The High Road
New Worlds Science Fiction – October 1959
(1959)*
James White

Dr. Conway and the Sector General hospital staff are taking a well-earned vacation at the moment so author James White has himself returned to Earth to recount a story of early spaceflight. There is more than one road to a given goal and it depends upon which one you take to get there first.

-

I

	A harsh, angry voice was saying "... Eight ... Seven ... Six ..." as if each numeral was a dirty word. Stevenson could see the Range Firing Officer at his panel rubbing sweating palms against his trouser legs. In the other control positions men smoked—or rather, chewed at—cigarettes, and some of them fingered grisly little things which contrasted oddly indeed with the clean, scientific outlines of the equipment around them.

	Stevenson would have preferred to stay away from the blockhouse during a firing these days: the atmosphere was anything but pleasant. But as the establishment's chief security officer it was his duty to be present and keep an eye on things. One day, perhaps, he would see something which would explain sixteen failures in a row, something other than carelessness or technical incompetence on the part of the men.

	The countdown marched inexorably into the last second and the towering three-stager out on the take-off apron screamed thunderously and spewed white fire. The flare was so blinding that it made the cold, clear blue of the hour-after-dawn sky seem suddenly dark. Stevenson watched the rocket creep slowly skywards, clear the service gantry and, gaining both velocity and directional stability now with every second which passed, go on climbing.

	Then the first microscopic wobble grew quickly into a wild, uncontrollable yawing which sent the ship snaking crazily all over the sky, and the all too familiar drama—or was farce a more accurate word?—came to its usual explosive finale as the Range Firing Officer destroyed it in flight while it was still over uninhabited country.

-

	In the silence which followed Stevenson studied the expressions on the faces around him: Miss Johns inconspicuous in a corner; Hutchings at the tracking radar; Preston, white-faced and apparently in shock, with his finger still on the button which had just sent half a million pounds up in smoke, and the others. He saw anger and disappointment, and bitter despair hung like a heavy fog in the room. At the moment the psychological climate on the base was such that its top technical brains were fast becoming candidates for a psychiatric ward, yet he was sure that some of the people about him were deliberately assuming these expressions of hopelessness and self-disgust in order to conceal something else.

	It was only a feeling, however. There was no proof.

	Stevenson turned to the man at the camera beside him and said quietly, "Later I would like to see those pictures."

	The cameraman grunted, slammed the protective cover over his instrument and angrily shouldered his way past Stevenson. "You people can hold a wake if you want to—me, I'm going to bed," he growled, and stamped out. The others trailed behind, leaving Stevenson alone with Preston and Miss Johns.

	"George," said Miss Johns suddenly, "will you give me a lift?"

	"A pleasure," he said politely. "But what about him?" He indicated Preston who was slumped in his chair staring at the patch of smoke he had made in the sky.

	"Better leave him alone," she replied. "He wouldn't be nice company, even for himself."

	Her tone was light but there had been real concern in her eyes when she had looked towards the Range Firing Officer. Those eyes, Stevenson thought, could hold all the wisdom, understanding and sympathy in the world. The severity, calm and tenderness of all the mothers that ever were was in them, too,—just to complicate things—a strong dash of juvenile delinquent as well.

	Not that there were many people who would appreciate or even notice Miss Johns' eyes—physically she was too unattractively packaged for that. Only someone like Stevenson would look into that shapeless, coarse-skinned exterior for deeper qualities. Despite her youth—Stevenson judged her to be in her mid- or early-twenties—this complete lack of good looks seemed not to bother her, but then as the psychologist attached to the Space Medicine section of the base she was, Stevenson thought, probably able to understand and adjust to her own problems.

	Altogether Miss Johns was a pleasant, stimulating person and Stevenson still liked her, despite his growing suspicion that she was a traitor ...

-

	The chill, early morning air bit at their faces as he took the open car away from the blockhouse. Stevenson turned up his greatcoat collar, but chiefly because Miss Johns was sitting on his bad side, and said, "You saw those things the men were fiddling with back there. Can't you do anything about that?"

	Miss Johns made a, noncommittal sound.

	"One of them looked familiar to me—maybe I've seen it in a geographical magazine or something," Stevenson went on. "It was a charm belonging to some kind of witch-doctor. Superstition doesn't bother me, within limits, but the men we saw must have gone to considerable trouble and expense to get those things.  Isn't that carrying superstition a bit too far?"

	Stevenson had meant to give the impression that he was treating the matter half as a joke, but the harshness of his own voice surprised him.

	"I wouldn't worry about it if I were you," said Miss Johns reassuringly, her tone giving the lie to her eyes; they were saying that Stevenson had her worried plenty. "To men who have been dogged with so much misfortune as them it's only natural for their minds to turn to lucky charms and the like, and it follows that the more expensive or difficult to procure the luckpiece in question the more potent they will consider it to be. I admit it isn't a nice business, but it's harmless. After all, you can understand what drove them to it ..."

	Yes, Stevenson thought, but what he did not understand was why it had driven them so far ...

	A little over four years ago, at the time when the Russians had begun putting men in the probes which they were sending around the Moon, this rocket experimental station had been set up. Awake at last to the realisation that the race for space was on and that a runner-up would gain much more in international prestige than a non-starter, the leading technical men of the country plus vast sums of money had been poured into the establishment. The base had been geared to one major vehicle launching every three months, and it had been hoped that if they could not catch up with the Russians, at least they would be tramping close on the heels of their American colleagues.

	The first firing had been a glorious failure, and every single one since an increasingly ignominious flop.

	Vehicles which had blown themselves apart on the take-off apron, or a few feet above it, or had flung themselves up and then down as though tied to Earth with a monster elastic band. The technical side of the base had been reorganised many times; there had been threats, sackings and investigations—all sorts of pressure had been brought to bear, to no avail.

	Such an incredible and persistent chain of misfortune had its effect on the technicians, of course. With each new mishap their feelings of personal guilt over the failures increased and the process became a vicious circle. Angry, frustrated and bitter they began to expect failures, and thus helped to produce more of them though sheer carelessness. But the recent, and to Stevenson quite unexpected development, had been that which he had been discussing with Miss Johns—the situation where practically all the top men on the station were fanatically convinced that Fate was against them. Many of them had become jumpy, superstition-ridden neurotics balanced on the thin edge of insanity.

	Possibly it was the workings of his security officer's mind, but Stevenson was convinced that there was more than Fate against them. It struck him as odd that while the Russians were making great strides with their space travel programme the West was getting nowhere at all—the Americans were having more than a share of 'bad luck' too. So far as he was concerned there could be only one explanation for that long series of failures. Sabotage.

-

	But it had to be sabotage of the most ingenious and subtle kind, because as yet Stevenson had not a single, solid clue as to how it was being done or who was doing it—merely suspicions. One of these days the saboteur must slip, finesse too much perhaps, and Stevenson would get him. And when it had been demonstrated to the men it was not blind Fate that was against them but a smarter than average saboteur, they would stop being convinced of their own incompetence and really begin to do the work expected of them—and without benefit of charms or other superstitious haberdashery!

