This Earth of Hours

THE ADVANCE squadron was coming into line as Master

Sergeant Oberholzer came onto the bridge of the Novae

Washingtongrad, saluted, and stood stiffly to the left of Lieutenant Campion, the exec, to wait for orders. The bridge

was crowded and crackling with tension, but after twenty

years in the Marines it was all old stuff to Oberholzer. The

Hobo (as most of the enlisted men called her, out of earshot

of the brass) was at the point of the formation, as befitted

a virtually indestructible battleship already surfeited with

these petty conquests. The rest of the cone was sweeping

on ahead, in the swift enveloping maneuver which had

reduced so many previous planets before they had been able

to understand what was happening to them.

This time, the planet at the focus of all those shifting

conic sections of raw naval power was a place called Calle.

It was showing now on a screen that Oberholzer could see,

turning as placidly as any planet turned when you were too far

away from it to see what guns it might be pointing at you.

Lieutenant Campion was watching it too, though he had to

look out of the very corners of his eyes to see it at all.

If the exec were caught watching the screen instead of

the meter board assigned to him, Captain Hammer would

probably reduce him to an ensign. Nevertheless, Campion

never took his eyes off the image of Calle. This one was

going to be rough.

Captain Hammer was watching, too. After a moment he

said, "Sound!" in a voice like sandpaper.

"By the pulse six, sir," Lieutenant Spring's voice murmured

from the direction of the 'scope. His junior, a very raw

youngster named Rover, passed him a chit from the plotting

table. "For that read: By the birefs five eight nine, sir,"

the invisible navigator corrected.

Oberholzer listened without moving while Captain Ham-

mer muttered under his breath to Flo-Mar 12-Upjohn, the

only civilian allowed on the bridgeand small wonder,

since he was the Consort of State of the Matriarchy itself.

Hammer had long ago become accustomed enough to his

own bridge to be able to control who overheard him, but

12-Upjohn's answering whisper must have been audible to

every man there.

'The briefing said nothing about a second inhabited

planet," the Consort said, a little peevishly. "But then

there's very little we do know about this systemthat's

part of our trouble. What makes you think it's a colony?"

"A colony from Calle, not one of ours," Hammer said,

in more or less normal tones; evidently he had decided

against trying to keep only half of the discussion private.

"The electromagnetic 'noise' from both planets has the same

spectrumthe energy level, the output, is higher on Calle,

that's all. That means similar machines being used in similar

ways. And let me point out, Your Excellency, that the outer

planet is in opposition to Calle now, which will put it

precisely in our rear if we complete this maneuver."

"When we complete this maneuver," 12-Upjohn said

firmly. "Is there any evidence of communication between

the two planets?"

Hammer frowned. "No," he admitted.

"Then we'll regard the colonization hypothesis as unproved

and stand ready to strike back hard if events prove us

wrong. I think we have a sufficient force here to reduce

three planets like Calle if we're driven to that pitch."

Hammer grunted and resigned the argument. Of course it

was quite possible that 12-Upjohn was right; he did not lack

for experiencein fact, he wore the Silver Barring, as the

most-traveled Consort of State ever to ride the Standing

Wave. Nevertheless Oberholzer repressed a sniff with difficulty.

Like all the military, he was a colonial; he had never seen

the Earth, and never expected to; and, both as a colonial

and as a Marine who had been fighting the Matriarchy's

battles all his adult life, he was more than a little contemp-

tuous of Earthmen, with their tandem names and all that

they implied. Of course it was not the Consort of State's fault

that he had been born on Earth, and so had been named

only Marvin 12 out of the misfortune of being a male; nor

that he had married into Florence Upjohn's cabinet, that

being the only way one could become a cabinet member,

and Marvin 12 having been taught from birth to believe

such a post the highest honor a man might covet. All the

same, neither 12-Upjohn nor his entourage of drones filled

Oberholzer with confidence.

Nobody, however, had asked M. Sgt. Richard Oberholzer

what he thought, and nobody was likely to. As the chief

of all the non-Navy enlisted personnel on board the Hobo,

he was expected to be on the bridge when matters were

ripening toward criticality; but his duty there was to listen,

not to proffer advice. He could not in fact remember any

occasion when an officer had asked his opinion, though he

had receivedand executedhis fair share of near-suicidal

orders from bridges long demolished.

"By the pulse five point five," Lieutenant Spring's voice

sang.

"Sergeant Oberholzer," Hammer said.

"Aye, sir."

"We are proceeding as per orders. You may now brief

your men and put them into full battle gear."

Oberholzer saluted and went below. There was little enough

he could tell the squadas 12-Upjohn had said, Calle's

system was nearly unknownbut even that little would

improve the total ignorance in which they had been kept

till now. Luckily, they were not much given to asking ques-

tions of a strategic sort; like impressed spacehands every-

where, the huge mass of the Matriarchy's interstellar holdings

meant nothing to them but endlessly riding the Standing

Wave, with battle and death lurking at the end of every

jump. Luckily also, they were inclined to trust Oberholzer,

if only for the low cunning he had shown in keeping most

of them alive, especially in the face of unusually Crimean

orders from the bridge.

