the
transmitter when no men were within hearing distance. After that his
manner abruptly changed. Each day his hatred for them and his secret
anticipation became more evident.

The thirty-fifth day came, with Athena five
days ahead of them—the day of the execution they had let him arrange
for them.

* * *

Stars filled
the transdimensional viewscreen, the sun of Athena in the center.
Humbolt watched the space to the lower left and the flicker came again;
a tiny red dot that was gone again within a microsecond, so quickly
that Narth in the seat beside him did not see it.

It was the
quick peek of another ship; a ship that was running invisible with its
detector screens up but which had had to drop them for an instant to
look out at the cruiser. Not even the Gerns had ever been able to
devise a polarized detector screen.

He changed
the course and speed of the cruiser, creating an increase in gravity
which seemed very slight to him but which caused Narth to slew heavily
in his seat. Narth straightened and he said to him:

"Within a few minutes we'll engage the ship
you sent for."

Narth's jaw dropped, then came back up. "So
you spied on me?"

"One of our
Ragnarok allies did—the little animal that was sitting near the
transmitter. They're our means of communication. We learned that you
had arranged for a ship, en route to Athena, to intercept us and
capture us."

"So you know?" Narth asked. He smiled, an
unpleasant twisting of his mouth. "Do you think that knowing will help
you any?"

"We expect it to," he answered.

"It's a
battleship," Narth said. "It's three times the size of this cruiser,
the newest and most powerful battleship in the Gern fleet. How does
that sound to you?"

"It sounds good," he said. "We'll make it
our flagship."

"Your flagship—your 'flagship'!"
The last trace of pretense left Narth and he let his full and rankling
hatred come through. "You got this cruiser by trickery and learned how
to operate it after a fashion because of an animal-like reflex
abnormality. For forty-two days you accidental mutants have given
orders to your superiors and thought you were our equals. Now, your
fool's paradise is going to end."

The red dot
came again, closer, and he once more altered the ship's course. He had
turned on the course analyzer and it clicked as the battleship's
position was correlated with that of its previous appearance. A short
yellow line appeared on the screen to forecast its course for the
immediate future.

"And then?" he asked curiously, turning back
to Narth.

"And then
we'll take all of you left alive back to your village. The scenes of
what we do to you and your village will be televised to all Gern-held
worlds. It will be a valuable reminder for any who have forgotten the
penalty for resisting Gerns."

The red dot came again. He punched the
BATTLE STATIONS button and the board responded with a row of READY
lights.

"All the
other Gerns are by now in their acceleration couches," he said. "Strap
yourself in for high-acceleration maneuvers—we'll make contact with the
battleship within two minutes."

Narth did so,
taking his time as though it was something of little importance. "There
will be no maneuvers. They'll blast the stern and destroy your drive
immediately upon attack."

He fastened
the last strap and smiled, taunting assurance in the twisted
unpleasantness of it. "The appearance of this battleship has very much
disrupted your plans to strut like conquering heroes among the slaves
on Athena, hasn't it?"

"Not
exactly," Humbolt replied. "Our plans are a little broader in scope
than that. There are two new cruisers on Athena, ready to leave the
shops ten days from now. We'll turn control of Athena over to the
humans there, of course, then we'll take the three cruisers and the
battleship back by way of Ragnarok. There we'll pick up all the
Ragnarok men who are neither too old nor too young and go on to Earth.
They will be given training en route in the handling of ships. We
expect to find no difficulty in breaking through the Gern lines around
Earth and then, with the addition of the Earth ships, we can easily
capture all the Gern ships in the solar system."

" 'Easily'!"
Narth made a contemptuous sneer of the word. "Were you actually so
stupid as to think that you biological freaks could equal Gern officers
who have made a career of space warfare?"

"We'll far
exceed them," he said. "A space battle is one of trying to keep your
blaster beams long enough on one area of the enemy ship to break
through its blaster shields at that point. And at the same time try to
move and dodge fast enough to keep the enemy from doing the same thing
to you. The ships are capable of accelerations up to fifty gravities or
more but the acceleration limitator is the safeguard that prevents the
ship from going into such a high degree of acceleration or into such a
sudden change of direction that it would kill the crew.

"We from
Ragnarok are accustomed to a one point five gravity and can withstand
much higher degrees of acceleration than Gerns or any other race from a
one-gravity world. To enable us to take advantage of that fact we have
had the acceleration limitator on this cruiser disconnected."

"Disconnected?" Narth's contemptuous
regard vanished in frantic consternation. "You fool—you don't know what
that means—you'll move the acceleration lever too far and kill us
all!"

The red dot
flickered on the viewscreen, trembled, and was suddenly a gigantic
battleship in full view. He touched the acceleration control and
Narth's next words were cut off as his diaphragm sagged. He swung the
cruiser in a curve and Narth was slammed sideways, the straps cutting
into him and the flesh of his face pulled lopsided by the gravity. His
eyes, bulging, went blank with unconsciousness.

The powerful
blasters of the battleship blossomed like a row of pale blue flowers,
concentrating on the stern of the cruiser. A warning siren screeched as
they started breaking through the cruiser's shields. He dropped the
detector screen that would shield the cruiser from sight, but not from
the blaster beams, and tightened the curve until the gravity dragged
heavily at his own body.

The warning
siren stopped as the blaster beams of the battleship went harmlessly
into space, continuing to follow the probability course plotted from
the cruiser's last visible position and course by the battleship's
robot target tracers.

He lifted the
detector screen, to find the battleship almost exactly where the
cruiser's course analyzers had predicted it would be. The blasters of
the battleship were blazing their full concentration of firepower into
an area behind and to one side of the cruiser.

They blinked
out at the sight of the cruiser in its new position and blazed again a
moment later, boring into the stern. He dropped the detector screen and
swung the cruiser in another curve, spiraling in the opposite
direction. As before, the screech of the alarm siren died as the
battleship's blasters followed the course given them by course
analyzers and target tracers that were built to presume that all enemy
ships were acceleration-limitator equipped.

The cruiser
could have destroyed the battleship at any time—but they wanted to
capture their flagship unharmed. The maneuvering continued, the cruiser
drawing closer to the battleship. The battleship, in desperation, began
using the same hide-and-jump tactics the cruiser used but it was of
little avail—the battleship moved at known acceleration limits and the
cruiser's course analyzers predicted each new position with sufficient
accuracy.

The cruiser
made its final dash in a tightening spiral, its detector screen
flickering on and off. It struck the battleship at a matched speed,
with a thump and ringing of metal as the magnetic grapples fastened the
cruiser like a leech to the battleship's side.

In that
position neither the forward nor stern blasters of the battleship could
touch it. There remained only to convince the commander of the
battleship that further resistance was futile.

This he did with a simple ultimatum to the
commander:

"This cruiser
is firmly attached to your ship, its acceleration limitator
disconnected. Its drives are of sufficient power to thrust both ships
forward at a much higher degree of acceleration that persons from
one-gravity worlds can endure. You will surrender at once or we shall
be forced to put these two ships into a curve of such short radius and
at an acceleration so great that all of you will be killed."

Then he
added, "If you surrender we'll do somewhat better by you than you did
with the humans two hundred years ago—we'll take all of you on to
Athena."

The commander, already sick from an
acceleration that would have been negligible to Ragnarok men, had no
choice.

His reply came, choked with acceleration
sickness and the greater sickness of defeat:

"We will surrender."

* * *

Narth
regained consciousness. He saw Humbolt sitting beside him as before,
with no Gern rescuers crowding into the control room with shouted
commands and drawn blasters.

"Where are they?" he asked. "Where is the
battleship?"

"We captured it," he said.

"You captured—a Gern battleship?"

"It wasn't
hard," he said. "It would have been easier if only Ragnarok men had
been on the cruiser. We didn't want to accelerate to any higher
gravities than absolutely necessary because of the Gerns on it."

"You did it—you captured the battleship,"
Narth said, his tone like one dazed.

He wet his lips, staring, as he contemplated
the unpleasant implications of it.

"You're freak
mutants who can capture a battleship. Maybe you will take Athena and
Earth from us. But"—the animation of hatred returned to his face—"What
good will it do you? Did you ever think about that?"

"Yes," he said. "We've thought about it."

"Have you?"
Narth leaned forward, his face shining with the malice of his gloating.
"You can never escape the consequences of what you have done. The Gern
Empire has the resources of dozens of worlds. The Empire will build a
fleet of special ships, a force against which your own will be nothing,
and send them to Earth and Athena and Ragnarok. The Empire will smash
you for what you have done and if there are any survivors of your race
left they will cringe before Gerns for a hundred generations to come.

"Remember that while you're posturing in
your little hour of glory on Athena and Earth."

"You insist
in thinking we'll do as Gerns would do," he said. "We won't delay to do
any posturing. We'll have a large fleet when we leave Earth and we'll
go at once to engage the Gern home fleet. I thought you knew we were
going to do that. We're going to cripple and capture your fleet and
then we're going to destroy your empire."

"Destroy the Empire—now?"
Narth stared again, all the gloating gone as he saw, at last, the quick
and inexorable end. "Now—before we can stop you—before we can have a
chance?"

"When a race
has been condemned to die by another race and it fights and struggles
and manages somehow to survive, it learns a lesson. It learns it must
never again let the other race be in position to destroy it. So this is
the harvest you reap from the seeds you sowed on Ragnarok two hundred
years ago.

"You
understand, don't you?" he asked, almost gently. "For two hundred years
the Gern Empire has been a menace to our survival as a race. Now, the
time has come when we shall remove it."

* * *

He stood in
the control room of the battleship and watched Athena's sun in the
viewscreen, blazing like a white flame. Sigyn, fully recovered, was
stretched out on the floor near him; twitching and snarling a little in
her sleep as she fought again the battle with the Gerns. Fenrir was
pacing the floor, swinging his black, massive head restlessly, while
Tip and Freckles were examining with fascinated curiosity the
collection of bright medals that had been cleaned out of the Gern
commander's desk.

Lake and Craig left their stations, as
impatient as Fenrir, and came over to watch the viewscreen with him.

"One day more," Craig said. "We're two
hundred years late but we're coming in to the world that was to have
been our home."

"It can never
be, now," he said. "Have any of us ever thought of that—that we're
different from humans and there's no human world we could ever call
home?"

"I've thought
of it," Lake said. "Ragnarok made us different physically and different
in the way we think. We could live on human worlds—but we would always
be a race apart and never really belong there."

"I suppose
we've all thought about it," Craig said. "And wondered what we'll do
when we're finished with the Gerns. Not settle down on Athena or Earth,
in a little cottage with a fenced-in lawn where it would be adventure
to watch the Three-D shows after each day at some safe, routine job."

"Not back to
Ragnarok," Lake said. "With metals and supplies from other worlds
they'll be able to do a lot there but the battle is already won. There
will be left only the peaceful development—building a town at the
equator for Big Winter, leveling land, planting crops. We could never
be satisfied with that kind of a life."

"No," he
said, and felt his own restlessness stir in protest at the thought of
settling down in some safe and secure environment. "Not Athena or Earth
or Ragnarok—not any world we know."

"How long
until we're finished with the Gerns?" Lake asked. "Ten years? We'll
still be young then. Where will we go—all of us who fought the Gerns
and all of the ones in the future who won't want to live out their
lives on Ragnarok? Where is there a place for us—a world of our own?"

"Where do we
find a world of our own?" he asked, and watched the star clouds creep
toward them in the viewscreen; tumbled and blazing and immense beyond
conception.

"There's a
galaxy for us to explore," he said. "There are millions of suns and
thousands of worlds waiting for us. Maybe there are races out there
like the Gerns—and maybe there are races such as we were a hundred
years ago who need our help. And maybe there are worlds out there with
things on them such as no man ever imagined.

"We'll go, to
see what's there. Our women will go with us and there will be some
worlds on which some of us will want to stay. And, always, there will
be more restless ones coming from Ragnarok. Out there are the worlds
and the homes for all of us."

"Of course," Lake said. "Beyond the space
frontier . . . where else would we ever belong?"

It was all
settled, then, and there was a silence as the battleship plunged
through hyperspace, the cruiser running beside her and their drives
moaning and thundering as had the drives of the Constellation
two hundred years before.

A voyage had
been interrupted then, and a new race had been born. Now they were
going on again, to Athena, to Earth, to the farthest reaches of the
Gern Empire. And on, to the wild, unknown regions of space beyond.

There awaited
their worlds and there awaited their destiny; to be a race scattered
across a hundred thousand light-years of suns, to be an empire such as
the galaxy had never known.

They, the restless ones, the unwanted and
forgotten, the survivors.

THE HARVEST

Editor's
note: I mentioned, didn't I, that Godwin had a grim side to him? The
very short story which follows, even more than "The Cold Equations,"
may well deserve the title of "the grimmest science fiction story ever
written." I'm not sure why, but I love it. Maybe it's because of the
wry humor I detect in it. Then again, maybe it's just because I'm
nuts.

It was Harvest time.

The Sky
People waited where the last tenuous vestiges of atmosphere met the
nothing of outer space, invisible to the land creatures below who had
no way of perceiving life forms that were almost pure energy. Harthon
and Ledri waited a little apart from the others, soaring restlessly on
scintillating wings in the light-stream from the sun.

For many days
the Release field had enveloped the world below, clouding and
distorting the surface of it to the perception of the Sky People with
the violence of its psycho-persuasion bands. Now the field was lifted,
its work done. There remained only the last little while of waiting
before the fralings came; the intoxicating, maddeningly delicious
fralings that filled the body and mind with a singing, ecstatic
fire . . .

"There are so many of us this time," Ledri
said. "Do you think there will be enough fralings?"

"Of course," Harthon reassured her. "There
are more of them, too, and they've learned how to send us as
many as we need. There will be more fralings this time than ever
before."

"The
Harvest—" Ledri's thought was like a nostalgic sigh. "What fun they
are! Do you remember the last one, Harthon? And the night we danced
down the moonbeams to meet the fralings coming up, before they had ever
reached the nets of the Gatherer?"

"I remember.
And afterward we followed the sun-stream out, so far out that the world
and the moon were like a big and a little star behind us. And we
sang . . ."

"And you. And
then we were hungry again and we let the sun-stream carry us back to
the feast where the others were laughing because someone had almost let
a fraling escape. Everyone was so happy and the world and the stars
were so beautiful. The poor creatures down below"—a touch of sadness
came over her—"they don't know and can never know what it's
like . . ."

"It has to be that way," Harthon said.
"Would you change it if you could?"

"Oh, no! They
have to stay there and we have to watch over them. But what if they
should do something beyond our control, as the Wise Ones say they may
do some day, and then there would be the Last Harvest and never again
any fralings for us?"

"I know. But
that may not happen for a long time. And this isn't the day for
worrying, little shining one—not when the feast begins so soon."

Their wings
touched as they turned in their soaring and looked down upon the great
curve of the world below. The eastern sea was blue and cloudless; the
western continent going into the evening and the huge mass of the
eastern continent coming out of the night. The turning of the world was
visible as they watched; the western rim of the western continent
creeping very slowly into the extinction of the horizon.

"Can the land people tell when we're
watching them like this?" Ledri asked.

"No. They know we're up here, but that's
all."

"How did they ever—"

A little sun
blazed into being on the western continent, brighter than the real sun.
Others followed, swiftly; then they began to flare into life on the
eastern continent—two fields of vivid flowers that bloomed briefly and
were gone. Where they had been were tall, dark clouds that rose higher
still, swelling and spreading, hiding the land beneath.

The Summoner
gave the call that was like the song of a trumpet and the one who had
been appointed Gatherer poised his far-flung nets.

"They're
coming—the fralings!" Ledri cried. "Look at them, Harthon. But there
are so many"—the worry came back to her—"so many that maybe this is the
Last Harvest."

"There aren't that many," Harthon
said, and he laughed at her concern. "Besides, will we care tonight?"

The quick
darkness of her mood vanished and she laughed with him. "Tonight we'll
dance down the moonbeams again. And tomorrow we'll follow the
sun-stream out, farther than ever before."

The fralings drew swiftly closer, hurrying
like bright silver birds.

"They're coming to us," Ledri said. "They
know that this is where they must go. But how did the land people ever
learn of us?"

"Once, many
centuries ago, a fraling escaped the nets long enough to go back for a
little while. But fralings and land people can't communicate very well
with one another and the land people misunderstood most of what it
tried to tell them about us."

The fralings struck the invisible nets and
the Gatherer gave the command to draw them closed.

"Let's go—the others are already starting,"
Harthon said, and they went with flashing wings toward the nearer net.

"Do the land people have a name for us?"
Ledri asked.

"They call us 'angels,' and they call the
Gatherer 'God.' "

The fralings,
finally understanding, were trying frantically to escape and the terror
of the small ones was a frightened, pleading wail.

"And what do they call the fralings?"

"They call them their 'souls.' We'll eat the
small, young ones first—they're the best and there will be plenty for
all."

BRAIN TEASER

Editor's
note: For the most part, though, Godwin's stories—however grim the
situation—are really about triumph in the face of adversity. Here, in a
story which is also a truly classic science fiction "problem solver
tale," is a splendid example.

Carl Engle stood aside as the flight
preparation crew filed out of the Argosy's airlock. Barnes was
the last; fat and bald and squinting against the brightness of the
Arizona sun.

"All set, Carl," he said. "They had us to
check and countercheck, especially the drives."

Engle nodded.
"Good. Ground Control reports the Slug cruiser still circling seven
hundred miles out and they think the Slugs suspect something."

"Damned
centipedes!" Barnes said. "I still say they're telepathic." He looked
at his watch. Zero hour minus twenty-six minutes. "Good luck, boy, and
I hope this space warp dingus works like they think it will."

He waddled
down the boarding ramp and Engle went through the airlock, frowning a
little as he threw the switches that would withdraw the ramp and close
the airlock behind him. Barnes' implied doubt in the success of the
space warp shuttle was not comforting. If the shuttle failed to work,
the Argosy would be on the proverbial spot with the Slug
cruiser eager to smear it well thereupon . . .

Access to the
control room was up through the room that housed the space warp
shuttle. Dr. Harding, the tall, bristle-browed physicist, and his young
assistant, Garvin, looked up briefly as he entered then returned their
attention to their work. The master computer, borrowed from M.I.T.,
stood like a colossal many-dialed refrigerator along one wall. A
protective railing around it bore a blunt KEEP OUT sign and it was
never left unwatched. Garvin was seated before it, his fingers flitting
over the keyboard and the computer's answer panel replying with strange
mathematical symbols.

The space
warp shuttle sat in the middle of the room, a cube approximately
two-thirds of a meter along the edge, studded with dials and knobs and
surmounted by a ball of some shining silvery alloy. Dr. Harding was
talking into the transdimensional communicator mounted beside the
shuttle.

Engle went on
to the computer and waited outside the railing until Garvin finished
with his work and turned in his seat to face him.

"The last check question," Garvin said. "Now
to sweat out the last twenty minutes."

"If you've
got the time, how about telling me about the shuttle," said Engle,
"I've been kept in the dark about it; but from what I understand, the
shuttle builds up a field around the ship, with the silver ball as the
center of the field, and this field goes into another dimension called
the 'space warp'. "

"Ah—it could
be described in that manner," Garvin said, smiling a little. "A clear
description could not be made without the use of several special kinds
of mathematics, but you might say this field in normal space is like a
bubble under water. The air bubble seeks its own element, rises rapidly
until it emerges into free air—in this case, the space warp. This
transition into the warp is almost instantaneous and the shuttle
automatically ceases operation when the warp is fully entered. The
shuttle is no longer needed; the hypothetical bubble no longer
exists—it has found its own element and merged with it."

"I know that
a light-hour of travel in the warp is supposed to be equivalent to
several light-years in normal space," Engle said, "but what about when
you want to get back into normal space?"

"The original
process is simply reversed: the shuttle creates a 'bubble' that cannot
exist in the warp and seeks its own element, normal space."

"I see. But if the shuttle should—"

He never
completed the question. Dr. Harding strode over, his eyes blue and
piercing under the fierce eyebrows as he fixed them on him. He spoke
without preamble:

"You realize
the importance of this test flight with the shuttle, of course?
Entirely aside from our personal survival should the Slug cruiser
intercept us."

"Yes, sir,"
he answered, feeling the question suggested an even lower opinion of
his intelligence than he had thought Harding held.

Project Space Warp existed for the purpose
of sending the Argosy to Sirius by means of the space warp
shuttle and bringing back the Thunderbolt by the same swift
method. The Thunderbolt,
Earth's first near-to-light-speed interstellar ship, was a huge ship;
armed, armored, and invincible. It had been built to meet every
conceivable danger that might be encountered in interstellar
exploration—but the danger had come to the solar system from the
direction of Capella nine years after the departure of the Thunderbolt.
Eight cruisers of the pulpy, ten-foot centipede-like things called
Slugs had methodically destroyed the colonies on Mars and Venus and
established their own outposts there. Earth's ground defenses had held
the enemy at bay beyond the atmosphere for a year but such defense
could not be maintained indefinitely. The Thunderbolt was
needed quickly and its own drives could not bring it back in less than
ten years . . .

"We will go
into the warp well beyond the atmosphere," Harding said. "Transition
cannot be made within an atmosphere. Since a very moderate normal space
velocity of the ship will be transformed into a greater-than-light
velocity when in the warp, it is desirable that we make turn-over and
decelerate to a very low speed before going into the warp."

"Yes, sir," he said. "I was briefed on that
part and I'll bring us as near to a halt as that cruiser will permit."

"There will
be communication between us during the flight," Harding said. "I will
give you further instructions when they become necessary."

He turned
away with an air of dismissal. Engle went to the ladder by the wall. He
climbed up it and through the interroom airlock, closing the airlock
behind him; the routine safety measure in case any single room was
punctured. He went to the control board with a vague resentment gnawing
for the first time at his normally placid good nature.

So far as Harding was concerned—and Garvin,
too—he might as well have been an unusually intelligent baboon.

* * *

Zero hour came and the Argosy
lifted until Earth was a tremendous, curving ball below and the stars
were brilliant points of light in a black sky. The Slug cruiser swung
to intercept him within the first minute of flight but it seemed to
move with unnatural slowness. It should have been driving in at full
speed and it wasn't . . .

"Something's up," Ground Control said. "It's
coming in too slowly."

"I see that," he answered. "It must be
covering something beyond it, in your radar shadow."

It was. When
he was almost free of the last traces of atmosphere he saw the other
cruiser, far out and hidden from Ground Control's radar by the radar
shadow cast by the first one.

He reported, giving its position and course
as given him by the robot astrogating unit.

"We'll have the greatest amount of time if I
make turn-over now and decelerate," he finished.

The voice of Harding came through the
auxiliary speaker:

"Do so."

The Argosy
swung, end for end, and he decelerated. The cruiser behind him
increased its speed, making certain it would be in position to cut off
any return to Earth. The other cruiser altered its course to intersect
the point in space the Argosy would soon occupy, and the Argosy
was between the rapidly closing jaws of a trap.

He made reports to Ground Control at
one-minute intervals. At 11:49 he said:

"Our velocity is approaching zero. We'll be
within range of the second cruiser's blasters in two more minutes."

Harding spoke again to him:

"We'll go into the warp now. Do not
alter the deceleration or the course of the ship while we're in the
warp."

"I won't," he said.

There was a
faint mutter from the auxiliary speaker as Harding gave some
instructions to Garvin. Engle took a last look at the viewscreen; at
blue-green Earth looming large in the center, Orion and Sirius
glittering above it and the sun burning bright and yellow on the right.
It was a scene he had observed many times before, all very familiar and
normal—

The chronometer touched 11:50 and normalcy
vanished.

Earth and sun
and stars fled away from him, altering in appearance as they went,
shrinking, dwindling. The seas and continents of Earth erupted and
shook and boiled before Earth faded and disappeared. The sun changed
from yellow to green to blue, to a tiny point of bright violet light
that raced away into the blackness filling the screen and faded and
disappeared as Earth had done.

Then the
viewscreen was black, utterly, completely, dead black. And the
communicator that had connected him with Ground Control was silent,
without the faintest whisper of background sound or space static.

In the silence the voice of Harding as he
spoke to Garvin came through the speaker; puzzled, incredulous, almost
shocked:

"Our velocity couldn't have been that great—and
the sun receded into the ultraviolet!"

There was the
quick sound of hurrying footsteps then the more distant sound of the
computer's keys being operated at a high rate of speed. He wanted to
ask what had gone wrong but he knew no one would answer him. And it
would be a pointless question—it was obvious from Harding's tone that
he did not know, either.

He had an
unpleasant feeling that Man's first venture into another dimension had
produced catastrophic results. What had caused sun and Earth to
disappear so quickly—and what force had riven and disfigured Earth?

Then he realized the significance of
Harding's statement about the sun receding into the ultraviolet.

If the ship
had been traveling at a high velocity away from the sun, the wave
length of the sun's light would have been increased in proportion to
the speed of the ship. The sun should have disappeared in the long-wave
infrared end of the spectrum, not the short-wave ultraviolet.

With the
thought came the explanation of the way the continents and oceans of
Earth had quivered and seethed. The shifting of the spectrum range had
shortened normally visible rays into invisibly short ultraviolet
radiations while at the same time formerly invisible long infrared
radiations had been shortened into visible wave lengths. There had been
a continuous displacement into and past the ultraviolet and each wave
length would have reflected best from a different place—mountains,
valleys, oceans, deserts, warm areas, cool areas—and the steady
progression into the ultraviolet had revealed each area in quick
succession and given the appearance of agitated movement.

So there was
no catastrophe and everything had a logical explanation. Except how
they could have been approaching a sun that he had seen clearly,
visibly, racing away from them.

"Engle—" The
voice of Harding came through the speaker. "We're going back into
normal space to make another observation. I don't know just where we
are but we're certain to be far from the cruisers. Don't alter our
course or velocity."

"Yes, sir," he said.

They came out
of the warp at 11:53. The communicator burped suddenly and the
viewscreen came to life; a deep, dull red that brightened quickly. A
tiny coal flared up, swelling in size and shifting from red to orange
to yellow—the sun. Earth appeared as a hazy red dot that enlarged and
resolved itself into a planet with distorted continents that trembled
and changed, to resume their natural shapes and colors. Within a few
seconds the sun was shining as ever, Earth loomed large and blue-green
before them and the stars of Orion glittered unchanged beyond. Even
their position in space was the same—they had not moved.

But the Slug cruisers had.

One was very
near and from its forward port came the violet haze that always
preceded a blaster beam. There was no time to escape—no chance at all.
He spoke into the mike, harsh and urgent:

"Into the warp! There's a blaster
beam coming—move!"

There was a
silence from below that seemed to last an eternity, then the sound of a
switch being slapped hastily. At the same time, the violet haze before
the cruiser erupted into blue fire and the blaster beam lanced out at
them.

It struck
somewhere astern. The power output needle swung jerkily as the
generators went out and the emergency batteries took the heavy load of
the shuttle's operation. There was a sensation of falling as the ship's
artificial gravity units ceased functioning. The auxiliary speaker
rattled wordlessly and there was a sound like a hard rush of wind
through it, accompanied by quick bumping sounds.

Then the
speaker was still and there was no sound of any kind as the viewscreen
shifted into the ultraviolet and Earth and stars and sun once again
raced away and disappeared in the blackness.

* * *

A myriad of
lights above the board informed him the generators were destroyed, the
stern section riddled and airless, the emergency batteries damaged and
reduced to quarter charge, the shuttle room punctured and airless.

And, of course, Harding and Garvin were dead.

He felt a
surge of futile anger. It had all been unnecessary. If only they had
not considered him incompetent to be entrusted with anything more than
the ship's operation—if only they had installed an emergency switch for
the shuttle by his control board, there would not have been the
two-second delay following his order and they would have been safely in
the warp before the blaster beam struck.

But they had
not trusted him with responsibility and now he was alone in a space
warp he did not understand; sole and full responsibility for the
shuttle suddenly in his hands.

He considered
his course of action, then got into a pressure suit. Magnets in the
soles of its heavy boots permitted him to walk in the absence of
gravity and he went to the interroom airlock and walked down what had
been the room's wall, then across to the center of its floor.

But for the
fact there was no one in the room, it was as he had last seen it. The
shuttle, computer, and other equipment stood in their orderly positions
with their lighted dials unchanged. Until one looked at the gash ripped
in the hull and saw the stains along its edge where the occupants had
been hurled through it by the escaping air.

He went on to
the next room and the next. The damage increased as he proceeded toward
the stern. The power generators were sliced into ribbons and the
emergency batteries in such condition it seemed a miracle they were
functioning at all. The drives had received the greatest damage; they
were an unrecognizable mass of wreckage.

He made his way back to the shuttle room,
there to appraise his circumstances.

First, he
would have to make the shuttle room livable; get out of the pressure
suit. He would have to question the computer and he could not do that
with the thick, clumsy gloves on his hands.

The job
didn't take long. There were repair plates on the ship and a
quick-hardening plastic spray. He closed the sternward airlock when he
was done and opened the airlock leading to the control room, as well as
the locks beyond. Air filled the shuttle room, with only a minor
overall loss of air pressure. He removed the suit, attached a pair of
magnetic soles to his shoes so he could operate the keys of the
computer without the movements sending him floating away, and went to
it.

He had never
been permitted to touch it before, nor even stand close enough to see
what the keyboard looked like. Now, he saw that the alphabetical
portion of the keyboard was minor compared with the mathematical
portion, many of the symbols strange to him.

The operation
of an interplanetary ship required a certain knowledge of mathematics,
but not the kind used by theoretical physicists. He typed, doubtfully:

ARE YOU CAPABLE OF ANSWERING QUESTIONS
PRESENTED IN NON-MATHEMATICAL FORM?

The word, YES, appeared at once in the
answer panel and relief came to him like the lifting of a heavy burden.

The computer
knew as much about the space warp as Harding or anyone else. It was
connected with his drive controls and instruments and knew how far, how
fast, and in what directions the flight had taken place. It had even
been given blueprints of the ship's construction, in case the structure
of the ship should affect the ship's performance in the warp, and knew
every nut, bolt, plate and dimension in the ship.

There was
supposed to be a certain method of procedure when questioning the
computer. "It knows—but it can't think," Garvin had once said. "It
lacks the initiative to correlate data and arrive at conclusions unless
the procedure of correlation is given it in detail."

Perhaps he could manage to outline some
method of correlation for the computer. The facts of his predicament
were simple enough:

He was in an
unknown medium called "the Space Warp." Something not anticipated
occurred when a ship went into the warp and Harding had not yet solved
the mystery when he died. The physicists in Observation would be able
to find an answer but he could not ask them. The forward movement of
the ship was not transferred with it into the warp and if he emerged
into normal space the waiting Slug cruisers would disintegrate him
before he spoke three words to Observation.

There was a
pencil and a tablet of paper by the computer. He used them to calculate
the time at which the charge in the damaged batteries would reach a
critical low, beyond which the charge would be insufficient to activate
the shuttle.

The answer
was 13:53. He would have to go out of the warp at 13:53 or remain in it
forever. He had a great deal less than two hours in which to act.

He typed the first question to the computer:

WHAT IS THE POSITION OF THIS SHIP RELATIVE
TO NORMAL SPACE?

The answer appeared on the panel at once;
the coordinates of a position more than a light-year toward Ophiuchus.

He stared at
the answer, feeling it must be an error. But it could not be an
error—the computer did not make mistakes. How, then, could the ship
have traveled more than a light-year during its second stay in the warp
when it had not moved at all during the first stay? Had some factor of
the warp unknown to him entered the picture?

As a check he typed another question:

WHAT WAS OUR POSITION, RELATIVE TO NORMAL
SPACE, IMMEDIATELY BEFORE THIS SHIP WAS SHUTTLED BACK OUT OF THE WARP?

The answer was a position light-days toward
Ophiuchus.

He typed: IMPOSSIBLE.

The computer replied: THIS STATEMENT
CONFLICTS WITH PREVIOUS DATA.

He recalled
the importance of keeping the computer free of all faulty or obscure
data and typed quickly: CANCEL CONFLICTING STATEMENT.

CONFLICTING STATEMENT CANCELED, it replied.

He tried
another tack. THIS SHIP EMERGED FROM THE SPACE WARP INTO THE SAME
NORMAL SPACE POSITION IT HAD OCCUPIED BEFORE GOING INTO THE WARP.

He thought
the computer would proceed to give him some sort of an explanation.
Instead, it noncommittally replied: DATA ACKNOWLEDGED.

He typed: EXPLAIN THIS DISCREPANCY BETWEEN
SPACE WARP AND NORMAL SPACE POSITIONS.

It answered: INSUFFICIENT DATA TO ACCOUNT
FOR DISCREPANCY.

He asked: HOW DID YOU DETERMINE OUR PRESENT
POSITION?

It replied: BY TRIANGULATION, BASED ON THE
RECESSION OF EARTH, THE SUN, SIRIUS, ORION, AND OTHER STARS.

BUT THE RECEDING SUN WENT INTO THE
ULTRAVIOLET, he objected.

Again it answered with the noncommittal,
DATA ACKNOWLEDGED.

DID YOU ALREADY HAVE THIS DATA? he asked.

YES.

EXPLAIN WHY THE RECEDING SUN SHIFTED INTO
THE ULTRAVIOLET INSTEAD OF THE INFRARED.

It replied: DATA INSUFFICIENT TO ARRIVE AT
LOGICAL EXPLANATION.

He paused,
pondering his next move. Time was speeding by and he was learning
nothing of value. He would have to move the ship to some place in the
warp where emergence into normal space would not put him under the
blasters of the Slug cruisers. He could not know where to move the ship
until he knew where the ship was at the present. He did not believe it
was in the position given him by the computer, and its original space
warp position had certainly not been the one given by the computer.

The computer
did not have the ability to use its knowledge to explain contradictory
data. It had been ordered to compute their space warp position by
triangulation of the receding sun and stars and was not at all
disturbed by the contradicting shift of the sun into the ultraviolet.
Suppose it had been ordered to calculate their position by computations
based on the shift of the sun's and stars' spectrum into the
ultraviolet?

He asked it:
WHAT IS OUR POSITION, IGNORING THE TRIANGULATION AND BASING YOUR
COMPUTATIONS ON THE SHIFT OF THE SPECTRUMS OF THE SUN AND ORION INTO
THE ULTRAVIOLET?

It gave him
the coordinates of a position almost two light-years toward Orion. The
triangulation computations had shown the ship to be going backward at
many times the speed of light; the spectrum-shift computations showed
it to be going forward with approximately the same speed.

THIS SHIP
CANNOT SIMULTANEOUSLY BE IN TWO POSITIONS THREE LIGHT-YEARS APART.
NEITHER CAN IT SIMULTANEOUSLY BE GOING FORWARD AND BACKWARD.

DATA ACKNOWLEDGED, it agreed.

USE THAT DATA TO EXPLAIN THE CONTRADICTIONS
OF THE TWO POSITIONS YOU COMPUTED.

DATA INSUFFICIENT TO ARRIVE AT LOGICAL
EXPLANATION, it answered.

ARE YOU CERTAIN THERE WAS NO ERROR IN YOUR
CALCULATIONS?

THERE WAS NO ERROR.

DO YOU KNOW THAT IF WE DROPPED BACK INTO
NORMAL SPACE, IT WOULD BE AT NEITHER OF THE POSITIONS YOU GAVE ME?

It replied with the characteristic
single-mindedness: DATA SHOWS OUR TWO POSITIONS TO BE THOSE GIVEN.

He paused
again. He was still getting nowhere while time fled by. How swiftly
less than a hundred minutes could pass when they were all a man had
left to him . . .

The computer
was a genius with the mental initiative of a moronic child. It could
find the answer for him but first he would have to take it by the hand
and lead it in the right direction. To do that he would have to know
more about the warp.

He wrote: EXPLAIN THE NATURE OF THE SPACE
WARP AS SIMPLY AS POSSIBLE AND WITHOUT USING MATHEMATICS HIGHER THAN
ALGEBRA.

It answered at once: THIS CANNOT BE DONE.

The chronometer read 12:30. He typed:

THIS SHIP
WILL HAVE TO RETURN TO NORMAL SPACE NO LATER THAN 13:53. IT MUST BE
MOVED TO A DIFFERENT POSITION WHILE STILL IN THE WARP.

DATA ACKNOWLEDGED, it replied.

THIS SHIP
CANNOT OCCUPY TWO POSITIONS AT THE SAME TIME. YOUR MEMORY FILES SHOULD
CONTAIN SUFFICIENT DATA TO ENABLE YOU TO FIND THE EXPLANATION OF THIS
TWO-POSITION PARADOX. FIND THAT EXPLANATION.

SUBMIT METHOD OF PROCEDURE, it answered.

I DO NOT KNOW HOW. YOU WILL HAVE TO ARRIVE
AT THE EXPLANATION UNAIDED.

THIS CANNOT BE DONE, it replied.

He wrote, with morbid curiosity:

IF YOU DO NOT FIND THE ANSWER UNAIDED YOU
WILL BE DESTROYED ALONG WITH ME AT 13:53. DON'T YOU GIVE A DAMN?

It answered: GIVE A DAMN IS A SEMANTIC
EXPRESSION I DO NOT UNDERSTAND. CLARIFY QUESTION.

He got out of
the computer seat and walked about the room restlessly. He passed by
the transdimensional viewscreen and communicator and pressed the
communicator's signal button. A dial flickered in return, showing his
signal was going out, but there was no sound in response. If only he
could make contact with the brains in Observation—

He was umpty
billion miles east of the sun and umpty billion miles west of the sun.
He was racing faster than light in two different directions at once and
he was sitting motionless under the blasters of two Slug cruisers.

Another thought came to him: even if he
could move the ship while in the warp, where could he go?

He would have
to go far beyond the outer limits of the solar system to escape
detection by the Slug cruisers. And at that distance the sun would be
only a yellow star, incapable of energizing the little solar power
units. He would not live long after the last of the power was drained
from the batteries and the air regeneration equipment ceased
functioning. He would not even dare sleep, toward the last. There were
no convection currents in the air of a ship without gravity, and it was
imperative that the air be circulated constantly. The air circulation
blowers would cease functioning while the ship still contained pure air
but he would have to move about continually to breathe that air. Should
he lie down to sleep he would smother to death in a carbon dioxide
bubble of his own making.

If he managed
to emerge into normal space at some point just outside Earth's
atmosphere, beyond range of the cruisers, his driveless ship would
descend as a blazing meteor. If, by some miracle, he could emerge into
normal space just a few inches above the space-field it would be to
materialize into space already occupied by air. Such a materialization
would be simultaneously fatal to him and to the electronic components
of the shuttle and computer.

And if he did
not move the ship, the Slug cruisers would disintegrate him. He had
four hypothetical choices of his way to die, all equally unpleasant.

He smiled wanly at his reflection in the
bright metal bordering the viewscreen and said, "Brother—you've had it!"

* * *

He went to
the control room, there to brush his fingers across the useless control
buttons and look into the viewscreen that revealed only black and
limitless Nothing.

What was the
warp? Surely it must have definite physical laws of some kind. It was
difficult to imagine any kind of existence—even the black nothing of
the warp—as being utterly without rule or reason. If he knew the laws
of the warp he might find some means of survival hitherto hidden from
him.

There was
only one way he could learn about the warp. He would have to question
the computer and continue questioning it until he learned or until his
time was up.

He returned
to the computer and considered his next question. The computer had
calculated their positions from observations of the sun and other stars
in front of the ship—what would similar calculations based on
observations of the stars behind the ship reveal? He typed:

USE FIRST THE
TRIANGULATION METHOD AND THEN THE SPECTRUM-SHIFT METHOD TO DETERMINE
OUR POSITION FROM OBSERVATIONS MADE OF THE STARS OF OPHIUCHUS.

The answers appeared. They showed the ship
to be simultaneously speeding away from Ophiuchus and toward it.

He asked: DO THESE TWO POSITIONS COINCIDE
WITH THOSE RESULTING FROM THE OBSERVATIONS OF ORION?

YES, it answered.

Was the paradox limited to the line of
flight?

He asked the
computer: WHAT IS OUR POSITION, COURSE AND SPEED AS INDICATED BY THE
STARS AT RIGHT-ANGLES TO OUR FORWARD-BACKWARD COURSE; BY THE STARS OF
URSA MINOR AND CRUX?

The answer
appeared on the panel: the ship was racing sideward through the warp in
two diametrically opposed directions, but at only one-third the speed
with which it was racing forward and backward.

So now the ship had four impossible
positions and two different speeds.

He frowned at
the computer, trying to find some clue in the new data. He noticed,
absently, that the hand of one of the dials was near zero in the red
section of the dial. He had not noticed any of the dials registering in
the danger zone before . . .

He jerked out
of his preoccupation with apprehension and typed: TELL ME IN
NON-TECHNICAL LANGUAGE THE MEANING OF THE HAND NEAR ZERO ON THE DIAL
LABELED MAX. ET. REF.

It answered:
ONE OF MY CIRCUITS WAS DAMAGED BY THE SUDDEN RELEASE OF AIR PRESSURE. I
WILL CEASE FUNCTIONING AT THE END OF FOUR MORE MINUTES OF OPERATION.

He slammed
the master switch to OFF. The lights on the board went out, the various
needles swung to zero, leaving the computer a mindless structure more
than ever resembling an overgrown refrigerator.

Four minutes
more of operation . . . and he had so many
questions to ask before he
could hope to learn enough about the warp to know what he should do. He
had wasted almost an hour of the computer's limited life, leaving it
turned on when he was not using it. If only it had told
him . . . but
it was not the nature of a machine to voluntarily give information.
Besides, the receding hand of the dial was there for him to see. The
computer neither knew nor cared that no one had thought it worthwhile
to teach him the rudiments of its operation and maintenance.

It was 12:52. One hour and one minute left.

He put the thought aside and concentrated on
the problem of finding the key to the paradox.

What
conceivable set of circumstances would cause receding stars to have a
spectrum shift that showed them to be approaching the ship? Or, to
rephrase the question, what conceivable set of circumstances would
cause approaching stars to appear to dwindle in size?

The answer came with startling suddenness
and clarity:

There was no paradox—the ship was expanding.

He considered
the solution, examining it for flaws of logic, and found none. If he
and the ship were expanding the wave length of light would diminish in
proportion to the increasing size of the retinas of his eyes and the
scanner plates of the transdimensional viewscreens: would become
shorter and go into the ultraviolet. At the same time, the increasing
size of himself and the ship would make the Earth and sun relatively
smaller and therefore apparently receding.

The same
theory explained the two different speeds of the ship: its length was
three times its diameter so its longitudinal expansion would proceed at
three times the speed of its cross-sectional expansion.

Everything checked.

How large was the ship now?

He made a
rough calculation and stared almost unbelievingly at the results. He
was a giant, more than a third of a light-year tall, in a ship that was
six light-years long and two light-years in diameter. Far Centauri,
which had required thirty years to reach in the fastest interplanetary
ship, floated seventy-one feet away in the blackness outside the hull.

And the sun and Earth were in the room with
him, going into the shuttle's silvery focal ball.

He would have
to ask the computer to make certain his theory was valid. His time was
too critically short for him to waste any of it with speculation based
on an erroneous theory.

He switched on the computer and it lighted
up again. He typed rapidly:

ASSUME THIS
SHIP TO BE MOTIONLESS AND EXPANDING WOULD THAT THEORY SATISFACTORILY
EXPLAIN ALL THE HITHERTO CONTRADICTORY PHENOMENA?

There was a brief pause as the computer
evaluated its data, then it answered with one word:

YES.

He switched
it off again, to squander none of its short period of usefulness until
he had decided upon what his further questions should be. At last, he
had some grounds for conjecture; had learned something about the warp
the designers of the shuttle had not suspected. Their calculations had
been correct when they showed a ship would travel in the warp at many
times the normal space speed of light. But somewhere some little factor
had been overlooked—or never found—and their precise mathematics had
not indicated that the travel would be produced by expansion.

Nature abhors a vacuum.
And the black, empty warp was a vacuum more perfect than any that
existed in normal space. In the normal space universe there were
millions of stars in the galaxy and millions of galaxies. In the warp
there was utter Nothing. Did the physical laws of the warp demand that
matter be scattered throughout it, in emulation of its rich neighbor in
the adjoining dimension? Was the warp hungry for matter?

He rejected
the thought as fantasy. There was some explanation that the physicists
would eventually find. Perhaps there was a vast size-ratio difference
between the two dimensions; perhaps the warp was far larger than the
normal space universe and some co-universal law demanded that objects
entering it become proportionally larger.

None of that
aspect of his circumstances, however, was of importance. There was only
one prime problem facing him: how to move the ship within less than an
hour to some point in the warp where his emergence into normal space
would result in neither instant nor days-away death and where he would
have the time to try to carry out the responsibility, so suddenly
placed in his hands, of delivering the space warp shuttle to the Thunderbolt.

The
long-range task depended upon his immediate survival. He had to move
the ship, and how did a man move a driveless ship? It might not require
a very large propulsive force—perhaps even an oxygen tank would serve
as a jet. Except that he had none.

He could use
part of the air in the ship. Its sudden release should move the ship.
There was a sun very near: Alpha Centauri. If he had the proper tools,
and the time, he could cut a hole in the hull opposite
Centauri . . . but he had neither the tools nor the
time.

And what good
would it do him if he could emerge into normal space at the desired
distance from Centauri? He would be provided with power for the air
regenerators by the solar power units but not power sufficient to
operate the shuttle. He would breathe, and eat, for a week. Then the
small amount of food on the ship would be gone and he would breathe for
another four or five weeks. And then he would die of starvation and his
driveless ship would continue its slow drift into the sun, taking his
bones and the shuttle with it.

He would have
to go to Sirius and he would have to reach it the first try or never.
If he could emerge into normal space at the proper distance from Sirius
he would have power from it to operate the communicator. The Thunderbolt
would come at once when it received his message and swallow the little Argosy
in its enormous hold. The return to Earth would be the swift one
through the warp and the Slug cruisers, so bold in pursuit of unarmed
interplanetary ships, would quickly cease to exist.

At 13:53
Sirius would be somewhere in or near the bow of the ship. The ship
would not have to be moved more than two thirds of its length—twenty
meters. He could do that by releasing part of the air in the shuttle
room through the sternward airlock.

How much air?

He tried to
remember long-forgotten formulas. So many cubic feet of air at such and
such a pressure when released through an opening of such and such a
diameter would exert a propulsive force
of . . . Hell, he didn't know.
And not even the computer would be able to tell him because there were
so many unknown factors, such as the proportion of the ship's mass lost
to the Slug blasters, the irregular shape of the airlock opening, the
degree of smoothness of its metal . . .

He made
calculations with pencil and paper. He would have to move the ship with
extreme precision. A light-hour short of the proper distance put him
too far from the sun for it to power the communicator, a light-hour
beyond put him in the sun's flaming white heart. One light-hour out of
eight point six light-years was approximately one part out of
seventy-five thousand. He would have to move the ship with an accuracy
of point aught three centimeters—one hundredth of an inch.

One hundredth of an inch!

He laid the
pencil back down, almost numbly. He could never open and close an
airlock and move a mass of thousand of tons with an accuracy of a
hundredth of an inch. The very thought was wildly fantastic.

He was already far closer to Sirius than he
would be if he tried to get any closer. And that was over eight
light-years from it.

He looked at
the chronometer and saw the hands had already reached 13:20.
Thirty-three minutes left to him. Sirius was near—soon it would be in
the bow of the ship—and Sirius was eight point six light-years away.

How could he
move the ship a certain distance accurate to one hundredth of an inch?
He couldn't. The answer was blunt and ugly: he couldn't.

He got up and
walked across the room, feeling like a man who had in quick succession
been condemned, reprieved, recondemned. He had been projected into a
situation for which he had had no preliminary training whatever; had
been made sole custodian and operator of a computer and a space warp
shuttle that he had never before been permitted to touch. He had used
the sound but not at all brilliant mind nature had given him to solve
the riddle of the paradoxes and learn where he was and where he wanted
to go. He had done quite well—he had solved every problem of his
survival and the shuttle's delivery except the last one!

He passed by
the shuttle and stopped to rest his hand on the bright, silvery focal
ball. The solar system would be deep inside the ball; the atoms of the
ball larger than Earth, perhaps, and far more impalpable than the
thinnest air. The Slug cruisers would be in there, infinitesimally
tiny, waiting for him to return . . .

No—faulty
reasoning. The solar system was as it had always been, not diminished
in size and not really in the ball. It was only that two different
points in two different dimensions coincided in the
ball . . .

He saw the answer.

He did not have to move the ship to
Sirius—he had only to move the ball!

* * *

There would be little time, very little
time. First, to see if the warp shuttle was portable—

It was. When
he unfastened the clamp that held it to the stand it lifted up freely,
trailing a heavy cable behind it. He saw it was only a power supply
cable, with a plug that would fit one of the sockets in the bow of the
ship. He left the shuttle floating in the air, leashed by the cable,
and went to the computer. Next, he would have to know if Sirius would
be fully in the ship—

He switched the computer on and typed:

DETERMINE THE
DISTANCE FROM THE CENTER OF THE WARP SHUTTLE'S FOCAL BALL TO THE SPACE
WARP POSITION OF SIRIUS AT 13:53, BASING YOUR COMPUTATIONS ON THE
EXPANDING-SHIP THEORY.

It gave him the answer a moment later:
18.3496 METERS.

He visualized
the distance, from his knowledge of the ship's interior, and saw the
position would be within the forward spare-parts room.

Next, to
learn exactly where in that room he should place the shuttle. He could
not do so by measuring from the present position of the shuttle. The
most precise steel tape would have to be at exactly the right
temperature for such a measurement to be neither too short nor too
long. He had no such tape, and the distance from the focal ball was
only part of the necessary measuring: he would have to measure off a
certain distance and a precisely certain angle from the purely
imaginary central line of the ship's axis to intersect the original
line. Such a measurement would be impossible in the time he had.

He considered
what would be his last question to the computer. The hand was touching
the zero and his question would have to be worded very clearly and
subject to no misinterpretations. There would be no follow-up questions
permitted.

He began typing:

IT IS DESIRED
THAT THIS SHIP EMERGE INTO NORMAL SPACE ONE LIGHT-HOUR THIS SIDE OF
SIRIUS AT 13:53. THIS WILL BE ACCOMPLISHED BY MOVING THE WARP SHUTTLE
TO SUCH A POSITION THAT ITS FOCAL CENTER WILL BE IN A SPACE WARP
POSITION COINCIDING WITH A NORMAL SPACE POSITION ONE LIGHT-HOUR THIS
SIDE OF SIRIUS AT 13:53. CONSIDER ALL FACTORS THAT MIGHT HAVE AFFECTED
THE DIMENSIONS OF THIS SHIP, SUCH AS TEMPERATURE CHANGES PRODUCED BY
OUR NORMAL SPACE ACCELERATION AND DECELERATION, WHEN COMPUTING THE
POSITION OF SIRIUS. THEN DEFINE THAT LOCATION IN RELATION TO THE
STRUCTURAL FEATURES OF THE ROOM'S INTERIOR. DO THIS IN SUCH A MANNER
THAT PLACING THE SHUTTLE IN THE PROPER POSITION WILL REQUIRE THE LEAST
POSSIBLE AMOUNT OF MEASURING DISTANCES AND ANGLES.

It seemed to
take it an unduly long time to answer the question and he waited
restlessly, unpleasantly aware of the hand touching zero and wondering
if the computer's mind was baffled by the question; the mind that
thought best in terms of orderly mathematics and could not know or care
that measurement by protractor and tape would result in a position
fatally far from that described by the neat, rigid figures.

Then the answer appeared, beautifully
concise:

POSITION WILL
BE IN CORNER OF ROOM, 764.2 CENTIMETERS ABOVE FLOOR PLATE, 820
CENTIMETERS PERPENDICULAR TO PANEL AA, 652.05 CENTIMETERS PERPENDICULAR
TO PANEL AB.

The computer
died with an oddly human sigh. Its last act had been to give him the
location of Sirius in such a manner that he could accurately position
the shuttle's focal ball with the aid of the precision measuring
devices in the ship's repair room.

He went to
the shuttle and picked it up in his arms. It was entirely weightless,
and each magnet-clicking step he took toward the bow of the ship
brought Sirius almost half a light-year nearer.

* * *

He squinted against the white glare of
Sirius in the viewscreen as he continued his terse report to the Thunderbolt's
commander: "I have about a week's supply of food. How long will it be
until you reach me?"

The commander's reply came after the pause
caused by the distance involved:

"We'll be
there within three days. Go ahead and eat hearty. But how did you
travel from Earth to Sirius in only two hours? My God, man—what kind of
a drive did that ship have?"

"Why, it
didn't have any drive from the start," he said. "To get here I"—he
frowned thoughtfully—"you might say I walked and carried the ship."

Mother of
Invention

Editor's
note: This story, as with the previous one, is a celebration of
tenacity and perseverance in the face of disaster. The enemy here,
however, is simply nature. But, whether facing death because of
intelligent hostility or accidental misadventure, Godwin's heroes in
this story are cut from the same cloth as all of his "survivors."

The Star Scout's
normal-space speed was far below that of light when she dropped out of
hyperspace beyond the rim of the Thousand Suns. Two last stars lay
beneath her; a binary composed of a small yellow sun and a larger
blue-white sun. Observations were taken and instruments noted the tiny,
shining mote that swung four hundred million miles out from the
blue-white sun. Other instruments determined the new destination and
the Star Scout vanished again into hyperspace.

When she
dropped once more into normal space the shining mote had become a
planet that blazed like a great, radiant gem against the black void
beyond. The planet grew as the hours went by, filling the viewscreen as
Blake braked for the descent into its atmosphere. Land masses and small
oceans were faintly discernible through the fiery, opalescent haze that
blanketed the planet. The image swelled and enlarged, the surplus
running off the four sides of the screen, until the western side of a
continent and a small portion of ocean filled the screen.

The four men
in the deceleration chairs behind Blake, and held as helplessly as he
by the force, watched the image on the viewscreen and the multiple
hands of the air analyzer. The hands began to move as the first thin
sample of air was scooped into the analyzer, then settled into position
a few minutes later.

"Breathable." The gray-haired Taylor spoke
with difficulty against the deceleration.

"Less carbon
dioxide than New Earth," Wilfred commented. Young, short and stocky, he
was far less affected by the deceleration than the elderly ex-dean. "I
can't understand why the spectroscope showed such an incredibly high
percentage of carbon. How could any planet's crust contain such an
excess of carbon?"

"The carbon must
be in the crust, rather than in the atmosphere," Taylor said. "Either
that or the old spectroscope is erroneous. We know the air analyzer is
a new and reliable instrument, but these old Warden spectroscopes, like
men, develop eccentricities with age. If we had a new—"

"Hang on," Blake interrupted, his eyes on
the instruments before him. "I'm going to have to brake a little
harder."

The increased
deceleration settled them all deeper in their chairs and no one spoke
while the section of continent on the viewscreen became a hazy desert
or plain through which ran dim wrinkles. The surplus slid away and the
wrinkle in the center of the screen became a range of mountains. Blake
watched the translucent white dot in the center of the screen that
represented their point of landing and saw it would be along the
eastern side of the mountain range. It would do as well as any other
unknown section of the unknown world and he let the ship hold its
course.

The green
line of a tree-bordered creek appeared, hugging the mountain's
foothills, with the white dot between the creek and the mountain. The
area covered by the dot became a small delta of alluvium from one of
the canyons with a few trees scattered across it. The delta swept up to
meet them, slowing as it came, with the white dot in a flat clearing
that seemed to be of some curiously glittering sand.

The Star Scout
halted ten feet above the ground with a staccato of blasts from the
drive tubes that sent the bright sand swirling in heavy clouds, then it
dropped, cushioned by the drive, to touch the ground with a slight
lurch. The wide tail fins settled in the sand and Blake cut off the
drive.

"And here we are," he remarked.

* * *

The others
were already hurrying to read the data recorded on the instruments;
Taylor and Wilfred, Lenson and Cooke. Blake watched them, interested by
their reactions. None of them had ever been off New Earth before, let
alone on a world hitherto unknown to exist, and they were as excited as
children with a new toy. Taylor, steeped in the academic environment
all his life, was the most enthusiastic of them all. He had once told
Blake: "With all due respect to ivied walls of stone, they can become a
prison. I want to see a few things before I grow any older; deep space
and distant suns and strange worlds—" Lenson, a tall, lean man with the
easy grace of a cat, stood a full head taller than the pink young
Wilfred; a pleasant sort of a man with a slow smile and a tolerant
understanding of the foibles of others.

There was the
indefinable mark of the intellectual upon all three of them and among
them the paradox, Cooke, stood out like a black sheep among white. He
was, Blake knew, fully as intelligent as any of the others; he, like
the others, had been selected by Taylor because his intelligence and
knowledge were considerably greater than the intelligence and knowledge
of the average graduate. But he did not look the part. His dark,
hard-jawed face was not that of an intellectual. Neither were his
broken nose and glittering black eyes. Blake watched him, thinking: He
doesn't belong with the others; he belongs on Old Earth three hundred
years ago, on the deck of a pirate ship with a bloody cutlass in his
hand.

But, for all
his appearance of being a man of sanguine physical violence, Cooke
seemed to be content to do no more than laugh at what his black eyes
found in others and in life, itself.

"Earth-type
in every important respect," Taylor was saying. "Gravity, temperature,
air. No indications of any harmful bacteria—we've been incredibly
fortunate."

"We had about
one chance out of several thousand of this being an Earth-type planet,
didn't we, Red?" Lenson asked, looking over at Blake.

Blake nodded
his red head. "Quite a few thousand, since this isn't a class-G sun. As
Taylor said, we were incredibly lucky to hit the jackpot the very first
try."

"Then let's
get out and look our find over," Cooke said, shifting restlessly.
"Let's get out and romp across the sand and breathe some air we haven't
breathed a million times already."

Taylor looked
questioningly at Blake and Blake nodded. "I don't see any reason why we
shouldn't," he said. He checked the readings on the control board
instruments from long habit and saw the red line that indicated the
drive room's temperature. It was climbing rapidly, and he turned a knob
marked: DRIVE ROOM—OUTSIDE VENTILATION. This would open the ports in
the drive room and start the blower to rushing its great volumes of
cool outside air through the overheated room. "Drive room's mighty hot
from the decelerating," he said as he followed the others to the
elevator. "If we had had a little more money left over, we could have
had full-size coolers installed."

"We were lucky to scrape up enough money to
buy what we have," Wilfred said, dropping the elevator to the cabin
level.

"Our worries are over, now," Cooke declared.
"Anyone who owns an Earth-type world isn't just rich—he's lord of all
he surveys."

* * *

They stopped
at the cabin level only long enough to procure a sidearm each. "You
can't tell what you may run into on an alien planet," Blake said as he
stepped back into the elevator. "No signs of any intelligent, civilized
life, but there might be animals. Sometimes animals don't wait for you
to run into them—they take a deep breath and do their level best to run
into you and tramp you into the ground."

They dropped
to the lower air lock and went through it. The boarding ramp was
dropped to the ground and they descended into the cloud of dust that
still swirled about the ship.

"The blower
is filling the drive room with this dusty air," Blake said, sneezing.
"I didn't realize it was so thick. But the drive room door is shut and
none of this dust can get into the rest of the ship."

They walked
out away from the ship and the dust and stood in the glittering sand,
looking about them curiously. The mouth of the canyon was visible above
them, with the iridescent haze hiding the higher peaks. The trees were
almost like those of the desert regions of New Earth, scattered very
thinly across the mountain's foot, and viciously thorned bushes grew
among them. Some of them, Blake noticed, were in bloom with exotically
beautiful blossoms, ranging from delicate pink to vivid scarlet.

"Pretty," Cooke commented. "A little
dangerous to try to pick one, I'd say; those thorns are Nature's ice
picks."

"We ought to name
it . . . this world," Taylor said. "What shall we
call it?"

"Aurora,"
Lenson said instantly. "She was the goddess of the dawn in ancient
mythology. She was beautiful and she wore a veil. This world is
beautiful and it wears a veil—that shining haze."

"A good
name," Taylor agreed. He looked toward the creek a few hundred feet
away, the creek itself hidden by the green trees that grew thickly
along its banks. "Let's get a sample of the water for analysis."