	"Perhaps," said Miss Johns suddenly, "you are going to pull a Russian spy out of that nice blue cap of yours and cure all our ills, psychological and otherwise, in that way?"

	There were times when Miss Johns gave him the uncomfortable feeling that she was reading his mind. Ignoring the question, Stevenson said, "I don't want to tell you your job, Miss Johns, but I think you should be doing more to kill this jinx idea, to restore the men's faith in themselves. Especially you should stop those meetings in the Dummy—"

	"You are telling me my job!" she broke in, an angry edge to her voice. "I say there is no harm in what the men are doing—it is merely a temporary phase. But you have this bee in your bonnet about superstition ..." She left the sentence hanging, then switched from defence to attack in mid-breath. "This seems to be a phobia with you, you're so down on it that that in itself is suspect. Maybe you should see me professionally sometime.

	"But tell me, George, do you have dream trouble? Something bothering you from the war, perhaps?"

	"I," said Stevenson, "sleep like a babe."

	He lied, of course, and Miss Johns was probably observant enough to know it, but that did not concern him at the moment. Stevenson was thinking of the psychologist's manner and words. The sudden flash of anger had been completely unlike her and the things she had suggested were ridiculous. But if his suspicions regarding her were correct, this sort of approach could be expected ...

-

	They were both silent until he let her out at her quarters, then she said, "I've never known you to be so quiet, George. Maybe you'll be in better humour after a good long sleep."

	Stevenson shook his head ruefully and made himself smile. "There's a new man arriving today," he said, "and being new he's sure to arrive early, so I'd better go straight to the office. Maybe after I've ascertained the purity of his character and politics I'll be able to get that sleep, but I doubt it." He waved and said, "Be seeing you."

	Once in his office Stevenson loosened shoes and belt, stretched his legs under the desk and settled himself for a nap. In common with the technicians concerned with this mornings' abortive launching he had not been to bed for thirty-six hours, his clerical staff would not come on duty for another two hours, and he was very tired.

	But it was a long time before he could sleep. His mind kept throwing jerky, fragmented pictures against the blackness of his closed eyelids—pictures of men angry and despairing and abysmally disgusted with themselves, or pretending those emotions. Weariness gave them the fuzzy, confused aspect of delirium before he finally drifted into sleep.

	He knew he was asleep because he was dreaming—the same sharp, vivid and unfinished dream which he had been dreaming more and more frequently of late, and which invariably woke him up sweating.

	Fully awake again and with a headache which threatened to blow the top off his head, Stevenson wondered yet again why he dreamt about Dusseldorf when his every conscious urge for the last seventeen years had been to forget all about it. The charge could have been cowardice and desertion in the face of the enemy, but considering his flying record up to then the court of enquiry had been loath to put it into just those words. They had, however, wanted answers to several questions, "Why had his aircraft arrived back so early?" being one of the first. But Stevenson himself had not remembered that trip back very well—this was attributed to the pain from his severely wounded face—and the evidence of surviving crew members and others who had been over the target area was so contradictory that the unspoken charge had been dropped. Subsequently, however, he had flown nothing more exciting than a desk.

	Stevenson grimaced and began rummaging in his drawer for the aspirin bottle, which seemed to be constantly in use these days. Swallowing two tablets he settled back to wait for the headache to abate.

-

II

	He was still waiting when Flight Lieutenant Holden was shown in an hour and a half later.

	Holden was a tall, painfully thin individual with the unlikely combination of serious brown eyes, a wider-than-average mouth and ears which stuck out. He marched up to Stevenson's desk and his mouth opened to speak.

	"If you call me 'Sir'," said Stevenson conversationally, "I shall disembowel you with this letter-opener." He smiled then to show that he hadn't meant it—or at least only half-meant it—and added, "And slouch a bit, man, you're supposed to be a civilian!"

	Holden slouched as instructed, then produced cigarettes and a lighter and hooked a leg over the corner of the desk.

	"Don't overdo it," said Stevenson, still smiling. "Sit in that chair, smoke if you want to—in fact, give me one—and listen."

	The research and technical sections of the establishment were staffed by civilians, Stevenson explained, with Security and some of the Medical and maintenance work under Air Force jurisdiction. Squadron-Leader Michaels, the doctor in charge of the Space Medicine section, was the only officer not engaged on security work of some kind or another. These men were so well known by everyone that they could perform little more than routine guard duties, and that was where Holden came in.

	With his service experience on guided missiles Holden could pose as a civilian rocket expert, and once accepted could begin reporting on the various strange things which had been going on of late. On the surface these occurrences could be blamed on the incredibly low morale of the men caused by their long series of failures, but Stevenson did not believe this.

	"You suspect sabotage, then," said Holden. "Is there anyone special you have in mind?"

	Holden's voice was serious and quiet, matching his eyes rather than the comically protruding ears. Stevenson was about to reply when the shrill jangle of the phone interrupted him.

	"That you, Wingco?" said a slow, deep voice immediately recognisable as belonging to Squadron-Leader Michaels. "We've a spot of trouble here—a man called Morrison. It looks as if he deliberately tried to blind himself." There was a short pause, then: "Ordinarily I would say that this was Miss Johns' pigeon, but you said to call you if—"

	"You did quite right, Doc," said Stevenson quickly. "I'll be over directly—"

	"No you won't," said the Doctor. "That man is in no fit state to be questioned and won't be for at least an hour—two would be better. You can see him then."

	Michaels' tone brooked of no argument.

	"I'll do as you suggest," Stevenson said, keeping the impatience he felt from showing in his voice. "But keep this affair to yourself for the time being—and especially, Doctor, don't let Miss Johns near that man until I get a crack at him."

	Stevenson rose suddenly and put on his cap. He felt that physical movement was the only thing which could relieve the tension building up inside him. To Holden he said, "I'll show you around. Nearly everybody will be catching up on their sleep, so we'll be able to talk undisturbed."

-

	The climbing sun had taken the chill out of the air and a faint breeze was blowing across the moor from the five miles distant sea. Stevenson said very little as he took Holden on a quick tour past the living quarters, engine test beds and the sprawling research and maintenance sections. At the building devoted to electronic guidance systems Stevenson climbed out and led Holden past a series of armed guards in RAF Regiment uniform and into a long, well-lit room containing six desks and two massive safes.

	Closely followed by Holden he went from desk to desk opening and closing drawers and rummaging among the books and scratchpads lying on top of them. Suddenly he held up a folder containing five or six sheets of paper covered by mathematical formulae to which was clipped the photostat of a circuit diagram.

	Slapping it back onto the desk, Stevenson said heavily, "This is marked 'Restricted' but could just as easily have been in any of the higher classified categories. Instead of being locked in one of the safes, as it should be after use, or even locked in a drawer, this was under the desk blotter."

	Stevenson was grimly silent for a moment, trying to pick the proper words to describe a situation which bordered on the insane without giving the impression that he might be affected that way himself. It was very difficult.

