bad memory by patrick fahy illustrated by martin [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy magazine december 1960. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] channing wanted a planet. had they sold him a pup? ex-vector commander jim channing strode purposefully to the reception desk of planet enterprises, inc. "i want," he told the well-built blonde who was making an interested survey of his lean features, "to buy a planet." "yes, sir." her interest evaporated. she took a card from a filing cabinet and handed it to him. "if you will just fill this out." it was a simple questionnaire--type, location, size--and channing's stylo moved rapidly over it. he hesitated only at the last, stark question, "how much are you prepared to pay?" then he wrote neatly in the space provided "one hundred thousand credits." that was exactly the amount of his signing-off bonus. it also represented his total finances. the unimaginative minds that calculated the pay of a red-blooded space officer didn't take into account all the attractive ways of spending it that a rumbustious pioneer vector provided. he gave the blonde the card and she wrote a name on it. the smile she gave him was altogether impersonal. she liked the look of the big, gangling fellow with "space" written all over his bronzed face and crinkled blue eyes, but.... she said, "will you come this way, please?" the name on the desk identified him as "mr. folan" and he was a tall, affable man. "i think we can suit you, commander--er--mr. channing," he said, "though what we have in mind mightn't be quite as large as you wish. earth-type planets come rather high, you know. now if you were to choose a siriusor a vega-type--" "thank you, no," jim said firmly. he had heard too much about the hazards of alien-type planets. "in that case," mr. folan said busily, "let's see what we have available." * * * * * a month later the doors of the automatic shuttle slid across and admitted jim channing to the third planet of phylox beta. it also disgorged one spaceboat, a clutter of machinery, a thousand tons of strawberry plants and a fully equipped house. while he was still taking in the first glimpse of his future home, the massive doors slammed shut and the giant ship took off smoothly and silently. a moment later it winked into sub-space. he was in business. the planet possessed only one sizable island--it could hardly be dignified by the name of continent. the rest was covered by a vast ocean. still, as folan had explained, he couldn't really expect anything more--not in the line of an earth-type, anyway--for the money. he spent a week figuring out the remote controls that operated the planting machinery. once it clanked into operation, it worked entirely on its own. he had only to push a few buttons to send it lumbering in new directions and the big island steadily took on a resemblance to a huge strawberry patch while channing fished and lounged in the sun. when the galactic trade agent came, the strawberries were waiting for him, neatly piled into a mountain of gleaming cans. he was a friendly, talkative little man, glad to exercise his tongue again after the lonely months in space. "what are you growing here?" he asked channing. "strawberries." the friendly smile disappeared. "every planet in the galaxy seems to be growing strawberries this year. i can't even give them away." "but i thought the ursa major colonies--" the little man shook his head. "so does everyone else. there's a million tons of strawberries the colonies can't use headed there already. now if it was upklin seeds--" "upklin seeds?" the agent looked at him in surprise. "you mean you haven't heard about upklin seeds?" "no. not a thing." "well, of course, you are a newcomer. it's this new race that's been discovered somewhere in the sack. they are as rich as all get-out and they have a passion for upklin seeds. trouble is they can't grow them on local planets and they are offering fancy prices to anybody that can supply them. i paid a thousand credits a bushel for them to your next-door neighbor on the fourth planet last week. got a hundred bushels." channing did a bit of mental arithmetic. a hundred thousand credits for one crop. whew! "could i grow them here?" the agent shook his head. "you need plenty of soft marsh and a jupiter-type atmosphere." then he had a sudden idea and he spoke long and seriously to channing, explaining quite a few things that were new to him. channing was still considering them, staring thoughtfully at the ground, after the little man left. * * * * * next day channing took off for the nearest sub-space center and a few hours later he was in mr. folan's office at planet enterprises, gingerly balancing his cap on his knee. mr. folan's sleek head nodded as channing made his points and when he was finished the executive pressed a buzzer and called for the file. "you realize, mr. channing," he said conversationally, as he turned over the pages, "that what you are asking will be a most expensive undertaking." "i know that," channing said eagerly, "but upklin seeds are such a sure-fire proposition that i thought planet enterprises might be willing to do the job on a percentage basis." mr. folan wrote some figures on the margin of the folder and considered deeply. "yes," he said at last, "i think it would work out on a seventy-thirty split." "seventy-thirty?" mr. folan inclined his head graciously. "seventy per cent for planet enterprises and thirty for yourself." channing said slowly, "that's a bit steep." in a few brisk words, mr. folan showed just why he was an executive of planet enterprises, inc. he gave channing the figures for transforming the planet's characteristics to those of jupiter; he told him what acreage of upklin seeds he could grow and the exact profit to be expected. channing's share should be about one hundred and fifty thousand credits per crop. fighting a rearguard battle, channing said, "your three hundred and fifty thousand won't look so bad on the balance sheet, either." folan reeled off his figures again with practiced glibness. channing had the sudden suspicion that his proposition wasn't entirely unexpected. but the figures sounded reasonable and he had to admit that planet enterprises was risking a great deal of money. "then there is the not inconsiderable cost of your own metamorphosis, mr. channing," folan added. "huh?" said channing. there followed the most excruciating half-hour of channing's life. proposition followed explanation, counter-explanation followed counter-proposition. at the end of that time he emerged from the office with a stricken look and a small white card. the blonde receptionist read the look correctly and definitely and finally crossed him off her list. * * * * * for a jube, ckm dyk wasn't at all bad-looking. his four legs growing directly from the bottom of the muscular, hairy trunk were strong and sturdy--always a mark of handsomeness in a male, for the legs had to take most of the strain of a gravitational pull several times that of earth. he had three flexible tentacles, a thin melon slice for a mouth, but nothing resembling a nose. he didn't need one, since he breathed through a set of gills at the sides of his head. he remembered vaguely that he had once been jim channing, an earthman, but the memory had nearly faded. he had been warned of that, that he would soon forget he had ever been anything except what he was now, but he had already forgotten the warning. phylox beta iii had changed, too, and in as great a degree. the wide ocean had become a turgid, soupy mush, covered by the trailing growths of the upklin flowers. the blue skies had turned an angry red and the sharp wind that rustled the hair on his squat body was almost pure methane. he waddled down to the low disk-shaped skimmer and started the jets. as it pushed its way through the clinging masses of the upklin flowers, he surveyed his crop happily. this was his second crop and it promised to be even better than the first. he was going to be a very wealthy buk, he told himself. he could buy.... his mind floundered. he didn't know what jubes longed for, what they sought wealth for. he was certain at the same time that there was a flaw in his contentment, that something was missing. what he was missing dropped from the sky a few days later. it came in a spaceboat and was his neighbor from phylox beta iv. her body hair was a rich golden brown and she wore pretty bracelets, studded with basim stones, on each of her four legs. ckm dyk's single eye, with its perpendicular outer eyelids and horizontal nictitating inner membranes to filter out the infra-red rays, shone with an emotion that was more than pleasure. her thoughts flooded his mind. there was a warm recognition of his admiration and a delicious suggestion that it wasn't unacceptable. "the agent told me you were upklin farming. i came to see if i could be of any help," she told him. the sentences rang like golden bells within his burgeoning consciousness. he tried to shape his answering thought coherently, but his lack of telepathic experience betrayed him. she flinched momentarily beneath the raw, undirected stream of passionate love that overwhelmed her mind. then an answering wave of shy, tender awareness and acquiescence laved his senses. without the clumsy barrier of speech between them, they had scaled in a few pulsating moments the shining heights of love and devotion that human passion sometimes cannot find in a lifetime of searching. ckm dyk had never been so happy. they decided to farm the two planets together so they could be with each other always. there was sound economic sense in this; with both of them helping, the output of each planet would be nearly doubled. it meant a huge increase in administrative and paper work for ckm dyk, but he didn't mind that. often, as he pored over account books and production figures, a tremulous, shy devotion would envelop him in a gauzy mental cloud and he would lay down his stylo and answer aln muh with all the great love that surged within him. as the months passed, his happiness increased. the perfect attunement of their minds excluded all the scalding jealousies and the offended silences of misunderstanding that can mar the most loving human relationships. they did not need to see each other; the physical presence of the beloved was unimportant; they loved more with their minds than with their bodies. it seemed improbable that such a glorious idyll should ever be disturbed. then, one morning, a shuttle-spacer came silently out of the red sky and landed beside the house. ckm dyk waddled toward it, impelled by a carefully built-in series of reflexes which he had completely forgotten about and entered its gaping maw. he never once looked at aln muh and the passionate entreaties that echoed through his mind only roused in him a dull irritation. * * * * * jim channing again found himself in mr. folan's office. the figures the tall, sleek-haired man was reading out to him made tuneful music. even when planet enterprises' massive deduction was made, his share was comfortingly more than a million. "not bad payment, mr. channing, for five years of life! in any case, it's all over now--just a bad memory." the executive smiled at him from his comfortable, familiar chair, aware of the torrents of confused thoughts hidden behind the gray eyes. when he had come out of the stupor that succeeded the almost disintegrating effects of his re-metamorphosis, jim channing remembered clearly the terms of the bargain he had made. he was to become a jube, a living nightmare, living in a nightmare world, for five years. at the end of that time, planet enterprises promised him, he would be given back his humanity and he would have earned enough money to keep him in luxury for the rest of his life. they had kept their promise--to the letter. he felt it ungrateful of him that his paramount emotion was fury. he had been happy; no human attachment could ever make him as happy again. he longed for the glorious love and trust he had shared during that tremendous five years. perhaps he had been a repulsive monster from whom any woman would run screaming. but he didn't want a woman. he wanted aln muh. he said, picking his words with the greatest care, "would a further metamorphosis be possible?" * * * * * folan's jaw dropped. it was a question he'd never expected to hear from any of the men who had taken the terrible choice for the glittering reward he held out to them. most of them had picked up their vouchers and asked the way to the nearest tavern; many of the alien races did not find alcohol compatible with their metabolisms. a few had inquired tentatively about his current receptionist. planet enterprises had a big turnover in pretty receptionists, but they didn't lose them to men who had been unhuman horrors for five years. one big red-haired character had wanted to start a private war against the sirians, whose brother he had been until two days previously. but none of them had wanted to go back. he said, "it's possible, mr. channing. but i must tell you that a second metamorphosis is very expensive--and it's permanent." "you mean if i become a jube again, i must stay one?" the executive nodded. channing gestured toward the payment voucher. "you said it was expensive. is there enough there to cover it?" folan looked curiously at him. "yes, more than enough." he waited to hear what the big man would say next. channing licked dry lips. a terrible doubt assailed him. maybe aln muh had been metamorphosed too. maybe she had returned to her former self--whatever that may have been--while he sat here. he looked down at the big, freckled hands resting on his knees. they were trembling and his palms felt moist. without looking up, he asked, "is the period of metamorphosis, always for a term of five years?" "invariably. no other term is possible in the present state of our knowledge of the technique--except permanency." a great sigh escaped channing. that was all right, then. aln muh was genuinely a jube. the agent had told him about her--mentioned her by name, he remembered now--had said that she was upklin farming on the neighboring planet. if she had been metamorphosed, she would have been taken from him more than a year ago. he tossed his cap on the table decisively and stood up. "all right. i'll take the permanent treatment." * * * * * ckm dyk sucked the methane through his gills with satisfaction. it was good to be home again. he had forgotten already that he had ever been jim channing, that he would never be human again. he did not know that less than five minutes after the shuttle-ship had borne him off to galactic enterprises, aln muh had sent her spaceboat hurtling toward the fiery orb of phylox beta, mad with the grief of having lost him. it would not have concerned him much if he had known. jubes make tender and devoted lovers, but they are notorious for their exceedingly bad memories. the pacifists by charles e. fritch _parker was a trouble maker wherever they landed. but here was the planet ideal, a chance he had awaited a long, long time--easy, like taking candy from a baby...._ [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from worlds of if science fiction, may 1955. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] like a lone sentinel, the house stood apart at the edge of the village, a white cube with no windows. the door stood open, a dark hole against the white brick. the house was silent. the village beyond was silent. "they must have seen us land," compton said, a little wildly. "you can't set down a rocket ship a hundred yards from somebody and not have them notice. they must have seen us!" "unless no one lives here," parker amended. "this may be a ghost city." "he's right," hinckley agreed. "there might not be anyone living here, or anyplace on the planet for that matter. we've found very little life in these alien star-systems, and it's varied from primitive to ancient. perhaps this society became old and died before any of us were born." the three earthmen stood at the base of the spaceship, their spacesuit headpieces thrown back so they could breathe in the cool thin air. they stood there peering into the deathly stillness. "i hope there are people living here," parker said. "it's been more than a month now--" "well," hinckley said, "let's find out." he waved them forward. they were fifty feet from the house when a woman appeared in the doorway with a silver vase. she was dressed in a grey flowing robe that covered her from neck to ankles. "a young woman," hinckley breathed, staring. "a woman just like any on earth!" his voice was loud in the silence, but the woman took no notice. she stooped and began filling the vase with sand. the two men with hinckley shifted anxiously, settling the sand beneath their boots. behind them the great spaceship pointed its nose at the sky. parker was staring intently at the girl. "i'm going to like this place," he said slowly. they walked forward, crunching sand. but the girl took no notice of their approach. she was kneeling beside the house, scooping tiny handfuls of sand into the silver vase. when they were within five feet of her, hinckley cleared his throat. she did not look up. he coughed. "maybe she's deaf," parker suggested vaguely. his eyes wandered appraisingly over her youthful body; he licked dry lips. hinckley moved forward and stood before the girl. her small white hands dug into the sand, scooping around his boots as though not aware of them. "and blind, too?" compton wanted to know. "and without the sense of touch?" there was a strange quality to his voice, as though some primitive part of his unconsciousness was telling him to run. hinckley bent to tap the girl lightly upon the shoulder. "pardon me, miss. we're visitors from earth," he told her. but she paid no attention to the sound of his voice, and he stepped back, puzzled. "now what?" compton wanted to know. he looked around him nervously, at the house, the speckled sand, the rocket squatting behind them. "i hope all the natives aren't like this." "i do," parker said, licking his lips thoughtfully and keeping his gaze on the girl. "i'd just as soon have them all like this. it might be interesting." compton flushed. "what i meant--" "he knows what you meant," hinckley said harshly. "and there won't be any of that going on here. you caused enough trouble on the other planets, and it's not going to happen again, not while i'm in charge of this expedition. we didn't come all the way out here just so you could satisfy your romantic inclinations." "and how about my off hours, _captain_," parker said, emphasizing the word as though it were obscene; "then may i fraternize?" "you have no off hours," hinckley said sternly. "here comes another one," compton warned in a whisper. a man, dressed in robes similar to the woman's, came from the door of the house and walked into the yard. after helping the woman to rise, he picked up the vase, and the two of them went back inside the house. he hadn't even looked at the earthmen. after awhile, parker said, "do you suppose they're both mirages?" "maybe that's it," compton said. "maybe it's all a mirage, the woman, the vase, the man, the house, maybe even the planet itself." his voice had risen in his excitement. "take it easy," hinckley advised. "let's get back to the ship before the whole planet evaporates," compton said. "go back if you like," hinckley said. "i'm going to investigate this. how about you, parker?" "okay with me. always wanted to see what makes a mirage tick." he glanced contemptuously at compton. "okay," compton said, gripping his rifle, "we'll all make fools of ourselves." "c'mon, then." hinckley led the way into the house, hesitating only briefly at the doorway. inside, a blue light flickered as the man bent over a flaming trough and poured sand into it from the silver vase. the flames leaped high, filling the room with a sweet fragrance. the man emptied the vase, rose and took it to one corner of the room. he sat down on the couch by the woman. he did not look at the earthlings. "he doesn't see us either," compton said hoarsely. he cried, "hey, you! you! listen! we're earthmen. visitors from space." his voice was explosive in the silence. the man didn't look up. the earthmen became aware of music seeping from the walls, music strange and hauntingly beautiful, played on incredible invisible instruments. "i don't like this," compton said. "i don't like it at all. why are they ignoring us? why?" "maybe they can't help it," hinckley suggested. "perhaps they actually can't see us or hear us. it's fantastic, but it's possible." "i wonder," parker mused. and before anyone could stop him, he struck the man across the face with a doubled fist. "parker!" hinckley cried. "you fool!" "that's a matter of opinion," parker said steadily, rubbing his knuckles. "i found out what i wanted to." the man had fallen beneath the blow, but recovered seconds later. there was a large red welt on his forehead, but neither he nor the woman took any notice of it. "it's incredible," compton said. "evidently we can affect them physically, even if not mentally," hinckley said. "you do something like that again, parker, and i'll shoot you. i've got the authority to do it, you know, and sometimes the urge." "i know," parker said, "but you haven't got the guts. besides, i'll behave myself." he looked intently at the young woman. "i just wanted to make certain they're real, that's all." "let's get out of here," compton suggested. "there must be some way we can get a message through to these people. perhaps someone in the village--" hinckley nodded and motioned them from the house. compton went eagerly, but parker lingered. the air outside seemed cooler now, and its freshness seemed strange after the pleasant fragrance inside the house. "go back to the ship," hinckley told parker. "compton and i'll go into the village." "i like it right here," parker said. "we might need someone at the ship," hinckley said. "that's an order." his hand caressed his rifle, as though daring parker to refuse. parker grinned contemptuously. "anything you say, _captain_. if you need any help, just yell." he turned away and walked toward the rocket. "someday i'm going to kill him," hinckley promised. he turned to compton. "c'mon, let's see what the village looks like." * * * * * the village was a replica of the first hut, multiplied. some of the huts seemed to have specialized purposes as stores or warehouses, but otherwise it was the same. people sat in the houses, listening to music or watching moving pictures swarm over their hut walls. some occasionally ventured into the street. all of them ignored the earthmen. "i don't know what to make of it," hinckley said finally. "we can touch them and hear them; they appear normal in all respects, but they seem to be operating on a different level of existence." "i don't pretend to understand it," compton said, "but i have a feeling i don't like, whenever i think about it. i'd rather meet bug-eyed monsters than this." "i know what you mean," hinckley said. "these people even though they're humanoid, are out of contact with reality--at least with reality as we know it. it's like some kind of mass hypnosis, with everyone in a trance except us." "think of how helpless these people would be," compton said. "when we turn in our report, those who come out here with unhealthy designs won't have any opposition." "we have a prime example of that on board," hinckley said disgustedly. "we'd better get back to the ship; i don't like to leave parker alone; there's no telling what he'll do." when they got back parker wasn't there. "i was afraid of this," hinckley said between clenched teeth. "maybe they've done something to him," compton suggested nervously. "that's too much to hope for. chances are, it's the other way around. if i know parker, there's only one place he'll be. c'mon." clutching his rifle, hinckley ran from the rocket. compton followed, a bit more cautiously. hinckley reached the lone house and peered into the bluelit gloom. he entered, gun ready, compton at his heels. "he's not here," hinckley said, surprised. the man and the young woman sat on the couch and casually watched pictures move across the far wall. hinckley, looking at the pictures, was not at all certain they weren't the reality and the natives of this place merely ghost images that might fade at any moment. on the wall an empire was being formed. tall buildings were raised by machinery that was unfamiliar to the earthmen. aircraft flitted across the sky like strange black birds. the buildings towered, the flying machines dove, spitting needles that exploded into blossoms of fire, and the buildings toppled into dust. people ran, screaming soundless screams. columns of smoke rose to replace the buildings. the scene shifted. great weapons were assembled and heaped carelessly. to the heap were added the skycraft and other weapons of war. the pile exploded, and the people rejoiced, clasping hands, dancing. the walls darkened. actual or symbolic? hinckley wondered. "what does it mean?" compton asked him. "i think," hinckley said, "we've just been given a short history of their race. they built up a great society here, but a warring one. finally, they outlawed all weapons in order to save themselves from total destruction. we could probably take a lesson from that." "they'll probably be worse off when the earthmen come here," compton said. "even if they could see and hear us, they wouldn't have any weapons left to defend themselves. we could loot and rape and--" "i think we'd better forget this planet exists," hinckley said slowly. "if we don't report it, no one'll ever know. it's one planet in a million planets. if we say it's empty, they'll believe it and never bother to check." "but what about parker?" "yes," hinckley said in a disturbed tone. "parker. we've got to find him before he does anything he shouldn't. he must be in one of the huts. c'mon. you take one side of the village, i'll take the other. when we find him, we'll blast off." but they didn't find him. they searched through all the buildings, peered into all the faces. "i don't like it," compton said when they met. "the people may be helpless, but that doesn't mean everything on the planet is. we've got to get out of here while we've got the chance." "take it easy," hinckley advised. "we can't leave without parker. he's probably hiding someplace." "hiding?" "hoping we'll take off and leave him alone here. he'd be perfectly safe. he could take anything he wanted--food, drink, anything--and these people couldn't raise a finger to stop him; they wouldn't even know he was here, most likely. if i know parker that's what he'd want. he wouldn't care about the people as long as he satisfied himself." "we'll never find him," compton said. "there's a forest beyond the village. if he got into that, we could search for months and not find him." hinckley shrugged. "we've got to try." night came before they returned to the rocket. hinckley shook his head in the gathering darkness. "he could be anyplace out there, damn him." "let's get out of here," compton suggested again. "leave him here, if that's what he wants. let him do what he wants here; what difference does it make if the natives don't know what's happening?" hinckley's look was cold. "we'll wait until morning," he said. "if he isn't back by then, we'll leave." but the next morning, the rays of the alien sun found the white squatting houses silent; parker had not returned. hinckley turned on the outer loudspeaker. "parker," he said. the words crashed across the still village. "parker, this is hinckley. we're blasting off in five minutes. if you're not aboard, we're leaving without you." after a few minutes, compton said, "he's not coming. he's probably dead, and so will we be if we wait long enough." "more likely, he's ignoring us," hinckley said, consulting his watch. "he's got two minutes more." two minutes later, compton said, "time's up." hinckley nodded. he switched on the rocket motors. deep within the spaceship a turbine growled; the growl rose to a whine. "i still don't like to leave him there. even though they don't know what's happening to them, i feel sorry for those people out there." he switched on the loudspeaker again. "parker," he said over it. "last chance. we're blasting off." "he's not coming," compton said shrilly, "he's not coming." hinckley touched a button. flaming rockets drove their fire in to the ground. the great spaceship shuddered, rose on a column of flame. "at last," compton sighed. "at last." "we'll have to come back, though," hinckley said. "i knew we'd have to turn in a report, and now i know we'll have to come back here to find parker, to jail him as a deserter, and perhaps worse. i hate to think of what'll happen to those people down there when the earthmen come." they looked into a viewscreen. below them, the planet dwindled and became nothing. * * * * * from the edge of the forest, parker watched the spaceship rise into the sky and disappear. he chuckled contentedly. he had won the game of hide-and-seek, and the planet was his prize. earthmen always took what they could from newly discovered planets, only this time _he_ would have first choice well ahead of any others. it would be months before an earth ship would arrive. but he could last that long easily. longer if necessary. during that time he could make up some story to account for his absence. they'd have to prove him a liar, and that would be difficult. any story he made up would certainly be no less fantastic than this planet certainly was. meanwhile, there were things to do. he took off his cumbersome spacesuit and left it in a clearing in the forest; he wouldn't need that for awhile, and it would only hamper him. he was in no mood to be delayed. there were a great many things to do, but first there was one special thing to do. there was a girl, he remembered, a young woman in a small hut at the other end of the village. he licked his lips in anticipation. there was a man with her, but there was nothing he could do--nothing at all. parker laughed loudly into the silence and trotted down the street. when he reached the other end of the village, he walked eagerly into the house. the girl sat on the couch. the man stood nearby. the walls were unmoving and the blue fire cast a cold light about the room. the earthman sat down beside the girl, and his hands reached out, unhesitating. but suddenly the man said something in an alien tongue, a sound that was like a whiplash, angry and bitter. parker felt his throat tighten. "what?" he said. "what?" he looked up into eyes alive with hate. no, that was impossible. it was only imagination. only imagination, yet for a moment--he laughed guiltily--he'd thought the man was looking directly at him. furiously, angry at himself, parker forced the thought from his mind. he reached once more for the girl, but she shrank from his touch and leaped up. the earthman followed her movement with startled, puzzled eyes, and then his bewilderment changed to a fear that held him with cold fingers. the man had taken a long silver knife from beneath his robe, and he held it in his hands so that its blade reflected the cold blue fire. his face was a mask, not pleasant to see. and he was looking at the earthman, seeing him, watching him, hating him. a sudden flash of understanding came. these people had known all the time. they stayed indoors in dim light to enhance the illusion and watch with greater secrecy, so that the movement of eyes would not betray them--and they had waited. for what? parker leaped up with a hoarse cry and ran, not waiting to find out. he was in the doorway when the silver knife caught him and slid easily between his ribs and released the breath of life that lay hidden there. before he struck the ground, he was a shell, with neither fear nor desire to trouble him. for a long moment afterward, the man stood over the still body, looking down at it with a mixture of hate and disgust. the girl joined him. he looked at her and then at the sky. "we must learn to make weapons again," he told her. "these creatures will be back, unsuspecting, thinking us helpless. next time, we must be ready!" without ceremony, they buried the earthman's body and then met others of their kind coming into the village streets. there was work to do. the birds of lorrane by bill doede illustrated by burns [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy magazine august 1963. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] intelligent birds! they knew a dead-end planet when they visited one! ingomar bjorgson knew he was going to die. he turned his back on his useless ship and went inside the bubble house that had been his home for ninety-nine days. methodically he donned his all-weather clothes, his environment suit. he did not want to die in this place. here was food and refrigeration for the days, warmth and comfort for the nights. he could not bring himself to put a gun to his head, or end it by any other direct, willful act. but out there in the desert, away from man-made helps for survival ... there a man could get himself into circumstances where nature took care of it. that was his reason for being here on this lonely planet, in the first place--the promise of finding intelligent life. for intelligence was rare in the universe, after all. a lone adventurer, a year before, forced down on this planet by a cosmic storm, had waited a week here for the storm to subside, then had landed on earth with the feverish news of intelligent life. ingomar bjorgson had come to investigate. birds, yet. * * * * * they were only two. two birds with minds like the edge of a razor, living alone on this planet that was one hundred per cent desert. he took one last look around the bubble, then walked out, leaving the door open. from ten feet away he watched the sand already blowing in through the doorway, and he felt very lonely and small. he knew that his death, like his life, would never be marked anywhere with any degree of permanence. he walked. there was no hurry, so he walked slowly, stopping occasionally to turn and stare at the tracks his feet had scuffed in the sand, watching sand drift into them. he smiled wryly. the universe was so eager to be rid of him--as if he were a disease. he looked up again, studying the whole sky. but there was no movement of wings, no silver streak of a ship coming to pick him up. only one spot marred the desert's domain--the tiny bright reflection of the burning sun on the now distant bubble. the birds had promised him. they had been so sure of themselves. when he knew that the fierce sun and wind would kill him before he could get back to the bubble, he started removing his all-weather clothes. he flung them aside like a dancer. coat to the left, trousers to the right. the hot wind threw the trousers back against his face. he tore them off with a curse. shirt to the left. he kept the shoes on, out of respect for his feet. then he trudged on, wondering vaguely how a half dressed man, dying on his feet, could make the same marks in the sand as a fully clothed, comfortable one. he stumbled on an outcropping of rock. he fell. he picked himself up again. it would be quick, after all. the sun was in league with the rest of the universe. he would die soon. he fell again. he had found the planet of lorrane easily. the adventurer's charts were accurate. it was a dry, barren place, an old, worn-out world where only wind and sand moved, where mountains shoved their eroded peaks into the impotent sky. but ingomar found, upon emerging from his ship, that there was another movement. two black dots appeared far away in the sky and rapidly grew larger. he had been told that the planet was populated by an intelligent form of bird life. two were approaching now. he smiled to himself. "imagine that," he said to himself, "a smart bird. how should you meet a smart bird? should you shake hands?" the birds alighted in the sand before him. they eyed him with bright, intelligent eyes. they were quite large, standing at least two feet tall. their gray feathers lay smooth and straight, immaculately cared for. ingomar cast around in his mind for something to say, or some sign to make that indicated friendship. then one of the birds looked at the other and said, "this one is larger." "much," the other replied. ingomar was astonished. "you can talk?" he asked, "in english?" "certainly. didn't the first man tell how he instructed us?" "yes, yes, of course," ingomar said, confused. "but i didn't remem ... that is.... well, i didn't believe it." the birds eyed each other again. "i like him," one said. "if there's anything i hate, it's a completely honest person." the other gave him a vicious peck on his back. "shut up!" it said, "do you want him to think we condone dishonesty?" "of course not," the other retorted hotly, "i just meant that, considering social protocol, it is sometimes kind to tell a very small lie." * * * * * ingomar was speechless. he looked back at his ship, standing tall and straight, ready to blast itself into the sky again. he glanced around at the lonely landscape. finally he said, "it is difficult to see a difference between you two. do you have names that i might be able to use?" "oh, yes. we beg your pardon. how uncivil of us. our name, translated into your tongue, is pisces." "the fish?" "well," they said, "from our home planet the constellation does not look like a fish." "oh. well, are both of you named pisces? oh, i see. that is your species. i am called man; you are called pisces." "of course not," they said, "you were right the first time. pisces is our name. you can say, 'pisces, get me that ship.' and we would do so." "how can both of you have the same name? are you actually one intelligence? and see that you keep your hands ... i mean, see that you leave my ship alone." one said, "we wouldn't think of touching your ship." the other said, "no, we are two separate entities." ingomar passed a hand over his face, thinking. the two very earth-looking birds stood quietly before him, their feet buried in the sand so that it looked like their legs were two stilts shoved into the ground. at last he said, "well, i know what we'll do. i will call you pisces i," he pointed to the bird on his left, "and your companion pisces ii." the identical birds glanced at each other, then leapt into the air. they circled high above his head. they swooped low. they engaged in marvelous aerial gymnastics wonderful to see. ingomar made notes in his book concerning their agility. finally they came to rest before him again, so suddenly that he stepped backward quickly, frightened. "now," they said, "which one of us is pisces i and which is pisces ii?" puzzled, ingomar studied them carefully. the one with the quick temper might show this characteristic in some way. he pointed to the bird on his right. "you," he said, "are pisces i." they laughed. it was a verbal sound only. no expression showed in their eyes. * * * * * "all right," ingomar said, after some thought. "i can fix that." he entered his ship and rummaged around in his clothes locker, then emerged with a brilliant red ribbon of plastic. "i'll tie this to your leg. that way i'll know that you are pisces i. if you promise not to move it from one to the other." "we promise." he stooped over to tie the plastic on the leg of the one he thought was pisces i, and was almost caught in the sudden flurry of slashing beaks and raking claws, like a mating fight in an aviary. "_i_ am pisces i," one screamed, administering a resounding peck on the other's back. "no, you're not. i am." this one leapt into the air and landed on the other's back. he raked vicious, long talons across the well-groomed feathers. "i am more intelligent than you. _i_ should be pisces i." from a safe ten feet away, ingomar threw the ribbon at them. "stop it!" he yelled. they obeyed instantly, and stood quietly side by side facing him. ingomar drew his hand gun and pointed it at them. "now stop your fighting, or i'll blow you to kingdom come." "fine," they said. "anything to get off this miserable planet. how far is it?" ingomar smiled, in spite of his anger. "it's an expression. it means i will destroy you." one of the birds quickly picked up the plastic ribbon and carried it to the other, and dropped it near the leg. then both took it in their beaks and together they tied it around the leg. it was done so quickly that ingomar stood there aghast, surprised into immobility. he had never before seen birds tie knots. "it would not be wise to destroy us," pisces i said. "we can help you." "how?" "you need help," pisces ii said. "a storm is coming." "a cosmic storm?" ingomar asked. "i'm not worried about that. i'll stay here until it moves on." pisces i shook his head. "a planetary storm." "when?" "sometime tonight." "okay," ingomar said. "thanks. i'll stay inside." "it's not so easy as that. you must blast off and put your ship in orbit for the night." "why? do you know how much fuel it takes to get into orbit? i have none to spare." pisces ii scratched in the sand with his claws, thinking. then he said, "only one alternative exists. if you remain, the storm will wreck your ship. take us aboard now, and blast off for your home planet. to stay here means death." ingomar snorted and turned back toward his ship. he thought, "take them aboard my ship? not in a million years." he saw their plan, now. they wanted to get into his ship. then, by some means he could not now foresee, they would take the ship away from him. * * * * * he was so shaken by this conclusion that he quickly retreated to safety, closing the airlock. the birds stayed outside. they were arguing between themselves. he could tell by the gesticulations they made with their heads. once pisces i attacked pisces ii viciously, raking him mercilessly with sharp talons. pisces ii fought back ferociously. they rolled over and over in the sand. ingomar threw a switch that gave him communication outside the ship, and yelled at them. they stopped fighting at once. he said, "have you two lost your minds?" pisces ii laughed. "now how could one lose his mind? it goes with him everywhere." "all right," ingomar said. "i meant, have you become insane?" "of course not," pisces i said. "we are peaceful entities. we intentionally developed this argument to break the monotony of life here." "is it so bad as that?" "it is terrible. will you take us aboard?" ingomar did not answer, but switched the communicator off and busied himself with recording his observations. he took advantage of their continued presence and took photographs. finally, after several hours, they leapt into the air and flew away toward the distant mountains. ingomar was sorry to see them leave, and more than once checked his instruments for signs of a coming storm in case they were right. but nothing outside had changed. after they had left he opened the ship and stepped outside, taking readings with instruments to record the character of the planet. he trudged through the eternally drifting sand, looking for some sign of life. no plants, insects, animals anywhere. only the fine, mobile sand, occasionally an outcropping of rock not yet eroded away. and the heat! ingomar was forced to turn the controls of his environment suit almost all the way up to keep comfortable. then, when the sun receded behind the ghostly barren mountains, the cold came creeping in. ingomar turned his controls in the other direction, while walking back to his ship. he was afraid he would not keep the cold outside. the landscape, with the sun's absence, was dark and fearful. shadows moved in the wind, shadows of drifting sand that took on the shapes of monsters lurking in the darkness. ingomar was not one to frighten easily, but the night took on such ominous sighs and moans and movements that his imagination began to magnify them beyond recognition. when he finally saw the ship loom up before him he ran, stumbling toward it. he fumbled in the darkness for the control knob to open the lock and found it at last. he leapt inside, accompanied by a cold blast of wind and sand, and stood there panting, hearing his heart pound in his ears. the night was long and lonely. he was too far from civilization for his radio equipment to bring the comfort of familiar sounds. he tried to read, but found concentration impossible. he thought of the birds, wondering where they were now, how they kept from freezing to death at night. he rewrote his notes, adding remembered facts and impressions. finally he decided sleep was the most painless way of spending the night, and swallowed a small capsule designed to induce total sleep for at least six hours. * * * * * he awoke the next morning standing on his head. the bed, horizontal the night before, was now vertical. the whole room was vertical. panic swept over him like a wave of burning fire. he scrambled to the airlock. it opened grotesquely. the ship, which last night had stood so proudly, now lay on its side. and in his drugged sleep he had not known when it fell. for ingomar, the bottom dropped out of everything, and his heart dropped with it. there was no resetting of a ship once it had fallen. this took special equipment. ingomar bjorgson was a doomed man, and he knew it. while he stood outside in the morning sun, staring at the horrible spectacle before him, the two birds alighted, one on each side. "why didn't you listen to us?" pisces i said in an accusing tone. "yes," pisces ii echoed angrily. "you make me sick, thinking you're so smart, coming down here in your big ship and strutting around like you think you're a god, or something. now, how big do you feel? do you realize that this is our first opportunity to leave this planet? i've a good notion to peck your stupid eyes out right here and now." "leave him be," pisces i said. "he may not be so bright, but i think he would have taken us with him, after he got used to us and saw how harmless we are." pisces ii leapt at him, almost knocking ingomar off his feet. "shut up! i've a good notion to peck your eyes out, too." "oh, stop it!" ingomar said wearily. "we're all doomed to spend the rest of our lives here. how was i to know that the storm would be so bad? my instruments gave no indication whatever." "actually, it was our fault," pisces ii said, more calmly. "we failed to mention the nature of the storm. we thought you knew. it was a magnetic storm. a shifting of magnetic currents surrounding the planet. we had no idea that you would think of the weather." they walked with him around the fallen ship. it was not injured, that much ingomar could see. the soft bed of sand had cushioned its fall. if it could only be righted! ingomar knew it was impossible. "it is pointed toward that knoll out there. see? suppose we all got inside and blasted off. we would slide along and maybe when we reached the knoll we'd have enough speed to keep on going in a straight line until we could point her nose upward." ingomar shook his head, but he appreciated the suggestion. it indicated that they were willing to try anything. he knew their motives were not entirely philanthropic, but he liked them more for it, anyway. he said, "there is only one way out, and that is for someone to come in and get us." "well," pisces ii said, "what are you waiting for? call them." "i can't. we are too far out for communication." the two gray birds eyed one another in disbelief. pisces i scratched his breast impolitely. then he said, "are you telling us that you have come this far from your own solar system, knowing that you could not call for help, if necessary?" ingomar nodded. * * * * * pisces ii snorted through his beak, and scratched in the sand. "stupidity," he said. "there is no other word for it." "yes, there is," pisces i answered, somewhat sharply. "in fact, there are several possible words. bravery. desperation. actually i think it is a combination of both. i am sure that you are aware how rare intelligent life is in the universe. when you heard of us, you rushed out here at once. i would call it bravery to go beyond the sound of the voices of your kind. you are desperate because you are lonely in an almost empty universe." "we must help him," said pisces ii. "of course. but first let's make him comfortable. it will be a long wait." "thank you," ingomar said, moved by their sympathy. "but you cannot help. or do you have a way to send messages?" "yes, in a way," pisces ii said, "you see...." pisces i lifted a huge wing and knocked pisces ii in the sand. he turned to ingomar. "do you promise to take us with you, if we should succeed in getting help?" ingomar did not think it over. "yes," he said. "then we will do it. but first we must make you comfortable. do you have equipment for shelter, besides the ship?" "yes, there is the bubble. it can be expanded to become a house." "get it," pisces ii said. ingomar did. he dragged it outside and began to unfold it, in preparation for inflation. but pisces ii stopped him. "not here," he said. "it will be a long time. our calculation is that it will take at least forty-five days to get help. the trip from your planet alone is at least forty days. you will not wish to stare at your toppled ship for so long. i suggest we go beyond the first knoll." pisces i laughed and said to ingomar, "for once he is using his brain. we will carry it." he grasped the bubble in his claws, flapped his enormous wings and sailed off. soon he returned, and among the three of them all his food and books and any equipment he might need was carried over the knoll out of sight of the wrecked ship. "we will not return," they said, "until the rescue ship arrives. so make yourself comfortable. do not stray too far from the ship. this is the most miserable planet in the universe. give us plenty of time. we know we can summon help, but we do not know how long it will take. we may need as many as seventy-five days." ingomar settled down to wait. * * * * * the fierce, burning sun had turned ingomar's face and naked arms into fried areas of intense pain, but he regained consciousness when he felt the coolness of the ointment. it penetrated deep down, under the burned skin, into flesh and muscle, soothing injured cells. he opened his eyes. he moved his head. the eyes were burned and bloodshot, but he could see a ship standing a hundred feet away. it was not sleek and long, pointing its needle nose at the sky, though. it was round, dull white, like a giant egg laid by a giant bird. bird? ingomar chuckled, senses returning, thinking through his pain of pisces i or pisces ii laying an egg. then he laughed aloud. he stopped, quite abruptly, and looked again. the egg was still there, but it was not an egg. it was actually a ship and the airlock was open and pisces ii was backing out, dragging a sort of stretcher on wheels. "it's a ... a ... ship!" he exclaimed, tears running down his cheeks, over the ointment. "whose ship is it?" "ours," said pisces i. "yours?" ingomar said, after a long pause while the pain raged over his skin. he tried to sit up, and pisces i got behind him and pushed, nudging him upright. "where did you get it?" "oh," pisces ii interrupted. "we had it all the time." "shut up!" pisces i yelled. "he asked me." "hold your tongue," pisces ii retorted hotly, "or i'll take off and leave you here. i've had enough of you in the past century to last a lifetime." pisces i said to ingomar, "pay no attention to that peasant." he helped pisces ii push the stretcher next to ingomar. then he pushed a lever and the stretcher reduced itself to ground height. it was too short for ingomar's body, having been designed for the body of a bird. "he's right, though," pisces i continued, giving the stretcher a kick because it wasn't long enough. "we had the ship all along. it was despicable of us to deceive you, but our ship was defective, and we needed yours for parts." ingomar shook his head. "there was no magnetic storm?" pisces ii nodded his head. "oh, yes, there was a storm. but not a natural phenomenon, i'm sorry to say. too bad. the natural storms are much more beautiful." "and you had the bubble set up away from the ship so i wouldn't see you steal the parts?" they hung their heads. "despicable," they said. "a rotten thing to do." ingomar was too ill for anger. "let me understand this," he said. "you ruined my ship to get parts for yours. why? why not just take my ship?" "too slow," pisces ii said. he took the container of ointment in his beak and set it beside ingomar's hand. "here, you can rub it on by yourself now. get busy." pisces i said, "by your standards our planet is a terrible distance away. your ship would take too long. hurry, now. we've got to take you to ... what do you call it, earth? what an odd name! we're in sort of a hurry to get home, as you might imagine." ingomar hurried. with the help of the mysterious, healing ointment he was soon able to get up and make his way to the ship. "one more question," he said. "your ship was defective and you set down here and you've been here for a long time, and you're a long way from home. what were you doing so far from home, in the first place?" "what do you suppose?" said pisces i irritably. "we were looking for intelligent life. get a move on, now. if we don't waste too much time on this earth, we may still find some!" death star by tom pace trapped by the most feared of space pirates devil garrett, starrett blade was fighting for his life. weaponless, his ship gone, he was pinning his hopes on a girl--who wanted him dead. [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from planet stories spring 1945. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] starrett blade crouched in the rocks by the tiny centaurian lake. it was only about two or three hundred feet across, but probably thousands of feet deep. this lake, and hundreds of others like it, were the only things to break the monotony of the flat, rocky surface of alpha centauri iii--called the most barren planet in space. ten minutes ago, star blade's ship had spun into the stagnant waters before him. an emergency release had flung the air-lock doors open, and the air pressure had flung star out. and now he was waiting for devil garrett to come down to the water's edge to search for him. for eight years, devil garrett had been the top space pirate in the void. for a year, star himself had personally been hunting him. and on a tour over alpha iii, a barden energy-beam had stabbed up at blade's ship, and star blade had crashed into the lake. that barden beam had star worried and puzzled. it took a million volts of power for a split-second flash of the beam. garrett didn't have an atomics plant on alpha iii--if he had, escaping rays would point it out, no matter how well it was camouflaged. there was no water power, for there was no running water. there were only the lakes ... and tidal power was out, for alpha iii had no moon. however, that could wait. star slid the electron knife from his water-proof sheath, gripped it firmly. he could hear quick footsteps as a man came down the trail that led directly past his hiding place. it wasn't garrett, which was disappointing. but it was one of his men, and he was heavily armed. that didn't worry star. his fighting had earned starrett blade the nickname of "death star." the man walked to the water's edge, and peered out over the pool. he saw the bubbles that were coming up from the sinking ship, and he nodded, grunted in satisfaction, and started to turn back. star landed on him, knocking him sprawling on the rock. the pirate jerked up an arm, holding the jet-gun. the stabbing lance of blue fire cracked from the electron knife, dug into the man's heart. star tossed the dead pirate's cloak over his shoulders, and thrust both electron blade and jet-gun into his belt. he straightened, and saw the leveled gun from the corner of his eye. he got the jet in his right hand, the knife in his left, and went into a dive that flipped him behind a rock. the three actions took only a split-second, and the blast from the jet-gun flaked rock where he had been standing. while a jet-gun is the most deadly weapon known, you have to press a loading stud to slide another blast-capsule into place. death star knew this very well. so he knew he was safe in coming up from behind the spur of stone to fire his own gun. if his reflexes hadn't been as quick as they were, he would have blasted the girl. * * * * * he stopped, and stood for a second, staring at the girl. she was something to invite stares, too. in the moment that lasted between her next move, he had time to register that she was about five feet five tall, black-haired--the kind of black hair that looks like silken spun darkness--dark-eyed, and possessing both a face and a form that would make anyone stop and gulp. then the moment of half-awed survey was over, and she leveled the jet on him, and said in a trembling voice, "drop those weapons, or i'll blast you ... _pirate_!" death star said, "that jet-gun is empty. i can see the register on the magazine. and i'm not a pirate. i'm starrett blade." the useless jet-gun slid out of the girl's hand, and she gave a half-gasp. "starrett blade! i--i don't believe ..." she broke off abruptly. "so you're death star! a fine story for a hired killer, a pirate." star reddened. "look," he snapped, "i don't know who's been talking to you, but ..." he whirled, and his hand whipped the jet-gun from his belt. as he did so, the girl jerked up the jet-gun she had dropped, and flung it with all her strength. the blow landed on his arm and side, and paralyzed him long enough for the man who had leaped out behind him to land a stunning blow against his head. as star went down, he dizzily cursed himself for becoming interested in the argument with the girl, so that he did not heed his reflexes in time ... and dimly, he wondered why it had seemed so important to convince the lovely dark-haired girl. then a bit of the cosmos seemed to fall on star's head, and he was hurled into blackness. an eternity seemed to pass. deep in the blackness, a light was born. it leaped toward him, a far-away comet rocketing along, coming from some far, unknown corner of the galaxy. it became a flaming sun in a gray-green space, and strangely, there seemed to be several odd planets circling about the sun. some of them were vast pieces of queer electronic machinery. some were vague, villainous-looking men. one was the dark-haired girl, and there was lovely contempt in her dark-star pools of eyes. then into the midst of this queer universe, there swam a new planet. it was the face of a man, and the man was devil garrett. that brought star up, out of his daze, onto his feet as though he had been doused with cold water. he stood there, not staring, just looking at garrett. the most famous killer in the void was big. he was six feet three, and twice as strong as he looked. he wore a huge high-velocity jet-gun, and a set of electron knives, all of the finest workmanship. he was sitting on a laboratory chair of steel, and the chair bent slightly under his great weight. he smiled at star, and there was a touch of hell in the smile. he said, "ah, mr. garrett." star's jaw dropped. "garrett? what do you--" he broke off. a glance at the girl told him what the purpose was. "look, mr. devil garrett," said the pirate, still smiling softly, "miss hinton is aware of your identity. there is no need to attempt to fool us.... i've known it was you ever since i flashed that beam at your ship. and you needn't flatter yourself that the devil's luck is going to hold out as far as you are concerned. for in a very short while, i'm going to have you executed ... before a stellar vision screen, connected with section void headquarters! i wish the authorities to see devil garrett die, so that i might collect the reward that is offered on you!" star stood quiet, and looked straight into garrett's eyes. after a minute of silence, garrett's lips twisted into a smile, and he said mockingly, "well, pirate? what are you thinking of?" star said, in a low, cold voice, "i'm thinking of putting an electron fire-blade into your face, devil garrett!" garrett laughed ... huge, rather evil, bluff laughter. the mirth of a person who is both powerful and dangerous. and then the girl leaped forward, shaking with rage. "you beast! murderer! to accuse this man ... you fool, you might have been able to complete any scheme of escape you had, if you hadn't called yourself starrett blade! mr. blade...." she gestured toward garrett, who made a mocking, sardonic bow. "... has given me ample proof that he is who he says! and this long before you came. he's shown me papers giving a description and showing a tri-dimension picture of you...." fire leaped in star's eyes. "listen ..." he snapped furiously, as he started to step forward. then garrett made a signal with his hand, and someone drove a fist against the base of star's skull. * * * * * when star came to, he was in a cell of sorts. a man standing by the door told him that he was to be executed, "... after mr. blade and the lady have eaten." starrett swore at him, and the man went out, with a mocking "goodbye, mr. garrett!" star got up. his head spun, and he almost fell at first, but the daze left in his head from the two blows quickly cleared away. he felt for various weapons which he had hidden about him ... and found them gone. garrett's men had searched carefully. star sat down, his head spinning more now from mystery than from physical pain. he had to keep himself in a whole skin, of course. that was most important right now. but other things were bothering him, tugging at his mind like waves slapping around a swamped ship, each trying to shove it in a different direction. there was the girl. star wondered why she always leaped into his mind first. and there was the way garrett was trying to leave the impression that he was blade, so that he could kill blade as garrett. obviously, the reason for that was the girl, miss hinton, garrett had called her. she had been shown faked papers by garrett, papers proving that the two were ... were whatever garrett had twisted the story into! star clutched at his head. he was in a mess. he was going to be killed, and he was going to die without knowing the score. and he didn't like that. nor did he like dying as star blade shouldn't die; executed as a "wolf's-head" pirate. the girl would be watching, and he felt as if that would make it far worse. his head came up, and he smiled flintily. he still had an ace card! one hand felt for it, and he shook his head slowly. it was a gamble ... but all the others had been found. blade looked up quickly, as the door opened. two men came into the cell, carrying jet-guns. they motioned blade to his feet. "come on, blade." one began, when the other hit him across the mouth. "you fool!" he hissed. "you better not call him that; suppose that girl was to hear it? until the boss gets what he wants on earth, that girl has got to think that he's blade! we're killing this guy as devil garrett! and a loud-mouthed fool like you ... look out!" blade had landed on the bickering men, and was grappling with the one who had called him by name. as the other leaped forward, swinging a clubbing blow with a jet-gun, star tripped one man into the corner, and ducked under the gun. he hit the man in the stomach, drove a shoulder up under his arms, and smashed the man's face in with a series of sharp blows. the man went reeling backward across the room, and star's hand leaped toward that "ace card" which he still held. devil garrett stepped in the door, and made a mock out of a courteous bow. as he did so, star snarled in rage, but stood very still, for the electron knife in garrett's hand did not waver. garrett gestured silently toward the door, and star, equally silent, walked over and out, at the point of the weapon. * * * * * star blade stood before a transmitter, and thought about death. he was very close to it. garrett stood five yards away, a gun in his hand, and the muzzle trained on blade's chest. the gun was the universally used weapon of execution, an old projectile-firing weapon. star did not doubt that devil garrett was an excellent shot with it. the girl, very round-eyed and nervous, sat by garrett. he had explained to her that garrett was the type of pirate that it is law to kill, or have executed, by anyone. which was very true. a man stepped away from the transmitter, and nodded to garrett. star felt a surge of hope, as he saw that it was a two-way transmitter. if the image of an interstellar command headquarters was tuned in--garrett would undoubtedly do it, if only to show the police that he had killed starrett blade--then garrett could not kill him and cut the beam in time to prevent one of the police from giving a cry that would echo over the sub-space beam arriving almost instantly in this room, and let the girl know that she had been tricked. and garrett would not want that. not that it would matter to starrett blade. then star saw what kind of a transmitter it was, and he groaned. it was not a hineson sub-space beamer ... it was an old-style transmitter which had different wave speeds, because of the different space-bridger units in it. the visual image would arrive many seconds before the sound did. thus the girl would not hear garrett revealed, but would see only blade's death. and then ... whatever garrett had planned, blade wished heartily that he could have the chance to interfere. the beam was coming in. star saw the mists swimming on the screen change, solidify into a figure ... the figure of district commander weddel seated at a desk. he saw weddel's eyebrows rise, saw his lips move--then garrett stepped over a pace, and weddel saw him, saw the gun in his hand.... the police officer yelled, silently, and came to his feet, an expression of shocked surprise on his face--surprise, blade thought desperately, that the girl might interpret as shock at seeing devil garrett. which was right, in a way. then, as commander weddel leapt to his feet, as devil garrett's finger tightened on the trigger, as the girl sucked in her breath involuntarily, star blade scooped up a bit of metal--a fork--and flung it at the vision transmitter. not at the screen. but at the equipment behind the dial-board. at a certain small unit, which was almost covered by wires and braces for the large tubes. and the fork struck it, bit deep, and caused result. result in the form of a burned-out set. if television equipment can curse, that set cursed them. its spitting of sparks and blue electric flame mingled with a strange, high-pitched whine. it was the diversion that caused garrett to miss star, which gave him time to pull three or four of garrett's men onto the floor with him. one of the men drove the butt of a jet-gun into the side of star's head, and for the third time, he went very limp. the last thing he saw was the girl. somehow, the expression on her face was different from what it had been. he was searching for the difference, when the blow struck him. somewhere in the space that lies between consciousness and unconsciousness, he reflected bitterly that if he kept staring at the girl when he should be fighting, he might not recover some day. this was the third time that he had been knocked out that way. it was not getting monotonous. he still felt it a novelty. star awoke in the same prison cell, facing the wall away from the door. he wondered if he were still alive, tried to move his head, and decided that he wasn't. he didn't even get up or look around when he dimly heard the door being opened. but when he heard the girl's voice, he came up and around very swiftly, despite his head. it was the girl all right. even through the tumbled mists of his brain, he could see that she was not a dream. and as he reeled and fell against the wall, she was beside him in a flash, her arm supporting him. * * * * * at first he tried to push himself erect, his head whirling with sick dizziness, and bewilderment. through a twisting haze, he peered up at the girl's face. it reflected a look that, amazingly, was one of--with no other phrase to do--compassion. star half-sighed, and laid his head on the girl's breast, and closed his eyes. in a minute or two, she said tensely, "are you all right?" star looked up at her. "i guess so. here--give a hand while i get my balance." she held him as he tried a step or two, and then he straightened. "i guess i'll be all right, now," he smiled. "my head feels like--say! how come you're doing this? what made you change your mind? and who are you?" she said quickly, breathlessly, "i know you're star blade, now. that transmission set.... i can read lips! i _knew_ what that officer was saying! it was just as if i had _heard_ him say that ... that you were starrett blade and that man out there is devil garrett!" she made a choking sound. "and i've been here, alone, for a month! for a month!" "a month? huh--please--you...?" star took a breath, and started over. "you.... who _are_ you? what are you doing here?" she said, "i'm anne hinton. my father is old john hinton. have you heard of him?" "of course!" said star. "he manufactures most of the equipment '_blade cosmian_' uses. weapons, hineson sub-spacers, star-traveler craft ... the ship i was in when garrett brought me down was a hinton craft. i should have recognized the name. but go on. what--" "garrett communicated with dad, secretly. he posed as starrett blade, as you, and told dad that he was developing certain new power processes. and he is! he has a new--or maybe it isn't so new--way of electrolyzing water to liberate hydrogen and oxygen." "i think i understand," said star quickly. "when the oxygen and hydrogen are allowed to combine, and produce an explosion which drive a turbine-generator. then that could be hitched up to a cyclotron, and even the most barren of alpha's lake-rock planets could be...." "no," she shook her head puzzledly. "it's just electric power. he said that atomics would release stray rays that would attract pirates." "i know," star nodded, abstractedly. "i was thinking of another application of it ... hmm. but say! what was garrett after? i know that he wouldn't do this just to get a secret process sold. he must have had another plan behind it. got any idea?" anne shook her head slowly. "i don't know. i can't see...." "perhaps i could help you?" devil garrett asked smoothly from the door. star whirled, thrust anne behind him, but there was no way out. garrett stood in the door, and there were men behind him. the jet in his hand could kill both of the two at one shot. and they had no weapons to resist with. devil garrett stepped them out of the room, and down the corridor, through a large door star had noticed at the end of the passage, and into a huge room. it must have been a thousand feet long, and half that wide. it was at least a hundred yards deep. and it was almost filled with gigantic machines. between the machinery, the spaces were almost filled with steel ladders and cat-walks. crews of men swarmed over them. it was the largest mass of equipment starrett had ever seen. his eyes began to pick out details. those huge vat-like things down at the far end, with the large cables running into them, and the mighty pumps connected to them ... they were probably the electrolysis chambers. and those great pipes, they must carry the hydrogen and oxygen from the electro chambers to the large replicas of engines, which could be nothing else but the explosion chambers, where the gases were allowed to re-unite, and explode. and there by the giant engines, those must be turbines, which in turn connected with the vast-sized generators just under the platforms on which they stood. * * * * * star blade whistled softly through his teeth. a huge enterprise! it could be ... but for a moment he had forgotten devil garrett. the girl standing by his side, star turned toward garrett. "well?" garrett smiled his mocking grin. "you grasp the principle, of course. but let me show you ... you see those pipes that run from the turbines after the wheels?" "yes. they carry the gases off. where do they lead?" "into giant subterranean caverns beneath the surface!" garrett said. "now look over there, on the platforms across from us. can you recognize a barden energy-beamer, blade? run by power from my little plant here, which is run by water from a thousand lakes! "just imagine, if you can, hundreds of those plants all over alpha iii. and each one with dozens of high-powered barden beams to protect it! and hinton ray screens to protect us from radio-controlled rocket shells from space, or barden rays, or any other weapon of offence, or to warn if anyone lands on this planet!" garrett leaned forward, his eyes aglow. "blade, i'll take over the few governing posts on this little planet, and i'll rule an entire world, a whole planet to myself! it'll be the first time in history! and it won't be the last. with the hinton secret patents, the plans of all john hinton's inventions and processes...." star twisted, and got his "ace card" out of its hiding place. it was a jet weapon, little more than a jet-blast capsule for a jet-gun. the sides were thicker and stronger, and there was a device fixed on it so it could be fired. altogether, it was somewhat smaller than an old-style fountain pen. he twisted up from the floor, and moved faster than he had moved ever before. star was famous for his speed and the quickness and alertness of his reflexes. he earned his fame a score of times over in that one instant. and devil garrett died. there was perhaps an eighth of a second between the staff of blue white fire from the tiny jet in star's hand and the huge broadsword of fire from garrett's gun. but in the split-second star's fire knifed into garrett's vitals, and garrett gave a convulsive jerk, and fired even as his muscles started the jerking movement. and the flame went over star's head, singeing his scalp. of the four men with garrett, one let go of the struggling anne, and swore as he snatched at an electron knife in his belt. anne's hand had already whipped the knife out, and without bothering to press the electron stud, she buried the knife in his back. two of the remaining men whirled, and went for the door as though a devil was after them. the other tried to get a jet-gun out. it was his final mistake. a blue lance from anne's knife whipped close enough to him to make him dodge, and then star got his hand on garrett's jet. the other two men had, in their flight, taken a door which led, not into the large corridor, but into a small room at one side, a room filled with instruments and recording devices for the machinery in the room below. star leaped to the side of the door, and called, "are you going to come out, or am i coming in to get you?" there was a short silence, in which anne heard one say hoarsely, "he can't get us ... we could get him if he came in the door." "oh, yes?" was the answer. "do you know who that guy is? he's the one they call 'death star.' i'm not facing starrett blade in a gun fight. you can do what you like, but i'm leaving." then he lifted his voice. "hey, blade! i'm coming out. don't shoot." * * * * * "okay," threw back star and the man appeared in the doorway, empty hands held high. after a second, the other joined him. anne turned to star. "now i know why they call you 'death star' blade," she said, and gestured toward the men who had surrendered, and the two whom starrett had shot down. he mused there for a minute. then anne broke the silence with, "star, what are we going to do now? garrett's men will be up here in a little while. we can't get to a sub-space beam. what are we going to do when they come up to investigate?" starrett blade laughed. "do? well, we could turn them over to commander weddel!" "_what?_" grinning broadly, star pointed, with a flourish, at the door. anne spun about, and found commander weddel grinning in the door from the corridor. "very simple," said star across the lounge to anne. "when i smashed the vision set with that dinner fork, i broke a small unit which is included in all sets. you know, a direction finder doesn't work, except in the liner-beam principle, in space, because of the diffusing effect of unrestricted cosmic rays." "yes, i knew that," said anne. "but how--" starrett grinned again. "a type of beam has been found which it is impossible for cosmics to disturb. but you can't send messages on it, so it is made in a little unit on every set. if that unit is broken, the set automatically releases a signal beam. this is a distress signal, and the location of the set that sent out the signal is recorded at the section headquarters. when commander weddel saw me throw something at the set, and it went dead, he looked at the automatic record, and found out that a signal had been sent in from a location on alpha cen's third planet. then he had a high-velocity cruiser brought out and dropped in, in time to pick up some pieces." he stopped, and idly toyed with a sheaf of papers, then held them up. "see these papers?" "uh-huh. what are they, star?" "they are the main plans of devil garrett's power plant, and they're the one good thing he's ever done. these plans are going to bring the barren, rocky centauri planets to life!" he got up, and paced to the window, and stood there, looking out, and up through the plastic port. "the planets of centauri!" he murmured softly. "seven circling alpha alone. and all seven are barren, rocky, level except for the thousands of lakes ... lakes that are going to be the life of centauri!" * * * * * he turned back to the window. "and all because a pirate named devil garrett built a vast power plant to use to garner more power!" "you know, anne, as a mockery, and a warning, i think i'll propose that this planet be officially named ... 'garrett'!" she looked up at him, and there was laughter bright in her eyes, and tugging at her mouth. "yes, there ought to be a reason," she murmured. star wavered. she was so darn close. after a minute, she turned her head, and looked up at him. "star, how soon will there be those gardens and woods you described? i mean, how long before garrett can be turned into that kind of world you described?" "why ... under pressure, we can do it in six months. why?" "not half quick enough," she murmured happily, "but it'll have to do, star." laughing, she turned her face up to his. "have you ever thought that planet garrett will be wonderful for a honeymoon?" the sweeper of loray by finn o'donnevan illustrated by goodman [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy magazine april 1959. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] you wish a universal panacea? a simple boon to grant--first decide what part of you it is that you wish to have survive! "absolutely impossible," declared professor carver. "but i saw it," said fred, his companion and bodyguard. "late last night, i saw it! they carried in this hunter--he had his head half ripped off--and they--" "wait," professor carver said, leaning forward expectantly. they had left their spaceship before dawn, in order to witness the sunrise ceremonies in the village of loray, upon the planet of the same name. sunrise ceremonies, viewed from a proper distance, are often colorful and can provide a whole chapter for an anthropologist's book; but loray, as usual, proved a disappointment. without fanfare, the sun rose, in answers to prayers made to it the preceding night. slowly it hoisted its dull red expanse above the horizon, warming the topmost branches of the great rain-forest that surrounded the village. and the natives slept on.... not _all_ the natives. already the sweeper was out, cleaning the debris between huts with his twig broom. he slowly shuffled along, human-shaped but unutterably alien. the sweeper's face was a stylized blank, as though nature had drawn there a preliminary sketch of intelligent life. his head was strangely knobbed and his skin was pigmented a dirty gray. the sweeper sang to himself as he swept, in a thick, guttural voice. in only one way was the sweeper distinguishable from his fellow lorayans: painted across his face was a broad black band. this was his mark of station, the lowest possible station in that primitive society. "now then," professor carver said, after the sun had arisen without incident, "a phenomenon such as you describe could not exist. and it most especially could not exist upon a debased, scrubby little planet like this." "i saw what i saw," fred maintained. "i don't know from impossible, professor. i saw it. you want to pass it up, that's up to you." * * * * * he leaned against the gnarly bole of a stabicus tree, folded his arms across his meager chest and glowered at the thatch-roofed village. they had been on loray for nearly two months and fred detested the village more each day. he was an underweight, unlovely young man and he wore his hair in a bristling crewcut which accentuated the narrowness of his brow. he had accompanied the professor for close to ten years, had journeyed with him to dozens of planets, and had seen many strange and wonderful things. everything he saw, however, only increased his contempt for the galaxy at large. he desired only to return, wealthy and famous, or wealthy and unknown, to his home in bayonne, new jersey. "this thing could make us rich," fred accused. "and _you_ want to pass it up." professor carver pursed his lips thoughtfully. wealth was a pleasant thought, of course. but the professor didn't want to interrupt his important scientific work to engage in a wild goose chase. he was now completing his great book, the book that would fully amplify and document the thesis that he had put forth in his first paper, _color blindness among the thang peoples_. he had expanded the thesis in his book, _lack of coordination in the drang race_. he had generalized it in his monumental _intelligence deficiencies around the galaxy_, in which he proved conclusively that intelligence among non-terrans decreases arithmetically as their planet's distance from terra increases geometrically. now the thesis had come to full flower in carver's most recent work, his unifying effort, which was to be titled _underlying causes of the implicit inferiority of non-terran peoples_. "if you're right--" carver said. "look!" fred cried. "they're bringing in another! see for yourself!" professor carver hesitated. he was a portly, impressive, red-jowled man, given to slow and deliberate movement. he was dressed in a tropical explorer's uniform, although loray was in a temperate zone. he carried a leather swagger stick, and strapped to his waist was a large revolver, a twin to the one fred wore. "if you're right," carver said slowly, "it would indeed be, so to speak, a feather in the cap." "come on!" said fred. * * * * * four srag hunters were carrying a wounded companion to the medicine hut, and carver and fred fell in beside them. the hunters were visibly exhausted; they must have trekked for days to bring their friend to the village, for the srag hunts ranged deep into the rain-forest. "looks done for, huh?" fred whispered. professor carver nodded. last month he had photographed a srag, from a vantage point very high in a very tall, stout tree. he knew it for a large, ill-tempered, quick-moving beast, with a dismaying array of claws, teeth and horns. it was also the only non-taboo meat-bearing animal on the planet. the natives had to kill srags or starve. but the wounded man had not been quick enough with spear and shield, and the srag had opened him from throat to pelvis. the hunter had bled copiously, even though the wound had been hastily bound with dried grasses. mercifully, he was unconscious. "that chap hasn't a chance," carver remarked. "it's a miracle he's stayed alive this long. shock alone, to say nothing of the depth and extent of the wound--" "you'll see," fred said. the village had suddenly come awake. men and women, gray-skinned, knobby-headed, looked silently as the hunters marched toward the medicine hut. the sweeper paused to watch. the village's only child stood before his parents' hut, and, thumb in mouth, stared at the procession. deg, the medicine man, came out to meet the hunters, already wearing his ceremonial mask. the healing dancers assembled, quickly putting on their makeup. "think you can fix him, doc?" fred asked. "one may hope," deg replied piously. they entered the dimly lighted medicine hut. the wounded lorayan was laid tenderly upon a pallet of grasses and the dancers began to perform before him. deg started a solemn chant. "that'll never do it," professor carver pointed out to fred, with the interested air of a man watching a steam shovel in operation. "too late for faith healing. listen to his breathing. shallower, don't you think?" "absolutely," fred said. deg finished his chant and bent over the wounded hunter. the lorayan's breathing was labored. it slowed, hesitated.... "it is time!" cried the medicine man. he took a small wooden tube out of his pouch, uncorked it, and held it to the dying man's lips. the hunter drank. and then-carver blinked, and fred grinned triumphantly. the hunter's breathing was becoming stronger. as they watched, the great gash became a line of scar tissue, then a thin pink mark, then an almost invisible white line. the hunter sat up, scratched his head, grinned foolishly and asked for something to drink, preferably intoxicating. deg declared a festival on the spot. * * * * * carver and fred moved to the edge of the rain-forest for a conference. the professor walked like a man in a dream. his pendulous lower lip was thrust out and occasionally he shook his head. "how about it?" fred asked. "it shouldn't be possible," said carver dazedly. "no substance in nature should react like that. and you saw it work last night also?" "damned well right," fred said. "they brought in this hunter--he had his head pulled half off. he swallowed some of that stuff and healed right before my eyes." "man's age-old dream," carver mused. "a universal panacea!" "we could get any price for stuff like that," fred said. "yes, we could--as well as performing a duty to science," professor carver reminded him sternly. "yes, fred, i think we should obtain some of that substance." they turned and, with firm strides, marched back to the village. dances were in progress, given by various members of the beast cults. at the moment, the sathgohani, a cult representing a medium-sized deerlike animal, were performing. they could be recognized by the three red dots on their foreheads. waiting their turn were the men of the dresfeyxi and the taganyes, cults representing other forest animals. the beasts adopted by the cults were taboo and there was an absolute injunction against their slaughter. carver had been unable to discover the rationale behind this rule. the lorayans refused to speak of it. deg, the medicine man, had removed his ceremonial mask. he was seated in front of his hut, watching the dancing. he arose when the earthmen approached him. "peace!" he said. "sure," said fred. "nice job you did this morning." deg smiled modestly. "the gods answered our prayers." "the gods?" said carver. "it looked as though the serum did most of the work." "serum? oh, the sersee juice!" deg made a ceremonial gesture as he mentioned the name. "yes, the sersee juice is the mother of the lorayan people." "we'd like to buy some," fred said bluntly, ignoring professor carver's disapproving frown. "what would you take for a gallon?" "i am sorry," deg said. "how about some nice beads? mirrors? or maybe a couple of steel knives?" "it cannot be done," the medicine man asserted. "the sersee juice is sacred. it must be used only for holy healing." "don't hand me that," fred said, a flush mounting his sallow cheek. "you gooks think you can--" "we quite understand," carver broke in smoothly. "we know about sacred things. sacred things are sacred. they are not to be touched by profane hands." "are you crazy?" fred whispered in english. "you are a wise man," deg said gravely. "you understand why i must refuse you." "of course. but it happens, deg, i am a medicine man in my own country." "ah? i did not know this!" "it is so. as a matter of fact, in my particular line, i am the highest medicine man." "then you must be a very holy man," deg said, bowing his head. "man, he's holy!" fred put in emphatically. "holiest man you'll ever see around here." "please, fred," carver said, blinking modestly. he said to the medicine man, "it's true, although i don't like to hear about it. under the circumstances, however, you can see that it would not be wrong to give me some sersee juice. on the contrary, it is your priestly duty to give me some." the medicine man pondered for a long time while contrary emotions passed just barely perceptibly over his almost blank face. at last he said, "it may be so. unfortunately, i cannot do what you require." "why not?" "because there is so little sersee juice, so terribly little. there is hardly enough for the village." deg smiled sadly and walked away. * * * * * life in the village continued its simple, invariant way. the sweeper moved slowly along, cleaning with his twig broom. the hunters trekked out in search of srags. the women of the village prepared food and looked after the village's one child. the priests and dancers prayed nightly for the sun to rise in the morning. everyone was satisfied, in a humble, submissive fashion. everyone except the earthmen. they had more talks with deg and slowly learned the complete story of the sersee juice and the troubles surrounding it. the sersee bush was a small and sickly affair. it did not flourish in a state of nature. yet it resisted cultivation and positively defied transplantation. the best one could do was to weed thoroughly around it and hope it would blossom. but most sersee bushes struggled for a year or two, then gave up the ghost. a few blossomed, and a few out of the few lived long enough to produce their characteristic red berries. from the berry of the sersee bush was squeezed the elixir that meant life to the people of loray. "and you must remember," deg pointed out, "how sparsely the sersee grows and how widely scattered it is. we must search for months, sometimes, to find a single bush with berries. and those berries will save the life of only a single lorayan, or perhaps two at the most." "sad, very sad," carver said. "but surely some form of intensive fertilization--" "everything has been tried." "i realize," carver said earnestly, "how important the sersee juice is to you. but if you could give us a little--even a pint or two--we could take it to earth, have it examined, synthesized, perhaps. then you could have all you need." "but we dare not give any. have you noticed how few children we have?" carver nodded. "there are very few births. our life is a constant struggle against the obliteration of our race. every man's life must be preserved until there is a child to replace him. and this can be done only by our constant and never-ending search for the sersee berries. and there are never enough," the medicine man sighed. "never enough." "does the juice cure _everything_?" fred asked. "it does more than that. those who have tasted sersee add fifty of our years to their lives." carver opened his eyes wide. fifty years on loray was roughly the equivalent of sixty-three on earth. the sersee was more than a healing agent, more than a regenerator. it was a longevity drug as well. he paused to consider the prospect of adding another sixty years to his lifetime. then he asked, "what happens if a man takes sersee again after the fifty years?" "we do not know," deg told him. "no man would take it a second time while there is not enough." carver and fred exchanged glances. "now listen to me carefully, deg," professor carver said. he spoke of the sacred duties of science. science, he told the medicine man, was above race, above creed, above religion. the advancement of science was above life itself. what did it matter, after all, if a few more lorayans died? they would die eventually anyhow. the important thing was for terran science to have a sample of sersee. "it may be as you say," deg said. "but my choice is clear. as a priest of the sunniheriat religion, i have a sacred trust to preserve the lives of my people. i cannot go against this trust." he turned and walked off. the earthmen frustratedly returned to their spaceship. * * * * * after coffee, professor carver opened a drawer and took out the manuscript of _underlying causes for the implicit inferiority of non-terran races_. lovingly he read over the last chapter, the chapter that dealt with the specialized inferiorities of the lorayan people. then he put the manuscript away. "almost finished, fred," he told his assistant. "another week's work, two weeks at the most!" "um," fred replied, staring at the village through a porthole. "this will do it," carver said. "this book will prove, once and for all, the natural superiority of terrans. we have proven it by force of arms, fred, and we have proven it by our technology. now it is proven by the impersonal processes of logic." fred nodded. he knew the professor was quoting from the book's introduction. "nothing must interfere with the great work," carver said. "you agree with that, don't you?" "sure," fred said absent-mindedly. "the book comes first. put the gooks in their place." "well, i didn't exactly mean that. but you know what i mean. under the circumstances, perhaps we should forget about sersee. perhaps we should just finish the job we started." fred turned and faced his employer. "professor, how much do you expect to make out of this book?" "hm? well, the last did quite well, you will remember. this book should do even better. ten, perhaps twenty thousand dollars!" he permitted himself a small smile. "i am fortunate, you see, in my subject matter. the general public of earth seems to be rather interested in it, which is gratifying for a scientist." "say you even make fifty thousand. chicken feed! do you know what we could make on a test tube of sersee?" "a hundred thousand?" carver said vaguely. "are you kidding? suppose a rich guy was dying and we had the only thing to cure him. he'd give everything he owned! millions!" "i believe you're right," carver agreed. "and it _would_ be a valuable scientific advancement.... but the medicine man unfortunately won't give us any." "buying isn't the only way." fred unholstered his revolver and checked the chambers. "i see, i see," carver said, his red face turning slightly pale. "but have we the right?" "what do _you_ think?" "well, they _are_ inferior. i believe i have proven that conclusively. you might indeed say that their lives don't weigh heavily in the scheme of things. hm, yes--yes, fred, we could save terran lives with this!" "we could save our own lives," fred said. "who wants to punk out ahead of time?" carver stood up and determinedly loosened his gun in its holster. "remember," he told fred, "we are doing this in the name of science, and for earth." "absolutely, professor," fred said, moving toward the port, grinning. * * * * * they found deg near the medicine hut. carver said, without preamble, "we must have some sersee." "but i explained to you," said the medicine man. "i told you why it was impossible." "we gotta have it," fred said. he pulled his revolver from its holster and looked ferociously at deg. "no." "you think i'm kidding?" fred asked. "you know what this weapon can do?" "i have seen you use it." "maybe you think i won't use it on you." "i do not care. you can have no sersee." "i'll shoot," fred warned, his voice rising angrily. "i swear to you, i'll shoot." the villagers of loray slowly gathered behind their medicine man. gray-skinned, knobby-headed, they moved silently into position, the hunters carrying their spears, other villagers armed with knives and stones. "you cannot have the sersee," deg said. fred slowly leveled the revolver. "now, fred," said carver, "there's an awful lot of them. do you really think--" fred's thin body tightened and his finger grew taut and white on the trigger. carver closed his eyes. there was a moment of dead silence. then the revolver exploded. carver warily opened his eyes. the medicine man was still erect, although his knees were shaking. fred was pulling back the hammer of the revolver. the villagers had made no sound. it was a moment before carver could figure out what had happened. at last he saw the sweeper. the sweeper lay on his face, his outstretched left hand still clutching his twig broom, his legs twitching feebly. blood welled from the hole fred had neatly drilled through his forehead. deg bent over the sweeper, then straightened. "he is dead," the medicine man said. "that's just the first," fred warned, taking aim at a hunter. "no!" cried deg. fred looked at him with raised eyebrows. "i will give it to you," deg said. "i will give you all our sersee juice. then you must go!" he ran into the medicine hut and reappeared a moment later with three wooden tubes, which he thrust into fred's hands. "we're in business, professor," fred said. "let's get moving!" they walked past the silent villagers, toward their spaceship. something bright flashed in the sunlight. fred yipped and dropped his revolver. professor carver hastily scooped it up. "one of those gooks cut me," fred said. "give me the revolver!" a spear arced high and buried itself at their feet. "too many of them," said carver. "let's run for it!" they sprinted to their ship with spears and knives singing around them, reached it safely and bolted the port. "too close," carver said, panting for breath, leaning against the dogged port. "have you got the serum?" "i got it," said fred, rubbing his arm. "damn!" "what's wrong?" "my arm. it feels numb." * * * * * carver examined the wound, pursed his lips thoughtfully, but made no comment. "it's numb," fred said. "i wonder if they poison those spears." "it's quite possible," professor carver admitted. "they did!" fred shouted. "look, the cut is changing color already!" the edges of the wound had a blackened, septic look. "sulfa," carver said. "penicillin, too. i wouldn't worry much about it, fred. modern terran drugs--" "--might not even touch this stuff. open one of those tubes!" "but, fred," carver objected, "we have so little of it. besides--" "to hell with that," fred said. he took one of the tubes and uncorked it with his teeth. "wait, fred!" "wait, nothing!" fred drained the contents of the tube and flung it down. carver said testily, "i was merely going to point out that the serum should be tested before an earthman uses it. we don't know how it'll react on a human. it was for your own good." "sure it was," fred said mockingly. "just look at how the stuff is reacting." the blackened wound had turned flesh-colored again and was sealing. soon there was a line of white scar tissue. then even that was gone, leaving firm pink flesh beneath. "pretty good, huh?" fred gloated, with a slight touch of hysteria. "it works, professor, it works! drink one yourself, pal, live another sixty years. do you suppose we can synthesize this stuff? worth a million, worth ten million, worth a billion. and if we can't, there's always good old loray. we can drop back every fifty years or so for a refill. the stuff even tastes good, professor. tastes like--what's wrong?" professor carver was staring at fred, his eyes wide with astonishment. "what's the matter?" fred asked, grinning. "ain't my seams straight? what you staring at?" carver didn't answer. his mouth trembled. slowly he backed away. "what the hell is wrong!" fred glared at carver. then he ran to the spaceship's head and looked in the mirror. "_what's happened to me?_" carver tried to speak, but no words came. he watched as fred's features slowly altered, smoothed, became blank, rudimentary, as though nature had drawn there a preliminary sketch of intelligent life. strange knobs were coming out on fred's head. his complexion was changing slowly from pink to gray. * * * * * "i told you to wait," carver sighed. "_what's happening?_" asked fred in a frightened whimper. "well," carver said, "it must all be residual in the sersee. the lorayan birth-rate is practically nonexistent, you know. even with the sersee's healing powers, the race should have died out long ago. unless the serum had another purpose as well--the ability to change lower animal forms into the lorayan form." "that's a wild guess!" "a working hypothesis based upon deg's statement that sersee is the mother of the lorayan people. i'm afraid that is the true meaning of the beast cults and the reason they are taboo. the various beasts must be the origins of certain portions of the lorayan people, perhaps all the lorayan people. even the topic is taboo; there clearly is a deep-seated sense of inferiority about their recent step up from bestiality." carver rubbed his forehead wearily. "the sersee juice has," he continued, "we may hazard, a role-sharing in terms of the life of the race. we may theorize--" "to hell with theory," fred said, and was horrified to find that his voice had grown thick and guttural, like a lorayan voice. "professor, do something!" "there's nothing i can do." "maybe terran science--" "no, fred," carver said quietly. "_what?_" "fred, please try to understand. i can't bring you back to earth." "what do you mean? you must be crazy!" "not at all. how can i bring you back with such a fantastic story? they would consider the whole thing a gigantic hoax." "but--" "listen to me. no one would believe! they would consider, rather, that you were an unusually intelligent lorayan. your very presence, fred, would undermine the whole thesis of my book!" "you can't leave me," fred said. "you just can't do that." professor carver still had both revolvers. he stuck one in his belt and leveled the other. "i am not going to endanger the work of a lifetime. get out, fred." "no!" "i mean it. get out, fred." "i won't! you'll have to shoot me!" "i will if i must," carver assured him. "i'll shoot you and throw you out." he took aim. fred backed to the port, undogged it, opened it. the villagers were waiting quietly outside. "what will they do to me?" "i'm really sorry, fred," carver said. "i won't go!" fred shrieked, gripping the edges of the port with both hands. carver shoved him into the waiting hands of the crowd and threw the remaining tubes of sersee after him. then, quickly, not wishing to see what was going to happen, he sealed the port. within an hour, he was leaving the planet's atmospheric limits. * * * * * when he returned to earth, his book, _underlying causes of the implicit inferiority of non-terran peoples_, was hailed as a milestone in comparative anthropology. but he ran into some difficulty almost at once. a space captain named jones returned to earth and maintained that, on the planet loray, he had discovered a native who was in every significant way the equal of a terran. and he had tape recordings and motion pictures to prove it. carver's thesis seemed in doubt for some time, until carver examined the evidence for himself. then he pointed out, with merciless logic, that the so-called super-lorayan, this paragon of loray, this supposed equal of terran humanity, occupied the lowest position in the lorayan hierarchy, the position of sweeper, clearly shown by the broad black stripe across his face. the space captain admitted that this was true. why then, carver thundered, was this lorayan superior not able, in spite of his so-called abilities, to reach any higher position in the debased society in which he dwelt? the question silenced the space captain and his supporters, demolished the entire school, as a matter of fact. and the carverian doctrine of the implicit inferiority of non-terrans is now accepted by reasoning terrans everywhere in the galaxy. the chasers by daniel f. galouye illustrated by harrington [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy magazine february 1961. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] civilizations must make sense somehow. but was this one the gaudy, impossible exception? as the dust drifted clear of the ship's landing skids, at least two things became obvious: one--although they had missed the city (if that's what it was) by miles, they had nevertheless managed to slam down near one of the numerous rural estates. two--the landscape would be crawling with zaortian fuzzy tails for a long while to come. they were still pouring out of hatches sprung open by the crunching impact. kent cassidy untangled himself from the control column and plucked one of the fuzzy tails from his neck. the creature scampered around until it found the ruptured hatch, then scurried through to join the squealing zoological exodus. "there goes ten thousand credits' worth of cargo," groaned gene mason. his stout form was slumped in dejection before the view port. cassidy sniffed the refreshing air that was drifting into the ship. "any idea where we are?" "after the directional stabilizer blew, we made three blind jumps, all in the direction of galactic center. we could be _anywhere_ between zaort seven and the far rim." "hey, look," said cassidy. from the hatchway, the sumptuous estate sprawled nearby, its many gabled manor closed off behind a high wire fence. cassidy squinted, but failed to recognize the bold, flowing architectural style. a small, bent figure clung to the wire netting of the fence. he was shouting at the ship, but his excited words were no match for the decompression hisses of the auxiliary drive. "humanoid?" mason suggested. "human, i'd say." cassidy gestured toward the gear locker. "better break out the translator." in baggy trousers and sagging blouse, the man raced back and forth behind the fence--the picture of frustrated anger. however, large, doleful eyes, complemented by a bald head and huge, pendulous ear lobes, belied his furious actions. presently the squeals of the fuzzy tails trailed off in the distance and the auxiliary drive quieted with a final sigh. and now the native's shouts rang out distinct and loud: "quick! from here get you! shoo! scram! or out there i'll come and apart tear you!" "it's english!" mason exclaimed. "of a sort. archaic, but understandable. and not at all friendly." mason scratched his blunt chin. "guess we're not too far off the beaten star paths, eh?" cassidy could find no grounds for challenging this observation as they started down the ladder--not until he looked overhead and saw three suns shining in the same sky. as far as he knew, there were no settled trinary systems. beyond the fence the native, a wisp of a man was still fuming. "the hell away from here get! you i'm warning--no closer come!" mason displayed a half frown. "he's sure a sour cuss." "you stay with the ship," said cassidy. "i'll see what's fouling his tubes." * * * * * before cassidy reached the fence, his pet fuzzy tail came scampering from behind a bush. it clambered up his trousers and wrapped itself around his neck. this encouraged the speculation that perhaps the shipment of tails could be bartered for repairs to the stabilizer--_if_ there was a local space technology, and _if_ they could corral the animals. the native grew even more frenzied now as cassidy drew up before him. "trespasser! back get! _my_ property this be! scram! you i'll kill!" the fuzzy tail uncoiled itself from around cassidy's neck. perching on his shoulder, it fussed back at the native in chirping, excited tones. it not only acted at times as though it owned cassidy, but it also exercised a personal responsibility for his welfare. "quiet!" cassidy snapped out. it caught both the fuzzy tail and the old man by surprise. the animal bounded for cover while the native rocked back on his heels. "be you not just a--_little bit_ afraid?" his eyebrows mounted the wrinkled expanse of his forehead. the nearby hedge rustled and parted to let through a dark-haired girl whose tanned skin suggested accustomed exposure to the multiple sunlight. wearing a belted tunic that lacked inches of reaching her knees, she confronted the old man calmly. "it's all about what, papa?" she asked, with a trace of an amused smile. "trespassers! on _our_ property, riva! the alarm sound! scat! to the woods take! or a dead duck you be!" "now, papa," she chided. then, through the fence, "him you musn't mind. it's only his duty he's attending to." from the distance, cassidy had suspected the man was of terran descent. now, with riva in the picture, he was certain this world was stocked either by intent or accident with true humans. "we're from terra," he said. she frowned. "ter-ra?" "earth. the original world--" incomprehension flooded her even features. but her confusion was only temporary. "let's play." it seemed like an altogether acceptable suggestion, cassidy thought, eying the attractive girl. but he went on, "this is our ship and--" "ship?" then she chased away her puzzlement with a sudden smile. "some nice games i know." there was no space technology on this planet, cassidy decided. they'd be strictly on their own as far as repairing the directional stabilizer was concerned. by this time papa, his eyes focused afar, had exploded again. "charge!" he roared. "after him! wa-hoo! away don't let him get!" he was gripping the fence and straining toward the field. cassidy turned and saw, in the distance, a skimmer vehicle floating along several feet off the ground. in full pursuit was a shouting youth who paused occasionally to seize a rock and hurl it at the craft. the old man turned toward his daughter. "a good chase that be. bet he wins." "not a chance." the girl frowned. "that be nedal. not so swift is he. loses interest too quick, he does." she surveyed cassidy. "be you a chaser?" "no, but i could do with a couple of stiff shots." this drew papa's attention back to the matter at hand. "trespassers! the road hit! scat! some dust kick up!" "quiet!" cassidy shouted. "will you listen a minute? i--" two loyal fuzzy tails came charging up to the fence and added their raucous chatter to papa's screeching diatribe, which had continued unchecked despite cassidy's loud, desperate plea. in the next instant, though, it seemed that a dam had burst overhead. materializing from nowhere, at least a ton of water poured down on the agile-tongued native, the two fuzzy tails, riva and cassidy himself, bringing an abrupt end to all the commotion. the animals streaked for the safety of the bushes while papa and the girl dived back through the hedge. bedraggled, cassidy headed for the ship, wondering what sort of meteorological quirk he had encountered. * * * * * "no, sir," he said some time later as he attacked the directional selector with pliers and a screwdriver, "i don't like the setup. i don't like it worth a damn." mason traced the power lead to the junction box beside the hatch. "maybe they aren't _all_ like that." "in this sort of place, chances are that the first people you run into are typical. i'm afraid--" "say!" mason interrupted, staring outside. "look at this!" cassidy went over to the hatch and watched a dozen or so men sprinting across the field, their voices rising in excited waves. a lithe young woman was in full flight before them. but she was screaming in delight as she turned now and then to beckon them on. one overtook her and brought her down with a waist tackle. she rebounded to her feet, however, and took off again. two of the pursuers collided and sprawled on the ground. they sprang up and tore into each other. unconcerned with the personal dispute, the chase struck off in a new direction, heading toward the ship as it paralleled one of the nearby fenced-in estates. behind the wire mesh, a burly young man came charging down the main steps of the manor and raced along with the others. "that be the way!" he yelled encouragement. "her go get! it's gaining you are! hurry!" he drew up in time to avoid crashing into the side fence, then stood there watching the chase recede in the distance. within a hundred feet of the ship, one of the men fell out of the group, panting. he squinted at the vessel, then crept forward, circling to the right. within arm's reach, he walked back and forth alongside the hull, giving it a close inspection. finally he paused and fumbled with his clothes. cassidy started. "look what he's doing!" "against the side of the ship, too!" said mason. hearing them, the native jerked his head up toward the hatch, then backed off for a better view. "stinkers!" he yelled, shaking his fist. "out here come and fight! take you both on i can!" when they only gaped, he whirled and sped off to rejoin the chase. "you see?" said cassidy. "now what do you think?" "i think we'd better get that directional stabilizer working." * * * * * it took more than an hour to locate the trouble. "the rectifier circuit's shot," cassidy said finally. "but maybe we can patch it up. some of the amplifiers i suppose we can do without. but a hyper-oscillator we've got to have." "say, you're doing it too," said mason. "what?" "talking like the natives." cassidy looked up. "guess it's something that grows on you. well, what do we do now?" "maybe the natives can help us." "if they don't even know where they're from, they probably left their volts and amps behind too. but that's only an assumption." "in that case," mason said with a sigh, "there's only one thing left to do--take riva up on her invitation to, ah, play." "funny," cassidy grunted, heading for the hatch. "i was only joking." "i'm not. if we can get in that house, we'll know for sure whether or not they've developed electronic devices." halfway across the field, they were almost run down by the laughing girl and her retinue of galloping suitors, if that's what they were. she was a well-proportioned blonde whose wind-frothed tresses suggested a nymph in flight. at the fence, they were confronted by riva, who smiled up at cassidy and said, "you i was just going to come and get. ready to play yet you are?" he looked away and cleared his throat. "not quite, riva. we'd like to visit your house." "it's some interesting games i know. enjoying them you'd surely be." her smile, revealing even teeth that contrasted ruddy cheeks, was as persistent as her intent on playing. staring at the girl, cassidy wrestled with a pang of wistful envy over the olympian life he had witnessed thus far on this world. maybe they were all irresponsible and childlike. but was that bad? * * * * * mason pointed in alarm toward the meadow in front of the next estate. an ominous-looking, furry thing, supported on six or eight spindly legs, was racing across their field of vision. "hurt you he won't," the girl assured them, noticing their apprehension. "nothing to be afraid of there is." "_what_ is it?" cassidy was still trying to determine whether it was an overgrown spider or a dry-land octopus. "look!" mason exclaimed. "it's on a leash!" and cassidy noticed the thong that extended from the creature to the human who was running along behind it. "to wolruf he belongs," the girl explained. "one of them i can get for you too--if you want." her slender hand reached out through the fence and tugged at cassidy's sleeve. "to chase me wouldn't you like?" she asked, pouting. glancing behind her, cassidy spotted the girl's father bearing down on them in a sprint that was nothing short of phenomenal for his age. he began shouting with the last few strides and was in full lung when he hurled himself at the fence. "git! out! away! i'll--" riva moved back and glanced overhead and papa, seeing some hidden significance in her gesture, lowered his voice. "you i'll tear into and apart i'll rip!" he went on in a menacing whisper. "your limbs i'll scatter like--" "papa, it's not afraid of you they are." "they're _not_?" he was disappointed. "the house they want to come in and see." he began working up a rage again, but caught himself and looked up into his daughter's face. "mean you--_my_ house they want to see?" when she nodded papa seized the lowest strand of wire and lifted the fence high enough for cassidy and mason to crawl under. "why, arranged it can be, i think." its architectural prominences rendered shadowless in the tri-solar light, the manor was even more imposing close at hand. of stone construction, it flaunted millwork and beams whose rich carvings would have been welcome on any mansion in the known galaxy. mounting the steps, mason observed, "nice little layout they've got here." riva moved closer to cassidy. "inside is cozy," she said behind a coy smile. "play we can _really_ in there." papa had been at the door for some time, fumbling with the lock. in a burst of impatience, he drew off and gave it a solid kick. then he went back and tried rattling the handle. after a while there was a click and it swung open. cassidy followed him into a blaze of iridescent color and unfamiliar form. the huge, circular room was like a vast diorama and it was impossible to tell exactly where the solid objects blended in with the jumbled geometric pattern of the wall. he walked across a carpet of undulant fibers that reached well above his ankles. and he tripped across a padded, z-shaped slab that protruded from the wall but slithered into a u and retracted as soon as it received the burden of his weight. laughing, riva helped him up and he paused for a closer visual inspection of his outlandish surroundings. objects of weird shapes and unguessable purposes hung from the ceiling, some changing form and size as he watched. scattered about were articles of furniture (he guessed) that resembled giant starfish supported at their centers and extremities by coiled springs. only, each arm was shaped like a trough that ran into the bowl-like central depression of the piece. * * * * * a gleeful scream sounded behind them and papa went tearing by. with a running leap, he landed on an arm of one of the starfish. its supporting spring contracted under the weight, then catapulted him ceilingward. when he came down again, it was on an arm of another starfish, then another. the fourth collapsed, depositing him on the floor, and its spring went twanging across the room. struggling to his feet, he staggered into something resembling a clothes tree, knocked it over and sprawled beside it. he roared with delight as he snapped the stem of the thing across his knee and hurled the pieces at the ceiling. they scored direct hits on one of the bulky objects suspended overhead and it came crashing down with a twinkling roar amid a shower of sparks. "yow-ee!" he exuberated. "so much fun i never had!" riva helped him up. "papa, it's control yourself you must. the last time--remember?" but he only shook her off and went bounding through an archway. his hectic progress through the house was punctuated by sounds of crashing destruction. "honestly," riva said, spreading her hands, "what to do with him i don't know." cassidy continued staring in the direction the old man had gone. "he's wrecking the place!" "that he is," she admitted sighing. "and such a nice joint it be, too." "he's just plain nuts!" said mason. riva smiled. "but it's _so_ much fun he has." cassidy moved away to get a better view of a silvery gray screen set in the wall and flanked by twin rows of dials and knobs. "you got stereovision, riva?" he asked. mason went over and twisted several of the controls until a soft light began suffusing the screen. "ster-eo-what?" the girl asked. "video, television--pictures with sound." her face brightened. "pictures we got--sounds too. right in that little window." just then papa, uninhibited as ever, came storming back into the room with a lusty "ya-hoo!" he lost his footing and crashed against the screen. sparks shot out and the picture that was beginning to take shape faded into obscurity. "it that settles, papa!" riva said, exasperated. "outside i'm going and for what happens to you i'm not responsible!" at the door, she paused and smiled at cassidy. "it'll have to be out there that we play, but no less fun will we have. put on my best cavorting clothes i'm going to." mason turned the knobs again, but produced nothing more than the smell of burning insulation and a few snickers from papa. "at least," cassidy observed, "they evidently do know something about electronics. all we have to do now is run down one of the technicians and we might get the parts we need for the stabilizer." * * * * * outside mason dropped down on the steps and sat with his shoulders slumping. "damnedest thing i've ever seen," he mumbled. cassidy paced to the edge of the porch and stared out over the field. a monstrous skimmer craft appeared in the distance, floating over toward what seemed to be a pile of trash in front of one of the estates. twin beams of crimson light darted from the nose of the vehicle and played over the mound. in seconds, the heap had melted away and the skimmer floated on. wolruf was still walking his octopus-spider pet. there were now two packs of youths out chasing girls. and another skimmer car was having no difficulty surviving the stone-throwing assault of not one, but two dedicated pursuers. outside of that, cassidy noted, things appeared quite normal. mason slapped his thighs and rose. "you go see if riva knows how we can contact the authorities. i'm going back and stay with the ship." cassidy watched him crawl under the fence, then went around the side of the house. when he caught sight of the girl, she was just disappearing into a smaller structure that might have been a guest house or garage. following, he knocked on the door and called out her name anxiously. "to play are you ready?" there was an eager note in her voice as it came through the panel. "in come on. it's all set i'll be in a jiffy." he turned the knob, stepped half into the room, lurched back outside and slammed the door behind him. "_riva!_" the door started to open, then closed again as the girl laughed. "oh, all right. funny you be. it's to play you want, don't you?" he assured her that he did and added, "but there's something we have to talk about now, riva." "talk, talk, talk. and it gets you where? only wastes time, it does." a moment later the door opened and she stood there smiling, with legs apart and hands on her hips. but he hardly had time to react to the skimpiness of her halter and skirt. "now," she urged as she sprang up on her toes and kissed him full on the lips, "like a chaser make! to the races we're off!" with that, she whirled and went streaking through the next room. * * * * * he surveyed his surroundings. it was an ordinary bedroom with conventional furnishings--perhaps a bit crude even for a culture without any space technology. but, then, it didn't seem uncharacteristic, considering the circumstances. recognizing the contrast between this guest house and the manor, he frowned as he started off in search of the girl. a worrisome suspicion dogged his thoughts--there had to be sense to riva and her father and this sumptuous estate, natives who made sport of chasing skimmer craft and voluptuous women when they weren't otherwise indiscreetly occupied. but what? in the kitchen, he discovered riva's shapely leg protruding from behind a cabinet. he suspected the exposure was not as accidental as she wanted him to believe. he was certain of that when, as he seized her ankle, she crawled out laughing. now she stood before him, unsmiling and impatient, and her slender arms reached out for his shoulders. "riva, this is serious!" he forced her hands down again. "i'm in trouble. i need help." "it's to help you i've been trying all along." "i've got to get in touch with the authorities--your government." she looked blank. he simplified it, "your leaders." "oh, it's easy that is. there be aline and clio and leah and--but that leah! it's the cake she takes! thirty chasers she led on the best drag-out of all. two whole days it lasted!" "no, riva! not _that_ kind of leader. i mean--well, someone who gets things done. the kind who gets behind things and--" "that be leanc. behind those floating cars he's getting all the time. and how he can throw so many rocks i'll never know!" he mussed his hair in frustration, then composed himself. "how do i get to the city?" "that crowded place with all the big houses?" when he nodded, she went on, "it's never been there i have. _now_ we play?" he drew in a hopeless breath. "all right. now we play. you go hide." she radiated a warm eagerness as she initiated the game all over again with a kiss and then went sprinting toward the front of the house. he watched her disappear through the next room, then went out the nearest door, heading for the fence and his ship beyond. it had required no small degree of restraint not to go racing off after her. at the corner of the manor he was bowled over by a shouting papa who was in full flight as he shot out around a hedge, heading for the guest house. "all your fault it is!" he cried, recovering his balance and plunging on. "you it be who caused this! that i'll remember!" cassidy sat up, arms resting on his updrawn knees, and stared after the old man. "ow! riva! ouch!" papa clutched his rear as he neared the cottage. "help! oh, my aching back!" * * * * * cassidy found mason frozen in the shadow of the ship, fascinated by another girl chase that was in progress nearby. the swirl of action swerved toward him and mason tensed, shifting from one foot to the other. with the wind pressing her clothes in revealing tightness about her, the flaxen-haired sprite swept past and he lunged for her. "mason!" cassidy shouted. "seemed like a good idea," mason explained, checking himself. "wonder what it takes to get in on that chase." cassidy forced a fetching thought of riva out of his mind. "what we ought to be wondering is how soon we can blast off." "but if we get spaceborne before the stabilizer's working, we'll only be floundering around again." cassidy started for the ladder. "there's one thing we _can_ do--patch up the hatches and jump over to another spot on this planet. maybe we'll find somebody who's normal, at least." but mason caught his arm and pointed toward riva's estate where a skimmer car was now parked on the side of the manor opposite the guest house. "anybody who can drive one of those things," he suggested, "must know something about the city and how to get there. maybe he'll even give us a lift." * * * * * mason circled the skimmer craft. "it's a fine piece of workmanship," he said in admiration. "i'll say," cassidy agreed. "if we can find out where that was made, i'm sure we'll--" his vision was suddenly cut off by a pair of hands that came around his head from behind and clamped themselves over his eyes. if he had any doubt as to the identity of their owner, it was soon cleared up by a soft voice next to his ear: "not right this is. it's chasing _me_ you're supposed to be." "riva," he said, facing her, "we'd like to meet the person who came here in that skimmer." "excuses, excuses," she complained. "always something more important than a chase it is." "take us to the driver of that thing," mason prompted. "we--" but he tensed and stared up in alarm toward the field. cassidy followed his gaze to the skimmer vehicle that had earlier reduced a pile of trash to nothing. the craft was just now floating up to their ship. its two beams of sizzling red light swept over the hull from stem to stern, again and again--until there was nothing left of their ship but incandescent molten metal. mason displayed a sickened, then resigned expression, thrust his hands in his pockets and shuffled off toward the field. "getting in on one of those chases i think i'll be," he said. but he paused outside the fence, turned to say something, then lurched back. "cassidy! watch out! there's one of those things!" the spider-octopus came into view from around the rear of the manor and crawled leisurely toward the guest house. its body, covered with a multitude of eyes and an unkempt mat of fuzz, was like a coal-black knob perched atop hairy stilts. evidently, cassidy guessed as he dived behind a hedge and pulled the girl with him, the thing had gotten away from its master, for it was trailing its leash in the dust. "it's hurt you he won't," riva assured, quite puzzled over his apprehension. "he belongs to--" but cassidy clamped a hand over her mouth. the thing reached the guest house and made a queer noise in front of the door. papa came outside on the double. the spider-octopus picked up the other end of the thong and clamped its braceletlike device around the old man's wrist. grinning, papa pulled toward the gate, straining at the leash. eventually, cassidy was aware of riva's smiling, inquisitive face in front of his. "play?" she invited. and, glancing back at the charred remains of his ship, he didn't see why not. half past alligator by donald colvin illustrated by barth [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy science fiction september 1953. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] it takes sportsmanship to make a ball team ... and foul play to get a backward race civilized! bill bradley shooed away the group of quxas that had surged over the first-base line. with broad grins on their flat, piebald faces, they moved away--in the wrong direction, of course--and squatted in a smiling semicircle around pat reed, who was playing third. this was bad, because reed was a fifty-fifty player: it was an even chance whether he got the ball or the ball got him. one of the half-domesticated thrags broke loose and cantered across the outfield with its peculiar five-legged gait. in the hubbub, ray bush stole second. nobody seemed to notice. sighing heavily, bill returned to the mound and whiplashed in a fast one, tight across the letters. the hitter got only a small piece of it; a pop fly sauntered toward left field. judging it to a nicety, gust mustas came racing in, evaded a tethered thrag, leaped a hole some quxa had dug and forgotten, and made a shoestring catch, retiring the side. the quxas cheered deliriously. bill trotted off the mound. for a moment, the thrill of the game held him. this was the way things should be: the feel of smoothly flowing muscles, the thudding sound of horsehide hitting a leather glove, the weight of a bat in your hands in your first ball game after clambering over and scrabbling in an unexplored planet for fourteen months. then he caught sight of candace mathews, walking among the pneuma-huts that served as the outpost camp for the expedition. gloom enveloped him again, surrounding him like a dank fog. * * * * * for fourteen long months, bill had feasted on the memory of candy mathews, on his recollection of her turquoise eyes and cascading brown hair, on the remembrance of her soft lips on his last night under the four moons of vensor iii. today she had arrived with the seventy-odd men and women who comprised the appraisal unit, the final group of the planet's explorers. he had looked forward like a schoolboy to her coming. and, like a schoolboy, he had suffered black despair when his dreams were shattered. for the candy mathews who got off the shuttlebug at camp outpost was not the candy mathews who had said soft words on vensor iii. she was, instead, a self-assured young woman, somehow harder, who felt only an indifferent tolerance toward a tall young man named bill bradley, and an all-consuming, hero-worshipping infatuation for a newcomer, a dapper walking brain, vance montgomery, one of the council's smart boys, with the title of planet evaluator. "he's simply wonderful," she had said. and the joy of life had gone out of bill bradley. the appraisal group brought in athletic equipment and bill's men spontaneously declared a holiday, their first on the planet. baseball was the order of the afternoon and they shanghaied a not unwilling bill to pitch. he should, he knew, be laying out reports for montgomery to study. he did not particularly want to be with montgomery. bill sat on the xetal log that served as a bench. one quxa was bent over, examining first base. he made a colorful sight. the first baseman slapped him jovially on the loin cloth to move him. the owner of the thrag caught up to it and was struggling manfully to lead it away. the five-legged beast defied his efforts, rearing and dragging him. a dozen quxas stood nearby. their sympathies were obviously with their fellow-quxa, but they made no move to help him. reed was on the bench next to bill. he had come in with the appraisal group. "your vivid friends," he said, cocking a thumb at the quxas, "don't appear too bright." "they're smart enough," said bill. "almost as intelligent as we are. it's just that they've never risen above a herd culture." "look," said reed. "i'm a silviculturist. give me a hunk of wood and i can tell how long it took to grow, what it's good for, where it can be raised and how much board and profit can be made out of it. but this kind of talk throws me. try another wave-length." "socially, they're like the seals or penguins back on earth. they like to gather in groups. the things they can do individually, they do well. but they don't know how to help each other. that's beyond them." "don't understand the meaning of cooperation?" "the word isn't even in their language. i've seen forty of them standing around, fretting and stewing, while the horals killed off one of their fellows." "what are horals?" "the other dominant life-form here. nasty brutes, like big upright ants with tentacles. stand about as high as my chest. most malignant things i've seen. one quxa can handle any horal, maybe even two or three. but the horals hunt in packs. good-by quxa." "killing them off, are they?" "this is the last big concentration the quxas have left. in another hundred years, there'll be no more quxas." * * * * * they looked again at the natives. the quxas were something to see--human in form, although somewhat shorter than earthmen; their skins were blotched and dashed with patches of vivid colors. antiquarians talked of their resemblance to the ancient circus clowns, a likeness furthered by their broad, flat faces and habitual grins. "sort of hate to see them disappear," bill said glumly. "they're happy, good-natured creatures. in their whole race, i know only one who's mean. we've done our best to help them. but if they won't cooperate even in a matter of life and death, what incentive can you offer them?" an elbow dug into him. "up to the platter, dream boy," said gust mustas. "a hit means two runs." selecting a bat, bill made his way to the plate. in the middle distance, vance montgomery emerged from a hut. candy went to him eagerly, put a hand on his arm. a deep rage engulfed bill. the first pitch was a curve that failed to break. as it came fatly over the plate, bill swung angrily. the ball rocketed up and away, past the infield, over the head of the desperately running left-fielder and dropped toward a sure home run. then a curious thing happened. one of the quxas darted away from the gabbling group along the foul line, his short legs churning over the uneven ground. as the ball sank, he dove, plucked it out of the air with one broad hand, turned a somersault and came up with it, grinning. it was an impossible catch and the earthmen joined the quxas in applause. still clinging to the ball, the quxa made little bobbing bows of acknowledgment. "throw it in!" shouted bill. the quxa stood motionless. "throw it in, adlaa!" bill urged. he went through a throwing motion. the quxa nodded comprehension. he went into a violent wind-up. his left foot came up, his upper body went back, his right arm snapped in an arc. the ball flew from his hand, straight and fast. in the wrong direction, of course. the pack of quxas pelted after it, shouting, picked it up and threw again. to his surprise, bill found himself pounding after them, bawling fruitless pleas, aware that he looked foolish, but, in his rage, not caring. he closed in on them on the fifth throw and his fingertips touched the ball. he succeeded only in deflecting it. there was a dull _thunk_ and the game was over. the ball had struck vance montgomery, planet evaluator, squarely in the left eye. three things were said then to bill bradley. one was by montgomery as he handed back the ball. "i was not aware, bradley, that the job of camp leader entailed joining the rowdyism of the native races." one was by candy mathews, hopping with anger. "you're a barbarian, bill bradley. monty might have been badly hurt." the third was by a clot of quxas, crowding eagerly. "play ball! billbrad, more play ball!" to the first two, bill did not reply. to the quxas, he said one word, "nuts!" and dolefully followed montgomery into the headquarters hut. * * * * * in spite of his natural prejudice against montgomery, bill was forced into a reluctant admiration for the way the man worked. montgomery's task was to recommend whether the planet should be marked for immediate colonization, placed on a reserve list for future expansion, or be left strictly alone as unworthy of occupancy. he tore through bill's reports like a small child through a bag of jellybeans. his questions, if pompous, were pointed. within twenty-four hours, ready to leave for the main camp, he called a conference. he stood before the group, as dapper as a man can be with a rainbow bruise under one eye, complacently listening to the resonance of his own voice. beside him, candy nodded worshipful agreement. bill grumped in a corner. for a full forty-five minutes, montgomery outlined additional data he wanted gathered. his voice was faintly chiding, implying by its tone that anybody but a dolt would have obtained the information long ago. "and now," he said, "we come to the question of the humanoid denizens of this planet--the so-called quxas." he fingered his black eye. "many persons might conclude that the quxas are not worth saving; and in themselves, they are not. however, my preliminary conclusions--based, unfortunately, on insufficient data--lead me to believe that this planet will be used for colonization in about five hundred years. it would be very convenient then to have a dominant life-form friendly to the galactic humans and capable of being integrated with the colonists. some method of preserving the quxas must therefore be worked out. in this, the advance group has failed lamentably." he paused, glanced around triumphantly. "how do i propose to achieve this? by a historical method. what do nations do when they are in peril? they call upon a single man, place themselves under him and let him lead them out. when the ancient western civilization was in its greatest danger after the fall of rome, the people gathered around the strong men, made them kings and dukes and earls, and were saved from barbarism. "i shall do the same for the quxas. the quxas shall have a king." his eyes sought out bill. "my acquaintance here has been short. i must rely on advice. bradley, whom would you recommend as king of the quxas?" "well," said bill slowly, "moahlo is the most intelligent. he's good-natured and kindly. he has a lot of artistic ability. some of his carvings are being taken back for the galactic folk museum." "an artist!" said montgomery in disgust. "well, let's have a look at him." * * * * * moahlo was finishing a figurine near one of the meandering paths that the quxas had worn by habit, not design. a bemused group of natives looked on admiringly. down the path came ratakka, the biggest of the quxas, his shoulders proudly back, his face set in the truculent scowl. bill knew and disliked him, and apprehensively felt sure the peaceful scene would be destroyed. alone of an amiable, tolerant race, ratakka was perpetually ill-tempered, the rankling product of lord knew what alien genetic accident or trauma. ratakka found his path obstructed by the carving. callously, he brought his foot down on the delicate figurine, crushing it to splinters. moahlo sprang up in gentle protest. ratakka gave him the back of a meaty hand that knocked him off his feet. two spectators indicated disapproval. ratakka smashed their heads together and strode on. "to save a culture, bradley," said montgomery, who had watched the brutal display with admiration, "you need strength, not delicacy or feeling. that man shall be king of the quxas." he ran after ratakka. the members of the outpost staff looked at bill in dismay. he shrugged sadly and walked out of the headquarters hut. at the doorway, adlaa was waiting for him with the same old plea. "play ball?" he begged. "more play ball, billbrad?" in his despondent mood, bill did not care. "all right. i'll throw the ball to you and you throw it back to me." "quxas not do that." "it's just as much fun to throw the ball in one direction as in any other direction," bill explained patiently. "unless you throw it back, forget it--no play ball." adlaa thought seriously. "hunky dokey. want play ball." they were tossing it back and forth in the middle of a cheering group when a half-track passed, taking montgomery, candy and ratakka to the main camp. the look that the girl gave bill was disdainful. "there's a gaggle of natives outside in assorted shades," said pat reed the next day. "they want to play ball. moahlo's at their head. he carved a bat." "tell them to beat it. we're busy." "let's give them some fun while we can. they won't enjoy life much after king rat gets back here." "that's the truth," bill agreed. "all right." * * * * * "i wish your painted idiots would get over their baseball mania," complained rudy peters, the mineralogist, two days later. "look me over carefully, will you, bill? i think my throwing arm just dropped off." "they're nutty about it, all right," bill bradley said. "too bad it couldn't have been about something with some economic value." "economic value, the man wants. okay, i'll talk economic value to you. bet you fifty units i can make a better ball team out of these freaks than you can." "well, make it thirty." "you're on, sucker. i've lined up the sweetest shortstop that ever spit in a glove ..." "here's your thirty," said rudy peters a week after. "how was i to know that shortstop wouldn't throw the ball to anyone except the center-fielder?" "team play's the stuff, lad," said bill bradley. "stress team play. twenty-five, twenty-seven, twenty-nine, thirty. exactly right. another lesson at the same price?" he was refused, but never on an exploration had bill bradley had so much fun. and never, he reminded himself grimly, had he got so little work done. the quxas were neglecting their skimpy food plots in their eagerness to play. they were getting lean. finally, with reluctance, bill called a temporary halt to baseball. "billbrad say no baseball until work done," said moahlo sadly to adlaa. "sometimes billbrad talk like southpaw pitcher." adlaa was trying to cultivate his food plot with the help of a thrag. the beast was of independent mind. it dragged adlaa in eccentric ovals, in defiance of agricultural needs. "adlaa want finish work, play baseball," the quxa commented. "thrag no play baseball, say nuts to work. adlaa be old like old hoss radbourne before work done." moahlo contemplated. "adlaa have trouble his thrag. moahlo have trouble his. moahlo help adlaa his thrag and adlaa help moahlo his. get work done more faster." adlaa dismissed the revolutionary thought. "quxas not do." "we play baseball run down play," argued moahlo. "play together. you throw ball me. i throw ball you. yippee. man out." "same team. old pals. want sing team song?" "want play team with thrag." adlaa considered the matter in this new light. "like ball game," he said at last in amazement. "sure. you, me be us together. make thrag look like busher." they both took hold of the thrag. unable to resist their combined strengths, the beast submitted docilely. they began to work. * * * * * glancing out from his labor in the headquarters pneuma-hut, bill saw the incident in happy surprise. perhaps, after all, his stay here might produce something to help the culture that montgomery would introduce upon his return. he had no doubt of montgomery's success. neither, for that matter, had montgomery. at the main camp, things were going swimmingly. the camp lay on the very fringe of the quxa territory, but, by an arduous hunt, ratakka had captured eight wandering quxas to whom he immediately set about teaching the duties of subjects. his method was simple--the quxa followed his orders, which he obtained from montgomery, or the quxa was knocked down. if he still refused, he was knocked down again. within three weeks, ratakka had them doing things no quxas ever had done before. they performed them reluctantly and sullenly, but they did them. seeing the result, but not the means, candy was enthusiastic. "they're working together!" she cried. "oh, monty, what will the quxas do to reward you?" "oh, they'll probably make a culture god of me," said montgomery, managing to look modest. "like the greeks did to that martian, proma ss thaa, who taught them the use of fire." as time went on, though, the girl began to have doubts. "but they're doing everything for ratakka," she protested. "as far as they're concerned themselves, they're more wretched than before." "that's the way feudal cultures are built, my dear," montgomery assured her. "the king gives them law and a fighting leader. in return, the subjects take care of his bodily comfort." "but they look so unhappy!" "in saving an inferior race, we cannot be concerned too much about the happiness of a few miserable members. perhaps in three hundred years or so, they can afford happiness." and finally an incident happened to complete her disillusionment. one of ratakka's morose subjects managed to slip the shackles with which he was bound at night and make a bolt for freedom. the king pursued him relentlessly, brought him back and then beat him, coldly and cruelly, slugging and gouging and kicking. ashen-faced, candy moved to interfere; montgomery restrained her. "we're saving a race," he said. "you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs." candy turned and ran sobbing to her quarters, unable to dispel the memory of the writhing body on the ground. * * * * * the next day was the day to move equipment. it was a policy of the expeditions to leave their wornout machines for the most friendly of the native races, who could dismantle them and use the parts. the equipment not worth toting back to earth was to be taken to the advance camp, where the quxa center was. montgomery also planned that day to take ratakka to his kingdom. a few minutes ahead of the motorcade, candy slipped out, got into a battered half-track and started driving the eighty miles to the advance camp. for the first twenty-five miles, she told herself that her eagerness was because it was a nice day and she wanted to get out of camp. for the next twenty-five miles, she called herself a liar. for the third twenty-five miles she gave herself up unashamedly to thinking about bill bradley: his smile, his gentleness, the awkward grace of his lean body. not a man to set a planet on fire--but how pleasant and restful to have around! she wondered if he would forgive the way she had acted. somehow she was sure he would. the narrow vehicular trail ran through a grove of fernlike trees. it's just over the rise, candy thought, just over the rise and down into the saucer, where bill is waiting.... the half-track struck a rock, lurched, threw a tread and went off the road, out of control. that did not matter especially, for the quxas could use the material very well where it was. candy went forward briskly afoot. a fallen branch brushed her ankle. unheedingly, she kicked it away. she began to reconstruct bill, feature by feature: the way his hair swirled on his forehead; his eyebrows, arched and regular; his eyes, wide, deep-seated, with inner pools of merriment; his nose, straight and rather ... another branch caught her. she lifted her foot to free it. it did not come free. another tentacle moved around her, pinioning her right arm to her side. she whirled in terror and found herself in the grip of the horals. * * * * * there were a dozen of the horrors, their antenna ears erect, mandibles open. they exuded an acid odor, a sign of hunger. candy screamed. she fought to reach her pistol, strapped to her right hip. more tentacles stopped her. she screamed and screamed again, throwing her body to shake off the grip, trying to kick with her feet. there was a movement in the road at the top of the rise. for a moment, elation surged in candy, almost stifling her. perhaps some expedition member had heard her, was hurrying to her rescue. then she saw that the newcomers were quxas. hope vanished, leaving her limp and hollow. to be killed by these horrors was bad enough, but to be killed in the presence of a group of piebald morons, who would stand and watch and moan, but not lift a hand ... in her agitation, she did not notice that the quxas were nine in number and wore baseball caps. they drew short clubs, shaped like bats. "kill the umpire!" they shouted, hatred born of diamond conflicts in their cry. "kill the umpire!" they yelled and charged. * * * * * in military formation, they clubbed their way through their enemies, battering and smashing until candy was free, with a dozen dying horals on the ground, their tentacles contracting and writhing. the quxa leader made his bobbing bow to her. "how do," he said politely. "we dip them in calcimine vat, you bet. we hang them out like wash. now we give team yell." the quxas put their arms around each other's shoulders. in unison, they chanted: "hoe tomata; hoe potata half past alligata, bum, bum, bulligata, chickala dah! pussycats! pussycats! rah! rah! rah!" "pussycats," the leader explained to candy, "are honored animal on planet where billbrad is head cheese." "i'll bet you play baseball nicely," candy said. woe broke forth on nine broad faces. "misfortunately not," confessed the captain. "thirty-three teams in quxa town. pussycats in thirty-third place." he brightened. "go ivory hunt now. catch nine new quxas. teach 'em baseball. then maybe we beat 'em and not be in cellar any more." together, the team bobbed politely to candy and trotted down the road. happily, candy went up the rise, then stopped in astonishment, looking at quxa town. gone was the straggling, haphazard settlement, with the flimsy huts and untended starvation patches where individual quxas tried to raise their own food. instead, building sites were laid out in straight, broad rows, and quxas were working, three and four in a group, raising substantial homes of timber. others were surrounding the settlement with a wall of brambles, impenetrable to horals. teams of men, two to a thrag, were plowing, preparing large fields for tillage. and down the side of the settlement, affectionately tended, ran a line of baseball fields. just off the road, a quxa squatted, baseball cap on his head, watching a crude sun dial. "nice day for game," he greeted candy. * * * * * speechless with surprise, the girl made a dazed questioning gesture toward the improvements. "billbrad do it," the quxa informed her. "he tell us how. work one by one, he say, work all time to fill belly, maybe fill horal belly instead. work all by all, do more quick. have time in afternoon. batter up! sock it, boy! wing it home, he sliding!" the sun's shadow touched a peg. "five minute!" bawled the quxa. the laborers quit work, put away their tools. the farmers herded their thrags into a strongly constructed corral. the natives gathered in knots at the settlement edge and looked longingly at the baseball fields. "yestday i fool billbrad," confided the quxa. "i hide ball, catch him off second. billbrad get all red face and say--" "never mind what bill said," candy interjected hastily. the shadow touched another peg. "play ball!" the quxa yelled. "play ball! play ball! play ball!" he sprang up, produced a baseball glove and spat into it reverently. "i go play now. you come see. get scorecard, know players." he looked at candy hopefully. "'specially me," he added. out of the moil of quxas came the lank form of bill bradley. he spied the girl, whooped and came running to her. for a few moments they talked at once, in an incoherent and ecstatic jumble. then candy, catching control of herself, cited in admiration the change in the quxa village. "and you've done all this!" she concluded. "i didn't do anything!" bill protested. "they like to play baseball and this sort of happened. we're getting representative government into action now. each team elects a captain and the captains are the town council. tonight they're going to vote on naming the settlement brooklyn." "you know," said candy, "i'll bet they'll make you a culture god." * * * * * the tanned face of bill bradley took on the rose hue of a blush. "well, moahlo carved a statue and they've put it in front of league headquarters--that's their city hall," he admitted uncomfortably. "it doesn't look much like me. i've got six arms because they wanted me batting, pitching and catching a ball all at the same time." candy slipped a hand into his. "is there a place around here," she asked in a small tone, "where a culture god can take a girl and--well, talk to her?" "is there!" said bill. "you just come with me ..." a heavy object bumped into him. he whirled at the touch. "oh! hi, ratakka," bill said in a flat voice. montgomery's king had returned to his subjects. he was alone--his captives having escaped off the ride over--and he was in vile temper. glaring evilly, he motioned at the baseball players. he was recalling an advice of montgomery: "whatever your subjects like to do most, do it better than they can. in that way, you will get their respect and find it easier to take over." "what that fool doings-on?" snarled ratakka. "ratakka do, too." bill's already sagging spirits sank again. with ratakka's strength and reflexes, the great brute undoubtedly would become the star of stars, gathering admirers to himself and destroying all the pleasant prospects now so happily started. still, it was bill's duty to give him every chance ... "i'll see what team has an opening, ratakka. perhaps you'd better bat seventh for a few days. then you can move to the clean-up spot." the giant stopped him. "ratakka not ordinary quxa; ratakka a king. ratakka not play like those serfs. want special job." a wild thought struck bill. on the playing fields were more than two hundred quxas, most of them with a justified and carefully nurtured dislike for the surly slab of muscle before him. in the old days, they could do nothing individually against him. but the quxas had learned to fight as a team. if he could only give them the shadow of an excuse, trap ratakka into rousing their joint anger, take advantage of the prejudices of their new-found love for baseball, then ratakka would get the reckoning that he deserved, the days of his supremacy would be over, the threat of his tyranny would be removed from a happy race. * * * * * bill grinned broadly. "sure thing, old pal," he said. he took off his own baseball cap and put it backward on ratakka's head. he signaled for someone to bring over a mask and chest protector. "there's only one of these at each playing field," bill explained. "in a way, he's boss of the game. are you sure you want to do it? sometimes the players argue with you." "anyone argue with ratakka," the giant said, raising a huge fist, "ratakka knock 'em down. ratakka a king, boss of game." "okay, boy, you asked for it," bill said. he thrust a whiskbroom into ratakka's hand. "you can be umpire," said bill bradley. a gift from earth by manly banister illustrated by kossin [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy science fiction august 1955. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] except for transportation, it was absolutely free ... but how much would the freight cost? "it is an outrage," said koltan of the house of masur, "that the earthmen land among the thorabians!" zotul, youngest of the masur brothers, stirred uneasily. personally, he was in favor of the coming of the earthmen to the world of zur. at the head of the long, shining table sat old kalrab masur, in his dotage, but still giving what he could of aid and comfort to the pottery of masur, even though nobody listened to him any more and he knew it. around the table sat the six brothers--koltan, eldest and director of the pottery; morvan, his vice-chief; singula, their treasurer; thendro, sales manager; lubiosa, export chief; and last in the rank of age, zotul, who was responsible for affairs of design. "behold, my sons," said kalrab, stroking his scanty beard. "what are these earthmen to worry about? remember the clay. it is our strength and our fortune. it is the muscle and bone of our trade. earthmen may come and earthmen may go, but clay goes on forever ... and with it, the fame and fortune of the house of masur." "it _is_ a damned imposition," agreed morvan, ignoring his father's philosophical attitude. "they could have landed just as easily here in lor." "the thorabians will lick up the gravy," said singula, whose mind ran rather to matters of financial aspect, "and leave us the grease." by this, he seemed to imply that the thorabians would rob the earthmen, which the lorians would not. the truth was that all on zur were panting to get their hands on that marvelous ship, which was all of metal, a very scarce commodity on zur, worth billions of ken. * * * * * lubiosa, who had interests in thorabia, and many agents there, kept his own counsel. his people were active in the matter and that was enough for him. he would report when the time was ripe. "doubtless," said zotul unexpectedly, for the youngest at a conference was expected to keep his mouth shut and applaud the decisions of his elders, "the earthmen used all the metal on their planet in building that ship. we cannot possibly bilk them of it; it is their only means of transport." such frank expression of motive was unheard of, even in the secret conclave of conference. only the speaker's youth could account for it. the speech drew scowls from the brothers and stern rebuke from koltan. "when your opinion is wanted, we will ask you for it. meantime, remember your position in the family." zotul bowed his head meekly, but he burned with resentment. "listen to the boy," said the aged father. "there is more wisdom in his head than in all the rest of you. forget the earthmen and think only of the clay." zotul did not appreciate his father's approval, for it only earned him a beating as soon as the old man went to bed. it was a common enough thing among the brothers masur, as among everybody, to be frustrated in their desires. however, they had zotul to take it out upon, and they did. still smarting, zotul went back to his designing quarters and thought about the earthmen. if it was impossible to hope for much in the way of metal from the earthmen, what could one get from them? if he could figure this problem out, he might rise somewhat in the estimation of his brothers. that wouldn't take him out of the rank of scapegoat, of course, but the beatings might become fewer and less severe. * * * * * by and by, the earthmen came to lor, flying through the air in strange metal contraptions. they paraded through the tile-paved streets of the city, marveled here, as they had in thorabia, at the buildings all of tile inside and out, and made a great show of themselves for all the people to see. speeches were made through interpreters, who had much too quickly learned the tongue of the aliens; hence these left much to be desired in the way of clarity, though their sincerity was evident. the earthmen were going to do great things for the whole world of zur. it required but the cooperation--an excellent word, that--of all zurians, and many blessings would rain down from the skies. this, in effect, was what the earthmen had to say. zotul felt greatly cheered, for it refuted the attitude of his brothers without earning him a whaling for it. there was also some talk going around about agreements made between the earthmen and officials of the lorian government, but you heard one thing one day and another the next. accurate reporting, much less a newspaper, was unknown on zur. finally, the earthmen took off in their great, shining ship. obviously, none had succeeded in chiseling them out of it, if, indeed, any had tried. the anti-earthmen faction--in any culture complex, there is always an "anti" faction to protest any movement of endeavor--crowed happily that the earthmen were gone for good, and a good thing, too. such jubilation proved premature, however. one day, a fleet of ships arrived and after they had landed all over the planet, zur was practically acrawl with earthmen. immediately, the earthmen established what they called "corporations"--zurian trading companies under terrestrial control. the object of the visit was trade. in spite of the fact that a terrestrial ship had landed at every zurian city of major and minor importance, and all in a single day, it took some time for the news to spread. the first awareness zotul had was that, upon coming home from the pottery one evening, he found his wife lania proudly brandishing an aluminum pot at him. "what is that thing?" he asked curiously. "a pot. i bought it at the market." "did you now? well, take it back. am i made of money that you spend my substance for some fool's product of precious metal? take it back, i say!" * * * * * the pretty young wife laughed at him. "up to your ears in clay, no wonder you hear nothing of news! the pot is very cheap. the earthmen are selling them everywhere. they're much better than our old clay pots; they're light and easy to handle and they don't break when dropped." "what good is it?" asked zotul, interested. "how will it hold heat, being so light?" "the earthmen don't cook as we do," she explained patiently. "there is a paper with each pot that explains how it is used. and you will have to design a new ceramic stove for me to use the pots on." "don't be idiotic! do you suppose koltan would agree to produce a new type of stove when the old has sold well for centuries? besides, why do you need a whole new stove for one little pot?" "a dozen pots. they come in sets and are cheaper that way. and koltan will have to produce the new stove because all the housewives are buying these pots and there will be a big demand for it. the earthman said so." "he did, did he? these pots are only a fad. you will soon enough go back to cooking with your old ones." "the earthman took them in trade--one reason why the new ones are so cheap. there isn't a pot in the house but these metal ones, and you will have to design and produce a new stove if you expect me to use them." after he had beaten his wife thoroughly for her foolishness, zotul stamped off in a rage and designed a new ceramic stove, one that would accommodate the terrestrial pots very well. and koltan put the model into production. "orders already are pouring in like mad," he said the next day. "it was wise of you to foresee it and have the design ready. already, i am sorry for thinking as i did about the earthmen. they really intend to do well by us." the kilns of the pottery of masur fired day and night to keep up with the demand for the new porcelain stoves. in three years, more than a million had been made and sold by the masurs alone, not counting the hundreds of thousands of copies turned out by competitors in every land. * * * * * in the meantime, however, more things than pots came from earth. one was a printing press, the like of which none on zur had ever dreamed. this, for some unknown reason and much to the disgust of the lorians, was set up in thorabia. books and magazines poured from it in a fantastic stream. the populace fervidly brushed up on its scanty reading ability and bought everything available, overcome by the novelty of it. even zotul bought a book--a primer in the lorian language--and learned how to read and write. the remainder of the brothers masur, on the other hand, preferred to remain in ignorance. moreover, the earthmen brought miles of copper wire--more than enough in value to buy out the governorship of any country on zur--and set up telegraph lines from country to country and continent to continent. within five years of the first landing of the earthmen, every major city on the globe had a printing press, a daily newspaper, and enjoyed the instantaneous transmission of news via telegraph. and the business of the house of masur continued to look up. "as i have always said from the beginning," chortled director koltan, "this coming of the earthmen had been a great thing for us, and especially for the house of masur." "you didn't think so at first," zotul pointed out, and was immediately sorry, for koltan turned and gave him a hiding, single-handed, for his unthinkable impertinence. it would do no good, zotul realized, to bring up the fact that their production of ceramic cooking pots had dropped off to about two per cent of its former volume. of course, profits on the line of new stoves greatly overbalanced the loss, so that actually they were ahead; but their business was now dependent upon the supply of the metal pots from earth. about this time, plastic utensils--dishes, cups, knives, forks--made their appearance on zur. it became very stylish to eat with the newfangled paraphernalia ... and very cheap, too, because for everything they sold, the earthmen always took the old ware in trade. what they did with the stuff had been hard to believe at first. they destroyed it, which proved how valueless it really was. the result of the new flood was that in the following year, the sale of masur ceramic table service dropped to less than a tenth. * * * * * trembling with excitement at this news from their book-keeper, koltan called an emergency meeting. he even routed old kalrab out of his senile stupor for the occasion, on the off chance that the old man might still have a little wit left that could be helpful. "note," koltan announced in a shaky voice, "that the earthmen undermine our business," and he read off the figures. "perhaps," said zotul, "it is a good thing also, as you said before, and will result in something even better for us." koltan frowned, and zotul, in fear of another beating, instantly subsided. "they are replacing our high-quality ceramic ware with inferior terrestrial junk," koltan went on bitterly. "it is only the glamor that sells it, of course, but before the people get the shine out of their eyes, we can be ruined." the brothers discussed the situation for an hour, and all the while father kalrab sat and pulled his scanty whiskers. seeing that they got nowhere with their wrangle, he cleared his throat and spoke up. "my sons, you forget it is not the earthmen themselves at the bottom of your trouble, but the _things_ of earth. think of the telegraph and the newspaper, how these spread news of every shipment from earth. the merchandise of the earthmen is put up for sale by means of these newspapers, which also are the property of the earthmen. the people are intrigued by these advertisements, as they are called, and flock to buy. now, if you would pull a tooth from the kwi that bites you, you might also have advertisements of your own." alas for that suggestion, no newspaper would accept advertising from the house of masur; all available space was occupied by the advertisements of the earthmen. in their dozenth conference since that first and fateful one, the brothers masur decided upon drastic steps. in the meantime, several things had happened. for one, old kalrab had passed on to his immortal rest, but this made no real difference. for another, the earthmen had procured legal authority to prospect the planet for metals, of which they found a good deal, but they told no one on zur of this. what they did mention was the crude oil and natural gas they discovered in the underlayers of the planet's crust. crews of zurians, working under supervision of the earthmen, laid pipelines from the gas and oil regions to every major and minor city on zur. * * * * * by the time ten years had passed since the landing of the first terrestrial ship, the earthmen were conducting a brisk business in gas-fired ranges, furnaces and heaters ... and the masur stove business was gone. moreover, the earthmen sold the zurians their own natural gas at a nice profit and everybody was happy with the situation except the brothers masur. the drastic steps of the brothers applied, therefore, to making an energetic protest to the governor of lor. at one edge of the city, an area had been turned over to the earthmen for a spaceport, and the great terrestrial spaceships came to it and departed from it at regular intervals. as the heirs of the house of masur walked by on their way to see the governor, zotul observed that much new building was taking place and wondered what it was. "some new devilment of the earthmen, you can be sure," said koltan blackly. in fact, the earthmen were building an assembly plant for radio receiving sets. the ship now standing on its fins upon the apron was loaded with printed circuits, resistors, variable condensers and other radio parts. this was earth's first step toward flooding zur with the natural follow-up in its campaign of advertising--radio programs--with commercials. happily for the brothers, they did not understand this at the time or they would surely have gone back to be buried in their own clay. "i think," the governor told them, "that you gentlemen have not paused to consider the affair from all angles. you must learn to be modern--keep up with the times! we heads of government on zur are doing all in our power to aid the earthmen and facilitate their bringing a great, new culture that can only benefit us. see how zur has changed in ten short years! imagine the world of tomorrow! why, do you know they are even bringing _autos_ to zur!" the brothers were fascinated with the governor's description of these hitherto unheard-of vehicles. "it only remains," concluded the governor, "to build highways, and the earthmen are taking care of that." at any rate, the brothers masur were still able to console themselves that they had their tile business. tile served well enough for houses and street surfacing; what better material could be devised for the new highways the governor spoke of? there was a lot of money to be made yet. * * * * * radio stations went up all over zur and began broadcasting. the people bought receiving sets like mad. the automobiles arrived and highways were constructed. the last hope of the brothers was dashed. the earthmen set up plants and began to manufacture portland cement. you could build a house of concrete much cheaper than with tile. of course, since wood was scarce on zur, it was no competition for either tile or concrete. concrete floors were smoother, too, and the stuff made far better road surfacing. the demand for masur tile hit rock bottom. the next time the brothers went to see the governor, he said, "i cannot handle such complaints as yours. i must refer you to the merchandising council." "what is that?" asked koltan. "it is an earthman association that deals with complaints such as yours. in the matter of material progress, we must expect some strain in the fabric of our culture. machinery has been set up to deal with it. here is their address; go air your troubles to them." the business of a formal complaint was turned over by the brothers to zotul. it took three weeks for the earthmen to get around to calling him in, as a representative of the pottery of masur, for an interview. all the brothers could no longer be spared from the plant, even for the purpose of pressing a complaint. their days of idle wealth over, they had to get in and work with the clay with the rest of the help. zotul found the headquarters of the merchandising council as indicated on their message. he had not been this way in some time, but was not surprised to find that a number of old buildings had been torn down to make room for the concrete council house and a roomy parking lot, paved with something called "blacktop" and jammed with an array of glittering new automobiles. an automobile was an expense none of the brothers could afford, now that they barely eked a living from the pottery. still, zotul ached with desire at sight of so many shiny cars. only a few had them and they were the envied ones of zur. kent broderick, the earthman in charge of the council, shook hands jovially with zotul. that alien custom conformed with, zotul took a better look at his host. broderick was an affable, smiling individual with genial laugh wrinkles at his eyes. a man of middle age, dressed in the baggy costume of zur, he looked almost like a zurian, except for an indefinite sense of alienness about him. "glad to have you call on us, mr. masur," boomed the earthman, clapping zotul on the back. "just tell us your troubles and we'll have you straightened out in no time." * * * * * all the chill recriminations and arguments zotul had stored for this occasion were dissipated in the warmth of the earthman's manner. almost apologetically, zotul told of the encroachment that had been made upon the business of the pottery of masur. "once," he said formally, "the masur fortune was the greatest in the world of zur. that was before my father, the famous kalrab masur--divinity protect him--departed this life to collect his greater reward. he often told us, my father did, that the clay is the flesh and bones of our culture and our fortune. now it has been shown how prone is the flesh to corruption and how feeble the bones. we are ruined, and all because of new things coming from earth." broderick stroked his shaven chin and looked sad. "why didn't you come to me sooner? this would never have happened. but now that it has, we're going to do right by you. that is the policy of earth--always to do right by the customer." "divinity witness," zorin said, "that we ask only compensation for damages." broderick shook his head. "it is not possible to replace an immense fortune at this late date. as i said, you should have reported your trouble sooner. however, we can give you an opportunity to rebuild. do you own an automobile?" "no." "a gas range? a gas-fired furnace? a radio?" zotul had to answer no to all except the radio. "my wife lania likes the music," he explained. "i cannot afford the other things." broderick clucked sympathetically. one who could not afford the bargain-priced merchandise of earth must be poor indeed. "to begin with," he said, "i am going to make you a gift of all these luxuries you do not have." as zotul made to protest, he cut him off with a wave of his hand. "it is the least we can do for you. pick a car from the lot outside. i will arrange to have the other things delivered and installed in your home." "to receive gifts," said zotul, "incurs an obligation." "none at all," beamed the earthman cheerily. "every item is given to you absolutely free--a gift from the people of earth. all we ask is that you pay the freight charges on the items. our purpose is not to make profit, but to spread technology and prosperity throughout the galaxy. we have already done well on numerous worlds, but working out the full program takes time." he chuckled deeply. "we of earth have a saying about one of our extremely slow-moving native animals. we say, 'slow is the tortoise, but sure.' and so with us. our goal is a long-range one, with the motto, 'better times with better merchandise.'" * * * * * the engaging manner of the man won zotul's confidence. after all, it was no more than fair to pay transportation. he said, "how much does the freight cost?" broderick told him. "it may seem high," said the earthman, "but remember that earth is sixty-odd light-years away. after all, we are absorbing the cost of the merchandise. all you pay is the freight, which is cheap, considering the cost of operating an interstellar spaceship." "impossible," said zotul drably. "not i and all my brothers together have so much money any more." "you don't know us of earth very well yet, but you will. i offer you credit!" "what is that?" asked zotul skeptically. "it is how the poor are enabled to enjoy all the luxuries of the rich," said broderick, and went on to give a thumbnail sketch of the involutions and devolutions of credit, leaving out some angles that might have had a discouraging effect. on a world where credit was a totally new concept, it was enchanting. zotul grasped at the glittering promise with avidity. "what must i do to get credit?" "just sign this paper," said broderick, "and you become part of our easy payment plan." zotul drew back. "i have five brothers. if i took all these things for myself and nothing for them, they would beat me black and blue." "here." broderick handed him a sheaf of chattel mortgages. "have each of your brothers sign one of these, then bring them back to me. that is all there is to it." it sounded wonderful. but how would the brothers take it? zotul wrestled with his misgivings and the misgivings won. "i will talk it over with them," he said. "give me the total so i will have the figures." the total was more than it ought to be by simple addition. zotul pointed this out politely. "interest," broderick explained. "a mere fifteen per cent. after all, you get the merchandise free. the transportation company has to be paid, so another company loans you the money to pay for the freight. this small extra sum pays the lending company for its trouble." "i see." zotul puzzled over it sadly. "it is too much," he said. "our plant doesn't make enough money for us to meet the payments." "i have a surprise for you," smiled broderick. "here is a contract. you will start making ceramic parts for automobile spark plugs and certain parts for radios and gas ranges. it is our policy to encourage local manufacture to help bring prices down." "we haven't the equipment." "we will equip your plant," beamed broderick. "it will require only a quarter interest in your plant itself, assigned to our terrestrial company." * * * * * zotul, anxious to possess the treasures promised by the earthman, won over his brothers. they signed with marks and gave up a quarter interest in the pottery of masur. they rolled in the luxuries of earth. these, who had never known debt before, were in it up to their ears. the retooled plant forged ahead and profits began to look up, but the earthmen took a fourth of them as their share in the industry. for a year, the brothers drove their shiny new cars about on the new concrete highways the earthmen had built. from pumps owned by a terrestrial company, they bought gas and oil that had been drawn from the crust of zur and was sold to the zurians at a magnificent profit. the food they ate was cooked in earthly pots on earth-type gas ranges, served up on metal plates that had been stamped out on earth. in the winter, they toasted their shins before handsome gas grates, though they had gas-fired central heating. about this time, the ships from earth brought steam-powered electric generators. lines went up, power was generated, and a flood of electrical gadgets and appliances hit the market. for some reason, batteries for the radios were no longer available and everybody had to buy the new radios. and who could do without a radio in this modern age? the homes of the brothers masur blossomed on the easy payment plan. they had refrigerators, washers, driers, toasters, grills, electric fans, air-conditioning equipment and everything else earth could possibly sell them. "we will be forty years paying it all off," exulted zotul, "but meantime we have the things and aren't they worth it?" but at the end of three years, the earthmen dropped their option. the pottery of masur had no more contracts. business languished. the earthmen, explained broderick, had built a plant of their own because it was so much more efficient--and to lower prices, which was earth's unswerving policy, greater and greater efficiency was demanded. broderick was very sympathetic, but there was nothing he could do. the introduction of television provided a further calamity. the sets were delicate and needed frequent repairs, hence were costly to own and maintain. but all zurians who had to keep up with the latest from earth had them. now it was possible not only to hear about things of earth, but to see them as they were broadcast from the video tapes. the printing plants that turned out mortgage contracts did a lush business. * * * * * for the common people of zur, times were good everywhere. in a decade and a half, the earthmen had wrought magnificent changes on this backward world. as broderick had said, the progress of the tortoise was slow, but it was extremely sure. the brothers masur got along in spite of dropped options. they had less money and felt the pinch of their debts more keenly, but television kept their wives and children amused and furnished an anodyne for the pangs of impoverishment. the pottery income dropped to an impossible low, no matter how zotul designed and the brothers produced. their figurines and religious ikons were a drug on the market. the earthmen made them of plastic and sold them for less. the brothers, unable to meet the payments that were not so easy any more, looked up zotul and cuffed him around reproachfully. "you got us into this," they said, emphasizing their bitterness with fists. "go see broderick. tell him we are undone and must have some contracts to continue operating." nursing bruises, zotul unhappily went to the council house again. mr. broderick was no longer with them, a suave assistant informed him. would he like to see mr. siwicki instead? zotul would. siwicki was tall, thin, dark and somber-looking. there was even a hint of toughness about the set of his jaw and the hardness of his glance. "so you can't pay," he said, tapping his teeth with a pencil. he looked at zotul coldly. "it is well you have come to us instead of making it necessary for us to approach you through the courts." "i don't know what you mean," said zotul. "if we have to sue, we take back the merchandise and everything attached to them. that means you would lose your houses, for they are attached to the furnaces. however, it is not as bad as that--yet. we will only require you to assign the remaining three-quarters of your pottery to us." the brothers, when they heard of this, were too stunned to think of beating zotul, by which he assumed he had progressed a little and was somewhat comforted. "to fail," said koltan soberly, "is not a masur attribute. go to the governor and tell him what we think of this business. the house of masur has long supported the government with heavy taxes. now it is time for the government to do something for us." * * * * * the governor's palace was jammed with hurrying people, a scene of confusion that upset zotul. the clerk who took his application for an interview was, he noticed only vaguely, a young earthwoman. it was remarkable that he paid so little attention, for the female terrestrials were picked for physical assets that made zurian men covetous and zurian women envious. "the governor will see you," she said sweetly. "he has been expecting you." "me?" marveled zotul. she ushered him into the magnificent private office of the governor of lor. the man behind the desk stood up, extended his hand with a friendly smile. "come in, come in! i'm glad to see you again." zotul stared blankly. this was not the governor. this was broderick, the earthman. "i--i came to see the governor," he said in confusion. broderick nodded agreeably. "i am the governor and i am well acquainted with your case, mr. masur. shall we talk it over? please sit down." "i don't understand. the earthmen...." zotul paused, coloring. "we are about to lose our plant." "you were about to say that the earthmen are taking your plant away from you. that is true. since the house of masur was the largest and richest on zur, it has taken a long time--the longest of all, in fact." "what do you mean?" "yours is the last business on zur to be taken over by us. we have bought you out." "our government...." "your governments belong to us, too," said broderick. "when they could not pay for the roads, the telegraphs, the civic improvements, we took them over, just as we are taking you over." "you mean," exclaimed zotul, aghast, "that you earthmen own everything on zur?" "even your armies." "but _why_?" * * * * * broderick clasped his hands behind back, went to the window and stared down moodily into the street. "you don't know what an overcrowded world is like," he said. "a street like this, with so few people and vehicles on it, would be impossible on earth." "but it's mobbed," protested zotul. "it gave me a headache." "and to us it's almost empty. the pressure of population on earth has made us range the galaxy for places to put our extra people. the only habitable planets, unfortunately, are populated ones. we take the least populous worlds and--well, buy them out and move in." "and after that?" broderick smiled gently. "zur will grow. our people will intermarry with yours. the future population of zur will be neither true zurians nor true earthmen, but a mixture of both." zotul sat in silent thought. "but you did not have to buy us out. you had the power to conquer us, even to destroy us. the whole planet could have been yours alone." he stopped in alarm. "or am i suggesting an idea that didn't occur to you?" "no," said broderick, his usually smiling face almost pained with memory. "we know the history of conquest all too well. our method causes more distress than we like to inflict, but it's better--and more sure--than war and invasion by force. now that the unpleasant job is finished, we can repair the dislocations." "at last i understand what you said about the tortoise." "slow but sure." broderick beamed again and clapped zotul on the shoulder. "don't worry. you'll have your job back, the same as always, but you'll be working for us ... until the children of earth and zur are equal in knowledge and therefore equal partners. that's why we had to break down your caste system." zotul's eyes widened. "and that is why my brothers did not beat me when i failed!" "of course. are you ready now to take the assignment papers for you and your brothers to sign?" "yes," said zotul. "i am ready." well, naturally kaiser would transmit baby talk messages to his mother ship! he was- growing up on big muddy by charles v. de vet illustrated by turpin [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy science fiction july 1957. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] kaiser stared at the tape in his hand for a long uncomprehending minute. how long had the stuff been coming through in this inane baby talk? and why hadn't he noticed it before? why had he had to read this last communication a third time before he recognized anything unusual about it? he went over the words again, as though maybe this time they'd read as they should. oo is sick, smoky. do to beddy-by. keep um warm. when um feels better, let usns know. ss ii kaiser let himself ease back in the pilot chair and rolled the tape thoughtfully between his fingers. overhead and to each side, large drops of rain thudded softly against the transparent walls of the scout ship and dripped wearily from the bottom ledge to the ground. "damn this climate!" kaiser muttered irrelevantly. "doesn't it ever do anything here except rain?" his attention returned to the matter at hand. why the baby talk? and why was his memory so hazy? how long had he been here? what had he been doing during that time? listlessly he reached for the towel at his elbow and wiped the moisture from his face and bare shoulders. the air conditioning had gone out when the scout ship cracked up. he'd have to repair the scout or he was stuck here for good. he remembered now that he had gone over the job very carefully and thoroughly, and had found it too big to handle alone--or without better equipment, at least. yet there was little or no chance of his being able to find either here. calmly, deliberately, kaiser collected his thoughts, his memories, and brought them out where he could look at them: the mother ship, _soscites ii_, had been on the last leg of its planet-mapping tour. it had dropped kaiser in the one remaining scout ship--the other seven had all been lost one way or another during the exploring of new worlds--and set itself into a giant orbit about this planet that kaiser had named big muddy. the _soscites ii_ had to maintain its constant speed; it had no means of slowing, except to stop, and no way to start again once it did stop. its limited range of maneuverability made it necessary to set up an orbit that would take it approximately one month, earth time, to circle a pinpointed planet. and now its fuel was low. kaiser had that one month to repair his scout or be stranded here forever. that was all he could remember. nothing of what he had been doing recently. a small shiver passed through his body as he glanced once again at the tape in his hand. baby talk.... * * * * * one thing he could find out: how long this had been going on. he turned to the communicator and unhooked the paper receptacle on its bottom. it held about a yard and a half of tape, probably his last several messages--both those sent and those received. he pulled it out impatiently and began reading. the first was from himself: your suggestions no help. how am i going to repair damage to scout without proper equipment? and where do i get it? do you think i found a tool shop down here? for god's sake, come up with something better. visited seal-people again today. still have their stink in my nose. found huts along river bank, so i guess they don't live in water. but they do spend most of their time there. no, i have no way of estimating their intelligence. i would judge it averages no higher than seven-year-old human. they definitely do talk to one another. will try to find out more about them, but you get to work fast on how i repair scout. swelling in arm worse and am developing a fever. temperature 102.7 an hour ago. smoky the ship must have answered immediately, for the return message time was six hours later than his own, the minimum interval necessary for two-way exchange. doing our best, smoky. your immediate problem, as we see it, is to keep well. we fed all the information you gave us into sam, but you didn't have much except the sting in your arm. as expected, all that came out was "data insufficient." try to give us more. also detail all symptoms since your last report. in the meantime, we're doing everything we can at this end. good luck. ss ii sam, kaiser knew, was the ship's mechanical diagnostician. his report followed: arm swollen. unable to keep down food last twelve hours. about two hours ago, entire body turned livid red. brief periods of blankness. things keep coming and going. sick as hell. hurry. smoky the ship's next message read: infection quite definite. but something strange there. give us anything more you have. ss ii his own reply perplexed kaiser: last letter funny. i not understand. why is oo sending garble talk? did usns make up secret messages? smoky the expedition, apparently, was as puzzled as he: what's the matter, smoky? that last message was in plain terran. no reason why you couldn't read it. and why the baby talk? if you're spoofing, stop. give us more symptoms. how are you feeling now? ss ii the baby talk was worse on kaiser's next: twazy. what for oo tending twazy letters? fink um can wead twazy letters? skin all yellow now. cold. cold. co the ship's following communication was three hours late. it was the last on the tape--the one kaiser had read earlier. apparently they decided to humor him. oo is sick, smoky. do to beddy-by. keep um warm. when um feels better, let usns know. ss ii that was not much help. all it told him was that he had been sick. he felt better now, outside of a muscular weariness, as though convalescing from a long illness. he put the back of his hand to his forehead. cool. no fever anyway. he glanced at the clock-calendar on the instrument board and back at the date and time on the tape where he'd started his baby talk. twenty hours. he hadn't been out of his head too long. he began punching the communicator keys while he nibbled at a biscuit. seem to be fully recovered. feeling fine. anything new from sam? and how about the damage to scout? give me anything you have on either or both. smoky kaiser felt suddenly weary. he lay on the scout's bunk and tried to sleep. soon he was in that phantasm land between sleep and wakefulness--he knew he was not sleeping, yet he did dream. it was the same dream he had had many times before. in it, he was back home again, the home he had joined the space service to escape. he had realized soon after his marriage that his wife, helene, did not love him. she had married him for the security his pay check provided. and though it soon became evident that she, too, regretted her bargain, she would not divorce him. instead, she had her revenge on him by persistent nagging, by letting herself grow fat and querulous, and by caring for their house only in a slovenly way. her crippled brother had moved in with them the day they were married. his mind was as crippled as his body and he took an unhealthy delight in helping his sister torment kaiser. * * * * * kaiser came wide awake in a cold sweat. the clock showed that only an hour had passed since he had sent his last message to the ship. still five more long hours to wait. he rose and wiped the sweat from his neck and shoulders and restlessly paced the small corridor of the scout. after a few minutes, he stopped pacing and peered out into the gloom of big muddy. the rain seemed to have eased off some. not much more than a heavy drizzle now. kaiser reached impulsively for the slicker he had thrown over a chest against one wall and put it on, then a pair of hip-high plastic boots and a plastic hat. he opened the door. the scout had come to rest with a slight tilt when it crashed, and kaiser had to sit down and roll over onto his stomach to ease himself to the ground. the weather outside was normal for big muddy: wet, humid, and warm. kaiser sank to his ankles in soft mud before his feet reached solid ground. he half walked and half slid to the rear of the scout. beside the ship, the "octopus" was busily at work. tentacles and antennae, extending from the yard-high box of its body, tested and recorded temperature, atmosphere, soil, and all other pertinent planetary conditions. the octopus was connected to the ship's communicator and all its findings were being transmitted to the mother ship for study. kaiser observed that it was working well and turned toward a wide, sluggish river, perhaps two hundred yards from the scout. once there, he headed upstream. he could hear the pipings, and now and then a higher whistling, of the seal-people before he reached a bend and saw them. as usual, most were swimming in the river. one old fellow, whose chocolate-brown fur showed a heavy intermixture of gray, was sitting on the bank of the river just at the bend. perhaps a lookout. he pulled himself to his feet as he spied kaiser and his toothless, hard-gummed mouth opened and emitted a long whistle that might have been a greeting--or a warning to the others that a stranger approached. the native stood perhaps five feet tall, with the heavy, blubbery body of a seal, and short, thick arms. membranes connected the arms to his body from shoulder-pits to mid-biceps. the arms ended in three-fingered, thumbless hands. his legs also were short and thick, with footpads that splayed out at forty-five-degree angles. they gave his legs the appearance of a split tail. about him hung a rank-fish smell that made kaiser's stomach squirm. the old fellow sounded a cheerful chirp as kaiser came near. feeling slightly ineffectual, kaiser raised both hands and held them palm forward. the other chirped again and kaiser went on toward the main group. * * * * * they had stopped their play and eating as kaiser approached and now most of them swam in to shore and stood in the water, staring and piping. they varied in size from small seal-pups to full-grown adults. some chewed on bunches of water weed, which they manipulated with their lips and drew into their mouths. they had mammalian characteristics, kaiser had noted before, so it was not difficult to distinguish the females from the males. the proportion was roughly fifty-fifty. several of the bolder males climbed up beside kaiser and began pawing his plastic clothing. kaiser stood still and tried to keep his breathing shallow, for their odor was almost more than he could bear. one native smeared kaiser's face with an exploring paw and kaiser gagged and pushed him roughly away. he was bound by regulations to display no hostility to newly discovered natives, but he couldn't take much more of this. a young female splashed water on two young males who stood near and they turned with shrill pipings and chased her into the water. the entire group seemed to lose interest in kaiser and joined in the chase, or went back to other diversions of their own. kaiser's inspectors followed. they were a mindless lot, kaiser observed. the river supplied them with an easy existence, with food and living space, and apparently they had few natural enemies. kaiser walked away, following the long slow bend of the river, and came to a collection of perhaps two hundred dwellings built in three haphazard rows along the river bank. he took time to study their construction more closely this time. they were all round domes, little more than the height of a man, built of blocks that appeared to be mud, packed with river weed and sand. how they were able to dry these to give them the necessary solidity, kaiser did not know. he had found no signs that they knew how to use fire, and all apparent evidence was against their having it. they then had to have sunlight. maybe it rained less during certain seasons. the domes' construction was based on a series of four arches built in a circle. when the base covering the periphery had been laid, four others were built on and between them, and continued in successive tiers until the top was reached. each tier thus furnished support for the next above. no other framework was needed. the final tier formed the roof. they made sound shelters, but kaiser had peered into several and found them dark and dank--and as smelly as the natives themselves. the few loungers in the village paid little attention to kaiser and he wandered through the irregular streets until he became bored and returned to the scout. the _soscites ii_ sent little that helped during the next twelve hours and kaiser occupied his time trying again to repair the damage to the scout. the job appeared maddeningly simply. as the scout had glided in for a soft landing, its metal bottom had ridden a concealed rock and bent inward. the bent metal had carried up with it the tube supplying the fuel pump and flattened it against the motor casing. * * * * * opening the tube again would not have been difficult, but first it had to be freed from under the ship. kaiser had tried forcing the sheet metal back into place with a small crowbar--the best leverage he had on hand--but it resisted his best efforts. he still could think of no way to do the job, simple as it was, though he gave his concentration to it the rest of the day. that evening, kaiser received information from the _soscites ii_ that was at least definite: set yourself for a shock, smoky. sam finally came through. you won't like what you hear. at least not at first. but it could be worse. you have been invaded by a symbiote--similar to the type found on the sand world, bartel-bleethers. give us a few more hours to work with sam and we'll get you all the particulars he can give us. hang on now! soscites ii kaiser's reply was short and succinct: what the hell? smoky _soscites ii's_ next communication followed within twenty minutes and was signed by the ship's doctor: just a few words, smoky, in case you're worried. i thought i'd get this off while we're waiting for more information from sam. remember that a symbiote is not a parasite. it will not harm you, except inadvertently. your welfare is as essential to it as to you. almost certainly, if you die, it will die with you. any trouble you've had so far was probably caused by the symbiote's difficulty in adjusting itself to its new environment. in a way, i envy you. more later, when we finish with sam. j. g. zarwell kaiser did not answer. the news was so startling, so unforeseen, that his mind refused to accept the actuality. he lay on the scout's bunk and stared at the ceiling without conscious attention, and with very little clear thought, for several hours--until the next communication came in: well, this is what sam has to say, smoky. symbiote amicable and apparently swiftly adaptable. your changing color, difficulty in eating and even baby talk were the result of its efforts to give you what it believed you needed or wanted. changing color: protective camouflage. trouble keeping food down: it kept your stomach empty because it sensed you were in trouble and might have need for sharp reflexes, with no excess weight to carry. the baby talk we aren't too certain about, but our best conclusion is that when you were a child, you were most happy. it was trying to give you back that happy state of mind. obviously it quickly recognized the mistakes it made and corrected them. sam came up with a few more ideas, but we want to work on them a bit before we send them through. sleep on this. ss ii * * * * * kaiser could imagine that most of the crew were not too concerned about the trouble he was in. he was not the gregarious type and had no close friends on board. he had hoped to find the solitude he liked best in space, but he had been disappointed. true, there were fewer people here, but he was brought into such intimate contact with them that he would have been more contented living in a crowded city. his naturally unsociable nature was more irksome to the crew because he was more intelligent and efficient than they were. he did his work well and painstakingly and was seldom in error. they would have liked him better had he been more prone to mistakes. he was certain that they respected him, but they did not like him. and he returned the dislike. the suggestion that he get some sleep might not be a bad idea. he hadn't slept in over eighteen hours, kaiser realized--and fell instantly asleep. the communicator had a message waiting for him when he awoke: sam couldn't help us much on this part, but after research and much discussion, we arrived at the following two conclusions. first, physical property of symbiote is either that of a very thin liquid or, more probably, a virus form with swift propagation characteristic. it undoubtedly lives in your blood stream and permeates your system. second, it seemed to us, as it must have to you, that the symbiote could only know what you wanted by reading your mind. however, we believe differently now. we think that it has such close contact with your glands and their secretions, which stimulate emotion, that it can gauge your feelings even more accurately than you yourself can. thus it can judge your likes and dislikes quite accurately. we would like to have you test our theory. there are dozens of ways. if you are stumped and need suggestions, just let us know. we await word from you with great interest. ss ii by now, kaiser had accepted what had happened to him. his distress and anxiety were gone and he was impatient to do what he could to establish better contact with his uninvited tenant. with eager anticipation, he set to thinking how it could be done. after a few minutes, an idea occurred to him. taking a small scalpel from a medical kit, he made a shallow cut in his arm, just deep enough to bleed freely. he knew that the pain would supply the necessary glandular reaction. the cut bled a few slow drops--and as kaiser watched, a shiny film formed and the bleeding stopped. that checked pretty well with the ship's theory. perhaps the symbiote had made his senses more acute. he tried closing his eyes and fingering several objects in the room. it seemed to him that he could determine the texture of each better than before, but the test was inconclusive. walking to the rear of the scout, he tried reading the printed words on the instrument panel. each letter stood out sharp and clear! kaiser wondered if he might not make an immediate, practical use of the symbiote's apparent desire to help him. concentrating on the discomfort of the high humidity and exaggerating his own displeasure with it, he waited. the result surprised and pleased him. the temperature within the scout cabin seemed to lower, the moisture on his body vanished, and he was more comfortable than he had yet been here. as a double check, he looked at the ship's thermometer. temperature 102, humidity 113--just about the same as it had been on earlier readings. * * * * * during the next twenty-four hours, kaiser and the mother ship exchanged messages at regular six-hour intervals. in between, he worked at repairing the damaged scout. he had no more success than before. he tired easily and lay on the cot often to rest. each time he seemed to drop off to sleep immediately--and awake at the exact times he had decided on beforehand. at first, despite the lack of success in straightening the bent metal of the scout bottom, there had been a subdued exhilaration in reporting each new discovery concerning the symbiote, but as time passed, his enthusiasm ebbed. his one really important problem was how to repair the scout and he was fast becoming discouraged. at last kaiser could bear the futility of his efforts no longer. he sent out a terse message to the _soscites ii_: taking short trip to another location on river. hope to find more intelligent natives. could be that the settlement i found here is analogous to tribe of monkeys on earth. i know the chance is small, but what have i to lose? i can't fix scout without better tools, and if my guess is right, i may be able to get equipment. expect to return in ten or twelve hours. please keep contact with scout. smoky kaiser packed a mudsled with tent, portable generator and guard wires, a spare sidearm and ammunition, and food for two days. he had noticed that a range of high hills, which caused the bend in the river at the native settlement, seemed to continue its long curve, and he wondered if the hills might not turn the river in the shape of a giant horseshoe. he intended to find out. wrapping his equipment in a plastic tarp, kaiser eased it out the doorway and tied it on the sled. he hooked a towline to a harness on his shoulders and began his journey--in the opposite direction from the first native settlement. he walked for more than seven hours before he found that his surmise had been correct. and a second cluster of huts, and seal-people in the river, greeted his sight. he received a further pleasant surprise. this group was decidedly more advanced than the first! they were little different in actual physical appearance; the change was mainly noticeable in their actions and demeanor. and their odor was more subdued, less repugnant. by signs, kaiser indicated that he came in peace, and they seemed to understand. a thick-bodied male went solemnly to the river bank and called to a second, who dived and brought up a mouthful of weed. the first male took the weed and brought it to kaiser. this was obviously a gesture of friendship. the weed had a white starchy core and looked edible. kaiser cleaned part of it with his handkerchief, bit and chewed it. the weed had a slight iron taste, but was not unpalatable. he swallowed the mouthful and tried another. he ate most of what had been given him and waited with some trepidation for a reaction. * * * * * as dusk fell, kaiser set up his tent a few hundred yards back from the native settlement. all apprehension about how his stomach would react to the river weed had left him. apparently it could be assimilated by his digestive system. lying on his air mattress, he felt thoroughly at peace with this world. once, just before dropping off to sleep, he heard the snuffling noise of some large animal outside his tent and picked up a pistol, just in case. however, the first jolt of the guard-wire charge discouraged the beast and kaiser heard it shuffle away, making puzzled mewing sounds as it went. the next morning, kaiser left off all his clothes except a pair of shorts and went swimming in the river. the seal-people were already in the water when he arrived and were very friendly. that friendliness nearly resulted in disaster. the natives crowded around as he swam--they maneuvered with an otter-like proficiency--and often nudged him with their bodies when they came too close. he had difficulty keeping afloat and soon turned and started back. as he neared the river edge, a playful female grabbed him by the ankle and pulled him under. kaiser tried to break her hold, but she evidently thought he was clowning and wrapped her warm furred arms around him and held him helpless. they sank deeper. when his breath threatened to burst from his lungs in a stream of bubbles, and he still could not free himself, kaiser brought his knee up into her stomach and her grip loosened abruptly. he reached the surface, choking and coughing, and swam blindly toward shore until his feet hit the river bottom. as he stood on the bank, getting his breath, the natives were quiet and seemed to be looking at him reproachfully. he stood for a time, trying to think of a way to explain the necessity of what he had done, but there was none. he shrugged helplessly. there was no longer anything to be gained by staying here--if they had the tools he needed, he had no way of finding out or asking for them--and he packed and started back to the scout. kaiser's good spirits returned on his return journey. he had enjoyed the relief from the tedium of spending day after day in the scout, and now he enjoyed the exercise of pulling the mudsled. above the waist, he wore only the harness and the large, soft drops of rain against his bare skin were pleasant to feel. when he reached the scout, kaiser began to unload the sled. the tarpaulin caught on the edge of a runner and he gave it a tug to free it. to his amazement, the heavy sled turned completely over, spilling the equipment to the ground. perplexed, kaiser stooped and began replacing the spilled articles in the tarp. they felt exceptionally light. he paused again, and suddenly his eyes widened. * * * * * moving quickly to the door of the scout, he shoved his equipment through and crawled in behind it. he did not consult the communicator, as he customarily did on entering, but went directly to the warped place on the floor and picked up the crowbar he had laid there. inserting the bar between the metal of the scout bottom and the engine casing, he lifted. nothing happened. he rested a minute and tried again, this time concentrating on his desire to raise the bar. the metal beneath yielded slightly--but he felt the palms of his hands bruise against the lever. only after he dropped the bar did he realize the force he had exerted. his hands ached and tingled. his strength must have been increased tremendously. with his plastic coat wrapped around the lever, he tried again. the metal of the scout bottom gave slowly--until the fuel pump hung free! kaiser did not repair the tube immediately. he let the solution rest in his hands, like a package to be opened, the pleasure of its anticipation to be enjoyed as much as the final act. he transmitted the news of what he had been able to do and sat down to read the two messages waiting for him. the first was quite routine: reports from the octopus indicate that big muddy undergoes radical weather-cycle changes during spring and fall seasons, from extreme moisture to extreme aridity. at height of dry season, planet must be completely devoid of surface liquid. to survive these unusual extremes, seal-people would need extreme adaptability. this verifies our earlier guess that natives have symbiosis with the same virus form that invaded you. with symbiotes' aid, such radical physical change could be possible. will keep you informed. give us any new information you might have on natives. ss ii the second report was not so routine. kaiser thought he detected a note of uneasiness in it. suggest you devote all time and effort to repair of scout. information on seal-people adequate for our purposes. ss ii kaiser did not answer either communication. his earlier report had covered all that he had learned lately. he lay on his cot and went to sleep. in the morning, another message was waiting: very pleased to hear of progress on repair of scout. complete as quickly as possible and return here immediately. ss ii * * * * * kaiser wondered about the abrupt recall. could the _soscites ii_ be experiencing some difficulty? he shrugged the thought aside. if they were, they would have told him. the last notes had had more than just a suggestion of urgency--there appeared to be a deliberate concealing of information. strangely, the messages indicated need for haste did not prod kaiser. he knew now that the job could be done, perhaps in a few hours' time. and the _soscites ii_ would not complete its orbit of the planet for two weeks yet. without putting on more than the shirt and trousers he had grown used to wearing, kaiser went outside and wandered listlessly about the vicinity of the ship for several hours. when he became hungry, he went back inside. another message came in as he finished eating. this one was from the captain himself: why have we received no verification of last instructions? repair scout immediately and return without further delay. this is an order! h. a. hesse, capt. kaiser pushed the last of his meal--which he had been eating with his fingers--into his mouth, crumpled the tape, wiped the grease from his hands with it and dropped it to the floor. he pondered mildly, as he packed his equipment, why he was disregarding the captain's message. for some reason, it seemed too trivial for serious consideration. he placated his slightly uneasy conscience only to the extent of packing the communicator in with his other equipment. it was a self-contained unit and he'd be able to receive messages from the ship on his trip. * * * * * the tracks of his earlier journey had been erased by the soft rain, and when kaiser reached the river, he found that he had not returned to the village he had visited the day before. however, there were other seal-people here. and they were almost human! the resemblance was still not so much in their physical makeup--that was little changed from the first he had found--as in their obviously greater intelligence. this was mainly noticeable in their facile expressions as they talked. kaiser was even certain that he read smiles on their faces when he slipped on a particularly slick mud patch as he hurried toward them. where the members of the first tribes had all looked almost exactly alike, these had very marked individual characteristics. also, these had no odor--only a mild, rather pleasing scent. when they came to meet him, kaiser could detect distinct syllabism in their pipings. most of the natives returned to the river after the first ten minutes of curious inspection, but two stayed behind as kaiser set up his tent. one was a female. they made small noises while he went about his work. after a time, he understood that they were trying to give names to his paraphernalia. he tried saying "tent" and "wire" and "tarp" as he handled each object, but their piping voices could not repeat the words. kaiser amused himself by trying to imitate their sounds for the articles. he was fairly successful. he was certain that he could soon learn enough to carry on a limited conversation. the male became bored after a time and left, but the girl stayed until kaiser finished. she motioned to him then to follow. when they reached the river bank, he saw that she wanted him to go into the water. * * * * * before he had time to decide, kaiser heard the small bell of the communicator from the tent behind him. he stood undecided for a moment, then returned and read the message on the tape: still anxiously awaiting word from you. in meantime, give very close attention to following. we know that the symbiotes must be able to make radical changes in the physiology of the seal-people. there is every probability that yours will attempt to do the same to you--to better fit your body to its present environment. the danger, which we hesitated to mention until now--when you have forced us by your obstinate silence--is that it can alter your mind also. your report on second tribe of seal-people strongly indicates that this is already happening. they were probably not more intelligent and humanlike than the others. on the contrary, you are becoming more like them. danger acute. return immediately. repeat: immediately! ss ii kaiser picked up a large rock and slowly, methodically pounded the communicator into a flattened jumble of metal and loose parts. when he finished, he returned to the waiting girl on the river bank. she pointed at his plastic trousers and made laughing sounds in her throat. kaiser returned the laugh and stripped off the trousers. they ran, still laughing, into the water. already the long pink hair that had been growing on his body during the past week was beginning to turn brown at the roots. all jackson's children by daniel f. galouye illustrated by finlay [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy science fiction january 1957. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] their chances hung literally on a prayer ... which they had to answer all by themselves! angus mcintosh vigorously scuffed the tarnished nameplate on the wrecked cargo carrier. then he stepped back and squinted under shaggy gray eyebrows. letter by letter, number by number, he coaxed out the designation on the crumpled bow of the spacer in the vine-matted gorge: "rt ... 3070 ... vg-ii." his lean frame tensed with concern as he turned to stare soberly at the other. "a vegan robot trader!" bruce drummond grinned. "are we lucky! clunkers are worth money--in any condition." angus snorted impatiently. "let's get out of here, quick." "get out?" the stocky drummond repeated incredulously as he ran thick-set fingers over the black stubble on his cheek. "ain't we going to salvage the clunkers? the book says they're ours after fifty years." "the hold's empty. there's no cargo." "there was when it landed. look at the angle of incidence on those fins." "exactly." frowning, angus shifted his holster around on his hip and strode back toward the plain. "ever hear of a frustrated compulsion?" * * * * * drummond, following hesitantly, shook his head. "those clunkers have to satisfy a basic behavior circuit," mcintosh explained as he hastened his step. "we don't know what the compulsion of this bunch is. suppose--well, suppose they have a chiropractic function. how'd you like to be the first person to show up after they've been frustrated for a hundred years?" "oh," drummond said comprehendingly, stumbling to keep pace. angus mcintosh brushed a mass of tendrils aside and stepped out on the plain. "we'll report it and let them send in a deactivation crew. that way, at least, we'll get fifty per cent of salvage and no danger." "even that ain't bad--just for following an sos a hundred light-years. taking an uncharted route and picking up that signal sure paid off like--" drummond gagged on his words as he gripped angus's arm and pointed. their ship was a shining oval, bobbing and weaving on a sea of silver that surged across the plain toward a cliff on the left. "clunkers!" drummond gasped. "hundreds of 'em--making off with our boat!" he unholstered his weapon and fired. angus struck his wrist sharply. "why don't you just run out waving your arms? we don't have enough firepower to get more than eight or ten of them." but the warning was too late. already the tide had washed away from the ship and was surging toward the gorge. there was a noise behind them and angus spun around. ten feet away stood a robot with the designation ra-204 on his breast-plate. "welcome, o jackson," the clunker said reverently. then he hinged forward on his hip joints until his head almost touched the ground. the gesture was a clockwork salaam. * * * * * mcintosh's thin legs dangled in front of 204's breast-plate and his ankles were secure in the grip of metal fingers as he rode the robot's shoulders. ra-76 strode alongside, carrying a squirming and swearing drummond. around them, the shining horde marched along noisily. "he has come!" cried one. "jackson has come!" chanted the others of the shining horde. "he will show us the way!" shouted ra-204. drummond kicked, but 76 only held his legs more firmly. furious, drummond reached for his gun. "that's using your head," angus said sarcastically. "agitate them. then we'll never get out of here." drummond let the weapon slip back into its holster. "what did we get into--a nest of fanatics? who's jackson?" angus helplessly shrugged his bony shoulders. the procession filtered through a narrow woods and broke out on another plain, headed for the nearby cliff. angus leaned forward. "put me down, 204." "thou art jackson," said the robot solemnly. "and thou art testing me to see whether i would so easily abandon my supervisor." "not testing," angus said. "just asking. come on, how about it?" "praise jackson!" 204 cried. "jackson! jackson!" intoned the throng. drummond leaned an elbow on 76's skull plate and disgustedly cupped his chin in his hand. "what if they _are_ chiropractor robots?" "we'll probably need one after this ride," angus said uncomfortably. "not like we'll need a way to get back to the ship and cut off those converters before they over-charge." "slow charge?" angus asked between grunts timed with 204's stride. "hell, no. i didn't think we'd be here more than a couple of hours. by tomorrow at this time, there'll be a crater out there big enough to bury the capellan fleet." "great," said angus. "that gives us another thing to worry about." the robots fell into two groups as they neared a cave in the cliff. "jackson is my supervisor!" chanted the ones on the right. "i shall not rust!" answered those on the left. "he maketh me to adjust my joint tension!" cried the first group. "oh, brother," said drummond. "sounds like a psalm," suggested angus. "you ought to know. you always got your nose in that bible." "notice anything peculiar about them?" "very funny," sneered drummond at the question. "no, i'm serious." "they bounce the daylights out of you when they walk," drummond grumbled. "no. their finish. it's shiny--like they were fresh out of the factory--not like they've been marooned here for a hundred years." * * * * * drummond scratched his chin. "maybe their compulsion is metal polishing." "not with the kind of fingers they have." angus indicated the hand that held his ankle. three digits were wrenches of various sizes. the index finger was a screwdriver. the thumb was a stillson wrench. the thumb on the other hand was a disclike appendage. drummond hunched over. "76, what's your function?" the robot looked up. "to serve jackson." "you're a big help," said drummond. "why dost thou tempt us, o jackson?" asked ra-204. "wouldst thou test our beliefs?" "we're no gods," angus declared as the robot drew up before the cave. "thou art jackson!" insisted 204. drummond and mcintosh were hoisted to a ledge beside the mouth of the cave. the robots backed off, forming a half circle, and bowed in obeisance. angus ran a hand helplessly through his sparse gray hair. "would you say there are four hundred of them?" "at least." drummond surveyed the expanse of metal bodies. "you know, maybe they don't have a function." "impossible. hasn't been a clunker in five hundred years without a primary compulsion." "think they forgot theirs?" "can't. they may forget how to put it in words, but the compulsion is good for as long as their primary banks are intact. that's not what's worrying me, though." "no?" "_religious_ robots! there can't be any such brand. yet here they are." drummond studied them silently. "before there can be theological beliefs," mcintosh went on, "there has to be some sort of foundation--the mystery of origin, the fear of death, the concept of the hereafter. clunkers _know_ they come from a factory. they _know_ that when they're finally disassembled, they'll be lifeless scrap metal." drummond spat disdainfully. "one thing's for sure--this pack thinks we're god almighty." "jackson almighty," angus corrected somberly. "well, god or jackson, we'd better get back to the ship or this is going to be a long visitation." drummond faced the almost prostrate robots and made a megaphone of his hands. "all right, you guys! how's about knocking it off?" slowly, the robots reared erect, waiting. "take us back to our ship!" ra-204 stepped forward. "again thou art testing us, o jackson." * * * * * angus spread his arms imploringly. "look, fellows. we're men. we're--" "thou art our supervisor!" the throng roared. "one of you is jackson," explained 204. "the other is a divine test. we must learn which is the true supervisor." "you're _not_ being tested!" mcintosh insisted. "our beliefs are firm, o jackson!" cried a hundred metallic voices. "thou are the supervisor!" declared 204 resolutely. "for god's sake," urged drummond, "tell 'em you're their jackson and then lay down the law." "no. can't do it that way." "why not? unfair advantage, i suppose?" there was a cutting edge on the younger man's words. angus stared thoughtfully at the robots. "if we only knew how they forgot their origin, how they got religion, we might find a way to get through to them." drummond laughed contemptuously. "_you_ figure it out. _i'm_ going to play jackson and get back to the ship." he turned toward the robots. but mcintosh caught his arm. "let me try something else first." he faced the horde below. "who made you?" "thou hast, o supervisor!" the robots chanted like a gleeful sunday school class. "and thou hast put us on this world and robot begot robot until we were as we are today," added 204 solemnly. drummond slapped the heel of his hand against his forehead. "now they think they've got a sex function!" angus's shoulders fell dismally. "maybe if we try to figure out their designation. they're all ras--whatever the a stands for." there was a hollow rumbling in the cave that grew in volume until the cliff shook. then a second group of robots emerged and fanned out to encircle the ledge. "hell," said drummond in consternation. "there's twice as many as we figured!" "thought there'd be more," angus admitted. "that ship was big enough to hold a thousand clunkers. and they didn't waste space in those days." the newcomers fell prostrate alongside the others. * * * * * the planet's single satellite hung like a lost gem over the low mountains east of the plain. it washed the cliff with a cloak of effulgence and bathed the forbidden ship in an aura of gleaming silver. below the ledge, the reverent robots wavered occasionally and highlights of coruscation played capriciously across their plates. their whispered invocations were a steady drone, like the soft touch of the wind. "quit it!" drummond yelled angrily. "break it up! go home!" angus sat with his head against the cliff, face tilted up. "that didn't help any." "when are they going to give up?" mcintosh glanced abstractedly at the horde. "how long would we keep it up if _our_ god appeared among us?" drummond swore. "damned if you haven't been reading the print off that bible!" "what do you suppose happened," angus went on heedlessly, "to make them more than clunkers--to make them grope for the basic truths?" drummond spat disgustedly in answer. "civilization goes on for a hundred years," angus said as he leaned back and closed his eyes, "spreading across a hunk of the galaxy, carrying along its knowledge and religious convictions. and all the while, there's this little lost island of mimic beliefs--so much like our own creed, except that their god is called jackson." drummond rose and paced. "well, you'll have plenty of time to set them straight, if we're still sitting on this shelf eleven hours from now." "maybe that's what it'll take--bringing them step by step through theology." "overnight?" no, not overnight, angus realized. it would take months to pound in new convictions. drummond slipped down from the ledge. "here goes nothing." interestedly, angus folded his arms and watched the other square his shoulders and march off confidently through the ranks of robots toward the ship in the distance. for a moment, it seemed he would succeed. but two of the ras suddenly reared erect and seized him by the arms. they bore him on their shoulders and deposited him back on the ridge beside mcintosh. "warm tonight," drummond observed bitterly, glancing up at the sky. "sure is," angus agreed, his voice calm. "wouldn't be surprised if we got some rain tomorrow." * * * * * drummond flipped another pebble and it _pinged_ down on a metal back. "seven out of thirteen." "getting good." "look, let's tell 'em we're their supervisor and end this marathon worship." "which one of us is going to play the divine role?" "what difference does it make?" angus shrugged and his tired eyes stared off into the darkness. "one of us is--jackson. the other is an impostor, brought here to test their faith. when they find out which is which, what are they going to do to the impostor?" drummond looked startled. "i see what you mean." the miniature moon had wheeled its way to the zenith and now the first gray tinge of dawn silhouetted the peaks of the mountain range. angus rose and stretched. "we've got to find out what their function is." "why?" "it looks like religion is their only interest. but maybe that's because they're completely frustrated in their basic compulsion. if we could discover their function, maybe we could focus their attention back on it." "ra," drummond mumbled puzzledly. "robot agriculturist?" * * * * * angus shook his head. "they wouldn't be frustrated--not with a whole planet to farm. besides, they'd be equipped with agricultural implements instead of wrenches." drummond got up suddenly. "you figure it out. i have something else to try." angus followed him along the ledge until they reached the mouth of the cave. "what are you going to do?" drummond hitched his trousers. "the way we're ringed in here, it's a cinch we won't get past 'em in the six hours we have left." "so you're going to make off through the cave?" the younger man nodded. "they might take off after me. that'll give you a chance to get to the ship and cut off those converters before they make like a nova." angus chuckled. "suppose half of them decide to stay here with me?" drummond swore impatiently at his skepticism. "at any rate, one of us might get back to the converters." "and leave the other here?" "he can say he's jackson and order an attack in force on the ship." "i don't follow you." "skidding the ship in a circle with the exhaust blowers on," drummond explained patiently, "will take care of _ten thousand_ clunkers." he dropped from the ledge and raced into the cave. none of the robots stirred. either they hadn't noticed drummond's departure, angus reasoned, or they weren't concerned because they knew the cave led nowhere. * * * * * the sun came up, daubing the cliff with splotches of orange and purple and striking up scintillations in the beads of dew on the robots' backs. and still the tiresomely shouted veneration continued. angus paced the ledge, stopping occasionally to stare into the impenetrable shadows of the cave. he checked his watch. five hours to go--five hours, and then time would be meaningless for the rest of his life, with the ship destroyed. it was unlikely that rescue would come. the wrecked spacer's automatic distress signals had gone out in an ever-expanding sphere for a hundred years, and he and drummond had been the only humans to hear them. trade routes were pretty stable in this section of the galaxy now. and it was hardly possible that, within the next ten or twenty years, one would be opened up that would intercept the sos that had lured them here. he stood up and surveyed the robots. "ra-204." 204 reared erect. "yes, jackson?" "one of us is gone." "we know, o supervisor." "why did you let him get away?" "if he is not the true jackson, it doesn't matter that he fled. if he is the supervisor, he will return. otherwise, why did he come here to us in the first place?" another robot straightened. "we are ashamed, o jackson, that we have failed the divine test and have not recognized our true supervisor." angus held up his arms for silence. "once there was a cargo of robots. that was a hundred years ago. the ship was from vega ii. it developed trouble and crashed when it tried to land on this planet. there was--" "what's a year, o supervisor?" asked 204. "a vega-two, jackson?" said 76 bewilderedly. "what's a planet?" another wanted to know. mcintosh leaned back hopelessly against the cliff. all of their memories and a good deal of their vocabularies had been lost. he could determine how much only through days of conversation. it would take weeks to learn their function, to rekindle a sense of duty sufficiently strong to draw their interest away from religion. unless-he drew resolutely erect. "strip the converters! pull the aft tube lining!" the robots looked uncomprehendingly at him. it was obvious they weren't trained for spacecraft maintenance. but it had to have something to do with mechanics. "a battle fleet is orbiting at one diameter! arm all warheads on the double!" they stared helplessly at one another, then back at angus. not ordnancemen. "pedestrian strip number two is jammed! crane crew, muster on the right!" the robots shifted uncertainly. apparently they weren't civic maintenancemen, either. defeated, angus scanned their blank face plates. for a moment, it was almost as though he could discern expressions of confusion. then he laughed at the thought that metal could accommodate a frown. suddenly the robots shifted their gaze to the cave. drummond, shoulders sagging dismally, walked out and squinted against the glare. several of the robots started toward him. "okay, okay!" he growled, heading back for the ledge before they could reach him. * * * * * "no luck?" angus asked. disgusted, drummond clambered up beside him. "the cave's just a nice-sized room." "took you two hours to find that out?" the younger man shook his head. "i was hiding by the entrance, waiting for the clunkers to break it up and give me a chance to run for the ship.... how many robots did we decide there were?" "about eight hundred." "wrong. you can add another four hundred or so." "in the cave?" drummond nodded. "with their parts spread all the way from here to hell and back." "dismantled?" "down to the last nut and bolt. they've even got their secondary memory banks stripped." angus was thoughtfully silent a long while. "ra ..." he said finally. "robot assembler!" "that's what i figured." drummond turned back toward the robots and funneled his voice through his hands. "okay, you clunkers! i want all odd-numbered ras stripped down for reconditioning!" he glanced at angus. "when they get through, i'll have half of what's left strip the other half, and so forth." mcintosh grinned caustically. "brilliant! the whole operation shouldn't take more than two or three days." then his face took on a grim cast. "drummond, we've only got four hours left to get to those converters." "but you don't understand. once they get started, they'll be so busy, we'll probably be able to walk away." angus smiled indulgently. "once they get started." he nodded toward the robots. they had all returned to their attitude of veneration. "it won't work," mcintosh explained. "their obsession with religion is stronger than their primary compulsion. that's probably because they've been satisfying their compulsion all along." he jerked a thumb in the direction of the cave. drummond swore venomously. angus dropped down on the ledge and folded his knees in his arms. he felt his age bearing down on him for the first time. "twelve hundred robots," he said meditatively. "twelve hundred _ra_ robots. out of touch with civilization for a century. satisfying their primary function by disassembling and assembling one another. going at it in shifts. splitting themselves into three groups." "that device on their left thumb," drummond interrupted. "it's a burnisher. that's why they're so shiny." angus nodded. "three groups. group a spends so many months stripping and reassembling group b. meanwhile, group c, which has just been put together again, has no memory because their secondary banks have been wiped clean. so, like children, they _learn_ from the working group a." * * * * * drummond's mouth hung open in shocked understanding. "and by the time a finishes the job, c's education is complete! and it's a's turn to be stripped!" "by then," angus went on, "group c is not only ready to start stripping group a, but has also become intellectually mature enough to begin the education of the reassembled group b!" they sat still for a while, thinking it over. "the compulsion to do their jobs," mcintosh continued, "is unchanged because the primary function banks are sealed circuits and can't be tampered with. but in each generation, they have their secondary memory circuits wiped clean and have to start all over, getting whatever general knowledge they can from the last generation." drummond snapped his fingers excitedly. "that's why they don't know what we are! their idea of man had to be passed down by word of mouth. and it got all distorted in the process!" angus's stare, more solicitous now, swept slowly over the prostrate robots. "more important, that's why they developed a religion. what's the main difference between human and robotic intelligence? it's that our span of life is limited on one end by birth, the other by death--mysteries of origin and destiny that can't be explained. you see, the _ordinary_ clunker understands where _he_ came from and where he's going. but here are robots who have to struggle with those mysteries--birth and death of the conscious intellect which they themselves once knew, and forgot, and now have turned into myths." "so they start thinking in terms of religion," drummond said. "well, that clears up the whole thing, doesn't it?" "not quite. it doesn't explain why the religion they've invented parallels ours so closely. and it doesn't tell us who jackson is." drummond ran thick fingernails against the stubble on his cheeks. "jackson is my supervisor. i shall not rust. he maketh me to adjust my joint tension--" he stopped and frowned. "i've heard that before somewhere, only it sounded different." angus gave him a wry, tired smile. "sure. it's practically the psalm of david. now you see why the resemblance is driving me batty." * * * * * the robots stirred. several of them stood up and plodded into the cave. the others continued repeating their endless praise and devotion--prayers in every sense of the word except common sense. angus leaned back against the cliff and let the sun's heat warm him. "somehow it doesn't seem fair," he commented unhappily. "what doesn't?" drummond asked. "they're so close to the truth. yet, after we file a report, a deactivation crew will come along and erase their beliefs. they'll have their memory banks swept clean and once more they'll be nothing but clunkers with a factory-specification job of routine work to do." "ain't that what they're supposed to be?" "but these are different. they've found something no clunker's ever had before--hope, faith, aspiration beyond death." he shook his head ruefully. there was movement at the mouth of the cave and the smaller group of robots emerged from the shadows, two of them bearing a stone slab. their steps were ceremoniously slow as they approached the ledge. bowing, they placed the tablet at angus's feet and backed away. "these are the articles of our faith, o jackson," one announced. "we have preserved them for thy coming." mcintosh stared down at the charred remains of a book. its metal-fiber binding was shredded and fused and encrusted with the dust of ages. drummond knelt beside it and, with stiff fingers, brushed away the film of grime, uncovering part of the title: oly bib e eagerly, angus eased the cover back. of the hundreds of pages it had originally contained, only flaked parts of two or three remained. the printing was scarcely legible on the moldy paper. he read aloud those words he could discern: "... to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside cool waters; he...." drummond jabbed angus with a triumphant forefinger. "they didn't invent any religion, after all!" "it isn't important _how_ they got it. the fact that they accepted it--that's what's important." mcintosh glanced up at drummond. "they probably found this in the wreck of the ship they'd been in. it's easy to see they haven't used it in hundreds of generations. instead, the gist of what's in it was passed down orally. and their basic concepts of man and supervisor were distorted all along the way--confused with the idea of god." * * * * * gently, he let the cover fall. and a shining square of duraloid fell out. "it's somebody's picture!" drummond exclaimed. "an id card," angus said, holding it so the light wouldn't reflect off its transparent protective cover. it was a picture of a nondescript man--not as stout as drummond, nor as lean as mcintosh--with hair neither all black, like the younger man's, nor nearly all white, like angus's. the print below the picture was indiscernible, except for the subject's last name.... "jackson!" drummond whispered. angus slowly replaced the card. "a hundred years of false devotion," he said pensively. "just think--" "this is no time for that kind of gas." drummond glanced at his watch. "we got just two hours to cut off those converters." desperately, he faced the robots. "hey, you clunkers! you're robot assemblers. you got four hundred clunkers in that cave, all in pieces. get in there and put 'em together!" angus shook his head disapprovingly. somehow it didn't seem right, calling them clunkers. "jackson is my supervisor!" intoned ra-204. "jackson is my supervisor!" echoed the mass. drummond glanced frantically at his watch, then looked helplessly at angus. angus shrugged. the younger man's face suddenly tensed with resolution. "so they've got to have a jackson? all right, i'll give 'em one!" he waved his fist at the horde. "i'm your supervisor! i'm your jackson! now clear out of the way and--" ra-76's hand darted out and seized drummond's ankle, tugged him off the ledge. as he fell to the ground, a score of robots closed in over him, metal arms flailing down methodically. angus yelled at them to stop, saw he was too late and sank down, turning away sickly. finally, after a long while, they backed off and faced angus. "we have passed the divine test, o jackson!" 204 shouted up jubilantly. "we have redeemed ourselves before our supervisor!" exclaimed 76. it took a long, horror-filled moment before angus could speak. "how do you know?" he managed to ask at last. "if he had been jackson," exclaimed 204, "we could not have destroyed him." * * * * * the robots fell prostrate again and returned to their devotional. but now the phrases were triumphant, where before they had been servile and uncertain. angus stared numbly down at drummond, then backed against the cliff. the litany below, exuberant now, grew mightily in volume, booming vibrantly against distant hills. "there is but one supervisor!" intoned 204. "but one jackson!" answered the assembly. "and now he dwelleth among his children!" 76 chanted. "in their midst!" boomed the hundreds. suddenly it all seemed horribly ludicrous and angus laughed. the litany, stopped and his laughter grew shriller, louder, edged with hysteria. the shimmering sea of metal, confounded, stared at him and it was as though he could see fleshy furrows of confusion on the featureless faces.... but how could a clunker show emotion? his laughter slowed and died, like the passing of a violent storm. and he felt weakened with a sickening sense of compassion. robots--_human_ robots--standing awed before unknown concepts while they groped for truth. clunkers with a sense of right and wrong and with an overwhelming love. it was absurd that he had been elected father of twelve hundred children--whether flesh or metal--but it didn't _feel_ at all absurd. "dost thou despair of us, o jackson?" asked 76 hesitantly, staring up at him. 204 motioned toward the ship, the top of its hull shining beyond the nearby woods. "wouldst thou _still_ return to thy vessel, supervisor?" incredulous, angus tensed. "you mean i can go?" "if that is thy wish, true jackson, you may go," said 76 submissively. as he watched unbelievingly, a corridor opened in their ranks, extending toward the woods and the ship beyond. he glanced anxiously at his watch. there was still more than an hour left. wearily, he dropped from the ledge and trudged toward freedom, trying to look straight ahead. his eyes, nevertheless, wandered to the dejected figures who faced him with their heads bowed. then he laughed again, realizing the illogical nature of his solicitous thoughts. imagine--_dejected_ clunkers! still, the metal faces seemed somehow different. where, a moment earlier, he had fancied expressions of jubilation, now there was the sense of hopelessness on the steel plates. * * * * * shrugging off his uncertainty, he walked faster. after all, was it _his_ fault they'd stumbled upon a substitute for birth and death and had become something more than clunkers? what was he supposed to do--stay and play missionary, bring them the truth so that when a deactivation crew came along, they would be so advanced morally that no one would suggest their destruction? he stopped and scanned the ranks on either side. he'd do one thing for them, at least--he wouldn't report the wreck. then it would be centuries, probably, before another ship wandered far enough away from the trade routes to intercept the distress signals. relieved by his decision, he went ahead more at ease. and the litany started again--softly, appealing: "jackson is my supervisor." "i shall not rust...." angus stiffened abruptly and stared at his watch, realizing belatedly that it had stopped. but how long ago? how much time did he have left? should he take the chance and make a dash for the converters? he reached the end of the robot corridor and started to sprint for the ship. but he halted and turned to glance back at the humble, patient horde. they were expectantly silent now--as though they could sense his indecision. he backed away from them. then the light of a hundred arcturan days flared briefly and a mighty mountain of sound and concussion collapsed on him. the trees buckled and branches were hurled out against the cliff. it rained leaves and pieces of metal from the hull for a long while as angus hugged the ground. when he finally looked up, familiar bits of the ship were strewn around him--a spacesuit helmet here, a control dial there, a transmitter tube up ahead. he rose shakily, staring at a black book that lay near the helmet with its pages ruffled. he picked it up and straightened out the leaves. then he motioned to the robots and they clustered around him. he would have to start from the beginning. he wet his lips. "in the beginning," angus read in a loud, convincing voice, "_god_ created heaven and earth and the earth was void and empty and darkness was upon the face of the deep. and _god_ said, 'let there be light'...." the scamperers by charles a. stearns _wellesley was ordered to check on deviants or mutants. but the evidence was often subtle, and he knew he couldn't afford to take a chance...._ [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from worlds of if science fiction, june 1956. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] the earthman, wellesley, came to ophir in the season of aphelion, when the binary suns of that remote planet were cold serpent's eyes, dimly seen above the chill mists that shrouded its fern forests and craggy, young mountains, its silent oceans and magnificent organ pipe cities of legend. from space one might look down upon the vista of these latter prominences and imagine a vast, exotic civilization spread over the face of the equinoctial swamps, but wellesley knew that the giant towers were mere calcareous shells, hollow as the expectations they had inspired in the first planeteers to arrive here two hundred years ago--they were the work, in fact, of small, mindless crustaceans. his own destination, a small, shabby, corporate plantation, was less impressive in appearance. its name was aidennsport. it consisted of a hundred buildings, including a commissary and a hulking communal storehouse. the primordial jungle was all about it. to wellesley, yellow-cheeked from too many years in space, cynical from the paucity of human values in his life, aidennsport was the despised prototype of colonial stagnation about the galactic rim. for he was a dour, lanky pessimist among that immense, invaluable, but nondescript order of men, the rift constabulary, whose beat is the emptiness between the stars, and which enforces the name of law throughout the vast reaches of the firmament beyond sol's sprawling civilization. wellesley's ship was accustomed to describe an elliptical orbit which brought it near the system containing ophir once every seventh side-real month. it never stopped. its course was as inexorable as a comet's; nevertheless, he had lately received the commission of an errand here for the omnipotent department of genetics and genealogical records. and so he was forced to make landfall in a rocket tender in a meadow by aidennsport, while the ground quaked dangerously beneath the settling blasts of the tiny vessel. he located the single course of the village without difficulty. half a dozen ragged children were playing there, and stopped to stare. women peered at his dark uniform from behind curtains in the stained, milk-colored bungalows. quaintly dressed men, tending the auto-pickers in nearby fields of drug-plant, shaded their eyes to gaze with silent menace, though there was no sun. he was able to find the house of the agent by the frayed company flag flying over it. to the right of it was the warehouse where the annual crop of senna-like leaves of the drug-plant were stored for drying. this was aidennsport's meagre industry. beyond lay the swamp, and far across its desolate surface, the multi-colored towers of the pipes fingered the sky, aloof and sinister in aspect. a boy of no more than ten, dark eyed but with that startling, burnished-gold complexion so often found in the systems of twin or multiple suns, sat upon the steps before the cottage. he was playing with a furry animal not unlike a martian ferrax, which sprang up, scarlet-eyed and bristling, at the sight of wellesley. "here, boy," said wellesley, who neither liked nor trusted children. "is this the house of amos sealilly, the factor of aidennsport?" "sure. that's my pa. say, are you a spaceman?" "never mind that. where is your father?" "in the warehouse," the boy said. "i'll show you how to get inside. my name's joseph, and i have a spaceship in the back yard. i call it the _stygia_, after the pirate ship of the twenty-eighth century. do you want to see my crew?" "later, perhaps," said wellesley dryly. "come along, now." they found tall, aluminum doors which slid back at the wave of a hand, and entered into a vastness of cool gloom, permeated by a spicelike odor of curing leaves. a figure emerged from the drying racks at the other end of the warehouse. "_is that you, joseph?_" "that's pa," joseph said. "damn you, joseph!" "i guess he's drunk," joseph said. wellesley advanced. "i am lieutenant wellesley of the rift police," he said. amos sealilly was a great, craggy ruin of a man, with seamed face and heavy grey brows that shadowed intense blue eyes. eyes that glared just now. "what do you want here?" he bellowed. "my mission is to perform an ethnic census for the bureau of genetics. i shall require your co-operation." "there are three hundred and twelve people in aidennsport," sealilly said. "write that down and get out. go back to your space castle and leave us alone." wellesley sighed. "i am afraid that an ethnic census is never quite that simple. however, since you are required by law to assist me, you may as well know the truth. this community is suspected of inbreeding." * * * * * inbreeding is not, of course, a crime, except against nature. nor is it ordinarily dangerous. combined, however, with the environmental influences of certain rim planets, it may cause genuine, true-breeding mutations within the species, such as monsters, impressiono-telepaths, psycho-variants and other undesirables which, if allowed to multiply for a few generations, might become dominant. they are located and deported to a-type worlds. it had been an anonymous tip that had brought wellesley to ophir, but in all the inhabited universe, he knew, the bureau was the sole guardian of the classic blood strain, and it took no chances. "what's 'inbreeding,' pa?" said joseph, tugging solemnly at his father's sleeve. "a naughty word of the middle ages," said sealilly thickly. "a bugaboo of the mighty sky-chiefs. if we do not co-operate we bring their lightning upon our heads. yet, what must we do?" wellesley did not smile. "you must inform the colonists that i wish to interview each member of every family and clan briefly, beginning tomorrow morning at seven. i do not mind in the least being _persona non grata_, but if any person fails to show up, or if there is any trouble, you will be held personally responsible. moreover, i do not think you are as drunk as you would like me to believe." amos sealilly bowed, took a flask from his pocket and drained it. "one other thing. i shall need a place to sleep." sealilly smiled. "there is an abandoned native daub-hut behind my house. you are welcome to it." "it will serve," answered wellesley coldly. "there are natives in the area then?" "yes. bipeds, though not mammalian, you will find. in fact, quite low in the scale of evolution. they are nearsighted and harmless by day, but you will be wise to keep to your hut after dark." "i can take care of myself." "i'll show you the place," joseph offered. "i can carry your space kit, too." * * * * * "over there is my ship," joseph said, pointing. "we are making ready to put out for arcturus." there was a bright constancy about joseph that clutched at the heart. not lieutenant wellesley's heart, of course, he reminded himself. the "ship" was indeed the rusty, peaked foretank from some ancient freighter, complete with hatch. it was set on end at the edge of the swamp. to any boy it would have been a starship. it was already dusk. the ophirian daub-hut was not so bad as he expected. it was massive. the orifice had been enlarged into a door. windows had been added. the only furnishing was the rude couch. it was a measure of sealilly's hostility. joseph spied the ferrax-thing scuttling across the lawn and dived at it. the two of them rolled over and over, joseph laughing, the animal growling and spitting. wellesley went in, closed the door and removed his official log from its case. the next two hours were spent in a carefully worded account--for space logs are part of the permanent records of the galactic court, among others--of the events of the day, including a bleak and perhaps prejudiced account of the character of aidennsport and of amos sealilly. afterwards he lay back on the couch and smoked several cigarettes in lieu of the food capsules that he did not crave. he was far from imaginative; nevertheless, the character of the place crept at last into his consciousness. he was used to cramped, machinery-filled spaces and the sterile smells of hot metal and ozone; here was an aura of decaying organic matter--and of something else. a faint, but unmistakable reptilian odor, attesting to the nature of past inhabitants. the vault of darkness was absolute, unabated by the dim patches of light that were the fenestrations above where he lay. and presently someone very stealthily opened the door and entered. * * * * * only for an instant was the figure silhouetted there before the door closed and darkness reigned supreme once more. yet that instant was long enough to tell him that it had been a woman. and though her features had not been discernible, he had gotten the impression of exceptional beauty. for a time there was no movement; no sound save her faint breathing. "who's there?" he said. "what do you want?" and then she came nearer and stood so close to him that the perfume of her breath was upon his face. suddenly he groped, caught her arm and pulled her to him. the warmth of her body was against him. he felt her tremble. but she did not try to pull away. he laughed. "perhaps i may revise my opinion of ophir," he said. "no light!" she whispered. her voice was low and vibrant. "why not?" "i must not be seen here. but i had to warn you. it would not have been right not to warn you about aidennsport." "what of aidennsport?" "it is a dreadful--an evil place. there are forces here which you would not understand. leave at once while you are still able to go!" "you forget that i am a policeman. to leave without completing the census would be dereliction. i remind you that the empire is inexorable in these things. and who are you, anyway?" she did not answer, but drew away so quickly that he could not grasp her. in a moment, from across the room her voice came. it was less intimate, even matter-of-fact. "if you will not leave," she said, "lock this door behind me and do not, as you value your life, step outside this hut until daylight." she was suddenly gone and he was alone in mystification and wonder, and a dull, stirring anger that he could not account for. but he could make nothing of it and after a time he put the incident resolutely out of his mind and tried to sleep. this was not accomplished at once. curious sounds had begun to filter in through the fenestrations. some were the night sounds of birds or insects. other sounds, faint hissings and gruntings, were unidentifiable. once he thought he heard the slap-slap of bare feet running past his door. at last he was forced to employ a mild form of auto-suggestion, learned long ago and employed often during those first lonely years in space. he slept. but once, in the early hours of morning, he was awakened by a tumult. there was much loud hissing and the scampering of many feet outside the daub-hut, as though some intricate and riotous game might be in progress out there, the nature of the game--or for that matter, the players--unguessed at. but he was half asleep, and thought little of it until he awoke again at daybreak. * * * * * the authority of the rift constabulary is acknowledged universally, though sometimes grudgingly. the men of aidennsport, therefore, sullenly reported to wellesley, and brought their families. it is a singular thing, but almost every birth and death in the galaxy is recorded by the empire. the laws concerning this are old and stringently enforced. therefore wellesley already had a fairly accurate estimate of the true population of aidennsport, and it came close to the number offered by amos sealilly. following the seldom-used manual of the bureau, he received vital statistics, made micro-photos and dermal prints, and endeavored a minute scrutiny of every man, woman and child that passed before him. he was finished by mid-afternoon. evidence of ingeneration he found in plenty, in the marked similarity of features among certain families, but nothing which could be called deviation or mutation. not even polydactylism, which is one of the earlier manifestations. still, he knew that the physical impress of the mutant was often subtle, and that he might have overlooked something. in none of the females could he identify the girl of last evening. if she had failed to appear--was hiding in the village--might not others be hiding too? the only recourse was to study the natives and try again. in many cases deviation among _homo sapiens_, who had colonized the rim planets, simulated the natural characteristics of native races. the relationship between mutation and environment was obvious. the chief magistrate, factor, or leader of any colony with an official grant was required by law to assist and obey any member of the rift police in the capacity of a deputy. wellesley called amos sealilly, who had been avoiding him all day. "is there a tribe of the dominant native species near here?" he asked. sealilly was still drinking, and saluted stiffly. "in the swamp, lieutenant." "guide me there." "you can go to hell," sealilly said, "and i will guide you _there_." "you refuse?" "i do. it's too dangerous for a spaceman. full of bog-fever. you've no natural resistance. besides, i'm busy inventorying." "very well," wellesley said, struggling to hold his temper in check, "i'll find them alone." "in which case," said sealilly, "you will not come back, and that will be an irreparable loss to the empire." wellesley left him and made his way toward the swamp. joseph was playing near his ship, and calling orders to an imaginary crew inside. when he saw wellesley he came running. "we were just blasting off for earth," he said, "but i heard you and pa talking. if you want to go in the swamp, i'll show you the way. i've been there lots. the ophirians hang out on the shores of the black lake, where the organ pipes are." he pointed to the towering pinnacles in the distance. "they catch shellfish there." "you know them?" "everybody has seen them. they are kind of green and slimy, but they won't hurt you. they can't see in the day-time. only smell. anyway, i'm not afraid of them." "done," said wellesley, "and in return for the favor i promise to put in a word for you at the nearest spaceman's hiring hall." "you won't have to do that," joseph said. "my crew and i are going to be space pirates." then wellesley laughed aloud, and felt better afterward than he had felt in many a long month. * * * * * the trail through the swamp was damp and primitive. everywhere the cycads, giant ferns and reeds overhung the path. there were great, blood-colored flowers which snapped at twigs that joseph put into their corollas. meanwhile, the ferrax-beast labored behind them, following with its proboscis to the ground, until the boy, taking pity, picked it up and carried it. wellesley asked its name. "his name is omur," joseph said. "i caught him in the mountains when he was little and raised him. but now omur is too fat to walk." eventually they emerged into an open swale, with a stretch of dark water before them. on the other side of the slough lay a sight well worth a day's march. dozens of giant pipes, some two hundred feet or more in height, stood braced against the sky, pastel blue, pink, and gold in the mists. but wellesley was less interested in these than the creatures which moved like grubs about their base, at the edge of the lake--squat, grotesque forms that waded the shallow water, scavenging for shellfish and crustaceans, and took no notice of the humans. on coming nearer, however, wellesley observed a very curious fact. the ophirians were of two varieties. the ones in the mud were gross and toadlike in appearance. whenever they found an especial delicacy they would run, with their webbed feet making smacking sounds in the shoal water, and lay it at the feet of an ophirian who sat in a wallow of peat moss and mud, and did nothing. he was a much smaller variety, but, wellesley noted, with considerably greater frontal development to his skull. also his thin body bore a long, green tail. the tails of the workers were vestigial. "the chief?" wellesley asked. "no," joseph said. "it's something else." "are they a clan, then, or brothers?" "closer than brothers," joseph said, scratching omur's head. "i have it--_avatars!_ i should have guessed!" he had heard of this odd genetic arrangement before, but never witnessed it. in such cases a dozen or more individuals were born of a single nucleus in a single egg. of these, one developed more fully than the rest and controlled his mentally-stunted avatars with a mental vinculum far more fundamental and powerful than mere telepathic union. on the other hand, the avatars were his hands and feet, and had larger bodies. the large-headed ophirian sat in his wallow and accepted the food offered him with long, leathery fingers. he crunched noisily. once he turned to stare at them briefly with great, owl eyes. eleven avatars turned simultaneously to stare. it was like looking into a multiple mirror. "they sense us," joseph said, "but they can't see us. come on." from nearby, the pipes were even more awe-inspiring. besides the massive old towers there were smaller ones in every stage of development. it was incredible to think that they were actually growing; pushing up out of the lake. in one of them a jagged hole, five or six feet in circumference, had been broken at the base. joseph, with his furry pet under his arm, went to investigate it. a moment later there came a shout from him that brought wellesley running. "what's the matter?" "omur went up the pipe," joseph said, "but _you_ can get him." there were tears in his eyes. beseeching tears. "we'll see," said lieutenant wellesley brusquely. he put his head inside the pipe. a tiny circle of light far above him showed at what an awesome height was the upper rim. the inner surface, however, was very rough, and there were plenty of holds for hands and feet. he could not see omur; only the circle of light, and around it, blackness. suppose the damned thing bit him when he tried to rescue it! a faint, moaning sound emanated from the vast funnel, doubtless from the updraft. he found a place for his foot; drew himself up a step; then another. joseph's white face was staring up at him from below. _and suddenly the circle of light was blotted out!_ * * * * * there was a rustling sound like dry leaves in the wind, and a sudden, sharp pain in his temple. then another at the base of his neck. he fell back and sprang out into the open. the aperture, in an instant, was full of small, needle-like fluttering things. "stingbats!" joseph screamed. "run!" wellesley fled after him, but he was already beginning to feel a sick, draining weakness. within a few steps his legs had become rubbery. joseph was out of sight. perhaps gone for help. but then joseph did not know that he had been stung. after a while he came to a small, black pond in his path. he had gotten off the trail. he sank down, there, beneath a fern tree, cursing. he was sure that he was dying, for a numbness, an absence of feeling, had stolen up from his feet and possessed his legs. he essayed a bitter smile. he was more chagrined than afraid, for this was an ignominious way to pass, here in a nameless swamp, alone, not even beset by one worthy enemy. and perhaps when he thought he smiled, he was merely baring his teeth in that manner that certain neurotoxins leave their corpses always.... * * * * * someone was shaking him brutally and insistently, and someone was repeating his name, over and over. he knew the voice at once, for it had been lately in his thoughts. "_get up!_" she said. "i can't." "you must--or die. get up now and try to walk. come, i'll help you." she did help him, and with her support he managed to get to his knees and then to his feet. he walked. afterward, there was a kind of delirium. he remembered bitter tasting capsules which she made him swallow later on in the daub-hut, but he did not recall having arrived there. he only knew that it was pleasant to have her cool hands on his forehead. the hands seemed to fill a vast, fundamental need. and this was out-of-character for lieutenant wellesley. after a while he was lucid, and was surprised to note that, as at their other meeting, the darkness was absolute. "it's night," he said. "very dark." "yes." "give me your hand." he held it for a time in both his own. it was a firm, capable hand with long, tapering fingers. "believe that i am grateful," wellesley said, "even though i must be grateful to a benefactor whom i have yet to see for the first time. let me look at you. i cannot command you to tell me who you are, as an officer of the rift constabulary, but i ask it as your friend." "you ask the impossible," she said. "the worst is over for you, but there may be still another shock to come. you must stay here until you are stronger, and then i will help you escape. now i had better go, before--before i am missed." he heard her retreating footsteps and the closing of the door. _escape from what?