They walked
toward the creek, each of them unconsciously glancing back at the
towering bulk of the ship as they went their way. Men always did that,
Blake had noticed, when they set down on an alien planet. They would go
out from their ship with their eyes alertly watching for danger ahead,
and they never failed to look back at the ship as though to reassure
themselves that its ponderous mass was still there. It was a normal
thing to do; when a man set down on an alien world he was on his own
and his only link with other humans and other worlds was his ship. It
had brought him there; it, alone, could take him back. A man walked out
from his ship knowing that it would be waiting for him to return, like
a great, patient dog; waiting and ready to hurl itself into space at
his command. Sometimes an alien planet held death for the bipeds who
ventured to explore it, such as the spider-monsters of Nelson 14, and
the ship would be the sword of vengeance for those who lived to fight
their way back to it. The ship would avenge the fallen with fury in the
thunder of its voice and annihilation in its flaming breath, leaving
only drifting ashes where once had been alien things that had made the
mistake of killing a human.

Without their ship, men on a hostile, alien
world would be near-helpless; with their ship, they were invincible
conquerors.

"Flowers,
even," Cooke exclaimed as they neared the trees by the creek. "Red,
blue, yellow, purple; green trees and good air—what more could we offer
colonists?"

* * *

Blake had
been examining the shining sand with increasing curiosity and he
stopped to inspect a bright crystal half the size of his hand. It was
not quartz. He scratched at it with his knife point but could not make
any impression. The same would have been true of quartz, but the
crystal did not have the appearance of quartz. It was alive with
internal fires and the crystal system, such as he could tell from its
rounded, worn form, was distinctly not that of quartz. A little way
farther on he found one that glowed a deep ruby red. He paused to pick
it up, then hurried on at an excited exclamation from Lenson, who had
gone with the others to the edge of the creek. "Look at this!"

"This" was a
crystal at the very edge of the creek's roiling, opalescent waters, the
same deep ruby red as the one he had in his hand but a foot in
diameter. Near it were other, smaller, crystals of blue-white, yellow,
red, blue, green, with the blue-white ones predominating. The sand,
gravel and rocks of the creek bed seemed to be composed exclusively of
the bright mineral.

"Did you ever
see so many quartz crystals in your life?" Lenson was asking the
others. "Or so many different colors? Look at this one—it looks like a
ruby."

Blake failed
to hear the reply of the others, a thought he had had upon first
examining the bright sand suddenly losing the fantastic quality which
had caused him to dismiss it. It all checked, the lack of any mineral
other than the one in the creek bed, the "erroneous" spectroscope that
had shown the world to possess an impossible percentage of carbon, the
high index of refraction possessed by the mineral.

He could find out very quickly.

"Let me have your diamond ring," he said to
Wilfred.

Wilfred
pulled it off his finger and handed it to him with a look of
questioning surprise. Blake scratched the diamond in the ring across
the red crystal he still held in his hand. It left no impression and he
repeated the performance on several other crystals scattered on the
ground near him. On none of them could he produce the faintest scratch
with the diamond in Wilfred's ring, no matter how heavily he bore down.

"The
spectroscope was right," he said, wondering if the others would find it
as hard to believe as he did. "I don't see how it could be, but it is."

"Is what?" Wilfred asked.

"Carbon—all these crystals are diamonds!"

They stared
at him, incredulous. "They couldn't be!" Wilfred objected. Lenson
asked, "How can you tell for certain? Are you sure?"

"The diamond in this ring won't scratch
them," he replied. "The only mineral a diamond can't scratch is another
diamond."

"Then they
really are diamonds?" Taylor said, dropping to his knees to pick up a
deep, bright-blue one that lay beside the ruby-red stone that Lenson
had found. "But the variations in color—are they all diamonds?"

"All those
that are any size," Blake told him. "The softer silica would soon be
reduced to a powder by the grinding action of the diamonds in the creek
bed. Anything of any appreciable size that shines is pretty certain to
be a diamond."

"Hmm-m-m!"
Cooke grunted, and shook his head in amazement. "I'm delighted to hear
it, but it's still hard to believe. Talk about luck—here we sink our
last cent to make this one trip, with the odds all in favor of our
finding nothing, and the first thing we do is hit a double jackpot; not
only an Earth-type—almost—planet but also an unlimited fortune in
diamonds. Such luck is incredible."

"It is incredible," Blake agreed.
"It just isn't the sort of thing that—"

* * *

His voice was
drowned by a thunderous bellow from the ship. He whirled toward it, as
did the others, wild disbelief on the faces of all of them. The same
thought flashed in their minds at the same instant; they were all
five there—there was no one in the ship!

The ship shot
into view, leaping high enough in the air that they could see it above
the trees that surrounded them. A gout of blue-white flame was lashing
from a hole torn in its stern, then the flame vanished and the ship
poised motionlessly for a moment; a great, metal monster halted in
mid-flight and pinned against the background of hazy sky. Then the nose
dropped, the tail went up, and it fell. It fell in a horizontal
position, its impact hidden from them by the trees but the sound of it
loud and terrible to hear; the muffled scream of rending metal shrill
above the ground-jarring thud of the impact.

Blake ran past the others, toward the ship.
He was vaguely aware of someone yelling, "What—" then he broke
through the concealing trees and stopped, appalled by the sight that
met his eyes.

Spaceships
were made to withstand the pull of gravity when at rest on their tail
fins; to withstand the thrust of the drive which, whether accelerating
or decelerating, was only the equivalent of gravitic attraction from
the stern. They were constructed to possess great longitudinal
strength, with no great cross-sectional strength needed. They were not
constructed to withstand a horizontal drop.

The Star Scout was broken in two.

Taylor stopped beside him, white and shaken.

"What . . . what was
it?" someone asked. "What happened . . .  how could
it happen?"

"The
converter blew up," Blake said, his lips feelings oddly stiff and numb.
"It was my fault—I should have had brains enough to think about it
before it was too late."

"What do you mean?" Cooke demanded.

"I left the
blower going, driving cool air into the drive room. The air was loaded
with the dust we stirred up when we landed, and that dust was mainly
diamond dust."

"Oh!" Cooke's eyes were fixed on Blake. "So
that was it. Diamond dust—carbon—catalyst!"

"But how?" Taylor asked. "How could the
diamond dust have gotten into the converter?"

"I don't
know." Blake shook his head. "Maybe the inspection crew forgot to put
the cover back on the fuel inlet—maybe the clamps broke while we were
en route. Anyway, it happened—somehow enough of the dust got into the
fuel inlet to put the amount of catalyst past a critical percentage and
the converter exploded. I shouldn't have started the blower until I
first went in and made a check of the fuel inlet."

"Why?" Cooke asked. "Did you ever hear of
anything like this ever happening before?"

"No."

"Then why
should you have checked? You had no reason to think the fuel inlet
might be open, and neither did you discover this was diamond dust until
about a minute before the explosion. You couldn't have done anything
about it in only one minute."

"I suppose
not," Blake agreed, "but I can't help feeling I should have been more
careful. But that's all water under the bridge; here we are among our
diamonds with no way of getting home—not for a long time at best, I'm
afraid. So let's see just how long that may be, just how great the
damage to the ship is."

"From here,"
Cooke observed as they walked toward the ship, "the situation looks
hopeless. Our ship looks exactly like an overripe watermelon that's had
a bad fall. It's not only broken in two, with a few girders holding the
broken halves together, it's also sort of flattened now, rather than
round like it once was."

"And gaping open at every seam," Wilfred
added.

* * *

They passed
the stern of the ship, where the rim of the ragged hole still glowed
redly with half-molten metal, and Blake motioned toward the deep furrow
blasted in the ground where the ship had stood. "The blast was
directional," he said. "If it hadn't been, it would have destroyed the
lower half of the ship."

"It didn't make such a big hole in the
stern," Cooke remarked with a return of his characteristic optimism. We
could patch it."

"Of course,"
he added bleakly, "we'd only have half a ship to drive, and no
converter to power our drive—if we have a drive left."

They entered
the ship by the gap where it had broken apart, climbing through the
bent and broken steel. The elevator shaft, now a horizontal passageway,
was accessible by climbing up the ragged, torn sheet metal and girders.
Blake made a suggestion to the older Taylor before they climbed up into
the elevator shaft.

"I'd like to
look at the drive room and the repair shop. So, suppose Cooke and I do
that while you and the others see what the damage is in the forward
half of the ship?"

"Anything you say, Red," Taylor answered. "I
have an idea we'll find nothing but wreckage either way."

"First, I'll get some lights for you," Blake
said.

He climbed up
into the elevator shaft and made his way to the supply level of the
ship. The door to the room he entered opened with considerable
difficulty and the scene inside, as revealed by his pocket lighter, was
utter confusion and chaos. He found the locker that held the emergency
lights under a mass of miscellaneous supplies, equipment and broken
containers and took five lights from it.

He went back
to the gap in the ship and tossed three of the lights to the others.
They began to climb up into their own section of the ship and Cooke
scrambled up to where he stood.

"How did it look where you were?" Cooke
asked.

"Just a little untidy," he answered, leading
the way to the drive room.

They forced
the now-horizontal drive room door open and a gush of warm air struck
them. The drive room was fairly well lighted by the hole the
converter's explosion had produced and they appraised the damage, not
caring to drop the ten feet to the new floor.

"That
shapeless gob over there by the hole—that's all that remains of our
converter," Blake said. "The explosion was directional, all right, and
the converter was working at minimum output—if it had been up to as
much as quarter output, it couldn't have remained directional and at a
quarter output the entire ship would have vanished in a blaze of glory."

He flashed
his light down into the shadowy corners of the room and found what he
sought. "Look—see that square metal thing?" he asked. "That's the fuel
inlet cover. Sure enough, it wasn't in place—they must have forgotten
to tighten down the clamps."

"And we paid them to do that?" Cooke
asked bitterly, flashing his own light over the cover.

* * *

Blake moved
his light slowly over the drive assembly. Originally equipped with the
old Harding atomic drive, the transformation to the hyperspace drive
had—for financial reasons—been confined to the installation of the
space-shift units and the installation of the nuclear converter to
supply the enormous energy required by the hyperspace units to wrench
the ship from normal space into hyperspace. Although a modern drive
would have been preferred, their limited capital had forced them to
compromise by leaving the atomic rocket drive intact and modifying its
fuel chambers to accept the tailor-made fuel prepared for it by the
converter.

"How does it look?" Cooke asked. "I
can't see where the blast did any damage to it. Am I right?"

"I think you
are—the directional blast missed it and its construction was rugged
enough that the fall didn't affect it. This is more than I had dared
hope for—we can alter those fuel chambers back to the way they were and
we have a rocket drive again.

"If," he added, "we can find uranium."

"And then
what? Won't we be a little bit old and feeble by the time we get home
through normal space, thirty thousand years from now?"

"Well, I
don't know of any outpost of civilization we can reach in less than two
hundred years," Blake said, "which would be too far to do us any good.
However, to get anywhere in hyperspace, we still have to have a drive,
you know. We have to have a drive to get off this planet so we can get
in hyperspace in the first place."

"Once we fix
up our drive and get away from here—how do we get into hyperspace with
no converter to power the space-shift units?" Cooke asked.

"That is the
question, and I don't know the answer. But I was taking first things
first. If we can find uranium—and we surely can—we can soon solve every
problem but that one."

He passed his
light over the squat generator that had served to supply the ship with
electrical power before the installation of the converter. It hung by
two of its mounting bolts from the vertical floor, but it seemed
undamaged.

"There's our
power—if we had some way to store it," he said. "If we could devise a
perfect condenser of unlimited capacity, we could accumulate enough
power to give the space-shift units the wallop that would jump us into
hyperspace. Anyway, whatever we do, we're going to need that generator.
We're going to need electrical power for operating the lathe—if it
isn't smashed beyond repair—welding, perhaps even for refining metals
with some sort of an electric furnace."

"How do we power the generator?" Cooke asked.

"That can be done," Blake said. "Provided we
have a lathe to build what we want."

He turned
away from the drive room without further explanation and Cooke followed
him to the repair shop. As with all other rooms in the ship's new
position, the door was horizontal, but the repair shop was smaller than
the drive room and it was no more than a six-foot drop to the new
floor. Blake saw, with a sense of vast relief, that the lathe was still
solidly bolted to the vertical floor. The other equipment was a jumbled
mass on the floor and they poked into it curiously for a few minutes.

"Not much in
the way of broken stuff here," Cooke said. "Steel tools seem to stand
up pretty good when a ship does a belly-whopper. I hope the transmitter
fared as well."

"That's
something we're all hoping, but you're the first one to speak out loud
about it," Blake said. "I don't see how it could have survived—a
transmitter is big, heavy and fragile."

"Neither do I. I suppose that's why no one
dared even say he hoped it wouldn't be smashed."

"Let's see
about our truck," Blake said. "If the transmitter is smashed beyond
repair, we'll have to try to find uranium and we'll stand little chance
of prospecting these ranges on foot."

Again, luck
had been with them. The little truck was unharmed but for a crumpled
fender. Some of its bright red enamel had been knocked off by the fall
of the diamond drill rods but the diamond drill, itself, seemed
untouched.

"And that covers the important things in our
end of the ship," Blake said. "Let's see what luck the others had."

* * *

Wilfred was
just descending from the broken elevator shaft, carrying a load of food
and cooking utensils. "We'll camp out for a while, it looks like," he
said. "With the new floors knee deep in wreckage and the doors six feet
to ten feet up on the walls, living in the ship would be just a little
inconvenient."

"We'll have
to cut a passageway along the bottom side of the ship's hull," Blake
said. "We can dodge the girders and just cut through the old flooring."

"How did it look up there?" Cooke asked.
"What about the transmitter?"

"We won't send any SOS," Wilfred said
flatly. "The transmitter tubes are smashed to fragments."

"I was afraid they would be," Blake said.
"Do the others need help with their loads?"

"They could use some help, all right,"
Wilfred said, climbing down with his own.

They crossed
the gap and met Lenson and Taylor in the elevator shaft, each with a
burden of sleeping bags and various other things needed for a
comfortable night outside. Blake and Cooke relieved them of part of
their loads and the four of them carried their burdens to the clean,
sandy spot near one of the trees where Wilfred had set up their
"kitchen."

Blake dropped his load and spoke to Taylor.
"So the transmitter is ruined?" he asked.

"The final power stage is," Taylor replied.
"The drive stage took the fall pretty well and we could couple that in,
except—"

"Except what?"

"In normal
space that would give us a range of around a billion miles—no more than
halfway to our sun's yellow companion. Useless."

"Oh—so we don't even get the chance to use
our little driver stage in hyperspace?"

"The
space-shift signal transformers are complete wreckage. Any signal we
sent, even if we had our final power stage intact, would take three
lifetimes to reach the nearest outpost through normal space. We could
send a signal through hyperspace, with our drive stage, for sixty
thousand billion miles—but the hyperspace transformers are broken and
smashed and we could never, with our resources, replace them. So that
brings up the question—what now?"

"Our
space-shift units in the drive room seem to be undamaged and it
wouldn't be difficult to change the rocket fuel chambers again so that
we can lift the ship with an uranium fuel," Blake answered. "And we do
have to lift the ship to make the jump into hyperspace under any
circumstances. If uranium is to be found, we'll only have the one big
problem to solve—and it's really big—how to produce enough power to
activate the space-shift units. If necessity forced us to, I have an
idea we might even make another converter. Of course, our success would
be an uncertain thing and it would require years of work as well as
luck, but it would be better than just giving up—at least, we would be
trying."

He glanced
toward the nearby canyon mouth. "Uranium is the vital essential, no
matter what we do. I'm going to take a little walk while Wilfred fixes
something to eat—I want to see what the formations look like, and if
they offer any encouragement."

"And then
we'll talk over our plans after we eat," Taylor said. "A man takes a
more optimistic view of his circumstances when is stomach is full,
anyway."

* * *

Blake walked
until he came to the first bank of rock and gravel, then examined what
he found with considerable muttering. The formations represented by the
rocks that had washed down out of the canyon were almost like those of
any Earth-type planet, with one incredible exception; every rock,
whether near-granite, near-rhyolite, near-andesite, whether high or low
in silica content, contained almost the same high percentage of diamond
crystal inclusions. In the coarse-grained rocks, such as the
near-granites, the diamond crystals were as large as the end of his
little finger, while the fine-grained near-rhyolites contained the
diamonds as minute inclusions. But, whether the rock was fine- or
coarse-grained, the diamond was present in all in approximately the
same high percentage.

He had just
come upon his first specimen of Aurora's animal life when he heard the
distant call of Wilfred announcing dinner. He ignored the call for a
moment, walking closer to the small, brown-furred animal. It was about
the size of a squirrel, with a round, dark-eyed face and a fat little
stomach that it scratched in an absent manner as it solemnly watched
his approach. It let him reach within six inches of it before it
scampered a few feet farther away from him, to stop and resume its
solemn staring.

Wilfred
called again and he turned back toward camp, the little animal staring
after him as he went. Apparently they would have no ferocious carnivora
to contend with on Aurora—the little animal had been without fear of
him, or virtually so. It had not behaved in the manner of an animal
accustomed to the law of "Run—or be eaten!"

* * *

Dishes were
scrubbed with a generous amount of sand and a small amount of water
after the meal was over, then Taylor began the discussion of their
circumstances.

"Our simplest
solution would have been to send out an SOS," he said. "We could have
contacted a ship easily enough on the emergency band—possibly one no
more than a day or so from here."

"A day or so
by hyperspace—two hundred years or more in normal space," Cooke
commented. "A man doesn't really realize how great galactic distances
are until he gets stuck thirty thousand light-years from home, does he?"

Lenson sighed
and gave the broken ship a dark look. "I'm already beginning to acquire
an unpleasant comprehension of the true magnitude of galactic
distances."

"It seems to
me that we have only two alternatives," Blake said. "We have to get
either our ship or an SOS into hyperspace. We have the power to send
the SOS through hyperspace, but the space-shift transformer that would
send our signal into hyperspace is broken. The space-shift units that
would send our ship into hyperspace are undamaged—but we haven't the
power they would have to have. Which do we want to try to do—build a
nuclear converter and take our ship back, or make a space-shift
transformer for the transmission of an SOS?"

"We would not
only have to make the transformer that would send our signal into
hyperspace, we'd also have to replace the broken power stage of the
transmitter," Taylor said. "The driver stage, even in hyperspace, would
have a range so limited that it wouldn't reach the nearest outpost.
Unless a ship happened to wander within its range, its signals would
never be picked up. And Space being the size it is, that might not
occur within our lifetimes."

"You think it
would be useless to attempt to duplicate the space-shift signal
transformer and the transmitter tubes?" Wilfred asked.

"I'm
convinced that their duplication is beyond us," Taylor said. "They
require special alloys as well as rare gases. They require delicate
precision assembly; in fact, the machines that assemble them would
require years of labor to build."

"We already
have the means of putting our ship into hyperspace," Blake said. "All
we need is the power. It seems to me we could more easily figure out a
method of accumulating that power than we could build precision
electronic equipment. After all, all we need is a tremendous store of
energy to power our jump into hyperspace—a lot of energy for a short
period. The drop back into normal space doesn't require but a fraction
of that power."

"If there is no hope of sending an SOS, then
we haven't any choice but to do that, have we?" Wilfred asked.

"I think we can safely say that the hope of
sending an SOS is nil," Taylor said.

None of the others voiced any disagreement
and Blake said:

"If we can
find uranium, we won't have much trouble changing the fuel chambers to
suit the fuel. We probably will have to spend more time making the
ship—or the stern half of it—air-tight again than anything else. At any
rate, the whole thing is hopeless unless we do rig up an atomic drive.
We have to lift our ship into space to slip it into hyperspace and
there's no use conjecturing on how we're going to take the second step
until we know we can take the first step."

No one spoke
for a few seconds, then Taylor said, "I suppose we agree on that, then.
Now, the important thing is; can we find the uranium?" He looked at
Blake. "How about it—what do you think of the possibilities?"

"I couldn't
say," Blake answered. "I haven't seen any of this country, yet. I saw
no evidence of metallic ores in the rocks washed down out of that
canyon, but we could hardly expect to discover uranium that easily."

"What did you find?" Cooke asked.

"These rock
formations are similar to Earth-type formations, and the silica content
is about normal—if a person discounts the diamond present. The diamond
is present in all formations, whether high or low in silica, usually as
small to minute crystals. The larger crystals we saw must have come
from pegmatitic formations."

"Which are—?" Cooke asked.

"Extremely
coarse-grained bodies of rock. Minerals in pegmatitic form as unusually
large crystals. On Charon we found a perfect quartz crystal that
weighed a thousand pounds in a pegmatitic formation. Cummings—an old
white-haired fellow who had been born on Old Earth—said that crystals
much larger than that had been found on Old Earth in the past.

"There's
something else about pegmatites," he added. "Pitchblende is sometimes
found in pegmatitic formations. So, it may possibly be that the uranium
ore we find—if we find any—will be in the same formation that these
diamond boulders come from."

"Another
thing—" Taylor said, thoughtfully. "We'll have to have cadmium. Cadmium
and uranium—if we can find the two ores and refine them, we can alter
the drive."

"Which will take how long—just as a wild
guess?" Lenson asked.

Taylor smiled. "That's like asking how high
is up. But, just as an optimistic guess, I'd say from one to two years."

Wilfred
nodded his head in agreement. "I'd say that was about right—not less
than one and not more than two years. We're lucky in that we have a
lathe and other tools to work with, a truck to use for prospecting and
all the mining equipment we need to mine the ore after we find it."

"The first
thing will be to fix up a place to live," Taylor said, pulling up his
pants leg to rub a skinned and bruised knee. "Climbing in and out of
those rooms as we did this afternoon is hard work, and painful."

"Red
suggested cutting a passageway along the bottom of the hull—using the
bottom of the hull as the floor," Wilfred said. "That shouldn't take
long. We can rearrange everything to accommodate the new floor and
we'll certainly have to take the lathe down off the wall and set it up
again on the floor."

* * *

Their first
Aurorian sunset stopped all talk of future operations a few minutes
later. The sun was invisible behind some distant range, its last rays
throwing lances of ruby, emerald and gold across the scintillating
rainbow field that was the western sky. The lances shifted as they
watched, widening and quivering with the splendor of their
ever-changing colors until they rippled across the sky like the banners
of some celestial fairyland.

Lenson was
the first to speak, after the colors began to fade. "I never saw
anything like that," he said, almost awe in his voice.

"Nor I,"
Cooke said, sprawling back against his sleeping bag. "That looks
exactly the way my mother used to tell me heaven would look—before she
decided I'd never go there, anyway."

"Probably
caused by several different layers of air currents, traveling at
different speeds and carrying varying amounts of dust and water vapor,"
Wilfred offered.

"Huh!" Cooke snorted. "Do you always have to
be so pragmatic and practical?"

"Oh, it was
impressive, I'll admit, but there was a simple, everyday reason for its
beauty—the one I suggested, likely. Beautiful sunsets on Earth-type
planets are due to water vapor and impurities in the atmosphere."

"Then, so
long as we're stuck here, let's be grateful that our atmosphere does
contain these beautiful-sunset producing impurities," Lenson said.

* * *

The afterglow
faded from the sky and the Thousand Suns revealed themselves; a field
of bright points of light shining through the haze with sufficient
brilliance to throw dim shadows along the ground.

"We'll have
to make observations," Taylor remarked. "I'll start making daily
observations of our sun and its companion. We know the days here are
about twenty-four hours long, but we don't know whether it's spring or
summer—or possibly this world has no seasonal inclination of the poles."

"I think it's
spring," Blake said. "The higher peaks we saw through the haze were
covered with snow. Of course, that's not very conclusive evidence."

"Let's hope
it's spring," Taylor said. "We know that our year is about six
Earth-years in length and, with luck, we may be able to get away from
here before winter comes."

There was a
little more talk of their plans; then, one by one, they spread out
their sleeping bags and crawled in. Blake, the last to retire, sat for
a while watching the golden field the Thousand Suns made of the haze,
reaching from the western horizon halfway to the zenith. To the east
the sky was dead black, with no star to relieve it. There were none in
that direction; not for a long, long way. Aurora had recently passed
the farthest point from the Thousand Suns in her orbit; a straight line
would pass from her to her sun, to close by the blue-white sun's yellow
companion, then on into the Thousand Suns.

Blake
remarked, just before he went to sleep, "You'll see what utter darkness
is before morning—after the Thousand Suns go down and before the sun
comes up."

* * *

It required
fifteen days to get the ship even partly in condition for living. There
was the passage to be cut, doors to be fitted to keep out the fine dust
stirred up by the afternoon winds, the ship's water tank to be equipped
with sediment filters, the tables and chairs to be unbolted from their
incongruous positions on what had become the walls, the truck to be
lowered out of the ship—an endless number of things to be done.

Blake and
Cooke left on the morning of the sixteenth day, leaving the other three
to continue the work on and in the ship. They watched Blake and Cooke
depart with a certain wistfulness and Cooke remarked, as they ground
away through the sand, "I think all would have liked to go with us.
They'll have nothing but hard work while we're out enjoying the fresh
air and new scenery."

"You may change your mind about 'enjoying'
it," Blake said. "Walking can be hard work when you do it all day."

"What's this truck for?" Cooke wanted to
know.

"To haul our stuff. We won't use it any more
than we have to—we can make new shoes by hand but we can't make a new
truck."

"Do you think the diamond dust will be that
bad?"

"I hope we
find diamond dust and sand are the exceptions rather than the rule, but
all evidence shows the diamond to be present everywhere. If so, we'll
have to use the truck as little as possible—if we find the ores we
want, then the truck will be indispensable for hauling them to the
ship. Whatever we have to have for refining the ores will have to be at
the ship—or we'll have to haul a good deal of material and equipment to
the ore. Either way, we'll have to have this truck, so we'd better take
care of it."

"I can see
your point," Cooke agreed, "but I doubt that we'll wear it out very
fast. After all, this thing was made to use in country where there was
silica sand, and diamond is less than fifty per cent harder than
silica."

"If you were correct in that surmise, I
wouldn't be worried," Blake said.

"What do you
mean—'if'?" Cooke demanded. "Quartz has a hardness of seven and diamond
has a hardness of ten. That's less than fifty per cent harder, isn't
it?"

Blake sighed.
"The true and unpleasant facts are these: Diamond is said to have a
hardness of ten because it's the only thing harder than corundum's
nine. A mineralogist named Woodell, a long time ago and back on Old
Earth, determined the true hardness of diamond in comparison with
quartz's seven and corundum's nine. The actual hardness of diamond
ranges from a fraction over thirty-six to a fraction over forty-two."

"Oh." Cooke
was thoughtfully silent for a while. "Then we can count on this diamond
sand and dust being six times harder than the sand and dust this truck
was made to resist."

"Six times harder, and also tougher."

* * *

They lurched
across a small gulch and onto a silty flat, winding to avoid the thorn
bushes that were scattered across it. The morning air was still and the
dust they raised followed them in a dense cloud, coating their faces
and clothing an iridescent gray, gritting harshly wherever two parts of
metal moved together, such as the driving controls. They had traveled
an hour, enclosed in the cloud of destructive dust, when Blake said, "I
wonder—"

"You wonder what?" Cooke asked, his black
eyes made blacker by the gray dust that covered his face.

"I wonder if this diamond dust hasn't got us
behind an eight-ball—a big, shiny eight-ball named Aurora."

They worked
their way along the southern foot of the mountain, toward the high
plateau to the east where the creek might have its headwaters. They
prospected the canyons one by one, both by carrying back samples of the
bedrock gravels to the truck, to pan for particles of the heavy uranium
and cadmium ores they sought, and by use of the Geiger counters they
each carried. Cooke ran the gauntlet from his first feeling of carefree
adventure to a condition of sore, aching legs and blistered hands.
Their picks and shovels wore away with amazing rapidity, even from
digging in the comparatively loose gravels of the canyon beds, and they
found nothing.

They reached
the eastern end of the range, a high, bleak plateau where the creek had
its headwaters and where the nights were chilly with the breezes from
the slowly melting snowbanks. There was nothing there but barren flow
rocks and the inevitable diamond so they turned and worked their way
back down the northern side of the range. Cooke's soft muscles hardened
and his habitual optimism returned, undaunted by the lack of
heavy-metal concentrates in the samples they panned or by the Geiger
counters that remained silent but for the intermittent clicking of the
natural background count.

Twice they
found veins of soft iron oxide and once they found a narrow vein of
low-grade copper ore but the mountain seemed devoid of any uranium or
of any lead-zinc ore that might contain the cadmium they needed.

Blake cared
for the little truck with painstaking attention, doing everything
possible to keep the diamond dust out of its moving parts. But no way
could be devised to keep the dust out of such moving parts as the brake
drums, the ball and socket of the front-wheel drive, the control-lever
linkage, the winch they were forced to use so many times, and many
other moving parts. The air filter caused him more worry than anything
else. He knew a certain amount of the fine dust was getting past the
filter and into the motor, and there was nothing he could do about it.
It was a good filter, made to protect an engine against silica dust;
any silica dust fine enough to get past the filter would be too fine to
cause any damage before it was reduced to an impalpable powder. But the
diamond dust it admitted was six times harder than silica, as well as
tougher—the diamond dust would refuse to be reduced to a harmless,
impalpable powder.

They rounded
the west end of the range early on the thirtieth day and saw the green
line of the creek a mile away. The truck labored noisily as Blake
turned it up a gentle grade toward the mouth of a narrow canyon and he
shifted into a lower gear.

"It's a good
thing we're only five miles from camp," Cooke said. "You're about three
gears lower than you would be if this truck was in the same condition
it was in when we left camp thirty days ago."

"I'm afraid
this will be its last trip—I've tried to baby it along and keep the
dust out of it, but you just can't enclose a machine in a dust-proof
wrapper."

* * *

They left the
truck on the smooth alluvial fan just outside the canyon's narrow
portal and began the by now repetitious process of prospecting the
canyon. It was late in the afternoon when they found their first
cadmium; a thin gray seam of metallic sulfide in a rock washed down
from higher on the canyon's wall.

"The gray sulfide is lead and zinc," Blake
said. "Those little yellowish-orange spots in it are cadmium sulfide."

Cooke shook his head. "The percentage of
cadmium is so slight—and the lead and zinc is only a thin seam."

"It might
have wider portions where it's in place," Blake said, looking up the
steeply sloping canyon's side. "It shouldn't be hard to find."

They located
it in place an hour later, halfway up the canyon's side, but it was
only a short, narrow seam. Blake tried unsuccessfully to dig into it
with his prospector's pick, the point of which had long since been worn
to a blunt stub. Cooke, pounding vainly at the tight-grained formation
beside him, stopped to light a cigarette and wipe the sweat from his
face.

"We have
acids and glycerin," he said. "If we only had a few holes drilled in
this rock, we could fill them with nitroglycerine."

"There's a
chance in a thousand that it might get wider at a greater depth," Blake
said, ceasing his own futile pounding. "But how do we drill holes in
it?"

"The diamond drill—" Cooke began, then his
voice trailed off.

"Exactly," Blake said, seeing what was
suddenly in Cooke's mind. "How do we drill diamond-bearing rock with a
diamond drill?"

"How did we
intend to drill holes for mining when we started out thirty days ago? I
won't argue about the diamond drill—I can't see how it could drill
through diamond-bearing rock—but why didn't we think of all that
before?"

"We didn't
know for sure that all formations carried the same high percentage of
diamond," Blake pointed out. "We hoped such wouldn't be the case,
remember?"

"What a world
to live on!" Cooke sighed. "Everything we try to do is foiled by
diamonds. How can a superabundance of just one element manage to cause
so much grief?"

"Well"—Blake
shook his empty canteen and glanced to the west where the sun had
disappeared behind the canyon wall—"we can't do any more here, now, so
we might as well get on back to the truck and have something to eat
before dark."

Cooke led the
way to the bed of the canyon, his blithe spirits returned sufficiently
for him to be whistling by the time they reached it. They were halfway
to the canyon's portal when it became suddenly darker, as though a
heavy cloud had covered the sun. It grew darker, although Blake's watch
said the sun was not quite ready to set, and when they were almost to
the portal's cliffs, where the canyon suddenly opened out upon the
desert, he became aware of a low roar above the crunching of his
footsteps in the diamond sand. It came from the desert beyond the
portal; a sound like a distant waterfall.

Cooke, two
hundred feet ahead of him, was still whistling cheerily and had
obviously not heard it. Blake increased his pace and was almost up with
him when Cooke stepped beyond the cliffs that still hid the desert from
Blake.

Cooke
stopped, then, a look of amazement on his face, staring in the
direction of their truck and the desert beyond. Then he wheeled to
shout back at Blake, "What is it?"

Blake was beside him a few seconds later and
he saw the source of the sound he had heard.

It was a mile
away; a great, high black wall rushing toward them, its towering crest
lost in the atmospheric haze. It was racing toward them at perhaps
fifty miles an hour, roaring with a deep, sustained roar and the sheer
front of it seething and boiling.

"What—?"
Cooke began, but Blake cut him off with a terse, "Come on!" He ran
toward the truck, estimating the distance they must cover before the
black wall reached them. The truck was not far—but the wall was
traveling at least fifty miles an hour.

"Is it—"
Cooke began again, then gave up as a gust of wind whipped sand in his
mouth and devoted his full attention to keeping up with the fleet Blake.

They reached
the truck with the black wall looming almost upon them and jumped
inside, slamming the doors. "Sandstorm," Blake said, as Cooke started
to ask again. A harder gust of wind lashed at the truck, stinging their
faces with sand. "Close your window," Blake said as he cranked up his
own. "Those baby zephyrs are the advance guard. I think we're in for a
real one."

* * *

The black
wall struck a moment later with a thunderous roaring and screaming,
smashing at the little truck with savage blows and enveloping them in
darkness. Sand and gravel slashed against the windows with a sharp, dry
hiss and, above the roar of the wind, Blake could hear a violent
thumping as the wind found an empty and unfastened water can in the bed
of the truck and slammed it back and forth. The pounding ceased
abruptly and Blake had a mental vision of their water can going in
kangaroo leaps across the mountainside.

" . . . long do you
think?" Cooke shouted through the darkness.

"What?" Blake asked, shouting, himself, to
be heard above the howl and roar of the storm.

"How long do you think this will last?"

"Don't know. Sometimes a sandstorm will last
an hour, sometimes ten hours."

He felt
inside the utility box under the dash and found a flashlight. Its beam
had the appearance of a three-dimensional cone in the dust-filled air
of the cab.

"How did that get in here so quick?" Cooke
demanded.

"It comes in
every little crack and crevice," Blake answered, flashing the light
through the windshield. The light revealed the dust and sand flowing
past them with incredible speed. There were bright gleams in the
torrent of air and sand as larger pieces of diamond reflected the light
for a microsecond and bits of dead vegetation were being carried along.

Blake shut
off the light and made himself as comfortable as possible in his half
of the small cab. "You might as well try to make your mind a contented
blank for an indefinite number of hours," he advised.

Cooke
followed his advice, grumbling at the lack of leg room. He was asleep
within fifteen minutes; a fact Blake confirmed by a quick flash of the
light. Blake sighed enviously and composed himself for the hours of
futile thinking and worrying that would be his own lot until sleep
came. There was, in the genial Cooke's philosophy, a blithe unconcern
for "Unborn Tomorrow and Dead Yesterday." But, while he envied Cooke
for his carefree attitude, he wondered if it would be of sufficient
stability to survive the eventual recognition of a not-so-remote
possibility—that all their efforts to leave their shining prison might
prove to be futile.

The wind was
shaking the truck and roaring with undiminished fury when he finally
went to sleep, still worrying about the diamond dust that was being
driven into every tiny crack about the truck wherever two parts of
metal moved against each other. Silica, over a period of time, would
ruin machinery. This was diamond, not silica; this had a hardness of
forty-two, not seven—

He awoke at
dawn, stiff and cramped, with Cooke's snoring loud in the silence that
had replaced the storm. He jabbed an ungentle elbow into Cooke's ribs.
"Wake up—the storm is over."

"Huh?" Cooke blinked and straightened with a
moan. "My leg's been asleep so long it—Hey! What happened to our
windows?"

"We now have
frosted glass all around," Blake said, rolling down the opaque window
on his own side. "Diamond sand is really tough on glass."

He stepped
out of the truck into the calm morning air and looked at the damage.
Cooke came around from the other side and stared open-mouthed at the
bright, gleaming metal side of the truck where, before, there had been
a thick coat of hard red enamel.

"It looks
like we need a new paint job," he said at last. "And we'll have to
knock a hole in the windshield to see how to drive to camp."

Blake lifted
the motor cover and ran a finger through the blanket of diamond dust
that covered every part of the motor. It was heaped on more thickly
where there had been grease or oil to hold it.

"What do we do about that?" Cooke asked.

"Nothing. If
we should try to wipe it off, it would cause it to work in deeper. We
can only let it stay and hope the grease will keep most of it from
getting any deeper into the moving parts."

"I wonder how they made out at camp?" Cooke
asked as Blake lowered the motor cover.

"I was
wondering the same thing. We'd better let the canyons to be prospected
between here and camp wait for the time being. They're all near enough
to camp that we can walk out to look at them, anyway."

They removed
the opaque windshield and got under way, the steering wheel and
gearshift lever grating harshly. They saw something shining
metallically a half mile farther on and it proved to be their errant
water can; lodged beneath a thorn bush, stripped of its enamel and
polished to a high luster.

* * *

Taylor and
Lenson were waiting outside the ship when they drove up. The question
and hope was plain to be seen on Lenson's face but there seemed an
almost imperceptible anxiety tingeing the questioning look on Taylor's
face.

Blake shut off the motor and climbed out.
"Nothing," he said. "Not a sign of uranium."

Lenson's face
reflected a natural disappointment but Taylor seemed to have something
on his mind more serious than simple disappointment. "Then there's no
hope of finding uranium in this range?" he asked.

"There was no
indication whatever that there is any such thing anywhere along the
range," Blake answered. He looked toward the ship. "Where's Wilfred?"

"He left
early to spend the day prospecting. We have the ship pretty well fixed
up inside and there hasn't been much to do the past few days. Now—how
about other minerals? Did you find anything at all?"

"A thin seam
of lead-zinc ore that carries a small percentage of cadmium. But I
don't think the diamond drill could ever drill through the rock it's
in."

Lenson
grinned sourly. "I know it can't," he said. "We no longer have a
diamond drill. While you were gone I got to looking around and found a
formation that carried zircons. Since we'll need zirconium, we all
three agreed it would be a good idea to set up the drill, put down some
holes and blast out some zirconium-bearing ore. We set the drill up
yesterday morning. By mid-afternoon we had worn out six of our eight
diamond bits and were down four inches. I came back to the ship late in
the afternoon to get some more oil for the drill's motor—we've been
using it and it was getting worn—and the storm hit before I could get
back to the drill. I had left the drill running; its progress was so
slow that it didn't need any attention. I got lost in the darkness of
the storm and finally had to hole up behind an outcropping until
morning. Then I saw where I was and went on to the drill. I found the
sand blowing into it while it was running had ruined it. Not only the
motor, but the gears of the drill, itself."

"It was no loss, I'm afraid," Blake said.
"All the formations Cooke and I saw carried the same high percentage of
diamond."

"But suppose
we should find some ore—how do we drill it without a drill?" Cooke
asked. "That is, suppose we find some ore that isn't so hard and filled
with diamonds as to make drilling impossible."

"In that
case, we'd probably find we could fix up the old drill after all,"
Blake said. He turned to Lenson. "You said you had been using the
drill's motor for something else—what was that?"

"Water pump,"
Lenson said. "It seemed like a foolish waste of effort and time to
carry water to the ship's tanks in buckets so we took the little
high-speed water pump that we had brought along for the very purpose of
filling the ship's tanks, took the motor off the drill—we weren't using
the drill then—stripped enough tubing out of the ship's air circulating
system to reach to the creek and set up our pump." He grinned again.
"It lasted long enough to fill one tank, then the bearings went out. We
fixed it and a week later, when we used it again, the bearings went out
again. Finally, the last time we used it, the impellers were half
abraded away as well as the bearings and shafting cut out."

"And the motor was wearing out, too?"

Lenson
nodded. "The bank was dry and sandy where we set the pump and breezes
were always stirring up little clouds of dust. The motor was in pretty
bad shape before it soaked through our thick skulls that the dust was
pure diamond dust and not at all as harmless as it looked."

"So now
you're back to carrying water in buckets?" Cooke observed. "And Red and
I are going to be back to walking. This is a cruel world to anyone
accustomed to mechanized assistance."

"About finding uranium—" Taylor said, the
aura of worry still about him. "What would you suggest next?"

"We can hike
across the desert to the nearest range and see what we can find," Blake
said. "It will be slow, doing it all on foot, but we have a boundless
supply of two things on this world—time and diamonds."

"No." Taylor shook his head. "Time is the
very thing we don't
have. I haven't said anything to Len or Wilfred about it yet. I wanted
to wait until all five of us were here to talk over what we—"

"Hello."
Wilfred's hail interrupted Taylor and he came hurrying toward them. "I
saw your truck pull in so I turned around and came back. Any luck?"

"None," Blake said. "It just wasn't there to
be found."

"What was this about not having time, and
something you hadn't told us yet?" Lenson asked Taylor, his eyes on
Taylor's face.

The others turned their attention to Taylor
as he spoke.

"I've been
making daily observations with the transit, as you know," he said.
"I've observed the apparent motion of our sun, the yellow sun, and the
Thousand Suns cluster. I found that this is spring—whether late
or early I don't know—but that's of no importance. I thought, at first,
the yellow sun was swinging in its orbit around our blue-white sun. You
can see the yellow sun—like a very bright yellow star—in advance of our
own sun each morning. According to my observations, the yellow sun is
making an apparent advance of approximately one degree every five days
in front of our own sun. This happens to be what its apparent advance
should be as we swing out in our orbit, so I became suspicious and made
other observations. I discovered we are approaching the Thousand Suns
at a speed of one hundred miles a second."

"That's what
you didn't tell us?" Lenson asked. "I don't understand—we'll either be
long since gone from here, or long since dust, before our wandering
binary reaches the nearest star of the Thousand Suns."

"I said the
apparent advance of the yellow sun is accounted for by our own orbital
movement," Taylor said. "There is no orbital movement of the yellow sun
observable. This isn't a binary—the yellow sun is a member of the
Thousand Suns."

"You mean—" Blake began.

"In approximately seven and a half months
the two suns will collide."

"And our position in our orbit at that time?"

"We'll go into the yellow sun the radius of
our orbit—four hundred million miles—in advance of the collision."

* * *

Tall Lenson
barely changed expression and the surprise on Wilfred's face hardened
into quick stubbornness, as though he had already decided he would
refuse to accept such a fate. Cooke leaned one hip on the fender of the
truck, his black eyes flickering over the others as he analyzed their
reactions. But for once, Blake felt, Cooke was finding nothing to amuse
him.

"You're sure
your observations were accurate—that there's no hope we might have
already swung past the yellow sun by then?" Blake asked.

"I've made my
observations as accurate as possible, and checked for errors. Our sun
is moving toward the yellow sun at a hundred miles a second and a
distance of slightly more than one and a half billion miles now
separates them. Our observation of these suns couldn't indicate that
they were not a binary during the brief period we dropped into normal
space—especially with our limited means for taking observations from
the ship. It was natural for us to assume that two suns so close
together were a binary. Only very precise observations during the short
time we observed them could have revealed the truth and we had neither
the proper instruments for such observations nor any reason to think
such observations were necessary."

"It wouldn't
have changed our circumstances," Blake pointed out. "With seven or
eight months of grace, we would have landed to see what the planet had
to offer in the way of mineral wealth, anyway."

"That's
true," Taylor said. "The result would have been the same. So here we
are and we have, according to my most optimistic calculations, six
months to fit our ship with a drive and get away from here as fast as
we can."

"Six months?" Cooke demanded. "You
said it would be seven and a half."

"We'll have
to be a long way from here by then—Aurora carries an exceptionally high
percentage of carbon and you know what happens when any nuclear
conversion process absorbs an excess of carbon."

"Oh-oh—nova!"

"And they reach out a long, long way,"
Taylor said.

"The hyperspace units—the power for them—"
Wilfred began.

"If we ever
find a way to power them, it will have to be en route in space," Taylor
said. "Or that's the safest course of action for us, I would say."

"I agree,"
Blake said. "If we can find ore pure enough, we might possibly be able
to take off from here within six months. It would have to be
exceptionally pure ore—it's improbable that we can find such ore but we
don't know that it's impossible. The first thing we want to do is to
start getting as far away from here as possible, and as fast as
possible. Given pure enough ores, we can do that, I think."

"You said 'improbable but not impossible,' "
Taylor said. "Just how improbable do you think it is?"

"If the other
ranges are similar to this one, our chances are very poor. We can try;
we can go out as two different parties to save time. Cooke has had
experience in the hills, now, and could go with one of you to the range
north of us while I went with the other to the range south of us. If
there's nothing in the adjoining ranges, I would say there is no use
looking farther."

"Why?" Lenson asked.

"Time. Time and distance. Any ore we found
would have to be carried to the ship on our backs—the truck is worn
out."

"Then let's
start today," Cooke suggested. "Since our time is so short, we
shouldn't waste an hour of it. Let's start right now."

Blake glanced
at the early morning sun. "A good idea. We certainly won't have any
days to waste. We'll take along about sixty days' supply of
concentrated food tablets, plus spare shoe soles and, above all,
canteens."

"The concentrated food tablets for two
months—" Wilfred began doubtfully, but was interrupted.

"For roughage
we can eat thorn berries," Blake told him. "Cooke and I tried them.
They're tasteless, but they're completely harmless." He turned to
Cooke. "You can take Wilfred across to the north range, and Lenson is
better built for the hike across the desert to the south range than
Wilfred is—it will be about three days on the water in our canteens to
reach that south range."

"And if the south range has no creeks or
springs in it—how will you come back across the desert without water?"
Taylor asked.

"We won't," Blake said simply.

Cooke slid off the fender and looked at the
truck, shaking his head. "If only we could have had this truck to use—"

* * *

Blake and
Lenson reached the south range on the third day of tramping across the
glittering diamond sand of the desert, their throats burned and dry and
their canteens empty. They found water; a seepage of sickening alkali
water, but it was water. They found a creek of sweet water the next day
as they started up the range's northern front, tumbling down out of the
mountains and disappearing beneath the sand at the mountain's foot. It
was a high, rugged range and they found other creeks and springs as
they went. They reached its eastern end on the thirtieth day and turned
down its southern face. They came to the last canyon on its southwest
slope on the fiftieth day and knew they had failed. They had found an
occasional vein of iron oxide and, once, a fairly soft vein of copper
ore, but there had been no indications of uranium.

On the
fifty-fourth day they reached the ship again, gaunt and ragged, with
Blake's red whiskers flaming riotously and Lenson's brown beard giving
him the look of a benign but destitute young religious father.

As though by
prearranged plan, Cooke and Wilfred returned at the same time;
Wilfred's pink face burned red by the sun, his blond whiskers sprouting
raggedly, while Cooke wore a bushy black beard that, together with his
glittering black eyes, gave him an even greater appearance of piratical
fierceness.

Taylor was carrying two buckets of water to
the ship when the four of them appeared. He set the buckets down and
waited.

"No luck," Blake said as they drew near him.

"Same here," Cooke said. "That range we went
to was as barren as this one."

"I've been
continuing my observations," Taylor said. "Everything checks with my
first ones, and now we're sixty days nearer the end. We'll have to
start accomplishing something pretty quick."

"I know it,"
Cooke said, scratching at his black beard, the tattered sleeve of his
shirt flapping in the wind. "But before we start any long talks on what
we shall do next, let's have something to eat besides thorn berries and
pills. And take a bath—I'm so covered with diamond dust that, in the
nude, I'd glitter like a precious jewel."

Taylor picked
up his buckets of water. "There's enough water for all of you to take
showers," he said, "so long as you don't waste it. I've been busy with
other things or I would have had more water carried to the ship."

"We'll have
to have a pump," Blake said, relieving Taylor of one of the buckets.
"There's no use spending time carrying water in buckets."

Lenson looked at him sharply to see if he
were joking.

"Did you take
a look at what that diamond silt in the water did to our pump?" he
asked. "It ruined it, and it was made of the hardest alloy steel."

"We can't use
any kind of pump that has moving parts of steel," Blake said. "No steel
alloy ever made can resist diamond. And, since steel is our hardest
man-made material, it's obvious we can't use any kind of a pump that
has metal moving parts. So, we'll not try to fight the diamond with
harder steel alloys—if we had them—we'll just overcome the abrasion
problem by making a pump that has no moving parts."

"Oh?" Cooke stared at him. "A brilliant
solution but for one thing—how do we move water without the mover doing
any moving?"

"We let the water use its own velocity to
force part of itself higher than the source—we make a hydraulic ram."

"Hm-m-m!"
Taylor grunted in self-disgust. "I could have had one made long ago, in
my spare time, but I never thought of such a simple solution. I kept
thinking of some way to combat the diamond's abrasion, rather than how
to avoid it completely."

"But a
hydraulic ram does have moving parts," Wilfred objected. "The valves.
Without the valves alternately opening and closing, the ram wouldn't
work. How do you keep valves in it?"

"The valves
are so simple—one floating valve and one flap valve—that all we have to
do is spray the valves and valve seats with plastic rubber. The diamond
can't harm rubber—the rubber is so soft that the diamond's hardness has
no effect on it."

* * *

A shower and
a full meal did much to improve their spirits, and a shave did even
more to improve their appearance. Taylor brought up the subject of
their next course of action and asked Blake for his opinion of the
desirability of further prospecting for uranium. Blake answered the
question with a suggestion.

"We'll have to rest a week, even though our
time is so short," he said. "This time we'll have two
deserts to cross, as well as the mountain between, and our past
sixty-day diet of food tablets and thorn berries has all four of us in
pretty weak condition. While we rest up I suggest we try to think of
some alternative to the atomic drive. I won't argue if the rest of you
want to continue looking for uranium, but I'm afraid it's hopeless.
Without a truck or any other form of transportation, it would do no us
good to find the ore. We're not going to be given the time to carry ore
for great distances on our backs, across deserts and mountains. So,
suppose for the next six days everyone makes a try at thinking up some
plan other than the atomic drive?"

"The more
plans, the better," Taylor said. "If we had a large enough selection to
choose from, we could pick out one that would be sure-fire. But I can't
see how we can find a quicker and simpler way to lift this ship than
the atomic drive."

The others
felt the same way; they seemed quite willing to consider any alternate
plan but with no conception of any such plans. Blake made no mention of
the idea in his own mind, certain that it held their only hope for
survival but fearing its radical departure from conventional lines of
thinking would cause them to reject it, despite the magnitude of its
possibilities.

They made the
hydraulic ram the next day and laid a line of the ship's air tubing to
a point sufficiently upstream along the noisy little creek to give the
necessary pressure. Shortly before the sun went down they connected the
last length of tubing to the ram, then returned to the ship to wait for
the first flow of water into the ship's tank. It required some time for
the tubing between the ram and the ship to fill with water but the
water came at last; a steady little trickle.

"You know," Cooke remarked as he watched the
tiny flow, "those ancients weren't exactly fools."

"At last, we've won one round in our battle
with this diamond dust," Lenson said.

"I want all of you to keep in mind how we
did it," Blake said. "We did it by using the natural forces at hand and
by not trying to fight the abrasiveness of the diamond grit.
Remember this, in any planning you do—you can't fight diamond with
metal!"

"I think we're all aware of that by now,"
Taylor said.

"I hope so. Until we acknowledge that fact,
we won't get anywhere."

No further
mention was made of their problem in the succeeding days and Blake
hoped that such silence was indicative of serious thinking on their
part and not merely a fatalistic acceptance of the status quo.

On the sixth
day following their return they gathered in the central room of the
ship for each to present his plan, if any. Blake procured a few small
items from the repair room and his own locker just before the
discussion began.

Taylor made a quick summary of their
predicament.

"There could
have been only three possible ways of leaving this planet," he said.
"The most certain would have been to send a message to New Earth, but
that's impossible. We can't repair or duplicate the smashed transmitter
tubes or hyperspace transformer. Their construction calls for very
complex precision machinery as well as special alloys. We can't re-use
the various alloys in the shattered tubes because exposure to the air
has turned several of the more delicate alloys to dust.

"The second
easiest method, and the most impossible, would be to simply wait and
hope a ship comes along in time to save us. I know that we all reject that.
That leaves only one way of leaving this world before it burns—to make
a drive for our ship. And that boils down to the question: Shall we
continue to search for uranium and cadmium or shall we devote our time
and effort to some other method of lifting the ship than an atomic
drive?"

"I've kept my
mind a receptive blank for six days and not one single idea has come
near it," Lenson said. "I don't see where we have any choice—what else
can we plan on with any hope at all other than an atomic drive?"

"Before we go
on to new plans," Wilfred said, "suppose we let Blake give his opinion
of the chances of finding uranium and cadmium in time to make a drive."

"We haven't
found any evidence of any uranium in three full-grown mountain ranges,"
Blake said. "There's iron, and a small amount of copper, but no
radioactive elements. I don't know whether it's true of all this
continent, but the section we're on is almost wholly light elements.

"I am not
in favor of any further prospecting. Our time is very limited; anything
we do will have to be done without delay. Further prospecting, on foot,
would require time, lots of time. Possibly the ore we want is within
fifty miles of us, but how do we find it in time, on foot? Even if we
found it, and in a sufficiently pure state, how do we transport it back
to the ship in time? We have no truck, you know; we have only our legs
and backs. If we had the time—and if this world permitted us to use the
truck—I would be in favor of continuing the prospecting until we did
find the ores we needed. The truck would shorten days of travel into
hours; it would haul needed supplies and equipment to the ore and haul
the ore back. But we don't have a truck any more—and we don't have the
time. In my own opinion, further prospecting is a waste of our short
and precious time."

"There
doesn't seem to be anyone who disagrees with you," Taylor said when the
others remained silent. "You paint a dark picture, but there's no
denying the truth of it."

"Do you have a plan?" Wilfred asked.

"I have. You've all been thinking along
conventional lines, haven't you?"

"Such conventional lines of thinking
produced the ship that brought us here," Wilfred pointed out.

"It did, but
the same conventional type of thinking is never going to lift it up
again. I have an unconventional idea, and a deceptively simple
question. If you can answer my question, we'll know how to make a drive
for our ship."

Blake
extracted several items from his pocket: a short steel bar, a square of
sheet aluminum, a piece of thin glass and a large darning needle on a
long thread. He laid them down on the table before him and continued:

"I'm afraid
that conventional thinking won't work on an unconventional world. We've
all been tackling our problem as though we were marooned on a
counterpart of New Earth, with New Earth's dust-free air and plentiful
supply of minerals. We keep thinking of a rocket drive because a rocket
drive was the simplest type of drive to build on a world of machinery
and radioactive ores. We have neither, here; we don't have Earth-type
resources and equipment to fight a decidedly non-Earth-type
environment. On New Earth we would use machines—all human technological
progress stemmed from that simple little thing, the wheel. Without
wheels there would never have been machinery, without machinery there
would never have been the atomic drive. You've all seen that we can't
have wheels on this world. We can't have wheels, we can't have
any kind of moving-parts machines on a world of diamond dust. Our own
science is built on the wheel and if we don't develop a substitute
science for it, we go up in smoke in seven or eight months."

Blake picked
up the steel bar. "There is one force that no one has mentioned, and
it's a force that all the diamond dust on this world could never faze
because it has no moving parts—field-type force."

He picked up
the needle by its thread. "This is a common bar magnet," he said,
letting the needle click against the end of it. "We all know that
opposite poles attract, like poles repel. I pull the needle off the end
of the magnet and the needle snaps back against it the moment I release
it because its lower end has been magnetized with a polarity opposite
to that of that end of the bar. If I switch ends with the bar magnet,
the needle, instead of being attracted to it, will swing away out on
the thread to stay away from it. I have a piece of sheet aluminum
here—the magnetic repulsion goes right through it. The same with this
piece of glass."

He laid the
magnet and needle back down on the table. "You four have the technical
training and knowledge—I'm only a fairly competent mining engineer. But
my common sense tells me the reason we can't leave here is because a
field-type force, gravity, holds us here. My common sense also tells me
that there must be the same basic principles underlying all field-type
forces; magnetism, induction, gravity. If two magnetized bodies can be
made to repel each other, is it impossible that two bodies held
together by gravitational attraction could be made to repel each other?

"As I said, I
think the same basic principles underlie all field-type forces. If we
can learn what that principle is, we can produce a drive that operates
by antigravity. So, this is the question I wanted to ask you: What
caused the needle and magnet to behave as they did?"

There was silence for a while as they
considered Blake's proposal. Wilfred was the first to speak.

"It's a simple phenomenon," he said, "and
known to any child."

"That's
true," Blake agreed. "Any child knows what a magnet will do, but do any
of you know any more about a magnet than the hypothetical child? You
all know what a magnet will do—do any of you know why
it does it?"

"I know
nothing of magnetic forces, myself," Lenson said, somewhat uncertainly,
"since they don't enter my own field of study, but Cooke probably knows
them from A to Izzard."

"I know what
a magnet will do—I don't really know why it does it," Cooke said. "Men
have made use of magnetism and induction forces for centuries and the
behavior of such forces is known in precise detail—but still no one
knows just what these forces are. You can manipulate a force to
your own advantage if you understand its behavior under various
conditions, but if you understand exactly what that force is, you can
manipulate it to your own advantage much more efficiently."

"I agree," Lenson said.

"There's
another field-type force we use without fully understanding it—our
hyperspace drive," Blake said. "Theoretically, it shouldn't require
such an enormous surge of power to activate the space-shift units—but
we have to use that enormous surge of power to get any results. We say
we 'slip' or 'jump' into hyperspace. We don't. We don't 'slip' through
that barrier—we smash our way through it with the full output of a
nuclear converter. If we can learn what field-type forces are, I see no
reason why we might not be able to so alter our hyperdrive that the
ship's generator will supply more than enough power for it."

"A possibility," Cooke said.

Taylor nodded
in agreement, then said, "But, while the idea has unlimited
possibilities, we haven't the slightest assurance that we'll realize
any of them in the short time we have."

"I know it,"
Blake said. "I know it's a long chance, since our time is so short. But
it is a chance, and all the other plans would have been doomed to
failure before we started."

"It's
something of a challenge," Wilfred said. "The idea appeals to me. It's
true that we actually know relatively little of field-type forces; our
environment was such that our technical progress led to atomic study."

* * *

Blake looked
the four men over, both surprised and relieved that they should accept
his plan without argument; the only possible approach to the problem,
he was convinced, that offered any hope. Taylor seemed to be the only
one who had any doubts and Blake said to him, "What is your own opinion
of my plan? Are you in favor of dropping all other plans and
concentrating on the study of field-type forces?"

"My
half-expressed doubts about accomplishing anything in the time we have
weren't intended as an objection. It's a field of study of which we
know very little, and it's a difficult field to learn. But I'm in favor
of it—it, at least, isn't dependent upon the use of moving machinery.
We can study it under controlled conditions, here in the ship. In fact,
I would like to suggest the study of induction fields as a starter—we
can manipulate induction fields to suit ourselves, and under all kinds
of conditions."

"In all of
Man's history," Cooke said, "since the first savage wondered why a
piece of natural lodestone would attract grains of magnetite, no one
has been able to discover why. But, while we don't have much time, we
have a very powerful incentive. And we do know a few things about
magnetism. For example: all ferrous iron with a valence of two is
magnetic. Ferric iron, with a valence of three, is not magnetic. Let's
find out why—an atom of iron is an atom of iron and should be magnetic
whether it's combined with oxygen or not."

"We'll need juice," Taylor said. "Plain,
old-fashioned electricity."

"We can
manage that," Blake said. "The ship's generator wasn't damaged, so
we'll make the only kind of engine a world without oil, coal or
radioactive ores would have permitted—a steam engine. We have water,
plenty of trees for fuel, and we have a lathe. There's a spare
primer-thrust tube that will make a perfect cylinder."

"How about the diamond dust in the water?"
Taylor asked.

"Only clean
steam will go to the cylinder, and the diamond dust won't affect the
boiler as lime would. Besides, we have our water filters on the ship's
tanks."