	"The job of a security officer on a base like this is usually pretty dull and uninteresting," he said finally, "and involves simply a constant checking of doors, windows and desk drawers, keeping track of classified papers or keys to see that they have not been deposited in a washroom somewhere or on top of a picture rail or under a mat instead of with the guard detail, and generally cleaning up after this bunch of lazy, careless or forgetful—or just plain stupid—geniuses we have here. The job also includes reminding them continually of these shortcomings, but in that it is a vain and thankless one which only earns us the reputation of being nagging old women.

	"It goes without saying," Stevenson continued," that all the necessary measures are taken to guard against the ordinary spy or would-be saboteur who might try to exploit these failings. But there is someone operating on this base who is, to put it mildly, extraordinary. He, she or them work tracelessly—there is not the slightest indication of how the jobs are done, much less who is doing them. And bear in mind that while a smart saboteur may remain hidden for a while, his methods of working—damage to fuel lines, placement of charges, or whatever—must eventually become plain. With this one we know nothing at all. I can't even prove that sabotage is taking place, it is just a feeling I have."

	Holden said, "This Miss Johns I heard you mention on the phone, is she the one?"

-

	They were back in the car again. Stevenson decided to make only one more stop before calling on Michaels in the Space Medicine building, even though a good deal less than the stipulated hour had passed.

	"Yes and no," Stevenson replied after a moment. "I've kept such a strict watch on her that she could not possibly have committed a physical act of sabotage during the past eight months, yet three vehicles have blown up in that time. As I see it she has an important, but secondary, role ..."

	The sabotage was occurring at two levels, Stevenson went on to explain, and was so subtle and effective as to be almost self-perpetuating. The rockets had been wrecked by some means as yet unknown, but damage of another kind had been duplicated in the minds of the men working on them. Feelings of guilt and inadequacy over the first few failures had been skilfully played upon by an expert until the scientists and upperlevel technicians on the base had become a bunch of shifty-eyed neurotics, or even worse. The wildest and most insane kinds of superstition were rife among them, they formed up into little cliques and secret societies with all sorts of crazy rituals and mumbo-jumbo, and generally behaved in the most childish and insane manner imaginable.

	And with every week that passed the situation got worse.

	When the engineers began wielding rabbit's feet in conjunction with their slide rules, Stevenson had been inclined to make allowances. But then he had seen how Miss Johns had encouraged them—and encourage them in a most subtle, backhanded manner by telling them not to in just the right words to ensure that they kept on at it. Miss Johns was a nice, sympathetic, ugly girl—and a first-rate psychologist. Those pudgy fingers knew exactly the right mental pushbutton required to gain any desired response.

	"... And the damage being done here is really serious," Stevenson concluded grimly. "Not only are rockets being destroyed, the technical minds which make space flight possible are being wrecked, too. It is only a matter of time before the financial drain caused by these repeated failures brings all rocket experimentation to a full stop and keeps us out of space forever."

-

	While he had been speaking Holden had watched him closely. His eyes had drifted from Stevenson's face, to the three broad rings on his sleeve, to the impressive double row of ribbons on his chest, and back to his face. Obviously he was weighing this scarred and well-gonged Wing-Commander with the no-nonsense look against the highly improbable tale he was being told, with a view to judging its accuracy.

	"It sounds bad, sir," he said finally, then: "Where do I come in?"

	"I want you," said Stevenson seriously, "to join a secret society—more than one if you can—with the ultimate aim of getting some good, solid evidence against Miss Johns instead of mere supposition. And you'll have to appear to be, not exactly off, you understand, but as if with a little coaxing you could easily go that way ..."

	Holden's eyebrows had climbed half-way to his hairline, but he proved that he was not slow on the uptake by saying, "There was a type on my last station who used to think he could communicate with the Cosmic All. That sort of thing?"

	"That's it exactly," said Stevenson approvingly. "Just don't lay it on too thick. And remember, you and I are the only two people here who suspect Miss Johns of anything, so act accordingly."

	He saw Holden look at him sharply and wondered if he saw the beginnings of doubt in the other's eyes. Was the new security officer thinking, perhaps, that his chief had a bee in his bonnet and was chasing phantoms? Or was he simply ascribing such thoughts to Holden because in his weaker moments he had them about himself?

-

	They rode in silence after that until Stevenson pulled up beside a tall, barn-like structure whose few windows were positioned at second floor level and above, and led the way in. There were no guards, yet inside, sweeping up from the dimness of the floor like a ghostly grey stalagmite until its slim nose-cone scraped the equally shadowy roof, there stood a three-stager of advanced design. There was a strong smell of paint.

	"This building was used to work out the cruder problems of design and placement," said Stevenson impatiently, indicating the conglomeration of half-assembled fuel tanks, structural members and plumbing littered around the floor.* "And that thing which you are gawping at is the Dummy. It is a metal framework containing fuel tanks and very little else, used for testing stresses and strains before we went back to simpler designs. Some of the men have spent a lot of spare time on it—the hull, which is painted plywood, and the interior of the nose-cone particularly."

	Holden put one foot on the ladder which led up through the hollow shell at the point where engines should have been until it disappeared in the shadows. He laughed suddenly because the inside of one of the very life-like sections of plating had 'Halloween Dance' painted on it.

	"It's been painted recently," he said, sniffing. "And look how clean they keep the floor around here."

	Stevenson had noticed that also, and a nagging something in the back of his mind kept insisting that the new paint and the well-swept circle of floor on which the Dummy stood meant something, something other than the obvious meaning be attributed to it as he spoke.

	"They spend far too much time on this thing," he said shortly, "and in it. Pretending, playing spaceman when they should be using their brains working on the real thing. It's childish, criminal ..."

	When they were outside again Stevenson found that his headache had returned. On the way to see Michaels he was tempted to go for the aspirin bottle in the glove compartment, but decided against taking pills in front of Holden.

	Squadron-Leader Michaels met them outside the infirmary on the second floor of the Space Medicine building. He said that the patient had settled down and talked quite a lot after learning that his blindness would not be permanent. The doctor had placed him under partial sedation despite this, because of the rugged time he had given them when first brought in.

	"How did it happen?" said Stevenson.

	Michaels looked uncomfortable. He said, "It's a peculiar business, this. Very. When he arrived he was confused and badly frightened about his eyes, and kept raving about the Sun ..." The doctor broke off to interrupt himself with ;" I was posted to India once and remember hearing of a fakir who blinded himself by staring at the sun for hours on end—some guff about blindness increasing the vision of the Inner Eye. Anyway, we couldn't make sense out of anything Morrison said until after we had him quietened down. Then he said that he had been staring into a sun-ray lamp without protective goggles—"

	"We …?" said Stevenson.

	"Miss Johns and I," said Michaels, then hurriedly as he saw the look on Stevenson's face, "she came in a few minutes after he did and went straight to him, while I was phoning you about it as a matter of fact. I couldn't very well chase her out—at least, not without a good reason, and you didn't give me any reason at all. Besides, she's a damned good psychologist—she had that man calm and talking rationally in no time at all. And she's a nice person, too ..."