This time Oberholzer would need every ounce of trust and

erg of obedience they would give him. Though he never ex-

pected anything but the worst, he had a queer cold feeling

that this time he was going to get it. There were hardly

any data to go on yet, but there had been something about

Calle that looked persuasively like the end of the line.

Very few of the forty men in the wardroom even looked

up as Oberholzer entered. They were checking their gear

in the dismal light of the fluorescents, with the single-mind-

edness of men to whom a properly wound gun-tube coil, a

properly set face-shield gasket, a properly fueled and focused

vaulting jet, have come to mean more than parents, children,

retirement pensions, the rule of law, or the logic of empire.

The only man to show any flicker of interest was Sergeant

Cassiriras was normal, since he was Oberholzer's under-

studyand he did no more than look up from over the

straps of his antigas suit and say, "Well?"

"Well," Oberholzer said, "now hear this."

There was a sort of composite jingle and clank as the

men lowered their gear to the deck or put it aside on their

bunks.

"We're investing a planet called Calle in the Canes

Venatici cluster," Oberholzer said, sitting down on an olive-

drab canvas pack stuffed with lysurgic acid grenades. "A

cruiser called the Assam Dragonyou were with her on her

shakedown, weren't you, Himber?touched down here ten

years ago with a flock of tenders and got swallowed up.

They got two or three quick yells for help out and that was

thatnothing anybody could make much sense of, no wea-

pons named or description of the enemy. So here we are,

loaded for the kill."

"Wasn't any Galley in command of the Assam Dragon

when I was aboard," Himber said doubtfully.

"Nah. Place was named for the astronomer who spotted

her, from the rim of the cluster, a hundred years ago,"

Oberholzer said. "Nobody names planets for ship captains.

Anybody got any sensible questions?"

"Just what kind of trouble are we looking for?" Cassirir

said.

"That's just it we don't know. This is closer to the

center of the Galaxy than we've ever gotten before. It

may be a population center too; could be that Calle is just

one piece of a federation, at least inside its own cluster.

That's why we've got the boys from Momma on board; this

one could be damn important."

Somebody sniffed. "If this cluster is full of people, how

come we never picked up signals from it?"

"How do you know we never did?" Oberholzer retorted.

"For all I know, maybe that's why the Assam Dragon came

here in the first place. Anyhow that's not our problem. All

we're"

The lights went out. Simultaneously, the whole mass of

the Novoe Washingtongrad shuddered savagely, as though a

boulder almost as big as she was had been dropped on her.

Seconds later, the gravity went out too.

2

Flo-Mar 12-Upjohn knew no more of the real nature of

the disaster than did the wardroom squad, nor did anybody

on the bridge, for that matter. The blow had been inde-

tectable until it struck, and then most of the fleet was

simply annihilated; only the Hobo was big enough to survive

the blow, and she survived only partiallyin fact, in five

pieces. Nor did the Consort of State ever know by what

miracle the section he was in hit Calle still partially under

power; he was not privy to the self-salvaging engineering

principles of battleships. All he knewonce he struggled

back to consciousnesswas that he was still alive, and that

there was a broad shaft of sunlight coming through a top-

to-bottom split in one wall of what had been his office

aboard ship.

He held his ringing head for a while, then got up in

search of water. Nothing came out of the dispenser, so he

unstrapped his dispatch case from the underside of his desk

and produced a pint palladium flask of vodka. He had

screwed up his face to sample thisat the moment he

would have preferred waterwhen a groan reminded him

that there might be more than one room in his suddenly

shrunken universe, as well as other survivors.

He was right on both counts. "Though the ship section he

was in consisted mostly of engines of whose function he had

no notion, there were also three other staterooms. Two of

these were deserted, but the third turned out to contain a

battered member of his own staff, by name Robin One.

The young man was not yet conscious and 12-Up]'ohn

regarded him with a faint touch of despair. Robin One was

perhaps the last man in space that the Consort of State

would have chosen to be shipwrecked with.

That he was utterly expendable almost went without say-

ing; he was, after all, a drone. When the perfection of

sperm electrophoresis had enabled parents for the first time

to predetermine the sex of their children, the predictable

result had been an enormous glut of maleswhich was

directly accountable for the present regime 6n Earth. By the

time the people and the lawmakers, thoroughly frightened

by the crazy years of fashion upheavals, "beefcake," poly-

andry, male prostitution, and all the rest, had come to their

senses, the Matriarchy was in to stay; a weak electric

current had overturned civilized society as drastically as the

steel knife had demoralized the Eskimos.

Though the tide of excess males had since receded some-

what, it had left behind a wrack, of which Robin One was

a bubble. He was a drone, and hence superfluous by defini-

tionfit only to be sent colonizing, on diplomatic missions

or otherwise thrown away.

Superfluity alone, of course, could hardly account for his

presence on 12-Upjohn's staff. Officially, Robin One was an

interpreter; actuallysince nobody could know the language

the Consort of State might be called upon to understand on

this missionhe was a poet, a class of unattached males

with special privileges in the Matriarchy, particularly if

what they wrote was of the middling-difficult or Hillyer So-

ciety sort. Robin One was an eminently typical member of

this class, distractible, sulky, jealous, easily wounded, homo-

sexual, lazy except when writing, and probably (to give him

the benefit of the doubt, for 12-Upjohn had no ear whatever

for poetry) the second-worst poet of his generation.

