Two To The Stars
Amazing Stories – March 1955
(1955)*
Randall Garrett
(as by Ivar Jorgensen)

Things have come to a sorry pass, Liddell mused, when a man must face certain death merely by returning to the same planet that had given him his life!

-

	FROM the window of the commander's office you could see the Earth, brilliant blue, the brightest star in the sky. It was a rare time when you could see the Earth or any star through the dense Venusian cloud blanket. Smiling grimly, Liddell thought it was almost as if the commander had somehow arranged it that way.

	"We don't expect you to come back alive, Liddell," the commander said. He was a small gaunt man who wore the look of too many years of hard service in his bleak eyes. "But someone's got to go."

	"Because we can't survive on Venus either?" Liddell asked bitterly. "Is that it? If you're so sure I won't come back alive, you might as well tell me. I won't be in a position to reveal your secret."

	"Then you'll go?" the commander demanded eagerly. "I can't force you."

	"Yes, I'll go. But I'd like to know ..."

	"All right, Liddell. We're dying here on Venus. Slowly. We thought the Venusian cloud blanket would keep out the stronger rays of the sun. It only keeps out heat, Liddell. The high frequency radiation is coming through, you see. In another generation, it will kill us."

	"What about Mars?" Liddell asked.

	"I'm sending a man to Mars. Jacoby. Not that it matters. It's back to Earth—or nothing. There isn't anything for humanity on Mars. Too cold, not enough air, not enough sunlight, not enough moisture. Jacoby will go through the motions, but it won't help us. If we can't return to Earth, humanity is finished."

	The last page of the story of mankind, thought Liddell. Close the book. Half a million years of history, a bare instant of cosmic time in which mankind burned briefly, like a flame, a tiny spark, across one out-of-the-way-speck of a planet. And then nothing but the cold silent vaults of space. Not even memory ...

	"And you want me to find out if we can return to Earth?" Liddell asked the commander.

	"You've got to find out, Liddell."

	"But you don't expect me to return. Life can't survive on Earth, can it, sir?"

	"Our legends say it can't. Four generations on Venus, and all that remains is legend. A hundred years ago, we poisoned our own planet. A few thousand people escaped. Here. To Venus. But it doesn't matter. We're going to die anyway. Let me tell you something, Liddell. Do you wonder why I selected you?"

	Liddell nodded.

	"You just had your quarterly physical exam. Routine, you thought. It wasn't routine. You're going to die."

-

	Liddell stood staring out the window at the evening star, the bright blue Earth. Near it was a paler speck in the sky, faint and white. The moon, Liddell thought. Out there, across thirty-five million miles of nothing, the Earth and the moon. Waiting.

	"You mean," Liddell asked, "I'm going to die on Earth? You don't expect me to come back?"

	"No. You're going to die, whether you go to Earth or not. Radiation poisoning. All of us in another generation, but on some it works more swiftly. You have six good months left."

	"And the prognosis?" Liddell asked automatically.

	"Hopeless. Venus is a harsh master. We need every able-bodied man. That's why I'm sending you. I wasn't going to tell you, but somehow I didn't think it was fair. Now you know."

	Liddell felt absolutely nothing. No pain, no fear, no regrets. It was too soon. He was twenty-five years old and could measure the remainder of his life in a couple of dozen weeks.

	"So, that's why I'm sending you to Earth. We have nothing to lose but the spaceship. If there's an outside chance, you'll find out for us. If Earth can be inhabited again, you'll tell us. You'll save mankind. And then you'll die. I'm sorry, Liddell. That's it."

	"Only a few thousand people got off Earth a hundred years ago," Liddell said, remembering the legends. "What about all the others, the hundreds of millions who must have survived the war?"

	"Radiation," said the commander grimly. Then, for some reason, he smiled. "Here on Venus, it's natural. We can't help it. We're too close to the sun. On Earth it's man-made. We came to Venus to die of the very thing we tried to escape. Ironical, isn't it?"

	"When do I leave?" Liddell asked. Now, with the knowledge of his sickness, he suddenly could not bear waiting.

	"In the morning. I'm sorry there isn't more time, but—"

	"But now that the secret is out you don't want me to have the opportunity to reveal it?"

	"That's right. Life is precarious enough on Venus. We can't afford hysteria." The commander stood up. "But I'm probably keeping you. I'm sure there are good-byes which must be said."

	"No. Nothing. Tell me, sir. This Jacoby—going to Mars. Does he have radiation sickness too? Is he going to die?"

	"Yes."

	They shook hands, the commander who would live long enough to watch his children die, and Liddell, for whom the future had utterly no meaning. Liddell stood outside for a long time in the warm humid darkness. The heavy clouds rolled and brooded and billowed overhead, finally obscuring the bright blue evening star, Earth.

	I'm sure there are goodbyes which must be said. The words came back to Liddell now, mocking him. Good-byes. He would have none of them, for he could tell Laura-Jean nothing unless he told her the truth. He stood there in the hot damp darkness, trying to conjure up her face. It was not quite right. It never was. Once he had told her he knew he was in love with her because when he tried to think of what she was like, he got it wrong. She was the personification of an ideal, somehow formless and wondrous. He didn't want to see her, not now. He wanted to remember her that way, without tears, without sorrow, in the six months he had left.

	Later, much later, he sought out Jacoby and found him in the officer's club down near the marshes which bordered the city on the south. Jacoby was drinking. Jacoby looked at him and he looked at Jacoby and silently they toasted, consuming their monthly liquor ration in two hours. Jacoby who was going to Mars, a cold, arid, dead world. Liddell who was going to Earth, a world which had killed itself. Each with six months to live. Each staring silently over the rim of his glass and wondering if this was the last time he would ever see a human being.

-

	The spaceship was entirely automatic. Liddell unstrapped himself from the crash hammock after blastoff and stood for a time at the rear port, watching Venus, a great silvery crescent between ship and sun, flash away behind him. Then, clomping noisily forward on magnetic boots, he made his way toward the front of the ship. When he got halfway across the companionway, a voice said, "Fred. Fred, don't be angry."

	He whirled and faced her. He wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her. He wanted to strike her brutally across the face. He wanted to blink his eyes and look again and see she wasn't there. He stood completely still and watched as she patted a handkerchief to her lips, wiping away the blood. There had been but one crash hammock on the spaceship. He tried to imagine the pain she had experienced. "How did you find out?" he said. There was utterly no expression in his voice.

	"I had to come with you, Fred. I love you."

	"How did you find out?"

	"Sam Jacoby lives in my apartment building. He came in very drunk and very noisy. He mentioned your name. I went out in the hall and talked to him."

	"What did he tell you?"

	"That you're going to Earth, Fred."

	"Anything else?"

	"Isn't that enough? You didn't even come to say goodbye."

	"I couldn't, Laura-Jean. Don't you see?"

	"You said you wanted to marry me. To spend our lives together. Did you think I'd let you go alone?"

	"You fool!" Liddell said harshly. "This ship is automatic. I couldn't turn around and take you back if I wanted to."

	"If you wanted to ...?" Laura-Jean said eagerly. "Then you don't? You don't, Fred?"