	"It doesn't matter," said Stevenson shortly. But it did matter, because he knew that the replies he would have received before a visit by Miss Johns would be very different from those he would gain afterwards, and it was answers in the former category which he needed. He added, "Is she with him now?"

	"Yes, but ..." Michaels coughed, then said firmly, "I'd like to say something, and I'm afraid it will sound like insubordination ..."

	Stevenson looked at him steadily for several seconds, then: "You've been insubordinate before without confessing to undue anxiety about it," he said drily, "but I can take a hint." He turned suddenly to Holden, who was still hovering in the background and performed brief introductions, then said, "Holden, I wonder if you would leave us alone for a few minutes? Consider that I worded it a little more tactfully and git, like a good man ..."

	When he had gone Stevenson said, "Well?"

	Michaels was a big man, with the ruddy features and great, ham-like hands of a farmer—except that any watchmaker would have delighted in the steadiness and sensitivity of those hands. He was the type who never beat around the bush but preferred to plough right through it, usually trampling it into the ground in the process. Bedside manners were something he knew only by hearsay, and Stevenson had the idea that what he was about to hear would be delivered straight from the shoulder and with considerable force.

	"I'm not a psychologist myself," said Michaels slowly, "but I can throw the jargon around as loosely as the next man, and even understand what I'm talking about sometimes. I think you need straightening out, Wingco."

	He was silent for a moment, then went on, "You're an odd man. Tough and strict, but in moderation. Psychologically the whole base is going to pot, and it would be worse if it wasn't for your constant sameness. You never have a hair out of place or a button undone, and you're so proper and dependable and so solidly normal that, even if they don't particularly like you, you shame them into behaving themselves. The entire personnel of the base could go completely round the bend without it affecting you, apparently—"

	"One successful launching," said Stevenson, "will cure everything."

	"Let's hope it cures you!"

	"You'd better explain that," said Stevenson sharply.

	"I said that the situation here did not seem to affect you," the doctor went on, "but it does. The way you have suddenly turned against Miss Johns proves that. I work with her a lot so possibly I'm the only one aware of it, and I think you are being blind and stupid.

	"Can't you see the physical change in her recently—I'm certain she must be dieting—or the way she looks at you? She's a nice person, George, a real nice person, and when I came here at first I thought you two were becoming serious about each other—she is just what you need, George. But now because things are going wrong generally you're taking it out on her ..."

	"That's enough!" said Stevenson angrily. "And you're right, Doctor, in saying that you are not a psychologist. Now I think I'll go in and see this Morrison. Alone."

-

III

	All the same, as he silently opened the door of the room where Morrison was being treated he felt very hot under the collar. He would never have suspected that anyone guessed his earlier feelings for the woman psychologist, much less that she returned them. Miss Johns was the sympathetic type; her extra attentions where he was concerned were simply because, with his chewed up face and necessarily emotionally barren life since getting it, she probably considered that he was in need of sympathy and understanding much more than any of the others.

	Either that or, even in those early days, she was already preparing for this moment.

	When Stevenson entered Miss Johns was reading in a low, soporific monotone to the man with bandaged eyes who was lying on the bed. Judging by the even breathing and relaxed state of the face visible below the dressings Morrison was asleep, but still she read on, occasionally darting a glance at the patient which was full of a tenderness so intense that she seemed almost to be sharing his pain. But she was like that with everybody, Stevenson knew; he thought how nice it would be if she could read to him like that, or take him in her arms and make him forget all the worries and compromises of his cold, lonely and frustrated existence. They might not be beautiful arms, but they were soft and comforting and she had so much sympathy to give which was not mere pity. He could be very happy with Miss Johns.

	Then abruptly he checked himself. Looking at her coldly and dispassionately again, he thought, Why you lousy, hypocritical …!

	There was a war on—a psychological war in which no holds were barred. Its effect on the morale and efficiency of the men in general had been bad despite everything that Stevenson could do, but now it was being concentrated on himself in particular and the method to be used against him was the dirtiest yet. Imagine trying to turn the Doc against him? And cunningly implanting the suggestion that she was carrying a torch for him by the most foolproof method—via a third party! She would know that Stevenson was particularly susceptible to that kind of approach, and she was really going to town on the process of softening him up. The ultimate aim, of course, being to render him as pliable and insane as the others.

	Stevenson had no intention of using a sun-ray lamp on his eyes or committing any similar act of insanity, but he was beginning to get an idea ...

-

	Miss Johns got up immediately she saw him and came towards Stevenson with a finger to her lips. She said, "I think he's sleeping. Do you have to talk to him now, George?"

	Two minutes ago Stevenson had fully intended to question Morrison to within an inch of his life, but now he replied, "I suppose it can wait."

	For the barest instant he thought he saw an overwhelming relief in her eyes, then she sighed and said, "This is a bad business, I can't understand it."

	Just a piece of harmless superstition, he said sardonically, but under his breath, then aloud: "Come outside where we can talk without waking him."

	This sort of thing was not in his line at all, Stevenson knew, he had the training and routine-indoctrinated mind of a good security officer—which meant that he was little more than a glorified nightwatchman—and he was afraid that he lacked the mental and verbal sleight-of-hand for the job he was contemplating. He was no psychologist and he was pitting himself against one of the best—he was bound to goof at some stage in the proceedings and wreck everything. But it was the only positive action he could take against this double-level sabotage and he had to try it.

	"I was thinking over what you said earlier, Miss Johns," he said when they were outside again. He had, he hoped, just the right amount of hesitancy and self-consciousness in his voice. "And I'd like your advice on something. It's headaches, mostly, and recurrent dreams—one dream, actually, connected with something which happened during the war. And recently things have been getting me down ..."

	"I understand, George," she said reassuringly. "I'd be glad to help, of course."

	There was concern in her eyes, real concern. Perhaps the feelings she had towards people were real and honest to a certain extent—in fact, Stevenson was convinced that that must be so. And if such was the case, then the plan he was about to try could be given another and more deadly modification.

-

	He had intended playing the part of a harrassed and near-to-neurotic security officer, and pretend to go along with her suggestions when, as he knew she must, she began to make them. He could see exactly how she worked and at the same time find out how to negate the damage already inflicted on others. Providing his act was convincing enough, there was the possibility that she might make a slip which would not only prove her own connection with the sabotage, but give him the identity of the other saboteur.

	Now, however, Stevenson was beginning to wonder if there was some truth in the Doc's assertion of a few minutes ago. He was tall, his hair was still dark and one half of his face could still be considered handsome—and while he wasn't much perhaps he was the most a girl like Miss Johns could hope for: after all, he had entertained such ideas towards her and she was not physically attractive. If all this was true and he pretended to return her affections, then the probability of her revealing something in an unguarded moment was increased many times.

	He said, "I won't talk about it now, I'm practically walking in my sleep. Maybe tomorrow or the next day?"

	"Surely," she said.  "Any time."

	Now that he was really looking for it he did notice a change in her. The blotchiness of her skin was less marked, and while she was still no siren her pudginess had decreased somewhat. Interesting.