_ he wondered vaguely. the poison, or the antidote seemed to have brought about some curious psychological change in him. he could not think with the old, clear incisiveness. the drive was gone, the purposefulness of his mission to ophir. he was like samson shorn--or a man taken with void amentia whose mind becomes as a child's. and it was so dark. a horrible suspicion arose in his mind. he searched for, and found the torch that was in his kit. he turned it on. nothing happened. no beam of light shot out to illuminate the ceiling. he clicked the switch several times, then held the lens against his cheek. it was warm, all right. he was stone blind. * * * * * wellesley was not unlearned in the physiological sciences. he guessed that the blindness might be temporary--a result of neural shock, but that was scant consolation. now it seemed to him that since his arrival an invisible pattern of ill-will had been forming up around him. an ugly something lurking beneath the sullen surface of this strange village. a malignant force, beyond doubt, that well knew his true mission on ophir. now he was helpless, incapable of concerted action. he could not even retreat, but only lie and listen and wait. now it was _their_ move. the terrors of the blind were apt to be blind terrors indeed. the sounds were not long in beginning. at first an indistinct murmur. then something--or someone--scampered swiftly past his door. he got up and locked it; then lay back, spent by the exertion. presently the running and scampering began in earnest. and a hissing and squealing such as might have emanated from all the fiends in hell. once there came a scratching at the door. an hour passed like a century. the sounds had gradually died away into an absolute silence that was much worse. he waited. there came a knock at the door. he sat up quickly. "who is it?" "_it's me--joseph._" he unlocked the door and the boy came in with light, eager tread. "you all right?" he said. "yes--yes, i'm all right. but i can't see. tell me, what time is it?" "it's nearly morning." "thank god! now listen carefully. do you know what a strategic withdrawal is?" "sure, everybody knows that. every spaceman, i mean." "good. it is time for me to withdraw to my patrol monitor in space and make a radio report. will you guide me to the rocket? there may be danger." "i'm not afraid," joseph said. "come on, i know a short cut." wellesley slung his space kit over his shoulder and followed, with his hand on joseph's collar. they went out into the night air which smelled fresh and clean after the daub-hut, and revived him a little. at first he walked easily, for the ground was level, but after a minute or two the growth became heavy underfoot, causing him to stumble, and reeds were whipping against his face. presently they halted. "why have we stopped?" wellesley asked. "here we are," joseph said. "we couldn't have gotten there in such a short time. not even by a short cut." "put your hand out before you," joseph commanded. "you'll see. i guess we can blast off any time." there was a sound of feet, scrambling up a steel ladder. a moment later he could hear joseph's voice from inside, echoing hollowly. he put his hand out and touched the ladder. the rungs were flaked with heavy rust beneath his finger. "_this is not my rocket!_" "it's _my_ rocket," said joseph's disembodied voice, from somewhere above his head. wellesley cursed him. "it's the fastest ship in the universe," joseph said. "_where you going?_" * * * * * black anger possessed him, but the keen instinct of orientation common to men who have lived in interstellar space worked for his salvation. he might have blundered into the swamp, but he did not. instead he came up, after a terrible half-hour, against the wall of a building which, by its immense extent, could only have been the warehouse. he moved along its sheer, featureless side until he came to a door, which reoriented him, then struck out in the direction that he guessed the daub-hut to be. he bumped against it at last, located its door, flung himself in and thankfully bolted it behind him. but he was not alone. she was there, waiting for him. he started when she spoke. "where have you been?" she breathed. "i have been terrified. i found the hut empty and i was sure that you were dead." "like a bad penny," he said, "i return. but your being here is good fortune. i am certain that _you_ will consent to leading a blind man to his ship without resorting to childish trickery. in fact, i shall make sure of it." "not now," she said. "it is too dangerous. we could never get through the swamp. besides, you must still be weak from the effects of the poison. let us wait until morning." he seized her wrists and squeezed. "you're hurting me!" she cried. "then waste no time. and if you try to break way, or lead me into a trap, i'll snap your wrist like a straw!" he dragged her to the door. "through the village is best," she said. "they are sure to see us, but in the open we may be able to outrun them." "_who_ is sure to see us?" "never mind that now. follow me!" their flight had a rather dream-like quality because nothing impeded them, even beyond the village. miraculously she seemed to guide him where no underbrush or tangling grasses caught his feet, so that not once did he fall. "there it is, just ahead," she said. "the rocket tubes appear to have sunk into the mud two or three feet, though. do you think you will be able to take off?" "it will not matter in the least," he said. "but tell me, is it still dark?" "yes." "quite dark?" "very dark," she said. "that's all i wanted to know. open the airlock and climb up. i'll follow." once aboard, he found the controls and set them for take-off. then he pressed a small button. the port began to swing shut. he heard her run toward it, but he caught her and held her until the heavy hatch had banged shut with a hiss of escaping air. "let me go," she whimpered. "what are you going to do to me?" "you are under civil arrest," he said harshly. "but i haven't done anything. i have helped you." "of course. but you forget that i represent law--not justice. once i told you that i could be ruthless. you see, whoever you are, you are what i came here to find. i have suspected all along; now i am certain." "what do you mean?" "you brought me here without losing the way. then, from a hundred feet away you saw that this rocket tender had settled two feet into mud. _all this in absolute darkness._ that must mean that you have night sight--like the natives, a sure sign of abnormality. besides that, you have consistently avoided me in daylight. meaning that i must not get a glimpse of you, even though you were able to see me quite well. you were the reason for sealilly's hostility. he wanted to get rid of me before i found out about you. joseph, the normal child, was used as a decoy to mislead me. but joseph's sister was a mutant." she fell to the deck, sobbing, as he throttled full power for the blast-off. * * * * * wellesley left ophir a small, grey-green globe in the vastness of black space and set an automatic course for the mother ship, where he intended to submit a detailed report by radio to regional headquarters on rigel twelve. so far as he was concerned, the case was closed, once they were aboard the patrol ship, but it was three weeks to the vicinity of rigel, and in that time a curious sequel had developed. the girl (her name turned out to be laura) had stopped crying, and had begun to take an interest in life once more. in fact, he sensed that she was studying him a great deal of late. they were standing before the viewport, she looking at the great angry mass of rigel, magnified in the glass, but actually still two days ahead, he listening to every sound aboard the huge ship as he had learned to listen since the darkness closed in on ophir. she spoke. "how will it be on rigel twelve? will i ever see you again?" "will you care?" he said. "perhaps i ought to hate you, but it is only because you are blind that you can not understand. on ophir i was not happy, but at least it was home. out there they may laugh at me. it is exciting and wonderful, but terrifying." "they will not laugh at you. you will be allowed to live on any approved planet that you wish, and choose your own profession. you will be trained at the expense of the empire. and in a few years you may be allowed to visit your father and brother on ophir. only _visit_, i mean. does that sound so bad?" "but if they laugh--" "_i_ am not laughing," said wellesley, with a strange lump in his throat. "you might if you could see me. i'm too dark. my eyes are too big. my ears are too small." "i _can_ see you," he said. "is it true!" she clasped his shoulders. "but when--how long?" "since this morning, a little. the effect of the venom is passing. now i can see you perfectly, and you are beautiful. strange, and--and beautiful." and she was. "do not go to rigel twelve. stay with me," he said. (it was wellesley's misfortune that he always sounded like a policeman making an arrest, but she kissed him anyway.) and he thought what a fool amos sealilly had been. * * * * * but amos sealilly had had troubles of his own. it was the evening after wellesley had taken leave of ophir forever. sealilly dreaded the coming night, as he always did, and had fortified himself against it. he was drunk, but not drunk enough. the warehouse was locked for the day. he was walking toward the house, lurching a little, and mumbling curses as he did so. then he spied joseph. joseph, a small figure in the dusk, had just climbed out of the rusty old peak-tank at the edge of the swamp. he had furnished it with a bunk, as befit a well-found spaceship, and often slept there. the fact was that he had been sleeping there all day, having been up all night. joseph did not go to school. he yawned and stretched. amos sealilly went on to the house, and started to shut the door behind him, but joseph, coming up behind him, pushed it open and came in. he was breathing hard, having hurried to catch up with his father. he asked: "what about the spaceman?" "what about him?" "was he lost in the swamp?" "where did you get that idea?" sealilly said. "he made it. took off before you were up this morning, just before dawn." "i _was_ up," joseph said. "i thought it was a meteorite. damn!" he stamped his small foot. sealilly grinned thinly. "laura went with him." joseph's face whitened. "_laura?_ damn him! damn her too." "you always hated her," said sealilly, taking the bottle out of his pocket and sucking it. "she was too normal for you to stomach, i guess." "i would've got him if he hadn't run away like a yellow dog," joseph said. "the stingbats would have done it if she hadn't interfered. and then this morning i had him, too." he was thoughtful for a moment. "who do you suppose tipped him off?" and he watched his father's pasty face. "_who?_" sealilly laughed. "all right," joseph hissed. "i'll get you for that. you wanted to get rid of _me_, i'll bet. but you got rid of her instead." but sealilly continued to laugh, inside, because this was almost as good as getting rid of joseph, having laura out of his clutches at last. "me and my crew will fix you for that," joseph said bitterly. and with that, his avatars came crowding in behind him, squat, powerful and ugly, their saucer eyes intent upon sealilly. he had been through it several times before, but this time he screamed a little bit before it was over. he could not get away from joseph, of course. there was too many of him. willie's planet by mike ellis _the most fitting place for a man to die is where he dies for man. yet willie chose a sterile, alien world that wouldn't even see a man for millions of years_.... [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from worlds of if science fiction, april 1955. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] tom stood in front of the filtered porthole of the tiny cabin and soaked up the sunlight that came through. it felt good after ten months of deep space blackness. "by golly, willie, this is luck," he said to the little man standing at the cabin's instruments, "our hundredth and last star, and it's an earth type sun. how much difference is there from our sun?" willie held the color chart up beside the spectrum screen. "almost on. couple of degrees difference." he tossed the chart on the desk and came to stand at tom's side, the top of his head even with tom's erect shoulder. his thin face was tense and worried. "tom," he said, "i have a hunch about this star." he stared at the screen morosely. "i don't receive a thing," tom chuckled, stretching his flat muscled arms to the low ceiling, his body making a triangle from his narrow hips to his wide shoulders. "what's the hunch?" "ever have the feeling you'd been some place before when you'd actually never been there? i feel that about this star." willie glanced at tom with his bright blue eyes, then looked quickly away, a bit of a red flush high on his cheeks. "it's just because it's like our sun, that's all," tom said. "no, it's not that, tom. it's something else. i feel like we ought to get out of here. maybe it's the planet." "planet?" tom said. "yes," willie said quietly, "an earth type planet." "earth type!" tom shouted. "ten thousand credits bonus! get it on the screen, willie. let's see that spending money baby." willie turned on the viewer. dark and shadowy on one side, bright with blue-green color on the other, the planet floated on the screen. "the blue must be water and the green continents," tom murmured in awe. "damn, it's beautiful. we going to pass it close?" "in about five more minutes of this spiral," willie answered. "say, tom," willie said hesitantly, "will you check over these figures? i'm not sure i've allowed enough for the pull of the sun." he shifted the papers aimlessly. "my gosh, willie," tom said, "the only thing i know about navigation is what you've taught me this trip. your figures are right." "i just wanted to make sure i'm right," willie said. "i don't like to navigate close in." he pushed the papers back on the desk. "i guess i'd better call the big shot and let him take over." he pressed the button that rang the buzzer in the captain's tiny cabin. "might as well let pudge in on it too," tom said, "or the food will be lousy for days." "yeah," willie said, and buzzed the galley. captain bart strode into the cabin, his barrel chest bare and hairy above the shorts he had been napping in. he went straight to the porthole and stood with his fists on his hips, appraising the sun. then he caught sight of the blue-green ball on the scope. "earth type planet! nice going, willie," he shouted, and clapped willie on the back. willie flinched slightly, then moved over to the chart desk, a frown making vertical creases in his forehead. bart turned to tom without noticing. "ten thousand credits, tom. i knew we'd do it. even in this forty year old tub. willie, are we going to pass it close?" "two more minutes," willie murmured, busy with the charts on the desk. "you'd better check my course, though." "o.k.," bart said. "let her go as she's headed." pudge came in from the galley and took his place beside tom without comment. "okay," bart said, as he sat down in the control board chair, "let's get to work. willie, i'll run us past just outside the atmosphere. tom, you do the life search. pudge, get the pictures." the cabin was silent except for the hum of the instruments. the radar probed the height of the mountains, the depth of the seas, the shape of the continents by recording the patterns of the reflections. the electron telescopes hunted down the movement of life, the artificial straight lines of civilization, the classification of plants; and typed the metals in the ground with the aid of a spectrum. the wave lengths of radio and tv were checked and recorded. one special instrument, sealed in its cabinet and booby-trapped with explosives against tampering, probed for the faint waves of any kind of life, down to single cells in the seas. they made four passes, the last one at a hundred miles from the ground at its closest point. then, as each man finished his task and relaxed from his instruments, they waited for the automatic tally of the results. the computer glowed and clicked in its dull grey cabinet on the bulkhead, then dropped the tally card in the slot. bart snatched it out, his grin fading to a blank look as he read it. "nothing. not a damn thing, no life at all." he went over to the screen, folded his thick arms across his chest, and stared at it in disgust. tom picked up the card and studied it. "this is goofey," he said aloud, "the planet's got plant life, plenty of it, but not a trace of animal life, not even plankton in the sea. how'd that happen?" willie came over and studied the card with tom. "could have bacteria we didn't get from this height, but it sure as hell hasn't got anything else." pudge held up the pictures; they showed close-ups of a tangled mass of plants. "all ferns," he said. "doesn't seem to be anything else." "why would a planet have ferns and nothing else, not even the beginning of animal life?" tom wondered aloud. "i once read an account of finding the tiny seeds of earth's plants millions of miles out in space," willie said. "seems the winds blow them right off the planet and they're so light they just keep going." he looked at the pictures, then at tom. "suppose some of them drifted here?" "that's as good a guess as anything else," tom said. "maybe the master minds at home can figure it out." "only seven or eight earth-type planets in all these years of star mapping and i had to find one with nothing but ferns on it," bart said in disgust to the screen. "oh, well, maybe it'll do as a colony. no alien life to worry about, anyway. we'll call it bart mcdonald planet." "hey," tom spoke up, "willie found the planet. he should get to name it." bart was curt. "i'm the captain of this ship; new planets are named after the captain that discovers them." "nuts," tom muttered. "we all had a hand in this. it ought to be named after all of us." "how about calling it the ship's name," willie put in quietly. bart strode over and yanked the log's keyboard out. he banged furiously on the keys for a moment, and then read aloud. "at 1430 this date, discovered mcdonald's planet, an earth class planet, signed, bart mcdonald, captain." he slammed the log shut. tom snorted. bart gave him a dirty look and went over and sat in the control board chair. pudge had disappeared in the galley as he always did when there was an argument. there were a few minutes of strained silence as they worked over the instruments. bart turned from the control board. "as long as this place has no life, we'd be safe in landing. suppose we earn the bonus by bringing back a full report on whether it's fit for a colony or not?" willie's head jerked up, his face white. tom frowned, and said nothing. he wanted to land but he didn't want to agree with bart on anything. "what say?" bart said. "i'll even put it up for a vote." "okay," tom said, thinking of walking in the sun, feeling firm ground under his feet. "it would be a shame to come all this way and then not be able to say we had explored the country." "no," willie said quickly. "it's dangerous. and--and besides, we'd have to go in quarantine when we got back." "so we go in quarantine," bart said. "we'll get paid for it." he turned to the control board. "buzz pudge, so he can get ready." he began punching buttons. they went around to the middle of the day side of the planet, swinging in closer. the continents formed a rough belt around the equator of the planet, with no land extending to the small ice caps on the poles. tom felt his stomach knot with the thrill of going into the unknown as he watched the screen, but part of the time he was running the lights of the control board through his mind, checking the actions of bart's big fingers as bart confidently punched the keys. then he caught sight of willie's tense face. it was white, with little splotches of pink, and his slender hands were gripping the chair he was sitting in. "here we go," bart shouted exultantly, as the big green light flashed on. he hit the big green key with a stubby forefinger. the auto pilot fired the jets, the ship slowed in its descent, and they were pushed down gently in their chairs. as the spot bart had picked came up on the screen, they could see the bare red of the ridge sticking up out of the yellow-green of the flat land. then the yellow-green was right below them, turning black as the jets burned it to ashes. they hovered a minute, then came to rest with a creaking thud that echoed through the ship. the jets cut out, leaving their ears ringing. "didn't know whether we'd make it or not," willie said. he unobtrusively wiped the glistening sweat off his slender palms on his coveralls, as he took his place at the panel. when the tests were done, bart grabbed the tally card as soon as the computer dropped it. "no bacteria at all. planet's completely sterile. let's get outside." * * * * * tom stopped beside bart on the narrow strip of red sand at the edge of the vast blue plain of smooth water. the water came right up to their feet without movement, just small ripples that lapped the red sand. the air was clean and brisk, and the wind was soft on his cheek. bart arched his thick chest and pulled in a great lung full of air. "this is wonderful. makes a man feel alive again." he yanked the zipper on his coveralls and pulled them off. then he jumped in the air, swinging his thick arms. tom grinned at the calisthenics as he peeled off his own coveralls. the sun was warm on his bare white skin. bart had pulled off his boots and with just his shorts left, charged into the water, and made a flat smashing dive. he leaped and splashed the water like a porpoise. tom grinned at him, and just as he had done during most of his boyhood on earth, took a gulp of air and dived down into the clear silent depths to the twenty foot deep bottom. he drifted slowly among the rocks. bart drifted beside him as the seconds ticked by. tom wished this was earth and there were some fish to hunt in the clear water with a three pronged spear. then, as his lungs seemed bursting and he had to have air, he put his feet against the bottom and shoved himself to the surface. several seconds later, bart burst through the surface and bobbed beside him. they floated until they got their wind back. "you don't use a suit and oxygen tanks," bart said. "you couldn't stay under two seconds if you did." "i learned to hunt as a boy," tom said. "i even had to make my own spear out of scraps. kids don't have the credits for suits and stuff." "no sport to it with a suit," bart said, as they paddled lazily along with their heads up, toward shore. "as bad as hunting animals with rifles. they killed off all the animals with guns, now they're fishing out the seas with suits." "yeah," tom answered, "might as well buy the fish from the hatcheries as to go after them with a portable sub." they dived under, and worked their way along the bottom toward shore, coming up for air, then diving again, until they were back to the beach. they walked out and dropped on the sand to rest, the sun warm on them. "notice the water?" tom asked. "yeah," bart said, "no waves. calm as hell. can't be waves without a moon to pull them." "doesn't seem to be as salty as the seas at home, either," tom said. "yeah, i noticed that too. must not be as much salt in the ground as at home." "could be it's a young planet that hasn't had much time to wash it out of the ground, too," tom said. they rested in silence for a few minutes, the only sound all about them was the wind blowing across the empty land. then bart jumped to his feet and started pulling on his clothes. "come on, tom," he said, "let's take a look around while it's still light." after they dressed, bart led the way along the strip of red sand towards the ridge. the tangled mass of yellow-green vegetation grew right down to the strip of red sand, and in some places, grew right over it to stop at the sea. "i'll be darned," tom said, stopping at the edge of the plants. the ferns covered the ground solidly; small ones, medium ones, big ones. he crashed back into the thicker growth and kicked some of it aside with his boot. the cloud of dust choked him for a minute. bart came crashing in to tom. "what you got?" "look," tom said. "all these dead ferns underneath, then just the sand. they haven't decayed." he searched under the dead growth. "the dead ones just fall down underneath and the live ones just grow on top. there's not only no life here, but no decay either. just ferns. i wonder if willie was right." "don't ask me," bart said. "come on, let's look from that ridge." they followed the sand around the impassable vegetation to the ridge and scrambled a little way up the barren red rocks. as far as they could see over the flat land, it was covered with the sickly yellow-green of the ferns. they looked out and rested, then noting the sun was getting close to the horizon, they made their way back to the huge grey splotched aluminum hulk of their ship. as tom was about to follow bart up the ladder, he noticed a solitary figure sitting at the edge of the sea. "hey, willie," he hollered, "come to chow." his voice echoed in the quiet. the figure waved and tom turned back to join him. he sat down on a small boulder near where willie was sitting and lit his tiny pipe. willie was sitting leaning back against a rock, and gazing dreamily out to sea. he didn't notice tom. "hey, willie," tom said, puffing on his pipe. willie started and turned to tom. "oh, hi, tom. i didn't know you'd come out." "you wouldn't," tom laughed, "not in that daydream. thinking of some gal back home?" "no, just thinking," willie said. "find anything interesting?" "just a lot of rock and ferns," he answered. "notice how the dead plants just pack under and don't decay?" willie asked. "yeah," tom puffed his pipe. "looks like your idea of seeds drifting through space is as good as any to explain it. sure is an odd place. full grown plants, but no decay and no sign of evolution." "this is a wonderful place," willie said as he leaned back against the rock. "i'd like to stay here for ten years." "why?" tom asked. the red of the sunset was fading from the high clouds, turning them dark grey. "because it's so quiet." willie smiled at him. "this is the quietest place i've ever been in. does something to you." "you should have been a colonist," tom said, "then you could live on a place like this and farm it." "i'm going to, someday," willie answered. "i'm saving my pay to buy a charter and i'm going to buy a place like this." tom blew out a cloud of smoke. seems like every guy working on crowded earth had the same dream. a little farm on a distant planet. but few of them ever did anything about it. it was a nice dream to relieve the monotony of working, but a hell of a lot of hard work if you actually did it. "i've even got seeds i saved when i was working on the truck farms of the west," willie talked on, more to himself than tom, "i saved them from some of the biggest and heaviest producing plants. i've got tomatoes, beans, corn, squash. they'll make a fine beginning." tom thought of willie leaving the safety and comfort of living that was found only in the crowded cities of earth. "think you'd like the loneliness of farming?" he asked. willie spoke with conviction. "there's nothing i'd like more. that's why i started star mapping, to get out of the mobs. that's why i'm out here." "dinner's on," pudge called from the ship. tom knocked the ashes out of his pipe. "let's eat." he led the way to the ship. * * * * * the meal was eaten in an appreciative silence, for pudge had spread a feast of celebration. when the last of the unaccustomed delicacies was gone, they pushed their plates away. "boy," bart grunted out as he lit his pipe, "i haven't eaten like that since the last time i was hunting. say, tom, what say you and i go fishing on the florida coast when we get back. we can get a fish a day down there." "we'll do that," tom said without conviction. he knew when they got back they would go their different ways in the eternal quest of spacemen back home. "i'm due to get a bigger ship when i get back," bart said expansively, "and i'm sure going to have pudge for my cook. how about you, tom? you're due to step up, now. want to be my navigator?" "sure," tom said, surprised. "we'll really do some star mapping," bart said. "with a bigger and newer ship, we can go clear to the end of the galaxy. who knows what we'll find for the astral service." "what about me?" willie said. "am i going to be retired as your first mate?" tom looked at willie, he had almost forgotten willie was there because he was so quiet. willie was trying to look bright and happy, but even through the happy haze, tom could see he looked tired and depressed. the wine hadn't done a thing for him, and his dinner was only half eaten. bart had looked down at his plate, frowning, at willie's question. he knocked out the ashes of his pipe and tossed it on the table. he looked willie squarely in the eye. "i was going to save it until we got back, but since you asked, i'll give it to you straight. willie, i'm sending you back for a check-up when we get in. you can't seem to do a darn thing anymore, without having somebody doublecheck it. tom and i have had to navigate the ship most of this trip, when you were supposed to do it. there's no place out here for a man that can't do his job. it puts too much on the others. i think you need a long rest or something." willie sat there, his face white, blinking his eyes rapidly. then he lurched to the door, his chair spinning behind him. pudge got up and went to the galley. "what the hell did you do that for?" tom asked bart. "why didn't you kid him along and give it to him easy when we got back. it would have been easier on his feelings." "that's not my way," bart said. "he asked me and i gave it to him straight. he's no good out here anymore. in fact, he's dangerous. if something should come up that needs quick action, we'd all be wiped out by the time he called me." "okay," tom said. "it was honest, and it was truthful. but it sure as hell hurt him. i'm going to see him and try to ease it over." "you'll be a good first mate, tom," bart said. "but don't baby the crew too much. they've either got it or they haven't." tom went down the narrow passageway to willie's cabin and knocked on the door. when he didn't get an answer, he opened the door. willie was lying on his bunk with his face to the wall. he didn't move as tom sat in the chair. "hey, willie," tom said. "you got company. i come in to shoot the breeze with you." willie turned over reluctantly. "i'm sorry, tom. i hate bart's guts. he's always so goddam right." willie clasped his hands behind his head on the pillow, and stared at the ceiling. "he'll wash me out of this job and then what will i do? i've failed at everything else i've tried to do. it's the people, tom. i can't do anything in front of people. what am i going to do when they ground me? i can't stand the crowds of people on earth." he rolled over against the wall. tom worked his big knuckled long fingers together. "maybe it won't amount to anything. the brass will just put you on another ship." "not if he puts in that report," willie said, his voice muffled against the wall. tom sat there. there was nothing more to say. willie was right. "well, i'll see you on the morning." he got up. "maybe we can go for a hike or something." when willie didn't answer, he went out and carefully shut the door behind him. in his own bunk, he tried to think of something else, but the problem of willie bothered him for a long, restless time. then it was morning and the clock was chiming. pudge came in to the table where tom and bart were waiting for breakfast. "some one's been in the stores. a couple of cases of emergency rations are missing. it must have been in the night." "what the hell," bart said, jumping up. "in the stores?" "where's willie?" tom said, getting up. "who cares," bart said. "there's no one on this planet but us. who'd get into our stores? or what?" "that's what i mean," tom said angrily. "where's willie?" bart gave him a startled glance, then led the way to willie's cabin. he wasn't there. they went through the ship. they dropped out of the lock, one after the other, into the blinding sunlight and looked around. willie was gone. "we'd better find him before he gets too far," tom said. "i've got a hunch he's not coming back. that's why the food." "i'll wring the little coward's neck," bart said as he led the way along the one trail of footprints they had all made to the sand by the sea. they scattered out, calling and looking. tom, on a hunch, headed for the shoulder of the mountain that jutted out in the sea, while bart and pudge went the other way. * * * * * the sun was high in the clear blue sky when tom at last came around the point to the little cove a stream had made in the side of the mountain. he walked up the narrow sandy bank between the red cliffs until a short way in, he found the cases of food and a pile of blankets. his yell echoed off the red cliffs several times before he looked up to see willie standing on top of the cliff twenty feet above him. "come on back to the ship, willie," tom called as though willie was just out for a walk. "we're going to blast off this afternoon. got to head home." "i'm not coming back," willie said. "i'm staying here." "be reasonable," tom shouted, "you can't stay here. come on back to the ship." "i'm going to live here. i'm going to colonize," willie said. "what?" tom's voice was unbelieving. "i'm going to live here," willie repeated. "tom, give me your word you won't force me to go back and i'll come down so we can talk." "o.k.," tom said, "you have my word." "bart isn't around, is he?" willie slid down the cliff in a shower of loose rock and dirt. "you can't stay here, willie," tom began, "how are you going to live, to eat?" "i've got my seeds," willie said dreamily. "i'll have a real farm." he waved vaguely at the ferns. "look at the stuff grow. the climate is ideal. i'll build a hut and farm enough to eat." "willie," tom said, trying another angle. "there are no other people here. what'll you do if you get sick or need help?" "i won't get sick and i won't need help," willie said. "that's why i want to stay here, 'cause there aren't any people. i can have a thousand acres all to myself. i can stake out a whole square mile and live right in the middle of it." he laughed like a little kid. "tom, this is what i've wanted all my life. why should i go back to earth and then try to come back later, i'm staying here, now." tom had the feeling he was trying to argue with an ostrich with its head in the sand. what would willie do for food if his crops failed when the emergency rations were gone? willie was gambling his life for a dream, but he didn't know it. willie saw only what he wanted to see, disregarding everything else. arguing was useless. the only way they could get willie back aboard was to carry him back. "well, okay, willie," tom said. "i'll go back and tell bart. but i'll get him to hold the ship until tomorrow if you should change your mind." "i won't," willie said. "so long, tom." he held out his hand. "you've been a swell guy." tom took the hand and shook it. "so long, willie. i'll be back someday, to see how you're making out." he started back down the narrow beach. along the way, he decided that they would have to catch willie and take him back to earth for hospitalization. coming back with bart wouldn't be breaking his word. that had only been for the time he had talked to willie. bart heard tom's report in his usual way. "let's go," was his only comment. they climbed up the crumbling red rock and followed the edge of the cliff. they climbed over the small boulders, around the huge ones, endlessly finding the way blocked, but each time going back a little and by going around, finding a new way that was clear. the sun was halfway to the western horizon when they stopped to rest on a pile of small boulders near the top. tom leaned back against the rock behind him. a trickle of sweat ran down his ribs from his armpit under his coveralls. bart snorted through his nose. "it'll be dark soon." he wiped his arm across his forehead, the sweat making a dark stain on the sleeve. "damn that fool willie. he'll pay for this when we get him back to earth. he must be crazy or something." "my god," tom said. "is that finally dawning on you?" bart looked up at tom, his dark brown eyes small in his broad sweat-streaked face. as he continued to stare at tom without saying anything, tom felt the stir of annoyance, then the beginning of hot tempered anger. they sat and waited, looking for the movement willie would make if he showed himself. nothing stirred in the yellow-green ferns below. after an hour of watching, bart got to his feet. "he's holed up somewhere and pulled the hole in after him. let's get down there and drag him out." he started back down the ridge the way they had come up. halfway down, as they stopped for a breather, tom noted the height of the sun. it was going to be dark before they could work their way back to the ship. a low bank of rolling grey clouds lay all along the straight horizon line of the sea; as the sun sank behind the clouds, it turned the edges of them to fiery red. bart hurried down the ridge, watching only for a glimpse of willie, but tom looked at the sunset occasionally, trying to store up the memory of the color for the months ahead. as they reached the stream cliff, tom stopped bart. "bart, i've got an idea. it's almost dark. willie will think we've headed back to get to the ship before it's too dark to find our way. he's probably sitting on a rock, watching the sunset and daydreaming. let's look on the edge of this little cliff where it ends at the sea." "o.k.," bart said, leading the way. the only light left was the reflected red light of the clouds that made long dark shadows behind the rocks. they came around the rocks, onto the cliff point overlooking the sea and the cove, and there was willie, sitting with his back to a big rock, his chin resting on his cupped hands, gazing dreamily out to sea. "willie!" bart shouted, lunging for him. willie jerked around to see them, then he was up and sliding down the loose rock into the shadowy cove below. "grab him, tom," bart shouted as he went sliding and falling down, the loose rock after him. tom jumped down the rocks to the bottom and slid to a stop, the loose rocks rolling down around him, but willie was deep in the ferns with only his head and shoulders showing. bart had the automatic pistol out and pointed at willie. "stop you crazy fool, or i'll shoot," he shouted, his voice echoing off the cliffs. willie only crashed into the ferns more desperately. bart raised the automatic and fired a burst of shots, the sharp explosions echoing shatteringly around them. tom made a flying tackle and smashed into bart. they went down in the ferns, struggling for the gun, until bart managed to roll and push his way to his feet. "knock it off," bart shouted. "what the hell are you trying to do?" "keep you from killing him," tom shouted back as he got to his feet. "i wasn't trying to kill him," bart snapped. "i was trying to scare him into stopping so we could grab him, now he's got clean away in those damn ferns." he waved a hand helplessly at the mass of dark vegetation. willie was gone all right. "now we'll have to spend days hunting for that lunatic. next time let me handle it. i'm the captain of this expedition." "okay," tom said angrily, "but let's catch him, not kill him. he hasn't done anything, just wants to be alone, that's all." "he's deserted," bart said, "and he signed articles, so that's a crime. how the hell am i going to explain a lost crewman when we go back. and on my first trip as captain." "that's your worry," tom said. "he's colonizing, not deserting." "you should have been a lawyer," bart said as he put the gun in his holster. "but this isn't getting that screwball aboard." he groped in the pocket of his coveralls and pulled out a small packlight. the white searchbeam lit up the ferns around them with glaring brightness. "come on, let's try to find him." he led the way into the ferns. they hunted through the ferns, forcing their way every step. the searchbeam was only good for a few feet in the dense growth. they knew willie was close, but in the ferns they could almost step on him and not know it. at last bart gave up. "let's go back to the ship. we'll come back in the morning, when it's light." following him along the beach toward the ship, tom had the feeling that in the morning might be too late. willie might have been hit by the burst of shots, or he might take off in the ferns so far they never could find him. * * * * * tom rolled out of his bunk at the first bell, wincing at his sore muscles. after getting the first aid kit from the bathroom, he quietly walked down the narrow passageway and out into the bright sunlight. as he walked through the grey ash to the strip of red sand, the quiet was like a blanket over everything, after the soft hum of the living ship. the breeze blew softly against his face, hummed past his ears, and rustled the ferns. the sea was glass smooth as far as he could see across its surface, smooth right up to where the water turned deep green as it got shallower. he could understand why willie wanted to stay here. it was a perfect place for anyone who loved solitude and there was probably none like it in the whole system. he thought of how a man could live here, with no one to bother him, nothing to buy, no need to do any more than just produce enough food to live. a little shack to keep off the rain, a little field to grow food. but there would be no one to talk to, no one to share experiences and troubles and little triumphs, no one to laugh with, no challenge to overcome, no excitement. "not for me," tom said aloud, and his voice was strange in the quiet. "boy, this place puts a spell on a guy, almost hypnotizes him." he laughed aloud. "even got me talking to myself." he hurried on to hunt for willie. then he came to the little cove where willie had his camp. the pile of food and blankets was still there. willie was there, too. he was lying half in the pool of water. as tom crunched over the sand and knelt beside him, willie opened his eyes. "hi, tom," he said faintly. "i'm glad you came alone." "hi, willie," tom said as he looked at the thin chest with the small neat hole low on the left side. "so he did shoot you, didn't he." he opened the first aid kit. "i'll get you back to the ship and you'll be o.k." he started putting a dressing on the wound. willie looked at him with his bright blue eyes. "never mind, tom. i just got to stay here in spite of the captain." his voice was so low tom had to lean closer to hear him. willie coughed slightly and winced with the pain. tom finished the bandage. he knew there was nothing he could do; willie was hurt inside and only a doctor could help him. but there were no doctors here. he wanted to do something for him to make him more comfortable. he started to put an arm under him to move him out of the pool. "i'll get you out of this water," he said. "no. tom," willie said. "leave me here. i crawled all night to get here. i want to die in this pool." "in the water?" tom said in surprise. "yes, in the water. don't you understand? i thought you would." he stared up at the white tracing of the clouds in the sky. tom waited, silently. he knelt there, the sun burning hot on his back. "i wanted to stay," willie said. "i had to stay. didn't you feel anything about this planet, tom?" tom thought a moment. "i did feel a little," he admitted. "on the way over here. like it would be a nice place to live." "that's it," willie smiled. "don't you see. here was this planet, ripe for life, but without life. then the seeds of the ferns got blown off earth and drifted here. but it needed more, it needed animal life to complete the cycle. "then we got 'blown off earth.' bart for the glory, pudge for the ride, you for the excitement, and me--me--because i had to, i guess. because i couldn't stand it back there. seeds, all four of us, and not knowing it. that's why we had to land. that's why one of us had to stay and i guess it was just me. now the rest of you can go back to earth." willie coughed, much longer this time. then he lay back exhausted. "tom," he whispered, "look at the edge of my camp. in the ferns." tom walked over to the edge of the camp. he looked at the yellow-green ferns, wondering what willie meant. then he saw it. the faint steaming from the packed dead ferns under the growing ones, the spreading dark spot, the already darker green of the plants growing around the spot. willie had brought the seeds of decay with him, as well as the seeds of life. the dead plants were decaying for the first time on this planet. this spot would spread until the whole planet was covered with dark green; and life would be as it was on earth. tom went back to willie and stood looking down at him. then he knelt and gently closed willie's eyelids. he thought of moving him, digging him a shallow grave. but kneeling there in the silent cove, he had the hunch that maybe there was more to this. willie had wanted to stay in the little pool. the stream came down off the ridge through the pool to the sea. maybe if willie stayed there, the bacteria of his body would live on, and be washed into the sea. the water was warm and there were no enemies to destroy them and there were plants to feed them. perhaps, willie was right. maybe he _was_ the seed of life coming to this planet; and in a million years men might walk these shores. tom straightened up. he took a deep breath and looked around the little cove, and then back to willie. "it's your planet, now, willie. willie's planet from now on. what bart put in the log and what spacemen will call it as they go by, will be two different things. or did you know that in your heart, too." he was silent a moment. "so long, willie. go with god." he turned and crunched along the sand towards the ship. orphans of the void by michael shaara illustrated by emsh [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy science fiction june 1952. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] finding a cause worth dying for is no great trick--the universe is full of them. finding one worth living for is the genuine problem! in the region of the coal sack nebula, on the dead fourth planet of a star called tyban, captain steffens of the mapping command stood counting buildings. eleven. no, twelve. he wondered if there was any significance in the number. he had no idea. "what do you make of it?" he asked. lieutenant ball, the executive officer of the ship, almost tried to scratch his head before he remembered that he was wearing a spacesuit. "looks like a temporary camp," ball said. "very few buildings, and all built out of native materials, the only stuff available. castaways, maybe?" steffens was silent as he walked up onto the rise. the flat weathered stone jutted out of the sand before him. "no inscriptions," he pointed out. "they would have been worn away. see the wind grooves? anyway, there's not another building on the whole damn planet. you wouldn't call it much of a civilization." "you don't think these are native?" ball said he didn't. steffens nodded. standing there and gazing at the stone, steffens felt the awe of great age. he had a hunch, deep and intuitive, that this was old--_too_ old. he reached out a gloved hand, ran it gently over the smooth stone ridges of the wall. although the atmosphere was very thin, he noticed that the buildings had no airlocks. ball's voice sounded in his helmet: "want to set up shop, skipper?" steffens paused. "all right, if you think it will do any good." "you never can tell. excavation probably won't be much use. these things are on a raised rock foundation, swept clean by the wind. and you can see that the rock itself is native--" he indicated the ledge beneath their feet--"and was cut out a long while back." "how long?" ball toed the sand uncomfortably. "i wouldn't like to say off-hand." "make a rough estimate." ball looked at the captain, knowing what was in his mind. he smiled wryly and said: "five thousand years? ten thousand? i don't know." steffens whistled. ball pointed again at the wall. "look at the striations. you can tell from that alone. it would take even a brisk earth wind _at least_ several thousand years to cut that deep, and the wind here has only a fraction of that force." the two men stood for a long moment in silence. man had been in interstellar space for three hundred years and this was the first uncovered evidence of an advanced, space-crossing, alien race. it was an historic moment, but neither of them was thinking about history. man had been in space for only three hundred years. whatever had built these had been in space for thousands of years. which ought to give _them_, thought steffens uncomfortably, one hell of a good head-start. * * * * * while the excav crew worked steadily, turning up nothing, steffens remained alone among the buildings. ball came out to him, looked dryly at the walls. "well," he said, "whoever they were, we haven't heard from them since." "no? how can you be sure?" steffens grunted. "a space-borne race was roaming this part of the galaxy while men were still pitching spears at each other, _that_ long ago. and this planet is only a parsec from varius ii, a civilization as old as earth's. did whoever built these get to varius? or did they get to earth? how can you know?" he kicked at the sand distractedly. "and most important, where are they now? a race with several thousand years...." "fifteen thousand," ball said. when steffens looked up, he added: "that's what the geology boys say. fifteen thousand, at the least." steffens turned to stare unhappily at the buildings. when he realized now how really old they were, a sudden thought struck him. "but why buildings? why did they have to build in stone, to last? there's something wrong with that. they shouldn't have had a need to build, unless they were castaways. and castaways would have left _something_ behind. the only reason they would need a camp would be--" "if the ship left and some of them stayed." steffens nodded. "but then the ship must have come back. where did it go?" he ceased kicking at the sand and looked up into the blue-black midday sky. "we'll never know." "how about the other planets?" ball asked. "the report was negative. inner too hot, outer too heavy and cold. the third planet is the only one with a decent temperature range, but _it_ has a co_{2} atmosphere." "how about moons?" steffens shrugged. "we could try them and find out." * * * * * the third planet was a blank, gleaming ball until they were in close, and then the blankness resolved into folds and piling clouds and dimly, in places, the surface showed through. the ship went down through the clouds, falling the last few miles on her brakers. they came into the misty gas below, leveled off and moved along the edge of the twilight zone. the moons of this solar system had yielded nothing. the third planet, a hot, heavy world which had no free oxygen and from which the monitors had detected nothing, was all that was left. steffens expected nothing, but he had to try. at a height of several miles, the ship moved up the zone, scanning, moving in the familiar slow spiral of the mapping command. faint dark outlines of bare rocks and hills moved by below. steffens turned the screen to full magnification and watched silently. after a while he saw a city. the main screen being on, the whole crew saw it. someone shouted and they stopped to stare, and steffens was about to call for altitude when he saw that the city was dead. he looked down on splintered walls that were like cloudy glass pieces rising above a plain, rising in a shattered circle. near the center of the city, there was a huge, charred hole at least three miles in diameter and very deep. in all the piled rubble, nothing moved. steffens went down low to make sure, then brought the ship around and headed out across the main continent into the bright area of the sun. the rocks rolled by below, there was no vegetation at all, and then there were more cities--all with the black depression, the circular stamp that blotted away and fused the buildings into nothing. no one on the ship had anything to say. none had ever seen a war, for there had not been war on earth or near it for more than three hundred years. the ship circled around to the dark side of the planet. when they were down below a mile, the radiation counters began to react. it became apparent, from the dials, that there could be nothing alive. after a while ball said: "well, which do you figure? did our friends from the fourth planet do this, or were they the same people as these?" steffens did not take his eyes from the screen. they were coming around to the daylight side. "we'll go down and look for the answer," he said. "break out the radiation suits." he paused, thinking. if the ones on the fourth planet were alien to this world, they were from outer space, could not have come from one of the other planets here. they had starships and were warlike. then, thousands of years ago. he began to realize how important it really was that ball's question be answered. when the ship had gone very low, looking for a landing site, steffens was still by the screen. it was steffens, then, who saw the thing move. down far below, it had been a still black shadow, and then it moved. steffens froze. and he knew, even at that distance, that it was a robot. tiny and black, a mass of hanging arms and legs, the thing went gliding down the slope of a hill. steffens saw it clearly for a full second, saw the dull ball of its head tilt upward as the ship came over, and then the hill was past. * * * * * quickly steffens called for height. the ship bucked beneath him and blasted straight up; some of the crew went crashing to the deck. steffens remained by the screen, increasing the magnification as the ship drew away. and he saw another, then two, then a black gliding group, all matched with bunches of hanging arms. nothing alive but robots, he thought, _robots_. he adjusted to full close up as quickly as he could and the picture focused on the screen. behind him he heard a crewman grunt in amazement. a band of clear, plasticlike stuff ran round the head--it would be the eye, a band of eye that saw all ways. on the top of the head was a single round spot of the plastic, and the rest was black metal, joined, he realized, with fantastic perfection. the angle of sight was now almost perpendicular. he could see very little of the branching arms of the trunk, but what had been on the screen was enough. they were the most perfect robots he had ever seen. the ship leveled off. steffens had no idea what to do; the sudden sight of the moving things had unnerved him. he had already sounded the alert, flicked out the defense screens. now he had nothing to do. he tried to concentrate on what the league law would have him do. the law was no help. contact with planet-bound races was forbidden under any circumstances. but could a bunch of robots be called a race? the law said nothing about robots because earthmen had none. the building of imaginative robots was expressly forbidden. but at any rate, steffens thought, he had made contact already. while steffens stood by the screen, completely bewildered for the first time in his space career, lieutenant ball came up, hobbling slightly. from the bright new bruise on his cheek, steffens guessed that the sudden climb had caught him unaware. the exec was pale with surprise. "what were they?" he said blankly. "lord, they looked like robots!" "they were." ball stared confoundedly at the screen. the things were now a confusion of dots in the mist. "almost humanoid," steffens said, "but not quite." ball was slowly absorbing the situation. he turned to gaze inquiringly at steffens. "well, what do we do now?" steffens shrugged. "they saw us. we could leave now and let them quite possibly make a ... a legend out of our visit, or we could go down and see if they tie in with the buildings on tyban iv." "_can_ we go down?" "legally? i don't know. if they are robots, yes, since robots cannot constitute a race. but there's another possibility." he tapped his fingers on the screen confusedly. "they don't have to be robots at all. they could be the natives." ball gulped. "i don't follow you." "they could be the original inhabitants of this planet--the brains of them, at least, protected in radiation-proof metal. anyway," he added, "they're the most perfect mechanicals i've ever seen." ball shook his head, sat down abruptly. steffens turned from the screen, strode nervously across the main deck, thinking. the mapping command, they called it. theoretically, all he was supposed to do was make a closeup examination of unexplored systems, checking for the presence of life-forms as well as for the possibilities of human colonization. make a check and nothing else. but he knew very clearly that if he returned to sirius base without investigating this robot situation, he could very well be court-martialed one way or the other, either for breaking the law of contact or for dereliction of duty. and there was also the possibility, which abruptly occurred to him, that the robots might well be prepared to blow his ship to hell and gone. he stopped in the center of the deck. a whole new line of thought opened up. if the robots were armed and ready ... could this be an outpost? _an outpost!_ he turned and raced for the bridge. if he went in and landed and was lost, then the league might never know in time. if he went in and stirred up trouble.... the thought in his mind was scattered suddenly, like a mist blown away. a voice was speaking in his mind, a deep calm voice that seemed to say: "_greetings. do not be alarmed. we do not wish you to be alarmed. our desire is only to serve...._" * * * * * "greetings, it said! greetings!" ball was mumbling incredulously through shocked lips. everyone on the ship had heard the voice. when it spoke again, steffens was not sure whether it was just one voice or many voices. "we await your coming," it said gravely, and repeated: "our desire is only to serve." and then the robots sent a _picture_. as perfect and as clear as a tridim movie, a rectangular plate took shape in steffens' mind. on the face of the plate, standing alone against a background of red-brown, bare rocks, was one of the robots. with slow, perfect movement, the robot carefully lifted one of the hanging arms of its side, of its _right_ side, and extended it toward steffens, a graciously offered hand. steffens felt a peculiar, compelling urge to take the hand, realized right away that the urge to take the hand was not entirely his. the robot mind had helped. when the picture vanished, he knew that the others had seen it. he waited for a while; there was no further contact, but the feeling of the robot's urging was still strong within him. he had an idea that, if they wanted to, the robots could control his mind. so when nothing more happened, he began to lose his fear. while the crew watched in fascination, steffens tried to talk back. he concentrated hard on what he was saying, said it aloud for good measure, then held his own hand extended in the robot manner of shaking hands. "greetings," he said, because it was what _they_ had said, and explained: "we have come from the stars." it was overly dramatic, but so was the whole situation. he wondered baffledly if he should have let the alien contact crew handle it. order someone to stand there, feeling like a fool, and _think_ a message? no, it was his responsibility; he had to go on: "we request--we respectfully request permission to land upon your planet." * * * * * steffens had not realized that there were so many. they had been gathering since his ship was first seen, and now there were hundreds of them clustered upon the hill. others were arriving even as the skiff landed; they glided in over the rocky hills with fantastic ease and power, so that steffens felt a momentary anxiety. most of the robots were standing with the silent immobility of metal. others threaded their way to the fore and came near the skiff, but none touched it, and a circle was cleared for steffens when he came out. one of the near robots came forward alone, moving, as steffens now saw, on a number of short, incredibly strong and agile legs. the black thing paused before him, extended a hand as it had done in the picture. steffens took it, he hoped, warmly; felt the power of the metal through the glove of his suit. "welcome," the robot said, speaking again to his mind, and now steffens detected a peculiar alteration in the robot's tone. it was less friendly now, less--steffens could not understand--somehow less _interested_, as if the robot had been--expecting someone else. "thank you," steffens said. "we are deeply grateful for your permission to land." "our desire," the robot repeated mechanically, "is only to serve." suddenly, steffens began to feel alone, surrounded by machines. he tried to push the thought out of his mind, because he knew that they _should_ seem inhuman. but.... "will the others come down?" asked the robot, still mechanically. steffens felt his embarrassment. the ship lay high in the mist above, jets throbbing gently. "they must remain with the ship," steffens said aloud, trusting to the robot's formality not to ask him why. although, if they could read his mind, there was no need to ask. for a long while, neither spoke, long enough for steffens to grow tense and uncomfortable. he could not think of a thing to say, the robot was obviously waiting, and so, in desperation, he signaled the aliencon men to come on out of the skiff. they came, wonderingly, and the ring of robots widened. steffens heard the one robot speak again. the voice was now much more friendly. "we hope you will forgive us for intruding upon your thought. it is our--custom--not to communicate unless we are called upon. but when we observed that you were in ignorance of our real--nature--and were about to leave our planet, we decided to put aside our custom, so that you might base your decision upon sufficient data." steffens replied haltingly that he appreciated their action. "we perceive," the robot went on, "that you are unaware of our complete access to your mind, and would perhaps be--dismayed--to learn that we have been gathering information from you. we must--apologize. our only purpose was so that we could communicate with you. only that information was taken which is necessary for communication and--understanding. we will enter your minds henceforth only at your request." steffens did not react to the news that his mind was being probed as violently as he might have. nevertheless it was a shock, and he retreated into observant silence as the aliencon men went to work. the robot which seemed to have been doing the speaking was in no way different from any of the others in the group. since each of the robots was immediately aware of all that was being said or thought, steffens guessed that they had sent one forward just for appearance's sake, because they perceived that the earthmen would feel more at home. the picture of the extended hand, the characteristic handshake of earthmen, had probably been borrowed, too, for the same purpose of making him and the others feel at ease. the one jarring note was the robot's momentary lapse, those unexplainable few seconds when the things had seemed almost disappointed. steffens gave up wondering about that and began to examine the first robot in detail. it was not very tall, being at least a foot shorter than the earthmen. the most peculiar thing about it, except for the circling eye-band of the head, was a mass of symbols which were apparently engraved upon the metal chest. symbols in row upon row--numbers, perhaps--were upon the chest, and repeated again below the level of the arms, and continued in orderly rows across the front of the robot, all the way down to the base of the trunk. if they were numbers, steffens thought, then it was a remarkably complicated system. but he noticed the same pattern on the nearer robots, all apparently identical. he was forced to conclude that the symbols were merely decoration and let it go tentatively at that, although the answer seemed illogical. it wasn't until he was on his way home that steffens remembered the symbols again. and only then did he realized what they were. * * * * * after a while, convinced that there was no danger, steffens had the ship brought down. when the crew came out of the airlock, they were met by the robots, and each man found himself with a robot at his side, humbly requesting to be of service. there were literally thousands of the robots now, come from all over the barren horizon. the mass of them stood apart, immobile on a plain near the ship, glinting in the sun like a vast, metallic field of black wheat. the robots had obviously been built to serve. steffens began to _feel_ their pleasure, to sense it in spite of the blank, expressionless faces. they were almost like children in their eagerness, yet they were still reserved. whoever had built them, steffens thought in wonder, had built them well. ball came to join steffens, staring at the robots through the clear plastic of his helmet with baffledly widened eyes. a robot moved out from the mass in the field, allied itself to him. the first to speak had remained with steffens. realizing that the robot could hear every word he was saying, ball was for a while apprehensive. but the sheer unreality of standing and talking with a multi-limbed, intelligent hunk of dead metal upon the bare rock of a dead, ancient world, the unreality of it slowly died. it was impossible not to like the things. there was something in their very lines which was pleasant and relaxing. their builders, steffens thought, had probably thought of that, too. "there's no harm in them," said ball at last, openly, not minding if the robots heard. "they seem actually glad we're here. my god, whoever heard of a robot being glad?" steffens, embarrassed, spoke quickly to the nearest mechanical: "i hope you will forgive us our curiosity, but--yours is a remarkable race. we have never before made contact with a race like yours." it was said haltingly, but it was the best he could do. the robot made a singularly human nodding motion of its head. "i perceive that the nature of our construction is unfamiliar to you. your question is whether or not we are entirely 'mechanical.' i am not exactly certain as to what the word 'mechanical' is intended to convey--i would have to examine your thought more fully--but i believe that there is fundamental similarity between our structures." the robot paused. steffens had a distinct impression that it was disconcerted. "i must tell you," the thing went on, "that we ourselves are--curious." it stopped suddenly, struggling with a word it could not comprehend. steffens waited, listening with absolute interest. it said at length: "we know of only two types of living structure. ours, which is largely metallic, and that of the _makers_, which would appear to be somewhat more like yours. i am not a--doctor--and therefore cannot acquaint you with the specific details of the makers' composition, but if you are interested i will have a doctor brought forward. it will be glad to be of assistance." it was steffens' turn to struggle, and the robot waited patiently while ball and the second robot looked on in silence. the makers, obviously, were whoever or whatever had built the robots, and the "doctors," steffens decided, were probably just that--doctor-robots, designed specifically to care for the apparently flesh-bodies of the makers. the efficiency of the things continued to amaze him, but the question he had been waiting to ask came out now with a rush: "can you tell us where the makers are?" both robots stood motionless. it occurred to steffens that he couldn't really be sure which was speaking. the voice that came to him spoke with difficulty. "the makers--are not here." steffens stared in puzzlement. the robot detected his confusion and went on: "the makers have gone away. they have been gone for a very long time." could that be _pain_ in its voice, steffens wondered, and then the spectre of the ruined cities rose harsh in his mind. war. the makers had all been killed in that war. and these had not been killed. he tried to grasp it, but he couldn't. there were robots here in the midst of a radiation so lethal that _nothing_, _nothing_ could live; robots on a dead planet, living in an atmosphere of carbon dioxide. the carbon dioxide brought him up sharp. if there had been life here once, there would have been plant life as well, and therefore oxygen. if the war had been so long ago that the free oxygen had since gone out of the atmosphere--good god, how old were the robots? steffens looked at ball, then at the silent robots, then out across the field to where the rest of them stood. the black wheat. steffens felt a deep chill. were they immortal? * * * * * "would you like to see a doctor?" steffens jumped at the familiar words, then realized to what the robot was referring. "no, not yet," he said, "thank you." he swallowed hard as the robots continued waiting patiently. "could you tell me," he said at last, "how old you are? individually?" "by your reckoning," said his robot, and paused to make the calculation, "i am forty-four years, seven months, and eighteen days of age, with ten years and approximately nine months yet to be alive." steffens tried to understand that. "it would perhaps simplify our conversations," said the robot, "if you were to refer to me by a name, as is your custom. using the first--letters--of my designation, my name would translate as elb." "glad to meet you," steffens mumbled. "you are called 'stef,'" said the robot obligingly. then it added, pointing an arm at the robot near ball: "the age of--peb--is seventeen years, one month and four days. peb has therefore remaining some thirty-eight years." steffens was trying to keep up. then the life span was obviously about fifty-five years. but the cities, and the carbon dioxide? the robot, elb, had said that the makers were similar to him, and therefore oxygen and plant life would have been needed. unless-he remembered the buildings on tyban iv. unless the makers had not come from this planet at all. his mind helplessly began to revolve. it was ball who restored order. "do you build yourselves?" the exec asked. peb answered quickly, that faint note of happiness again apparent, as if the robot was glad for the opportunity of answering. "no, we do not build ourselves. we are made by the--" another pause for a word--"by the _factory_." "the factory?" "yes. it was built by the makers. would you care to see it?" both of the earthmen nodded dumbly. "would you prefer to use your--skiff? it is quite a long way from here." it was indeed a long way, even by skiff. some of the aliencon crew went along with them. and near the edge of the twilight zone, on the other side of the world, they saw the factory outlined in the dim light of dusk. a huge, fantastic block, wrought of gray and cloudy metal, lay in a valley between two worn mountains. steffens went down low, circling in the skiff, stared in awe at the size of the building. robots moved outside the thing, little black bugs in the distance--moving around their birthplace. * * * * * the earthmen remained for several weeks. during that time, steffens was usually with elb, talking now as often as he listened, and the aliencon team roamed the planet freely, investigating what was certainly the strangest culture in history. there was still the mystery of those buildings on tyban iv; that, as well as the robots' origin, would have to be cleared up before they could leave. surprisingly, steffens did not think about the future. whenever he came near a robot, he sensed such a general, comfortable air of good feeling that it warmed him, and he was so preoccupied with watching the robots that he did little thinking. something he had not realized at the beginning was that he was as unusual to the robots as they were to him. it came to him with a great shock that not one of the robots had ever seen a living thing. not a bug, a worm, a leaf. they did not know what flesh was. only the doctors knew that, and none of them could readily understand what was meant by the words "organic matter." it had taken them some time to recognize that the earthmen wore suits which were not parts of their bodies, and it was even more difficult for them to understand why the suits were needed. but when they did understand, the robots did a surprising thing. at first, because of the excessive radiation, none of the earthmen could remain outside the ship for long, even in radiation suits. and one morning, when steffens came out of the ship, it was to discover that hundreds of the robots, working through the night, had effectively decontaminated the entire area. it was at this point that steffens asked how many robots there were. he learned to his amazement that there were more than nine million. the great mass of them had politely remained a great distance from the ship, spread out over the planet, since they were highly radioactive. steffens, meanwhile, courteously allowed elb to probe into his mind. the robot extracted all the knowledge of matter that steffens held, pondered over the knowledge and tried to digest it, and passed it on to the other robots. steffens, in turn, had a difficult time picturing the mind of a thing that had never known life. he had a vague idea of the robot's history--more, perhaps, then they knew themselves--but he refrained from forming an opinion until aliencon made its report. what fascinated him was elb's amazing philosophy, the only outlook, really, that the robot could have had. * * * * * "what do you _do_?" steffens asked. elb replied quickly, with characteristic simplicity: "we can do very little. a certain amount of physical knowledge was imparted to us at birth by the makers. we spend the main part of our time expanding that knowledge wherever possible. we have made some progress in the natural sciences, and some in mathematics. our purpose in being, you see, is to serve the makers. any ability we can acquire will make us that much more fit to serve when the makers return." "when they return?" it had not occurred to steffens until now that the robots expected the makers to do so. elb regarded him out of the band of the circling eye. "i see you had surmised that the makers were not coming back." if the robot could have laughed, steffens thought it would have, then. but it just stood there, motionless, its tone politely emphatic. "it has always been our belief that the makers would return. why else would we have been built?" steffens thought the robot would go on, but it didn't. the question, to elb, was no question at all. although steffens knew already what the robot could not possibly have known--that the makers were gone and would never come back--he was a long time understanding. what he did was push this speculation into the back of his mind, to keep it from elb. he had no desire to destroy a faith. but it created a problem in him. he had begun to picture for elb the structure of human society, and the robot--a machine which did not eat or sleep--listened gravely and tried to understand. one day steffens mentioned god. "god?" the robot repeated without comprehension. "what is god?" steffens explained briefly, and the robot answered: "it is a matter which has troubled us. we thought at first that you were the makers returning--" steffens remembered the brief lapse, the seeming disappointment he had sensed--"but then we probed your minds and found that you were not, that you were another kind of being, unlike either the makers or ourselves. you were not even--" elb caught himself--"you did not happen to be telepaths. therefore we troubled over who made you. we did detect the word 'maker' in your theology, but it seemed to have a peculiar--" elb paused for a long while--"an untouchable, intangible meaning which varies among you." steffens understood. he nodded. the makers were the robots' god, were all the god they needed. the makers had built them, the planet, the universe. if he were to ask them who made the makers, it would be like their asking him who made god. it was an ironic parallel, and he smiled to himself. but on that planet, it was the last time he smiled. * * * * * the report from aliencon was finished at the end of the fifth week. lieutenant ball brought it in to steffens in his cabin, laid it on the desk before him. "get set," ball advised stiffly, indicating the paper. there was a strained, brittle expression on his face. "i sort of figured it, but i didn't know it was this bad." when steffens looked up in surprise, ball said: "you don't know. read it. go ahead." the exec turned tautly and left the room. steffens stared after him, then looked down at the paper. the hint he had of the robots' history came back into his mind. nervously, he picked up the report and started to read. the story unfolded objectively. it was clear and cold, the way formal reports must always be. yet there was a great deal of emotion in it. even aliencon couldn't help that. what it told was this: the makers had been almost humanoid. almost, but with certain notable exceptions. they were telepaths--no doubt an important factor in their remarkable technological progress--and were equipped with a secondary pair of arms. the robot-doctors were able to give flawless accounts of their body chemistry, which was similar to earth-type, and the rubble of the cities had given a certain amount of information concerning their society and habits. an attached paper described the sociology, but steffens put it aside until sometime later. there had been other factories. the remains of them had been found in several places, on each of the other continents. they had been built sometime prior to the war, and all but one of the factories had subsequently been destroyed. yet the makers were not, as steffens had supposed, a warlike people. telepathy had given them the power to know each other's minds and to interchange ideas, and their record of peace was favorable, especially when compared with earth's. nevertheless, a war had begun, for some reason aliencon could not find, and it had obviously gotten out of hand. radiation and bacteria eventually destroyed the makers; the last abortive efforts created enough radiation to destroy life entirely. there were the germs and the bombs and the burning rays, and in the end everything was blasted and died--everything, that is, but the one lone factory. by a pure, blind freak, it survived. and, naturally, it kept turning out robots. it was powered by an atomic pile, stocked with materials which, when combined with the returning, worn-out robots, enabled it to keep producing indefinitely. the process, even of repair, was entirely automatic. year after year, the robots came out in a slow, steady stream. ungoverned, uninstructed, they gathered around the factory and waited, communicated only rarely among themselves. gradually the memory of war, of life--of everything but that which was imprisoned in their minds at birth--was lost. the robots kept coming, and they stood outside the factory. the robot brain, by far the finest thing the makers had ever built, was variable. there was never a genius brain, and never a moron brain, yet the intelligence of the robots varied considerably in between. slowly, over the long years, the more intelligent among them began to communicate with each other, to inquire, and then to move away from the factory, searching. they looked for someone to serve and, of course, there was no one. the makers were gone, but the crime was not in that alone. for when the robots were built, the makers had done this: along with the first successful robot brain, the makers had realized the necessity of creating a machine which could never turn against them. the present robot brain was the result. as steffens had already sensed, _the robots could feel pain_. not the pain of physical injury, for there were no nerves in the metal bodies, but the pain of frustration, the pressure of thwarted emotion, _mental_ pain. and so, into the robot brain, the makers had placed this prime directive: the robots could only feel content, free from the pain, as long as they were serving the makers. the robots must act for the makers, must be continually engaged in carrying out the wishes of the makers, or else there was a slowly growing irritation, a restlessness and discontent which mounted as the unserving days went by. and there were no more makers to serve. * * * * * the pain was not unbearable. the makers themselves were not fully aware of the potentialities of the robot brain, and therefore did not risk deranging it. so the pressure reached a peak and leveled off, and for all of the days of the robots' lives, they felt it never-ending, awake and aware, each of them, for fifty-five years. and the robots never stopped coming. a millenium passed, during which the robots began to move and to think for themselves. yet it was much longer before they found a way in which to serve. the atomic pile which powered the factory, having gone on for almost five thousand years, eventually wore out. the power ceased. the factory stopped. it was the first _event_ in the robots' history. never before had there been a time when they had known anything at all to alter the course of their lives, except the varying weather and the unvarying pain. there was one among them now that began to reason. it saw that no more robots were being produced, and although it could not be sure whether or not this was as the makers had ordained, it formed an idea. if the purpose of the robots was to serve, then they would fail in that purpose if they were to die out. the robot thought this and communicated it to the others, and then, together, they began to rebuild the pile. it was not difficult. the necessary knowledge was already in their minds, implanted at birth. the significance lay in the fact that, for the first time in their existence, the robots had acted upon their own initiative, had begun to serve again. thus the pain ceased. when the pile was finished, the robots felt the return of the pain and, having once begun, they continued to attempt to serve. a great many examined the factory, found that they were able to improve upon the structure of their bodies, so that they might be better able to serve the makers when they returned. accordingly, they worked in the factory, perfecting themselves--although they could not improve the brains--and many others left the factory and began to examine mathematics and the physical universe. it was not hard for them to build a primitive spaceship, for the makers had been on the verge of interstellar flight, and they flew it hopefully throughout the solar system, looking to see if the makers were there. finding no one, they left the buildings on tyban iv as a wistful monument, with a hope that the makers would some day pass this way and be able to use them. millenia passed. the pile broke down again, was rebuilt, and so the cycle was repeated. by infinitesimal steps, the robots learned and recorded their learning in the minds of new robots. eventually they reached the limits of their capability. the pain returned and never left. * * * * * steffens left his desk, went over and leaned against the screen. for a long while he stood gazing through the mists of carbon air at the pitiful, loyal mechanicals who thronged outside the ship. he felt an almost overwhelming desire to break something, anything, but all he could do was swear to himself. ball came back, looked at steffens' eyes and into them. his own were sick. "twenty-five thousand years," he said thickly, "that's how long it was. _twenty-five thousand years...._" steffens was pale and wordless. the mass of the robots outside stood immobile, ageless among rock which was the same, hurting, hurting. a fragment of an old poem came across steffens' mind. "they also serve who only stand and wait...." not since he was very young had he been so deeply moved. he stood up rigidly and began to talk to himself, saying in his mind: _it is all over now. to hell with what is past. we will take them away from this place and let them serve and, by god...._ he faltered. but the knowledge of what could be done strengthened him. earthmen would have to come in ships to take the robots away. it would be a little while, but after all those years a little while was nothing, less than nothing. he stood there thinking of the things the robots could do, of how, in the mapping command alone, they would be invaluable. temperature and atmosphere meant nothing to them. they could land on almost any world, could mine and build and develop.... and so it would be ended. the robots would serve man. steffens took one long, painful breath. then he strode from the room without speaking to ball, went forward to the lockers and pulled out a suit, and a moment later he was in the airlock. he had one more thing to do, and it would be at once the gladdest and most difficult job that he had ever attempted. he had to tell the robots. he had to go out into the sand and face them, tell them that all of the centuries of pain had been for nothing, that the makers were dead and would never return, that every robot built for twenty-five thousand years had been just surplus, purposeless. and yet--and this was how he was able to do it--he was also coming to tell them that the wasted years were over, that the years of doing had begun. as he stepped from the airlock he saw elb standing, immobile, waiting by the ship. in the last few seconds steffens realized that it was not necessary to put this into words. when he reached the robot, he put forth a hand and touched elb's arm, and said very softly: "elb, my friend, you must look into my mind--" and the robot, as always, obeyed. satisfaction guaranteed by joy leache illustrated by gaughan [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy magazine december 1961. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] interstellar trouble-shooting is the easiest work there is. all you need is brains, energy--and a steno with nice legs! andrew stephens was trying to think of two things at once, and it wasn't working out. an inspirational message (delivered by crumbly, president of planetary promotions, inc.) was mixing itself up in his mind with the probable difficulties of his first company assignment. he hoped he was thinking, and not worrying. crumbly said worry was fatal in the promotion business. it was fervor, not fret, crumbly said, that had made planetary promotions, inc., what it was today. and it was work, not worry, that would make it what it was destined to be tomorrow. andy stephens stared at the farthest corner of his office (about four feet from his nose) and sighed. he didn't have a slogan in his body, let alone on (or off) the top of his head. his assignment was an easy one, crumbly had assured him. planetary promotions always started new men off with easy ones. only fair. andy squared his narrowish shoulders in as close an imitation of crumbly's desk-side manner as he could, and picked up the dope sheet. it seemed there was a planet, felix ii, somewhere near the edge of nowhere. it wanted to join the galactic federation. a laudable desire, andy thought, but strictly a political matter, having nothing to do with planetary promotions, or andrew stephens. however, it also seemed that a planet had to demonstrate that it would be contributing something to the federation before it was allowed to join. in other words, andy thought, you have to have something they want, or they won't let you in. a buzzer squawked out of the dun-colored box on his desk. andy jumped, and flipped the lever. "the bus to the port will be at the door in seven minutes," the grim voice of the lower office co-ordinator told him. "a stenographer will meet you on the ship." "thank you, miss ellis," andy said meekly. he stuffed the dope sheet into his jacket and left the main office for felix ii. * * * * * "excuse me," said a feminine voice. "are you with planetary promotions?" andy looked up. a sandy-haired girl with a passable figure and nice legs was looking down at him. "yes," he said. "i'm andy stephens." the girl looked relieved. "i'm edith featherpenny from the steno pool," she said. "i was afraid i wouldn't be able to find you." "sit down," andy invited. he moved, and miss featherpenny moved. between them, they unsettled a large woman eating an orange. when the juice had been mopped up and the woman apologized to, miss featherpenny squeezed in beside andy. "is that the information on the case?" she indicated the dope sheet crumpled under andy's arm. "yes." andy tried to pull it out. "were you issued one?" he moved his elbow and tried again. the orange woman glared at him. miss featherpenny shook her head. "miss ellis told me you'd tell me everything i needed to know." andy felt obscurely flattered. "it doesn't look too promising," he admitted. miss featherpenny glanced at the dope sheet and found a ray of hope. "the federation only requires that the felician exports are nearly as valuable as their imports," she pointed out. "'nearly' is a nice vague, maneuverable word." "but," said andy, "if the felicians can't think of anything to sell, how do they expect me to?" "maybe they're too isolated to know what's in demand," miss featherpenny comforted him. "it says they won't authorize ships to land on the planet except by invitation." "it might be isolation, i suppose," andy doubted. he felt an urge to confide in miss featherpenny. she did, after all, look as if there might be something besides fluff in her head. "look," he said. "this is my first assignment, on my fourth job, on my second career. i've got to make good. my father is beginning to get impatient." miss featherpenny's eyes grew softer. "fathers are usually more patient than their children think," she encouraged. "but," andy added morosely, "i have a brother, a salesman with universal products. he keeps getting promoted, and i keep getting fired. dad must be conscious of the contrast." "maybe," miss featherpenny suggested, "your brother's been lucky. you know, being assigned jobs that were easier than they sound." andy glanced at her to see if he was being humored. he decided he was not, or not much. "i've tried to believe that," he admitted. "unfortunately, lloyd keeps proving me wrong. he got his last promotion for selling fancy food products to the mahridgians." miss featherpenny had obviously never even heard of mahridge. "they have a strong taboo against eating," andy explained. "they swallow concentrates to keep alive, but it's still not quite decent. on mahridge, it's the dining room, not the bathroom, that has a door with a lock on it for privacy. "is he married?" asked miss featherpenny, who didn't intend to be a steno all her life. "i mean," she added quickly, "his wife would get anxious about his selling something like that, that could get him put in prison, or killed. how did he do it?" there was a certain coolness in andy's voice. "he took a lead from the dope peddlers. he converted the adolescent mahridgians first. it's all right to eat on mahridge now." miss featherpenny diplomatized. "i don't think that's ethical. convincing people to do what they think is wrong." andy was still suspicious. he said, "ethical or not, he got the promotion." * * * * * they stood at the edge of the only launching pad on felix ii, and surveyed the landscape. thirty feet away, there was a barnsized stone building with a weedy roof. aside from some rounded blue hills in the distance, and a felician leaning against the building, there was not much to detain the eye. miss featherpenny giggled softly in surprise. "he looks like a leprechaun," she said. "the sheet didn't say that." "tourist trade," andy breathed, his eyes gleaming with the solution of his problem. since the two-foot-tall welcoming committee showed no signs of moving, they started toward him. "my name," andy said in galactic, "is andrew stephens. i'm here from planetary promotions." "i know," the felician muttered ungraciously. "i came out from town to meet you. my name is blahrog. who's this?" "my steno, miss featherpenny." "urk." obviously blahrog had never heard the term "steno" and was interpreting it freely. "i'm in charge of our admission to the federation. that means i'm in charge of you." he eyed andy unenthusiastically. "you haven't had much experience with this kind of thing, have you?" andy had a wild rush of hope. if the felician government rejected him as a representative, he could go home without a failure on his record, and pray for a simpler assignment. even p. p. didn't consider an agent responsible for the unpredictable whims of aliens. "no, i haven't," he replied cheerfully. "i was hoping maybe you had." miss featherpenny, who hadn't read the contract, gasped. blahrog, who had read the contract, replied, "i haven't. let's get on into town where we can discuss the possibilities in comfort." they set out, walking unequally through the thick white dust that passed for paving on felix ii. "don't you use ground cars?" miss featherpenny choked at the end of the first half-mile. "don't have technology," blahrog growled, stumping grimly along. "the everking has a car, but he doesn't use it much. no fuel." as he walked, andy composed a speech on the merits of the tourist business, to be delivered to the everking. miss featherpenny grew visibly more depressed with each mile. she uttered an involuntary cry when the guard of the city gate appeared with a slender mug in each hand. "felician ladies don't drink," blahrog said gruffly. "i can fetch you a glass of water," the guard offered, without enthusiasm. "thank you," said miss featherpenny, with an attempt at sincerity. the contents of his mug made andy choke. "tastes something like cider," he gasped. blahrog downed his without a wink. "it's customary to give a guest a mug of throatduster as a sign of gratitude because he walked so far in the dust." "in this dust," miss featherpenny murmured to her second glass of water, "any distance is far." "thoughtful custom," andy said quickly. "could you export the beverage?" "sell throatduster?" blahrog was indignant. "it would be a breach of hospitality. besides, felix ii can't produce enough second-rate stuff, let alone first-rate. sometimes, in a bad year, we have to greet guests with water." "what a pity," said miss featherpenny. * * * * * she became increasingly unsympathetic as andy swallowed another throatduster at the door of the palace (a one-story building similar to a small barn), and yet another in the presence of the everking (an eighteen-inch felician with a beard-warmed paunch). andy watched the everking dim and blur on his wooden throne. swaying slightly, he muttered, "i wonder what proof this stuff is?" "in short, mr. stephens," blahrog was translating, "we cannot think of a single product which we could sell. have you any immediate suggestions?" blahrog's expression indicated that he ought to say something, but andy couldn't think of a thing, except that he didn't need any more throatduster. "no," he said firmly, if faintly. "thank you very much, but no." he passed out cold. "i'm afraid the journey was too much for him," miss featherpenny put in. "ah, yes," blahrog translated for the everking. "throatduster has that effect on some life forms. perhaps he had better retire, and discuss the situation more fully tomorrow." the everking motioned to a pair of stout-looking guards (thirty inches tall, at least). they towed miss featherpenny's immediate superior out of the royal presence. "they will show him to his room," blahrog explained. the everking let loose a quick stream of felician. "would you," blahrog addressed miss featherpenny, "enjoy meeting my daughter? the everking suggests it, since our affairs could hardly be of interest to you." "i'd be very pleased." the words were not empty ones. edith featherpenny's education in coping with men had not extended to felician males. blahrog frightened her with a feeling of superior and incomprehensible intelligence. hrom, although seventeen inches tall and weighing perhaps eleven pounds, was definitely feminine and comprehensible. "why don't women drink throatduster?" miss featherpenny asked, on the strength of a two-hour acquaintance. "the men grow the grain here," hrom explained, "and it's theirs as long as it's in the fields. however, we consider harvesting women's work. we also make the throatduster. then we sell it to the men. we don't drink because it is uneconomical." "does everyone grow his own grain?" "not any more. town women have other sources of dress money. the custom started that way, that's all." "if you'll forgive my saying so," miss featherpenny remarked, "that dress you are wearing must have taken a big chunk out of your pocket." hrom sighed. "in my mother's time, i would have thought nothing of it. now, one such gown is all i can afford." "i would have thought your father was one of the wealthier men on felix ii," miss featherpenny remarked. "he is _the_ wealthiest," hrom said. "the richest man is always minister of finance. it's only reasonable." her tone changed. "we're all poor now, since the tourist industry failed. it took every dnot we had to pay for the contract." invisible antennae shot from miss featherpenny's forehead. "you must be quite sure that planetary promotions won't fail you." she tried her best to sound casual. hrom smiled faintly. "have another of these seed cakes," she said. "thank you. they are delicious." miss featherpenny took one, regardless of calories. "of course, there is the guarantee clause: 'double your money back.'" hrom busily fluffed a cushion. "one must have some insurance," she said, having her turn at sounding casual. "tell me, are they wearing large or small hats on earth this season?" miss featherpenny conceded defeat. "it's all bonnets for summer," she said. * * * * * her first impulse was to tell andy that she thought the felicians had bought the guarantee clause, not the contract. it died at her first sight of the morning-after andy. the situation must be pretty desperate, she rationalized, when the wealthiest girl on the planet has only one dress. this is probably their last chance. andy tried to conceal his headache by being brisk and efficient. "have you considered your natural resources?" blahrog, slow and shrewdly inefficient, said, "we mine soft coal. enough for our own fires and to spare." "no one within a hundred light-years of felix ii uses coal for fuel anymore," andy said gently. "do you have enough for the plastic industries?" "we have four freighters surplus every season." blahrog was evidently banking heavily on the coal. andy wondered if coal were the only surplus on felix ii. "what are you doing with your surplus at present?" he inquired tactfully, hoping that blahrog would realize, without being told, the impossibility of supporting the population of felix ii on four freighters of soft coal. "we store it up," was the crafty answer, "and sell it to the synthetics plants on darius iv when the ionian miners go on strike." "how long since the ionians struck?" if this economic event occurred regularly, the coal surplus could assist in meeting the federation's requirements. "twenty seasons or so." blahrog's tone was off-handed, but his eyes slid guiltily toward andy and away again. andy sighed. "any other resources?" they went quickly through minerals, agricultural products and animal skins; established that felicians could not teleport, levitate or read minds. they were technologically uneducated, and had no industry on the factory-system level. "it is coal or nothing, mr. stephens," blahrog said with finality. "isn't there some way to make the federation believe that our coal is superior to other coal, and worth more?" "do you, perchance, own a sizable proportion of felician coal reserves?" blahrog nodded, guilty looking again. "well, forget it. there isn't enough." * * * * * the everking, who had been holding andy's translator to his ear in silence, burst into speech. "his foreverness says," blahrog remarked cannily, "that it appears impossible for felix ii to join the federation." "we aren't through yet," andy said quickly. "what about the tourist industry? if you'd allow visitors and advertise a little...." "no," the everking shouted, in galactic. "we tried that during the last reign," blahrog said. "it didn't work." "you're pretty far off the shipping lanes, i'll admit," andy said, "but surely you could attract enough tourists from somewhere to show a profit." "we showed a profit," blahrog said morosely. he translated a remark of the everking's. "we made money hand over fist." "then why did you quit?" andy was baffled. "why did you restrict the planet?" "because of the way we happen to look." "like leprechauns," miss featherpenny explained. "and hrom looks exactly like a little christmas fairy." blahrog winced. "the tourists found us amusing. we weren't real to them. it became difficult for us to seem real to ourselves. most of my generation couldn't grow up. the birth rate dropped. we closed the planet to keep the race alive. that's all there is to it." "surely," andy protested, "if you handled it differently...." "tourists," blahrog translated for the everking, "are out of the question." "i remember hearing about an intelligent life form that resembled teddy bears," miss featherpenny said thoughtfully. "everybody loved them on sight." "what happened to them?" blahrog asked with interest. "they became extinct." * * * * * andy glared at her. how could he accomplish anything with a stupid steno butting in? she looked away, guilty. "it's such a simple solution," he said. "it fits your situation perfectly." "that's what we thought, until we tried it," blahrog said, grinning sidelong at miss featherpenny. "if you won't try tourists," andy snapped at both of them, "i don't see exactly what you can do." "maybe you didn't cover everything in the special abilities list," miss featherpenny suggested softly. andy glared at her again. "all right, blahrog. can you think of anything you can do that most other species can't?" blahrog looked at the floor and considered. "we can walk a long way without getting tired," he offered. andy sighed, and wrote "endurance?" on his scratch pad. it was scarcely saleable. "is there anything else? anything you know how to make? besides throatduster." "we make good shoes," blahrog said hopefully. "the tourists used to buy lots of them." "hum," andy cogitated. "here we have something for which a market already exists. if we can expand the market and the production facilities...." he nailed blahrog with a finger, in conscious imitation of crumbly. "how many pairs of shoes can felix ii produce in a single season?" "if the reserves were called in to the cobbler's guild, it would be almost half the manpower of the planet...." blahrog paused, doing mental arithmetic. "four and a half million pairs, more or less." he sounded as though he were surprised. "that ought to do it," andy said gleefully. "but where will we find that many pairs of feet?" blahrog asked. "there are eight million times that many pairs of feet in the federation," andy said. "leave the advertising to planetary promotions." "it seems sort of poetic," miss featherpenny romanced. "leprechauns are supposed to be cobblers." blahrog snorted. andy turned and addressed her from the full distance between a promoter third class and a girl from the steno pool. "miss featherpenny, i will ask for your opinion when i want it." miss featherpenny answered from her side of the gulf. "yes, sir." andy had always despised rank-pullers. he turned to blahrog "i'll have to send the dope back to the home office so they can put it through the computer and send me the ad-intensity index." blahrog looked a polite enquiry. "that will tell us how effective the ad campaign will have to be to make a go of this. what's the fastest way to send a message to earth?" "radiogram the satellite station," blahrog answered. "they'll relay it to the next ship within range, and the ship will relay it to the next planet it nears with the radiogram facilities to send it to earth." "how long will it take to get an answer?" andy asked. "about twelve days." * * * * * they didn't stare at the sky while they waited for the answer. blahrog called the members of the cobbler's guild together, and delivered a series of lectures on their importance to the future of felix ii. foreseeing a return to political and economic power, the reserve members dusted off their lasts and aprons and got back into practice. for the first time in nearly thirty seasons, the applications for apprenticeship were too numerous to handle. new life showed on their faces. the master cobblers (including the everking and blahrog) worked around the clock, fabricating plastic lasts. miss featherpenny and hrom dug pictures and descriptions of the various types of galactic feet that habitually or occasionally wore shoes out of old periodicals, located by members of the newly-organized ladies' auxiliary. felix ii was humming, if not absolutely singing, with industry and good humor. some of it rubbed off on andy. he relented toward miss featherpenny to the extent of presenting her with a pair of felician shoes, fabricated by the everking. they were of the sensible walking variety, and not miss featherpenny's style. nevertheless, she was extremely pleased with the gift. like all felician shoes, they fit her perfectly. the everking, backed by his debators and ministers, issued public thanks to one andrew stephens, restorer of hope, and propagator of economic equality. the ladies' auxiliary gave a tea in miss featherpenny's honor. they were both showered with gifts from a grateful and admiring populace. the reply to the message was signed by crumbly himself. "forlorn hope," it said unsympathetically. "try something else. computer indicates ad intensity of 0.94." an ad intensity of 0.0001 means you sell someone something he wants anyway. an intensity of 1.0 means you have to make the consumer love something he thinks he hates. * * * * * andy sent a young felician on the run for blahrog, and retired to the storeroom of blahrog's dwelling, which housed two fair-sized plastic barrels of throatduster. "but you have to try," blahrog insisted, finishing his second mug of hospitality. "snow good," andy said, deep into his fifth. "even gray flannel, ad man in legend, only got to 0.87. simpossible." blahrog, who knew little about advertising or computers, repeated, "you must try. no member of the cobbler's guild has ever quit without trying." andy had been accepted as an apprentice of the guild the night before. "dunno," he said. "tell you simpossible." blahrog climbed off the barrel of throatduster. "i'll go get miss featherpenny," he said. "perhaps she can help you." "miss featherpenny. bah," andy snorted. "what good would she be? dumb steno." he tried to be fair. "nice legs, i admit. but no brains." "i'll go get miss featherpenny," blahrog repeated firmly, closing the door behind him.... "what frame of mind is he in?" miss featherpenny looked uncertainly at the heavy door to andy's store room. "drunk," blahrog informed her coldly. it takes an enormous quantity of throatduster to intoxicate a felician. intoxication is therefore considered bad form. "and belligerent," the minister of finance added. "oh, dear." miss featherpenny looked at the door again. "but what can i do?" she asked in a helpless voice. "i'm not a promoter." "he said," blahrog indicated the door, "that you were a dumb steno." "well!" hrom exclaimed. miss featherpenny's hackles invisibly rose. her mouth visibly tightened. she turned away from the door. hrom said, "you ought to try to show him." miss featherpenny looked at them, and at the surrounding examples of felician landscape and architecture. "mr. blahrog," she said suddenly, "you don't mind looking like a leprechaun, do you? as long as you don't have to meet people?" blahrog's silence was more than dignified. "what do you mean?" hrom asked. "you wouldn't mind if we used a picture of a master cobbler in the ad, would you?" blahrog thawed abruptly. "you have an idea?" "if you don't mind the picture." "he doesn't mind," hrom said, adding in felician, "after all, papa, we don't have to let any ships but the freighters land." "go ahead, then," blahrog consented. "good luck," hrom added. * * * * * "you," andy welcomed her. "bah." he shut his eyes. most of him was sprawled out on the floor. "yes, me," miss featherpenny agreed, repressing an inclination to kick him. she sat down on one of the kegs, and opened her stenographer's book. "i came to take down the ad for the shoes," she announced. "what ad?" andy moaned. "the newest, biggest, brightest ads can't get over an 0.62. how can i manage an 0.94? you're crazy." he opened his eyes. "but you do have nice legs." "felix ii is sort of quaint," miss featherpenny suggested. "why not use an old ad?" "an idea," andy enunciated, without hope. "it's sort of pretty too," miss featherpenny nudged. "we could use a color picture of it," andy said, kicking thoughtfully at an overturned stool. "the felicians are quaint looking, too." "sure," andy said. "put a felician in the foreground, cobbling." he tried to sit up. "i've seen ads like that in history books," miss featherpenny said, exuding admiration. "it's so old it's new," andy said, lying down again. "old english lettering over the top. a real cliche." he considered miss featherpenny's ankle. "peaceful scenery, felician shoes?" "not quite," said miss featherpenny. "quiet field, felician shoes?" "nope," said miss featherpenny. "you're an aggravating woman," andy said sweetly, "but you do have nice legs." "what about elysian fields?" miss featherpenny suggested. andy tasted it. "elysian fields, felician shoes." he tried to sit up again. "you got all that down?" he demanded. "yes," miss featherpenny lied. she had it in her head, but not on the steno pad. "then get somebody to send it off so we can find out if it's good enough. and come back soon." he wobbled on his elbow. "you do have...." "i think i'd better attend to sending it personally." miss featherpenny opened the door. "you rest until you feel better." blahrog had gone, but hrom was waiting for her. she looked more like a christmas fairy than usual. a mischievous one. "did you manage?" she whispered. "barely." miss featherpenny looked grim. "drink this," hrom ordered, holding out a mug of throatduster. miss featherpenny was surprised. "i thought ladies didn't drink on felix ii." "there are," hrom said, "exceptions." * * * * * the next twelve days of waiting for computer results were not as hopefully active as the first twelve. the felicians finished setting up their manufacturing and storing systems, but they didn't start making shoes. the cattle drovers forbore to slaughter the beasts who provided the leather. the everking and his debators all developed severe cases of beard-itch, a felician nervous disorder. since it is even more unseemly to scratch on felix ii than it is on earth, they retired temporarily from public life. andy also retired from public life, biting his fingernails, an earther nervous disorder. blahrog joined him in the illness, which was new to felicians. by the time the answer from planetary promotions came it was the most fashionable habit on the planet, in spite of the fact that felicians have extremely tough nails, and a pair of bony ridges rather than true teeth. the second message was also direct from crumbly. it read: "computer rates ad campaign at intensity 0.942. p. p. in action by the time you receive this. stephens ordered back to home office; promoted to first class." four earth months later, miss featherpenny entered andy's ten by twelve office, her high heels clicking on the plastic tiles, and laid a memorandum on the new steel desk. "they've been admitted," she announced. "what? who?" andy said irritably. there were times when he thought her position as his private secretary had gone to her head. "felix ii has been admitted to the federation. the contract has been fulfilled." she smiled brightly. "shall i mark the file closed?" "can't yet," andy said. "felix ii won't be a permanent member of the federation until they've been self-supporting for ten years." "why?" asked miss featherpenny. "it's a precautionary measure," andy began to explain. "oh, let's go get some lunch and forget felix ii." "yes, mr. stephens," miss featherpenny said meekly. he followed her out the door, admiring the effect of her plastic skirt. she did have nice legs.... * * * * * three years later, edith featherpenny was forced to remember felix ii. there was a communication on her mock-baroque desk. felician shoes weren't selling. felix ii wasn't making enough money. the galactic federation was threatening to take steps. she glanced at the impressive door to the inner office. andy, she knew, was engaged in reading a letter from his brother lloyd, who had just been promoted to vice-president of universal products. she judiciously forged his initials on an order to put data on the felix ii failure through the computer. in an hour and a half she had the answer. the felicians hadn't changed the styles, and their shoes didn't wear out. everybody had a pair. she considered the door again. there was really little sense in disturbing andy over such a simple matter. she forged his name on a message to blahrog. "change the styles of your shoes." she then picked up some carefully selected problem sheets from the top of the filing cabinet, and went through the impressive door. the next morning, blahrog's answer was on her desk. "felician shoes are of the cut most suited to the feet that wear them. to change them would be both foolish and unethical." it was a good thing, miss featherpenny thought, that andy was feeling better today. she went into his office, padding softly over the carpet to his contemporary prestwood desk. "good morning, edie," andy said cheerfully. "what happened? lightning strike you?" "practically," miss featherpenny said. "it's felix ii again." she handed over the sheaf of papers. "why didn't you tell me about this yesterday?" andy muttered, reading them. "i thought i could handle it." miss featherpenny made a face. "until i got that answer this morning." "it sounds like typical felician thinking," andy said. "there's no sense trying to argue by mail." he sighed. "you'd better reserve a first-class passage for me on the first ship out." "can't i go?" miss featherpenny asked. "who'd run the office?" "the stenos can stack stuff until we get back." miss featherpenny looked wistful. "i was in on the beginning of it. i want to see it through. besides, i'd like to see hrom again." "oh, all right," andy agreed. "make it two first class." * * * * * blahrog was waiting on the long porch of the space port dining room. "have a nice trip?" he asked. "what's all this about not changing the shoe styles?" andy countered. "as i told you in the message," blahrog said impatiently, "we make our shoes in the best possible shapes for the feet that will wear them. there isn't any good reason to change them." "you can't sell people two pairs of identical shoes," andy insisted. "you might be able to sell them if you changed them," miss featherpenny added, sounding reasonable. "save your arguments for the everking," blahrog said. "come on to the car." "car?" miss featherpenny exclaimed. "the everking's?" "no, mine." blahrog couldn't keep the pride out of his voice. "there are nearly two hundred cars on felix ii." andy went over the same ground in the presence of the everking. it didn't help. the everking, his minister and his debators were solidly against changing the shoes. the ethics of the cobblers' guild were involved. "if you won't follow planetary promotions' advice," he said at last, "the company can't be responsible for the outcome." he glared at the assembly. "in other words, the guarantee clause is cancelled." there was an indignant and concerned buzz from the audience. blahrog got up. "your foreverness," he said, "honorable members of the government, mr. stephens. three earth years ago, felix ii gathered together all the money the government could find, and bought a contract with planetary promotions." he paused and shuffled his feet. "we did not expect the contract to be fulfilled. we needed money, and two for one would keep us going while we attempted to educate the young to be immune to the tourists. of course, if planetary promotions found a way for us to be self-supporting without tourists, we would be equally pleased." "i thought so," miss featherpenny murmured. "really," andy said. "why didn't you let me in on it?" blahrog cleared his throat to indicate that he wasn't through. "since a way was found," he continued, "felician self respect and content has increased along with felician prosperity." he glanced uneasily at andy. "we would like to continue as we are going." "unless you change the styles," andy said flatly, "that is impossible." * * * * * miss featherpenny, realizing that they were starting over the same ground, slipped out the door and walked over to visit hrom. "so papa admitted it," hrom said, after miss featherpenny had admired the baby, and been shown over the house. "i almost told you myself, when i first met you." "you told me enough to let me guess the rest," miss featherpenny said. "have some olgan seed cakes," hrom offered. "why didn't you tell mr. stephens?" miss featherpenny took a cake. "partly because of his almighty attitude, and partly because i was on your.... ow!" she clapped a hand hastily to her jaw. "what's wrong?" hrom asked, alarmed. "broke a tooth," miss featherpenny muttered, her face contorted. "does it hurt much?" hrom's question was part sympathy and part curiosity. miss featherpenny nodded. "i'll have to find a dentist right away." "what's a dentist?" "man who fixes your teeth." "but we don't have teeth," hrom said. "i forgot," miss featherpenny moaned. "oh, lord, i guess i'll have to go all the way back to earth." hrom shook her head. "there are a lot of earthers living on darius iv. they must have a dentist. there's a ship every morning." "fine," miss featherpenny gasped. "can i get you something for the pain? would an aspirtran help?" "i'd better have two. thanks." "here. take the bottle with you." hrom was frowning worriedly. "my, i'm glad we don't have teeth." "i'll have to tell andy--mr. stephens--that i'm leaving." inspiration dawned on hrom's face. "i've hardly been out of the house since the baby was born. i'll leave him with my husband's mother and go with you." "i'd be glad of the company," miss featherpenny admitted. "good. i'll find out what time the ship leaves, and tell mother klagom about the treat she's got coming. you go tell mr. stephens and then come back here for the night." miss featherpenny heard them shouting before she opened the council chamber door. "i suggest," andy was saying, "that you either change the styles or go back to the tourist business." she pushed the door open. "mr. stephens," blahrog said mildly, "the last time calamity was upon us, you solved the problem by drinking throatduster until you got an idea. may i suggest that you try again?" "andy," miss featherpenny whispered. "well?" he snapped. "i broke a tooth. i'm going over to darius iv tomorrow, with hrom, to have it fixed." "why darius iv?" andy demanded. "what's the matter with felician dentists?" "what's hrom going to do with boy?" blahrog demanded. "hrom's leaving the baby with mrs. klagom," miss featherpenny answered, "and there aren't any felician dentists." "mrs. klagom is a silly woman," blahrog disapproved. "she would do better to leave him with me." "if you must, i suppose you must," andy admitted grudgingly. "where are you going now?" "back to hrom's house to lie down." "tell her i'll mind the baby," blahrog called after her. as she closed the door, she heard andy say, "gentlemen, if you'll supply the throatduster, i'll give it a try." * * * * * "it's awfully quiet," hrom said doubtfully, looking around at the felician spaceport. "look at the tannery chimneys. no smoke." miss featherpenny, her mouth in good repair, glanced into the bar as they passed it. "only two shippers," she said. "there are usually dozens." "they must have stopped production entirely," hrom said. "maybe andy thought of something." "i wonder if papa brought the car down for us." he hadn't. they walked into town. blahrog was in conference with the everking. "i'd better wait for him," miss featherpenny said. "i want to find out what's going on before i talk to andy." "i'd better rescue mother klagom from the baby." blahrog was as long-winded as usual. "where is mr. stephens?" miss featherpenny demanded, as soon as she saw him coming down the hall. "in his old storeroom," blahrog said moodily. "he's quite drunk, i believe, but he doesn't seem to be getting any ideas." "then why did you stop cobbling?" blahrog did a felician shrug. "we're waiting to see what happens. there's no sense making shoes any more if they aren't wanted." "i have to talk to him," miss featherpenny said. "do you have an idea?" "no," miss featherpenny lied. "but you'd let him drink himself to death, if he didn't think of anything." "you want a lift in the car?" blahrog asked, uninsulted. "i'd be pleased, if you don't mind. i just walked in from the port." * * * * * andy was not, as blahrog had suggested, very drunk. he was only hung over. "get your tooth fixed?" he asked cheerlessly. "yes." "good dentist?" miss featherpenny nodded. "he had some entirely new equipment. extremely powerful, and quite precise." "oh?" andy straightened in the old arm chair. "i've been trying to think. and drinking. throatduster isn't working this time." he paused to reconsider. "except that it makes me drunk. everything keeps getting fuzzy, and my head is wider than my shoulders." "the dentist said," miss featherpenny persisted, "that he could pull a whale's tooth as easily and smoothly as he pulled mine." "you had to have it pulled? too bad." andy made a face at the full mug of throatduster on the barrel beside him. "the felicians won't change their minds about the shoes, and they won't try tourists again. i can't think of anything else. and they can claim the guarantee. i was bluffing." "i know," miss featherpenny said. she tried again. "the dentist claims even the tiniest species could do dental work on the biggest species." she paused, hoping it would sink in. "providing the tiny species had sufficient dexterity." "blasted felicians," andy muttered. "stubborn little pigs." "that's part of their trouble, i think," miss featherpenny said. "being little, i mean. but it doesn't always work against them. when they're doing delicate work...." "like those shoes," andy agreed. "'best possible shapes already,'" he imitated blahrog. "they're one of the smallest intelligent species," miss featherpenny said in desperation. "and their manual dexterity rating is one of the highest. why, a felician could get both hands inside an earther's mouth." "and steal his fillings...." andy started. "wait a minute. you've given me an idea." miss featherpenny breathed relief. "i have? what is it?" "dentists! they can all be dentists." "all?" "well, enough of them to provide for the planet's income." "why, that's marvelous," miss featherpenny said. "it won't matter that other species think they're cute. everybody takes dentists seriously." "their appearance will work for them," andy said. "think of children's dentistry." "let's go tell them right away," miss featherpenny said, feeling like a bobbsey twin. andy swayed upward. "sit still," miss featherpenny commanded. "i'll bring you some coffee." * * * * * blahrog accepted the suggestion with felician phlegm and ministerial greed. "we'll have to change the tax system, since most of our working population will be living off-planet." "maybe you could work out a rotation system, papa." hrom had sneaked into the council chamber. "wait a minute," andy said uneasily. "how are you going to educate these dentists?" blahrog stopped and thought. "we'll use the hotels for schools," he said slowly. his face wrinkled with sly pleasure. "and we can sell the coal surplus to pay teachers and buy equipment." the everking made a wicked-sounding comment in felician. the entire assembly burst into loud, beard-wagging laughter. it had a nasty ring to it. "what did he say?" andy demanded. "he said," hrom giggled, "'let them try to treat us like stuffed toys now.'" "disgusting," said miss featherpenny. "indecent, edie," andy agreed. "but never mind. let's go home and get married." "you're a little sudden." andy grinned. "i'll have a raise coming for this, and i'd like to keep you in the family. i can't seem to think unless you're around." "took you long enough to notice," said miss featherpenny. but she didn't say it out loud. laboratory by jerome bixby _trying to keep a supercolossal laboratory invisible when two curious aliens are poking around can be a trying affair for even the most brilliant of minds._... [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from worlds of if science fiction, december 1955. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] gop's thoughts had the bluish-purple tint of abject apology: "they're landing, master." pud looked up from the tiny _thig_-field he had been shaping in his tentacles. "of course they are," he thought-snapped. "you practically invited them down, didn't you? if you'd only kept a few eyes on the detector, instead of day-dreaming--" "i'm sorry," gop said unhappily. "i wasn't day-dreaming, i was observing the magnificent skill and finesse with which you shaped the _thig_. after all, this system is so isolated. no one ever came along before.... i just supposed no one ever _would_--" "a scientist isn't supposed to suppose! until he's proven wrong, he's supposed to _know_!" thirty of pud's eyes glowered upward at the tiny alien spaceship, only ninety or so miles above the surface of the laboratory-planet and lowering rapidly. the rest of pud's eyes--more than a hundred of them, set haphazardously in his various-sized heads like _gurf_-seeds on rolls--scoured every inch of the planet's visible surface, to make certain that no sign of the vegans' presence on the planet, from the tiniest experiment to the gigantic servo-mechanical eating pits, was left operating or visible. irritatedly he squelched out of existence a _yim_-field that had taken three weeks of laborious psycho-induction to develop. his psycho-kineticut stripped it of cohesion, and its faint whine-and-crackle vanished. "i told you to deactivate _all_ our experiments," he snapped at gop. "don't you understand vegan?" abashed, the junior scientist lowered his many eyes. "i--i'm sorry," gop said humbly. "i thought the _yim_ might wait until the creatures landed, master ... perhaps their auditory apparatus would not have been sufficient to reveal its presence to them, in which case the field would not have had to be--" "all right, all right," pud grunted. "i appreciate your point ... but, dripping mouthfuls, you know that _any_ risk of detection is too great. you know the regulations on contact!" "yes, master." "speaking of which, part of your seventh head is showing." the junior scientist included the head in the personal invisibility field which he himself was broadcasting. "of all the suns in this sector," pud thought, eying the little spaceship, "and of all the planets around this particular sun, they have to choose this one to land on. chew!" gop flushed. a member of the transverse colon revivalists, he found pud's constant atheistic swearing very disturbing. he sighed inwardly. usually at least one of pud's heads could manage to keep its sense of humor, but right now all of them were like proton-storms. the senior scientist was on the verge of one of his totalitantrums. "they must have sighted flashes from our experiments," pud went on, "before you decided you could spare just _one_ set of eyes for the detector!" * * * * * though both vegans were invisible to other eyes, they remained visible to each other because their eyes were adjusted to the wavelength of their invisibility fields. by the same token, they could see all their invisible experiments--a vast litter of gadgets, gismos, gargantuan gimmicks, shining tools, huge and infinitesimal instruments, stacks of supplies, and various types of energy fields, the latter all frozen in mid-activity like smudges on a pane of glass. the sandy ground was the floor of the vegans' laboratory; small hills and outcroppings of rock were their chairs and work-benches. like a spaceship junkyard, or an enormous open-air machinery warehouse, the laboratory stretched away from the two scientists in every direction to the planetoid's near horizon. pud intensified the general invisibility field to the last notch, and the invisible experiments became even more invisible. the _thig_-field was a nameless-colored whorl of energy in the senior scientist's tentacles. in his concern for the other experiments, he had forgotten to deactivate it. it grew eagerly to the size of a back yard, then of a baseball diamond, then of a traffic oval, and one shimmering edge of it touched his body, which he had not insulated. energy crackled. pud jumped forty feet into the air, swearing, and slapped the field into non-existence between two tentacles. his body, big as an apartment house, floated slowly downward in the laboratory-planet's light gravity. the tiny alien spaceship touched the ground just as he did. the rocket flare flickered and died. the ship sat on its fins, about thirty feet--vegan feet--away. in its shining side, a few vegan inches above the still smoking rocket tubes, was a small black hole. "master, look!" gop thought. "their ship is damaged ... perhaps that's why they landed!" and he started to extend a tentative extra-sensory probe through the hole. pud lashed out with a probe of his own, knocking gop's aside before it could enter the hole. "nincompoop! ... don't go esprobing until we know if they're sensitive to it or not! can't you remember the regulations on contact for just one _minute_?" the tiny spaceship sat silently, while its occupants evidently studied the lay of the land. small turrets halfway up its sides twitched this way and that, pointing popgun armament. pud inspected the weapons extra-sensorily, and thought an amused snort: the things tossed a simple hydrogen-helium pellet for a short distance. gop, nursing a walloping headache as a result of pud's rough counterprobe, thought sourly to himself: "i try to save the _yim_ ... that's wrong. he forgets to deactivate the _thig_ ... that's all right. i esprobe ... that's wrong. he esprobes ... that's all right." at last: "they're getting out," gop observed. a tiny airlock had opened in the side of the ship. a metal ladder poked out, swung down, settled against the ground. the aliens--two of them--appeared; looked down, looked up, looked to the right and to the left. then they came warily down the ladder. for a few minutes the giant vegans watched the creatures wander about. one of them approached one of pud's tails. irritatedly pud lifted it out of the way. the little creature snooped on, unaware that twenty tons of invisible silicoid flesh hung over its head. pud curled the tail close to him, and did likewise with all his other tails. "you'd better do the same," he advised gop, his thought-tone peevish. silently, gop drew in his tails. one unwise move, he knew, and the senior scientist would start thinking in roars. one of gop's tails scraped slightly against a huge boulder. the scales made a tractor-on-gravel sound. pud thought in roars. the tiny creature had stopped and was turning its helmeted head this way and that, as if trying to see where the sound had come from. it had drawn a weapon of some sort from a holster at its belt--another thermonuclear popgun. the creature turned and came back toward the vegans, heading for his ship. pud lifted his tail again. the creature passed under it, reached the ship, joined its partner. * * * * * "i heard it too, johnny," helen gorman said nervously. "a loud scraping noise--" "it seemed to come from right behind me," johnny gorman said. "damn near scared me off the planet ... i thought it was a rockslide. or the biggest critter in creation, sneaking up on me. i couldn't see anything, though ... could you?" "no." johnny stood there, blaster in hand, looking around, eyes sharp behind his faceplate. he saw nothing but flat, grayish-red ground, a scattering of stone outcroppings large and small; nothing but the star-clouded black of space above the near horizon, and the small sun of the system riding a low hillock like a beacon. "blue light," he said thoughtfully. "green light. red and purple lights. and a mess of crazy colors we never saw before. whatever those flashes were, honey, they looked artificial to me...." helen frowned. "we were pretty far off-world when we saw them, johnny. maybe they were aurorae--or reflections from mineral pockets. or magnetic phenomena of some kind ... that could be why the ship didn't handle right during landing--" johnny studied the upside-down dials on the protruding chest-board of his spacesuit. "no neon in the atmosphere," he said. "darned little argon, or any other inert gas. the only large mineral deposits within fifty miles are straight down. and this clod's about as magnetic as an onion." he gave the surrounding bleak terrain another narrow-eyed scrutiny. "i suppose it _could_ have been some kind of aurora, though ... it's gone now, and there isn't a sign of anything that could have produced such a rumpus." he looked around again, then sighed and finally holstered his blaster. "guess i'm the worrying type, hon. nothing alive around here." "i wonder what that sound was." "probably a rock falling. this area's been undisturbed for god knows how many million years ... the jolt of our landing just shook things up a little." he grinned, a little sheepishly. "as for the landing ... i was so scared after that meteor hit us, it's a wonder i didn't nail the ship halfway into the planet, instead of just jolting us up." helen looked up at the three-foot hole in the side of the ship. johnny followed her gaze, and grunted. "we'd better get to work." he turned to the ladder that led up to the airlock. "i'll rig the compressor to charge the spare oxy-tanks ... we'll have to delouse this air of ammonia, but otherwise it's fine. look, honey, i won't need any help; why don't you get busy on a pc?" helen nodded, still staring up at the meteor-hole. "you know," she said slowly, "it wouldn't happen again this way in a million years, johnny. thank god, this clod was here ... we ought to name it lifesaver." "yeah, sure," johnny said ironically. "it'll save our lives. only thing is, it got us into this mess in the first place!" he started up the ladder, using only his arms, legs trailing. helen got down on hands and knees and began poking around for the two dozen or so samples needed for standard planetary classification. bits of rock, air, vegetable growth, dust--the dust was very important. all went into vac-containers at her belt. then suddenly she said, "o-o-o-_oof_!" and reared back on her knees and clapped both hands to her helmet. her eyes squeezed shut behind her faceplate, then opened wide and frightened. by the time her hands reached her helmet, johnny had his blaster out and was floating toward the ground, looking around for something to shoot at. his boots touched, and two long light-gravity steps brought him to her side. * * * * * pud had been leaning over the tiny spaceship, one of his faces only feet above the little creatures. gop's thought came: "what are they?" "fanged if i know. bipeds ... never saw such little ones." pud adjusted several eyes to a certain wavelength and studied the creatures through their spacesuits. he gave gop a thought-nod: "mammals. bi-sexual. they're probably mates." "it's a miracle they didn't land right in the middle of one of our experiments." that brought back pud's ill-temper. "miracle! didn't you see me give this cosmic kiddycar of theirs a couple of psychokineticlouts so they'd land where they did?" the senior scientist glared around at their thousand-and-one experiments, and then down at the little spaceship, smaller than the smallest of them, squatting on toy fins. he curled a tentacle, as if wishing he could swat it. gop knew, however, that despite pud's irritation at having his work interrupted, he was just a little intrigued by the aliens. no matter how insignificant they were they were animate life of some intelligence, and pud must be wondering about them. gop thought it might be a good idea to dwell on that, in order to keep pud from getting his heads in an uproar again. "can you get into their thoughts?" he inquired. "i haven't tried. i don't think i could keep my potential down to their level." "wonder where they're from." "who cares?" pud snorted. "i just wish they'd go away." gop noted, though, that pud's heads were lowering closer over the creatures. "they're nowhere near acceptable contact level, are they?" gop said, after a moment. "from their appearance, i'd say they're even beneath classification. reaction motor in their ship. primitive weapons. protective garments ... they can't even adjust physically to hostile environments!" a minute passed. pud said, "mm. well. i think i _will_ see what i can read ... just to have something to talk about at the scientists' club." he sent out a tentative probe ... a little one ... just enough to register in one of his brains the total conscious content of one of the little creature's minds. he was afraid to go deeper, after the subconscious, though actually that was far more important. but deep probing would probably be felt for what it was, while conscious probing was just a little painful. the creature popped erect in its squatting position, and clapped its upper extremities to its head. the other one, which had been scrambling up the ladder to the ship's airlock, drew its popgun and joined the first. "they're from someplace called earth," pud said. "in the v-lm-12xva sector of this galaxy, as nearly as i can make out. they're an exploration team, sent out by their planet to gather data on the nature of the physical universe." he paused to consult the third memory bank of his fifth brain, where he had impressed the content of the creature's mind. "they've had space travel for about two hundred of their years. i translate that as about eleven of ours." he consulted again. "highly materialistic. externally focused. very limited sensorium. an infant race, chasing everything that moves, round and round through their little three-dimensional universe. they've a long way to go." "what are they doing here?" "hm." pud consulted again. "a routine exploration flight brought them to this system ... and an almost unbelievable coincidence has served to delay them here. they dropped their meteor-screens for just a moment--at just the wrong moment. a large meteor came along, entered the ship, and destroyed both their atmosphere-manufacturing equipment and the large pressure tank of atmosphere which they kept as reserve in case the equipment should fail." he paused. "mixture of hydrogen and oxygen ... they can't live without it. at any rate, the ship was evacuated, and they barely had time to get into the ... mm, spacesuits, they call them ... which they now wear. the accident left them with no atmosphere whatever, except the small amount in the tanks of those suits. that will be exhausted in a short time ... i gather that if this planet hadn't been here, they'd have been goners. as it stands, they plan to charge their spare suit-tanks, which weren't harmed, with the air of this planet, and then return to their earth, subsisting on the tanked air, by hyperspatial drive...." again pud paused. "hm. well, now! i'd overlooked that. so they have hyperspatial drive, at least ... and after only two hundred years of space travel! hm. perhaps they _are_ worth a closer look...." pud lowered his heads over the two little aliens, who were moving warily, popguns drawn, away from the ship. "pud," gop said nervously. "what?" "one of them is crawling toward the time-warp." "well, don't tell _me_ about it ... lift the warp out of the way!" gop extended a tentacle, first reconstituting it on the seventh atomic sublevel so he wouldn't get it blown off, and gently picked up the time-warp. it looked like a blue-violet frozen haze in his grasp. he set it down on the other side of the spaceship, anchoring it again to _now_ so it wouldn't go flapping off along the time-continuum. "so they _didn't_ land because they saw flashes from our experiments," he said a little triumphantly. one of pud's heads turned and gave the junior scientist an acid look, while the others continued to observe the aliens. "they lowered their meteor-screens," he said nastily, "thus bringing about this entire bother, because they wanted to get a better look at the flashes." gop was silent, but he thought acidly: "that's what you say--you won't let _me_ esprobe, and when you do, you manage to prove it's all my fault." * * * * * johnny gorman had just said to helen, "i want to chip a few samples off that outcropping over there ... come on, hon." he started toward the ridge of gray-black rock. helen followed on his heels. "as-pir-in," she said, deliberately falsetto, and her helmet-valet fed her another pill with a sip of water. "then we'll go back and stick inside the ship until the tanks are charged," johnny went on, a little grimly. "i think we're just edgy. planets don't give people headaches ... and there's nothing alive within in a million miles of this dustball." he hefted his blaster, which he had adjusted to wide-field. "but just in case...." * * * * * "pud," gop said, still more nervously. "yes, i see, you idiot! lift the _tharn_-field out of their way ... i'll take care of the space-warp generator!" the giant vegans, for all their bulk, moved soundlessly and at great speed until they were between the aliens and the stone outcropping toward which they appeared to be heading. gop extended a tentacle, curled it at an odd angle, and picked up the shimmering _tharn_-field, which was the vegans' reservoir of basic universal energy. set in any energy matrix, _tharn_ became that energy; added to any existing energy, _tharn_ augmented it to any desired potential. thus it was extremely valuable to their experiments ... and very risky stuff to handle, as well. gingerly, gop set the _tharn_ down beyond the outcropping. at the same time he picked up several instruments that lay nearby--an electron-wrench, a _snurling_-iron, a _plotz_-meter, several pencil-rays. he placed them on the ground beside the _tharn_. pud had curled twelve tentacles around the space-warp generator--it was as big as a city block, and heavy, even in light gravity. he puffed a thought at gop: "give me a tentacle." gop helped his master place the generator safely on the other side of the ridge. * * * * * johnny gorman banged off a handful of rock, and shoved it into the vac-container at his belt. "okay, hon," he said. "let's go." they stood once more moment atop the ridge, looking out over the barren, rusty-gray plain that the ridge had until now concealed from their gaze. "looks just as dead as the rest," johnny observed. "i guess we were just jumpy over nothing." he turned to start down the slope. "come on." in three long light-gravity steps he had reached the bottom, and turned to steady helen. she wasn't there. she had tripped and tumbled off the other side of the ridge. he could hear her screaming. * * * * * "_putrefied proteins!