Wilfred
picked up the needle and let it swing from the thread, holding the
magnet under it. "If this magnet represented this planet, and its
magnetism was the force of gravity, with this needle representing our
ship, fitted with some gadget to make it antigravitic at the lower end
as this needle is antimagnetic—"

He let the
needle swing on the thread, bouncing away from the repulsion of the
magnet, then swinging in again, to be stopped and driven away by the
invisible force.

"The
invisible barrier," he said. "What is it? It isn't matter—not as we
know matter. We call it a force, but just exactly what is it that no
material—glass, metal or anything else—can bar?"

"That's the question," Taylor said. "It's
going to be a hard one to answer."

"It will,"
Cooke said, "but we know the answer is there if we can find it. The
power we need to move this ship is all around us; we'll be looking for
the secret of a power that we know exists."

"And if we continued to hunt for uranium,
we'd be looking for something that all the evidence shows does not
exist," Blake said.

Lenson shoved
back his chair and got to his feet. "Now that we know what we want to
do, let's get busy," he said. "It will take all five of us quite a
while to build that boiler and engine, so let's get started right now."

"I agree,"
Cooke said. "We're headed for an unpleasant end at a hundred miles a
second—the Bird of Time has but a little way to fly—"

"And Lo!—the Bird is on the Wing!" Wilfred
finished, a rare smile on his pugnacious young face as he shoved back
his own chair.

* * *

The generator
was lowered from its hanging position on the wall and fastened to a
new-laid flooring of steel. A gear box was made from the gears of the
ship's elevator and the portholes of the drive room were equipped with
glassite windows; windows which were rendered sub-translucent by the
first sandstorm, but would still admit sufficient light for working.
The boiler and engine construction progressed slowly, with the small
lathe and the limited kinds of material available, but they worked
steadily while the yellow star advanced farther and farther ahead of
their own sun. It gleamed in the dawn sky a full hour in advance of the
rising of their sun when they began the building of the engine. On the
day they completed the engine it was dispelling the eastern blackness
two hours before the blue-white sun brought the first touch of the
rainbow dawn and almost three hours before the sun, itself, appeared.

Blake, Cooke
and Lenson toasted the steam engine on the day they completed it and
gave it a successful trial run; a modest toast of one small glass each,
due to the limited amount of grain alcohol in the medicine locker.
Taylor and Wilfred, who never drank, had already gone into the central
room to begin the job of converting it into a laboratory.

"She's not
pretty," Cooke said, indicating the shapeless boiler and engine with
his empty glass, "but beauty is as beauty does. And she spun that
generator like a top."

"She did," Lenson said. "As you said of the
hydraulic ram—those old-timers weren't exactly fools."

"We have all
the power we need whenever we happen to need it," Blake said. "Next, as
soon as we get the central room converted, will be to put our ideas to
the acid test."

"They say the
acid test is always sour," Cooke said. "We'll have to make an exception
of that rule. And have you noticed our big yellow star? It's over forty
degrees in advance of our sun, now—gives the illusion of traveling away
from our sun, except that it keeps getting brighter."

"We're already a fifth of the way to it,"
Blake said.

"The nova
created when Aurora goes into the yellow sun should be spectacular,"
Cooke went on. "And then what happens when our big blue-white sun goes
into the nova? Will it produce a super-nova? No man has ever stood off
and seen such a thing, you know."

"Neither will
we if we don't get busy," Lenson said. "Time, tide and Aurora's
rendezvous wait for no man—and here we stand with empty glasses in our
hands when we should be working."

"You're right," Cooke said, turning to go.
"Holding an empty glass is about the most useless thing a man
ever did."

* * *

The central
room of the ship was converted into a laboratory—or as near to a
laboratory as their limited equipment would permit—and large glassite
windows were fitted into holes cut in the hull; a much better form of
illumination than the improvised oil lamps they had been using.

Ideas were
presented in the days to come; some that were no more than the
repetition of known experiments and some that were contrary to accepted
theories of magnetic and gravitic principles. The latter were, at
first, presented somewhat self-consciously and Blake and Cooke did
their best to discourage such reluctance to depart from conventional
thinking. As the days merged into scores of days the reluctance to
present unorthodox theories vanished and they all five adopted the
policy of accepting each new theory with, as Cooke put it: "The
assumption that every theory, no matter how fantastic, is innocent of
the crime of invalidity until proven guilty."

Each
experiment was given a number, preceded by the letter X for
"Experimental," and the data gained by the experiment filed away.
Blake, whose mathematical computations as a mining engineer had never
required more than trigonometric and logarithmic tables, became as
proficient as the others. His lack of advanced technical learning was,
in a way, no disadvantage—he had nothing to unlearn. He absorbed all
the data available concerning the actual, observed behavior of
field-type forces and rejected the adoption of any preconceived
theories of the causes for such behavior, keeping his mind open for the
unbiased inspection of new concepts.

Thirty days
passed and then another thirty, while the yellow star grew slowly
brighter and widened the apparent distance between itself and their own
sun—the apparent widening of the distance that was so belied by the
yellow star's increasing brightness. The first enthusiasm of Cooke,
Lenson and Wilfred gave way to a quietness and they worked longer
hours. Taylor betrayed no particular emotion but he was up early and to
bed late.

Summer
solstice came and the sun ceased its apparent northward progress and
began to creep to the south, almost imperceptibly at first. The desert
winds came with greater frequency after solstice, hot and searing and
bringing their ever-present burden of sand and dust.

They had been
on Aurora four months when Cooke, in a moment of grim humor, chalked a
huge calendar on the wall of the laboratory. He made it thirty days
wide and five rows deep. Each day that passed would be filled in with
red chalk and the red squares would move across the calendar, row upon
row, warning the five men who labored in the room of the shortness of
their time.

Two lines of thirty days each were chalked a
solid red when they found the first key to the secret that meant their
lives.

* * *

X117 lay on
the laboratory table, a complex assembly of coils and electronic
apparatus, with a small blue-white diamond swinging in a tiny arc just
within the focal point of the induction fields. The diamond hung on a
long thread, attached to a delicate spring scale with a large dial.

Cooke glanced
over the assembly, then raked his heavy hair back from his face and
grinned at the others. "This," he said, "should be what we've been
looking for."

"You've said that every time," Wilfred
reminded him.

"Let's find
out," Blake suggested, feeling his usual impatience to learn as soon as
possible if their efforts had again been in vain. "We have full steam
pressure and our engine is ready to spin the generator whenever you
close the switch."

"That's what
I say—let's get the suspense over with," Lenson said. He closed the
switch that would open the steam engine's governors and the faint
chuffing of it in the drive room became a fast pounding. The needle on
the generator output gauge began to climb rapidly and all eyes were
transferred to the dial of the spring scale.

"Twenty
seconds," Cooke said, his attention alternating between the diamond and
his watch. "It should have built up an effect by then. If it hasn't, it
will look like another failure and I'll have to guess again on the
success of the next one."

No one else
spoke as they watched the diamond swing gently from the long thread. It
was only a small one, not more than ten grains in weight; such a small
and insignificant mass to resist all their efforts to move it.

"Ten seconds," Cooke intoned. "Eight—cross
your fingers and say a little prayer—three—two—now!"

The diamond
continued to swing in its tiny arc and the pointer on the scale
remained motionless. No one moved nor took their eyes off the diamond,
even when the smell of scorched insulation became noticeable.

"It's overloaded, now," Lenson said, but
made no move to open the switch.

"Give it more," Blake ordered. "Give it the
full output of the generator—let's be sure of it, and let it burn if it
wants to."

Lenson
snapped another switch shut and the full output of the big generator
surged through X117. A coil went out in a flash of blue fire and
someone cried out incredulously.

In the brief instant before the coil
disappeared the diamond moved—up.

"It moved!" Cooke exclaimed
jubilantly. "We're going to have our drive!"

There was a
minute of quite natural elation and confused babble of excited talk
during which Blake remembered to open the switch again. The muted
pounding of the steam engine died away and the babble resolved itself
into coherent conversation.

"We're on the right track, at last," Blake
said decisively.

"We've just done something all our science
has never before accomplished," Wilfred said. "We've created a force of
antigravity."

"We have a
long way to go," Taylor said. "We've built up a force of antigravity
that lifted a diamond weighing ten grains—and it took the full output
of our ship's generator to do it. But we now have a proven result to go
on; we have the beginning of an understanding of the basic principles."

"When we get it where we want it, I doubt
that it will bear any resemblance to this,"
Blake said, indicating the assembly on the table with his hand. "This
just happened to be the easiest way to produce a little of the force we
were looking for. Like, you might say, the easiest way to produce
electricity is to stroke a cat. But you wouldn't try to supply
electricity for a city by having a million men engaged in stroking a
million cats."

"I have a
theory," Cooke said. "Once we learn a little more about this force we
created we can try something else—we'll try reversing the gravitic
flow, rather than building up a counter-flow. I want to work on that
theory and see what the rest of you think of it. Such a system should
require almost no power since no force would be created, merely
reversed."

"The perfect
ship's drive would be a field-type drive," Wilfred said, "for more
reasons than one. The reason I have in mind at the moment is this:
there would be no limit to the speed of acceleration since the ship and
its occupants would be enveloped in the driving force. It wouldn't, to
the passengers, be like the rocket drive where they're actually pushed
along by the seat of their pants."

Blake nodded.
"I've been thinking of the same thing. I suppose we all have, because
the only way we're going to escape that nova is to accelerate at an
unheard-of velocity. We can do that when we perfect what we're working
on; with our ship and ourselves enveloped in the driving force we can
accelerate immediately to any speed, and with no sensation of
accelerating at all."

"No more
acceleration hammocks and anti-acceleration drugs," Cooke said. "No
more long periods of reaching maximum acceleration, then other long
periods of decelerating. We really have something—or will have when
we're through." He looked over at Taylor. "How much time to we have?
Did your latest observations give us as much as a day more?"

Taylor
glanced at the calendar Cooke had chalked on the wall. "Your calendar
still holds good—the last day you have on it will be our last day."

"Eighty-five days—that's not many," Lenson
said.

"No, but
we're going to make progress from now on," Blake said. "We have
something to work on; we've opened a door that no one has ever opened
before."

"And if there's another door behind the one
we opened?" Lenson asked.

It was Cooke who answered, the finality of
conviction in his voice. "Then we'll open that one, too."

* * *

Lenson's
question proved to be not an idle one; there was a door behind the one
they had opened. In the countergravity they had created lay the key to
the second door, the reversal of gravity, but it eluded them as the
days went by. They repeated X117 and variations of it until the
experimental-data record bore the number, X135. Cooke's theory was
examined and re-examined and no fallacy could be found, neither could
any other theory be constructed that would fit the facts they had
discovered. They accepted Cooke's theory as valid, and no one
questioned the possibility of reversing gravitic flows with a
negligible amount of power.

All were convinced of ultimate success—if
they could but have the time.

The days fled
by while they tried and tried again. They worked longer hours, all of
them thinner and the bulldog stubbornness on Wilfred's face becoming
more pronounced. The yellow star crept farther ahead of their own sun,
growing brighter as it went, and the red-chalked squares marched across
the calendar. Their determination increased as their days of grace
melted away; a determination expressed by a silent intensity of effort
by all but Cooke, whose intensified efforts were accompanied by
considerable cheerful speculations upon the many pleasures New Earth
would have to offer them on their return.

Blake
wondered if Cooke's faith in their eventual success was as firm as he
insisted, or if it was only a psychological attempt to improve not only
the morale of the others but also his own. The red squares had crept
across two more rows and over half-way across a third when he got his
answer.

* * *

It was on the
morning following the failure of X144. They had worked far into the
night to complete the assembly of it and it had been devoid of
observable results. The others had gone to bed to get a few hours sleep
before starting the construction of X145 but Blake had found sleep
impossible. The failure of X144 exhausted every possibility but one;
the one represented by the to-be-constructed X145. Theoretically, X145
would be successful—but some of the others had been theoretically
certain of success until their trial had revealed hitherto unknown
factors. After an hour of the futile wondering and conjecturing, Blake
had given up the thought of sleep and put on his clothes.

He walked
down to the creek, marveling again at the beauty of a world so harsh
and barren. The yellow star, now bright enough to cast his shadow
before him, was low in the west as he walked up the creek and the
eastern sky was being touched with the first emerald glow that preceded
the rainbow banners. When the sun came up it would bring another day of
heat, and the dry, swirling winds would send the diamond dust along in
low-flying clouds. But in the quiet of early dawn it was cool and
pleasant along the creek with the trees bordering it making a leafy
green corridor along which he walked into the emerald dawn while the
fresh scent of green, living things was about him.

He saw the
bulk of something red, lying in the sand beside a tree, and he went
over to it. It was a small mound of blood-red diamonds, and he saw that
someone had selected them for their flawless perfection. He squatted
beside them, leaning back against the tree trunk and lighting a
cigarette as he wondered idly who had placed them there, and why.

He forgot
them as he rested and watched the emerald of the eastern sky glow
deeper in color and the first touch of iridescence come to it. Aurora,
for all her grimness, was a beautiful world, and along the creek a man
could almost imagine he was on New Earth but for the glory of the dawn
and the glitter of the diamond sand. The leaves of the tree over him
rustled softly, and among the fresh green smells there came the scent
of the red flowers that grew along the water's edge; a scent that
brought a brief, nostalgic memory of the old-fashioned briar roses in
his mother's garden when he was a boy. She had brought the seeds from
Old Earth when she was a girl and on Old Earth, she had told him, they
grew wild.

It was hard
to believe, as he sat beside the creek, that it and the sweet-scented
flowers and the leaves rustling overhead were not things of some stable
world where they would remain so for uncounted lifetimes to come; where
only the slow, slow dying of the sun could at last bring the end.

* * *

Gravel crunched behind him and he turned to
see Cooke. "Nice here, isn't it?" Cooke asked, sitting down near him.

Blake nodded, then said, "I thought you were
in bed?"

"And I thought you were," Cooke replied.
"What do you think of the quality of the diamonds there beside you?"

"You're the one who piled them here?" Blake
asked, surprised. "How long has this been going on, and why?"

"Ever since I said we'd unlock that second
door. We may have to leave here in a hurry, but we are
going to leave here. I just did the logical thing of using some of my
spare minutes to pile up some of the choicest diamonds where we can get
them in short order."

"Do you really believe that, or is this
diamond-gathering just to bolster your confidence?" Blake asked,
watching him curiously.

"What do you think?" Cooke countered.

Blake studied
him, the hard jaw and broken nose, the glittering black eyes, and saw
that they were not deceptive, after all. Under ordinary circumstances
Cooke was easy-going and genial, but now the mask of good humor had
fallen away for the moment and the hard steel core of the man was
revealed. Cooke, like the bulldog Wilfred, would be stubbornly defying
their fate when Aurora went into the yellow sun.

Yet, though
such stubborn faith might prove to be in vain, it had its advantages.
Stubborn men die hard—sometimes it takes more than merely impossible
difficulties to persuade a stubborn man to die at all.

"I think you have the right idea," Blake
said.

There was a
silence as Blake returned his attention to the dawn, then Cooke
remarked, "We won't have but a few more like that—before we leave here,
one sun or the other will be in view all the time. And, by then, the
yellow one will be too bright to permit any sunrise effects from the
other one."

"Aurora doesn't have many days left."

"What a show
that will be!" Cooke mused. "First a nova as Aurora goes into the
yellow sun, then the big blue-white sun will go into the nova." Then he
sighed and said, "But I sort of hate to see it. I don't care about the
suns, but I hate to see Aurora go up in a blaze, no matter how glorious
that blaze may be. She's a hard world on humans, but she forced us to
pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. She's a beautiful little devil
and I hate to see her destroyed."

The good die
young, Blake thought, watching the dawn flame into vivid, fiery life.
Not that Aurora was good. She was cruel and beautiful; she was a
splendid, glittering prison taking them with her on her swift, silent
flight to extinction.

It was not
the way a world should die. The death of a world should come only when
the fires of her sun went out. A world should grow old and cold for
millennia upon millennia; death should come slowly and quietly like
that of an old, old woman. But it would not be so for Aurora; for her
death would be quick and violent and she would explode a yellow sun
into a nova as she died.

* * *

Two days
later they were ready to put X145 to the test. It was similar to the
long-past X117 in that the same blue-white diamond swung from the same
long thread, but the assembly was of a different form and the steam
engine was cold. They had made a battery, a simply storage battery, and
X145 would either succeed or fail with the battery's small current.

The tension
was far greater than it had ever been at any previous test, and even
Cooke had no cheerful smile or remarks. X145 would be the test;
if it failed all their labors leading up to it had been to a dead-end.
And they would have no time to try another approach.

"I guess
we're ready," Cooke said. Blake went to the rheostat that controlled
the amount of current and the others grouped about the X145 assembly.

"I'll give it
the juice gradually," Blake said. "Although if it as much as quivers at
full current, we really will have our drive."

Blake watched
the diamond as he turned the rheostat's knob. He felt the faint click
of it as it made first contact, then flinched involuntarily as
something cracked like a pistol shot and the diamond, thread and scale
vanished. Something clattered to the floor across the room and Lenson's
surprised question was cut off by a shout from Cooke: "Look—the scale!"

He ran to where it had fallen and picked it
up, holding it for all to see. There was a hole torn through it.

"How much . . . how much
power did you give it?" he demanded of Blake.

"Minimum current," Blake replied.

"Minimum current," Wilfred murmured.
"Minimum current—and it shot the diamond through the scale!"

The torn scale was passed from hand to hand
and the talk it engendered was both voluble and optimistic.

Cooke hurried
out after another scale and Blake and Lenson connected another rheostat
in series with the first, then added still another when Wilfred gave
the results of his calculations on the slide rule.

Cooke
returned with the scale, a much larger one, and a block of copper.
"Three?" He lifted his eyebrows toward the three rheostats. "If we can
budge a pound of copper with full current through three rheostats, then
we can lift a thousand ships with our generator."

The copper
block was suspended from the scale, to swing down in the field of the
X145, and Blake said, "I'll try minimum current again, even though it
may not be enough to affect it at all. We can't expect it to do
anything spectacular at minimum current, I'm sure."

He turned the
rheostat knob a fraction of an inch and felt the faint click, his eyes
on the copper block. There was a roar, sharp and deafening in the room,
and the copper block vanished as the diamond had. A hard pull of hot
air struck him and something ricocheted back down from the roof to
strike him painfully on the shoulder, a fragment of metal from the
scale. Wilfred was pointing upward, yelling something. " . . . Through
the roof!"

Blake looked
up and saw what he meant; there was a small hole torn through the hull
of the ship over their heads, a hole such as would be made by a
one-pound block of copper.

"Three rheostats," Cooke exclaimed.
"We not only have the power to lift our ship; we could lift ten
thousand of them!"

Cooke began
to make rapid calculations and Wilfred followed suit. Blake, curious
though he was, saw no reason for three of them to work simultaneously
on the same problem so he waited, as did Taylor and Lenson. Taylor was
smiling; the first time in many days he had seen the old man smile.

* * *

"The problem
of power for the hyperspace drive no longer exists," Lenson said. "We
can apply the same principles to its alteration that we just now made
use of and we can actually 'slip' through the barrier rather than
bulldozing our way through it."

"We have a
means of driving our ship and we have a means of slipping her into
hyperspace," Blake said. "We've come mighty near to succeeding in our
plans—will we have the time to succeed all the way?"

"Time?" Lenson looked surprised. "How much
time do you want? We have seven days. Isn't that enough?"

Blake shook his head. "We can't have the
ship ready in that short space of time. To leave here within seven days
we'll have to—"

"Did I say
ten thousand ships?" Cooke's black eyes glittered with exultation. "We
could move a world with the power in that generator!"

"We've really
reversed the gravitic flow," Wilfred said, as enthused as Cooke. "The
only power required to move an object is that for the reversing
field—or whatever we should call it. This power requirement is
negligible with a capital N."

"Homeward bound!" Cooke said. "Safe and snug
beyond the nova's reach in hyperspace!"

"If we want to give up the habit of
breathing," Blake pointed out.

The four of
them stared at him, and one by one their faces fell as they realized
what he referred to; the thing they had forgotten in the intensity of
their efforts to devise a drive.

"The ship—" Cooke was the first to express
the thought in the minds of all of them. "It leaks like a sieve!"

"How, in
seven days, can we finish cutting the two halves of the ship apart,
wall in the cut-off end and repair all the broken-apart seams?" Blake
asked.

"We can't,"
Taylor said. He sat down, suddenly old and tired, his former
cheerfulness gone. "I don't see how we could make the ship leak-proof
in less than four months with the tools and materials we have." He
smiled again, but without mirth. "But we came close to succeeding,
didn't we?"

"We'll succeed," Blake said. "It's a tough
problem, apparently, but I have an idea."

"How about enclosing the ship in a gravitic
field large enough to hold its air by plain gravity?" Wilfred asked.

"And how big a field would that have to be?"
Lenson asked.

"Big," Blake
said. "Even in hyperspace, it will take us six months to get home—or
near that. Air has a tendency to leak away and dissipate into space
rather easily. I doubt that we could enclose the ship in a field large
enough to hold enough air to last us for six months—as I say, it leaks
away into space very easily."

"The gradual
loss of our air would be an unpleasant way to die," Cooke said. "The
ship leaks, we don't have the time to repair it, so what do we do? How
do we solve that last little problem?"

"Seven days to do a four months' repair
job—" Lenson sat down beside Taylor and sighed. "It looks like we can't
make our ship leak-proof in the time we have. But surely there is some
way—"

"There is,"
Blake said. "We have a perfect method of both getting home and keeping
air in our ship. It should be obvious to all of you."

Questioning
looks gave way to dawning comprehension. There was a long silence as
they considered the plan, then Cooke said, "After all, a fortune was
what we set out for."

"We'll have to call them in advance,"
Wilfred said. "We can't just barge in."

Blake nodded.
"Homeward bound, safe and snug in hyperspace—but, as you say, we'll
have to radio them in advance. If we just barreled in without giving
them a chance to tell us where to park, it could raise merry hell with
everything."

* * *

Redmond,
control-tower radio operator of Spaceport 1, New Earth, was puzzled. He
scratched his thinning hair and leaned closer to the speaker. The voice
from it came in distinctly, but faintly.

"Can't you step up your volume?" he asked.

"No," the tiny voice answered. "I told you
we had to couple in the driver stage—our power stage is gone."

"How far out are you?" Redmond asked.

"About a billion miles. Did you get what I
told you? This is the Star Scout and we're just back from
beyond the Thousand Suns. We were going to get caught by a nova—"

"I got
everything," Redmond interrupted. "Your planet was going into the
yellow sun and its high carbon content would create a nova. You learned
how to control field-type forces so that you would have a drive for
your ship. So you came back to New Earth—or a billion miles out from
it. But why do you keep insisting that I have my superiors engage an
astrophysicist to tell you where to park your ship? And another
thing—you said it would take four months to make your ship leak-proof
and you only had seven days. How did you do a four months' job in seven
days?"

"We didn't,"
the thin voice from the speaker answered. "That's what I'm trying to
tell you and that's why we'll have to have an astrophysicist define our
parking place. We didn't have time to repair our ship, and we couldn't
enclose it in a gravitic field large enough to hold air for six months."

Redmond clutched his thinning hair again,
feeling suddenly dizzy. "You don't mean—"

"Yeah. We brought the planet with us."

—And
Devious the Line of Duty

Editor's
note: As a general rule, Godwin made no attempt to fit his stories into
a common setting. The two stories which follow are one of the
exceptions to the rule. Even then, a partial exception, because the
only commonality they have is the appearance in both stories of the
distinctive semi-intelligent species of Altairians—in the character of
Alonzo in this story, and Loper and Laughing Girl in the next. I think
Godwin found these aliens, with their devotion to duty, loyalty, and
unfailing courage—and the example they set for the humans who were
theoretically their "superiors"—simply irresistible. So do I.

"We're almost
there, my boy." The big, gray-haired man who would be Lieutenant Dale
Hunter's superior—Strategic Service's Special Agent, George
Rockford—opened another can of beer, his fifth. "There will be intrigue
already under way when this helicopter sets down with us. Attempted
homicide will soon follow. The former will be meat for me. You will be
meat for the latter."

Rockford was
smiling as he spoke; the genial, engaging smile of a fond old father.
But the eyes, surrounded by laughter crinkles, were as unreadable as
two disks of gray slate. They were the eyes of a poker player—or a
master con man.

"I don't understand, sir," Hunter said.

"Of course not," Rockford agreed. "It's a
hundred light-years back to Earth. Here on Vesta, to make sure there is
an Earth in the future, you're going to do things never dreamed of by
your Terran Space Patrol instructors there. You'll be amazed, my boy."

Hunter said
nothing but he felt a growing dislike for the condescending Rockford.
Only a few weeks ago President Diskar, himself, had said: For more
than a century these truly valiant men of the Space Patrol have been
our unwavering outer guard; have fought and died by legions, that Earth
and the other worlds of the Terran Republic might remain free—

"I suppose
you know," Rockford said, "that there will be no more than four days in
which to stop the Verdam oligarchy from achieving its long-time
ambition of becoming big enough to swallow the Terran Republic."

"I know," Hunter answered.

Jardeen,
Vesta's companion world, was the key. Jardeen was large and powerful,
with a space navy unsurpassed by that of any other single world. A
large group of now-neutral worlds would follow Jardeen's lead and
Jardeen's alliance with the Verdam People's Worlds would mean the quick
end of the Terran Republic. But, if Jardeen could be persuaded to ally
with the Terran Republic, the spreading, grasping arms of the Verdam
octopus would begin to wither away—

Rockford spoke again:

"Val Boran,
Jardeen's Secretary of Foreign Relations, is the man who will really
make Jardeen's decision. I know him slightly. Since my public role is
that of Acting Ambassador, he agreed—reluctantly—to come to Vesta so
that the talks could be on a neutral world. With him will be Verdam's
Special Envoy Sonig; a wily little man who has been working on Boran
for several weeks. He seems to be succeeding quite well—here's a
message I received from Earth early this morning."

Rockford
handed him a sheet of the green Hyperspace Communications paper. The
message was in code, with Rockford's scribbled translation beneath:

Intelligence
reports Verdam forces already massed for attack in Sector A-13, in full
expectation of Jardeen's alliance. Anti-Terran propaganda, stressing
the New Jardeen Incident, being used in preparation for what will be
their claim of "defensive action to protect innocent worlds from Terran
aggression." Terran forces will be outnumbered five to one. The urgent
necessity of immediate and conclusive counter measure by you on Vesta
is obvious.

Hunter handed the paper back, thinking, It's
worse than any of us thought,
and wondering how Supreme Command could ever have entrusted such an
important task to a beer-guzzling old man from Strategic Service—a
branch so unknown that he had never even heard of it until his briefing
the day before he left Earth.

He saw that
they had left the desert behind and were going up the long slope of a
mountain. "The meeting will be on this mountain?" he asked.

Rockford
nodded. "The rustic Royal Retreat. Princess Lyla will be our hostess.
Her mother and father were killed in an airplane accident a year ago
and she was the only child. You will also get to meet Lord Narf of the
Sea Islands, her husband-by-proxy, who regards himself as a rare
combination of irresistible woman-killer and rugged man-among-men."

"Husband-by-proxy?" Hunter asked.

"The king
worshiped his daughter and his dying request to her was that she
promise to marry Lord Narf. Narf's father had been the king's closest
friend and the king was sure that his old friend's son would always
love and care for Lyla. Lyla dutifully, at once, married Narf by proxy,
which is like a legally binding formal engagement under Vestan law.
Four days from now the time limit is up and they'll be formally
married. Unless she should do the unprecedented thing of renouncing the
proxy marriage."

Rockford
drained the last of the beer from the can. "Those are the characters
involved in our play. I have a plan. That's why I told Space Patrol to
send me a brand-new second lieutenant—young, strong, fairly
handsome—and expendable. I hope you can be philosophical about the
latter."

"Sir," Hunter
said, unable to keep a touch of stiffness out of his tone, "it is not
exactly unknown in the Space Patrol for a man to die in the line of
duty."

"Ah . . . yes."
Rockford was regarding him with disturbing amusement. "You are
thinking, of course, of dying dramatically behind a pair of blazing
blasters. But you will soon learn, my boy, that a soldier's duty is to
protect the worlds he represents by whatever actions will produce the
best results, no matter how unheroic those actions may be."

* * *

"Attention, please." It was the voice of the
pilot. "We are now going to land."

Hunter
preceded Rockford out of the helicopter and onto the green grass of a
small valley, across which tall, red-trunked cloud trees were
scattered. Pale gray ghost trees, with knobby, twisted limbs, grew
thickly among the cloud trees. There was a group of rustic cabins,
connected by gravel paths, and a much larger building which he assumed
would be a meeting hall . . .

"Hello."

He turned,
and looked into the brown eyes of a girl. Her green skirt and orange
blouse made a gay splash of color, her red-brown hair was wind-tumbled
and carefree about her shoulders, in her hand was a bouquet of bright
spring flowers.

But there was no smile of spring in the dark
eyes and the snub-nosed little face was solemn and old beyond its years.

"You're Lieutenant Hunter, aren't you?" she
asked in the same low, quiet voice.

"Princess
Lyla!" There seemed to be genuine delight in Rockford's greeting as he
hurried over. "You're looking more like a queen every day!"

Her face lighted with a smile, making it
suddenly young and beautiful. "I'm so glad to see you again, George—"

"Ah . . . good
afternoon."

The voice was
loud, unpleasantly gravelly. They turned, and Hunter saw a tall,
angular man of perhaps forty whose pseudogenial smile was not
compatible with his sour, square-jawed face and calculating little eyes.

He spoke to
Rockford. "You're Ambassador Rockford, here to represent the Terran
Republic, I believe." He jerked his head toward Princess Lyla, who was
no longer smiling. "My wife, Princess Lyla."

"Oh, she and I have been friends since she
was ten, Lord Narf."

"And this young man"—Narf glanced at
Hunter—"is your aide, I presume. Lyla, did you think to send anyone
after their luggage?"

A servant was
already carrying their luggage—and cases of Rockford's beer—out of the
helicopter. Hunter followed the other toward the cabins. Narf, in the
lead, was saying:

" . . . Ridiculously
primitive here, now, but I'm having some decent furniture and
well-trained servants sent up from my Sea Island
estates . . ."

* * *

The cabin was large and very comfortable, as
Rockford mentioned to Princess Lyla.

"I'm glad you
like it," she said. "Val Boran and Envoy Sonig are already here and
we'll meet for dinner in the central hall. I thought that if we all got
acquainted in a friendly atmosphere like that, it might help a lot
to . . ."

"That reminds
me"—Narf glanced at his watch—"I promised this Boran he could have a
discussion with me—Vesta-Jardeen tariff policies. I suppose he's
already waiting. Come on, Lyla—it will do you no harm to listen and
learn a bit about interplanetary business."

For a long
moment she looked at Narf silently, her eye thoughtful, then she said
to Rockford, "If you will excuse us, please. And be prepared for Alonzo
to come bounding in the minute he learns you're here."

She walked beside Narf to the door and out
it, the top of her dark hair coming just even with his shoulder.

"And that,"
Rockford said as he settled down in the largest, softest chair, "was
king-to-be Narf, whose business ability is such that all his inherited
Sea Island estates are gone but the one Lyla saved for him and who owes
a total of ten million monetary units, to everyone from call girls to
yacht builders."

"And she is going to marry him?" Hunter
asked. "Marry that jackass and let him bankrupt her kingdom?"

Rockford
shrugged. "You may have noticed that she doesn't look the least bit
happy about it—but she is a very conscientious young lady who regards
it as her most solemn duty to keep the promise she made to her father.
For her, there is no escape."

"But—"

"Your first duty will be to cultivate a
friendship with her. I'm going to use her, and you, to get what I want."

"Use us?"

"Yes. One of the most rigid requirements of
a Strategic Service man's character is that he be completely without
one."

* * *

Rockford was
asleep in his chair an hour later, three empty beer cans beside him.
Hunter watched him, his doubt of Rockford's competence growing into a
conviction. Rockford had spoken knowingly of his plan—and had done
nothing but drink more beer. Now he was asleep while time—so limited
and precious—went by. He hadn't even bothered to reply to Hunter's
suggestion that perhaps he should call on Val Boran and counteract some
of Envoy Sonig's anti-Terran propaganda.

Hunter came
to a decision. If Rockford was still doing nothing when morning came,
he would send an urgent message to Supreme Command.

He went outside, to find a servant and learn
how mail was handled.

* * *

"Rook out!"

Gravel flew
as overgrown feet tried to stop, and something like a huge black dog
lunged headlong around the corner and into his legs. He went to the
ground head first over the animal, acutely aware as he went down of the
fascinated interest on the face of a not-so-distant servant.

"I sorry, Rootenant."

He got up, to
look down at the doglike animal. There was a concerned expression in
its brown eyes and an apologetic grin on its face. He recognized it as
one of the natives of the grim starvation world of Altair Four. The
Altairians had emigrated to all sections of the galaxy, to earn a
living in whatever humble capacity they could fill. Many were empathic.

"I run too fast to meet Mr. Rockford, I
guess. Are you hurt, Rootenant?"

He pulled a
cloud tree needle out of his hand and looked grimly down into the furry
face. "In the future, try to look where you're going."

"Oh, I rook,
awr right. I just not see. My name is Aronzo, Rootenant, and I stay
here awr the time and guard everything for Princess Ryra. I pleased to
meet you and I wirr run errands for you, and do things rike mair your
retters, for candy or cookies, which I are not supposed to eat much of,
but Princess Ryra say not too many wirr hurt me—"

"Mail
letters?" Hunter's animosity vanished. "I'm sorry I was rude,
Alonzo—all my fault. I may write a letter to my dear old mother
tonight, and if you would mail it for me in the morning—"

* * *

Rockford left
ahead of Hunter and it was a minute past the appointed time when Hunter
reached the meeting hall. He heard Narf's loud voice inside:

" . . . Boran must have
stopped to watch the sunset. Told him I wanted everyone here on time—"

The low voice of Lyla said something and
Narf said, "Not necessary for you to defend him, my dear. I made it
plain to him."

A new voice spoke from behind Hunter:

"It seems I have annoyed Lord Narf."

He was a
tall, black-eyed man, with the dark, saturnine face of an Indian. There
was a strange, indefinable air of sadness about him which reminded
Hunter of the somber little Princess Lyla.

"You're Val Boran, sir?" he said. "I'm
Lieutenant Hunter—"

Inside, Narf
sat at the head of the table. On his left was Lyla, then Rockford. On
his right was a spidery little man of about fifty, his slicked-back
hair so tight against his skull that it gave his head the appearance of
a weasel's. His lips were paper-thin under a long nose, like those of a
dry and selfish old maid, but the round little eyes darting behind
thick glasses were cold and shrewd and missed nothing. He would be
Verdam's Special Envoy Sonig. Hunter appraised him as a man very
dangerous in his own deceptive way.

A servant
showed them to their places at the table. Rockford and Val Boran
exchanged greetings. The moment everyone was seated, Narf said, "Dinner
tonight will—"

"Excuse me," Lyla said, "but Mr. Sonig
hasn't yet met—"

"Oh . . . the
young fellow there—" Narf gestured with his hand. "Rockford's aide.
Now, ring the chime, Lyla. Those forest stag steaks are already getting
cold. I killed the beast myself, gentlemen, just this morning; a
long-range running shot that required a bit more than
luck . . ."

The dinner
was excellent, but no one seemed to notice. Narf was absorbed in the
story of his swift rise to eminence in the Vestan Space Guard. There
were humorous incidents:

" . . . Can't
understand why, but I seem to attract women like a magnet. I'm strictly
the masculine type of male and I approve of this but it can be a
blasted nuisance when you're an ensign going up fast and your commander
finds one of your blondes stowed away in your
compartment . . ."

And there were scenes of tense drama:

" . . . Made
a boyhood vow that I'd never settle for anything less than to always be
a man among men. Seem to have succeeded rather well. When I saw the
crew was almost to the snapping point from battle tension I knew that
as commander I'd have to set the example that would inspire."

Hunter
recalled Rockford's words of a few hours before: "Narf got to be
commander, finally, but only because he was the son of the king's best
friend. His record is very mediocre."

Princess Lyla
tried three times to start a conversation of general interest and was
drowned out by Narf each time. Sonig's pretense of being spellbound by
Narf's stories was belied by the way his eyes kept darting from
Rockford to Val Boran. Val's own attention kept shifting from Narf to
the silent Lyla, whose downcast eyes betrayed her discouragement. She
watched Val from under her eyelashes, to look away whenever their eyes
met, and Hunter wondered if she was ashamed because Narf had given
Sonig the seat of honor that should have belong to Val.

Of course, Narf's own position at the head
of the table was actually Lyla's.

" . . . So there's no
substitute for competent, unwavering leadership," Narf was saying.
"Received a citation for that one."

Sonig nodded
appreciatively. "Your military record well illustrates the fact that
the tensions of danger and battle can bring forth in a competent leader
the highest kind of courage. But it seems to me that these same
circumstances, if the leader is frightened or incompetent, can easily
produce hysterical actions with disastrous consequences. Is this true,
your lordship?"

Rockford was watching Sonig intently and
Hunter saw that there was an eager anticipation in Sonig's manner.

"You are
quite right," Narf answered. "I've always had the ability to remain
cool in any crisis. Very important. Let a commander get rattled and he
may give any kind of an order. Like the New Jardeen Incident."

A frozen silence followed the last five
words. Hunter thought, So that's what the little weasel was fishing
for . . .

Rockford quietly laid down his fork. Val's
face turned grim. Lyla looked up in quick alarm and said to Narf:

"Let's not—"

"Don't misunderstand me, gentlemen," Narf's
loud voice went on. "I
believe the commander of the Terran cruiser wouldn't have ordered it to
fire upon the Verdam cruiser over a neutral world such as New Jardeen
if he had been his rational self. Cold-war battle nerves. So he shot
down the Verdam cruiser and its nuclear converters exploded when it
fell in the center of Colony City. Force of a hydrogen bomb—forty
thousand innocent people gone in a microsecond. Not the commander's
fault really—fault of the military system that failed to screen out its
unstable officers."

"Yes, your
lordship. But is it possible"—Sonig spoke very thoughtfully—"for a
political power, which is of such a nature that it must have a huge
military force to maintain its existence, to thoroughly screen all its
officers? So many officers are required— Can there ever be any
assurance that such tragedies won't occur again and again, until a
majority of worlds combine in demanding an end to aggression and war?"

Rockford spoke to the grim Val:

"I know, sir,
that your sister was among the lost in Colony City. I am sorry. For the
benefit of Mr. Sonig and Lord Narf, I would like to mention that the
Verdam cruiser fired upon the Terran cruiser over neutral New Jardeen
in open violation of Galactic Rule. An atmospheric feedback of the
Verdam cruiser's own space blasters tore out its side and caused it to
fall. The Terran cruiser never fired."

"But Mr. Rockford—" Sonig spoke very
courteously. "Isn't it true that certain safety devices prevent
atmospheric feedback?"

"They do—unless accidentally or purposely
disconnected."

Sonig raised his eyebrows. "You imply a
created incident, sir?"

"It doesn't
matter," Val Boran said. His tone was as grim as his face and it was
obvious he did not believe Rockford's explanation. "Colony City is a
field of fused glass, now, its people are gone, and no amount of
debating can ever bring them back."

* * *

The dismal dinner was finally over. Rockford
stopped outside the door of their cabin to fill and light his pipe.

"It was a profitable evening," he said to
Hunter. "I can start planning in detail now—after a little beer, that
is."

He'll go to sleep after he drinks his beer,
Hunter thought, and there will never be any plan unless I—

Soft footsteps came up the path behind them.
It was Princess Lyla.

"I want to apologize," she said. "I just
told Val . . . Mr. Boran the same thing."

Her face was a pale oval in the starlight,
her eyes dark shadows. "I'm sorry my husband mentioned the New Jardeen
incident."

"That's all right, Lyla," Rockford said. "No
harm was done."

"He's an ex-military man, and I guess it's
his nature to be more forthright than tactful."

"You
certainly can't condemn him for that," Rockford said. "In fact, he's an
extraordinary teller of entertaining stories. It was a most enjoyable
evening."

* * *

"And, in a
way, it was," Rockford said when she was gone and they were in the
cabin. He was seated in the softest chair, a can of beer in his hand,
as usual.

Hunter
thought of the way she had looked in the starlight and said, "Why did
she let that windbag sit at the head of the table and ruin the meeting
that she had arranged?"

"He'll soon be her husband—I suppose she
feels she should be loyal to him."

"But—"

"But what?"

"Nothing. It's none of my business."

"Oh?" Rockford smiled in a way Hunter did
not like. "You think so, eh?"

Hunter changed the subject. "Are you going
to start talking to Boran to undo the damage Narf and Sonig have done?"

"It would be a waste of time, my boy. Val
Boran's mind is already made up."

"Then what are you going to do?"

"Drink six cans of beer and go to sleep."

"I thought you had a plan."

"I have, a most excellent plan."

"What is it?"

"You'd scream like a banshee if you knew.
You'll learn—if you manage to live that long."

Rockford was
sound asleep an hour later, snoring gently. Hunter sat thinking,
hearing the steady murmur of a voice coming from Val Boran's cabin.
Sonig's voice—using every means of persuasion he could think of, at the
moment capitalizing on the New Jardeen incident and Boran's withheld
grief over the sister he had lost.

And the Terran Republic's representative was
sprawled fat and mindless in a fog of beer fumes.

Hunter
hesitated no longer. The fate of Earth and the Terran Republic hung in
the balance and time was desperately limited—if there was now any time
at all.

He took paper
and pen and began the urgent message to Supreme Command, headed, TOP
EMERGENCY. It would be sent via Hyperspace Communications from the city
and would span the hundred light-years within seconds.

* * *

He was up
before Rockford the next morning, and went out into the bright
sunlight. He looked hopefully for Alonzo, not wanting to be seen
mailing the letter in person. Rockford, despite his drunken stupors,
could be shrewdly observant and he might deduce the contents of the
letter before Supreme Command ever received it.

He was some distance from the cabin when he
heard the pound of padded feet behind him.

"Rootenant," Alonzo had the grin of a genial
canine idiot. "Do you want me to mair your retter to your dear ore
mother?"

"Yes, I have the letter right here."

"O.K. I got to hurry, because the mair
hericopter reaves right away. I charge six fig cookies or three candy
bars or—"

"Here—take it and run—and try not to slobber
all over it."

* * *

They were
served breakfast in the cabin. Afterward, Rockford went for a brief
talk with Princess Lyla. He came back and settled down in the
easy-chair, his pipe in his hand.

"Your
morning's duty won't be at all unpleasant," he said. "The obnoxious and
repulsive things will begin to happen to you later. Maybe this
afternoon."

"What do you mean?"

"This morning
you will go for a walk with Princess Lyla and discuss changing the
Vestan Space Guard into a force along Terran Space Patrol lines. Narf
is still in bed, by the way."

Rockford added, "I'll give you a bit of sage
advice, for your own good—try not to fall in love with her."

* * *

Hunter and
Princess Lyla sat together on the high hill, their backs against the
red trunk of a cloud tree. On the mountain's slope to their right lay
the dark and junglelike Tiger Forest—he wondered if it was true that
the savage tree tigers never left its borders—while the toylike cabins
of the camp were below them. The mountain's slope dropped on down to
the deserts, beyond which were other mountains, far away and
translucent azure.

"It was
George who suggested we come up here," she said. "He knows I do that
often when the responsibilities of being queen of a world—I'm such an
ordinary and untalented person—become too much for me. I always feel
better when I sit up here and look down on the mountains and deserts."

"Yes," he said politely.

"A ruling
princess can be so alone," she said. "That's why I appreciate George's
friendship so much—it's never because of any ulterior motive but
because he likes me."

I'm going to use her, and you, to get
what I want.

He looked at
her, at the lines of sadness on the face that was too old for its
years, felt the way she was so grateful to Rockford for what was only a
cold-blooded pretense of friendship, and the dislike for Rockford
increased. He could not force himself to speak civilly of Rockford so
he changed the subject:

"I understand you wanted to talk to me about
the Space Guard?"

"Yes. Even a neutral world can't feel safe
these days and George suggested that."

"I'll be glad to help all I can. Of course,
the change will require time."

"I can
understand that. They say you Space Patrol officers begin training at
sixteen, after passing almost impossible qualification tests."

"The tests can seem extremely difficult to a
farm boy from Kansas. I—"

"Kansas?" Her
eyes lighted with interest. "My grandmother was from Kansas! She used
to tell me about the green plains of grain in the spring, and how
different they were from the deserts of Vesta . . ."

It was almost
noon when he took her hand and helped her to her feet, realizing
guiltily that they had talked all morning without ever getting back to
the cold, dry facts of military efficiency.

"It was nice
to talk up here this morning," she said. She looked down at the cabins
and the shadow fell again across her face. "But nothing down there has
been changed by it, has it?"

He held to her hand longer than was
necessary as they went down the steep part of the hill. She did not
seem to mind.

When they
reached her cabin she said, "It's still a little while until lunch—time
enough for you to give me a rough outline of the Space Guard change."

Everything
inside the cabin was feminine. None of Narf's possessions were visible.
There was a heavy door leading into Narf's half of the cabin, with a
massive lock. Hunter wondered if it was left unlocked at night, thought
of Narf's sour face and leering little eyes, and found the thought
repulsive.

The answer to his conjecture came with the
entrance of a servant as they seated themselves.

"By your leave, your highness," the servant
said, bowing, "I came to make Lord Narf a key for that inner door."

"A key?" There was alarm in her tone. "But
we're not married—not yet!"

A puzzled
expression came to the man's face. "Lord Narf told me, your highness,
that you had ordered the duplicate key made and given to him before
evening. I found I could not do this without first borrowing your key
for a pattern."

There was a frightened look in her eyes as
they went to the door and back to the servant. "No . . . don't
try to make a key!"

"Yes, your highness." The servant bowed and
turned away.

A familiar gravelly voice spoke from behind
them:

"Ah . . . an unscheduled
little meeting, I see!"

It was Narf, anger on his face, already
within the doorway as the servant went out it.

"We were
going to talk about the Space Guard," Lyla said in an emotionless tone.
"Lieutenant Hunter has promised to show how Space Patrol methods will
improve it and—"

"By a
coincidence, Sonig and I were discussing military matters only a few
minutes ago," Narf said. He looked at Hunter. "I'm afraid that Sonig
and I agree that the Terran Space Guard is quite out of date, now. The
fighting force of the galaxy is the Verdam's Peoples Guards."

Narf spoke to
Lyla, "You may go ahead and talk with this lieutenant if you wish to,
but it's a waste of time. I'm arranging to have Sonig send Peoples
Guards officers here to supervise the rebuilding of the Space Guard.

"And
now"—there was insinuation in Narf's tone as he spoke to Hunter—"I have
to give Sonig a demonstration of my skill with weapons. He insists on
it—he has heard of several of my modest feats."

Narf left the door open behind him so that
by turning his head as he walked, he could see the two inside.

"I suppose I might as well go," Hunter said.

Lyla did not
answer. She sat motionless, staring unseeingly before her, and he
wondered if she was thinking of how very soon Narf would be king and
his authority as great as hers.

She did not notice when he quietly left the
room.

* * *

Rockford was waiting in the cabin, still in
the easy-chair. "Well," he said, "what do you think of her?"

Hunter tried to keep the personal dislike
out of his coldly formal reply:

"If you refer
to your suggestion that I not make love to her, sir, I can assure you
that such a suggestion was never necessary. I happen to have a code of
ethics."

"I didn't say 'make love.' I said, 'fall in
love.' That's quite ethical. Did you complete your discussion with her?"

"Well . . . no."

"You must do that this afternoon, then.
Can't let anything as important as that be delayed."

Hunter stared
at him, trying to find one small grain of sanity in Rockford's actions.
The Verdam empire already had Jardeen within its grasp; add Vesta, and
the end for Earth was inevitable. And Rockford slept, and drank beer,
and regarded it as very important that the Vestan Space Guard
discussions—of a change that Narf would never permit—be continued
without delay.

He walked
slowly into his own room. In the nightmare situation of frustration
there was one single sane and stable conviction for his mind to cling
to: Supreme Command would by now have received his message and shot
back the reply that would relieve Rockford of his command. Perhaps it
wasn't yet too late—

Then his mind reeled as a new conviction
struck it.

There was a sheet of paper on his bed—a
message.

His message!

. . . SITUATION
EXTREMELY CRITICAL . . . VAL BORAN ALREADY
CONVINCED BY SONIG'S
PROPAGANDA . . . MUST REPORT ROCKFORD IS UTTERLY
INCOMPETENT, HIS MIND
AND WILL DESTROYED BY ALCOHOL . . . REPEAT:
ROCKFORD IS DOING NOTHING,
HIS MIND DESTROYED BY ALCOHOL . . .

The words
screamed up at him and he felt the sickness of one who sees the last
faint hope shattered and gone. All was lost,
now . . .

He went outside, feeling a savage desire for
violence rising above the sickness.

"Rootenant!"
Alonzo came bounding to meet him and slid to a halt with his saucer
feet scattering gravel and the idiotic grin on his face. "I mair your
retter and you owe me six fig cook—"

It occurred
to Hunter that it was not Alonzo that should be punished. He, Hunter,
was the one who deserved execution for ever entrusting anything so
important as the message to an imbecilic animal.

He said with old distinctness:

"The . . . letter . . . is . . . inside."

"Oh?" Alonzo blinked. "I sure mair
something, awr right. After Mr. Rockford correct it."

"Correct it?"

"Oh, sure.
Mr. Rockford, he up rong before you this morning to find me and say you
are writing a retter rast night and I must bring it by for him to make
awr your mistakes over again."

So Rockford was watching all the time,
pretending to be in a drunken sleep . . .

"Rootenant—" Alonzo shifted his big feet
impatiently. "You stirr owe me six fig—"

Hunter swung
around and strode away, afraid he might decide to choke the animal
after all. A culture of twenty worlds was the same as already
destroyed, and he was held in a maddening quagmire of helplessness by a
crafty alcoholic and a dog with the mind of a small child.

"Ah . . . my
boy!" Rockford came out of the cabin, beaming as though nothing had
ever happened. "Look to your left, among those ghost trees—Narf is
demonstrating his quick-draw skill to Sonig. Narf is supposed to be a
very dangerous man, you know."

Hunter
looked, and saw Narf whipping up the blunt, ugly spread-beam
blaster—known to soldiers as the Coward's Special, because at short
range it could not miss and would always cripple and blind a man for
life even though it would not always kill him. Sonig was standing by,
nodding his weasel head and smiling in open admiration.

"Of course,"
Rockford said, "Sonig isn't mentioning the needle gun all Verdam envoys
carry up their sleeves. He's flattering Narf's ego for a reason—he
intends to have Vesta, as well as Jardeen, sewed up for the Verdam
empire when he leaves here."

"And so far
as I can see," Hunter said coldly, "Sonig never is going to have
anything vaguely resembling intelligent resistance to his plans."

"Ah,
yes . . . so far as you can see," Rockford agreed
amiably. "But you
obey my order to take Lyla for another walk and everything will turn
out all right. In fact, I'll speak to her about that right now."

Hunter stared after Rockford as he walked
away. There could be no possible shred of doubt—Rockford was insane!

The breeze shifted and the voice of Narf
came:

" . . . Certainly no
weapon for a timid man, this spread-beam blaster. Have to meet the
enemy man-to-man at close range."

"In that
respect, too," Sonig said, "you remind me of our great General Paluk.
His skill in hand-to-hand combat was something that—"

"Rootenant—"

Hunter quivered and steeled himself.

"Rootenant—"
Alonzo came to a flopping halt beside him. "I terr Princess Ryra and
she say I are bad to be mad at you. So I not mad, even if you didn't
give me my pay."

"Thank you," Hunter said acidly. "I was
deeply disturbed by your resentment."

"Oh, I know,
you don't rike me. But I think you not as mean as you act. But Rord
Narf—he is. I terr you, he awready mad enough to kirr you."

"What? Lord Narf wants to kill me?"

"Oh, he know
you hord Princess Ryra's hand awrmost awr the way down the hirr this
morning. Mr. Sonig, he see you, and he run and terr Rord Narf and Mr.
Boran, too."

"But I was only helping her down the hill."

"Rord Narf,
he are going to say mean things about it to Princess Ryra, too. I know.
He are awrways saying mean things to my Princess Ryra."

Alonzo sighed, a sound strangely humanlike
in its sadness.

"Who wirr
watch over my Princess Ryra after she marred Rord Narf? He said, 'The
first thing to go around here wirr be that stupid brabber-mouth animar
that are not worth what it costs to feed it.' I think maybe he are
afraid that if he ever hit my Princess Ryra, I wirr kirr him." The
brown eyes looked up at Hunter, and suddenly they were unlike he had
ever seen them; cold with deliberate decision. "I wirr, too."

* * *

Hunter was still standing by the cabin,
thinking of what Alonzo had said, when Rockford returned.

"I also
stopped by to see Val Boran," Rockford said. "While you're off with
Lyla, we'll go to the city. Lyla is giving us free access to the Royal
Library and the records of a neutral world carry more weight than
anything I could say. Not that it's going to change his mind any—but it
will give me a chance to work on him in another way."

Rockford went
into the cabin as Val Boran came up the path, Princess Lyla walking
beside him. She was saying, " . . . And anything we
have in the library
is yours for the asking."

They were
close enough for Hunter to see her expression as she looked up at Val
and added with what seemed a touch of wistfulness, "I'll be glad to go
in with you and Mr. Rockford and do what I can to help if you want me
to."

"Lyla"—it was
the grating voice of Narf who seemed to have the ability to materialize
anywhere—"I'm sure the man knows his business. Besides, I want to talk
to you about something as soon as I have finished my discussion with
Mr. Sonig."

With that,
Narf started on toward his cabin. Sonig, close behind him, paused long
enough to bow to Lyla and say with the meaningless smile, "Good
afternoon, Princess Lyla. Your husband was just demonstrating his
marvelous skill with weapons. I would very much dislike"—the little
eyes darted to Hunter and back again—"being the man who aroused his
lordship's wrath."

Then Sonig followed Narf, with one last
flickering glance at Hunter to see how the remark had fallen.

Rockford came out of the cabin with his
brief case and said to Val, "Are we ready to go?"

"I just told
Val"—Lyla spoke quickly—"that I would be glad to go along and help any
way I can." The words were addressed to Rockford but her eyes were on
Val, with the same wistful expression. "Do you want me to?"

Val answered
her with cool, formal courtesy: "The librarian can find all the records
we need, Princess Lyla, without our interrupting your schedule for the
day or your discussion with your husband. Thank you very much."

For an
instant Lyla's face had the hurt expression of a child rebuffed without
reason. Then she looked away and Val turned to Rockford and said, "I'm
ready when you are, sir."

Lyla watched them walk away and she was
still watching when the helicopter had lifted into the air and faded
from sight.

Hunter hesitated, then spoke to her:

"I understand you want to talk more about
the Space Guard, Princess Lyla?"

"Princess
Lyla!" Her lips curled as she turned to face him and she seemed to spit
the words at him in sudden, unexpected resentment. "I love the
meaningless sound of my official figurehead title! It's so much better
than being regarded as a living person with feelings that can be hurt!"

"But Princ . . . I
mean—" He floundered, not quite sure what had caused her reaction.

She made a
visible effort to compose herself. "I'm sorry," she said. "I suppose
my . . . husband . . . is quite
right; an immature female has no
business trying to rule a world and the sooner the marriage is
confirmed, the sooner a competent man can take over the job."

"No," he said. "I think—"

He decided that what he thought had better
be left unsaid.

"I'll"—she looked toward the cabin she
shared with Narf—"let you know when we can talk."

She went back
toward the cabin, walking slowly. From inside Narf's half of it came
the sound of Narf's voice as he spoke to Sonig:

" . . . Of
course, this collection of heads is nothing compared with what I have
in the Sea Islands . . . but some interesting
stories here . . . take
that snow fox there . . ."

Hunter sighed, and saw that Lyla had stopped
before her door, as though dreading to enter. Narf's voice droned on:

" . . . Only
wounded, so I finished it with a knife. Even with its heart half cut
out, it still wanted to live . . . beautiful
pelt . . .  coat for
Janalee, the strip-tease queen . . . always had a
way with women—Lyla
could tell you that . . . had my pick of hundreds
but I'm letting her
be my choice . . ."

He saw Lyla
half lift her hand, as in some mute gesture of protest, then she turned
and walked swiftly away; up the path that led into the ghost trees, and
out of sight.

He waited,
but she did not come back. He went into his cabin and moved about
restlessly, hearing again Narf's sadism-and-sex boasting and seeing
again how she turned and almost ran from it—

* * *

"Rootenant!"

Alonzo was panting, a look of frantic appeal
in his eyes.

"Prease herp
me . . . Princess
Ryra . . . she wirr die!"

He felt his heart lurch. "She's hurt?" he
demanded, and was already on his way to the door.

"She are about to cry and she are going to
where the tree tigers riv. They wirr kirr her—prease come with me!"

He asked no more questions but went out the
door and up the path, Alonzo running ahead of him.

The ghost
trees grew thinner as they went up the mountain's slope, and the
blue-green fernlike trees of the tiger forest began to appear. They
grew thicker and thicker, until the ground was black with their shadows
and the midday sunlight was filtered out by the foliage overhead.
Alonzo was trailing her, his nose to the ground, and Hunter hurried
close behind him, watching for the red-and-white of the clothes she was
wearing and hoping they would not find her too late.

They were deep in the forest when they found
her.

She was
standing motionless in the center of a clearing, facing away from him
and looking as small and alone as a lost child. She seemed to be
waiting . . .

He realized
for the first time how alone she really was, with only a doglike alien,
Alonzo, to love her or care what might happen to her, and with a future
she could not bear to face. But Rockford had been wrong when he had
said, For her, there is no escape.

There was
escape for her. She had only to wait, as she was waiting now, and it
would come in the windlike whisper of a tiger's rush through the grass
behind her . . .

He hurried to her. She turned, and he saw
the stains of tears now dry on her face and in her eyes the darkness of
utter defeat.

"I was afraid you might get hurt, Lyla—"

Then,
seemingly without volition on his part, he put his arms around her and
she was clinging to him and crying in muffled sobs and trying to say
something about "I didn't think anybody cared . . ."

It was some time later, when her crying was
finished, that he was reminded of the tigers by Alonzo:

"Rootenant—awr
the time, some tigers are coming croser and croser. We better get her
out of here, Rootenant, before they find us."

Lyla looked
down at Alonzo. "Thank you, Alonzo, for watching over me
and . . . and—" Her voice caught and she dropped to
her knees and
hugged the shaggy head tight against her.

Hunter
watched ahead, Lyla beside him as they went through the dense trees.
Alonzo walked soft-footed behind them, watching the rear. When they
came to the first ghost trees and the dwindling of the tiger trees,
Hunter thought it safe to walk slower and talk to her.

"I saw you go," he said. "I didn't know
where until Alonzo came running to tell me."

"I heard him bragging about killing, and
about his women—I was weak, wasn't I?"

"Weak?"

"I was afraid to face the future, just
because it isn't to be exactly like I thought I wanted."

"What was the kind you wanted, Lyla?"

"Oh . . . I
guess I wanted a husband who could see me only, and children, and
evenings together in the flower garden, and, well, all the silly,
sentimental little things that mean so much to a woman."

He thought, Even with its heart half cut
out, it still wanted to live . . . Coat for
Janalee . . . the strip-tease
queen . . .

They passed
through the last of the tiger trees and she said, "We're safe, now. The
tigers never attack anyone outside their forest."

She was walking slowly and he said, "We
should get on back before you're missed, shouldn't we?"

"Who would
miss me?" she asked. "So long as I remain physically intact for the
marriage night, who cares where or why I went away?"

There was the
cold blackness of winter in her eyes as she spoke, and in her voice the
first undertone of brass. He saw that this was already the beginning of
the change that Narf would make in her; the transformation of a girl
young and wanting to love and be loved into a hard and cynical woman.

He put his arm around her shoulder, thinking
that he should tell her that he cared and that she must never
let Narf change her.

"Lyla, I—"

He realized
how futile and foolish the words would sound. She would marry Narf, he
would return to Earth, and they would never meet again. There were no
words for him to speak on this last walk together, no way to tell her
that he wanted to help her, to protect and care for her. No way to
express the feeling inside him . . .