	Almost, he told her. If she was with him and there was nothing he could do about it, she might as well know the truth. She was traveling through space with a dead man. Probably, she wasn't going to return from Earth, either. But for a different reason. Whether their mission succeeded or failed, Liddell would die. Yet, he couldn't tell her. He tried, but the words wouldn't come. I'm going to die, Laura-Jean. I have radiation sickness. We're all going to die from it eventually, but I'm going to die in six months.

	"All right," Liddell sighed. "You're here. You shouldn't have come, but there's nothing we can do about it now. Did Jacoby say why I'm going to Earth?"

	"Only that it was very important. He wouldn't tell me why. He said the chances of you coming back were—very small. That's why I had to come, Fred. If it was going to be a year or two or even longer, I could wait. But I can't live without you. I don't want to live without you. I ... Fred, I'm afraid. Hold me, please. Please, please hold me tight ..."

	She was warm and softly firm and trembling in his arms. For a long time he held her that way, stroking her hair, whispering words which afterwards he did not remember. When finally he moved away from her, Laura-Jean's eyes were bright with tears, "If we're not going to come back, ever," she said, "and if we're the only two people on this ship and ... and, we're not likely to meet any other people, that kind of makes you in charge. You—you're the captain of this ship, Fred. You have the authority. You can do it."

	"What the devil are you talking about?"

	"You can marry us, silly!" She tried to smile through her tears. She looked suddenly very beautiful and very shy. "Just say the word—Captain, and we're married. Say that we're married, Fred."

	For some strange reason he could not himself fathom, he did not. Afterwards, whenever Laura-Jean mentioned it, he grew angry. In his heart, he knew why. That would be the final bond, which he did not want. For the spaceship was automatic. Assuming they could survive on Earth when they reached it, Laura-Jean could return to Venus in the spaceship. If Earth did not prove lethal, Laura-Jean was going to live. True, like everyone else on Venus, her time was limited. One more generation, the commander had said. But somehow, it wasn't so bad that way, dying like that, when everyone died. And somehow, Liddell wanted to prove his love by not laying hands on Laura-Jean. Hands of the dead, he thought. I'm a walking dead man. It was very important that he did not touch her. If he touched her now, accidentally, he would not be able to stop himself.

-

	Five days later they stood together at the foreport of the spaceship. The light which entered through the quartzite was green-blue and beautiful. The great azure globe of Earth was suspended below them against the velvet immensity of space, black, infinite, star-specked. The globe was rich deep green with tones of blue, frothy puffs of white, streaks and smears and shadows of brown and gray.

	"It's beautiful," Laura-Jean said. "It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my whole life."

	"It's where our ancestors died," Liddell said bitterly. "Two billion people, in an orgy of self-destruction. You call that beautiful?"

	"I don't care what happened once, long ago. I think it's lovely. I have a feeling, Fred. A feeling that maybe—just maybe—God is watching. God is watching us return, and He approves."

	That was one of the things they never talked about on Venus. God. God had been left on Earth, forgotten. For, the leaders had written four generations ago on Venus, had He not forsaken His children? But the word was good, the way Laura-Jean said it. Almost, Liddell believed. But then he remembered the commander's words. The prognosis. Negative. Negative prognosis. What did it matter now, since he was going to die?

	A warning light blinked on and off over their heads. A buzzer sounded. "We're going to land," Laura-Jean said, staring raptly through the foreport.

	"You use the hammock, Laura-Jean. I'll strap you in."

	"If we squeeze real close, we both can use it."

	He was going to say no, but under deceleration pressure it would be all right. He would not be able to move. Hip to hip, they reclined on the crash hammock, fastening the straps. At the last moment, he wanted to turn to her and kiss her. But the pressure was on him abruptly, a giant hand pushing at his chest, constricting his entrails, contorting his face. Vaguely he heard the shrill faint scream of friction as the spaceship knifed through Earth's upper atmosphere. The outer hull, he thought, would be glowing bright, like a meteor. A shoot-ing star—with no human eye on Earth to see it ...

-

	It is not so bad, Wendy thought, to be a monster. At first, when you are growing up and the other children taunt you, it is very, very bad. Now, though, she was twenty, and a woman. Now the jeers hardly mattered. Now she could look at the scales, silver blue and actually not ugly at all, which grew in place of skin on her forearms and her legs from knees to toes, without shivering all over and wishing she were dead.

	And the others, even the children now, were less cruel. Perhaps they could sense it finally. Perhaps they knew that one day soon there would be nothing but monsters left, because while the radiation was no longer lethal, it could still alter a man's genes. And if she polished her scales, and gave them the silver-blue sheen of forged steel, they were almost attractive. Of course, there were other types of monstrosities, more extreme types. For these Wendy felt not revulsion but pity.

	Besides, it was what a man had in his heart that really mattered. There were monsters, all right, real monsters, but not on Earth. The monsters were those with hearts of black stone who, according to the old legends, had sowed the seeds of radioactive destruction on Earth a hundred years ago and more, and then had left in some mysterious, incomprehensible way, to voyage somewhere in the sky.

	It was funny, Wendy thought, the way her people knew about things like genes and chromosomes but knew nothing of the physical sciences or the science of the sky called astronomy. For these things were forbidden, and had been forbidden these hundred years. Ever since the Doom, Wendy thought, remembering the lessons she had learned in school. These things had been forbidden, and with them, history. Legends, approved legends, could be learned. But not history. The history books were burned. We must not—ever—dwell on the past. The past is forgotten. Is dead.

	"Wendy, are you listening to me?"

	"Huh?—No. No, I'm sorry, Howard. I was thinking."

	"For a young girl, you sure can go off into crazy moods sometimes."

	"Are you angry at me?"

	"No, Wendy. I'm not angry. After we are married, all this will change. You'll take up the duties of a housewife and won't have to worry that head of yours with thoughts even a man doesn't think."

	"You know? You could read my mind?" Some people, Wendy knew, claimed the power. It was another mutation following the Doom. This ability to read minds.

	"Not clearly," Howard Croton admitted. "I can just get impressions."

	"Well, I'm sorry," Wendy said contritely. "What were you saying?"

	"I asked you if you saw the shooting star?"

	"No? Where?" All at once, Wendy was interested. It was something from the sky, the forbidden sky. You could make a wish on it and maybe the wish would come true.

	"It's gone now," Howard Croton said.

-

	Wendy looked up at him as they walked along the rutted dirt road toward the village of his father. His father, she knew, was head man there, and lived in the biggest house. Even then, it would not be much of a house. For was not machinery forbidden? Everything had to be built by hand, and by yourself and your family. You could not hire labor. No man could hold another in bondage, for wages or anything else.

	Howard was handsome, Wendy realized. Hard-looking, in fact cruel-looking, with gray eyes of flint and the high-bridged nose and thin nostrils and cruel slash of a mouth, but terribly attractive. And normal. Except for his ability to read minds, quite normal. It frightened her sometimes. He was normal and good-looking and could have any girl in the village or from the outlying farms. But he had chosen her—a monster. He was handsome and some day he would rule the village in place of his father. Naturally, rule was hereditary. Otherwise, there would be conflict. And it was written that conflict was forbidden, absolutely forbidden—for had not the true monsters who had fled a hundred years ago to the sky almost destroyed the world with conflict? If they ever returned, then it would be different. Then conflict was sanctioned, approved, encouraged. For they must be destroyed before they could bring again the Doom.