It had to be admitted that assigning 12-UpJ'ohn a poet

as an interpreter on this mission had not been a wholly

bad idea, and that if Hildegard MuUer of the Interstellar Un-

derstanding Commission had not thought of it, no mere male

would have been likely toleast of all Bar-Rob 4-Agberg,

Director of Assimilation. The nightmare of finding the whole

of the center of the Galaxy organized into one vast federation,

much older than Earth's, had been troubling the State De-

partment for a long time, at first from purely theoretical

considerationsall those heart-stars were much older than

those in the spiral arms, and besides, where star density in

space is so much higher, interstellar travel does not look like

quite so insuperable an obstacle as it long had to Earthmen

and later from certain practical signs, of which the obliter-

ation of the Assam Dragon and her tenders had been only

the most provocative. Getting along with these people on the

first contact would be vital, and yet the language barrier

might well provoke a tragedy wanted by neither side, as the

obliteration of Nagasaki in World War II had been provoked

by the mistranslation of a single word. Under such circum-

stances, a man with a feeling for strange words in odd rela-

tionships might well prove to be useful, or even vital.

Nevertheless, it was with a certain grim enjoyment that

12-Upjohn poured into Robin One a good two-ounce jolt

of vodka. Robin coughed convulsively and sat up, blinking.

"Your Excellencyhowwhat's happened? I thought we

were dead. But we've got lights again, and gravity."

He was observant, that had to be granted. "The lights are

ours but the gravity is Calle's," 12-Upjohn explained tersely.

"We're in a part of the ship that cracked up."

"Well, it's good that we've got power."

"We can't afford to be philosophical about it. Whatever

shape it's in, this derelict is a thoroughly conspicuous object

and we'd better get out of it in a hurry."

"Why?" Robin said. "We were supposed to make contact

with these people. Why not just sit here until they notice

and come to see us?"

"Suppose they just blast us to smaller bits instead? They

didn't stop to parley with the fleet, you'll notice."

"This is a different situation," Robin said stubbornly.

"I wouldn't have stopped to parley with that fleet myself, if

I'd had the means of knocking it out first. It didn't look a bit

like a diplomatic mission. But why should they be afraid of

a piece of a wreck?"

The Consort of State stroked the back of his neck re-

flectively. The boy had a point. It was risky; on the other

hand, how long would they survive foraging in completely

unknown territory? And yet obviously they couldn't stay

cooped up in here foreverespecially if it was true that there

was already no water.

He was spared having to make up his mind by a halloo

from the direction of the office. After a startled stare at

each other, the two hit the deck running.

Sergeant Oberholzer's face was peering grimly through

the split in the bulkhead.

"Oho," he said. "So you did make it." He said something

unintelligible to some invisible person outside, and then

squirmed through the breach into the room, with consider-

able difficulty, since he was in full battle gear. "None of

the officers did, so I guess that puts you in command."

"In command of what?" 12-Upjohn said dryly.

"Not very much," the Marine admitted. "I've got five

men surviving, one of them with a broken hip, and a section

of the ship with two drive units in it. It would lift, more or

less, if we could jury-rig some controls, but I don't know

where we'd go in it without supplies or a navigatoror an

overdrive, for that matter." He looked about speculatively.

"There was a Standing Wave transceiver in this section, I

think, but ifd be a miracle if it still functioned."

"Would you know how to test it?" Robin asked.

"No. Anyhow we've got more immediate business than

that. We've picked up a native. What's more, he speaks

Englishmust have picked it up from the Assam Dragon. We

started to ask him questions, but it turns out he's some

sort of top official, so we brought him over here on the off

chance that one of you was alive."

"What a break!" Robin One said explosively.

"A whole series of them," 12-Upjohn agreed, none too

happily. He had long ago learned to be at his most suspicious

when the breaks seemed to be coming his way. "Well, better

bring him in."

"Can't," Oberholzer said. "Apologies, Your Excellency,

but he wouldn't fit. You'll have to come to him."

3

It was impossible to imagine what sort of stock the

Callean had evolved from. He seemed to be a thoroughgoing

mixture of several different phyla. Most of him was a brown,

segmented tube about the diameter of a barrel and perhaps

twenty-five feet long, rather like a cross between a python

and a worm. The front segments were carried upright, raising

the head a good ten feet off the ground.

Properly speaking, 12-Upjohn thought, the Callean really

had no head, but only a front end, marked by two enormous

faceted eyes and three upsetting simple eyes which were

usually closed. Beneath these there was a collar of six short,

squidlike tentacles, carried wrapped around the creature in

a ropy ring. He was as impossible-looking as he was fear-

some, and 12-Upjohn felt at a multiple disadvantage from the

beginning.

"How did you learn our language?" he said, purely as a

starter.

"I learned it from you," the Callean said promptly. The

voice was unexpectedly high, a quality which was accentuated

by the creature's singsong intonation; 12-Upjohn could not

see where it was coming from. "From your ship which I

took apart, the dragon-of-war."