_" pud roared. "help me get it out of the _tharn_!" the two vegans leaned over the ridge. while gop forced the writhing folds of the _tharn_-field apart with two reconstituted tentacles, pud reached in, plucked the little alien out and set it upright. it immediately scrabbled up the side of the ridge as fast as it could and joined its mate, which had bounded up the other side. "now look at what you've done!" pud raged. "what about the rules on contact! the examiners will get this out of us when we report on our projects ... mountains of bites, we've _revealed_ ourselves!" "not really, master," gop said, rushing his thoughts. "all the creature will know is that it tumbled into the field, and then was somehow ejected by it ... a trick of gravity, perhaps ... a magnetic vortex ... it won't know what really happened--" "that--field--was--supposed--to--be--turned--_off_," pud said, every one of his faces green with rage. "i--" "you are a stupid, clumsy, few-headed piece of provender!" gop flushed clear down to his tails. "i'm sorry," he said. "i can't think of everything at once! i must have accidentally activated the _tharn_ when i moved it. i'm _sorry_!" pud clapped a tentacle to his prime forehead. "what next!" he moaned. * * * * * "oh, johnny, johnny," helen sobbed. "i tripped when i started to turn around, and fell down the other side, and all of a sudden ... it was horrible ... i thought i was going _crazy_--" johnny gorman had his arms tight around her. behind her back, his blaster was pointed straight down the far slope of the ridge, ready to atomize anything that moved. "what, honey?" he said. "what happened? i didn't see anything near you ... what happened?" "it was like i was in a hurricane ... i couldn't see anything, but something seemed to be whirling around me, something as big as the universe ... and it seemed to be whirling _inside_ me too! i felt--it felt like ... johnny, i was _crossed_!" "crossed?" he shook her gently. "what do you mean, you were crossed?" "it felt like my right side was my left side, and, my heart was beating backwards, and my eyes were looking at each other, and i was just twisted all downside up outside and inside out upside, and ... johnny," she wailed, "i _am_ going crazy!" "oh, no, you're not," he said grimly. "you're going back to the ship! i don't know what gives with this creepy clod, but i know we're not moving an inch outside the ship until we blast off! _come on!_" * * * * * "they're crawling back toward their ship, pud ... _look_ out, they're heading for the dimensional-warp!" pud extended a tentacle ninety feet and slapped the dimensional-warp out of the path of the scurrying creatures. the warp bounced silently on the rocky ground, caromed like a fire-ball from boulder to boulder, encountered stray radiation from the _tharn_-field that still glowed invisibly on the other side of the ridge, and became activated; it emitted concentric spheres of nameless-colored energy, and a vast snapping and crackling. "_there_," gop thought triumphantly at pud. "that's just what _i_ did with the _tharn_-field.... i guess nobody is above accidents, eh?" pud thought pure vitamins at his junior scientist. "you idiot, i didn't accidentally turn on the warp! you left the _tharn_ on, and _it_ triggered the warp! _why didn't you deactivate the_ tharn?" "why didn't _you_?" gop shot back. "you were there too!" pud lashed a tentacle over the outcropping, and the _tharn_-field became inactive. then he looked around, and every eye in his prime head popped. "look out, the dimensional-warp is spreading ... it's lost its cohesion ... oh, digestion, they're in _that_ now!" * * * * * johnny and helen gorman were in a universe of blazing stars and nebulae that whirled like cosmic carousels; of gas clouds that seethed in giant turbulence ... it was the universe of creation, or a universe in its death-throes.... "_johnny_...." "_helen_...." the boiling universe exploded away from them in soundless radiation, in all directions ... in _five_ directions, their subconscious minds told them ... it vanished into nothingness, a nothingness that surrounded them like white blindness, and then suddenly it was restored again, roiling, churning, flashing with the bright eyes of novae, shot with the sinuous streamers of rushing gas clouds, pulsing with the heartbeats of winking variables ... and suddenly they were tumbling head over heels along the rocky ground of the little planetoid again. "_johnny_...." "_helen_...." "at least we got them out of _that_," pud puffed. "the sub-temporal field, gop ... help me lift it ... hurry!" "master, _all_ our experiments are activated! the _tharn_ radiated enough to activate _everything_!" "_help me lift the sub-temporal field!_" "master, it's too late ... they're _in_ it!" * * * * * a million miles above their heads was the vast sweep of all time, like a rushing, glassy, upside-down river ... they tumbled through a chaos where time, twice in each beat of their hearts, bounced back and forth between creation and entropy, and took them with it.... time was a torrent beneath whose surface they were yanked back and forth from beyond the end to before the beginning like guppies on a deepsea line; a torrent whose banks were dark eternity, and whose waters were the slippery substance of years.... "_johnny_...." "_helen_...." pud deactivated the sub-temporal field with a lash of a tentacle, and the two little aliens rolled from it like dice from a cup, gasping and wailing. immediately they started running again toward their ship, dodging between the faint flickers of red, blue, green, scarlet and nameless-colored light that marked the location of those experiments which, now activated and releasing their fantastic energies, defied even the invisibility fields that still surrounded them. the aliens brushed against another experimental field, and it twisted itself in one millionth of a second into a fifth-dimensional topological monstrosity that would take weeks to untangle--if it didn't explode first, for it bulged dangerously at the seams. pud hastily back-tentacled the field into an interdimensional-vortex, where, if it did explode, it would disrupt an uninhabited universe so far down on the scale of subspaces that nobody would get hurt. then the senior scientist gathered ten tons of machinery in a tentacle and hoisted it while the creatures ran beneath. gop was psychokineticarrying five energy-fields toward the sidelines, with another dozen or so wrapped in his tentacles. pud silently dumped his load of machinery and reached for something else in the creatures' path. but the creatures scurried erratically, stopping, dashing off in this direction, skidding to a halt as they saw something else to terrify them, and then dashing off in _that_ direction just as the vegans had dealt with an obstacle to their progress in _this_ direction. "pud! ... one of them fell through the intraspatial-doorway to the other side of the planet!" "well, for the love of swallowing, reach through and _get_ it! if those beasts see it, they'll tear it to pieces!" * * * * * helen gorman faced something that was a cross between a tomcat and an eggplant on stilts. it looked hungry. it bounded toward her in forty foot lopes. "johnny ... _johnny, where are you_...." helen fainted. several other garage-sized beasts converged on her, all looking as hungry as the first. in reality, they weren't hungry--their food consisted of stone, primarily, while they also drew sustenance from cosmic radiation. but they liked to tear things to pieces. they were native to the planetoid; the vegan scientists had gathered them up and shoved them through the intraspatial-doorway to this side of the planet, where they wouldn't be underfoot all the time. it was a one-way doorway, through which pud or gop would occasionally reach to pluck one of the beasts back for use in experimentation. now, just as the beasts reached helen gorman, one of gop's tentacles came through the doorway, followed by one of his smaller heads. the junior scientist picked up helen, and hastily extruded another tentacle from the first to bat aside one of the beasts that leaped after her. the part of the tentacle bearing helen gorman swished back through the doorway. the head and the rest of the tentacle followed. the beasts commenced fighting among themselves, which was what they did most of the time anyway. gop, however, in his haste, had forgotten to repolarize the molecules of his body while retreating through the doorway ... and the moment he cleared the doorway on the other side of the planet, the doorway reversed--still one-way, but now the _other_ way. and eventually one of the beasts, attracted by all the flickering and flashing and frantic scrabbling visible through the doorway, abandoned the fun of the fight and leaped, like a ten-ton gopher, through the opening. the others followed, naturally. they always chased and tore apart the first one to cut and run. * * * * * gop had just set helen gorman on the ground, and johnny gorman, seeing her apparently materialize from thin air and float downward, had just started to stagger toward her, when the ten-ton gopher began to vivisect one of pud's tails. the animal hadn't seen the tail, of course--it was invisible. but it had stumbled over it, and been intrigued. pud leaped ninety feet into the air, roaring. roaring out loud, not thought-roaring. and roaring with a dozen gigantic throats. the sound thundered and rolled and crashed and echoed from the low hills around. the beast fell off pud's tail, bounced, looked around, and made for johnny gorman as the only visible moving object. johnny's eyes were still bugging from the gargantuan roar he had just heard. he saw the beast and dodged frantically, just as gop's invisible tentacle shot out to bowl the beast over. in dodging, johnny tumbled into another energy-field. ... he stood on his own face, saw before his eyes the hairy mole on the back of his neck, and threw a gray-and-red insideout hand before his eyes in complete terror. then pud nudged him gently out of the field, and before johnny's eyes, in an instantaneous and unfathomable convolution, the hand became normal again. about that time the rest of the beasts emerged from the intraspatial-doorway. while some of them continued the fight that had begun on the other side of the planet, others started for johnny gorman and for helen, who was now sitting up weakly and shaking her head. a beast resembling a steam-shovel on spider's legs rammed full-tilt into a force-field. the field bounced fifty feet and merged with another field in silent but cataclysmic embrace, producing a sub-field which converted one tenth of one percent of all water within a hundred foot radius to alcohol. the effect on johnny and helen was instantaneous ... they became drunk as hoot-owls. their eyes bleared and refused to focus. their jaws sagged. johnny stumbled, and sat down hard. he and helen stared dolefully at each other through their faceplates. pud gave up every last hope of avoiding contact. * * * * * he picked up johnny with one tentacle and helen with another and set them down on top of their spaceship, where there was just enough reasonably flat surface on the snip's snub nose to hold them. the beasts were chasing one another around and around through the wreckage of the laboratory. they romped and trampled over delicate machines, sent heavier equipment spinning to smash against boulders; they ran head-on into sizzling energy-fields and, head-off, kept running. pud grabbed up an armful of beasts, raced to the doorway, reversed it and poured them through. he grabbed up more beasts, threw them after. gop was busily engaged in the same task. some of the beasts began fighting among themselves even as the vegans held them--gop jumped as one tore six cubic yards of flesh from a tentacle. he healed the tentacle immediately, then hardened it and all his other tentacles to the consistency of pig iron. he held back that particular beast from the lot. when the others had been tossed through, he hauled back his tentacle, wound up, and pegged the offending beast with all his might. it streaked through the doorway like a projectile, legs and eyestalks rigid. pud plucked a machine from the two-foot claws of the very last beast, and tossed the beast through. then he examined the machine--it was beyond repair. he slammed that through the doorway too. in ten seconds, the two vegan scientists had slapped and mauled all their rioting experiments into inaction. silence descended over the battle-ground. silence, more nerve-shattering than the noise had been. * * * * * pud looked around at the remains of the laboratory, every face forest-green with rage. machines lay broken, tilted, flickering, whining, wheezing, like the bodies of the wounded. delicate instruments were smashed to bits. the involuted field that pud had flung through the vortex had evidently burst, as he had feared--for the vortex had vanished. so, probably, had the universe the field had burst in. the two fields that had interlocked were ruined, each having contaminated the other beyond use. other energy-fields, having absorbed an excess of energy from the _tharn_, were bloated monstrosities or burned-out husks. it would take weeks to get the place straightened up ... even longer to replace the smashed equipment and restore the ruined fields. many experiments in which time had been a factor would take months--and in some cases years--to duplicate. all that was bad enough. but worst of all ... the little aliens had been contacted. like it or not, the aliens knew that something was very much up on this planetoid. like it or not, they'd report that, and more of their kind would come scurrying back to investigate. pud groaned, and studied the little creatures, who sat huddled together on the nose of the ship. "well," he thought sourly to gop, "here we are." "i--yes, master." "do you think that from now on you'll watch the detector?" "oh, yes, master--i will." "and do you think it matters a chew now if you do or not? now that we've _revealed_ ourselves?" "i--i--" "we have a choice," pud said acidly. "we can destroy these little aliens, so they can't report what they've seen. that's out, of course. or we can move our laboratory to another system ... a formidable job, and food knows whether we'd ever find another planet so suited to our needs. and even if we _did_ do that, and they found nothing when they returned here, they'd still know we were around somewhere." "they wouldn't know that _we're_ around, master." "they'd know _something_ is around ... don't mince words with me, you idiot. you know that they've seen enough to draw the very conclusions we don't want them to draw. you know how vital it is that no race under contact-level status know of the existence of other intelligent races ... particularly races far in advance of it. such knowledge can alter the entire course of their development." "yes, master." "so what are we to do, eh? here we are. and there--" pud motioned with a tentacle at the little aliens--"they are. as you can see, we must reveal ourselves to still a greater extent ... they can't even get into their ship to leave the planet without our help!" gop was silent. "also--" pud sent a brief extra-sensory probe at the aliens, and both of them clutched at their helmeted heads--"their problem of air supply is critical. there is very little left in their suit-tanks, and the time required for their machines to refine air from this planet's atmosphere has been wasted in--in--the _entertainment_ so recently concluded. at this moment they are resigned to death. naturally, we must help them." he paused. "well, my brilliant, capable, young junior nincompoop? any ideas on how we can help them, and still keep our scientists' status when the examiners get the story of this mess out of us?" "yes, master." "i thought not." pud continued his frowning scrutiny of the aliens for a moment. then he looked up, his faces blank. "eh? you do?" "yes, master." "well, great gobs of gulosity, _what_?" "master, do you recall the time experiment that you wanted to try a few years ago? do you recall that the idea appealed to you very much, but that you wanted an intelligent subject for it, so we could determine results by observing rational reactions?" "i recall it, all right. my brave young junior scientist declined to be the subject ... though food knows you're hardly intelligent enough to qualify anyway. yes, i remember ... but what's that got to do with--" pud paused. the jaws of his secondary heads, which were more given to emotion, dropped. then slowly his faces brightened, and his many eyes began to glow. "ah," he thought softly. "you see, master?" "i do indeed." "if it works, we'll have no more problem. the examiners will be pleased at our ingenuity. the aliens will no longer--" "i see, i _see_ ... all right, let's try it!" pud reached down and picked one of the aliens off the nose of the ship. it slumped in his grasp immediately. the other alien began firing its popgun frantically at the seemingly empty air through which its mate mysteriously rose. the thermonuclear bolts tickled pud's hide. he sighed and relaxed his personal invisibility field and became visible. that didn't matter now. the alien stared upward. its face whitened. it dropped its popgun and fell over backward, slid gently off the ship's nose and started a slow light-gravity fall toward the ground. pud caught it, and said, "i thought that might happen. evidently they lose consciousness rather easily at unaccustomed sights. a provincial trait." he slid the aliens gently into the airlock of their ship. the vegans waited for the aliens to regain consciousness. eventually one did. immediately, it dragged the other back from the lock, into the body of the ship. a moment later the lock closed. "now hold the ship," pud told gop, "while i form the field." flame flickered from the ship's lower end. it rose a few inches off the ground. gop placed a tentacle on its nose and forced it down again. he waited, while the ship throbbed and wobbled beneath the tentacle. now, for the first time, gop himself esprobed the aliens. he sent a gentle probe into one of their minds--and blinked at the turmoil of terror and helplessness he found there. faced with death at the hands of "giant monsters," the aliens preferred to take off and "die cleanly" in space from asphyxiation, or even by a mutual self-destruction pact that would provide less discomfort. gop withdrew his probe, wondering that any intelligent creature could become sufficiently panicky to overlook the fact that if the "monsters" had wanted to kill them, they would be a dozen times dead already. pud had shaped a time-field of the type necessary to do the job. it was a pale-green haze in his tentacles. he released the field and, under his direction, it leaped to surround the spaceship, clinging to it like a soft cloak. as the vegans watched, it seemed to melt into the metal and become a part of it--the whole ship glowed a soft, luminescent green. "let it go," pud said. gop removed his tentacle. the ship rose on its flicker of flame--rose past the vegans' enormous legs and tails, past their gigantic be-tentacled bodies, past their many necks and faces, rose over their heads. gop sneezed as the flame brushed a face. and pud began shaping a psychokinetic bolt in his prime brain. for this purpose he marshaled the resources of all his other brains as well, and every head except his prime one assumed an idiot stare. he said, "now!" and loosed the bolt as a tight-beam, aimed at the ship and invested with ninety-two separate and carefully calculated phase-motions. the ship froze, fifty miles over their heads. the flicker from its rocket tubes became a steady, motionless glow. pud said, "now," again, and altered a number of the phase-motions once, twice, three times, in an intricate pattern. the ship vanished. as one, the many heads of the vegan scientists turned to stare at the point in the sky where they had first sighted the ship. there it was, coasting past the laboratory-planet, tubes lifeless; coasting on the velocity that had brought it from the last star it had visited. there it was, just as it had been before the tiny aliens had sighted the flickerings that had caused them to relax their meteor-screens. there it was, sent back in time to before all the day's frantic happenings had happened. * * * * * pud and gop esprobed the distant aliens ... and then looked at each other in complete satisfaction. "fine!" pud said. "they don't remember a thing ... not a single alimentary thing!" he looked around them, at the shambles of the laboratory. "it's a pity the experiment couldn't repair all this as well ... is everything turned off?" "everything, master." "no experiments operating, you nincompoop? no flashes?" "none, master." "then they should have no reason to land, you idiot. "you know," pud said, "in a way it was rather a fortunate thing that they landed. it enabled me to perform a very interesting experiment. we have demonstrated that a creature returned through time along the third _flud_-subcontinuum will not retain memory of the process, or of what transpired between a particular point in time and one's circular return to it. i'm glad you stimulated me to think of it. best idea i ever had." pud turned his attention to the ruins of the laboratory. he moved off, half his heads agonizing over the destruction caused by today's encounter, the other half glowing at its satisfactory conclusion. gop sighed, and esprobed the little aliens for the last time ... a final check, to make certain that they remembered nothing. "_johnny, how about that little planet down there ... to the left?_" "_let's drop the meteor-screens for a better look._" hastily, gop reached out and tapped the meteor aside. "_heck, that planet looks like a dud, all right ... but it's two days to the next one ... and i've got a terrific headache!_" "_funny ... i've got one too._" "_well, what say we land and stretch our_--" by that time gop had hastily withdrawn his headache-causing probe. he stared anxiously upward. after a moment, he said, "they're landing, master." the princess and the physicist by evelyn e. smith illustrated by kossin [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy science fiction june 1955. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] elected a god, zen the omnipotent longed for supernatural powers--for he was also zen the all-put-upon, a galactic sucker! zen the terrible lay quiescent in the secret retreat which housed his corporeal being, all the aspects of his personality wallowing in the luxury of a day off. how glad he was that he'd had the forethought to stipulate a weekly holiday for himself when first this godhood had been thrust upon him, hundreds of centuries before. he'd accepted the perquisites of divinity with pleasure then. it was some little time before he discovered its drawbacks, and by then it was too late; he had become the established church. all the aspects of his personality rested ... save one, that is. and that one, stretching out an impalpable tendril of curiosity, brought back to his total consciousness the news that a spaceship from earth had arrived when no ship from earth was due. _so what?_ the total consciousness asked lazily of itself. _probably they have a large out-of-season order for hajench. my hajench going to provide salad bowls for barbarians!_ when, twenty years previously, the earthmen had come back to their colony on uxen after a lapse of thousands of years, zen had been hopeful that they would take some of the divine work off his hands. after all, since it was they who had originally established the colony, it should be their responsibility. but it seemed that all humans, not merely the uxenach, were irresponsible. the earthmen were interested only in trade and tribute. they even refused to believe in the existence of zen, an attitude which he found extremely irritating to his ego. * * * * * true, uxen prospered commercially to a mild extent after their return, for the local ceramics that had been developed in the long interval found wide acceptance throughout the galaxy, particularly the low bowls which had hitherto been used only for burning incense before zen the formidable. now every two-bit planet offered hajench in its gift shops. culturally, though, uxen had degenerated under the new earth administration. no more criminals were thrown to the skwitch. xwoosh lost its interest when new laws prohibited the ancient custom of executing the losing side after each game. there was no tourist trade, for the planet was too far from the rest of the galaxy. the commercial spaceships came only once every three months and left the same day. the two destroyers that "guarded" the planet arrived at rare intervals for fueling or repairs, but the crew never had anything to do with the uxenach. local ordinance forbade the maidens of uxen to speak to the outlanders, and the outlanders were not interested in any of the other native products. but the last commercial spaceship had departed less than three weeks before on its regular run, and this was not one of the guard ships. zen reluctantly conceded to himself that he would have to investigate this situation further, if he wanted to retain his reputation for omniscience. sometimes, in an occasional moment of self-doubt, he wondered if he weren't too much of a perfectionist, but then he rejected the thought as self-sacrilege. zen dutifully intensified the beam of awareness and returned it to the audience chamber where the two strange earthmen who had come on the ship were being ushered into the presence of the king by none other than guj, the venerable prime minister himself. "gentlemen," guj beamed, his long white beard vibrating in an excess of hospitality, "his gracious majesty will be delighted to receive you at once." and crossing his wrists in the secular xa, he led the way to where uxlu the fifteenth was seated in full regalia upon his imposing golden, gem-encrusted throne. uxlu himself, zen admitted grudgingly, was an imposing sight to anyone who didn't know the old yio. the years--for he was a scant decade younger than guj--had merely lent dignity to his handsome features, and he was still tall and upright. "welcome, earthlings, to uxen," king uxlu said in the sonorous tones of the practiced public speaker. "if there is aught we can do to advance your comfort whilst you sojourn on our little planet, you have but to speak." he did not, zen noted with approval, rashly promise that requests would necessarily be granted. which was fine, because the god well knew who the carrier out of requests would be--zen the almighty, the all-powerful, the all-put-upon.... "thank you, your majesty," the older of the two scientists said. "we merely seek a retired spot in which to conduct our researches." "researches, eh?" the king repeated with warm interest. "are you perhaps scientists?" "yes, your majesty." every one of zen's perceptors quivered expectantly. earth science was banned on uxen, with the result that its acquisition had become the golden dream of every uxena, including, of course, their god. the older scientist gave a stiff bow. "i am an anthropologist. my name is kendrick, professor alpheus kendrick. my assistant, dr. peter hammond--" he indicated the tall young man with him--"is a physicist." * * * * * the king and the prime minister conferred together in whispers. zen wished he could join them, but he couldn't materialize on that plane without incense, and he preferred his subjects not to know that he could be invisibly present, especially on his day off. of course, his immaterial omnipresence was a part of the accepted dogma, but there is a big difference between accepting a concept on a basis of faith or of proven fact. "curious researches," the king said, emerging from the conference, "that require both physics _and_ anthropology." "yes," said kendrick. "they are rather involved at that." peter hammond shuffled his feet. "perhaps some of our technicians might be of assistance to you," the king suggested. "they may not have your science, but they are very adept with their hands...." "our researches are rather limited in scope," kendrick assured him. "we can do everything needful quite adequately ourselves. all we need is a place in which to do it." "you shall have our own second-best palace," the king said graciously. "it has both hot and cold water laid on, as well as central heating." "we've brought along our own collapsible laboratory-dwelling," kendrick explained. "we just want a spot to set it up." uxlu sighed. "the royal parks are at your disposal. you will undoubtedly require servants?" "we have a robot, thanks." "a robot is a mechanical man who does all our housework," hammond, more courteous than his superior, explained. zen wondered how he could ever have felt a moment's uneasiness concerning these wonderful strangers. "zen will be interested to hear of this," the prime minister said cannily. he and the king nodded at one another. "_who_ did you say?" kendrick asked eagerly. "zen the terrible," the king repeated, "zen the all-powerful, zen the encyclopedic. surely you have heard of him?" he asked in some surprise. "he's uxen's own particular, personal and private god, exclusive to our planet." "yes, yes, of course i've heard about him," kendrick said, trembling with hardly repressed excitement. _what a correct attitude!_ zen thought. _one rarely finds such religious respect among foreigners._ "in fact, i've heard a great deal about him and i should like to know even more!" kendrick spoke almost reverently. "he _is_ an extremely interesting divinity," the king replied complacently. "and if your robot cannot teleport or requires a hand with the heavy work, do not hesitate to call on zen the accommodating. we'll detail a priest to summon--" "the robot manages very well all by itself, thank you," kendrick said quickly. * * * * * in his hideaway, the material body of zen breathed a vast multiple sigh of relief. he was getting to like these earthmen more and more by the minute. "might i inquire," the king asked, "into the nature of your researches?" "an investigation of the prevalent nuclear ritual beliefs on uxen in relation to the over-all matrix of social culture, and we really must get along and see to the unloading of the ship. good-by, your majesty ... your excellency." and kendrick dragged his protesting aide off. "if only," said the king, "i were still an absolute monarch, i would teach these earthlings some manners." his face grew wistful. "well i remember how my father would have those who crossed him torn apart by wild skwitch." "if you did have the earthlings torn apart by wild skwitch, sire," guj pointed out, "then you would certainly never be able to obtain any information from them." uxlu sighed. "i would merely have them torn apart a little--just enough so that they would answer a few civil questions." he sighed again. "and, supposing they did happen to--er--pass on, in the process, think of the tremendous lift to my ego. but nobody thinks of the king's ego any more these days." no, things were not what they had been since the time the planet had been retrieved by the earthlings. they had not communicated with uxen for so many hundreds of years, they had explained, because, after a more than ordinarily disastrous war, they had lost the secret of space travel for centuries. now, wanting to make amends for those long years of neglect, they immediately provided that the earth language and the earth income tax become mandatory upon uxen. the language was taught by recordings. since the uxenach were a highly intelligent people, they had all learned it quickly and forgotten most of their native tongue except for a few untranslatable concepts. "must be a new secret atomic weapon they're working on," uxlu decided. "why else should they come to such a remote corner of the galaxy? and you will recall that the older one--kendrick--said something about nuclear beliefs. if only we could discover what it is, secure it for ourselves, perhaps we could defeat the earthmen, drive them away--" he sighed for the third time that morning--"and rule the planet ourselves." * * * * * just then the crown princess iximi entered the throne room. iximi really lived up to her title of most fair and exalted, for centuries of selective breeding under which the kings of uxen had seized the loveliest women of the planet for their wives had resulted in an outstanding pulchritude. her hair was as golden as the ripe fruit that bent the boughs of the iolo tree, and her eyes were bluer than the uriz stones on the belt girdling her slender waist. reproductions of the famous portrait of her which hung in the great hall of the palace were very popular on calendars. "my father grieves," she observed, making the secular xa. "pray tell your unworthy daughter what sorrow racks your noble bosom." "uxen is a backwash," her father mourned. "a planet forgotten, while the rest of the galaxy goes by. our ego has reached its nadir." "why did you let yourself be conquered?" the princess retorted scornfully. "ah, had i been old enough to speak then, matters would be very different today!" although she seemed too beautiful to be endowed with brains, iximi had been graduated from the royal university with high honors. zen the erudite was particularly fond of her, for she had been his best student in advanced theology. she was, moreover, an ardent patriot and leader of the underground moolai (free) uxen movement, with which zen was more or less in sympathy, since he felt uxen belonged to him and not to the earthlings. after all, he had been there first. "_let_ ourselves be conquered!" her father's voice rose to a squeak. "_let_ ourselves! nobody asked us--we _were_ conquered." "true, but we could at least have essayed our strength against the conquerors instead of capitulating like yioch. we could have fought to the last man!" "a woman is always ready to fight to the last man," guj commented. "did you hear that, ancient and revered parent! he called me, a princess of the blood, a--a woman!" "we are all equal before zen," guj said sententiously, making the high xa. "praise zen," uxlu and iximi chanted perfunctorily, bowing low. iximi, still angry, ordered guj--who was also high priest--to start services. kindling the incense in the hajen, he began the chant. of course it was his holiday, but zen couldn't resist the appeal of the incense. besides he was there anyway, so it was really no trouble, _no trouble_, he thought, greedily sniffing the delicious aroma, _at all_. he materialized a head with seven nostrils so that he was able to inhale the incense in one delectable gulp. then, "no prayers answered on thursday," he said, and disappeared. that would show them! "drat zen and his days off!" the princess was in a fury. "very well, we'll manage without zen the spiteful. now, precisely what is troubling you, worthy and undeservedly honored parent?" "those two scientists who arrived from earth. didn't you meet them when you came in?" "no, respected father," she said, sitting on the arm of the throne. "i must have just missed them. what are they like?" * * * * * he told her what they were like in terms not even a monarch should use before his daughter. "and these squuch," he concluded, "are undoubtedly working on a secret weapon. if we had it, we could free uxen." "moolai uxen!" the princess shouted, standing up. "my friends, must we continue to submit to the yoke of the tyrant? arise. smite the...." "anyone," said guj, "can make a speech." the princess sat on the steps of the throne and pondered. "obviously we must introduce a spy into their household to learn their science and turn it to our advantage." "they are very careful, those earthlings," guj informed her superciliously. "it is obvious that they do not intend to let any of us come near them." the princess gave a knowing smile. "but they undoubtedly will need at least one menial to care for their dwelling. i shall be that menial. i, iximi, will so demean myself for the sake of my planet! moolai uxen!" "you cannot do it, iximi," her father said, distressed. "you must not defile yourself so. i will not hear of it!" "and besides," guj interposed, "they will need no servants. all their housework is to be done by their robot--a mechanical man that performs all menial duties. and you, your royal highness, could not plausibly disguise yourself as a machine." "no-o-o-o, i expect not." the princess hugged the rosy knees revealed by her brief tunic and thought aloud, "but ... just ... supposing ... something ... went wrong with the robot.... they do not possess another?" "they referred only to one, highness," guj replied reluctantly. "but they may have the parts with which to construct another." "nonetheless, it is well worth the attempt," the princess declared. "you will cast a spell on the robot, guj, so that it stops." he sighed. "very well, your highness; i suppose i could manage that!" making the secular xa, he left the royal pair. outside, his voice could be heard bellowing in the anteroom, "has any one of you squuch seen my pliers?" "there is no need for worry, venerated ancestor," the princess assured the monarch. "all-helpful zen will aid me with my tasks." far away in his arcane retreat, the divinity groaned to himself. * * * * * another aspect of zen's personality followed the two earthmen as they left the palace to supervise the erection of their prefab by the crew of the spaceship in one of the royal parks. a vast crowd of uxenach gathered to watch the novelty, and among them there presently appeared a sinister-looking old man with a red beard, whom zen the pansophic had no difficulty in recognizing as the prime minister, heavily disguised. of course it would have been no trouble for zen to carry out guj's mission for him, but he believed in self-help--especially on thursdays. "you certainly fixed us up fine!" hammond muttered disrespectfully to the professor. "you should've told the king we were inventing a vacuum cleaner or something. now they'll just be more curious than ever.... and i still don't see why you refused the priest. seems to me he'd be just what you needed." "yes, and the first to catch on to why we're here. we mustn't antagonize the natives; these closed groups are so apt to resent any investigation into their mythos." "if it's all mythical, why do you need a scientist then?" "a physical scientist, you mean," kendrick said austerely. "for anthropology is a science, too, you know." peter snorted. "some earthmen claim actually to have seen these alleged manifestations," kendrick went on to explain, "in which case there must be some kind of mechanical trickery involved--which is where you come in. of course i would have preferred an engineer to help me, but you were all i could get from the government." "and you wouldn't have got me either, if the minister of science didn't have it in for me!" peter said irately. "i'm far too good for this piddling little job, and you know it. if it weren't for envy in high places--" "better watch out," the professor warned, "or the minister might decide you're too good for science altogether, and you'll be switched to a position more in keeping with your talents--say, as a refuse removal agent." _and what is wrong with the honored art of refuse removal?_ zen wondered. there were a lot of mystifying things about these earthmen. * * * * * the scientists' quaint little edifice was finally set up, and the spaceship took its departure. it was only then that the earthmen discovered that something they called cigarettes couldn't be found in the welter of packages, and that the robot wouldn't cook dinner or, in fact, do anything. _good old guj_, zen thought. "i can't figure out what's gone wrong," peter complained, as he finished putting the mechanical man together again. "everything seems to be all right, and yet the damned thing won't function." "looks as if we'll have to do the housework ourselves, confound it!" "uh-uh," peter said. "you can, but not me. the earth government put me under your orders so far as this project is concerned, sir, but i'm not supposed to do anything degrading, sir, and menial work is classified as just that, sir, so--" "all right, all _right_!" kendrick said. "though it seems to me if _i'm_ willing to do it, _you_ should have no objection." "it's your project, sir. i gathered from the king, though," peter added more helpfully, "that some of the natives still do menial labor themselves." "how disgusting that there should still be a planet so backward that human beings should be forced to do humiliating tasks," kendrick said. _you don't know the half of it, either_, zen thought, shocked all the way back to his physical being. it had never occurred to him that the functions of gods on other planets might be different than on uxen ... unless the earthlings failed to pay reverence to their own gods, which seemed unlikely in view of the respectful way with which professor kendrick had greeted the mention of zen's awe-inspiring name. then refuse removal was not necessarily a divine prerogative. _those first colonists were very clever_, zen thought bitterly, _sweet-talking me into becoming a god and doing all their dirty work. i was happy here as the only inhabitant; why did i ever let those interlopers involve me in theolatry? but i can't quit now. the uxenach need me ... and i need incense; i'm fettered by my own weakness. still, i have the glimmerings of an idea...._ "oh, how much could a half-witted menial find out?" peter demanded. "remember, it's either a native servant, sir, or you do the housework yourself." "all right," kendrick agreed gloomily. "we'll try one of the natives." * * * * * so the next day, still attended by the unseen presence of zen, they sought audience with the prime minister. "welcome, earthmen, to the humble apartments of his majesty's most unimportant subject," guj greeted them, making a very small xa as he led them into the largest reception room. kendrick absently ran his finger over the undercarving of a small gold table. "look, no dust," he whispered. "must have excellent help here." zen couldn't help preening just a bit. at least he did his work well; no one could gainsay that. "your desire," guj went on, apparently anxious to get to the point, "is my command. would you like a rojh of dancing girls to perform before you or--?" "the king said something yesterday about servants being available," kendrick interrupted. "and our robot seems to have broken down. could you tell us where we could get someone to do our housework?" an expression of vivid pleasure illuminated the prime minister's venerable countenance. "by fortunate chance, gentlemen, a small lot of maids is to be auctioned off at a village very near the imperial city tomorrow. i should be delighted to escort you there personally." "auctioned?" kendrick repeated. "you mean they _sell_ servants here?" guj raised his snowy eyebrows. "sold? certainly not; they are leased for two years apiece. after all, if you have no lease, what guarantee do you have that your servants will stay after you have trained them? none whatsoever." when the two scientists had gone, iximi emerged from behind a bright-colored tapestry depicting zen in seven hundred and fifty-three of his attributes. "the younger one is not at all bad-looking," she commented, patting her hair into place. "i do like big blond men. perhaps my task will not be as unpleasant as i fancied." guj stroked his beard. "how do you know the earthlings will select _you_, your highness? many other maids will be auctioned off at the same time." the princess stiffened angrily. "they'll pick me or they'll never leave uxen alive and you, your excellency, would not outlive them." * * * * * although it meant he had to overwork the other aspects of his multiple personality, zen kept one free so that the next day he could join the earthmen--in spirit, that was--on their excursion in search of a menial. "if, as an anthropologist, you are interested in local folkways, professor," guj remarked graciously, as he and the scientists piled into a scarlet, boat-shaped vehicle, "you will find much to attract your attention in this quaint little planet of ours." "are the eyes painted on front of the car to ward off demons?" kendrick asked. "car? oh, you mean the yio!" guj patted the forepart of the vehicle. it purred and fluttered long eyelashes. "we breed an especially bouncy strain with seats; they're so much more comfortable, you know." "you mean this is a _live_ animal?" guj nodded apologetically. "of course it does not go very fast. now if we had the atomic power drive, such as your spaceships have--" "you'd shoot right off into space," hammond assured him. "speed," said kendrick, "is the curse of modern civilization. be glad you still retain some of the old-fashioned graces here on uxen. you see," he whispered to his assistant, "a clear case of magico-religious culture-freezing, resulting in a static society unable to advance itself, comes of its implicit reliance upon the powers of an omnipotent deity." zen took some time to figure this out. _but that's right!_ he concluded, in surprise. "i thought your god teleported things?" peter asked guj. "how come he doesn't teleport you around, if you're in such a hurry to go places?" kendrick glared at him. "please remember that i'm the anthropologist," he hissed. "you have got to know how to describe the transcendental personality with the proper respect." "we don't have zen teleport animate objects," the prime minister explained affably. "or even inanimate ones if they are fragile. for he tends to lose his temper sometimes when he feels that he is overworked--" _feels, indeed!_ zen said to himself--"and throws things about. we cannot reprove him for his misbehavior. after all, a god is a god." "the apparent irreverence," kendrick explained in an undertone, "undoubtedly signifies that he is dealing with ancillary or, perhaps, peripheral religious beliefs. i must make a note of them." he did so. * * * * * by the time the royal yio had arrived at the village where the planetary auctions for domestics were held, the maids were already arranged in a row on the platform. most were depressingly plain creatures and dressed in thick sacklike tunics. among them, the graceful form of iximi was conspicuous, clad in a garment similar in cut but fashioned of translucent gauze almost as blue as her eyes. peter straightened his tie and assumed a much more cheerful expression. "let's rent _that one_!" he exclaimed, pointing to the princess. "nonsense!" kendrick told him. "in the first place, she is obviously the most expensive model. secondly, she would be too distracting for you. and, finally, a pretty girl is never as good a worker as a plain.... we'll take that one." the professor pointed to the dumpiest and oldest of the women. "how much should i offer to start, your excellency? no sense beginning the bidding too high. we earthmen aren't made of money, in spite of what the rest of the galaxy seems to think." "a hundred credits is standard," guj murmured. "however, sir, there is one problem--have you considered how you are going to communicate with your maid?" "communicate? are they mutes?" "no, but very few of these women speak earth." a look of surprise flitted over the faces of the servants, vanishing as her royal highness glared at them. kendrick pursed thin lips. "i was under the impression that the earth language was mandatory on uxen." "oh, it is; it is, indeed!" guj said hastily. "however, it is so hard to teach these backward peasants new ways." one of the backward peasants gave a loud sniff, which changed to a squeal as she was honored with a pinch from the hand of royalty. "but you will not betray us? we are making rapid advances and before long we hope to make earth universal." "of course we won't," peter put in, before kendrick had a chance to reply. "what's more, i don't see why the uxenians shouldn't be allowed to speak their own language." the princess gave him a dazzling smile. "moolai uxen! we must not allow the beautiful uxulk tongue to fall into desuetude. bring back our lovely language!" guj gestured desperately. she tossed her head, but stopped. "please, kendrick," peter begged, "we've got to buy that one!" "certainly not. you can see she's a troublemaker. do you speak earth?" the professor demanded of the maid he had chosen. "no speak," she replied. peter tugged at his superior's sleeve. "that one speaks earth." kendrick shook him off. "do you speak earth?" he demanded of the second oldest and ugliest. she shook her head. the others went through the same procedure. "it looks," peter said, grinning, "as if we'll have to take mine." "i suppose so," kendrick agreed gloomily, "but somehow i feel no good will come of this." zen wondered whether earthmen had powers of precognition. no one bid against them, so they took a two-year lease on the crown princess for the very reasonable price of a hundred credits, and drove her home with them. iximi gazed at the little prefab with disfavor. "but why are we halting outside this gluu hutch, masters?" guj cleared his throat. "sirs, i wish you joy." he made the secular xa. "should you ever be in need again, do not hesitate to get in touch with me at the palace." and, climbing into the yio, he was off. * * * * * the others entered the small dwelling. "that little trip certainly gave me an appetite," kendrick said, rubbing his hands together. "iximi, you had better start lunch right away. this is the kitchen." iximi gazed around the cubicle with disfavor. "truly it is not much," she observed. "however, masters, if you will leave me, i shall endeavor to do my poor best." "let me show you--" peter began, but kendrick interrupted. "leave the girl alone, hammond. she must be able to cook, if she's a professional servant. we've wasted the whole morning as it is; maybe we can get something done before lunch." iximi closed the door, got out her portable altar--all members of the royal family were qualified members of the priesthood, though they seldom practiced--and in a low voice, for the door and walls were thin, summoned zen the all-capable. the god sighed as he materialized his head. "i might have known you would require me. what is your will, oh most fair?" "i have been ordered to prepare the strangers' midday repast, oh puissant one, and i know not what to do with all this ukh, which they assure me is their food." and she pointed scornfully to the cans and jars and packages. "how should _i_ know then?" zen asked unguardedly. the princess looked at him. "surely zen the all-knowing jests?" "er--yes. merely having my bit of fun, you know." he hastily inspected the exterior of the alleged foods. "there appear to be legends inscribed upon the containers. perchance, were we to read them, they might give a clue as to their contents." "oh, omniscent one," the princess exclaimed, "truly you are wise and sapient indeed, and it is i who was the fool to have doubted for so much as an instant." "oh you doubted, did you?" terrible zen frowned terribly. "well, see that it doesn't happen again." he had no intention of losing his divine authority at this stage of the game. "your will is mine, all-wise one. and i think you had best materialize a few pair of arms as well as your august and awe-inspiring countenance, for there is much work to be done." * * * * * since the partitions were thin, zen and the princess could hear most of the conversation in the main room. "... first thing to do," kendrick's voice remarked, "is find out whether we're permitted to attend one of their religious ceremonies, where zen is said to manifest himself actually and not, it is contended, just symbolically...." "the stove is here, almighty," the princess suggested, "not against the door where you are pressing your divine ear." "shhh. what i hear is fraught with import for the future of the planet. moolai uxen." "moolai uxen," the princess replied automatically. "... i wonder how hard it'll be to crash the services," kendrick went on. "most primitives don't like outsiders present at their ritual activities." "especially if there _are_ actual manifestations of their god," hammond contributed. "that would mean the priests are up to some sort of trickery, and they wouldn't care to run the risk of having us see through--" he was interrupted by a loud crash from the kitchen. "are you all right, iximi!" he yelled. "need any help?" "all is well!" she called back. "but, i pray you, do not enter, masters. the reverberation was part of a rite designed to deflect evil spirits from the food. were a heretic to be present or interrupt the ceremonies, the spell would be voided and the food contaminated." "okay!" peter returned and, in a lower tone, which he probably thought she could not overhear, "seems you were right." "naturally." there was complacency in the professor's voice. "and now let us consider the validating features of the social structure as related to the mythos--and, of course, the ethos, where the two are not coincident--of the uxenians...." "imagine," zen complained in the kitchen, "accusing _me_ of being a mere trick of the priesthood--supreme me!" "supreme butterfingers!" the princess snapped, irritation driving her to the point of sacrilege. "you spilled that red stuff, the ..." she bent over to read the legend on the container "... the ketchup all over the floor!" "the floor is relatively clean," zen murmured abstractedly. "we can scoop up the substance and incorporate it in whatever dainty dish we prepare for the earthlings' repast. now they'll think that i, zen the accessible, am difficult to have audience with," he mourned, "whereas i was particularly anxious to hold converse with them and discover what quest brings them to uxen. that is," he added hastily, remembering he was omniscient, "just how they would justify its rationale." "shall we get on with our culinary activities, almighty one?" iximi asked coldly. if the most fair and exalted had a flaw, zen thought, it was a one-track mind. * * * * * "what in hell did you put in this, iximi?" kendrick demanded, after one taste of the steaming casserole of food which she had set proudly before the two earthmen. "ketchup, that's for sure...." peter murmured, rolling a mouthful around his tongue as he sought to separate its component flavors. "and rhubarb, i should say." "dried fish and garlic...." kendrick made further identifications. "and a comestible called marshmallow," iximi beamed. "you like it? i am _so_ glad!" "i do _not_--" kendrick began, but peter intervened. "it's very nice, iximi," he said tactfully, "but i guess we're just used to old run-of-the-mill earth cooking. it's all our fault; we should have given you a recipe." "i had a recipe," iximi returned. "it came to me by divine inspiration." kendrick compressed his lips. "useful sort of divinity they have around here," peter said. "everything that goes wrong seems to take place in the name of religion. are you sure you didn't happen to overhear us talking before, iximi?" "don't be silly, hammond!" kendrick snapped. "these simple primitives do not have the sophistication to use their religious beliefs consciously as rationalization for their incompetence." "even had i wished to eavesdrop," iximi said haughtily, "i would hardly have had the opportunity; i was too busy trying to prepare a palatable repast for you and--" her voice broke--"you didn't like it." "oh, i did like it, iximi!" peter protested. "it's just that i'm allergic to rhubarb." "wait!" she exclaimed, smiling again. "for dessert i have an especial surprise for you." she brought in a dish triumphantly. "is this not just how you have it on earth?" "stewed cigarettes with whipped cream," kendrick muttered. "stewed cigarettes! where on ear--on uxen did you find them?" "in a large box with the other puddings," she beamed. "is it not highly succulent and flavorful?" the two scientists sprang from their chairs and dashed into the kitchen. iximi stared after them. when they returned, they looked much more cheerful. they seated themselves, and soon fragrant clouds of smoke began to curl toward the ceiling. _they are calling me at last_, zen thought happily, _and with such delightful incense! who wants chants anyway?_ "but what are you _doing_!" the princess shrieked. * * * * * zen hastened to manifest himself, complete with fourteen nostrils, before she could spoil everything. "the procedure is most unorthodox," he murmured aloud, "but truly this new incense has a most delicious aroma, extremely pleasing to my ego. what is your will, oh, strangers?" "all-merciful zen," the princess pleaded, "forgive them, for they knew not what they did. they did not mean to summon you." "then who," asked zen in a terrible voice, "is this wonderful smoke for? some foreign god whom they worship on my territory?" and he wouldn't put it past them either. peter looked at the anthropologist, but kendrick was obviously too paralyzed with fright to speak. "as a matter of fact, your--er--omnipotence," the physicist said haltingly, "this is not part of our religious ritual. we burn this particular type of incense which we call tobacco, for our own pleasure." "in other words," zen said coldly, "you worship yourselves. i work and slave my godhood to the bone only to have egotists running all over my planet." "no, it's nothing like that at all," kendrick quavered. "we smoke the tobacco to--well--gratify our appetites. like--like eating, you know." "well, you will have to forego that pleasure," zen said, frowning terribly. even the tall one cowered, he noted with appreciation. it had been a long time since people had really cringed before his frown. the uxenach had come to take him too much for granted; they would learn their mistake. "from now on," he said portentously, "the tobacco must be reserved for my use alone. smoke it only for purposes of worship. once a day will be sufficient," he added graciously, "and perhaps twice on holy days." "but we do not worship alien gods," kendrick persisted in a shaky voice. "even if you _were_ a god...." zen frowned. "would you care to step outside and test my divinity?" "well, no ... but...." "then, as far as you're concerned, i am divine, and let's have no more quibbling. don't forget the tobacco once a day. about time i had a change from that low-grade incense." he vanished. too late he remembered that he'd planned to ask the earthlings why they had come to uxen, and to discuss a little business proposition with them. oh, well, time for that at his next materialization for them. and, now that he considered the matter, the direct approach might very well be a mistake. he hoped iximi would make sure they burned him tobacco regularly--really good stuff; almost made godhood worthwhile. but then he'd felt that way about incense at first. no, he had other ideas for making divinity worthwhile, and iximi was going to help him, even if she didn't know it. people had used him long enough; it was his turn to use them. * * * * * in the kitchen, iximi recalled zen and together they washed the dishes and listened to the scientists quarreling in the next room. "you will note the use of incense as standard socio-religious parallelism, hammond. men have appetites that must be gratified and so they feel their supreme being must also eat ... only, being a deity, he consumes aromas." "yes," peter said. "you explained all that to him much more succinctly, though." "hah! well, have you any idea yet as to how the trick was worked?" "worked? what do you mean?" "how they made that talking image appear? clever device, i must say, although the scoomps of aldebaran iii--" "didn't look like a trick to me." "that's a fine young man," zen said approvingly to iximi. "i _like_ him." "you really do, most high? i am _so_ glad!" "you don't mean you really believe this zen is an actual living god?" kendrick spluttered. there was a silence. "no, not a god," peter said finally, "but not a human, either. perhaps another life-form with attributes different from ours. after all, do we know who or what was on uxen, before it was colonized by earth?" "tcha!" kendrick said. iximi looked at zen. zen looked at iximi. "the concept of godhood varies from society to society," the divinity told the princess. "peter is not being sacrilegious, just manifesting a healthy skepticism." "you're a credulous fool," kendrick said hotly to his assistant. "i don't blame the secretary for demoting you. when we return to earth, i shall recommend your transfer to refuse removal. you have no business at all in science!" there was the sound of footsteps. "leaving my noxious company?" peter's voice asked tightly. "i am going out to the nearest temple to have a chat with one of the priests. i can expect more sensible answers from him than from you!" the outside door slammed. "speaking of refuse removal, almighty," iximi said to zen, "would you teleport the remains of this miserable repast to the sacred garbage dump? and you need not return; i'll be able to handle the rest myself." "moolai uxen," zen reminded her and vanished with the garbage, but, although the refuse was duly teleported, the unseen, impalpable presence of the god remained. * * * * * the door to the kitchen opened, and hammond walked in, his face grim. "need any help, iximi?" he asked, not very graciously. "or should i say 'your royal highness'?" iximi dropped a plate which, fortunately, was plastic. "how did you know who i was?" he sat down on a stool. "didn't you remember that your portrait hung in the great hall of the palace?" "of course," she said, chagrined. "a portrait of a servant would hardly be hung there." "not only that, but i asked whom it depicted. do you think i wouldn't notice the picture of such a beautiful girl?" "but if you knew, why then did you...?" he grinned. "i realized you were up to no good, and i have no especial interest in the success of kendrick's project." iximi carefully dried a dish. "and what is his project?" "to investigate the mythos of the allegedly corporeal divinity in static primitive societies, with especial reference to the god-concept of zen on uxen." "is that _all_?" _all!_ zen thought. _sounds like an excellent subject for research to me. unfortunate that i cannot possibly let the study be completed, as i am going to invalidate the available data very shortly._ "that's all, iximi." "and how is it that professor kendrick did not recognize me from the picture?" "oh, he never notices girls' pictures. he's a complete idiot.... you overheard us just now? when we get back to earth, i'm going to be a garbage collector." "here on uxen, refuse removal is a divine prerogative," iximi remarked. "poor zen, whatever he is," peter said to himself. "but a god, being a god," he went on in a louder voice, "can raise himself above the more sordid aspects of the job. as a mere human, i cannot. iximi, i wonder if...." he looked nervously at his watch. "i hope kendrick takes his time." "he will not return soon," iximi told him, putting away the dish towel. "not if he is determined to find a temple. because there are no temples. zen is a god of the hearth and home." "iximi," peter said, getting up and coming closer to her, "isn't there some way i can stay here on uxen, some job i can fill? you're the crown princess--you must have a drag with the civil service." he looked at her longingly. "oh, if only you weren't so far above me in rank." "listen, peter!" she caught his hands. "if you were the royal physicist, our ranks would not be so far disparate. my distinguished father would make you a duke. and princesses have often ..." she blushed "... that is to say, dukes are considered quite eligible." "do you think i have a chance of becoming royal physicist?" "i am certain of it." she came very close to him. "you could give us the atomic drive, design space ships ... weapons ... for us, couldn't you, darling?" "i could." he looked troubled. "but it's one thing to become an extraterrestrial, another to betray my own world." iximi put her arms around him. "but uxen will be your world, peter. as prince consort, you would no longer be concerned with the welfare of the earthlings." "yes, but...." "and where is there betrayal? we do not seek to conquer earth or its colonies. all we want is to regain our own freedom. we are entitled to freedom, aren't we, peter?" he nodded slowly. "i ... suppose so." "moolai uxen." she thrust a package of cigarettes into his hand. "let us summon the almighty one to bless our betrothal." peter obediently lit two cigarettes and gave one to her. * * * * * zen materialized his head. "blessings on you, my children," he said, sniffing ecstatically, "and welcome, holy chief physicist, to my service." "_royal_ chief physicist," iximi corrected. "no, that is insufficient for his merits. holy and sacrosanct chief physicist is what he will be, with the rank of prince. you will have the honor of serving terrible zen myself, peter hammond." "delighted," said the young man dubiously. "you will construct robots that do housework, vehicles that carry refuse to the sacred garbage dump, vans that transport household goods, machines that lave dishes...." "will do," peter said with obvious relief. "and may i say, your--er--benignness, that it will be a pleasure to serve you?" "but the atomic power drive ... freedom?" iximi stammered. "these will point the surer, shorter way to the true freedom. my omnidynamism has stood in the way of your cultural advancement, as professor kendrick will undoubtedly be delighted to explain to you." "but, your omnipotence...." "let us have no more discussion. i am your god and i know best." "yes, supreme one," iximi said sullenly. "you uxenach have kept me so busy for thousands of years, i have had no time for my divine meditations. i shall now withdraw myself from mundane affairs." the princess forgot disappointment in anxiety. "you will not leave us, zen?" "no, my child, i shall be always present, watching over my people, guiding them, ready to help them in case of emergency. but make sure i am not summoned save in case of dire need. no more baby-sitting, mind you." "yes, almighty one." "the incense will continue to be offered to me daily by everyone who seeks my sacred ear, and make sure to import a large quantity of this tobacco from earth for holy days ... and other occasions," he added casually, "when you wish to be especially sure of incurring my divine favor. and i wish to be worshipped in temples like other gods." _less chance of my being stuck with some unexpected household task._ "i shall manifest myself on thursdays only," he concluded gleefully, struck by the consummate idea. "thursday will be my day to work and your holy day. all other days you will work, and i will indulge in divine meditation. i have spoken." and he withdrew all aspects of his personality to his retreat to wallow in the luxury of six days off per week. naturally, to make sure the uxenach kept the incense up to scratch, he would perform a small miracle now and again to show he was still omnipresent. being a god, he thought as he made himself more comfortable, was not a bad thing at all. one merely needed to learn how to go about it in the right way. cultural exchange by j. f. bone _how could any race look so ferocious and yet be peaceful--and devise so nasty a weapon?_ [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from worlds of if science fiction, january 1960. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] i i couldn't help listening to the big spaceman sitting alone at the corner table. he wasn't speaking to me--that was certain--nor was his flat, curiously uninflected voice directed at anyone else. with some surprise i realized that he was talking to himself. people don't do that nowadays. they're adjusted. he noted my raised eye-brows and grinned, his square teeth white against the dark planes of his face. "i'm not psycho," he said. "it's just a bad habit i picked up on lyrane." "lyrane?" i asked. "it hasn't been entered on the charts yet. just discovered." his voice was inflected now. and then it changed abruptly. "if you must know, this is ethanol--c_{2}h_{5}oh--and i drink it." he looked at me with an embarrassed expression in his blue eyes. "it's just that i'm not used to it yet," he explained without explaining. "it's easier when i vocalize." "you sure you're all right?" i asked. "want me to call a psychologician?" "no. i've just been certified by decontamination. i have a paper to prove it." "but--" "draw up a chair," he invited. "i hate to drink alone. and i'd like to talk to somebody." i smiled. my talent was working as usual. i can't walk into a bar without someone telling me his life history. nice old ladies buttonhole me at parties and tell me all about their childhoods. boys tell me about girls. girls tell me about boys. politicians spill party secrets and pass me tips. something about me makes folks want to talk. it's a talent and in my business it's an asset. you see, i'm a freelance writer. nothing fancy or significant, just news, popular stuff, adventure stories, problem yarns, romances, and mysteries. i'll never go down in history as a literary great, but it's a living--and besides i meet the damnedest characters. so i sat down. "i guess you're not contagious if you've been through decontamination," i said. * * * * * he looked at me across the rim of an oversized brandy sniffer--a napoleon, i think it's called--and waggled a long forefinger at my nose. "the trouble with you groundhogs is that you're always thinking we spacers are walking hotbeds of contagion all primed to wreck earth. you should know better. anything dangerous has about as much chance of getting through decontamination as an ice cube has of getting through a nuclear furnace." "there was martian fever," i reminded him. "three centuries ago and you still remember it," he said. "but has there been anything else since decontamination was set up?" "no," i admitted, "but that was enough, wasn't it? we still haven't reached the pre-mars population level." "who wants to?" he sipped at the brownish fluid in the glass and a shudder rippled the heavy muscles of his chest and shoulders. he grinned nastily and took a bigger drink. "there, that ought to hold you," he muttered. he looked at me, that odd embarrassed look glinting in his eyes. "i think that did it. no tolerance for alcohol." i gave him my puzzled and expectant look. he countered with a gesture at the nearly empty brandy glass. i got the idea. i signaled autoservice--a conditioned reflex developed over years of pumping material out of spacemen--and slipped my id into the check slot of the robot as it rolled up beside us and waited, humming expectantly. "rum," the spaceman said. "demerara, four ounces." "you are cautioned, sir," the autoservice said in a flat mechanical voice. "demerara rum is one hundred fifty proof and is not meant to be ingested by terrestrial life-forms without prior dilution." "shut up and serve," i said. the robot clicked disapprovingly, gurgled briefly inside its cubical interior and extruded a pony glass of brownish liquid. "sir, you will undoubtedly end up in a drunkard's grave, dead of hepatic cirrhosis," it informed me virtuously as it returned my id card. i glared as i pushed the glass across the table. "robots," i said contemptuously. it was lost on that metallic monstrosity. it was already rolling away toward another table. the spaceman poured the pony glass into his napoleon, sniffed appreciatively, sipped delicately and extended a meaty hand. "my name's halsey," he said. "captain roger halsey. i skipper the _two two four_." "the bureau ship that landed this morning?" he nodded. "yeah. i'm one of the bureau's brave boys." there was a faint sneer in his voice. "the good old bureau of extraterrestrial exploration. the busy bee." he failed to pronounce the individual letters. "you're a reporter, aren't you?" he asked suddenly. "how'd you guess?" "that little trick of not answering an introduction. most of you sludge pumpers do it, but i never knew why." "libel and personal privacy laws," i said. "if you don't know who we are, you can't sue." he grinned. "okay. i don't care. keep your privacy. all i want is someone to talk to." i smiled inwardly. "think my job's exciting?" he asked. "skipper of an exploration ship. poking my nose into odd corners of the galaxy. seeing what's over the hill." "of course," i said. "well, you'd be wrong ninety-nine times out of a hundred. it's just a job. most of it is checking--or did you know that only one sun in ten has planets, and only one in ten thousand has a spectrum that will support human life, and that only one in ten thousand planets has earthlike qualities? so you can imagine how we felt when we ran across lyrane." he grimaced wryly. "i had it on the log as halsey's planet for nearly two weeks before we discovered it was inhabited." he shrugged. "so the name was changed. too bad. always did want to have a planet named after me. but i'll make it yet." i clucked sympathetically. capt. halsey sighed, and this is what he told me. ii it's a beautiful world, lyrane is. like earth must have been before it got cluttered up with people. no cities, no smoke, no industrial complexes--just green plains, snowy mountains, dark forests, blue seas, and white polar caps all wrapped in cotton clouds swimming in the clearest atmosphere you ever saw. it made my eyes ache to look at it. and it affected the crew the same way. we were wild to land. we came straight in along the equatorial plane until we hit the van allen belt and the automatics took over. we stopped dead, matched intrinsics and skirted the outer band, checking the radiation quality and the shape of the belt. it was a pure band that dipped down at the poles to form entry zones. there was not a sign of bulges or industrial contaminants. naturally we had everything trained on the planet while we made our sweeps--organic detectors, radar, spectroanalytic probes--all the gadgets the bee equips us with to make analysis easy and complete. the readings were so homelike that every man was landsick. i wasn't any different from the rest of them, but i was in command and i had to be cautious about setting the _two two four_ down until we'd really wrung the analytic data dry. so, while the crew grumbled about hanging outside on a skyhook, we kept swinging around in a polar orbit until we knew that world below us like a baby knows its mother. it checked clean to five decimal places, which is the limit of our gadgetry. paradise, that's what it was--a paradise untrod by human foot. and every foot on the ship was itching. "when we gonna land, skipper?" alex baranov asked me. it was a gross breach of discipline, but i forgave him. alex was the second engineer, an eager kid on his first flight out from earth. like most youngsters, he thought there was romance in space, but right now he was landsick. even worse than most of us. and, like most kids, he'd leap where angels'd dread to walk on tiptoe. "we'll land," i assured him. "you'll be down there pretty soon." he hurried off to tell the others. we set the ship down in the middle of one of the continental land masses in an open plain surrounded by forest and ran a few more tests before we stepped out, planted the flag, and claimed the place for the confederation. after that we had an impromptu celebration to thoroughly enjoy the solid feel of ground under our feet and open sky overhead. it lasted all of five minutes before we came to our senses and posted a guard. it was five minutes too long. alex baranov had a chance to get out of sight and go exploring, and, like a kid, he took it. we didn't miss him for nearly ten minutes more, and in fifteen minutes a man can cover quite a bit of territory. "anyone see where he went?" i asked. "he was wearing a menticom," one of the crew offered. "said he wanted to look around." "the idiot!" i snapped. "he had no business going off like that." "nobody told him not to," dan warren said. dan was my executive officer, and a good hand in case of trouble, but he left the command decisions to me, and of course i figured that everybody knew the cardinal rule of first landings. the net result was that alex had disappeared. i went back into the ship and broke out another menticom. "alex!" i broadcasted. "return to ship at once!" "i can't, skipper," alex's projection came back to me. "i'm surrounded." "by what? where?" "they look sorta human--bigger than us. i'm near the edge of the forest nearest the ship. i can't do anything. i didn't bring a blaster." there was panic in his thoughts. and then suddenly i saw two hairy bipeds flash across alex's vision. both of them were carrying spears. the nearest one jumped and lunged. the scene dissolved in a blaze of red panic and the projection cut off as though someone had turned a switch. i had a fix now and turned to face a knob of forest jutting out into the plain. near the forest's edge i saw a flurry of movement that vanished as i watched. "break out a 'copter," i ordered. "why?" warren asked, and then i realized that i alone of all the crew had seen what had happened to alex. i told them. * * * * * the search, of course, was unproductive. i didn't expect that it would be anything else. i was pretty certain that alex was a casualty. i'd felt people die while wearing menticoms, and the same blank sense of emptiness had blotted out alex. it was a bad deal all around. i liked that kid. but alex's death had provided data. this world was inhabited and the inhabitants weren't friendly. so i had the crew stake out a perimeter which we could energize with the ship's engines, and activated a couple of autoguards for patrol duty. alex wasn't a pleasant thought, but we weren't equipped to retrieve bodies. so i wrote him in the log as missing and let it go at that. i had to correct the entry a week later when alex came walking up to the perimeter as large as life and just as healthy, wearing a mild sunburn, a sheepish expression, and nothing else. the autoguard announced his coming and i headed the delegation that met him. i read him the riot act, and after i'd finished chewing on him he was pinker than ever. "okay, sir--so i was a fool," he said. "but they didn't hurt me. scared me half to death, but once they realized i was intelligent there was no trouble. they were fascinated by my clothes." alex grinned ruefully. "and they're pretty strong. they peeled me." "obviously," i said coldly. "they have a village back in the woods." he pointed vaguely behind him. "it'd pay to take a look at it." "_mister_ baranov," i said. "if i don't throw you in the brig for what you've done, it's only because you may have brought back some information we can use. what are these natives like? what did they do to you besides making you a strip-tease artist? what cultural level are they? how many of them do you estimate there are? what do they look like? get up to the ship and report to lieutenant warren for interrogation and draw new clothing." i had the same half exasperated, half angry tone that a relieved mother has when one of her youngsters returns home late but unharmed. * * * * * alex must have recognized it, because he grinned as he went off. i contacted warren on the intercom. "dan," i said, "baranov's back--apparently unharmed. i want him given the works. when you've gotten everything you can get, have a man detailed to watch him. if he so much as looks suspicious, heave him in the brig." warren's answering projection had a laugh in it. "always cautious, hey, skipper? okay, i'll see that he gets the business." it turned out that alex didn't have much real information except for a description of the natives, their village, and their attitude toward him. it was about what you'd expect from a kid, interesting but far from helpful. the delegation of natives showed up a half hour later. they came walking across the open space between the ship and the forest as though they hadn't a care in the world. four of them--big hairy humanoids, carrying spears. they were naked as animals. not that they needed clothes with all that hair, but just the same their appearance gave me a queasy feeling--like i was looking at man's early ancestors suddenly come to life. if you can imagine a furry humanoid seven feet tall, with the face of an intelligent gorilla and the braincase of a man, you'll have a rough idea of what they looked like--except for their teeth. the canines would have fitted better in the face of a tiger, and showed at the corners of their wide, thin-lipped mouths, giving them an expression of ferocity. they came trotting straight across the plain, moving with grace and power. all external signs pointed to them being a carnivorous, primitive race. hunters, probably. the muscles of my scalp twitched as some deep-buried instinct inside me whispered, "_competition!_" * * * * * i've met plenty of humanoids, but these were the first that roused any emotion other than curiosity. perhaps it was their fierce appearance, or the bright, half-contemptuous intelligence in their eyes, or the confident arrogance in their approach, or merely that they looked more like us than the others i had met. whatever it was, it was strong, and i had the impression that the feeling was mutual. "stop!" i said as they approached the periphery. "why should we?" the foremost native replied in perfect terran. "because that barrier'll burn you to a nice crisp cinder if you don't." "that's a good reason," the native said, nodding. then the delayed reaction took over and the shock nearly floored me, until i saw that he was wearing alex's menticom. well, that explained the language and the feeling of mutual distrust--and it could explain why i thought alex had died back there in the jungle. a mental communicator snatched from its wearer's head can give that impression. but it raised an entirely new set of questions. where did this savage learn to operate the circlet and how did he recognize its purpose? i guess i wasn't too smart, because the native was tuned to me and i wasn't shielding my thoughts at all. he chuckled--it sounded like the purr of a cat. "we are not stupid, earthman." "so i see," i said uneasily. "i am k'wan, chief of this segment. i wish to know why you are here." "to survey your world. we are members of the bureau of extraterrestrial exploration. it is our job to make surveys of planets." "why?" "for trade, colonization, and exploitation," i answered. there was no sense in giving him a dishonest explanation. with him wearing that communicator, it would have done no good to try. "and what have you decided about us?" "that's not our job. we just investigate and report. what happens next is not our affair. but if you're worrying--don't. there are plenty of worlds available without bothering inhabited places. since you are intelligent, we would probably like to trade with you, if you have anything to trade--but that, of course, is up to you. we never intrude where we are not wanted, as long as we are treated with respect. if we are attacked, however, that is a different story." it was the old respect-and-threat routine that worked with primitive races. but i wasn't at all sure it was working now. "strange," k'wan said. "i would have sworn you were a predatory race. you are enough like us to be our little cousins." he scratched his head with a surprisingly human gesture. "in your position i would have attacked to show my power and inspire respect. perhaps you are telling the truth." "a predator can grow soft when he has too much prey," i said. "aye, there is truth in that. but what is too easy and how much is too much? and does a man change his habits of eating just because he is fat?" "you can find out." "i do not think that would be wise," the native said. "although you are physically weak, you sound confident. therefore you are strong. and strength is to be respected. let us be friends. we will make an agreement with you." * * * * * i shook my head. "it is not our place to make agreements. we only observe." "you have not done much of that," he said pointedly. "you sit here and send your machines over our seas and forests, but you do not see for yourselves. you cannot learn this way." "we learn enough," i said shortly. "we have talked of you at our council," k'wan continued, "and we think that you should know more before you depart. so we have come to make you an offer. let four of your men come with me, and four of mine will stay with you. we will exchange--and you can see our ways while we see yours. that would help us understand each other." it sounded reasonable. an exchange of hostages--or call it a cultural exchange, if you'd prefer. i told him that i'd think it over and to come back tomorrow. he nodded, turned, and together with his retinue disappeared into the jungle. * * * * * we hashed k'wan's proposal over at a board meeting that night and decided that we'd take it. the exact status of lyranian culture worried us. it is a cardinal rule never to underestimate an alien culture or to judge it by surface appearances. so we organized a team that would form our part of the "cultural exchange." i would go, of course. if k'wan could visit us, i could hardly stay back. alex was selected partly because he was an engineer, mostly because he'd been over the ground before. ed barger, our ecologist, and patrick allardyce, our biologist, made up the remainder of the party. i'd have liked to take the padre and doc, but doc was more valuable at base, and if i could have only four men, i wanted fighting men. "now," i said, "we'll take along a tight-beam communicator. coupled to our menticoms, it should be able to reach the ship and put what we see and what happens on permanent record." then i turned to dan warren. "if anything goes wrong, don't try to rescue us. finish your observations and get out. you understand? and get those exchange natives into interrogation. condition them to the eyeballs with cooperation dogma. we may need some friends here when the second echelon makes a landfall." warren nodded. i didn't have to elaborate. the native village was about what i expected from our reconnaissance flights. it was beautifully camouflaged. you couldn't tell it from the rest of the forest except that the trees were larger and were hollow--apparently hewn out with patient care to make a comfortable living space inside. lyranians lived in one place, if what i could see of their dwellings was any criterion. i wanted to look inside, but k'wan hustled us down the irregular "street" that wound through the grove of giant trees until we finally came to the granddaddy of them all, a trunk nearly forty feet in diameter. k'wan gestured at the tree. "your house while you are here. we made it for you earthmen." his voice came over my menticom and was duly recorded on the ship, since we were in constant contact, giving our impressions of the place. so far it was strictly sop. "thanks," i said. "we appreciate it." i was really touched at this tribute. k'wan had probably evacuated his own house to furnish us quarters where we could be together. the size of it indicated that it must be the chief's residence. but like all primitives he had to lie a little and the fiction of making this place for us was a way of salvaging pride in the face of our technological superiority. he walked inside and we followed, expecting to find a gloomy hole--but instead the room glowed with a soft light that came from the walls themselves. the air was cool and comfortable, a pleasing contrast to the heat outside. "what the--" i began, but allardyce was already peering at the walls. "a type of luminous fungus," he said. "a saprophyte. lives on the wood of this tree and gives off light. clever." i shut my mouth and looked around. there were other rooms opening off this one and along one wall a knobby imitation of a staircase led upward to a hole overhead. "hmmm, a regular skyscraper," ed barger commented, noting the direction of my gaze. "well, we should not be crowded, at any rate." i had been noticing something was wrong without realizing it. you know the feeling you get when you've lost something, but can't quite remember what it was. then my neurons made connections and i realized that the communicator and the menticom were both as dead as if we were in a lead box. quietly i moved to the door--and dan's voice hammered in my ears: "skipper! answer me! what's wrong?" "nothing, dan," i said. "we just went into the quarters they assigned us. something about them blocks transmission and reception. we're all fine." "oh." dan sounded relieved. "for a minute i was worried." "one of the boys'll call in every two hours," i assured him. "if you don't hear from us then, it'll be time to do something." "okay, skipper, but what'll i do?" "that'll be your decision," i said. "you'll be ranking officer." dan's chuckle was humorless. "thanks, but i hope we keep on hearing from you." "don't worry--you will. these people look worse than they really are. at least they have been nice so far." "they'd better stay that way," dan replied grimly. it was my turn to chuckle. "keep calm and keep your blasters dry. i'm going inside now. you'll hear from us in two hours." * * * * * ed barger looked at me a trifle oddly as i came through the doorway. "a while ago you were laughing at that story k'wan was telling us about making this house for us. i caught your undertone." "sure. what about it?" "well, i'm not so sure he was lying." "huh?" "take a look around you." i did. it was a nice room, considering its origin--low benches around the walls, a table and four chairs in the center, a soft, thick floor covering that was a pleasure to the feet. "see anything unusual?" ed asked. "no," i said. "what about those benches?" "they're part of the walls," i said, "cut out of the tree when it was hollowed out." "cut to _our_ size?" i did a double take. barger was right. the lyranians were seven feet tall and long-legged, but the benches were precisely right for human sitting, and the table in the center was only three feet above the gray floor. suddenly i didn't feel so good. "and those rooms--there are four of them--scaled to people _our_ size?" i shrugged. "so they modified the joint for us." "you still don't get it. this place is _living_. it's _growing_. nothing here except those chairs isn't part of this tree, and i'm not sure that they weren't. besides, how did they know that there'd be four of us?" "they could have been hopeful, or maybe four is their idea of a delegation. remember there were four of them that visited us, and they suggested that four of us visit them." "it's obvious," allardyce added, "that this place _has_ been made for us. k'wan wasn't lying." barger shook his head. "i still don't like it. i think we'd better get out of here. if they are as good biologists as this tree indicates, they're a class vi civilization at least--and we're not set up to handle levels that high." "i don't think that's necessary," allardyce said. "they don't seem unfriendly, and until they do, we're better off sitting pat and playing the cards as they're dealt. we can always warn the ship in case anything goes wrong." "don't be jumpy," alex broke in. "i told you they were all right. they grew the place for me. it's just grown a little since." i made a noncommittal noise. "it's true," alex said. "while i was here i needed quarters and nobody wanted me in with them. they have some custom about not letting strangers in their houses after sunset. so they took a sapling and sprayed it with some sort of stuff and by the next afternoon i had a one-room house." "where did you stay that first night?" i demanded. alex shrugged. "in one of the trees down the street," he said, pointing through the door. "it was some sort of a storage warehouse. no air conditioning and blacker than the inside of the coal sack. it rains pretty bad at night and they had to give me some shelter." he was right on time with his last statement, because the skies opened up and started to pour. the four-hour evening rain had begun. it had fascinated us at first, the regularity with which the evening showers arrived and left, but our meteorologist assured us that it was a perfectly natural phenomenon in a planet with no axial tilt. "but growing a tree in a day is fantastic," i said. "what's more, it's unbelievable, a downright--" "not so fantastic," allardyce interrupted. "this really isn't a tree. it's a cycad--related to the horsetail ferns back on earth. they grow pretty fast anyway and they might grow faster here. besides, the lyranians could have some really potent growth stimulants. in our hydroponics stations we use delta-gibberelin. that'll grow tomatoes from seed in a week, and forage crops in three days. it could be that they have something better that'll do the job in hours." "and one that makes a tree grow _rooms_?" i scoffed. * * * * * allardyce nodded. "it's possible, but i hate to think of the science behind it--it makes me feel like a blind baby fumbling in the dark--and i'm supposed to be a good biologist." he shivered. "their science'll be centuries ahead of ours if that is true." "not necessarily," barger said. "they could be good biologists or botanists and nothing much else. we've run into that sort of uneven culture before." "ha!" allardyce snorted. "that shows how little you know about experimental biology. anybody able to do with plants what these people do would have to know genetics and growth principles, biochemistry, mathematics, engineering and physics." "maybe they had it once and lost most of it," i suggested. "they wouldn't be the first culture that's gone retrograde. we did it after the atomic wars and we were several thousand years recovering. but we hadn't lost the skills--they just degenerated into rituals administered by witch doctors who handed the formulas and techniques down from father to son. maybe it's like that here. certainly these people give no evidence of an advanced civilization other than these trees and their native intelligence. civilized people don't hunt with spears or live in tribal groups." barger nodded. "that's a good point, skipper." "well, there's no sense speculating about it; maybe we'll know if we wait and see," allardyce summed up. i set sentries, three hours on and nine off, to keep dan informed of our situation, and since rank has its privileges, i took the first watch. we were all tired from our walk through the woods; the others turned in readily enough. i was sufficiently worried about the hints and implications in the native culture to keep alert--but nothing happened. i checked in with dan back at the ship and went to awaken alex, who had drawn the second watch, and turned in to the bedroom allotted to me. normally i can sleep anywhere, but i kept thinking about houses grown from trees and upholstery grown from fungus, about spear-carrying savages who understood the working principle of a menticom. it was all wrong and my facile explanation of a regressed culture didn't satisfy me. superior technology and savagery simply didn't go together. even in our interregnum period, islands of culture and technology had remained, and men hadn't reverted to complete savagery. but there were no such islands on this world--or none that were apparent. such enclaves couldn't have escaped our search mechanisms, which are designed precisely to locate such things. and besides, an advanced biological technology would have no need for hunting or spears. they could grow all the food they needed. any damn fool knew that. then why the noble savage act? for if our analysis was right, it must be an act. why were they trying to hoodwink us? the only answer was that there was a high civilization here that was being deliberately hidden from us. the only mistake they had made was in underestimating us--the old story of civilized men sneering at savages, but in reverse. the trees, therefore, must be such old and primitive techniques that they thought nothing of them, deeming them so inconsequential that even savages like us would know of them and not be suspicious. at that, they probably didn't have too much time after they detected us orbiting and intending to land. and if that were true, there could be only one place where their civilization was hidden. * * * * * i tried to get to my feet, to warn the others--but i couldn't move and no sound came from my flaccid vocal cords. i was paralyzed, helpless, and k'wan's amused thought floated gently into my brain. "i told the others that you humans were an advanced race, but they couldn't believe an obviously warlike species that depended upon _machinery_ could be anything but savages. and your man alex confirmed their beliefs. so we tried to meet you on your own ground--savage to savage, as it were. it seems as though we weren't as good at being savages as we thought." and k'wan stepped through an apparently solid section of tree trunk that parted to let him pass! this tree was nothing but a mousetrap, and we were the mice! why hadn't one of us carried the discussion a bit further? any idiot should know that biological agents were fully as deadly as physical ones. and these people were self-admittedly predatory. contempt at my stupidity was the only emotion that filled my mind--that we would be trapped like a flock of brainless sheep and led bleating happily to slaughter. raw anger surged through me, smothering my fear in a red blanket of rage. k'wan shook his head. "your reaction works against you. it's primitive--and, i think, dangerous. we cannot risk associating with a race that cannot control themselves. you have developed too fast--too soon. we are an old race and a slow race, and our warlike days are far behind us. the council was right. something must be done about you or there will be more of your kind on lyrane--hard, driving, uncontrolled, violent." he sighed--a very human sigh--half regret, half resignation. "and you promised no harm would come to us if we came with you," i thought bitterly. "i said you would come to no harm, nor will you. you'll just be changed a little." "like alex?" "yes." "what did you do to him?" he grinned, exposing his long tusks. "you'll find out," he said. he sounded just like a villain in a cheap melodrama. he took the menticom circlet off my head and all communication stopped. two other lyranians stepped through the wall, lifted me and carried me out like a shanghaied drunk from a spaceport bar. i wasn't particularly surprised at the laboratory that lay behind the wall. after all, an observation cage had to have its laboratory facilities. these were good--very good indeed. even though i knew hardly anything about biological laboratories, there was no doubt that here were the products of an advanced technology. i hated to admit it, but it looked as though we had run into what we had always feared but had never found--a civilization superior to ours. from the windowless appearance of the place, it was probably underground, and k'wan's look and nod seemed to confirm my guess. they laid me out on a table, took blood and tissue samples and proceeded to forget me while they ran tests and analyses. i kept trying to move, but it wasn't any use. a group of about a dozen oldsters came in, looked at me and went away. the council, i guessed. in a surprisingly short time k'wan came back, distinguishable by the menticom circlet. he was holding something that looked like a jet hypo in his hand. the barrel was full of a cloudy red liquid that swirled sluggishly behind the confining glass. "this won't hurt," he said, his thoughts amplified by the circlet. he lifted my arm, examined it and nodded. there was a high-pitched, sibilant hiss as he touched the trigger of the syringe and i felt a brief sting near my elbow. "there--that's that!" he said. "now we'll take you back and get the others." i swore at him coldly and viciously. he smiled. alex helped lay me back on my bed in the tree house. he looked down at me and grinned. it wasn't a pleasant grin. it reminded me of a crocodile. * * * * * naked, i was standing on an endless sandy plain. off in the distance the _two two four_ stood on her landing jacks, a tall, needle-pointed tower of burnished silver metal. the sun beat down from a cobalt sky burning my bare back as i trudged painfully across the hot shifting sand. my feet, scorched and blistered, sent agony racing through me with every step i took toward the tall silver column that seemed to recede from me as fast as i approached. my throat was choked with dust and my mind filled with fear and pain. i had to reach the ship. i _had_ to. yet i knew with dreadful certainty that i would not. he came at me from a hollow in the sandy ground, a huge, furry lyranian--bigger than any i had seen. his white tusks glittered in the sunlight as he leaped at me. twisting, i avoided him and turned to run. to fight that mountain of fanged flesh was futile. he could rip me apart with one hand. but i moved with viscid slowness, stumbling through the shifting sands. in a moment he was upon me, clutching with his huge hands, snapping at my throat with his tusked mouth. fear pumped adrenalin into my system and i fought as i had never fought before, breaking his holds, throwing jarring punches into his fanged face as he clawed and bit at me. with a violent effort i broke away and ran again toward the safety of the distant ship. for a moment i left him behind as he scrambled to regain his feet and came running after me. he was on me again, hands reaching for my throat. i couldn't get away. and again we fought, battering and clawing at each other, using fists, feet and teeth, biting and gouging. his strength was terrible and his hot, fetid breath was rank in my nostrils. with a grunt of triumph he tripped me and i fell on my back on the blazing sand. i screamed as my back struck the searing surface, but he held me helpless and immovable, pinned beneath his massive, crushing weight. and then he began to eat me! i felt his sharp fangs sink into my shoulder muscles and meet in my flesh. with a rush of frantic strength i threw him off again and again, ran stumbling across the plain. once more he caught me and again we fought. it went on endlessly--the fight, the temporary breakaway, the flight, the pursuit, and the recapture. i wondered dully why no one on the ship had seen us. perhaps they were looking in the wrong direction, or perhaps they weren't even looking. if i survived this and found that they hadn't been on watch--i snarled and slammed my fist into the lyranian's face. both of us were covered with blood, but he was visibly weaker. it was no longer a fight; we were too exhausted for that. we pawed at each other feebly, and i could detect something oddly like fear in him now. he couldn't hold me--but neither could i finish him. i gathered my last remaining strength into one last blow. my torn fist smashed into his bloody face. he toppled to the ground and i fell beside him, too spent to move. i lay there panting, watching him. he rose to his hands and knees and came crawling toward me, trembling with weakness. i felt his smothering weight pinning me as he fell across me. he twisted slowly, his fanged mouth gaping to bite again. his jaws closed on my arm. i was done--beaten--too weary and bruised to care. he had won. but his teeth couldn't break my skin. like me, he was finished. we lay there as the sun beat down, glaring at each other with fear and hate. and suddenly--over us--loomed the familiar faces of my crew and the tall tower of the _two two four_. somehow i had reached the ship and safety! * * * * * i awoke. i was bathed with sweat. my muscles were aching and my head was a ball of fire. i looked around. everything seemed normal. my menticom was on my head and i was lying on the bed in the tree house. painfully i rose to my feet and staggered into the main room. "my god! skipper, you look awful!" allardyce's voice was sharp with concern. "what's wrong?" "i don't know," i muttered. "my head's splitting." "here, sit down. let me take a look at you." allardyce produced a thermometer and stuck it in my mouth. "mmmm," he said worriedly. "you've got fever." "i feel like i've been through the mill," i said. "we'd better get back to the ship. doc should have a look at you." i wanted nothing more than the familiar safety of the ship, away from these odd natives and exotic diseases that struck despite omnivaccination. and we should get back before the others fell sick. "all right, pat," i said. "contact dan. have him send the big 'copter. we'll leave at once." i discounted the experience of last night as delirium, but just to make sure, i checked with allardyce and barger when they came in. "obviously fever," barger said. "nothing happened to me like you describe." "nor to me," allardyce said. i nodded. they were right, of course, unless the lyranian in _their_ dreams had eaten and absorbed them. then--but that was sheer nonsense. i was being a suspicious fool. but that dream--all of it--had been damnably real. we made our excuses to k'wan as the 'copter fluttered down into a nearby clearing. "i'm sorry about this," k'wan said apologetically, "but i never thought of the possibility of diseases. we are all immune. we do have some biological skill, as you've surely guessed, but our engineering technology is far inferior to yours. we thought it would be better not to let you know about us until we had a chance to observe you. but you undoubtedly have seen enough to deduce our culture." he grinned--a ferocious grimace that exposed his long tusks. "i suppose we are rather bad liars. but then we're not accustomed to deception." "i understand," i said. "you had no way of knowing what we were really like. we could have been the advance guard of a conquering space armada. you showed great courage to open relations with us." "not as great as yours. we had the opportunity of examining your man alex. you had only his untried opinions to go by." the 'copter came down with a flutter of rotor blades, and i shook hands with k'wan. for a moment i was tempted to call dan and tell him to turn our hostages loose, but on second thought decided that could wait. i slipped my menticom off. there was no point in broadcasting my thoughts, and without the gadget k'wan couldn't intercept them unless they were directed. after all, we were a minority on this world and earth didn't even know where we were yet. a ship can cross hyper-space far more easily and quickly than the most powerful transmitter can broadcast across normal space. it would be a thousand years before earth could hear from us by radio, even if they could distinguish our messages from stellar interference. while i felt oddly friendly, there was no reason to take chances, especially if there was any truth in that dream. "you will be leaving soon?" k'wan asked. "you and the ship?" "yes," i said. "we have done all we can do here." i looked up at him. he was standing there--_holding_ the menticom in his _hand_--yet i understood him! i didn't let the astonishment show on my face, nor the shock that coursed through my mind _when the lyranian in my brain tried vainly to scream a warning_! instead i took the circlet and turned to go. "remember what you are to do; the others will help," k'wan said. "i will remember," i replied. _you're damn well right i'll remember_, i thought grimly. the lyranian was supposed to wreck the ship. * * * * * he waved farewell as i turned to enter the 'copter. "our thoughts go with you for your success," he said. the lyranian in my brain screamed and struggled, but i held him easily. i was his master, not he mine. there would be no sabotage on the _two two four_. he wouldn't wreck my ship. "dan," i said as we went into orbit, "did alex come aboard?" "of course." "where is he?" "down in the engine room, i suppose, or in his bunk. it's not his watch." "maybe you'd better check. but before you do--" he waited for me to continue, and finally i was able to. "put allardyce, barger, and myself in the brig," i said. "set a guard over us with instructions to shoot if we try to make a break. then get alex, if he's aboard. frankly, i don't think you'll find him. they didn't need a ship's commander, a sociologist or a biologist, but they did need an engineer. now get going. this is an order!" warren stiffened. "yes, sir--sorry, sir!" inside my skull, the lyranian came to life--struggled briefly--and then quit. barger, allardyce and i spent the rest of the trip home in the air-conditioned, radiation-resistant, germproof, dustproof, escape-resistant brig. alex, of course, wasn't aboard. there aren't many places on a starship where a man can hide, and the crew searched them all. even so, i kept worrying about the ship's safety all the way back. it was a miserable trip. i suppose it was just as miserable for the lyranians in my two companions who kept worrying about how to destroy us. it didn't do them any good either. they never got a chance, and ultimately we reached decontamination. barger and allardyce are up there now. the medics think they can erase the lyranians with insulin shock, but it'll take time. mine, being a nice, tame one, was considered to be more valuable in me than out. we're going to have to know a lot about lyrane in a hurry if we're going to do anything about those people, and my lyranian can tell us plenty. but i'll bet we'll find things different on lyrane when we go back. they'll have at least ten years, and with the brains they've got--and alex's brain to pick--they'll do just fine from an engineering point of view. i'll bet they'll even have spaceships. from what i can gather from my alter ego, they checked alex's brain and didn't like what they saw. that's the trouble with romantics. they always remember the wars and the fighting, never the stodgy, peaceful interims. but you simply don't spring that sort of stuff on a culture like lyrane's. and i suppose my anger didn't help things any, but if not for that anger and my primitive bull-headedness, we might not be here. iii capt. halsey hurriedly downed the rum. "skippers are picked because they're tough-minded and authoritarian. in space you need it occasionally. fortunately i lived up to specifications. a peaceful sort like my lyranian just couldn't take it--fortunately." "fortunately?" i asked. "sure. what else? possibly those natives we conditioned would help our case, possibly not. and in the meantime the lyranians would suck alex dry. and with the _two two four_ gone it'd be maybe a couple of hundred years before we ran into them again, and by then they'd really be ready--loaded for bear with itchy trigger fingers--and we just might have a war on our hands. as it is we'll send out a battle fleet to give some authority to our negotiators so no one will get hurt. they just shouldn't have picked alex as typical of us. with his attitude and our weapons, they naturally got a lot of wrong ideas." "wrong?" i prompted the skipper. halsey chuckled. "yes, that's what i said--wrong ideas," he said in that remote second voice. "just because you've forgotten self-defense doesn't mean that other peaceful civilizations don't remember it." from an unseen censor by rosel george brown illustrated by dillon [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy magazine september 1958. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] you can't beat my uncle isadore--he's dead but he's quick--yet that is just what he was daring me to try and do! uncle isadore's ship wasn't in bad shape, at first glance. but a second look showed the combustion chamber was crumpled to pieces and the jets were fused into the rocks, making a smooth depression. the ship had tilted into a horizontal position, nestling in the hollow its last blasts had made. dust had sifted in around it, piling over the almost invisible seam of the port and filming the whole ship. we circled around the ship. it was all closed and sealed, blind as a bullet. "okay," rene said. "he's dead. my regrets." he coughed the word out as though it were something he had swallowed by accident. "but how do you know?" i asked. "he might be in there." "that port hasn't been opened for months. maybe years. i told you the converter wouldn't last more than a month in dock. he couldn't live locked up in there without air and water. let's go." my guide had no further interest in the ship. he hadn't even looked to see what the planet was like. i stood shivering in my warm clothes. the ship seemed to radiate a chill. i looked around at the lumpy, unimaginative landscape of alvarla. there was nothing in sight but a scraggly, dun heather sprouting here and there in the rocks and dust, and making hirsute patches on the low hills. i had some wild idea, i think, that uncle izzy might come sauntering nonchalantly over the hills, one hand in the pocket of a grilch-down jacket and the other holding a martian cigarene. and he would have on his face that look which makes everything he says seem cynical and slightly clever even if it isn't. "the scenery is dull," he might say, "but it makes a nice back-drop for you." something like that, leaving the impression he'd illuminated a side of your character for you to figure out later on. * * * * * nothing of the kind happened, of course. i just got colder standing there. "all right," rene said. "we've had a moment of silence. now let's go." "i--there's something wrong," i told him. "let's go in and _see_ the--the body." "we can't go in. that ship's sealed from the inside. you think they make those things so any painted alien can open the door and shoot in poisoned arrows? believe me, he _has_ to be inside if those outside ports are sealed. and he _has_ to be dead because that port hasn't been opened in months. look at the dust! it's a fourth of the way up the port." rene lumbered over to it and blew away some of the lighter dust higher up. "see that?" he asked. "no." he groaned. "well, you'll have to take my word for it. it's a raindrop. almost four months old. a very light rain. you could see the faint, crusted outline of the drop if you knew how to look." "i believe you," i said. "i hired you because you know which side of the trees the moss grows on and things like that. still...." rene was beginning to stomp around impatiently. "still _what_?" "it just isn't like uncle isadore." i was trying to search out, myself, what it was that struck me as incongruous. "it's out of character." "it's out of character for _anybody_ to die," rene said. "but i've seen a lot of them dead." "i mean at least he would have died outside." "oh, for pete's sake! why outside? you think he took rat poison?" i went around to the other side of the spaceship, mostly to get away from rene for a moment. i'm only a studs and neck clasp man and rene had twenty years' experience on alien planets. so he was right, of course, about the evidence. there was no getting around it. still.... i circled back around to where rene was smoking his first cigarette since we left earth. his face was a mask of sunbaked wrinkles pointing down to the cigarette smack in the middle of his mouth. "uncle izzy wouldn't die like an ordinary mortal," i said. "he'd have a brass band. or we'd find his body lying in a bed of roses with a big lily in his hand. or he might even disappear into thin air. but not _this_." i waved a hand toward the dead ship. "look," rene said. "my job was to find your uncle isadore. i've found him. we can't get inside that ship with anything short of a matter reducer, which i _don't_ happen to have along since they weigh several tons. you'll have to take my word for it that his body's in there. now let's go home." he managed to talk without moving the cigarette at all. * * * * * "you said a week," i reminded rene. "i said if i didn't find him in a week, then he wasn't there. i've found him. i'm sorry if he was your favorite uncle or something." "as a matter of fact, i never liked him. he was--frivolous. he never had a job. he thought life was a big game." "then how come he got so rich?" "he always won." "not this time, brother! but if he's not your favorite uncle, why all this concern? you can take my word for it he's dead and you've done your duty." "there are two things that bother me. one is curiosity. i just don't believe uncle izzy died in an ordinary fashion locked up in a spaceship. you don't know him, so you wouldn't understand. the other thing i'm concerned about is--well, his will." rene barked a couple of times. i had learned this indicated laughter. "i figured what you were really after was his money." under my yellow overskin, i could feel myself coloring. that wasn't at all the point. i'd mortgaged mother's bonds to finance this trip, confident that uncle izzy would make it good when we found him. if i couldn't get mother's bonds out of hock, she'd have to live out her life in a comfort park. i shuddered at the thought. uncle isadore must have known that when he radared for help. he must have provided some way.... "you said a week and we're staying a week," i told rene as authoritatively as i could manage. "you haven't actually _showed_ me uncle izzy's--er--corpus delicti, so i have you on a legal technicality." i didn't know whether or not this was true, but it sounded good. "all right, we'll stay." rene spat the sentence out onto the ground. "but if you think i'm going to do any more looking, take another guess." he tramped back into his own ship, leaving the outside port and the pressure chamber open. if only uncle izzy had done that! i went over his ship inch by inch, feeling with my hands, to be sure there was no extra door that might be opened. rene would have laughed, but i was beginning to build up antibodies against rene's laughter. i got the bottom part of the ship dusted off and found nothing. i pushed open the door of rene's ship and asked him for a ladder. "you'll have to pay for it," he warned. "once it's open, i can't carry it in my ship and i'll have to get another." "okay, okay! i'll _pay_ for it." * * * * * he handed me a synthetic affair that looked like a meshed rope, wound tight, about the size of a venusian cigar. "this is a ladder?" i asked incredulously, but he had shut the door in my face. i slipped the cellophane off and unrolled it. it seemed to unroll endlessly. when it was ten feet long and four feet wide, i stopped unrolling. sure enough, it hardened into a ladder in about ten minutes. it was so strong i couldn't begin to bend it over my knee. i set it against the side of the ship and began to investigate the view ports. the first two were sealed tight as a drum. the third slipped off in my hands and clattered over the side of the ship onto the rocks. i was almost afraid to look through the "glass" beneath. i needn't have been. i could see absolutely nothing. it was space-black inside. i went back to rene's ship for a flashlight. he was unimpressed by my discovery. "even if you could break the glass, which you can't," he said, "you still couldn't get through that little porthole. here's the flash. you won't be able to see anything." he came with me this time. not because he was interested, but because he wanted another cigarette and never smoked in the ship. he was right. i couldn't see a darned thing in the ship with the flashlight. but i found something--a little lead object that looked like a coin. it had rolled into a corner of the port. now i don't like adventure. i don't like strange planets. all i've ever asked of life was my little four-by-six cubby in the brooklyn bloc and my job. a job i know inside out. it's a comfortable, happy, harmless way to live and i test 10:9 on job adjustment. all the same, it was a thrill to discover a clue that rene would have thrown away if he'd been the one looking. i tossed it casually in the air and showed it to rene. "know what that is?" i asked. "slug for a halfdec slot machine?" "nope. know what i can do with it?" he didn't say. "i'm going to open uncle izzy's ship from the _inside_." * * * * * rene lighted a fresh cigarette from the old one and let the smoke out of his nose. it gave rather the impression of a bull resting between picadors. "can you show me, on the outside, approximately where the button is that you push on the inside to unseal the ship?" i inquired casually. "i can show you exactly." he pointed to a spot next to the entrance port. i wet my finger and made a mark in the dust so i could get it just right. then i found a sharp stone and cut around the edges of the lead. as i slipped off the back half of the coinlike affair, i clapped it over the finger mark. the entrance port swung open. if i'd had a feather, i would have taken great pleasure in knocking rene over with it. "it'd be worth a million dollars," he breathed, "to know how you did that." "oh, a lot less than that," i said airily. "well? explain!" "uncle isadore had it set up," i told him, using the same patiently impatient tone he used on me. "he knew i'd recognize that lead coin. there was a cuff link in it." "a cuff link!" "a studs and neck clasp man has to know about cuff links, too. this happens to be an expensive cuff link, but worth only about a year's salary, not a million dollars. they're held together by a jazzed-up electromagnetic force rather than by a clasp. this force is so strong it would take a derrick to pull them apart. the idea is to keep you from losing one. if you drop it to the floor, you just wave the mate around a little and it pops up through the air." "how do you get them apart?" "just slip them sideways, like a magnet. you can sheathe them in lead, like the one i found, to cut down the attraction. this is how they're packaged. you don't know about them because they're not advertised--that keeps them a luxury item, you know." "so your uncle isadore pasted one of them on the port button." "he didn't have to paste. all he had to do was stick it on. all i had to do was line up the mate to it and the attractive force pushed the button." "that's very neat," rene said. "but why the hell didn't he just leave the port open? he'd hardly do this sort of thing with his dying gasp." "i'm not sure," i admitted. "as a matter of fact, i wonder why he radared _me_ if he really wanted to be rescued. he had plenty of friends who could rescue him more reliably." * * * * * i had an inkling of what had been on uncle isadore's mind. although uncle izzy had had three--or was it four?