	"Thanks," Stevenson said. He smiled what he hoped was a shy smile, though with his face one never knew, and added hesitantly, "I, ah, don't know what you've been doing to yourself recently, Miss Johns, but you keep getting more beautiful every day ..."

	For a moment he thought that she was going to faint. Her face went a dirty white colour and in her eyes as she looked at him was such utter terror that Stevenson could only stare foolishly at her with his mouth open. She mumbled something about another patient and fled.

	Stevenson barely nodded to the doctor as he left and all the warmth had departed from his voice and manner when he gave Holden, who was still waiting outside, his final instructions. He had only pretended to make a pass at Miss Johns, so that while he might feel disappointment that his plan to play her at her own game had misfired, he should not feel so hurt and angry like this over her running away from him. But he did.

	Apparently even plain and downright ugly women would have nothing to do with him.

-

	His utter fatigue was again brought home to him when he banged into the back of the Base Director's car on returning to his office—Stevenson had been certain that he had braked in plenty of time. He fought to keep his eyes wide open and focussed and as he went inside tried to give the impression that he was wide awake, alert and altogether on top line. Probably he failed dismally.

	The Flight-Sergeant in charge of the outer office jumped to his feet and said crisply, "Professor Martyn is inside, sir. He arrived a few minutes ago."

	Stevenson nodded and went in, closing the door firmly behind him. He said, "What can I do for you, sir?"

	Professor Martyn was the Chief Scientist, an extremely able and intelligent man who—perhaps because he was physically not very strong—was not very good at concealing his feelings. It was for that reason that he had not been present in the block-house during the last three launchings—his reactions to earlier failures, Stevenson remembered, had had a worse effect on the men's morale than the failures themselves. At the moment he was sitting with chin on chest, looking so completely dispirited that the large, grey eyes in his thin-boned face seemed at any moment they would melt into tears. The Professor was a weak man who felt things a little too strongly.

	Martyn lifted his head. "Nothing," he replied, and sudden anger kept his voice from breaking. "Not a blasted thing! I'm here to tell you that our spaceflight programme is called off. We're to pack up and go home.

	"Not that I'm surprised," he went on furiously before Stevenson could interrupt. "There's been far too much money wasted here with rockets which just punch holes in the ground! And now the Russians have announced their latest achievement, a manned expedition to Mars—they intend landing on Deimos before returning.  The expedition left secretly about ten months ago and now they're expecting news of the landing
at any time."

	"But that doesn't necessarily mean—"

	"Yes it does!" Martyn broke in. "They're giving this expedition the treatment, and when the Russians blow their own trumpet they don't believe in fitting a mute. This latest effort makes us look stupid. Not only that, it has made our attempts at trying to keep up with them even stupider. So it's all off, cancelled, phtt!"

-

	So they've won after all, Stevenson thought sickly. He had not realised that time was running out so quickly. For some obscure reason he thought of the Dummy—they would probably sell it to a fairground—and his eyes drifted to the wall facing his desk. It held a large picture of a section of the Moon taken at a distance of sixty miles—a fuzzy, distorted picture which had been taken by the first Lunar probe. Inevitably, the picture was Russian.

	Martyn was looking at the picture, too.

	"Can't you hold off for a couple of weeks?" Stevenson pleaded, cursing the tiredness which clogged both mind and tongue. "Even a week? Our men aren't that stupid—there is another reason for the failures, and I've got a line on it—"

	"I know, I know," said Martyn irritably. "You've told me a dozen times; sabotage. But you've no proof, no facts. Who do you suspect, and why? Above all, how .. ?"

	"I'd rather not say at the moment," said Stevenson, "but I'll have proof, all right, and soon. The way I see it there are two of them, one working in the open and one ..."

	"George," said Martyn gently, "I think you're chasing ghosts. There are no saboteurs, and even if you proved that there were I doubt that it would reverse the decision."

	But Stevenson clung to the opinion that it would. When the Chief Scientist had gone he began telephoning furiously to all the departments which might conceivably contain Holden. He had to tell the new security officer that there was no longer time for gentle boring from within—he must act fast and blow the risks! And when Holden had been given his new instructions Stevenson would have to contact Martyn again and somehow keep Mm talking about the coming dissolution of the base.

	To anyone ...

-

IV

	He was forced to leave the office early in the afternoon to avoid scandalising his staff by falling asleep on duty. His headache had grown steadily until it felt like a web of red-hot metal laid across his brain. Stevenson called up the Squadron-Leader to ask for something stronger than aspirin, but Michaels insisted on talking like the village match-maker and he hung up angrily without making the request. Shortly afterwards he fell unconscious into bed.

	And dreamed ...

	Dusseldorf on a night early in 1943, a night with heavy flak, searchlights, enemy fighters and an atrociously bright moon. His Lancaster shuddered and lurched to the intensity of the barrage and below him the whole city seemed to be on fire. But obviously it wasn't all on fire because in his phones the absurdly drawling voice of a Pathfinder type in his all-black Mosquito was urging, "Hit the area between the red and yellow marker flares. Disregard the aircraft burning on the ground ..." Close on his port side an aircraft had a near miss which set its starboard inner engine on fire. Before he could blink twice the tanks caught and the plane became a bright orange ball of fire which continued to fly straight and level for all of ten seconds before it gradually slid into a dive.

	For the then Squadron-Leader Stevenson, finishing his fourth tour of duty, the pressure had been on too heavy and for far too long. The odd conviction—which he had never confessed to, because in those days he would have died rather than let anyone suspect there was anything wrong with his mind—had been growing in him that all these threats against his life could be shifted into some other system of reality, that the flak and tracer and the planes of his colleagues' when they were forced to fly in formation without lights could harm him only if he allowed them to.

	He was, therefore, neither more nor less frightened than usual as he took his aircraft into its bombing run. All the ack-ack defences of the city seemed to be concentrated over the target area. It was a blinding, thunderous curtain so thick that the very air seemed to be a bubbling, fiery porridge. And Stevenson knew that if he flew into that muck he would not live ...

	He awoke shivering and with a pounding headache. It was early morning and he had forgotten to close the windows, which explained the cold, and the phone was ringing. It was one of the guards. They had caught a saboteur. Preston.

	"Take him to my office," Stevenson said curtly, fighting the urge to stutter with sheer excitement. "Don't let anyone see or speak to him until I get there. Especially Miss Johns."

	As he jammed down the phone and began hauling on his clothes, Stevenson thought that the last few words were becoming a refrain with him.

	So Preston was the other one.

	But when Stevenson questioned the Range Firing Officer a' few minutes later he drew a complete blank. It wasn't that Preston refused to answer questions, he could not. The only useful information came from the men who had brought him; in.

	Apparently Preston had not left the blockhouse since the; last firing and had been found by a security patrol still sitting; at his control desk. The chair he sat on was the only whole piece of furniture or equipment in the room, which looked as if it had suffered a near miss by a block-buster. The red button used for destroying vehicles which had gone out of control, together with a three-inch section of its connecting rod, had been clenched tightly in one fist—it was still there, Stevenson could see. Preston had given the patrol no trouble and had done exactly as he had been told with the happy air of an obedient and not too brainy dog.