"Why did you do that?"

"It was evident that you meant me ill," the Callean sang.

"At that time I did not know that you were sick, but that

became evident at the dissections."

"Dissections! You dissected the crew of the Dragon?"

"All but one."

There was a growl from Oberholzer. The Consort of State

shot him a warning glance.

"You may have made a mistake," 12-Upjohn said. "A

natural mistake, perhaps. But it was our purpose to offer

you trade and peaceful relationships. Our weapons were

only precautionary."

"I do not think so," the Callean said, "and I never make

mistakes. That you make mistakes is natural, but it is not

natural to me."

12-Upjohn felt his jaw dropping. That the creature meant

what he said could not be doubted; his command of the

language was too complete to permit any more sensible

interpretation. 12-Upjohn found himself at a loss; not only

was the statement the most staggering he had ever heard

from any sentient being, but while it was being made he had

discovered how the Callean spoke: the sounds issued at low

volume from a multitude of spiracles or breath-holes all

along the body, each hole producing only one pure tone,

the words and intonations being formed in mid-air by inter-

modulationa miracle of co-ordination among a multitude

of organs obviously unsuitable for sound-forming at all. This

thing was formidablethat would have been evident even

without the lesson of the chunk of the Novae Washington-

grad canted crazily in the sands behind them.

Sands? He looked about with a start. Until that moment

the Callean had so hypnotized his attention that he had for-

gotten to look at the landscape, but his unconscious had

registered it. Sand, and nothing but sand. If there were

better parts of Calle than this desert, they were not visible

from here, all the way to the horizon.

"What do you propose to do with us?" he said at last

There was really nothing else to say; cut off in every possible

sense from his home world, he no longer had any base from

which to negotiate.

"Nothing," the Callean said. "You are free to come and

go as you please."

"You're no longer afraid of us?"

"No. When you came to kill me I prevented you, but you

can no longer do that."

"There you've made a mistake, all right," Oberholzer said,

lifting his rifle toward the multicolored, glittering jewels of

the Callean's eyes. "You know what this isthey must have

had them on the Dragon."

"Don't be an idiot, Sergeant," 12-Upjohn said sharply.

"We're in no position to make any threats." Nor, he added

silently, should the Marine have called attention to his gun

before the Callean had taken any overt notice of it.

"I know what it is," the creature said. "You cannot kill

me with that. You tried it often before and found you could

not. You would remember this if you were not sick."

"I never saw anything that I couldn't kill with a Sussmann

flamer," Oberholzer said between his teeth. "Let me try it

on the bastard, Your Excellency."

"Wait a minute," Robin One said, to 12-Upjohn's astonish-

ment. "I want to ask some questionsif you don't mind,

Your Excellency?"

"I don't mind," 12-Upjohn said after an instant. Anything

to get the Marine's crazy impulse toward slaughter side-

tracked. "Go ahead."

"Did you dissect the crew of the Assam Dragon person-

ally?" Robin asked the Callean.

"Of course."

"Are you the ruler of this planet?"

"Yes."

"Are you the only person in this system?"

"No."

Robin paused and frowned. Then he said: "Are you the

only person of your species in your system?"

"No. There is another on Xixobraxthe fourth planet."

Robin paused once more, but not, it seemed to 12-Upjohn,

as though he were in any doubt; it was only as though he

were gathering his courage for the key question of all. 12-

Upjohn tried to imagine what it might be, and failed.

"How many of you are there?" Robin One said.

"I cannot answer that. As of the instant you asked me

that question, there were eighty-three hundred thousand

billion, one hundred and eighty nine million, four hundred

and sixty five thousand, one hundred and eighty; but now the

number has changed, and it goes on changing."

"Impossible," 12-Upjohn said, stunned. "Not even two

planets could support such a numberand you'd never

allow a desert like this to go on existing if you had even a

fraction of that population to support. I begin to think, sir,

that you are a type normal to my business: the ordinary,

unimaginative liar."

"He's not lying," Robin said, his voice quivering. "It all

fits together. Just let me finish, sir, please. I'll explain, but

I've got to go through to the end first."

"Well," 12-Upjohn said, helplessly, "all right, go ahead."

But he was instantly sorry, for what Robin One said was:

"Thank you. I have no more questions."

The Callean turned in a great liquid wheel and poured

away across the sand dunes at an incredible speed. 12-Upjohn

shouted after him, without any clear idea of what it was

that he was shoutingbut no matter, for the Callean took

no notice. Within seconds, it seemed, he was only a thread-

worm in the middle distance, and then he was gone. They

were all alone in the chill desert air.

Oberholzer lowered his rifle bewilderedly. "He's fast," he

said to nobody in particular. "Gripes, but he's fast. I couldn't

even keep him in the sights."

"That proves it," Robin said tightly. He was trembling,

but whether with fright or elation, 12-Upjohn could not tell;

possibly both.

"It had better prove something," the Consort of State

said, trying hard not to sound portentous. There was some-

thing about this bright remote desert that made empty any

possible pretense to dignity. "As far as I can see, you've just

lost us what may have been our only chance to treat with

these creatures . . . just as surely as the sergeant would have

done it with his gun. Explain, please."