-

	It was a fairy story, Wendy thought, and nothing else. They would never return. Perhaps they never existed. But these were secret thoughts, and Wendy never told them to anyone, not even Howard.

	As they neared the village, Wendy watched the farmers' carts and wagons creaking and swaying in across the rutted road with their produce—onions and leeks and potatoes and grain for the', people of the village. Carts and wagons, drawn by horses or great hound dogs grown huge after the Doom. And tired-looking farmers who could not use machinery in their fields. Grim-faced, dirty farmers who would work from sunup to sunset and in the autumn prayed for a good harvest moon and clear skies, for then they must work far into the night, too.

	"Will you look at that?" Howard Croton said.

	Urchins were running toward them from the village, shouting. Most of them were normal children. It was always worse in a village for the monsters, Wendy thought. Somehow, the normal ones sought out the villages and lived there. They saw few monsters from day to day and when one like Wendy appeared, they would usually jeer and taunt her. This was what she expected from the mob of running urchins. She braced herself for it. She had learned to ignore it, but now, now in front of Howard Croton, it would be different. She drew back and waited there on the rutted road without moving.

	But the urchins were not interested in her. They hardly saw her. Incredulously, she listened to their shouts.

	"A shooting star!"

	"So big ..."

	"Bigger'n the sun!"

	"Come down like a ball of fire on t'other side of town."

	"Let's go!"

	"My mama said not to go, we're kids. That's why we're going around the long way."

	"An' it's still smoking an' all, like it was on fire."

	And one of the urchins looked at Wendy and saw her for the first time. "Come on, Monster. Wanta see the shooting star?"

	They all ran off and began to circle around behind the west end of town.

	"Kids," said Howard Croton, smiling at Wendy. "How they can make up tall tales."

	"You said you saw the shooting star yourself," Wendy reminded him.

	"Yes, but it didn't land. They never land, do they? Those kids have some imagination."

	That's what Howard was like, Wendy thought. But since her own imagination was too child-like and extreme, he complemented her perfectly. "I guess their fathers and mothers have some imagination too," Wendy said without smiling. She pointed up the main street of the village.

	Howard Croton frowned. A few stragglers were running up the street away from them, shouting and waving their arms. In another moment, the street was deserted.

	"Let's go and see," Wendy said.

	Still frowning, Howard Croton followed her. Ten minutes later, along with the three hundred frightened inhabitants of the village which Howard Croton's father ruled, they stood staring at the spaceship.

-

	With thick, numb fingers, Liddell unbuckled the straps which pinned them down to the crash hammock. Laura-Jean was unconscious, but her face, which had been contorted with pain, was now relaxed. She would be all right, Liddell knew, and he stood up unsteadily on legs of rubber. He walked to the foreport but could see nothing. The friction of their passage through the dense lower atmosphere had fused the quartzite, blackening it and making it opaque.

	He could walk to the airlock, open it, and put an end to this foolish venture. Earth's atmosphere was poisoned. A split second exposure to it wouldn't be dangerous, and after opening the airlock he could pump the lethal air from the ship. But he hesitated. Laura-Jean had the right idea, he thought. It was nice to dream. He could stand here without doing anything to investigate the conditions outside. He could stand here and look at Laura-Jean, asleep now, on the crash hammock. He could think—and convince himself for a time the thoughts were facts—that Earth had again become a place fit for habitation. But soon—eventually—he would have to open the airlock. And then, the dream shattered, it would be worse.

	Laura-Jean's voice came to him. "Sleeping at a time like this. I ought to be ashamed of myself."

	Liddell smiled at her. He felt awkward. He could not go to her and touch her, which he wanted. He could not open the airlock, not yet. He just stood there. This was some return to Earth, he thought with a sick feeling deep inside him. It would never go down in the history books.

	"What are you waiting for?" Laura-Jean said, sitting up. "I'm so excited."

	"Maybe we ought to have something to eat first," Liddell suggested.

	"Are you serious? I couldn't get down a mouthful. If you don't open that airlock door, Fred Liddell, I will."

	In the last few moments before landing and unconsciousness, he had finally figured it out. He would satisfy himself and Laura-Jean that Earth was not fit for human life. He would write his report for the commander. Then he would wait until Laura-Jean was asleep, set the automatic controls to take her back to Venus, and walk outside to a quicker death from the more lethal radiation of Earth. It was the only way. If he lingered, it would be that much harder on Laura-Jean. In time she would forget him. She was young. And maybe—although the odds seemed incredibly, terribly against it—Sam Jacoby would find something on Mars.

	"Are you coming?" Laura-Jean said.

	"We could test the air with a counter."

	"No, please. I don't want to do it that way. There's nothing wrong with the air out there, Fred. But ... but just in case there is, we won't be hurt if we do it ourselves, will we?"

	"No," Liddell said. "We won't be hurt." He waited until Laura-Jean stood alongside him, and then activated the airlock mechanism.

-

	He had no time for surprise. The land was rich and rolling and green-matted with vegetation. And the people—there were hundreds of them. Laura-Jean let out one happy, excited yelp—and then rough hands grabbed them.

	"What's the matter with you?" Liddell cried. "Get your goddam hands off us!"

	There were shouts, roars. A sea of angry faces eddied and flowed before his eyes. Something clanged metallically against the hull of the spaceship. A stone. And another. One of them struck Liddell's shoulder, numbing it.

	"Stop fighting, you fool!" a harsh voice said in his ear. "The people will kill you unless we can get you into prison."

	For answer, Liddell tried to struggle free of the hands which held him. And then, all at once, as if he stood detached from what was happening, he took in the rough, obviously homespun garments of the crowd, the lack of firearms in a mob which might be expected to sport some, the absence of any vehicle except crude wood carts beyond the angry circle of faces. These people are savages, he thought wildly, and renewed his struggles. You couldn't reason with savages. You could only fight them if they wanted to fight.

	And Liddell, junior army officer on a frontier world, knew how to fight. He sent them reeling with thrusts of elbow and knee, clearing enough space to use his fists. He stood there with Laura-Jean for several moments in the middle of a churning circle, clearing it with flailing fists. They were closing in inexorably, though. At best he could earn for himself and Laura-Jean a few moments more of defiant freedom—and, he realized grimly, increased hatred from the crowd.

	Yet he would not surrender. He had not come across thirty-five million miles of space to bend his knee before a pack of wild savages. He began to curse loudly and steadily when a missile struck Laura-Jean's forehead, bringing blood and sending the girl to her knees. A face leered close out of the background of homespun and coarse bodies, some of them bared to the waist in the strong afternoon sun. Liddell extended two fingers of his right hand and thrust for the eyes, feeling the contact with suddenly yielding wetness, hearing the scream of pain. The face faded back, but others took its place. Liddell's fists split flesh, crushed cartilage, struck bone, with jarring impact which numbed his arms to the elbow. Blood smeared his fists. Blood—his own—stung his eyes, salted his mouth. He felt almost no pain, but they were striking back, pushing in on him. His left eye was swollen. He could barely see through it. Something had happened to his left arm. Tendons severed at the elbow or merely strained? he thought objectively. And then a great giant of a man, his face a mask of blood with skin split across his high cheekbone, drew Liddell's right arm up and back behind him. He stood quite helplessly and waited. If he moved, the arm would break.