He did what
seemed as natural under the circumstances as it had been for him to put
his arm around her in the clearing. He tilted up her face and bent his
head to kiss her.

And walked with jarring impact into the
knobby elbow of a ghost tree limb.

* * *

The sun was down and dusk was darkening the
camp when they arrived back at her cabin.

"Thank you,
Dale," she said. Her hand squeezed his arm. "I didn't know I had a
friend . . . but now we'll have to be strangers
because—"

Gravel
crunched loudly on one of the paths in the ghost trees and they looked
back, to see Narf and Sonig coming, walking swiftly. Even at the
distance, there was anger like a red aura about Narf.

"Well," Lyla said softly, "here comes my
medicine."

Sonig stopped
at his own cabin, to stand just within the doorway, watching. Narf
strode on and stopped before Hunter and Lyla, his face twisted with
savage hatred as he looked at Hunter. He spoke to Lyla with grating
vehemence:

"You've done an excellent job of making an
ass of yourself—and of me—haven't you? Come on in the cabin!"

Narf seized
her by the arm, towering over her as he jerked her around toward the
door. Hunter stepped quickly forward, feeling the hot flash of his own
anger, but there was the paleness of Lyla's face as she looked back, an
appeal on it that said, No! He stopped, realizing that Narf
would not physically harm the woman who would make him king of Vesta,
and that any interference on his part would only make everything the
harder for her.

He watched
the two go into the cabin—into Lyla's half—and Narf slammed the door
shut behind them. There followed the quick bang of windows being
closed, and then Narf's muffled tirade began:
" . . . May think I'm a
fool . . . I'm going to tell you a few things . . ."

Sonig was
still standing within his doorway. Hunter knew, without seeing it, that
the thin-lipped smile would be on Sonig's face.

He turned and
walked back to his own cabin. There was nothing he could do but
withdraw—and listen from a distance and be ready to act if it seemed
she was in danger.

He sat on his
doorstep in the darkness, hearing occasional phrases in Narf's
unrelenting abuse. One was: "So prim you had to countermand my order
for a key to that lock—then you went out to play with that second
lieutenant . . ."

Alonzo
materialized out of the darkness, coming as silently as a shadow. He
was no longer the bumbling clown. The idiotic grin was gone and his
eyes were green fire, slanted and catlike, his teeth flashing white in
a snarl as he looked back toward the sound of Narf's voice.

"She are my Princess Ryra," Alonzo
said. "He are cursing her. If he ever hurt her, I wirr tear out his
throat and his river."

"He won't hurt her, Alonzo," Hunter said,
wishing he could be sure. "He'll only use words on her."

"He never ask her why she run
away—he onry curse her and threaten her because she embarrass him."

"Embarrass him?"

"He and Sonig, they see you coming out of
the forest with your arm around her. They watch with high-power
grasses."

"But there was nothing wrong in that—"

"That are
what Princess Ryra say. She say you onry put your arm around her
because she are stirr scared of the tigers. And then he say, what about
the other? And he cawr her awrful bad names."

"What other?"

"Oh, when you are bending down to kiss
Princess Ryra and are wawrking into tree."

He gulped. "They saw that?"

"Oh, sure.
Rord Narf are so mad he want to kirr you right then but Sonig say,
'Wait, I have a pran.' Then Sonig say, 'It are too bad we don't have a
camera—we could have made that rootenant the raffing stock of forty
worlds.' "

The thought made Hunter gulp again.

"What was Sonig's plan that Narf told Lyla
about?" he asked.

"Oh, he not terr her.
I hear Sonig terr Rord Narf when I spy. Sonig say, 'Tomorrow we be
friendry and we ret those two go for another wawrk in the woods. And we
have cameras with terescope lens and when they kiss and hug we take
moving pictures.' "

"Why, the gutter-bred rat—"

"And Rord
Narf say, 'That is what we wirr do. And then I wirr kirr him as soon as
we have the pictures and she wirr have to toe the mark from then on
because if I pubricry show the pictures of what she did, she wirr be
ashamed to show her face anywhere on Vesta.' "

"Why, the—" He could not think of a suitable
expression.

"And then
Sonig say, 'To make sure she go out tomorrow, you bawr her out good so
she wirr want to cry on the rootenant's shourder again.' And Rord Narf
say, 'I wirr be very grad to terr the two-timing hussy what I think of
her, don't worry.' "

"Why, she was only a scared girl and that
rat thinks she—"

* * *

" . . . Your
promise to your dying father" Narf's voice came in accusation. "He's
gone now, and you can betray him, too! Why don't you go all the way in
your deceptions . . . your father will never
know . . ."

Alonzo said, "I think I go back and stay
croser to her cabin, Rootenant."

It was an
hour later, and Narf's voice had settled to a low, steady growling,
when Hunter heard a helicopter settle down near the camp. A minute
later, Val Boran was outlined momentarily in the doorway of the cabin
he shared with Sonig. There followed the exchange of a few
words—interrogation in Val's tone—and then the sound of Sonig's voice
alone, which continued for minute after minute.

Sonig is
telling him all about it, Hunter thought, including my walking into
that tree. But there won't be one word in sympathy with Lyla.

Sonig's story
ended and Hunter saw Val leave the cabin. He came straight up the path
toward Hunter, looming tall in the darkness as he stopped before him.
There was the pale gleam of metal in Val's belt—a blaster. His voice
came cold and flat:

"I want to talk to you, Lieutenant."

Hunter sighed, thinking, I suppose he wants
to kill me, too.

He got up and said, "We'll go inside. Shut
the door behind you—I don't want your friend straining his ears to hear
us."

Val sat tall even in the chair, his face
like a carving in a dark granite and his eyes as bright and hard.

"I understand
that you took Princess Lyla into the tiger forest today." Val's hand
was very near the blaster. "I understand you then played the role of
affectionate rescuer."

"Do you believe that story?" Hunter asked.

"Do you have a different one?"

"You might ask Lyla. Or Alonzo. Alonzo is
the one who came to me for help when he saw she was going out to die."

"To die?" A startled expression came into
the black eyes. "She wanted to die?"

"I'll tell
you what happened," Hunter said, and told him the story, omitting only
the embarrassing kissing incident and knowing that Sonig had not.

Val was
silent for a while after Hunter finished speaking, then he said, "It
isn't for me to comment upon Lord Narf's character or actions. She is
his wife by her own choice. But the thought of someone else taking her
out and—"

"I know. It wasn't so." Then Hunter added,
"You think a great deal of her, don't you?"

Val's face hardened and Hunter thought he
would not answer. Then he smiled a little, even though without humor,
and said:

"Since I came
here to kill you if I thought you deserved it, I suppose I am obligated
to answer your question. My regard for Princess Lyla is the respectful
one that any civilized man would have for another man's wife."

There was an unintended implication in the
statement and Hunter made a conjecture:

"You and Princess Lyla were engaged—how long
ago?"

There was surprise on Val's face, and
something like pain quickly masked. "So she's already making it public
information?"

"No. I
learned of it from . . . other sources. I don't
know, of course, why
you persuaded her to break the engagement—that's none of my business,
anyway."

"No," Val said. "It's none of your business.
I'll tell you this: I
didn't ask her to break the engagement. But so long as that was what
she wanted, I certainly wasn't going to beg her to change her mind."

Val stood up
to go. "If you don't mind, I would rather you said nothing to Princess
Lyla about this visit tonight. I'm afraid my misplaced sense of
chivalry would make me look like a fool to her."

Then, as an after thought, Val added, "Mr.
Rockford had further business in the city."

* * *

It was late
when Narf finally left Lyla's part of the cabin. He went to the cabin
occupied by Val and Sonig, aroused Sonig, and the two of them went to
the helicopter field. Hunter heard the helicopter leaving for the city
a few minutes later. Val's cabin remained dark and after a while, the
light in Lyla's cabin went out.

He went to
bed, but not to sleep. Over and over, a lonely little Princess Lyla
clung to him for comfort, crying, while he held her close. He twisted
and turned restlessly as he thought of the hours she had sat alone and
unloved while Narf poured out his hatred and fury on her.

There was a
yearning for her, a desire to hold her and always protect her, that
would not let him sleep. And he realized the reason why.

He thought miserably, I'm in love with
her!

* * *

Rockford was
in bed, snoring loudly, with six empty beer cans on the floor beside
him, when Hunter got up. He went outside and found Alonzo waiting for
him.

"They got it awr pranned to kirr you for
sure today, Rootenant."

"How?" he asked.

"Rast night,
Rord Narf and Sonig go to the city and Rord Narf, he hire four
bad-rooking men with brasters, and Sonig hire four more that are his
countrymen, and they bring these men back and now they are hiding in
the woods. And they awrso bring back movie cameras with terescope
renses. And Rord Narf raff and say he wirr marry Princess Ryra today
before your dead body is even coor."

"Oh?" Hunter said. He thought of the snoring
Rockford and his words of two days before: If you manage to live
that long. How, he wondered, could the lazy old drunkard have made
such an accurate guess?

"And then,"
Alonzo said, "Rord Narf wake up Princess Ryra—onry I know she wasn't
asreep—and he terr her he ruv her and have awready made awr the
arrangement for them to get married today, right after runch. And he
terr her she is right about the Space Guard and she wirr have until
runch to tawrk to you about it."

There was the
sound of Narf's door opening and closing and Alonzo said, "I go
now—Rord Narf might guess that I are terring you things."

A few minutes
later Narf and Sonig came down the path toward Hunter. Both carried
packsacks—the cameras, of course—and both carried long-range rifle
blasters.

"Good
morning, Lieutenant!" Narf was smiling and pseudogenial again. "About
last night—sometimes a man has to be stern with his wife to impress
her. Very foolish thing she did—might have been killed. I'm afraid I
was so badly shaken with worry over her that I didn't even thank you
for bringing her back."

"A beautiful
morning, lieutenant!" Sonig was smiling, coming as close to beaming as
the nature of his face would permit. "Lord Narf is going to take me
stag hunting this morning—I'll get some lessons from a master. Did you
ever see his lordship's collection of heads? Amazing!"

"But it seems
a sportsman's collection is never quite complete," Narf said. He was
still smiling but the hatred was burning like a fire in his eyes as he
looked at Hunter. "There's one more head I must have—I intend to get it
this morning."

Narf and
Sonig were gone when Lyla came out of her cabin, her face pale and
drawn. Val came out of his cabin and the two spoke to each other in
greeting. There was a silence, in which neither seemed to know what to
say.

Finally, awkwardly, Val said, "I heard about
yesterday, Lyla. Why did you go into the tiger forest?"

"Oh . . . I was just
walking, I guess, and didn't notice where."

"You went there to die, didn't you?"

"I . . . when you have
nothing left—" Then she lifted her head in a proud gesture and said,
"Should it matter to you?"

For a moment Val had the look of a man
struck. Then it was gone and he said in an emotionless voice:

"No. I was asking about something that is
only your husband's business. I won't do it again."

He turned away, back to his cabin.

"Val—" She took a quick step after him, the
proud air gone and her arms outstretched. "I didn't mean—"

He turned back, his tone politely
questioning.

"Yes?"

"I only
wanted—" Then her arms dropped and the life went out of her voice.
"What does it matter . . . what does anything
matter?"

She hurried into her cabin and the door
closed behind her.

* * *

Rockford spoke from the doorway behind
Hunter:

"Well, my boy, are you ready for your day's
duties?"

He followed Rockford inside, where Rockford
settled down in the easy-chair and yawned.

"I had a
rather busy night," he said. "Certain events occurred yesterday
afternoon which forced me to change my own plans to some extent. Or to
set them ahead a day, I should say."

He made an effort to put the vision of Lyla
from his mind and asked, "Did you make any progress with Val Boran?"

"No, I'm
afraid not. Of course, I didn't expect to." Rockford yawned again.
"There was another message from Supreme Command. The situation is
getting worse. Which reminds me of your Duty For The Day and the fact
that if you can live through it, you will have it made."

He's my
superior, Hunter thought. He's supposed to outrank a Space Patrol
General—and he's amused by the situation he's here to remedy.

"Right now,"
Rockford said, "Lyla faces a grim future and feels like she doesn't
have a friend in the world. She needs a shoulder to cry on. You will
take her for a walk and supply that shoulder."

Somehow, even
though the order had nothing to do with the Terran-Verdam crisis, he
did not have the heart to object. She had been crying before she even
reached her door. Later, after he had comforted her, he would demand
that Rockford get down to determined effort on the Verdam problem. No
more than an hour would be lost by that . . .

"Yes, sir,"
he said. "But in the interests of Princess Lyla's safety, I had better
talk to her in her cabin. Alonzo saw Narf and Sonig bring back eight—"

"Professional
killers, to dispose of you," Rockford finished. "I know all about it,
and I know that Narf took time last night to spend an hour with his
favorite girl friend and brag even to her that he was going to marry
Lyla today before your dead body had time to get cool.

"But you just
take Lyla for another walk and you will cause the beginning of the end
for the Verdam Peoples Worlds. You will go down in history, my boy, as
the man who saved the Terran Republic."

Hunter went
out the door, again feeling a feverish sense of unreality. He was to go
forth and get blasted into hamburger and by some mysterious process
known only to Rockford, the Verdam empire would contritely start
collapsing . . .

He did not
knock on her door. He did not think of it as a violation of her
privacy. She would be feeling too alone and unwanted to care.

She was not
crying as he had thought she would be. She was standing by the window,
staring down at the gray, distant desert, her eyes as bleakly empty as
it.

"Hello, Lyla," he said.

"Hello, Dale.
I was just thinking; this is the day that I, as a woman, should always
have dreamed about"—she tried to smile, and failed, and the brass came
into her voice—"my wedding day!"

"Alonzo told me about it."

It seemed to
him he should add something, such as to wish her happiness—but such
words would be meaningless and farcical and they would both know it.

But there was no reason why he should
endanger her by obeying Rockford's insane order. He would not do it—

"Ah . . . good
morning, Lyla!" Rockford loomed in the doorway, jovial as a Santa
Claus. "Did you know Dale wants to go for a walk in the woods with you
this bright spring morning—and he's no doubt too bashful to tell you
so? Do you good to get away from camp"—there was the suggestion of a
pause—"while you're still free."

He turned a
beaming smile on Hunter. "Don't stand there like a dummy, boy—take her
by the arm and let her have a last walk with someone who cares what
happens to her."

There was one
thing about Rockford not compatible with his air of fond fatherliness:
his eyes were hard, gray slate as they looked into Hunter's and there
was no mistaking their expression. Rockford had not made a fatherly
suggestion for his own amusement. He had given an order that he
intended to be obeyed.

* * *

Hunter and
Lyla walked on through the thickets of ghost trees and arrow brush,
each with little to say, Hunter feeling more and more like a ridiculous
fool. They had no destination, no purpose in their walk, other than to
abide by Rockford's desire that a total of ten assassins get a chance
to slaughter a certain expendable second lieutenant.

He did not
put his arm around Lyla as they walked. If they killed him, it would
have to be without their having the satisfaction of the pictures they
wanted with which to blackmail her.

They came to a tiny clearing, where a cloud
tree log made an inviting seat in the shade, and Lyla said:

"No matter how far we walk, I'll have to go
back to face it. Let's stop here, and rest a while."

He saw that the clearing was fairly well
screened, but certainly not completely so. It would have to do.

He sat down on the log several feet away
from her, not wanting to take the chance of her getting hit by accident.

Not that I'm enthusiastic about getting hit
by intent, myself, he thought. What a way for a Space Guard officer to
die.

He wondered
if Rockford would ever inform Headquarters that Lieutenant Dale Hunter
had died in the line of duty—by whatever twisted logic this insane
episode could be called duty—and he wondered how the Commemoration Roll
would read for him . . . Displaying courage
above and beyond the
call of duty, Lieutenant Hunter sat conspicuously on top of a hill and
calmly waited for ten assassins to slaughter
him . . .

"It's peaceful and quiet here, isn't it?"
Lyla said.

He had been
trying to watch four different directions at once and he realized that
the constant swiveling of his neck was causing his stiff blouse collar
to slowly cut his throat. And he saw that it was—for the moment,
anyway—peaceful and quiet where they sat. The sun was warm and golden
before them, bright flowers sweetly scented the air, and giant rainbow
moths were fluttering over them, their tiny voices like the piping of a
thousand fairy flutes.

"I wish I had been born a country girl,"
Lyla said. "I'd like to have a life like this, and not—what mine will
be."

He asked the question to which he had to
have the answer:

"Once you were going to marry Val and live
on Jardeen, weren't you?"

"I . . . so my
foolishness is no longer a secret?"

"Foolishness?" he asked.

"We met two years ago when I was attending
the Fine Arts university on Jardeen. I was younger and a lot more
naïve  than
I am now. I thought we were desperately in love and would get married
as soon as I finished school and would live happily ever after, and all
that."

"And it didn't turn out that way?"

"I had to
make that promise to Daddy and when I wrote to Val about it, he seemed
to approve. He didn't suggest I renounce the proxy marriage when the
time was up, or anything. He just wrote that I knew what I wanted to
do. He seemed relieved to be free to go ahead with his political
career."

"I see," he said, and then, "you don't feel
bad about it, do you, Lyla?"

"Feel bad? I wouldn't marry Val Boran if he
was the last man on Vesta! Even Lord Narf isn't as self-centered as he
is!"

"You don't have to marry Narf, either," he
said. "You know that."

She looked down at the ground and said in a
dead voice, "I made a promise."

"Rockford
told me that your father never really knew Narf—that on the few times
they met, Narf put on the act of being a refined gentleman, very
respectful toward the king's daughter."

She did not answer and he said, "Is that the
way it was?"

"Yes. That's the way it was. But how could I
tell Daddy, as he lay dying?"

"You
couldn't, Lyla. But if your father could be here today and know what
you know about Narf, do you think he would want you to marry him?"

"No . . . I guess not.
But Lord Narf loves me in his own way, I think—and that's more than
anyone else does."

Then her tone
changed and she said, "I'm so glad that you're here today, Dale—I'm
glad that there is someone who cares at least a little about what
happens to me."

On her face
was a poignant longing for someone to love and comfort her. It seemed
to him, now beyond any doubt, that there could never be anything for
him in his career but loneliness. How different the warm love of Lyla
would be from the cold austerity of the military and its endless
succession of weapons and killing—

* * *

He moved, to sit beside her and put his arm
around her shoulders. "Lyla," he said, "I want to tell you—"

"Dale . . ."
The word was a despairing sob as her composure broke and she held
tightly to him, crying, her voice coming muffled as she pressed her
face against his chest. "Help me, Dale! How can I marry that sadistic
beast when it's someone else I can't live without—and he doesn't even
know I love him!"

"But he does!" He hugged her closer, "He
does know, and he loves you even more than you love him."

"Are you
sure?" She raised a tear-stained face, hope like sunshine through
clouds on it. "Are you really sure Val loves me, after all?"

"Val?"

The
revelation was like the stunning concussion shock of a blast beam
passing two inches overhead. His vision blurred and there was a hideous
roaring in his ears. She was still holding to him for comfort and it
seemed to him that was wrong—he should be clinging to her for
support . . .

"Dale . . . what's
the matter?"

"But I thought—" He swallowed with
difficulty. "I thought you meant that I was the—"

Something
struck the top of his head; this time, for certain, the concussion
shock of a blaster beam passing close above it. There was a vicious
crack as the beam split the tree beyond, then a crash and explosion of
wood fragments as a second beam followed the first.

He rolled
from the log, taking Lyla with him. The arrow bushes shielded them
briefly, long enough for them to reach the temporary safety of a small
swale.

"Dale!" Her
dark eyes were wide with puzzled surprise and one small foot was bare
from the loss of a sandal. "Someone shot at us!"

He thought, So Narf got his pictures, after
all.

"Rootenant!" Alonzo came running. "They are that
way—awr spread out to be sure to kirr you."

Alonzo
motioned with his nose, a movement that seemed to cover all the high
ground beyond them. At least, the enemy was not between them and camp.
Not yet.

A distant shout came, an order from Narf to
his men:

"All of you—down that ridge! Get between
Hunter and camp!"

"It's him!" Her fingers gripped his
arm. "He wants them to kill you!"

They had fired from a distance too great for
his own blaster. He could not defy them from where he now stood.

"I'll have to try to get within range of
them," he said. "I'll go back—"

"No!" Her grip on his arm tightened.
"Don't leave me, Dale—don't let him find me here."

He looked
down the length of the swale. At its lower end the ghost tree forest
began, dense and concealing—but all down the length of the swale the
snarevines lay in thick, viciously barbed entanglements, overlying a
bed of sharp rocks and boulders. She could never get to the safety of
the ghost trees in time.

Narf had his pictures, now. What would he do
to her in the insanity of his hatred and triumph when he reached her?

"All right, Lyla," he said. "I'll see that
you get to the trees—"

* * *

There was a
crashing of explosions and debris leaped skyward behind them and along
both sides of the swale. The firing continued, scattered but very
effectively consistent, and he said as he drew his blaster, "I guess
they don't want us to go away."

He set the
regulator of the blaster at lowest intensity so that the beam would not
clip dangerous flying fragments from the boulders. The green, tough
vines disintegrated reluctantly while the precious minutes sped by;
while the unhindered assassins would be hurrying to the point where the
entire swale would be visible to them and under their fire.

Alonzo was
following along near the top of the swale's side, ignoring the danger
as he watched the progress of the enemy and reported it to Hunter: "Now
they are half-way, Rootenant, hurrying faster—"

They reached the lower end of the swale. The
last of the vines disintegrated and the ghost tree forest lay before
them.

He touched her cheek in farewell. "Get on to
camp, as fast as you can run."

The firing
abruptly ceased as he spoke. There was an ominous silence. Alonzo came
running, his tone almost a yelp in its urgency:

"They are awrmost where they can see us! We
got to get her out of here, Rootenant—awrfur quick!"

* * *

"Lyla!"

It was the
voice of Val, sharp with concern for her. He came running out of the
ghost trees, all his cold impassiveness gone. "Are you hurt, honey—are
you hurt?"

"You came for me!" She whispered the
words, her face radiant. Then she ran to meet him, her arms
outstretched, crying, "Val . . . oh,
Val . . ."

Their arms went around each other.

Then the woods erupted as ten blasters laid
down a barrage to block any escape to camp.

"I'll try to give you a chance to get
through," Hunter said quickly. "Be ready for it when it comes."

He ran toward
the firing line, taking advantage of the concealing afforded by the
first fringe of ghost trees. They should be almost within range of his
own weapon, now—

Again, the firing abruptly ceased, as though
by some signal. There came the furious raving of Narf:

"It's that Boran she wants! Kill him too!"

Sonig cursed with bitter rage. "Jardeen is
lost to Verdam if any witness escapes—and we'll all hang, besides."

There was a second of silence, and then
Narf's command:

"Kill the woman, too!"

There was a
roar like thunder as the firing began. The ground trembled and debris
filled the air with flying fragments. Hunter, still running toward the
enemy under cover of the trees, saw Val trying to get Lyla to safety
and saw them both hurled to the ground as a tree exploded in front of
them. They would never live to rise and run again—

* * *

He saw Rockford's plan, at last, and what
his own duty would now have to be: He knew why Rockford had said of
this day, "If you can live through it, you will have it made."

And he had a cold feeling inside him that he
was not going to have it made.

He took a
deep breath and ran toward the enemy, out of the concealment of the
ghost trees and in the open where they could not fail to see him, his
blaster firing a continuous beam that fell only a little short of the
enemy, that showed them he would be close enough to kill them within
seconds if he was not stopped.

The fire
concentrated upon him, giving Lyla and Val their chance for escape. He
ran through an inferno of crashing explosions, twisting and dodging on
ground that trembled and heaved under his feet, while razor-sharp rock
shrapnel filled the air with shrill, deadly screaming sounds.

Something
ripped through his shoulder, to spin him around and send him rolling.
He scrambled up, firing as he did so, and ran drunkenly on.

Something
struck the side of his head and he went down again. He tried to rise
and fell back, a blackness sweeping over him that he could not hold
away despite his efforts to do so.

It seemed to
him that the firing had suddenly stopped, that in its place was the
hoarse buzz of a police stun-beam. It seemed he saw helicopters
overhead, bearing the bright blue insignia of the Royal Guard and then
there was nothing but the blackness.

* * *

There was a
brief, dreamlike return to consciousness. He was in a Royal Guard
helicopter and Alonzo was beside him, grinning, and saying, "You be
O.K.—I grad! And my Princess Ryra—rook at her now, Rootenant!"

He saw Lyla,
her hand in Val's, and her face was glowing and beautiful in its
new-found happiness. Then she was bending down, kissing him, and
saying,
"Dale . . . Dale . . . how can
we ever thank you for what you
did?"

* * *

When the
blackness lifted the second time he was lying, bandaged, on a cot in
the meeting hall and the voice of Rockford was saying,
" . . . Ready to
go in just a minute."

The hall was
filled with members of the royal court who had come for the wedding. He
saw the white robes of the Church of Vesta dignitaries who had come to
officiate at the wedding. Then he saw the seven grim old men seated at
the far end of the table.

The Royal Council—with the judicial power to
give even death sentences in crimes committed against royalty.

Sonig, his face white and staring, was being
half led, half carried, away from them.

Narf, in the grip of another Guardsman, was
standing before the Council and saying in a tone both incredulous and
sneering:

"Is that my sentence?"

"There is a
qualification to it," one of the Council said. "It seems only just, in
view of your crime, that you be tortured until death—"

The rest of
the words were lost as the blackness swept back. But before
unconsciousness was complete, when all else in the hall was gone from
him, he heard Narf's cry; an animal-like bawl of protest, raw and
hoarse with anguish . . .

* * *

"Ah . . . you're coming
out of it, my boy."

Rockford was
standing over him. "They gave you a Restoration shot on Vesta
forty-eight hours ago. It will be wearing off in a minute and your head
will clear."

He sat up,
and the dizziness faded swiftly away. He saw that he was in the
compartment of an interstellar ship and he knew that it was Earthbound.

And that Vesta, and brown-eyed Lyla, were
now part of the past . . .

"Don't look so sad, my boy," Rockford said.
"You'll get due credit and promotion for the invaluable part you played
in my plan."

"But—"

"I know. But she was never yours. You'll
find life is full of heartbreaks like that, son.

"And we
accomplished our mission. Narf's crime neatly invalidated the proxy
marriage. Then Lyla set a new precedent by marrying Val that very day.
Earth has never had two such loyal and grateful friends as Val and
Lyla."

"You knew all about them, didn't you?" he
asked.

"Strategic
Service has to know everything. And I knew they were still in love even
though each was too proud to admit it. That's why I had to insist on
Val coming to Vesta. After that, it was only a matter of using you to
awaken Val to the fact that she did not love Narf. And of
taking care of various little details, such as faking an official
request for the helicopters to come out two hours ahead of time,
getting Val off to find her at the proper time, and so on."

Rockford
smiled at him, "And you learned that an old man's mind can be mightier
than the space fleets of the Verdam empire—and that the line of duty
that produces the best results can sometimes be very devious."

He thought of the white-faced Sonig, and the
anguished bawl he had heard from Narf.

"I suppose they were going to hang Narf and
Sonig at once."

"The Council
would have, no doubt. But Lyla was so happy that she begged the Council
to give them very light sentences—or just let them go free. So I
suggested a compromise. The Royal Council regarded it as very fitting."

"What was it?"

"For Sonig,
no punishment. The murder attempt, being news of public interest, will
be broadcast upon Vesta and other worlds, including a factual, unbiased
account of Sonig's participation in it. Shortly afterward, Sonig will
be taken to Verdam and turned over to his own benevolent government.
Vesta will file no charges."

"But Sonig lost Jardeen for his government.
They'll execute him for that!"

"Yes, I'm afraid so. Shall we call it poetic
justice?"

"What about Narf?"

"His sentence
was life-long exile on his Sea Island estate. He will be provided with
all the luxuries to which he has been accustomed, including a full
staff of servants. He will continue to enjoy all his possessions there,
including his gallery of nude paintings, his risqué films, his
pornographic library, and so on. In fact, since he is so fascinated by
pornography and such a collector thereof, any pornographic material
which might become available on Vesta in the future will be sent to
him."

"That's not
right . . . I mean, they were going to torture him
to death."

"Not 'to death.' It was 'until death.'
There's a difference."

"But that bawling noise he made—"

"Ah . . . that
was due to the one restrictive qualification to the benign terms of his
exile. Every woman on his estate was to be removed before he reached
there, leaving men servants only. Patrol boats will see to it that for
so long as he lives no woman shall ever set foot on the Sea Islands."

Rockford
smiled again. "Lord Narf succeeded beyond his wildest dreams in keeping
his boyhood vow of being always a man among men."

EMPATHY

The crisis
with the natives was at hand and still the ERB showed no sign of
permitting a Frontier Corps officer to make any suggestions.

For the fifth
time that day Captain Harold Rider walked up the single dusty street of
what had been his Frontier Corps outpost on Deneb Five until the
unexpected arrival forty-eight hours before of General Beeling and his
Extraterrestrial Relations Board unit. He came to the huge ERB
Headquarters prefab at the end of the street. There, still on duty at
the door, was the ferret-faced guard who had turned him back twice
before.

The guard
lounged indolently against the wall, seemed not to see Rider. But when
Rider reached out to open the door he came to life with a quick
sidestep that barred the way, straightening to attention with his hands
brushing his holstered blaster and club.

"No
admittance!" he snapped, with the crisp intonation of those who enjoy
authority. "General Beeling and the others must not be disturbed, as I
told you before."

He added, with deliberate delay, "—sir."

Rider
withdrew his reaching hand and considered the pleasure of smashing the
pointed chin and walking into the building across the man's stomach. He
regretfully dismissed it as wishful dreaming. The feud between the old
Frontier Corps and the politically powerful and young ERB was
approaching its decisive climax and reached even to Deneb. He was a
despised and unwanted superfluity in what had been his own camp and
they would like nothing better than an excuse to arrest and confine him.

* * *

Quick
footsteps sounded inside and the door swung open. It was Colonel
Primmer, Beeling's aide, turning with his hand still on the doorknob
and almost bowing in the obsequious manner characteristic of him as he
said, "You are so right, General Beeling. Yes, sir. At once,
sir."

He turned
again and shut the door behind him. The fawning expression vanished
from his red face at the sight of Rider and a cold, fishy look replaced
it.

"General Beeling is far too busy to see
you," he said, "if that's what you're still waiting for."

"It is," he
answered. "Surely he can spare a few minutes. Right now we're two
shakes away from a mass attack by the natives and if the chief isn't
handled just right when he comes for the last talk this camp will be
turned into a slaughter pen. Let me tell—"

"I think,"
Primmer said, "that the Extraterrestrial Relations Board can
successfully cope with a barbarian chieftain without first consulting a
layman. As for that other matter with which you've been trying to annoy
the general all day: he requested me to inform you that the helicopter
will not be available to you, that there are issues before him of a
great deal more importance than the life of your talking dog."

Primmer
turned to the guard, pointedly dismissing Rider. "Go tell Mantingly and
Johnson that I want them here on the double. Tell Myers to bring his
laborers here—"

Rider turned
away and went back down the street, wondering again how he could show
Beeling the deadly danger of the situation. It was a hell of a
problem—how could you convince a man who wouldn't let you talk to him?

He detoured
around a mound of crates—part of the huge mass of ERB equipment and
supplies that had been hastily unloaded from the special Missions
cruiser before it hurried back Earthward—and was met by a gust of wind
that whipped the fine, poisonous sand against his face. Deneb, almost
to the horizon, was going down with a purple halo around it and the
desert to the southeast was a smoky azure. He could not tell for sure
through the haze but the sky above the distant Sea Cliffs seemed to
have turned black.

If a storm
was in progress there it would already be too late to take the
helicopter more than part way to rescue Laughing Girl, the Altairian.
But that made little difference—he had virtually no hope of altering
Beeling's disdainful regard for what he called "the talking dogs." The
helicopter would remain unavailable and he would have to find some
other way of saving her.

* * *

Beeling's
entire force of laborers and other non-ERB-commissioned personnel was
at work along the street, erecting more prefabricated buildings to
shelter the supplies. He noticed again the way they spoke to one
another in lowered voices and glanced often toward the ragged hills
that surrounded the valley. One of them, a red-haired boy, stepped out
and spoke to him:

"Sir—could I ask you a question?"

He appraised the boy automatically:
Nineteen, a long way from home, and trying not to show that he was
scared.

"Of course," he answered. "What is it?"

"Is it true that the natives have been
waiting for weeks for this ERB unit to come, so they could kill us all?"

"They didn't even know you existed until you
landed here," he said. "Who told you that?"

"Why—" The boy looked suddenly
uncomfortable. "I don't remember, sir."

He did not press the question. It would have
been something that came down from Beeling or Primmer.

The others
had stopped to listen, all of them showing to some degree the same
uncertainty that was on the freckled face of the red-haired boy. They
were young; the mechanically logical ERB had selected seventeen to
twenty-two as the preferred aged for its performers of manual labor
since men of that age were the hardiest and made the most efficient
workers on worlds not suited to human life.

The ERB
encouraged laborer enlistments with colorful posters that promised:
GOOD PAY AND HIGH ADVENTURE AWAIT YOU BEYOND THE STARS. The boys had
thought, when they landed two days and nights before, that they had
stepped across the threshold of the promised high adventure and they
had been as excited as children. Now they were solemn and hushed as
they tried to adjust themselves to the realization that there would be
no adventure, no allure, in quick and violent
death . . .

"There may be
trouble over your coming," he said, "but it won't be anything that was
premeditated. There's a likely chance it won't happen at all. We'll
know in a few minutes."

He turned and walked off, feeling them
silent and very thoughtful behind him.

At the end of
the street was the little building that had been his office until
Beeling's arrival with the special order that had changed the Frontier
Corps outpost to an ERB Primary Contact Field Installation. It was
there that he and the natives had met and talked so many times in the
past and it was there that old Chief Selsin would soon come to what
might be the last meeting.

He went
inside and saw that his few remaining possessions had been piled in a
corner pending further disposal. He walked on to the desk where the
hyperspace communicator, borrowed from the Frontier ship, stood locked
and silent. One of Beeling's first demands, as new commander of the
outpost, had been for the hyperspace communicator's key. Beeling did
not need the communicator—he had a similar model in his headquarters
building—but a locked communicator could not be used by a displaced
Frontier Corpsman to send unauthorized reports to Earth.

The
camp-to-ship radio was inside the communicator. He switched it on, to
try again to reach his Frontier ship on Deneb One. The result was the
same as before; a shrieking, roaring, ear-splitting blast of static.
The sun was squarely between the two worlds and, since it was a white
sun, its electronic emission was tremendous. Contact with the ship was
utterly impossible.

He changed
the wave length to that of the little shortwave radio under the Sea
Cliffs and signaled with the Beep button. There was no response, other
than a harsh grinding of static from the storm he thought he had seen,
which meant that Laughing Girl must still be out tending to the mineral
detector.

He switched the radio off, wondering what he
could have told her if she had answered him.

* * *

"Captain—rook!"

Loper, the other shaggy, dog-like Altairian,
came running through the door, his eyes bright with excitement.

"Are coming now—oh, hundreds and hundreds.
Rook, Captain!"

He looked,
where a wide, low pass to the northeast led to the higher country
beyond, and saw the natives coming down it. There were perhaps five
hundred of them, coming with their dragon-beast mounts in a run, their
long rifles across their saddles and their bronze battle helmets
gleaming brightly in the late sunlight.

There were
nine columns and a different pennant fluttered at the head of each.
Which meant that the Nine Tribes were solidly allied under the
leadership of old Selsin until the business with the humans was settled.

"Are stirr
more coming farther back," Loper said. "Pretty soon awr around us wirr
be the big rif'res that can kirr us. Why, Captain?" There was puzzled
question in his dark eyes. "We not hurt any of them."

"They're afraid we might," he said. "We're
getting this one last chance to prove we won't."

"If they not berieve us, how soon wirr they
kirr us?"

"I think they'll give us a chance to leave,
first."

"But we can't reave—our ship is
gone."

"That, Loper, is the big, repulsive fly
that's in everybody's soup today."

The columns of armed natives split as they
reached the bottom of the pass, and raced to north and south along the
valley's rim.

"They going to surround us," Loper said. "If
they say, 'You not pass,' we have
to have the hericopter." He looked away from the natives and toward the
Sea Cliffs. "She die there if we not come and nobody care. I not
understand."

To Loper it
was still incomprehensible that there could be humans who did not like
Altairians. He had known only the men of the Frontier ship, who
regarded Altairians with the same affection they would have had for
loyal and cheerful—and sometimes blundering—twelve-year-old children.
Except when it was time to meet the natives of a new world, when the
Altairians' highly developed sense of empathy changed their role to
that of invaluable coaches and advisors.

* * *

Frontier
ships were always undermanned—each year the increasingly huge
expenditures of the ERB forced the Space Board to cut the Frontier
Corps budget to make up the difference—and the Altairians diligently
performed all tasks of which they were capable. When the order came
through to have Deneb One surveyed immediately he had needed to send
his entire crew and had used Laughing Girl to replace the man tending
the electronic mineral detector that had been set up under the Sea
Cliffs. It was a job she could manage, since the detector was
near-enough automatic in its operation that its supervision required no
technical knowledge. This had enabled him to send a full crew to Deneb
One, while he remained at camp with Loper to help him and continued the
meetings with the natives.

He had
intended to take the helicopter to the Sea Cliffs a safe twenty hours
in advance of the Big Tide and bring back Laughing Girl and the
portable mineral detector. But Beeling had ordered: "Our only means of
transportation will not be permitted to leave this camp until this
trouble with the natives is fully settled."

By then it
would be too late. The three moons of Deneb Five possessed complex
orbits that brought the Big Tide every ten days; a titanic bulge in the
waters of the oceans that raced around the world at a speed of five
hundred miles per hour. The three moons were already on the opposite
side of the world, swinging close around it and bringing the Big Tide
with them. It would strike the high, unscalable Sea Cliffs at sunrise
and Laughing Girl, still faithfully tending the detector down under
them and waiting for him to come for her, would be killed instantly.

To the few of
the ERB staff he had managed to talk to, his persistent requests for
the helicopter had seemed ridiculous. "Really, Captain," one natty
young lieutenant he had cornered outside Headquarters had said, "you're
taking the loss of your mascot far too seriously. After all, you can
pick up a dozen of the beasts the next time you pass
Altair." . . .

"We not got much time, Captain. Are we have
to wait much ronger?"

"Not much longer, Loper. Only until the talk
with Selsin is over."

"I think he come now."

The long
columns were still coming down the pass and parting at the bottom but
one native was coming straight toward the camp in a slow trot. It was
Selsin.

* * *

"—lively there! Faster, all of
you . . ."

The voice of
Primmer, edged with strain, came from the street. Rider went to the
window and looked out upon a scene of confused activity.

Primmer, with
two blasters buckled around him, was trying to post as many guards as
possible as quickly as possible; all the laborers and technicians among
them. They were being stationed around Headquarters, around the
helicopter, and all along the windows of supplies in the street.

"Damn!" he said aloud.

Beeling could
have done nothing worse than to order the show of armed defense at a
time when everything depended upon regaining Selsin's trust.

The door of
the ERB Headquarters building opened and General Beeling stepped out,
briskly despite his paunchy overweight. He strode down the street with
his pink moon-face looking straight ahead, not glancing once toward the
natives. He stopped a moment to say something to Primmer that caused
most of Primmer's nervousness to vanish then came on with the bearing
of calm purpose.

"He not worried," Loper said. "How can he
not worry now?"

Beeling stepped through the doorway with
cold satisfaction on his face and a look at Rider that said, I have
your muddled situation well in hand, my man.

"Good afternoon, General," Rider greeted
him, and Loper said politely, "Her'ro, Generar Beering."

Beeling's eyes flicked to Loper in brief
curiosity then, without answering either of them, he seated himself
behind the desk.

"I presume you know we're surrounded, Rider?"

There was the
same vengeful satisfaction in his tone as on his face. Rider noticed,
absently, that his blouse bulged with the bulk of a concealed blaster.

"I knew they
would come ready for war," he said. "When Selsin gets here we'll have
our one last chance to avert it and I've been trying to see you all day
to tell you we'll have to show Selsin the respect that—"

"My dear
Captain," Beeling interrupted, "I have been very busy the entire day
supervising a review of all data and deciding upon the best method of
counteracting the damage you have done. I feel rather certain that I
know how to speak to the native."

Rider kept
his face expressionless and said with careful courtesy, "But couldn't
you order the guards off duty before Selsin gets here, sir? He'll
regard them as proof of suspicion and enmity on our part."

The soft
answer seemed to have slightly lessened Beeling's dislike for him;
Beeling's next statement was more pompous than sarcastic:

"On the
contrary, that display of preparedness will prove to the natives that
we are quite aware of their hostility and are not to be intimidated by
it; that our request for friendship is sincere and does not spring from
fear of them."

Rider looked
again at the guards, able to count only seven blasters among them, and
back to Beeling. "You don't understand, sir—if they call our bluff we
won't have a chance."

Beeling's reply was to spread a sheaf of
papers on the desk before him and say:

"Here are the
Analysis Sheets; the result of almost two days of work by myself and my
staff and our computer. For your information, these natives are like
children both in the awe and fear with which they regard our weapons
and in their eagerness to possess the labor-saving machines, the luxury
items and the pretty novelties of our 'grown-up' society. By
dramatically presenting the two choices—the gift-laden helping hand or
the unyielding fist—they cannot logically do other than ask for our
friendship and gifts."

"But it isn't that simple," he protested.
"They'll—"

Annoyance
passed across Beeling's face and the full degree of coldness returned.
"As I remarked, the procedure outlined by the Analysis will counteract
the damage you have done. Insufficient data, however, leave two
questions answered. One: why have your reports never mentioned the
consistent enmity of the natives?"

"Because no
enmity ever existed. They were only exercising reasonable caution, due
to the experience they had with that other alien race forty years ago."

"Yes? Then
perhaps you can answer the other question: why should this 'reasonable
caution' flare so suddenly into a lust for war? What did you do to
make them hate humans so?"

"I lied to
them. They were almost ready to agree to everything but they wanted a
little more time in which to be sure that we would not betray their
trust as that other alien race did. I gave my solemn promise as the
representative of Earth that no reinforcements would come in the
meantime. And within forty-eight hours after receiving its copy of my
report to the Frontier Corps, the ERB had you and thirty men and a
hundred tons of supplies on the way to Deneb.

"Just what do
you suppose the natives thought of my truthfulness—of the truthfulness
of any human—when that cruiser dropped down out of the sky and men and
equipment began rolling out of it?"

"I see,"
Beeling said acidly. "You were the innocent victim of unfair
circumstances. But, as the ERB informed the Supreme Council, you had
accomplished nothing concrete in your six months here and this world
was too badly needed by Earth to permit any more cautious delays.
Despite anguished wails of protest from the Frontier Corps we persuaded
the Supreme Council to transfer command of this outpost to the ERB. I
was dispatched at once to analyze the situation, to remedy whatever
mistakes you had made, and to gain the cooperation of the natives as
quickly as possible.

"I trust"—the acidic dislike increased—"that
properly explains my presence here."

Loper lifted his ears toward the door and
Rider heard the squeak of saddle leather.

"I hope your plans work out the way you
think," he said. "Selsin is here."

* * *

Selsin was so
big that his bulk in the doorway half darkened the room as he came
through. He was seven feet tall, black as coal, with muscles that
bulged and rippled as he walked. He had the thin, curved nose and
pointed ears of a devil, while his green, glittering eyes under
slanting brows added to his satanic appearance.

His bristling
blue-gray head was bare; he had left his helmet on his saddle, together
with his rifle and sword, as a gesture of peaceful intention.

"Chief Selsin!" Beeling rose, smiling. "You
honor us. I'm sorry there was no one to meet you—I told my aide—"

"It is of no importance." Selsin spoke in
accented Terran. "I came to hear you, not your assistant."

"Ah—of course. Will you sit down?"

Selsin did
so, the chair creaking under his weight. He waited for Beeling to
speak, regarding him with a mocking half smile. The smile was
meaningless—the cheek muscles of the natives were different from those
of humans and caused their lips to turn upward at the corners—but it
could be rather disconcerting to a human at first.

Beeling
cleared his throat. "I see you came alone. At the end of our brief
meeting yesterday I requested that all nine of you tribal chiefs come
again this afternoon so I could tell all of you that I am here to help
you."

"You told us that yesterday," Selsin said.
"I came today to hear your proof."

"Ah—of course."

Beeling
looked down at the Analysis Sheets, a touch of uncertainty in his
manner. It's all right, Rider thought as he watched him, to speak of
handling the natives as one would handle children—but it's a little
hard to hang on to that conception when the child is a
three-hundred-pound black devil sitting two yards in front of you.

Beeling
looked up from the Analysis. "We want the friendship of your race," he
said to Selsin, "and your race needs our friendship. We are here on
your world only to help you"—stern reproof came into Beeling's
voice—"and yet you foolishly prepare to attack us with your puny
rifles!"

Selsin's expression did not change. He
answered in the emotionless manner of one stating unalterable facts:

"We do not,
we have never, wanted war. But the promise your world made to mine was
a lie and your second ship came, bringing more men and great stacks of
strange objects which we fear are weapons—and which you are now
guarding as one would guard weapons. We do not know how many more of
your ships may be on the way, now, with still more men and weapons. We
can only hope that if we must fight for our world, we have not waited
too long."

"Your
suspicions are baseless, your plans are foolhardy," Beeling said with
admonishing sternness. "Consider, friend Selsin; think of the terrible
price an attack would cost you. You would meet certain defeat—and you
would forever forfeit our friendship and our gifts!"

Selsin's
black face seemed to turn even darker and his teeth flashed in a quick
snarl. "Forty years ago we were offered friendship and gifts, as you
are doing, by another alien race—the gini-deglin, the
three-eyed ones. They needed metal to repair their ship and we used all
our supply of charcoal to smelt the ores we had mined for them, for
they told us they were very grateful and would within a year bring us
an atomic furnace so we would never have to hoard charcoal again. Then,
on the day they finished repairing their ship, they turned their
weapons on us. They butchered thirty, to take along as fresh meat.
Three others were killed with a gas that would not mar their
appearance, so they could be stuffed and placed in a museum. A man, a
woman, and a child—and the child was my sister!"

Selsin leaned toward Beeling, his devil's
face ugly with the hatred the memory aroused.

"To them we
were only animals who had served their purpose. Their pretense of
friendship was a lie—we should have killed them all when their ship
crashed!"

Beeling's
chair squealed as he shoved it back and his hand pawed at the buttons
of his blouse, reaching in for the concealed blaster. His hand closed
around the butt of it and he held it there, still concealed, as he
appraised Selsin with wary thoughtfulness. Rider spoke quickly, before
he could say or do something that would destroy the last faint hope of
regaining Selsin's trust.

"The
three-eyed-ones kill and take specimens from every world they visit,
Chief Selsin. Someday our ships will meet them and they will want some
humans as specimens, too. They are already our enemies as well as
yours."

Selsin settled back in his chair and his
anger faded.

"We have
thought of that," he said. "We had hoped that your race would be our
ally should they ever return. But now—does it matter whether a race is
killed for food and specimens or killed to get it out of the way for
worldwide mining operations?"

Rider told Selsin again, for what would
probably be the last time, why his world was needed by humans:

"Earth's
policy strictly forbids colonizing a world against the wishes of its
inhabitants. This world is doubly forbidden—beryllium is present in the
dust over all its surface, in a form that would be fatal to humans
within two years.

"But we need
domed repair and refueling bases here for our exploration, survey and
colonization ships bound for worlds farther on. This is the only world
within three hundred light-years that has metal for repairs, and that
has the rare earths and elements that make our ships' hyperspace drives
possible. You have such an abundance on this world that fifty centuries
from now we would have used less than one-tenth of one percent, yet
that small amount is so necessary to us that if we cannot have it we
will have to abandon all further exploration in this sector of space."

When he had
finished Selsin sat still and thoughtful, his green eyes unwaveringly
on Rider's as though trying to see inside Rider's mind and know that he
spoke without deceit. Rider had the feeling that Selsin's suspicions
were wavering before an almost desperate desire to believe.

Then Beeling,
his composure regained, jerked his chair back to the desk with another
noisy squeal. He cleared his throat in a profound manner, ready to
resume the talk with Selsin, and Rider crossed his fingers with a
wordless prayer that something would happen to interrupt him before he
could again anger Selsin.

* * *

The
interruption came: a signal beep from the radio beside the hyperspace
communicator, the call from Laughing Girl at the Sea Cliffs.

Rider stepped
to the radio, reaching past the scowling Beeling to turn the volume to
maximum. A muffled roaring filled the room when he did so, static
grinding and crashing through it.

"Go ahead, Girl," he said into the
transmitter.

"A awrfur
storm come, Boss"—Laughing Girl's voice was hard to hear through the
roaring—"from off the sea—a wind that tear down the detector and
scatter our record tapes and I try to find them but it are so dark with
brack crouds and rain and then the sea come in and things are in it,
things that—"

A louder
roaring drowned out her voice. He waited, knowing that she was
frightened. Whenever she was scared and faced with problems too great
for her, she called him "Boss" and talked in the quick, rushing manner
of a child.

Her voice came in again:

"—and then
they see me rooking for the record tapes and they run after me, awrfur
big things with craws and beaks, and they are stirr coming and I have
no prace to hide. Terr me what to do, Boss—"

"Run to the
cliffs!" he ordered, in his mind the vision of the lumbering horde of
two-ton Elephant Crabs closing in on her. "Climb as far as you can up
that crevice in the cliffs—they're too big to follow you in—and wait
for me."

"Wirr you come for me soon—before the Big
Tide?"

"I'll be there. Now, run!"

"Okay, Boss—I run."

He lifted his
hand to the switch, then paused as he heard deep, jarring sounds
through the wind's roaring. Four seconds later there was a loud
crashing, a snap, and sudden silence. The monsters had smashed the
transmitter in their pursuit of Laughing Girl.

He switched
off his own transmitter and said in answer to Beeling's questioning,
irritated look, "A local tornado. Sometimes one will precede the Big
Tide and push a small tide ahead of it."

"They awrfur
crose behind her," Loper said. He looked at Beeling with worry and
accusation in his eyes. "We are supposed to go after her yesterday but
you say, 'No.' Now, maybe awready they are catch her and kirr her."

Beeling
glanced at Loper with the same momentary curiosity he had exhibited
before, then he gave his full attention to Selsin. He began in a tone
of smooth sincerity:

"You are an
exceptionally intelligent person, Chief Selsin, or you would never have
risen to your position as leader. Therefore, I know you are far too
wise to betray the trust of your people in you by making the wrong
choice of the two kinds of future offered your world.

"Should you
refuse to cooperate with us, we would be forced to reroute our ships
through other sectors of space and your world would see no more of us
for centuries to come. You would continue to stagnate here—you are no
doubt aware that the resources of your world are such that you can
never leave it without our help. Your unlimited wealth of minerals is
of no use to you—you have no coal deposits, no trees, nothing but
scrawny shrubs with which to make a meager supply of charcoal for
smelting. There is no oil on your world; you have no fuel for steam
engines or internal combustion engines. Your environment will force you
to remain in a state of barbarism, nomads in animal skins, with
privation your only known way of life.

"This we can
alter for you, in wondrous ways beyond your imagining. We will give you
atomic furnaces, processing plants, manufacturing machinery. We will
help you build factories that will produce not only all the things you
need but also luxuries beyond counting—the very same luxury goods our
own society uses! And we will give you costless and unlimited power for
your factories and homes and vehicles by showing you how to get it out
of a rock which is to be found all over your world; a magic rock we
call 'uranium' but for which you probably don't even have a name."

* * *

Beeling paused, as though for effect. He was
smiling at Selsin, very sure of himself.

"Choose,
Chief Selsin! Will you condemn your race to a future of poverty and
stagnation by refusing to cooperate with us? Or will you give them all
the achievements and luxuries of a civilization three thousand years in
advance of theirs—will you be the wise leader and accept this
tremendous payment which we offer for merely your race's friendship?"

Selsin stood
up, on his face an anger and hatred such as Rider had never seen. He
looked down at Beeling and gave his answer in words that came like the
spitting of a tiger:

"My people's insignificant friendship is not
for sale today, human!"

Beeling gaped in incredulous disbelief.

"You—refuse?"

Selsin turned to Rider.

"We believed
your promise, until your reinforcements came. Even then we still had a
faint hope that you humans were sincere. Now I know we were wrong. It
is better so."

"You know we can't prove our good
intentions," Rider answered. "Not here and now, in this room."

"I realize
that. But I wanted to know the attitude of your superior toward my
race. As he regarded us, so likely would all the others who would
follow him. My people and I wanted to know if we would be regarded with
respect, or if we would be dismissed as an inferior species to be used
for human purposes.

"I learned. We are backward barbarians,
simple savages who can be bought and then ignored."

Through the anger on Selsin's face something
like regret showed for a moment, something like a look of farewell.

"I do not
think it is your fault—but you are one of them and responsible with
them. This is our world and we will live here and fight here and die
here—but we will be no race's inferiors here."

Then the regret was gone as Selsin turned
back to Beeling.

"You will be
given until sunrise tomorrow to recall your ship and leave this world.
If you and all the other humans are not gone by then, we will have no
choice but to remove you."

Then, not waiting for an answer, Selsin
strode to the door.

Beeling half rose, still gaping with
amazement. "Wait—"

* * *

The door
closed behind Selsin's broad back and Beeling ordered sharply, "Call
him back, Rider! Something is wrong—he didn't understand my offer."

Rider
listened to Selsin's dragon-beast departing in a fast trot. "He
understood you," he said to Beeling. "But you cooked our goose by not
understanding him."

"He failed to
comprehend," Beeling said flatly. "Or else—and I'll have that question
put to the computer—he's bluffing, trying to extort still more from us.
In either case, he knows we can't leave here; he knows the Special
Missions cruiser has gone back to Earth and the Frontier ship can't
receive our signals."

"He didn't believe that explanation
yesterday and he doubly doesn't today."

"Something is
wrong," Beeling said again. "The Analysis showed the natives to want
all the things I offered him. They don't even have wooden-wheeled
carts—and yet, instead of the grateful acceptance that the Analysis
predicted, the native's reaction was one of irrational enmity."

"Didn't you know the Analysis was
meaningless drivel?" he asked.

Beeling jerked up his head with a shocked
expression, as though Rider had uttered an obscene heresy. "What do you
mean by that?"

"All your
calculations are based on the assumption that the species being studied
is as emotionlessly logical as one of your computers. That worked once,
with that ant-like race on Medusa, and it was played up by the ERB
politicians until now most of the Supreme Council believes the ERB
claim that relations with alien life forms has been reduced to an exact
science by the ERB and the slow methods of the Frontier Corps are
worthlessly obsolete. But the ERB has failed on every world since
Medusa, even though you've kept the fact covered up, and now you've
failed here. I tried to tell you from the day you came, that Selsin and
his race are proud individualists and it would be a fatal mistake to
try to convert them into mathematical equations."

Beeling
smoothed the Analysis under his fingers. "We made a mistake; the
mistake of depending upon a Frontier Corps layman to procure adequate
data for our Analysis, among which would have been Selsin's emotional
instability. It is a mistake that will not happen again. I can assure
you."

"I suppose you'll send a full report of this
to Earth, at once?"

"A most complete report. Why do you ask?"
Beeling answered.

"Because in
the morning you're going to die, and I, and all those kids out there,
and you can try to prevent such a thing happening again by telling not
the ERB but the Supreme Council exactly what caused it."

"I assure you, the ERB will properly present
the facts to the Council."

"No—not the true facts. You know that,
Beeling."

"General
Beeling. And what are you trying to say—are you asking me to omit
mention of the incompetence on your part that created this situation?"

"I'm asking
you to tell the Council that you followed all the rules in the ERB
textbooks and did exactly what the Analysis told you to do and that you
and everyone here is going to die because you did so. Tell them that if
a form of life behaved according to absolutely predictable rule and
logic it wouldn't be anything intelligent—it would be a vegetable."

Beeling smoothed out the Analysis sheets
again. "Do you really think I might give my superiors hysterical
nonsense like that?"

He knew that
further argument would be useless. He had already explained to Beeling
that a Frontier Corpsman, or any man first meeting an alien race, had
to base his actions upon the reactions of the natives; he had to
develop something like a sixth sense in detecting their emotions and
let that be his guide or he would become enmeshed in misunderstandings
that would result in death for him and the loss of the new world for
Earth.

Beeling had
refused to listen and had laughed outright when Rider told him the
Altairians were far better than any human sixth sense; that all
Frontier and ERB ships should carry Altairians and that the ERB's
erroneous classification of the Altairian race as "Animals" unjustly
condemned them to continuing half-starvation on their rocky, barren
world by denying them the assistance that Earth's empire gave to all
needy forms of life that had been classified as "Intelligent
inhabitants."

* * *

Loper moved restlessly, sensing his emotions
and disturbed by them. He spoke with the suddenness and frankness of a
child:

"Once Sersin
awrmost berieve us, Captain. He come in thinking with question and
uncertain, and hoping very much we are his friends but afraid we not
be. Then you terr how we need his friendship and not ever harm
his race even if they not want to be our friends. Sersin rook at you he
awrmost happy, awrmost ready to berieve you, then Generar Beering speak
about awr the things humans have that Sersin's race don't have and say
very proud, 'We give you awr these things for mer'rey your friendship,'
and Sersin get mad and not hope at awr anymore, and when he reave he
thinking of fighting and kirring. He not rike, but he know it have to
be. Why it have to be?"

"You have the
animal well coached," Beeling observed. "Its ability to relate a
witnessed incident proves your claim that Altairians are telepathic, I
presume?"

"Loper was
aware of Selsin's emotions before he ever walked into this room. It
isn't telepathy; it's a highly developed sense of empathy. It serves
the same purpose."

"I'm afraid your naïve trust in the
animal's power of—"

* * *

Beeling never
finished the sentence. A drum was suddenly beating along the near side
of the valley; a hard, fast stuttering that rose sharp and clear above
the whining of the wind.

"What is that?" Beeling demanded.

"A signal drum, sending the word around the
circumference of the valley."

"The word?" For an instant Beeling's face
registered blankness. "Do you mean they really intend to attack us?"

"Good Lord—haven't you realized that yet?"

Beeling
chewed his lip, his face thoughtful, then shook his head. "You must be
wrong. The Analysis showed that they wouldn't dare attack us."

"The Analysis also showed you how to win
Selsin's friendship—remember?"

Beeling
looked thoughtful again. "If your guess is correct, we'll have to
prepare an impenetrable defense system. How many heavy weapons do you
have here, and what kind?"

"The ship's
blasters are always the prime defense weapons of a Frontier unit. There
are a few other weapons on the ship, too—but now everything is on the
other side of the sun. There's one hand blaster in my room, and we have
the ten blasters your men brought."

"One?—you have one
blaster here?" Beeling glared, "I thought you had a supply of
weapons—must every action of a Frontier man be one of mindless
bungling?"

"I was trying to make friends with the
natives, not kill them."

"Eleven hand
blasters to stand off thousands of bloodthirsty
savages . . ." Beeling
chewed his lip again. "How long can we hold the natives off with eleven
blasters?"

"About as long as a snowball would remain
firm in hell."

"We need the ship—how incredibly stupid of
you to send it away. Our lives are in the balance—"

"Rook!" The voice of Loper interrupted, from
where he had moved to the north window. "A smoke signar are going up,
too."

Beeling swung
with such haste that he knocked the Analysis sheets off the desk. A
tall, black column of smoke was standing up from the high hill at the
valley's head. It could be seen for miles, despite the angle at which
the wind was making it lean, and it was rolling blacker and higher by
the second.

"That will be
to summon all the reserve forces from the highlands," Rider said. "They
think we're well armed and they'll hit us with everything they have."

Beeling's nervous movement as he turned back
to Rider changed abruptly to decision.

"There's only one thing we can do—evacuate.
We'll use the helicopter."

Rider shook
his head. "The helicopter is small, for scouting, and can't carry more
than three. It's five hundred miles to the nearest safe refuge, the
Northern Islands, and the helicopter carries fuel for seven hundred
miles. It would be a one-way trip."