	He still looked happy in a vacuous sort of way, except when Stevenson asked a question in a loud or angry voice, then he looked frightened.

	"Take him away!" said Stevenson harshly. "No need to put him in the guardroom, take him to Michaels at the infirmary ..."

	Poor Preston, he thought as he watched the man shamble out. both pitying and hating him because for a few glorious minutes he had allowed Stevenson to think that his troubles were over.

	In a way he envied Preston, the man who had neatly sidestepped all his problems.

	Steadily, inexorably, the pressure was building up again—just as it had done during the war, he thought—and it seemed! an eminently sane and logical thing just to duck out. Certainly it was not sanity to go on battering one's head against a brick wall. He had not accomplished anything in the four years he had been here, and now the Director said that the base was to close down ...

	The clerical staff had come on duty in the outer office, and someone had turned on the radio. There was still no news of the Russian landing on Deimos, but it was expected hourly. For a moment Stevenson thought of that expedition, of the equipment they would set up on that hurtling, little moon of Mars and of the data they would bring back. Imagine knowing the physical composition of Deimos, not by juggling with high-powered math at the end of a spectroscope but because you had brought a piece of it back with you. A great wave of envy and despair rose in him and he clenched his teeth so hard that his jaws hurt. If only he could stand up there, and look at the shrunken Sun and Mars like a big red wall in the black sky—if some of the people from this base could do it, even that would satisfy him.

-

	He had been hopelessly ineffectual as a security officer, Stevenson told himself as his mind returned to earth and present time; he was about ready to admit now that there were no saboteurs, that he had dreamed them up rather than admit that another nation could produce better men than his. His suspicions of Miss Johns must have grown from a subconscious hatred because their earlier friendship had not, as he had hoped, ripened into something warmer. The same hatred which he felt towards all women who either stared or pointedly did not stare at the right side of his face ...

	The sudden ringing of the phone jolted him out of the depths of despair to a small extent, then the fast, excited voice of Holden in the ear-piece pulled him the rest of the way out with a rush.

	"I haven't much time, sir," said Holden quickly, "someone might walk in on me. But I've found out plenty. You were dead right, there's sabotage—maybe as many as ten people involved with Miss Johns definitely behind it. I don't know how it is being done, just that Miss Johns seems to be solely responsible. But it's a crazy business; there is no indication that they are pro-Russian. They seem to believe that too much physical science is a bad thing and that all rocket attempts here must be stopped—I overheard them talking about a 'low road' which must remain closed to us. The whole thing strikes me as a sort of fanatical, crackpot cult—"

	"Undoubtedly a front," said Stevenson, "But go on."

	Quickly Holden described how he had hidden himself in the Dummy building the previous night, and how a very thorough search of the place by three men with flashlamps had driven him into a hiding place from which he could hear very little and see not at all. The three searchers had been joined by six or seven others and they had stood around talking and waiting for Miss Johns. Her name had been mentioned several times, in tones of great respect which made him think that they regarded her as a sort of high priestess or being apart, and they had also discussed the lovely way the previous day's launching had been sabotaged—the beautiful touch of allowing it to look as if this time they were going to be successful for all of ten seconds before cracking down, so as to wreck the maximum psychological damage with the incident.

-

	There were a lot of quite innocent types who used the Dummy for flights of imagination and nothing else, Holden went on, but these people had a purpose which seemed to go beyond even sabotage. Next time he was going to listen from a spot inside the Dummy—he had gone through it after they had all left and found the perfect hiding place—when the next meeting took place. It was scheduled for this morning sometime ...

	"This morning ...?" said Stevenson.

	"Yes," said Holden. "They think you are becoming too interested in what goes on in the Dummy at night and might raid the place with a detachment of security men, hence the switch to daytime meetings. They're afraid of you putting two and two together and connecting them with the Morrison accident—though what the connection is I haven't been able to see, either.

	"For some reason they regard Morrison as a hero," Holden said, then went on smoothly, "what you see in that Flight-Sergeant is beyond me. Take away the moustache and what have you got? Now take me ..."

	"Nice work, Holden," said Stevenson and hung up. It was obvious that Holden had been walked in upon, wherever he was.

	He spent the next half hour pacing up and down his office wondering how he could assist Holden. His first impulse was to surround the Dummy building with men, but dismissed that idea for the piece of lunacy that it was. Holden alone could do everything that was necessary—he had already proved himself to be quick, intelligent and adaptable. But he could not help worrying. Supposing the hiding place was discovered. The interior of the Dummy was a rickety, flimsy structure of lightweight girders, ladders and three-ply—an accident could happen very easily, someone might fall and it would be hard to prove that it was not an accident. If they did anything to Holden ...

	But there was something useful that he could do. Stevenson put on his cap, checked his appearance briefly in the glass and saw a tired but spic-and-span Wing-Commander, and reflected that the tiredness could not be helped. Then he left to find Professor Martyn.

-

	It took him nearly three hours to track down the Chief Scientist and wrest the promise from him that he would make no public or private announcement about the closing of the base for at least three days. Stevenson called his office to see if there were any messages, but there were none so presumably Holden was still eavesdropping on the meeting in the Dummy. He had a late breakfast early dinner combination, then decided that there were some loose ends he could tie up while waiting on Holden's report. He could talk to Morrison, the man who said he had been blinded by a sun-ray lamp and who the saboteurs regarded as a hero ...

	The road from the cafeteria to the infirmary in the Space Medicine building ran past the structure which housed the Dummy, and Stevenson intended shooting past without even a sideways glance. But when he saw the body lying by the side of the road he jammed on the brakes.

	It was Holden. He recognised the sports jacket even before he got close enough to see the protruding ears. The face was unrecognisable. And as the implications of Holden's physical condition sank in, the fabric of reality around him cracked open and madness gibbered in at him.

	Holden was still—just barely—alive. Stevenson half dragged him into the car, wondering wildly as he did so if the car was really a car and the road a road, or if they would all break up and dissolve if he didn't keep thinking about them. When an event occurs which is clearly, beyond all doubt, a product of madness—a nightmare hallucination so detailed that it could be seen, felt and lifted into a car—then connected events must also become suspect.

	Had he merely imagined that last report of Holden's, for instance, because he wanted so badly to believe something like that? And how many other people and places and incidents was he imagining? The pressure was building up too far, he thought fanatically; it was time to duck, to fly around or to whatever he had done that other time.

	You can't fly through that muck and live …!

-

	He left Holden with Michaels and, ignoring the doctor's shocked, incredulous questions, went straight to Miss Johns' office. She wasn't in. Stevenson stood for a moment in the small, neat room fighting for control. Disregard the impossible, insane things, he told himself desperately; hold hard onto the original idea, the plan for playing Miss Johns at her own fiendishly subtle game. He wasn't equipped to fight this sort of psychological war, less so now that she had begun to use shock tactics, but he could try ...