	The first blow drove him to his knees. The second sent him pitching over on his back, gasping at air which suddenly refused to be drawn into his lungs. The last thing he remembered was Laura-Jean's scream.

-

	"... they won't treat you, Fred. They won't come near you." The words came, swimming through blackness, through wraiths of fog, to him. "I did what I could, but it isn't much. Fred, I was so afraid ..."

	He opened his eyes. The voice was Laura-Jean's. He would worry about Laura-Jean later. Her voice indicated she was all right. He looked right and left, saw the thick log walls, the clay-filled chinks, the great wooden door, the packed clay floor. Stout wooden bars made a lattice at the high window of the room.

	"Prison?" he asked.

	"Prison," Laura-Jean said. "I've been listening to them talk outside. They don't know what to do with us. Each guard was afraid to help you, thinking his companions might see him do it and talk about it. All they've been doing is staying out there and keeping the mob away. It's as if they can't make up their minds about us."

	"Why should they hate us so?" he demanded. He could move his left arm now, but it pained him. He became aware that he saw everything flat, two-dimensionally. His left eye was swollen shut. When he explored his face gingerly, he found a tender bruise on his left cheek.

	"Why should they hate us?"

	Laura-Jean echoed his words. "I don't know. If the mob has its way, we'll never find out."

	For me it hardly matters, Liddell thought. I'm going to die anyway. Six months sooner or later, what's the difference? But for you. For you it's different, Laura-Jean ... And it does matter, because savages or not, there are people here. They can survive here. If they can, the colonists on Venus can, too.

	He stood up, walked on unsteady feet to the high window. If he stood on his toes and grasped the wooden bars with his hands—bringing the left one up slowly, painfully and surprised that it would function for him at all—he could see outside.

	Lurid, watery light from the setting sun illumined the scene. The mob was very ugly, milling there. Torches had already been lit, spluttering and glowing against the gathering gloom. The mob had splintered into several groups, each listening to a frenetic speaker. Liddell wished he could hear the words, but they rolled and coalesced in a confusing babble of sound. The prison guards—half a dozen nervous, uncertain men, armed with nothing more deadly than clubs and daggers—stood below the window.

	"They hate us so," Laura-Jean said. "They want to kill us." She repeated it, as if she could not quite believe her own words. "To kill us. Why, Fred? Why?"

	Instead of answering her, Liddell said, "Someone's coming." He watched the mob outside' part to admit a solitary figure. The man walked up to the guards and addressed them briefly in a voice which was lost in the noise of the crowd. Seconds later, Liddell heard a creaking sound as the huge wooden bolt which barred the door to their prison was lifted. The door opened ponderously, admitting the roar of the crowd in suddenly increased volume. Liddell heard phrases snatched by his ears from a maelstrom of sound.

	"Kill them now ..."

	"Poisoners ... almost destroyed this world ..."

	"Fool! Fool, let Croton's son talk with them."

	"... for trouble. Why else did they return?"

	"Kill them!"

-

	When the door was closed once more, the man said, "I am Howard Croton, son of the head man here. You realize, of course, it is only by my father's grace that you are alive at all."

	At once, Liddell found himself hating the voice. It was too suave, too sure of itself. "What's the matter with you people?" he said, trying to keep his voice calm. "Is that the way you treat all strangers?"

	"It is written that the monsters with hearts of black stone," Croton recited, as if the words had been drummed into him from his youth, "all but destroyed the Earth and then fled into the sky. It is further written that we have no conflict among ourselves, for is not conflict the way of the monsters who fled? But if the monsters return, then it is written that we direct our strength against them."

-

	"Listen," Liddell said. "There's too much at stake for me to be polite about this fairy story of yours. I don't know who you are or how much power this father of yours has, but I demand that knowledge of our return to Earth is given to your highest authorities."

	"You're in a position to demand nothing. However, there are no higher authorities."

	"But I understood that your father ruled this one small village."

	"That's right. There are nothing but small villages like this all over Earth."

	"No national governments ..." Liddell began, amazed.

	"I am here to offer you your lives," Croton said matter-of-factly. "My father and I agreed that you certainly would not come to Earth alone, not just the two of you. We are thus aware that a great force of your people must be lurking in the sky, preparing to strike."

	Laura-Jean said, "But that isn't ..." and let her voice trail off. Liddell had given her a warning glance. She had been on the point of telling the truth, that they were quite alone and could expect no reinforcements.

	Liddell said, "And you want us to tell you when and where to expect them?"

	"Right. For that information, your lives."

	Their lives were hanging by a thin thread now, Liddell realized. The head man and his son, if their authority was respected, might be able to keep them from the mob's clutches for a while, but if they suddenly lost their value to the head man, what was left of their lives could be measured in hours.

	"No," Liddell said. "Maybe we're going to die, but we won't die traitors to our own people."

	"Ah, then you admit it? They're coming?"

	"I admit nothing."

	"If you don't tell me—""

	"All right, if I don't tell you—what? You came here because you're scared. All we have to worry about is our lives, and from the looks of things they're forfeit anyway."

	"No. I can help you. I can save you. I can—"

	"You say," Liddell told him calmly.

	"The alternative is execution for you, in the morning. If the guards can keep that mob away from you tonight."

-

	Liddell shrugged, wondering how far he could carry the bluff. "Then kill us," he said quietly, "for we'll tell you nothing. But remember this as your executioner strikes. If we die, you won't know when our people are coming, or where they'll strike, or—"

	"Enough!" Croton shouted. "I came because my father and I thought the precaution worthwhile. But the chances of your people coming down on this very spot are slim indeed. A few miles in either direction and it won't be a problem for my father or myself, or our people. The landing will be in another village, and—"

	"Fool!" Liddell cut him short. "Do you think village boundaries or even old national boundaries matter to us? Do you think we'd be satisfied with the puny domain of your father? With a few hundred ignorant villagers? When we come in great numbers it will be to fulfill your legends—to take over the world or destroy it as we see fit."

	The redness started at Croton's neck and crept up his face. His eyes were white slits against the livid skin as he said, "Then so be it. You'll die in the morning." And he turned angrily and strode to the door, rapping on it with his knuckles. Soon Liddell heard the great bolt creaking upward, saw the shaft of crimson sunset glow appear. Seconds later, he was alone with Laura-Jean again.

	"Why didn't you accept his offer?" Laura-Jean wanted to know. "We could have told him a false story about when reinforcements could be expected. I don't like the idea of lying because these people will have to be told the truth some day, but if it means saving ourselves and returning to Venus to let our people know they can live on Earth ..."

	"No," Liddell said flatly. "It wouldn't work. He's the wrong person. He doesn't think we're going to survive. He thinks the mob out there is going to lynch us, no matter what we told him. And once we answered his questions, he wouldn't lift a finger to stop them. But we haven't answered his questions, Laura-Jean. Now he's wondering. Now he doesn't know if he can afford to let that mob have its way with us. He'll wonder—and maybe let us live."