--wives, he'd very carefully had no children. and it had occurred to him at an advanced age to take an interest in me. he'd sent me through two years of general studies and reluctantly let me specialize in studs and neck clasps. "you were a grilch hop expert in middle school," he had told me. "how come you're getting so stuffy?" "because i can't be an adolescent all my life, uncle isadore," i had replied stiffly. "i would like to get into some solid line of work and be a good citizen." "phooey!" he'd said. but he had let me do what i'd wanted. it was because of this that i had felt duty bound to answer his call for help. i'd _not_ felt duty bound to take all the opportunities he'd tried to force on me when i got out of school. mining the semi-solid seas of alphard kappa. fur trading on procyon beta. and a hundred others, all obviously doomed to failure unless there was one lucky chance. "but i'm _happy_ here with my little room and my little job," i kept telling uncle isadore. "you only think you're happy because you don't know any better," he kept telling me. only, now that he was dead, he seemed to have me where he wanted me. now that nothing could matter to him any longer. "maybe he was getting senile," rene suggested. "uncle izzy always said he'd rather die than--he _did_ die," i replied, suddenly recalling myself to the present and the open outside port of the ship. i realized how reluctant i was to go in. it was one thing to admit uncle izzy was dead--i cherished no great affection for him--but it was something else to have to face his dead body. "would you mind going in first?" i asked rene. he shrugged and shouldered the inside door open. he came out, his face a study in perplexity. "not here!" he said. "this is the first time i've been wrong in fifteen years!" "that's because it's the first time you've been up against uncle izzy. he must have closed the port behind him the same way i opened it." i climbed through the door, feeling immensely relieved. i realized then what had really been worrying me. if the gods had abandoned isadore at the last, what did they have in mind for the rest of us mere mortals? i kicked at my mind irritably, knowing these were young thoughts. but then i _am_ young, i explained to myself. * * * * * the inside of the ship was neat and empty. stuck on the instrument panel with a vaccup was a note, in uncle izzy's flowery script. _my boy. i have died of boredom. do not look for the remains. i have hidden my body to avoid the banality of a decent burial. i bequeath you my entire fortune. find it._ rene groaned. "i suppose now you want to look for the body." "no. if he says it's hidden, it's hidden. but it would be a little silly to go off without finding his fortune, wouldn't it?" "looking for buried treasure wasn't in the contract," rene pointed out. "you'll have to make it worth my while." "another five thousand," i said. "make it ten. payable if i find it." "suppose _i_ find it?" "don't be ridiculous. you'd be a fool to take two steps on this planet without me." he was right, of course. and if we left, i wouldn't get anything. i thought of mother living by the bells at a comfort park. "all right," i said. "what form was his fortune in?" rene asked. "money? bonds? polarian droplets? it would help to know what i'm looking for." "i have no idea," i confessed. "ordinarily it would take a computer to figure out uncle isadore's financial affairs. but he'd have been perfectly capable of selling out everything and taking his entire fortune along with him for some new project." rene had skillfully unscrewed the instrument panel and he lifted it off and began poking inside and removing mysterious bits of machinery. "that makes it harder. you don't know whether he sold out or not?" "i have no idea. he might have all his money piled in the locker of the whist club of sirius beta. in that case, we look for a key. or he might have a block of eretrevium buried somewhere. your guess is as good as mine." "if he's dug up the ground," rene said, "i'll recognize the spot. but that'll mean walking over every inch of ground for a day's journey around. or more, if he did any overnight traveling." "not uncle izzy," i said. "he wouldn't be at all likely to spend a freezing night out on alvarla, even for a good joke." "radar equipment's in perfect shape," rene said, shifting his activities to another segment of the ship's equipment. "i wonder why he didn't leave it on so we could locate him easier. not that we had any trouble. or why he didn't continue broadcasting for help until he died.... mind if i take some of the equipment?" "you haven't been exactly generous with me." "i intend to subtract its value from the cost of supplies and mileage on my ship. i never said i was generous, but, by god, i'm honest." * * * * * rene slid out the compartment of lunch packages, dumped them on the floor. "all unopened," he was saying disgustedly. then he picked up a heavy, square object with sharp corners, open on three sides. "what the hell is this?" "a book," i informed him. rene opened it "hey! a real, antique book! must be worth at least a thousand! look at the _size_ of that print! you can read it with the naked eye, like an instrument panel! well, here's a little piece of your fortune." he tossed it to me and went on examining the lunch packages. he didn't trust me to help him because _i_ wouldn't be able to tell if they'd been opened and something inserted. i hung the book by the covers and let the pages flip open. nothing fell out. i sighed. i'd have to go through the whole damn thing. "i'm going back to your ship and read in comfort," i told rene. "you're no help here anyway," he said, putting the lunch packages in a large plastic bag he'd found somewhere. "no use letting these go to waste." i didn't tell him i had the clue to uncle isadore's fortune in my hand. he didn't know uncle isadore, so he wouldn't have believed me. nothing is more uncomfortable than reading an antique book. there is no way to lie back and flash it on a screen or run the tape over your reading glasses while you lie prone and relax. you have to _hold_ it. if you try to hold it lying down, your arms get tired. if you put it down on a table to read, your neck gets tired from bending over. and the pages keep flipping and make you lose your place. still, i read it all the way through. it wasn't too bad. not like edgar guest, of course, who was the only ancient author i liked in general studies. but i found there was a sort of grilch hop beat to it that reminded me of the footlooses i used to go to in middle school. i grinned. it was funny to think of now. i found no clues in the book. the only thing to do was read it again, more carefully. * * * * * i noticed there was one poem with a _real_ grilch hop beat. i thought suddenly of sally, my regular partner at the footlooses. she was very blonde and she affected a green crestwave in her hair, pulled over her forehead with a diamond clip. she was a beauty, all right. but she was a little silly. and she had that tendency to overdress. no, i sighed, she wouldn't have done for a studs and neck clasp man. but i couldn't help wondering where she was now and what she was like now. did she remember me, and did she think about me when she heard that song we used to dance to, because it was about a girl named sally? once i knew a girl named sally met her at a footloose rally i began humming the grilch hop tune to the ancient poem in uncle algy's book. it was fantastic how closely it fitted, though, of course, the words in the poem were plain silly. but imagine finding a poem with a perfect grilch hop beat before anybody even knew what a grilch was! before venus was even discovered. jump on both feet. hop three times on the left foot. jump. hop three times on the right foot. the rhythm was correct, right down to the breakaway and four-step at the end of each run. it was while i was singing this poem to a grilch hop tune that i noticed the clue. the poem was named "the dodo." and the rhyming was very smooth until i came to the lines: "though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," i said, "art like a raven ghastly, grim, and ancient dodo, wandering from the nightly shore; tell me what thy lordly name is on the night's plutonian shore." quoth the dodo, "isadore." now the author had gone to a lot of trouble in the previous verse not to break the grilch hop rhyme scheme. he made "thereat is" rhyme with "lattice" and "that is." why did he follow "shaven" and "raven" with "dodo"? furthermore, it had not struck me the first time i read the poem quickly that there was anything odd about a bird being named "isadore." people who keep pet grilches frequently name them after famous reed players and isadore is a common name. on the other hand, it _was_ my uncle's name. and the word "dodo" didn't rhyme as it should. i got out a magnifying glass to examine the ancient print. sure enough, it had been tampered with. the print looked so odd to me, anyway, i hadn't noticed the part that had been changed. but it was obvious under the glass that "dodo" had been substituted for a word of almost equal length. the same with "isadore." i went over the whole poem now, carefully, to see which words had been changed. there weren't many. "white" in a couple of places. "dodo" and "isadore" wherever they occurred. an "o" in the line "perfume from an unseen cens_o_r." "s" in the line "'wretch,' i cried, 'isadore hath _s_ent thee....'" * * * * * sitting back, i thought about what i had read. it made no sense at all. was i to look for a white bird, "grim, ungainly, ghastly"? and what if i found him? why was he like a raven? what was this perfume from an unseen censor? i could picture the ghost of uncle isadore, knowing his financial imagination, as the "unseen censor" because he always criticized me. was i to look for perfume? did he have a fortune in perfume stowed somewhere? it seemed to me it would take an awful lot of even the most expensive perfume to comprise a fortune. i decided to start with the bird. i went outside rene's ship and looked around. no birds. "rene!" i called. he was still looking through uncle izzy's ship. "have you seen an ungainly white bird around?" "what!" he snapped, sticking an indignant face out of the door. "i guess you haven't. can your woodsy lore tell if there _are_ birds on this planet?" "obviously," rene said. "i don't know why you can't find your own spoor. i noticed the droppings immediately." "where are the birds?" "how the hell would i know?" but he couldn't contain his special knowledge. "they're probably night birds," he said. "oh, yes." it checked. "wandering from the night's plutonian shore." he looked at me suspiciously. "you ever had a nervous breakdown?" "i have _not_. i test 10:9 on job adjustment and 10:8 on life adjustment." "some people crack on alien planets," he said. "i have a padded room in my ship. you'd be surprised how often i have to use it." i told him about the poem i found in uncle izzy's book. "we look for a white bird," i said. "or perfume." "you're nuts," he pointed out with some justice, because he hadn't known uncle isadore. "how do you know these changes weren't made by somebody else a long time ago? maybe this ancient printer printed it wrong and had to change it afterward." "i don't think they were that primitive back then." but i didn't know what "back then" meant or how primitive ancient printing was. all i knew for sure was that, as the poem stood, it sounded as if somebody had loused up a perfect grilch hop rhyme. and uncle izzy knew i was a grilch hop expert in middle school and this was the only _real_ grilch hop rhythm in the book. what's more, uncle izzy could depend on me to go over that book in painstaking detail because a studs and neck clasp man has to be good on details. * * * * * "all right," i said. "you look your way and i'll look my way." "we're not looking any more any way today," rene said, emerging from uncle isadore's ship loaded down with removings. "it'll be night and below freezing in half an hour." "what do you think," i asked, "a dodo would like to eat?" "a _what_?" "the birds. i want to put something out to attract them. crackers or something?" "i think you're crazy. if you have any idea of sitting outside to wait for them, you'll freeze to death. not only that, there's no moon. you wouldn't be able to see your hand in front of your face." "how do the birds see?" "maybe they aren't night birds. maybe they migrated somewhere else." "and if i use a light, it might scare them away," i mused. "well, maybe i'm not supposed to wait outside, anyway." rene went in and switched on the heat and lights. "leave the outside port open," i said. "why?" "so the birds can knock." "can _what_?" "well, it's possible," i said defensively. "it won't hurt anything to leave it open." "all right," he consented, curving his mouth around unpleasantly, "just to show you what a jackass you are." rene had the heat turned low, for sleeping, and the lights off, as soon as we had eaten and fed the converter. i hydrated a package of crackers so that they were full-sized but not soggy, broke them into pieces and tossed them out. i admit i felt a little embarrassed. i sat there in the chill quiet, on this ugly, alien world, reading "the dodo" by the light of a miniature flash, so as not to disturb rene. pretty soon i began to feel creepy. "the dodo" is a ghastly poem. there's an insidious morbidity about it. it had sounded merely funny the first time i read it. now, the more i read it, the more i began to hear strange, impossible creakings and sighs, which might or might not be due to temperature changes. the night outside was a deep, cold cup of darkness where no human thing moved. there was a knock at the door. i dropped the book and flashlight. rene was up like a cat. he didn't turn on the light. "who's there?" he shouted. there was a scratching noise at the door. then a voice croaked, "my name is isadore summers." * * * * * i reached a trembling hand for the door. "wait, you fool!" rene cried. he picked up the flash and got his gun. "stand behind me and keep your hands off your gun. i know when to shoot and when not to shoot. you don't." "if it's uncle isadore...." "i tell you you've got to leave it up to me, if you want to get off this planet alive. now stand back and keep your mouth shut, no matter what happens." he kicked the door open and stood back and to one side of it. "come in with your arms up!" there was a sort of rustling sound and in walked a huge, white, wingless bird. "my name," the dodo repeated, somewhat plaintively this time, with a glance toward the lunch compartment, "is isadore summers." i couldn't help it. i rolled all over the ship with laughter. rene looked a little shamefaced, tossed his gun onto the rack and punched the lighting on. obviously the dodo recognized our lunch compartment from familiarity with uncle izzy's ship. then he looked at the alcohol tap that led from the fuel conversion. "nepenthe?" he begged. i hesitated. "isn't there something," i asked rene, "about corrupting the natives of a primitive planet?" but rene was sitting on his bunk, his jaw slack. "this is the first time i've ever been made a fool of by an alcoholic bird." "if it's _just_ a bird, of course. like a parrot...." i addressed the bird. "sir," i began, and caught myself, "or perhaps madam, can you say anything else?" "nepenthe," the bird said firmly. i shrugged and drew a cup. the dodo lifted the cup and drained it in one smooth gesture. this, as it turned out, was the only thing it seemed to do smoothly. it began a wild attempt to scratch its head with one claw and remain upright. then, abandoning all dignity, it rolled to its side and scratched furiously to satisfaction. after that, it began what looked like a hopeless attempt to right its awkward body, legs struggling in the air and back bumping around the ship. i couldn't help remembering uncle izzy after a meal, slim and suave, lighting up a tapered, perfectly packed cigarene and blowing out one round, shapely smoke ring that hovered before his light, sardonic grin like a comment on his thoughts. an uncomfortable comparison. i shook myself to life. i righted the bird, no small problem, for he weighed almost two hundred pounds. "well," rene finally said, coming out of his mood, "now that you have this bird, what are you going to do with it?" "i had thought it might lead us to uncle izzy's fortune," i explained. * * * * * the bird obviously had no such intention. it was getting ready to take a nap. "a night bird," i told it reprovingly, "shouldn't take a nap in the middle of the night." "all you're proving is that he has no self-respect," rene pointed out. "why don't you look to see if he's got a note tagged to his leg or something?" i did. he didn't. "i think this whole thing is crazy," rene said, "but since he's a talking bird, you might ask him a few questions. maybe he's trained to say something else." "where is uncle izzy's fortune?" i asked, when i had tugged at the dodo's feathers until he opened one eye. he closed it. "do you have a message for me?" he drew away from me irritably and closed the eye again, ruffling down into his feathers. "he may be keyed to respond to certain phrases. try your uncle's name--he obviously knows that," rene suggested coldly, wanting no part of this but unable to hold down the suggestion. "my name," i screamed at the somnolent dodo, "is isadore summers." he reared back and pecked the hell out of me. i picked the book up off the floor and flipped through the bent pages until i found "the dodo." maybe there'd be something in _that_. "listen to this, rene," i said, "and see if you catch anything i might have missed." rene looked discomfited, but he didn't stop up his ears. when i came to the part, "'tell me what thy lordly name is/on the night's plutonian shore....'" the dodo looked up and said, "isadore." clearly, this was it, although i couldn't recall that any of the questions in the poem were to the point. i got to, "'on the morrow he will leave me/as my hopes have flown before.'/then the bird said...." "ask me more," said the dodo without missing a beat. i read on, getting excited. "'quaff, oh, quaff this kind nepenthe,/and forget this lost lenore.'/quoth the dodo...." "give me more," he supplied, pointing his beak at the alcohol tap. i gave him another cup and continued, sure that he must be going to say _something_ relevant to uncle izzy's fortune. "'is there--_is_ there balm in gilead?--tell me, tell me, i implore!' quoth the dodo...." "probably not," the dodo said, breaking the grilch hop rhythm at last, "but there are perfume trees on alvarla." "perfume trees!" rene shouted. "that bird's lying. it's impossible." "shut up!" i yelled at him. "the poem's not over." * * * * * i read on, somewhat ashamed of having to say such inhospitable words to a dodo who had been, after all, cooperating with me. "'take thy beak from out my heart,/and take thy form from off my door!'/quoth the dodo...." "i was just leaving," the bird said, and struggled to his feet and went and stood by the door expectantly. i got up. "wait!" i commanded the bird, who couldn't do much else because the door was closed. "do you know what perfume trees are, rene?" "yeah, i know what they are, and they don't grow on this planet. you can take my word for it. they need a warm, moist soil to germinate in. they need to have their soil cultivated every day for a year. they die fast on contact with any sort of industrial fumes. they die in captivity, like some wild animals. they die if you sweat on them. they die if you breathe on them. they need to start off warm and get colder every month until they form their flowers. then they need a frost for the pods to fill with the perfume, along with the seeds." "there aren't any industrial fumes here," i pointed out, "and they could get plenty of frost." "that's all they'd get. where's the warm, moist climate to germinate in? where's the parasitical rhns to cultivate their soil? the rhns couldn't exist without their gleees and the gleees can't exist without--never mind. the only place perfume trees can grow is on odoria and that's why the perfume is worth two thousand dollars an ounce." "i have never heard of anything," i informed him, "that spelled 'uncle isadore' so exactly. he always said, 'if it can't be done, i can do it.' well, there's only one way to find out. surely there's something on the ship i can wear." "you mean you're going out into that frozen inkpot after that idiotic bird?" "that's exactly what i mean." "for pete's sake! you're as brainless as the bird is!" but i think, for all his attitude, he was curious, too. * * * * * he began to spray me with something. "close your eyes and mouth. if you don't wash this off with soap and water in twenty-four hours, you'll die. but it sure keeps in the body heat." i stuck the book in my pocket for good luck, and rene handed me a gun, some lunch packages, an antibiotic kit and a water purification kit. "all right," i said, pocketing them, "but it can't be far. uncle izzy wouldn't have gone more than a day's journey." "then why haven't we smelled the perfume? and why would he have gone through all this rigmarole when he must have known you'd search that far?" i didn't know why. i pushed the door open. the bird hopped out and i realized how easy it would be to lose him from the small, round glow of my flash. he looked curiously at me, as though expecting something further. i looked curiously at him, wondering where he would lead to. then he was off. there was no question of following him. that big, awkward bird ran so fast that in a few minutes we could no longer hear the beat of his huge claws on the rocks, even in the perfectly still, dry air. "how fast do you figure he's going?" i asked rene. "how the hell would i know?" "roughly." "roughly? maybe fifty miles an hour." "but that's incredible!" "the big point-tails on aldebaran kappa can do eighty with a native on their backs." "ah!" i said. "so _that's_ it! maybe tomorrow night...." but we could hear the drumming of the returning dodo. "don't be stupid," rene said. "he can't carry both of us and you'd be a fool either to go alone or stay here alone." "as a tribute to my deceased uncle, i'm going to be a fool." i stuck my flashlight into one of my many pockets and climbed onto the huge bird's back. the down beneath his outer feathers was as soft and strong as heavy fur. i dug in with my hands and feet, my head braced against the thickened part of his neck. he started off with a lurch that brought my stomach out of hiding. i kept my eyes squeezed closed. i couldn't have seen anything, anyway. not even the impossible creature that was rushing through the darkness carrying me, for all i knew, straight to damnation. the night rushed past my ears in a wild keening and it crossed my mind to wonder what mr. picks, my supervisor, would say if he saw me now. i had a sudden vision of mr. picks, even more neatly dressed than i always was, with middle-cost neck clasp and stud discreetly shining from a plain, square-edged bag shirt and dun suit. i pictured him opening a refined little box and holding it two feet under the customer's eyes with a gesture of faint, unconscious supplication. a comfortable, warm, happy picture in which my place, one counter behind mr. picks, was reassuringly assured. then, out of nowhere, into the picture galloped a yellow-skinned monster astride a huge, white bird. it turned out to be me and i tumbled off the bird, crying, "mr. picks! i don't know what came over me!" but i was answered only by a multitude of squawks, rustles and scratchings. the bird was home. * * * * * i could almost see vague forms. the darkness was beginning to give a little. i was warm, itchy and uncomfortable under whatever it was that rene had sprayed on me. warm? perfume trees? all i could smell were bird roosts. i stood up, finding my limbs weak, trembling and painful. first, i glanced at my watch. five hours terran time since we left the ship. at fifty miles per hour, we'd have gone two hundred and fifty miles. if we'd gone due north, as the bird started out, we must be in the snow zone. and i was _warm_! i switched my flash around. all i could see were birds. there seemed to be hundreds of them. i couldn't tell which one was my bearer. "where is the perfume?" i bawled. all i got was squawks. some of the birds were, in fact, standing on one foot and tucking their heads away. it was growing lighter. the birds were going to bed. feverishly, i pulled out uncle izzy's old volume of poetry. brushing from my mind a vision of mr. picks in a state of shock and another picture of uncle isadore snickering triumphantly, i stood on that desert land enchanted--on that home by horror haunted, and solemnly read "the dodo" to a colony of wingless birds. my dodo identified himself at the proper place, but i kept on, waiting for something to show me my inheritance. "then methought the air grew denser," i read. "perfume from an unseen censor!" a bird croaked from the back row. "where?" i cried, pushing my way through the birds crowding around me in various stages of roost and curiosity. "then," i repeated, "the air grew denser." "perfume," the bird now in front of me said, "from an unseen censor." he began to scratch at the ground assiduously under one of four dim shapes about the level of my eyes. then he yawned gapingly, gave up and went to sleep. i sat down to wait, because it was almost dawn and the last dodo had tucked his head into his feathers. daylight showed me four little trees, nothing like the usual scraggy vegetation of alvarla. they _must_ be perfume trees, i thought. but they were too young to have blossoms or pods. i didn't go too near them, remembering what rene had said. and, remembering that, i began to figure out how they grew here. * * * * * this place was a little valley. no, a crater. several feet deeper than my height, with sloping sides. the birds apparently kept it warm with their body heat, plus the heat the rocky sides would store. since it was a crater, the winds wouldn't reach it. the crater made a basin to catch the snow which i could see beginning to melt at the edges and ooze down the slope. the birds provided more than ample fertilizer and uncle izzy had apparently trained at least one of them to cultivate the soil under the trees. i climbed out of the crater to see that i was indeed in the regions of snow. to the north were huge drifts, and far off loomed towering glaciers. to the south, the hills tapered off from white to spotted brown. that was the reason for uncle izzy's crazy setup. rene and i would never have come across this crater in an ordinary search. of course, the setup needn't have been _quite_ so crazy. that was the personal equation of which uncle izzy was so fond. the trees would, i assumed, poke their heads up over the crater as they grew, reaching toward the cold, and finally getting the frostbite to fill their pods properly. at two thousand dollars an ounce. i had neglected to ask rene how many pods a tree could be expected to produce or how big the pods were. but, say, half an ounce in each pod and a conservative fifty pods on each tree. a hundred thousand dollars. i slid back into the crater, sat leaning against a somnolent dodo and ate a lunch package with a cupful of melted snow. all sorts of thoughts were jostling my brain. but i was bone-weary. i hadn't slept since we hit alvarla and the ride last night had been a tremendous strain, because i wasn't in the habit of getting any exercise at all. therefore, i fell asleep in mid-thought. it was the noon sun that woke me. i wasn't just warm. i was _hot_. and i was very reluctant to let go of my dream; i kept grabbing at the tag ends of it with both hands. it was the most exciting dream i'd had since the one about succeeding mr. picks. only _very_ different. i'd made a fortune cultivating perfume trees. my dream was full of perfume. some of it came from the exotic plants of my african estate. some of it was from a long-legged, pink-haired girl, the kind african millionaires have. it was the sort of dream, i mused, unable to keep it in mood any longer, as large-minded men have. men like--uncle isadore! i sat up suddenly. uncle isadore--large-minded? why hadn't he had the avuncular decency to leave me his fortune the usual way? why? * * * * * because then he wouldn't be able to play penny-ante psychology and get me dreaming about wild schemes with perfume trees and african estates. that's why. or maybe there wasn't any fortune! suddenly i understood why people smoke. it gives them something to do when they feel helpless. if there wasn't any fortune, then i was hopelessly tied to the perfume trees. if uncle izzy had lost his last cent, it would be very like him to borrow enough from friends to finance a perfume tree scheme. and if he didn't make it to the planet he had in mind--why, he'd make the planet he'd crashed on do. anyone else would have shot the birds for fresh meat. anyone else would have seen immediately that alvarla was the last planet in the galaxy where perfume trees would grow. anyone else would have seen immediately that i was one of the minor, comfortable people in the world who likes the happy regularities of a little job and an assured, if limited, future. anyone else would have seen i had the sort of personality that could not be changed. but uncle izzy wasn't anyone else. _why_ did i keep smelling the perfume from my dream? i followed my nose out of the crater and found the snow melting around a water tank about four feet long and two feet in diameter--part of the ruined fuel system from uncle izzy's ship. i dislodged it from the ice beneath and shook it. the perfume was so strong, as it unfroze, that it made me dizzy. and all that smell was coming from a pinhole. there seemed to be half a gallon in it. enough to pay off mother's bonds and whatever i owed rene, with a handsome sum left over for me. i could go home and forget about perfume trees and alvarla and uncle isadore. but that dream of the african estate kept irritating the back of my mind. and the large, free sky of alvarla was soothing to the eye, when compared to the little squares of blue i noted occasionally when riding the slidewalks of brooklyn. what _did_ i want out of life, anyway? _damn_ uncle isadore. i'd never test 10:9 on job adjustment again. i was still thinking when evening swept in fast, as it does in dry climates, and the birds began to wake up and climb out of the crater, presumably to forage for food. "wait!" i cried. "isadore!" * * * * * i drew out a lunch package and spread it to attract him. it attracted all of them. i pulled out "the dodo." "'tell me what thy lordly name is/on the night's plutonian shore.'" "isadore," he volunteered, swallowing fast while i climbed aboard him. "take me back." then i realized i had made a mistake with the food. "go!" i cried. "spaceship! more food!" he just stood there, his beak poking around the ground for crumbs. but i had to get that skin spray washed off before twenty-four hours were up. "nepenthe!" i shouted desperately. the dodo was off like a flash and didn't stop till we were back at the ship. "you were gone quite a while," rene said nonchalantly. "find anything?" "enough to pay you off," i said. "and we'll make it five thousand because _i_ found it. stow this somewhere. it's perfume." he did. "find anything else?" "nothing that would interest you. i'll be ready to blast off as soon as i've had a shower." rene shrugged. the perfume, when we returned to earth, proved to be worth what he'd said it would be. a lot of people wanted to know where i'd gotten it. "the crops on odoria," they said, "are entirely sewed up by odoria, inc." "they certainly are," i always replied agreeably. it took all i cleared from the perfume to put a down payment on a ship and hire an expert on fertilizing perfume flowers. but this time _i_ wanted to run the show. mr. picks shook his head sadly when i told him to replace me permanently. "you have a great future ahead of you in studs and neck clasps," he said. "why not take a little time and reconsider your decision? or--" "nevermore," i answered. * * * * * not until five years later did i find out what happened to the rest of good old uncle algernon's fortune. i was stretched out on a gently undulating force-field in my interior patio, a huge, scarlet fan-flower tree sifting in the sunshine. leda, her pink hair flowing down to her knees, was just emerging from the pool of grilch milk. she bent to an aphrodite of cnidos position. "perfect!" i said, and threw away my cigarene. "depart!" i told the robot, who came rolling in. "but, master, it's the cha'n of betelgeuse, lord of the seven planets and the four hundred moons." "get dressed, leda," i said regretfully. "we have company." i'd never met him, but i knew he was one of uncle isadore's best friends and i felt obliged to see him. the cha'n had several meals and four cigarenes, maintaining a courteous silence all the while. then he loosened his belt, reached into his furry pouch and handed me a piece of copper scroll. it was a check for five million dollars. "you won," he told me. "or lost, as the case may be." i just looked at him. "i was holding it in trust for you," the cha'n explained, "in accordance with your uncle isadore's last wishes." i blew a perfect smoke ring, let it float before my face for a perfect moment, and then asked, "and suppose i had lost? or won, as the case may be?" "i was to save it to try on your son, the gods permitting you have one." "if necessary," i told him, "i'll try it on him myself, o cha'n of the seven planets and the four hundred moons." "call me charlie," he said. survival type by j. f. bone illustrated by kirberger [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy science fiction march 1957. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] score one or one million was not enough for the human race. it had to be all or nothing ... with one man doing every bit of scoring! arthur lanceford slapped futilely at the sith buzzing hungrily around his head. the outsized eight-legged parody of a mosquito did a neat half roll and zoomed out of range, hanging motionless on vibrating wings a few feet away. a raindrop staggered it momentarily, and for a fleeting second, lanceford had the insane hope that the arthropod would fall out of control into the mud. if it did, that would be the end of it, for niobian mud was as sticky as flypaper. but the sith righted itself inches short of disaster, buzzed angrily and retreated to the shelter of a nearby broadleaf, where it executed another half roll and hung upside down, watching its intended meal with avid anticipation. lanceford eyed the insect distastefully as he explored his jacket for repellent and applied the smelly stuff liberally to his face and neck. it wouldn't do much good. in an hour, his sweat would remove whatever the rain missed--but for that time, it should discourage the sith. as far as permanent discouraging went, the repellent was useless. once one of those eight-legged horrors checked you off, there were only two possible endings to the affair--either you were bitten or you killed the critter. it was as simple as that. he had hoped that he would be fast enough to get the sith before it got him. he had been bitten once already and the memory of those paralyzed three minutes while the bloodsucker fed was enough to last him for a lifetime. he readjusted his helmet, tucking its fringe of netting beneath his collar. the netting, he reflected gloomily, was like its owner--much the worse for wear. however, this trek would be over in another week and he would be able to spend the next six months at a comfortable desk job at the base, while some other poor devil did the chores of field work. * * * * * he looked down the rain-swept trail winding through the jungle. niobe--a perfect name for this wet little world. the bureau of extraterrestrial exploration couldn't have picked a better, but the funny thing about it was that they hadn't picked it in the first place. niobe was the native word for earth, or perhaps "the world" would be a more accurate definition. it was a coincidence, of course, but the planet and its mythological greek namesake had much in common. niobe, like niobe, was all tears--a world of rain falling endlessly from an impenetrable overcast, fat wet drops that formed a grieving background sound that never ceased, sobbing with soft mournful noises on the rubbery broadleaves, crying with obese splashes into forest pools, blubbering with loud, dismal persistence on the sounding board of his helmet. and on the ground, the raindrops mixed with the loesslike soil of the trail to form a gluey mud that clung in huge pasty balls to his boots. everywhere there was water, running in rivulets of tear-streaks down the round cheeks of the gently sloping land--rivulets that merged and blended into broad shallow rivers that wound their mourners' courses to the sea. trekking on niobe was an amphibious operation unless one stayed in the highlands--a perpetual series of fords and river crossings. and it was hot, a seasonless, unchanging, humid heat that made a protection suit an instrument of torture that slowly boiled its wearer in his own sweat. but the suit was necessary, for exposed human flesh was irresistible temptation to niobe's bloodsucking insects. many of these were no worse than those of earth, but a half dozen species were deadly. the first bite sensitized. the second killed--anaphylactic shock, the medics called it. and the sith was one of the deadly species. lanceford shrugged fatalistically. uncomfortable as a protection suit was, it was better to boil in it than die without it. he looked at kron squatting beside the trail and envied him. it was too bad that earthmen weren't as naturally repellent to insects as the dominant native life. like all niobians, the native guide wore no clothing--ideal garb for a climate like this. his white, hairless hide, with its faint sheen of oil, was beautifully water-repellent. kron, lanceford reflected, was a good example of the manner in which nature adapts the humanoid form for survival on different worlds. like the dominant species on every intelligent planet in the explored galaxy, he was an erect, bipedal, mammalian being with hands that possessed an opposable thumb. insofar as that general description went, kron resembled humanity--but there were differences. * * * * * squatting, the peculiar shape of kron's torso and the odd flexibility of his limbs were not apparent. one had the tendency to overlook the narrow-shouldered, cylindrical body and the elongated tarsal and carpal bones that gave his limbs four major articulations rather than the human three, and to concentrate upon the utterly alien head. it jutted forward from his short, thick neck, a long-snouted, vaguely doglike head with tiny ears lying close against the hairless, dome-shaped cranium. slitlike nostrils, equipped with sphincter muscles like those of a terrestrial seal, argued an originally aquatic environment, and the large intelligent eyes set forward in the skull to give binocular vision, together with the sharp white carnassial teeth and pointed canines, indicated a carnivorous ancestry. but the modern niobians, although excellent swimmers, were land dwellers and ate anything. lanceford couldn't repress an involuntary shudder at some of the things they apparently enjoyed. tastes differed--enormously so between earthmen and niobians. there was no doubt that the native was intelligent, yet he, like the rest of his race, was a technological moron. it was strange that a race which had a well-developed philosophy and an amazing comprehension of semantics could be so backward in mechanics. even the simpler of the bee's mechanisms left the natives confused. it was possible that they could learn about machinery, but lanceford was certain that it would take a good many years before the first native mechanic would set up a machine shop on this planet. lanceford finished tucking the last fold of face net under his collar, and as he did so, kron stood up, rising to his five-foot height with a curious flexible grace. standing, he looked something like a double-jointed alabaster anubis--wearing swim fins. his broad, webbed feet rested easily on the surface of the mud, their large area giving him flotation that lanceford envied. as a result, his head was nearly level with that of the human, although there was better than a foot difference in their heights. lanceford looked at kron inquiringly. "you have a place in mind where we can sleep tonight?" "sure, boss. we'll be coming to hunthouse soon. we go now?" "lead on," lanceford said, groaning silently to himself--another hunthouse with its darkness and its smells. he shrugged. he could hardly expect anything else up here in the highlands. oh, well, he'd managed to last through the others and this one could be no worse. at that, even an airless room full of natives was preferable to spending a night outside. and the sith wouldn't follow them. it didn't like airless rooms filled with natives. he sighed wearily as he followed kron along the dim path through the broadleaf jungle. night was coming, and with darkness, someone upstairs turned on every faucet and the sheets of rain that fell during the day changed abruptly into a deluge. even the semi-aquatic natives didn't like to get caught away from shelter during the night. the three moved onward, immersed in a drumming wilderness of rain--the niobian sliding easily over the surface of the mud, the earthman plowing painfully through it, and the sith flitting from the shelter of one broadleaf to the next, waiting for a chance to feed. * * * * * the trail widened abruptly, opening upon one of the small clearings that dotted the rain-forest jungle. in the center of the clearing, dimly visible through the rain and thickening darkness, loomed the squat thatch-roofed bulk of a hunthouse, a place of shelter for the members of the hunters' guild who provided fresh meat for the niobian villages. lanceford sighed a mingled breath of relief and unpleasant anticipation. as he stepped out into the clearing, the sith darted from cover, heading like a winged bullet for lanceford's neck. but the man was not taken by surprise. pivoting quickly, he caught the iridescent blur of the bloodsucker's wings. he swung his arm in a mighty slap. the high-pitched buzz and lanceford's gloved hand met simultaneously at his right ear. the buzz stopped abruptly. lanceford shook his head and the sith fell to the ground, satisfactorily swatted. lanceford grinned--score one for the human race. he was still grinning as he pushed aside the fiber screen closing the low doorway of the hunthouse and crawled inside. it took a moment for his eyes to become accustomed to the gloom within, but his nose told him even before his eyes that the house was occupied. the natives, he thought wryly, must be born with no sense of smell, otherwise they'd perish from sheer propinquity. one could never honestly say that familiarity with the odor of a niobian bred contempt--nausea was the right word. the interior was typical, a dark rectangle of windowless limestone walls enclosing a packed-dirt floor and lined with a single deck of wooden sleeping platforms. steeply angled rafters of peeled logs intersected at a knife-sharp ridge pierced with a circular smokehole above the firepit in the center of the room. transverse rows of smaller poles lashed to the rafters supported the thick broadleaf thatch that furnished protection from the rain and sanctuary for uncounted thousands of insects. a fire flickered ruddily in the pit, hissing as occasional drops of rain fell into its heart from the smokehole, giving forth a dim light together with clouds of smoke and steam that rose upward through the tangled mass of greasy cobwebs filling the upper reaches of the rafters. some of the smoke found its way through the smokehole, but most of it hung in an acrid undulating layer some six feet above the floor. the glow outlined the squatting figures of a dozen or so natives clustered around the pit, watching the slowly rotating carcass of a small deerlike rodent called a sorat, which was broiling on a spit above the flames. kron was already in the ring, talking earnestly to one of the hunters--a fellow-tribesman, judging from the tattoo on his chest. to a niobian, the scene was ordinary, but to lanceford it could have been lifted bodily from the inferno. he had seen it before, but the effect lost nothing by repetition. there was a distinctly hellish quality to it--to the reds and blacks of the flickering fire and the shadows. he wouldn't have been particularly surprised if satan himself appeared in the center of the firepit complete with horns, hoofs and tail. a hunthouse, despite its innocuousness, looked like the southeast corner of hades. * * * * * clustered around the fire, the hunters turned to look at him curiously and, after a single eye-filling stare, turned back again. niobians were almost painfully polite. although earthmen were still enough of a curiosity to draw attention, one searching look was all their customs allowed. thereafter, they minded their own business. in some ways, lanceford reflected, native customs had undeniable merit. presently kron rose from his place beside the fire and pointed out two empty sleeping platforms where they would spend the night. lanceford chose one and sank wearily to its resilient surface. despite its crude construction, a niobian sleeping platform was comfortable. he removed his pack, pulled off his mud-encrusted boots and lay back with a grunt of relaxation. after a day like this, it was good to get off his feet. weariness flowed over him. he awoke to the gentle pressure of kron's hand squeezing his own. "the food is cooked," the niobian said, "and you are welcomed to share it." lanceford nodded, his stomach crawling with unpleasant anticipation. a native meal was something he would prefer to avoid. his digestive system could handle the unsavory mess, but his taste buds shrank from the forthcoming assault. what the natives classed as a delicate and elusive flavor was sheer torture to an earthman. possibly there was some connection between their inefficient olfactory apparatus and their odd ideas of flavor, but whatever the physical explanation might be, it didn't affect the fact that eating native food was an ordeal. yet he couldn't refuse. that would be discourteous and offensive, and one simply didn't offend the natives. the bee was explicit about that. courtesy was a watchword on niobe. he took a place by the fire, watching with concealed distaste as one of the hunters reached into the boiling vat beside the firepit with a pair of wooden tongs and drew forth the native conception of a hors d'oeuvre. they called it vorkum--a boiled sorat paunch stuffed with a number of odorous ingredients. it looked almost as bad as it smelled. the hunter laid the paunch on a wooden trencher, scraped the greenish scum from its surface and sliced it open. the odor poured out, a gagging essence of decaying vegetables, rotten eggs and overripe cheese. lanceford's eyes watered, his stomach tautened convulsively, but the niobians eyed the reeking semi-solid eagerly. no meal on niobe was considered worthy of the name unless a generous helping of vorkum started it off. * * * * * an entree like that could ruin the most rugged human appetite, but when it was the forerunner of a main dish of highly spiced barbecue, vorkum assumed the general properties of an emetic. lanceford grimly controlled the nausea and tactfully declined the greasy handful which kron offered. the niobian never seemed to learn. at every meal they had eaten during their past month of travel on niobe, kron had persistently offered him samples of the mess. with equal persistence, he had refused. after all, there were limits. but polite convention required that he eat something, so he took a small portion of the barbecued meat and dutifully finished it. the hunters eyed him curiously, apparently wondering how an entity who could assimilate relatively untasty sorat should refuse the far greater delicacy of vorkum. but it was a known fact that the ways of earthmen were strange and unaccountable. the hunters didn't protest when he retired to his sleeping platform and the more acceptable concentrates from his pack. his hunger satisfied, he lay back on the resilient vines and fell into a sleep of exhaustion. it had been a hard day. lanceford's dreams were unpleasant. nightmare was the usual penalty of sitting in on a niobian meal and this one was worse than usual. huge siths, reeking of vorkum, pursued him as he ran naked and defenseless across a swampy landscape that stretched interminably ahead. the clinging mud reduced his speed to a painful crawl as he frantically beat off the attacks of the blood-suckers. the climax was horror. one of the siths slipped through his frantically beating hands and bit him on the face. the shocking pain of the bite wakened him, a cry of terror and anguish still on his lips. he looked around wildly. he was still in the hunthouse. it was just a dream. he chuckled shakily. these nightmares sometimes were too real for comfort. he was drenched with sweat, which was not unusual, but there was a dull ache in his head and the hot tense pain that encompassed the right side of his face had not been there when he had fallen asleep. he touched his face with a tentative finger, exploring the hot puffiness and the enormously swollen ear with a gentle touch. it was where he had struck the sith, but surely he couldn't have hit that hard. he gasped, a soft breath of dismay, as realization dawned. he had smashed the sith hard enough to squeeze some of the insect's corrosive body juices through his face net--and they had touched his skin! that wouldn't normally have been bad, but the sith bite he had suffered a week ago had sensitized him. he was developing an anaphylactic reaction--a severe one, judging from the swelling. that was the trouble with exploration; one occasionally forgot that a world was alien. occasionally danger tended to recede into a background of familiarity--he had smashed the sith before it had bitten him, so therefore it couldn't hurt him. he grimaced painfully, the movement bringing another twinge to his swollen face. he should have known better. he swore mildly as he opened his aid kit and extracted a sterile hypo. the super-antihistamine developed by the bureau was an unpredictable sort of thing. sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. he removed the screw cap that sealed the needle and injected the contents of the syringe into his arm. he hoped that this was one of the times the drug worked. if it wasn't, he reflected grimly, he wouldn't be long for this world. he sighed and lay back. there wasn't anything more to do now. all he could do was wait and see if the anti-allergen worked. * * * * * the bureau of extraterrestrial exploration had discovered niobe barely three years ago, yet already the planet was famous not only for its peculiar climate, but also for the number of men who had died upon its watery surface. knowledge of this planet was bought with life, grim payment to decrease the lag between discovery and the day men could live and work on niobe without having to hide beneath domes or behind protection suits. lanceford never questioned the necessity or the inevitable price that must be paid. like every other bee agent, he knew that niobe was crash priority--a world that _had_ to be understood in minimum time. for niobe was a made to order herbarium for a swampland plant called viscaya. the plant was originally native to algon iv, but had been spread to practically every suitable growth center in the galaxy. it was the source of a complex of alkaloids known as gerontin, and gerontin had the property of tripling or quadrupling the normal life span of mammals. it was obvious that viscayaculture should have a tremendous distribution throughout the confederation worlds. but unfortunately the right conditions existed in very few places in the explored galaxy. despite the fact that most life is based on carbon, oxygen and water, there is still very little free water in the galaxy. most planets of the confederation are semi-arid, with the outstanding exceptions of terra and lyrane. but these two worlds were the seats of human and humanoid power for so long that all of their swampland had been drained and reclaimed centuries ago. and it was doubly unfortunate that gerontin so far defied synthesis. according to some eminent chemists, the alkaloid would probably continue to do so until some facet of the confederation reached a class viii culture level. considering that terra and lyrane, the two highest cultures, were only class vii, and that class level steps took several thousands of years to make, a policy of waiting for synthesis was not worth considering. the result was that nobody was happy until niobe was discovered. the price of illicit gerontin was astronomical and most of the confederation's supply of the drug was strictly rationed to those whom the government thought most valuable to the confederation as a whole. of course, the confederation officialdom was included, which caused considerable grumbling. in the nick of time, niobe appeared upon the scene, and niobe had environment in abundance! the wheels of the confederation began to turn. the bee was given a blank check and spurred on by a government which, in turn, was being spurred on by the people who composed it. the exploration of niobe proceeded at all possible speed. with so many considerations weighed against them, what did a few lives matter? for the sake of the billions of humanoids in the confederation, their sacrifice was worthwhile even if only a few days or hours were saved between discovery and exploitation. * * * * * lanceford groaned as a violent pain shot through his head. the anti-allergin apparently wasn't going to work, for it should have had some effect by now. he shrugged mentally--it was the chance one took in this business. but he couldn't say that he hadn't been warned. even old sims had told him, called him a unit in the bee's shortcut trial and error scheme--an error, it looked like now. seemed rather silly--a class vii civilization using techniques that were old during the dark ages before the atomic revolution, sending foot parties to explore a world in the chance that they might discover something that the search mechs missed--anything that would shorten the lag time. it was incomprehensible, but neither sims nor the bee would do a thing like this without reason. and whatever it was, he wasn't going to worry about it. in fact, there wasn't much time left to worry. the reaction was observably and painfully worse. it was important that the news of his death and the specimens he had collected get back to base alpha. they might have value in this complex game alvord sims was playing with men, machines and niobe. but base alpha was a good hundred miles away and, in his present condition, he couldn't walk a hundred feet. for a moment, he considered setting up the powerful little transmitter he carried in his pack, but his first abortive motion convinced him it was useless. the blinding agony that swept through him at the slightest movement left no doubt that he would never finish the business of setting up the antenna, let alone send a message. it was a crime that handie-talkies couldn't be used here on niobe, but their range, limited at best, was practically nonexistent on a planet that literally seemed to be one entire "dead spot." a fixed-frequency job broadcasting on a directional beam was about the only thing that could cover distance, and that required a little technical know-how to set up the antenna and focus it on base alpha. there would be no help from kron. despite his intelligence, the native could no more assemble a directional antenna than spread pink wings and fly. there was only one thing to do--get a note off to sims, if he could still write, and ask kron to deliver the note and his pack to the base. he fumbled with his jacket, and with some pain produced a stylus and a pad. but it was difficult to write. painful, too. better get kron over here while he could still talk and tell him what he wanted. the stylus slipped from numb fingers as lanceford called hoarsely, "kron! come here! i need you!" * * * * * kron looked down compassionately at the swollen features of the earthman. he had seen the kef effect before, among the young of his people who were incautious or inexperienced, but he had never seen it among the aliens. surprisingly, the effects were the same--the livid swellings, the gasping breath, the pain. strange how these foreigners reacted like his own people. he scratched his head and pulled thoughtfully at one of his short ears. it was his duty to help lanceford, but how could he? the earthman had denied his help for weeks, and niobians simply didn't disregard another's wishes. kron scowled, the action lending a ferocious cast to his doglike face. tolerance was a custom hallowed by ages of practice. it went to extremes--even with life at stake, a person's wishes and beliefs must be respected. kron buried his long-snouted head in his hands, a gesture that held in it all the frustration which filled him. the human was apparently resolved to die. he had told kron his last wishes, which didn't include a request for help, but merely to get his pack back to the others in their glass dome. it was astonishing that such an obviously intelligent species should have so little flexibility. they didn't understand the first principles of adaptation. always and forever, they held to their own ways, trying with insensate stubbornness to mold nature to their will--and when nature overcome their artificial defenses, they died, stubborn, unregenerate, inflexible to the end. they were odd, these humans--odd and a little frightening. lanceford breathed wheezily. the swelling had invaded the inner tissues of his throat and was beginning to compress his windpipe. it was uncomfortable, like inhaling liquid fire, and then there was the constant desire to cough and the physical inability to do so. "dirty luck," he whispered. "only a week more and i'd have had it made--the longest trek a man's made on this benighted planet." kron nodded, but then belatedly realized that the human was muttering to himself. he listened. there might be something important in these dying murmurings, something that might explain their reasons for being here and their strange driving haste that cared nothing for life. "it's hard to die so far from one's people, but i guess that can't be helped. old sims gave me the score. like he said, a man doesn't have much choice of where he dies in the bee." "you don't want to die!" kron exploded. "of course not," lanceford said with weak surprise. he hadn't dreamed that kron was nearby. this might well destroy the imperturbable earthman myth that the bee had fostered. "not even if it is in accord with your customs and rituals?" "what customs?" "your clothing, your eating habits, your ointments--are these not part of your living plan?" despite the pain that tore at his throat, lanceford managed a chuckle. this was ridiculous. "hell, no! our only design for living is to stay alive, particularly on jobs like this one. we don't wear these suits and repellent because we _like_ to. we do it to stay alive. if we could, we'd go around nearly as naked as you do." "do you mind if i help you?" kron asked diffidently. "i think i can cure you." he leaned forward anxiously to get the man's reply. "i'd take a helping hand from the devil himself, if it would do any good." kron's eyes were brilliant. he hummed softly under his breath, the niobian equivalent of laughter. "and all the time we thought--" he began, and then broke off abruptly. already too much time was wasted without losing any more in meditating upon the ironies of life. he turned toward the firepit, searched for a moment among the stones, nodded with satisfaction and returned to where lanceford lay. the hunthouse was deserted save for himself and the earthman. with characteristic niobian delicacy, the hunters had left, preferring to endure the night rain than be present when the alien died. kron was thankful that they were gone, for what he was about to do would shock their conservative souls. * * * * * lanceford was dimly conscious of kron prying his swollen jaws apart and forcing something wet and slippery down his throat. he swallowed, the act a tearing pain to the edematous membranes of his gullet, but the stuff slid down, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. the act triggered another wave of pain that left him weak and gasping. he couldn't take much more of this. it wouldn't be long now before the swelling invaded his lungs to such a degree that he would strangle. it wasn't a pleasant way to die. and then, quite suddenly, the pain eased. a creeping numbness spread like a warm black blanket over his outraged nervous system. the stuff kron had given him apparently had some anesthetic properties. he felt dimly grateful, even though the primitive native nostrum would probably do no good other than to ease the pain. the blackness went just far enough to paralyze the superficial areas of his nervous system. it stopped the pain and left him unable to move, but the deeper pathways of thought and reason remained untouched. he was conscious, although no external sensation intruded on his thoughts. he couldn't see kron--the muscles that moved his eyes were as paralyzed as the other muscles of his body and the native was outside his field of vision--but somehow he knew exactly what the niobian was doing. he was washing mucus from his hands in a bowl of water standing beside the fire pit _and he was wondering wryly whether forced feeding was on the list of human tabus_! lanceford's mind froze, locked in a peculiar contact that was more than awareness. the sensation was indescribable. it was like looking through an open door into the living room of a stranger's house. he was aware of the incredible complexity and richness of kron's thoughts, of oddly sardonic laughter, of pity and regret that such a little thing as understanding should cause death and suffering through its lack, of bewildered admiration for the grim persistence of the alien earthmen, mixed with a wondering curiosity about what kept them here--what the true reasons were for their death-defying persistence and stubbornness--of an ironic native paraphrase for the terran saying, "every man to his own taste," and a profound speculation upon what fruits might occur from true understanding between his own race and the aliens. it was a strangely jumbled kaleidoscopic flash that burned across the explorer's isolated mind, a flash that passed almost as soon as it had come, as though an invisible door had closed upon it. but one thing in that briefly shocking contact stood out with great clarity. the niobians were as eager as the bee to establish a true contact, a true understanding, for the message was there, plain in kron's mind that he was thinking not only for himself but for a consensus of his people, a decision arrived at as a result of discussion and thought--a decision of which every niobian was aware and with which most niobians agreed. * * * * * the magnitude of that thought and its implications staggered lanceford's imagination. after two years of exploration and contact with the dominant race of this planet, the bee still knew literally nothing about the sort of people with whom they were dealing. this instantaneous, neural contact proved that. equated against the information dished out in basic training, it merely emphasized the fact that the bee was grossly ignorant. anthropological intelligence had a lot to account for--the job they'd done so far could have been performed by low-grade morons. in wishing to avoid the possibility of giving offense, in hiding behind a wall of courtesy and convention, there had been no contact worthy of the name. yet here was the possibility of a rapport that could be closer than any which existed between any races in the galaxy. lanceford groaned with silent frustration. to learn this when he was dying was the bitterest of ironies. in any other circumstances, the flash of insight could be parlayed into a key which might unlock the entire problem of niobian relationships. bitterly he fought against the curtain of unconsciousness that closed down on him, trying by sheer will to stay awake, to make some move that could be interpreted, to leave some clue to what he had learned. it was useless. the darkness closed in, inexorable and irresistible. * * * * * arthur lanceford opened his eyes, surprised that he was still alive. the pain was gone from his face and the swelling had subsided. he grinned with relief--his luck had held out. and then the relief vanished in a wave of elation. he held the key. he knew the basics for mutual understanding. and he would be alive to deliver them to the specialists who could make them operate. he chuckled. whatever the cure was--the bee drug, kron's treatment, whatever it was, it didn't matter. the important thing was that he was going to live. he wondered whether that flash of insight just before unconsciousness had been real or a figment of delirium. it could have been either, but lanceford clung to the belief that the contact was genuine. there was far too much revealed in that sudden flash that was entirely alien to his normal patterns of thought. he wondered what had triggered that burst of awareness. the bee drug, the stuff kron had given him, the poison of the sith and the histamines floating around in his system--it could have been any one of a number of things, or maybe a complex of various factors that had interacted to make him super-receptive for an instant of time. it was something that would have to be reported and studied with the meticulous care which the bee gave to any facet of experience that was out of the ordinary. a solution might possibly be found, or the whole thing might wind up as one of those dead ends that were so numerous in exploration work. but that was out of his field and, in consequence, out of his hands. his specialty wasn't parapsychological research. kron was standing beside his bed, long doglike face impassive, looking at him with pleased satisfaction. behind him, a group of natives were clustered around the cooking fire. it was as if no time had passed since the allergy struck--but lanceford knew differently. still, the lost time didn't matter. the bright joy that he was going to live transcended such unimportant things. "looks like you won't have to bury me after all," lanceford said happily. he stretched his arms over his head. he felt wonderful. his body was cool and comfortably free of the hot confinement of the protection suit. he did a slow horrified doubletake as he realized that he was lying on the sleeping platform practically naked--a tempting hors d'oeuvre for the thousand and one species of niobe's biting insects. "where's my suit?" he half shouted. * * * * * kron smiled. "you don't need it, friend lanceford. if you will notice, you are not bitten. nor will you be." "why not?" kron didn't answer. it wasn't the proper time, and the euphoria that he and the earthman were enjoying was too pleasant to shatter. lanceford didn't press the matter. apparently kron knew what he was talking about. lanceford had been watching one particularly vicious species of biting fly hover above his body. the insect would approach, ready to enjoy a mandible full of human epidermis, but, about six inches from his body, would slow down and come to a stop, hanging frustrated in midair. finally the fly gave up and flew off into the darkness of the rafters. lanceford hoped that one of the spiders would get it--but he was convinced. whatever happened to him while he was unconscious had made him as insect-repellent as the niobians. the smell of cooking came from the firepit and, incredibly, it smelled good. lanceford looked startledly at kron. "i'm hungry." "an excellent sign," kron replied. "you are nearly cured. soon you will be able to finish this trek." "incidentally," lanceford said, "for the first time since i have been out on this showerbath world of yours, you're cooking something that smells fit to eat. i think i'd like to try it." kron's eyebrows rose and he hummed softly under his breath. this was something entirely unexpected--an added delight, like the flavor of komal in a sorat stew. he savored it slowly, enjoying its implications. "what is it?" lanceford persisted. "a dish called akef," kron said. the name was as good as any and certainly described the effect well enough. * * * * * the last hundred miles had been a breeze. lanceford stood at the edge of the clearing, looking across the planed-off landscape to the shimmering hemispherical bulk of base alpha, glistening like a giant cabochon jewel under niobe's dark sky. without the protection suit to slow him down and hamper his movements, what would have been a week's trip had been shortened to four days. in a few minutes, he would be back among his own kind--and he wasn't sure whether he was glad or sorry. of course, there was a certain satisfaction in bringing back a first-class discovery--perhaps the greatest in the short history of niobian exploration--but there was a stigma attached to the way it had been found. it wouldn't be easy to confess that it had practically been forced upon him, but it would have to be done. it would have been much nicer to have found the answer by using his head. there would have been some really deserved prestige in that. * * * * * he sighed and turned to kron. "farewell, friend," he said soberly, "and thanks." "we are even," kron replied. "you saved my life from a roka and i saved yours from the sith. the scales are balanced." lanceford blinked. he had forgotten that incident where he had shot the big catlike animal shortly after the 'copter had dropped them for the start of their journey back to base. apparently it was after kron--or at least the native had thought so. lanceford grinned ruefully. score another point for blind luck. "but, kron, it's not that easy. you have given me a secret of your people and i shall have to tell it to mine." "i expected that you would. besides, it is no secret. even our children know its composition and how to make it. we have never held it from you. you simply wouldn't accept it. but it is about time, friend lanceford, that your race began learning something of niobe if they wish to remain here--and it is about time that we began learning something about you. i think that there will be some rather marked changes in the future. and in that regard, i leave you with the question of whether a civilization should be judged entirely upon its apparent technological achievements." "i--" lanceford began. "you have learned how we avoid the insects," kron continued, maneuvering past the abortive interruption, "and perhaps someday you will know the full answer to my question. but in the meantime, you and your kind will be free to move through our world, to learn our ways, and to teach us yours. it should be a fair exchange." "thanks to akef," lanceford said fervently, "we should be able to do just that." * * * * * kron smiled. "you have used the drug enough to have overcome the mental block that prevented you from naming it before. the word i coined from your own language of science is no longer necessary." "i suppose not, but it's pleasanter to think of it that way." "you earthmen! sometimes i wonder how you ever managed to achieve a civilization with your strange attitudes toward unpleasant facts." kron smiled broadly, relishing the memory of his deception and lanceford's shocked awakening to the truth. "i hope," he continued, "that you have forgiven my little deceit and the destruction of your protective clothing." "of course. how could i do otherwise? it's so nice to be rid of that sweatbox that i'd forgive anything." lanceford frowned. "but there's one thing that puzzles me. how did you disguise the stuff?" "i didn't," kron replied cryptically. "you did." he turned away and, with characteristic niobian abruptness, walked off into the jungle. his job was done and natives were never ones to dally with leavetaking, although their greetings were invariably ceremonious. lanceford watched until the native was out of sight and then walked slowly across the clearing toward the dome. he had learned a lot these past few days, enough to make him realize that his basic training had been so inadequate as to be almost criminal. it was lacking in many of the essentials for survival and, moreover, was slanted entirely wrong from a psychological point of view. sure, it was good enough to enable a man to get along, but it seemed to be particularly designed to deny the fact that the natives obviously possessed a first-rate culture of their own. it didn't say so directly, but the implications were there. and that was wrong. the natives possessed a civilization that was probably quite as high as the one terra possessed. it was simply oriented differently. one thing was certain--the confederation wasn't going to expropriate or exploit _this_ planet without the natives' consent. it would be suicide if they tried. he grinned. actually there would be no reason for such action. it was always easier to deal with advanced races than to try to conquer or educate primitive ones. kron had the right idea--understanding, exchange, appreciation--confederation culture for niobian. it would make a good and productive synthesis. still grinning, lanceford opened the airlock and stepped inside, ignoring the pop-eyed guard who eyed his shorts and sandals with an expression of incredulous disbelief. * * * * * alvord sims, regional director, niobe division bee, looked up from his desk and smiled. the smile became a nose-wrinkling grimace as lanceford swung the pack from his shoulders and set it carefully on the floor. "glad to see that you made it, lanceford," sims said. "but what's that awful smell? you should have done something about it. you stink like a native." "all the baths in the world won't help, sir," lanceford said woodenly. he was tired of the stares and the sniffs he had encountered since he had entered the base. in his present condition, a fellow-human smelled as bad to him as he did to them, but he didn't complain about it and he saw no reason why they should. humanity should apply more courtesy and consideration to members of their own species. "it's inside me," he explained. "my metabolism's changed. and incidentally, sir, you don't smell so sweet yourself." sims sputtered for a moment and then shrugged. "perhaps not," he admitted. "one can't help sweating in this climate even with air-conditioning." "it's the change inside me," lanceford said. "i suppose it'll wear off in time, once i've been on a normal diet. but i didn't think that was too important in view of the information i have. i've learned something vital, something that you should know at once. that's why i'm here." "that's decent of you," sims replied, "but an interoffice memo would have served just as well as a personal visit. my stomach isn't as good as it once was. ulcers, you know." "the executive's disease," lanceford commented. sims nodded. "well, arthur, what did you find that was so important?" "that we've been fools." sims sighed. "that's nothing new. we've been fools since the day we left earth to try and conquer the stars." "that's not what i mean, sir. i mean that we've been going at this niobe business the wrong way. what we need is to understand the natives, instead of trying to understand the planet." "out of the mouths of babes and probationers--" sims said with gentle irony. "it pays off," lanceford replied doggedly. "take my case. i've found out why the natives are insect-proof!" "that's a new wrinkle. can you prove it?" "certainly. i came the last hundred miles in shorts." "what happened to your suit?" "kron destroyed it accidentally." "accidentally--hah!" sims snorted. "niobians never do things accidentally." * * * * * lanceford looked sharply at the director. the observation carried a wealth of implications that his sharpened senses were quick to grasp. "then you know the natives aren't simple savages, the way we were taught in basic training?" "of course! they're a non-technical class v at the very least--maybe higher. somehow they've never oriented their civilization along mechanical lines, or maybe they tried it once and found it wanting. but no one in the upper echelons has ever thought they were stupid or uncivilized." "then why--" "later," sims said. "you're entitled to an explanation, but right now i'd appreciate it if you'd finish your statement. what makes the natives insect-proof?" "vorkum." "that gunk?" "that's the repellent." "in more ways than one," sims said. "it's not so bad after you get used to it. it just smells awful at first." "that's an understatement, if i ever heard one." * * * * * "perhaps the lab can analyze it and find the active principle," lanceford said hopefully. "if they do, i'll bet it is distilled quintessence of skunk," sims replied gloomily. "i'll be willing to bet that our native friends tried that trick ages ago and gave it up for a bad job. they're pretty fair biochemists as well as being philosophers." "could be," lanceford said thoughtfully. "i never thought of that." "you'd better start thinking all the time. these lads are _smart_. why do you think we have this complicated rigmarole about native relations and respect? man, we're running scared. we don't want to lose this planet, and anything less than the kid-glove treatment would be sheer suicide until we learn how far we can go. these natives have an organization that'd knock your eye out. i didn't believe it myself until i got the proof. as you learn more about it, you'll understand what i mean. we're dealing with an ecological _unit_ on this planet!" "but i thought--" "that you were here to explore a primitive world?" "wasn't that what i was trained for?" "no. we can do that sort of thing with a couple of geodetic cruisers. we don't need men trekking through the jungles to assay a world's physical resources. that business went out of date during the dark ages. there's a better reason than that for these treks." "like what?" "you asked the question. now answer it," sims said. "you have enough data." lanceford thought for a moment "i can see one reason," he said slowly. "yes?" "the trek could be a test. it could be used to determine whether or not the probationer was a survival type--a sort of final examination before he's turned loose in a responsible job here in the bee." * * * * * sims smiled. "bull's-eye! it's part of the speedup--a pretty brutal part, but one that can't be helped if we want to get this planet in line quickly enough to stop the riot that's brewing in the confederation. it's as much for niobe's good as ours, because the confederation wants that gerontin like an alcoholic wants another drink--and they're not going to wait for normal exploration and development. that's why the treks. it's a tough course. failure can and often does mean death. usually we can pull a misfit out in time, but not always. if you live through the trek and we don't have to pull you out, though, you've proved yourself a survival type--and you're over the first hurdle. "then we check with your guide and anyone you happen to meet en route. the natives are very cooperative about such things. if you pass their evaluation, you're ready to join the club. it's been forming ever since we landed here two years ago, but it's still pretty exclusive. it's the nucleus of the bee's mission here, the one that'll get things rolling with the gerontin plantations. we'll know about you in a few more minutes after the cyb unit gets through processing your data." sims grinned at the thunderstruck youngster. lanceford nodded glumly. "i'll probably fail. i sure didn't use my head. i never caught the significance of the trek, i failed to deduce the reason for the insect-repellent qualities of the natives, and i missed the implications of their culture until i had almost reached base. those things are obvious. any analytical brain would have figured them out." "they're only obvious when you know what you're looking for," sims said gently. "personally, i think you did an excellent job, considering the handicaps you have faced. and the discovery of the vorkum was masterly." lanceford blushed. "i hate to admit it, but kron literally shoved the stuff down my throat." "i didn't mean the _method_ by which you learned that vorkum was the stuff we've been searching for," sims said. "i meant the _results_ you obtained. results are what count in this business. call it luck if you wish, but there is more to it than that. some people are just naturally lucky and those are the sort we need here. they're survival types. a lot is going to depend on having those so-called lucky people in the right places when we settle niobe's status in the confederation." he paused as the message tube beside his desk burped a faint hiss of compressed air and a carrier dropped out into the receiving basket. "somehow i think that this is your membership card to the club," he said. he read it, smiled, and passed the sheet to lanceford. "and now, arthur, before i appoint you as a niobe staff member, i'd like to know one thing." "what is that, sir?" "just why in the name of hell did you bring that pack in here with you? i've just realized where that smell is coming from!" "i didn't dare leave it anywhere," lanceford said. "someone might have thrown it down a disposal chute." "i wouldn't blame them. that's vorkum you have in there, isn't it?" lanceford nodded. "yes, sir. i didn't want to lose it." "why not? we can always get more from the natives if we need it." "i know that, sir. _we_ can, but this is all _i'll_ get for the next six months, and if i ration myself carefully, it might last that long. you see, sir, it's mildly habit-forming--like cigarettes--and one gets accustomed to it. and besides, you really don't know what flavor is until you've tried vorkum on chocolate." moral equivalent by kris neville illustrated by dick francis [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy science fiction january 1957. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] why shouldn't a culture mimic another right down to the last little detail? because the last detail may be just that--the final one! the planet lanit ii had dwindled to a luminous speck. they were in clear space now, at breakoff point. beliakoff held the ship in position while kelly set dials for the jump into the hyperspatial drift opening, which deep-space men knew as the slot. beliakoff cracked his bony knuckles nervously. "now, johnny," he said, "easy this time. _real_ easy. gentle her into it. she's not a new ship. she resents being slammed into the slot." "she'll take it," kelly said, with a boyish grin of almost suicidal abandon. "maybe she will, but how about us? you sort of creased the slot getting us off torriang. a little closer and--" "i was still getting the touch. you ought to be glad i'm an instinctive astrogator." he set the last dial with a rapid twirl and reached for the kissoff switch. "you're out two decimal points," said beliakoff, who worried about such trifles. "enough to ionize us." "i know, i know," kelly grumbled, adjusting the dial. "i was just touching it for luck. here we go!" he depressed the kissoff switch. beliakoff shut his eyes as the ship lurched slotward, wishing that kyne, their government-inspected, college-graduated astrogator was still aboard. kyne had been an expert at the job. but then, three planets back, he had suddenly gone after a native stevedore with a micro-edge cleaver, screaming that no dirty alien would ever marry _his_ daughter. kyne had no daughter. currently he was confined in azolith, awaiting transportation earthside, to a padded little homy room in the spaceman's snug port. * * * * * "how about that?" kelly asked proudly, once the ship was locked in hyperspace. "superior intelligence and steel nerves do the trick every time." "poor devil, kyne," beliakoff sighed. "a paranoid," kelly diagnosed. "did he ever tell you about the plot to keep him out of the luna military academy?" "he never talked to me much." "that's because you're a cold, distant, unsympathetic type," kelly said, with a complacent smile. "me, he told everything. he applied to luna every year. studied all the textbooks on military organization, land tactics, sea tactics, space strategy, histories of warfare. crammed his cabin with that junk. knew it inside out. fantastic memory!" "why didn't he get in?" "hemophilia. he couldn't pass the physical. he thought they were plotting against him. still, i'm grateful for the chance at a little astrogation." with the barest hint of a smile, kelly said, "i understand it's possible to bring a ship sidewise through the slot at terra." "please don't try," beliakoff begged, shuddering. "i knew we should have waited for kyne's replacement at mala." "we'd still be there, with a cargo of kvash turning sour." "i was afraid it would sour anyhow," beliakoff said, with a worrier's knack for finding trouble. "mala is the slowest loading port this side of the rift. i must admit, however, they didn't do badly this time." "noticed that, did you?" kelly asked. "hm? did you find a way of speeding them up?" "sure. gave them kyne's old dog-eared books. they're crazy about books. really hustled for them." beliakoff said nothing for several seconds, but his long, sallow face became pale. "you what?" "gave 'em the books. don't worry," kelly said quickly. "kyne gave them to me before they hauled him away." "you gave the _warfare books_ to the people on mala?" "you mean i shouldn't have? why not? what's wrong with mala?" "plenty." beliakoff grimly did some quick figuring. "it'll be a year, their time, when we can get back. kelly, take us out of hyperspace!" "now?" kelly gasped. "here?" "at once!" "but we might come out inside a star or--" "that," beliakoff said, his voice filled with righteousness, "simply cannot be helped. we must return at once to mala!" * * * * * general drak, commander of the forces of the empress, wearer of the gold star of mala, sat at his desk in the supreme command post, which had recently been converted from a hardware store. he was engaged in a fiery argument over the telephone with nob, the empress's right-hand man. "but damn it all," general drak shouted, "i must have it! i am the supreme commander, the general of all the armies of the dictatorship! doesn't that mean anything?" "not under the circumstances," nob answered. two soldiers, standing guard in the general's quarters, listened interestedly. "think he'll get it?" one asked. "not a chance," the other answered. drak glared them into silence, then returned to the argument. "will you please attempt to understand my position?" he said hoarsely. "you put me in command. at my orders, the armies of the dictatorship move against the allied democracies. all the other generals obey me. _me!_ correct?" "he's got a point," one soldier said. "he'll never get it," the other replied. "shut up, you two!" drak roared. "nob, aren't i right? it's the earthly way, nob. authority must be recognized!" "i'm sorry," nob said. "extremely sorry. personally, i sympathize with you. but the _book of terran rank equivalents_ is quite specific. seven shoulder stars are the most--the absolute most--that any general can wear. i absolutely cannot allow you to wear eight." "but you gave frix seven! and he's just unit general!" "that was before we understood the rules completely. we thought there was no limit to the number of stars we could give and frix was sulky. i'm sorry, general, you'll just have to be satisfied with seven." "take one away from frix, then." "can't. he'll resign." "in that case, i resign." "you aren't allowed to. the book, _military leadership_, specifically states that a supreme commander never resigns during hostilities. an earthman would find the very thought inconceivable." "all right!" drak furiously slammed down the telephone. the two soldiers exchanged winks. "at attention, you two," drak said. "you're supposed to be honor guards. why can't you act like honor guards?" "we haven't got weapons," one of the soldiers pointed out. "can't be helped. i sent what we had to the front." "but we need them here," the soldier said earnestly. "it's bad for morale, us not having weapons, and morale is vital for victory." drak hated to be lectured, but he had to accept textbook truth when it was quoted at him. "you may be right," he agreed. "i'll try to get some back." he rubbed his eyes tiredly. everything had happened so quickly! * * * * * just a week ago, nob had walked into his store and inquired, "drak, how would you like to be a general?" "i don't know," drak had confessed honestly. "what is it and why do we need one?" "war starting," nob said. "you've heard of war, haven't you? earth idea, _very_ earthly. i'll explain later how it works. what do you say?" "all right. but do you really think i'm the right type?" "absolutely. besides, your hardware store is perfectly situated for the supreme command post." but aside from the location of his hardware store, drak had other qualifications for leadership. for one thing, he looked like an earth general and this had loomed large in nob's eyes. drak was over six feet tall, strongly built, solidly muscled. his eyes were gray, deep-set and fierce; his nose was aquiline; his mouth was firm because he usually held nails in it when he was out on a repair job. in his uniform, drak looked every inch a general; as a matter of fact, he looked like several generals, for his cap came from the earth-mars war of '82, his tunic was a relic of the d'eereli campaign, his belt was in the style of the third empire, his pants were a replica of the southern star front, while his shoes reminded one of the hectic days of the fanzani rebellion. but at least all his clothes were soldiers' clothes. his honor guard had to piece out their uniforms with personal articles. they had complained bitterly about the injustice of this, and had come close to deserting. but drak, after some hasty reading in smogget's _leadership_, told them about the terran doctrine of the privileges of rank. in front of him now was a report from the allani battle front. he wasn't sure what it said, since it was coded and he had neglected to write down the code. was it enemy repulsed us with heavy losses or should it read us repulsed enemy with heavy losses? he wished he knew. it made quite a difference. the door burst open and a young corporal rushed in. "hey, general, take a look out the window!" drak started to rise, then reconsidered. rules were rules. "hey, what?" he demanded. "forgot," the corporal said. "hey, _sir_, take a look out the window, huh?" "much better." drak walked to the window and saw, in the distance, a mass of ascending black smoke. "city of chando," the corporal said proudly. "boy, we smacked it today! saturation bombing for ten hours. they can't use it for anything but a gravel pit now!" "sir," drak reminded. "sir. the planes are fueled up and waiting. what shall we flatten next, huh, sir?" "let me see...." general drak examined a wall map upon which the important enemy cities were circled in red. there were alis and dryn, kys and mos and dlettre. drak could think of no reason for leveling one more than another. after a moment's thought, he pushed a button on his desk. "yeah?" asked a voice over the loudspeaker. "which one, ingif?" "kys, of course," said the cracked voice of his old hardware store assistant. "fellow over there owes us money and won't pay up." "thanks, ingif." drak turned to the corporal. "go to it, soldier!" "yes, sir!" the corporal hurried out. general drak turned back to the reports on his desk, trying again to puzzle out what had happened at allani. repulsed us? us repulsed? how should it read? "oh, well," drak said resignedly. "in the long run, i don't suppose it really makes much difference." * * * * * miles away, in no man's land, stood a bunker of reinforced concrete and steel. within the bunker were two men. they sat on opposite sides of a plain wooden table and their faces were stern and impassive. beside each man was a pad and pencil. upon each pad were marks. upon the table between them was a coin. "your toss," said the man on the right. the man on the left picked up the coin. "call it." "heads." it came up heads. "damn," said the flipper, passing the coin across the table and standing up. the other man smiled faintly, but said nothing. * * * * * kelly reached for the kissoff switch, then hesitated. "look, igor," he said, "do we have to come out now, without charts? it gets risky, you know. how can we tell what's out there in normal space?" "it is a risk we have to take," beliakoff said stonily. "but why? what's wrong with the people of mala having those books? believe me, there's nothing dirty in them." "look," beliakoff said patiently, "you know that mala is a semi-restricted planet. limited trading is allowed under control conditions. no articles are allowed on the planet except those on the approved list." "yeah," kelly said vaguely. "silly sort of rule." "not at all. mala is a mirror culture. they consider earth and its ways to be absolute perfection. they copy everything of earth's they can find." "seems like a good idea. we _have_ got a real good culture." "sure, but we developed into it. the malans simply copy what they see, with no underlying tradition or rationale. since they don't know why they're doing any particular thing, they can easily misinterpret it, warp it into something harmful." "they'll learn," kelly said. "of course they will. but in the meantime, the results can be devastating. they always are when a primitive race tries to ape the culture of a more advanced people. look at what happened to the south sea islanders. all they picked up was the worst of french, british and american culture. you hardly see any more south sea islanders, do you? same with the american indians, with the hottentots, and plenty of others." "i still think you're making too much of a fuss about it," kelly said. "all right, i gave them a lot of books on warfare and political organization. so what? what in blazes can they do with them?" "the malans," beliakoff said grimly, "have never had a war." kelly gulped. "never?" "never. they're a completely cooperative society. or were, before they started reading those warfare books." "but they wouldn't start a war just because they've got some books on it, and know that earth people do it, and--yeah, i guess they would." quickly he set the dials. "you're right, buddy. we have an absolute moral obligation to return and straighten out that mess." "i knew you'd see it that way," beliakoff said approvingly. "and there is the additional fact that the galactic council could hold us responsible for any deaths traceable to the books. it could mean ran-hachi prison for a hundred years or so." "why didn't you say that in the first place?" kelly flipped the kissoff switch. the ship came out in normal space. fortunately, there was no sun or planet in its path. "hang on," kelly said, "we're going where we're going in a great big rush!" "i just hope we'll be in time to salvage something," beliakoff said, watching as their freighter plowed its way through the sea of space toward the unchanging stars. * * * * * with evident nervousness, nob walked down a long, dim corridor toward the imperial chambers, carrying a small package in both hands. the prime minister of the dictatorship was a small bald man with a great bulging forehead and small, glittering black eyes, made smaller by steel-rimmed spectacles. he looked the very incarnation of an evil genius, which was why he had been chosen as the power behind the throne. in point of fact, however, nob was a mild, near-sighted, well-meaning little man, a lawyer by occupation, known throughout mala for his prize rose gardens and his collection of earth stamps. in spite of a temperamental handicap, he didn't find his new job too difficult. the earth books were there and nob simply interpreted them as literally as possible. whenever a problem came up, nob thought: how would they solve it on earth? then he would do the same, or as near the same as possible. but dealing with the empress presented problems of a unique nature. nob couldn't find a book entitled _ways and means of placating royalty_. if such a book were obtainable, nob would have paid any price for it. he took a deep breath, knocked and opened the door into the royal chambers. instantly he ducked. a vase shattered against the wall behind him. not so good, he thought, calculating the distance by which it had missed him. the empress jusa's aim was improving. "nob, you dirty swine!" the empress shrieked. "at your service, majesty," nob answered, bowing low. "where are the pearls, you insolent dolt?" "here, majesty," nob said, handing over the package. "it strained the exchequer, buying them for you. the minister of the treasury threatened to desert to the enemy. he may still. the people are muttering about extravagance in high places. but the pearls are yours, majesty." "of course." jusa opened the package and looked at the lustrous gems. "can i keep them?" she asked, in a very small voice. "of course not." "i didn't think so," jusa said sadly. she had been just another malan girl, but had been chosen as empress on the basis of her looks, which were heartbreakingly lovely. it was axiomatic that an empress should be heartbreakingly lovely. the malans had seen enough earth films to know that. but an empress should also be cold, calculating, cruel, as well as gracious, headstrong and generous to a fault. she should care nothing for her people, while, simultaneously, all she cared for was the people. she should act in a manner calculated to make her subjects love her in spite of and because of herself. * * * * * jusa was a girl of considerable intelligence and she wanted to be as earthly as the next. but the contradictions in her role baffled her. "can't i keep them just for a little while?" she pleaded, holding a single pearl up to the light. "it isn't possible," nob said. "we need guns, tanks, planes. therefore you sell your jewelry. there are many terran precedents." "but why did i have to insist upon the pearls in the first place?" jusa asked. "i explained! as empress, you must be flighty, must possess a whim of iron, must have no regard for anyone else's feelings, must lust for expensive baubles." "all right," jusa said. "all right, what?" "all right, swine." "that's better," nob said. "you're learning, jusa, you really are. if you could just fluctuate your moods more consistently--" "i really will try," promised the empress. "i'll learn, nob. you'll be proud of me yet." "good. now there are some problems of state which you must decide upon. prisoners of war, for one thing. we have several possible means for disposing of them. first, we could--" "you take care of it." "now, now," nob chided. "mustn't shirk your duty." "i'm not. i am simply being arbitrary and dictatorial. _you_ solve it, pig. and bring me diamonds." "yes, excellency," nob said, bowing low. "diamonds. but the people--" "i love the people. but to hell with them!" she cried, fire in her eyes. "fine, fine," nob said, and bowed his way out of the room. jusa stood for a few moments in thought, then picked up a vase and shattered it on the floor. she made a mental note to order several dozen more. then she flung herself upon the royal couch and began to weep bitterly. she was quite a young empress and she had the feeling of being in beyond her depth. the problems of the war and of royalty had completely ended her social life. she resented it; any girl would. * * * * * nob, meanwhile, left the palace and went home in his armored car. the car had been ordered to protect him against assassins, who, according to the earth books, aimed a good deal of their plots at prime ministers. nob could see no reason for this, since if he weren't prime minister, any one of a thousand men could do the job with equal efficiency. but he supposed it had a certain symbolic meaning. he reached his home and his wife kissed him on the cheek. "hard day at the palace, dear?" she asked. "quite hard," nob said. "lots of work for after supper." "it just isn't fair," complained his wife. she was a plump, pleasant little person and she worried continually about her husband's health. "they shouldn't make you work so hard." "but of course they should!" said nob, a little astonished. "don't you remember what i told you? all the books say that during a war, a prime minister is a harried, harassed individual, weighed down by the enormous burden of state, unable to relax, tense with the numerous strains of high office." "it isn't fair," his wife repeated. "no one said it was. but it's extremely earthlike." his wife shrugged her shoulders. "well, of course, if it's earthlike, it must be right. come eat supper, dear." * * * * * after eating, nob attacked his mounds of paperwork. but soon he was yawning and his eyes burned. he turned to his wife, who was just finishing the dishes. "my dear," he said, "do you suppose you could help me?" "is it proper?" she asked. "oh, absolutely. the books state that the prime minister's wife tries in every way possible to relieve her husband of the burden of power." "in that case, i'll be happy to try." she sat down in front of the great pile of papers. "but, dear, i don't know anything about these matters." "rely on instinct," nob answered, yawning. "that's what i do." flattered by the importance of her task, she set to work with a will. several hours later, she awakened her husband, who was slumbering on the couch. "i've got them all finished except these," she said. "in this one, i'm afraid i don't understand that word." nob glanced at the paper. "oh, propaganda. that means giving the people the facts, whether true or false. it's very important in any war." "i don't see why." "it's obvious. to have a genuine earth-style war, you need ideological differences. that's why we chose a dictatorship and the other continent chose a democracy. the job of propaganda is to keep us different." "i see," she said dubiously. "well, this other paper is from general heglm of security. he asks what you are doing about the spy situation. he says it's very serious." "i had forgotten about that. he's right, it's reached a crisis point." he put the paper in his pocket. "i'm going to take care of that personally, first thing in the morning." in the last few hours, his wife had made no less than eight major policy decisions, twenty codifications, eight unifications, and three clarifications. nob didn't bother to read them over. he trusted his wife's good judgment and common sense. he went to bed that night with the feeling of a job well done. and before he fell asleep, he figured out exactly what he would do about the spy situation. * * * * * the next morning, nob's orders went out by all means of communication. the results were gratifyingly swift, since the people of the dictatorship were completely behind the war and dutifully loved and hated their empress, in whose name the order was signed. a typical scene took place in the clubcar of the char-xil express. the occupants of the car, twenty-three commuting businessmen, sealed the doors as soon as they received nob's order. the best-read among them, a salesman by the name of thrang, was elected spokesman for the group. "boys," said thrang, "i guess i don't have to tell you anything about the importance of this order. we all know what war is by now, don't we?" "we sure do!" "war is hell!" "the war that the enemy thrust on us!" "the war to start all wars!" "that's right," thrang said. "and i guess we've all felt the pinch since the war started. eh, boys?" "i've done my part," said a man named draxil. "when the prime minister called for a cigarette shortage, i dumped twenty carloads of tobacco in the hunto river. now we got cigarette rationing!" "that's the spirit," thrang said. "i know for a fact that others among you have done the same with sugar, canned goods, butter, meat and a hundred items. everything's rationed now; everyone feels the pinch. but, boys, there's still more we have to do. now a spy situation has come up and it calls for quick action." "haven't we done enough?" groaned a clothing-store owner. "it's never enough! in time of war, earth people give till it hurts--then give some more! they know that no sacrifice is too much, that nothing counts but the proper prosecution of the war." the clothing-store owner nodded vehemently. "if it's earthly, it's good enough for me. so what can we do about this spy situation?" "that is for us to decide here and now," thrang said. "according to the prime minister, our dictatorship cannot boast a single act of espionage or sabotage done to it since the beginning of the war. the chief of security is alarmed. it's his job to keep all spies under surveillance. since there are none, his department has lost all morale, which, in turn, affects the other departments." "do we really need spies?" "they serve a vital purpose," thrang explained. "all the books agree on this. spies keep a country alert, on its toes, eternally vigilant. through sabotage, they cut down on arms production, which otherwise would grow absurdly large, since it has priority over everything else. they supply security with subjects for interrogation, confession, brainwashing and re-indoctrination. this in turn supplies data for the enemy propaganda machine, which in turn supplies material for our counter-propaganda machine." * * * * * draxil looked awed. "i didn't know it was so complicated." "that's the beauty of the earth war," thrang said. "stupendous yet delicate complications, completely interrelated. leave out one seemingly unimportant detail and the whole structure collapses." "those terrans!" draxil said, shaking his head in admiration. "now to work. boys, i'm calling for volunteers. who'll be a spy?" no one responded. "really now!" said thrang. "that's no attitude to take. come on, some of you must be harboring treasonous thoughts. don't be ashamed of it. remember, it takes all kinds to make a war." little herg, a zipper salesman from xcoth, cleared his throat. "i have a cousin who's minister of war for the allies." "an excellent motive for subversion!" thrang cried. "i rather thought it was," the zipper salesman said, pleased. "yes, i believe i can handle the job." "splendid!" thrang said. by then, the train had arrived at the station. the doors were unsealed, allowing the commuters to leave for their jobs. thrang watched the zipper salesman depart, then hurried into the crowd. in a moment, he found a tall man wearing a slouch hat and dark glasses. on his lapel was a silver badge which read _secret police_. "see that man?" thrang asked, pointing to the zipper salesman. "you bet," the secret policeman said. "he's a spy! a dirty spy! quick, after him!" "he's being watched," said the secret policeman laconically. "i just wanted to make sure," thrang said, and started to walk off. he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. he turned. the secret policeman had been joined by two tall men in slouch hats and dark glasses. they wore badges that said _storm troopers_. "you're under arrest," said the secret policeman. "why? what have i done?" "not a thing, as far as we know," said a storm trooper. "not a single solitary thing. that's why we're arresting you." "arbitrary police powers," the secret policeman explained. "suspension of search warrants and habeas corpus. invasion of privacy. war, you know. come along quietly, sir. you have a special and very important part to play in the war effort." "what's that?" "you have been arbitrarily selected as martyr," said the secret policeman. head held high, thrang marched proudly to his destiny. * * * * * the whole of mala took to war with a will. soon books began to appear on the stalls: _war and you_ for the masses, _the erotic release of war_ for the elite, _the inherent will to destroy_ for philosophers, and _war and civilization_ for scholars. volumes of personal experiences sold well. among them was an account of daring sabotage by a former zipper salesman, and the dramatic story of the martyrdom of thrang. war eliminated a thousand old institutions and unburdened the people of the heavy hand of tradition. war demonstrated clearly that everything was as temporary as a match-flash except art and man, because cities, buildings, parks, vehicles, hills, museums, monuments were as whispers of dust after the bombers had gone. among the proletariat, the prevailing opinion was voiced by zun, who was quoted as saying at a war plant party, "well, there ain't nothin' in the stores i can buy. but i never made so much money in my life!" in the universities, professors boned up on the subject in order to fit themselves for chairs of war that were sure to be endowed. all they had to do was wait until the recent crop of war profiteers were taxed into becoming philanthropists, or driven to it by the sense of guilt that the books assured them they would feel. armies grew. soldiers learned to paint, salute, curse, appreciate home cooking, play poker, and fit themselves in every way for the post-war civilian life. they broadened themselves with travel and got a welcome vacation from home and hearth. war, the malans agreed, was certainly one of the cleverest of earth institutions and as educational as it was entertaining. * * * * * "nope," beliakoff was saying, "you wouldn't like ran-hachi prison, not one little bit. it's on mercury, you know, in the twilight zone. you blister by day and you freeze by night. only two men have escaped from ran-hachi in the last hundred years, and one of them figured his curve wrong and flipped into sol." "what about the other one?" kelly asked, perspiring lightly. "his gyros fused. he was bound straight for the coal sack. take him a couple of thousand years to get there, at his speed," beliakoff finished dreamily. "no, johnny, you wouldn't like ran-hachi." "okay, okay," kelly said. "the death penalty would be better." "they give that only as a measure of extreme clemency," beliakoff said with gloomy slavic satisfaction. "enough! we'll straighten out mala." there was more hope than conviction in kelly's voice. "thar she lies, off to starboard." mala was a tiny blue and brown sphere, suddenly growing larger in their screens. their radio blared on the emergency channel. kelly swore. "that's the galactic patrol boat from azolith. what's he doing here?" "blockade," said beliakoff. "standard practice to quarantine a planet at war. we can't touch down legally until the war's declared over." "nuts. we're going down." kelly touched the controls and the freighter began to descend into the interdicted area. "attention, freighter!" the radio blasted. "this is the interdictory ship _moth_. heave to and identify yourself." beliakoff answered promptly in the propendium language. "let's see 'em unscramble _that_," he said to kelly. they continued their descent. after a while, a voice from the patrol boat said in propendium, "attention, freighter! you are entering an interdicted area. heave to at once and prepare to be boarded." "i can't understand your vile north propendium accent," beliakoff bellowed, in a broad south propendium dialect. "if you people can't speak a man's language, don't clutter up the ether with your ridiculous chatter. i know you long-haul trampers and i'll be damned if i'll give you any air, water, food, or anything else. if you can't stock that stuff like any normal, decent--" "this area is interdicted," the patrol boat broke in, speaking now with a broad south propendium accent. "hell," beliakoff grumbled. "they've got themselves a robot linguist." "--under direct orders from the patrol boat _moth_. heave to at once, freighter, and prepare to be boarded and inspected." * * * * * beliakoff glanced at the planet looming large beneath them. he gestured at the power control to kelly and said, "hello! hello! do you read me? your message is not coming across. do you read me?" "stop or we'll fire!" beliakoff nodded. kelly kicked in all the jets and they plummeted toward the surface. with his pilot's sixth sense, kelly changed course abruptly. a blast seared past them, sealing a starboard tube for good. then they were in the atmosphere, traveling too fast, the hull glowing red with friction. the heavy cruiser, built only for spatial maneuvering, broke off its pursuit curve. "all right, freighter. this means your license. you gotta leave sometime." beliakoff shut off the radio. kelly fired the braking jets and began to spiral in for a landing. as they circled, beliakoff saw the shattered rubble and ruin where cities had been. he saw highways filled with military columns, and, at the distant edge of the horizon, a fleet of military planes winging their way to a fresh target. "what a mess!" he said. kelly nodded glumly. they touched down and opened the hatches. already a crowd of malans had gathered. a few artists had set up their easels and were busy painting the freighter, not because it was lovely, but because it was terran, which was better. a malan stepped forward, grinning. "well," he asked, "what do you think of it?" "of what?" "our war, of course. you must have noticed!" "oh, yes, we noticed," beliakoff said. "a real intercontinental war complete with ideological differences," the man stated proudly. "just like the civilized planets have. you must admit it's earthlike." "exceedingly earthlike," kelly said. "now take us to whoever's in charge--quick!" * * * * * the conference with nob at the imperial palace began well. the prime minister was overjoyed that real earthmen had come to witness their war. he knew very well that, by earth standards, it was a pretty small war. a beginner's war, really. but they were trying. some day, with more know-how, with better equipment, they would be able to produce a war that would match anyone's. "we were hampered from the start," nob apologized, "by not knowing how to produce atomic fission." "that must have been confining," kelly said, and beliakoff winced. "it was. dynamite and nitroglycerin just don't have the same grandeur and finality. the scale of demolition seems insignificant. but if you will come with me, gentlemen, i have something here which may interest you." nob ushered the earthmen ahead of him so he could copy their loose-jointed, rolling walk. "here!" he said, darting ahead and opening a door. "behold!" the earthmen saw, upon an ivory pedestal, a small model of an atomic bomb. "we worked until we mastered it at last," nob said proudly. "with any luck, we'll be in production within the month and using them within the year. now i think i can safely say that mala has come of age!" beliakoff said, "no." "no, what?" "no atom bombs." "but it's earthlike to use atomic bombs. why--" "this war has to end at once," kelly said. "you're joking!" protested nob, looking intently at the earthmen. but he saw at once that they were deadly serious. he groaned and sat down. nob was faced with a moral dilemma of fearful proportions. on the one hand, war was a typical terran institution, an extremely important one, an institution clearly worthy of emulation by the people of mala. but on the other hand, this terran institution was being refuted, denied, in fact, by two typical terrans. the problem was insoluble for him. and nob remembered that, when an ultimate crisis is at hand, that is the moment for the supreme authority to step in. "we must discuss this with the empress," he said. * * * * * he led them to jusa's chambers, knocked and opened the door. half a dozen vases shattered around them. "on your knees, pigs!" jusa shrilled. "you, nob, have you brought the diamonds?" "i knew i forgot something." "forgot them! then how dare you show your face?" jusa stamped her small foot. "and these peasants--who are they? i've a good mind to lock them up, especially that grinning red-headed ape." kelly's grin became a trifle strained. "these are _earthmen_, your majesty," nob said. "genuine earthmen!" "really?" breathed jusa. "really," said nob. "oh, golly," jusa said, losing all her painfully acquired imperial pose and becoming a frightened, albeit lovely, young girl. "your majesty--" beliakoff began. "just call me jusa. my gosh! real earthmen! i never met a real earthman before. i wish you had let me know in advance. my hair--" "is beautiful, just like yourself," kelly said. "i'm so glad. i think _your_ hair is beautiful, too." kelly turned brick-red. "you're not supposed to say that, you know." "i _didn't_ know," jusa said. "but i'm willing to learn. what should i have--" "excuse me," beliakoff broke in sourly. "your majesty, we've come to ask you to stop the war." "you don't mean it!" jusa turned bewilderedly to kelly. "have to do it, honey," kelly said softly. "you folks just aren't ready for a war yet." jusa's eyes flashed and she began to regain a little of her imperial pose. "but of course we are! look at what we've done. go over our battlefields, look at our cities, interrogate our refugees. you'll find that everything has been done in strict accordance with the rules. we're as ready for war as anyone!" "i'm sorry, you'll have to stop it," beliakoff said, and kelly nodded his agreement. jusa gave nob a beseeching look, but the prime minister averted his eyes. the dilemma was there again, enormous, insurmountable, and squarely on jusa's shoulders. to stop the war now would be unearthlike; to refuse the earthmen was unthinkable. "i just don't know," jusa said. she looked at kelly, who wore the guilty expression of a man caught murdering a fawn. then she burst into tears and collapsed on a couch. * * * * * nob and the earthmen looked at each other, made several helpless gestures, and left. "what now?" beliakoff asked, in the corridor. "do you think she'll stop the war?" nob shrugged his shoulders. "who knows? it's a problem without a solution." "but she has to make up her mind," kelly said. "that's one of the duties of authority." "the empress is aware of that. and she _will_ make up her mind, though it could take a year or more. unless she fails completely under the strain." "poor kid," kelly said. "she needs a man to help her out." "indeed she does," nob agreed hastily. "a strong man, a wise man, a man who could guide her and be as adviser and husband to her." kelly blinked, then laughed nervously. "don't look at me! i mean she's a cute kid, nice girl, make some man a wonderful wife, but i'm not the marrying kind, you know what i mean?" "johnny," said beliakoff, "i'd like to have a serious talk with you." nob led them to a vacant room and left discreetly. "i won't do it!" kelly declared bluntly. "you have to," beliakoff said. "you got us into this mess. now you can marry us out." "no!" "she'd make a wonderful wife," beliakoff quoted kelly's words back at him. "docile, pretty, but spirited. what more could you ask?" "freedom of choice," kelly said grimly. "that's for adolescents." "speaking." "she'll never be able to make up her mind to stop the war unless you marry her. until the war ends, that interdictory ship is going to sit in orbit, waiting for us. you haven't anything to lose," beliakoff added. "i haven't?" "not a thing. it's a big galaxy and our freighter is always waiting." "that's true...." kelly admitted. ten minutes later, beliakoff dragged him into the corridor. they were joined by nob, who ushered them back to the empress's chambers. "it's okay by me if it's okay by you, kid," kelly blurted out, in a tone that made beliakoff shudder and made nob smile in outright hero-worship. "what is all right?" jusa asked. "marriage," kelly said. "what d'ya say?" jusa studied his face for several seconds. "but do you love me?" "give it time, kid! give it time!" jusa must have seen something in his expression, something behind the embarrassment and anger. very softly she said, "i will be most happy to marry you." * * * * * it was a double-ring ceremony and authentically terran. beliakoff produced a bible from the freighter and the ancient words of the earth ceremony were read. when it was over, kelly, grinning, perspiring, nervously rubbing his hands together, turned to his bride. "now stop the war, honey." "yes, dear," jusa said dutifully. she heaved a great sigh. "what's wrong?" kelly asked. "i just tremble to think of our cities being bombed out of existence and us not able to do anything about it because we've stopped fighting." "what are you talking about? if we stop fighting--" "_they_ won't!" she said. "why should they? it's earthlike to continue conquering, and if we quit fighting, there'll be nothing to stop them from conquering us completely." "nob!" kelly shouted. "igor! what can we do about this?" nob said, "there would appear to be only one certain solution. i can arrange a meeting for you--" he turned to beliakoff--"with lanvi, the president of the allies." "what would i say to him?" asked beliakoff. "to her," nob corrected. "you can say, i suppose, the same sort of thing your friend said." beliakoff, ashy pale, started to back away. kelly caught him in one meaty fist. "okay, mr. fixer. your duty is plain. marry us out of trouble." "but i've got a girl friend in minsk--" "she forgot you years ago. stop squirming, buddy." "what does she look like?" beliakoff queried in apprehension. "_very_ pretty," nob said. * * * * * during the double-ring ceremony, beliakoff peered at his bride with cautious approval. lanvi was indeed a pretty girl and she seemed to possess the malan virtues of obedience, patience and fire. as soon as the final words were spoken, the war was declared officially over. peace, an authentic earth custom, was proclaimed. "now the real work begins," beliakoff said. "first, we'll need a list of the casualties." "the what?" nob asked. "casualties." "i'm not sure i understand," said the prime minister. "casualties! the number of people killed in the warfare." "now wait a moment," nob said, his voice trembling. "do i understand you correctly? are you trying to tell me that civilized people kill people in their wars? _do you mean that they leave people in the cities they bomb?_" kelly looked at beliakoff. beliakoff looked at kelly. "lord, lord," murmured kelly. beliakoff merely gulped. "is it possible?" asked nob. "do civilized people really--" "of course not," said beliakoff. "never," kelly said. nob pursed his lips. "i've been wanting to ask a real authority, a genuine earthman, some questions on the subject. our texts were by no means complete and some parts we couldn't understand at all. like the matter of determining victories. that's something we couldn't figure out. we decided you must use a complicated system of umpires. it was too much for us, so we built a bunker in no man's land and put a man from each side in it. they tossed coins to determine whose turn it was. the winning side would bomb an enemy city. after the occupants had been evacuated, of course." "of course," said beliakoff. "it worked out rather well with the coins," nob said. "law of averages, in fact." "substantially our system," said kelly. "just the way we do it," beliakoff added. "a few more questions, if you please," nob said. "jusa, would you bring in the big _war encyclopedia_?" * * * * * jusa and lanvi had been gossiping on the other side of the room. they hurried out and returned with the great book. "now here," nob said, opening the volume, "it seems to imply--" "wait," beliakoff broke in. he took the book from nob's hands and flipped through it rapidly, then turned to kelly. in a whisper, he said in propendium, "it looks as though kyne blotted out all references to killing." "sure!" exclaimed kelly, brightening. "i told you he was a hemophiliac--a bleeder. naturally, he'd cut out every single mention of bloodshed!" "this point--" nob began. "later," beliakoff said. "right now, we'd like to get a few articles from our spaceship." he winked at kelly, who winked back. "it won't take a moment and then we'll be only too happy to--" "oh, dear," said nob. "you mean you _wanted_ the spaceship?" "what?" "well, i assumed that you'd have no further use for it. metal is hard to get nowadays and it seemed only proper to erect heroic statues to both of you, the men who brought the institution of peace to mala. did i do something wrong?" "not at all, not at all," kelly said. "oh, not at all. perfectly delighted. not at--" "johnny!" said beliakoff. "sorry," kelly apologized, a broken man. the brides stepped forward to claim their husbands. peace and prosperity came to mala, under the deft guidance of their terran leaders. in time, spaceships arrived and departed, but neither man showed any particular desire to board one, for their wives--docile, patient, yet fiery--proved more appealing than the lonely far reaches of space. beliakoff sometimes pondered the opportune melting down of their freighter. he was never able to discover who had signed the order. but all mala knew the saying, "an earthman is easy to catch, but hard to hold." he wondered whether that had been the true reason behind the order to scrap the ship. by this time, of course, he didn't really care; if his wife or kelly's had been responsible, it was all the more reason to feel appreciated. * * * * * nob knew the answer, but he had other things on his mind. he lay awake, restless, until his wife asked worriedly what was wrong. "i've been wondering," he said. "those war books that the earthmen had us turn in--i never did understand why all those deletions were made. you know, the ones that made us figure out a way of deciding which side won." "but the earthmen said they used the very same system," she reminded him. "and they wouldn't lie, would they?" "they would, if it was for our good. that's what is known as diplomacy, dear. statesmanship. or politics. interchangeable terms." she looked impressed. "oh. and?" "i've tried to question the crews of ships that land here. the answers are so evasive that i can't help thinking--" "yes, dear?" she prompted. "--that civilized people actually _kill_ each other in wars." she turned a shocked face toward him. "how can you think such a thing? what would be the advantage?" "advantage?" he repeated. then his expression cleared and he fell back on his pillow, completely relaxed. "i hadn't thought of that, dear. none, of course. it would really be _too_ much, wouldn't it?" "no question of it, dear," she said. "now that that's settled, can you go to sleep?" there was no answer. he was already snoring peacefully. task mission by fox b. holden _captain jorl thought arcturus iv was the answer to all he had ever wanted. and it was. but there was also a twist.... how can there be an ideal where everything is perfection?_ [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from worlds of if science fiction, april 1955. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] captain nicholas joel stood waiting in his fore-waist bridge; he looked again through its heavy, slotted quartz windows and now he could see them coming. he could make out the toy-like silhouette of their jeep, emerging in reckless, bounding leaps from the edge of the cultivated forest. now they were racing at full tilt across the hard-packed yellow sand of the desert in a bee-line for the ship that had landed them here a scant three weeks ago. captain nicholas joel watched them, their excitement a visible thing as they pounded up clouds of saffron behind them, and knew without activating his personal communicator what they'd have to tell him. "we've hit it again!" they'd tell him. he turned his big body from the curving windows, quickly calculated the time it would take the jeep to reach the flaring stern of the _white whale_, figured how many minutes it would take the pneumatic lift to whisk them three hundred and twelve feet up to the fore-waist, and snatched open the door of his liquor cabinet. sam carruthers would be the first one to say it. thin, quiet sam, who'd been in space as ship's surgeon and psychiatrist for as long as joel himself. it had been twenty-two years since they'd left the academy together. sam had taken his specialty training in space medicine, while he, joel, had let himself get sucked into qualifying as pilot. twelve years of the academy. and twenty-two more being ordered around the freezing hell of god's black universe like a toy on a string. and for all of it, sam still had that look in his dark, brooding eyes--the look that had been glazed with shock, but which had still not surrendered, the day they told sam he wasn't going to make pilot. the look would still be there four minutes and thirty seconds from now when he led the others into the fore-waist bridge to holler "we've hit it again!" it would always be. joel tilted the liquor bottle and one big, clumsy-looking hand poured steadily into the thick glassite flagon he held in the other. he downed it in a gulp. hit it again _hell_! and behind sam there would be the first officer, dobermann. little, wiry german who knew more about languages and semantics than the guy who'd invented them, and the best astro-navigator you could find in this or any other galaxy. sure, they always gave nicholas joel nothing but the best. that was part of it. part and parcel of the whole damn conspiracy. dobermann wouldn't say anything when he came in. but there'd be a thorough-going, successful, mission-accomplished look on his handsome face. dobermann never missed. and southard.... still a kid, still wet behind the ears, but a hell of a promising astrophysicist, backed up with plenty of biochemistry and geophysics. it was still a big, romantic adventure to southard, and he wore the single red, gleaming stripe of ship's second officer on his broad young shoulders as though it was the thick gold circle of a full captaincy. joel filled the flagon and emptied it a second time. he went back to the windows, the liquor bottle and flagon still in his hands. to most men, he supposed, the panorama that spread for miles from the stern of the up-ended _white whale_ would be a thing of sheer beauty. it would be hard for them to believe that there existed other planets far beyond the rim of their own hostile solar system which could equal or exceed the soft beauty of the oasis they called earth. but there it was--gently-rolling, golden desert beneath a temperate, dark-gold sun, flanked at one gently curving edge by a forest that looked as though it had been scientifically planned and landscaped for beauty. it was a big forest that covered a full third of the planet, and at its opposite edge it gave way to twelve thousand miles of unblemished shoreline which descended into gleaming, azure ocean. and in the forest, on the ocean, even on the wide expanse of desert, there were people. intelligent, strong, peaceful, quiet people, who might have been natives of earth's pacific islands of three centuries ago, save that their flesh was lighter in tone; their sun was not as young as sol. farmers, mostly, carruthers had reported. some merchants, some travelers and explorers, even some men of a very young science, but, mostly, farmers ... it was the way they lived. a good way, joel thought. a good way, in a good place. he looked through the fore-waist bridge windows, and what he saw was beautiful. but he filled the flagon again. a buzzer sounded softly from the compact secondary control console which banked a full third of the bridge's fore bulkhead, and deliberately, joel let it buzz a second and a third time before he fingered the stud that slid the small metal door open behind him. he turned as they came through it. fatigue and sweat lined sam's thin face; dobermann was audibly out of breath. southard had to duck slightly to get into the room, but when he straightened he seemed as fresh as when the party had left the ship seventeen days before. joel returned their salute with the full flagon still in his left hand, and then beat carruthers to the punch. "all right, so we've hit it one more time! bully for us--" he drained the flagon, reached for the bottle. without carruthers, there would have been an awkward silence. but after twenty-two years, sam knew his man. "ahh, you've shown us more than this, skipper. i suppose it is a little better than our prelim reports indicate, if you want to get technical. the people want to co-operate. they're intelligent, healthy, and friendly and they realize fully what we're trying to do. they want to help us, and say we're welcome to all the mneurium-4 we want. 'course there's only a few hundred pure megatons of it lying around, but, if you want to get technical--" "go to hell," joel said, and poured his flagon half full. he felt a little better, but it would take more than a half-bottle of martian colony bond and sam's wise answers to change things. "go right straight to hell!" he sniffed at the bond. "so the long arm of superior civilization has reached out its clanking claws again to make the universe a better place to live in, has it? god help 'em if they _believed_ all the hog-wash you fed 'em, sam." the thin face sobered. "i spoke to them in good faith, nicholas, and they did believe me. the fact is, they--" "all right, i get your point! got my mind made up, so don't start confusing me with facts." he transfixed the three of them with a restless look; a look they had grown used to. it was a gaze that matched the rest of him; the unruly, untrimmed black hair, the short, thick beard which was unneeded on a chin and jaw as big and square as joel's, the careless, unmilitary carriage of his thick shoulders and blocky body, the blood-shot metal-blue eyes themselves. but during the split-second the gaze was upon them, they knew pages were flipping in joel's massive head. pages of regulations, procedures, memorized down to the last foot-note. "let's go in order with your reports," joel snapped. southard stepped forward. "constellation boötis, arcturus, planet iv. preliminary analysis of ore-samples indicate rich lodes of mneurium-4, relatively close to the surface, and in unprecedentedly great number. purity is unbelievably high, with--" "all right, southard, good report. dobermann." "minimum of linguistic difficulty, coupled with a surprisingly high aptitude on the natives' part for language learning. in the seventeen days i had with them, i'm almost certain those with whom i worked learned at least half as much english as i did of their tongue," the german said. he added, simply, as though the seventeen days of exhausting gesticulating, diagramming, systematizing, learning, recording, had never existed, "there will be no language difficulty, sir." "good. now you, sam, and no schmaltz!" "healthy people, no cancer, no tb, no coronary troubles--" "the mneurium-4, i know. go on." "average iq in the 120's--and there's something for us to keep in mind in spite of our big technological and scientific jump on them. they're still working with wood, iron and crude steel, but they won't be for long. agrarian civilization so far; they've got a representative type of government--democracy, and a damn good one, and they're psychologically suited for just what they've evolved along that line. they actually practice what they preach, from the individual status right on up through the framework of their government. open, honest, sincere--they have to be, because of the high degree of uniformity of iq, and because--now get this--they _want_ to be. it's the way their minds are built, and--" "all right, so if i believe you, we won't be fighting to get what we want. they're willing to meet our terms, that it?" "yes, skipper. access to all scientific data with which we can supply them now, and as much more later as they think they'll require, in exchange for reasonable mining rights." "_reasonable?_" joel thundered. he slammed the heavy bottle down on the old-fashioned mahogany desk at his elbow. "was _that_ in the contract you made with them? how do you know what the hell they mean by reasonable?" "sir, if i may--" "all right, dobermann, go ahead and enlighten me." "i worked a number of hours with them on that point, to make certain there would be no errors in the semantics involved. they have learned, despite their lack of scientific medical knowledge, that as long as there is mneurium-4 around, they don't get sick. they trust us to leave enough to insure their own well-being." "that's crazy," joel shot back at his first officer. "how in god's name can they know about mneurium-4 and how to use it when we've only known about it and have been scratching the universe for it for less than thirty years? that's goddam nonsense--" he refilled the flagon, spilled a little of the potent liquor on his beard as he downed it. "no, nicholas," sam said. "you're the bug on history around here. think a minute." joel drew a sleeve across his mouth, and pages flipped in his head again. yes, sam was right. back as far as the twentieth century, there had been isolated tribes in south america which had been found free of the diseases that had plagued their more civilized neighbors of the north, and it had taken the medical experts years to find out exactly why. invariably, the answer had been usage of the most promising materials provided by nature which were closest at hand. a tribe stumbled onto something, used it--experimentally at first, then wastefully, but finally, with a thousand years' practice, pretty efficiently. and it had nothing to do with the fact that they still went around with spears and animal-hide shields.... "all right, i get your point, sam," joel said. sam quit talking, and for a moment there was silence in the limited confines of the fore-waist bridge. then joel put the bottle and the flagon down on the desk, turned his back to it and faced them. "from the way you boys talk this thing up, it all must be just jim-dandy. maybe better than on that rock back in aldeberan, or even better than we did in altair, or fomalhaut, or procyon seven, or any of the rest of 'em...." he paused again, watched their faces. they remembered--all except southard, who hadn't been with them on any of the old strikes. but his youthful enthusiasm just about made up for the fierce pride that shone in the eyes of the others. * * * * * back home, the _white whale_, of all of earth's great fleet of explorer-class ships, had hung up the most enviable record. she had brought back rare elements known to men but unobtainable by them within the confines of their own tiny solar system, or rare life-forms, impossible to study effectively in their native habitats, or precious new data which were beyond the reach of the astronomer's observatory. it meant progress. it meant a living force in the universe, a force of learning and of knowing, which would tolerate no barrier, which would broach neither defeat nor ultimate conclusion. in short, it meant man. nicholas joel knew it, and he still hated space. since that first indoctrination blast out to the moon and back when he'd been a plebe--since that day that he'd realized for the first time how _big_ it was. and how big men ought to be, but weren't. big muscles, but little minds.... he still wondered just how the hell they'd sucked him in. they'd hit him somewhere inside, in a place he'd forgotten to guard--his instructors, his commandant, the secretary of science himself. they'd sweet-talked him into staying those twelve years. young man, they had told him, yours is a body and a brain with an adaptability to space exploration the like of which has never been duplicated in our records. you hate to fly, yet you are the best cadet pilot ever to enter the academy. you dislike technical and scientific study, yet your grades in this field are the highest on record. you despise the regimen of the military necessary to survival in space, yet, unaccountably, your cadet commands have been the most efficient and best handled of any in our knowledge. young man, they had said, here's the works on a silver platter--be a pilot--you owe it to yourself, to the world, to humanity! say you'll take our ships where no other man would dare, and you can write your own ticket for the rest of your life! _but you simply have to be a pilot, young man...._ and he remembered how it had been with sam, who would have moved the earth with arms and legs tied behind him to have qualified. sam, who had hungered for it, but had taken a lesser assignment cheerfully, just so, at least, he could be a part of some other pilot's team in space. sam, who had that look in his eyes. but since his assignment to the _white whale_ fifteen years ago, there had never been a sign--not the slightest, that joel had been able to detect, that he was doing anything but what he most wanted. that took guts, and guts. joel understood. and so now they'd hit it again. mneurium-4, the "wonder-element" that science had discovered would put a host of earth's most dreaded diseases to rout, but which it had not been able to obtain or synthesize despite years of exhaustive effort. captain joel, they had told him, the radio-astronomers say there could be mneurium-4 somewhere out in boötis. get some. and in spite of them and their damned passion for onward-and-upward, if they insisted he pilot space to bring them back one new gew-gaw after another to play with, then he'd bring them back gew-gaws until they choked! _choked!