"I didn't really catch on until I realized that he was using

the second person singular when he spoke to us," Robin

said. If he had heard any threat implied in 12-Upjohn's

charge, it was not visible; he seemed totally preoccupied.

"There's no way to tell them apart in modem English. We

thought he was referring to us as "you' plural, but he wasn't,

any more than his 1' was a plural. He thinks we're all a part

of the same personalityincluding the men from the Dragon,

toojust as he is himself. That's why he left when I said I

had no more questions. He can't comprehend that each of

us has an independent ego. For him such a thing doesn't

exist."

"Like ants?" 12-Upjohn said slowly. "I don't see how an

advanced technology . . . but no, I do see. And if it's so, it

means that any Callean we run across could be their chief of

state, but that no one of them actually is. The only other

real individual is next door, on the fourth planetanother

hive ego."

"Maybe not," Robin said. "Don't forget that he thinks

we're part of one, too."

12-Upjohn dismissed that possibility at once. "He's sure

to know his own system, after all. . . . What alarms me is the

population figure he cited. It's got to be at least clusterwide

and from the exactness with which he was willing to cite

it, for a given instant, he had to have immediate access to it.

An instant, effortless census."

"Yes," Robin said. "Meaning mind-to-mind contact, from

one to all, throughout the whole complex. That's what started

me thinking about the funny way he used pronouns."

"If that's the case. Robin, we are spurlos versenkt. And

my pronoun includes the Earth."

"They may have some limitations," Robin said, but it was

clear that he was only whistling in the dark. "But at least

it explains why they butchered the Dragon's crew so readily

and why they're willing to let us wander around their

planet as if we didn't even exist. We don't, for them. They

can't have any respect for a single life. No wonder they

didn't give a damn for the sergeant's gun!"

His initial flush had given way to a marble paleness; there

were beads of sweat on his brow in the dry hot air, and he

was trembling harder than ever. He looked as though he

might faint in the next instant, though only the slightest

of stutters disturbed his rush of words. But for once the

Consort of State could not accuse him of agitation over

trifles.

Oberholzer looked from one to the other, his expression

betraying perhaps only disgust, or perhaps blank incom-

prehensionit was impossible to tell. Then, with a sudden

sharp snick which made them both start, he shot closed the

safety catch on the Sussmann.

"Well," he said in a smooth cold empty voice, "now we

know what we'll eat."

4

Their basic and dangerous division of plans and purposes

began with that.

Sergeant Oberholzer was not a fool, as the hash marks

on his sleeve and the battle stars on his ribbons attested

plainly; he understood the implications of what the Callean

had saidat least after the Momma's boy had interpreted

them; and he was shrewd enough not to undervalue the con-

tribution the poor terrified fairy had made to their possible

survival on this world. For the moment, however, it suited the

Marine to play the role of the dumb sergeant to the hilt. If a

full understanding of what the Calleans were like might

reduce him to a like state of trembling impotence, he could

do without it.

Not that he really believed that any such thing could

happen to him; but it was not hard to see that Momma's boys

were halfway there alreadyand if the party as a whole

hoped to get anything done, they had to be jolted out of it

as fast as possible.

At first he thought he had made it. "Certainly noti" the

Consort of State said indignantly. "You're a man, sergeant,

not a Callean. Nothing the Calleans do is any excuse for

your behaving otherwise than as a man."

"I'd rather eat an enemy than a friend," Oberholzer said

cryptically. "Have you got any supplies inside there?"

"I1 don't know. But that has nothing to do with it."

"Depends on what you mean by 'it.' But maybe we can

argue about that later. What are your orders. Your

Excellency?"

"I haven't an order in my head," 12-Upjohn said with

sudden, disarming frankness. "We'd better try to make some

sensible plans first, and stop bickering. Robin, stop snuffling,

too. The question is, what can we do besides trying to survive,

and cherishing an idiot hope for a rescue mission?"

"For one thing, we can try to spring the man from the

Dragon's crew that these worms have still got alive," Ober-

holzer said. "If that's what he meant when he said they

dissected all but one."

"That doesn't seem very feasible to me," 12-Upjohn said.

"We have no idea where they're holding him"

"Ask them. This one answered every question you asked

him."

"and even supposing that he's near by, we couldn't

free him from a horde of Calleans, no matter how many

dead bodies they let you pile up. At best, sooner or later

you'd run out of ammunition."

"It's worth trying," Oberholzer said. "We could use the

manpower."

"What for?" Robin One demanded. "He'd be- just one more

mouth to feed. At the moment, at least, they're feeding him."

"For raising ship," Oberholzer retorted, "if there's any

damn chance of welding our two heaps of junk together and

getting off this mudball. We ought to look into it, anyhow."

Robin One was looking more alarmed by the minute. If

the prospect of getting into a fight with the Calleans had

scared him, Oberholzer thought, the notion of hard physical

labor evidently was producing something close to panic.

"Where could we go?" he said. "Supposing that we could

fly such a shambles at all?"

"I don't know," Oberholzer said. "We don't know what's

possible yet. But anything's better than sitting around here

and starving. First off, I want that man from the Dragon."