	Quick footsteps came along the corridor and Miss Johns entered, a little breathlessly. She looked surprised to see him, also wary and a little afraid. But there was genuine concern in her voice when she said, "George, what's wrong? You don't look well."

	"I'm not," said Stevenson thickly. "I was worried. About last night, you—"

	Even to himself he sounded incoherent. If only the pain in his head would stop so that he could think. And he had to concentrate on the carpet and desk and bookshelves for fear that he would suddenly find himself looking into the nothingness of the non-existent atomic particles which made them up.

	"George, I'm sorry!" she burst out, and hurried across to him. "When I ran away you must have thought that I ... that your face ... But it wasn't that at all."

	Miss Johns put both hands on his shoulders and pushed him gently into a chair. Hesitantly, she reached up to touch his cheek, the bad one.

	"I'm a very ... immature person," she said. "The very idea of war horrifies me, yet I can feel strongly for a man who has fought in one and bears the scars because by doing so he has proved that he is ... Well, it's the romantic in me, I suppose. And I've been lonely on this job, more lonely than you could ever imagine, George. Your looks don't matter, please believe that."

	She was actually pleading with him, Stevenson saw in amazement, and he knew that she meant every word of it. This was going to make his job a lot easier, he thought; it also made him feel a louse.

	Miss Johns turned away suddenly and sat down at her desk. She said quietly, "This recurrent dream which is troubling you, would you like to talk about it?"

	Stevenson told her about Dusseldorf, before and after but not during—the crucial ten minutes over the target area together with large periods of the return flight were a complete blank to him. And because Miss Johns was a top psychologist no matter what else she might be, and because he had been honestly troubled by that business for years, Stevenson waited anxiously for her reactions.

	"Protective amnesia, obviously," said Miss Johns. "You had taken too much and just this once you ran away, for which nobody could really blame you. But you blamed yourself so much that you had to forget this moment of cowardice. However, I think that you would ultimately feel better if you did remember and face up to it.

	"What were your feelings and impressions just before the blank period?"

	"Headache, a peculiar, burning sort of headache," said Stevenson. "Just the same as those I've been having recently. And the idea that things around me were ... were ... I mean, that they weren't really real and could be changed, if necessary, so's not to hurt me." He sighed, then went on, "But it wasn't as simple as you think. We returned to base long before the others—which was the reason the enquiry was called in the first place—and the aircraft fell to pieces the moment it touched down and nobody heard us come in until that time. Yet we were seen making the bombing run, so there was no way we could have come home early. Then my co-pilot said that I deserted my position during the ten minutes we were in the thickest flak, and turned up again when the aircraft was badly shot up and rapidly losing height. But nobody else saw me in the aircraft at that time and anyway, trying to run away inside a bomber at 15,000 feet strikes me as being too stupid an idea even for me ..."

-

V

	Stevenson had seen the sudden change in Miss Johns' expression when he had described his headaches, and saw it become more and more marked as he went on talking. He attributed it to the fact that the high and mighty chief security officer was displaying a major weakness which she was already considering methods to exploit. He disregarded the thing like a pencil torch which she took out of her desk, until all power and feeling left his legs and he had to grab the sides of the chair to avoid slipping to the floor.

	"This gadget paralyses completely," said Miss Johns in a strained voice. "Its effect wears off in a few minutes, but if focussed in the heart area the effect is irreversible—at least to the facilities available here. I don't want to kill you, George, or even hurt you, but when you can stand up again you'll have to come with me."

	Suddenly she swore. "To think of all the years of training and coaching and bringing along men, men who had to be started at the bottom, from scratch. And all the time you were right here …!"

	She pressed her lips tightly together and thereafter kept them that way while Stevenson was in the office.

	They left by a side entrance and walked towards the Dummy building.

	Stevenson said, "There's no sense in pretending any longer. You are the saboteur—or one of them, I should say. Who's the other one and ... and how the blazes does he do it?"

	Miss Johns could not have been very experienced at this sort of thing, he thought; she was walking so close to him that he could have disarmed her any time he chose. But he wanted to find out all he could now in case she could not be made to talk later.

	"Before I answer that," she said, "tell me one thing. Do you hate Russians?"

	"That's a hard question," said Stevenson. "Let's say I admire them for their achievements—especially in spaceflight—but do not like them for the way they're hamstringing us here when they're already so far ahead of us."

	"That's the answer I expected," said Miss Johns, looking greatly relieved, "And I can assure you that the Russians are not the people responsible for your troubles." She pointed to the ground a few yards ahead of them and a handful of gravel lifted itself into the air. Keeping pace with them as they walked it opened out into a cloud of individual pieces which went into a whirling complicated dance like a swarm of midges then dropped back to the path again. She went on, "There are many delicate mechanisms in a rocket which can be moved at a distance like that, before, during or after a take-off. So I alone am responsible for the sabotage, though there were many people who knew I was doing it, and why."

-

	Stevenson's capacity for being surprised or shocked had been overloaded. He walked on dully, trying desperately to put the possible and impossible into some sort of order in a brain that was one throbbing ache. The only faint reassurance he had was the hope that if things like this could happen then maybe there was an explanation for Holden.

	He must have been thinking out loud because Miss Johns said, "I'm sorry about Holden. If he hadn't been so well hidden it would never have happened. But he managed to kick out a panel before losing consciousness and v/e saw him and brought him back. We had no transport ourselves and when one of the men, a limited Pre-cog, sensed a car coming in a few minutes we put him beside the road knowing that that way he would have medical attention quickly.

	"I spoke to Squadron-Leader Michaels before seeing you," she continued, "and he said that Holden would be all right. The damage to his lungs was negligible and you saw how tightly his eyes were closed, a reflex action which undoubtedly saved his sight—though there was still a considerable boil-off from his tear ducts. And the swelling and blistering of the skin looks much worse than what it really is. You know, provided one acts quickly enough, explosive decompression isn't nearly so fatal as some people believe.

	"And now inside," she added. "You first." Stevenson became aware that they were entering the Dummy building. He had not disarmed Miss Johns and now it was too late to try.

	There were eight or nine men inside, all of whom he recognised as being important people in the technical end: Hutchings, MacKellar, Roberts and others. Roberts was pale and scared looking and was clutching a floor-brush, but the others gathered round excitedly, throwing incomprehensible questions at each other, Miss Johns and himself—someone even tried to shake his hand! Then he heard Miss Johns detailing three men to go into the Dummy, and telling the whitefaced Roberts that he need not bother sweeping the floor because after today it wouldn't matter, and then she was pointing to the open end of the steel and hardboard rocket and saying, "After you ..."

-

	They climbed to the Dummy's control room, in silence except for the soft, tuneless singing of MacKellar. "You tak' the Low Road an' I'll tak' the High Road," he gave out a little breathlessly as he climbed, "An' I'll be in Scotland before you ..." It was obvious that the words had significance. Inside the control room Hutchings handed him a high altitude suit. When Stevenson just stood looking at it they took it away from him again and began putting him into it. After that they left him alone while they put on their own suits and he had a chance to look around.