"We'll go as soon as you can check the
helicopter for the flight."

"We?"

"Colonel Primmer has had only a few hours
flying time and I have had none. You will be our pilot."

He shook his head. "I'm as afraid to die in
the morning as the next man but I'll be damned if I could run like that."

Annoyance
passed across Beeling's face. "You will obey my order and forget the
heroic ideals. It would be only stupid for all to die when some can be
saved with the helicopter."

"I agree. But why not let everybody cut
cards or draw straws so all would have the same chance?"

"This Field
Installation is not a gambling casino. Furthermore, there is an ERB
regulation which reads: 'In times of critical danger and limited
transportation the unit commander will arrange for the survival of his
command in the order of each individual's importance to the unit as a
whole.' "

"I see," he said, and thought: So in the ERB
you do even your running by the book?

* * *

Beeling began
hastily scribbling a note. "This is an order to Colonel Primmer,
authorizing you to go past the helicopter guards. Make sure you
overlook nothing in preparing it for the trip."

"I have other things to do. Primmer can
check it."

Beeling
stopped writing and his face hardened dangerously under its pink
softness. "As commander of this outpost and your superior officer, I
can have you locked up in chains for insubordination if I wish to.
Would you prefer that?"

"It still
wouldn't force me to be your pilot. Anyway, you needn't worry about my
absence—the helicopter is easily enough handled that Primmer can land
you safely at your destination."

He saw that the sun was setting, already a
bright, molten silver on the horizon, and he turned to Loper.

"Run to the storage shed and get me that
coil of small rope. I'm ready to start."

"Where are you going?" Beeling demanded,
suspicion in his eyes and his hand reaching inside his blouse.

Loper ran to
the door, using both paws to turn the knob. He slammed it shut behind
him and Rider saw him race past the window, where the spinning,
wind-blown dust half obscured the ground. It was a good thing, he
thought, that the Altairians were immune to beryllium poisoning. Loper
and Laughing Girl would never see any other world
again . . .

"Where are you going?"

"The Sea Cliffs," he answered.

"Do you think you can hide from the natives
there?"

"Not to hide. To keep my promise to Laughing
Girl. The Big Tide is coming and she can't escape it."

Beeling stared, as though he had babbled
gibberish.

"You—you're
going to walk forty miles through beryllium dust, through armed natives
and man-killing beasts, to save an animal—and yet you refuse to lift a
hand to help save the lives of your fellow human beings?"

"Or, to be specific, the lives of you and
Primmer. That's right."

He went to
the corner where his remaining possessions lay and swung the still-full
canteen from his shoulder. He kicked his respirator to one side—he
would never need it again—and picked up the long-bladed knife.

He shoved the knife in his belt and said to
Beeling, "I'm leaving my blaster for the others to use."

Beeling
withdrew his own blaster from his blouse and laid it on the desk with
the muzzle pointing toward Rider. His hand continued to rest on it as
he stared at Rider with cold savage calculation.

The door
banged open and a gust of wind scattered the pages of the Analysis
across the floor as Loper plunged through. The coil of rope was in his
mouth and he was panting from his running as he dropped it at Rider's
feet.

"Are you ready to go, Captain—can we hurry
now, prease?"

"Just a minute, Rider—"

Beeling
reached out with the transmitter key in his left hand and unlocked the
hyperspace communicator. His right hand did not leave the blaster.

"You might be interested in knowing what my
report will be," he said. He flipped on the signal switch.

"I suppose I
already know," Rider answered. "I ask you to overlook our personal
differences and tell them the real cause behind tomorrow's massacre. It
could go a long way toward saving the lives of others in the future."

Beeling
nodded, smiling. "Such a report is precisely what I have in mind. I
feel they should know how your blundering Frontier Corps methods had
stirred the natives into such a murderous anti-human frenzy that my ERB
unit arrived too late to remedy the situation. I shall point out that
every world lost by the ERB was due to the incompetence of the Frontier
men who preceded the ERB units there and created hatred and distrust
among the natives. I shall point out the tragic mistake of continuing
to permit Frontier Corps laymen to try to assume the duties of ERB
specialists and I shall urge the Supreme Council let this be the last
bloody sacrifice by passing the Harriman Proposal now before it; the
proposal that would dissolve the Frontier Corps and place all its ships
and men under ERB supervision.

"And it is my
duty"—Beeling's smile was as vindictive as the sting of a wasp—"to
report your actions of this afternoon; your flagrant insubordination,
your flat refusal to assist in transporting others to safety, your
desertion in time of danger, your flight to the Sea Cliffs, leaving the
rest of us to do the fighting."

It required a
few seconds for Rider to comprehend the extent of Beeling's malice,
then he said, "I thought you were only inexperienced and too blind to
see. I didn't know the half of it, did I?"

"It should be obvious to you what my report
will do to the Frontier Corps when it's read before the Supreme
Council."

It was very
obvious. Beeling's report would be the climax of the ERB's all-out
effort to absorb the Frontier Corps. The already delicately balanced
scales would be tipped, the Harriman Proposal would be passed, and the
Corps would cease to exist . . .

"Do you still want to go to the Sea Cliffs?"
Beeling asked.

He saw Beeling's prime objective. Beeling
was still afraid to let the inexperienced Primmer be his pilot.

"Suppose I should decide to be your pilot?"
he asked.

"I certainly
couldn't report you as a deserter. In fact, I might find it possible to
forget to mention several of the facts concerning you and the Frontier
Corps."

He did not
reply at once and Beeling added, "What is the welfare of an animal
compared with your life and the existence of the Frontier Corps to
which, I understand, you and the others have dedicated your lives?"

Loper made a whining sound, looking up at
Rider with his face twisted in apprehension.

"What are he
mean?" Then he read the answer in the conflicting emotions of the two
men and his question came like a despairing whimper. "Are it have
to be that way?"

* * *

The hyperspace communicator blinked an
orange light and said in a metallic voice:

"Extraterrestrial Relations Board,
Communications Center."

Beeling spoke
into the transmitter: "Connect me with General Supervision, Classified
AA circuit." He turned to Rider. "Which will you take, Rider?"

It seemed to
him that he could see the two alternative courses of events with vivid
clarity. He could see the dissolution of the Frontier Corps, his name
in the records as a coward who had run in vain—and he could see
Laughing Girl crouching cold and scared in the crevice, trusting him to
come for her before the black tide rushed out of the dawn to kill her,
knowing in her child-like mind that he would be there in time as surely
as she and Loper had raced to him in time that night on Vulcan when he
lay injured and helpless under the cliff and the moon wolves were
gathering around him for the kill . . .

"Office of General Supervision," the
communicator said. "Classified AA. Give us your report."

"A moment, please," Beeling said to it. To
Rider he said, "I give you exactly ten seconds—which will it be?"

Which would
it be? Death and infamy at the Sea Cliffs—and know that to the end he
had done what seemed right and just to him? Or life and safety and an
unmarred record on the Northern Islands, while Laughing Girl died still
waiting for him and he knew he was a coward no less than Beeling?

"Now!"

There was the brittle snap of ultimatum in
Beeling's single word. He gave his answer:

"I'm going to the Sea Cliffs."

For a moment
Beeling sat rigid, so sure had he been that the answer would be the one
he wanted. Then he leaned forward, his lips thin and white with the
intensity of his hatred and his words half choking in his throat:

"You fool—you incredible fool! I can legally
shoot you down where you stand as a deserter!"

The muzzle of
the blaster tilted up. Loper's eyes went fire-bright with understanding
and his claws ripped at the floor as he threw himself back, into
position to leap at Beeling's throat. Rider reached for the knife in
his belt, warned by Loper's action and knowing he would never live to
throw it. Beeling, in the insanity of his rage, was going to fire—

* * *

"Sir, the natives are—"

Primmer burst
into the room and the scene froze. Primmer gawked at Beeling's blaster,
at Rider's hand reaching for the knife, then he seized his own blasters
and leveled them waveringly on Rider.

"Don't touch that knife!" he commanded. He
turned his red face to Beeling. "What is it, sir—what is he trying to
do?"

Slowly, almost regretfully, Beeling let his
grip on the blaster relax.

"A little
matter of desertion," he said to Primmer. He spoke to Rider. "I've
changed my mind. You are experienced in eluding danger on alien worlds
and you might have a good chance of hiding from the natives until a
ship comes to pick you up. I hope so. I want you to live, to sit in
your death row cell and read about the end of the Frontier Corps before
they take you out and hang you as a deserter and a coward."

He motioned toward the door with a quick
jerk of the blaster. "Now go! Get out of this room!"

Rider picked up the coil of rope and started
toward the door, Beeling's blaster following him. Primmer spoke in
protest:

"But General Beeling! As a deserter he
should be held for proper punishment, sir—"

Beeling silenced him with a hard look and
turned to the communicator. He began his report:

"General
David A. Beeling, Unit Twenty, Deneb Five. Subjects: Impending attack
of native armies, due to erroneous reports and general incompetence of
Frontier Corps commander Captain Harold Rider; Report of Captain
Rider's rebellion and desertion on eve of attack; Details of dangerous
impracticability of Frontier Corps methods and—"

The words faded away, drowned by the wind,
as Rider and Loper went down the street.

"He rie," Loper said. "They can't berieve
him, can't ever hang you, can they?"

He smiled a little. "No, they won't be able
to hang me."

He angled
across the street, toward the edge of the dagger-brush thicket, and
passed not far from one of the guards. It was the red-haired boy,
facing the enemy lines with his weapon, a crate hammer, gripped tightly
in his hand. Rider saw the code number on the supplies he guarded:
XG-B-193.

"I'll be damned," he said.

"What are he guarding?" Loper asked.

"Exchange
items and good-will gifts that the ERB has designated as suitable for
barbaric cultures of this type. He's supposed to fight to the death to
protect three thousand pounds of glass beads, hand mirrors, and bright
red toy magnets."

They went
into the thicket and the camp was hidden from view. The winding course
of an old animal trail led in the desired direction and they followed
it until it skirted the base of a small hill. He climbed to the top of
it, with Loper at his heels, and looked back at the camp. There was a
great deal of activity around the helicopter and he could distinguish
Primmer standing to one side and directing the refueling operations.

He looked to
the southeast, along his route to the sea, and along the rocky ridge
that lay like a barrier between he saw the natives waiting and watching.

"I think," Loper said, "that they not want
us to pass. I think we fight there, Captain."

"You'll stay here, on this hill," he said.

"Stay?" Loper jerked up his head in surprise
and defiance. "No!"

"That's an order. I want you to watch the
camp until after it's all over with tomorrow."

"I not stay safe whire you fight arone!"
Loper braced his forepaws wide-apart and stubborn on the ground. "I not
do it!"

* * *

He sat down on a sun-blackened boulder.
"Listen, Loper—listen to the reasons why you have to help me:

"The
government of Earth is four hundred light-years away and they will have
to believe Beeling's story; that the natives are treacherous and hate
all humans and that the Frontier Corps goaded them into massacring the
entire camp. The natives are honest in their fear and distrust of
humans—they think they are fighting for their world—and there will be
no one after tomorrow to tell them they are wrong.

"Except you
and Laughing Girl. They might listen to you Altairians since you know
humans well and yet aren't human. You must tell them that Earth never
takes a world by force, that even Beeling meant well but did not
understand, and that all the things I told them Earth would do for them
would have been done. And you must stay here until after tomorrow
morning and watch the camp so that when a ship comes from Earth to
investigate you can tell the officers exactly what happened here and
what caused it to happen. It will be too late to save the Frontier
Corps but if they will listen to you it might not be too late for them
to see the mistakes that have been made and start over again."

The rigid
stubbornness was gone from Loper, understanding and dark misery in its
place. "It wrong—everything are happen awr wrong and I never see you
again!"

"Yes," he
said, "everything is all wrong and shot to hell. I'm trying to salvage
the remains the best I can and I have to have your help."

"I do everything you say, Captain."

"For some
time this will be your world and Laughing Girl's. Maybe for all your
lives. So be friends with the natives and don't blame them for what
they did. Remember that."

"Yes, sir. I remember."

He looked at the sunset's violet afterglow
and stood up. "I'll have to hurry or I won't get there in time. Good
luck, Loper."

"Good-bye, Captain. I—I sorry."

He turned and
went down the hill and across the flat beyond. He looked back when he
was almost to the ridge and saw Loper still staring forlornly after him.

* * *

He reached
the foot of the ridge and climbed its steep slope. Three natives were
waiting for him on top, their long rifles in their hands and the smiles
on their faces. The one in the center was Resso, a sub-chief in
Selsin's tribe.

"Where would you go, human?" Resso asked in
the native language.

"I would go to the sea," he answered in the
same language, and told them why. "I ask permission to pass," he said.

Resso rubbed
the breach of his rifle, his eyes thoughtful and hard. "Between here
and the sea are many by-paths. You might lose your way and be
troublesome for us to find in the morning."

He took the
long knife from his belt, spun it in the air and caught it by the
blade. The three rifles centered on him as he did so.

"This is my
only weapon," he said to Resso. "I think I can put it in your throat
before I can be killed—but I ask you to let me save the Altairian first
and match it against your rifles tomorrow."

Resso spit on the ground. "Tomorrow I will
make you eat it before I kill you."

Rider felt a great sense of relief—Resso was
going to let him pass . . .

"I want to ask a favor of you," he said to
Resso. "That the Altairians not be harmed."

Surprise
showed on Resso's face. "Why should we harm the furry ones? They are
only your slaves and not responsible for what humans do."

"Then you promise?"

Resso took a
step forward, glowering in quick anger. "Do you have the insolence to
question what I say? Be on your way—run, human, and find your hiding
place!"

He went,
walking past them with the glum thought: This makes Ignominious Exit
Number Two. I hope my last one, tomorrow, will have at least a little
dignity to it . . .

* * *

The desert
was miles of red iron sand, across which rocky ridges lay like a
hundred randomly flung barriers. Some of the ridges were of limestone,
honey-combed with natural caves. These he would have to avoid at all
costs since they were the lairs of the ten-foot sand hounds.

He was no
more than well started when dark came. He had no light and without a
blaster he would not dare to use one if he had it. It would attract the
attention of sand hounds for miles around.

For the
greater part, his way was along relatively clear stretches of the
wind-packed sand and his progress was fairly fast. At intervals,
however, he came to dense and wide-spreading thickets of the
poison-thorned desert vegetation and these he had to bypass with time
consuming detours.

Once he
almost walked upon a band of wild dragon-beasts, grazing silently in
the starlight. Only the good fortune of the wind being in his favor
prevented them from detecting him and charging. He had to backtrack and
then climb a long ridge to get around them. It cost him an hour of time.

The last of
the clouds disappeared from the eastern sky as the storm went its way
across the Southern Gulf. He was grateful that it had not swerved
inland and turned the dim starlight into total darkness. His time
margin would be small, at best.

Shortly
before midnight he stopped on a sand dune, to rest for the first time.
It was there that he saw a tiny, distant red spark; a signal fire on
the hill north of camp. It blinked for several minutes in a code he did
not understand, then went out.

When it did not reappear at the end of two
more minutes he got up and resumed his journey to the sea.

Not long
afterward the sky to the east turned pale; a whiteness that grew
swiftly brighter and obscured the eastern stars. It was the dawn of the
three moons; the moons that brought the Big Tide with them.

They lifted
above the horizon in a flying wedge formation, flooding the desert with
cold, white light. He could see well, then, and he hurried faster down
the long slopes that led to the sea.

The bright
moonlight greatly increased the danger of being seen by a sand hound
and he had not gone far when one screamed from somewhere behind him. He
stopped, and looked back.

He could not
see it but he saw something else when he looked to the rocky ridge west
of him; flitting shadow-shapes that seemed to be dragon-beasts were
keeping pace with him. He wondered if it would be Resso and the others,
making certain he would not be hard to find when morning came. They
were gone from view before he could be sure he had not imagined seeing
them.

He hurried on
again. The character of the desert had changed as the elevation
decreased and a dry, wiry grass was replacing most of the vegetation.
He changed his course slightly so that he could walk down the center of
a shallow valley where it grew the thickest, listening for the sand
hound to scream again.

It did so,
much closer than before. Two more answered it from farther back, then a
third. Which made four of them racing toward him, each of them like a
reptilian ten-foot greyhound with the claws of a tiger and the teeth
and jaws of a young tyrannosaurus.

He lighted
the grass at his feet, then started two more fires on each side of the
first one. Within that short time the tinder-dry grass was burning in a
solid wall of flame, pushed down the valley by the wind at increasing
speed and spreading wider as it went.

* * *

He had to run
to get in front of it and then run still faster to keep ahead of it.
Through the choking smoke he could see nothing except the red blaze of
fire behind him but he heard the sand hounds screeching in frustration
beyond it. The sound of their fury faded as he ran on, and then was
gone.

A mile
farther on he angled to the left, to the rim of the valley where the
grass was too thin to burn, and there he rested until his hard panting
had subsided. Then he walked on again; to hurry faster and faster as
the three moons neared the zenith. Shortly after they had passed the
zenith it would be sunrise and the Big Tide would reach the Sea Cliffs.

He saw no
more of the phantom dragon-beasts, but the smoke from the valley he had
fired lay like a pall across the desert and visibility was limited.

The eastern
sky was lightening with the first glow of dawn when he saw the distant
gleam of moonlight on the ocean. The delays during the night had been
greater than he had thought—there would be no time margin, at all.

He went the rest of the way in a fast trot,
the rope ready in his hand.

The sea to
the east was flat and calm when he reached the ragged top of the Sea
Cliffs but the pale violet of dawn had turned into a vivid blue-white.
Sunrise and the Big Tide were at hand.

He looked
down over the edge of the cliffs, down the sheer face of them where the
crevice reached up for two hundred feet before it dwindled into
nothing, and saw the red-shelled horrors grouped in a thick mass at the
bottom. Laughing Girl was above them, wedged tightly in the crevice as
far up it as she had been able to climb. It had not been far; the
groping claws of the topmost Elephant Crabs were cracking together only
inches below her.

He had
already tied a series of knots in the end of the rope so she could grip
it firmly between her teeth. He dropped the knotted end over the cliff
and gave the rope a flip to guide it toward the crevice.

He glanced
again to the east, at the calm, flat sea, and in that instant its
horizon abruptly swelled and lifted up and became a mountain rushing
toward him.

The Elephant
Crabs were spilling apart, scrambling to positions of safety where they
could anchor themselves against the rough rock surface and be protected
by the thick armor of their shells. Laughing Girl was suddenly alone in
her refuge, a small black huddle that watched the coming of the Big
Tide in frozen helplessness.

The rope was
snaking down the crevice as fast as he could play out the coils. He
whistled at her as the rope neared her. She jerked up her head, almost
falling in her surprise, and greeted him in her native language; a word
that was like the joyous yelp of a pup. Then the end of the rope
reached her and she seized it between her teeth.

* * *

He hauled up
on the rope, bringing it back hand over hand, while Laughing Girl
clawed at the rock to help all she could. She disappeared from his
sight where the cliff became vertical and the thin, hard rope was
almost impossible to grip tightly as her full weight went upon it.

The tide
raced inward as he struggled with the rope; the forefront of an oceanic
plateau. Between it and the cliffs the beach and sea below lay like a
valley, then a narrow basin, then suddenly a vanishing canyon—

* * *

Laughing
Girl's head popped into view and she came pawing and scrambling over
the edge of the cliff. She dropped the rope and leaped toward him in
ecstatic welcome.

"You come for me! You—"

The tide
struck the cliffs with a thunderous roar, making the earth shake. He
seized Laughing Girl by the scruff of the neck and dropped flat to the
ground, where he could lock his free arm around a projection of rock. A
solid mass of water was flung high into the air by the impact, to
descend upon them with a smashing force that knocked the breath from
his lungs and bruised his face against the rocks. He held grimly to the
rock and Laughing Girl as the mass of water poured back over the cliff,
ripping and tearing at him as it tried to take them with it.

They
staggered erect as it drained away and ran. A second mass of
skyward-flung water came too late to do more than drench them. They
stopped a little farther on, along the top of a low ridge.

Behind them the sea growled and rumbled as
it surged against the cliffs. Laughing Girl looked back, trembling a
little.

"I thought you had forgot me, Boss. I was
scared, and I wait and wait . . ."

"Everything is all right, now," he said.
"You won't ever have to go under the Sea Cliffs again."

He was tired,
weak with near-exhaustion. He wiped the salty water from his face and
saw, as something that was no longer of importance, that the sun was
up. His job was done, his last duty carried out, and the thing that
would happen next was something inevitable and beyond his control. He
saw that his knife was gone, washed into the sea—but that no longer
mattered, either.

"You will go
home now," he said to Laughing Girl. "Don't wait for me. Loper will
probably be starting on his way to meet you in a few minutes. He'll
tell you about the things that have happened in the past two days. From
now on the two of you will do whatever he thinks is best for you."

Her eyes were wide in alarm before he had
finished, anxious and questioning.

"What are wrong, Boss? What are going to
happen to you—prease, what are wrong?"

* * *

A slow,
muffled thudding came from the east and he looked into the bright blaze
of the sun to see the dragon-beasts trotting down the ridge toward him.
There were six of them and even against the sun he could see the gleam
of battle helmets and the long rifles across the saddles.

"Go home!" he ordered. "Right now!"

She looked from the approaching war party
back to him and flung up her head in defiance as Loper had done.

"No! You know they come to kirr you—I can
terr. I stay!"

"There are things you don't yet understand,
Girl," he said. "For my sake, go now. Run."

"I—" She hesitated, her sense of duty and
sense of loyalty conflicting. The loyalty won. "No! I not go!"

He could not
permit her to stay. When the natives shot him down she would attack
them with a fury that only her own death could stop.

He stepped
forward and hit her; a hard, open-handed blow alongside the jaw that
sent her rolling. She got to her feet with amazement and hurt in her
eyes and he made his tone harsh and ugly:

"I'll not order you but this one more time—go
home!"

She obeyed,
her tail drooping as she started across the swale. She stopped once, to
look back at him, and he motioned her on with a curt gesture.

She was gone from sight when the natives
reached him. Resso was not with them—it was Selsin who rode in the lead.

They stopped before him in a semi-circle and
regarded him silently, the mocking smiles on their faces.

"It is sunrise," Selsin said.

"It is," he agreed.

"We followed you last night. I wanted to
know if you told the truth about going to save the furry one."

"And now," he said, "I want to know if Resso
told the truth when he said she and her mate would not be harmed."

"He did."

There was
nothing more to say, then. He waited, wondering if they were
deliberately delaying his execution in the hope of seeing him weaken
under the tension.

Selsin spoke again:

"Your
superior and his aide escaped in the flier shortly after you left. The
fire signal at midnight said they had landed on one of the Northern
Islands and were firing steadily at a school of bladder fish. They
seemed to think the fish were an attacking party."

He had the
impression that Selsin and the others were amused. He could understand
why—but for himself there was only a sick feeling of shame and the
thought: So they wouldn't even leave those kids their blasters?

"It is sunrise," Selsin said again, "and
there is no reason to wait any longer. Do you have anything to say?"

"Nothing," he answered, and braced himself
for the impact of the bullets.

But the long rifles were not lifted.
Instead, Selsin swung down from the saddle and came up to him.

"The furry
one—Loper—came to me before dark and told me what you had said to him
on the hill. Didn't you know that what you were doing was more proof of
good intentions than all the promises in the world?"

"I don't understand," he said.

"You claimed
from the beginning that humans respected other forms of life and kept
their promises to them—but words are only little noises. You proved
what you had claimed when you spent what was to be the last night of
your life in keeping the promise you had made to a being who was far
less human than even my own race."

"But the camp—" He did not dare believe what
Selsin's statements implied. "They were to be killed at sunrise—"

"I ordered the attack postponed until your
actions could be judged. Now, there will be no attack."

* * *

He tried to
see past Selsin's meaningless smile, wishing he had let Laughing Girl
stay so she could tell him if they were only taunting him before they
killed him.

"You will
ride one of the dragon-beasts, if you are ready now," Selsin said.
"When you call Earth from your camp today, I will speak to them, too. I
want no more misunderstandings."

"What will you tell them?" he asked.

"The truth of
it all, and how the fat one boasted and insulted my race, and then ran.
I will offer the friendship of my race under the condition that no more
of his kind ever be sent here and that you, or others of your choice,
be in charge of all operations here.

"I suppose," Selsin added, "that your
Supreme Council would like to hear what I have to tell them?"

There was a
flash of black across the swale and he saw Laughing Girl running toward
them; disobeying his order, after all, and come back to fight beside
him. But now she was running with her tail up, her white teeth
grinning, and happiness like something tangible about her.

She was an Altairian—she knew
that everything was suddenly all right. There could be no doubt
whatever about Selsin's sincerity, about the future that lay ahead for
all of them.

Even for
Laughing Girl's race, although she did not yet know it. Loper, in his
simple wisdom, had made it possible for Earth to regain the friendship
of a badly needed world. The Council, in return, could do no less than
to promptly overrule the ERB's classification of the Altairians as
"Animals."

"The Supreme
Council," he said in answer to Selsin's question, "is going to be
delighted by what you have to tell them. Let's go."

No Species Alone

Editor's
note: There is a strong moral component in most of Godwin's stories.
Courage, by itself, is never enough. There also has to be an underlying
sense of empathy for other creatures. In Godwin's universe, selfishness
is perhaps the ultimate sin. We've seen that theme appear many times in
his stories. And, here again:

The morning
was, to Jim Hart, exactly like any other June morning but for the
presence of Gwen—eight weeks was not yet long enough for him to take
her as fully for granted as he would in the months and years to come.
She hummed to herself as she finished wiping the breakfast dishes. Out
on the porch Susie and six of the kittens, having just lapped up their
own breakfast, were engaged in the after-meal practice of making
themselves neat and clean as is the manner of cats. The sky was a
flawless sapphire blue with the touch of the sun as warm and gentle as
a benediction while the meadowlarks filled the air with their soft
melodies.

There was nothing about the morning's soft
beauty to presage sudden and vicious peril.

He checked to
make sure he had his surveying compass as he stood in the doorway then
glanced across the brush-and-tree-dotted flat that extended to the
mouth of the canyon a thousand feet away. There the flat broke abruptly
along the high, steep bank, a trail leading from the cabin to the
break. There was no sign of the pup along the trail, which meant
Flopper had gone on up the canyon—he had made so many trips to the
uranium prospect that spring that Flopper knew as well as he where they
were going for the day.

Gwen wiped the last dish and came over to
stand beside him, her head leaned against his shoulder.

"So it's off for the day you go again." She
sighed. "I'm glad this is the last day of it."

"Less than a
day—I'll be back by noon. Also, from now on we're all set—I found that
uranium myself and it's good. My company will take it without a doubt
and then I'll be a well-to-do uranium property owner rather than just
an employed mining engineer. Doesn't that sound like a bright and
pleasant future for us?"

"It sounds
wonderful," she agreed. "You can be home all the time and every young
wife should have a man around the place—preferably her husband. And
another thing—" She looked at the cat and kittens. "If you had to go
back to work and they sent you off to South America or somewhere—what
would become of them?"

"You gave
yourself responsibility when you picked them up. You shouldn't be so
soft-hearted. 'Poor little things—out by this lonely road and it's
raining and they're cold and hungry and have no home.' That's what you
said, and now we have to buy a case of canned milk every month for
them. If I had my own way—"

"You did," she pointed out sweetly. "You
said, 'Don't just stand there—let's load 'em in the car and be going.' "

"Well—" He considered his defense. "I was
weak that night."

"And the pup, Flopper?" she demanded.

"Another weak spell—like the day I finally
consented to marry you."

"You consented?" She straightened
with indignation. "You consented?"

"Mm-hmm." He nodded with grave seriousness.
"I felt sorry for you."

"Why, you—you—" She stuttered, and tried
again. "You consented? You—"

"Please, Gwen, do you have to keep repeating
everything I tell you, over and over?"

"You told me—I didn't—I mean—oh!"
She struck a small fist against his arm. "You're just trying to make me
mad again—why are you always doing that?"

"Practice,"
he said succinctly and put his arm around her shoulders to draw her
close to him. "When we have our first big fight, we don't want to be
amateurs, you know."

"One of these days," she said, "you're going
to really
make me mad," but the threat of her words was belied by the way she
once again rested her head against his shoulder. "Now, admit the
truth—you wanted to give Flopper a home and you wanted
to give Susie and the kittens a home, didn't you?"

"O.K.—I admit it," he said. "It seems to be
a human characteristic to want pets around. Illogical—but human nature."

"Logic, fooey!"
She turned her head and made a face at him. "A computing machine is
infallibly logical, but do you think I'd ever want to marry one?"

He raised his brows. "I certainly hope not,
that would be ridiculous. Also, you'd get bored with
life-with-an-adding-machine."

"I'd sue it
for divorce on grounds of mental cruelty. Imagine how life would be if
you had to always be logical in everything you did and never did
anything because you wanted to, like going swimming and playing
games and giving homes to lost dogs and cats and—and—" She broke off to
stare past him, toward the mouth of the canyon. "Look!" She
pointed, sudden excitement in her voice. "There alongside the trail—the
spotted kitten. He wasn't here for breakfast—there he is now. Susie got
her fourth one yesterday and now he's found one!"

He followed
her gaze and saw the half-grown spotted kitten some three hundred feet
away and perhaps fifty feet to one side of the trail. As he watched the
kitten circled a few steps, carefully keeping its eyes on whatever it
was circling as it did so. It was, he saw, holding something at bay in
a small area free of brush but was not yet making an effort to kill it.

"It's another one," he said, turning back
into the cabin. "I'll kill it on my way to work."

He went into
the bedroom and came back with a .38 automatic pistol in his hand. "I
used to be a pretty good shot with one of these," he remarked in
explanation. "A shovel would do just as well, but I think I'll see if
I've lost the ability to hit the broad side of a barn."

"Do a good
job," she said. "As soon as I sweep and do a few other things, I'm
going up to the creek to get some watercress for salad. I hope—" She
frowned worriedly. "I hope this is the last one—I'm afraid of the
things."

"Susie would
have had this one by now if it hadn't been for her having to take time
off to drink her breakfast milk and wash her face. The wind's in the
wrong direction for her to smell it yet, but she'd have spotted it
before it got much closer to the cabin." He stepped off the porch and
started up the trail. "I'll be back about noon. Be careful when you go
after that watercress and don't wear those idiotic cutaway moccasins."

"I won't," she answered, for once not
disputing his opinion of her footwear.

He was still
a hundred feet from the spotted kitten when he heard the low, dry buzz.
It was a rattlesnake, as he had known it would be. It was coiled, its
head weaving restlessly, and the kitten was watching it with cold
intentness. The rattlesnake turned away from the kitten as he came up
to them and tried to slither away to the cover of the nearest bush. The
kitten darted around in front of it, just beyond striking range, and
cut off its retreat.

The snaked
stopped, to coil and wait with its head poised to strike. The kitten
stood before it as motionless as a little statue, only a faint tremor
to the end of its tail to indicate any emotion. That, and its eyes.
They were, as Hart observed on previous such occasions, quite wide and
green and mercilessly cold. There was always something different
about the look in a cat's eyes when it watched a snake; a
concentration, a hair-trigger alertness, and an icy, implacable hatred.
Yet, despite the kitten's alertness, there was an air of calmness in
the way it watched the snake, almost contempt. It knew instinctively
that the snake was deadly dangerous but that instinctive knowledge was
outweighed by the other instinctive knowledge; the knowledge that the
snake was afraid of it and would never dare to deliberately
come within striking range. The rattlesnake would never dare approach
the kitten; it had but one desire—to escape.

* * *

The two were
motionless for a few seconds with the snake waiting to strike, its
triangular head, two-thirds as wide as Hart's hand, poised and ready.
Then the snake broke and tried to dart away from the kitten. The kitten
flashed in front of it, still just out of striking range, and the snake
stopped to coil and squirm in indecision, its red tongue flickering in
and out and its buzzing rising higher and higher in pitch as its
agitation increased.

Hart looked
back toward the cabin and saw that Susie and the kittens were still on
the porch. He raised his voice and called to her: "Susie—snake!"

He had taught
her to recognize the word and she was off the porch at once, to come
trotting up the trail with the five kittens stringing out behind her
and Gwen standing in the doorway, shading her eyes against the sun with
one hand as she watched.

He turned back to the snake. It wouldn't be
long—not after Susie got there.

The snake's
head was weaving restlessly as it tried to evade the stare of the
kitten and find a way to escape. It tried again to dart away, and again
the kitten flashed in front of it to cut off its retreat. The snake
stopped, unable to reach the safety of the bush, unable in its fear to
pass near the kitten. Its fear was visibly increasing and so was its
hate; a vicious, reptilian hatred for the half-grown kitten that stood
before it. But, greater than the hatred was the fear; the old, old
instinctive fear of a cat that was common to all snakes.

It was
strange, the way snakes feared cats. One strike with that broad head
and there would be enough venom in the kitten's body to kill a dozen
like it, yet the snake did not dare to strike. Should the kitten come
within striking range, it would strike—but it was afraid to approach
the kitten with the purpose of striking it. There was something about
the way the kitten stared at it, the cold lack of fear, that the snake
could not understand and feared. And the longer the kitten stared at
the snake, the greater the snake's fear would become.

There were
animals that enjoyed an immunity from the bite of a rattlesnake; a hog,
protected by its fat, could kill a rattlesnake; a band of sheep,
protected by their wool, would blindly trample a rattlesnake to death.
Some animals could kill rattlesnakes; a deer could, some small, fast
dogs could. But the rattlesnake feared none of these, would try to
strike any of them. Yet the kitten, completely vulnerable with neither
wool nor fat to protect it, did not fear the snake and knew the snake
feared it. It was something peculiar to cats and snakes; an inherent
hatred and enmity that went back to the dawn of creation.

Susie trotted
up and took in the scene with one swift glance. The kitten relaxed as
he turned the job over to the more capable paws of his mother and she
stood a moment just beyond striking range, studying the snake. It
coiled closer, afraid to try to escape from her for such an action
would render it vulnerable by forcing it to uncoil, knowing in its tiny
reptilian mind that in the lean, wise old cat before it was Death.

Susie paused
only briefly in her appraisal of it, then she stepped forward with her
eyes fixed on the wide-jawed head and her body as tense as a coiled
spring. She calmly, deliberately, came within striking range and waited
for it to strike at her, one forepaw slightly lifted. The snake struck,
then; the very thing Susie had intended for it to do. Its head flicked
forward in a motion too fast for Hart to see and at the same time, and
even faster, there was the flash of Susie's paw. That, and her backward
leap.

It was a blur
of movement too swift for human eyes to follow but in that split-second
the snake had struck, its fangs had encountered only thin air where
Susie had been and, simultaneously, it had felt the sharp rip of her
claws down its venomous head. Then they were poised again, as before,
but this time there were three slashes down the top of the snake's head
from which blood was beginning to ooze.

She moved in
on it again, her pupils two razor-edge slits in eyes that were like
hard emeralds. She came within range and the snake struck again. It was
the same as before; the invisibly swift stab of the white fangs was too
slow to equal the speed of the slashing claws. There were more bloody
furrows down the snake's head when the blur of movement was over. The
next time there would be still more, and it would go on until the
snake's head was half torn from its body and it was dead. It could end
no other way; it was not the nature of a cat to permit a snake to live.

There was
insane fury, now, to the quick coiling of the snake, the high, shrill
buzzing of its tail and the frantic flickering of its head. It was
reaching the stage where its rage and fear was nothing short of madness
and it would deliberately attack anything in the world—except a cat.
Hart threw a cartridge into the chamber of the .38. He had no desire to
see anything die a slow death, not even a rattlesnake. Although, it
seemed to him, there was something downright splendid about the way
Susie—and all other cats—could put the fear of Eternity into man's
traditional enemy, the serpent.

As Susie
began easing back within range of the snake Hart lined the sights on
its head and pulled the trigger. The snake's head smashed to the ground
at the impact of the bullet and the cats jumped back in startled
surprise at the crack of the pistol.

Susie looked
at the dead, writhing snake with a sudden and complete lack of
interest, gave Hart a look that seemed to contain definite disgust and
went over to sit in the shade of a bush.

"Sorry, Susie—I know you didn't really need
any help," he apologized.

The kittens
were crowding around the snake, attacking it in emulation of their
mother's fight with it. They were only kittens, but they were learning.
By the time they were grown he and Gwen would have a very efficient
crew to rid the place of rattlesnakes. Susie, alone, had killed four in
the past two months that he knew of for certain—and one of them had
crawled into the cabin while Gwen was gone, to lay coiled under the
butane range. Had it not been for the vigilance of Susie, it would
still have been there when Gwen returned to prepare dinner, her bare,
brown legs the target for its striking fangs. By that one act, alone,
Susie had far more than repaid them for giving her and her kittens a
home.

He picked the
snake up on the end of a stick and tossed it far out in the brush. The
kittens watched it arc through the air and fall from sight; with the
snake no longer there, they lost interest in the past events and
wandered over to join their mother. He hefted the pistol in his hand,
wondering whether to take it with him or take it back to the cabin.
Deciding one was as much trouble as the other, he waved to Gwen who was
still watching from the doorway and started up the trail.

He was some
distance up it when he looked back to see the ubiquitous spotted kitten
following him—or following in so far as necessary delays to inspect
interesting scents and insects along the trail would permit. The red
kitten was watching the spotted one, apparently with half a mind to go,
too. He went on—they wouldn't follow him very far up the canyon,
anyway. Perhaps as far as the creek; perhaps they'd change their minds
and return to the cabin.

At the edge
of the sagebrush flat the trail went down into the canyon, following
along the side of the steep wall in a gentle grade. He made his way
along the narrow trail, which was sixty feet above the floor of the
canyon at its highest point, and down to the bottom of the canyon. It
was as he started up the canyon that he first detected the odor. It was
very faint, so faint that he could not place it. His thoughts were upon
the survey he would make that morning and he was hardly conscious of
it, though a part of his mind noted it and was vaguely disturbed by it.
He walked on, past the place along the creek where Gwen would gather
the watercress, and there an almost imperceptible breeze drifted down
from the up-canyon. It brought the odor stronger and he stopped, the
vague uneasiness in his mind suddenly awakening to wary alertness.

It was the odor of a snake.

He looked
about him, but there was nothing to be seen. He knew he could not have
gotten any of the odor of the snake he had killed on his clothes, and
the odor coming down the canyon was not quite that of a rattlesnake; it
was fully as offensive and reptilian, but different.

He shook his
head, puzzled, and walked on. Two hundred feet farther on the canyon
swung in a bend and the trail took a shortcut through a thick growth of
junipers. Here the odor became definitely stronger and a creepy feeling
ran up his spine. He kept his eyes on the ground, watching where he was
stepping as he went through the heavy underbrush. There was no doubt
about the odor; while not quite like that of a rattlesnake, it was
certainly the odor of some kind of a snake. Or several snakes,
judging by the strength of it.

He stepped
out of the thicket of trees and brush to the sandy bed of the canyon
and looked up. There, not fifty feet in front of him, was Flopper—and
the thing he had smelled.

* * *

The Slistian
scout ship drifted down through the darkness, silently, undetected.
Sesnar watched the little that the viewscreen could show in the
darkness, his eighteen-foot snake-like body coiled in the concave
pilot's chair before the control board, and patiently heard the
thoughts that emanated from the spherical device beside him.

"Is there any evidence of intelligent life
in the immediate vicinity?" the thought from the transmitter sphere
asked.

"None,"
Sesnar's own thought replied. "I'm descending over an isolated section
of the western part of the continent. The instruments indicate
considerable mineralization in this area under me, including uranium.
There are the lights of some kind of a small city in the far distance,
but that is all."

The sphere made no comment and Sesnar asked,
"Shall I sterilize the area in which I shall land?"

It required
the usual two seconds for the sphere to project his thought through a
hundred lightyears of space to his superior on Slistia and another two
seconds for the reply to come back. "No. Although your observations
have shown no great technological knowledge on the part of the natives,
they may possess means of detecting your use of the sterilizer ray.
They do possess the atomic and hydrogen bombs, we know, and the
discovery upon their planet of an alien spaceship equipped with such a
weapon as the sterilizer ray would most certainly cause them to attempt
to interfere with your preliminary surveys and your capture of some of
the natives for examination and study. When you are near the surface
you shall proceed toward the area the instruments show to contain
radioactive ores, flying low and watching for evidences of habitation,
such as the lights of individual dwellings."

Sesnar duly acknowledged the order.

It did not
seem strange to him that he, alone, should have been dispatched to make
the preliminary survey of the new world while the nine members of the
psychologist-strategist board remained upon Slistia to direct his most
detailed activities by means of the thought transmitter sphere. It was
merely coldly logical. No Slistian could foretell the degrees of
civilization, if any, on a world a hundred lightyears away. Such a
world might possess defensive weapons unknown to the Slistians.
Such a thing had never happened—and no Slistian doubted ultimate
Slistian victory—but the preliminary survey would disclose the weapons,
if any, that the natives possessed; would disclose the resources of the
new world, including the vital radioactive ores, and would provide
specimens of the native intelligent life for study and ultimate
vivisection. The weapons of the Slistians were many and deadly, with
the hypnotic power of the Slistian mind the most insidiously deadly
weapon of all. Yet there was always the small possibility of the
natives possessing deadly weapons of their own and an exploration
scout, such as Sesnar, proceeded under the constant supervision of the
highly learned, very systematic, psychologists-strategists of the
Colonization Board. The scout ship was equipped with every needed
device and instrument to survey the new world, from mapping its
continents to analyzing its air and determining what harmful viruses
might be present. It carried robotic equipment to mine and refine
radioactive ores for powering the force field it would throw around the
mineralized area; the area that would become the Slistian headquarters
for their Extermination Force ships. It carried a well-equipped
laboratory where the captured native specimens could be probed and
questioned by Sesnar's mind until their own minds were drained dry of
information. After that, they would be placed on the tables and the
viewscreen overhead would permit the Colonization Board on Slistia, as
well as the Extermination Force Board, to learn the physical structure
of the natives as Sesnar methodically vivisected them.

* * *

It was all
very logical and carefully planned. A scout ship required a
considerable amount of uranium-based fuel and the supply still
remaining upon Slistia and the two worlds Slistia had captured was
limited. Although thought waves could be transmitted across a hundred
lightyears of space in two seconds, the material body of the ship
required eight months to traverse the same distance. One Slistian
could, with the specially-equipped ship, do as quick and thorough a job
of surveying a new planet as a crew of Slistians could do and
additional Slistians, plus additional food for the eight months voyage,
would have required an additional amount of fuel; fuel that would be
needed by the Extermination Force ships that would follow later. It was
only necessary to know that the new world possessed the radioactive
ores and to learn of what means of defense the natives might have.

The latter
was very important; upon the study of the specimens of native life and
their weapons would depend the strategy of the Extermination Force.
They were quite efficient in ridding a world of its natives and their
efficiency was due to careful planning beforehand; to equipping the
Extermination Force ships with the most suitably destructive weapons
for the job.

Sesnar halted
the descent of the ship a few hundred feet above the surface and let it
travel slowly in the direction of the uranium mineralization. He was
almost to the bulk of a mountain when he saw the yellow light. He
notified his superiors at once.

"There is a
yellow-white rectangle of light some distance away. It's apparently
artificial light from the window of a native's dwelling."

"Pass it by."
The command was from Eska, head of the Colonization Board. "Take no
chance of detection at this time. Pass it by and conceal your ship near
the area of greatest mineralization."

Sesnar
continued on his way, rising as he did so to clear the foothills of the
mountain. He had gone a relatively short distance, the rectangle of
light in the native's dwelling still visible behind him, when the
instruments told him he was directly over the deposit of uranium. He
descended to the ground, letting the robotic control scan the terrain
under the ship with its radar eyes and select a safe and level spot.
The ship settled to earth and he notified Eska of the fact.

There was a
certain emotionless satisfaction in Eska's thought as he said, "The
nearness of the native's dwelling to the uranium deposit simplifies
things. Tomorrow you can accomplish both the capture of natives for
study and the erection of the force field. In the meantime, you shall
remain in the ship."

The latter
order was not without sound reasons of caution; some creatures could
see excellently in the dark and no Slistian could use its hypnotic
powers on an animal it could not see.

Sesnar waited
until dawn, then he reached out with the two small arms that were the
only interruption of the snake-like form of his body and picked up his
menta-blaster, to snap it down on the four metal studs set in the tough
scales of the top of his head. He took no other weapon with him as he
crawled forth from the ship; he needed no other weapon and only the
most unexpected circumstances could cause him to need it, the
hypnotic power of its mind serving very well to force other creatures
to do as he willed.

The ship had
landed in the bottom of a small canyon. There had been something in the
canyon very recently, he saw, something that had dug some narrow
trenches across what he presumed to be the deposit of uranium ore. He
reported the fact to Eska.

"The work of
the natives, obviously," Eska commented. "It would not be advisable to
lift the ship at present. Reconnoiter—there should be some kind of a
path the natives have made and it will lead to the dwelling. Follow the
path for a short distance and report what you find."

The thoughts
of Eska, broadcast by the sphere inside the ship, came clearly to
Sesnar and he obeyed the orders, pausing only long enough to try the
menta-blaster on a small bush beside the path. It vanished in a puff of
dust.

The
menta-blaster was a Slistian achievement and one that could be used
only by Slistians. It was operated by certain thought patterns, the
type and intensity of the beam regulated at will. Since the thought
pattern that operated it had to be very precise, it was useless to any
warm-blooded animal; only a Slistian could produce the necessary
pattern with the necessary machine-like precision. It was a
characteristic of warm-blooded animals to be emotional to a certain
extent and no emotional animal, no matter how intelligent, could be
sure of suppressing its emotions sufficiently to always duplicate the
rigid, precise thought pattern. Although it might seem to the
warm-blooded, intelligent animal that its emotions were completely in
check and its mind free of all influence from them, the emotional
influence over the pure, cold logic would still be there to some slight
extent, enough to prevent exact duplication of the thought pattern
built into the menta-blaster.

The
menta-blaster was, to the Slistians, quite unnecessary proof that
cold-blooded and logical life forms were superior to warm-blooded and
emotional life forms.

The path was
easily found and he followed it. He had gone only a short distance when
the canyon emptied into a much larger one; a canyon that led in the
general direction of the native's dwelling. The path followed the creek
bank down the larger canyon and there, feeding on the green vegetation
beside the path, he saw the first specimen of the planet's life.

It was a
small quadruped with long ears and its sensitive ears detected the
whisper in the sand of Sesnar's coming at almost the same moment he saw
it. It sat up high on its hind legs to stare at him, its nose
twitching, then it wheeled to bound away. He brought it under hypnotic
control and it fell limply to the ground.

It was, of
course, still alive and conscious; merely held helpless. Sesnar crawled
to it and searched its mind. Its mind held no information of any value,
its intelligence was of a very low order. Obviously, it was not a
member of the planet's intelligent form of life.

He touched
the rabbit with his small, lizard-like hands, feeling the fast flutter
of its heart, then ripping a sharp claw down its belly. The entrails
spilled out on the ground and he observed with interest that the animal
was strictly herbivorous. He reported the fact to Eska who then ordered
him to release the rabbit from hypnotic control so that its reaction to
pain might be observed.

At the
release of hypnotic control it leaped high in the air with a thin,
shrill scream, then fell back to lay flopping and kicking in the sand,
its bloody entrails trailing behind it. Its efforts to escape quickly
weakened and soon it could do no more than lie and watch Sesnar with
intense fear in its eyes.

"A high
degree of sensitivity to pain, with no desire to destroy the inflictor
of the pain," Eska remarked. "No revenge instincts whatever. Should
this characteristic of complete non-aggressiveness apply to the
intelligent creatures, our colonization program should need relatively
little aid from the Extermination Force."

Sesnar waited
until the rabbit died, reporting its resistance to death. It took a
remarkably long time for it to die—that is, for a warm-blooded animal.
The characteristic sensitivity to pain of warm-blooded animals was
usually one of the factors that hastened their death when badly
injured. When it finally stopped panting he crawled on, both he and
Eska feeling well satisfied on the whole, though the high resistance to
death was not to be desired.

He had not
crawled very far down the canyon when he encountered the next
quadruped, coming upon it suddenly where the trail swung around a sharp
bend in the canyon. It was trotting up the trail toward him, unable to
scent him with the breeze momentarily blowing up the canyon and he
brought it under control the moment he saw it. He left it standing on
its four legs and went down to it. It was considerably larger than the
quadruped he had killed, shorter of ear and a different species
altogether. He probed into its mind and found its intelligence to be of
the third order; very high for a non-reasoning animal.

"Does its mind contain any information
concerning the dominant form of life?" Eska asked.

"The dominant
form is biped and this animal lives with two of them," Sesnar replied.
"It exhibits an odd regard for them; an illogical emotional regard."

He went on to
explain the affection of the dog for its masters and their affection
for it as best he could. It was not a new thing to either Sesnar or
Eska—they had observed similar attachments among other warm-blooded
species—but it was impossible for them to comprehend the desire of two
creatures of different species to be near each other and find pleasure
in each other's company.

Eska
dismissed it as of no importance. "Apparently the same as the
attachment between the natives of Venda and the small animals they used
to keep around before our arrival. It might be termed a symbiosis of
the emotions—utterly illogical and no more than another example of
their mental inferiority. What other information does the quadruped's
mind contain?"

"It isn't a
mature specimen but its thoughts are quite clear. It lives with two of
these bipeds—a male and a female—in the dwelling near here. The male
biped is to pass this way very soon and the quadruped has a strong
desire for the biped to make its appearance. It's afraid of me but it
seems confident the biped will either kill me or frighten me away."

"It has no doubt of the biped's ability to
destroy you?" Eska asked.

"None
whatever. Although it possesses no technical knowledge, of course, and
is unable to supply me with any information concerning the biped's
weapons."

"I think you
will find the animal's confidence in the invincibility of the biped is
due to the regard of the weaker for the stronger," Eska said. "Since
the actions and abilities of the biped are beyond the quadruped's
intelligence to comprehend it assumes, having no experience to the
contrary, that nothing can be superior to the biped it depends upon for
protection.

"Now, if you
have extracted all the information of value in the animal's mind, kill
it and conceal yourself near the path the biped is to use. A search of
the biped's mind will reveal if there are any other bipeds in the
vicinity, other than the biped's mate. If not, you will capture her,
too, and return with both of them to your ship. You will then throw a
force field around that area and lift ship to complete your mapping of
the opposite hemisphere. The minds and bodies of the biped and its mate
can be studied enroute."

"The path
goes through a dense thicket of small trees a very short distance ahead
of me," Sesnar said. "They would afford perfect concealment—"

He stopped as
he caught the crunching of footsteps from within the trees. He reported
to Eska, then watched the spot where the trail emerged from the trees.
In a few moments the maker of the sounds appeared.

"It is the biped."

"If it shows
no hostility toward you, do not bring it under full and immediate
control," Eska ordered. "Let it remain in a hypnotic semi-trance until
you have questioned it. It will eventually realize you are searching
its mind, of course, and when that happens you will bring it under full
control and proceed in the usual manner. But, until it is aware of your
purpose, you can extract information from it with little difficulty."

* * *

Hart thought
at first that the thing must be a boa constrictor that had escaped from
a circus. Then he saw the hands. The two arms sprouted from tiny
shoulders like two thick bullsnakes and terminated in pale green
lizard-like hands, the size of a woman's hands. The forward portion of
the body was erect with the belly a glazed yellow. The head was broad
and slightly domed, swaying in the air nearly six feet above the
ground. There was something mounted on the snake's head; a flat object
with a short tube projecting a little in front of it. He noticed it
only vaguely, his attention caught by the snake's eyes.

They seemed
to possess an intelligence, even at a distance, and they fascinated
him. He walked forward to see them better, remembering the pistol in
his pocket as something of casual importance. The eyes were quite
large, dead black in color with thin orange rims. There was an
intelligence behind them, an intelligence as great as his own, and he
could feel it studying him. Some instinct within him was trying to warn
him—danger—but it was not until he had stopped before the snake
and breathed the heavy, nauseating odor of it that the spell broke.

Snake! Men did not walk up to snakes
as a hypnotized sparrow might do—but he had just done so.

He saw the
intelligence in the snake's eyes for what it was, then; a cold, alien
appraisal of him with the same objective detachment with which an
entomologist might inspect an insect. It had not moved and there was no
threat in its manner, other than the alienness of it and the way it had
drawn him so irresistibly to it, but that was warning enough. He let
his hand slide to his hip pocket and grasp the hard butt of the pistol,
not drawing it but wanting it ready should he need it. Until, and if,
the snake made a threatening move, he would try to question it. It very
obviously was not of Earth and to kill it first then ask questions
later would be both uninformative and stupid. It might intend
him no harm; he would wait and see and keep his hand on the pistol.

It would most likely be from another planet
of the solar system. He could draw a diagram of the solar system in the
sand—there were no humans near but for Gwen at the cabin—and
find out which planet it came from. Venus should be the one, the second
from the sun—she should be along in a few minutes—

He stopped, suddenly aware of the random
thoughts. His mind spoke another one: She would be after watercress
and would not be armed as he was—

He cut the
thought off with the chilling realization that the snake was
questioning him. It could be nothing else. As the source of a motor
nerve, when touched in an exposed brain, will make the corresponding
muscle twitch, so the snake was questioning him; touching with its mind
at the proper memory cells, exciting the desired memory responses.

The snake-thing wanted both him and Gwen. Why?

The implications of the question broke the
hypnosis and the warning instinct screamed frantically: Kill it—while
you can!

His arm
jerked to whip the pistol from his pocket—and froze. His entire body
was abruptly as motionless and powerless as though locked in a vice. He
could not move—he had heeded the warning too late.

* * *

"The biped
has an intelligence of the first order," Sesnar reported. "It became
aware of my control before I had completed the questioning and
attempted to kill me the moment it realized my intentions. I put it
under full control before it could harm me, of course."

"Determine its full resistance to
questioning while under muscular control," Eska ordered.

His entire
body from the neck down was separated from the control of his brain. He
was standing before the snake and could see it watching him, smell the
odor of it; he was normal and the sensory nerves were functioning as
always. He could feel the weight of the pistol in his pocket and his
fingers could feel the butt of it as they held it half drawn from the
pocket. The sensory nerves were functioning normally but his commands
to his muscles were being cut off. His mind could formulate the
commands and try to send them with all its power but nothing happened.
Somewhere in his brain where the pure thought was transformed into a
neural impulse, the snake had seized control. At that relay station his
own commands were being cut off and the snake's commands substituted.

* * *

He had made a
grave mistake; he had underestimated his opponent. He had reached for
the pistol with his mind wide open, with his intention plain there for
the snake to read. He should have kept the thought subdued, should have
covered it over with other, stronger, thoughts. He had learned a
lesson—perhaps it would not be too late. Physically he was helpless but
his mind was still his own. His only resistance to the snake would have
to be mental for the time being. In the end, if he made no more
mistakes, he might win the game of wits and kill it before it killed
him and Gwen.

A question came from the snake's mind, not
the touching at the memory cells as before but a direct question.

"What is the percentage of uranium in the
ore samples at your dwelling?"

It was, he
realized, a test of his ability to withstand questioning. The snake
would not care what the percentage might be—it was a test, the first
won.

"Why do you want to know?" he asked.

The snake's answer was to touch quickly at
the memory cells where the information lay and to repeat over and over:
The percentage—the percentage—

Three point
one four one five nine, he thought rapidly, and multiply by the
diameter and you have the circumference. The circumference is—the
percentage—the percentage— The thought was insistent, demanding an
answer— The circumference is pi times the diameter and how do you like
those onions?

The reply from the snake was a greater
insistence upon an answer. The percentage—the percentage—the
percentage—
It hammered at his mind and the answer was there, eager to respond to
the snake's touch and make itself heard. It was there, just below the
level of expression, and he fought to keep it there, submerged, while
he covered it over with other thoughts.

According to
the semanticists, a thought cannot be conceived clearly without its
conversion to words. Not necessarily spoken, but the thought conceived
with the aid of the semantic expressions to outline it, to detail and
clarify it. Forty-one percent, expressed in words, is a very definite
part of the whole. Forty-one percent as a thought unaccompanied by the
proper semantic equivalent is an indefinite minor proportion. He could
not block the snake from probing at his memory cells but he could let
the answer the probing evoked remain a wordless thought, an impression
in his mind that was not clear even to himself, by keeping the answer
below the level of semantic expression and covering it up with other
thoughts of his own making and spoken aloud.

The percentage—the percentage—
It was coming harder, with the full force of the snake's mind behind
it, and he met it with every evasion he could contrive. He recited
mathematical formulae to it, he told it an Aesop fable, he gave it
portions of the federal mining laws. The question flicked relentlessly
at his mind—the percentage—the percentage—and his words that
kept the answer submerged came more swiftly and louder as the moments
went by, his concentration became more intense.

He was
telling it of the crystallographic structure of tourmaline when it was
abruptly out of his mind, to stand silently before him as though
meditating.

"Well," he asked, his voice dropping to
normal pitch, "did you find out anything?"

It gave no indication that it heard him.

* * *

"Its
resistance to questioning is unexpectedly high," Sesnar reported. "As
with all warm-blooded animals, its means of communication is vocal and
I left its vocal organs uncontrolled that it might accompany its answer
with the semantic expressions that would give the answer the greatest
clarity. It exhibited considerable cunning by taking advantage of the
freedom of its vocal organs to use them to speak other thoughts and
keep the answer I desired submerged."

"Pain will
break its resistance," Eska replied. "The combination of pain plus
control will quickly destroy its ability to keep the answer submerged.
Use your menta-blaster with care, however—the biped must not be so
severely injured that it will be unfit for complete questioning and
physical study when you take it and its mate to the ship. Use the Type
4 beam."

* * *

He had won!
The power of the snake's mind, great as it was, had not been great
enough to force him to answer. It was only the first victory—he was
still held as powerless as before—but it had been a victory. There
would be other tests but he knew, now, that the snake-thing was
incapable of hypnotizing a human. It could only assume control of the
body, not of the mind.

Flopper was
standing fifteen feet to one side of him, held by the same control. Or
even more so—Flopper could not turn his head. He could move his eyes
but that was all. Flopper was watching him now, fear in his eyes and a
look of hopeful expectancy; a faith that his master would destroy the
thing before them. It was pathetically humorous; he was the pup's god
and a pup knows that its god can do anything.

Then the snake was speaking to his mind
again, very concisely, very menacingly.

"You will
tell me the percentage of uranium in the ore samples. You will tell me
at once and with no attempts to submerge the answer."

Well, here we
go again, he thought. He had an unpleasant premonition that this time
it would not be so easy—but he would soon find out.

"Go to hell," he said.

The tube on
the snake's head glowed a deep violet and something like the blades of
incandescent knives stabbed into his chest and began to cut slowly
across it. It was a searing, burning pain that ripped down his stomach
and up his neck, to explode like a white light in his brain. The
question was coming again—the percentage—the percentage—lashing
at his mind like a whip through the glare of pain. The
percentage—the percentage— The pain intensified and tore at every
nerve in his body while the question goaded incessantly: The
percentage—the percentage—
He fought against it and the white glare engulfed his brain until the
question was no longer a question but a knife thrusting again and again
into his mind while he was an entity composed of pain and spinning in a
hell-fire of agony, writhing blind and mindless in the white glare
while the question stabbed at him—the percentage—the percentage—

It was meaningless, as meaningless as his
own thought in return: thirty-five percent—thirty-five percent—
Meaningless. He had been going to fight something—he couldn't remember
what it was. His mind was blinded by the pain and he couldn't
remember—nothing existed but pain, unbearable
pain . . .

The chaos
faded slowly and the white glare melted away. The knife was no longer
in his brain and the tube on the snake's head was crystal white again.
He knew, then, that he had lost.

His heart was
pounding violently and his chest was an intolerable aching and burning.
He looked down at it. Something like a row of sharp knives had cut
halfway across it. The cuts were not bleeding—the knives had cauterized
as they cut . . .

* * *

"The biped's
resistance was greater than expected," Sesnar said. "I was forced to
cut and burn it rather severely, but it will still be able to serve our
purpose."