	"Maybe," Laura-Jean said. Her voice lacked depth and she was staring off into the distance, trying to pierce the thick log walls with her gaze, as if she could see what it would be like when the mob finally overpowered the half dozen guards and came for them.

	"Maybe we'll live long enough to find a way of escaping," Liddell told her. "Hope is all we have now, Laura-Jean."

	He walked over to her and kissed her, first gently, then fiercely and for a-time, for a long time after that, the mob outside was forgotten. But one small part of Liddell's mind remembered. He had come to Earth thinking he had six months to live, and that was bad enough. But now it might be six hours or six minutes or less—and not just Liddell, but Laura-Jean as well.

-

	The sun was gone now, its afterglow barely purpling the western sky. The lights of torches held aloft here and there in the crowd cast leaping shadows on the log walls of the prison.

	"Are you sure it's all right, sis?" Lonnie, Wendy's brother, wanted to know.

	"I don't care if it's all right or not," Wendy admitted. "I know I should be at Howard's house to meet his family. I know they're expecting me."

	"Perhaps they'll call off the betrothal. You wouldn't want that, would you, sis?"

	"I don't know what I want. I only know I have to be here now, that's all. We have peace, Lonnie; but we have nothing else. The world is a grim, colorless place and maybe it was wrong many years ago when we had conflict, and maybe it was not. But at least, according to the legends, the conflict produced poetry and painting and music and an appreciation of these things."

	"I don't see what this has to do with the people in the prison."

	"I don't either," Wendy admitted. She had to shout in order to be heard over the roar of the crowd. "But the two who came from the sky, the man and woman who came alone—doesn't it seem strange to you that if conquest was what they wanted they came that way, two people, unarmed, landing with fire and thunder so we could come and take them?"

	"You heard what Howard Croton said to the crowd a couple of hours ago. The prisoners admitted they were an advance guard. Spies, he said. Spying and waiting for reinforcements to come and destroy us." Lonnie shuddered. "Sis, do they really drink human blood? That's what they are saying in the crowd."

	"Hush, Lonnie. Anyway, you should be home on the farm."

	"I brought the cart in to get some supplies. The shop was closed. I figured I'd wait until tomorrow."

	"You brought that little cart, with a team of two fast horses, just to get supplies?" There was mock anger in Wendy's voice, but her eyes were soft and warm and smiling.

	"Aw, I like to ride 'em fast, that's all. Pop said I could."

	"Well, it strikes me as—Listen, Lonnie. Listen. Something's happening."

	A tall heavy man with a blood-reddened bandage on the right side of his face, brandishing a flaming torch in his hand, mounted one of the small dog carts. All eyes in the crowd turned toward him, as if there was some magic in the way he moved or what he was going to say.

	"It's Daggert!" someone near Wendy called.

	"Daggert was fighting them at the skyship this afternoon. Daggert helped take them in."

	"Hear Daggert!"

	For the first time in hours, the roar of the crowd subsided. Speakers had demanded attention several times before, and milling knots of people had gathered around to hear their words, but the words were soon drowned in roars of approval and disapproval. For Daggert alone silence fell like a shroud on the mob around the log jailhouse.

	"Maybe that's why I'm here," Wendy whispered to Lonnie. "Things are happening. New things, strange things—and frightening. But the rest of our lives is conformity and knowing what's going to happen. Howard and his family can wait. It's a terrible thing, what they're going to do. Lynch that man and woman, maybe. But don't you see? It's different. It's unexpected. It's like you driving that team of fast horses just because you like speed. I've got to stay here, Lonnie. If Howard doesn't like it ..." Wendy shrugged, and turned her eyes toward the huge flame-lit figure of the man Daggert, who was preparing to speak.

-

	He had a deep, commanding, bellowing voice. He roared, "I tell you, we've waited long enough. You all know the legends. They've come here, those two, for only one purpose." He said what that purpose was. Death—or more monsters—for the survivors on Earth. Daggert himself was no monster. Many of them in the crowd were monsters, and of these, half had mutations more extreme than Wendy's. But they wouldn't listen to a monster. It had to be a normal man, like Daggert. Soon, after every few words, after every phrase, they were roaring. It was like magic, Wendy thought. He would raise his torch on high and silence them instantly with the gesture. He directed their formless, frenzied emotional orgy. He held it in the cup of his two great hands and molded it. He was a troublemaker, a rabble-rouser—a born leader in times of unexpected stress, who could bring grim, murderous order to hysteria.

	"So I tell you," he concluded, "that unless we're all yellow and unfit to wear the name man, unfit to survive despite the worst efforts of the monsters who fled when the Earth was dying—unless we want to slink off to our hearths and cower there, trembling and afraid, waiting for the second and final coming of the Doom—unless all this, my friends, we have no choice but to batter down the prison door, drag out those two in there, and—"

	Further words were unnecessary. Wendy could understand the crowd's actions, although she did not share their murder lust. This was the unexpected, coming to brighten their lives with the wild hot leaping flames of the totally strange.

	Two heavy coils of rope were produced from somewhere, passed through the crowd from hand to hand until they reached Daggert. Several men trotted off in the direction of the village's one inn and soon returned with a heavy wooden bench fifteen feet long. Eager hands closed around the wooden planking, pounding feet churned the soft dusty earth of the village's main street. The bench, an improvised but effective battering ram, struck the heavy door of the prison with a loud shattering sound.

	The whole scene was almost dream-like, Wendy thought as she drifted through the crowd with her brother Lonnie toward the center of violence. The ram was carried back, borne forward with great speed, smashed against the door. The timbers shook, cracked, but held. Back went the battering ram, ready to strike again. For a moment, Wendy wondered about those two in there—waiting, cowering against the furthest wall, perhaps, for the end. Were they as evil as everyone said? She didn't know, but suddenly it was very important that she find out. She also didn't know why it was important, but this whole wild, unexpected evening, she had been governed by impulse. She would find out, she told herself, then realized it was impossible. In hardly more than minutes, those two in there, nameless, terrified, would be lynched.

	The ram struck again, shattering the wood of the door. For a brief instant it seemed the door would hold for one more onslaught, but suddenly, as the ram was drawn back, as the guards who had prevented the crazed crowd from reaching the huge wooden bolt and opening the door that way, scattered in all directions, fading into the crowd, the door tilted and crashed into the one large room of the prison. Holding their torches aloft, a dozen men streamed into the room.

-

	For Wendy, time was suspended. Seconds had passed. Less than seconds. The crowd streamed out again, the man and the woman with them. It was going to be over now, so soon, so soon. And strangely, strangest of all on this wild night, the man did not seem afraid. Proudly almost, he had one arm about the waist of the woman and walked steadily forward with the roaring crowd, out into the torchlit night. Wendy found herself wishing he was afraid. Wishing he would yell and strike out blindly. Instead, it seemed that he was walking blindly forward, like a sheep to the slaughter.

	But no ... no ...