_ and the world he wanted--the world he'd always wanted, would just have to be for somebody else. then he looked at their faces, and they were waiting. "all right, i get your point! don't just stand there--southard, get your 'copters going! i want a fully plotted area of operation for the next six months, including jump-off point as of tomorrow at 0600 hours, and on this desk by 2200 tonight! dobermann, you won't have anything to do for awhile, so you can get southard's servodrillers going for him; get 'em all out, form 'em on the port flank in details of five. i want to see it by 2100. sam, has dobermann given you any practice in their lingo? good--all right, it's time i met 'em--you'll take me to their capital city or wherever it is their top people are and we'll get things down in black and white. i'll be ready for you in twenty minutes. any questions?" there weren't. joel's three officers turned and left, each scrambling to his new assignment, glad to actually get started before something happened to upset the unexpected simplicity of the whole thing. there'd never been a mission that had come off as smoothly as this one was beginning. it promised to make them feel guilty to draw their pay checks for it. for once, it looked as though joel was going to get what he came after without having to fight down to raw nerve and bone to get it. good. the captain had an easy one coming. when they'd gone, joel dropped his great frame into the ancient chair behind his big desk and got to work with the ship's intercom, flipping it to main circuit. he did ten minutes' talking in six, and phase one was organized, down to the last ship's guard, down to the last assistant servomech. then he had fourteen minutes until carruthers was due, ready to drive him to meet these people in their cultivated forest. so for every one of the fourteen minutes, captain nicholas joel leaned back in the chair, shut his eyes tight, and filled in a little more of the world he wanted. * * * * * the roads were of hard-packed dirt, but level, and wide. occasionally, as sam carruthers drove, they would pass through a hamlet, or go by small knots of men and women in carriages and wagons drawn by striped animals resembling earth's african zebra. the farms were small but numerous, and none, joel noted, had been entirely cleared; the trees had been thinned, and they were of a far more slender variety than grew elsewhere, but they had not been eliminated. it set well with him. joel had always liked trees, and he had a feeling he was going to like other people who did to such an obvious extent. buildings, he noted, were almost entirely of wood; structures very similar to those he remembered having seen in a history text dealing with the western united states in the nineteenth century. a few were of stone, some of small, brick cubes; all were pleasing enough to the eye. and the people themselves were-the people looked up as the jeep roared past; looked up from their work in the fields, looked out from their wagons and carriages, looked from their saddled mounts at the roadside. but there was no fear in their glances, only the quick puzzlement of inquiring intelligence. they were straight, well-bodied people, clothed simply in colorful garments which joel assumed were made of cloth; the men were tall and broad and he could mentally picture the powerful muscles that rippled beneath their shirts. and the women--the women were the most graceful creatures he had ever seen, even those who were obviously no longer young; they were less fully clad than their men, and captain nicholas joel liked that. he liked it because it was honest. where there was something beautiful, why in the name of anything holy or otherwise should it be covered up? that was the trouble with earth and her people. there were too few things of real beauty, and when they did exist, humans seemed to have a psychotic compulsion for either ignoring them or hiding them completely. and those who did hesitate for a stolen moment's admiration were hurriedly hollered back to their jobs. "you're surprised that they're not cluttering up the roads, trying to get a closer look at us?" sam was hollering over the howl of the warm, oxygen-rich atmosphere. "good discipline," joel grunted, still occupied with his own thoughts. "well, you're partly right. but more than that, we haven't stopped to look at _them_! it's sort of a half-courtesy, half-pride they have. they won't slow a stranger down if he doesn't slow them down, figuring that if he wanted to, he would; the prerogative is his. and, if he's not that interested, then neither are they!" "you're sure some expedition didn't get here before we did?" joel asked. "i mean--hell, they could be from earth--" "ever hear of an earthman with two hearts, skipper? but physically that's about the only difference i could find. psychologically--" the space surgeon hesitated. "psychologically what?" "take too long to explain--we're coming into the capital city you were talking about. and besides--" he grinned in a sidelong glance at joel, "you might even have the brains to figure it out all by yourself." "go to hell!" in a moment carruthers was busy with the jeep, tooling it through narrowing streets, slowing it to almost a walk as men and women hastened out of their way, crowded the board sidewalks to allow them to pass unhampered. the buildings were much like those he had seen in the rural districts; a little larger, a bit taller, but none more than fifty feet in height. neatly painted, their thin glass windows bright and clean, they did not look like part of a city at all, joel reflected, much less part of a capital city. and everything was so quiet. maybe too quiet. he felt a little chill at the base of his spine, but kept looking straight ahead. "you're sure, sam, about leaving my guns back at the ship?" carruthers just grinned again. and then they turned abruptly, and hauled up in front of a long, low building of flagstone. "this is it," the surgeon said. "no reporters, no photographers, no autograph seekers, no brass band or politicians. but you're on, skipper." * * * * * captain nicholas joel felt naked without his guns, and he felt off-balance and out of place. standing in the sedate, oval-shaped council-chamber with these peaceful-looking people confronting him, he felt clumsy in his heavy black leatheroid uniform, big, highly-polished black boots. he felt as if he looked like what he'd been forced to be on other occasions, facing forms of life so alien that no difference counted--like a man-at-arms, like a conqueror. suddenly, he was glad sam had made him leave his guns back at the ship. "nicholas joel, united americas intergalactic exploration fleet, of the ship _white whale_, commanding!" carruthers was introducing him in english, and he wished that sam would have had the good sense to have said "this is captain joel" and let it go at that. didn't the grinning idiot know it must have been an awful pill for these people to swallow all at once? that there were, to begin with, such things as other planets and other galaxies--and that there were, even more incredibly, other creatures that lived on them. and, whether they cared to believe it or not, some of these creatures had just landed among them, and there was nothing they could do about it! sam was picking his way along now in their speech, and then at an obvious gesture, joel knew he was being introduced to their top man. sam waved an arm toward the tallest of the twelve-man group, who arose from the opposite side of a polished wooden table, and bowed gently from the waist. "his excellency and prime governor, k'hall-i-k'hall." joel hesitated, then returned the bow. he had never bowed in his life, but a salute to somebody dressed in civilian clothes seemed crazy. "sam, you mean he's prime governor of--" "the whole planet." "am i always supposed to say his name twice?" "that is his name. that's the way they do it. now shut up, skipper, and let me do the talking. i'm going to go through the whole works again with 'em. then we sign. then you get a tour of the town so the people can be introduced to you officially. but don't go making any speeches! behave, and we're in business." "you go to--" but sam had already started talking in the liquid-sounding language, and joel decided it was better for him to keep his own mouth shut and be thought stupid than open it and remove all doubt. damn it, the whole thing was making him feel just the way he had twenty years ago, when he landed his first explorer on an alien world! it had been that long, and how many hundred meetings with alien life-forms since then, under how many fantastic circumstances, on how many god-forsaken, unworldly places? by now he was supposed to know the score. by now he was supposed to have seen everything. by now he knew the book inside and out, and had the ability to take charge no matter where in the black universe they sent him. nicholas joel, united americas intergalactic exploration fleet, of the ship _white whale_, commanding.... but nobody was challenging his right to have what he'd come for! no _trouble_, that was the hell of it, and--and there was nothing to hate. for a miserable moment, captain nicholas joel stood becalmed, with not so much as a breeze in his sagging sails. but he would not let them know it. he looked levelly into the eyes of each of the twelve, but even that did little to make him feel more at ease. for he saw wisdom in the lined, kindly faces. he saw a humility and sincerity that matched the simple clothing they wore. he saw a kindness that men talked about in books and sometimes felt in their hearts, but seldom held openly in their faces for the world to see. these men were handsome in their physical stature, but they could have been little men three feet high, and they would have been the biggest that joel had ever seen. now they were talking in subdued tones to sam, and then one produced a document, and handed sam a slender writing stylus. "hey sam--" the hoarseness of his voice unnerved him, but joel plowed ahead. "hadn't you oughtta read that thing?" "it's already been read, skipper. by dobermann. it took him three days to draw it up--he did most of the writing himself. it's already been electrostated; we've got ten copies of our own. now keep your mouth shut or they'll think we don't trust them. you sign first, because you're the guest. then k'hall-i-k'hall, and it's all over." sam's thin face had a seriousness in it that joel knew he did not dare question. _the trouble is_, the thought stung him, _you doubt, because you were born and raised on earth. sam knows that. and he knows how these people think. and he says sign.... so sign, you big boob._ silently, joel took the stylus from sam, bent quickly over the papyrus-like document, and put his name, rank and ship where sam pointed. then he gave the stylus to sam, who returned it to k'hall-i-k'hall. and in another instant, all the mneurium-4 the _white whale_ could lift clear was theirs for the taking. * * * * * once he'd put his mind to it, joel could converse in the language of his hosts as fluently as either dobermann or carruthers, and within a month he had been able to finish a limited round of visits to a full dozen of the smaller cities and towns. these people had respected his wish that he be allowed to roam their streets and public buildings without official escort, and with an ever-quickening fading of his self-consciousness, he did. he did, more and more frequently. and from the vantage point of their peacefully winding roads or their quaint little shops where they dispensed a fluid amazingly similar to martian colony bond, joel could hate the _white whale_ from a comfortable distance, and with a healthy, untiring diligence. this he also did, more and more frequently. it was during one of these self-assigned off-duty periods, alone in his personal jeep, that his most recent pint of bond decided to harass him, and he discovered almost too late that he had ignored a turn of the dirt roadway. he skidded wickedly, and frightened one of the zebra-like animals drawing a vehicle much resembling a four-wheeled surrey. the animal let go with a terrified whinny, and with a sickening splintering noise, the _dhennah_ went plunging off the road into the deep drainage ditch at its edge. there was also another sound, and joel practically stood the jeep on its nose slewing it to a stop. by the time he was out and running back, the frightened animal had gotten itself out of the ditch and was working frantically to bring the _dhennah_ out after it. but the vehicle was canted at a crazy angle, and it was obvious to joel that at least one of its starboard wheels was broken, and that it would take more than one _kaelli_ to haul it out. none of this, he reflected as he ran, was going to help diplomatic relations a bit. and he was no dobermann. but it was none of these things that worried him at the moment. she was screaming bloody murder, and still was hard at it when he jumped into the ditch. she stopped when he clambered up on the steeply tilted narrow seat to which she clung. there was suddenly not a sound from her as his big hands circled her waist and gently lifted her to the ground. then he discovered that his voice was stuck. dammit, an explorer captain for over fifteen years, and he didn't know what to say when he banged up some farm girl's _dhennah_! "i--ah, am terribly sorry. it will be replaced, of course. very stupid and clumsy of me. i--ah, you hurt?" rather smooth, at that! she smiled. slender lips, golden-colored eyes, delicately contoured face--all seemed to smile together. a breeze ruffled her tawny mass of shoulder-length hair, and nicholas joel just stood there. "you are forgiven, the _dhennah_ was not a costly one. i know how difficult it must be for you to guide those machines of yours at such terrible speeds ... but of course the speeds are necessary to you in your work. thank you for helping me." joel reassured himself that if only the conversation were in his mother tongue, he would of course not feel so ridiculously at a loss for words. after all, this young female was only an--an alien being. "it was my pleasure, of course," joel said. he thought perhaps if he could manage a smile--"i am gratified that you accept my clumsiness with such excellent grace. as intruders to begin with, my men and i--" "intruders, sir?" she had taken a few steps away from him to stroke the neck of the _kaelli_ and quiet it, but she was still looking at him. "why intruders? at one time, all the people of this world were not of one great community as they are now, surely you know that. but when one group travelled and visited another, no one thought of it as an intrusion." she laughed. "are we all not one under the sun?" "but they were of your own kind, from elsewhere on your own planet--" "a visitor is a visitor," she said, as though suddenly puzzled. "what can it matter where he is from?" joel started to reply, but checked himself. of course these people had no way of knowing. of course they were still under the impression that intelligent life, wherever it might exist, would necessarily be in their own form. the fact that it might not be had never occurred to them! then that was why they had not feared the _white whale_ and her crew. it was something carruthers had probably perceived at once, something he could no doubt explain. but now joel was seeing it first-hand for himself. psychologically, this girl and her people were incapable of conceiving a way of life based on different reasons for living than their own, with different motives, different--ambitions. just, he reflected, as his own people were psychologically incapable of greeting a stranger without subconscious suspicion. to these people, a visitor was--a visitor, and therefore a friend! he wondered how many others beside himself, carruthers and dobermann knew. "perhaps it does not matter at all," joel said, and he was surprised at the gentleness in his voice. he had not felt it that way in his throat for a long time. not for a terribly long time. "now, if you'll let me help you with that harness, we'll free your _kaelli_, and see what can be done about getting you on toward your destination!" joel's big fingers started fumbling with the thick leather thongs of the _kaelli's_ rig. the harness felt strange and confusing to hands disciplined to the limiting exactnesses of servocircuits and pressure-control studs, and the complexity of their co-ordination was thrown into confusion by sheer simplicity. the girl laughed as she watched his efforts, then guided his hands with her own, and joel felt a strange warmth mounting in his neck. and when the _kaelli_ was at last freed, he said, "now then, where can i take you? i owe you something more than just the replacement of your _dhennah_. i shall drive slowly so that the _kaelli_ can follow, and you can see for yourself what it is like to ride in one of our machines!" "but--they go like the wind!" "indeed they do!" joel laughed, unaccountably pleased with her excitement. "yes, ma'm, just like the wind!" quite unexpectedly, she reached for his hand, and joel clasped hers with a quickness he had not intended. but then he was leading her to the jeep, helping her into it. he started the powerful turbine engine, chuckled aloud at her quick gasp, then joined in her laughter. "just like the wind!" he cried and they were off. the day was clear and bright and to joel the air itself seemed to come alive with a heady excitement. this was something, it told him. this was not to hate. this was not to drink in bitterness. this was _not_ to be alone. * * * * * captain nicholas joel paced the fore-waist bridge. there was a full, untouched flagon on the mahogany desk, and the bottle of martian colony bond stood, tightly corked, beside it. he sat down, hating the feel of the chair of command beneath his big body. what he was thinking was wrong, of course. but no man could be two men; a man could not split himself down the middle and say: this is your life _here_, this is your life _there_, for it is unthinkable that a man be prisoner of one life only--no, a man could not do that; a man had only one life. wrong, was it? and who, any more a man than himself, could dare to be judge? he would call carruthers; he would explain, and carruthers would inform the rest. as for command-a buzzer roared on the desk in front of him. it was the dispatch unit communicator--it would be southard. a huge forefinger hit the toggle almost hard enough to wrench it from its socket. "command!" joel grated into the sensitive pick-up. "proceed with your message." he reached for the flagon, drained it, filled it again. "lieutenant southard calls command from servogroup 4." the youngster's voice sounded tight, excited. now what the hell--"request task mission. request task mission. position--" joel quickly jacked in the ship's armory circuit. an alarm klaxon would be electrifying the entire complement of combat personnel stationed in that quarter of the ship even as armory communications was taking down the co-ordinates southard was dictating. and within one minute and forty-five seconds after that, combat units would be assembling in machine-like precision, deploying into advance order at the ship's stern. and as the two huge sections between the _white whale's_ slender atmosphere fins opened like hungry steel mouths, disgorging flat, thick-bodied machines with their grim burdens of armed men and destroyer-artillery. ship's guard would be taking up defense positions, manning gun stations which commanded an energy potential sufficient to destroy a minor planet in a single, searing second of blue-white heat. all this was automatic. a dispatch-unit request for task mission was an order, momentarily transcending even command authority. it worked that way because the men who travelled space had learned that with the first foot they rose off the surface of earth, theirs was no longer the privilege of living, but the task of survival. space was emergency. and if you regarded it otherwise, it would kill you. joel waited. he watched only the sweep second hand on his desk chronometer; he did not need his screens, for he knew too well what was transpiring three hundred and twelve feet below him. he had seen it too many times. and too many times had he waited the necessary two minutes, listened to the taut silence of the waiting communicator. "command to southard. task mission dispatched and advancing. now describe your situation." "as follows--" the young lieutenant's voice was still taut, but it was not at the edge of panic. of that joel was certain. it was just that this was the first time, and it wasn't a field exercise, and it hadn't just been learned the night before from an academy manual.... "servounit 4, sample tapping with four facilities at two hundred feet. metal encountered; processed. object depth-screened; fabricated. extends from minus two zero zero to minus five two seven. diameter three zero feet. further investigation withheld pending arrival of task mission. over for command." _over for command_, the young voice said. so many, many times.... he was not exactly the same nicholas joel, now. he was command.... "all right, boy, sit easy and try to relax. what the hell is it you've got holed up out there?" "it's a--a space ship, sir." "what class?" "i don't know, sir. it isn't terrestrial." "all right, what do the counters tell you?" "it's about a thousand years old, sir. that's as close as the counters can come, working off a screen. perhaps, sir, you'd--" "well i don't want to look at pictures! inform task mission when they show up that i'm coming out for a look around--and i'll have their hides if they go unnailing things before i get there. you got any bond with you, southard?" "yes sir." "all right, you get my point? don't drink it all! this is command, _whale_, out!" joel broke the circuit just as the admittance buzzer went off; he thumbed a stud and the narrow bulkhead door slid back, admitting carruthers and dobermann. "was wondering when you two were going to report. sent a t-m to southard--says he's found a space ship two hundred feet under the desert. sometimes i think that kid works too hard. all right, got the 'copter ready?" "warming up on the waist ramp now," dobermann said. joel stood up, reached for his guns and belt and strapped them around his thick middle. he gave carruthers a quick look. the thin face was taut, almost expressionless, but there was an excitement smouldering in the dark eyes; the old excitement joel had seen in them so many times before. "no objections to the artillery this time, i take it, sam?" joel grunted as he clasped the big buckle, let the weight of the blasters sag their holsters down into position on his thighs. "damn good of you! and i'm glad you understand these people so well--while we're on our way maybe you can tell me why they bury space ships." "maybe we ought to ask them, skipper," sam said with a half-smile on his thin lips. "i get your point. but maybe they should've told us! come on." * * * * * on joel's order, the task mission's guns had been reversed; drawn about the area where southard's servounits were noisily sucking up sand, they no longer were concentrated on the excavation site, but instead defended it, slender snouts commanding an immense circular field of fire. "you don't trust them at that, do you, nicholas?" carruthers said above the racket of the servounits. "lord, you could slaughter an army--" "this is what it says to do in the goddamn books!" joel snapped. "you're the guys who were so glad to make a strike." the heavy, tracked machinery with its towering drill-housings and down-thrust vacuum-scoops whined and growled in a nerve-wrenching discord of power. men sweated under the mild sun with a silent hurry, with a disciplined excitement. southard was fast and efficient. dobermann was silent, watching, analyzing. carruthers had the hungry look in his eyes that joel did not understand. and joel was impatient. it was a tableau of men and machines that he had watched before, and always, at the end of it, there was something big for him to handle--frustrating if not dangerous, a mind and bone-wearying struggle if not an outright battle. they never came smooth, never. "forehull clear, sir!" it was southard, calling from the lip of the immense hole his machines had excavated. "cut your servos!" southard signalled to his units, and they muttered slowly into silence, and then the silence hung over them all like a heavy thing, and captain nicholas joel knew that what happened next was up to him. with a motion of one gauntleted hand he brought dobermann and carruthers in next to him, and then the three of them walked with a disciplined haste to the sandy lip, past southard, and looked down. a pitted forehull jutted up out of the moist sand two hundred feet below them, its plates glittering darkly in the rays of the powerful illumination units which had already been lowered. dobermann's quick eyes took in each detail in seconds, and then they darted up to joel's face. carruthers was silent, and his face was white. "all right, let's get some winch-lifts over here!" joel bellowed. "torches, can-openers, let's get with it!" and within minutes, joel was on his way down in a bucket, big boots planted solidly on a small mountain of heavy tools. dobermann was following, and carruthers was in the third bucket. joel's bare hands were exploring the gnurled lip of the forehull lock-hatch before either of them hit bottom. dobermann was first up beside him, a heavy torch cradled in his short, thick arms. "ready?" "won't need that thing," joel grunted. "nobody locked up when they left. give me a hand." the hatch, like the rest of the hull, was pitted, but despite the moistness of the sand in which the ship was imbedded, there were no indications of corrosion. joel made a mental note to have the lubricants in which the hinge-gymbals were packed analyzed later; they were still as good as new; the hatch was giving almost easily. carruthers, with an arc lantern, lit their way inside. they walked into what was obviously a pilots' compartment. instruments, control panels, ack-seats, notations on metal-leaf note-pads which they did not understand; dobermann copied them. they descended ladder-walks into the fore-waist; crew compartment. functional, compact, reflecting the same efficient engineering which they had encountered in the previous compartment. through a second bulkhead opening; supply compartment. through another; cargo hold. it was not empty, and loading gear was in evidence, although neatly stowed in its locks. "mneurium-4," carruthers said. the words made a hollow sound in the emptiness behind them. they kept going. armory. all units still in place. engine room. dobermann's counter ticked slowly in the stillness. still a little kick left in the piles. machine-shop; lab. spotless, perfect order. finally, tubes. the smooth metal gleamed in the light of carruthers' lamp. and that was all. joel turned wordlessly and started back up the ladder-walks. dobermann and carruthers clanged hollowly after him, scrambling to keep up. joel didn't stop until he had climbed back into one of the buckets, and then he waved impatiently. machinery whined above him, and his bucket swung clear. at the lip, he motioned for southard. "all right, i want ten of your people with technical research rates. leave them with dobermann and carruthers. issue return orders to your t-m, and then get these units out of here and digging up what we came after." "but--yes sir." dobermann and carruthers were at the lip, climbing out of their buckets. there was a puzzled look, even on dobermann's usually taciturn face. "you two," joel snapped, "will have a crew of researchers. ten men. take twenty-four hours and scrape the insides of this thing. carruthers will report directly to me when you're finished. dobermann, you'll nail k'hall-i-k'hall to a wall somewhere and don't let him down until you find out what became of whoever flew this tank." he turned and walked away before anyone could protest. * * * * * captain nicholas joel drained the flagon. he looked again at the faded image in the small, rectangular frame, finally returned it to the breast pocket of his tunic. then he looked up across the mahogany desk at carruthers and dobermann. "so," he said slowly, "so he told you he didn't know, did he?" "yes, captain, that is what he told me. he was surprised about the space ship. he called the others in. there was the same reaction. they--" joel leaped to his feet. "don't give me that!" he thundered. he grabbed at the bottle of bond; spilled it as he poured. "you _know_ he knows!" "captain, i was quite convinced." "quite convinced, quite convinced, were you.... all right, dobermann, get out of here. you find out anything, let me know. sam, i want to talk to you. go on dobermann, _git_!" joel slumped back behind the desk as his first officer pivoted, left. he tried a swallow from the flagon; fumbled at his tunic pocket for the small frame, extracted it; looked at it again. then put it back a second time. carruthers sat down opposite him. "you going to talk to me, nicholas, or pass out before you get the chance?" "all right, sam." joel got up, put the bond back in its cabinet; emptied the flagon and put it in too. "i get your point. only you listen. the crew of that ship was deliberately murdered. cold-bloodedly murdered, and it isn't going to happen to us." "i see." the ship's surgeon eyed the tips of his fingernails, then slowly looked up into joel's red, swollen face. "naturally, there wouldn't be any bodies around to prove your theory, would there, skipper? and no signs of struggle. we didn't see any. of course, their guns _were_ racked up pretty neatly--but it's all there in the report--" he waved a slender hand toward a roll of tape on the desk. "never mind your sarcastic technicalities! they were--" "nicholas, sit down. and listen." "all right. but i _don't_ get your point! and i don't want any of your double-talk! the trouble with you guys--" "first of all, nicholas, you know that crew wasn't murdered or anything of the kind. and you know, and dobermann realizes that you know _he_ knows, that k'hall-i-k'hall was lying in his teeth. and k'hall-i-k'hall knows _we_ know it." joel lowered his eyes. "all right, sam," he said. no, there hadn't been any use in trying to drum up a bunch of tripe--no use in trying to fool sam. he had known that from the start. but sometimes--sometimes, even when a man knew he was fooling himself, he had to give it a try, just to see-"they went native, didn't they, sam?" he said. "yes, skipper. they did. somebody back where they came from needed that mneurium-4 real bad. somebody had guts and sweat and brains enough to get ships into space looking for it. and in their own way, somebody had faith enough to think they'd get it if it was to be found. only, as you say--" "liked it here, i suppose. liked it better than anything they'd ever seen before--and that can of theirs had a thumping set of drives, so they'd seen plenty." there was silence for a moment. and then sam said, "well, nicholas, there it is. the psychology of the thing is obvious enough, isn't it?" carruthers gave him a meaningful look, and joel's nerves rebelled at it. "all right, i get your point!" a big fist slammed down on the desktop. "so somebody didn't get their mneurium-4! somebody probably ornery enough to keep on living anyway. what do you want to bet they're still going strong, who or wherever they are out in that black hell up there? what do you want to bet, sam?" the surgeon's thin lips smiled gently. "i'd bet right along with you, nicholas. they're probably still going strong. i imagine they made out." "but k'hall-i-k'hall--" "is proprietor of a very pleasant world. a world of very nice people, nicholas, who enjoy living in their way, and get a kick out of seeing other people enjoy it. they think a little differently than a lot of folks." "that makes 'em bad, i suppose?" "no." joel looked into the thin face, the intent, dark eyes. the look was in them. and joel guessed he was finally letting himself realize what the look really meant. it was a look that meant a hunger for all that joel hated, and more.... it was a look that meant, even now after all these years, that sam still hurt inside, and hurt badly. "why--why couldn't it have been the other way _around_, sam," joel said hoarsely. the other looked up at him. "you do hate it that much, don't you." "look sam, you've gotta get my point! i don't think that crew did anything wrong! they didn't. they just decided to stop being hunks of machinery." carruthers smiled. "i get your point, skipper. and i'm going to let you figure this one out all by yourself. but i'd like to tell you something first, just sort of as a point of information; maybe it'll help. skipper, i had a girl once, too." joel stood still. then he turned, opened his mouth to speak, then clamped it hard shut. "they told me i couldn't pilot. but i could help, and my help was needed--everybody's was, because this wasn't a matter of a government project. this was a matter of a race of people who were building a ladder--a big, tall ladder, nicholas. sometimes it was a killer. sometimes a heartbreaker. sometimes a laughingstock. _but it belonged to men, and they lived and died for it; they built it, and it's theirs to climb, nicholas!_" joel watched the other's worn face, and now the hurt was naked in it. "she said, nicholas, that it was all off if i decided to go up to space. i loved her, skipper. _and i loved the tall ladder._" joel whirled. "sure, and what's it got us, sam? a bellyful of cold, aching loneliness--our guts twisted and squeezed until the life's dried up in 'em--and what do we get? what do those wrangling, yapping, bellyaching rotters back home give us for it? pension us off when we can't see our blast-off studs anymore and forget about us. "they take the stuff we bring 'em--just as if it grew on trees, just as if it grew into a neat, pretty package somewhere all by itself! with money they can buy it--with enough money they can buy all of it! even if we had to get it with the air sucked out of us, with our brains boiled out of us, with our crazy heads busted in. "and you know what, sam? there was even a time when they said we couldn't do it at all! a hundred years ago, they laughed at us for trying to get to the moon! they laughed, sam--and those who didn't laugh _didn't even give a damn at all_! "so i was to tell the girl i'd marry her later, but that right now they thought i ought to be a pilot! i was to say to my life: i'll live you later, but right now i've got to be a pilot.... and i was to freeze my insides for twenty years showing 'em they were wrong to laugh, and that it was time they gave a damn, that what i could bring home was going to mean a lot to the world they live on! "and like a fool i did! "and sam--sam, they're still yapping like little dogs for a piece of meat--not just a good piece of meat, but all wrapped up nice and fancy, no mistakes allowed, every time they whistle! and the whistling gets so easy, sam--so easy. you can even do it while you're stabbing your neighbor in the back, while you're selling his kids down the river--even while you're taking your next breath to yap some more! "they can go to hell, sam! they can go to hell." joel slumped down in the chair behind the mahogany desk. the surgeon looked at him, looked away. "you've made up your mind, then." "that's right." "i suppose dobermann and i can get the ship back somehow." "you'll make it." "i guess we will. unless the rest feel the way you do--and i know half the crew thinks this is quite a place. in which case, of course, i suppose they'll survive, back home, even without the mneurium-4--they have for a long time. but there is one thing." "yeah, yeah." "these people are fine people, as you've--found out. you couldn't even replace that _dhennah_." "how did you--" "they're swell folks, nicholas, and always will be," the surgeon said softly, "and they've never built a thing, _and never will_. "they don't know greed, because no one has ever achieved anything worth another's wanting. "they don't know jealousy, because no one has ever obtained anything that another couldn't. "they don't know hate, because no one has ever discovered a thing for which to fight that another thinks of sufficient value to fight for. "only--if they don't know hate or jealousy, skipper--then, _they don't know love_!" quietly, carruthers rose from his chair. for a moment, he hesitated. "what is it you're lonely for, nicholas?" he asked, and then he left the fore-waist bridge. * * * * * there was a mushroom of sun-fire against the blackness of the cool night, and a thunder of power. slowly, ponderously, the _white whale_ backed down her column of flame, hesitated, flared again for a final time from her thick stem, and then settled to earth. gantries rolled into position. and the sound of lock-hatches clanging open thrilled the length of the _white whale_, and there were the muffled voices of men, and the voices became shouts with the joy loud in them. the men trooped down from their great metal monster as fast as the lifts would carry them, and in small groups and in crowds they made their boisterous way across the landing plaza and toward home. and when the shouts had died, a last man descended the smooth sides of the _white whale_. his eyes glanced over the great bulk of her, making certain she was secure. then he, too, walked from her, but not as quickly as the rest. captain nicholas joel walked slowly, because he was tired. on every side of him, in dark shadow against the night, there were tall, slender, streamlined shapes pointing toward the stars. his slow boot-steps echoed from their hulls as he passed, a tiny midge of a thing, between them. as sam had said, these were things that man had made. and among them again was the _white whale_. they had said he was a good pilot. to save earth by edward w. ludwig illustrated by van dogen [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from worlds of tomorrow october 1963 extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] the life of everyone on earth depended on their sanity ... which they had long ago lost! for more than six years the silver rocket was like a tomb buried at the earth's center. it wore the blackness of interstellar space for a shroud, and ten thousand gleaming stars were as the eyes of hungry, waiting worms. five of the inhabitants of the rocket moved like zombies, stone-faced and dull-eyed, numb even to their loneliness. the sixth inhabitant did not move at all. he sat silent and unseeing. the sixth inhabitant was mad. there had been times when all of them--mad and near-mad--had forgotten that they hurtled through space, that they were men and that they were growing old. occasionally they had even forgotten that the destiny of mankind might lie in their hands like a fragile flower to be preserved or crushed. but now came a moment six years one month and five days after their departure from earth. the sole planet of sirius loomed green and blue in the ship's magni-screen. the sight of the shining planet was like a heavenly trumpet call, a signal for resurrection. the inhabitants stirred, rubbed their eyes, and tried to exhume forgotten hopes and memories from the lethargy of their minds.... * * * * * "what do you think?" asked lieutenant washington. captain jeffrey torkel, gaunt-faced and gray, stiffened his lean body. at this moment all memory had left him, like a wind-tossed balloon leaping out of his skull. _it's happened again_, he thought. _i've forgotten. oh god, why must i keep forgetting?_ "tell me what you think, captain," said a balding, dark-skinned man clad in khakis. captain torkel stared at the blue-green, cloud-mottled image in the screen. where was he? certainly not in south dakota. certainly not on a field of golden, bristling wheat. no, he had the feeling that much time had passed since those boyhood days on the dakota farm. he glanced at the strange man who had spoken to him. the balloon snapped back into his skull. memory returned. _at least it wasn't gone for a week this time_, he thought. _thank you, god._ "you must be thinking _something_," persisted the man who had become lieutenant washington. the captain rubbed his gray stubble of beard. "i guess i'm thinking that we're afraid and bewildered. we're not as full of strength and hope as saviors of the race should be. sure, what we find here today will mean either life or death for the race. but the concept has been with us for too long. it's already made us half-mad. and the same part of our minds is afraid to hope lest it be disappointed. after all, the planet might be radioactive or uninhabitable, or--" "but, lord, captain! even with the sub-spatial drive it's taken us six years to get here. if there's a god who answers prayers, it's _got_ to be a good planet. sirius has only one planet. this is the last chance left for the race. and look at it, captain! the blue places must be water and the green must be land. it's bigger than earth, but it looks almost like it!" captain torkel nodded. "whether it's good or bad, we still can't win, really. if it's bad, humanity dies and we stay on the ship for the rest of our lives. if it's good, we'll still be on it for twelve more years--six years back to earth and another six to return here." lieutenant washington began to shake. "i don't know if i could take twelve more years in space. twelve years of eating and sleeping and playing chess in the silence and nothing but darkness outside, and trying to find a micro-movie we haven't seen a hundred times--all that, over and over--" he closed his eyes. "i don't think the others could take it either. they'd probably become like kelly." kelly was the mad one. "we have no other choice, lieutenant. if the planet's habitable, we have to take the news back." the lieutenant shuddered. "i--i need a drink," he faltered. "i know. i said i wasn't going to drink today. i'm not either. not much. i want to be on my feet when we hit that planet. but--excuse me, captain." captain torkel watched the gaunt officer stride to the aft compartment. he suddenly realized that the lieutenant was bald. the top of his negroid skull shone like a dark egg. when had _that_ happened? only a short time ago, it seemed, the lieutenant had been a young man with soft thick hair. _those six years did it_, thought captain torkel, _those six dark, silent, crazy years._ * * * * * the lieutenant returned a few seconds later, calmer now, reeking with the stench of laboratory alcohol spilled on his jacket. captain torkel, as always, pretended not to notice the stench. "captain," said lieutenant washington deeply. "yes?" "suppose the astrophysicists back on earth were wrong. they said the sun would blow up in exactly twelve years, two months and fifteen days. how could they get it that close? suppose this planet _is_ habitable, suppose it _could_ be a new home for humanity. and suppose we start back home with the news, and then the sun turns into a nova ahead of schedule--say, in twelve years, two months and _three_ days, when we're still a week away." captain torkel swallowed hard. "we have to allow a margin for error, of course. but i don't think those predictions will be off by more than a day or two. after all, they've been corroborated in all the broadcasts we've been able to pick up." he smiled grimly. "so if the planet's habitable, we have to start back to earth almost at once. we can't allow ourselves more than a day to rest and try to get the madness out of our systems." "oh, god," murmured lieutenant washington, closing his eyes. "if we only had our transmitter," captain torkel mused, "we could stay here. we wouldn't have to--" "damn him," interrupted the lieutenant, opening his eyes and clenching his fists. "_damn_ him!" "kelly?" "kelly. why did he do it, captain? why did he throw every piece of transmitting equipment over-board?" "maybe a part of his mind hated earth. maybe unconsciously he didn't want to save humanity. kelly's crazy. you can't account for the actions of a crazy man." lieutenant washington was shaking again. "and so we can't radio earth about what we find. if the planet's good, we have to tell earth the hard way--by traveling through space for six more years. captain, i--i think i'm going to have to get a dr--" footsteps sounded on the deck behind them. van gundy, the lean, hawk-nosed jetman, rushed up to them. he was breathing heavily and trembling. "captain, fox stole my harmonica!" captain torkel scowled. for a moment he forgot van gundy's name and who the lean man was. then he remembered. "stole your harmonica. why?" "he won't tell me. he's a thief, captain. he's always stealing things. you ought to--" "tell him i said for him to give it back to you. tell him i said that." "yes, sir." van gundy clasped his trembling hands. "but that isn't all, captain. garcia said if i got my harmonica back and kept playing it, he'd kill me." "oh, god. tell garcia i said he couldn't." "yes, sir." van gundy turned toward the aft compartment, then spun back, eyes blazing. "i won't let 'em scare me, captain. if they don't leave me alone. i'll kill _them_." * * * * * "the men are like rotting trees," said captain torkel a few moments later, "and you can't tell which way they'll fall. fox steals. van gundy is afraid of everything and everybody. garcia keeps breaking things and threatening violence. someday he'll break a port, and that'll be _it_. finis." lieutenant washington said, with a hiccough, "too bad we didn't insist on having a psychiatrist in the crew. fox probably thinks he's been cheated out of his youth, and unconsciously he's trying to steal it back. van gundy has been knocked around so much that everything in the universe is a source of terror to him. garcia breaks things." he laughed sourly, blowing hot alcoholic breath into the captain's face. "and me, i'm a dipso who's no good to himself or anyone. you, captain ... sometimes i suspect that your memory isn't quite what it use to be." captain torkel scratched his stubbled chin. "six psycho-specimens trying to save humanity. how did we become so detestable? are all earthmen like us?" "don't you remember?" "remember?" "yes. how when the u. n. announced about the blowup every interstellar rocket and spaceman in the system was commissioned to discover new worlds. each ship was given a destination and an interstellar ether-radio to send back its findings. mechanics and technicians still on earth were put to work building new rockets to carry the race to its future home--if one were found. we and the _star queen_ were at the bottom of the barrel. the oldest ship; the crew that ordinarily would have been grounded." captain torkel murmured, "i remember. there were fourteen interstellar ships then. six cracked up smashing through the einstein barrier, according to what we picked up on the ether receiver. the others reached their destinations and not one found a habitable world. and newer ships sent out later had no better luck. now, all the nearest star systems have been reached, and there isn't time for the ships to go on to other systems. by an ugly little prank of fate, we're earth's last chance." he straightened. he pressed the warning buzzer and flicked on the rocket's intercom. "all hands to their crash-chairs," he intoned. ii the crewmen appeared in the rear of the control room. hesitantly, they approached the massive, semicircular control panel with its hundred flashing red and blue lights. fox was in the lead. "captain," the small-boned, brown-bearded radarman said solemnly, "can we take a look before we belt down?" "a short one." the men looked. fox seemed ready to kiss the image of the planet. van gundy, wide-eyed, trembled before it as if at any instant it might destroy him. garcia, the swarthy engineer, glowered at it as though threatening to crush it like an eggshell. "i want kelly to see this," said fox. he hurried aft, nervously stroking his beard. an instant later he returned, leading the former radioman by the hand. kelly's soft blue eyes stared vacantly out of a pink, cherubic face. he was as plump as a dumpling, and his hair was as red as prairie fire. his short body moved woodenly. "come on, kelly," said fox. "you got to see this. nobody's going to stop you from seeing this, by god." the fire-haired man stood before the magni-screen. fox pointed. "see it?" kelly stared. "he can't see it," rumbled garcia. "he's crazy." "not too crazy to see this," fox retorted. kelly's head bent forward. his lip quivered. "home," he mumbled. fox jerked, eyes widening. "hey, kelly spoke! did you hear that? he spoke! first time in two years!" "home," kelly mumbled again. "no, not home," fox explained. "it's the only planet of sirius." "hell," said garcia, "if it'll make him happier, let him think it's earth." "no, it's the only planet of--" "we can't be saying 'the only planet of sirius' all the time. we got to give it a name." "home," mumbled the madman. "what kind of a name would _that_ be?" growled garcia. captain torkel said, patiently, "kelly didn't mean that for a name. he was just saying the word." fox cried, "let's name it after kelly. kelly's planet!" van gundy stepped forward. he was trembling. his trembling seemed as much a part of him as sight in his eyes. "no," he said. "why not?" snapped fox. "because of what he did. he took the transmitter and--" "we know all that. he couldn't help it. he's a schizophrenic. that doesn't mean we can't name a world after him, does it?" garcia balled his hands into fists. "fox is right. i say we call it kelly's planet. how about it, captain?" "it's all right with me," said the captain. "then kelly's planet it is!" cried fox. "strap down," captain torkel said. "this is it. we're going to land." then he said the words again in his mind: _this is it. this is the world that will give death or life to humanity, madness or sanity to us._ * * * * * the midnight blackness of space dissolved into gentle twilight as the _star queen_ slid into the atmosphere of kelly's planet. the grumble of the jets became audible and then swelled until it was like a rebirth of the thunderous sound of an april takeoff more than six years ago. captain torkel switched on the second layer of bow jets, braced himself in his crash-chair. despite the effects of the deceleration compensator, his face was swollen and distorted. it was as if the soul was bubbling out of his body. he realized that he should have commenced deceleration some ninety minutes ago. but he had forgotten. the image of the planet broadened in the magni-screen. it filled the screen, then seemed to spill out of it. captain torkel beheld an expanse of blue which, in a silent explosion, was transformed into the cerulean calm of a sea. the blue was swept away. the brownish gold of mountains stabbed briefly upward, faded into the shadowy green of rushing forest. then came the glassy green of a meadow. the _star queen_ paused, shaking with vibration. its nose arched upward. the _star queen_ landed with an almost imperceptible thump. the atomic engines spluttered, coughed, died. the men unbuckled themselves, tested their limbs, slid off their chairs. they moved to the portholes like frightened old men treading on slippery ice. they looked out. * * * * * they stared for a long moment. "i don't believe it," said fox at last. "it's a mirage. we're still in space." "it--it frightens me," stuttered van gundy. "there's death out there. the air is poisonous. i feel it." "we're crazy," garcia spat. "as crazy as kelly." his eyes widened. "or maybe we're dead. could that be?" "e--excuse me, captain," said lieutenant washington. "i think i'll go aft for a minute." captain torkel said nothing. he had forgotten where he was. he was nameless and lost, among strangers in a strange place. but at this moment he somehow did not care. he was content to let his hungry gaze absorb the rainbow beauty beyond the ports. the meadow was like molten emerald stirring lazily in a slight breeze. the meadow was spotted with flowers as large as a man's head, shaped like teardrops, and shining purple and yellow and blue and crimson in the light from a swollen, blood-red sun. some five hundred yards away on the rocket's starboard side rose a towering green forest. in its shadow was a dark jungle of colossal fern and twisted vines and more flowers. beyond that, far away, snow-cloaked mountains stretched their ponderous bulk into sea-blue sky. captain torkel returned his slow gaze to the interior of the strange place in which he stood. he beheld a group of strange men doing strange things. a stern-looking man with tight lips and menacing eyes was looking up from a litter of glass flasks and electronic devices. "air twenty-nine per cent oxygen--a bit higher than on earth. sixty-five per cent nitrogen. rest is a mixture of water vapor, co2 and inert gases." a small-boned man with a brown beard was saying, "mass point-eight-three. that and the increased oxygen should make us feel like kids again." a hawk-nosed man with trembling hands and a forehead glistening with perspiration said, "temperature sixty-four fahrenheit. no harmful radiation, pathogenic tests negative. air pressure, eleven-point-three." he pointed to an odd-looking flower and a tuft of grass in the window of a metal, box-like chamber. "flora shows the same oxygen-co2 cycle as on earth. only the flowers here seem edible." the men looked at one another. "captain, is everything all right?" the brown-bearded man asked anxiously. captain torkel sensed that the strange men desired an affirmative answer from him. "yes," he said. the brown-bearded man clapped his hands. "and we can go outside! how about it, captain? can we go outside without our suits? can we go out now--please?" _click._ * * * * * memory returned to captain torkel like water crashing out of a broken dam and into a barren valley. he blinked and took a deep breath. the three men before him became garcia and fox and van gundy. he saw that kelly was still strapped in his crash-chair. he did not see lieutenant washington, but from the aft compartment came a faint tinkling of glassware. "yes," he said, "we'll go outside. but first someone should go alone--just in case. who'll volunteer?" "not me," said van gundy. "you can't depend on those tests. there's death out there. the whole human race will die out if it comes here." "why not let kelly go?" asked fox. "it's his planet." "sure," said garcia. "if he dies, it'd serve him right, after what _he_ did." captain torkel thought, _it may be a dangerous planet. the captain ought to go first. he shouldn't send a madman to do a captain's job._ "let kelly go first," he said, hating himself. fox helped kelly out of the crash-chair, pushed him to the airlock. "go on, kelly. this is your planet. you'll be the first to set foot on it." kelly did not move. fox pulled him to a port. "look out there, kelly. damn it, don't keep looking at your feet. out there, out the port!" fox raised kelly's head and brushed the red hair back from his eyes. the madman looked. "heaven?" he whispered. "not heaven. kelly's planet. your planet, kelly." they pushed kelly into the airlock. a minute later they saw him stumble onto the green meadows. for eleven more minutes he stood silent and motionless. then he turned toward the rocket. through the ports the men saw his lips move. "heaven!" yelled fox. "that's what he said! he said 'heaven'!" iii captain torkel and fox and garcia and van gundy stood beside kelly. lieutenant washington, too drunk to stand, sprawled in the grass. they let the cool, clean air wash out their lungs like sweet perfume. they took off their shoes. they dug their toes into the soft, silky grass. they sniffed the poignant, spicy smell of the brilliant flowers. van gundy, despite his trembling, played _turkey in the straw_ on his harmonica. captain torkel did a dance like that of a russian cossack. lieutenant washington, squatting like a dark buddha and with his torso swaying drunkenly, clapped his hands in time with the dance. fox hummed the tune, and even kelly nodded his head rhythmically. only garcia stood motionless. "it's a good planet!" exclaimed fox at last. van gundy's trembling hand whacked spit out of his harmonica. his eyes rolled fearfully toward the forest. "we don't know for sure yet." "i think fox is right," said captain torkel. "it _is_ a good planet. enjoy it, men. breathe deeply. smell those flowers. feel the grass. because very soon we've got to start earthward. we've got to store our memories full of this beauty so it'll last for twelve years." "oh, god," sighed fox. "twelve years." garcia stepped forward, swelling his chest. strangely, it seemed that all the hatred had been drained out of him. "i was wrong," he said. "we're not crazy and we're not dead. this planet is good. it's so good that i'd like to stay here as long as i live." "what?" asked captain torkel, blinking. "i said i'd like to stay here as long as i live." the words echoed in the still air. they were like evil seeds, falling into fertile minds and sprouting. "and not go back to earth?" asked fox, stroking his beard. "and not go back to earth." * * * * * captain torkel stiffened. "get those thoughts out of your head, garcia. there are two billion people back on earth. they'll die unless we tell them about this planet. we've got wives, friends--" "not me," said garcia sternly. "no wife and no friends." fox shrilled, "the only reason i volunteered for this trip was to get away from my wife and that lousy new york apartment. you're not married, are you, captain?" "n--no." "me neither," hiccoughed lieutenant washington. "not many girls'll marry spacemen." "kelly's married, though," mused fox. "how about it, kelly?" "heaven," mumbled kelly. fox laughed. "kelly means he wants to stay here." captain torkel wiped perspiration from his upper lip with the back of his hand. "we got to get these thoughts out of our minds. we're talking like murderers. garcia, think of the people you used to know. think of their faces. imagine how it would be for them to die." garcia looked up into the sky, his features softening. "i can't remember any faces, captain. i can remember how the gulls used to fly over the coast at monterey and how the fishing boats used to bounce over the waves. that's all. the gulls and the boats will be destroyed anyway. we can't save those." captain torkel turned to fox. "_you_ remember faces, don't you, fox?" the little man shrugged. "they're like those crowd scenes we used to see in movies--hundreds and thousands of faces all huddled together. you really can't remember a single one. they're like shadows." "but you remember your wife's face." "i don't want to remember that. i might vomit. and i don't want to remember that cheesy new york apartment either." in desperation the captain turned to van gundy. "and you?" "i--i remember the face of an old woman who sold flowers on o'farrell street in frisco. stood there all year long, she did. in winter, summer, spring, fall. i used to buy gardenias from her when i had a date." "do you want her to die?" "she was so old that she's probably dead by this time anyway. but listen, captain, i--i'm not sure yet that this planet--" captain torkel whirled frantically to lieutenant washington, kicked him lightly in the side. the lieutenant, apparently somewhat sobered by the cool air, rose shakily. "lieutenant, _you_ remember the people of earth. can't you still see their faces in your mind?" * * * * * "the only face i remember," drawled lieutenant washington, "is my mom's. a good face, with a lot of work in it, but thin around the lips and wrinkled around the eyes. it was a cold face, though. mom was born in louisiana and then moved up to maine as a girl. her bones weren't the kind to take those new england winters. so mom slept, ate, lived and died cold. been dead now for eight years, and i think she's still cold, even in her grave. i don't believe mom'd mind one bit if the earth burns up. she'd be warm then. i think she'd like it." "that's not the point," said captain torkel angrily. "the point is--" fox broke in: "what do _you_ remember, captain?" captain torkel swallowed hard. "me? why, i remember, i--" his mouth remaining open, he scratched the back of his neck. his memories suddenly vanished like puffs of smoke. "just like the rest of us!" burst garcia, triumphantly. "you know, captain," said fox, "if we didn't go back, the race wouldn't have to roast. people would still escape in their emergency rockets." "but they wouldn't know where to go. they'd float around a few years, and then those flimsy mass-production ships would break up. good lord, men, we've got to act like human beings!" garcia stepped forward. "why don't we decide this later? can't we relax for a few hours, captain?" lieutenant washington nodded agreement. "he's right. you said yourself, captain, that if the planet was good we'd spend a day or so getting the madness out of our systems." "all right," murmured captain torkel, shoulders drooping. "we'll look around some more." they walked toward the forest. fox led kelly by the hand. lieutenant washington advanced under his own power. they saw trees five hundred feet high with brown trunks like twisted, lumpy crullers and leaves like elephant ears of green velvet. from smaller trees hung fruit that shimmered like golden snow as light touched it. here and there were clusters of scarlet berries as large as apples, and chocolate-brown balls the size of coconuts. "don't touch 'em," said van gundy, trembling. "i'll bet they're deadly poison." "they look delicious," said captain torkel, stuffing three specimens in his knapsack, "but we'll test them first." van gundy screamed. the others whirled to look at him. van gundy, speechless, pointed with a trembling forefinger. a brown, smiling face broke out of the fern foliage. then another appeared, and another and another. a score or more of brown-skinned humanoids walked up to them. iv the sirians were dressed in loin cloths as bright and multi-colored as the tear-shaped meadow flowers. their resemblance to earthmen made captain torkel gasp. he could discern no appreciable difference save for the perfect roundness of their dark eyes and a slight elongation of their ears. their flesh was golden tan. "well, hello!" said captain torkel. the sirians moved toward him, with such grace that they seemed not men striding through the singing forest, but part of the living trees and ferns and flowers. "hello," echoed the foremost sirian, smiling. he was a young man, about thirty by earth standards, with long black hair and wide, muscular shoulders. his handsome face reminded captain torkel of romantic latin heroes in the micro-movies aboard the _star queen_. captain torkel pointed to the sky. "we come from up there, from another world." the sirian's eyes were like black lights spearing into the captain's skull. "yes, you come from star. you are star people. where is your star?" "it's a long way--" "hey, he spoke in english!" cried fox. "what the hell!" "i--i'm going back to the rocket," stammered van gundy, shaking. "lord, i need a drink," murmured lieutenant washington, stepping back with van gundy. "wait, all of you," captain torkel commanded them. to the sirian he said, "we know that earthmen haven't been here before. how do you speak our language?" the young man's smile broadened. "your mind is a fire sending out warmth to us. within the warmth i see sounds you use to make words." "telepathy," said captain torkel. "yes," the sirian agreed. "and i see that your people are troubled. they fear a strange thing--a coming of heat and light. your world is soon to be destroyed, yes?" suddenly the captain was afraid. the fear came to him in an invisible cloud, settling over him, seeping into his flesh and chilling his bones. he tried to believe that it was the senseless fear of a child whose imagination has peopled the dark corners of his room with nameless monsters. he tried to crush the fear, but it clung to him in fog-cold intensity. the sirian nodded understandingly. "you must not worry now about the coming of the great heat. you are tired. you must come with us to our village. you must see how we live." * * * * * the captain's legs were weak. he wanted to flee; he wanted to escape from the sirian's omnipresent smile and his round-eyed piercing gaze. van gundy whispered to him, very softly, "did you bring weapons, captain? should we go without weapons?" "i--i forgot about weapons," he whispered back, his face reddening. fox said anxiously, "how about it, captain? do we go with them?" "i don't want to go," said van gundy, trembling. "don't make me go, captain." "i'll be damned if i'll go," muttered garcia. "i'm going back to the rocket." captain torkel nodded. "you two can go back to the rocket." fox leaned forward. "the rest of us can go, can't we?" captain torkel frowned at fox and lieutenant washington and kelly. the fear was still in him, but he said softly, "all right, we'll go." garcia and van gundy ran back toward the _star queen_, white-faced, shoulders hunched. captain torkel and fox and kelly and lieutenant washington, led by the young sirian, stumbled down a wide forest trail. other sirians darted on either side of them and behind them, half hidden by the thick foliage. they were like happy, dancing nymphs. every second or two the forest echoed their clear, melodious laughter. "we forgot to introduce ourselves," captain torkel said to the sirian. "my name is torkel, captain jeffrey torkel." "my name is taaleeb," replied the sirian. "a pretty name. you are the leader of your people?" the sirian's smile gave way to uncertainty. "leader--that is a strange thought in your mind. we have no leaders." "but you _must_ have leaders." "why?" asked the sirian, his eyes wide. "we have no star-boat. we are not going anyplace." the captain cleared his throat. "we have leaders not only in our rockets. we have them to help us make our laws, to supervise our work, to guide us in the decisions of our living." the sirian laughed like a happy child. "laws, work--more strange thoughts. we do not have laws. we do not have work." a scowl creased captain torkel's forehead. "but you _must_ do work of some kind. what do you do all the time?" "we pick fruit from the trees and make love and sing and sleep and lie in the forest and make up poems. is there anything else to do?" "but when you build shelters or make clothes--_that_ is work." taaleeb laughed again. "no, no. building a shelter or making clothes is just building a shelter or making clothes." they came to the village. it lay in circle of domes about eight feet high that reflected the same shining colors as the meadow flowers. whether they were wooden, metallic or vegetable captain torkel could not tell. "this is where we live," said taaleeb proudly. captain torkel nodded. then he saw the women coming toward them. * * * * * he felt the hair rise on the nape of his neck. for an instant he thought he was going to fall backward. somehow he caught himself and managed to remain erect. the women stood in a line in the center of the clearing as if gathered to meet the earthmen. like the men, they were clad only in loin-cloths. they were bronzed, sultry young goddesses. the captain's gaze traveled over the nearest, a girl of perhaps twenty. his gaze began with her midnight hair that cascaded to firm, round breasts in a shower of black silk. it turned to her piquant, up-turned nose and dimpled cheeks and pink, sensual mouth. it fell to the slim, full body and the sweep of long, tanned thigh. the girl smiled at him. her eyes were like wells of interstellar space silvered with sparkling stars. he sat down on his haunches, too weak to stand. he'd almost forgotten that women of flesh and blood existed. he'd almost begun to believe that women were memories hidden in dark corners of his mind or flickering images striding across a micro-movie screen. "we have presents for you," the young sirian said, smiling down at him. captain torkel forced his eyes away from the girl. he saw that older women and children were standing beside him, smiling, their arms filled with strange containers. "wine for the star people," said a white-haired woman. she seized a golden flagon and filled golden cups held by children. "food for the star people," said another. more smiling women and children appeared carrying greenish, transparent bowls filled with slices of a yellow, porous substance. taaleeb chuckled at captain torkel's hesitancy. "it is good food," he said. "everything is good. there is no end to food and no end to wine. there is plenty for all." lieutenant washington and fox and kelly squatted beside captain torkel, accepting the strange bowls and the golden flagons. fox whispered, "captain, shall we let kelly test the food first? it _could_ be poisonous." "let kelly test it first," murmured captain torkel, hating himself again. fox stuffed a slice of the yellow food into kelly's mouth. the fire-haired man gulped and blinked and grinned like a summer sunrise. "heaven," he mumbled. suddenly captain torkel froze. "wait. can't you see what these people are trying to do? they can read our minds. they know that we'll probably bring millions and millions of people to their planet, that we'll probably overrun their civilization. they don't want us to go back to earth. they want us to stay here. they're just pretending--" he stopped as he saw the bronzed form of taaleeb towering above him. "you are wrong," said the sirian, and it seemed that his smile faded ever so slightly, and a muscle in his cheek twitched almost imperceptibly. "your thoughts are not good. we will welcome the people of your star--those who survive the long journey. we will be sorry to see you leave so soon. you leave in one day, yes? then we will try to make your visit pleasant. now, you must eat and drink. be gay, my good friends." captain torkel grunted. reluctantly, he tasted the yellow food. it was delicious as a golden-brown fried chicken on earth. his mood lightened. he saw that it wouldn't be necessary to test the wine on kelly. lieutenant washington had already emptied his flagon. it was now being refilled. "wine, captain," said the smiling sirian. "you must try our wine." * * * * * captain torkel cautiously raised the shining flagon to his lips. he sipped. it was more than wine. it was a sparkling, bubbling nectar of the gods. his throat and stomach glowed under its stimulating warmth. an almost miraculous sense of peace and well-being flooded through his body. it was as if he had become a god. "more?" asked taaleeb. "well--just a little." captain torkel drank again. to lieutenant washington, he said, "i guess i was wrong. the sirians are fine people. they really do like us." the lieutenant drained his golden flagon. "i'm sure of it." "me, too," said fox, pouring more of the sparkling liquid into kelly's mouth. "i'd like to stay here always." "heaven," gurgled kelly. "you like the wine?" asked the smiling sirian. "yes!" "you relish our food?" "of course!" "you are pleased with the daughters of our village?" captain torkel shook with desire. "quite pleased. they are beautiful." "each of you would like one of our daughters to stay with you during your visit here?" captain torkel gulped. there was a movement among the women as of wind stirring through tall grass. the tall, lissome bodies stepped closer to the earthmen. "i, er--" "i think we would," said fox, nodding eagerly. "then each of you may pick a companion," said taaleeb. "perhaps you would like to select two for your friends who did not come to our village." captain torkel rose, swallowing hard. he bowed shakily to the girl nearest him. "would you--" the girl smiled and stepped to his side. lieutenant washington wiped perspiration from his bald head. he pointed. "i'll take you," he said thickly. "and you two for garcia and van gundy." "garcia and van gundy may not want companions," said captain torkel. "don't be silly." eyes shining, fox selected a tall, lean-faced girl. then he pulled kelly forward. "kelly, pick yourself out a companion." kelly belched. "pick out one of the girls, you idiot. which one do you want?" kelly stared glassily at the waiting, watching figures. "all." "no, kelly, you can't have them all. just one. pick out one. no, i'll pick one out for you." fox nodded at one of the girls. she laughed and came to kelly. captain torkel downed the rest of his wine. "now we'll return to the rocket with our companions." * * * * * taaleeb cocked his head, widening his omnipresent smile. "but your companions must wash and scent themselves and select the proper clothing. they must make themselves ready. you will return here tonight as the sun falls into the forest." "oh," said captain torkel, slumping. then he shrugged. "we'll see you tonight then." his gaze turned to fox. his mouth tightened. "fox," he said sternly. "hummm?" "put it back." fox's brows lifted innocently. "put back the cup. take it out of your pocket." pouting like a disappointed child, fox placed the stolen cup on the ground. "the bowl, too." fox's lips formed a silent curse. he put down the bowl that he'd hidden under his armpit. taaleeb stepped forward. "no, this must not be. your friend must keep the cup and the bowl. keep, please." he placed the objects in fox's hands. "there are our gifts to our friends." his eyes twinkled slyly. "i say just one more thing," he went on, his suggestive gaze wandering over the faces of the earthmen. "it is such a pity that you think of leaving us. if you would stay with us always, you would be not only as friends to us, but also as gods. you would, if you wished, have a different companion every night. your stomachs would have all the wine and food they could hold. we would build you a most big and most pretty house. your friend--" he nodded at fox--"your friend could take whatever his fingers desired. your other friend--your thoughts call him garcia--could break whatever he wanted. your other friend, whose name i see as van gundy, would never have to be afraid again. will you tell these promises to your garcia and your van gundy?" "we'll tell them," said fox, quickly. v they waved good-by and started down the forest trail. they began to sing the first song that popped into their heads: glory, glory, hallelujah, glory, glory, hallelujah, glory, glory, hallelujah, his truth is marching on. the glowing effect of the wine remained with them. many times they paused to nibble at the forest fruit and to throw themselves onto the soft cushions of fern. "it's a wonderful planet," declared captain torkel. "best in the universe," said fox. "all," mumbled kelly. "and it's a long way home," said lieutenant washington suggestively, with a hiccough. "a long, long way," commented fox. the lieutenant grumbled, "what did the people of earth ever do for us?" "not a darned thing," said fox. "besides, i bet the sun has already exploded. that's what i bet." "that sirian sounded like he meant what he said, didn't he?" "sure he meant it. we'd be like gods." "captain," said lieutenant washington. "there's no use arguing any more. i'm going to stay here. to hell with homo sapiens!" "to hell with homo sapiens!" repeated fox. the wine was still like hypnotic laughter in captain torkel's skull. "i--i don't know. it'd be nice to stay--" they came to an object lying in the soft green grass, not far from the rocket. "hey, here's van gundy!" yelled fox. "van gundy drank too much wine. van gundy's drunk!" he laughed and coughed and swallowed and then held his stomach and laughed again. lieutenant washington began to sing: what shall we do with a drunken spaceman, what shall we do with-"shut up," said captain torkel, frowning. "van gundy wasn't with us. he didn't drink any wine." they stood over van gundy. the singing stopped and the laughter stopped, and time, too, seemed to stop. an ivory-handled knife was buried hilt-deep in van gundy's throat. * * * * * they carried the dead man to the shadow beneath the starboard side of the _star queen_. each was a capped jug of solemn silence. captain torkel withdrew the knife. "van gundy's," he muttered. "van gundy was killed with his own knife." he knelt and wiped his blood-smeared hands on the grass. then he saw garcia squatting on the deck in the rocket's open airlock. a fan-nosed flame pistol dangled from the engineer's loose hand. captain torkel walked up to him. "give me the pistol, garcia." garcia didn't answer. his eyes were black pin-points in his hard, tight-lipped face. he raised the gun, leveled the barrel at the captain's chest. "give me the pistol. that's an order." garcia's face was a dark cloud of hatred and savagery. "garcia! i'm your captain! give me the gun!" the animal savagery faded from garcia's face. he lowered the pistol and extended it by the barrel. captain torkel moved forward and seized it. then he puffed out his cheeks, blew breath from them, wiped sweat from his forehead. fox shouted, "the ports, captain! look at 'em! look at the ports!" the heavy, transparalite portholes of the _star queen_ were ruthlessly pitted and chipped. little pools of broken, shiny plastic lay on the grass beneath them. it was as if each port had been struck a hundred times with an axe. captain torkel and lieutenant washington and fox closed in on garcia while kelly stood smiling into the planet's sun. "did you do it, garcia?" asked the captain. "did you kill van gundy?" garcia still squatted on his haunches, dazed and staring. "i don't know." "did you try to smash the ports? did van gundy try to stop you? is that why you killed him?" garcia shook his head, bewildered. "why did you get the pistol?" "i don't know." "did you and van gundy fight?" no answer. "don't you remember anything?" "i remember--" the engineer stopped, trembling. "yes, what do you remember?" "i--i remember we decided not to go to the village, me and van gundy. we started back to the rocket. then--then i remember you saying for me to give you the gun." fox said, "he's crazy, almost like kelly. whatever happened has made him almost crazy." "try to remember, garcia. we got to know what happened." "i can't remember." "retrograde amnesia," said lieutenant washington. captain torkel finally voiced the thought that had taunted him ever since the discovery of van gundy. "garcia, were the sirians here? did _they_ kill van gundy?" garcia began to cry.... * * * * * they buried van gundy in the rich moist soil beneath the sea-blue sky and the blood-red sun. they made a cross from the gnarled limbs of forest trees and draped it with blue and yellow meadow flowers. in its center they hung his harmonica and his jetman's medallion with its silver-starred reproduction of the big dipper. captain torkel spoke into the silence, and over the cool meadow flowed the words, "... yea, though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death...." they put away the shovel. they gave garcia a sedative and tucked him into his bunk. they sat kelly down in the grass and handed him a red flower to play with. then captain torkel and lieutenant washington and fox stood gazing into each other's eyes. "say what you're thinking, captain," said lieutenant washington. captain torkel sighed. "all right. it adds up. the sirians can read our minds. they know we want to bring our race here. they'll do most anything to stop us. they attacked the rocket, tried to break the ports. garcia and van gundy tried to stop them. van gundy got killed, and garcia scared them away with the pistol." lieutenant washington squinted dubiously at the captain. "i can't believe that. why would they be so nice to us in the village?" "to keep us there as long as possible. to keep us away from the rocket." "they could have killed us in the village." "maybe they really don't want to kill us--unless they have to. maybe they'd rather persuade us not to return to earth." fox grumbled, "you say maybe they don't like to kill. then why would they kill van gundy?" "van gundy was killed with his own knife. that looks like self-defense." lieutenant washington cleared his throat. "there's just one thing wrong with your ideas. you say the sirians are trying to bribe us into staying here, trying to win us over by kindness. now you say they tried to smash the ports. if the sirians are hostile in any way, they wouldn't combine those two conflicting methods." captain torkel was silent for a moment. "the sirians are an alien race. leadership seems to be an unknown concept to them, even though taaleeb unconsciously assumed a kind of leadership this afternoon. the point is that the race isn't used to carrying out unified plans of procedure. taaleeb might have used _his_ method in the village, and another group might have hit upon the plan of destroying the rocket." * * * * * lieutenant washington shook his head. "you're wrong, captain. the sirians are good, innocent, child-like. here's what happened: garcia liked to break things. he went wild and started to break the ports. van gundy tried to stop him and got himself killed. the shock gave garcia amnesia." fox tugged at his beard. "i bet you're right, lieutenant, i bet that's it." eagerness rose in his tone. "how about tonight? are we still going to see our companions?" captain torkel spat. "you'd go to the village with van gundy's grave-dirt still on your hands?" "we've been in a grave for six years. is there any difference?" captain torkel ignored the question. "we _can't_ forget the people of earth!" he said suddenly. "we've got to start home now. can't you see what the sirians are trying to do? they'll get us to stay here tonight, then--" lieutenant washington snapped, "i told you i made up my mind, captain. you want to give us six--no, twelve more years of darkness and loneliness and frustration. we won't take it. we'd be as mad as kelly." "right!" fox slapped his fist into his open palm. "we've got no other choice. we _got_ to stay here!" captain torkel's mouth became a hard, gray line. he stepped back, spread his legs apart, withdrew his flame-pistol. "get in the rocket!" he burst. "that's an order!" lieutenant washington laughed contemptuously. the captain repeated, "get in the rocket! i'm your captain. so help me, i'll--" "you'll do nothing," spat the rock-faced lieutenant. "can you astrogate a rocket, captain? can you find your way back to earth alone? can you keep those engines going without garcia or dodge those meteors without fox? go ahead and kill us. you might as well kill yourself, too. how about it, fox?" "right," said fox. "and you, kelly?" "all," murmured kelly. "this is mutiny!" screamed captain torkel. "you can't--" "we already have. now get the hell away from here, captain." despair fell upon captain torkel. his head sagged. the flame-pistol slipped from his fingers.... vi the sun settled behind the forest horizon, its pale pink rays filtering through the branches of trees and angling onto the cool meadow. the glare was reflected by the silver rocket and by the cross above van gundy's grave and by the small harmonica and the jetman's medallion. captain torkel stood alone before the grave. laughter drifted faintly from within the rocket. it was a lonely sound to captain torkel. _you're really alone now_, he thought. _apart from earth, and now apart from the men. you and van gundy._ to hell with it, he thought bitterly. why not join the men? why not bathe and shave and smell of lotion and put on a clean white dress uniform? why not forget about an insignificant planet fifty trillion miles away? he pivoted toward the rocket, toward the laughter and the happy, getting-ready sounds. then a small gust of wind sent van gundy's medallion tinkling against the grave-cross. he paused. through his mind passed a swirling vision of the people of earth: the silent children too frightened to play in the sunlight, the white-faced women scanning the callous sky, the grim-lipped priests chanting ceaseless prayers. two billion souls wrapped in a shroud of fear, counting off the swift seconds that carried them closer and closer to oblivion. you can't force the men to go with you, he told himself. you can't make them believe that the sirians are dangerous. you've got to make them _want_ to return to earth. and once they get to the village, they're lost. there's so little time.... he rubbed his chin. he was sure the sirians had killed van gundy. if only garcia could remember-suddenly he straightened. perhaps it was a blessing that garcia did _not_ remember! out of desperation that was like a prayer, a plan arose in his brain. it expanded and crystallized, then faded as memory slipped away like a rock under rising water. for a few moments he was a boy on a dakota wheat farm, staring down at a strange grave. then the water receded; the rock remained. he was again captain torkel and the plan lay like an opened flower in his thoughts. _please, god, don't let me forget now. let me keep my memory for a while longer, just a little while longer._ his hand tight about his pistol, he strode across the meadow and plunged into the singing forest. rays from the sinking sun penetrated the foliage at intervals, creating islands of rainbow brilliance in the semi-darkness. leaves fluttered above him. an orange-colored bird darted upward, releasing a cackle that was like shrill, old-woman laughter. he moved slowly, hesitating, listening. soon he heard the low voices of sirians. he stepped off the forest path, concealing himself in foliage. he tried to clear his mind so that the natives would not receive a telepathic warning. the sirians came nearer. captain torkel counted: one, two, three, four, five. the first, he saw, was taaleeb. perfect, he thought. _thank you, god._ he stepped out of the foliage. taaleeb's features broke into a smile. "good evening, our friend from earth-star. we come to escort you back to our--" the smile died. alarm flooded his face. captain torkel raised the pistol. "that won't be necessary. there's been a change in plan." the sirian's dark gaze speared into his skull. "yes, i see," he murmured.... * * * * * a few minutes later captain torkel returned to the meadow, the five scowling sirians herded before him. each carried an uprooted grapevine. "you know what to do?" he asked, brandishing the pistol. "your mind has told us," said taaleeb sullenly. "i don't like to kill--no more than your people wanted to kill van gundy. but, like you, i will if i have to." it seemed strange to captain torkel to see a snarl on taaleeb's handsome features. "you know everything," the sirian muttered. "your mind has guessed how we think and what we have done. yet you are a fool. you could have had all i promised you--wine, food, happy nights!" "but the others--the ones who stoned the rocket--would they have let you keep that promise?" taaleeb digested the question for a moment. "perhaps not. and perhaps those others were wiser than taaleeb. i see now that we should have killed you. i am sorry we did not--but perhaps even now it is not too late." his eyes were like dark, hot fires. they walked across the meadow. the darkness was deepening, crawling like a hand over van gundy's grave. "the pistol will be in my pocket," captain torkel cautioned his captives, "but it will be ready." the sirians nodded. "and one more thing. _smile._" the sirians smiled. they reached the _star queen_ just as lieutenant washington and fox and kelly were stepping out of the airlock. garcia stood behind them, sleepy-eyed, yawning off the effects of his sedative. the men stared first at the sirians, then at captain torkel. lieutenant washington said, threateningly, "get out of here, captain. we've made our decision." "no," said captain torkel. "i'm going to join you. i'm going to the village, too." "hey!" exclaimed fox. "he's going with us. atta boy, captain!" "_why?_" asked the stern-faced lieutenant. "because we won't have to return to earth--not even if we wanted to. the sirians are going in our place." garcia frowned. "are you crazy, captain?" "no, i was just wrong about the sirians, garcia. they're good people, just like the lieutenant said. they like us. they want to help our people--and they're going to take the _star queen_ back to earth." * * * * * "that's impossible," spat lieutenant washington. "they're simple natives. they're ignorant. they couldn't astrogate that ship." _of course not_, thought the captain. _no more than we could sprout wings and fly back to earth._ he fought to keep his tone calm, convincing. "why can't they? they're telepaths. they've gotten all our knowledge from our minds. they can be just as good in space as we are--maybe better. and they'll save humanity. right. taaleeb?" "right," said taaleeb, smiling. "wonderful!" said fox, clapping his hands. "let's go to the village." "but they haven't the intelligence," protested lieutenant washington. "captain, i think you're--" "look at the way they've learned to talk our language. doesn't that indicate an extremely high intelligence?" "that's right," agreed fox. "it does, lieutenant. let's go, captain. ready?" garcia edged forward, blinking the drowsiness from his eyes. "how about van gundy, captain? who killed van gundy?" captain torkel started to speak. the lie stuck in his throat. he telepathed, _you tell him, taaleeb. you tell him the lie._ taaleeb said, "you killed him, friend garcia. we have looked into your mind. we see what happened. you began to break the portholes. friend van gundy tried to stop you. he had knife, you took knife. you killed him. you took the flame-weapon because you were afraid of what friend captain might do." garcia groaned. "god. is that right, captain? is that what happened? i--i can't remember." "i'm afraid so," sighed the captain. to himself, he said, _and i pray you never remember._ then he saw taaleeb glancing anxiously toward the forest. how strong was the sirian telepathic sense? strong enough to send to the village for help? his fingers were hot and moist on the pistol in his pocket. he struggled to put down the rising anxiety that threatened to overwhelm him. "taaleeb," he said, "better have your men take the vines aboard." "yes," said taaleeb, smiling. the sirians carried the vines to the airlock, laid them within. "what's the idea of that?" asked lieutenant washington. "it was their idea," the captain lied. "those vines will grow rapidly in our hydroponics tanks. they'll produce something like a bottle of wine for each of them once a month. that'll be something to make their trip a little more pleasant. and _that_ shows they're intelligent, doesn't it?" he motioned toward the rocket. "the sirians want to leave for earth now, men. get whatever gear you want out of the ship." "they're leaving _now_?" asked fox. "of course. tell them why, taaleeb." the sirian said, "because, as your friend captain says, we must allow a margin for error. your sun may explode a day or two or three before the predicted time. even if it does not, we wish to see your world as much as possible before its death." * * * * * fox and garcia started to enter the airlock. "wait," said lieutenant washington. "i don't think i like this." captain torkel's heart pounded. _this may be it_, he thought. "what do you mean?" he asked. "i mean, these sirians will be heroes to humanity, won't they?" "i suppose so." "and they'll return here with our race, or what's left of it, in twelve years?" "yes, god willing." "then what will our people think of _us_? what will they _do_ to us?" _this is it_, the captain told himself. he could feel blood pulsing through his temples like drumbeats. "they won't like us for what we're doing. that's a cinch. but there's no other solution. you wouldn't want the sirians _not_ to go, would you?" the lieutenant slowly shook his head. "no. of course not." "no," chorused fox and garcia weakly. the lieutenant snapped, almost accusingly, "then we'd be exiles from our own people. they'd call us traitors." "who cares?" said fox. "_i_ care," grumbled the lieutenant. captain torkel turned to garcia. "how do you feel about this? would you care?" garcia wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "i wouldn't care about _that_. to hell with it. but--" "yes?" "i'm not sure if i like the idea of someone else doing my job for me. i'm a good engineer. i'm forty years old, and no one's ever had to do my job for me." the captain pursed his lips. "well, i suppose you two could relieve two of the sirians and go to earth while fox and kelly and i stay here." lieutenant washington snorted, "you've changed, captain. you used to be so damned anxious to get back to earth. what's happened to you?" * * * * * the captain pretended to be in deep thought. "i suppose it's because it was hard for me to make that decision not to go back to earth. when i did make it, it was a solid decision, one not easily changed. besides, you said yourself that we couldn't take another six or twelve years in space, that we'd go mad." "but it's different now. we've gotten some of the madness out of us. i haven't had a drink since this afternoon. garcia's got rid of some of his hatred. maybe killing van gundy was like a kind of shock treatment to him. and fox--" "he's right," fox interrupted him. "i'm going to stay here. don't try to talk me out of that. but i feel _cleaner_ inside. i guess when you know that nobody'll stop you from stealing, you lose desire." "even kelly's better," said the lieutenant. "look at the way he's been talking." captain torkel nodded. "yes, and my memory's been better these past few hours. you know, men, i _do_ keep thinking of what taaleeb said. he said he wanted to see as much as possible of our world before its death. if those predictions should turn out right, we'd have a whole week to spend on earth. i could see dakota again, see the wheat and the sky and the hills." lieutenant washington mused "and i could fly down to louisiana, take a look at maine, too. maybe put some flowers on mom's grave, make her ready to become warm again." garcia said wistfully, "and we could see monterey and the boats and listen to the gulls. and maybe that old flower peddler van gundy knew is still in frisco. i bet van gundy'd like us to find out." he began to laugh almost hysterically. "i'm going to stay here," declared fox, "but we never thought of that week, did we? we kept thinking of being in space for twelve unbroken years. it wouldn't be that way at all." captain torkel asked, "wouldn't you like to see broadway again, fox? i'll bet they'll have it all lit up, all shining and proud and full of life. wouldn't you, fox?" fox gulped. even in the gathering darkness, the captain saw tears in his eyes. "i--yes, captain. i guess i would." "and your wife, fox?" fox wiped his eyes. "i don't know." then he jerked backward. "i just thought of something. my wife'll be _here_ in twelve years. she'll make the journey all right, make it if she has to take a rocket by herself and hold it together with hairpins. she'll locate me, too. when she finds out what i've--" fox suddenly stood very straight and heroic. "captain, i'm going back to earth--right now." "and i," said lieutenant washington deeply. "i _want_ to go," said garcia, his voice cracking, "but i'm a murderer. you don't want a murderer with you, do you?" captain torkel glanced nervously toward the forest. he wasn't sure, but he thought he saw faint reflections of lights, and voices. "we need you, garcia. you've got to take care of those engines. we'll have a trial. court is now in session. how do you plead?" "i--" "guilty. okay. sentence suspended. let's get aboard." he kept his hand in his pocket, tight about the pistol. to taaleeb he said, "thanks, friend, but i guess we won't need your help after all." he shot out the thought: _keep smiling, fellow. keep smiling until the very last second._ fox slapped kelly's face to gain his attention. "kelly, we're going back to earth. we're going home, back where your wife is. you want to come along or stay here alone?" "alone?" "alone." "kelly, kelly--" "where, kelly? to the village or to earth? damn you, say it!" "kelly go--earth." * * * * * captain torkel leaned back in his crash-chair. the rocket shook under the vibration of thundering atomic engines. he flicked a switch. acceleration began. "brace yourselves, men! earth, here we come!" before the rising acceleration froze his movements, he snapped on the starboard visi-screen. he stared only for a second. he stared at the mass of sirians filtering out of the dark forest, their sleek bodies illumined by the crimson glare from the jets and by the trembling fires from their torches. they were like red devils, their faces contorted in rage and hatred as they poured over the meadow. captain torkel shivered at the sight of the knives, stones, clubs in upraised hands, at the savage mouths spitting forth alien oaths. this was what mankind would meet when the refugee ships began to land, twelve years hence.... but they had twelve years to decide what to do about it. then the image was swept away in space like a red stone falling into the depths of a black pool. captain torkel turned off the screen. acceleration pushed him deeper and deeper into his chair. soon the thunder of the jets faded, and there was silence. the blackness of space pushed itself against the ports. captain torkel cut the engines. "beautiful louisiana," said lieutenant washington in low, reverent tones, "and lovely maine." "good old broadway." "and the gulls and boats at monterey." "and north dakota." "heaven," mumbled kelly. end the fire and the sword by frank m. robinson illustrated by emsh [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy science fiction august 1951. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] nothing could have seemed pleasanter than that peaceful planet. then why was a non-suicidal man driven to suicide there? yet it made sense. _why do people commit suicide?_ templin tightened his safety belt and lay back on the acceleration bunk. the lights in the cabin dimmed to a dull, red glow that meant the time for takeoff was nearing. he could hear noises from deep within the ship and the tiny whir of the ventilator fan, filling the air with the sweetish smell of sleeping gas. to sleep the trip away was better than to face the dull monotony of the stars for days on end. _oh, they kill themselves for lots of reasons. maybe ill health or financial messes or family difficulties. an unhappy love affair. or more complex ones, if you went into it deeper. the failure to achieve an ambition, failure to live up to one's own ideals. weltschmerz, perhaps._ he could smell the bitter fragrance of tobacco smoke mingling with the gas. eckert had lit a cigarette and was calmly blowing the smoke at the neon "no smoking" sign, which winked on and off in mechanical disapproval. he turned his head slightly so he could just see eckert in the bank facing him. eckert, one of the good gray men in the service. the old reliables, the ones who could take almost anything in their stride because, at one time or another, they had had to. it was eckert who had come into his office several days ago and told him that don pendleton had killed himself. _only pendleton wasn't the type. he was the kind who have everything to live for, the kind you instinctively know will amount to something someday. and that was a lousy way to remember him. the clichés always come first. your memory plays traitor and boils friendship down to the status of a breakfast food testimonial._ the soft red lights seemed to be dancing in the darkness of the cabin. eckert was just a dull, formless blur opposite him. his cigarette was out. eckert had come into his office without saying a word and had watched his scenery-window. it had been snowing in the window, the white flakes making a simple pattern drifting past the glass. eckert had fiddled with the controls and changed it to sunshine, then to a weird mixture of hail amid the brassy, golden sunlight. and then eckert had told him that pendleton had taken the short way out. _he shouldn't get sentimental. but how the hell else should he remember pendleton? try to forget it and drink a toast to him at the next class reunion? and never, never be so crude as to speculate why pendleton should have done it? if, of course, he had...._ the cabin was hazy in the reddish glow, the sleeping gas a heavy perfume. eckert and he had talked it out and gone over the records. pendleton had come of good stock. there had been no mental instability in his family for as far back as the genetic records went. he had been raised in a middle-class neighborhood and attended a local grammar school where he had achieved average grades and had given his instructors the normal amount of trouble. later, when he had made up his mind to enter the diplomatic service, his grades had improved. he had worked hard at it, though he wasn't what you would call a grind. in high school and later in college, he was the well-balanced type, athletic, popular, hard-working. _how long would it be before memories faded and all there was left of pendleton was a page of statistics? he had been on this team, he had been elected president of that, he had graduated with such and such honors. but try getting a picture of him by reading the records, resurrect him from a page of black print. would he be human? would he be flesh and blood? hell, no! in the statistics pendleton was the all-around boy, the cold marble statue with the finely chiseled muscles and the smooth, blank sockets where the eyes should be. maybe someday fate would play a trick on a hero-worshiping public and there would actually be kids like that. but they wouldn't be human; they wouldn't be born. parents would get them by sending in so many box tops._ he was drowsy; the room was filled with the gas now. it would be only a matter of minutes before he would be asleep. pendleton had been in his second year as attache on tunpesh, a small planet with a g-type sun. the service had stumbled across it recently and decided the system was worth diplomatic recognition of some kind, so pendleton had been sent there. he had been the first attache to be sent and naturally he had gone alone. there was no need to send more. tunpesh had been inspected and certified and approved. the natives were primitive and friendly. or maybe the service had slipped up, as it sometimes did, and tunpesh had received something less than a thorough survey. and then an unscheduled freighter had put in for repairs, one of the very few ships that ever came by tunpesh. the captain had tried to pay his respects to pendleton. only pendleton wasn't there. the natives said he had killed himself and showed the captain the little flower-covered plot where they had buried him. tunpesh had been pendleton's second assignment. _the natives were oh-so-friendly. so friendly that he had made sure that a certain box was on board, filled with shiny atomic rifles, needle pistols, and the fat little gas guns. they might be needed. people like pendleton didn't kill themselves, did they? no, they didn't. but sometimes they were murdered._ it was almost black inside the cabin now; only a thin red line around the ceiling told how close they were to takeoff. his head was thick with drowsiness, his eyelids a heavy weight that he knew he couldn't keep open much longer. eckert and he had been chosen to go to tunpesh and investigate. the two of them, working together, should be able to find out why pendleton had killed himself. _but that wasn't the real reason. maybe eckert thought so, but he knew better. the real reason they were going there was to find out why pendleton had been killed and who had killed him. that was it._ _who had killed cock robin?_ the thin red line was practically microscopic now and templin could feel his lashes lying gently on his cheeks. but he wasn't asleep--not quite. there was something buzzing about in the dim recesses of his mind. their information on tunpesh was limited. they knew that it had no trading concessions or armed forces and that nobody from neighboring systems seemed to know much about it or even visited it. but a staff anthropologist must have been routinely assigned to tunpesh to furnish data and reports. "ted?" he murmured sleepily. a faint stirring in the black bulk opposite him. "yes?" "how come our anthropologist on tunpesh didn't come across with more information?" a drowsy mumble from the other cot: "he wasn't there long enough. he committed suicide not long after landing." the room was a whirling pool of blackness into which his mind was slowly slipping. takeoff was only seconds away. _why do people commit suicide?_ * * * * * "it's a nice day, isn't it, ted?" eckert took a deep and pleasurable breath. "it's the type of day that makes you feel good just to be alive." warm breezes rustled through eckert's graying hair and tugged gently at his tunic. the air smelled as if it had been washed and faintly perfumed with the balsamy scent of something very much like pine. a few hundred yards away, a forest towered straight and slim and coolly inviting, and brilliantly colored birds whirled and fluttered in the foliage. the rocketport, where they were standing surrounded by their luggage, was a grassy valley where the all too infrequent ships could land and discharge cargo or make repairs. there was a blackened patch on it now, with little blast-ignited flames dying out around the edges. _it won't be long before it will be green again_, he thought. the grass looked as though it grew fast--it would certainly have plenty of time to grow before the next ship landed. he looked at the slim, dwindling shape that was the rocket, and was suddenly, acutely aware that he and templin would be stranded for six months on a foreign and very possibly dangerous planet. and there would be no way of calling for help or of leaving before the six months were up. he stood there for a moment, drinking in the fresh air and feeling the warmth of the sun against his face. it might be a pleasant six months at that, away from the din and the hustle and confusion, spending the time in a place where the sun was warm and inviting. _i must be getting old_, he thought, _thinking about the warmth and comfort. like old dogs and octogenarians._ templin was looking at the scenery with a disappointed expression on his face. eckert stole a side glance at him and for a fleeting moment felt vaguely concerned. "don't be disappointed if it doesn't look like cloak-and-dagger right off, ray. what seems innocent enough on the surface can prove to be quite dangerous underneath." "it's rather hard to think of danger in a setting like this." eckert nodded agreement. "it wouldn't fit, would it? it would be like a famous singer suddenly doing a jazz number in an opera, or having the princess in a fairy tale turn out to be ugly." he gestured toward the village. "you could hardly class that as dangerous from its outward appearance, could you?" the rocketport was in a small valley, surrounded by low, wooded hills. the village started where the port left off and crawled and wound over the wooded ridges. small houses of sun-baked, white-washed mud crouched in the shadow of huge trees and hugged the banks of a small stream. it looked fairly primitive, eckert thought, and yet it didn't have the earmarks, the characteristics of most primitive villages. it didn't seem cluttered or dirty and you didn't feel like beating a hasty retreat when the wind was blowing toward you. a few adults were watching them curiously and the usual bunch of kids that always congregated around rocketports quickly gathered. eckert stared at them for a moment, wondering what it was that seemed odd about them, and they stared back with all the alert dignity of childhood. they finally came out on the field and clustered around him and templin. templin studied them warily. "better watch them, ted. even kids can be dangerous." _it's because you never suspect kids_, eckert thought, _you never think they'll do any harm. but they can be taught. they could do as much damage with a knife as a man could, for instance. and they might have other weapons._ but the idea still didn't go with the warm sun and the blue sky and the piny scent of the trees. one of the adults of the village started to walk toward them. "the reception committee," templin said tightly. his hand went inside his tunic. he couldn't be blamed for being jumpy, eckert realized. this was his first time out, his first mission like this. and, of course, pendleton had been a pretty good friend of his. "i'd be very careful what i did," eckert said softly. "i would hate to start something merely because i misunderstood their intentions." the committee of one was a middle-aged man dressed in a simple strip of white cloth twisted about his waist and allowed to hang freely to his knees. when he got closer, eckert became less sure of his age. he had the firm, tanned musculature of a much younger man, though a slightly seamed face and white hair aged him somewhat. eckert still had the feeling that if you wanted to know his exact age, you'd have to look at his teeth or know something about his epiphyseal closures. "you are _menshars_ from earth?" the voice was husky and pleasant and the pronunciation was very clear. eckert regarded him thoughtfully and made a few mental notes. he wasn't bowing and scraping like most natives who weren't too familiar with visitors from the sky, and yet he was hardly either friendly or hostile. "you learned our language from pendleton and reynolds?" reynolds had been the anthropologist. "we have had visitors from earth before." he hesitated a moment and then offered his hand, somewhat shyly, eckert thought, in the terrestrial sign of greeting. "you may call me _jathong_ if you wish." he paused a moment to say something in his native tongue to the kids who were around. they promptly scattered and picked up the luggage. "while you are here, you will need a place to stay. there is one ready, if you will follow me." he was polite, eckert thought. he didn't ask what they were there for or how long they were going to stay. but then again, perhaps the natives were a better judge of that than he and templin. the town was larger than he had thought at first, stretching over a wide expanse of the countryside. there wasn't, so far as he could see, much manufacturing above the level of handicrafts and simple weaving. colored patches on far hillsides indicated the presence of farms, and practically every house in the village had its small garden. what manufacturing there was seemed to be carried on in the central square of the town, where a few adults and children squatted in the warm afternoon sun and worked industriously at potter's wheels and weaver's looms. the other part of the square was given over to the native bazaar where pots and bolts of cloth were for sale, and where numerous stalls were loaded with dried fruits and vegetables and the cleaned and plucked carcasses of the local variety of fowl. it was late afternoon when they followed jathong into a small, white-washed house midway up a hill. "you are free to use this while you are here," he said. eckert and templin took a quick tour of the few rooms. they were well furnished, in a rustic sort of way, and what modern conveniences they didn't have they could easily do without. the youngsters who had carried their luggage left it outside and quietly faded away. it was getting dark; eckert opened one of the boxes they had brought along, took out an electric lantern and lighted it. he turned to jathong. "you've been very kind to us and we would like to repay you. you may take what you wish of anything within this box." he opened another of the boxes and displayed the usual trade goods--brightly colored cloth and finely worked jewelry and a few mechanical contrivances that eckert knew usually appealed to the primitive imagination. jathong ran his hand over the cloth and held some of the jewelry up to the light. eckert knew by the way he looked at it that he wasn't at all impressed. "i am grateful," he said finally, "but there is nothing i want." he turned and walked away into the gathering darkness. "the incorruptible native." templin laughed sarcastically. eckert shrugged. "that's one of the things you do out of habit, try and buy some of the natives so you'll have friends in case you need them." he stopped for a moment, thinking. "did you notice the context? he didn't say he didn't want what we showed him. he said there was _nothing_ that he wanted. implying that everything he wanted, he already had." "that's not very typical of a primitive society, is it?" "no, i'm afraid it's not." eckert started unpacking some of the boxes. "you know, ray, i got a kick out of the kids. they're a healthy-looking lot, aren't they?" "too healthy," templin said. "there didn't seem to be any sick ones or ones with runny noses or cuts or black eyes or bruises. it doesn't seem natural." "they're probably just well brought-up kids," eckert said sharply. "maybe they've been taught not to get in fights or play around in the mud on the way home from school." he felt faintly irritated, annoyed at the way templin had put it, as if any deviation from an earth norm was potentially dangerous. "ted." templin's voice was strained. "this could be a trap, you know." "in what way?" the words came out slowly. "the people are too casual, as though they're playing a rehearsed part. here we are, from an entirely different solar system, landed in what must be to them an unusual manner. they couldn't have seen rockets more than three or four times before. it should still be a novelty to them. and yet how much curiosity did they show? hardly any. was there any fear? no. and the cute, harmless little kids." he looked at eckert. "maybe that's what we're supposed to think--just an idyllic, harmless society. maybe that's what pendleton thought, right to the very end." he was keyed up, jumpy, eckert realized. he would probably be seeing things in every shadow and imagining danger to be lurking around every corner. "it hasn't been established yet that pendleton was killed, ray. let's keep an open mind until we know for certain." he flicked out the light and lay back on the cool bed, letting his body relax completely. the cool night wind blew lazily through the wood slat blinds, carrying the fragrance of the trees and the grass, and he inhaled deeply and let his thoughts wander for a moment. it was going to be pleasant to live on tunpesh for six months--even if the six months were all they had to live. the climate was superb and the people seemed a cut above the usual primitive culture. if he ever retired some day, he thought suddenly, he would have to remember tunpesh. it would be pleasant to spend his old age here. and the fishing was probably excellent.... he turned his head a little to watch templin get ready for bed. there were advantages in taking him along that templin probably didn't even realize. he wondered what templin would do if he ever found out that the actual reason he had been chosen to go was that his own psychological chart was very close to pendleton's. pendleton's own feelings and emotions would almost exactly be duplicated in templin's. a few stray wisps of starlight pierced through the blinds and sparkled for an instant on a small metal box strapped to templin's waist. a power pack, eckert saw grimly, probably leading to the buttons on his tunic. a very convenient, portable, and hard to detect weapon. there were disadvantages in taking templin, too. * * * * * "just how primitive do you think the society is, ted?" eckert put down the chain he had been whittling and reached for his pipe and tobacco. "i don't think it's primitive at all. there are too many disparities. their knowledge of a lot of things is a little more than empirical knowledge; they associate the growth of crops with fertilizer and nitrogen in the soil as well as sunlight, rather than the blessings of some native god. and they differ a lot in other respects. their art and their music are advanced. free art exists along with purely decorative art, and their techniques are finely developed." "i'm glad you agree, then. take a look at this." templin threw a shiny bit of metal on the rough-hewn table. eckert picked it up and inspected it. it was heavy and one side of it was extremely sharp. "what's it for?" "they've got a hospital set up here. not a hospital like any we know, of course, but a hospital nonetheless. it's not used very much; apparently the natives don't get sick here. but occasionally there are hunting accidents and injuries that require surgery. the strip of metal there is a scalpel." he laughed shortly. "primitive little gadget, but it works well--as well as any of ours." eckert hefted it in his palm. "the most important thing is that they have the knowledge to use it. surgery isn't a simple science." "well, what do you think about it?" "the obvious. they evidently have as much technology as they want, at least in fields where they have to have it." "how come they haven't gone any further?" "why should they? you can live without skycars and rocket ships, you know." "did you ever wonder what kind of weapons they might have?" "the important thing," eckert mused, "is not if they have them, but if they'd use them. and i rather doubt that they would. we've been here for two weeks now and they've been very kind to us, seeing that we've had food and water and what fuel we need." "it's known in the livestock trade as being fattened up for the slaughter," templeton said. eckert sighed and watched a fat bug waddle across a small patch of sunlight on the wooden floor. it was bad enough drawing an assignment in a totally foreign culture, even if the natives were humanoid. it complicated things beyond all measure when your partner in the project seemed likely to turn into a vendettist. it meant that eckert would have to split his energies. he'd have to do what investigating he could among the tunpeshans, and he'd have to watch templin to see that he didn't go off half-cocked and spoil everything. "you're convinced that pendleton was murdered, aren't you?" templin nodded. "sure." "why?" "the tunpeshans know why we're here. we've dropped enough hints along those lines. but nobody has mentioned pendleton; nobody has volunteered any information about him. and he was an attache here for three years. didn't anybody know him during that time? we've let slip a few discreet statements that we would like to talk to pendleton's friends, yet nobody's come around. apparently, in all the three years he was here, pendleton didn't make any friends. and that's a little hard to believe. it's more likely that his friends have been silenced and any information about him is being withheld for a reason." "what reason?" templin shrugged. "murder. what other reason could there be?" eckert rolled up the thin, slatted blinds and stared out at the scenery. a hundred feet down the road, a native woman was going to market, leading a species of food animal by the halter. "they grow their women nice, don't they?" "physically perfect, like the men," templin grumbled. "you could get an inferiority complex just from watching the people here. everybody's so damn perfect. nobody's sick, nobody's unhealthy, nobody is too fat or too thin, nobody's unhappy. the only variation is that they don't all look alike. perfection. it gets boring after a while." "does it? i hadn't noticed." eckert turned away from the blinds. his voice was crisp. "i knew don pendleton quite well, too," he said. "but it isn't blinding me to what i'm here for. we came to find out what happened to him, not to substantiate any preconceived notions. what we find out may be vitally important to anybody serving here in the future. i would hate to see our efforts spoiled because you've already made up your mind." "you knew pendleton," templin repeated grimly. "do you think it was suicide?" "i don't think there's such a thing as a suicide type, when you come down to it. i'm not ruling out the possibility of murder, either. i'm trying to keep an open mind." "what have we accomplished so far? what have we found out?" "we've got six months," eckert said quietly. "six months in which we'll try to live here inconspicuously and study the people and try to cultivate informants. we would get nowhere if we came barging in asking all sorts of questions. and don't forget, ray, we're all alone on tunpesh. if it is a case of murder, what happens when the natives find out that we know it is?" templin's eyes dueled for a moment. then he turned his back and walked to the window. "i suppose you're right," he said at last. "it's nice living here, ted. maybe i've been fighting it. but i can't help thinking that don must have liked it here, too." * * * * * one of the hardest things to learn in a foreign culture, eckert thought, is when to enjoy yourself, when to work and when to worry. "_pelache, menshar?_" "_sharra!_" he took the small bowl of _pelache_ nuts, helped himself to a few, and passed the bowl on. this was definitely the time to enjoy himself, not to work or worry. he had heard about the _halera_ a few days ago, and, by judicious hinting to the proper authorities, he and templin had been invited. it was a good chance to observe native customs. a little anthropology--with refreshments. the main courses started making the rounds and he took generous helpings of the roasted _ulami_ and the broiled _halunch_ and numerous dabs from the side dishes of steaming vegetables. between every course, they passed around a small flagon of the hot, spiced native wine, but he noticed that nobody drank to excess. _the old greek ideal_, he thought: _moderation in everything._ he looked at templin, sitting across from him in the huge circle, and shrugged mentally. templin looked as if he was about to break down and enjoy himself, but there was still a slight bulge under his tunic, where he had strapped his power pack. any fool should have known that nothing would happen at a banquet like this. the only actual danger lay in templin's getting excited and doing something he was bound to regret later on. and even that danger was not quite as likely now. _there will be hell to pay_, eckert thought, _if templin ever finds out that i sabotaged his power pack._ "you look thoughtful, _menshar_ eckert." eckert took another sip of the wine and turned to the tunpeshan on his left. he was a tall, muscular man with sharp eyes, a firm chin and a certain aura of authority. "i was wondering if my countryman pendleton had offended your people in any way, nayova." now was as good a time as any to pump him for what he knew about pendleton's death. "so far as i know, _menshar_ pendleton offended no one. i do not know what duties he had to perform here, but he was a generous and courteous man." eckert gnawed the dainty meat off a slender _ulami_ bone and tried to appear casual in his questioning. "i am sure he was, nayova. i am sure, too, that you were as kind to him as you have been to templin and myself. my government is grateful to you for that." nayova seemed pleased. "we tried to do as well for _menshar_ pendleton as we could. while he was here, he had the house that you have now and we saw that he was supplied with food and all other necessities." eckert had a sudden clammy feeling which quickly passed away. what nayova had said was something he'd make sure templin never heard about. he wiped his mouth on a broad, flat leaf that had been provided and took another sip of the wine. "we were shocked to find out that _menshar_ pendleton had killed himself. we knew him quite well and we could not bring ourselves to believe he had done such a thing." nayova's gaze slid away from him. "perhaps it was the will of the great one," he said vaguely. he didn't seem anxious to talk about it. eckert stared bleakly at his wine glass and tried to put the pieces of information together. they probably had a taboo about self-destruction which would make it difficult to talk about. that would make it even harder for him to find out by direct questioning. a native fife trilled shrilly and a group of young men and women walked into the room. the circle broke to let them through and they came and knelt before nayova. when he clapped his hands sharply, they retreated to the center of the circle and began the slow motions of a native dance. the sound of the fife softened and died and the slow monotonous beat of drums took its place. the beat slowly increased and so did the rhythm of the dancers. the small fires at the corners of the hut were allowed to dwindle and the center of the circle became filled with the motions of shadows intermixed with the swift, sure movements of glistening limbs. eckert felt his eyebrows crawl upward. apparently the dance was the tunpeshan version of the _rites de passage_. he glanced across the circle at templin. templin's face--what he could see of it by the flickering light--was brick red. a voice spoke in his ear. "it is hard for us to imagine anybody doing what _menshar_ pendleton did. it is ..." and he used a native word that eckert translated as being roughly equivalent to "_obscene_." the dancers at the center of the circle finally bowed out with small garlands of flowers on their heads that signified their reaching adulthood. acrobats then took the stage and went through a dizzying routine, and they in turn were succeeded by a native singer. they were all excellent, eckert thought. if anything, they were too good. the bowl of _pelache_ nuts made its way around again and nayova leaned over to speak to him. "if there is any possibility that i can help you while you are here, _menshar_ eckert, you have but to ask." it would probably be a mistake to ask for a list of pendleton's friends, but there was a way around that. "i would like to meet any of your people who had dealings with pendleton, either in business or socially. i will do everything not to inconvenience them in any way." "i think they would be glad to help you. i shall ask them to go to you this coming week." * * * * * it wasn't a driving rain, just a gentle drizzle that made the lanes muddy and plastered eckert's tunic against him. he didn't mind it; the rain was warm and the trees and grass smelled good in the wet. "how would you classify the culture after seeing the ceremony, ted?" templin asked. "about what you would expect. an apollonian culture, simple and dignified. nothing in excess, no striving for great emotional release." templin nodded soberly. "it grows on you, doesn't it? you find yourself getting to like the place. and i suppose that's dangerous, too. you tend to let your guard down, the way pendleton must have. you--what was that?" eckert tensed. there was a gentle padding in the mud, several hundred feet behind them. templin flattened himself in the shadows alongside a house. his hand darted inside his tunic and came out with the slim deadliness of a needle gun. "don't use it!" eckert whispered tersely. templin's eyes were thin, frightened slits in the darkness. "why not?" eckert's mind raced. it might be nothing at all, and then again it might be disaster. but there was still a chance that templin might be wrong. and there were more immediate reasons. "how many charges do you have for that?" "twelve." "you think you can stand there and hold them off with only twelve charges for your needle gun?" "there's my power pack." "it's no good," eckert said softly. "the batteries in it are dead. i was afraid you might do something foolish with it." the footsteps were only yards away. he listened intently, but it was hard to tell how many there were by the sound. "what do we do then?" "see if they're following us first," eckert said practically. "they might not be, you know." they slid out from the shadows and ducked down another lane between the houses. the footsteps behind them speeded up and came down the same lane. "we'll have to head back for our house," eckert whispered. they started running as quietly as they could, slipping and sliding in the mud. another stretch past the shuttered, crouching houses and they found themselves in the square they had visited on the day they had landed. it was deserted, the looms and pottery wheels covered with cloth and reeds to keep off the rain. they darted across it, two thin shadows racing across the open plaza, and hurried down another path. the last path led to the small river that cut through the city. templin looked around, gestured to eckert, waded into the water and crouched under the small bridge that spanned it. eckert swore silently to himself, then followed templin in. the cold water swirled under his armpits and he bit his lips to keep himself from sneezing. templin's emotions were contagious. would he have worried about the footsteps? he frowned and tried to be honest with himself. perhaps he would--and perhaps he wouldn't have. but he couldn't have let templin stay there and face the unknown approachers. not templin. footsteps approached the bridge, hesitated a moment, then pattered on the wooden structure and faded off down the muddy path. eckert let his breath out slowly. the footsteps were curiously light. there was only one pair of them. * * * * * "i would like to know something," templin said coldly. he stripped off his power pack and let it fall to the floor of their house. "why did you decide to substitute dead batteries in the pack?" "because," eckert said shortly, "i was afraid you would do something with it that you might regret later. you're inexperienced in situations like this. your reactions aren't to be trusted. one false move here and we could follow pendleton, however he died. you know that." he wriggled out of his tunic and slowly peeled off his wet trousers. there was a timid knock at the door. he wrapped a blanket about himself and motioned to templin to stand to one side. templin grabbed a small stool, hefted it in one hand, and complied. eckert went to the door and casually threw it open. a girl stood there, half in the outer darkness and half in the yellowish light from the room, covered with mud to the knees and drenched to the skin. "the _menshar_ forgot this at the _halera_," she said softly. she quickly handed him his pipe and a soggy bag of tobacco, and disappeared instantly into the rain. he listened for the sound of her footsteps in the soft mud and then closed the door. templin put down the stool and stared stupidly at the pipe and the tobacco sack. eckert placed them carefully on the table and began to towel himself. "we probably face as much danger from our own imaginations as from anything else," he said grimly. "tell me, would you have fired first, or would you have waited until you found out for sure who she was and what she wanted when she first started to follow us?" "i don't know," templin said sullenly. "then i'll leave to your imagination the position we would be in now, if you had given in to your impulse." * * * * * "we haven't found out much, have we?" templin demanded some days later. "no," eckert admitted. "we haven't." he riffled through the thick stack of cards on the table. statistically, the results were not only interesting but slightly phenomenal. during the three years or so that pendleton had been on tunpesh, he had met and known approximately seven hundred of the natives. by far the greater majority of these, of course, were purely casual and meant nothing. almost a hundred, though, had had extended relations with pendleton in business or social affairs. of this hundred, none--not a single one--would admit that he had known pendleton well or could be considered a friend of his. about all they had to say was that pendleton had been healthy and easy to get along with, and one warm night he had shocked the community by going off and shooting himself. "like richard cory," eckert said aloud. "like who?" templin asked. "richard cory. a character in a poem by a twentieth century poet, edwin arlington robinson. apparently he had everything to live for, but 'richard cory, one calm summer night, went home and put a bullet through his head.'" "i'll have to look it up some day," templin said. he pointed to the stack of cards. "that's so much waste paper, isn't it?" "yes, it is," eckert said reluctantly. "to be frank, i had hoped we'd know a lot more by now. i still can't understand why we haven't dug up anybody who will admit having been his friend." "how do you know they're telling the truth? or, for that matter, how do you know that the ones we've seen so far are the ones who _actually_ knew pendleton?" eckert drummed his fingers on the table. _you handle different human cultures for twenty-five years and you get to the point where you can tell if people are lying or not. or do you? maybe just an old man's conceit. age alone never lent wisdom. regardless of the personal reasons that templin might have for thinking the tunpeshans are lying, the fact remains that they very easily could be. and what should you do if they are?