"I'm opposed to it," 12-Upjohn said firmly. "The Calleans

are leaving us to our own devices now. If we cause any real

trouble they may well decide that we'd be safer locked up,

or dead. I don't mind planning to lift ship if we canbut no

military expeditions."

"Sir," Oberholzer said, "military action on this planet is

what I was sent here for. I reserve the right to use my own

judgment. You can complain, if we ever get backbut I'm

not going to let a man rot in a worm-burrow while I've got a

gun on my back. You can come along or not, but we're

going."

He signaled to Cassirir, who seemed to be grinning slightly.

12-Upjohn stared at him for a moment, and then shook his

head.

"We'll stay," he said. "Since we have no water. Sergeant,

I hope you'll do us the kindness of telling us where your part

of the ship lies."

"That way, about two kilometers," Oberholzer said. "Help

yourself. If you want to settle in there, you'll save us the

trouble of toting Private Hannes with us on a stretcher."

"Of course," the Consort of State said. "We'll take care

of him. But, Sergeant . . ."

"Yes, Your Excellency?"

"If this stunt of yours still leaves us all alive afterwards,

and we do get back to any base of ours, I will certainly see

to it that a complaint is lodged. I'm not disowning you now

because it's obvious that we'll all have to work together

to survive, and a certain amount of amity will be essential.

But don't be deceived by that."

"I understand, sir," Oberholzer said levelly. "Cassirir, let's

go. We'll backtrack to where we nabbed the worm, and then

follow his trail to wherever he came from. Fall in."

The men shouldered their Sussmanns. 12-Upjohn and

Robin One watched them go. At the last dune before the two

would go out of sight altogether, Oberholzer turned and

waved, but neither waved back. Shrugging, Oberholzer

resumed plodding.

"Sarge?"

"Yeah?"

"How do you figure to spring this joker with only four

guns?"

"Five guns if we spring himI've got a side arm," Ober-

holzer reminded him. "We'll play it by ear, that's all. I want

to see just how serious these worms are about leaving us

alone, and letting us shoot them if we feel like it. I've got a

hunch that they aren't very bright, one at a time, and don't

react fast to strictly local situations. If this whole planet is

like one huge body, and the worms are its brain cells, then

we're germsand maybe ifd take more than four germs to

make the body do anything against us that counted, at least

fast enough to do any good."

Cassirir was frowning absurdly; he did not seem to be

taking the theory in without pain. Well, Cassirir had never

been much of a man for tactics.

"Here's where we found the guy," one of the men said,

pointing at the sand.

"That's not much of a trail," Cassirir said. "If there's any

wind it'll be wiped out like a shot."

"Take a sight on it, that's all we need. You saw him run

offstraight as a ruled line, no twists or turns around the

dunes or anything. Like an army ant. If the trail sands over,

we'll follow the sight. It's a cinch it leads someplace."

"All right," Cassirir said, getting out his compass. After a

while the four of them resumed trudging.

There were only a few drops of hot, flat-tasting water left

in the canteens, and their eyes were gritty and red from dry-

ness and sand, when they topped the ridge that overlooked

the nest. The word sprang instantly into Oberholzer's mind,

though perhaps he had been expecting some such thing ever

since Robin One had compared the Calleans to ants.

It was a collection of rough white spires, each perhaps

fifty feet high, rising from a common doughlike mass which

almost filled a small valley. There was no greenery around it

and no visible source of water, but there were three roads,

two of them leading into oval black entrances which Ober-

holzer could see from here. Occasionallynot oftena Cal-

lean would scuttle out and vanish, or come speeding over

the horizon and dart into the darkness. Some of the spires

bore masts carrying what seemed to be antennae or more

recondite electronic devices, but there were no windows to

be seen; and the only sound in the valley, except for the dry

dusty wind, was a subdued composite hum.

"Man!" Cassirir said, whispering without being aware of

it. "It must be as black as the ace of spades in there. Anybody

got a torch?"

Nobody had. "We won't need one anyhow," Oberholzer

said confidently. "They've got eyes, and they can see in desert

sunlight. That means they can't move around in total

darkness. Let's goI'm thirsty."

They stumbled down into the valley and approached the

nearest black hole cautiously. Sure enough, it was not as

black as it had appeared from the hill; there was a glow

inside, which had been hidden from them against the con-

trast of the glaringly lit sands. Nevertheless, Oberholzer found

himself hanging back.

While he hesitated, a Callean came rocketing out of the

entrance and pulled to a smooth, sudden stop.

"You are not to get in the way," he said, in exactly the

same piping singsong voice the other had used.

'Tell me where to go and I'll stay out of your way,"

Oberholzer said. "Where is the man from the warship that

you didn't dissect?"

"In Gnitonis, halfway around the world from here."

Oberholzer felt his shoulders sag, but the Callean was not

through. "You should have told me that you wanted him," he

said. "I will have him brought to you. Is there else that you

need?"

"Water," Oberholzer said hopefully.

'That will be brought. There is no water you can use here.

Stay out of the cities; you will be in the way."

"How else can we eat?"