	His right hand moved swiftly, so swiftly she could hardly follow the blurring motion in the torch-light. He plucked one of the spluttering torches from a man near him, bellowed something which Wendy could not hear, then swung the torch in a great arc over his head.

	Wind whipped flame around in a circle so it seemed he held not a torch but a ring of flame above his head. He swung it like a flail, lowered the flail, swept through the crowd with it. There were screams of animal pain as men scattered in all directions. Two or three figures, burning brightly, torches themselves now, ran shrieking through the crowd, their hair afire, their clothing, their living flesh.

	Incredibly, Wendy thought, he might do it. Might escape with his woman. But no, the way was not clear for him. It was half a mile and more to the skyship, and surely the crowd would close in on them, crush them with sheer weight before they could reach it.

	The man was a grim terrible figure now. Wendy would remember him that way all her life, brandishing the torch, whirling it, his face awful to behold, his mouth open as if he was shouting but the sound lost in other shouts, other screams.

	"Look out, sis!" Lonnie warned. "They're coming this way."

	She stood there, transfixed. Lonnie was clutching her shoulder desperately, tugging at her arm. "Sis, they're coming!"

	"Lonnie! Where's the wagon? Where are the horses?"

	"Why, just down the street, but ..."

	"Come on, hurry up!" Already, she was running, Lonnie, unquestioning beside her.

-

	They reached the wagon, climbed aboard. Lonnie moved automatically for the reins, but Wendy thrust him aside and took them herself. "Up!" she cried. "Up, up!" The horses broke into a swift, ground consuming gallop and the wind tore at Wendy's hair, her clothing, its cool exhilarating fingers dancing against her face.

	"You're heading right back into the crowd!" Lonnie wailed.

	She didn't hear him. Men ahead of them now were breaking wildly to right and left to avoid the thundering hooves of the two galloping horses. The wagon rocked and swayed, pitching from side to side.

	Then, all at once, they had reached the man with the torch. He had cleared a circle now, and was keeping it clear with the swinging, spinning flame. But already his arm had slowed and soon, Wendy knew, he would drop the torch from numb fingers and then the crowd would get hold of him.

	She drew the reins back so hard that the two horses, already lathering, reared dangerously. She was dimly aware of Lonnie shouting soothing words to them. Their forelimbs hit the ground again and they stood there, pawing nervously.

	"Climb on!" Wendy cried to the man. "Now, now while you still can."

-

	He needed no second invitation. He hurled the woman up bodily and leaped aboard the wagon behind her. It was only then that Wendy, limp and half-conscious, gave the reins over to Lonnie and sank down weakly on the wood seat. "Take them to the sky-ship," she said and slumped there, spent, her head rolling forward on her chest.

	After that, she was aware of motion, wild, surging, leaping, of the sway of the wagon and the wind-borne stink of the lathering horses. And voices, the man's and her brother's.

	"I don't know what to say. I didn't expect ... Thank you."

	"Don't look at me. My crazy sister!"

	"Then thank you, miss."

	And the woman's voice. "Yes, thank you ..."

	She was too weak to answer. She had hardly been aware of fighting off the half-seen figures when the wagon had stopped there behind them in the torchlight, but her arms were numb and she could feel blood seeping warm and wet from a gash in her side.

	"They're blocking the way!" Lonnie cried. "We can't get through to the sky-ship."

	"Try," Wendy said. She did not open her eyes.

	"It's no use, miss." This was the voice of the man, roaring over the clatter of hooves and creaking of the wagon. "They have a barricade."

	"Then turn around, Lonnie. Take them the other way. Take them to our farm."

	"But sis! We can't!"

	She said his name, once.

	"Lonnie—" The tone of her voice did it. She heard the horses whinnying, felt the wagon lurch wildly as the two animals reared again. Then there was a swaying motion as the wagon turned. Soon the rhythmic galloping motion rocked Wendy back toward unconsciousness.

	Later—was it seconds, minutes—hours?—Lonnie cried:

	"They're following us on horseback."

	"Are we near the farm?" she asked him.

	"Almost there. I don't know if we'll make it:"

	"Faster, Lonnie! Faster! It will be all right if we reach the farm. It is written that a man's territory, his personal property, is inviolate. They won't dare cross our border. And while these people won't be able to get away yet, they will have a chance to rest and think and plan."

	She could hear horses' hooves now, other horses, many of them. She was glad, infinitely glad this had happened. She did not know why. She did not try to understand. That would only spoil the feeling she had, the feeling which said, clearer than any words, that she was living for the first time in her entire life ...

	Closer came the horses' hooves. She could hear men shouting now.

	"We're almost there!" Lonnie shouted.

	"Are they crossing our border? It's marked, Lonnie. They can see it in the moonlight."

	A pause. Her heart waited with that pause, not daring to beat. "No," Lonnie said finally. "They're reining up."

-

	Here we are, Liddell thought two days later. On a primitive farm in a primitive village on a primitive world. Our lives are saved, for the moment. But they have the farm ringed around now. We can't leave it. We were rescued for nothing. Except to wait for death ... I guess I should be grateful to the girl and her brother, he thought. Without them, we'd be dead now—strung up to a tree somewhere. But still, there's nothing for us. Nothing ...

	"You've hardly said a word in two days," Laura-Jean told him. "You just sit there. It isn't like you, Fred."

	He growled an answer. Laura-Jean turned away as if she was going to cry.

	Just then Lonnie came running into the room. His freckled face was animated with excitement,, his voice breathless. "I came from town," he cried. "Sis says I should tell you what I told her. It's the skyship."

	For the first time in two days, Liddell was interested. "What about the skyship?" he demanded.

	"First all the kids from town went out there, throw-in rocks at it. The Monster, they call it. They keep throwing stones at it and calling it The Monster."

	"Their stones won't hurt it," Liddell said. 

	"But now the grownups are at it, too. They're trying to force the door and get inside. They're saying if they can get inside and mess things up, they'll be safe."

	"The fools!" Liddell cried. "The blind, blundering, incredible fools."

	Laura-Jean took his hand. "What can we do, Fred?"

	"I don't know. But it's all over if they damage the ship so we can't blast-off. All over. Everything. I'm going out there."

	"Fred, you can't. They'll kill you."

	"I have to go. You see that I have to go, don't you?"

	"I only know you'll be going to your death. I won't let you."

	Liddell's smile was bitter. The words came out almost before he realized he was speaking them. "So what?" he said, unreasoning defiance in his voice. "I'm going to die anyway."

	"What did you say?" Laura-Jean gasped.

	"Nothing. I—"

	"Tell me, Fred. I have a right to know."

	"I'm going out there, that's all."

	"You said you were going to—to die."

	"Listen, Laura-Jean. Does it matter? All I can do is try."

	"I want you to tell me."

	"No you don't, Laura-Jean. I can't lie to you. Just don't ask me, that's all.""

	"Fred."

	"All right, damn it. All right. It's radiation. That's why they sent me." As the words came out, he began to feel better. It was something you couldn't keep bottled up inside, because once the words were out you could forget about them and do what had to be done. "They said I only had six months to live."

	"Oh, Fred. Fred, Fred ..." Laura-Jean came to him. Her eyelids squeezed shut, the lashes dark and long. Two big tears rolled down her cheeks. "Fred, is there nothing we can do?"