"Proceed to
the place where the biped's mate is to come," Eska ordered. "If she is
there, return with both of them to your ship. If not, continue on to
the dwelling and get her. Nothing is to be gained by waiting and there
is always the slight possibility that other bipeds might make an
unexpected appearance. The sooner you can return to the ship with the
two natives and erect the force field, the better."

* * *

There was a
command from the snake to turn and step forward. He started to turn,
then, even as the movement was begun, there came another command from
the snake: Stop.

He stopped
and stood motionless. The snake was looking beyond him, at something in
the junipers behind him. Its full attention, but for its control over
him, seemed to be on whatever it saw. The seconds went silently by as
the snake stared and as they passed he felt an almost imperceptible
lessening of the control; a faint tremor to his arm and hand as he
tried to force them to obey his will. Something in the junipers
was loosening the snake's control over him.

A brief glow
of dim red came from the tube on the snake's head, existing barely long
enough to be seen and then vanishing. With its vanishing the control
weakened to the point where he could move his arm. It was like fighting
against the drag of quicksand, but he could move it. He dropped his
eyes to the target, the glistening yellow belly where he could bring
the pistol up with the minimum amount of movement.

The pistol
was almost free of his pocket when the snake abruptly returned its
attention to him; seizing control with a savagery that ripped at his
muscles like an electric shock. His fingers flew open and the pistol
dropped back into his pocket. His hand was jerked around and slammed
against his side. The snake permitted his knotted muscles to relax,
then, but the tightening of his chest muscles had torn at the wounds
and for what seemed a long time a sickness and a blackness swirled
around him, the bulging eyes of the snake seemed to advance and retreat
through it.

The blackness
dispersed, though the sickness remained, and the dizziness left him.
The snake was not moving and he could, for the first time, sense vague
thoughts impinging upon its mind. Apparently the thing in the junipers
had so disturbed the snake that it was unconsciously letting some of
its own thoughts come through with the control. There was a distinct
impression that it was communicating with another of its kind but there
was no clue as to the identity of the thing in the junipers.

"A small animal suddenly appeared in the
trees behind the biped," Sesnar said. "That is, I think it was
an animal."

"You think
it was an animal?" Eska's thought was a cold hiss. "What is the meaning
of this? You were not sent on this mission to indulge in guessing—determine
if it's an animal."

"I tried to—and I couldn't!"

"Explain yourself. I sense an agitation in
your mind. Explain!"

"This animal is different to any we've ever
encountered—if it is
an animal," Sesnar said, his agitation becoming more evident as he
spoke. "I cannot determine what it is because I not only cannot control
it—I cannot enter its mind!"

Eska was
silent for a while. "This is incredible," he said at last. "It cannot
be! The mathematics of Kal, as well as our own centuries of
colonization of alien worlds, have irrefutably proven that no
warm-blooded creature can resist the power of the Slistian mind!"

"This one did."

"Perhaps,"
suggested Eska, "it is such a low form of life that it has no mind to
enter, existing solely by instinct as the mollusks do."

"It is
physically far too high on the evolutionary scale to not possess an
intelligence," Sesnar said. "It has the appearance of an animal but
that is all I can learn about it. I cannot control it, I cannot enter
its mind, and—" Sesnar paused, as though dreading to reveal the rest. "It
disturbs my mind!"

"Impossible!" Eska stated flatly. "No
creature can disturb the mind of a Slistian."

"This one
did," Sesnar repeated. "It disturbs me so that I cannot project the
thought pattern into my menta-blaster. I tried to kill it, but despite
my efforts to produce a full-force blast I was able to activate the
menta-blaster for but a moment and then at such low intensity that the
creature never felt it."

"Your
menta-blaster must have developed a defect," Eska said. "I refuse to
believe that any creature could so affect a Slistian. Is the creature
still in view?"

"No. It vanished when I tried to activate
the menta-blaster and is now watching me from the concealment of the
trees."

"How do you know it is?"

"I can sense it watching me."

"Your
menta-blaster has no doubt become defective," Eska said again. "Test
it. Lower your head behind the protection of the biped and test it."

Sesnar
dropped his head lower and his eyes searched for a suitable target.
They fell on the quadruped, still motionless under his control. It
would serve the purpose admirably and it was of no other use to him.
With the biped's body between himself and the thing in the trees the
disturbance was gone from his mind. He felt the familiar thought
patterns come easily: Type I, quarter force—fire!

* * *

Confused
thoughts swirled in Hart's mind. Why had the snake not killed whatever
it saw behind him? It had started to do so—there had been the first dim
glow from the tube on its head—and then it had stopped? Why? The snake
had been disturbed by what it saw—why hadn't it eliminated it?

He turned his
head as far as he could but the trees were directly behind him and he
could not see them. Neither could he tell what it might have been by
Flopper's reaction; the pup's back was to the trees, too.

The faith was
still in Flopper's eyes. He was afraid of the thing before them and
could not understand the awful paralysis that held him, but he knew
with all his dog's heart that his master would help him. Then the snake
dropped its head to the level of Hart's chest and looked directly at
the pup. Frantic, imploring appeal flashed into Flopper's eyes as he
sensed what was coming.

There was a
blue-white flash from the tube on the snake's head and a crackling
sound. A puff of dust hid Flopper from view for a moment. When it
cleared he was lying on the ground, broken and still, a tiny trickle of
blood staining his mouth.

"The blaster
functions perfectly, the thought patterns are produced without effort,
when I am not under the direct gaze of the thing in the trees," Sesnar
reported.

"Proceed with
the biped toward its dwelling," Eska ordered. "Permit it to retain its
weapon—should the other thing appear again, force the biped to kill it."

* * *

It had killed Flopper!

Hart felt
sick with the futility of his hatred for the stinking, scaly thing
before him; he wanted, more than he had ever wanted anything in his
life, to reach the pistol and empty it into the glazed belly, to watch
the snake fall and then tramp its head into a shapeless mass. He
wanted—but the command came to turn and he was doing so.

He turned and
began the walking back down the trail, the snake slithering along
beside him. They passed the limp little bundle of black and white fur
that had been Flopper and went on, bypassing the shortcut through the
junipers and following the sandy canyon bed. Was the thing still
afraid of what it had seen in the trees?
His chest was a sheet of fire and his heart was slugging heavily. Then
the trees were behind them and they were back on the trail again,
passing by the place where Gwen had intended to get the watercress. Were
they going to the cabin?
They came to the place where the trail climbed out of the canyon and
his heart pounded harder as they started up it. There was a limit to
the injury and pain a man could stand, no matter how hard he might
fight to ignore it, and he had withstood injury and pain to such an
extent that his body could take little more of it.

They were
climbing up the grade and the snake could have but one reason for going
to the cabin. It wanted Gwen; it wanted a pair of specimens of the
native life to study; specimens that it would crush and examine as
emotionlessly as he would crush and examine a specimen of ore. It
hadn't told him, but he knew. It would force him to stand there where
the trail came out on top of the bank and motion to Gwen to come to
him. She might even now be starting out to gather the watercress; she
would be able to see him easily from the cabin and she would come
without question when he motioned her to do so. She had no reason to
suspect any danger.

He would have to do something—what?
His breath was coming harsh and labored and a blur kept trying to form
before his eyes. It was hard to think, yet he had to think. He had to
do something, and quickly. He was weakening and his time for action was
running short—

Stop.

He stopped,
the snake beside him, and wondered why they had done so. It was looking
up the trail, up at the top of the climb, and he shook his head to
clear the blur away from his eyes. There was something gray there—

Kill it!

He saw what it was as his hand obediently
reached for the pistol. It was one of the gray kittens. Why didn't
the snake kill it?
He thought of the rattlesnake he had killed so long ago and he knew
what it was the snake-thing had seen in the trees, knew why its cold,
merciless mind had been so disturbed.

Kill it!

Kill it—he must kill the kitten because
the snake was afraid of it! The snake couldn't
kill it! There was a flooding of hope through him. He had a plan, now;
held deep and vague in his mind as he brought the sights of the pistol
in line with the kitten's face. There was no time to inspect the plan,
not even the hazy sub-conversion inspection it would have to be. He had
been ordered to kill the kitten and his muscles were no longer his own;
he could not disobey. His mind was his own, however, and he could—

The front sight was on the kitten's head,
outlined in the rear sight, and he made his thought sharp and clear: This
pistol shoots low; I must draw a coarse bead. Another thought tried
to make itself heard: No—no—it shoots high. He drowned it out
with the one of his own creating: Shoots low—draw a coarse bead.
The front sight came up in obedience to the thought he was making sharp
and clear, the snake unable to read the thought he was keeping
submerged. The sight loomed high in the notch of the rear sight and he
pressed the trigger. The startled kitten vanished in the brush beside
the trail as the bullet snapped an inch over its head.

I did it! There was exultation in the
thought—it was difficult to keep it hidden. There was a plan that would
work—it would have to work—

"What is your plan?"

The snake's question came hard and cold and
the tentacles flicked at his mind—the plan—the plan—

His hope became despair. He had let part of
his thoughts get through to the surface, and now the snake knew of them—the
plan—the plan—
The tube was coming in line with his chest again. He would, in the end,
tell the snake what it wanted to know—his mind would be sent spinning
into the glare of pain and it would no longer be his own. But if he
could delay it for a while . . .

"I'll tell
you," he said calmly. The snake waited, the tube still in line with his
chest. "Cats—they chase mice," he went on, his mind two things; a
frenzied effort to think and to talk calmly to the snake with one part
of it and a desperate planning in the darkness of sub-conversion with
the other part. "Cats chase mice and I was going to yell at them—Susie—SNAKE!"

At his shout
he expected, with the part of his mind he was keeping hidden from the
snake, that the tube would flash violet again as the snake detected the
subterfuge. But it had not—not for the moment, at least. Susie would
come, she had to—

"They always chase these mice and the reason
I sent for them—" The snake wouldn't let him talk nonsense for
long—Susie would have to come soon— "I sent for them because the
mice scared the farmer's wife when the clock—" What if she had gone
back to the cabin? What if there was nothing to hear him but the gray
kitten?— "struck one. I—"

"You are hiding something."

The tube flashed violet and his mind went
reeling into the white glare where the tentacles lashed like whips—the
plan—the plan— Something was saying: You
are a snake and snakes are afraid of cats. I called Susie so you
couldn't use the tube—so I could kill you before you could kill Gwen
and me . . .

His mind came
out of the glare again, out of the blinding intensity of pain. Vision
returned and he saw the snake before him, with the tube once again
crystal white. It knew, now, of his plan—he had resisted the
questioning as long as he could and all he could do now was hope that
Susie had heard him, that she was coming and had not returned to the
cabin, after all. The cabin was too far away for her to have heard his
call from there . . .

The snake was watching the top of the trail,
its little hands fidgeting. He followed the snake's gaze, to find the
trail empty. Susie—Susie—he thought—don't
fail us now. It's Gwen and me and maybe every human on Earth if this
thing isn't killed. Hurry, Susie, and help me—help me so I can kill it—

Then something appeared at the top of the
trail, something gray. Susie!
She had heard him! She came down the trail without pausing, flowing
along low to the ground with her eyes fixed on the snake. She stopped
eight feet short of them, her eyes stone-hard and unwavering in their
stare.

Kill it.

There was a
hint of emotion to the command this time; a touch of urgency where,
before, the commands of the snake had been as dispassionate as its own
hard-scaled face.

Again his
hand brought up the pistol, but this time his will was delaying it a
little. Not much, but a little. Susie was not a kitten; she was a
mature cat with a mature cat's contempt for snakes. A cat, even a
kitten, instinctively knows the difference between a harmless snake,
such as a garter snake, and a poisonous snake, such as a rattlesnake. A
small kitten will kill a garter snake but it will not tackle a
rattlesnake until it has acquired the necessary strength, speed and
experience. For all its size, the snake-thing before Susie was still a
snake; a snake without fangs. It could not harm her except by physical
force and to do so it would have to move faster than she did. All her
experience had taught her that no snake could ever equal her own
lightning coordination. The effect of her stare upon the snake would be
far stronger than that of a kitten; that it was stronger was made
evident by the manner in which his hand was bringing up the pistol so
slowly. She could not harm the snake, but such would not be necessary.
She had only to sit there and torment its mind with her cold stare—in
the end the snake-thing's mind and will would break, its fear would
become so complete that it would lose all control over him. And then—he
would kill the thing—

Kill it!

The command
was more urgent and he was raising the pistol faster despite his
efforts to hold it back. It would take time for her stare to fully
affect the thing and it was not going to permit that. The sights were
coming in line with Susie's face—all his will could not halt the
movement and he was going to kill her. When he shot her, he would
destroy the only hope for survival—when he pulled the trigger he would
be killing himself and Gwen as surely as though the muzzle was against
their own heads. He tried the subterfuge of thinking the gun shot low,
but it failed. His hand brought the front sight down low in the notch
of the rear sight and his finger tightened on the trigger. He
concentrated on the movement of the finger, forgetting everything else
in the effort to delay the squeeze of the trigger. The command came
again: Kill— It broke and he felt the control lessen.

It came once more, but differently: Kill
them!

Them?
The pistol had dropped and was no longer in line with Susie. He looked
up the trail and saw why; the two gray kittens were trotting down the
trail. They stopped beside their mother, one on each side of her, and
their eyes as coldly upon the snake as hers.

No further
command came for the time and the snake's hands fluttered with greater
nervousness. The pistol was still in his hand but the muzzle had
dropped toward the ground. There were six green eyes watching the snake
now, and it was getting worried.

It would try
again—it would have to try again, and soon. It took a little time for
the stare of a cat to break a snake and the snake knew it. It was a
snake and there was something about the impenetrable mind of a cat that
it feared—but it was intelligent and it knew it could still escape if
it acted quickly enough . . .

Gravel
rattled down the face of the cliff his back was against. He twisted his
neck to look up and saw the yellow kitten making its way along the
ledge over his head. The kitten stopped just over him and there were
eight cold eyes watching the snake. Three kittens to go, he thought,
and then someone is going to get hurt. There was another yellow one and
the red one, and the far-ranging spotted one should have been the one
the snake saw in the trees—it should be coming up the trail any moment.

More gravel
fell from the ledge above him; the other yellow one. The snake was
darting its glance from the kittens on the ledge to Susie and the two
beside her and did not see the spotted one trot up the trail and stop
near the end of its long, thin tail. The red one was at the spotted
one's heels and stopped beside it.

There was a
trembling to his legs as the control lessened. The snake was
breaking—he could not raise the gun to shoot the snake; it could not
force him to shoot the cats. He felt an elation through the sickness
and pain. The snake would break soon, would break and turn to flee.
When it did the control would vanish and he would kill it. He would
empty the pistol into the mottled green coils of
it . . .

"Drop the weapon!"

His hand
tried to spread open to drop the pistol and he tried to force it to
clench the pistol tighter. If he dropped the pistol, the snake would
scoop it up and use it to kill the cats—but his fingers were obeying
the command, they were spreading apart.

He spoke quickly: "Did you know there are
two more at your tail?"

It had the
affect he had hoped for; the snake flicked its glance toward the two
kittens, then there was a flurry of movement as it whipped its tail
away from them and closer about its body.

His grip was firmer on the pistol and for
the first time he smiled at the snake. "Disconcerting, aren't they?"

* * *

"There are
seven of the creatures," Sesnar reported. "I am not sure whether or not
they can harm me physically—they display a complete lack of fear as
though they might possess some power to destroy me of which I am
unaware. The biped has now become a menace; I am losing control of it
and when my control weakens sufficiently it intends to kill me. It is
too strong for me to wrest the weapon from its hand but it is rapidly
weakening from the effects of its injuries. As soon as it weakens
sufficiently, I shall take the weapon away from it. Since the biped's
primitive weapon operates by manual control, I can use it to kill the
other creatures. I am now going to release the biped of all control but
for the hand that holds the weapon. This will cause it to feel the full
extent of its injuries and reduce it to helplessness very quickly. My
control, itself, is steadily deteriorating but the biped is so severely
injured that I have no doubt it will be helpless long before my control
over it is completely gone."

* * *

He was
standing with his back to the cliff, his feet spread a little, when the
control over everything but his hand suddenly vanished. His knees
turned to rubber and he fell back against the cliff. He had not
realized, while his muscles were under the absolute control of the
snake, just how weak he was. His back bumped against the cliff and he
braced his feet, shoving as hard as his weakness would permit against
the cliff to keep himself standing. It was not enough and he began to
drop, his backbone scraping along the rough rock face. For a moment a
fold in his shirt caught on a projection and supported him, then it
slipped off and he dropped to the ground in a squatting position. It
seemed he dropped with a terrible jar and the hell-fire rippled across
his chest. The sickness flooded over him and the blur clouded his eyes.
He put all his will into one thought: Hold tight to the pistol!

The blur
faded away and he could see the snake, its head now above him. He was
sitting with his legs doubled under him and his heart was a small flub-flub
within him. He was sweating the cold sweat of shock and the hand that
held the pistol was no longer tan but an odd grayish color. He watched
it and waited, hoping the spell would pass before the snake realized
how weak he was.

The worst of
it did pass and a little color came back to his hand. His heart,
relieved of the burden of supplying his legs with blood, began to beat
a little stronger and the blackness that had hovered around him
withdrew.

The snake was
in a close coil a few feet before him, the coils sliding and slithering
together and the snake-like arms a succession of nervous ripplings.

"Afraid,
aren't you?" he asked. "You need a dog—cats run from dogs." He kept his
mind free of information-giving surface thoughts and went on to bait
it. "You could easily control a dog and force it to chase all these
cats away."

The snake asked the question he had
expected. "What is a dog?"

"The animal you killed was a dog."

He regretted
that the snake's expressionless face prevented his seeing the effect of
the disclosure but the thought would be galling bitterness in the
snake's mind. It had no emotions—but one. There was one emotion it had
to have; the fear of death. Without that a species would never survive.
It was afraid, now, and the greater its fear became, the weaker its
control over him would become. He would have no time to spare; the
blackness had merely withdrawn a little way and it kept threatening to
swoop back over him. He would have to fight it off as best he could and
at the same time do what he could to increase the snake's fear.

"Cats," he said to it. "You're afraid of
them and they're not afraid of you. Do you know why they're not afraid
of you?"

"Why?" The question was like a quick
hiss, intense in its desire to know.

"Ask them,"
he answered. "They know; they can tell you. Ask them—look at them, go
into their minds and learn why they don't fear you. Go ahead—go into
their minds—"

A wisp of the
darkness reached out to cloud his eyes and he waited for it to pass,
holding tight to the pistol. The darkness withdrew and he repeated: "Go
ahead—go into their minds. Burn them like you did me—make them tell
you—go ahead—try it." He smiled up at the snake, twisted and mirthless.
"They know what's going on in your mind; they know how they're
breaking you without ever touching you. Why don't you go into their
minds and learn why they hate you and hold you in contempt? Look into
their eyes—go deep into their minds and see what you
find . . ."

The cloud came again and he let his voice
trail off to concentrate on holding to the pistol.

* * *

"The biped has not weakened yet?" Eska asked.

"It is weakening very rapidly, though not
yet helpless," Sesnar replied.

"We dare take
no risks—this absurd situation must be remedied at once," Eska informed
him. "The thought pattern of your menta-blaster is on file and will be
given to myself and the other eight members of the Colonization Board
present here. The recording projector is being set up now. As soon as
the last connections are made the pattern of your blaster will be
projected to you with the power of the nine minds of the Board behind
it. Since none of us are under the influence of the creatures before
you, the pattern projection will be of absolute precision and
irresistible power. Your own mind need serve only as the carrier. The
final connections are being made now and you will receive the pattern
projection at any moment."

* * *

He shook his
head, trying to drive the darkness away. It withdrew, slowly and
reluctantly, hovering near to close in on him again. His time was
running out—all his will and determination could not much longer hold
unconsciousness at bay. Time—he needed more time. Susie and the kittens
were doing the best they could but their only weapon was the green
stare of their eyes. In the end they would break the snake—but he would
have to be there to kill it when they did so. If he lost consciousness
all would be lost; the snake would use the pistol to kill the cats, it
would go on to the cabin where Gwen was . . .

He needed
time and he could not have it. He would have to bring it all to a
showdown fast—in the little time he did have. Maybe if the cats were
closer . . .

He called to Susie. His voice was a vague
mutter and he tried again, making it clear. "Susie, come here—snake,
Susie—snake!"

She came at
his call, with the same silent, flowing motion. She stopped close
beside him, so near that her whiskers tickled the back of his hand that
held the pistol as she stared up at the snake's head and the writhing
arms of it.

* * *

"The biped
has called the largest of the creatures to its side," Sesnar reported.
"I can see nothing about the creature capable of harming me but I sense
a distinct menace—an utter lack of fear. It must possess some
means of harming me of which I am unaware, otherwise it would not
display this complete lack of fear. The effect of its stare upon my
control over the biped is considerably greater at this close range and
I am afraid to delay any longer. I am sure the biped has now weakened
sufficiently for me to wrest the weapon from its grasp. I cannot wait
any longer or my control over it will be completely gone. Project my
menta-blaster pattern as soon as possible but I must take the biped's
weapon now and kill it and the other creatures."

"The
connections have been made and the charge is building up in the relay
now," Eska said. "The moment it reaches full potential you will receive
the pattern."

* * *

The snake
settled lower in its coils until its head was barely a foot higher than
his own. "I wish to talk to you," it said, leaning forward a little
toward him. "I intend you no harm."

Subterfuge! The foreknowledge of the
snake's intention was an electric shock through the haze of pain and
sickness. Subterfuge—it was trying to put him off guard a
little before it snatched the pistol from his hand.

The showdown had come.

He moved with
all the desperate quickness his weakness would permit, trying to bring
his left hand over in time to help his still-controlled right hand hold
onto the pistol. The movement was hardly begun when the hand of the
snake flashed out. At the same moment it ordered with all the force at
its command: "Release the weapon!"

Susie reacted
then, instinctively and instantaneously. It was beyond her ability to
understand that the snake wanted only the pistol; that it wanted no
contact with her. She had been waiting and watching, her eyes and body
coordinated like a perfect machine and ready to act at the
lightning-fast instant of her command. The snake-like arm darted toward
her, as a rattlesnake would strike, and she replied to its threat as
she would to the strike of a rattlesnake. Its hand was yet four inches
from the pistol when her paw made its invisibly swift slash and the
razor-sharp claws laid the soft-scaled hand open in four long gashes.

It flipped
its body back at the slash of her claws and the control was suddenly
gone, something like a scream coming through the channel where it had
been. It was soundless but it was terror, complete and absolute.

Now!
The glazed yellow belly was before him and the control was gone. He
brought the pistol up, spurred by the frantic fear that the snake would
resume control when victory was only a split second away. Up, where the
sickening glaze was so near him—up and in line— The pistol barked,
vicious and savage, and the snake lurched from the impact, a small,
round hole in the glaze. Up and fire—up and fire— It was as he had
wanted it to be when the snake held him helpless; as he raised the
pistol and fired, raised and fired, the little black holes ran up the
glazed belly while the snake kept lurching from the impacts and leaning
farther backward, out over the edge of the trail. There were six of the
little black holes in it when it toppled over and fell into the canyon
below.

He heard the
thump of it as it hit the bottom and he crawled to the rim of the trail
to look down at it. It was lying in the sand of the canyon floor,
twisting aimlessly, sometimes the dark green back up and sometimes the
glistening yellow belly up.

It was twisting and turning as all dead
snakes do; it was going nowhere; it was no longer a menace.

He turned
away from it and saw that Susie and all the kittens were lined up
beside him, looking down at the thing they had helped kill.

"I think," he
said to them, "that the hungry old cat and the scrawny kittens we gave
a home to one cold, rainy night have repaid us."

* * *

He was still
in the hospital nine months later—with release a month away—when
Earth's first spaceship was completed and the christening ceremony
held. The snake-thing's ship had possessed every conceivable kind of
weapon as well as the hyper-space drive and the military had been given
orders, and unlimited priority, to create a Hyperspace Interceptor
Fleet. There had been tapes and records in the ship that had left no
doubt as to the snake-thing's mission. Industry had combined genius and
mass-production to do the impossible; it had turned out the first
complete and fully armed interceptor in less than nine months.

Gwen made her daily visit on the afternoon
of the day of the ship's christening.

"This one
will be the flagship, I guess you'd call it," she said. "Now that
they're tooled up for production, they say they'll be turning out a
ship a week."

"The things
might try again," he said. "I don't think they will for some time; when
Susie struck the snake it let its mind go wide open to my own mind for
a moment—not only its mind but I could sense the thoughts of the other
ones that it was in communication with—and they were afraid.
Even the others were afraid, afraid because the one here was terrorized
by something it couldn't control or understand. I think these
snake-things got where they are by pure, unemotional logic; they
happened to be an older form of life than the ones on the worlds they
conquered and their knowledge of physical things, such as weapons, was
greater. I suppose they had plans for ultimately conquering every
habitable world in the galaxy. They were utterly without mercy in their
plans; they, alone, were entitled to life because they, alone, had
developed methods of destroying all other forms of life. They knew all
about physical laws and they made use of their knowledge to devise
weapons that made them invincible. But they overlooked what I like to
think is a law higher than any they knew: the law that no species
alone, is entitled to survival."

Gwen smiled
at him. "The law that causes people to feel sorry for lost and hungry
dogs and cats and want to give them a home. It's a good law, and it
doesn't have to be written down for people; it's just our nature like
it was the nature of that snake-thing to be cold and logical in
everything it did."

"And its cold
logic caused it to die," he said, "with it, even as it died, still
wondering at our illogical affection for other creatures. And speaking
of other creatures; how is Susie taking all the publicity and fame?"

"She's
completely unphotogenic, and bewildered besides. She just wants to keep
on being a common cat and she can't understand why all those people
keep coming to see her and take her picture."

"Well—after
all, she can't know just how important was the thing she and the
kittens did. That thing was a snake and she was a cat; she just did the
usual, normal thing for a cat to do."

"She was
wanted at the ship's christening today, too," Gwen said. "They wanted
her there to go out over all the television channels. I had to put my
foot down flat on the idea, though."

"Why?"

Gwen smiled
again. "Because she was too busy today doing something else that is the
usual, normal thing for a cat to do—she was having kittens."

The Gulf Between

Editor's
note: The backdrop to all of Godwin's stories is a universe which is
cold and pitiless. More so than any demon, because it is a lack of
mercy which stems from the fact that the universe simply does not care.
Technical advances, whatever their benefits, do not fundamentally
change that bleak reality. In different ways, that theme stands at the
center of the last two stories in this anthology.

1

He was dying!

The fear
flooded over him again, dark and smothering and made worse by his
inability to move. His doctor was standing near him, watching over him
with dark, patient eyes, knowing that he was dying. When a man is
dying, there should be comfort in the presence of a doctor who knows
how to save his life. His doctor knew he was dying and had already done
the thing that should have saved him from death; the doctor had
informed the pilot of his condition by means of the letters on the
pilot's communications panel. They had leered at him for an endless
eternity: OBSERVER DYING OF EFFECTS OF FULL ACCELERATION. IMMEDIATE
REDUCTION OF ACCELERATION IS SUGGESTED.

His doctor watched him die with dark,
brooding eyes and suggested to the pilot that the acceleration be
reduced.

But the pilot's seat was empty.

He was the pilot, and the doctor knew
it . . .

Lieutenant
Knight flattened himself behind the outcropping on the windswept ridge
and raised his head to stare across the small basin at Hill 23, looming
red-scarred and forbidding in the Korean rain; deceptively, ominously
quiet, as though daring Company C to resume its vain battering at it.

"Don't look
dangerous, does it?" Sergeant Wenden asked, his bush of black and gray
beard close to the ground as he crawled up beside Knight. "Real calm
and peaceful. Good old Hill Twenty-three—all we gotta do is take it."

The blue of
the Pacific gleamed beyond Hill 23; if they could take the hill it
would destroy one of the last remnants of one of the last enemy
beachheads on the Korean coast. It would not be difficult—if Cullin
would only wait another day until Company B came up.

"I have an
idea they won't want to give that hill up," the sergeant went on. "It's
their last one; their backs are to the sea and they're goin' to argue
about givin' it up."

Knight did
not answer, studying the terrain of the hill and the basin that lay
between; planning the best route for the Fourth Platoon, the best way
to give them a fighting chance.

"Yep, real
calm and peaceful," the loquacious sergeant repeated. "I wonder if
their snipers know we're lookin' over the ridge at 'em?"

His answer
came a half second later; a spurt of rock dust as a bullet struck
between them, and a shrill scream as it ricocheted away.

"Reckon they
do," he grunted, dropping his whiskers low and scuttling backward from
the crest of the ridge. Knight followed, and they slid to the bottom of
the small gulch that ran behind the ridge.

"Of course,"
the talkative sergeant remarked philosophically, biting off a chew of
tobacco, "bullets'll be snappin' all around us in another hour, but
there ain't no reason to invite one of 'em to hit us any sooner than it
has to."

Knight
started back down the muddy gulch and the sergeant tramped beside him,
paying no attention to his silence. "The other guys are about ready to
call this war a draw, I hear. Except for Korea, here, neither us nor
them is makin' any headway and they say the chances of an armistice is
real good. I hope so; I've had all the war I want and I've already got
it figgered out how I'm gonna settle down in Florida and raise
chickens—or somethin'. Wish they'd declare the armistice right
now—they're dug in on that hill and the Fourth is goin' to have one
hell of a time tryin' to be the decoy and draw their fire and not all
of us get killed." He scowled at Knight, his philosophical attitude
turning to wrath. "A lot of men are goin' to die real soon, and for no
reason. Company B will be up tonight—why can't we wait until tomorrow?"

Knight shrugged. "Orders."

"Yeah—orders!" The sergeant snorted
disgustedly. "Our Captain Cullin wants his company to take that
hill today,
then he can tell battalion headquarters to not bother about sendin' up
any support, that he done took the hill all by himself. Then, he
figgers, regimental headquarters will be so impressed by his ability to
do so much with so few men that they'll recommend he be raised to
major. And then"—the sergeant spat viciously—"he'll have a
whole battalion to give orders to, 'stead of only a company!"

Knight half
heard the sergeant as they walked along, his thoughts occupied with the
suicidal role his men would have to play. They would be the decoy, as
the sergeant had said, deliberately and perhaps fatally drawing the
concentration of enemy fire upon themselves.

" . . . I'm a
Regular Army man," the sergeant was saying. "I've been in this game for
thirty years, but I ain't never seen an officer like Cullin. All he
thinks about is himself and his own glory. He made it plain to us what
he was when he took over this company. 'A soldier is only as good as
his ability to obey orders,' he says. 'You men are going to be soldiers,'
he says, 'and there will be no questioning of any order given you. I
want, and I shall have, absolute obedience and discipline,' he says—"

Decoy.

It would be
senseless, needless slaughter of the Fourth Platoon. It would enable
the rest of the company to take the hill but the premature attack was
not necessary; the enemy had their backs to the Pacific and they could
retreat no farther. They could retreat no farther and they certainly
would not dare attack.

Why had Cullin chosen the Fourth Platoon as
the decoy? Was it because of the hatred between himself and Cullin? The
Fourth was his platoon; by sending it on a suicide mission
Cullin could add the savor of revenge to the sweet taste of glory.

The Fourth
was his platoon, and between himself and the men of the Fourth was the
bond that months of common danger had welded; the bond of
brothers-in-arms that is sometimes greater than that of
brothers-by-blood. They did not give his gold second-lieutenant's bars
any parade-ground respectful salutes; instead, they respected him as a
man, as Blacky who slogged through the mud and rain beside them, who
ate the rations they ate, who knew their names and moods, who was one
with the hard veterans of combat and the nervous young replacements.
Not Lieutenant Knight; just Blacky, to whom someone would sometimes
come on the eve of battle and say: "This address here—it's Mary's. If
I'm not so lucky this time, I wish you would write her a few words.
Just tell her I wanted to see her again but that
I . . . well, just say
that I said . . . that I said—Aw, hell,
Blacky—you'll know what to say."

He would sit
by the light of a gasoline lantern in the nights following the battle
and write the letters; not alone for the one who had asked him to but
for all who had been "not so lucky." They were hard to write, those
letters. Soon, now, if he, himself, were not among those not so lucky,
he would have more of them to write—far more than ever before.

" . . . What would you
say caused it, Blacky?" the sergeant was asking.

"What?" Knight brought his mind back to the
present. "How was that?"

"I say, you
take a man like Cullin—what do you reckon makes him act that way? You
oughta know—you knowed him when you was both kids, didn't you?"

"I've known
him most of my life, from the time we were each six years old," Knight
answered. "He was always a lot like he is now—even as a kid he wanted
to boss the other kids and make them do things for him. I don't know
why he hasn't matured emotionally as well as physically. A psychiatrist
might be able to trace it back to something—I'm a computer engineer,
misplaced in the infantry, and not a psychiatrist."

"Well, if I
was one of these psychiatrists, I'd sure ask him if he didn't once have
a set of wooden soldiers he liked to play with better than anything
else. That's the kind of soldiers he wants us all to be—wooden dummies
that don't dare move unless he says to."

They came to
the mouth of the gulch and Knight stopped beside a splintered tree. "I
have to go over to where he has his headquarters for a last-minute
briefing," he told the sergeant. "It's a little over an hour, yet, so
everybody might as well take it easy till then. I'll be along in a few
minutes."

The sergeant
craned his neck to stare past Knight with sudden and baleful interest.
"Here he comes now, down from the Second. Guess he's makin' the rounds
personally this time." He scowled at the approaching captain then
hurried away, his course such that only his long, fast steps prevented
a face-to-face meeting.

* * *

Knight waited
beside the tree and Captain Cullin strode up to him; a big man, heavier
than Knight and almost as tall, with an arrogant impatience to the arch
of his nose and a relentless drive in the set of this thick jaw and the
iciness of his eyes.

He stopped
before Knight, with a glance after the rapidly disappearing sergeant,
and said acidly: "If the men in my company could be relied upon to
display as much determination when sent on a mission as your sergeant
just now displayed to avoid saluting me, I would think I had a
first-class combat unit."

"He's a good
man—none better," Knight said. "He just didn't happen to feel like
going in for any such melodrama as: 'We, who are about to die, salute
you!' "

"Very witty,"
Cullin said coldly. "Although your wit, in its implications, is rather
melodramatic, itself. But suppose we talk of something a little more
important—the action of your platoon in taking that hill. I've moved
the attack up half an hour. The other platoons are already taking up
positions as advanced as possible until your own platoon draws the
enemy fire."

"I just came
down from off the ridge," Knight said. "I know the lay of the land and
I have your orders as given to me by Lieutenant Nayland; to attack as
best we can along the southwestern floor of the hill and keep the enemy
occupied while the other three platoons close in on their flanks. But
the strategy is your own, so I'm listening if you have anything to add.
From you, I get the dope straight from the horse's mouth."

Cullin stared at Knight, hard lines running
along his jaw and the hatred burning deep back in his eyes.

"I want to
remind you, Knight," he said at last, "that you are my subordinate
officer. An officer's promotions are usually in direct ratio to his
ability, and we received our second-lieutenant's bars at the same
time—remember? I'm a captain, now, in command of a company; you're
still a second lieutenant in charge of a platoon. I'm your commanding
officer and you keep that fact in mind at all times. You will restrain
your wit, confine yourself to obeying orders and extend me the same
courtesy I demand of my other platoon leaders. Is that clear?"

"Very clear,"
Knight replied. "Your orders have been, and will be, obeyed. When in
the presence of others I'll continue to observe every rule of military
courtesy, as I have in the past. But I've known you too long and too
well to have any desire to go through those antics when you and I are
alone."

"Discipline
is not an antic," Knight. "The purpose of discipline is to condition
the soldier into efficient obedience. You will obey me with full
military courtesy and you will not presume an equality with me because
of our past friendship."

"Our past
friendship is a long way past, and I'm sure neither of us has any
desire to ever renew it. I would like to ask you a question, though—why
do we attack today when Company B will be up tonight?"

"For a very good reason—because I've ordered
it," Cullin said flatly.

"That's all?" Knight asked.

"That's sufficient. It isn't required of you
to seek any other reason."

" 'Theirs not to reason
why—' . . . that's what you want, isn't it?"

"That's what I intend to have."

"By waiting
for B's support you might not win any major's oak leaves but you could
save a lot of lives. There's no hurry about taking that hill—the enemy
isn't going anywhere."

"Keep your
advice to yourself, Knight. Casualties are to be expected in any combat
unit and this company will remain a combat unit as long as I am in
command of it."

"Then give
your orders," Knight said with brittle resignation. "I'll see that
they're followed, regardless of what I think of them."

"See that you do. This is what I want out of
your platoon, and I won't tolerate any deviation from these orders—"

2

How long
had he been a living brain in a dying husk of a body? Had it been weeks
or months or years, and how much longer could it continue? If only he
could forget the end that was drawing irresistibly closer; if only his
mind could lose its clear perception and go into the comforting solace
of unknowing insanity!

But the
doctor would not let it; the doctor watched him and injected the
antihysteria drug into his bloodstream whenever madness threatened to
relieve his mind of its cold and terrible knowledge. Sanity was a
torture in which his body sat helpless and immobile while his mind
perceived with clear and awful detail and recoiled and whimpered in
futile, desperate fear from what it perceived.

Yet, the
doctor didn't want to torture him; the doctor didn't want him to die.
The doctor was using every means known to medical science to prolong
his life. But why did the doctor merely prolong his life when his life
could be saved entirely with less effort? There was still time—the
doctor had only to do as he had suggested the phantom pilot do; reduce
the acceleration. The deceleration button was visible on the control
board in front of the vacant pilot's chair. The doctor didn't really
want him to die, and the doctor could save his life by one quick flick
of the deceleration button.

WHY DIDN'T THE DOCTOR DO IT?

Peace.

Four years of
peace, with all their changing of the ways of his life, were to pass
from the time Knight stood beside a splintered tree in Korea and heard
his last orders until he met Cullin again.

First, there
had been the bullet-swept hell of the attack on Hill 23 and then a long
time in the hospitals—field hospital, base hospital, State-side
hospital. There had been the irony of the cease-fire order two days
after the slaughter of the Fourth Platoon. There had been the letters
to write, so many of them and so many lies to tell. The folks at home
always wanted the comfort of knowing that their Tommy or Bill or Dave
had found death to be not cruel and merciless but something that had
come quickly and painlessly, for all its grim finality.

There had
been the day of his discharge from service and the strange feel of
civilian clothes. There had been a period of restlessness, a period
during which the peacetime world seemed a shallow and insignificant
thing and the memory of the Fourth was strong within him as something
irretrievably lost; a comradeship forged by war and never to be found
again in the gentle fires of peace.

Then he had
received the letter from Computer Research Center, and the invitation
to come to Arizona and work with Dr. Clarke, himself. Clarke had
written: " . . . The theory you set forth in your
thesis can, I think,
be worked out here at Computer Research Center and an experimental
model of such a 'brain' constructed. I asked for your assistance
eighteen months ago, but our little semi-military Center lacked the
influence to have a combat officer recalled from active duty—"

His theory
had been valid, and Computer Research Center was no longer small and
unimportant. The Knight-Clarke Master Computer was a reality and Center
had become the most powerful factor in the western hemisphere. The
restlessness had faded away as he adjusted himself to taking up his old
way of life and he forgot the war in the fascination of creating
something from metal and plastic that was, in a way, alive.

In four years
he had found his place in life again and the ghosts of the Fourth lay
dormant in his mind; splendid and glorious in the way they had fought
and died but no longer stirring the restlessness and the sense of
something lost.

Then he met Cullin again.

* * *

Punta Azul
was a cluster of adobes drowsing on the northeastern shore of the Gulf
of California, away from the tourist routes and accessible only by a
long and rough desert road. Nothing ever happened in Punta Azul; it was
a good place for a man to rest, to fish, to sit in the cool adobe
cantina and exchange bits of philosophy with its proprietor, Carlos
Hernandez.

And it was a good place to do a little
amateur-detective checking on a suspicion.

It was siesta
time and everyone in Punta Azul was observing that tradition but Knight
and Carlos—and even their own conversation had dwindled off into
silence. Knight was nursing a glass of beer, putting off the time when
he would have to leave the cool cantina and drive the long, hot miles
back to the border, while Carlos was at the other end of the bar, idly
polishing his cerveza glasses and singing in a soft voice:

"Yo soy la paloma errante—"

He was a big
man, with a fierce black mustache that made him resemble Pancho Villa
of old. He sang softly, in a clear, sweet tenor. Why, Knight wondered,
do so many big men sing tenor and so many small men sing baritone?

"El nido triste donde naci—" Knight
listened, unconsciously making a mental translation of the words into
English:

I am the wandering dove that seeks

The sad nest where I was born—

How old was
"La Paloma?" Music, like men, had to possess more than a superficial
worth to be remembered. Novelty tunes, like the little Caesars and
Napoleons, lived their brief span and were forgotten while the music
that appealed to the hearts of men never died. People had a habit of
remembering the things that appealed to them and finally forgetting the
others.

Once there
had been a man named Benedict Arnold. No living person had ever seen
him; they knew him only from the books of history. At one time he had
been hated but no one bothered, any more, to hate him. He was no longer
of interest or importance to anyone.

And once
there had been another man that no living person had ever seen. Like
Benedict Arnold, he was known to them only through the books of
history. But he had appealed to something in other men, so they had
built a monument in his honor and there he sat carved in stone, tall
and gaunt. The sculptor had been a master, and the things about the
figure that appealed to other men were in his face; the understanding
and the gentle compassion. People came to look at him, the loud of
mouth suddenly still and the hard of face softening. They looked up at
him with their heads bared and spoke in quiet voices as though they
stood before something greater than they.

Yet, Lincoln had been only a man—

His musing
was broken by the sound of a car in the street outside, stopping before
the cantina. Its door slammed and a man stepped through the open
doorway of the cantina; through it and then quickly to one side so that
he would not be outlined against the light as he took his first look at
the interior. He was, Knight noticed, wearing a white sports coat and
his right hand was in the pocket of it. His identity registered on
Knight's mind almost simultaneously and he tensed as a cat might tense
at the sight of a dog.

It was Cullin.

Then he
relaxed, and waited. Once there had been a time when he might have
killed Cullin, when the memory of the vain sacrifice of the Fourth
might have brought the hate surging red and unreasoning to his mind.
But four years had altered his emotions. The hatred had settled into
something cold and deep and not to be satisfied with brief physical
violence. It was cold and deep and patient, and there are better ways
than physical violence of finding vengeance if one is patient.

Cullin's eyes
flashed over Carlos, still polishing his cerveza glasses, and up the
length of the bar. He stiffened at the sight of Knight and there was a
slight movement of his right hand inside his coat pocket. For perhaps
ten seconds neither spoke nor moved; Knight sitting on the high stool,
half turned away from the bar with his glass still in his hand and
Cullin looming white-coated just within the doorway, alert and waiting
for Knight to make a hostile move.

* * *

Knight broke the silence. "Going somewhere,
Cullin?"

Cullin walked
toward him, warily. "So we meet again?" He seated himself on a stool
near Knight, facing him with his hand never leaving his pocket.

Carlos
started toward them, looking questioningly at Cullin, and Cullin
motioned him back with a wave of his left hand and a curt, "Nada!"

Carlos
returned to his glass polishing and Cullin looked curiously at Knight.
"It's a small world, Knight—sometimes too small. What are you doing
here, anyway?"

"I could ask the same of you."

Cullin made
no answer and Knight went on: "I see you're a civilian again. The last
time I saw you, you were flicking the dust off your handkerchief in
anticipation of polishing a pair of gold oak leaves."

"Peacetime
armies and ambitious officers aren't compatible," Cullin said, his jaw
tightening at the words. "This is especially true if you aren't a
Regular Army officer."

"I heard that
you never did get those oak leaves; that you got a bawling-out,
instead, and a demotion back to second lieutenant. It seems they had
something to say to you about 'stupid and unnecessary sacrifice of
men.' "

Cullin's face flushed a dull red. "A bunch
of sentimental old women. My strategy was sound; I took the hill."

"Yes, you did—didn't we?" Knight agreed,
smiling without humor.

"As
commanding officer, I would have been stupid to have done anything as
vainglorious as to actively engage in the fighting. You should know
that. Leaders are not dispensable, while the led are."

"Anyway, you've now forsaken the military
career?"

"I've found myself a new field where my
abilities are duly appreciated and rewarded."

Cullin
volunteered no further information and Knight decided it would gain him
nothing to ask. Nor would needling Cullin cause him to reveal the
reasons for his presence in Punta Azul; a roundabout and non-hostile
approach would be better.

"I ran across
an item in the paper three years ago," he remarked to Cullin.
"According to it, you had missed a curve and plunged off into the
Feather River canyon."

"My car went
over the cliff and into the river. The papers erroneously assumed I had
been in it when it left the road. I never did correct them."

"Why didn't you?"

"Why should I?"

"No particular reason to do, I suppose,"
Knight agreed.

Cullin
studied Knight with a calculating look in his eyes, then said in a tone
almost friendly, "Obscurity hasn't been your own lot, Knight. The
papers are full of the things being done by the Knight-Clarke Computer.
They claim it can outthink a thousand men."

Knight kept
his face expressionless. He, Knight, wasn't the only one who wanted
information; there was something about the Computer that Cullin wanted
to know.

"Its
knowledge is greater than that of a thousand men," Knight replied,
adopting Cullin's own attitude of pseudo-friendliness. "Of course,
among a thousand men much of the knowledge they possessed would be
common to all of them. The Computer is valuable in that it can combine
and correlate the specific knowledge of men in all the different fields
of learning."

"I was especially interested in one article.
As the Knight of the Knight-Clarke Computer, perhaps you can
give me the true facts."

"Which
article was that?" Knight asked, then failed to resist the impulse to
add, "From me, you get the dope straight from the horse's mouth."

* * *

Cullin's face
flushed again and the knots of muscle stood out along his jaw. It was
with an obvious effort that he forced his voice to retain its
conversational tone. "This article came up with the proposition that
the Master Computer, with all its knowledge and its ability to devise
weapons, could rule the world if it only had a means for manual
operations, such as tentacles or hands, and if it had a means of
locomotion instead of being bolted to a concrete floor."

"Why should it want to rule the world?"
Knight asked.

"The article
claimed that it would have absorbed men's motivations along with their
knowledge, and it further claimed that no one thousand men can be found
who are utterly free of the desire for power over others."

"I read the
same article," Knight said, smiling a little. "The writer, as is true
of all writers for that particular 'news' weekly, was following the
editorial injunction to make it interesting, and never mind the facts.
I'm surprised that you were gullible enough to believe it."

"I wasn't
gullible enough to believe it. I just wondered if there was any truth
at all to it and, if so, why couldn't that characteristic be utilized.
You might, say, build such a brain into a tank and use a perfect
soldier as its source of knowledge; a soldier who knew tank warfare
from A to Z and who fanatically desired to kill as many of the enemy as
possible."

"No." Knight
shook his head. "The robotic brains don't absorb emotions along with
the knowledge. Emotions aren't facts, you know; they're the creation of
a sensory body and the nerves and glands that affect the body. We
haven't worried about the Computer's lack of emotions—it doesn't need
them to accept the data we give it, correlate that data and give us the
answer we want.

"But so far as tanks controlled by robotic
brains go," he added, "we have one in the experimental stage at Center,
now."

"Oh?" Cullin's surprise seemed simulated. "I
thought you just inferred they weren't possible?"

"Possible,
but not too practical at the present stage. For best results, the
robotic brain has to be in close communication with an ordinary
flesh-and-blood soldier."

Cullin's
surprise became genuine. "You mean your robotic brains aren't thinking
units at all, but just a conglomeration of television and radar,
operated by remote control?"

"No—the brains can comprehend and obey the
most complex orders."

"Then why do
you say they aren't practical?" Cullin demanded. "So long as they
comprehend and obey, nothing more is needed. What more could you want?"

"The human element—initiative and curiosity."

Cullin's lip
curled. " 'The human element!' You were never able to understand the
military, Knight. The 'human element' is precisely the thing a good
commander tries to weed out among his men. Initiative contrary to given
orders cannot be tolerated, neither can questioning of those orders be
tolerated. In your robotic brain you have the brain of a perfect
solider. It would need only one more thing, and I suppose it has
that—an utter lack of fear."

"It has no conception of any such emotion as
fear."

"A complete
lack of fear, an intelligence great enough to understand the orders
given it, and unquestioning obedience in following those orders—those
are the three characteristics of the perfect soldier, Knight."

Knight shrugged. "A matter of opinion.
You're presuming a machine's actions would be the same as a man's
actions."

"They are
the same. I've found that humans serve in exactly the same manner as
machines. There is no difference, once the human has been conditioned
into obedience."

* * *

Knight
switched the subject abruptly, feeling that the talk of Center was not
going far enough toward causing Cullin to reveal his business in Punta
Azul. "I see that Premier Dovorski is doing a good job of applying that
philosophy to the Russo-Asians," he remarked. "He's really
making robots out of the people."

"So I've heard," Cullin said, making no
other comment but his eyes suddenly more watchful.

"I suppose
there will be war again within ten years." Knight idly swirled the beer
in his glass. "We'll be outnumbered four to one, but maybe we can have
the Computer give us something that will even the odds."

Cullin
hesitated, then said: "I hear rumors that you have both a spaceship and
a disintegrator ray on the drawing board. The disintegrator ray should
even the odds, if it's as good as the rumors say. Of course, I suppose
these rumors usually exaggerate the true facts?"

"I suppose."
Knight ignored the question. "Sometimes we deliberately create rumors
to throw Dovorski's spies off on false leads, too. One was caught in
Center yesterday. He made the mistake of trying to shoot it out with
the Center police, but he lived long enough to talk a little."

Suspicion blazed in Cullin's eyes, and there
was menace in the way he silently waited for Knight to continue.

"We didn't
think he would know the identity of the head of the Russo-Asian spy
ring, but we asked him, anyway," Knight said, still swirling his beer.

Cullin stared
at him and waited, as a rattlesnake might wait, poised to strike. The
bulge of his hand in his coat pocket showed that his finger was on the
trigger and Knight could hear the sound of his own breathing in the
silence. A fly droned loudly across the room and out the door, while
Carlos' low humming made an incongruously melodious background to the
deadly tension.

He ceased swirling the beer in his glass and
looked Cullin full in the eyes, grinning mockingly at him.

"He gave us a name, Cullin."

"So you were leading me on?" Cullin hissed.
"You've just written out your own death warrant—fool! You're going with
me!"

"And
espionage is the new field where your abilities are appreciated and
rewarded?" Knight shook his head with feigned sympathy. "You really had
no reason to give yourself away. I came down here on a suspicion of
'fishermen' who hire boats from the Mexicans at regular intervals. I
wouldn't have connected you with it if you hadn't been so curious about
the Computer, and then naïve enough to fall into my crude little
trap.
I told you the spy gave us a name—he did. He told us his own name, then
he died."

"I'm afraid
your cleverness has backfired on you, Knight, but enjoy it while you
can. You can go to the beach with me and prolong your life for a little
while, or you can take it here and now—which?"

"I'm not too
fond of the idea of taking it either place, but I wouldn't want to mess
up Carlos' floor." Knight swirled the warm beer again and held it up to
the light. "Flat. The Greeks had an expression for everything, didn't
they?" he asked, smiling, then said something swiftly in a foreign
tongue.

Cullin
reacted as quickly as a cat, the pistol out of his pocket and hard
against Knight's stomach, his head jerking around to watch Carlos.

Carlos was still polishing his cerveza
glasses, his back turned to them and his humming continuing unbroken.

Cullin turned back to Knight. "That didn't
sound like Greek to me. If your friend tries anything, you know where
you'll get it."

"You would
prefer to not arouse the village by doing any shooting in here,
wouldn't you?" Knight asked. "These Mexicans might not like the idea of
a stranger shooting up their town."

"I'm not
worried about these sleepy Mexicans. And I've changed my mind about
killing you—if you co-operate with me. Tell me all the things I want to
know, and I'll let you go free."

"Under such
circumstances, the gun in your hand is no threat," Knight pointed out.
"Dead, I can't answer your questions. Alive, why should I?"

"Alive and
not answering my questions, you are of no value to me," Cullin said
grimly. "I came here to hire a boat to take me to a certain place
several miles down the beach where a submarine will pick me up. This
was both my first and last trip down here. I can get by without hiring
a boat—I have a truck with a four-wheel drive and oversize tires for
sand. I can kill you and be in it and gone before these Mexicans wake
up, and they could never follow me through that sand in your own pickup.

"So—you can
go with me and be released after you answer our questions on the
submarine or you can refuse and I'll let you have it now, with nothing
to lose."

"I'm pretty
sure that my release from the submarine would be over the side of it
with my hands tied behind my back and a weight tied to my neck, Cullin.
That's why I quoted the pseudo-Greek phrase. I have a Papago boy
working in my department at Center, and Carlos' mother was a Papago.
Have you noticed him lately?"

Cullin turned his head quickly, but the
muzzle of his pistol remained shoved hard against Knight's stomach.

* * *

Carlos was
still humming, but he was no longer polishing glasses. One elbow was
leaning on the bar and in the hand of that arm he held an ancient .45
revolver. The muzzle gaped blackly at Cullin's back and the big spiked
hammer was reared back. Carlos was peering down the sights of it with a
malevolently glittering black eye and there was satanic anticipation in
the arch of his heavy black brows.

Cullin turned
slowly back to Knight. "I should have had sense enough to cover you
both. And now what? I'm not going to take my gun out of your stomach
until your friend takes his gun off my back. It seems to be a
stalemate, Knight."

"Looks like it, doesn't it?"

"Stalemate,"
Cullin repeated. "So we'll just have to settle for me letting you live
and your friend letting me live. It doesn't matter much—I've built up
an espionage system that consistently gives satisfactory results. I've
liquidated the weak and the incompetent and my work here is done; this
was to be my last trip, as I said. I'm changing sides, Knight—I'm going
across to where the ability to achieve results is rewarded; where a
leader is expected to use his men, not pamper them."

"You ought to enjoy that."

"I will. Over
there I'll have a free hand—no more hiding or secrecy. Before I'm
through I'll be head of Dovorski's State Police, and the man who
controls a state's police can control the state in the end. I'll use
them to make every man, woman and child in Russo-Asia a cog in my
machine."

"You sound rather vainglorious—but go on."

"Is there
anything vainglorious about what I've done so far? When you say I'm
vainglorious, you're engaging in some wishful thinking. I used my
company in Korea to get what I wanted—until the very last when the old
women in regimental headquarters decided sentiment was more important
than competence. I've used the spy organization in this country—I used
it, I didn't pet it. That's what convinced Dovorski he needed me over
there. I've done everything I claim to have done and I'll do everything
I claim I'm going to do. You know that, don't you?"

Knight had the unpleasant feeling that he
did, but he only said, "The proof of the pudding is in the eating."

"In a few
years you'll be eating it and you'll find it a bitter dish. And
now—we've chatted long enough." Cullin got to his feet, slowly, so as
to not excite the trigger finger of Carlos, keeping his own pistol
trained on Knight. He spoke to Carlos in Spanish. "I'm leaving. If you
try anything, I'll kill your friend."

Carlos looked
questioningly at Knight and Cullin smiled thinly. "Do you want to be a
hero and die to have him stop me, Knight? You can, you know."

Knight's
answer was to Carlos. "Keep your gun on him. If he goes out peacefully,
don't shoot him. If he makes any suspicious move, kill him."

Carlos nodded, then laughed, but the
revolver in his hand remained as steady as a rock.

"What's he laughing about?" Cullin demanded.

"I think it amuses him to think of the
results, should he pull the trigger."

"You wouldn't be around long enough to join
in his merriment, Knight—remember that."

Knight smiled
without answering and Cullin backed to the door, keeping his pistol
leveled on him. Carlos remained at the bar, following Cullin with the
sights of his revolver. Cullin reached the door and paused a moment in
it to say, "You'll be hearing about me—more and more every year and you
won't like what you hear."

Then he was
gone and the roar of his truck came seconds later. Knight listened to
the sound of it as it took the almost-impassable road along the shore
line. There would be no use trying to follow over such a road in his
own pickup.

"You saved my life, Carlos," he said. "I
don't intend to forget it."

Carlos
laughed and slapped the revolver down on the bar. "It's a fortunate
thing, my friend, that my mild nature is belied by a fierce and
mustachioed countenance. Otherwise, he might have killed us both."

"It is," Knight agreed, "but I wish we could
have stopped him some way."

He sighed morosely and frowned at the
revolver on the bar.

"The next time I come down this way, I'm
going to bring you some cartridges and a firing spring for that thing."

3

The doctor was waiting for him to
speak.

What thoughts
lay behind those staring eyes as the doctor waited? Was the doctor
aware of how swiftly death was approaching? But of course—the doctor
had changed the words on the communications panel in front of the empty
pilot's chair. They now read: OBSERVER HAS A LIFE EXPECTANCY OF ONE
HUNDRED HOURS AT PRESENT ACCELERATION. DEATH FOR OBSERVER WILL RESULT
UNLESS ACCELERATION IS REDUCED WITHIN THAT PERIOD.

The doctor
would watch over him during the next one hundred hours, waiting for a
pilot he knew did not exist to reduce the acceleration. For one hundred
hours the doctor would wait, knowing as fully as he that no spectral
finger would reach out from the empty chair and press the deceleration
button.

The doctor
could reduce the acceleration. The doctor knew he wanted it done but
the doctor was waiting to be ordered to do so. He had only to speak two
words: "Reduce acceleration." The doctor would obey at once—the doctor
was patiently waiting for him to speak the words.

But the doctor knew he couldn't speak!

* * *

There was a
soft thump outside the door of his cottage and Knight left his
after-breakfast coffee to pick up the morning paper. His cottage sat on
the slope above Computer Center with the near-by Miles cottage his only
close neighbor, and the Center laid out below in neat squares. The gray
concrete hemisphere that housed the Master Computer was at the southern
edge of the city with the four laboratory buildings grouped beyond it.
Beyond them the landing field reached out into the desert and the
desert stretched on to the harsh, bold mountains to the east.

Center hadn't
looked like that, at first. In the seven years he had been there it had
grown from a random scattering of army barracks into a city of four
thousand with all the bustle and ambition of a city that intended to
grow still larger. Even then it would not be a large city as cities go
but it would, in its way, be the most important city in the world. One
of its achievements alone, the synthesis of food starch, would soon
gain it that distinction.

He carried the paper inside and spread it
out on the breakfast table, to read with certain skepticism:

* * *

CHUIKOV NEW AMBASSADOR

* * *

Nicolai
Chuikov has been appointed the new ambassador to the United States.
Demoted in the first post-war years from a position of power in
Dovorski's cabinet to a minor clerical job in an obscure province for
his expression of the desirability of trade and friendly relations with
the West, Chuikov has been reinstated with honors. This is in line with
a softening of the anti-American attitude that first became evident two
years ago and an increasing emphasis on the need for East and West to
observe the nonaggression agreements of the peace terms.

An item near the bottom of the page was more
interesting:

* * *

TRAITOR MOVES UP

* * *

The ambitious
American traitor, William Peter Cullin, was promoted to Commanding
Supervisor of the State Police today. He was lauded by the official
press for his "patriotic and tireless zeal in strengthening the
efficiency of the police and enabling them to guard Russo-Asia from
traitors against the people."

Cullin, once
head of Russo-Asia's spy network in this country, has acquired the
dubious honor of being the first American to ever rise to a position of
considerable power in an enemy country. He renounced his American
citizenship two years ago, after having served eighteen months as a
behind-the-scenes co-planner of State Police operations. His
"efficiency" in ridding Russo-Asia of "traitors" has been remarkable
for its machinelike precision and thoroughness—

* * *

There was a
sudden racket outside, a sputtering and rattling, and he looked up from
the paper in time to see an ancient and rusty coupé approaching
his
driveway. It was June Martin and he sighed instinctively, then flinched
as the coupé, without reduction of speed, whipped into his
driveway,
spraying red petals from the rambler rose at the driveway's entrance.
It slid to a brake-squealing, shivering halt and the driver climbed out
with a swirl of blue skirt and a flash of bare legs. She observed the
furrows her wheels had plowed in the gravel with evident satisfaction,
then shook her head sadly at the sight of the rambler rose trailing
from the battered rear fender.