	There was a dummy control board with one side pushed out—where Holden had hidden himself to eavesdrop on a crackpot secret society—and pieces of netting stapled loosely to walls and ceiling. One wall also held a calendar with a girl on it—her attractions were such that nobody had noticed that the calendar was two years old. Nailed to the floor were five chairs which had straps for waist and ankles attached to them. They were ordinary wickerwork chairs a bit gone in places rather than padded acceleration couches, Miss Johns explained when she saw him looking at them, because there would be no acceleration.

	"I and a few others like me are doing everything possible to check any further technological development by the nations of what you think of as the West," she went on. "Your whole culture is headed into a scientific dead end, where everything is classified and tucked into tiny, rigid compartments and there is only this one unalterable reality. Physical science has an important part to play in your advancement, but it is only a part. It requires similar advances in the purely mental sciences—especially of the type which some of you are already calling psionics—if you are to go to the Stars, or into Time or explore the countless probability worlds within reach of this continuum.

	"That is why we are not hindering the Russians, who are doing very well in the physical sciences, and curbing you in every way possible. Your thinking and energies must be forced into new and different channels, and then the two methods must be merged ..."

	Her tone had been that of a nurse lecturing a backward patient, both loving and severe, but suddenly she sighed and looked appealingly at Stevenson, "I have a plan which will accomplish all these things, and quickly, but ..." She broke off and her tone hardened again as she gave orders to close the suit face-plates, and thereafter it was a toneless, metallic sound coming through the radio which had been fitted to each suit.

-

	"... News of the Russian landing on Deimos came through about fifteen minutes ago," she said. "It wasn't altogether good. There was technical trouble ... apparently they're stuck there without enough fuel to get back. What we have to do is rescue them and make the incident—especially the method used—as public as possible. This will have the effect of shaking a lot of physical scientists loose from their needlessly limited concepts, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and bring about first the branching off and ultimately the merging which is also necessary.

	"I'm taking a great risk cutting corners like this," she continued quickly, "but I've been on this job far too long, and certain physical changes are beginning which would soon make it obvious that I was not of this planet.

	"Oh, well, here we go ..."

	Air whooshed briefly through the unglazed portholes and cracks in the plywood hull, and all weight was suddenly gone. Below them stretched a blinding expanse of white that was mottled here and there by hazy blue and green and brown. Stevenson had seen the Russian photographs; it was the Earth from one thousand miles out.

	Stevenson's mind was too stunned to think about why or how he had got here; his only coherent thought was the wish that the port was bigger so that he could see more of the most glorious sight he had ever seen.

	"... I'm no good yet at moving big stuff," Miss Johns was saying, "and this will leave my brain useless for anything but thinking with for a week. Roberts and Morrison were specialising in this sort of thing and were coming along nicely. But the Holden accident unsettled Roberts badly and on the last training jump around the Moon Morrison was blinded by a dose of unshielded sunlight—the gyro system had broken down and he was outside rotating the ship with a compressed air jet, so that the sun wouldn't blister the paint and cause a certain security officer to ask awkward questions.

	"But we're not worried about the paint now, or you," she ended quietly. "She's all yours, George."

	Stevenson looked at her blankly.

	"Come now," she said impatiently. "You know what is possible, so should no longer be afraid of what seemed impossible. This trip should be easier than the last one, because space is empty and an inch of nothing and forty million miles of nothing are exactly equal. Or fifty lightyears of nothing. Think man! What did you do during the ten minutes you were away from the aircraft over Dusseldorf?"

	Stevenson heard himself stammering out the story of what he had done, the story which he had steadfastly refused to remember not, as he had thought originally because it was shameful, but because it was insane.

-

	"So at the height of that raid you craved the peace and security of your childhood," said Miss Johns sternly. "You found yourself in your own back garden on a summer afternoon watching a little boy playing. Did you return again to the aircraft before the little boy, yourself, could turn around and be frightened by your bleeding face, or because you felt that you had deserted your crew, or both? But it doesn't matter—you returned and brought home an aircraft that couldn't possibly fly, fast enough for an enquiry to be called over the incident but not so quickly that you wrecked the sanity of yourself and your crew.

	"You're a very talented man, George. Time travel and teleportation. The abilities are latent in most people but require training to be brought out. You developed them independently, under pressure.

	"But we're wasting time, George. Take us to Deimos."

	Startled, Stevenson protested, "I can't do that! I mean, I believe now that I must have done it before, but I forget how. And now that you've explained everything, the pressure is off. You said yourself that I needed—"

	"Is it?" said Miss Johns quietly. "You're forgetting what I said about using all my psi energy to get us up here, and that this isn't a self-powered vehicle which has been put into orbit.

	"We're falling, and at thirty-two feet per second there isn't much time."

	He saw the faces of Hutchings, MacKellar and the other man whose name he hadn't remembered yet all staring at him. Obviously this was as much a surprise to them as to himself, their frightened expressions proved that. But while Miss Johns' face was pale she was not nearly so frightened.

	She was expecting him to produce ...

-

	Because he was their sole means of transport home Miss Johns forbade him to go outside the ship on Deimos, nor did she leave it herself. While Hutchings and the others visited with the Russians in their air-tight but fuel-less ship and tried to explain things with the inadequate vocabulary at their disposal, Stevenson and his saboteur talked.

	The outbreak of superstition at the base had been engineered by Miss Johns, not because it was important in itself but because it helped the breakaway from too-logical patterns of thought. She had been given the assignment because males on her world were noticably different from Human males, and adult females were so strikingly beautiful by Earth standards that it would have been impossible for them to operate at all. Her people were probably more intelligent than the Humans, but no less impressionable—such an agent was bound to be sought after by some Earthman whose feelings she would eventually return. It had happened to her, and she was anything but beautiful! That was why people like herself were given these assignments.

	"I see," said Stevenson sympathetically. "Even ugly people have their uses sometimes. Uh, maybe us ugly ducklings should stick together ...?"

	He saw her start to say something then break off in confusion. Her face was very red and she would not meet his eyes. Stevenson found the old suspicion coming back and with it the old hurt. She seemed to be fond of him, but ...! "Why did you run away from me last night?" he asked sharply.

	"Because you said I was getting more beautiful every day," said Miss Johns, shyness and asperity mixing equally in her tone, "and nearly scared me to death! We take a long time to reach maturity, but when we do it happens fast and it's due to happen to me any time. I'm not an ugly duckling—what ails me is our equivalent of freckles and puppy-fat." She lowered her eyes again and ended, "If we could wait a while you'd find me a real nice duck."

	He was happily trying to find a suitable reply to that when the six figures, three in suits of unfamiliar design, came half-swimming half-climbing over the hundred yards distant horizon of Deimos, and Hutchings' voice came through their phones:

	"George, for Pete's sake get us home quick. The inside of that ship was interesting enough, but dammit they've been cooped up in there for eight months! Man, the stink! I think if you offer them a bath when we get home they'd tell you every secret in the Kremlin ..."

The End