	"Radiation poisoning? No, nothing. Now forget it. You wanted me to tell you. Nothing's changed. I have to go out there and stop them."

	Lonnie said, "They thought everyone on Earth was going to die of radiation sickness, my grandfather used to tell us. I can remember like it was only yesterday, but I was a very little boy then. My grandfather used to tell us how our biologists—"

	"Later," Liddell snapped. "I'm leaving now. Lonnie, do you think I'll be able to ride one of your horses? It's our only chance."

	"For God's sake, be reasonable," Laura-Jean pleaded. "You can't go out there now, in broad daylight. Speed won't help you, Fred. Stealth will. If you wait for night—"

-

	They argued the point back and forth hotly, but in the end she prevailed. It was, Liddell realized, the only way. Their one hope, and a slim one. If he could escape from the farm tonight without the ring of guards seeing him, and if he could reach the spaceship unseen, and if the villagers had not damaged the ship beyond repair, and if he could board it, fly back to the farm and pick up Laura-Jean, then humanity on Venus had a chance.

	The hours of waiting were very slow and very bad. He watched the sun and began to hate it. He cursed the sun, sitting up there in the sky, apparently unmoving, in no hurry to sink below the horizon and summon night. The hours crawled on leaden knees. But towards late afternoon a dark overcast swept in from the west, and that helped. It meant darkness would fall sooner. It meant the darkness, when it came, would be more complete.

	In the hours of waiting, Lonnie wanted to talk to him, to tell him something. But he couldn't listen. Irritably, he would wave the boy away. In the last few hours of waiting, even Laura-Jean's presence annoyed him. Out there, not many miles away, what were they doing to the spaceship? Had they entered it now? Were they smashing the delicate mechanisms with heavy wooden clubs, mouthing prayers to their foolish, foresaking God?

	And Laura-Jean said, "God's on our side, Fred. Oh, these people aren't bad, but they don't understand. God won't let our people be destroyed. I—I just know it."

	He was too restless, too irritable, his mind could not remain long enough on one thought to argue. Perhaps there was a God. He didn't know. At the moment, he didn't care. What happened to him was not important. But if he could save their people, perhaps then he would believe.

	Finally, night dropped its black obscuring cloak upon the face of the land. There was a threat of rain in the suddenly cool autumn air, and by the time Lonnie had darkened the exposed skin of his face and hands with charcoal, the first big drops of rain had begun to fall.

	"You better go on foot," Lonnie suggested. "A horse would give you away."

	And, unexpectedly, Wendy said, "You can't go alone. You might get lost. It's a long way back to the village."

	"But I can't ask either one of you to risk your life and come with me."

	"All right," Wendy said, smiling. "Don't ask. I'll volunteer. I'll go with you, because someone must go."

	"No. You've done enough for us already."

	But Lonnie was already blackening his sister's face with charcoal. "Don't be angry with me, please," she told Liddell. ""Actually, I'm being selfish. I want to go. Suddenly, for the first time, my life isn't humdrum. For the first time, things are happening. Big things. Important things. I want to be part of them. Does that seem so strange?"

	"No," Liddell said. "It doesn't seem strange. If you're ready, Wendy, let's go." He said good-bye quickly to Laura-Jean, shook Lonnie's hand. Then, with Wendy, he slipped away from the farm building into the wet night.

	And after they were gone, Laura-Jean asked Lonnie: "Your sister is in love with him, isn't she?"

	"Yes," Lonnie said.

-

	The knife at Liddell's belt scraped against the wet rocky ground as they crawled down the steep hill toward the shoulder of the road, making their slow way in the darkness among the graceful boles of mountain ash. It had been surprisingly easy leaving the farm, slipping out behind one of the posted sentries and moving quickly down the road before the man had executed another about face and headed back toward them. Then they had trudged in silence along the unpaved road which the rain quickly turned into a quagmire. After that, they had passed through the village boldly, because it was the shortest way. But no one had been out in the rain-drenched night. The yellow glow of oil lamps made pale golden squares against the night. There was the far off sound of laughter, of voices, of a woman singing from one of the wooden cabins. And there was no one abroad to stop them.

	Now it was different. Now, crawling down the slope with Wendy, Liddell could see the muddy, rutted road below them lit by a hundred crimson torches. A hundred yards down the road to his left, a great bonfire was burning fiercely against the black night. And in front of the flames, silhouetted against them, its dark prow pointing up at the darker sky, was the spaceship.

	His left leg, trailing, numb with wet and cold, struck something, dislodged it. A rock went rolling down the slope. He froze there, placed a hand on Wendy's shoulder. They listened to the sound the rock made, rolling and bouncing down to the road. They waited. There was no response. Dozens of figures stood around the bonfire, yelling, gesturing, waving their hands in the air. It reminded Liddell somehow of some obscene pagan rite which for millenia now had resided only in the dim ancestral memory of mankind.

	"They didn't hear it," Wendy whispered.

	Liddell nodded, realized the gesture was lost in the darkness. "Let's go," he said softly. Moments later, they reached the shoulder of the road. There they made their way along on hands and knees, stopping fifty yards short of the bonfire and half that from the spaceship. It seemed easy. Too easy.

	All at once, Liddell groaned. He began to curse softly but very earnestly.

	"What is it?" Wendy whispered.

	"The airlock," he said.

	"Airlock?"

	"The door to the skyship. It's on the other side. Between the ship and the bonfire. We'll never reach it without being seen."

	At first, Wendy did not answer him. For a while he stood there listening to the sounds of wood crackling in the bonfire, of men shouting, of wood striking metal, as if, through the night, the people of the village were still trying to smash their way into the spaceship. And in time, Liddell thought bleakly, they would do it.

	"It's terribly important to you, isn't it?" Wendy asked.

	He realized that she had never asked that before. She had helped them escape the mob, had come back with him now, without knowing why. "Yes," he said, gripping her hand impulsively. "More important than I can tell you. Because you helped us, I guess you don't believe those legends about the people who went off to the sky. We didn't poison the Earth any more than you did. It was all of us, your ancestors and mine, together, in our great evil. We managed to get away, that's all. But where we are now—we can't live. It's something in the air—radiation poison. Unless I can lead my people back to Earth, all of them will perish."

	"And you. Lonnie told me. You're going to die of the radiation."

	"You understand those things?"

	"We had to. We forgot all about physical science and concentrated our best minds on the biological effects of radiation. We too would have died otherwise. Listen, please. I believe you. I'm not like these others. I .don't know why, but I'm not. What I'm going to do now is for you. You understand?"

	"What are you talking about?"

-

	She hardly heard him, he realized. Almost, she was talking to herself now. "It might have been different for us, but it wasn't meant to be that way. Once, once briefly I was allowed to live, my life filled with newness and strangeness and wonder. You understand? It doesn't matter. It's for you ... and your people."

	"I still don't know—"

	"Listen. I know you. You have honor and pride. Soon you must make a decision. Remember that the fate of your people hangs in the balance. The decision you make must be the right one. I am known here and liked. I'll be all right. I will marry the head man's son, and soon the strangeness of these days will be forgotten by my people. Although I, I will never forget it." Abruptly, she pressed something into his hand. "Take this." She swayed toward him, kissed him full on the mouth. Then she let go of his hand and began running swiftly toward the spaceship—and beyond it. Toward the bonfire and the figures silhouetted against it.