"Food will be brought. You should make your needs

known; you are of low intelligence and helpless. I forbid

nothing, I know you are harmless, and your life is short in

any case; but I do not want you to get in the way."

The repetition was beginning to tell on Oberholzer, and the

frustration created by hig having tried to use a battering ram

against a freely swinging door was compounded by his

mental picture of what the two Momma's boys would say

when the squad got back.

"Thank you," he said, and bringing the Sussmann into

line, he trained it on the Callean's squidlike head and

squeezed the trigger.

It was at once established that the CallSans were as mortal

to Sussmann flamers as is all other flesh and blood; this one

made a very satisfactory corpse. Unsatisfied, the flamer bolt

went on to burn a long slash in the wall of the nest, not

far above the entrance. Oberholzer grounded the rifle and

waited to see what would happen next; his men hefted

their weapons tensely.

For a few minutes there was no motion but the random

twitching of the headless Callean's legs. Evidently he was

still not entirely dead, though he was a good four feet shorter

than he had been before, and plainly was feeling the lack.

Then, there was a stir inside the dark entrance.

A ten-legged animal about the size of a large rabbit

emerged tentatively into the sunlight, followed by two more,

and then by a whole series of them, perhaps as many as

twenty. Though Oberholzer had been unabashed by the

Calleans themselves, there was something about these things

that made him feel sick. They were coal black and shiny,

and they did not seem to have any eyes; their heavily

armored heads bore nothing but a set of rudimentary palps

and a pair of enormous pincers, like those of a June beetle.

Sightless or no, they were excellent surgeons. They cut

the remains of the Callean swiftly into sections, precisely

one metamere to a section, and bore the carrion back inside

the nest. Filled with loathing, Oberholzer stepped quickly

forward and kicked one of the last in the procession. It

toppled over like an unstable kitchen stool, but regained its

footing as though nothing had happened. The kick had not

hurt it visibly, though Oberholzer's toes felt as though he

had kicked a Victorian iron dog. The creature, still holding

its steak delicately in its living tongs, mushed implacably

after the others back into the dubiety of the nest. Then all

that was left in the broiling sunlight was a few pools of black-

ening blood seeping swiftly into the sand.

"Let's get out of here," Cassirir said raggedly.

"Stand fast," Oberholzer growled. "If they're mad at us,

I want to know about it right now."

But the next Callean to pass them, some twenty eternal

minutes later, hardly even slowed down. "Keep out of the

way," he said, and streaked away over the dunes. Snarling,

Oberholzer caromed a bolt after him, but missed him clean.

"All right," he said. "Let's go back. No hitting the

canteens till we're five kilometers past the mid-point cairn.

Marchi"

The men were all on the verge of prostration by the time

that point was passed, but Oberholzer never once had to

enforce the order. Nobody, it appeared, was eager to come

to an end on Calle as a series of butcher's cuts in the tongs

of a squad of huge black beetles.

"I know what they think," the man from the Assam

Dragon said. "I've heard them say it often enough."

He was a personable youngster, perhaps thirty, with blond

wavy hair which had been turned almost white by the

strong Callean sunlight: his captors had walked him. for

three hours every day on the desert. He had once been the

Assam Dragon's radioman, a post which in interstellar flight

is a branch of astronomy, not of communications; never-

theless, Oberholzer and the marines called him Sparks, in

deference to a tradition which, 12-Upjohn suspected, the

marines did not even know existed.

"Then why wouldn't there be a chance of our establishing

better relations with the 'person' on the fourth planet?" 12-

Upjohn said. "After all, there's never been an Earth landing

there."

"Because the 'person' on Xixobrax is a colony of Callg,

and knows everything that goes on here. It took the two

planets in co-operation to destroy the fleet. There's almost

full telepathic communion between the twoin fact, all

through the Central Empire. The only rapport that seems to

weaken over short distancesinterplanetary distancesb the

sense of identity. That's why each planet has an 1' of its

own, its own ego. But it's not the kind of ego we know

anything about. Xixobrax wouldn't give us any better deal

than Calle has, any more than I'd give Calle a better deal

than you would, Your Excellency. They have common pur-

poses and allegiances. All the Central Empire seems to be

like that."

12-Upjohn thought about it; but he did not like what he

thought. It was a knotty problem, even in theory.

Telepathy among men had never amounted to anything.

After the pioneer exploration of the microcosm with the

Arpe Effectthe second of two unsuccessful attempts at an

interstellar drive, long before the discovery of the Standing

Waveit had become easy to see why this would be so.

Psi forces in general were characteristic only of the subspace

in which the primary particles of the atom had their being;

their occasional manifestations in the macrocosm were

statistical accidents, as weak and indirigible as spontaneous

radioactive decay.

Up to now this had suited 12-Upjohn. It had always

seemed to him that the whole notion of telepathy was a

dodgean attempt to by-pass the plain duty of each man

to learn to know his brother, and, if possible, to learn to

love him; the telepathy fanatics were out to short-circuit the

task, to make easy the most difficult assignment a human

being might undertake. He was well aware, too, of the bias

against telepathy which was inherent in his profession of

mplomat; yet he had always been certain of his case, hazy

though it was around the edges. One of his proofs was that

telepathy's main defenders invariably were incorrigibly lazy

writers, from Upton Sinclair and Theodore Dreiser all the

way down to . . .