_ there was a polite knock at the door. "we've got another visitor," templin said sarcastically. "he probably saw pendleton at a _halera_ four years ago and wants to be sure we know all about it." the tunpeshan looked faintly familiar to eckert. there was something about the man's carriage.... "i met you the day you landed," the tunpeshan began, and eckert remembered. jathong, the guide who had shown them to the house. "you knew pendleton?" jathong nodded. "i and a fellow weaver took over his small office after he had left it." eckert recalled the small office in the square with the bolts of cloth on display, and the small mud brick on the window ledge with the incised lettering reading: donald pendleton, service attache. "why you didn't tell us this before?" "i didn't know what kind and how much information you wanted." _we didn't ask him_, eckert thought, _so he didn't volunteer any information. polite, to say the least._ "how long did you know him?" "since he landed. i was the one appointed to him." "what do you mean--appointed to him?" "to try to learn his language, and try to teach him ours." eckert felt his interest rising. jathong, then, must have known pendleton fairly well. "did he have any enemies that you know of?" "enemies?" jathong seemed ignorant of the meaning of the word, so eckert explained. "no, he had no enemies. he would naturally have none such on tunpesh." templin leaned forward, tense. "if he had no enemies, why did he have no friends? you, for example, knew him longer and better than most. why is it that you weren't his friend?" jathong looked unhappy, as if being forced to say something he wanted not to say. "pendleton was _kava_--i cannot explain it. the concept is difficult. you would not understand." he might be running the danger of throwing too many questions at jathong, eckert realized, and having him freeze up or turn vague. but it couldn't be helped. they had made no progress at all by subtlety, and time would eventually run out. he tried to broach the next question delicately. "did pendleton know any of the women of your race?" "he knew some of the women, as he knew the men." the answer didn't tell eckert what he wanted to know. "was he in love with any woman?" it sounded crude the way he put it, but it was hard to think of any other way of asking it. * * * * * jathong looked at him incredulously, as if eckert had asked him if pendleton had had two heads. "that would have been impossible. none of our women would have--could have--been in love with _menshar_ pendleton." _one line of inquiry just gone phht_, eckert thought. _but pendleton wasn't one to let a broken heart get him down anyway._ "why not?" templin cut in harshly. "he wasn't hard to look at and he would have made a good husband." jathong diplomatically turned around to face templin. "i have told you once--pendleton was _kava_. it would have been quite impossible." the answer to what had happened to pendleton probably lay in jathong's inability to explain his own terms, eckert believed. one could get just so close, and then the definitions became vague and useless. he asked a few more questions and finally dismissed jathong. the interview, like all the others he and templin had held during the last week, had been worthless. they knew nothing more than they had when they landed. "i still think they're lying," templin said almost savagely. "or perhaps the ones who really know something haven't come around." * * * * * eckert got his pipe and sat near the doorway, letting the sunlight streaming through the foliage of a nearby tree dapple his face with a checkerboard pattern of modulated lights and velvety shadows. "if they're evading us or if they're lying, then the society is a dangerous one for us. but i still can't believe it. they're not warlike. they don't seem to have many weapons and definitely none of an advanced type." "how could anybody know for sure?" eckert methodically knocked the cold ashes out of his pipe and added more tobacco. "easy. despite what you read in story books, no civilization lives simply, governs itself simply, and yet possesses 'super-blasters.' the sword-and-blaster combination just doesn't exist. any weapon above the level of bows and arrows or knives is the product of a well advanced technology. along with weapons, of course, you have to have good communications. now take an ordinary radio and think of the degree of knowledge, technology, and industrialization that would have to exist to supply it. there's nothing like that here." templin came over to the warmth streaming in through the doorway. "it almost seems that they're acting in concert, though--as if there were some kind of plot, where, by prearrangement, everybody knows exactly what to say." "you're wrong again. you can practically smell a dictatorship or a tyranny, which is the only situation in which almost one hundred per cent of the population will follow the same line through fear of the consequences if they don't. in a situation like that, the people are frightened, unhappy. you can hardly say that's the case on tunpesh." "no," templin admitted, "you couldn't. but, still, you have to admit that the answers we've received so far are just too unanimous--and too sketchy. all agree that pendleton was a fine fellow; all agree that he had no native friends." eckert nodded. "i'll go along with that. and i think it's time we did something about it. tonight we'll have to start eliminating certain ideas." he took a small case from their pile of luggage and opened it. inside was a small, battery-powered box with various dials set on the front and the usual electrodes and nerve probes protruding from the sides and the top. templin looked at it with surprise. "that will be dangerous to use, won't it?" "it might be more dangerous not to. time is getting to be a factor and we have to make some progress. we have a safety margin of a sort in that we can erase memories of its use, but the procedure is still risky." "who do we use it on?" "as long as we're going to use it," eckert said grimly, "we might as well start at the top." when they had started out, the investigation had seemed fairly simple to eckert. there were two possibilities--either pendleton had committed suicide or he had been murdered. knowing pendleton's record, the first possibility had seemed remote. a few weeks on tunpesh had convinced him that the second possibility was also remote. one or the other had to be eliminated. the second would be the easiest. there were other reasons as well. templin was still convinced that pendleton had been killed, and templin was an emotional man with access to powerful weapons. the question was not what he might eventually do, but when. * * * * * the night looked as if it would be another rainy one. it was cooler than usual and dark clouds were scudding across the starlit sky. eckert and templin stood in the shadows of the house, watching the dark lane for any casual strollers. eckert looked at his watch. a few minutes more and nayova would come out for his evening walk. eckert had just started to think longingly of his bed and the warmth inside his house when the door opened and nayova appeared in the opening. eckert held his breath while the chieftain stood uncertainly in the doorway, testing the night air, and then let it out slowly when nayova started down the lane. they closed in on him. "the _menshars_ from earth," he said without alarm. "is there something you wish?" "we would like you to come with us to our house for a while," eckert started in. nayova looked puzzled. "i do not understand. would not tomorrow do as well?" "i'm afraid it'll have to be tonight." nayova was obviously not quite sure of their threat. "no, i...." eckert caught him before he touched the ground. templin took the rag off the butt of the needle gun, lifted the ruler's feet, and they disappeared into the brush along the lane. they would have to sneak back to the house, eckert knew, and hope that nobody saw them lugging the unconscious native. he laughed a little grimly to himself. templin had expected cloak-and-dagger. it looked as if he was going to get more than his share of it, after all. once inside the house, eckert arranged the electrodes and the small nerve probes on nayova, who had come to. "i am sorry," eckert said formally, "but we find this necessary. you understand that we have to find out all we can about pendleton. we have no choice." he found it difficult to look the ruler in the face, even with the realization that this was strictly in the line of duty and that the chieftain would not be hurt. "but i have cooperated with you in every way possible!" nayova protested. "i have told you everything we know!" "that's right," templin said bluntly. "and now we're going to ask you the same questions." nayova looked blank for a moment and then reddened as he understood. * * * * * templin turned to the dials on the little square box. "we would like to know," eckert said politely, "where you were two weeks ago at this time of night." nayova looked surprised. "you know that i was at the _halera_, the coming-of-age ceremony. you were there with me, as my guests. you should assuredly know i was there." eckert looked over at templin, who nodded shortly. it had been a standard question, to test the apparatus. "did pendleton have any enemies here on tunpesh?" nayova emphatically shook his head. "to the best of my knowledge, _menshar_ pendleton had no enemies here. he would have none." templin's face showed its disappointment. "who were his friends?" "he had no friends." templin glowered angrily, but he said nothing. eckert frowned. the same answer--pendleton had had no enemies and yet he had had no friends. "would you say he was well liked here?" "i would say no." "why not?" a shrug. "it is hard to explain and you would not be able to understand." "did somebody here kill pendleton?" eckert could hear templin suck in his breath. "no." "ask him that again," templin cut in. "did somebody kill pendleton?" "no." "did pendleton kill himself?" a trace of disgust showed on nayova's face. "yes." "why?" "i do not know." templin gestured to eckert to take the box. "let me ask him." he came around and faced the native. "why did your people kill pendleton?" "we did not kill him. we had no reason to wish him harm." "do you expect us to believe that pendleton killed himself? we knew him better than that." "you may believe whatever you wish. but men change and perhaps he did. we did not kill him. such an act would have been repugnant to us." "i think that's enough," eckert said calmly. templin bit his lip as eckert touched another dial on the machine. nayova suddenly jerked, looked blank, and slumped in the chair. eckert took off the electrodes. "help me take him back, will you, ray?" * * * * * they carried nayova to his house, stayed with him until he showed signs of recovering, and then left. "why didn't you use a drug?" templin demanded. "possible allergy or serum reaction. we don't know enough about these people to take chances--they're humanoid, not human." "they can fool machines, though, can't they?" eckert didn't reply. "all right, i know they can't," templin said grudgingly. "he was telling the truth all the time, wasn't he?" eckert nodded. "i never did think he was lying. they don't seem to be the type; their culture doesn't allow for it." they were silent for a while, walking quietly in the lanes between the shuttered, seemingly untenanted houses. "i'm glad," templin said quietly. "it's off my mind. it's hard to believe that anybody here would ... deliberately kill somebody else." templin's reactions would be worth something now for eckert to study. they wouldn't be inhibited by his conviction that the natives had murdered his best friend. just what reactions and emotions he would display, eckert wasn't sure, nor how templin's psychology, so similar to pendleton's, would help solve the problem. they had eliminated one possibility, but that still left them with the one they had started with. _why had pendleton taken the short way out?_ * * * * * a breeze scampered through the open door and played tag with the papers on the desk. eckert swore without annoyance and calmly started chasing those that had been blown on the floor. "what did pendleton have to say in his reports?" templin sat in the doorway, his eyes barely open. he had begun taking siestas in the early afternoon, after their usual light lunch. it was pleasant to sit on the worn wood and feel the warmth of sun and smell the crisp freshness of the outdoors, or maybe watch the kids playing in the lane, catching the butterflies that floated past in the afternoon air. "about what you'd expect. mostly reports on the industry, climate, system of government, and general anthropological information that he thought might prove interesting. as far as i can see, he didn't lack enthusiasm for making the reports. if anything, he grew more enthusiastic as time went on. he practically wrote us treatises on every phase of life on tunpesh." templin's eyes closed all the way. "any indication in his reports that he didn't like it here?" "just the other way around. everything points to the fact that he liked the climate, the people, the way they lived." "i don't blame him," templin murmured. "this is a lovely place to be. the climate is wonderful, the people are happy, hard-working. the society itself seems to be--perfect. sometimes you can't help but compare it too damn favorably to earth." eckert shoved the papers to one side and came over to where templin sat. he felt rather lazy himself. the warmth and sunshine corroded ambition, as it did in most climates like this. "you know, there isn't any crime here," templin continued. he laughed to himself. "except the minor crime wave we caused when we landed here five months ago. no criminals, no villains foreclosing mortgages, no gamblers bleeding the gullible white, and nobody trying to sell gold bricks. i can't get over it." * * * * * a butterfly flapped into the sunlight that glistened on his tunic, like a drop of water on a piece of black velvet. it hung there for a moment and then was off, its wings flashing. eckert watched it go in a sort of torpor. it was pleasant to relax and slip the leash off your thoughts quietly and see where they took you. maybe it was a sort of letdown. they had expected six months of danger in a potentially criminal culture, and instead it had been paradise. as templin said, you couldn't help but compare it to earth. no greed, no belligerency, no contempt for the rights of others. no cynicism, no sarcasm, and no trampling crowds in the stores. the little important things.... "where did you go last night, ray?" templin stirred. "a community meeting. almost like a quaker meeting. you get up and say what you think. the one last night was about some local government issues. they talked it over, decided what to do, and how much each person should contribute. the original democracy, ted." eckert was wide awake. "i wonder why i wasn't invited." he felt slightly put out that templin should have been asked to something like that and he hadn't been. "i wasn't invited," templin said. "i invited myself." "have you noticed," eckert mused, "we haven't been invited to too many functions lately?" "they know we're busy," templin said lazily. "they're too polite to ask us to go some place if they thought we were busy doing something else." "you like it here, don't you, ray?" templin brushed idly at a marauding mosquito. "it took me pretty long to warm up to it, but i guess i do." they only had a month left, eckert knew--a month to do practically nothing but lie in the sun and watch the people. oh, they could go through the motions of investigating and look over pendleton's old records and reports, but there was nothing in them of any value. he yawned and sat down and settled his back against the door frame. it began to look as if they'd never find out why pendleton had done what he had. and it didn't seem to matter, somehow. * * * * * eckert opened the door slowly. templin was asleep on the bed, the sunlight lying in bands across his tanned, bare back. he had on a strip of white cloth, knotted at the waist in imitation of what the natives wore. it was mussed now, and the knot had started to come loose. he looked a lot healthier than he had when they had first landed. more peaceful, more content. he appeared to have gained ten pounds and shed, five years in the last six months. and now the vacation was over. it was time to go back. "ray," eckert called out to him softly. templin didn't stir, but continued his soft and very regular breathing. eckert found a book and dropped it on the floor with a thud. templin woke up, but didn't move. "what do you want, ted?" "how did you know it was me?" templin chuckled, as if it were hugely funny. "riddles yet. who else would it be? no tunpeshan would be rude enough to wake somebody up in the middle of a nap, so it had to be you." "you know what you would have done if somebody had awakened you like that five months ago?" templin tried to nod, but was slightly handicapped by the bed underneath him. "i would have pulled my trusty atomgun and plugged him." eckert went over to where they kept their luggage and started pulling the boxes out from the wall. "well, i've got good news for you. a liner just landed to pick us up. they were going through this sector and they got an order from the service to stop by for us. some cargo-wallopers will be here in a few minutes to help us with our gear." "ted." eckert paused. "yes?" "i'm not going back." "why not?" eckert's face had a look of almost clinical curiosity on it. "why should i? i like it here. i want to live here the rest of my life." * * * * * the pieces began to fall in place. "i'm not so sure you'd like it, ray. not after a while. all your friends are back on earth. everybody you know is back there. it's just the novelty of something new and something different here. i've felt that way a lot of times in different cultures and different societies. you'd change your mind after a while." "those aren't reasons, ted. why should i go back to a world where most of the people are unhappy at some time and a few people all the time? as far as i'm concerned, tunpesh is my home now, and i don't intend to leave it." eckert was fascinated. it was like a case history unfolding right before his eyes. "are you sure you would enjoy it here for the rest of your life? have you made any friends to take the place of those back home?" "it takes time to become acquainted, even more time to make friends," templin said defensively. "you can't desert the service," eckert pointed out. "you still have your duty." templin laughed in his pillow. "it won't work, ted. duty's just a catch word, a jingo phrase. they can get along without me and you know it." "what about pendleton, ray? he died here, you know, in mysterious circumstances." "would going back help him any? he wasn't murdered; we know that. and why do people commit suicide? for what one of several thousand possible reasons did pendleton? we don't know. we'll never know. and if we did know, what good would it do?" he had changed a lot in six months, eckert saw. too much. "what if i told you i knew why pendleton killed himself?" eckert asked. "and that you would do the same if you stayed here?" "don't use it, ted. it's poor psychology. it won't work." the pieces made a perfect picture. but templin was going back whether he wanted to or not. the only difficulty was that, deep underneath, eckert sympathized with him. perhaps if he had been younger, less experienced.... "then you won't go back with us?" templin closed his eyes and rolled over on his back. "no." there was dead silence. templin could smell the piny scent of the woods and feel the warmth of soft sunlight that lanced through the blinds. some place far away, there was the faint chatter of kids at play, but outside of that it was quiet. too quiet. templin opened his eyes in sudden alarm. "ted! don't!" he caught the gas full in the face and tumbled back on the bed, unconscious. * * * * * eckert opened the hatch to the observation cabin as quietly as he could. templin was seated on one of the pneumatic couches, staring soberly at a small yellow star in the black sky. he didn't look up. "it's me, ray," eckert said. templin didn't move. "i suppose i owe you an apology," eckert began, "but i had to gas you to get you to leave. otherwise you wouldn't have left. and the same thing would have happened to you that happened to don pendleton." "you're sure of that?" templin asked bitterly. "reasonably. you're a lot like pendleton, you know. in fact, that's why you were selected to go--not so much because you knew him as the fact that psychologically you were a lot like him. we thought that by studying your response to situations there, we would have a picture of what pendleton's must have been." templin didn't want to talk about it, eckert realized, but it had to be explained to him. "do you want to know why pendleton killed himself?" templin shrugged listlessly. "i suppose we should have seen it right away," eckert continued. "any race that is so happy with their way of life that they show no curiosity about strangers, the way they live, or what possessions they have, must have something to be happy about. tunpesh is something that might happen only once in a thousand civilizations, maybe less, ray. "the environment is perfection and so are the people, or at least as near to perfection as it's possible to get. an intelligent people who have as much technology as they desire, living simply with themselves and each other. a fluke of nature, perhaps. no criminals, no insane, no neurotics. a perfect cultural pattern. tunpesh is a paradise. you didn't want to leave, neither did i, and neither did pendleton." templin turned on him. "so it was paradise. would it have been criminal if i had stayed there? who would it have hurt?" "it would have hurt you," eckert said gravely. "because the tunpeshans would never have accepted you. we're too different, ray. we're too aggressive, too pushy, too persistent. we're not--perfect. you see, no matter how long we stayed there, we would never have fit in. we lived in a harsh society and we bear the scars of it. our own environment has conditioned us, and we can't change. oh, we could try, but it would crop up in little ways. because of that, the natives could never genuinely like us. we'd never belong. their own cultural pattern wouldn't allow them to accept us. "their cultural pattern is like the fire and the sword that were placed outside the garden of eden, after adam and eve were driven out, to keep it sacrosanct. if you're an outsider, you stay outside. you can never come in." * * * * * he paused a moment, waiting for templin to say something. templin didn't. "the natives have a word for it, _kava_. it means, i suppose, _different_--not necessarily inferior, just different. we should have seen it as time went on. we weren't invited places; they seemed to avoid us. a natural reaction for them, i guess i have to admit." eckert cleared his throat huskily. "you see, what happened to pendleton," he continued awkwardly, "is that he fell in love with paradise, but paradise would have nothing to do with him. by the time three years were up, he knew that he was an outcast in eden. and he couldn't leave, to come back and try to forget. he was stranded in paradise and had to look forward to spending four more years there as a pariah. he couldn't do it. and neither could you." he was quiet for a moment, thinking of the cool, scented air and the warm sunshine and the happy kids playing on the grassy lanes. "i suppose it didn't affect you at all, did it?" templin asked venomously. * * * * * a shadow crossed eckert's face. "you should know better than that, ray. do you think i'll ever forget it? do you think i'll ever be satisfied with my own culture again?" "what are you going to do about it?" "it's dangerous to human beings, ray. looking at it brutally, their culture has killed two of our people as surely as if tunpesh were populated by murderous savages. we'll probably send a larger commission, throw it open to commerce, try to change it." templin gripped the sides of the couch, his face strained and tense with anxiety. "what happens to it depends on the report you make, doesn't it?" "yes, it does." "then make up something in your report. say the climate is bad for earthmen. say anything, but don't let them change tunpesh!" eckert looked at him for a long moment, remembering. "okay, ray," he said slowly. "we'll leave paradise alone. strictly alone. it'll be put on the quarantine list." he turned and left. behind him, templin swiveled around in his chair and gazed bleakly at the tiny mote of yellow fading in the blackness of space. advance agent by christopher anvil illustrated by finlay [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy science fiction february 1957. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] raveling porcy's systematized enigma, dan found himself with a spy's worst break--he was saddled with the guise of a famed man! i dan redman stooped to look in the mirror before going to see the director of a section. the face that looked back wasn't bad, if he had expected strong cheekbones, copper skin and a high-arched nose. but dan wasn't used to it yet. he straightened and his coat drew tight across chest and shoulders. the sleeves pulled up above hands that felt average, but that the mirror showed to be huge and broad. dan turned to go out in the hall and had to duck to avoid banging his head on the door frame. on the way down the hall, he wondered just what sort of job he had drawn this time. dan stopped at a door lettered: a section j. kielgaard director a pretty receptionist goggled at him and said to go in. dan opened the inner door. kielgaard--big, stocky, expensively dressed--looked up and studied dan as he came in. apparently satisfied, he offered a chair, then took out a small plastic cartridge and held it in one hand. "dan," he said, "what do you know about subspace and null-points?" "practically nothing," admitted dan honestly. * * * * * kielgaard laughed. "then i'll fill you in with the layman's analogy, which is all _i_ know. suppose you have a newspaper with an ant on the middle of the front page. to get to the middle of page two, the ant has to walk to the edge of the paper, then walk back on the inside. now suppose the ant could go _through_ the page. the middle of page two is just a short distance away from the middle of page one. that going _through_, instead of around, is like travel in subspace. and a null-point is a place just a short distance away, going through subspace. the middle of page two, for instance, is a null-point for the middle of page one." "yes," said dan patiently, waiting for the point of the interview. kielgaard pushed the plastic cartridge he'd been holding through a slot in his desk. a globe to one side lighted up a cottony white, with faint streaks of blue. "this," he said, "is porcys." dan studied the globe. "under that cloud blanket, it looks as if it might be a water world." "it is. except for a small continent, the planet is covered with water. and the water is full of seafood--_edible_ seafood." dan frowned, still waiting. "galactic enterprises," said kielgaard, "has discovered a region in subspace which has porcys for one null-point and earth for another." "oh," said dan, beginning to get the point. "and earth's hungry, of course. galactic can ship the seafood straight through subspace at a big profit." "that's the idea. but there's one trouble." kielgaard touched a button, and on the globe, the white layer vanished. the globe was a brilliant blue, with a small area of mingled green and grayish-brown. "the land area of the planet is inhabited. galactic must have the permission of the inhabitants to fish the ocean. and galactic needs to close the deal fast, or some other outfit, like trans-space, may get wind of things and move in." kielgaard looked at the globe thoughtfully. "all we know about the porcyns could be put on one side of a postage stamp. they're physically strong. they have a few large cities. they have an abundant supply of seafood. they have spaceships and mataform transceivers. this much we know from long-distance observation or from the one porcyn we anesthetized and brain-spied. we also know from observation that the porcyns have two other habitable planets in their solar system--fumidor, a hot inner planet, and an earthlike outer planet called vacation planet." kielgaard drummed his fingers softly. "granting the usual course of events, dan, what can we expect to happen? the porcyns have an abundance of food, a small living area, space travel and two nearby habitable planets. what will they do?" "colonize the nearby planets," said dan. * * * * * "right," said kielgaard. "only they aren't doing it. we've spied both planets till we can't see straight. fumidor has a mine entrance and a mataform center. vacation planet has a mataform center and one or two big buildings. and that's it. there's no emigration from porcys to the other two planets. instead, there's a sort of cycling flow from porcys to vacation planet to fumidor to porcys. why? "the porcyn we brain-spied," he went on, "associated vacation planet with 'rejuvenation.' what does that mean we're up against? galactic wants to make a contract, but not till they know what they're dealing with. there are some races it's best to leave alone. this 'rejuvenation' might be worth more than the seafood, sure, but it could also be a sackful of trouble." dan waited, realizing that kielgaard had come to the crux of the matter. kielgaard said, "galactic wants us to find the answers to three problems. one, how do the porcyns keep the size of their population down? two, what is the connection between rejuvenation and 'vacation planet'? and three, do the porcyns have a proper mercantile attitude? are they likely to make an agreement? will they keep one they do make?" kielgaard looked intently at dan. "the only way we're likely to find the answers in a reasonable time is to send someone in. you're elected." "just me?" asked dan in surprise. "all your eggs in one basket?" "in a situation like this," said kielgaard, "one good man is worth several gross of dubs. we're relying on you to keep your eyes open and your mind on what you're doing." "and suppose i don't come back?" "galactic probably loses the jump it's got on trans-space and you miss out on a big bonus." "when do i leave?" "tomorrow morning. but today you'd better go down and pick up a set of porcyn clothes we've had made for you and some of their money. it'd be a good idea to spend the evening getting used to things. we've implanted in your brain the porcyn language patterns we brain-spied and we've installed in your body cavity a simple organo-transmitter you can use during periods of calm. because the porcyns are physically strong and possibly worship strength, we've had your body rebuilt to one of the most powerful human physique patterns--that of an american indian--that we have on record." they shook hands and dan went to his room. he practiced the porcyn tongue till he had some conscious familiarity with it. then he tried his strength to make sure he wouldn't accidentally use more force than he intended. then, while the evening was still young, he went to bed and fell asleep. it was dan's experience that everything possible went wrong the first few days on a new planet and he wanted to be wide-awake enough to live through it. ii the next day, dan left in a spacetug that galactic was sending on a practice trip through subspace to porcys. from the tug, he went by mataform to the lab ship in the porcyn sea. here he learned that he had only twenty minutes during which conditions would be right to make the next mataform jump to a trawler close to the mainland. dan had wanted to talk to the men on the lab ship and learn all they could tell him about the planet. this being impossible, he determined to question the trawler crew to the limit of their patience. when dan reached the trawler, it was dancing like a blown leaf in a high wind. he became miserably seasick. that evening, there was a violent electrical storm which lasted into the early morning. dan spent the whole night nauseously gripping the edge of his bunk, his legs braced against the violent heave and lurch of the trawler. before dawn of the next day, aching in every muscle, his insides sore and tender, his mind fuzzy from lack of sleep, dan was set ashore on a dark, quiet and foggy strip of beach. he stood for a moment in the soft sand, feeling it seem to dip underfoot. this, he thought, was undoubtedly the worst start he had ever made on any planet anywhere. from around him in the impenetrable fog came distant croakings, whistlings and hisses. the sounds were an unpleasant suggestion that something else had gone wrong. between bouts of sickness, dan had tried to arrange with the crew to land him near the outskirts of a porcyn city. but the sounds were those of the open country. what dan wanted was to go through the outskirts of the city before many people were moving around. he could learn a great deal from their homes, their means of transportation and the actions of a few early risers. he could learn from the things he expected to see, or from the lack of them, _if_ he was there to see them. dan moved slowly inland, crossed a ditch and came to what seemed to be a macadam road. he checked his directions and started to walk. he forced the pace so his breath came hard, and hoped it would pump some life into his dulled brain and muscles. as his senses gradually began to waken, dan became aware of an odd _swish-swish, swish-swish_, like a broom dusting lightly over the pavement behind him. the sound drew steadily closer. dan halted abruptly. the sound stopped, too. he walked on. _swish-swish._ he whirled. silence. * * * * * dan listened carefully. the sound could be that of whatever on porcys corresponded to a playful puppy--or to a rattlesnake. he stepped sharply forward. _swish-swish._ it was behind him. he whirled. there was a feeling of innumerable hairy spiders running over him from head to foot. the vague shape of a net formed and vanished in the gloom before him. he lashed out and hit the dark and the fog. _swish-swish._ it was moving away. he stood still while the sound faded to a whisper and was gone. then he started to walk. he was sure that what had just happened meant something, but _what_ it meant was a different question. at least, he thought ruefully, he was wider awake now. he walked on as the sky grew lighter. then the fog shifted to show a solid mass of low blocky buildings across the road ahead. the road itself disappeared into a tunnel under one of the buildings. to one side, a waist-high metal rail closed off the end of one of the city's streets. dan walked off the road toward the rail. his eye was caught by the building ahead. each was exactly the same height, about two to three earth stories high. they were laid out along a geometrically straight border with no transition between city and farmland. there was a faint hum. then a long, low streak, its front end rounded like a horseshoe crab, shot out of the tunnel under the building beside him and vanished along the road where he'd just been walking. now dan saw a small modest sign beside the road. care high-speed vehicles only --_swept_-dan crossed the rail at the end of the street with great caution. the porcyn clothing he was wearing consisted of low leather boots, long green hose, leather shorts, a bright purple blouse and a sky-blue cape. dan bunched the cape in his hand and thrust it ahead of him as he crossed the rail, for some races were finicky about their exits and entrances. the straight, sharp boundary between city and farmland, and the identical buildings, suggested to dan that here was a race controlled by strict rules and forms, and he was making an obviously unauthorized entrance. it was with relief that he stood on the opposite side, within the city. he glanced back at the sign and wondered what "swept" meant. then he gave his attention to the buildings ahead of him. * * * * * low at first, the buildings rose regularly to a greater height, as far as the fog would let him see. dan remembered the storm of the night before and wondered if the progressive heightening of the buildings was designed to break the force of the wind. the buildings themselves were massive, with few and narrow windows, and wide heavy doors opening on the street. dan walked farther into the city and found that the street took right-angle bends at regular intervals, probably also to break the wind. there was no one in sight, and no vehicles. dan decided he was probably in a warehouse district. he paused to look at a partly erected new building, built on the pattern of the rest. then he heard from up the street a grunting, straining sound interspersed with whistling puffs. there was a stamping noise, a _thud_ and the clash of metal. dan ran as quietly as he could up the street, stopped, glanced around one of the right-angle bends. he was sure the sound had come from there. the street was empty. dan walked closer and studied a large brass plate set in the base of a building. it looked about twenty inches high by thirty wide with a rough finish. in the center of the plate was a single word: sweeper dan looked at this for a moment. then, frowning, he strode on. in his mind's eye, he was seeing the sign by the road: care high-speed vehicles only --_swept_-dan couldn't decide whether the word "swept" was part of the warning or just an afterthought. in any case, he had plainly heard a struggle here and now there was nothing to be seen. alert for more brass plates, he wound his way through the streets until he came out on a broad avenue. on the opposite side were a number of tall, many-windowed buildings like apartment houses. on the sidewalks and small lawns in front, crowds of children were playing. they were wearing low boots, leather shorts or skirts, brightly colored blouses and hose, and yellow capes. walking quietly among them was a tawny animal with the look and lordly manner of a lion. it _was_ a lion. as far as the rapidly dispersing fog let him see, the avenue ran straight in one direction. in the other, it ended a block or so away. apparently the crooked, wind-breaking streets were only on the edge of the city. dan thought of the questions kielgaard wanted him to answer: 1, how do the porcyns keep the size of their population down? 2, what is the connection between rejuvenation and vacation planet? 3, do the porcyns have a proper mercantile attitude? are they likely to make an agreement? will they keep one they do make? to find the answers, dan intended to work his way carefully through the city. if nothing went wrong, he should be able to see enough to eliminate most of the possibilities. already he had seen enough to make porcyns look unpromising. the rigid city boundary, the strict uniformity of the buildings and the uniform pattern of the clothing suggested a case-hardened, ingrown way of living. * * * * * across the street, a low door to one side of the apartment building's main entrance came open. the lion walked out. it was carrying a squirming little boy by his bunched-up cape. the big creature flopped down, pinned the struggling boy with a huge paw and methodically started to clean him. the rasp of the animal's tongue could be heard clearly across the street. the boy yelled. a healthy-looking girl of about twelve, wearing a cape diagonally striped in yellow and red, ran over and rescued the boy. the lion rolled over on its back to have its belly scratched. dan scowled and walked toward the near end of the street. on less advanced planets, where the danger of detection was not so great, agents often went in with complex, surgically inserted organo-transmitters in their body cavities. unlike the simple communicator dan had, these were fitted with special taps on the optic and auditory nerves, and the transmitter continuously broadcast all that the agent saw and heard. experts back home went over the data and made their own conclusions. the method was useful, but it had led to some dangerous mistakes. sight and sound got across, but often the atmosphere of the place didn't. dan thought it might be the same here. the feeling that the city gave him didn't match what his reasoning told him. he crossed a street, passed an inscription on a building: freedom devisement fraternity then he was back in a twisting maze of streets. he walked till the wind from the sea blew in his face. the street dipped to a massive wall and the sea, where a few brightly colored, slow-moving trawlers were going out. dan turned in another street and wound back and forth till he came out along the ocean front. on one side of the street was the ocean, a broad strip of sand, and the sea wall. on the other side was a row of small shops, brightly awninged, with displays just being set in place out in front. in the harbor, a ship was being unloaded. flat-bottomed boats were running back and forth from several long wharves. on the street ahead, a number of heavy wagons, drawn by six-legged animals with heads like eels, bumped and rattled toward the wharves. behind them ran a crowd of boys in yellow capes, a big tawny lioness trotting among them. on the sidewalk nearby strode a few powerfully built old men, their capes of various colors. dan glanced at the displays in front of the shops. some were cases of fish on ice. others were piles of odd vegetables in racks. dan paused to look at a stack of things like purple carrots. a man immediately came forward from the rear of the store, wiping his hands on his apron. dan moved on. the next shop had the universal low boots, shorts, skirts, blouses and hose, in assorted sizes and colors, but no capes. dan slowed to glance at the display and saw the proprietor coming briskly from the dark interior, rubbing his hands. dan speeded up and got away before the proprietor came out. the porcyns, he thought, seemed at least to have a proper mercantile attitude. iii dan passed another fish market, then came to a big, brightly polished window. inside was a huge, chromium-plated bar-bell on a purple velvet cloth. behind it were arranged displays of hand-grips, exercise cables, dumb-bells and skipping ropes. the inside of the store was indirectly lighted and expensively simple. the place had an air that was quiet, lavish and discreet. it reminded dan of a well-to-do funeral establishment. in one corner of the window was a small, edge-lighted sign: you never know what the next life will be like. in the other corner of the window was a polished black plate with a dimly glowing bulb in the center. around the bulb were the words: your corrected charge- courtesy of save-your-life co. a tall, heavily muscled man in a dark-blue cape stepped outside. "good morning, devisement," he said affably. "i see you're a stranger in town. i thought i might mention that our birth rate's rather high just now." he coughed deferentially. "you set an example, you know. our main store is on 122 center street, so if you--" he was cut off by a childish scream. down the street, a little boy struggled and thrashed near an oblong hole at the base of a building, caught in a tangle of the mysterious ropes. "a _kid_!" cried the man. he sucked in his breath and shouted, "_dog!_ here, dog! _dog!_" on the end of a wharf, a crowd of children was watching the unloading. from their midst, a lioness burst. "_here_, dog!" shouted the man. "a sweeper! a sweeper! _run_, dog!" the lioness burst into a blur of long bounds, shot down the wharf, sprang into the street and glanced around with glaring yellow eyes. the little boy was partway inside the hole, clinging to the edge with both hands. "doggie," he sobbed. the lioness crouched, sprang into the hole. a crash, a bellow and a thin scream came from within. the lioness reappeared, its eyes glittering and its fur on end. it gripped the little boy by the cape and trotted off, growling. "good _dog_!" cried the man. men in the shops' doorways echoed his shout. "a _kid_," said the man. "they have to learn sometime, i know, but--" he cut himself short. "well, all's well that ends well." he glanced respectfully at dan. "if you're here any length of time, sir, we'd certainly appreciate your looking into this. and if you're planning to stay long--well, as you see, our sweepers are hungry--our main store is on 122 center street. our vacation advisor might be of some service to you." "thank you," said dan, his throat dry. "not at all, devisement." the man went inside, muttering, "a _kid_." dan passed several more shops without seeing very much. he turned the corner. across the street, where the boy had been, was a dented brass plate at the base of the building. on dan's side of the street, trotting toward him, was a big, tawny-maned lion. dan hesitated, then started up the street. there was a faint clash of metal. _swish-swish._ * * * * * a net seemed to form in the air and close around him. there was a feel of innumerable hairy spiders running over him from head to foot. the net vanished. something wrapped around his ankle and yanked. the lion growled. there was a loud _clang_ and dan's foot was free. he looked down and saw a brass plate labeled sweeper. dan decided it might be a good idea to see the save-your-life co.'s vacation advisor. he started out to locate 122 center street and gave all brass plates a wide berth on the way. he strode through a briskly moving crowd of powerfully built men and women in capes of various colors, noticing uneasily that they were making way for him. he studied them as they passed, and saw capes of red, green, dark blue, brown, purple, and other shades and combinations of colors. but the only sky-blue cape he had seen so far was his own. a sign on the corner of a building told dan he was at center street. he crossed and the people continued to draw back for him. it began to dawn on dan that he had had the ultimate bad luck for a spy in an unknown country: he was marked out on sight as some sort of notable. just how bad his luck had been wasn't clear to him till he came to a small grassy square with an iron fence around it and a man-sized statue in the center. the granite base of the statue was inscribed: i devise the statue itself was of bronze, showing a powerful man, his foot crushing down a mass of snapping monsters. in his right hand, he held together a large circle of metal, his fingers squeezing shut a cut in the metal, which would break the circle if he let go. his left hand made a partially open fist, into which a wrench had been fitted. the statue itself, protected by some clear finish from the weather, was plain brown in color. but the statue's cape was enameled sky-blue. dan stared at the statue for a moment, then looked around. in the street beside it, a crowd of people was forming, their backs toward him and their heads raised. dan looked up. far up, near the tops of the buildings, he could make out a long cable stretched from one building to another across the street. just on the other side of the crowd was the entrance to the main store of the save-your-life co. * * * * * dan crossed the street and saw a very average-looking man, wearing an orange cape, come to a stop at the corner and look shrewdly around. dan blinked and looked again. _the man in orange was no porcyn._ the man's glance fell on the statue and his lips twisted in an amused smile. he looked up toward the rope, then down at the crowd, and then studied the backs of the crowd and the fronts of the stores around him, the lids of his eyes half-closed in a calculating look. a brass plate nearby popped open, a net of delicate hairy tendrils ran over him, and something like a length of tarred one-inch rope snaked out and wrapped around his legs. an outraged expression crossed his face. his hand came up. the rope yanked. he fell on the sidewalk. the rope hauled him into the hole. the brass plate snapped shut. from inside came a muffled report. it occurred to dan that galactic was not the only organization interested in porcys. dan looked thoughtfully at the brass plate for a moment, then walked toward the entrance of the save-your-life co., past display windows showing weights, cables, parallel bars, trapezes and giant springs with handles on each end. he tried the door. it didn't move. a clerk immediately opened the door and took dan along a cool, chaste hallway to an office marked "vacation advisor." here a suave-looking man made an offhand remark about the birth rate, took a sudden look at dan's cape, blinked, stiffened, glanced at dan's midsection and relaxed. he went through his files and gave dan a big photograph showing a smiling, healthy, middle-aged couple and a lovely girl about nineteen. "these are the milbuns, sir. mr. milbun is a merchant at present. quite well-to-do, i understand. mrs. milbun is a housewife right now. the daughter, mavis, is with a midtown firm at the moment. the mother became ill at an awkward time. the family put their vacation off for her, and as a result their charge has run very low. if you can get to their apartment without being--ah--swept, i feel sure they will welcome you, sir." he scribbled a rough map on a piece of paper, drew an arrow and wrote "6140 runfast boulevard, apartment 6b," and stamped the paper "courtesy of save-your-life co." then he wished dan a healthy vacation and walked with him to hold open the outer door. dan thanked him and went outside, where the crowd was now almost blocking the sidewalk. he forced his way free, saw someone point, and glanced at the statue. the wrench in the statue's left hand had been replaced by what looked like a magnifying glass. dan had gone a few steps when there was a thundering cheer, then a terrified scream high in the air behind him. he turned around and saw a man come plummeting down. dan gaped higher and saw a line of tiny figures going across high up on the rope. one of the figures slipped. there was another cheer. dan hurriedly turned away. he had already convinced himself that the porcyns had a "proper mercantile attitude." and he thought he was beginning to get an idea as to how they kept their population down. iv carefully avoiding brass plates, dan made his way along an avenue of shops devoted to exercise and physical fitness. he came to runfast blvd. and located 6140, which looked like the apartment houses he had seen earlier. he tried the outer door; it was locked. when someone came out, dan caught the door and stepped in. as the door shut, he tried it and found it was locked again. he stood for a moment trying to understand it, but his sleeplessness of the night before was catching up with him. he gave up and went inside. there were no elevators on the ground floor. dan had his choice of six ropes, two ladders and a circular staircase. he went up the staircase to the third floor, where he saw a single elevator. he rode it up to the sixth, got off and found that there was a bank of four elevators on this floor. he looked at the elevators a minute, felt himself getting dizzy, and walked off to locate apartment 6b. a powerfully built gray-haired man of middle height answered his knock. dan introduced himself and explained why he had come. mr. milbun beamed and his right hand shot forward. dan felt like a man with his hand caught in an airlock. "lerna!" called milbun. "lerna! mavis! we have a guest for vacation!" dan became aware of a rhythmical clinking somewhere in the back of the apartment. then a big, strong-looking woman, obviously fresh from the kitchen, hurried in, smiling. if she had been ill, she was clearly recovered now. "ah, how are you?" she cried. "we're so happy to have you!" she gripped his hand and called, "_mavis!_" the clinking stopped. a beautifully proportioned girl came in, wearing a sweatshirt and shorts. "mother, i simply have to get off another pound or so--oh!" she stared at dan. "mavis," said mr. milbun, "this is mr. dan redman. devisement, my daughter mavis." "you're going with us!" she said happily. "how wonderful!" "now," said mr. milbun, "i imagine his devisement wants to get a little rest before he goes down to the gym." he glanced at dan. "we have a splendid gym here." "oh," said mavis eagerly, "and you can use my weights." "thanks," said dan. "we're leaving tomorrow," milbun told him. "the birth rate's still rising here, and last night the charge correction went up again. a little more and it'll take two of us to get a door open. it won't inconvenience you to leave tomorrow?" "not at all," said dan. "splendid." milbun turned to his wife. "lerna, perhaps our guest would like a little something to eat." * * * * * the food was plain, good and plentiful. afterward, mavis showed dan to his room. he sank down gratefully on a firm, comfortable bed. he closed his eyes.... someone was shaking him gently. "don't you want to go down to the gym?" asked mr. milbun. "remember, we're leaving tomorrow." "of course," said dan. feeling that his brain was functioning in a vacuum, dan followed the milbuns into the hall, climbed down six stories on a ladder, then into the basement on a rope. he found himself in a room with a stony dirt track around the wall, ropes festooning the ceiling, an irregularly shaped pool, and artificial shrubs and foliage from behind which sprang mechanical monsters. the milbuns promptly vanished behind imitation vine-covered doors and came out again in gym clothes. dan went through the doorway mr. milbun had come out of and discovered that the save-your-life co. had a machine inside which dispensed washed, pressed and sterilized gym clothes for a small fee. the machine worked by turning a selector dial to the proper size, pressing a lever, and then depositing the correct fee in an open box on the wall nearby. dan studied this a moment in puzzlement, guessed his proper size and put the correct payment in the box. he put on the gym clothes and went outside. for forty-five minutes, mechanical creatures of odd and various shapes sprang at him from behind shrubbery, gripped him when he passed holes in the floor and wound themselves around his legs as he tried to swim in the pool. his temper worsened. he stopped to look at mavis as she swayed, laughing, on a rope above two things like mobile giant clamshells. mr. milbun shook his head. "mavis, remember, we're leaving _tomorrow_." just then, something snarled and lunged at dan from the side. there was a flash of teeth. dan whirled. his fist shot out. there was a scream of machinery, then a crash and a clatter. an imitation monster with a huge jaw and giant teeth lay on its back on the floor. milbun let out a slow whistle. "_dismounted_ it. boy!" "a one-bite, too," breathed mavis. mrs. milbun came over and looked at dan approvingly. dan had been about to apologize, but checked himself when the others smiled cheerfully and went back to what they were doing. this consisted of dodging, tricking or outrunning the various contraptions that lunged at them, chased them, tripped them, trailed, stalked and sprang out at them from nearly every place in the room. finally the gym began to fill up with other people. the milbuns got ready to leave and dan followed. * * * * * dan lay in his bed that night and tried to summarize the points he didn't understand. first was the question of vacation. but he supposed he would learn about that tomorrow. next was "charge." apparently one went on vacation when his "charge" was low, because the vacation advisor had said, "the family put their vacation off for her, and as a result their charge has run very low." but just what was "charge"? dan remembered the flickering bulb in the store window, ringed by the words "your corrected charge--courtesy of save-your-life co." apparently he had _some_ charge, because the bulb had flickered. but where did he get it? then he thought of the waterfront and of the little boy caught at the hole. what was the point of that? and why did that produce such an uproar when, a little later, a grown man could get dragged out of sight on a well-traveled street and never cause a single notice? dan felt himself sinking into a maze of confusion. he dismissed the problems and went to sleep clinging to one fact. the porcyns _must_ be honest people who would keep an agreement, once made. on what other planet could anyone find a slot machine with no slot, but just an open box for the money? dan fell asleep, content that he had the answer to that part of the problem, at least. before it was light, he awoke to an odd familiar buzz inside his head. "dan," said kielgaard's voice, small and remote. dan rolled over, lay on his back and spoke sub-vocally. "right here." "can you talk?" "yes," said dan, "if i can stay awake." "can you give us a summary?" "sure." dan told him briefly what had happened. kielgaard was silent a moment. then he said, "what do you think 'charge' is?" "i haven't been in any condition to think. maybe it's a surgically implanted battery, set to run down after so long." "too clumsy. what about radioactivity?" "h'm. yes, you mentioned a mine on the inner planet. maybe they mine radioactive ore. that would explain why i have _some_ charge. there's residual radioactivity even in the atmosphere of earth." "that's so," said kielgaard. "but not every planet has it. i'm wondering about this other agent you mentioned seeing. he sounds to me like someone from trans-space. and that's bad." "they play dirty," dan conceded. * * * * * "worse than that," said kielgaard's tiny voice. "they recruit their agents from lassen two. maybe that's a break. unlike earth, lassen two is nearly radiation-free. and trans-space doesn't use finesse. they'll pump porcys full of agents loaded down with organo-transmitters. visual, auditory and olfactory. they'll broadcast on every wave-length, suck out as much information in as short a time as they can, then either pull some dirty trick or slam the porcyns an offer. that is, if everything goes according to plan. "but meanwhile," he added, "one or more of their agents is bound to stand in front of a free 'your charge' device somewhere in the city. very likely, that agent will be radiation-free and some porcyn, for the first time in his life, is going to see a bulb that doesn't even flicker. if the porcyns are as scientifically advanced as we think, and if trans-space is as dirty as usual, there may be a rat-race on before we know it." dan lay gloomily still. "dan," said kielgaard, "where were you standing in relation to the other agent? did he come up from behind or was he in front of you when you reached the statue?" "i was in front of him. why?" "because then you were in his range of vision. _he_ may not have noticed you, but his organo-transmitter would. the chances are you appeared on the screen back at trans-space headquarters. they record those scenes as they come in and their experts go over them frame by frame. unless you happened to be behind someone, they'll see your image on the screen, spot you here and there in other scenes from other agents, study your actions and recognize you as an agent just as surely as you recognized their agent." "yes," said dan wearily, "of course they will." he was thinking that if he had been more awake yesterday, he would have thought of this himself and perhaps avoided it. but he couldn't be alert without sleep and who could sleep in a heaving boat in a thunderstorm? "this changes things," kielgaard was saying. "i'm going to see if we can get a little faster action." "i think i'd better get some more sleep," dan answered. "i may need it tomorrow." "i agree," said kielgaard. "you'll have to keep your eyes open. good night, dan, and good luck." "thanks." dan rolled over on his side. he tried for a moment to remember how the other agent had been standing and whether anyone had been between them to block his view, but he couldn't be sure. dan decided there was nothing to do but assume the worst. he blanked his mind. soon a feeling of deep weariness came over him and he fell asleep. * * * * * in the morning, dan and the milbuns ate a hurried breakfast. dan helped mr. milbun grease his rowing machine, weights, springs and chinning bar, so they wouldn't rust in his absence. milbun worked in a somber mood. all the milbuns, in fact, were unusually quiet for a family going on vacation. when they went out into the hall, carrying no baggage, they even took the elevator to the third floor. "better save our strength," said mr. milbun. the street seemed to dan to have a different atmosphere. people were walking quietly in groups, their eyes cool and alert. the milbuns walked in front of the apartment houses dan had passed the day before, and across the street he saw the place where the chiseled motto had read: freedom devisement fraternity it was gone. some workmen nearby were lifting a stone slab onto a cart. dan blinked. the motto now read: alertness devisement vigilance the milbuns plainly noticed it, too. they drew closer together and looked around thoughtfully. carefully keeping away from brass plates labeled sweeper, they followed a devious route that led to the statue. the statue had changed, too. the hand that gripped the circle was now hidden by a massive shield. the other hand still held what looked like a magnifying glass, and the motto was still "i devise." but the shield gave the whole statue a look of strange menace. across the street, near the place where dan had seen the trans-space agent, stood several men wearing orange capes, barred black across the shoulders. nearby, the brass plate opened and a man in work clothes handed out a box and went back in. at a store entrance up the street, watching them, stood an average-looking man in a purple cape, his look intent and calculating. mavis glanced at the statue and took dan's arm. "devisement," she said, "they won't take you now, will they, before vacation?" dan kept an uneasy silence and mr. milbun said, "of course not, mavis. where's the belt?" mavis glanced at the statue. "oh." dan looked at the statue, then at mavis and mr. milbun, said nothing and went on. they came to a large building with a long flight of broad wide steps. across the face of the building was boldly and sternly lettered, high up: hall of truth lower down was the motto: "speak the truth- live yet a while with us." v on one side of the stairs as they climbed was a statue of a man, smiling. on the other side was an urn with a bunch of carved flowers lying beside it. a big bronze door stood open at the top. they walked through into a large chamber with massive seats in triple rows along two walls, and a single row of yet more massive seats raised along the farther wall. a bored-looking man got up from a low desk as the milbuns sat down in three of the massive seats. the man asked in a dreary voice, "have you, to the best of your knowledge, committed any wrong or illegal act or acts since your last vacation?" he picked up a whiskbroom and pan and waited for their answers. "no," said the three milbuns in earnest quavering voices. the man looked at each of them, shrugged and said boredly, "pass through to your vacations, live law-abiding citizens." he beckoned impatiently to dan, turned to scowl at him, saw dan's cape, stiffened, looked hastily out to the statue framed by the doorway, relaxed slightly and inquired respectfully, "is it time for you to go on vacation, devisement?" "it seems to be," said dan. "i think you should, sir. then you'd be still more helpful if called." dan nodded noncommittally and sat down in one of the massive chairs. his glance fell on an ornamental carving above the big doorway. it was a set of scales held by a giant hand. in one pan of the scales sat a smiling man. in the other was a small heap of ashes. "have you," asked the bored man, "to the best of your knowledge, committed any wrong or illegal act or acts since your last vacation?" he readied the dustpan and whiskbroom. the milbuns watched anxiously at a door in the back of the room. uneasily, dan thought back and remembered no wrong or illegal acts he had committed since his last vacation. "no," he said. the functionary stepped back. "pass through to your vacation, live law-abiding citizen, sir." dan got up and walked toward the milbuns. another bored functionary came in wheeling a cartful of urns. he stopped at a massive chair with a heap of ashes on the seat, a small pile on either arm, and two small piles at the foot. the functionary swept the ashes off and dumped them in the urn. a cold sensation went through dan. he followed the milbuns out into a small room. he felt an out-of-focus sensation and realized the room was a mataform transmitter. an instant later, they were in a spaceship crowded with thoughtful-looking people. * * * * * life on the spaceship seemed to be given over to silent, morose meditation, with an occasional groan that sounded very much like, "oh, give me just one more chance, god." when they left the ship, it was again by mataform, this time to a building where they stood in a line of people. the line wound through a booth where the color of their capes was marked on their foreheads, thence past a counter where they received strong khaki-colored capes, blouses and hose, and new leather shorts and boots to replace those they were wearing. they changed in tiny private rooms, handed their own clothing in at another counter, had a number stamped on their left shoulders and on their boxes of clothing. then they walked out onto a strip of brilliant white sand, fronting on an inlet of sparkling blue water. here and there huddled little crowded knots of people, dancing from one foot to another on the hot sand and yet apparently afraid to go in the water. dan looked to the milbuns for some clue and saw them darting intense calculating glances at the beach and the water. then mr. milbun yelled, "_run for it!_" a slavering sound reached dan's ear. he sprinted after the milbuns, burst through the crowd in a headlong bolt for the cove, then swam as fast as he could to keep up with them as they raced for the opposite shore. they crawled out, strangling and gasping, and dragged themselves up on the sand. dan lay, heaving in deep breaths, then rolled over and sat up. the air around them was split by screams, laced through with sobs, curses and groans. on the shore opposite, a mad dog darted across the crowded beach and emptied people into the cove. in the cove, a glistening black sweep of hide separated the water for an instant, then sank below. people thrashed, fought and went under. dan looked up. on the wooden building beyond the cove and the beach was a broad sign: porcys planet rejuvenation center dan read the sign three times. if this was rejuvenation, the porcyns could have it. beside dan, milbun stood up, still struggling for breath, and pulled his wife and mavis to their feet. "come on," he said. "we've _got_ to get through the swamp ahead of the grayboas!" * * * * * the rest of the day, they pushed through slimy muck up to their knees and sometimes up to their necks. behind them, the crowd screamingly thinned out. that night, they washed in icy spring water, tore chunks of meat from a huge broiled creature turning on a spit and went to sleep in tents to the buzz and drone of creatures that shot their long needle noses through the walls like drillers hunting for oil. the following day, they spent carefully easing from crevice to narrow toehold up the sheer face of a mountain. food and shelter were at the top. jagged rocks and hungry creatures were at the bottom. that night, dan slept right through an urgent buzz from kielgaard. the next night, he woke enough to hear it, but he didn't have the strength to answer. where, he thought, is the rejuvenation in this? then he had a sudden glimmering. it was the porcyn _race_ that was rejuvenated. the unfit of the porcyns died violently. it took stamina just to live from one day to the next. even the milbuns were saying that this was the worst vacation ever. trails slid out from under them. trees fell toward them. boulders bounded down steep slopes at them. at first, the milbuns tried to remember forgotten sins for which all this might be repayment. but when there was the dull _boom_ of an explosion and they narrowly escaped a landslide, milbun looked at the rocks across the trail with sunken red eyes. he sniffed the air and growled, "undevised." that afternoon, dan and the milbuns passed three average-looking men hanging by their hands from the limb of a tree beside the trail. the faces of the hanging men bore a surprised expression. they hung perfectly still and motionless, except for a slight swaying caused by the wind. dan and the milbuns reached a mataform station late that afternoon. a very hard-eyed guard in an orange cape, barred across the shoulders in black, let them through and they found themselves in another spaceship, bound for fumidor, the mining planet. * * * * * dan sat back exhausted and fell asleep. he was awakened by a determined buzz. "_dan!_" said kielgaard's voice. "yes." dan sat up. "go ahead." "trans-space is going to try to take over porcys. there's nothing you can do about that, but they've landed agents on vacation planet to pick you off. look out." dan told kielgaard what had happened to the agents on vacation planet, such as the "undevised" explosion and being hung up by the hands. kielgaard whistled. "maybe the porcyns can take care of themselves. trans-space doesn't think so." "how did you find out?" the tiny voice held a note of grim satisfaction. "they ran an agent in on us and he gave himself away. he went back with an organo-transmitter inside him, and a memory bank. the bank stores up the day's impressions. the transmitter squirts them out in one multi-frequency blast. the agent is poorly placed for an informant, but we've learned a lot through him." "how are they going to take over porcys?" "we don't know. they think they've found the porcyns' weak point, but if so, we don't know what it is." "listen," urged dan, "maybe _we_ ought to put a lot of agents on porcys." "no," said kielgaard. "that's the wrong way to play it. if we go in now, we'll be too late to do any good. we're still counting on you." "there's not very much i can do by myself." "just do your best. that's all we can ask." dan spent the next week chipping out pieces of a radioactive ore. at night, kielgaard would report the jubilant mood of trans-space. on the following days, dan would chop at the ore with vicious blows that jarred him from his wrists to his heels. the steady monotonous work, once he was used to it, left his mind free to think and he tried furiously to plan what he would do when he got out. but he found he didn't really know enough about porcys to make a sensible plan. then he began trying to organize what he had seen and heard during his stay on the planet. at night, kielgaard helped him and together they went over their theories, trying to find those that would fit the facts of porcys. "it all hinges on population pressure," said kielgaard finally. "on most planets we know of, overpopulation leads to war, starvation, birth control or emigration. these are the only ways. at least, they were, till we discovered porcys." * * * * * "all right," agreed dan. "grant that. the porcyns plainly don't have any of those things, or not to any great extent. instead, they have institutions such as we've never seen before. they have 'sweepers,' so-called 'vacations' and a rope from building to building. all these things cut down population." "don't forget their 'truth chairs,'" said kielgaard. "where you either tell the truth or get converted to ashes--yes. but how does it all fit in?" "let's take one individual as an example. start at birth." "he's born," said dan. "probably they have nurseries, but we know they stick together as families, because we have the milbuns to go by. he grows up, living at his parents' place. he goes with other children to school or to see different parts of his city. a lion--which he calls a 'dog'--protects him." "yes," said kielgaard. "it protects him from sweepers. but most grownups don't need protection. only those whose charge is low." "of course. the boy hasn't been on vacation yet. he's not radioactive. apparently you have to be radioactive to open doors. at the apartment house, the boy comes in a small door to one side. the lions, or what resemble lions, like the children but don't like the sweepers. and the sweepers are afraid of them. all right. but what about when he grows up?" "well, for one thing, he has to use the regular doors now. and they won't open unless he's been on vacation. and if he hasn't been on vacation and if his charge isn't high, the sweepers will go out and grab him. that must be what that sign you saw meant. 'swept' was a warning that there was no escape in that direction." "i begin to see it," said dan. "i was safe on that road because the birth rate in that section wasn't high. but in the city, the birth rate _was_ high, so, to keep the population down, the standards were raised. apparently the sweepers were fed less and got more hungry. people had to go on vacation more often. but what about the rope?" * * * * * "i don't think we really know enough to understand the rope," said kielgaard, "but maybe it's a face-saving device. people who don't think they're in good enough shape to get through 'vacation,' and who don't want to die a slow death avoiding sweepers and waiting to go through locked doors, can go across on the rope. or perhaps it's a penance. if a man has done something wrong and he's afraid to deny it in the truth chair, perhaps he's allowed to confess and go so many times across the rope as punishment. the people cheered. that must mean it's honorable." "that makes sense," dan agreed. "all right, but why don't they just ship their surplus population to the other two planets?" "we've studied that back here," said kielgaard. "we think it's because they wouldn't dare. they've got their little mainland allotted and rationed down to the last blade of grass. they can do that because it's small enough to keep control of. now suppose they try to enforce the same system on a new planet with a hundred times the land area--what's going to happen? they'll have unknown, uncontrollable factors to deal with. their system will break down. that statue of theirs shows they know it, too. the man in the blue cape 'devises' and his strong right hand does nothing but keep the circle--their system--from flying apart. what puzzles me is that they're satisfied with it." "there's another point," dan said, "but i think i see it now. they've got a caste system, but people must be able to move from one caste to another. there must be a competitive exam or some system of choice. the vacation advisor said mr. milbun was 'at present' a merchant. his wife was 'now' a housewife. and no one ever asked my name, though i told it voluntarily to milbun. it was always 'yes, devisement,' or 'is it time to take your vacation, devisement?' there were no personal titles like 'sir moglin,' or 'first magistrate moglin,' such as we've encountered on other planets." kielgaard grunted. "that would explain the differently colored capes, too. no one would care if a man was a street-cleaner ten years ago. they'd see his cape was blue and give him immediate, automatic respect." "yes," said dan. "that's it. and no one would dare _cheat_ about the color of the cape he wore, because, regardless of his position, sooner or later his charge would be gone. then he would have to go on vacation. and to do _that_, he _has_ to sit in the truth chair and tell the truth or get incinerated." dan stopped suddenly and sucked in a deep breath. "what's wrong?" asked kielgaard. "_that's_ the weak point." vi by the end of the week, dan was able to pass through a door with a specialized type of geiger counter in the locking circuit. and by that time, kielgaard had noted sharp fluctuations in the mood at trans-space. there had been an interval of wild confusion, but it hadn't lasted. many more trans-space agents had gone to porcys and trans-space seemed to be on top again. the instant dan stepped from the mines through the door marked "out," he was rushed through a shower, a shave and a haircut, shoved into a truth chair and asked questions, given a new cape and clothes, and buckled into a glittering belt by a purple-caped man addressed as "reverence." no sooner was the belt in place than all, including "reverence," snapped to attention. "devisement," said a man in an orange-and-black cape, "we need your decision quickly. at home, men have usurped cloaks of devisement and given orders contrary to the public good. they wore belts of power, but did not die when their false orders were given. in the central city, they convened a council, seated themselves in the hall of truth, and on the very first oath every single one of them present was thrown into the life beyond. "because the statue was already belted, men wearing cloaks of devisement _had_ to give the orders. but now they were all gone. looters roamed the streets, breaking in doors. these men were vacation-dodgers--out so long that they couldn't even make a charge-light flicker--and the sweepers cleaned up some of them. _but they killed the sweepers!_ devisement, i tell you the truth!" "i believe you," said dan. "thank heaven. devisement, something must be done. a young boy passed and graduated to the devisement cape, but before he could take action, he was shot from ambush. we found an old man of the right cape out in the country, and when we finally convinced him, he rounded up one hundred and fifty-seven vacation-dodgers and executed them. we had things in order, but now a glut of lunatics in devisement capes and belts of power have burst into the streets. their orders are silly, yet their belts don't kill them. they have no fear of the truth. business is stopped and men are hungry. the people are going wild. strange boats have appeared offshore. mataform transmitters of odd design are being set up near the shore. this cannot go on without breaking the circle!" dan's throat felt dry. "sir," said the porcyn desperately, "you _must_ devise something! what shall we do?" a faint tingling at dan's waist suggested to him that he choose his words carefully. one lie or bad intention and the belt of power would probably finish him. he thought carefully. the total power of the porcyn planet must be at least the equal of even the huge trans-space organization. and porcys had its power all in one place. the planet was organized to the last ounce of energy, if only it could be brought to bear in time. dan ordered his anxious companions to take him to porcys. * * * * * far under the central city, which was the city he had seen, he found a weary, powerful old man in a light-blue cape and glittering belt, directing operations from a television command post. the console showed street scenes of men in sky-blue capes and flashing belts, who danced and jabbered, their faces aglow with lunacy as they rapped out conflicting orders and the people jerked and dashed this way and that, tears running down their faces. near the statue, before the hall of truth, close ranks of porcyn men in orange-and-black capes stood massed on the steps, holding sleek-bored guns. on the street below, gibbering lunatics in sky-blue danced and shrieked orders, but the eyes of the men on the steps were tightly shut. by a technicality, they avoided obedience to the lunacy, for with their eyes shut, how could they be sure who gave the command? at the belted statue itself, a man in blue was clinging to one bronze arm as he slammed down a hammer to knock loose the partly broken circle. the statue obstinately refused to let go. at the base of the statue, holding a microphone, stood an average-looking man in a sky-blue cape, his lips drawn back in an amused smile. he gestured to men with crowbars and they tried to jam them between the statue and its base. this failing, they took up chisels and hammers. the man working on the circle shrugged and jumped down. at the console, the old man looked up at dan. he put his hand out and felt dan's belt. apparently the tingle reassured him and he seemed to accept dan without further question. "this is about the end," he said. "when that statue goes, those men will feel the jolt and open their eyes. they're the last formed body of troops on the planet, and when they go, we'll have nothing to strike with. there must be something i could devise for this, but i've been up three nights and i can't think." "can you delay it?" asked dan, grappling with the beginning of his plan. "oh, we'll delay it. i've got the last of the sweepers collected at the holes opening into the square. just when that statue begins to tip, i'll let the sweepers out. that will stop things for a while. then they'll kill the sweepers and my bolt is shot." "won't the men you've got here fire on those blue-caped fakes?" "devisement," said the old man, shaking his head, "you know better." "are there any fire hoses? will your men squirt water on the blue-caped ones?" "yes," said the old man, leaning forward. "they'll get shot. but yes, they will. what is it? what are you devising?" * * * * * dan outlined his plan. the old man's eyes lighted. he nodded and dan went out and climbed with guides through a grim, dark tunnel where the sweepers were kept. he peered out the hole, and as across the street the statue began to tip, he burst outside and sprinted into the square. the trans-space leader raised his microphone. dan ripped it out of his hand and knocked him off his feet, then knelt and picked up the heavy shield that had been taken off the statue to get at the ring. a bullet hummed over dan's head. with a rush of air and a heavy smash, the statue landed full length on the ground. dan hauled himself up onto its base. another bullet buzzed past him. then there was a yell, and dan looked down in the street. the sweepers were horrible as they poured from their holes, but they looked almost beautiful to dan. he glanced at the porcyns massed on the steps, their faces white with near-hysteria. their eyes were open and watching him; the trans-space men were too busy to give orders. dan raised the microphone and his voice boomed out: "_close your eyes till you hear the roar of the lion! then obey your true leaders!_" he repeated the order three times before it dawned on the trans-space technicians that this was not according to plan. the loudspeaker gave a booming click and cut off. by then, the sweepers had been killed and dan became aware of bullets thrumming past him. suddenly he felt weak with panic that the rest of the plan had fallen apart. up the street, porcyn men were unscrewing a cap on the face of a building. they connected a hose. a sky-blue-caped trans-space agent ordered them away. the porcyns turned, wads of wax in their ears, and raised the hose. a stream of water knocked the agents backward. shots rang out. porcyns fell, but other porcyns took their places. the stream arched and fell on the trans-space agents and abruptly a whirl of color tinged the water. blots and blobs of green, orange, pink and yellow spattered the blue-caped agents. at the end of the street, someone ran up tugging a lion by the mane. "_go_, dog! _run!_" somewhere a child cried out in terror. the lion roared. the troops on the steps opened their eyes. an old man's voice, amplified, spoke out with icy authority: "_deploy for street-fighting! first rank, move out along center street toward north viaduct. rifles at full charge. wide intervals. use every scrap of cover. shoot the false-belted usurpers on sight._ "_second rank, move out along west ocean avenue toward the sea wall...._" shots rang out. there was a faint thrumming hum, like wires in the wind, and streaks of cherry radiance criss-crossed in the air. the lion roared, unable to find the child. the roars of other lions joined in. dan was aware that he was lying atop the hard base of the statue, but he didn't know how he had come to be there. he tried to stand up. he heard voices screaming orders, then falling still, and a scene swung into his line of sight like something watched through the rear-view mirror of a turning groundcar. half a dozen men, guns in their hands, their bodies and blue capes spattered and smeared till they could hardly be recognized, lay motionless on the pavement then the scene swung up and away, and dan felt weightless. something hit him hard. his head bounced and he rolled over. soft grass was in his face. it smelled fresh. there was a dull boom that moved the ground under him. he twisted his head to look up. a massive arm was stretched out over him, its hand firmly gripping the cut edges of a big metal ring. somewhere a drum took up a steady monotonous beat. he fell into a deep black quiet and all the sights and sounds grew smaller and fainter and disappeared entirely. * * * * * he awoke in a porcyn hospital. kielgaard was there, wearing a broad grin and brilliant porcyn clothes and promising dan a huge bonus. but it was all like a dream. kielgaard said the porcyns were as mad as hornets. they had raised a battle fleet and it had taken a corps of diplomats and the combined intergalactic space fleet to argue them out of personally chopping trans-space into fine bits. no one knew what would finally happen, but meanwhile galactic had its contract and everyone was tentatively happy. his account finished, kielgaard grinned more broadly yet and switched on a bedside televiewer. dan lifted his head off the pillow and looked at the screen. then he stared. it was the statue, solid once more on its base, the ring grasped firmly in one hand and a big wrench in the other. but something seemed different. dan at last saw what it was. it was the face. it wasn't a bad face, if one expected to see strong cheekbones, copper skin and a high-arched nose. "what a compliment!" he said, embarrassedly pleased. "i--hell, i feel like blushing." "make it a good one," said kielgaard. "after tomorrow, you'll have to blush with your own face again." "_tomorrow?_" "sure. you're still working for us, remember." dan sank back on the pillow and gazed up speculatively at the ceiling. "all right, but i want some time off. i have a fat bonus to spend." "you could use a holiday," kielgaard agreed. "why not try the andromedan cloud gardens? pretty expensive, but with your bonus--" "i've got a place picked out," said dan. "i'm going to take a vacation on porcys." kielgaard started. "you're joking! or you've gone twitchy!" "no. before i have to give this face back to surgery, i ought to get a _little_ enjoyment out of it. and what could be more enjoyable than hanging around the statue, letting people see the resemblance? besides, they can't make me take my vacation on the vacation planet--i've already had it." the ignoble savages by evelyn e. smith illustrated by dillon [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy science fiction march 1957. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] snaddra had but one choice in its fight to afford to live belowground--underhandedly pretend theirs was an aboveboard society! "go away from me, skkiru," larhgan said, pushing his hand off her arm. "a beggar does not associate with the high priestess of snaddra." "but the earthmen aren't due for another fifteen minutes," skkiru protested. "of what importance are fifteen minutes compared to eternity!" she exclaimed. her lovely eyes fuzzed softly with emotion. "you don't seem to realize, skkiru, that this isn't just a matter of minutes or hours. it's forever." "forever!" he looked at her incredulously. "you mean we're going to keep this up as a permanent thing? you're joking!" bbulas groaned, but skkiru didn't care about that. the sad, sweet way larhgan shook her beautiful head disturbed him much more, and when she said, "no, skkiru, i am not joking," a tiny pang of doubt and apprehension began to quiver in his second smallest left toe. "this is, in effect, good-by," she continued. "we shall see each other again, of course, but only from a distance. on feast days, perhaps you may be permitted to kiss the hem of my robe ... but that will be all." skkiru turned to the third person present in the council chamber. "bbulas, this is your fault! it was all your idea!" there was regret on the dilettante's thin face--an obviously insincere regret, the younger man knew, since he was well aware how bbulas had always felt about the girl. "i am sorry, skkiru," bbulas intoned. "i had fancied you understood. this is not a game we are playing, but a new way of life we are adopting. a necessary way of life, if we of snaddra are to keep on living at all." "it's not that i don't love you, skkiru," larhgan put in gently, "but the welfare of our planet comes first." * * * * * she had been seeing too many of the terrestrial fictapes from the library, skkiru thought resentfully. there was too damn much terran influence on this planet. and this new project was the last straw. no longer able to control his rage and grief, he turned a triple somersault in the air with rage. "then why was i made a beggar and she the high priestess? you arranged that purposely, bbulas. you--" "now, skkiru," bbulas said wearily, for they had been through all this before, "you know that all the ranks and positions were distributed by impartial lot, except for mine, and, of course, such jobs as could carry over from the civilized into the primitive." bbulas breathed on the spectacles he was wearing, as contact lenses were not considered backward enough for the kind of planet snaddra was now supposed to be, and attempted to wipe them dry on his robe. however, the thick, jewel-studded embroidery got in his way and so he was forced to lift the robe and wipe all three of the lenses on the smooth, soft, spun metal of his top underskirt. "after all," he went on speaking as he wiped, "i have to be high priest, since i organized this culture and am the only one here qualified to administer it. and, as the president himself concurred in these arrangements, i hardly think you--a mere private citizen--have the right to question them." "just because you went to school in another solar system," skkiru said, whirling with anger, "you think you're so smart!" "i won't deny that i do have educational and cultural advantages which were, unfortunately, not available to the general populace of this planet. however, even under the old system, i was always glad to utilize my superior attainments as official dilettante for the good of all and now--" "sure, glad to have a chance to rig this whole setup so you could break up things between larhgan and me. you've had your eye on her for some time." skkiru coiled his antennae at bbulas, hoping the insult would provoke him into an unbecoming whirl, but the dilettante remained calm. one of the chief outward signs of terran-type training was self-control and bbulas had been thoroughly terranized. _i hate terrestrials_, skkiru said to himself. _i hate terra._ the quiver of anxiety had risen up his leg and was coiling and uncoiling in his stomach. he hoped it wouldn't reach his antennae--if he were to break down and psonk in front of larhgan, it would be the final humiliation. "skkiru!" the girl exclaimed, rotating gently, for she, like her fiance--her erstwhile fiance, that was, for the new regime had caused all such ties to be severed--and every other literate person on the planet, had received her education at the local university. although sound, the school was admittedly provincial in outlook and very poor in the emotional department. "one would almost think that the lots had some sort of divine intelligence behind them, because you certainly are behaving in a beggarly manner!" "and i have already explained to you, skkiru," bbulas said, with a patience much more infuriating than the girl's anger, "that i had no idea of who was to become my high priestess. the lots chose larhgan. it is, as the earthmen say, kismet." * * * * * he adjusted the fall of his glittering robe before the great polished four-dimensional reflector that formed one wall of the chamber. _kismet_, skkiru muttered to himself, _and a little sleight of hand._ but he didn't dare offer this conclusion aloud; the libel laws of snaddra were very severe. so he had to fall back on a weak, "and i suppose it is kismet that makes us all have to go live out on the ground during the day, like--like savages." "it is necessary," bbulas replied without turning. "pooh," skkiru said. "pooh, _pooh_, pooh!" larhgan's dainty earflaps closed. "skkiru! such language!" "as you said," bbulas murmured, contemptuously coiling one antenna at skkiru, "the lots chose well and if you touch me, skkiru, we shall have another drawing for beggar and you will be made a metal-worker." "but i can't work metal!" "then that will make it much worse for you than for the other outcasts," bbulas said smugly, "because you will be a pariah without a trade." "speaking of pariahs, that reminds me, skkiru, before i forget, i'd better give you back your grimpatch--" larhgan handed the glittering bauble to him--"and you give me mine. since we can't be betrothed any longer, you might want to give yours to some nice beggar girl." "i don't want to give my grimpatch to some nice beggar girl!" skkiru yelled, twirling madly in the air. "as for me," she sighed, standing soulfully on her head, "i do not think i shall ever marry. i shall make the religious life my career. are there going to be any saints in your mythos, bbulas?" "even if there will be," bbulas said, "you certainly won't qualify if you keep putting yourself into a position which not only represents a trait wholly out of keeping with the new culture, but is most unseemly with the high priestess's robes." larhgan ignored his unfeeling observations. "i shall set myself apart from mundane affairs," she vowed, "and i shall pretend to be happy, even though my heart will be breaking." it was only at that moment that skkiru realized just how outrageous the whole thing really was. there must be another solution to the planet's problem. "listen--" he began, but just then excited noises filtered down from overhead. it was too late. "earth ship in view!" a squeaky voice called through the intercom. "everybody topside and don't forget your shoes." except the beggar. beggars went barefoot. beggars suffered. bbulas had made him beggar purposely, and the lots were a lot of slibwash. "hurry up, skkiru." * * * * * bbulas slid the ornate headdress over his antennae, which, already gilded and jeweled, at once seemed to become a part of it. he looked pretty damn silly, skkiru thought, at the same time conscious of his own appearance--which was, although picturesque enough to delight romantic terrestrial hearts, sufficiently wretched to charm the most hardened sadist. "hurry up, skkiru," bbulas said. "they mustn't suspect the existence of the city underground or we're finished before we've started." "for my part, i wish we'd never started," skkiru grumbled. "what was wrong with our old culture, anyway?" that was intended as a rhetorical question, but bbulas answered it anyway. he always answered questions; it had never seemed to penetrate his mind that school-days were long since over. "i've told you a thousand times that our old culture was too much like the terrans' own to be of interest to them," he said, with affected weariness. "after all, most civilized societies are basically similar; it is only primitive societies that differ sharply, one from the other--and we have to be different to attract earthmen. they're pretty choosy. you've got to give them what they want, and that's what they want. now take up your post on the edge of the field, try to look hungry, and remember this isn't for you or for me, but for snaddra." "for snaddra," larhgan said, placing her hand over her anterior heart in a gesture which, though devout on earth--or so the fictapes seemed to indicate--was obscene on snaddra, owing to the fact that certain essential organs were located in different areas in the snaddrath than in the corresponding terrestrial life-form. already the terrestrial influence was corrupting her, skkiru thought mournfully. she had been such a nice girl, too. "we may never meet on equal terms again, skkiru," she told him, with a long, soulful glance that made his hearts sink down to his quivering toes, "but i promise you there will never be anyone else for me--and i hope that knowledge will inspire you to complete cooperation with bbulas." "if that doesn't," bbulas said, "i have other methods of inspiration." "all right," skkiru answered sulkily. "i'll go to the edge of the field, and i'll speak broken inter-galactic, and i'll forsake my normal habits and customs, and i'll even _beg_. but i don't have to like doing it, and i don't intend to like doing it." all three of larhgan's eyes fuzzed with emotion. "i'm proud of you, skkiru," she said brokenly. bbulas sniffed. the three of them floated up to ground level in a triple silence. * * * * * "alms, for the love of ipsnadd," skkiru chanted, as the two terrans descended from the ship and plowed their way through the mud to meet a procession of young snaddrath dressed in elaborate ceremonial costumes, and singing a popular ballad--to which less ribald, as well as less inspiring, words than the originals had been fitted by bbulas, just in case, by some extremely remote chance, the terrans had acquired a smattering of snadd somewhere. since neither party was accustomed to navigating mud, their progress was almost imperceptible. "alms, for the love of ipsnadd," chanted skkiru the beggar. his teeth chattered as he spoke, for the rags he wore had been custom-weatherbeaten for him by the planet's best tailor--now a pariah, of course, because snadd tailors were, naturally, metal-workers--and the wind and the rain were joyously making their way through the demolished wires. never before had skkiru been on the surface of the planet, except to pass over, and he had actually touched it only when taking off and landing. the snaddrath had no means of land transport, having previously found it unnecessary--but now both air-cars and self-levitation were on the prohibited list as being insufficiently primitive. the outside was no place for a civilized human being, particularly in the wet season or--more properly speaking on snaddra--the wetter season. skkiru's feet were soaked with mud; not that the light sandals worn by the members of the procession appeared to be doing them much good, either. it gave him a kind of melancholy pleasure to see that the privileged ones were likewise trying to repress shivers. though their costumes were rich, they were also scanty, particularly in the case of the females, for earthmen had been reported by tape and tale to be humanoid. as the mud clutched his toes, skkiru remembered an idea he had once gotten from an old sporting fictape of terrestrial origin and had always planned to experiment with, but had never gotten around to--the weather had always been so weathery, there were so many other more comfortable sports, larhgan had wanted him to spend more of his leisure hours with her, and so on. however, he still had the equipment, which he'd salvaged from a wrecked air-car, in his apartment--and it was the matter of a moment to run down, while bbulas was looking the other way, and get it. bbulas couldn't really object, skkiru stilled the nagging quiver in his toe, because what could be more primitive than any form of land transport? and even though it took time to get the things, they worked so well that, in spite of the procession's head start, he was at the earth ship long before the official greeters had reached it. * * * * * the newcomers were indeed humanoid, he saw. only the peculiarly pasty color of their skins and their embarrassing lack of antennae distinguished them visibly from the snaddrath. they were dressed much as the snaddrath had been before they had adopted primitive garb. in fact, the terrestrials were quite decent-looking life-forms, entirely different from the foppish monsters skkiru had somehow expected to represent the cultural ruling race. of course, he had frequently seen pictures of them, but everyone knew how easily those could be retouched. why, it was the terrestrials themselves, he had always understood, who had invented the art of retouching--thus proving beyond a doubt that they had something to hide. "look, raoul," the older of the two earthmen said in terran--which the snaddrath were not, according to the master plan, supposed to understand, but which most of them did, for it was the fashionable third language on most of the outer planets. "a beggar. haven't seen one since some other chaps and i were doing a spot of field work on that little planet in the arcturus system--what was its name? glotch, that's it. very short study, it turned out to be. couldn't get more than a pamphlet out of it, as we were unable to stay long enough to amass enough material for a really definitive work. the natives tried to eat us, so we had to leave in somewhat of a hurry." "oh, they were cannibals?" the other earthman asked, so respectfully that it was easy to deduce he was the subordinate of the two. "how horrible!" "no, not at all," the other assured him. "they weren't human--another species entirely--so you could hardly call it cannibalism. in fact, it was quite all right from the ethical standpoint, but abstract moral considerations seemed less important to us than self-preservation just then. decided that, in this case, it would be best to let the missionaries get first crack at them. soften them up, you know." "and the missionaries--did they soften them up, cyril?" "they softened up the missionaries, i believe." cyril laughed. "ah, well, it's all in the day's work." "i hope these creatures are not man-eaters," raoul commented, with a polite smile at cyril and an apprehensive glance at the oncoming procession--_creatures indeed_! skkiru thought, with a mental sniff. "we have come such a long and expensive way to study them that it would be indeed a pity if we also were forced to depart in haste. especially since this is my first field trip and i would like to make good at it." "oh, you will, my boy, you will." cyril clapped the younger man on the shoulder. "i have every confidence in your ability." either he was stupid, skkiru thought, or he was lying, in spite of bbulas' asseverations that untruth was unknown to terrestrials--which had always seemed highly improbable, anyway. how could any intelligent life-form possibly stick to the truth all the time? it wasn't human; it wasn't even humanoid; it wasn't even polite. "the natives certainly appear to be human enough," raoul added, with an appreciative glance at the females, who had been selected for the processional honor with a view to reported terrestrial tastes. "some slight differences, of course--but, if two eyes are beautiful, three eyes can be fifty per cent lovelier, and chartreuse has always been my favorite color." _if they stand out here in the cold much longer, they are going to turn bright yellow._ his own skin, skkiru knew, had faded from its normal healthy emerald to a sickly celadon. * * * * * cyril frowned and his companion's smile vanished, as if the contortion of his superior's face had activated a circuit somewhere. _maybe the little one's a robot!_ however, it couldn't be--a robot would be better constructed and less interested in females than raoul. "remember," cyril said sternly, "we must not establish undue rapport with the native females. it tends to detract from true objectivity." "yes, cyril," raoul said meekly. cyril assumed a more cheerful aspect "i should like to give this chap something for old times' sake. what do you suppose is the medium of exchange here?" _money_, skkiru said to himself, but he didn't dare contribute this piece of information, helpful though it would be. "how should i know?" raoul shrugged. "empathize. get in there, old chap, and start batting." "why not give him a bar of chocolate, then?" raoul suggested grumpily. "the language of the stomach, like the language of love, is said to be a universal one." "splendid idea! i always knew you had it in you, raoul!" skkiru accepted the candy with suitable--and entirely genuine--murmurs of gratitude. chocolate was found only in the most expensive of the planet's delicacy shops--and now neither delicacy shops nor chocolate were to be found, so, if bbulas thought he was going to save the gift to contribute it later to the treasury, the "high priest" was off his rocker. to make sure there would be no subsequent dispute about possession, skkiru ate the candy then and there. chocolate increased the body's resistance to weather, and never before had he had to endure so much weather all at once. on earth, he had heard, where people lived exposed to weather, they often sickened of it and passed on--which helped to solve the problem of birth control on so vulgarly fecund a planet. snaddra, alas, needed no such measures, for its population--like its natural resources--was dwindling rapidly. still, skkiru thought, as he moodily munched on the chocolate, it would have been better to flicker out on their own than to descend to a subterfuge like this for nothing more than survival. * * * * * being a beggar, skkiru discovered, did give him certain small, momentary advantages over those who had been alloted higher ranks. for one thing, it was quite in character for him to tread curiously upon the strangers' heels all the way to the temple--a ramshackle affair, but then it had been run up in only three days--where the official reception was to be held. the principal difficulty was that, because of his equipment, he had a little trouble keeping himself from overshooting the strangers. and though bbulas might frown menacingly at him--and not only for his forwardness--that was in character on both sides, too. nonetheless, skkiru could not reconcile himself to his beggarhood, no matter how much he tried to comfort himself by thinking at least he wasn't a pariah like the unfortunate metal-workers who had to stand segregated from the rest by a chain of their own devising--a poetic thought, that was, but well in keeping with his beggarhood. beggars were often poets, he believed, and poets almost always beggars. since metal-working was the chief industry of snaddra, this had provided the planet automatically with a large lowest caste. bbulas had taken the easy way out. skkiru swallowed the last of the chocolate and regarded the "high priest" with a simple-minded mendicant's grin. however, there were volcanic passions within him that surged up from his toes when, as the wind and rain whipped through his scanty coverings, he remembered the snug underskirts bbulas was wearing beneath his warm gown. they were metal, but they were solid. all the garments visible or potentially visible were of woven metal, because, although there was cloth on the planet, it was not politic for the earthmen to discover how heavily the snaddrath depended upon imports. as the earthmen reached the temple, larhgan now appeared to join bbulas at the head of the long flight of stairs that led to it. although skkiru had seen her in her priestly apparel before, it had not made the emotional impression upon him then that it did now, when, standing there, clad in beauty, dignity and warm clothes, she bade the newcomers welcome in several thousand words not too well chosen for her by bbulas--who fancied himself a speech-writer as well as a speech-maker, for there was no end to the man's conceit. the difference between her magnificent garments and his own miserable rags had their full impact upon skkiru at this moment. he saw the gulf that had been dug between them and, for the first time in his short life, he felt the tormenting pangs of caste distinction. she looked so lovely and so remote. "... and so you are most welcome to snaddra, men of earth," she was saying in her melodious voice. "our resources may be small but our hearts are large, and what little we have, we offer with humility and with love. we hope that you will enjoy as long and as happy a stay here as you did on nemeth...." cyril looked at raoul, who, however, seemed too absorbed in contemplating larhgan's apparently universal charms to pay much attention to the expression on his companion's face. "... and that you will carry our affection back to all the peoples of the galaxy." * * * * * she had finished. and now cyril cleared his throat. "dear friends, we were honored by your gracious invitation to visit this fair planet, and we are honored now by the cordial reception you have given to us." the crowd yoomped politely. after a slight start, cyril went on, apparently deciding that applause was all that had been intended. "we feel quite sure that we are going to derive both pleasure and profit from our stay here, and we promise to make our intensive analysis of your culture as painless as possible. we wish only to study your society, not to tamper with it in any way." _ha, ha_, skkiru said to himself. _ha, ha, ha!_ "but why is it," raoul whispered in terran as he glanced around out of the corners of his eyes, "that only the beggar wears mudshoes?" "shhh," cyril hissed back. "we'll find out later, when we've established rapport. don't be so impatient!" bbulas gave a sickly smile. skkiru could almost find it in his hearts to feel sorry for the man. "we have prepared our best hut for you, noble sirs," bbulas said with great self-control, "and, by happy chance, this very evening a small but unusually interesting ceremony will be held outside the temple. we hope you will be able to attend. it is to be a rain dance." "rain dance!" raoul pulled his macintosh together more tightly at the throat. "but why do you want rain? my faith, not only does it rain now, but the planet seems to be a veritable sea of mud. not, of course," he added hurriedly as cyril's reproachful eye caught his, "that it is not attractive mud. finest mud i have ever seen. such texture, such color, such aroma!" cyril nodded three times and gave an appreciative sniff. "but," raoul went on, "one can have too much of even such a good thing as mud...." the smile did not leave bbulas' smooth face. "yes, of course, honorable terrestrials. that is why we are holding this ceremony. it is not a dance to bring on rain. it is a dance to _stop_ rain." he was pretty quick on the uptake, skkiru had to concede. however, that was not enough. the man had no genuine organizational ability. in the time he'd had in which to plan and carry out a scheme for the improvement of snaddra, surely he could have done better than this high-school theocracy. for one thing, he could have apportioned the various roles so that each person would be making a definite contribution to the society, instead of creating some positions plums, like the priesthood, and others prunes, like the beggarship. what kind of life was that for an active, ambitious young man, standing around begging? and, moreover, from whom was skkiru going to beg? only the earthmen, for the snaddrath, no matter how much they threw themselves into the spirit of their roles, could not be so carried away that they would give handouts to a young man whom they had been accustomed to see basking in the bosom of luxury. * * * * * unfortunately, the fees that he'd received in the past had not enabled him both to live well and to save, and now that his fortunes had been so drastically reduced, he seemed in a fair way of starving to death. it gave him a gentle, moody pleasure to envisage his own funeral, although, at the same time, he realized that bbulas would probably have to arrange some sort of pension for him; he could not expect skkiru's patriotism to extend to abnormal limits. a man might be willing to die for his planet in many ways--but wantonly starving to death as the result of a primitive affectation was hardly one of them. all the same, skkiru reflected as he watched the visitors being led off to the native hut prepared for them, how ignominious it would be for one of the brightest young architects on the planet to have to subsist miserably on the dole just because the world had gone aboveground. the capital had risen to the surface and the other cities would soon follow suit. meanwhile, a careful system of tabus had been designed to keep the earthmen from discovering the existence of those other cities. he could, of course, emigrate to another part of the planet, to one of them, and stave off his doom for a while--but that would not be playing the game. besides, in such a case, he wouldn't be able to see larhgan. as if all this weren't bad enough, he had been done an injury which struck directly at his professional pride. he hadn't even been allowed to help in planning the huts. bbulas and some workmen had done all that themselves with the aid of some antique blueprints that had been put out centuries before by a terrestrial magazine and had been acquired from a rare tape-and-book dealer on gambrell, for, skkiru thought, far too high a price. he could have designed them himself just as badly and much more cheaply. it wasn't that skkiru didn't understand well enough that snaddra had been forced into making such a drastic change in its way of life. what resources it once possessed had been depleted and--aside from minerals--they had never been very extensive to begin with. all life-forms on the planet were on the point of extinction, save fish and rice--the only vegetable that would grow on snaddra, and originally a terran import at that. so food and fiber had to be brought from the other planets, at fabulous expense, for snaddra was not on any of the direct trade routes and was too unattractive to lure the tourist business. something definitely had to be done, if it were not to decay altogether. and that was where the planetary dilettante came in. * * * * * the traditional office of planetary dilettante was a civil-service job, awarded by competitive examination whenever it fell vacant to the person who scored highest in intelligence, character and general gloonatz. however, the tests were inadequate when it came to measuring sense of proportion, adaptiveness and charm--and there, skkiru felt, was where the essential flaw lay. after all, no really effective test would have let a person like bbulas come out on top. the winner was sent to gambrell, the nearest planet with a terran league university, to be given a thorough terran-type education. no individual on snaddra could afford such schooling, no matter how great his personal fortune, because the transportation costs were so immense that only a government could afford them. that was the reason why only one person in each generation could be chosen to go abroad at the planet's expense and acquire enough finish to cover the rest of the population. the dilettante's official function had always been, in theory, to serve the planet when an emergency came--and this, old luccar, the former president, had decided, when he and the parliament had awakened to the fact that snaddra was falling into ruin, was an emergency. so he had, after considerable soul-searching, called upon bbulas to plan a method of saving snaddra--and bbulas, happy to be in the limelight at last, had come up with this program. it was not one skkiru himself would have chosen. it was not one, he felt, that any reasonable person would have chosen. nevertheless, the bbulas plan had been adopted by a majority vote of the snaddrath, largely because no one had come up with a feasible alternative and, as a patriotic citizen, skkiru would abide by it. he would accept the status of beggar; it was his duty to do so. moreover, as in the case of the planet, there was no choice. but all was not necessarily lost, he told himself. had he not, in his anthropological viewings--though bbulas might have been the only one privileged to go on ethnological field trips to other planets, he was not the only one who could use a library--seen accounts of societies where beggarhood could be a rewarding and even responsible station in life? there was no reason why, within the framework of the primitive society bbulas had created to allure terran anthropologists, skkiru should not make something of himself and show that a beggar was worthy of the high priestess's hand--which would be entirely in the terran primitive tradition of romance. "skkiru!" bbulas was screaming, as he spun, now that the terrans were out of earand eye-shot "skkiru, you idiot, listen to me! what are those ridiculous things you are wearing on your silly feet?" skkiru protruded all of his eyes in innocent surprise. "just some old pontoons i took from a wrecked air-car once. i have a habit of collecting junk and i thought--" bbulas twirled madly in the air. "you are not supposed to think. leave all the thinking to me!" "yes, bbulas," skkiru said meekly. * * * * * he would have put up an argument, but he had bigger plans in mind and he didn't want them impeded in any way. "but they seem like an excellent idea," luccar suggested. "primitive and yet convenient." bbulas slowed down and gulped. after all, in spite of the fact that he was now only chief yam-stealer--being prevented from practicing his profession simply because there were no yams on the planet and no one was quite certain what they were--luccar had once been elected president by a large popular majority. and a large popular majority is decidedly a force to be reckoned with anywhere in the galaxy. "any deviations arouse comment," bbulas explained tightly. "but if we all--" "there would not be enough pontoons to go around, even if we stripped all the air-cars." "i see," luccar said thoughtfully. "we couldn't make--?" "no time!" bbulas snapped. "all right, skkiru--get those things off your feet!" "will do," skkiru agreed. it would be decidedly unwise to put up an argument now. so he'd get his feet muddy; it was all part of the higher good. later, as soon as the rain-dance rehearsals were under way, he slipped away. no part had been assigned to him anyhow, except that of onlooker, and he thought he could manage that without practice. he went down to the library, where, since all the attendants were aboveground, he could browse in the stacks to his hearts' content, without having to fill out numerous forms and be shoved about like a plagiarist or something. if the earthmen were interested in really primitive institutions, he thought, they should have a look at the city library. the filing system was really medieval. however, the library would, of course, be tabu for them, along with the rest of the city, which was not supposed to exist. as far as the terrans were to know, the group of lumpy stone huts (they should, properly speaking, have been wood, but wood was too rare and expensive) was the capital of snaddra. it would be the capital of snaddra for the snaddrath, too, except during the hours of rest, when they would be permitted to retire unobtrusively to their cozy well-drained quarters beneath the mud. life was going to be hard from now on--unless the bbulas plan moved faster than bbulas himself had anticipated. and that would never happen without implementation from without. from without bbulas, that was. skkiru got to work on the tex-tapes and soon decided upon his area of operations. bbulas had concentrated so much effort on the ethos of the planet that he had devoted insufficient detail to the mythos. that, therefore, was the field in which skkiru felt he must concentrate. and concentrate he did. * * * * * the rain dance, which had been elaborately staged by the planet's finest choreographers, came to a smashing climax, after which there was a handsome display of fireworks. "but it is still raining," raoul protested. "did you expect the rain to stop?" bbulas asked, his eyes bulging with involuntary surprise. "i mean--" he said, hastily retracting them--"well, it doesn't always stop right away. the gods may not have been feeling sufficiently propitious." "thought you had only one god, old boy," cyril observed, after giving his associate a searching glance. "chap by the name of whipsnade or some such." "ipsnadd. he is our chief deity. but we have a whole pantheon. major gods and minor gods. heroes and demigods and nature spirits--" "and do not forget the prophets," larhgan put in helpfully. as former chief beauty of the planet (an elective civil-service office), she was not accustomed to being left out of things. "we have many prophets. and saints. i myself am studying to be a--" bbulas glared at her. though her antennae quivered sulkily, she stopped and said no more--for the moment, anyway. "sounds like quite a complex civilization," cyril commented. "no, no!" bbulas protested in alarm. "we are a simple primitive people without technological pretensions." "you don't need any," cyril assured him. "not when you have fireworks that function in the rain." inside himself, skkiru guffawed. "we are a simple people," bbulas repeated helplessly. "a very simple and very primitive people." "somehow," raoul said, "i feel you may have a quality that civilization may have lost." the light in his eyes was recognizable to any even remotely humanoid species as a mystic glow. but cyril seemed well in command of the situation. "come now, raoul," he laughed, clapping his young colleague on the shoulder, "don't fall into the rousseau trap--noble savage and all that sort of rot!" "but that beggar!" raoul insisted. "trite, certainly, but incredible nonetheless! before, one only read of such things--" a glazed look came into two of bbulas' eyes, while the third closed despairingly. "what beggar? what beggar? tell me--i must know ... as if i didn't really," he muttered in snaddrath. "the only beggar we've seen on this planet so far. that one." * * * * * with a wave of his hand, cyril indicated the modest form of skkiru, attempting to conceal himself behind luccar's portly person. "i realize it was only illusion, but, as my associate says, a remarkably good one. and," cyril added, "an even more remarkable example of cultural diffusion." "what do you mean? please, gracious and lovable terrans, deign to tell me what you mean. what did that insufferable beggar do?" in spite of himself, skkiru's knees flickered. _fool_, he told himself, _you knew it was bound to come out sooner or later. take courage in your own convictions; be convinced by your own courage. all he really can do is yell._ "he did the indian rope trick for us," raoul explained. "and very well, too. very well indeed." "the--indian rope trick!" bbulas spluttered. "why, the--" and then he recollected his religious vocation, as well as his supposed ignorance. "would you be so kind as to tell me what the indian rope trick is, good sirs?" "well, he did it with a chain, actually." "we have no ropes on this planet," larhgan contributed. "we are backward." "and a small boy went up and disappeared," raoul finished. suddenly forgetting the stiff-upper-lip training for which the planet had gone to such great expense, bbulas spun around and around in a fit of bad temper, to skkiru's great glee. fortunately, the dilettante retained enough self-control to keep his feet on the ground--perhaps remembering that to fail to do so would compound skkiru's crime. "dervishism!" raoul exclaimed, his eyes incandescent with interest. he pulled out his notebook. after biting his lip thoughtfully, cyril did the same. "just like skkiru!" bbulas gasped as he spun slowly to a stop. "he is a disruptive cultural mechanism. leading children astray!" "but not at all," raoul pointed out politely. "the boy came back unharmed and in the best of spirits." "so far as we could see," cyril amended. "of course there may have been psychic damage." "which boy was it?" bbulas demanded. * * * * * cyril pointed to the urchin in question--a rather well-known juvenile delinquent, though the terrestrials, of course, couldn't know that. "he is a member of my own clan," bbulas said. "he will be thrashed soundly." "but why punish him?" raoul asked. "what harm has he done?" "shhh," cyril warned him. "you may be touching on a tabu. what's the matter with you, anyway? one would think you had forgotten every lesson you ever learned." "oh, i am truly sorry!" raoul's face became a pleasing shade of pink, which made him look much more human. maybe it was the wrong color, but at least it was a color. "please to accept my apologies, reverend sir." "it's quite all right." bbulas reverted to graciousness. "the boy should not have associated with a beggar--especially that one. if he did not hold his post by time-hallowed tradition, we would--dispose of him. he has always been a trouble-maker." "but i do not understand," raoul persisted. skkiru could not understand why cyril did not stop him again. "the beggar did the trick very effectively. i know it was all illusion, but i should like to know just how he created such an illusion, and, moreover, how the indian rope trick got all the way to--" "it was all done by magic," bbulas said firmly. "magic outside the temple is not encouraged, because it is black magic, and so it is wrong. the magic of the priests is white magic, and so it is right. put that down in your little book." raoul obediently wrote it down. "still, i should like to know--" "let us speak of pleasanter things," bbulas interrupted again. "tomorrow night, we are holding a potlatch and we should be honored to have the pleasure of your company." "delighted," raoul bowed. "i was wrong," cyril said. "this is not a remarkable example of cultural diffusion. it is a remarkable example of a diffuse culture." * * * * * "but i cannot understand," raoul said to cyril later, in the imagined privacy of their hut. "why are you suspicious of this charming, friendly people, so like the natives that the textbooks lead one to expect?" _naturally_, skkiru--having made his way in through a secret passage known only to the entire population of the city and explicitly designed for espionage, and was spying outside the door--thought, _we are textbook natives. not only because we were patterned on literary prototypes, but because bbulas never really left school--in spirit, anyway. he is the perpetual undergraduate and his whole scheme is nothing more than a grandiose class night._ "precisely what i've been thinking," cyril said. "so like the textbooks--all the textbooks put together." "what do you mean? surely it is possible for analogous cultural features to develop independently in different cultures?" "oh, it's possible, all right. probability--particularly when it comes to such a great number of features packed into one small culture--is another matter entirely." "i cannot understand you," raoul objected. "what do you want of these poor natives? to me, it seems everything has been of the most idyllic. rapport was established almost immediately." "a little too immediately, perhaps, don't you think? you haven't had much experience, raoul, so you might not be aware it usually isn't as easy as this." cyril flung himself down on one of the cots that had been especially hardened for terrestrial use and blew smoke rings at the ceiling. skkiru was dying for a cigarette himself, but that was another cultural feature the snaddrath had to dispense with now--not that smoking was insufficiently primitive, but that tobacco was not indigenous to the planet. "that is because they are not a hostile people," raoul insisted. "apparently they have no enemies. nonetheless, they are of the utmost interest. i hardly expected to land a society like this on my very first field trip," he added joyfully. "never have i heard of so dynamic a culture! never!" "nor i," cyril agreed, "and this is far from being my very first field trip. it has a terribly large number of strange elements in it--strange, that is, when considered in relationship to the society as a whole. environmental pressures seem to have had no effect upon their culture. for instance, don't you think it rather remarkable that a people with such an enormously complex social structure as theirs should wear clothing so ill adapted to protect them from the weather?" * * * * * "well," raoul pointed out enthusiastically--another undergraduate type, skkiru observed, happiest with matters that either resembled those in books or came directly from them, so that they could be explicitly pigeonholed--"the indians of tierra del fuego wore nothing but waist-length sealskin capes even in the bitterest cold. of course, this civilization is somewhat more advanced than theirs in certain ways, but one finds such anomalies in all primitive civilizations, does one not?" "that's true to a certain extent. but one would think they'd at least have developed boots to cope with the mud. and why was the beggar the only one to wear mudshoes? why, moreover--" cyril narrowed his eyes and pointed his cigarette at raoul--"did he wear them only the first time and subsequently appear barefooted?" "that _was_ odd," raoul admitted, "but--" "and the high priest spoke of thrashing that boy. you should know, old chap, that cruelty to children is in inverse ratio to the degree of civilization." raoul stared at his colleague. "my faith, are you suggesting that we go see how hard they hit him, then?" cyril laughed. "all i suggest is that we keep a very open mind about this society until we can discover what fundamental attitudes are controlling such curious individual as well as group behavior." "but assuredly. that is what we are here for, is it not? so why are you disturbing yourself so much?" but it was raoul, skkiru thought, who appeared much more disturbed than cyril. it was understandable--the younger man was interested only in straightforward ethnologizing and undoubtedly found the developing complications upsetting. "look," cyril continued. "they call this place a hut. it's almost a palace." _my god_, skkiru thought, _what kind of primitive conditions are they used to?