Knight opened
the door and she came up the walk with an apologetic smile. "Sorry
about your rose, Blacky. I had my car's brakes fixed yesterday and I
wanted to try them out." She looked back at the disreputable
coupé and
the furrows it had plowed in the gravel of the driveway. "Not bad, eh?"

"A matter of opinion," he growled. "Come on
in and have a seat, then tell me where your brain, such as it is, was
when you were approaching the driveway. Why didn't you slow
down then?"

"Oh, I
suppose I should have," she admitted, entering the cottage. "I told you
I was sorry." She picked up the percolator on the table. "Any coffee
left over?" she asked, pouring herself a cup.

"What brings you here so early on the day
I'm supposed to go fishing and forget my job and haywire assistant?"

"Haywire
assistant, you say?" she asked, setting down the cup and smiling with
anticipation. "And you were going fishing, you say?"

"All right—get on with it. I see the delight
in your sadistic little soul. What's come up?"

"I'm the
special messenger of Dr. Clarke this morning. You will go to Lab Four
at once, to meet some high brass who wants to see how we're getting
along on our spaceship. And then, my friend, you will spend the rest of
the day checking the SD-FA blueprints."

"I will?" He
stared gloomily at her from her dark, curly hair to the small foot that
swung back and forth from her crossed leg. "That sounds like a lot of
fun. If you hadn't been such an eager-beaver in your role as messenger,
I would have been gone from here in another ten minutes; on my way to
the Colorado River and a pleasant day of catfishing. I've been looking
forward to this day all week, and now you have to throw a
monkey wrench in the works."

"Glad to do
it," she answered him. "You needn't feel so humbly grateful about it.
Besides, the day won't be wasted for the catfish—I'll be glad to take
your new streamlined coupé and go fishing in your place."

"You'll go with me to Lab Four."

"I? Your haywire assistant? Why should I?"

"Because I
said so. Checking those blueprints is going to be a long job and I
can't imagine myself doing it alone while you loaf all day and happily
reflect upon all the grief you managed to cause me."

"I can," she said, smiling, "and it
makes pleasant imagining."

"Well, it
never will be any more concrete than it is right now. You're going with
me and you're lucky I don't wipe that smile off your face by giving way
to the impulse to lay you across my knee. In fact, one of these days I
will."

"Oh?" Her brows arched, mockingly. "Why
don't you try it? I'll bet you'd forget you were mad before you
ever . . . don't you dare!"
She dodged behind the table as he started toward her. "I take it back—I
take it—" He reached over the table and seized her by the upper arms,
to bring her kicking and struggling across it. "Blacky! If you
spank me, I'll . . . I'll—"

The musical
jangling of the doorbell sounded and he released her. She straightened
her clothes and smiled triumphantly. "Saved by the bell!" she jeered.

"A stay of execution," he promised, then
called: "Come in!"

* * *

The door
opened and Connie Miles stepped through, swinging a straw hat in one
hand. "Hi," she greeted. "Look—no cane this morning." She walked the
few feet to them with steps that were almost normal. "How was that?"
she asked, the gray eyes in her young face alight with pride.

"That was
wonderful!" June hugged her sister with affectionate delight, then
dragged over a chair for her. "You're getting better every day. I told
you that you would walk as good as ever, some day. I told you that a
year ago when you were in a wheelchair, remember? And now you're doing
it!"

"Not yet,"
Connie said, taking the chair, "but I intend to in the end. The doctor
said to take exercise every day and that's what I'm doing." She looked
at them questioningly. "You two are going somewhere for the day, I
suppose?"

"Ha!" June laughed. "We're going
somewhere—back to work. He
was very much upset by the news. In fact, only your timely arrival
prevented the big ox from laying a hamlike hand where it would hurt the
most."

"Oh?" Connie
smiled at her younger sister. "Maybe he was just taking up where I left
off on the job of trying to spank some sense into you."

"My brain isn't there,"
June objected. "Besides, it's George's fault, not mine, that we have to
work today. I don't suppose we ever will be able to teach him to act
like a human being."

"Then he did
something to cause Tim to have to stay overtime?" Connie asked. "Tim
phoned that he had to stay for a while, but he didn't say why."

"Probably too
mad to want to rehearse the details," Knight said. "As the ship's
pilot-to-be, Tim likes everything to progress smoothly in its
construction and George sometimes introduces an unexpected ripple."

"George was supposed to check those
blueprints," June said. "He didn't—I wonder why?"

"We'll find out when we get there," Knight
answered, then spoke to Connie. "Do you want to go along? I can get you
a pass."

"No, thanks."
Connie stood up and rested her hand on the back of the chair. "I
wouldn't want to try that much standing on hard concrete, right now.
I'm going to take a walk down Saguaro Street this morning—if Tim gets
home before I do, he'll know where I am."

"Look—don't
overdo that walking," June said, concern for her sister in her voice.
"I know it's doctor's orders, but don't try to walk too much in one
day."

"Oh, I won't
try to make a marathon of it, honey. I take my time and every day I
seem to be a little stronger and more certain in the way I can walk. If
this keeps on, I'll be able to go back to my old job in another year or
two. And now, you two be on your way to your mechanical marvels—I'm
going down to that little park by Saguaro and Third where there's a
chipmunk who loves peanuts."

She left the
house, walking with the slow, careful steps of one who has not walked
unaided for a long time; a slight little thing with gray eyes too large
for her face and too wise and understanding for her age, going with one
pocket of her white sweater bulging with peanuts to feed a saucy and
impudent chipmunk.

* * *

June watched
Connie's progress through the window. "Do you think she ever will be
completely well again?" she asked. "She's getting a little better all
the time—she'll be completely well one of these days, won't she?"

There was
unconscious pleading for assurance in June's voice and he made his own
casual and confident. "Of course. There isn't any doubt about it."

"She wants to
go back to her job. It takes all kinds of people to make the world, and
Connie is the kind to restore your faith in all of them. All she asks
is to be able to walk again so she can go back to the hospital and take
up her job as nurse—go back to caring for the sick and the hurt."

"She will in another year or two. That last
operation on her back really was the last operation—she won't need any
more."

"Mama died
when I was six and Daddy had to be away all day, working," June mused,
still watching Connie through the window. "Connie was only ten. It was
a good thing she was so wise and so sensible for her age, or they would
have taken us away from Daddy. Connie showed them—she kept the house
clean and my dirty face washed and my clothes clean. She was the one I
went to when I got skinned up, or I got my feelings hurt. Part of the
time she was my sister to play with but most of the time she was my
mother."

June turned
away from the window and looked up at him. "Why did it have to be
Connie who got hurt in that wreck? Why couldn't it have been someone
the world wouldn't miss—like me?"

"Connie will get well—you just give her time
and you'll see. Now cheer up, little worry-wart, and let's be on our
way."

"In my car?" she asked, the devilment back
in her eyes.

"No, not in your car. We'll take mine—I want
to get there in able-bodied condition."

"We'll take mine," she corrected. "You can't
get yours out of the driveway until I let you."

"Get your junkpile off to one side and I
can."

"Oh, come on—don't be a coward!" she begged.
"Let me drive you down."

He sighed with resignation. "All right,
then—let's go."

June drove
the eight blocks to the Computer area gate with an excess of reckless
abandon and a roaring of the mufflerless engine that made conversation
impossible.

"One of these
days," Knight said as the coupé bucked and shivered to a stop
before
the gate, "you're going to go hell-for-leather around a corner like
that and take the front end off a patrol car. And then what are you
going to say to them? Tell me that—what can you say?"

"The wrench is on the floor."

"What?"

"I said, 'The
wrench is on the floor!' If you want to get out, you have to open the
door. The door handle is broken off so you have to turn that little
stem with that wrench."

He sighed again and felt for the wrench.
"Nature blundered hideously with you; you should have been born a boy."

* * *

Another car
stopped at the gate as Knight, with the aid of the wrench, opened the
door. It was an Air Corps car, with four stars on the license plate.
Dr. Clarke climbed out, to be followed by a tall man with neat gray
mustache and four smaller duplicates of the license plate stars on each
shoulder. Knight walked to meet them, June beside him.

They were
greeted by Dr. Clarke, a small, gray man with quick, nervous movements.
"Glad Miss Martin was able to reach you before you left for the day,
and I'm sorry this had to come up." He made quick introductions.
"General Gordon, this is Mr. Knight and this is Miss Martin, his
assistant."

The general
acknowledged the introductions with a brief handshake with Knight and a
slight bow to June. "Very interesting, the work you're doing here," he
remarked politely. "I was here once before—saw the Master Computer
that's making such a big change in the lives of all of us. I would like
to see the progress you're making with the ship this time. I can't stay
long, as much as I would like to take a look at some of the marvelous
things the papers say the 'Big Brain' has thought up for us."

Knight gave
Clarke an amused side glance. The general caught it but said nothing
until they were through the guarded gate and in one of the sedans used
for personnel transportation with the Computer and laboratory area. The
general and Clarke got into the back seat and June slid under the wheel
without invitation. Knight seated himself beside her, gave her a
warning and significant look which she returned with one of bland
innocence, and she set the sedan into motion.

General Gordon spoke then. "My remark seemed
to amuse you, Mr. Knight. Would you tell me why?"

"Of course."
Knight turned in the seat to face the general. "The newspapers have a
habit of dramatizing anything new or unusual. They credit the Master
Computer with a great deal of intelligence, which it has, and a great
deal of originality, which it does not have. Actually, it couldn't
'think up' a mouse trap—or it wouldn't, rather."

"I find that
hard to believe," the general answered. "It's thought up several very
important things—a spaceship drive, the synthesis of starch, the
anticancer serum, the atomic motor—a great many things. Wasn't the
Computer responsible for all those?"

"Partly,"
Knight replied. "It really should be called a 'Data Correlator.' It
only knows what we tell it; it has no curiosity and therefore no
incentive to acquire new knowledge.

"For
illustration: Suppose we want it to devise a better mouse trap for us.
Should we simply say: 'Invent a better mouse trap,' it would do no more
than to reply, 'Insufficient data.' It's up to us to supply the data;
it has no volition to look for its own unless instructed to do so. So
we would gather all the data pertaining to mice and traps that exists.
We would give that to it as proven data. We would also give it
theoretical data containing all the as-yet-unproven theories of mice
and traps and we would label it as such. Of the proven data we would
say, 'This is valid and proven data; use it as it is.' Of the theories
we would say, 'This is theoretical data; ascertain its validity before
using.' Then we say, 'Build us a better mouse trap'—and it does."

"I see." The general nodded. "The papers
have been stealing your thunder then, and giving it to the Computer?"

"Not only our
thunder but the thunder of Newton, Roentgen, Richards, Faraday,
Einstein—the thunder of all men who ever contributed to human
knowledge, clear back to the first slant-browed citizen who came up
with the bright idea that a round wheel ought to roll."

"The Master
Computer gets the credit," Clarke commented, "but we don't mind here at
Center. The data that we, personally, have originated for it is but a
small part of the mass of data that is its knowledge. As Knight said,
the credit goes to all men who ever thought of something new or
observed a new fact, on back to the inventor of the wheel."

"I would say
this co-operation between Man and Machine has worked out very
satisfactorily," General Gordon said. "The results are proof of that."

"Very
satisfactorily," Clarke agreed, "so long as we keep a few fundamental
facts in mind. By the way"—he motioned toward the building they were
approaching—"that's Lab Three, where we condition the robotic
brains—mainly the D Twenty-three model, such as your own Air Corps
ordered. Would you like to see the conditioning process?"

"I would like to, but I'm afraid I haven't
the time."

June, who had slowed the car, resumed speed
and they drove on to the high, square bulk of Lab 4.

"Lab Three
isn't much to see, important though it is," Clarke said as they climbed
out of the car and walked toward the Lab 4 entrance. "The D
Twenty-three brains in their final stage of assembly look like nothing
in the world but foot-square tin boxes—or stainless steel boxes,
rather. Each brain is inspected and tested for flaws after final
assembly, then taken to the conditioning chamber where it's given its
knowledge. This is a process roughly equivalent to teaching a young
child but with the advantage that the brain has the learning capacity
of an exceptionally intelligent adult plus a perfectly retentive memory
and a perception so fast that all visual and audial material, such as
sound films, can be given to it at several times normal speed.
Although, even at that speed, the period of learning amounts to almost
two thousand hours."

"Remarkably
fast learning, I would say," the general commented. "Once you produce
enough of such mechanical brains, the human brain will become almost a
superfluous and unnecessary organ so far as being needed to contribute
to our new technical type of culture is concerned."

"Have you forgotten the hypothetical mouse
trap, general?" Knight asked.

"No, but the
brains lack only self-volition," the general replied with crisp
decision. "Once you create that in them, they will be our mental
equals—if not superiors."

"Yes, once we do that," Clarke agreed dryly.

* * *

The guards at
the entrance inspected their identification, then passed them on.
Knight opened the door and they stepped into Lab 4.

The ship
stood in the center of the room, dominating everything else. It was
forty feet from the floor to the end of its blunt, round nose and the
four tail fins it rested on had a radius of fifteen feet. It did not
have the slender, cigarlike form that artists had anticipated
spaceships would have; there would be no air in space to hinder its
progress and it would need no streamlining. It was shaped more like a
great, round-nosed bullet, forty feet in length and twenty feet in
diameter. Its outer skin was a hard, bright chromium alloy, and it
reflected the walls of the room in insane distortions as they walked
toward it.

The ship's
entrance was near the bottom and Miles was waiting for them by its
ramp; a rangy, homely man who usually had a smile for everyone but who
now wore a harried expression. Vickson appeared from around the ship; a
slightly stooped man with mild blue eyes behind his rimless spectacles.

Clarke again made introductions. "General
Gordon, Mr. Miles and Mr. Vickson. They'll be the pilot and observer."

The general
acknowledged the introduction and asked: "How about the others? I
understand the ship will take a full crew on its first flight."

"Once it's
made a successful test flight—which Miles and Vickson will make with
it—it will have a full crew for interplanetary explorations," Clarke
said. "We're selecting and training the other members of the crew now."

The general
took a backward step and ran his eye up the length of the hull.
"Progress seems to have exceeded the estimates you made a year ago. How
about the drive—is it installed yet?"

"It would have been if George hadn't taken
things too literally again," Miles spoke up.

"George?" The
general raised his eyebrows inquiringly and Clarke spoke to June. "The
general has never seen George. Go get him, will you?"

June walked
across the room to the door marked ASSEMBLY 1 and Clarke said to Miles,
"Go ahead, Tim—tell General Gordon what happened."

"It wasn't
Vickson's fault," Miles began. "A man gets so accustomed to George
being so intelligent and capable that he sometimes forgets and isn't
specific enough—or in this case, Vickson was too specific. A
human would have known what he wanted, but George—"

The door of
ASSEMBLY 1 opened and Miles stopped talking as the general stared at
the robot that was approaching them. It was a manlike monster of steel,
seven feet tall and walked as silently as a cat on its rubber-soled
feet. June walked beside it, a ridiculously tiny thing beside its own
ponderous bulk.

"So that's
George?" The general shook his head in amazement. "This is your new
type robot, then? You've not only given it a manlike body, you've even
given it almost-human features. In an alien sort of a way the thing is handsome."

"The
almost-human face was purely by coincidence," Clarke explained. "It's
D-Twenty-three brain is in its chest, of course, and it so happened
that installing the eyes, ears and mouth gave it a head of normal
size—that is, a head of a size normal for the size of its body."

The robot
stopped a few feet in front of them and inclined its head downward so
that its eyes were on theirs; eyes that were large and dark, giving it
an appearance of thoughtful, patient waiting.

"Two eyes
were necessary for it to properly estimate distances," Clarke
explained. "The rather humanlike ears are acoustically efficient and
their location, together with locating the speaker grill at its mouth,
was to enable it to do such things as use a phone."

"It phones?"

"Oh, yes.
George can do anything. He checks data with the Master Computer at
times—there's a line for that purpose—checks blueprints and installed
circuits, assembles parts. He is very useful and, since he never gets
tired or needs sleep, he works twenty-four hours a day."

"Hm-m-m."
General Gordon studied the robot thoughtfully. "Apparently we'll have
no trouble training the D-Twenty-three's for duty in the Air Corps."

"Well, they will
have to be trained, and under the supervision of Center technicians.
Mr. Miles' account of what happened last night will show you why."

"Oh, yes—the trouble with the robot. Please
go on, Mr. Miles, and tell us what happened."

June looked
inquiringly at Clarke. He nodded and she said to the robot, "They're
through with you, George—get on back to work." It turned without a word
and walked across the room and through the door of ASSEMBLY 1.

* * *

"It started
just as Vickson here went off-shift," Miles began. "Vickson was working
on the final assembly of the drive and came to the K-Seven reflector at
the end of his shift. It's a very essential little item, though its
installation is simple. But it had to be coated with the Reuther Alloy,
first. This reflector is a circular plate of platinum, eight inches in
diameter, and we were to do the alloy plating here—they sent us a
special machine for that, yesterday. The alloy has to be of a certain
thickness—sixty-five one-thousandths of an inch. So, as Vickson went
off-shift, he gave George the plate and told him to metal-spray it to a
thickness of sixty-five one-thousandths of an inch.

"This alloy
is so hard to produce and so expensive that we had orders to waste none
of it, if possible. Vickson ordered George to use the only method
possible whereby the proper thickness would be put on the plate in one
operation, with no guesswork and no surplus to machine off; he told
George to determine the surface area of the plate then weigh out the
proper amount of alloy to coat it the required thickness. This should
have been a simple job, quickly done, and George was to then install
the plate—a job even simpler. The entire thing shouldn't have taken
George over twenty minutes.

"When I came
to work an hour later I took it for granted everything had been done. I
had the workmen put in the drive shields and I went ahead with circuits
in the control panel. I was a fool not to check with George, first, but
it's like I said; George is so intelligent and competent that you
sometimes forget he isn't human. It was six hours later that I went
into the assembly room, over there, to see why he hadn't brought out
the parts he was supposed to be assembling."

Miles
breathed deeply, and sighed. "He wasn't at his workbench. He was at the
blueprint table, figuring. He had a pile of papers beside him ten
inches high, all covered with figures. The K-Seven reflector plate was
over by the sprayer, not even touched—"

Clarke
interrupted him. "For General Gordon to understand the peculiarities to
be expected from D-Twenty-three's, we had better let Vickson tell us
his exact words to George."

"It was
stupid of me," Vickson said, almost apologetically. "I made the mistake
of giving him a specific order and expecting him to follow it as a
human would have—to a certain degree of precision and no farther. My
words were: 'Take a pencil and paper and determine the exact surface
area of this plate, then weigh out the proper amount of alloy to coat
it sixty-five one-thousandths of an inch.'

"A human
would have determined the area by the formula: Point seven eight five
four times the squared diameter. Although not exact, it's close enough.
But I had told George to determine the exact area of the plate and
that's what he was trying to do, using the other formula: pi times the
squared diameter, divided by four. He would still be at it if Miles
hadn't stopped him."

"Why?" the general asked. "The formulas are
the same."

"No—" Vickson
shook his head. "In the first one, a human has already decided how far
the decimal of pi should be carried. This, though close enough, is not
exact. I had told George to determine the exact area of the
plate, and to do so he had to use the second formula which contains pi
as an endless term."

"But that's
absurd!" the general objected. "You claim a robot is intelligent—didn't
it know it could never find the last decimal place of pi?"

"George knew,
but he was simply following orders," Clarke said. "The duty of a
machine is to obey orders, not place special interpretations on them."

* * *

"And you had to have the drive shields taken
off again?" Knight asked Miles. "Is the plate sprayed, now?"

"It took
George no more than five minutes after I told him to use the point
seven eight five four formula," Miles replied, "but we lost the entire
shift on that part of the ship, due to his cussed attention to detail."

The general
frowned thoughtfully. "Why not teach it to understand the purpose of
this ship as a whole, as well as the purpose of the ship's component
parts?" he asked. "The entire thing is very simple: We want a
spaceship. We want it equipped with an efficient drive plus
disintegrator rays for protection against meteors. We want all this
accomplished as soon as possible. Surely, as intelligent as it is, it
can comprehend the purpose of the work—the ultimate goal—and learn
better than to repeat any such off-on-a-tangent idiocy as this pi
business."

"How do we
explain 'purpose' to it?" Clarke asked. "A machine understands only
'Is' and 'Is not'—it can't understand human desires and purposes since
they are based on 'I want it to be' and not on 'Is' and 'Is not.' "

"Well—you should know if it's impossible,"
the general said, but he did not sound entirely convinced.

"We have a
slogan—a philosophy, you might say. Mr. Knight suggested it several
years ago and we have it plastered on the Master Computer, itself, to
keep us reminded of the gulf that will always separate Man from
Machine. You saw it, general—a simple little five-word sentence."

"I remember
it. It seems to me you're exaggerating the importance of it, but I'm a
military man and certainly in no position to argue the characteristics
of robots with the men who created them." He looked up at the ship
again and changed the subject. "Are the disintegrator ray projectors
installed?"

"Not yet,"
Clarke answered. "We've given the Computer the job of devising a safety
gadget that will prevent the operation of the ray projectors whenever
the ship is within an atmosphere dense enough to produce a feedback of
the rays."

"Although the
situation is looking less and less like war, you can never tell," the
general said. "The disintegrators would serve as a terrible threat of
retaliation. However, rather than having the rays as a strictly
offensive weapon used from a spaceship, it would be more desirable to
have ray projectors mounted along the borders of this country. They
would make the perfect defense weapon—no force by air, land or water
could get past them."

"Except for the feedback," Clarke said.

"Except for the feedback—and I know without
asking that you haven't been able to do anything about it."

"This
chain-reaction feedback is a tough problem. We haven't solved it yet.
The projector actually projects two rays, which you might call A and B.
They merge at a point about twenty feet in front of the projector and
disassociate the atomic structure of any material in their path from
there on. The maximum range is controllable, however. In empty space, A
and B are harmless—until they unite. But there's the chain-reaction
feedback within an atmosphere and the disassociating effects of
combined A and B follows the ununited A and B rays to their source—the
ray generator. The result is that the ship, and any material within a
radius of one hundred feet, is transformed suddenly into a cloud of
disassociated atoms. It was designed for protection against meteors in
space, where there would be no feedback."

"I hope we
never have to use it against anything but meteors," the general said.
"I'm a military man and the competent military leader wants a permanent
victory. Should war ever come, we must avert defeat at all costs but a
victory won with the disintegrator rays, projected from a ship in
space, would only sow the hatred for another war."

"Why do you say that?" Knight asked.

"It's a human
characteristic to say of defeat at the hands of an enemy no better
armed than you—and with greatly varying degrees of philosophical
acceptance—'The fortunes of war.' But Russo-Asia's defeat by a
disintegrator ray, projected from an invulnerable ship in space, would
arouse the reaction: 'It wasn't a fair fight—we never had a chance.'
Victory would be ours, but victory by such a means would create a
resentment and hatred that would be long in dying."

"I can see your point, general," Knight
said. "But you do intend to use the disintegrator if necessary, don't
you?"

"We don't
want to have to use it, but we certainly shall if we're forced to," the
general answered. He smiled faintly and added: "There's an old saying,
and a true one: 'The very worst peace is better than the very best
war.' To that should be added an equally true fact: 'The very worst
victory is better than the very best defeat.' "

He looked at
his watch, then at Clarke. "I'm afraid my time is running short, and
I'd like to look through the ship before I go."

"Of course,"
Clarke said. He turned to Knight. "I'm sorry this came up to spoil your
day, but we have to make up for the time George lost us. If you'll make
the check of the SD-FA blueprints, with Miss Martin's assistance, we'll
have the lost time made up by night. By the way"—he looked toward the
ASSEMBLY 1 door—"where did Miss Martin go?"

"She's in with George, I think," Knight said.

"Probably
already checking her share of the work," Clarke said with an approving
nod. "You have a superb assistant in Miss Martin."

* * *

The four of
them went into the ship and Knight walked across the concrete floor to
the door of the assembly room, smiling at Clarke's statement. June was
a superb assistant, despite her youth, but she was hardly the type to
exercise her abilities when less important and more interesting things
could be found to do.

He opened the
door to find her, as he had expected, busily pestering the stoic
George. "Don't you understand that one, either?" she was asking. "Tell
me what the point is."

George
answered her without pausing in his deft assembly of the work on the
bench before him. "I understand it. It can be interpreted in either of
two ways; as an expression of a feeling of pleasure or as a factual
statement of the loss of the ability to phosphoresce."

"What goes on?" Knight asked.

"I've been
trying to develop a sense of humor in George," she said, making a face
at the unmoved robot. "I told him jokes and explained the points, but
it's a waste of time. He just can't see the funny side of anything."

"You ought to
know better than to even try. What kind of jokes did you tell him,
anyway? What was this one about not being able to phosphoresce?"

"What the firefly said when he got his tail
cut off—'I'm delighted!' "

"Oh." Knight pulled his mouth down and
shuddered. "No wonder George refused to laugh at that. Not even
the most genial human-being could see anything funny about such a stup—"

"Never mind!" she interrupted him. "I
think it's funny." She looked toward the doorway. "Where did the brass
go?"

"Up into the
ship. You and I are to check these blueprints. You can check the
electronic circuits of the initial and restraining stages and I'll take
the rest."

"Well—" she
sighed philosophically, "at least I know what I'll be doing the rest of
the day—and it's all the fault of that humorless pile of tin."

"Speaking of
jokes"—Knight spilled the blueprints out of the brown envelope and
spread them on the table—"did I ever tell you about the traveling
salesman who asked the farmer's daughter if—"

"Never mind that, either!" she interrupted
him firmly. "Do you want to shock George?"

4

Silence.

There had
been utter silence from the first; the silence enclosing him and the
dark eyes watching him. Why did the doctor move so quietly? Was it
because he was dying; was it because people always walk softly in the
presence of the dying?

Of course! His doctor was showing him the
respect that is due the dead—and the soon-to-be-dead.

For a
moment the tide of insanity almost broke through the bulwark built
around his mind by the antihysteria drugs; the insanity he so
desperately longed for; the insanity that would let him die in
mindless, unfrightened madness.

The words above the pilot's communication
panel now read: OBSERVER
HAS A LIFE EXPECTANCY OF TWENTY HOURS AT PRESENT ACCELERATION. DEATH
FOR OBSERVER WILL RESULT UNLESS ACCELERATION IS REDUCED WITHIN THAT
PERIOD.

The urge
to laugh came to him. It was funny! The doctor wouldn't reduce the
acceleration until he gave the order and he couldn't give the order
until the doctor reduced the acceleration.

Funny! The
butterscotchmen couldn't run unless they were hot and couldn't get hot
unless they ran . . .  Couldn't run unless they
were hot—Couldn't get
hot unless they ran . . .  Couldn't run—Couldn't
hot . . . run . . . hot . . . run . . . hot . . . vicious
circles and
circles vicious, spinning around and
around . . . spin around and
around and around and around till your mind flies off into the darkness
where someone is laughing . . .  How pleasant to go
laughing and
spinning into the darkness, around and
around . . . laughing and
spinning and spinning and laughing . . .  around
and around and . . .

Sanity
jolted into his mind with all its cold, grim reality and the comfort of
the brief delirium vanished. The doctor was standing over him,
injecting the antihysteria drug into his bloodstream.

The
desperate fear ran through him again, terrible in its helpless
impotency. It was always the same; the doctor watched him ceaselessly,
ready to move forward and deny him the solace of madness at the first
sign of its coming.

The doctor didn't hate him—WHY MUST
THE DOCTOR TORTURE HIM SO?

* * *

It was a year
later, with the ship six days from the morning of its test flight, that
Russo-Asia completed the about-face in its foreign policy and promised
the freedom of Western representatives to inspect their "greatly
reduced military strength." It was not, to Knight, a surprising or
mysterious thing. Russo-Asia had been built on false promises and
deceit; this last action, he feared, could have but one reason behind
it.

It was the
other, happening five days later, that sent the chill certainty, too
late, into his mind—the discovery that a tentacle of Cullin's
presumably dead espionage system was in the very heart of
Center . . .

* * *

It was with
relief that Knight led General Gordon and his five-star superior,
General Marker, to the control room of the ship. He had shown them the
ship from bottom to top, explaining its workings and answering
questions until he was beginning to feel like a tourist's guide.
Furthermore, it was late in the night—or early in the morning,
rather—and he would have little sleep before returning to be on hand
for the ship's first take-off.

"And this is
the control room," he said. "The first seat, with its control and
instrument board over there, is for the pilot. This one is for the
observer." He indicated the seat and instrument board immediately
behind the pilot's. "You'll notice the observer has only a few
instruments, but several viewscreens. The pilot can control the ship
manually, with those buttons on his control board, or by voice command
to the robot drive control—a D-Twenty-three. In an emergency, the
observer can control the ship by voice command to the drive control,
but his panel is not equipped with manual control buttons. The
observer's duties are to observe and record, as well as to maintain
constant contact with Earth."

He pointed to
a small viewscreen in the center of the observer's panel. "This is his
contact with the auxiliary control station. You both saw it—that little
steel building two hundred feet west of this one. A man will be on duty
at all times in it." He flipped a switch and the screen came to life,
to show the back of an empty chair and a steel door beyond. "No one on
duty right now, of course, but there will be when the ship takes off."

"What is the
purpose of this ground-control station?" General Marker asked. "I know,
of course, that it's an auxiliary means of controlling the ship, but
why?"

"It's a
safety measure we hope we won't have any need for. We're convinced that
the ship has no bugs, but we don't want to take any chances with men's
lives. So we have the constant communication with the observer plus the
auxiliary control of the ship's drive. Should something go wrong, such
as both pilot and observer becoming unconscious, we can bring the ship
safely back to Earth from our ground-control station."

"Which method
of controlling the ship takes precedence, the pilot's manual control,
his oral orders to the drive control, or the means of controlling the
ship from the ground-control station?"

"The control
from the ground overrides all forms of control from within the ship. It
might possibly be that a man would crack, and if he did he might give
any kind of orders to the robot drive control—even such a one as
ordering the disintegrators turned on Earth. We don't expect anything
like that to happen, you understand—Miles and Vickson were selected for
their mental stability—but we like to play safe."

"Will the crew include a doctor?"

"The very
best, so far as technical skill goes. But circumstances might arise
where more than technical skill would be needed, so that's why we have
the auxiliary control station."

General Gordon tentatively touched a red
knob on the observer's panel. "Does this turn the disintegrators on?"
he asked.

Knight
nodded. "It turns them on, and also controls the maximum range. The
Computer gave us that safety gadget I spoke of when you were here a
year ago, so now we don't have to worry about them being turned on
accidentally and destroying the ship." He spun the red knob to the
right and the generals exchanged nervous glances. "It's on full
intensity, right now. This safety gadget prevents the closing of the
circuit so long as the ship is within an atmosphere dense enough to
produce a feedback of the rays."

He turned it off again and General Marker
remarked, "You certainly go all the way in trusting your gadgets here."

"A soundly built gadget can be
trusted."

"Then why your five-word slogan—the same as
you have on the Master Computer—in big letters here on the observer's
panel?"

"It's
different when a gadget has an intelligence. The observer, in an
emergency, would have to control the ship through a robotic brain. That
five-word sentence, which is actually a sound philosophy to keep in
mind when dealing with machines, is to remind the observer that he is
not giving orders to a human pilot."

"Although it's six hours until take-off, I
suppose the ship is ready to go right now?" General Gordon asked.

"Ready to go, and Miles and Vickson are now
getting their last hours of sleep—the
last hour, to be exact. They'll be back down here in less than two
hours, together with myself, Dr. Clarke, and about a platoon of
technicians to make the last-minute check of all the other checking. We
have something too big in space flight to chance any errors on the
first attempt."

"I'm glad
this ship's first flight will not be as a weapon of war," General
Marker said, "but I trust it's well guarded—just to play safe, as you
said of your ground-control station."

"You saw the
guards outside," Knight answered. "And there are guards outside the
door of the ground-control station—this ship can't lift while enclosed
in this steel building and the controls that lower the roof and walls
into recesses in the ground are inside that station. We still have the
machine-gun towers that we erected seven years ago when war seemed just
around the corner. The antiaircraft artillery is still stationed in a
wide circle around Computer Center—no one ever got around to ordering
their removal and the guns were still manned twenty-four hours a day,
the last I heard."

"Well, if
Russo-Asia has any plans for this ship, they've certainly kept them
well concealed," General Marker said. "Our Intelligence reports no
indications whatever of any such thing. And now, I think we had all
better get out of here and take advantage of that less-than-two-hours
sleep we'll get before the preliminaries start."

* * *

Knight
noticed, as they went down out of the ship, that George was still in
the drive room, checking the control panel to drive circuits. The robot
did not look up from its work, though it saw them pass. Robots confined
their speaking to necessary answers and wasted no time with such
amenities as "Good morning" and "Good night."

He parted
company with the two generals at the Computer area gate; they to return
to their Center hotel and he to drive through the slumbering streets to
his own cottage. Tired and sleepy, he set the alarm to arouse him in an
hour and a half and went to bed.

He had been
asleep an hour and fifteen minutes when he was awakened by the ringing
of the doorbell and June's voice. "Blacky—wake up!"

"What is it?" he called, swinging his feet
to the floor and reaching for his clothes.

"Come over to Tim's house." There was both
indignation and urgency in June's tone. "See if you can straighten
things out."

He heard her
hurry back to the Miles' cottage, her footsteps clicking sharp and fast
on the walk. He grinned, despite his worry that Tim might be in some
kind of trouble—the manner of her walking indicated that June was
beginning to get mad.

He put on his
clothes and went out into the pre-dawn darkness. The lights were on in
the Miles' cottage and there was a black sedan parked at the curb
before it. It had a government-service license plate, but there was
nothing about the number on the plate to indicate the type of service
it represented.

Tim Miles'
voice came from within the house, angry and incredulous, and a vaguely
familiar voice answered him. Knight went to the door and entered
without knocking.

There were
four in the room; Tim Miles, Connie, June, and a cold-eyed man in a
gray suit. Knight recognized him with a start; his name was Whitney and
he was a Security man. He returned Knight's "Hello" with a nod of
recognition and Connie, sitting in a chair by the card table, said,
"Hello, Blacky." Miles, red-faced and scowling, hardly glanced away
from Whitney, while June sat one-hipped on the card table beside
Connie, her eyes smoldering and her hands gripping the edge of the
table until the knuckles were white.

Knight stopped beside Whitney. "What is
this?" he asked.

"The ship has been sabotaged," Whitney
replied.

"It's a lie!" Miles declared.

"Just a minute—" Knight looked from Miles
back to Whitney. "It wasn't sabotaged when I left it an hour ago."

"It was sabotaged a year ago," Whitney said.
"We didn't learn of it until tonight—in fact, not over half an hour
ago."

"Are you sure?" Knight asked.

"I'm
supposed to have done it!" Miles burst out wrathfully. "I'm supposed to
have cross-wired the circuits from the control panel to the drive so
that the drive will explode on take-off."

Knight made
his reply to Whitney. "I can't believe that. I've known Miles and
worked with him for several years. Of course, I realize that Security
wants more positive proof of a suspected man's innocence than the
personal opinion of his friends. If you will give me the details,
perhaps I can help."

"He isn't
exactly accused, yet," Whitney said, "but he's very much under
suspicion of performing the work of sabotage. As for the reasons for
our suspicions, they are these:

"The robot,
George, has been helping Miles and Vickson check the ship today; an
extra safety measure, I understand, to make sure there will be no
mechanical failures on the ship's trial flight tomorrow. Miles
completed his share of the work early in the afternoon and went home.
Vickson was through about an hour later and he went home, leaving the
robot to check the control-panel-to-drive circuits—a precautionary
measure that Miles, here, admits he insisted was not necessary. It was
about thirty minutes ago that the robot finished checking the circuits.
He then phoned Security—a thing he had been ordered to do if he ever
found any evidence of sabotage—and informed us that the drive circuits
had been so cross-circuited that the drive would explode the moment it
was activated for take-off."

* * *

Miles sighed heavily. "I tell you, those
circuits are not sabotaged! I installed them myself, and I
personally welded the control panel seals."

"You say this sabotage was supposed to have
been done a year ago?" Knight asked.

"That's
right," Whitney said. "Miles admits that he, himself, installed the
circuits and sealed the panel at that time—and the panel is still
sealed."

"Yes, I admit
it!" Miles snapped. "Those circuits are not cross-wired. I don't know
what this is all about, but I do know the kind of job I did on those
circuits."

"The robot traced the circuits and found
them to be cross-wired," Whitney said. "Isn't it true that a robot
never lies?"

A look of helplessness passed over Miles'
face. "Yes, it's true—but there's some mistake."

Whitney
turned his cold eyes on Connie who was sitting quietly in her chair,
watching Whitney with a composure that was in such striking contrast to
the ever-growing wrath of the hot-eyed June.

"There's
something else—" he said, and June froze into a waiting tenseness. "Why
do you so often go to the park at Saguaro and Third, Mrs. Miles?"

Connie's eyes
went wide with surprise. "I go there because it happens to be along the
route I usually follow when taking the daily walks my doctor
prescribed. Why?"

"You usually sit for a while beside the rock
monument in the center of the park, don't you?"

"I always do. Why do you ask?"

"Why do you choose that spot to sit?"

"For two
reasons; because there is a stone bench there to sit on while resting
and because I like to feed the chipmunk that has a nest in the
monument."

"Get to the
point, Whitney." Miles could restrain himself no longer. "Quit beating
around the bush—is my wife under suspicion, too?"

"We received
an anonymous phone call this afternoon," Whitney said. "It enabled us
to intercept a note, although the message meant nothing to us then.
It was just a slip of paper in a tin box, and it read: 'Crisscross O.K.
No suspicion. Ill on schedule.' "

"What does that have to do with my wife?"
Miles demanded.

"After the
robot told us of the sabotage, the meaning of the message became clear.
It was an absurdly easy message to understand. 'Crisscross O.K. No
suspicion' could only mean that the drive controls were still
cross-circuited and no one suspected it. As for 'Ill on schedule'—we
could only take that to mean that the person guilty of sabotaging the
drive controls would pretend to be ill on the day of the ship's
take-off—too ill to be in the ship when its drive exploded."

Whitney
turned his eyes on Connie again. "As I say, an anonymous phone call
tipped us off. This person suggested we look at the monument and we
found the message in a crevice inside the monument. That, Mrs. Miles,
was only a few minutes after you had left there."

There was a moment of dead silence, then
Whitney's voice lashed at Connie like the crack of a whip.

"What do you know about that
message?"

June reacted
then, and in a manner typical of her. She shoved herself away from the
card table with a violence that sent it crashing to the floor and
advanced on Whitney with her eyes blazing. "Nothing, you fool!"
The words came like the spitting of an infuriated cat. "My sister isn't
a spy and she doesn't know anything about that message,
you . . . you—"

Her small
hand flashed out to rip her nails down Whitney's face and Knight moved
quickly to stop her, catching her wrist, then the other hand as she
tried to whirl away from him, bringing her arms down tight against her
stomach. She struggled furiously to tear loose, her heart pounding
against his arm like that of a small, wild animal.

"June—don't!"
Connie was beside them, to lay her hand on June's shoulder. "Quit
spitting and fighting, kitten—he's only trying to do his job."

June ceased struggling but the hate still
blazed in her eyes. "He called you a spy—nobody is going to call my
sister a spy!"

"He didn't call me a spy, honey—he just
asked me what I know about that message."

"I understand
your problem, Whitney," Knight said, releasing June but keeping a wary
eye on her, lest she should renew her attack. "Someone is guilty of
sabotage and it's your job to find who that person is. But aren't you
jumping to conclusions on flimsy evidence?"

"I have no
desire to cause anyone embarrassment or discomfort," the cold-eyed
Whitney replied. "My business is to sort people into two different
classes—guilty and innocent. An unexpected question suddenly snapped at
a suspect will often go a long way toward indicating the person's guilt
or innocence."

"Then why
don't you snap some questions at a few others?" June demanded. "Vickson
and the workmen who helped build the ship and George— What makes you so
sure—"

"Sit down, June," Connie ordered, going back
to her own chair. "Give him a chance to ask his own questions."

June
hesitated, half turning away to do as her sister had ordered, then
Whitney made the mistake of seconding the order. "Yes, sit down," he
commanded, unconsciously rubbing his hand down the cheek that had been
her intended target.

She whirled
back to face him, the rebellion flaring hotly. "Never mind any such
details as dictating our posture—just get on with your questions!"

She waited
for him to dare repeat his order, standing erect and defiant before
him, and an expression of helpless defeat flitted over his face. Knight
watched with combined sympathy for him and amusement. The cold-eyed
Whitney was accustomed to dealing with dangerous men and awing them—but
how does a man go about awing a hundred and five pounds of fuming,
spitting female wildcat?

* * *

"I have no
more questions to ask—now," Whitney said. He spoke to Knight. "Dr.
Clarke was in Yuma—we contacted him by phone and he's on his way back,
now. He's given orders for public announcement of the postponement of
the ship's test flight and when he returns we'll continue the
questioning—of everyone connected with the ship, including the robot."

"Have you questioned George at all?" Knight
asked.

"Very
briefly," Whitney said with a wry smile. "Questioning a robot isn't too
informative—a robot does no more than answer each question as it's
given. It requires time plus a great many questions to get the entire
picture. We questioned the robot briefly, as I say, and learned only
that his check showed the drive controls to be cross-circuited. When
Dr. Clarke returns, we'll do a thorough job of the questioning."

"Have you questioned Vickson?"

"He was
spending the night with friends in Center Junction, we learned. A man
was sent after him and they should return any minute."

"Here?"

"We'll all
meet at the Computer area gate, then we'll go to Lab Four and find just
who is guilty." Whitney turned to Miles. "Since the evidence against
your wife is so uncertain, and since she is in frail health, she will
remain here. If we need her, we can send a man after her. I'm afraid
you'll have to go with me, now. At present, the evidence points only to
you. If you're innocent, we'll do everything in our power to prove it.
And if you're guilty"—he smiled grimly—"we'll do everything in our
power to prove it."

"Thanks," Miles replied with the same
grimness. "That's exactly what I want you to do."

Connie got to
her feet. "There's no question about his innocence—it's all a
ridiculous mistake. But I realize there is no way you can know that
until everyone is questioned and the guilty one found. As for the
message in the monument—I know nothing whatever about it. I always sit
by the monument and feed the chipmunk, but I certainly never knew
someone was using it as a place to leave messages for foreign agents."

"This anonymous phone call—doesn't that
sound a little fishy?" Knight asked. "Have you traced it?"

"We're trying
to," Whitney answered. "We're not at all convinced that Mrs. Miles is
guilty of any connection with the affair. With her husband, it's
different—he personally installed the circuits and they have been found
to have been installed in such a manner as to destroy the ship."

"Couldn't the
robot have made a mistake?" Connie asked. "Maybe they aren't
cross-circuited at all—maybe the robot just made a mistake in his
checking."

"I'm afraid not," Whitney answered. "Your
husband will tell you that robots neither make mistakes nor false
statements."

"That's true,
Connie," Miles said, going to her. "But it's also true that I didn't
sabotage the drive." He put his arm around her. "I'll be back in a few
hours, and everything will be all right."

Whitney moved
toward the door, his eyes on Miles. Miles gave Connie's shoulders a
quick squeeze and followed Whitney through the door without looking
back.

Knight spoke
to Whitney as they went through the door. "I'll follow you down in my
own car." Whitney said, "All right," then he and Miles went on up the
walk. Knight turned back to the two women in the room.

"There's no
question about there being a mistake," he said. "What, I don't know. We
do know that someone sabotaged the drive controls, but who? We'll rip
out the drive-control panel and trace the leads that way—George had to
depend upon tracing them with instruments. I'll go down right now—and
you'd better go with me, June. Before it's over they'll want everyone
who was ever around the ship, and you've been around it almost as much
as I have."

June went to
the door where Knight waited, then stopped to say to Connie, "Don't you
do any worrying about this while we're gone, Connie. We'll be back with
Tim's name cleared before noon, you wait and see."

"Of course
you will," Connie answered, but it seemed to Knight that she was, for
all her composure, suddenly very small and lonely as she stood in the
empty room and watched them leave.

* * *

The sky was
shell-pink in the east, lighting the world with the half-light of dawn,
when he backed out of the driveway. June sat silent and thoughtful
beside him; worried, despite her assurances to her sister. He drove
slowly, trying to fit together the two facts he was convinced were
true; Tim Miles had not sabotaged the ship, yet a robot had no
incentive to lie.

There were certain characteristics of the
robotic brain:

A machine is constructed to obey
commands; it does not question those commands.

A machine has no volition; it neither
acts nor informs unless ordered to do so.

And then he had the answer; so simple that,
he felt, a child should have seen it.

A machine
would not voluntarily make a false statement, but the prime function of
a machine was prompt, unquestioning obedience. The robot, George, would
never make a false statement by its own volition, but it would if
ordered to do so.

He slowed the
car to a barely moving crawl as he considered the implications and June
looked at him questioningly. "We're still three blocks from the
gate—what's wrong?"

"The drive
controls have never been sabotaged. George was ordered to make that
statement, and no one thought to ask him if it were true."

"But why? What would anyone gain by getting
Tim into trouble like this?"

"It wasn't for personal reasons. Someone
didn't want that ship tested today!"

"Then it was—" June stopped as a dull,
distant roaring came to them. "It must have been—"

She stopped
again as the roaring increased, coming from above them and to the
southwest, filling the air like the hum of a billion bees. "What's that?"

He stopped
the car and jumped out, to look into the sky and see the source of the
sound. Planes, wave upon wave of them, coming in and down on Center
from the southwest—from toward the Gulf of California. They were coming
as fast as their jets could send them; almost as fast as the sound that
preceded them. The first wave parted in definite formations as it came
in, part of it dissolving to strike at the six antiaircraft gun
positions that surrounded Center and the main body coming in on Center,
itself.

"What is it?" June was beside him with her
hand on his arm. "They couldn't be ours—"

"No," he said tonelessly, "they're not ours."

They stood
and watched—there was nothing else they could do. The first wave passed
low above them with a deafening, ground-shaking roar and was gone in
the space of two breaths. The bombs shot downward in fast, flat arcs
and their explosions raced through the city at the speed of the planes
that had dropped them; red and yellow spurts of flame that leaped
upward and hurled strange, broken things into the air, to be
silhouetted momentarily against the pale dawn.

The second
wave came close behind the first; a roar that swelled into a crescendo
then boomed into the distance with the bomb bursts a thunderous
staccato racing along on the ground behind them. Then the antiaircraft
guns came to life, licking thin, defiant tongues of flame at the
invaders. The third wave concentrated on the gun positions and some of
them plunged to earth, trailing black plumes of smoke, but three of the
guns were still when the others had passed on.

For a few
seconds Center was almost quiet by contrast to the thunder and fury
that had filled it and a dog could be heard somewhere among the
wreckage, barking and whining anxiously as it ran back and forth in a
vain search for its master. A woman screamed, a sound that cut through
the morning air like a thin, sharp knife, then the alarm siren began to
moan and wail, half drowning the sound of cold motors breaking into
life and the shouted orders of men.

The next
attack on Center was a wave of fighters, boring in on the machine-gun
towers in the Computer and laboratory area. The machine guns in the
towers met their fire and tracer bullets were golden lances that met
and crossed and struck the towers, to ricochet away in beautiful
parabolic curves. Two of the attacking planes wavered and spun to the
ground, but when the others turned to renew the attack there were no
guns left to oppose them.

They began to
strafe the streets and the cars that were trying to make their way
through the debris, patrolling the area around Lab 4 and concentrating
vicious fire on any vehicle that attempted to go in that direction.
They had not bombed the laboratory area or the adjacent landing strip,
and Knight realized, as he watched them, that there could be but one
reason.

Russo-Asia
had planned for this day for a long time. They had planned well; so
well that even America's own Intelligence agents had thought the talks
of peace were sincere. They had stressed the desirability of friendship
between East and West and the West had hoped, and half-believed, and
let themselves be caught unawares and unprepared. The anonymous phone
call implicating Connie had been only a touch to add weight to the
evidence against Miles; the evidence that had resulted in the
postponement of the ship's flight and had insured that neither Miles
nor anyone else would be inside the ship and in position to prevent its
seizure when the attack came.

It had all
been done with exact and detailed precision; the timing of the robot's
phone call to Security, the attack in the early dawn before Clarke or
Vickson had time to appear—or was Vickson their agent, and already
inside the ship?

He would have to move fast—if it wasn't
already too late.

He swung the
door wide and thrust June into the car. "Get behind that wheel and
drive like hell back to where Connie is. If a plane comes at you, jump
and run—don't stay in the car or they'll get you. I'll have to try to
get to the ship—"

* * *

A plane
roared over them and its tracers made a bright splash of yellow
phosphorescence on the pavement beside them. The tires of an army truck
screamed at the intersection a hundred feet behind them and June,
watching, cried, "Connie!"

Connie was
coming toward them across the intersection, trying to run as best she
could, and the army truck was braking and slewing desperately to avoid
hitting her. Then the plane banked and turned and came roaring back at
them and June half sobbed a terrified "No!" as its tracers
licked down at the truck and across it, to lash at Connie who had
reached the curb. She crumpled to the walk and the plane went its way,
while the army truck wandered aimlessly down the street with the dead
driver slumped over the wheel.

"No!"
June shoved past him, her face white with fear, and ran to her sister.
He followed, sick at heart with the foreknowledge of what he would see.

Connie was
lying very still, her face like that of a pale, waxen doll that had
gone to sleep. June was kneeling beside her, holding her hand and
saying over and over in a dazed voice:
"Connie . . . Connie . . . why
did you do it?"

"She had to,"
he said softly. "She was going to you because you might need her. She
was a nurse and she was going to you and Tim and all those who might be
hurt and in need of her."

The siren
whimpered off into silence and the bark of one lone antiaircraft gun
came to them, to falter and stop as another attack of bombers roared
over it.

"They killed
her!" June's voice was numb with the shock. She held Connie's hand
between both her own, a bright red splotch on her knee where it touched
Connie's side as she knelt beside her. "They killed her—they killed my
sister!"

She raised
her face to look at the planes circling above them and a terrible,
savage hatred blazed through the hurt and pain in her eyes.

Then the
tears, that the first shock had held back, came and he hurried quietly
away, leaving her crying with shaking, muffled sobs beside her sister.
There was nothing he could do to comfort her and it would be better for
her to not follow him.

He ran in a
steady trot, two blocks to the highway that paralleled the western
boundary of the laboratory area, then down along it. Trees had been
transplanted beside the highway in years past and he kept under the
shelter of their concealment as he ran. He stopped once, to dart out on
the pavement where a jeep lay overturned and riddled with machine-gun
bullets. A soldier was sprawled lifelessly beside it, his heavy
automatic rifle still in his hands. Knight seized the rifle and the
belt of cartridge clips and ran back to the shelter of the trees as a
plane spotted him. Its bullets cut twigs from the limbs above him and
made a thunk-thunk sound as they buried themselves in the trunk
of the tree. Then the plane was gone and he ran on toward the western
entrance that was the closest to Lab 4.

The fighter
planes widened in their circling to leave a clear space above the
laboratory area as he reached the gate, then the troop-transport planes
came in—six of them. The sky blossomed with chutes, the Russo-Asian
paratroopers firing even as they descended. Other rifles were firing
from within Center and from the area outside the main gate, and
occasionally a paratrooper would jerk, then dangle limply in his
harness as he drifted downward.

The last
group of planes came in; a light, fast bomber surrounded by a
protecting ring of fighters. The objective of the light bomber, he saw,
was the landing strip nearest to Lab 4.

The bomber's
mission would not be to bomb the landing strip, and there could be no
doubt as to the identity of the passenger it carried. It slowed and
dropped to make its landing and he began to run toward the
ground-control station and Lab 4 that set two hundred feet beyond it.

He was
protected from the fighter planes by their own paratroopers and the aim
of the paratroopers, shooting from their swinging suspension, was
uncertain as they tried to catch his running, weaving figure in their
sights. Bullets kicked up puffs of dust beside and behind him but none
touched him. He had reached the ground-control station when the first
paratrooper reached the ground. The vicious rip of a burst of
well-aimed bullets slammed against the steel corner of the building a
split-second after he had rounded it. Two more paratroopers landed even
as he ran for the door of the station, adding their fire to their
comrade's. It was two hundred feet to the ship and, now that they were
on the ground, the aim of the paratroopers would be deadly and certain.
He would never live to run a tenth of the distance to the ship. And the
others were landing, by three's and four's.

But it didn't matter—he would be in supreme
control of the ship from the auxiliary station.

* * *

The guards
were lying before the door of the station, dead, and the door was ajar.
Simultaneously, he saw the other thing that was happening; the roof of
Lab 4 was sliding back and the walls were dropping into the ground. He
leaped through the doorway and to one side as paratrooper bullets
hammered at him, the automatic rifle held ready before him.

The room was
deserted but for the robot, George. George turned away quickly from the
control panel at the far end of the room, and Knight saw the switch was
on that lowered the walls of Lab 4.

"Turn that switch off!" he commanded. "Raise
those walls again."

The robot
stepped toward him with long, swift strides, seeming not to hear him.
The metal arms were half outstretched before it and a sudden, icy
premonition ran a cold finger up his spine.

"Stop!"

It came on
without slackening its speed, the dark eyes thoughtful and the steel
hands reaching out toward him—hands that had the strength to tear his
head from his body.

"Stop!"

The steel
hands swooped toward his throat and he leaped to one side. It spun with
him, as quick as he for all its ponderous bulk, and then it sprang like
a great cat.

There was no
time to wonder why the robot wanted to kill him, no time to dodge. The
rifle was still leveled before him and he pressed the trigger. The
great mass of the robot lurched and shuddered as twenty bullets, each
with a muzzle energy of three thousand foot pounds, tore through its
body within a space of two seconds. It reeled and crashed to the floor,
to lay inert while the dark eyes stared up at him with their same
expression of thoughtful, patient waiting.

But it was dead. Its brain was a riddled
wreckage and it was as dead as ever a robot could be.

He ran to the
control board and slapped the switch that would re-erect the walls and
roof of Lab 4, wondering why the robot had tried to kill him. A machine
has no volition, yet it had walked toward him with the deliberate
intent to kill him, heedless of his command for it to stop. It might as
well have been deaf—

Of course! It had
been deaf! It had been sent recently from Lab 4 with orders to lower
Lab 4 into the ground and to kill anyone who entered the ground-control
station. Then, after the orders were given, the microphones that were
its ears had been disconnected and it had gone on its mission,
stone-deaf and unable to hear any orders that would countermand the
ones given it.

He hurried
back to the door, slipping a fresh clip of cartridges into the rifle as
he went. He opened it a quick, cautious ten inches and saw that the
paratroopers were taking up positions in a wide circle around the ship.
Two of them saw the partial opening of the door and he had time only
for one quick glance before their bullets pounded against it as he
slammed it shut.

He had had
time to see the ship, standing bright and naked in the first rays of
the sun. The walls that had enclosed it had disappeared. The air lock
of the ship had been open and a man had been standing there, the rising
sun red on his face—Vickson. He had been looking toward the landing
strip and a car racing toward the ship—a car whose dust trail led back
to the light bomber.

He locked the
door to prevent anyone entering the station, while the bullets
hammering methodically against the outside of it informed him that they
were seeing to it that no one left it. He went back to the control
board and looked at the switch that he had closed before going to the
door; the switch that should have re-erected Lab 4 around the ship. It
had not, and he saw the reason why; George had ripped out the wires
behind the panel that led to the switch. They were lying tangled on the
floor behind the panel and he could never, in the short time he had,
reconnect them.

He seated
himself in the chair before the control board and turned on the
observer's viewscreen. His own viewscreen came to life, showing the
interior of the ship's control room. It was still empty.

He closed the
switch that would give his own commands precedence over any given
inside the ship and said: "Ship's drive control—disregard all orders
given you by anyone in the ship's control room. Disregard all impulses
from the pilot's control panel."

Only silence answered him and he said
sharply, with sudden anxiety, "Ship's drive control—acknowledge that
order!"

Silence.

He tried again, coldly, unpleasantly certain
that it would be in vain. "Ship's drive control—acknowledge!"

Again the
dead silence was his answer and he knew there was no use to try any
more. The units that permitted the ground-control station to control
the ship had been sabotaged and he was helpless to prevent the ship's
take-off. Bullets continued to rattle against the door, warning him how
fatal would be any attempt to leave the station. He was helpless so
long as he remained in the station; he would be both helpless and dead
a split-second after he opened the door to leave the station. Yet, he
had to do something.

He estimated
the time that had gone by since he had seen the car speeding from the
bomber to the ship. It would have been Cullin, of course; it would be
Cullin and Vickson who took the ship into the sky, with Vickson at the
pilot's seat and Cullin behind him, watching him. Vickson knew as well
as Miles how to operate the manual drive controls, and there was no
hope that he would make a mistake and wreck the ship in a take-off.
Even Cullin, alone, could lift the ship by simple voice command to the
drive control. The Center forces would be closing in on the ship as the
fighter planes exhausted the ammunition they were forced to use so
continually, but they would be too late.

* * *

A sound broke
the silence of the observer's viewscreen, the sound of someone entering
the control room. It was Cullin, wearing the black and gray uniform of
a high official of the State Police, and he was alone. He took one
quick look at the room, then walked straight to the observer's chair in
the manner of a man who knew exactly what he was going to do.

At the sight
of Knight's face in the observer's viewscreen he smiled in sudden,
pleased surprise. Knight spoke the same greeting he had spoken at Punta
Azul: "Going somewhere, Cullin?"

Cullin seated himself in the observer's
chair, still smiling and taking his time about answering. "Why, yes,"
he said, "I am
going somewhere. Vickson was telling me you were in there, but I was
afraid you had been rendered permanently speechless by your faithful
George." Cullin shifted his eyes to look past Knight at the robot lying
on the floor across the room. "I see you had sufficient intelligence to
destroy the robot before it destroyed you. It was very useful to me—via
Vickson's orders to it—but it's just as well that it failed to carry
out its last order; to throttle anyone who entered the station. You and
I can now chat pleasantly about cabbages and kings and sealing wax and
a man named Cullin who is, as you feared, going somewhere."

"Alone?" Knight asked. "Where's Vickson?"

"Outside. He was rather surprised that he
couldn't go with me."

"He is a pilot as well as observer—why don't
you take him along?"

"You builders
of this ship thoughtfully gave it a robotic brain for the drive that
makes the pilot's manual controls unnecessary. Whoever controls this
ship can write his own ticket, so I'll take it up alone and there'll be
no danger of a doublecross, no doubt as to who will write the ticket."

Cullin reached out and turned the red knob
to the right. "No pilot is needed," he said. "You've made the ship
foolproof."

"How did you manage to keep Vickson from
taking the ship up before you ever got to it?"

"He was
selected, Knight, years ago. For all his passing of the tests for
superior mental stability, Vickson is a man who places a very high
value on his own life. Of all the men who had full access to the ship,
Vickson was the best suited to our purpose. There are various ways of
persuading various types of men and compelling them to co-operate. With
Vickson it was very easy and simple—we used the y drug.

"Perhaps
you've heard rumors of it. Our own scientists whipped it up for us
several years ago, and it's very efficient. Thirty days after the
administration of the drug the subject is stricken with intense pain.
This pain increases by the hour and only the antidote, made from a
batch of the original drug, can stop the increasing pain and eventual
death. We have occasionally let Vickson wait a few hours extra just to
keep him convinced of the desirability of wholehearted co-operation
with us. Had he been foolish enough to take the ship he would have died
in a great deal of agony within six hours, since everything was timed
very carefully, including the last administration of the y
drug."

"And what becomes of Vickson now?"

"I wouldn't
know." Cullin shrugged his shoulders with disinterest. "He's served his
purpose for me—I have no further use for him."

"And no antidote for him?"

"I rather doubt that the good citizens of
what is left of Center will permit him to suffer very long."

No, thought Knight, they won't, but it was
Cullin who had planned it, coldly, deliberately—

"I've planned
this for a long time," Cullin said, as though he had been reading
Knight's mind. "All my life I've played second-fiddle to someone else.
Now, the world will dance to my tune."

Knight looked
at him sharply and Cullin laughed with genuine mirth. "No, I'm not
insane. This ship is my whip; I'll use the threat of it to whip the
world into billions of gentle, obedient horses."