All the same, it seemed inarguable that the whole center

of the Galaxy, an enormously diverse collection of peoples

and cultures, was being held together in a common and

strife-free union by telepathy alone, or perhaps by telepathy

and its even more dubious adjuncts: a whole galaxy held

together by a force so unreliable that two human beings

sitting across from each other at a card table had never

been able to put it to an even vaguely practicable use.

Somewhere, there was a huge hole in the argument.

While he had sat helplessly thinking in these circles, even

Robin One was busy, toting power packs to the welding crew

which was working outside to braze together on the desert the

implausible, misshapen lump of metal which the Marine

sergeant was fanatically determined would become a ship

again. Now the job was done, though no shipwright would

admire it, and the question of where to go with it was being

debated in full council. Sparks, for his part, was prepared

to bet that the Calleans would not hinder their departure.

"Why would they have given us all this oxygen and stuff

if they were going to prevent us from using it?" he said

reasonably. "They know what it's foreven if they have

no brains, collectively they're plenty smart enough."

'Wo brains?" 12-Upjohn said. "Or are you just exag-

gerating?"

"No brains," the man from the Assam Dragon insisted.

"Just lots of ganglia. I gather that's the way all of the races

of the Central Empire are organized, regardless of other

physical differences. That's what they mean when they say

we're all sickhadn't you realized that?"

"No," 12-Upjohn said in slowly dawning horror. "You

had better spell it out."

"Why, they say that's why we get cancer. They say that

the brain is the ultimate source of all tumors, and is itself a

tumor. They call it 'hostile symbiosis.' "

"Malignant?"

"In the long run. Races that develop them kill themselves

off. Something to do with solar radiation; animals on planets

of Population II stars develop them, Population I planets

don't."

Robin One hummed an archaic twelve-tone series under

his breath. There were no words to go with it, but the Con-

sort of State recognized it; it was part of a chorale from a

twentieth-century American opera, and the words went:

Weep, weep beyond time for this Earth of hours.

"If fits," he said heavily. "So to receive and use a weak

field like telepathy, you need a weak brain. Human beings

will never make it."

"Earthworms of the galaxy, unite," Robin One said.

"They already have," Sergeant Oberholzer pointed out.

"So where does all this leave us?"

"It means," 12-Upjohn said slowly, "that this Central

Empire, where the stars are almost all Population I, is

spreading out toward the spiral arms where the Earth lies.

Any cluster civilizations they meet are natural alliesclusters

are purely Population Iand probably have already been

mentally assimilated. Any possible natural allies we meet,

going around Population II stars, we may well pick a fight

with instead."

"That's not what I meant," Sergeant Oberholzer said.

"I know what you meant; but this changes things. As I

understand it, we have a chance of making a straight hop to

the nearest Earth base, if we go on starvation rations"

"and if I don't make more than a point zero five per

cent error in plotting the course," Sparks put in.

"Yes. On the other hand, we can make sure of getting

there by going in short leaps via planets known to be in-

habited, but never colonized and possibly hostile. The only

other possibility is Xixobrax, which I think we've ruled out.

Correct?"

"Right as rain," Sergeant Oberholzer said. "Now I see

what you're driving at. Your Excellency. The only thing is

you didn't mention that the stepping stone method will take

us the rest of our lives."

"So I didn't," 12-Upjohn said bleakly. "But I hadn't for-

gotten it. The other side of that coin is that it will be even

longer than that before the Matriarchy and the Central

Empire collide."

"After which," Sergeant Oberholzer said with a certain

relish, "I doubt that it'll be a Matriarchy, whichever wins.

Are you calling for a vote, sir?"

"Wellyes, I seem to be."

"Then let's grasshopper," Sergeant Oberholzer said unhesi-

tatingly. 'The boys and I can't fight a point zero five per cent

error in navigationbut for hostile planets, we've got the

flamers."

Robin One shuddered. "I don't mind the fighting part,"

he said unexpectedly. "But I do simply loathe the thought of

being an old, old man when I get home. All the same, we

do have to get the word back."

"You're agreeing with the sergeant?"

"Yes, that's what I said."

"I agree," Sparks said. "Either way we may not make it,

but the odds are in favor of doing it the hard way."

"Very good," 12-Upjohn said. He was uncertain of his

exact emotion at this moment; perhaps gloomy satisfaction

was as close a description as any. "I make it unanimous. Let's

get ready."

The sergeant saluted and prepared to leave the cabin; but

suddenly he turned back.

"I didn't think very much of either of you, a while back,"

he said brutally. "But I'll tell you this: there must be some-

thing about brains that involves guts, too. I'll back 'em any

time against any critter that lets itself be shot like a fish in a

barrelwhatever the odds."

The Consort of State was still mulling that speech over as

the madman's caricature of an interstellar ship groaned and

lifted its lumps and angles from Calle. Who knows, he kept

telling himself, who knows, it might even be true.

But he noticed that Robin One was still humming the

chorale from Psyche and Eros', and ahead the galactic night

was as black as death.

The End