	She called in a loud voice: "It's me—Wendy. He's crazy, that man from the skyship. Crazy. I managed to get away, but he's after me. He's coming."

	And the shouts:

	"Where?"

	"We'll kill him!"

	"Show us, Wendy."

	And Wendy: "Then follow me."

	And she led them, Liddell saw, not toward where he was hiding, but off in another direction. His heart pounding wildly, he waited there in the rain, the rain which was falling harder now, streaming down steadily on him, drenching him. If they found she was lying ...

	But she had mentioned the head man's son, the one who had spoken to him and Laura-Jean in prison. If the head man's son protected her, she would be all right. And a world needed saving—

	Liddell thrust the small hard object Wendy had given him into a pocket of his jacket, gripped the knife in his right hand, and sprinted toward the spaceship.

-

	He came all the way around the left side of the ship before he saw the three figures standing near the airlock, and when he did see them it was too late.

	Hot blasts of air from the bonfire reached him through the rain. The flames began to smoulder now, smoking and hissing as the strong rain began to smother them. By the ruddy light which remained, though, he could see the three men. There was no retreating. They had spotted him. This was his one chance, his final chance, and he knew it.

	"It's him!" one of them cried. "It's the one from the skyship."

	Liddell recognized the booming voice, saw the bandage on the man's right cheek. It was the man, Daggert he was called, who had led them into the prison, led the mob there to lynch them.

	Waiting, balanced easily on the balls of his feet, the knife held low in his right hand, no higher than his thighs, Liddell watched them come for him. He did not think Daggert would be in front, and he was right. He knew Daggert's kind. Daggert was a rabble-rouser, but valued his own hide. Daggert would let his companions test the opposition first.

	The lead figure lunged at Liddell awkwardly, his own knife drawn, his right hand raised with it over his shoulder. This one, Liddell thought with unexpected objectivity, has not been trained to fight with the knife. He waited, sidestepped easily, pivoted his body, grasping the man's wrist as he swung the fire-gleaming blade. Liddell went down swiftly on one knee and hurled the man, arms and legs flailing, over his head.

	He barely had time to turn and face the second one. This man was better, very much better. He came for Liddell in a balanced crouch, the knife low at the level of his waist, held easily there, not gripped with strain-whitened knuckles, so he could thrust in either direction. The thrust rose upward in a blur of motion, aimed for the tendons and great veins in Liddell's neck. When it was too late for the man to check himself, Liddell let his knees go limp and dropped swiftly to the ground. The man's knife sliced air over his head and for a brief moment the knife-wielder stood that way, awkward, vulnerable, arm outstretched.

	It was a brief moment, but it was enough. Liddell shot upright and in a quick fluid motion of his right hand sank the blade of his knife into the soft flesh of the man's armpit. He regretted it. He had no fight with the man. The man was not Daggert. Daggert was different. Liddell would not mind killing Daggert at all.

	The man screamed. Liddell wrenched the knife lose before the figure fell away from him. A spray of blood, warmer than the rain, squirted against Liddell's face.

	It was then that the first man, the awkward one, crawling back through the darkness, tripped him.

	He fell heavily, his right elbow striking against rock, the arm going numb. He was aware of the knife being hurled from his fingers, of Daggert's wild triumphant bellow. The other man he did not see. He had eyes only for Daggert, who came plunging down at him. You don't save a world with sophistication and science, Liddell found himself thinking, the thought running wildly, ridiculously through his brain in the split, second it took Daggert to reach him. You save it with violence or you don't save it at all—

-

	At the last moment, Liddell rolled over on his side. He felt the blade of Daggert's knife scrape against his ribs, scalding like flame. He drove his knee up into Daggert's groin, two stiffened fingers of his right hand at Daggert's eyes. The big man twisted his head up, roaring, caught the fingers on his cheekbones harmlessly. As he swung the knife again, the other man came lunging for Liddell. Daggert's knife bit into flesh, but not Liddell's. The other man screamed, his voice bubbling with blood in his throat.

	Liddell got to his feet, ran not for the spaceship but the bonfire beyond it. He needed time to operate the combination mechanism of the airlock. Daggert—alive—wouldn't give him time.

	Through the darkness, he heard shouts, the pounding of many feet running. The others were returning.

	He reached the great fire, stood for a moment in its warmth, then plunged his hands toward, the base of the flames, brought them out—scorched—with a brand.

	He whirled to face Daggert. The man was in no hurry. He came for Liddell slowly, relishing the seconds, his knife ready. He did not consider the firebrand a weapon.

	Liddell sighed. If Daggert had thought to throw the knife, Liddell would be finished. But Daggert wanted to sink it into Liddell's flesh with his own hand. Liddell waited until it was safe to wait no longer, then suddenly leaped at Daggert and thrust the firebrand in his face.

	Daggert screamed. His eyes went wide, unbelieving, in the split second before the flame enveloped them. His hair and his homespun shirt were afire. He beat huge hands across his chest and ran howling, a blazing torch, off into darkness. He took a dozen running steps and fell.

	Liddell leaped for the spaceship. With numb fingers, he twisted the dials of the airlock mechanism. The shouts were closer now, but he did not turn to look. He felt the airlock door give suddenly. He tumbled inside the spaceship and slammed the airlock door behind him.

	He was safe now. Something made him go to the one pane of quartzite in the fore-port which had not been fused entirely by their descent through Earth's atmosphere. It took a while before his eyes could make out the figures there in the fading firelight outside. Finally, he saw Wendy. She was standing with the head man's son, with Howard Croton. His arm was around her waist. She was sobbing, her shoulders wracked with the sobs. She had made her decision, and she would live. Happiness she would not know for a long time. But it was not given that everyone should be happy all the days of his life. Not given? thought Liddell. Given? By whom ... I believe, he told himself incredulously. I believe in Him Who, after all, has not foresaken His people ...

	A moment later, he lifted the spaceship and headed it for the farm where Wendy and her brother lived and where Laura-Jean was waiting for him.

	Lonnie was very excited when Liddell returned. "Did she give it to you?" he asked.

	"Give it to me—yes, she gave me something."

	Lonnie was going to say more, but Laura-Jean was there then, and came into Lid-dell's arms, kissing him, holding herself close against him, crying but managing to say, "It's a cure for radiation poisoning. You're not going to die, Fred. You're not going to die."

	"A cure?"

	"They developed it, these people. It's why they didn't perish. Oh, Fred ..."

	He walked back with her into the spaceship. They could remain on Venus, he thought, his people, because now, with what he had in his pocket, they could eliminate the radiation sickness, analyzing the drug, reproducing it ...

	But they would not remain on Venus. It wasn't meant that the human race should form two splinter groups like that. Mankind would reunite again, the men of Venus bringing back the ways of science to the men of Earth, dispelling their foolish legends with the unalterable facts of history.

	And together one day soon, not because they had to but because they wanted to, all of them might journey to the stars ...

The End