"Obedience seems to be a mania with you."

"It produces the desired results. That's why
I liked your robot; no threats were necessary, no y drugs. It
accepted orders without question and carried them out without question."

The bullets
were no longer banging against the door, Knight noticed. That would
mean that the Center forces had gathered in strength and had drawn in
closer; that the paratroopers had no time to spare for watching the
door. Cullin liked the unquestioning obedience of a robot and he,
Knight, could not keep him from giving the order to the drive control
that would lift the ship. The robotic brain that was the drive control
would obey instantly and without question, but if Cullin should not
word his command in the proper manner—

"Once more I'm leaving you. Listen while I
give the order to your own ship."

Cullin smiled once more, triumphant and
exultant, and gave the order: "Ship's drive control—accelerate!"

* * *

It was the
command Knight had hoped he would give. It was a command the robotic
brain would obey instantly and Cullin could never countermand.

It required
slightly less than three seconds for the primary activation of the
ship's drive, then the thrust of acceleration came and the ship hurled
itself upward. Cullin was shoved deep into the cushioned seat by it,
pinned and chained by it. He tried vainly to speak, the horror of
sudden realization and fear in his eyes, then the blankness of
unconsciousness clouded them. Knight turned away from the viewscreen.
Cullin would be conscious when he returned to it later in the day.
Cullin would not die for a long, long time—the doctor in the control
room was very competent.

He went to
the door and stepped outside. The ship was gone, already beyond sight,
and the last of the paratroopers were throwing down their guns and
surrendering to the Center forces that surrounded them. The planes were
gone; back to carriers somewhere in the Pacific, he presumed, there to
depend upon the threat of the disintegrator rays to shield them and the
carriers from retaliation.

But there would be no war. Russo-Asia had
put all her eggs in one basket and one wrong word had sent that basket
away forever.

Someone was
lying near Lab 4; motionless on the ground, his rimless glasses knocked
askew by the bullet that had killed him and looking mild and
apologetic, even in death. Knight felt a sense of relief. Vickson had
paid the penalty and it had been gentle compared with the penalty
Cullin would pay. It was as it should be.

"Blacky."

June was coming toward him, a cartridge belt
sagging from her waist and a rifle in her hands.

"We've lost, haven't we?" she asked,
stopping before him. "They took the ship and we couldn't stop them."

"The ship
will never come back," he said. He looked down at her, her grimy hands
clutching the rifle, her clothes torn and her face scratched and dirty
and tear-streaked. He saw that most of the clips were gone from the
cartridge belt.

"They got
Tim," she said. "They must have killed him in the first bombing. I
ought to go back and try to help—there are so many people in need of
help and it's what Connie would want me to do. But first"—she looked up
at him, tears suddenly threatening to wash a new channel through the
dirt on her face—"can't we take her—home?"

He took the rifle she still held and let his
hand rest on her shoulder.

"First, we'll take Connie home."

5

The doctor's pre-flight training had
included the order to keep the pilot informed of each man's physical
condition.

How long had
it been since the doctor last changed the words on the pilot's
communications panel? Was his time finally within short minutes of its
end? It was no longer hours, but minutes. The words read: OBSERVER HAS
A LIFE EXPECTANCY OF ONE HOUR AT PRESENT ACCELERATION. DEATH FOR
OBSERVER WILL RESULT UNLESS ACCELERATION IS REDUCED WITHIN THAT PERIOD.

How many
days and weeks had gone by since he had first given the fatal command
to the drive control? It had been Vickson who had done the thing that
would so soon culminate in his death. Vickson, the mild and apologetic.
Vickson had feared that he would be deemed dispensable, and this had
been his means of revenge. Vickson had told him how to word the command
to the drive control: "Ship's drive control—accelerate!"

Vickson had
known that the robotic drive control would continue to accelerate until
full acceleration was reached. Vickson had known full acceleration
would be maintained until he ordered it reduced. Vickson had known that
the first surge of acceleration would render him speechless and
unconscious. Vickson had known that the robot doctor in the control
room would do the only thing possible to save his life while under full
acceleration: by-pass his heart with a mechanical heart, and put it in
conjunction with a mechanical lung that frothed and aerated his blood.
Vickson had known he would live a long time that way, with the doctor
watching over him and administering nutrients into his bloodstream.
Nutrients—and the antihysteria drug that had been designed to keep the
observer's mind clear and logical so that he could meet any
emergency!

How long had it been since the viewscreen
shifted into the red and then turned black as the ship exceeded the
speed of light?

They had
watched him until the ship's speed had become too great. Knight, and
others he did not know. He had tried to appeal to them to do something;
pleading mutely, with all the power of his terrified mind. They had
done nothing—what could they do? The robot had been ordered to destroy
the units that enabled the ground-control station to control the ship,
and machines did not make mistakes when carrying out orders.

Knight had
spoken to him once: "You wanted obedience, Cullin—now you have it. You
climbed a long way up by forcing human beings to behave like machines.
But you were wrong in one respect; no human can ever be forced to
behave exactly like a machine, and no machine can ever be constructed
that will behave exactly like a human. Machines are the servants of
humans, not their equals. There will always be a gulf between Flesh and
Steel. Read those five words on the panel before you and you will
understand."

How many
minutes did he have left? The doctor knew he wanted to live, and it
knew it had only to reduce the acceleration to save his life. It was
intelligent and it knew what he wanted, but it was obedient and it was
waiting to be ordered to reduce the acceleration.

It was watching him, waiting for him to
give the order, and it knew he could not speak without lungs!

Once he
had wanted obedience, without question, without initiative of thought.
Now, he had it. Now he understood what Knight had meant. The full,
bitter lesson was in the five words on the panel before him, and he was
trying to laugh without lungs when he died, his eyes fixed on it and
his lips drawn back in a grim travesty of a smile.

* * *

It was a
good ship, built to travel almost forever, and it hurled itself on
through the galaxy at full acceleration; on and on until the galaxy was
a great pinwheel of white fire behind it and there was nothing before
it.

On and on,
faster and faster, into the black void of Nothing; without reason or
purpose while a dark-eyed robot stared at a skeleton that was grinning
mirthlessly at a five-word sentence:

A MACHINE DOES NOT CARE.

THE COLD
EQUATIONS

Editor's
note: And here we come to the end, the backdrop of reality that Godwin
never forgot. There are times I think "The Cold Equations" may be the
greatest science fiction story ever written. But it's not a story I
read very often. And I'm glad that I started, at the age of thirteen,
with The Survivors.

He was not alone.

There was
nothing to indicate the fact but the white hand of the tiny gauge on
the board before him. The control room was empty but for himself; there
was no sound other than the murmur of the drives—but the white hand had
moved. It had been on zero when the little ship was launched from the Stardust;
now, an hour later, it had crept up. There was something in the
supplies closet across the room, it was saying, some kind of a body
that radiated heat.

It could be but one kind of a body—a living,
human body.

He leaned
back in the pilot's chair and drew a deep, slow breath, considering
what he would have to do. He was an EDS pilot, inured to the sight of
death, long since accustomed to it and to viewing the dying of another
man with an objective lack of emotion, and he had no choice in what he
must do. There could be no alternative—but it required a few moments of
conditioning for even an EDS pilot to prepare himself to walk across
the room and coldly, deliberately, take the life of a man he had yet to
meet.

He would, of
course, do it. It was the law, stated very bluntly and definitely in
grim Paragraph L, Section 8, of Interstellar Regulations: Any
stowaway discovered in an EDS shall be jettisoned immediately following
discovery.

It was the law, and there could be no appeal.

* * *

It was a law
not of men's choosing but made imperative by the circumstances of the
space frontier. Galactic expansion had followed the development of the
hyperspace drive and as men scattered wide across the frontier there
had come the problem of contact with the isolated first-colonies and
exploration parties. The huge hyperspace cruisers were the product of
the combined genius and effort of Earth and were long and expensive in
the building. They were not available in such numbers that small
colonies could possess them. The cruisers carried the colonists to
their new worlds and made periodic visits, running on tight schedules,
but they could not stop and turn aside to visit colonies scheduled to
be visited at another time; such a delay would destroy their schedule
and produce a confusion and uncertainty that would wreck the complex
interdependence between old Earth and the new worlds of the frontier.

Some method
of delivering supplies or assistance when an emergency occurred on a
world not scheduled for a visit had been needed and the Emergency
Dispatch Ships had been the answer. Small and collapsible, they
occupied little room in the hold of the cruiser; made of light metal
and plastics, they were driven by a small rocket drive that consumed
relatively little fuel. Each cruiser carried four EDS's and when a call
for aid was received the nearest cruiser would drop into normal space
long enough to launch an EDS with the needed supplies or personnel,
then vanish again as it continued on its course.

The cruisers,
powered by nuclear converters, did not use the liquid rocket fuel but
nuclear converters were far too large and complex to permit their
installation in the EDS. The cruisers were forced by necessity to carry
a limited amount of the bulky rocket fuel and the fuel was rationed
with care; the cruiser's computers determining the exact amount of fuel
each EDS would require for its mission. The computers considered the
course coordinates, the mass of the EDS, the mass of pilot and cargo;
they were very precise and accurate and omitted nothing from their
calculations. They could not, however, foresee, and allow for, the
added mass of a stowaway.

* * *

The Stardust
had received the request from one of the exploration parties stationed
on Woden; the six men of the party already being stricken with the
fever carried by the green kala midges and their own supply of
serum destroyed by the tornado that had torn through their camp. The Stardust
had gone through the usual procedure; dropping into normal space to
launch the EDS with the fever serum, then vanishing again in
hyperspace. Now, an hour later, the gauge was saying there was
something more than the small carton of serum in the supplies closet.

He let his
eyes rest on the narrow white door of the closet. There, just inside,
another man lived and breathed and was beginning to feel assured that
discovery of his presence would now be too late for the pilot to alter
the situation. It was too late—for the man behind the door it
was far later than he thought and in a way he would find terrible to
believe.

There could
be no alternative. Additional fuel would be used during the hours of
deceleration to compensate for the added mass of the stowaway;
infinitesimal increments of fuel that would not be missed until the
ship had almost reached its destination. Then, at some distance above
the ground that might be as near as a thousand feet or as far as tens
of thousands of feet, depending upon the mass of ship and cargo and the
preceding period of deceleration, the unmissed increments of fuel would
make their absence known; the EDS would expend its last drops of fuel
with a sputter and go into whistling free fall. Ship and pilot and
stowaway would merge together upon impact as a wreckage of metal and
plastic, flesh and blood, driven deep into the soil. The stowaway had
signed his own death warrant when he concealed himself on the ship; he
could not be permitted to take seven others with him.

He looked
again at the telltale white hand, then rose to his feet. What he must
do would be unpleasant for both of them; the sooner it was over, the
better. He stepped across the control room, to stand by the white door.

"Come out!" His command was harsh and abrupt
above the murmur of the drive.

It seemed he
could hear the whisper of a furtive movement inside the closet, then
nothing. He visualized the stowaway cowering closer into one corner,
suddenly worried by the possible consequences of his act and his
self-assurance evaporating.

"I said out!"

He heard the stowaway move to obey and he
waited with his eyes alert on the door and his hand near the blaster at
his side.

The door opened and the stowaway stepped
through it, smiling. "All right—I give up. Now what?"

It was a girl.

* * *

He stared
without speaking, his hand dropping away from the blaster and
acceptance of what he saw coming like a heavy and unexpected physical
blow. The stowaway was not a man—she was a girl in her teens, standing
before him in little white gypsy sandals with the top of her brown,
curly head hardly higher than his shoulder, with a faint, sweet scent
of perfume coming from her and her smiling face tilted up so her eyes
could look unknowing and unafraid into his as she waited for his answer.

Now what?
Had it been asked in the deep, defiant voice of a man he would have
answered it with action, quick and efficient. He would have taken the
stowaway's identification disk and ordered him into the air lock. Had
the stowaway refused to obey, he would have used the blaster. It would
not have taken long; within a minute the body would have been ejected
into space—had the stowaway been a man.

He returned
to the pilot's chair and motioned her to seat herself on the boxlike
bulk of the drive-control units that set against the wall beside him.
She obeyed, his silence making the smile fade into the meek and guilty
expression of a pup that has been caught in mischief and knows it must
be punished.

"You still haven't told me," she said. "I'm
guilty, so what happens to me now? Do I pay a fine, or what?"

"What are you doing here?" he asked. "Why
did you stow away on this EDS?"

"I wanted to
see my brother. He's with the government survey crew on Woden and I
haven't seen him for ten years, not since he left Earth to go into
government survey work."

"What was your destination on the Stardust?"

"Mimir. I
have a position waiting for me there. My brother has been sending money
home all the time to us—my father and mother and I—and he paid for a
special course in linguistics I was taking. I graduated sooner than
expected and I was offered this job on Mimir. I knew it would be almost
a year before Gerry's job was done on Woden so he could come on to
Mimir and that's why I hid in the closet, there. There was plenty of
room for me and I was willing to pay the fine. There were only the two
of us kids—Gerry and I—and I haven't seen him for so long, and I didn't
want to wait another year when I could see him now, even though I knew
I would be breaking some kind of a regulation when I did it."

I knew I would be breaking some kind of a
regulation—
In a way, she could not be blamed for her ignorance of the law; she was
of Earth and had not realized that the laws of the space frontier must,
of necessity, be as hard and relentless as the environment that gave
them birth. Yet, to protect such as her from the results of their own
ignorance of the frontier, there had been a sign over the door that led
to the section of the Stardust that housed the EDS; a sign that
was plain for all to see and heed:

UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL

KEEP OUT!

"Does your brother know that you took
passage on the Stardust for Mimir?"

"Oh, yes. I sent him a spacegram telling him
about my graduation and about going to Mimir on the Stardust
a month before I left Earth. I already knew Mimir was where he would be
stationed in a little over a year. He gets a promotion then, and he'll
be based on Mimir and not have to stay out a year at a time on field
trips, like he does now."

There were two different survey groups on
Woden, and he asked, "What is his name?"

"Cross—Gerry Cross. He's in Group Two—that
was the way his address read. Do you know him?"

Group One had requested the serum; Group Two
was eight thousand miles away, across the Western Sea.

"No, I've
never met him," he said, then turned to the control board and cut the
deceleration to a fraction of a gravity; knowing as he did so that it
could not avert the ultimate end, yet doing the only thing he could do
to prolong that ultimate end. The sensation was like that of the ship
suddenly dropping and the girl's involuntary movement of surprise half
lifted her from the seat.

"We're going faster now, aren't we?" she
asked. "Why are we doing that?"

He told her the truth. "To save fuel for a
little while."

"You mean, we don't have very much?"

He delayed the answer he must give her so
soon to ask: "How did you manage to stow away?"

"I just sort
of walked in when no one was looking my way," she said. "I was
practicing my Gelanese on the native girl who does the cleaning in the
Ship's Supply office when someone came in with an order for supplies
for the survey crew on Woden. I slipped into the closet there after the
ship was ready to go and just before you came in. It was an impulse of
the moment to stow away, so I could get to see Gerry—and from the way
you keep looking at me so grim, I'm not sure it was a very wise impulse.

"But I'll be
a model criminal—or do I mean prisoner?" She smiled at him again. "I
intended to pay for my keep on top of paying the fine. I can cook and I
can patch clothes for everyone and I know how to do all kinds of useful
things, even a little bit about nursing."

There was one more question to ask:

"Did you know what the supplies were that
the survey crew ordered?"

"Why, no. Equipment they needed in their
work, I supposed."

Why couldn't
she have been a man with some ulterior motive? A fugitive from justice,
hoping to lose himself on a raw new world; an opportunist, seeking
transportation to the new colonies where he might find golden fleece
for the taking; a crackpot, with a mission—

Perhaps once
in his lifetime an EDS pilot would find such a stowaway on his ship;
warped men, mean and selfish men, brutal and dangerous men—but never,
before, a smiling, blue-eyed girl who was willing to pay her fine and
work for her keep that she might see her brother.

* * *

He turned to the board and turned the switch
that would signal the Stardust.
The call would be futile but he could not, until he had exhausted that
one vain hope, seize her and thrust her into the air lock as he would
an animal—or a man. The delay, in the meantime, would not be dangerous
with the EDS decelerating at fractional gravity.

A voice spoke from the communicator. "Stardust.
Identify yourself and proceed."

"Barton, EDS 34G11. Emergency. Give me
Commander Delhart."

There was a
faint confusion of noises as the request went through the proper
channels. The girl was watching him, no longer smiling.

"Are you going to order them to come back
after me?" she asked.

The communicator clicked and there was the
sound of a distant voice saying, "Commander, the EDS requests—"

"Are they coming back after me?" she asked
again. "Won't I get to see my brother, after all?"

"Barton?" The blunt, gruff voice of
Commander Delhart came from the communicator. "What's this about an
emergency?"

"A stowaway," he answered.

"A stowaway?"
There was a slight surprise to the question. "That's rather unusual—but
why the 'emergency' call? You discovered him in time so there should be
no appreciable danger and I presume you've informed Ship's Records so
his nearest relatives can be notified."

"That's why I had to call you, first. The
stowaway is still aboard and the circumstances are so different—"

"Different?"
the commander interrupted, impatience in his voice. "How can they be
different? You know you have a limited supply of fuel; you also know
the law, as well as I do: 'Any stowaway discovered in an EDS shall be
jettisoned immediately following discovery.' "

There was the sound of a sharply indrawn
breath from the girl. "What does he mean?"

"The stowaway is a girl."

"What?"

"She wanted to see her brother. She's only a
kid and she didn't know what she was really doing."

"I see." All
the curtness was gone from the commander's voice. "So you called me in
the hope I could do something?" Without waiting for an answer he went
on. "I'm sorry—I can do nothing. This cruiser must maintain its
schedule; the life of not one person but the lives of many depend on
it. I know how you feel but I'm powerless to help you. I'll have you
connected with Ship's Records."

* * *

The
communicator faded to a faint rustle of sound and he turned back to the
girl. She was leaning forward on the bench, almost rigid, her eyes
fixed wide and frightened.

"What did he
mean, to go through with it? To jettison
me . . . to go through with
it—what did he mean? Not the way it
sounded . . . he couldn't have.
What did he mean . . . what did he really mean?"

Her time was too short for the comfort of a
lie to be more than a cruelly fleeting delusion.

"He meant it the way it sounded."

"No!"
She recoiled from him as though he had struck her, one hand half
upraised as though to fend him off and stark unwillingness to believe
in her eyes.

"It will have to be."

"No! You're joking—you're insane! You can't
mean it!"

"I'm sorry."
He spoke slowly to her, gently. "I should have told you before—I should
have, but I had to do what I could first; I had to call the Stardust.
You heard what the commander said."

"But you can't—if you make me leave the
ship, I'll die."

"I know."

She searched his face and the unwillingness
to believe left her eyes, giving way slowly to a look of dazed terror.

"You—know?" She spoke the words far apart,
numb and wonderingly.

"I know. It has to be like that."

"You mean
it—you really mean it." She sagged back against the wall, small and
limp like a little rag doll and all the protesting and disbelief gone.
"You're going to do it—you're going to make me die?"

"I'm sorry,"
he said again. "You'll never know how sorry I am. It has to be that way
and no human in the universe can change it."

"You're going to make me die and I didn't do
anything to die for—I didn't do anything—"

He sighed, deep and weary. "I know you
didn't, child. I know you didn't—"

"EDS." The
communicator rapped brisk and metallic. "This is Ship's Records. Give
us all information on subject's identification disk."

He got out of
his chair to stand over her. She clutched the edge of the seat, her
upturned face white under the brown hair and the lipstick standing out
like a blood-red cupid's bow.

"Now?"

"I want your identification disk," he said.

She released
the edge of the seat and fumbled at the chain that suspended the
plastic disk from her neck with fingers that were trembling and
awkward. He reached down and unfastened the clasp for her, than
returned with the disk to his chair.

"Here's your data, Records: Identification
Number T837—"

"One moment," Records interrupted. "This is
to be filed on the gray card, of course?"

"Yes."

"And the time of the execution?"

"I'll tell you later."

"Later? This is highly irregular; the time
of the subject's death is required before—"

He kept the
thickness out of his voice with an effort. "Then we'll do it in a
highly irregular manner—you'll hear the disk read, first. The subject
is a girl and she's listening to everything that's said. Are you
capable of understanding that?"

There was a brief, almost shocked, silence,
then Records said meekly: "Sorry. Go ahead."

He began to
read the disk, reading it slowly to delay the inevitable for as long as
possible, trying to help her by giving her what little time he could to
recover from her first terror and let it resolve into the calm of
acceptance and resignation.

"Number T8374 dash Y54. Name: Marilyn Lee
Cross. Sex: Female. Born: July 7, 2160. She was only eighteen.
Height: 5-3. Weight: 110. Such a slight weight, yet enough to add
fatally to the mass of the shell-thin bubble that was an EDS. Hair:
Brown. Eyes: Blue. Complexion: Light. Blood Type: O. Irrelevant
data. Destination: Port City, Mimir. Invalid data—"

He finished
and said, "I'll call you later," then turned once again to the girl.
She was huddled back against the wall, watching him with a look of numb
and wondering fascination.

* * *

"They're
waiting for you to kill me, aren't they? They want me dead, don't they?
You and everybody on the cruiser wants me dead, don't you?" Then the
numbness broke and her voice was that of a frightened and bewildered
child. "Everybody wants me dead and I didn't do anything. I
didn't hurt anyone—I only wanted to see my brother."

"It's not the
way you think—it isn't that way, at all," he said. "Nobody wants it
this way; nobody would ever let it be this way if it was humanly
possible to change it."

"Then why is it! I don't understand. Why is
it?"

"This ship is carrying kala
fever serum to Group One on Woden. Their own supply was destroyed by a
tornado. Group Two—the crew your brother is in—is eight thousand miles
away across the Western Sea and their helicopters can't cross it to
help Group One. The fever is invariably fatal unless the serum can be
had in time, and the six men in Group One will die unless this ship
reaches them on schedule. These little ships are always given barely
enough fuel to reach their destination and if you stay aboard your
added weight will cause it to use up all its fuel before it reaches the
ground. It will crash, then, and you and I will die and so will the six
men waiting for the fever serum."

It was a full minute before she spoke, and
as she considered his words the expression of numbness left her eyes.

"Is that it?" she asked at last. "Just that
the ship doesn't have enough fuel?"

"Yes."

"I can go alone or I can take seven others
with me—is that the way it is?"

"That's the way it is."

"And nobody wants me to have to die?"

"Nobody."

"Then maybe—Are you sure nothing can be done
about it? Wouldn't people help me if they could?"

"Everyone would like to help you but there
is nothing anyone can do. I did the only thing I could do when I called
the Stardust."

"And it won't
come back—but there might be other cruisers, mightn't there? Isn't
there any hope at all that there might be someone, somewhere, who could
do something to help me?"

She was leaning forward a little in her
eagerness as she waited for his answer.

"No."

The word was
like the drop of a cold stone and she again leaned back against the
wall, the hope and eagerness leaving her face. "You're sure—you know
you're sure?"

"I'm sure. There are no other cruisers
within forty light-years; there is nothing and no one to change things."

She dropped
her gaze to her lap and began twisting a pleat of her skirt between her
fingers, saying no more as her mind began to adapt itself to the grim
knowledge.

* * *

It was better
so; with the going of all hope would go the fear; with the going of all
hope would come resignation. She needed time and she could have so
little of it. How much?

The EDS's
were not equipped with hull-cooling units; their speed had to be
reduced to a moderate level before entering the atmosphere. They were
decelerating at .10 gravity; approaching their destination at a far
higher speed than the computers had calculated on. The Stardust
had been quite near Woden when she launched the EDS; their present
velocity was putting them nearer by the second. There would be a
critical point, soon to be reached, when he would have to resume
deceleration. When he did so the girl's weight would be multiplied by
the gravities of deceleration, would become, suddenly, a factor of
paramount importance; the factor the computers had been ignorant of
when they determined the amount of fuel the EDS should have. She would
have to go when deceleration began; it could be no other way. When
would that be—how long could he let her stay?

"How long can I stay?"

He winced
involuntarily from the words that were so like an echo of his own
thoughts. How long? He didn't know; he would have to ask the ship's
computers. Each EDS was given a meager surplus of fuel to compensate
for unfavorable conditions within the atmosphere and relatively little
fuel was being consumed for the time being. The memory banks of the
computers would still contain all data pertaining to the course set for
the EDS; such data would not be erased until the EDS reached its
destination. He had only to give the computers the new data; the girl's
weight and the exact time at which he had reduced the deceleration to
.10.

"Barton." Commander Delhart's voice came
abruptly from the communicator, as he opened his mouth to call the Stardust.
"A check with Records shows me you haven't completed your report. Did
you reduce the deceleration?"

So the commander knew what he was trying to
do.

"I'm
decelerating at point ten," he answered. "I cut the deceleration at
seventeen fifty and the weight is a hundred and ten. I would like to
stay at point ten as long as the computers say I can. Will you give
them the question?"

It was
contrary to regulations for an EDS pilot to make any changes in the
course or degree of deceleration the computers had set for him but the
commander made no mention of the violation, neither did he ask the
reason for it. It was not necessary for him to ask; he had not become
commander of an interstellar cruiser without both intelligence and an
understanding of human nature. He said only: "I'll have that given the
computers."

The
communicator fell silent and he and the girl waited, neither of them
speaking. They would not have to wait long; the computers would give
the answer within moments of the asking. The new factors would be fed
into the steel maw of the first bank and the electrical impulses would
go through the complex circuits. Here and there a relay might click, a
tiny cog turn over, but it would be essentially the electrical impulses
that found the answer; formless, mindless, invisible, determining with
utter precision how long the pale girl beside him might live. Then a
second steel maw would spit out the answer.

The chronometer on the instrument board read
18:10 when the commander spoke again.

"You will resume deceleration at nineteen
ten."

She looked
toward the chronometer, then quickly away from it. "Is that
when . . . when I go?" she asked. He nodded and she
dropped her eyes to
her lap again.

"I'll have
the course corrections given you," the commander said. "Ordinarily I
would never permit anything like this but I understand your position.
There is nothing I can do, other than what I've just done, and you will
not deviate from these new instructions. You will complete your report
at nineteen ten. Now—here are the course corrections."

The voice of
some unknown technician read them to him and he wrote them down on the
pad clipped to the edge of the control board. There would, he saw, be
periods of deceleration when he neared the atmosphere when the
deceleration would be five gravities—and at five gravities, one hundred
and ten pounds would become five hundred fifty pounds.

The
technician finished and he terminated the contact with a brief
acknowledgement. Then, hesitating a moment, he reached out and shut off
the communicator. It was 18:13 and he would have nothing to report
until 19:10. In the meantime, it somehow seemed indecent to permit
others to hear what she might say in her last hour.

* * *

He began to
check the instrument readings, going over them with unnecessary
slowness. She would have to accept the circumstances and there was
nothing he could do to help her into acceptance; words of sympathy
would only delay it.

It was 18:20 when she stirred from her
motionlessness and spoke.

"So that's the way it has to be with me?"

He swung around to face her. "You understand
now, don't you? No one would ever let it be like this if it could be
changed."

"I
understand," she said. Some of the color had returned to her face and
the lipstick no longer stood out so vividly red. "There isn't enough
fuel for me to stay; when I hid on this ship I got into something I
didn't know anything about and now I have to pay for it."

She had
violated a man-made law that said KEEP OUT but the penalty was not of
men's making or desire and it was a penalty men could not revoke. A
physical law had decreed: h amount of fuel will power an EDS with a
mass of m safely to its destination; and a second physical law had
decreed: h amount of fuel will not power an EDS with a mass of m
plus x safely to its destination.

EDS's obeyed only physical laws and no
amount of human sympathy for her could alter the second law.

"But I'm
afraid. I don't want to die—not now. I want to live and nobody is doing
anything to help me; everybody is letting me go ahead and acting just
like nothing was going to happen to me. I'm going to die and nobody cares."

"We all do,"
he said. "I do and the commander does and the clerk in Ship's Records;
we all care and each of us did what little he could to help you. It
wasn't enough—it was almost nothing—but it was all we could do."

"Not enough fuel—I can understand that," she
said, as though she had not heard his own words. "But to have to die
for it. Me, alone—"

How hard it
must be for her to accept the fact. She had never known danger of
death; had never known the environments where the lives of men could be
as fragile and fleeting as sea foam tossed against a rocky shore. She
belonged on gentle Earth, in that secure and peaceful society where she
could be young and gay and laughing with the others of her kind; where
life was precious and well-guarded and there was always the assurance
that tomorrow would come. She belonged in that world of soft winds and
warm suns, music and moonlight and gracious manners and not on the
hard, bleak frontier.

"How did it happen to me, so terribly
quickly? An hour ago I was on the Stardust, going to Mimir. Now
the Stardust is going on without me and I'm going to die and
I'll never see Gerry and Mama and Daddy again—I'll never see anything
again."

He hesitated,
wondering how he could explain it to her so she would really understand
and not feel she had, somehow, been the victim of a reasonlessly cruel
injustice. She did not know what the frontier was like; she thought in
terms of safe-and-secure Earth. Pretty girls were not jettisoned on
Earth; there was a law against it. On Earth her plight would have
filled the newscasts and a fast black Patrol ship would have been
racing to her rescue. Everyone, everywhere, would have known of Marilyn
Lee Cross and no effort would have been spared to save her life. But
this was not Earth and there were no Patrol ships; only the Stardust,
leaving them behind at many times the speed of light. There was no one
to help her, there would be no Marilyn Lee Cross smiling from the
newscasts tomorrow. Marilyn Lee Cross would be but a poignant memory
for an EDS pilot and a name on a gray card in Ship's Records.

"It's
different here; it's not like back on Earth," he said. "It isn't that
no one cares; it's that no one can do anything to help. The frontier is
big and here along its rim the colonies and exploration parties are
scattered so thin and far between. On Woden, for example, there are
only sixteen men—sixteen men on an entire world. The exploration
parties, the survey crews, the little first-colonies—they're all
fighting alien environments, trying to make a way for those who will
follow after. The environments fight back and those who go first
usually make mistakes only once. There is no margin of safety along the
rim of the frontier; there can't be until the way is made for the
others who will come later, until the new worlds are tamed and settled.
Until then men will have to pay the penalty for making mistakes with no
one to help them because there is no one to help them."

"I was going to Mimir," she said. "I didn't
know about the frontier; I was only going to Mimir and it's
safe."

"Mimir is safe but you left the cruiser that
was taking you there."

She was
silent for a little while. "It was all so wonderful at first; there was
plenty of room for me on this ship and I would be seeing Gerry so
soon . . . I didn't know about the fuel, didn't
know what would happen
to me—"

Her words
trailed away and he turned his attention to the viewscreen, not wanting
to stare at her as she fought her way through the black horror of fear
toward the calm gray of acceptance.

* * *

Woden was a
ball, enshrouded in the blue haze of its atmosphere, swimming in space
against the background of star-sprinkled dead blackness. The great mass
of Manning's Continent sprawled like a gigantic hourglass in the
Eastern Sea with the western half of the Eastern Continent still
visible. There was a thin line of shadow along the right-hand edge of
the globe and the Eastern Continent was disappearing into it as the
planet turned on its axis. An hour before the entire continent had been
in view, now a thousand miles of it had gone into the thin edge of
shadow and around to the night that lay on the other side of the world.
The dark blue spot that was Lotus Lake was approaching the shadow. It
was somewhere near the southern edge of the lake that Group Two had
their camp. It would be night there, soon, and quick behind the coming
of night the rotation of Woden on its axis would put Group Two beyond
the reach of the ship's radio.

He would have
to tell her before it was too late for her to talk to her brother. In a
way, it would be better for both of them should they not do so but it
was not for him to decide. To each of them the last words would be
something to hold and cherish, something that would cut like the blade
of a knife yet would be infinitely precious to remember, she for her
own brief moments to live and he for the rest of his life.

He held down
the button that would flash the grid lines on the viewscreen and used
the known diameter of the planet to estimate the distance the southern
tip of Lotus Lake had yet to go until it passed beyond radio range. It
was approximately five hundred miles. Five hundred miles; thirty
minutes—and the chronometer read 18:30. Allowing for error in
estimating, it could not be later than 19:05 that the turning of Woden
would cut off her brother's voice.

The first
border of the Western Continent was already in sight along the left
side of the world. Four thousand miles across it lay the shore of the
Western Sea and the Camp of Group One. It had been in the Western Sea
that the tornado had originated, to strike with such fury at the camp
and destroy half their prefabricated buildings, including the one that
housed the medical supplies. Two days before the tornado had not
existed; it had been no more than great gentle masses of air out over
the calm Western Sea. Group One had gone about their routine survey
work, unaware of the meeting of the air masses out at sea, unaware of
the force the union was spawning. It had struck their camp without
warning; a thundering, roaring destruction that sought to annihilate
all that lay before it. It had passed on, leaving the wreckage in its
wake. It had destroyed the labor of months and had doomed six men to
die and then, as though its task was accomplished, it once more began
to resolve into gentle masses of air. But for all its deadliness, it
had destroyed with neither malice nor intent. It had been a blind and
mindless force, obeying the laws of nature, and it would have followed
the same course with the same fury had men never existed.

Existence
required Order and there was order; the laws of nature, irrevocable and
immutable. Men could learn to use them but men could not change them.
The circumference of a circle was always pi times the diameter and no
science of Man would ever make it otherwise. The combination of
chemical A with chemical B under condition C invariably produced
reaction D. The law of gravitation was a rigid equation and it made no
distinction between the fall of a leaf and the ponderous circling of a
binary star system. The nuclear conversion process powered the cruisers
that carried men to the stars; the same process in the form of a nova
would destroy a world with equal efficiency. The laws were, and
the universe moved in obedience to them. Along the frontier were
arrayed all the forces of nature and sometimes they destroyed those who
were fighting their way outward from Earth. The men of the frontier had
long ago learned the bitter futility of cursing the forces that would
destroy them for the forces were blind and deaf; the futility of
looking to the heavens for mercy, for the stars of the galaxy swung in
their long, long sweep of two hundred million years, as inexorably
controlled as they by the laws that knew neither hatred nor compassion.

The men of the frontier knew—but how was a
girl from Earth to fully understand? H amount of fuel will not
power an EDS with a mass of m plus x safely to its destination. To
himself and her brother and parents she was a sweet-faced girl in her
teens; to the laws of nature she was x, the unwanted factor in
a cold equation.

* * *

She stirred
again on the seat. "Could I write a letter? I want to write to Mama and
Daddy and I'd like to talk to Gerry. Could you let me talk to him over
your radio there?"

"I'll try to get him," he said.

He switched on the normal-space transmitter
and pressed the signal button. Someone answered the buzzer almost
immediately.

"Hello. How's it going with you fellows
now—is the EDS on its way?"

"This isn't Group One; this is the EDS," he
said. "Is Gerry Cross there?"

"Gerry? He
and two others went out in the helicopter this morning and aren't back
yet. It's almost sundown, though, and he ought to be back right away—in
less than an hour at the most."

"Can you connect me through to the radio in
his 'copter?"

"Huh-uh. It's
been out of commission for two months—some printed circuits went
haywire and we can't get any more until the next cruiser stops by. Is
it something important—bad news for him, or something?"

"Yes—it's very important. When he comes in
get him to the transmitter as soon as you possibly can."

"I'll do that; I'll have one of the boys
waiting at the field with a truck. Is there anything else I can do?"

"No, I guess that's all. Get him there as
soon as you can and signal me."

He turned the
volume to an inaudible minimum, an act that would not affect the
functioning of the signal buzzer, and unclipped the pad of paper from
the control board. He tore off the sheet containing his flight
instructions and handed the pad to her, together with pencil.

"I'd better write to Gerry, too," she said
as she took them. "He might not get back to camp in time."

She began to
write, her fingers still clumsy and uncertain in the way they handled
the pencil and the top of it trembling a little as she poised it
between words. He turned back to the viewscreen, to stare at it without
seeing it.

She was a
lonely little child, trying to say her last good-by, and she would lay
out her heart to them. She would tell them how much she loved them and
she would tell them to not feel badly about it, that it was only
something that must happen eventually to everyone and she was not
afraid. The last would be a lie and it would be there to read between
the sprawling, uneven lines; a valiant little lie that would make the
hurt all the greater for them.

Her brother
was of the frontier and he would understand. He would not hate the EDS
pilot for doing nothing to prevent her going; he would know there had
been nothing the pilot could do. He would understand, though the
understanding would not soften the shock and pain when he learned his
sister was gone. But the others, her father and mother—they would not
understand. They were of Earth and they would think in the manner of
those who had never lived where the safety margin of life was a thin,
thin line—and sometimes not at all. What would they think of the
faceless, unknown pilot who had sent her to her death?

They would
hate him with cold and terrible intensity but it really didn't matter.
He would never see them, never know them. He would have only the
memories to remind him; only the nights to fear, when a blue-eyed girl
in gypsy sandals would come in his dreams to die again—

* * *

He scowled at
the viewscreen and tried to force his thoughts into less emotional
channels. There was nothing he could do to help her. She had
unknowingly subjected herself to the penalty of a law that recognized
neither innocence nor youth nor beauty, that was incapable of sympathy
or leniency. Regret was illogical—and yet, could knowing it to be
illogical ever keep it away?

She stopped
occasionally, as though trying to find the right words to tell them
what she wanted them to know, then the pencil would resume its
whispering to the paper. It was 18:37 when she folded the letter in a
square and wrote a name on it. She began writing another, twice looking
up at the chronometer as though she feared the black hand might reach
its rendezvous before she had finished. It was 18:45 when she folded it
as she had done the first letter and wrote a name and address on it.

She held the letters out to him. "Will you
take care of these and see that they're enveloped and mailed?"

"Of course." He took them from her hand and
placed them in a pocket of his gray uniform shirt.

"These can't be sent off until the next
cruiser stops by and the Stardust
will have long since told them about me, won't it?" she asked. He
nodded and she went on, "That makes the letters not important in one
way but in another way they're very important—to me, and to them."

"I know. I understand, and I'll take care of
them."

She glanced at the chronometer, then back at
him. "It seems to move faster all the time, doesn't it?"

He said nothing, unable to think of anything
to say, and she asked, "Do you think Gerry will come back to camp in
time?"

"I think so. They said he should be in right
away."

She began to
roll the pencil back and forth between her palms. "I hope he does. I
feel sick and scared and I want to hear his voice again and maybe I
won't feel so alone. I'm a coward and I can't help it."

"No," he said, "you're not a coward. You're
afraid, but you're not a coward."

"Is there a difference?"

He nodded. "A lot of difference."

"I feel so
alone. I never did feel like this before; like I was all by myself and
there was nobody to care what happened to me. Always, before, there was
Mama and Daddy there and my friends around me. I had lots of friends,
and they had a going-away party for me the night before I left."

Friends and music and laughter for her to
remember—and on the viewscreen Lotus Lake was going into the shadow.

"Is it the
same with Gerry?" she asked. "I mean, if he should make a mistake,
would he have to die for it, all alone and with no one to help him?"

"It's the same with all along the frontier;
it will always be like that so long as there is a frontier."

"Gerry didn't
tell us. He said the pay was good and he sent money home all the time
because Daddy's little shop just brought in a bare living but he didn't
tell us it was like this."

"He didn't tell you his work was dangerous?"

"Well—yes. He
mentioned that, but we didn't understand. I always thought danger along
the frontier was something that was a lot of fun; an exciting
adventure, like in the three-D shows." A wan smile touched her face for
a moment. "Only it's not, is it? It's not the same at all, because when
it's real you can't go home after the show is over."

"No," he said. "No, you can't."

Her glance
flicked from the chronometer to the door of the air lock then down to
the pad and pencil she still held. She shifted her position slightly to
lay them on the bench beside her, moving one foot out a little. For the
first time he saw that she was not wearing Vegan gypsy sandals but only
cheap imitations; the expensive Vegan leather was some kind of grained
plastic, the silver buckle was gilded iron, the jewels were colored
glass. Daddy's little shop just brought in a bare living— She
must have left college in her second year, to take the course in
linguistics that would enable her to make her own way and help her
brother provide for her parents, earning what she could by part-time
work after classes were over. Her personal possessions on the Stardust
would be taken back to her parents—they would neither be of much value
nor occupy much storage space on the return voyage.

* * *

"Isn't it—"
She stopped, and he looked at her questioningly. "Isn't it cold in
here?" she asked, almost apologetically. "Doesn't it seem cold to you?"

"Why, yes,"
he said. He saw by the main temperature gauge that the room was at
precisely normal temperature. "Yes, it's colder than it should be."

"I wish Gerry
would get back before it's too late. Do you really think he will, and
you didn't just say so to make me feel better?"

"I think he
will—they said he would be in pretty soon." On the viewscreen Lotus
Lake had gone into the shadow but for the thin blue line of its western
edge and it was apparent he had overestimated the time she would have
in which to talk to her brother. Reluctantly, he said to her, "His camp
will be out of radio range in a few minutes; he's on that part of Woden
that's in the shadow"—he indicated the viewscreen—"and the turning of
Woden will put him beyond contact. There may not be much time left when
he comes in—not much time to talk to him before he fades out. I wish I
could do something about it—I would call him right now if I could."

"Not even as much time as I will have to
stay?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Then—" She
straightened and looked toward the air lock with pale resolution. "Then
I'll go when Gerry passes beyond range. I won't wait any longer after
that—I won't have anything to wait for."

Again there was nothing he could say.

"Maybe I shouldn't wait at all. Maybe I'm
selfish—maybe it would be better for Gerry if you just told him about
it afterward."

There was an
unconscious pleading for denial in the way she spoke and he said, "He
wouldn't want you to do that, to not wait for him."

"It's already
coming dark where he is, isn't it? There will be all the long night
before him, and Mama and Daddy don't know yet that I won't ever be
coming back like I promised them I would. I've caused everyone I love
to be hurt, haven't I? I didn't want to—I didn't intend to."

"It wasn't your fault," he said. "It wasn't
your fault. They'll know that. They'll understand."

"At first I
was so afraid to die that I was a coward and thought only of myself.
Now, I see how selfish I was. The terrible thing about dying like this
is not that I'll be gone but that I'll never see them again; never be
able to tell them that I didn't take them for granted; never be able to
tell them I knew of the sacrifices they made to make my life happier,
and I knew all the things they did for me and that I loved them so much
more than I ever told them. I've never told them any of those things.
You don't tell them such things when you're young and your life is all
before you—you're afraid of sounding sentimental and silly.

"But it's so
different when you have to die—you wish you had told them while you
could and you wish you could tell them you're sorry for all the little
mean things you ever did or said to them. You wish you could tell them
that you didn't really mean to ever hurt their feelings and for them to
only remember that you always loved them far more than you ever let
them know."

"You don't have to tell them that," he said.
"They will know—they've always known it."

"Are you sure?" she asked. "How can you be
sure? My people are strangers to you."

"Wherever you go, human nature and human
hearts are the same."

"And they will know what I want them to
know—that I love them?"

"They've always known it, in a way far
better than you could ever put in words for them."

"I keep
remembering the things they did for me, and it's the little things they
did that seem to be the most important to me, now. Like Gerry—he sent
me a bracelet of fire-rubies on my sixteenth birthday. It was
beautiful—it must have cost him a month's pay. Yet, I remember him more
for what he did the night my kitten got run over in the street. I was
only six years old and he held me in his arms and wiped away my tears
and told me not to cry, that Flossy was gone for just a little while,
for just long enough to get herself a new fur coat and she would be on
the foot of my bed the very next morning. I believed him and quit
crying and went to sleep dreaming about my kitten coming back. When I
woke up the next morning, there was Flossy on the foot of my bed in a
brand-new white fur coat, just like he had said she would be.

"It wasn't
until a long time later that Mama told me Gerry had got the pet-shop
owner out of bed at four in the morning and, when the man got mad about
it, Gerry told him he was either going to go down and sell him the
white kitten right then or he'd break his neck."

"It's always
the little things you remember people by; all the little things they
did because they wanted to do them for you. You've done the same for
Gerry and your father and mother; all kinds of things that you've
forgotten about but that they will never forget."

"I hope I have. I would like for them to
remember me like that."

"They will."

"I wish—" She
swallowed. "The way I'll die—I wish they wouldn't ever think of that.
I've read how people look who die in space—their insides all ruptured
and exploded and their lungs out between their teeth and then, a few
seconds later, they're all dry and shapeless and horribly ugly. I don't
want them to ever think of me as something dead and horrible, like
that."

"You're their
own, their child and their sister. They could never think of you other
than the way you would want them to; the way you looked the last time
they saw you."

"I'm still
afraid," she said. "I can't help it, but I don't want Gerry to know it.
If he gets back in time, I'm going to act like I'm not afraid at all
and—"

The signal buzzer interrupted her, quick and
imperative.

"Gerry!" She came to her feet. "It's Gerry,
now!"

* * *

He spun the volume control knob and asked:
"Gerry Cross?"

"Yes," her brother answered, an undertone of
tenseness to his reply. "The bad news—what is it?"

She answered
for him, standing close behind him and leaning down a little toward the
communicator, her hand resting small and cold on his shoulder.

"Hello, Gerry." There was only a faint
quaver to betray the careful casualness of her voice. "I wanted to see
you—"

"Marilyn!" There was sudden and terrible
apprehension in the way he spoke her name. "What are you doing on that
EDS?"

"I wanted to see you," she said again. "I
wanted to see you, so I hid on this ship—"

"You hid on it?"

"I'm a stowaway . . . I
didn't know what it would mean—"

"Marilyn!" It was the cry of a man
who calls hopeless and desperate to someone already and forever gone
from him. "What have you done?"

"I . . . it's
not—" Then her own composure broke and the cold little hand gripped his
shoulder convulsively. "Don't, Gerry—I only wanted to see you; I didn't
intend to hurt you. Please, Gerry, don't feel like that—"

Something
warm and wet splashed on his wrist and he slid out of the chair, to
help her into it and swing the microphone down to her own level.

"Don't feel like that—Don't let me go
knowing you feel like that—"

The sob she
had tried to hold back choked in her throat and her brother spoke to
her. "Don't cry, Marilyn." His voice was suddenly deep and infinitely
gentle, with all the pain held out of it. "Don't cry, sis—you mustn't
do that. It's all right, honey—everything is all right."

"I—" Her
lower lip quivered and she bit into it. "I didn't want you to feel that
way—I just wanted us to say good-by because I have to go in a minute."

"Sure—sure.
That's the way it will be, sis. I didn't mean to sound the way I did."
Then his voice changed to a tone of quick and urgent demand. "EDS—have
you called the Stardust? Did you check with the computers?"

"I called the Stardust almost an
hour ago. It can't turn back, there are no other cruisers within forty
light-years, and there isn't enough fuel."

"Are you sure that the computers had the
correct data—sure of everything?"

"Yes—do you
think I could ever let it happen if I wasn't sure? I did everything I
could do. If there was anything at all I could do now, I would do it."

"He tried to
help me, Gerry." Her lower lip was no longer trembling and the short
sleeves of her blouse were wet where she had dried her tears. "No one
can help me and I'm not going to cry any more and everything will be
all right with you and Daddy and Mama, won't it?"

"Sure—sure it will. We'll make out fine."

Her brother's
words were beginning to come in more faintly and he turned the volume
control to maximum. "He's going out of range," he said to her. "He'll
be gone within another minute."

"You're
fading out, Gerry," she said. "You're going out of range. I wanted to
tell you—but I can't, now. We must say good-by so soon—but maybe I'll
see you again. Maybe I'll come to you in your dreams with my hair in
braids and crying because the kitten in my arms is dead; maybe I'll be
the touch of a breeze that whispers to you as it goes by; maybe I'll be
one of those gold-winged larks you told me about, singing my silly head
off to you; maybe, at times, I'll be nothing you can see but you will
know I'm there beside you. Think of me like that, Gerry; always like
that and not—the other way."

Dimmed to a whisper by the turning of Woden,
the answer came back:

"Always like that, Marilyn—always like that
and never any other way."

"Our time is
up, Gerry—I have to go, now. Good—" Her voice broke in mid-word and her
mouth tried to twist into crying. She pressed her hand hard against it
and when she spoke again the words came clear and true:

"Good-by, Gerry."

Faint and ineffably poignant and tender, the
last words came from the cold metal of the communicator:

"Good-by, little sister—"

* * *

She sat
motionless in the hush that followed, as though listening to the
shadow-echoes of the words as they died away, then she turned away from
the communicator, toward the air lock, and he pulled down the black
lever beside him. The inner door of the air lock slid swiftly open, to
reveal the bare little cell that was waiting for her, and she walked to
it.

She walked
with her head up and the brown curls brushing her shoulders, with the
white sandals stepping as sure and steady as the fractional gravity
would permit and the gilded buckles twinkling with little lights of
blue and red and crystal. He let her walk alone and made no move to
help her, knowing she would not want it that way. She stepped into the
air lock and turned to face him, only the pulse in her throat to betray
the wild beating of her heart.

"I'm ready," she said.

He pushed the
lever up and the door slid its quick barrier between them, enclosing
her in black and utter darkness for her last moments of life. It
clicked as it locked in place and he jerked down the red lever. There
was a slight waver to the ship as the air gushed from the lock, a
vibration to the wall as though something had bumped the outer door in
passing, then there was nothing and the ship was dropping true and
steady again. He shoved the red lever back to close the door on the
empty air lock and turned away, to walk to the pilot's chair with the
slow steps of a man old and weary.

Back in the
pilot's chair he pressed the signal button of the normal-space
transmitter. There was no response; he had expected none. Her brother
would have to wait through the night until the turning of Woden
permitted contact through Group One.

It was not
yet time to resume deceleration and he waited while the ship dropped
endlessly downward with him and the drives purred softly. He saw that
the white hand of the supplies closet temperature gauge was on zero. A
cold equation had been balanced and he was alone on the ship. Something
shapeless and ugly was hurrying ahead of him, going to Woden where its
brother was waiting through the night, but the empty ship still lived
for a little while with the presence of the girl who had not known
about the forces that killed with neither hatred nor malice. It seemed,
almost, that she still sat small and bewildered and frightened on the
metal box beside him, her words echoing hauntingly clear in the void
she had left behind her:

I didn't do anything to die for—I didn't do
anything—

AFTERWORD:

Sometimes It All Just Works

by David Drake

My parents'
thirteenth birthday present to me, a collection of SF paperbacks bought
from a guy going into the Navy, included an anthology titled Five
Tales for Tomorrow. I've since learned that the paperback was a
selection from Best SF of 1955,
but I was just getting into SF at the time; all the names and ideas
were new to me, and I had a thirteen-year-old's appreciation of style
(that is, effectively no appreciation at all).

Till I dug
out the volume a couple days ago, I couldn't have told you what the
other four stories in the anthology were (though one of them, Simak's How-2,
is justly famous). I say "the other four" because the second of the
five was "The Cold Equations."

A few years
ago Ramsey Campbell asked me to put together my list of the ten
greatest horror stories of all time; the first story I thought of was
"The Cold Equations." For me at least, the question isn't even arguable.

I've read a
lot of Godwin since 1958. None of it is similar to "The Cold Equations"
in tone, nor is any of it even remotely comparable to "The Cold
Equations" in impact. Though (as you know if you've read this volume)
much of Godwin's work is very good, all the rest of it put together
wouldn't have kept him from the obscurity that's covered truly
excellent contemporary writers like Wyman Guin and Ralph Williams (the
pen name of Ralph Slone).

But Godwin did write
"The Cold Equations." Eric suggests it may be the best science fiction
story ever written. That's true, but it's even more likely to be the
best known science fiction story ever written.

What follows
is my guess as to how Godwin came to write something so
uncharacteristic (and by the way, he never tried to duplicate that one
enormous success). The plot is lifted directly from "A Weighty
Decision," a story in the May-June, 1952, issue of the EC comic Weird
Science. I don't believe that coincidence could have created plots
so similar in detail.

But before I'd read "A Weighty Decision,"
I'd heard the rumor that Godwin offered the story to Astounding with
a happy ending: the pilot manages to strip enough out of the ship to
allow himself to land safely with the girl aboard. John Campbell read
the story and told Godwin to change the ending so that the girl can't
be saved. Godwin obeyed, and we have the story as it stands.

I believe the
rumor for a number of reasons. Campbell was notoriously fond of telling
his writers to change some critical point of a story before he bought
it. (He did that in 1940 to my friend Manly Wade Wellman, which is why
Manly sold "Twice in Time" to Startling Stories instead of Astounding—after
he'd told Campbell to go piss up a rope.) Further, the story with a
happy ending would be exactly the sort of triumph over enormous
adversity story which Godwin generally wrote.

Finally, the
plot is such an obvious steal from the comic that I think Godwin would
have concealed it better if he hadn't intended to use a completely
different ending. I can also imagine that Godwin wouldn't have
expressed his qualms at changing the ending to Campbell, who wouldn't
have winked at direct plagiarism. (Not that EC had any legitimate
gripe: Bill Gaines laughed in later years about the way he and his
staff at EC stole plots from SF stories and ran them without credit.)

So a good but
not great writer, through a series of chances, came to write an
outstanding story; perhaps the most outstanding SF story ever written.
I don't know about the rest of you, but personally I take comfort in
the notion.

Dave Drake

david-drake.com

Afterword

by Barry Malzberg

David Drake's
remarkable short essay illumines the comment from A.J. Budrys' which I
quoted in my preface, making what would otherwise seem an arcane
reference completely understandable. (" 'The Cold Equations' was the
best short story that Godwin ever wrote and he didn't write it.")

It is clearly on the record that a 1952
story, "A Dangerous Situation," appearing in the comic book Weird
Science, uses the central theme and circumstance of "The Cold
Equations." Although, in the Weird Science version, the
stowaway is the pilot's fiancée who hid on the ship so that she
could give him a nice surprise—her "nice surprise" is that she
is jettisoned just as thoroughly as Godwin's heroine.

There is
myth—but no concrete evidence—that Godwin, in the belief that Campbell
(to whom he had just begun selling stories; "The Cold Equations" was
his fourth appearance in the magazine in a period of less than a year)
would never publish an ending this despairing, changed the Weird
Science
story so that the girl was saved. But Campbell, having none of it,
flogged Godwin through numerous revisions until Godwin was forced to
accept the implications of his own material (the universe is vast and
uncaring and has no room for pity, sympathy or even awareness of the
human condition) and reinstalled the original ending.

We are not
sure of this . . .  The first collection of
Campbell's letters,
published in 1985, contains a letter to Isaac Asimov in which Campbell
says, "I had Godwin really sweating over that story," but there are no
specifics. It would be a pretty and resonant thing to believe that
Campbell, all on his own, found the proper ending and made Godwin more
of a copyist than he would have otherwise been, but we will probably
never know.

What we do know is that Godwin's story,
published in the August 1954 issue of Astounding,
found an enormous response. As I said in my preface, and according to
Campbell (a letter from that collection), it generated more mail than
any story previously had—most of it apparently from anguished men who
insisted that the girl could have been saved. (Harry Harrison in an
introduction to the story in his Astounding anthology in 1972,
said that the response to this story from ASF's overwhelmingly
male readership proved that males were clearly the more truly
sentimental and teary gender.)

Campbell then
showed Godwin his appreciation by the apparent rejection of his stories
over a period of more than seven years until "—And Devious The Line of
Duty" appeared in the December 1961 issue of Analog. One more
story appeared in the magazine exactly a year later, and that was
it—although Campbell edited the magazine for another nine years and
Godwin himself lived another nineteen.

Did someone perhaps tip off Campbell to the Weird
Science
story after the fact? We can speculate entertainingly and uselessly
over the imponderable Campbell but we shall never know. Campbell
certainly had an authoritarian and vindictive mode (John Brunner and
Fritz Leiber, regular contributors who suddenly became contributors no
more, have testified to that). But Godwin did sell to him again; and
Campbell, in a letter to Scott Meredith rejecting a 1966 Godwin story
(Godwin came to the Scott Meredith Agency in that year) expressed
unhappiness with the outcome and said, "I'm glad to see he's back to
writing, I've been trying to get him to do that for years."

So, who
knows? Science fiction is in many ways imponderable; our apocrypha have
often overcome the apparent truth. The history of science fiction,
compiled offstage and in its interstices, can never truly be known.

Godwin's story, certainly the most famous of
the so-called five most famous science fiction stories
(okay, for the record, the other four are: Bradbury's "Sound of
Thunder," Asimov's "Nightfall," Daniel Keyes' "Flowers for Algernon"
and Arthur Clarke's "The Star") was signed by an obscure writer; none
of Godwin's other stories is well known or often reprinted. The fact
that two of the five most famous stories are by writers otherwise
unnoted within the field and regarded in all of its precincts as
"one-story writers" is highly provocative and says a great deal about
science fiction itself. But that would be another essay.

How did this happen?

My answer,
years ago, was that Godwin was a writer who at the age of thirty-nine,
with no definable history and no estimable future, had been—as a
soprano said about a Puccini aria in Girl of the Golden West—"kissed
by God"; that Puccini and Godwin had not been creating at that moment
so much as they had been listening; and Godwin's failure to produce
anything remotely as memorable (not true of Puccini) makes the
mysterious answer the only explanation.

That seemed reasonable enough before I knew
of Weird Science.
Now I am not so sure. This story and its provenance become more elusive
and mysterious the more carefully they are considered. As The New
York Review of Science Fiction
debate made clear, there is less of a settled body of opinion on this
story than there was ten or thirty years ago. This of itself is not an
explanation or definition of a masterpiece; but it is certainly a
quality whose absence means no masterpiece.

Beyond "The
Cold Equations" are twenty short stories and three novels written by
Godwin. Some of the stories—I opt for "The Gulf Between" and "Mother of
Invention"—are quite competent. And the two prison planet novels (The
Survivors and its sequel, The Space Barbarians) are
memorable enough to have been optioned for film by the respectable
Howard Chaikin only a few years ago.

The third novel, Beyond Another Sun,
was written before Godwin came to the Scott Meredith Agency, was
marketed everywhere by the agency for five years, finally sold to a
bottom-line publisher in 1971 for a thousand dollars and barely
issued . . . I've never myself seen a published
copy nor have I ever
read or met anyone who had a good word to say of that novel. (Although,
in fairness, I should mention that the editor of this volume, Eric
Flint, thinks it would have made a good novelette—unfortunately, Godwin
tried to expand a too-slender framework into a full-length novel.)

Godwin,
without "The Cold Equations," is a mid-range writer of the kind formed
and framed by the 1950s. Some of those writers are clearly better than
he, others not so good, and almost all of them have been forgotten by
all than old science fiction fans. In deference to those writers or
their estates I won't call the roster, but I would note Godwin's
astonishing similarity in one way to the otherwise forgotten Jerome L.
Bixby, 1923–1998, who also wrote one extraordinary and memorable story—
"It's a Good Life"—and is otherwise unknown.
But . . .  "It's a Good
Life" has faded; "The Cold Equations" has not.

With "The
Cold Equations"—and it is his story; he signed it, and there is no
other fair ascription—Godwin comes as close to permanence as any writer
to emerge from science fiction. If there are SF readers, if there is
such a medium a millennium from now, Isaac Asimov and Arthur Clarke and
"The Cold Equations" will still be read. The story has not only
outlasted Godwin and almost all his contemporaries, it may outlast
science fiction itself.

It is a
mystery, this work, in the way that Puccini's great arias—my favorite
is the Dove song which comes very early in the first act of Rondine—are
mysteries. The marks on paper which cue the performer or reader are
absolutely no indicator of the power, the tormenting, haunting,
overwhelming power of the creation. For this we honor the creator, even
if the creator was (as Mozart said of himself) only "taking dictation,"
was only the medium. What passed through Tom Godwin in one night or one
week or one month in late 1953 was what Richard Strauss and Nietzche
called "The World Riddle," the muss ess sein which Beethoven
scrawled epigraphically on the opus 135 Quartet.

"Must it be?"

Yes, Beethoven and Godwin respond, yes it
must be. It must be and here we all are: in its enclosure.

3l December 2001

New Jersey

THE END

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eBook Info

Identifier:

NDNXRRCCDS

Title:

Goodwin-TheColdEquations

Creator:

Goodwin, Tom - The Cold Equations (v5.0 html)

Date:

7/27/2005