_ "that is largely a question of semantics," raoul protested. "but regard--the roof leaks. is that not backward enough for you, eh?" and raoul moved to another part of the room to avoid receiving indisputable proof of the leakage on his person. "what is more, the sanitary arrangements are undeniably primitive." "the roofs of many palaces leak, and there is no plumbing to speak of, and still they are not called huts. and tell me this--why should the metal-workers be the pariahs? why _metal-workers_?" raoul's eyes opened wide. "you know there is often an outcast class with no apparent rationale behind its establishment. all the tapes--" "true enough, but you will remember that the reason the smiths of masai were pariahs was that they manufactured weapons which might tempt people to commit bloodshed. i keep remembering them, somehow. i keep remembering so many things here...." "but we have seen no weapons on this planet," raoul argued. "in fact, the people seem completely peaceful." "right you are." cyril blew another smoke ring. "since this is a planet dependent chiefly upon minerals, why make the members of its most important industry the out-group?" "you think it is that they may be secretly hostile?" cyril smiled. "i think they may be secretly something, but hardly hostile." _aha_, skkiru thought. _bbulas, my splendidly scaled friend, i will have something interesting to tell you._ * * * * * "you idiot!" bbulas snarled later that night, as most of the snaddrath met informally in the council chamber belowground, the new caste distinctions being, if not forgotten, at least in abeyance--for everyone except bbulas. "you imbecile!" he whirled, unable to repress his snadd emotions after a long behaviorally terran day. "i have half a mind to get rid of you by calling down divine judgment." "how would you do that?" skkiru demanded, emboldened by the little cry of dismay, accompanied by a semi-somersault, which larhgan gave. in spite of everything, she still loved him; she would never belong to bbulas, though he might plan until he was ochre in the face. "same way you did the rope trick. only you wouldn't come back, my boy. nice little cultural trait for the ethnologists to put in their peace pipes and smoke. never saw such people for asking awkward questions." bbulas sighed and straightened his antennae with his fingers, since their ornaments made them too heavy to allow reflective verticalization. "reminds me of final exams back on gambrell." "anthropologists _always_ ask awkward questions--everybody knows that," larhgan put in. "it's their function. and i don't think you should speak that way to skkiru, bbulas. like all of us, he's only trying to do his best. no man--or woman--can do more." she smiled at skkiru and his hearts whirled madly inside him. only a dolt, he thought, would give way to despair; there was no need for this intolerable situation to endure for a lifetime. if only he could solve the problem more quickly than bbulas expected or--skkiru began to understand--wanted, larhgan could be his again. "with everybody trying to run this planet," bbulas snarled, taking off his headdress, "no wonder things are going wrong." luccar intervened. although it was obvious that he had been enjoying to a certain extent the happy anonymity of functionless yam-stealer, old elective responsibilities could not but hang heavy over a public servant of such unimpeachable integrity. "after all," the old man said, "secretly we're still a democracy, and secretly i am still president, and secretly i'm beginning to wonder if perhaps we weren't a little rash in--" "look here, all of you," bbulas interrupted querulously. "i'm not doing this for my own amusement." * * * * * _but that's just what you are doing_, skkiru thought, _even though you wouldn't admit it to yourself, nor would you think of it as amusement._ "you know what happened to nemeth," bbulas continued, using an argument that had convinced them before, but that was beginning to wear a little thin now. "poorest, most backward planet in the whole galaxy. a couple of ethnologists from earth stumbled on it a little over a century ago and what happened? more kept on coming; the trade ships followed. now it's the richest, most advanced planet in that whole sector. there's no reason why the same thing can't happen to us in this sector, if we play our cards carefully." "but maybe these two won't tell other anthropologists about us," luccar said. "something the older one remarked certainly seemed to imply as much. maybe they don't want the same thing to happen again--in which case, all this is a waste of time. furthermore," he concluded rather petulantly, "at my age, i don't like running about in the open; it's not healthful." "if they don't tell other anthropologists about us," bbulas said, his face paling to lime-green with anxiety, "we can spread the news unobtrusively ourselves. just let one study be published, even under false coordinates, and we can always hire a good public relations man to let our whereabouts leak out. please, everybody, stick to your appointed tasks and let me do the worrying. you haven't even given this culture a chance! it's hardly more than a day old and all i hear are complaints, complaints, complaints." "you'd better worry," skkiru said smugly, "because already those terrans think there's something fishy about this culture. ha, ha! did you get that--fishy?" only larhgan laughed. she loved him. "how do you know they're suspicious?" bbulas demanded. "are you in their confidence? skkiru, if you've been talking--" "all i did was spy outside their door," skkiru said hastily. "i knew _you_ couldn't eavesdrop; it wouldn't look dignified if you were caught. but beggars do that kind of thing all the time. and i wanted to show you i could be of real use." he beamed at larhgan, who beamed back. "i could have kept my findings to myself," he went on, "but i came to tell you. in fact--" he dug in his robe--"i even jotted down a few notes." "it wasn't at all necessary, skkiru," bbulas said in a tired voice. "we took the elementary precaution of wiring their hut for sound and a recorder is constantly taking down their every word." "hut!" skkiru kept his antennae under control with an effort, but his retort was feeble. "they think it's a palace. you did them too well, bbulas." "i may have overdone the exterior architecture a bit," the high priest admitted. "not that it seems relevant to the discussion. although i've been trying to arrange our primitivism according to terrestrial ideas of cultural backwardness, i'm afraid many of the physical arrangements are primitive according to our conceptions rather than theirs." * * * * * "why _must_ we be primitive according to terran ideas?" luccar wanted to know. "why must we be slaves even to fashions in backwardness?" "hear, hear!" cried an anonymous voice. "and thank you, skkiru," the former president continued, "for telling me they were suspicious. i doubt that bbulas would have taken the trouble to inform me of so trivial a matter." "as high priest," bbulas said stiffly, "i believe the matter, trivial or not, now falls within my province." "shame!" cried an anonymous voice--or it might have been the same one. bbulas turned forest-green and his antennae twitched. "after all, you yourself, luccar, agreed to accept the role of elder statesman--" "yam-stealer," luccar corrected him bitterly, "which is not the same thing." "on earth, it is. and," bbulas went on quickly, "as for our assuming primitive earth attitudes, where else are we going to get our attitudes from? we can't borrow any primitive attitudes from nemeth, because they're too well known. and since there are no other planets we know of with intelligent life-forms that have social structures markedly different from the major terran ones--except for some completely non-humanoid cultures, which, for physiological reasons, we are incapable of imitating--we have to rely upon records of primitive terran sources for information. besides, a certain familiarity with the traits manifested will make the culture more understandable to the terrans, and, hence, more attractive to them psychologically." he stopped and straightened out his antennae. "in other words," skkiru commented, emboldened by a certain aura of sympathy he felt emanating from larhgan, at least, and probably from luccar, too, "he doesn't have the imagination to think up any cultural traits for himself, so he has to steal them--and that's the easiest place to steal them from." "this is none of your business, skkiru," bbulas snapped. "you just beg." "it's the business of all of us, bbulas," luccar corrected softly. "please to remember that, no matter what our alloted roles, we are all concerned equally in this." "of course, of course, but please let me handle the situation in my own way, since i made the plans. and, skkiru," the dilettante added with strained grace, "you may have a warm cloak to wear as soon as we can get patches welded on." then bbulas took a deep breath and reverted to his old cheer-leader manner. "now we must all get organized for the potlatch. we can give the terrans those things the ladies' aid has been working on all year for the charity bazaar and, in exchange, perhaps they will give us more chocolate bars--" he glanced reproachfully at skkiru--"and other food." "and perhaps some yams," luccar suggested, "so that--god save us--i can steal them." "i'll definitely work on that," bbulas promised. * * * * * skkiru was glad that, as beggar, he held no prominent position at the feast--in reality, no position at all--for he hated fish. and fish, naturally, would be the chief refreshment offered, since the snaddrath did not want the terrans to know that they had already achieved that degrading dependency upon the tin can that marks one of the primary differences between savagery and civilization. there were fish pã¢tã© on rice crackers, fish soup with rice, boiled fish, baked fish, fried fish and a pilau of rice with fish. there were fish chitlins, fish chips, fish cakes, fish candy and guslat--a potent distillation of fermented fish livers--to wash it all down. and even in the library, where skkiru sought refuge from the festivities, fishy fumes kept filtering down through the ventilating system to assail his nostrils. bbulas had been right in a way, skkiru had to admit to himself upon reflection. in trying to improve his lot, skkiru had taken advantage of the snaddrath's special kinetic talents, which had been banned for the duration--and so he had, in effect, committed a crime. this time, however, he would seek to uplift himself in terms acceptable to the terrans on a wholly indigenous level, and in terms which would also hasten the desired corruptive process--in a nice way, of course--so that the snaddrath civilization could be profitably undermined as fast as possible and larhgan be his once again. it was a hard problem to solve, but he felt sure he could do it. anything bbulas could do, he could do better. then he had it! and the idea was so wonderful that he was a little sorry at the limited range it would necessarily cover. his part really should be played out before a large, yoomping audience, but he was realistic enough to see that it would be most expedient for him to give a private performance for the earthmen alone. on the other hand, he now knew it should be offered outside the hut, because the recorder would pick up his cries and bbulas would be in a spin--as he would be about any evidence of independent thinking on the planet. bbulas was less interested in the planet's prospering, it was now clear to skkiru, than in its continuing in a state where he would remain top fish. * * * * * fortunately, the guslat had done its work, and by the time the earthmen arrived at the door to their hut, they were alone. the rest of the company either had fallen into a stupor or could not trust themselves to navigate the mud. the earthmen--with an ingeniousness which would have augured well for the future development of their race, had it not already been the (allegedly) most advanced species in the galaxy--had adapted some spare parts from their ship into replicas of skkiru's mudshoes. they did, in truth, seem none too steady on their feet, but he was unable to determine to what degree this was a question of intoxication and what degree a question of navigation. "alms, for the love of ipsnadd." he thrust forward his begging bowl. "regard, it is the beggar! why were you not at the festivities, worthy mendicant?" raoul hiccuped. "lovely party. beautiful women. delicious fish." skkiru started to stand on his head, then remembered this was no longer a socially acceptable expression of grief and cast his eyes down. "i was not invited," he said sadly. "like the little match girl," raoul sympathized. "my heart bleeds for you, good match gi--good beggar. does your heart not bleed for him, cyril?" "bad show," the older ethnologist agreed, with a faint smile. "but that's what you've got to expect, if you're going to be a primitive." he was very drunk, skkiru decided; he must be, to phrase his sentiments so poorly. unless he--but no, skkiru refused to believe that. he didn't mind cyril's being vaguely suspicious, but that was as far as he wanted him to go. skkiru's toes apprehensively started to quiver. "how can you say a thing like that to a primitive?" raoul demanded. "if he were not a primitive, it would be all right to call him a primitive, but one does not accuse primitives of being primitives. it's--it's downright primitive; that's what it is!" "you need some coffee, my boy." cyril grinned. "black coffee. that guslat of theirs is highly potent stuff." they were about to go inside. skkiru had to act quickly. he slumped over. although he had meant to land on the doorstep, he lacked the agility to balance himself with the precision required and so he fell smack into the mud. the feel of the slime on his bare feet had been bad enough; oozing over his skin through the interstices of his clothing, it was pure hell. what sacrifices he was making for his planet! and for larhgan. the thought of her would have to sustain him through this viscous ordeal, for there was nothing else solid within his grasp. "ubbl," he said, lifting his head from the ooze, so that they could see the froth coming out of his mouth. "glubbl." * * * * * raoul clutched cyril. "what is he doing?" "having an epileptic fit, i rather fancy. go on, old man," cyril said to skkiru. "you're doing splendidly. splendidly!" "i see the sky!" skkiru howled, anxious to get his prophecies over with before he sank any deeper in the mud. "it is great magic. i see many ships in the sky. they are all coming to snaddra...." "bearing anthropologists and chocolate bars, i suppose," murmured cyril. "shhh," raoul said indignantly. "you must not interrupt. he is having personal contact with the supernatural, a very important element of the primitive ethos." "thank you," cyril said. "i'll try to remember that." _so will i_, thought skkiru. "they carry learned men and food for the spiritually and physically hungry people of snaddra," he interrupted impatiently. "they carry warm clothing for the poor and miserable people of snaddra. they carry yams for the larcenous and frustrated people of snaddra." "yams!" raoul echoed. "_yams!_" "shhh, this is fascinating. go on, beggar." but the mud sogging over skkiru's body was too much. the fit could be continued at a later date--and in a drier location. "where am i?" he asked, struggling to a sitting position. "you are on snaddra, fifth planet of the sun weebl," raoul began, "in--" "weeeeebl," skkiru corrected, getting to his feet with the older ethnologist's assistance. "what happened?" he beat futilely at the mud caught in the meshes of his metal rags. "i feel faint." "come in and have some coffee with us," cyril invited. this also was part of skkiru's plan, for he had no intention of going back across that mud, if he could possibly help it. he had nothing further to say that the recorders should not hear. bbulas might object to his associating with the earthmen, but he couldn't do much if the association seemed entirely innocent. at the moment, snaddra might be a theocracy, but the democratic hangover was still strong. "i would rather have some hot chocolate," skkiru said. "that is, if you have no objection to drinking with a beggar." "my dear fellow--" cyril put an arm around skkiru's muddy shoulders--"we ethnologists do not hold with caste distinctions. come in and have chocolate--with a spot of rum, eh? that'll make you right as a trivet in a matter of seconds." * * * * * it wasn't until much later, after several cups of the finest chocolate he had ever tasted, that skkiru announced himself to feel quite recovered. "please do not bother to accompany me to the door," he said. "i can find my own way. you do me too much honor. i would feel shamefaced." "but--" cyril began. "no," skkiru said. "it is--it is bad form here. i insist. i must go my way alone." "all right," cyril agreed. raoul looked at him in some surprise. "all right," cyril repeated in a louder tone. "go by yourself, if an escort would bother you. but please give the door a good bang, so the lock will catch." skkiru slammed the door lustily to simulate the effect of departure and then he descended via the secret passage inside the hut itself, scrabbling a little because the hot chocolate seemed strangely to have affected his sense of balance. the rest of the snaddrath were in the council chamber gloating over the loot from the potlatch. it was, as a matter of fact, a good take. "where were you, skkiru?" bbulas asked, examining a jar of preserved kumquats suspiciously. "up to no good, i'll be bound." "oh, my poor skkiru!" larhgan exclaimed, before skkiru could say anything. "how muddy and wretched-looking you are! i don't like this whole thing," she told bbulas. "it's cruel. being high priestess isn't nearly as much fun as i thought it would be." "this is not supposed to be fun," the dilettante informed her coldly. "it is in dead earnest. since the question has been brought up, however, what did happen to you, skkiru?" "i--er--fell down and, being a beggar, i had no other garments to change into." "you'll survive," bbulas said unfeelingly. "on earth, i understand, people fall into mud all the time. supposed to have a beneficial effect--and any effect on you, skkiru, would have to be beneficial." larhgan was opening her mouth to say something--probably, skkiru thought fondly, in his defense--when there came a thud and a yell from the passage outside. two yells, in fact. and two thuds. "my faith," exclaimed a terrestrial voice, "but how did the beggar descend! i am sure every bone in my body is broken." "i think you'll find him possessed of means of locomotion not known to us. but you're not hurt, old chap--only bruised." and cyril came into the council chamber, followed by a limping raoul. "good evening, ladies and gentlemen. i trust this is not an intrusion, although i'm quite sure you'll tell us we've broken a whole slue of tabus." "you!" bbulas screamed at skkiru. "you must have used the passage in the hut! you let them follow you!" losing control of his own reflexes, he began to whirl madly. * * * * * "but regard this!" raoul exclaimed, staring around him. "to build a place like this beneath the mud--name of a name, these people must have hydraulic engineering far superior to anything on earth!" "you are too kind," the former hydraulic engineer said deprecatingly. "actually, it's quite simple--" "this is not a primitive civilization at all, raoul," cyril explained. "they've been faking it from tapes. probably have a culture very much like ours, with allowances for climatic differences, of course. oh, undoubtedly it would be provincial, but--" "we are not provincial," larhgan said coldly. "primitive, yes. provincial, no! we are--" "but why should they do a thing like this to us?" raoul wailed. "i imagine they did it to get on the trade routes, as nemeth did. they've been trying not to talk about nemeth all the while. must have been rather a strain. you ought to be ashamed of yourselves!" cyril told the assembled snaddrath. "very bad form!" bbulas was turning paler and paler as he whirled. "all your fault," he gasped hoarsely to skkiru. "all your fault!" and that was true, skkiru realized. his antennae quivered, but he didn't even try to restrain them. he had meant well, yet he had messed up the planet's affairs far more seriously than bbulas had. he had ruined their hopes, killed all their chances by his carelessness. he, skkiru, instead of being his planet's savior, was its spoiler. he psonked violently. but larhgan moved nearer to him. "it's all over, anyhow," she whispered, "and you know what? i'm glad. i'm glad we failed. i'd rather starve as myself than succeed as a sham." skkiru controlled himself. silently, he took the grimpatch out of his carrier and, as silently, she took it back. "my faith, they must have had plumbing all the time!" raoul complained. "very likely," said cyril sternly. "looks as if we've suffered for nothing." "such people!" raoul said. "true primitives, i am sure, would never have behaved so unfeelingly!" cyril smiled, but his face was hard as he turned back to the snaddrath. "we'll radio gambrell in the morning to have a ship dispatched to pick us up. i'm not sure but that we have a good case for fraud against you." "we're destroyed!" bbulas shrieked as the full emotional impact of the situation hit him. "an interplanetary lawsuit would ruin snaddra entirely." his cries were echoed in the howls of the other snaddrath, their antennae psonking, their eyes bulging. * * * * * agonized by his sorrow, bbulas lost all emotional restraint, forgot about his terrestrial training, and turned upside down in a spasm of grief. since there was no longer any reason to repress their natural manifestation of feeling, all the snaddrath followed suit, their antennae twisting in frenzy as they ululated. and then, to skkiru's surprise and the surprise of all the rest, cyril stopped and took out his notebook. "wait a minute," he said as raoul did likewise. all four earthly eyes were shining with a glow that was recognizable to any even remotely humanoid species as the glow of intellectual fervor. "wait just a minute! our plans are altered. we may stay, after all!" one by one, the snaddrath reversed to upright positions, but did not retract their eyes, for they were still staring at the earthmen. skkiru knew now what had been bothering him about the terrestrials all along. they were crazy--that was what it was. who but maniacs would want to leave their warm, dry planets and go searching the stars for strange cultures, when they could stay quietly at home in peace and comfort with their families? skkiru's hand reached out for larhgan's and found it. _there was something rotten in the planet named truth ... rotten enough to call for the intervention of ... _ a tourist named death by christopher anvil [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from worlds of if science fiction, may 1960. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] dan redman walked swiftly and quietly down the broad hallway toward a door lettered: a section j. kielgaard director as dan opened the door, his trained glance caught the brief reflection of a strange, strong-featured face, and a lithe, powerful, and unfamiliar physique. dan accepted this unfamiliar reflection of himself as an actor accepts makeup. what puzzled him was the peculiar silent smoothness with which his hand turned the knob, while his shoulder braced firmly and easily against the opening door. he stepped into the room in one sudden quiet motion. the receptionist inside gave a visible start. what kind of a job, dan asked himself, did kielgaard have for him this time? the receptionist recovered her poise, to usher dan into the inner office. kielgaard--big, stocky, and expensively dressed--glanced up from a sheaf of glossy photographs. he said bluntly, "sit down. we've got a mess to straighten out." "what's wrong?" "a few years back, galactic enterprises discovered a totally undeveloped planet with no inhabitants. they claimed development rights and got to work to find an economical route to the planet, which is called triax." kielgaard snapped a switch on the edge of his desk and the room lights dimmed out. three stellar maps seemed to hang in space in front of dan, one map directly above the other. kielgaard's voice said, "galactic found a route to triax that promised to be very economical. watch." * * * * * on the lowest map, the word "earth" lit up, and a silver line grew out from it along the stellar map, then jumped up in a vertical straight line to the second map, traveled along this map almost to a place where the word "truth" lit up. the line then jumped straight up to the third map and traveled along it to the word "triax." the room lighted and the maps vanished. kielgaard said, "in two subspace jumps and not too much normal-space traveling, galactic can ship a cargo from triax to earth. that's a good, short route, but it comes too close to that planet called truth." dan said, "truth is the native name for the planet?" "exactly. truth is inhabited. the inhabitants look much like us, and they're very highly developed technologically, though there is no sign that they use space travel in any form. the problem is that galactic's cargo ships will pass close enough to truth so that the inhabitants--call them truthians--will eventually detect them and may or may not like the idea. galactic's worry is that after sinking a lot of money into the development of triax, and just as it's about to make a profit on the planet, these truthians may blossom out with a fleet of commerce raiders, or else claim sovereignty over all contiguous space and land galactic in a big court fight." kielgaard glanced at dan with a smile. "suppose you were running galactic and had this problem. what would you do?" "try to vary the route. but subspace being what it is, a mild variation of the starting point can produce an abrupt shift in the place where they come out." kielgaard nodded. "there's probably a usable route, but there's no telling when they'll find it. meanwhile, the development license only runs so long before galactic has to show proof of progress." "what's this truth look like?" "earth-type, with cities and towns scattered over its surface at random, some of the cities remarkably advanced, some antique, with forest and wilderness in between, and only haphazard communications between cities." dan frowned. "well, then, i'd set down an information team, brain-spy some of the inhabitants, and ease agents into key cities and towns. at the same time, i'd go on looking for a new route, and do enough work on triax to keep the development license. when things clear up on truth, i'd develop triax further." kielgaard nodded. "a sound and sensible plan. that is exactly what galactic did. and after a slow start, things began to straighten out very nicely, too. the more truth cleared up, the more galactic invested in triax. and then, one day, this photograph came in." kielgaard held out a photograph showing a busy street corner in a city at night. a brightly clothed crowd was walking along the sidewalk past store windows showing a variety of merchandise. kielgaard said, "look down that street. you see a low building, part way down the block, with a wide chimney?" "yes," said dan, "i see it." "look just above the top of the chimney." "you mean this arrow-shaped constellation?" kielgaard nodded. "there is no such arrow-shaped constellation visible from truth." "then this photo is a fake?" "they're all fakes. what apparently happened is that someone managed to get a spy into galactic's planning division, and through him found out when and where galactic's agents were to be set down. they grabbed the agents one by one soon after each agent landed. since then, they've sent back reports to build up a purely synthetic picture of the planet. the only reports galactic can rely on are the original impressions of the information team they set down to begin with." dan whistled. "so someone is working galactic into position to jerk the rug out from under it." "exactly." "what's galactic doing?" "they're trying hard to keep this quiet. but meanwhile, no one knows for sure who the spy is." "a nice situation," said dan. "what do we do about this planet truth?" * * * * * "well," said kielgaard, "the first thing we do is set a man down and let him get the lay of the land. we get more agents ready to move in right behind him. we intend to use the best men available, and nothing but the latest and best equipment. if things turn out as we intend them to, whatever organization started this will come out slit up the middle, stuffed, roasted, and with an apple in its mouth." dan said cautiously, "who's the first agent we set down on this planet?" "you," said kielgaard. "and you're going to be up against a deadly proposition. our opponent is established on the planet, and we're going in cold. fortunately, we've sunk a good part of our profits into research and it's about to pay off. we have, for instance, installed in your body cavity a remarkably small organo-transceiver. it uses a new type of signal which should escape detection under any circumstances you're likely to face on truth." * * * * * "so i can be more or less constantly in touch with you?" "in any period of relative calm, yes. during violent action, the interference of other currents in your brain would drown out the signal. but we've also run a series of delicate taps to your optic and auditory nerves, so we should have continuous contact by sight and sound." "you mentioned that the cities and towns on the planet were separated by wilderness. how do i travel?" "we have a new type of unusually small mataform transceiver." kielgaard reached in a drawer and tossed on his desk a smooth olive-colored object little larger than a package of cigarettes. "the range is only a few hundred miles, but it uses the new type of signal i've mentioned, which eliminates the problem of orbiting a set of satellites to relay the signal. the problem of first putting the mataform transceiver in the place where you want to go is tricky, but we have a little glider that ought to do the trick." he showed dan how to use the glider, and several other new items of equipment, then frowned and sat back. "the worst of this is, we don't know exactly what to expect on the planet. some big organization could even be trying to take over the planetary government. if so, a lot will depend on what stage things are in when you land. to give you as much chance as possible, your body has been carefully restructured to give you exceptional strength and endurance. the neuro-conditioning lab has recreated in your nervous system the reflexes of one of the deadliest agents ever known. don't be surprised if you perform certain actions almost before you're aware of your own intentions. it has to be that way to cut down the risks." dan and kielgaard shook hands, and dan went out to check his equipment. early the next day, he was on a fast spaceship to the planet called truth. * * * * * dan was dropped low over the night side of the planet in a vaned capsule that whirled straight down, burst open on contact with the water, and sank. from this capsule, a small boat nosed out toward the coast. in the cramped space inside, dan checked a little gauge to be sure the boat's outer layer had adjusted to the water around it, so that there would be no sharp difference in the radiation of heat to show up on any infrared detector that might be in range. then the boat nosed down with a _suck-swish_ from the water-jet engine and began to pick up speed. several hours later, a thin flexible cable shot out from shallow water at the edge of the junglelike coastline. the cable whipped around the trunk of a tree well back from the water's edge, there was a faint low hum, a grating noise, and something slid up over the rocks and pebbles and came to rest among the tangled trunks and roots of the trees. a moment later, dan was out and dragging the boat further inland. when he was satisfied that the boat was safe, he glanced at his watch. the planet's large moon should soon be up and he intended to waste no time making his position more secure. he broke open a carton of the little mataform transceivers, clipped several of them on small, almost completely transparent gliders, and checked to be sure the little auxiliary motors of the gliders were in working order. he slid on a helmet that fit tightly over his head and eyes, and sent up the first glider. as the faint whir of the small engine receded, dan could see before him in the helmet a clear view of the sea, with the thin rim of the planet's moon just rising, huge and blood-red, over the horizon. the small sensor unit on the glider sent back an image from a safe height above the forest, and dan switched the helmet from this glider long enough to send up another. by dawn, he had landed gliders, with their small mataform transceivers, in isolated spots outside three moderate-sized cities within range of the boat. dan then took another of the mataform units and buried it. standing nearby, he mentally pronounced a key word. as he did this, the electro-chemical change in a nervous tract triggered a tiny implanted device that sent its imperceptible signal to the mataform transceiver. the transceiver interpreted the signal, and for an instant dan sensed a shift in the pattern of things around him. abruptly he was standing in the clearing where he had brought down the first glider. around him were several tall wind-thrown trees. in the gray light of early dawn, he could barely make out the glider and little mataform unit clipped to it. a few minutes later, the unit was temporarily hidden, he had returned the glider to the boat, and he was picking up the second glider in a badly burned tract of forest near the second city. * * * * * when the three mataform units were all hidden, dan paused for a moment to think through the next step. the three gliders, invisible to the naked eye as they passed high above the tree tops, might possibly have shown up on any of a number of detection devices, to give away both the starting point and the places where they had landed. it was now dan's problem to outwit these detection devices. dan clipped another mataform transceiver to a glider, put on the control helmet, and sent the glider dodging low and carefully through the trees. he found a spot about two miles away that suited him and landed the glider. he swiftly unloaded the boat and carried its contents to the buried mataform unit, where he mentally pronounced a new key word, which triggered the unit and took him to the glider and transceiver he had just landed. in a short time, he had the contents of the boat stacked beside the glider. dan then disassembled the boat and engine, and stacked the parts beside the boat's piled-up contents. by now, the sun was well up, and dan was becoming aware of a thrumming drone that grew steadily louder. he quickly dug up the buried mataform unit, clipped it to a glider, and hung the glider to an overhead limb by a green string, knotted so as to come undone at the first sharp pull. dan glanced around carefully and listened to the increasing drone. he looked up and studied a bumpy blue-green limb well overhead. this limb was located so that a spy unit on it would cover most of the place where the boat had been. dan carefully gauged the speed with which the droning was coming closer, then went by the mataform to the pile of goods he had transferred, came back with a long tube, and sighted at the overhead limb. there was a _whoosh_ and a small colorless blob with a tiny bump in the center spread out on the limb. the blob gradually turned blue-gray, matching the limb, and then the spy unit was indistinguishable from the limb's other bumps and irregularities. the droning noise was now quite loud. dan went by the mataform to his new camp and put on the helmet he used to control the glider. an instant later, the glider gave a whir and jerked forward. the knot came untied, and the glider, carrying the mataform unit and a length of dark-green string, flitted out of sight amid the big tree trunks. dan, his hand on a knob at the side of the helmet, shifted his vision rapidly back and forth from the glider to the spy unit over the spot where the boat had been. there now came into view, in the place where the boat had been, something that looked like a cross between an oversize bloodhound and a tiger. right behind this came a man with a rifle. then another man, and another. the angle of vision did not let dan see exactly where the men came from, but he supposed there was a jetcopter just overhead. the tiger-like animal snuffled around, pawed at the ground, made trips into the jungle on all sides, and finally ran back toward the shore. the men followed close behind. * * * * * dan, shifting his attention back and forth from this scene to the glider, landed the glider nearby, just as the last of the men left the place where the boat had been. dan quickly went to each of the three places near cities where he had landed the mataform transceivers, and moved each of them by glider well away from the places where they had landed. he left behind in each place a small spy unit. he had just finished doing this when several loads of heavily armed men in jetcopters came down in all three places. the men, dan noticed, wore no uniforms, and the copters were unmarked. dan said mentally, "can you hear me, kielgaard?" "loud and clear," came the familiar voice. "we're getting sight and sound perfectly." "have you got your corps of experts working on everything that comes in?" "naturally," said kielgaard. "but i wouldn't advise you to stop and chat right now. those boys seem to mean business." "do they look like planetary police to you?" "no. they don't look like anything that was born on that planet." "that's exactly the way they strike me. well, maybe i can make them some more trouble." dan got out a map and noted a long, fairly straight road from one of the cities, near which he had a mataform transceiver, to another distant city. from this distant city, a winding river curled away to a city even more distant. that night, dan intended to make use of road and river alike. but right now, he spent an hour or so moving his goods to a place further away from the landing; then he partly reassembled the boat, and cat-napped till evening. he was awoken at frequent intervals by sudden drops of men and more of the tiger-like animals, at each of the four places where they had been before. each time there was sudden activity at one of these places, a little alarm buzzed in dan's ear, and he slid on the helmet to watch a renewed search of the ground. he had the impression that someone had reported nothing was to be found, and that this word had been passed along to someone who had said there _must_ be something there, and it had better be found or else. the search this time was much more careful. but it was not till the last place was searched that one of them came very close to the spy unit, and reached out toward it. dan regretfully slid back a protective cover at the lower edge of the helmet and pressed a button underneath. there was a dazzling flash, and then the scene was gone. dan would much rather have kept them thinking that maybe there was nothing to look for after all. but he could tell from their numbers and zeal that he was not likely to have very much his own way on this planet. * * * * * that night, dan sent a glider under power down the long road to the distant city. the glider was low enough to avoid the usual detectors, but happily free of the need to dodge an endless succession of tree trunks. the river served much the same purpose, so that well before dawn, dan had mataform transceivers planted near each of the two new cities, and also at a place right at the edge of the river. from this spot, dan threw out into the river a heavily weighted mataform transceiver. he returned to the partly assembled boat and methodically put it together again. this time, however, he fitted sections together differently and left the heavy engine out entirely. he put his arms around one end of the thing he had put together and mentally said a keyword. the river water rushed coldly around him, gritty with silt sweeping along the bottom. there was a _chug_ in his ears as the water triggered off the grab anchors around the rim of the shelter. dan said another key word and he was inside. he snapped on a light and looked carefully around, but found no sign of a leak. he transferred the rest of his goods, checked to see that the selective membrane panel was keeping the oxygen at the right level inside, then lay down to catch up on sleep. the following day, he took three of his small transceivers, and went by the mataform to a place outside the nearest city. a short walk along a winding trail took dan past a series of huts and cabins to a rough covered stand displaying combs, brooms, and other simple merchandise, along with a dusty case of what looked like soda pop, and a dust-covered carton of what appeared to be candy bars. the soda pop was labeled "gas," and the candy had a card labeled "toothrot." the girl in charge of the stand smiled and said, "good morning, death." there was no one else around, and the girl spoke in a perfectly natural way, so dan smiled back and said, "good morning." but as he walked on down the trail, he said mentally, "kielgaard?" kielgaard's voice replied, "i heard it, dan. we're checking at this end to see if it's some error in the vocabulary we implanted in your brain." a moment later, kielgaard said, "as nearly as we can tell here, 'death' is the word she used." "funny." dan rounded a bend in the trail and came to a moderately wide road, paved with smooth blocks of stone. to his right was a wall about ten feet high, with an open gate and a city street visible behind it. from somewhere came the steady beat of a drum. dan started toward the gate, but had to jump aside as a heavily armed column of troops marched out, their faces set and their feet striking the ground in an unvarying cadence. as the last of the troops went by, a man standing nearby turned to dan and said, "well, there they go. we won't be seeing some of them again in this life." dan nodded noncommittally, and the man looked at him sharply, then grinned and said, "good hunting." "thank you," said dan. he could hear a faint muttering somewhere in the background, which he took to be kielgaard and his experts, trying to understand this latest exchange. dan followed the man through the city gates, and walked past a variety of small shops selling baked goods, meats, groceries, hand tools, books, and appliances. dan noted the location of the bookstore, so that on the way back he could buy some books. he wanted to transmit the contents of the books; the staff of experts could learn a great deal from a cross-section of a planet's fiction and non-fiction. * * * * * as dan walked toward the center of the city, he noted that the buildings grew larger, and the shops turned into big department stores. these all looked much the same as the ones on earth, or on many other technologically advanced planets. the merchandise showed only minor differences in design. looking in a hardware store, for instance, dan discovered that ordinary screwdrivers had a short curved crosspiece on the handle--apparently a thumb rest to give greater leverage in turning. aside from such minor differences, everything seemed the same. dan had just decided that the planet looked almost like home when he came to a low building with a paved yard. into the yard trundled several small carts, similar to the kind used to transfer baggage in railroad and mataform depots back home. on these carts, however, were canvas covers, which were thrown back to reveal fully clothed human forms. on all but one cart, the human forms wore the same kind of white garment, trimmed in various colors. these forms--bodies, dan supposed--were lifted from the carts by attendants who handled them with the greatest care and respect. on the other cart, though, the bodies wore street clothes. these bodies were grabbed under the arms, dragged to a black door like the door of a furnace, set in the wall of the building, and shoved through the door head first. as the bodies were shoved in, dan saw the sunlight glint on what looked like tight metal cords around their necks, bearing oblong metal tags. several men had stopped while dan glanced in to watch this scene. dan now overheard their comments, which were made in tense angry tones: "look at that. if this referendum isn't over soon, it'll dust the lot of us over the forest." "it's all these charges and accusations that make the trouble. why we can't do it like civilized human beings, i don't know." "the trouble is, there's no precedent." the men walked away. dan had the out-of-focus sensation of a man who comes into a room where a joke has already been half-told. he glanced at the low building. "are you getting all this, kielgaard?" "we're getting it. but i hope it makes more sense to you than it does to us." "well, it doesn't." dan glanced around, noted the discreet word "disposal" printed on the face of the small building where the bodies were shoved through what looked like a furnace door. dan thought he could see what was going on here, but the reasons for the things that were happening were totally obscure to him. it was in the next block that he began to get some sort of an idea, when he saw a large poster bearing a blue triangle standing point down. stamped over this triangle were large letters: vote yes! several blocks away was a big poster showing a green triangle, its base down, and bearing the words: vote no! * * * * * both posters were dented, scratched, and spattered, as if stones and rotten fruit had been thrown at them. but, though dan watched carefully as he walked on toward the center of the city, he saw no clue as to what the voting was about. he was also puzzled to find that, though there were many stores, and a fair number of what looked like hotels, office buildings, and apartment houses, there seemed to be no factories, large or small. the people passing here were another source of uncertainty. as dan approached the center of the city, he began to sense the peculiar air of freedom that he had noticed in resort towns on a dozen planets. and yet this did not look to him like a resort town. moreover, it was hard to gauge the mood of the people passing by, because nearly all seemed to react to his presence in some way. some looked suddenly alarmed, a few looked furtive, others seemed pleased and smiled at him. a considerable number of the women had a thrilled look when they saw him. dan walked another block and saw part of the reason for the resort-town atmosphere. across the street was a sweeping expanse of green. in the far end of this green was an enormous swimming pool, with floats and concrete islands dotted through it to hold diving boards that were almost constantly in use. dan, wanting to watch the passersby without their watching him, stepped into a quiet, old-fashioned-looking bookstore that fronted on the green. he looked out the many-paned front window and immediately noticed a change in the people. without his inexplicably disturbing influence, nearly all of the people fell into two distinct categories. one group had a depressed and angry look. the other group looked cheerful and carefree. aside from their mood, they didn't seem to differ noticeably in dress, age, or any other way. dan glanced around the bookstore and saw that it, like the other stores, could be transplanted to earth, and--except for the unfamiliar lettering on storefront and book titles--would hardly be noticed. he nodded to an elderly woman working at a small desk to one side of the store, then walked to the rear, where the stacks of books left a far corner partially in shadow and out of sight from the front of the store. dan stooped, glanced at the dusty row of books on the bottom shelf, and slid a mataform transceiver behind the books. he walked back to the front of the store, stepped out on the sidewalk, and saw a cart come slowly along in the street. this was the kind of cart he had seen earlier. the outstretched figures of men lay bumping loosely on the cart, metal cords with oblong tags tight around their necks. dan stepped over to note that the tags he could see all read: --kill- unauthorized * * * * * there was a buzz of indignation from the crowd on the sidewalk as the cart went by. then there was a sudden silence. dan glanced around. walking along the sidewalk toward him was a man about his own height and build, who moved with controlled catlike steps. the man looked directly at dan and called out: "hello, death!" the people on the sidewalk rushed to get out of the way. abruptly the man's arm swung back and forward. "catch." something flashed in the air. dan's impulse was to jump aside, then tackle the man. instead, his body turned slightly. his right hand, already partly raised, whipped in a short arc, caught something, flicked it to his left, and blurred straight out again. the man opposite dan blinked and jumped aside. at the same instant, dan's left hand shot out. there was a gasp from the crowd. the man collapsed with the butt of a knife jutting from his chest. a voice behind dan said warmly, "superb! a return attack complete in one stroke!" dan turned to see three alert, strong-looking men. one counted bills from a thick roll. the second opened up a square case with carrying handle. the third was unwinding an armband with a badge on it. the man with the case held it out. "if you'll just put your fingertips on these plates, so we'll be sure to get your mating credits--" dan sensed from the waiting attitude of the people watching that this was some kind of test. unhesitatingly, he held out his fingertips. there were also two bright flashes as a small tube was held to dan's eyes. once dan could see again, everyone seemed relaxed and friendly. the crowd was excitedly arguing the details of what had happened. the man with the roll of bills handed over a small fistful, saying, "double, for the return at one stroke." the man with the armband put it on dan's arm as he rapidly recited the words of some rote formula, of which all dan caught was a frequent reference to "the code," and the words "peril and deadly danger," and the last words, "now say, 'i do.'" "i do," said dan, fervently wishing he were somewhere else. the man with the case was beaming as he snapped the little rod inside. he said genially, "i always know an honest fight when i see it. and these days it's a real pleasure to--" just then, he clapped the case shut. the case gave out a clang like the general alarm on a space cruiser under surprise attack. the crowd gave a shout. "unauthorized kill!" the three men beside dan jumped forward. dan's left hand lashed out to smash the nearest of the three men in the midsection. the flat edge of his right hand struck the second man just below the nose; then dan had thrown the first man back against the third, had whirled around and seen the crowd start to surge across the sidewalk to block his escape. he sprinted directly past this crowd, so that when it completely blocked the sidewalk an instant later, he was cut off from the view of the three men he had just knocked down. dan did not doubt that these three men were officials of the planet, and he strongly suspected that they were armed and knew how to use their weapons. * * * * * across the street, at the edge of one corner of the green, was a tall hedge of flowering shrubs, back of which was a grove of young trees. dan dodged past carts and small, square, silent automobiles, and ran through this hedge. behind him there was a shout of anger. to dan's left were two young trees, growing close together. dan still had with him two of his little mataform units, and he quickly thrust one of them between the two dark, slender tree trunks. an instant later, he was in the dark corner of the bookstore, hearing the angry shouts dwindle into the distance outside. the door of the store closed as the elderly woman who ran the store stepped outside, apparently to see what had happened. a moment later, dan was in the shelter under the river. he worked quickly with a small brush and some dye, then got out another set of clothes. he checked his appearance swiftly and thoroughly. then with more of a tanned look than he had had before, with much darker hair, and wearing entirely different clothes, dan mataformed back to the bookstore. the elderly woman was standing by the front window as he came forward, to pick up a thin scientific volume lying on a table and say, "i believe you were outside when i came in." "oh," she said, "the most frightful thing just happened." she then gave a highly inaccurate account of dan's fight with the knife man, and described how the crowd was hunting him down right now at the far end of the park. dan took his change and said, "i'll have to go look." he stepped outside and could see the path of the crowd with no difficulty. the flowering shrubs were flattened, and the ground under the trees showed the marks of many feet. dan recovered his mataform unit and walked a short distance to look down toward the far end of the green, where the swimmers were all out of the pool--probably so that it could be searched for dan. he turned around and noticed near the bookstore a large restaurant, built in a style that made him think of an old english tavern. several men looking well contented came out. dan realized he was hungry. he went in, and from a weird merry-go-round serving apparatus got a steak indistinguishable from those at home, and a selection of unfamiliar side dishes that looked good to him, but made other diners nearby wince. dan paid for his selection and sat down. during the meal, someone at a nearby table began to talk loudly, and someone else shouted, "spacerot!" there was a momentary hush in the restaurant, and two burly men in white jackets quickly crossed to the table and spoke firmly to the diners. peace was restored, and the two burly men wove back through several parties just leaving the restaurant, and separated to stand quietly but alertly near the far wall. as dan ate, he thought, "kielgaard!" "right here." "do you make any sense out of what we've seen so far?" "i get the impression something's about to snap, but i don't know what. or as my experts here tell me, 'it's too early to venture an opinion.'" "that," thought dan, "is likely to be the trouble with this place. by the time we find out what's going on, it will be too late to do anything about it. we're going to have to play hunches to crack this one in time." kielgaard said fervently, "_how_ we crack it makes no difference to me, so long as we _do_ crack it." * * * * * while dan ate, a considerable crowd of people went out the front door, and two couples came in. the restaurant, however, remained very nearly full. "something tells me," dan thought, "that there must be a lot more to this planet than meets the eye." he got up and walked toward the back of the restaurant. what he had taken for the rear wall turned out to be merely a wall that divided one section of the restaurant from another equally large, where waitresses served individual tables. a flight of carpeted steps led down to men's and women's rest rooms and a gently sloping, softly lighted hallway. people were coming up the hall in considerably greater numbers than they went down, and dan was startled to see that they reacted to him exactly as the crowd outside had, before he had gone into the bookstore to watch them unnoticed. dan went to the men's rest room, washed, and inconspicuously studied himself in the mirror. he looked very much different than he had before. why, then, did the people react in the same way? dan concealed a mataform unit in the dimly lit lounge outside the washroom, then went out and down the hall. he had gone perhaps thirty steps when a lithe man coming the other way saw him, whipped out a gun, and shouted, "_death!_" one instant dan was walking down the right side of the hall. a split fraction of an instant later, he had thrown himself to the other side of the hall. there was a swift, bright flash. someone screamed. the gun went spinning and dan had the man on the floor, both hands locked at his throat. it was a severe struggle for dan to loosen his hands. a crowd gathered so quickly that there was scarcely room to stand. a man carrying a small box with a handle forced his way through. dan had his captive, half-unconscious, on his feet. improvising rapidly, dan said, "i think that was unauthorized." the man with the carrying case said grimly, "we'll soon find out." he held the man's fingertips to plates in the case, flashed a small tube in his eyes, and shut the case. there was a loud clang. two powerfully built men wearing armbands with shields stepped up. one glanced at dan and said, "want to finish him? he's yours, by rights." someone in the crowd said, "_question_ him! find out which side is behind this!" the man with the carrying case said sternly, "that's neither here nor there. the only question is, which side is _right_?" there was a tense silence. it occurred to dan that this planet might not be called truth for nothing. he was still gripping his captive by the arms and wanted in the worst way to question him. but how, in this crowd? and then he remembered that he still had one mataform unit with him. the man with the case was saying to the sullen crowd, "maybe you think something's wrong. maybe it is. all right, you know what to do--_go to the war ruler_--" dan mentally pronounced a key word, then opened his hands as he pronounced another. a momentary flash of dense jungle, and then he was in the corridor again, his prisoner gone. * * * * * it all seemed to take a moment to register. as soon as it did, someone shouted, "spacerot!" this word acted on the crowd like a blazing torch thrown into an explosives shack. they began smashing each other violently around in the crowded corridor. dan barely recovered his mataform unit, which had fallen to the floor when he transferred his prisoner, and had a rough time merely staying on his feet. the savage pressing and crowding in the jammed corridor seemed to drive the crowd to hysteria. dan realized there was no way to tell when he might get loose. for the second time, he used the mataform unit to get out of the corridor. this time he went to the shelter under the river. he got some strong cord, went to the place in the jungle where his prisoner was, and tied him up. then he returned to the shelter, fitted a set of small filters in his nostrils, and went back to the lounge outside the washroom near the corridor, carrying a small egg-shaped object. someone happened to be looking at the spot where he appeared. dan ignored the staring onlooker, went out to the corridor, and found that things were even worse than when he had left. he threw the egg-shaped object at the wall of the corridor and ducked back into the lounge. there was a loud _bang_, followed by a number of smaller explosions. abruptly the lounge was filled with bright points of light and little popping noises. the air was permeated with a gray vapor. the people in the room sagged in their seats or collapsed on the floor, and dan was very careful to breathe only through the filters in his nostrils. he mentally said a key word and he was in the corridor, standing on a mound of unconscious people. he worked till he found the transceiver, went by mataform back to the lounge, took the transceiver there in case the lounge should be searched, and walked back through the corridor over heaps of people, picked up the other mataform unit, and went on down the corridor. he wasn't happy about the people behind him. when the concentration of the drug in the air reached a low enough point, those on top of the heap were going to come to, then those under them, till there was one writhing hysterical mass that would be even worse than it had been before he threw the bomb. the only good feature--if it could be called that--was that they would all very soon be violently nauseated, with an urgent need for fresh air, and yet would be too sickened and weak to head for the outside in a rush. thinking this, dan rounded a corner and came to a dead stop. * * * * * directly before him was a short, wide, high-ceilinged cross-corridor with half a dozen doors swinging open as people hurried in, walked a few paces, and collapsed. either side of this short hall was made of shiny metal containing numerous slots. as dan watched, a man came through a door, and in one automatic motion jammed a coin in a slot, ripped off a ticket that popped out another slot, then suddenly blinked and jerked around to stare at the pile of people on the floor of the corridor. then he collapsed. dan glanced from this man to the wall above the doors, which was brilliant with lights and moving letters, forming a maze that made him dizzy to look at: skl mach ops--80l6h4 s wanted on level 10 mnl lbrs-647l25h2*mn *men with fast refle penses paid housing dan strode forward and through a door with the numeral "1" over it. directly before him was a short dead-end hallway that abruptly vanished, and he was walking toward a crowd of hurrying people in an immense room. * * * * * glancing around, dan again felt at home. the immense room reminded him of grand central mataform terminal back on earth. one wall even had the same kind of huge map of the tunnels and cross-tunnels that gave underground access to stores in the area. but the map here was even larger and more complex. near its face were spidery walks and moving stairways, so that people could examine individual parts from close at hand if they wanted. dan looked over the terminal carefully, then walked slowly along looking for a place to hide one of his mataform units. he spotted, near a door in a corner, a poster on a stand showing a strong young man in uniform with a series of numbers, apparently dates, stretching out like a road before him. the stand held a poster on either side, and there was a place between them where dan could slip one of the mataform units. an instant after he did this, he was in the shelter under the river. quickly, he got out a very light, strong two-man tent, an air mattress, a hypodermic, and a shiny half-globe with web straps at the back. he immediately went to the spot in the jungle where he had left his prisoner and found him thrashing furiously in an attempt to get loose. dan injected a small quantity of a fast-acting hypnotic drug, and the man lay still. then dan set up the small tent and got the man inside on the mattress. it was now getting dark outside, and, with the darkness, there was a rumble of thunder in the distance. dan went back to the shelter, returned with a light, and adjusted the half-globe over the man's face and head, then fastened the straps behind his head. he inserted in the man's ears two little thimblelike devices, then said mentally, "kielgaard?" kielgaard's voice answered, "we'll know in a minute." after a considerable pause, he said, "yes, he's responding. watch." very slowly, the man's right arm lifted from the mattress, then dropped limply. dan said, "you can handle it all from that end?" "easily. we've got a team here that will do nothing else but question him." dan nodded, aware that the voices of specially trained psychologists were now speaking in the man's ears, so that he heard nothing else, while he saw only what the screen in the half-globe projected directly into his eyes. soon he should begin to talk, and what he said would be transmitted through subspace to kielgaard's team of questioners. then it might be possible to learn something of what was going on on this planet. but there was another way that might also help. dan glanced at his wristwatch and saw that it was late enough so that if this were earth most stores would probably be closed by now. dan didn't know how it was on this planet, but he pronounced a key word and was in the bookstore that faced the green. the bookstore was closed. dan quickly selected an armload of books, brought them back to the shelter under the river, went back and got another stack of them. he set up a spidery device of light metal and piled the books near enough so the feed arms could reach them. a set of rubber-tipped rods like long skeletal fingers turned the pages, while the scanner on an overhead arm oscillated from a position over one page to a position over the other page. dan said, "how's it coming in, kielgaard?" "speed it up a little." dan moved a small lever. the pages turned more quickly. * * * * * dan said, "we'll see how the feeder works before i leave it." then he got out a mirror and went to work to change his appearance again. the second book fed in with no difficulty, so dan took four of his little mataform units, which was all he had room for, and went back to the terminal. the crowd seemed to have thinned out somewhat, so he supposed the evening rush was about over. as in terminals nearly everywhere dan had been, most of the people moved briskly, intent on their own affairs. no one paid much attention to dan while he glanced around, noting the wall of flashing lights and moving letters, similar to but far larger than the one he had seen before, and a series of sizable blocky structures with large numerals suspended above them, and the stylized outlines of doorways on their four walls. people appeared in front of these doorways, or strolled directly toward them and vanished, hesitating only when a red glow outlined the door to show that someone was coming through from the other side. in the center of the room toward either end were large silvery structures with the word "information" hanging above them. dan went to one and found that vertical blue lines divided it into twenty-four sections, with room left over for more that weren't there as yet, plus a section headed "general information." dan studied the numerous slots, went to the general information section and spent most of his change. he sat down with a small package of maps and folders and soon had before him a cross-sectional drawing showing a series of spherical layers one inside the other, labeled, "level 1--retail," "level 2--retail," "level 3--wholesale," "level 4--manufacturing," and so on, numbered from the outside in toward the center of the sphere, from one to twenty-five. dan sat perfectly still for a moment, looking at this. he leafed carefully though the folders, and was soon convinced that this wasn't a map of underground layers under just one city, but of an interconnected system that appeared to stretch over most of the planet. the surface was labeled, "recreation--ordeals--general." the complex of underground layers seemed to be much thicker than separate floors of a building would be; the map showed cross-sections of buildings of many stories in the individual layers. dan studied the map further and found that level 10 was marked, "coordination--government." dan walked to the information machine and came back with a general map of level 10, which was divided into sixteen sections. sections 4 and 5 were headed "government sections," and dan got large-scale maps of each of them. what he was looking at was being reproduced far away on big screens, and instantly recorded, to be examined in detail by staffs of trained men. he was thankful this was so. the map was a maze of colored lines, blocks, and curves, with numbered lists up and down both sides and across the bottom. abruptly, kielgaard's voice said, "dan, see that dark purple oval a little to the left of the center of the page?" "i see it." dan glanced from the number to the list at the side of the page and read, "war ruler's control center." * * * * * kielgaard said, "the staff going over those books thinks there is some sort of an arrangement by which a 'war ruler' takes over absolute power in an emergency. what would be a better way to take over the planet than to get control of this war ruler and then provoke an emergency?" dan studied the purple oval on the map. "yes. but what do we do about it?" "the first of your reinforcements will be coming down tonight. if you can get near that control center and plant a few transceivers, we might be able to make a good deal of trouble for anyone who may have seized it." "i'll do my best," said dan. he got up, put most of the maps and folders into a locker, and bought a ticket for level 10, section 4. as he turned, he noticed two men standing about twenty feet away, talking. on impulse, dan went, not to the block that would take him to level 10, but instead toward the station that his pamphlet had told him would take him to section 6 of the same level he was on. as he rounded a corner and strode up a deserted corridor, he stooped and slid a mataform unit into the space between a waste container and the wall. an instant later, he was back beside the posters where he had hidden a transceiver earlier. two men were walking in the same direction he had gone. dan followed them till they vanished, walking very rapidly now, around another corner. he picked up the mataform transceiver and looked around for the blocky structure with the big number "10" over it. he saw it, after a moment, near the wall with the lights and moving letters on it. "kielgaard," he thought, "what do you suppose that wall is?" "we think it's a sort of abbreviated classified ad arrangement." "sounds reasonable," dan thought. dan was by now near the blocky structure with the big numeral "10" above it. each of the four faces of the structure had four large doors outlined on it--one door for each of the sixteen sections of the level. dan stepped up to the door marked "4" and it was immediately outlined in red. a voice said, "travelers are reminded of the special restrictions now enforced at the governmental sections. to enter, you must present valid authorization papers, or state an acceptable reason for entering." dan stood perfectly still. he was fairly sure now that he must get into this section. but how? at that moment, the lights of the huge wall of moving letters caught his attention, and kielgaard's voice said, "dan, look to the left, about halfway up." dan looked and saw moving letters spell out: s wanted on level 10 all credits paid short term employment *men with fast reflexes wanted on level 10 * * * * * dan realized he had seen parts of this ad spelled out twice at the terminal entrance. he didn't know if it was a trap or something he could use. he said, "i'm interested in a job on level 10." "you have examined the record?" dan had no idea what this meant. he said, "i understand men with fast reflexes are wanted on level 10." "one moment." there was a short pause, then a new voice. "what we offer you is a special credit allotment sufficient for all normal mating and purchase needs. on account of these latest restrictions, i can't tell you exactly what the job is, but i can say this: the rewards are great. but you also might end up getting sprinkled over the forest. we've got a situation down here that has to be cleaned up fast. with the special referendum tomorrow, it might boil over and make an interstellar mess. we want you for a night's work. at the end you're either rich or dead. how about it?" dan thought of the two words "interstellar mess," used in connection with a "special referendum." he had the sensation that he was getting close. "all right," he said. * * * * * there was a blur as mataform stations shuttled him from one place to the next. then he was walking into a large room holding about thirty men, all of whom had something of the look of big cats alert for prey. dan had hardly come in when a lithe man walked out on a raised platform, looked over the waiting men, and said, "i'd like to wait till there are more of us, but there isn't time. i'll come to the point without delay. i'll only explain it once, so listen carefully. "on this level, we have the war ruler's control center. two levels up, there is the planetary zoo. among the animals in the zoo is an ape about our size and general shape, with a thick layer of fur, strong muscles, and a sense of humor like a white-hot rivet dropped down your collar. by some process i don't understand, about fifty of these apes have gotten into a storeroom in an arms depot attached to the control center. "with this referendum coming up to decide whether we should join the stellar union, every time there is a disturbance the election committee blames it on one faction or another. using their emergency powers, they then clap on some new restriction to keep order till the referendum is over. if there is now a disturbance near the control center itself, tempers are going to shorten further. if the blame should be stuck on one side or the other, true or untrue, it could swing the vote either way. "we have got to get those apes out of the arms depot right away. the trouble is, there's an alarm in the arms depot that can't be shut off except from the control center. fire any kind of impact or vibration weapon in there, or change the composition of the atmosphere by pouring in gas, and the alarm automatically goes off in guard stations all over this level. if we had more time, we could starve them out. we don't have the time. "the result is that we have to go after them with knives and clubs. now, the apes are fast, they gang up, they throw things, and if they can, they'll grab you from opposite sides and pull your arms and legs off. that's very funny--for them. so we'll have to work together as a team and fight as hard as we know how." * * * * * after the speaker finished, there was a silence in the room. dan was thinking over the idea and he liked nothing about it. he had little enough time to do his job, and he did not want to spend it being pulled to pieces by apes. he called out, "mind if i make a suggestion?" "i'm willing to try anything. let's hear it." dan said, "i don't know about anybody else here, but i am no team player myself. let me go in alone first. you wait half an hour and then come in and see if there are fifty apes left." everyone craned to see who was offering to fight fifty wild apes singlehanded. the man on the platform turned pale, but said, "agreed. and if you win, you received the combined credits of all." dan found himself walking down a corridor, surrounded by well-wishers, to a room where several tables were loaded with hand-weapons. he picked up a short weighted club, and a short double-edge, razor-sharp sword. a few minutes later, he arrived at a heavy metal door studded with rivets and painted green. dan had intended to hide a transceiver nearby on the outside and spend as little time in the storeroom as possible. but everything had happened so fast, and there were so many eyes watching him, that he had no chance to hide a mataform unit anywhere. there was a loud clang as the heavy door swung shut behind him. then he was in a big dimly lighted room with a twelve-foot aisle running down the center, a narrower aisle along each wall, and high piles of wooden crates and wirebound heavy cardboard cartons spaced five feet apart to either side of the central aisle. there was a strong smell of damp dirty fur. on the floor partway up the aisle lay what looked like a clothed human arm. from the far end of the building came a series of low gruff barks. a humping motion ran along like a wave up the aisle and over the piles of crates toward dan. he glanced briefly to either side at the solid concrete walls of the building, felt behind him. the door was locked. it flashed through his mind that up till now he had had good luck on this planet. dan saw, in the nearest corner of the room, several pipes that ran up from the floor and were bent to travel along near the ceiling. he quickly slipped a mataform unit behind these pipes on the floor, then cut into a cardboard carton about fifteen feet away and put another unit inside. he tossed a third on top of the nearest pile of cartons, mentally said a key word, and was on the pile slashing open a carton to slide the unit inside. then he was on the floor in the corner. in the dim light, the shadowy figures came toward him. their long arms swung up and a barrage of rifle parts, bayonets, scabbards, and helmets smashed into the corner. dan was fifteen feet away when they hit. an instant later, he was back, kicking the rubble out of the corner. there was a repeated gruff cough, then the aisles were jammed, and he had a brief view of bared teeth in fur-covered faces, and hairy arms that reached out to grasp him. there was a grisly laugh that started as a low chuckle and ended on a high-pitched wavering note. dan mentally pronounced a key word and he was on the pile of cartons with a half a dozen apes. the short sword flicked out and back. other apes sprang from the next pile of cartons. dan dropped the weighted club, threw his last mataform unit toward the top of a pile across the aisle, and an instant later had recovered it, dropped to the floor, and raced up the aisle. * * * * * there was noise like teeth clicking together and then the wavering laugh burst out again as the apes turned to chase him up the aisle. dan slid the transceiver into a slit-open carton and whirled as the leaders rushed toward him. the short sword flashed out and back in rapid thrusts, and abruptly dan was on top of the first pile of cartons. he recovered the weighted club, glanced down at the apes turning to rush up the aisles, and then suddenly he was with them, slamming the last few of them over the heads with the weighted club. he thrust, stabbed, and smashed, now in one place, now another, always striking the gibbering horde where they were fewest and most off-balance. after a long, hideous interval, there came a silence. dan could see that there were four heaps of dead or unconscious apes, the only live ones were a few clinging to overhead beams with their eyes shut. dan recovered his transceivers and made his way to one of the few windows in the room. this was about seven feet from the floor, heavily barred, with its glass panes broken out. dan pulled himself up and looked out at a walk and a high wall a few feet away. he cut the sleeve of his shirt into strips and knotted the strips together with a transceiver tied onto either end, so that one transceiver hung on the outside and the other on the inside. then dan was outside, in an underground part of the planet where no one was supposed to be without an official permit. the air seemed as fresh as outdoors, while overhead there was the appearance of the sky on a heavily overcast day. there was light enough to see by, but it was apparently dimmed to provide an artificial night. dan saw no one, and said mentally, "kielgaard?" kielgaard's voice had a hoarse sound. "are you out of that place?" "i'm out of it--thank heaven." "amen. but listen, things have taken a nasty turn." "what's happened?" "we've questioned that prisoner. the outfit behind this trouble is trans-space. but they don't have the control center. instead, they've got the headquarters of the election committee that controls the referendum. trans-space is representing itself as the government of an interstellar league of planets. they have everything set up to falsify the vote tomorrow." dan frowned. "what of it? i can still plant the mataform transceivers and we can bring men down from above." "yes, but trans-space has a mataform terminal set up in the terminal election headquarters. it hooks into the local system and connects with an outpost in the jungle on the surface. trans-space has been building up to this day for over three years. the election headquarters is manned like a fortress. it's in immediate touch with the outpost on the surface where they've got an army of reinforcements." dan stood still, thinking. he remembered the official with the carrying case in the corridor overhead, who had said to the angry crowd, "go to the war ruler." dan mentioned the incident and said, "what about this war ruler and his emergency powers?" * * * * * kielgaard said, "it looked promising to us at first, but actually that's as if someone should say, 'england is in peril. go to king arthur.'" "what?" said dan, puzzled. "the war ruler is a myth. a thousand years or more ago, after a terrific internal war, they had a famine. they also had a huge army to disband, headed by a very popular leader. the army apparently threatened to take over the planet, but by a clever gimmick, the government put off the crisis. they announced that their scientists had discovered a way to halt the flow of time after the famine--and the war ruler marched the whole army loyally into a kind of big mausoleum where they presumably killed the lot of them with a quick-acting gas. that is the war ruler's control center. "ever since then, they've been making ritual gestures. they stock new arms of standard design nearby, and recruit a number of fresh soldiers to join the old--as a population control measure. to make the illusion complete, they say that any man or woman who sincerely believes the state to be in peril can enter the control center, by passing through a lethal field that kills the insincere and lets the sincere through alive. a number of people have tried it and got killed, so now they don't try any more." "where is this place?" asked dan. "if we read your map rightly, that wall in front of you marks the edge of the field surrounding it." dan set down one of the mataform units and mentally pronounced a keyword. he was in the shelter under the river. an instant later he was back by the wall, a glider and the control helmet in his hands. he clipped a transceiver to the glider and guided it toward a huge, dark-stained building with the look of a fortress. he sent the glider around to the front of the building and saw two huge bronze doors, one of which stood open. there was a totally still, motionless look about the place that dan did not care for. but the glider had come to a closed inner door and that was as far as it could go. dan took off the control helmet, drew a deep breath and said a key word. he was standing in the huge hall, before the closed door. he opened the door. before him was a room with tall slit windows, and as dan went in, he could see dimly, but, like a man in a hall of mirrors, what he saw did not make sense. distorted shapes and forms, with bright points and blots of light, shifted as he moved, and shifted again as he moved closer, to see one leg of what looked like a very old, faded table. a heavy cable ran up the leg to the top, where there was a switch, and a bronze plate with the words, "open switch." dan reached for the switch, and hesitated. if kielgaard's theory was right, he would now be electrocuted, or otherwise disposed of. he swallowed hard, reached the rest of the way, and opened the switch. a pall of choking dust spread over the room, with the sound of coughing all around him and the rustle of clothing and stamping of feet. dan wiped his streaming eyes, and saw a man in uniform behind the desk, all but one corner of which looked new. the man stared at dan and said, "so soon? what's happened?" * * * * * dan glanced around. the huge room was filled with tough, weary-looking men in combat uniform, all fully armed and equipped. he thought fast, turned back to the man behind the desk and said earnestly, "peace is restored to the planet. it's been rebuilt and the damage is all repaired. but now, fantastic as it may seem, an enemy has come down to this world from outer space--" the man at the desk angrily brought down his fist. "no one lives in outer space! that's foolishness!" dan said, his mind racing, "whoever they are, they've seized a vital communications center! they've got men on guard, armed to the teeth. they've issued orders through captive government officials to seal off this part of the level from the public. they're trying to take over the whole government!" there was a stir in the room and a low ugly rumble. "i knew it," said the man behind the desk, jumping to his feet. "i knew they'd lie low and then creep back again when things are quiet. if we'd been demobilized, it would all have been for nothing. but we _aren't_ demobilized!" abruptly there were shouted orders, and someone was gripping dan by the arm. "just lead the way. show us where they are and we'll take care of the rest." dan said mentally, "kielgaard?" kielgaard said, "good lord! go straight outside and turn right." someone threw a switch beside the door. outside, they followed dan to the right. behind him, dan heard the mutter and cough of engines starting up. they were in a well-lighted street like that of a large city, but there was no traffic, either because it was late or because of the travel restrictions. kielgaard said, "next left and it's in front of you." dan turned the corner. directly before him was a large white marble building with a lawn on either side of a broad flight of steps, and guards on the sidewalk, the steps, and in emplacements in the shrubbery on either side of the steps. one of them saw dan and casually snapped a shot at him. dan got back around the corner fast and looked around. on both sides of the street, men were lying flat at the bases of the buildings, or crouching in doorways. down the street, they were running up a block to the left. up the middle of the street came a tank. it paused just out of sight from the building around the corner, and an amplified voice boomed out, "this is the war ruler. get out of that building before the count of thirty, or we clean you out." a voice began to count. there was a sound of fast footsteps on the sidewalk around the corner, and half a dozen men carrying guns came into view. dan recognized some of the men who had searched the place where he'd landed his boat. one of them, not yet quite in a position to see the tank, called out irritably, "all right, you. get out here!" then he caught sight of the men lying at the base of the buildings, and crouched in the doorways. he fired. flashes of light came from the men by the buildings. there was a roar and a grind and the tank rolled forward. a whistle blew. dan heaved a mataform transceiver toward the emplacement at the base of the stairs, and an instant before it landed, he mentally pronounced a key word. in the emplacement, he jerked the men away from their gun before they could fire a shot. he knocked them senseless, grabbed a rifle, and sprang up onto the staircase, with the intent of sprinting to the other side and diving into the emplacement there. halfway across the steps, there was a sensation as if someone had smacked him between the shoulder blades with a rifle butt. he saw the stairs coming up to meet him, and then he saw nothing. * * * * * he came to with a pretty face smiling at him through a sort of fog. the fog cleared away, and a highly attractive nurse was looking at him very admiringly. she said, "sir, you have a visitor." dan glanced around and saw kielgaard, a sorrowful look on his face. dan said as the nurse went out, "she spoke truthian, didn't she?" "she did. you're still on the planet." "what's this 'sir' business and the pleasant smile for?" kielgaard said. "you're a hero. it shows, incidentally, how the best experts can make awe-inspiring mistakes. we gave you fast reflexes, thinking that would make you safer. but it turns out that the planet has a class of authorized assassins who hunt down criminals for a livelihood, and never get too numerous because they fight each other for extra credits and prestige. with your fast reflexes and built-in wariness, the populace immediately spotted you for one of these lawful assassins, so you couldn't have been more conspicuous." kielgaard shook his head. "meanwhile, trans-space was bringing in hired killers to knock off the planet's lawful assassins at a huge bonus per head, in order to create an uproar so that the election committee, which they had already captured and conditioned, would clap on more restrictions, thus creating more tension, so that trans-space could swing the referendum at the last minute. you see, the most dangerous thing we could have done to you was to give you these extra-fast reflexes. but now, because of it, you're a hero." kielgaard looked sad. "luckily," said dan, "i'm still alive. and so were all those soldiers." "another mistake of the experts," said kielgaard. "the highest authorities on truth strongly suspected something was wrong with the protective field around the control center. this made them fearful that the scientific device to halt the flow of time hadn't worked either. this would have been a terrible catastrophe, so by a set of rationalizations that would do credit to a bunch of habitual liars, they evaded the whole issue. the experts and i made the mistake of drawing the logical conclusion. i'm glad it wasn't so." "what happened to trans-space?" kielgaard stopped looking sad and smiled a smile of deep satisfaction. "galactic has its contract with this planet. trans-space is in a very anemic condition. the truthians don't like people who lie, and they always settle their accounts very strictly." kielgaard's face subsided into its gloomy look. dan said, "what's wrong?" "well," said kielgaard, "you see, you're a planetary hero for settling that business with trans-space. also, you have--let's see"--he took out a slip of paper--"the equivalent of around six hundred thousand dollars spending money for cleaning out those apes, plus--i don't know how to translate this--six thousand mating credits. they have a weird system for romance, and these credits--" dan grinned. "envious?" "it isn't that," said kielgaard. "i'm thinking how i'd feel in your place. these truthians don't have any give in their system. right's right, and wrong's wrong, and they hand out rewards and punishments irrespective of persons." there was a sharp rap at the door. dan tried to sit up, but he was still too weak. kielgaard said sadly, "i tried to reason with them, but i might as well have talked to a wall." "listen," said dan, becoming alarmed. "what's wrong?" "i don't have the heart to tell you," said kielgaard. * * * * * picking up a large briefcase, he said, "do what you think best. i might mention that we're giving you a bonus, though i suppose that's no consolation." the rap at the door was repeated and there were sounds of arguments outside. "what's in that briefcase?" said dan. "a big version of the kind of mataform transceiver you used. there's a dreadnaught of ours orbiting the planet with another transceiver like this on board. the key word, in case you should have use for it, is 'krakior.'" the door burst open and three men came in, arguing with a man in a white jacket. "that doesn't matter," said the first man, a familiar-looking individual who was opening a square case with carrying handle. "the only question is, was it or was it not an unauthorized kill, and is this the man? we have our checker set up to answer this question and that's all there is to it." he glanced at dan. "hold out your fingertips, please, and touch those plates. purely a routine check." behind the man with the case were two men with armbands and shields. one glanced disinterestedly at dan and cocked his gun. dan looked at the head of a section and said fervently, "thank you, kielgaard." the doctor in the white jacket was arguing to no visible effect as the tube was held to dan's eyes, snapped back into the case, and the case clapped shut, to give its loud alarm clang. the assassin with the gun calmly leveled it at dan and fired. all he hit was a suddenly empty bed. dan had said the key word. shamar's war by kris neville illustrated by guinta [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy science fiction february 1964. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] he was earth's secret weapon, as deadly as a sword--and two-edged! i the year was 2346, and earth, at the time, was a political democracy. the population was ruled by the over-council and, in order of decreasing importance, by councils, and local councils. each was composed of representatives duly apportioned by popular vote between the two contending parties. executive direction was provided by a variety of secretaries, selected by vote of the appropriate councils. an independent judiciary upheld the laws. a unified earth sent colonists to the stars. back came strange tales and improbable animals. back, too, came word of a burgeoning technological civilization on the planet itra, peopled by entirely humanoid aliens. earth felt it would be wise for itra to join in a galactic federation and accordingly, submitted the terms of such a mutually advantageous agreement. the itraians declined.... * * * * * space captain merle s. shaeffer, the youngest and perhaps the most naive pilot for trans-universe transport, was called unexpectedly to the new york office of the company. when capt. shaeffer entered the luxurious eightieth story suite, old tom twilmaker, the president of tut, greeted him. with an arm around his shoulder, old tom led capt. shaeffer to an immense inner office and introduced him to a general reuter, identified as the chairman of the interscience committee of the over-council. no one else was present. with the door closed, they were isolated in olympian splendor above and beyond the affairs of men. here judgments were final and impartial. capt. shaeffer, in the presence of two of the men highest in the ruling councils of earth, was reduced to incoherent awe. general reuter moved about restlessly. old tom was serene and beatific. when they were seated, old tom swiveled around and gazed long in silence across the spires of the city. capt. shaeffer waited respectfully. general reuter fidgetted. "some day," old tom said at last, "i'm going to take my leave of this. yes, gentle jesus! oh, when i think of all the souls still refusing to admit our precious savior, what bitterness, oh, what sorrow is my wealth to me! look down upon the teeming millions below us. how many know not the lord? yes, some morning, i will forsake all this and go out into the streets to spend my last days bringing the words of hope to the weary and oppressed. are you a christian, merle?" general reuter cracked his knuckles nervously while capt. shaeffer muttered an embarrassed affirmative. "i am a deeply religious man," old tom continued. "i guess you've heard that, merle?" "yes sir," capt. shaeffer said. "but did you know that the lord has summoned you here today?" old tom asked. "no, sir," capt. shaeffer said. "general reuter, here, is a dear friend. we've known each other, oh, many years. distantly related through our dear wives, in fact. and we serve on the same board of directors and the same charity committees.... a few weeks ago, when he asked me for a man, i called for your file, merle. i made discreet inquiries. then i got down on my knees and talked it over with god for, oh, it must have been all of an hour. i asked, 'is this the man?' and i was given a sign. yes! at that moment, a shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds!" * * * * * general reuter had continued his nervous movements throughout the speech. for the first time, he spoke. "good god, tom, serve us a drink." he turned to capt. shaeffer. "a little drink now and then helps a man relax. i'll just have mine straight, tom." old tom studied capt. shaeffer. "i do not feel the gentle master approves of liquor." "don't try to influence him," general reuter said. "you're embarrassing the boy." "i--" capt. shaeffer began. "give him the drink. if he doesn't want to drink it, he won't have to drink it." sighing, old tom poured two bourbons from the bar in back of his desk and passed them over. martyrdom sat heavily upon his brow. after a quick twist of the wrist and an expert toss of the head, general reuter returned an empty glass. "don't mind if i do have another," he said. he was already less restless. "how's your ability to pick up languages?" general reuter asked. "i learned spanish and russian at tut ps," capt. shaeffer said apologetically. "i'm supposed to have a real high aptitude in languages, according to some tests i took. in case we should meet intelligent aliens, tut gives them." "you got no association with crackpot organizations, anything like that?" general reuter asked. "you're either a good liberal-conservative or radical-progressive, aren't you? i don't care which. i don't believe in prying into a man's politics." "i never belonged to anything," capt. shaeffer said. "oh, i can assure you, that's been checked out very, very thoroughly," old tom said. the general signaled for another drink. with a sigh of exasperation, old tom complied. "bob," old tom said, "i really think you've had enough. please, now. our master counsels moderation." "damn it, tom," the general said and turned back to the space pilot. "may have a little job for you." old tom shook his head at the general, cautioning him. "actually," the general said, ignoring the executive, "we'll be sort of renting you from tut. in a way you'll still be working for them. i can get a million dollars out of the--" "bob!" "--unmarked appropriation if it goes in in tut's name. no questions asked. national defense. i couldn't get anywhere near that much for an individual for a year. it gives us a pie to slice. we were talking about it before you came in. how does a quarter of a million dollars a year sound to you?" "when it comes to such matters," old tom interjected hastily, "i think first of the opportunities they bring to do good." the general continued, "now you know, merle. and this is serious. i want you to listen to me. because this comes under world security laws, and i'm going to bind you to them. you know what that means? you'll be held responsible." "yes, sir," merle said, swallowing stiffly. "i understand." "good. let's have a drink on that." * * * * * "please be quiet, general," old tom said. "let me explain. you see, merle, the interscience committee was recently directed to consider methods for creating a climate of opinion on itra--of which i'm sure you've heard--which would be favorable to the proposed galactic federation." "excuse me," general reuter said. "they don't have a democracy, like we do. they don't have any freedom like we do. i have no doubt the average whateveryoucallem--itraians, i guess--the average gooks--would be glad to see us come in and just kick the hell out of whoever is in charge of them." "now, general," old tom said more sharply. "but that's not the whole thing," the general continued. "even fit were right thing to do, an' i'm not saying isn't--right thing to do--there's log-lo-lo-gistics. i don't want to convey the impresh, impression that our defense force people have been wasting money. never had as much as needed, fact. no, it's like this. "we have this broad base to buil' from. backbone. but we live in a democracy. now, old tom's liberal-conservative. and me, i'm radical-progresshive. but we agree on one thing: importance of strong defense. a lot of people don' understan' this. feel we're already spendin' more than we can afford. but i want to ask them, what's more important than the defense of our planet?" "general, i'm afraid this is not entirely germane," old tom said stiffly. "never mind that right now. point is, it will take us long time to get the serious nature of the menace of itra across to the voters. then, maybe fifteen, twenty years.... let's just take one thing. we don't have anywhere near enough troop transports to carry out the occupation of itra. you know how long it takes to build them? my point is, we may not have that long. suppose itra should get secret of interstellar drive tomorrow, then where would we be?" old tom slammed his fist on the desk. "general, please! the boy isn't interested in all that." the general surged angrily to his feet. "by god, that's what's wrong with this world today!" he cried. "nobody's interested in defense. spend only a measly twenty per cent of the gross world product on defense, and expect to keep strong! good god, tom, give me a drink!" apparently heresy had shocked him sober. old tom explained, "the general is a patriot. we all respect him for it." "i understand," capt. shaeffer said. general reuter hammered his knuckles in rhythm on the table. "the drink, the drink, the drink! you got more in the bottle. i saw it!" old tom rolled his eyes heavenward and passed the bottle across. "this is all you get. this is all i've got." the general held the bottle up to the light. "should have brought my own. let's hurry up and get this over with." old tom smiled the smile of the sorely beset and persecuted and said, "you see, merle, there's massive discontent among the population of itra. we feel we should send a man to the planet to, well, foment change and, uh, hasten the already inevitable overthrow of the despotic government. that man will be strictly on his own. the government will not be able to back him in any way whatsoever once he lands on itra." the general had quickly finished the bottle. "you she," he interrupted, "there's one thing they can't fight, an' that's an idea. jus' one man goes to itra with the idea of freedom, that's all it'll take. how many men did it take to start the 'merican revolution? jefferson. the russian revolution? marx!" "yes," old tom said. "one dedicated man on itra, preaching the ideas of liberty--liberty with responsibility and property rights under one god. that man can change a world." exhausted by the purity of his emotions, old tom sat back gasping to await the answer. "a quarter of a million dollars a year?" capt. shaeffer asked at length. ii the itraians spoke a common language. it was somewhat guttural and highly inflected. fortunately, the spelling appeared to be phonetic, with only forty-three characters being required. as near as anyone could tell, centuries of worldwide communication had eliminated regional peculiarities. the speech from one part of itra was not distinguishable from that of another part. most of the language was recovered from spy tapes of television programs. a dictionary was compiled laborously by a special scientific task force of the over-council. the overall program was directed and administered by intercontinental iron, steel, gas, electricity, automobiles and synthetics, incorporated. it took shaeffer just short of three years to speak itraian sufficiently well to convince non-itraians that he spoke without accent. the remainder of his training program was administered by a variety of other large industrial concerns. the training was conducted at a defense facility. at the end of his training, shaeffer was taken by special bus to the new mexican space port. a ship waited. the car moved smoothly from the defense force base, down the broad sixteen-lane highway, through the surrounding slum area and into grants. sight of the slums gave shaeffer mixed emotions. it was not a feeling of superiority to the inhabitants; those he had always regarded with a circumspect indifference. the slums were there. he supposed they always would be there. but now, for the first time in his life, he could truly say that he had escaped their omnipresent threat once and for all. he felt relief and guilt. during the last three years, he had earned $750,000. as a civilian stationed on a defense force base, he had, of course, to pay for his clothing, his food and his lodging. but the charge was nominal. since he had been given only infrequent and closely supervised leaves, he had been able to spend, altogether, only $12,000. which meant that now, after taxes, he had accumulated in his savings account a total of nearly $600,000 awaiting his return from itra. * * * * * shaeffer's ship stood off itra while he prepared to disembark. in his cramped quarters, he dressed himself in itraian-style clothing. capt. merle s. shaeffer became shamar the worker. in addition to his jump equipment, an oxygen cylinder, a face mask and a shovel, he carried with him eighty pounds of counterfeit itraian currency ... all told, forty thousand individual bills of various denominations. earth felt this would be all he needed to survive in a technologically advanced civilization. his plan was as follows: 1. he was to land in a sparsely inhabited area on the larger masses. 2. he was to procure transportation to xxla, a major city, equivalent to london or tokyo. it was the headquarters for the party. 3. he was to establish residence in the slum area surrounding the university of xxla. 4. working through student contacts, he was to ingratiate himself with such rebel intellectuals as could be found. 5. once his contacts were secure, he was to assist in the preparation of propaganda and establish a clandestine press for its production. 6. as quickly as the operation was self-sufficient, he was to move on to another major city ... and begin all over. the ship descended into the atmosphere. the bell rang. shamar the worker seated himself, put on his oxygen mask and signaled his readiness. he breathed oxygen. the ship quivered, the door fell away beneath him and he was battered unconscious by the slipstream. five minutes later, pinwheeling lazily in free fall, he opened his eyes. for an instant's panic he could not read the altimeter. then seeing that he was safe, he noted his physical sensations. he was extremely cold. gyrating wildly, he beat his chest to restore circulation. he stabilized his fall by stretching out his hands. he floated with no sensation of movement. itra was overhead, falling up at him slowly. he turned his back to the planet and checked the time. twelve minutes yet to go. he spent, in all, seventeen minutes in free fall. at 2000 feet, he opened his parachute. the sound was like an explosion. he floated quietly, recovering from the shock. he removed his oxygen mask and tasted the alien air. he sniffed several times. it was not unpleasant. below was darkness. then suddenly the ground came floating up and hit him. the terrain was irregular. he fought the chute to collapse it, tripped, and twisted his ankle painfully. the chute lay quiet and he sat on the ground and cursed in english. at length he bundled up the chute and removed all of the packages of money but the one disguised as a field pack. he used the shovel to dig a shallow grave at the base of a tree. he interred the chute, the oxygen cylinder, the mask, the shovel and scooped dirt over them with his hands. he sat down and unlaced his shoe and found his ankle badly swollen. distant, unfamiliar odors filled him with apprehension and he started at the slightest sound. dawn was breaking. iii noting his bearings carefully, he hobbled painfully westward, with thirty pounds of money on his back. he would intersect the major north-south intercontinental highway by at least noon. two hours later, he came to a small plastic cabin in a clearing at the edge of a forest. wincing now with each step, he made his way to the door. he knocked. there was a long wait. the door opened. a girl stood before him in a dressing gown. she frowned and asked, "_itsil obwatly jer gekompilp?_" hearing itraian spoken by a native in the flesh had a powerful emotional impact on shamar the worker. stumblingly, he introduced himself and explained that he was camping out. during the previous night he had become lost and injured his ankle. if she could spare him food and directions, he would gladly pay. with a smile of superiority, she stepped aside and said in itraian, "come in, chom the worker." he felt panic, but he choked it back and followed her. apparently he had horribly mispronounced his own name. it was as though, in english he had said barchestershire for barset. he cursed whatever professor had picked that name for whatever obscure reason. "sit down," she invited. "i'm about to have breakfast. eggs and bacon--" the itraian equivalent--"if that's all right with you. i'm garfling germadpoldlt by the way, although you can call me ge-ge." the food was quite unpleasant, as though overly ripe. he was able to choke down the eggs with the greatest difficulty. fortunately, the hot drink that was the equivalent of earth coffee at the end of the meal, was sufficiently spicy to quiet his stomach. "good coffee," he said. "thank you. care for a cigarette?" "i sure would." he had no matches, so she lit it for him, hovering above him a moment, leaving with him the fresh odor of her hair. the taste of the cigarette was mild. rather surprisingly, it substituted for nicotine and allayed the sharp longing that had come with the coffee. "let's look at your ankle," she said. she knelt at his feet and began to unlace the right shoe. "my, it's swollen," she said sympathetically. he winced as she touched it and then he reddened with embarrassment. he had been walking across dusty country. he drew back the foot and bent to restrain her. playfully she slapped his hand away. "you sit back! i'll get it. i've seen dirty feet before." she pulled off the shoe and peeled off the sock. "oh, god, it is swollen," she said. "you think it's broken, shamar?" "just sprained." "i'll get some hot water with some medaid in it, and that'll take the swelling out." when he had his foot in the water, she sat across from him and arranged her dressing gown with a coquettish gesture. she caught him staring at the earring, and one hand went to it caressingly. she smiled that universal feminine smile of security and recklessness, of invitation and rejection. "you're engaged," he noted. she opened her eyes wide and studied him above a thumbnail which she tasted with her teeth. "i'm engaged to von stutsman--" as the name might be translated--"perhaps you've heard of him? he's important in the party. you know him?" "no." "you in the party?" she said. she was teasing him now. then, suddenly: "neither am i, but i guess i'll have to join if i become mrs. von stutsman." they were silent for a moment. then she spoke, and he was frozen in terror, all thoughts but of self-preservation washed from his mind. "your accent is unbelieveably bad," she said. "i'm from zuleb," he said lamely, at last. "meta--gelwhops--or even karkeqwol, that makes no difference. nobody on itra speaks like you do. so you must be from that planet that had the party in a flap several years ago--earth, isn't it?" he said nothing. "do you know what they'll do when they catch you?" she asked. "no," he said hollowly. "they'll behead you." * * * * * she laughed, not unkindly. "if you could see yourself! how ridiculous you look, shamar. i wonder what your real name is, by the way? sitting with a foot in the water and looking wildly about. here, let me fix more coffee and we can talk." she called cheerily over her shoulder, "you're safe here. no one will be by. i'm not due back until tuesday." she brought him a steaming mug. "drink this while i dress." she disappeared into the bedroom. he heard the shower running. he sat waiting, numb and desperate, and drank the coffee because it was there. his thoughts scampered in the cage of his skull like mice on a treadmill. when ge-ge came back, he had still not resolved the conflict within him. she stood barefoot upon the rug and looked down at him, hunched miserably over the pan of water, now lukewarm. "how's the foot?" "all right." "want to take it out?" "i guess." "i'll get a towel." she waited until he had dried the foot and restored the sock and shoe. the swelling was gone. he stood up and put his weight on it. he smiled wanly. "it's okay now. it's not broken, i guess." she gestured him to the sofa. he complied. "what's in the field pack?" she asked. "money? how much?" she moved toward it. he half rose to stop her, but by then she had it partly open. "my," she said, bringing out a thick sheaf of bills. she rippled them sensuously. "pretty. very, very pretty." she examined them for texture and appearance. "they look good, shamar. i'll bet it would cost ten million dollars in research on paper and ink and presses to do this kind of a job. only another government has got that kind of money to throw around." she tossed the currency carelessly beside him and came to sit at his side. she took his hand. her hand was warm and gentle. "tell me, shamar," she said. "tell me all about it." so this is how easily spies are trapped in real life, shamar told himself with numb disbelief. the story came out slowly and hesitantly at first. she said nothing until he had finished. "and that's all? you really believe that, don't you? and i guess your government does, too. that all we need is just some little idea or something." she turned away from him. "but of course, that's neither here nor there, is it? i never imagined an adventurer type would look like you. you have such a soft, honest voice. as a little girl, i pictured myself being carried off by a tanned desert sheik on a camel; and oh, he was lean and handsome! with dark flashing eyes and murderously heavy lips and hands like iron! well, that's life, i guess." she stood and paced the room. "let me think. we'll pick up a flyer in zelonip when we catch the bus next tuesday. how much does the money weigh?" "eighty pounds." "i can carry about 10 pounds in my bag. you can take your field pack. how much is in it? thirty pounds? that'll leave about forty which we can ship through on extra charges. then, when we get to xxla, i can hide you out in an apartment over on the east side." "why would you run a risk like that for me?" he asked. * * * * * she brushed the hair from her face. "let's say--what? i don't really think you can make it, because it's so hopeless. but maybe, just maybe, you might be one of the rare ones who, if he plays his cards right, can beat the system. i love to see them licked! "well, i'm a clerk. that's all. just a lowly clerk in one of the party offices. i met von stutsman a year ago. this is his cabin. he lets me use it. "he's older than i am; but there's worse husband material. but then again, he's about to be transferred to one of the big agricultural combines way out in the boondocks where there's no excitement at all. just little old ladies and little old men and peasants having children. "i'm a city girl. i like xxla. and if i marry him, all that goes up the flue. i'll be marooned with him, god knows where, for years. stuck, just stuck. "still--he is von stutsman, and he's on his way up. everyone says that. ten, twenty years, he'll be back to xxla, and he'll come back on top. "oh ... i don't know what i want to do! if i marry him, i can get all the things i've always wanted. position, security. he's older than i am, but he's really a nice guy. it's just that he's dull. he can't talk about anything but party, party, party. "that's what i came out to this cabin for. to think things over, to try to get things straightened out. and then you came along. maybe it gives me a chance for something exciting before i ship off to the boondocks. does that make sense to you? "i'll get married and sit out there, and i'll turn the pages of the party magazine and smile sweetly to myself. because, you see, i'll always be able to lean forward and say, 'dear? once upon a time, i helped hide an earth spy in xxla.' and that'll knock that silly and self-satisfied look off his face for once.... oh, i don't know! let me alone!" with that, she fled to the bedroom and slammed the door behind her. he could hear her sobbing helplessly. in the afternoon, she came out. he had fallen asleep. she shook him gently to waken him. "eh? oh! huh?" he smiled foolishly. "wash up in there," she told him. "i'm sorry i blew up on you this morning. i'll cook something." when he came back, she was serving them their dinner on steaming platters. "look, ge-ge," he said over coffee. "you don't like your government. we'll help you out. there's this galactic federation idea." he explained to her the cross-fertilization of the two cultures. "shamar, my friend," she said, "did you see earth's proposal? there was nothing in it about giving us an interstellar drive. we were required to give earth all transportation franchises. the organization you used to work for was to be given, as i remember it, an exclusive ninety-nine year right to carry all earth-itra commerce. it was all covered in the newspapers, didn't you see it?" shamar said, "well, now, i'm not familiar with the details. i wasn't keeping up with them. but i'm sure these things could be, you know, worked out. maybe, for security reasons, we didn't want to give you the interstellar drive right off, but you can appreciate our logic there. once we saw you were, well, like us, a peace-loving planet, once you'd changed your government to a democracy, you would see it our way and you'd have no complaints on that score." "let's not talk politics," she said wearily. "maybe it's what you say, and i'm just naturally suspicious. i don't want to talk about it." "well, i was just trying to help--" the sentence was interrupted by a monstrous explosion. "good god!" shamar cried. "what was that?" "oh, that," ge-ge said, shaking off the effects. "they were probably testing one of their damned automated factories to see if it was explosion proof and it wasn't." iv during the week alone in the cabin, ge-ge fell in love with shamar. "oh, my god!" she cried. "what will i do when they catch you? i'll die, shamar! i couldn't bear it. we'll go to xxla, we'll hide away as quietly as two mice, somewhere. we won't go out. the two of us, alone but together, behind closed doors and drawn shades. nobody will ever know about us. we'll be the invisible people." shamar protested. "i don't see how we can ever be secure until something's done about your government. as long as you don't reach some kind of agreement with earth, i'll be an outlaw. i'll be afraid any minute they'll tap my shoulder and come and take me away. i don't think we could hold up under that. we'd be at each other in no time." she wept quietly. the last day in the cabin, they went out and dug up the rest of the money. the trip to xxla took place without incident. ge-ge rented an apartment for him, and he safely checked in. she went shopping for food and clothing. thereafter she came nearly every evening. they would eat and she would reveal the inconsequential details of the office regime to which she was daily exposed. after dinner, they would sit in the living room and practice itraian and neck a little. then she would go home. one day, after a month of this routine, she threw herself into his arms and sobbed, "i gave von stutsman back his earring today. it was the only fair thing to do. i'm afraid he knows about us. he's had me watched. i know he has. i admitted it was another man." shamar held her tensely. she broke away. "you were born in zuleb, you suffered amnesia, you woke up in a ditch one morning without papers. you've been an itinerant worker since. things like that happen all the time. you hit a big lottery ticket a few months ago. i told him that. how can he check it?" "you told him i didn't have any papers?" "millions of people don't have any papers--the drifters, people that do casual labor, the people that don't work at all. the thing is, without papers he doesn't have any way to check on you. oh, you should have seen his face when i gave him back his earring. he was absolutely livid. i didn't think he had it in him. i suppose i'll have to quit my job now. oh, if you only had papers so we could be married!" ge-ge's mood, that evening, alternated between despair and optimism. in the end, she was morose and restless. she repeated several times, "i just don't know what's going to happen to us." "ge-ge," he said, "i can't spend my life in this apartment i've got to get out." "you're mad." she faced him from across the room. she stood with her legs apart, firmly set. "well, i don't care what happens any more. i can't stand things to go on like they are. i'll introduce you to some people i know, since you won't be happy until i do. but god help us!" * * * * * after approving his accent, which had improved under her tutelage, ge-ge took him to a party the following saturday. the party was held in an ill-lighted railroad flat. people congregated cross-legged on the bare floor. shamar listened to a man complaining that citizens were being taxed beyond all endurance to support the enforced automation program. "they aren't interested in building consumer goods. they're interested in building factories to build consumer goods and blow them up testing them. or the factories are always obsolete just as soon as they finish them, and they can't phase into their new production setup and hundred year plan." ge-ge whispered a warning to him to beware of spies. "spies?" "the party," she said, drawing him to one side. "but--but--you mean the party just lets people talk like this?" "whatever harm does it do?" she asked. "everybody benefits from talking out their aggressions. now, have another drink and relax, and shamar, be careful! nobody minds local crackpots, but nobody wants _foreign_ crackpots!" she led him to another drink and left him standing with the host. "nice party," shamar said. "thank you," the host said. "i find it very invigorating. as long as there's still people that think and that criticize on this planet, i feel there's hope, don't you? this is your first time? i don't recall your face. i have a study group that meets wednesday nights. you're welcome to come. we have very stimulating discussions about government and politics. please do come, any time you can. just drop in any time after eight. what was your name again?" "shamar the worker." "interesting name," the host said. "another drink?" later, shamar found himself in an intense conversation with a bearded youth of perhaps seventeen. "a guy's responsible for his own conduct, right? right! i'm responsible for _their_ conduct? each man goes to hell in his own way, right? right! i don't want anything to do with them. you can't do anything about it, man, that's what i'm telling you. i don't seem to be getting through. don't you see, it's a machine...." "but if everybody joined the party," shamar suggested. "so everybody joins? so what's new? okay, you vote in the party elections. what do you get? you get these two guys running for office: one is slightly left of center and one is slightly right of center. and both are four-square for the automated factory program. just suppose you did get a radical--suppose they accidentally let one slip through? he goes off and they argue him into line, and when he comes back, you say, 'like, man, what happened?' and so he tells you, 'well, i couldn't do anything about it.' that's just what i'm telling you." "i can't see that," shamar said. "i just don't believe that." * * * * * at another time, shamar tried to explain free elections to a female. he was informed, "man, just give me a way to cast a vote against all those crumbs--and then i'll think twice about all this guff you're peddling." a sober, scholarly man told him, "join the party? whatever for? you join the party and you're expected to spend all your free evenings at rallies and meetings and speeches and in ceremonial parades in honor of the ground breaking for a new automated factory. no, thank you." another told him, "you need a lesson in economics, son. what do you mean by free society? the only way you can run an industrial society is to limit production. if you produce enough for everybody, the government would produce itself out of business. look here. the party has millions of tabulating machines of one kind or another clicking happily away day and night arranging production to fit income distribution. they've never been known to goof and produce a surplus of anything. why, damn it, if every man, woman and child in the world went out to buy a pound of nails apiece, the shortage of nails would be fantastic. but would they produce more nails? you know they wouldn't. 'so you want more nails?' they'd say. 'well, damn you, work for them!' and the price would go up. see what i mean, son? they'd have another stick to beat us with." later, shamar found himself seated on the floor across from an aesthetic in his late thirties. "you see, my friend, force and violence never accomplish their stated ends. we must stand firmly on the principle of non-violence." "but that's taking it laying down," shamar protested. "no! sometimes i think it goes to the very core of human existence. perhaps this is the central import of all philosophy: the way things are done is more important than the ends that are obtained." at that point, ge-ge arrived breathlessly. "shamar, quickly! we must go!" "huh? i'm having this interesting little talk--" she tugged him from the floor. baffled, he followed her. as he did so, the fighting broke out in the far corner of the room. "quickly!" she said. "let's get out of here before the police come." they fought their way, hand in hand, to the door. there they paused for a moment to look back. "it's a couple of rival socialist parties fighting," she explained breathlessly. "what about?" "god knows. hurry." they were in the street. "don't run, walk," she cautioned. after a block, she said, "i didn't even need to watch you at the end. everybody got so drunk nobody noticed you much." "even the spies?" "oh, they always get the drunkest." the siren sounded. "let's hurry." when they arrived at shamar's apartment, she asked, "well, what did you think of the party?" "it was an education," he said after a moment. v the following week shamar spent many hours walking the streets of xxla. he tried to convince himself that the people he had met at the party were not representative. they were. friday night ge-ge announced "shamar, i can't stand much more of this! what's going to happen? what is von stutsman going to do? he's onto something. i sometimes wish--oh, god!--i sometimes wish something would happen so we'd know where we stand, so we'd know what to do!" he tried to put an arm around her, but she brushed it away. "don't! let me alone!" she retired to the other side of the room. for a moment, and for no reason, the hostility in the air between them was like ice and fire. "i'm sorry," ge-ge said curtly. "that's all right," shamar said, his voice cold and distant. "let's talk about something else." they were silent for a minute. then he said, "i wanted to ask you. of all the people i talked to, i couldn't find anyone who seemed to give a damn, one way or the other, about earth. why is that? you'd think they'd be at least talking about earth." "why should they be? we've got our own problems." at that point, the police arrived and took shamar the worker away. * * * * * they put him in a cell in which there were already three other prisoners. "what you in for, buddy?" shamar studied the prisoner for a moment without answering. his companions looked up. "no visible means of support," shamar said. "i'm long john freed." shamar nodded. "they're trying to hook you for evading the productivity tax, huh?" shamar declined comment. freed settled back on his bunk. "i say take them for all you can. now, look, you're a little guy. so they bleed us white. take a factory manager or an important black market operator--you think they pay taxes? you can bet they don't. it's a racket. the poor pay and pay because they can't hire fancy lawyers to lie for them; and the rich take and take. i don't see why the party puts up with it." freed shifted his position. "say what you will about the party--and i know it's got it's faults--still, there are dedicated men in it. i may be a small-time crook, but i'm as patriotic as the next man. the party's done a lot of good. "first time for you? how old are you, twenty-seven or so? first time, they usually try to recruit you for the factory force. "it's not such a bad racket. when you start out, they toss you in with lots of kids--usually the draftees. you get six weeks pick-and-shovel, and you're really dragging when you finish that. then comes specialist school. "try to get in as an electrician or plumber. plasterers or bricklayers have to work too hard. carpentry's not bad--i'd hold out for cabinet-making, rather than rough carpentry, if i had to go into that. then there's real specialties. tile laying. you have to have a personality for that, or you'd go nuts. demolition's not too bad; you blow up obsolete factories. that would have been right down my alley." freed was silent a moment, then he resumed: "sometimes i may talk like a radical, and maybe i am a little of a radical, i don't know. you look at the overall picture, things ain't too bad. i've known a lot of thieves and petty crooks in my time. as a class, for pure patriotism, i'll stack them up against anybody you can name; and in a way, you know, i'm kind of proud of that.... well, let's shut up and get some shut-eye." * * * * * when finally he slept, shamar dreamed that the party was a vast, invulnerable pyramid resting on the shifting base of the population. it was constructed to dampen out vibrations. the bottom quivered, and the quiver ran upward a few inches and was absorbed. the top of the pyramid remained stable, fixed and motionless, indifferent even to its own foundation. the pyramid was built like an earthquake-proof tower. it was built to last. the party was built to govern. it need only devote itself to its own preservation. any other issue was secondary. it was an organic machine. the gears were flesh and blood. the people on top were maintenance engineers. their job was to go around with an oil can that they could squirt when necessary to keep friction to a minimum. he awakened the following morning ravenously hungry and was hugely disappointed by breakfast. even discounting his somewhat biased viewpoint, the food was inedible. freed accepted shamar's share eagerly with the comment, "it'll taste better after you miss a few meals. it always does." an hour later, the jailer came to open the cell. "shamar the worker? get your stuff. we're going." ge-ge was waiting in the reception room. her hair had been especially waved for the occasion. she wore a suit newly pressed and gleaming. she had tears in her eyes. she fled to his arms. "darling!" she cried, caressing his face with childlike wonder. "was it awful? did they beat you?" "i'm fine." "darling, we're going to get you out on bail. i've made all the arrangements. we just have to go to the judge's chambers for a minute, and they'll let you go. thank god you're going to be out of this horrible place, at least for a little while." the jailer brought shamar's belt and his bag of possessions. shamar signed a receipt for them and they went to the judge. the judge said, "please be seated." he had a resonant and friendly voice. he went to his desk and sat down. ge-ge and shamar seated themselves before him. "ah, you young people," he said. "now, you must be shamar the worker, and you--" "garfling germadpoldlt." "of course." he turned to shamar. "i hate to see a fine young person like you in trouble, shamar. it seems to me such a waste. man and boy, for sixty years i've been a dedicated worker for the party. oh, shamar, when i think of that glorious paradise to come--that time of wealth and plenty for all--that time when the riches and abundance of mother itra will, from automation, overflow alike the homes of the rich and poor...." they waited. he continued. "here i sit, year after year, garfling and shamar, judging my fellow men. judging poor creatures who do not live the dream. i sometimes feel that this is not the way. i sometimes feel my job is out there on the street corners, preaching the dream, awakening the souls, telling the story of love and beauty and abundance in the life to come. "ah, me. but the world is not yet perfect, is it? and man's understanding is imperfect. here you are before me today, shamar, with no visible means of support and no record of having paid productivity taxes. oh, what a grim and fearful picture! in all your life have you ever once thought of your obligation to the future? you have failed yourself; you have failed the party; and failed the future. "yet--in a larger sense--although this in no way militates against your own guilt--have we not failed you? how have we permitted a human soul to degrade himself to the point where we must punish him?" abruptly, the judge stood up. "well, i've done the best i can. i remand you to the custody of miss germadpoldlt. your trial will be set at a later date. you are not to leave xxla without permission of this court. and i hope my lecture today has fallen on fertile soil. it is not too late to correct your ways. and i may say, if i am the one who hears your case, your conduct between now and the trial may have some bearing on the outcome." * * * * * they took a taxi back to his apartment. ge-ge trembled violently most of the way and nestled against him; they murmured their affection. after he had been fed, she said nervously, "it was von stutsman who was responsible for your arrest. i should have known we couldn't fight the party. if he digs hard enough, nothing on itra can save us." finally, she went out to canvas lawyers. she came back at dusk. "shamar, darling," she said, "i've located him. i asked a lot of my friends, and he's the best. he's a big lawyer for left-wing people. i talked to him, i told him everything." "what! you told him everything?" "why, yes." "you, you told him i was an earthman?" he grabbed her by the shoulders. "listen, ge-ge! i was arrested on a charge i could beat; now look what you've done. what makes you think he won't turn me over to the party? this is too big, now! this isn't just a tax avoidance matter, this is treason for him." "it's all right, darling," she said soothingly, breaking free from him. "i had to tell him so he'd take the case. why would a big man like him want to defend a common vagrant?" shamar closed his mouth. "but--you mean, he won't tell anyone?" "of course not." "has the man no patriotism?" "look, shamar," she said in exasperation, "you once asked me why the people in the street aren't upset about earth. i'm beginning to see the way you think. what you mean is, aren't we _afraid_ of earth? aren't we afraid earth would, oh, do something like invade us or something? that's what you mean." "of course it is." "once upon a time," she said, "when we first got space flight, the party got all shook up about the possibility of some hostile force out there developing an interstellar drive and coming along and doing their will with us. they asked the computers about it. invading and conquering a planet is such a vast technological undertaking that the mind just boggles at it. don't forget, we've got a warning network out there. they're not very alert, or you wouldn't have gotten through, but they wouldn't miss an invasion fleet. there's computer-controlled chemical rockets in orbit, and we've got a few sited on itra that can blast down anything that slows up to try to land. it wouldn't take one-hundredth, it wouldn't take one-thousandth of the technological resources required to defend itra that it would to attack her. earth just simply can't afford to attack us. they'd go broke trying. every million dollars you spent to get here, we'd spend a thousand to keep you from landing. "oh, i suppose if earth wanted to, they might figure out some way to blow up itra. but where's the profit in that? we're not bothering you. why spend all that money when it's not going to get you one damn thing in return?" * * * * * the following day, shamar called on the lawyer, counselor freemason. counselor freemason inquired politely as to the state of his financial reserves. shamar replied reassuringly. "good, good. that's most encouraging. most encouraging indeed. we need not place any limit on our ingenuity, then. "i've been thinking about your case, mr. worker. the thing first to do, in my opinion, is to stir up public sympathy in your favor. it's almost an ideal case. it has no real political overtones. it's not as if you're accused of anything serious. well, i believe i can interest some friends of mine who are always deeply concerned with cases involving the infringement of an individual's liberty--provided, of course, there are no political overtones. i can think of several good people who would be willing to head up a defense committee. the fact that we have and i'm talking now about as much as, oh, one hundred thousand dollars?" he paused interrogatively. "i'm prepared to pay," shamar said. "maybe even more," councilman freemason continued quickly. "we can come to that later. the important thing right now is to get down to work on your case." "counselor freemason, now, obviously i'm not a lawyer," shamar said, "and i know it's bad business to tell a professional how to run his job. but i believe miss germadpoldlt explained the, ah, rather unusual delicacy of my own position. it would seem to me that the less publicity we got, the better." counselor freemason shook a pen at him. "a very good point, mr. worker. it shows you're thinking, and i'm glad of the opportunity to explain the reasons for this recommendation. if i brazenly parade you before them, you see, by implication it means we're not afraid of your background being examined. we have nothing to hide. consequently, they will not look for anything. if, on the other hand, i'm cautious, fearful, defensive, they'll ask themselves, 'what's counselor freemason trying to hide?' and they'll start digging into your past. "now, i hope that clears that matter up to your satisfaction? good. good. i'll get right to work on your case. do you have anything else? miss germadpoldlt explained rather nicely, i think, yesterday. as far as anyone knows, you're a man without papers. you've never paid any taxes but they have no proof you owe taxes. you won money in the lottery. you collected anonymously; lots of people do for perfectly valid reasons. let them prove you didn't win. the party can't be very interested in a man like that. "so, i'll raise an issue. maybe we'll suggest that any lottery winner is likely to be persecuted. the party wants things to go smoothly. the lottery makes the people feel as if, you know, they actually own a piece of things. and too many people don't have papers. "my job is to take the specific and convert it to a vague general principle that a number of people feel deeply about. the party will take the easy way out: they're not dumb. they've learned from experience. you're not worth that much trouble to them. otherwise, there'll be a period of aggravation, people without papers beating up police and things like that." * * * * * three days later, shamar met with the newly formed committee of one hundred for justice to shamar the worker. there were five members of the committee and counselor freemason in attendance. they briefed him on their initial activities. they had printed letterheads and were circulating letters to people known to be friendly, with a hastily printed booklet giving the facts of the case. "as you can see," counselor freemason said, "we're off to a very fast start. um, the question naturally arises as to finances. i have advanced a certain amount out of my own pocket.... we will need more than i can conveniently scrape together at the moment, and i'm reluctant to--ah--impose on the committee for a loan insofar as--" "i took the liberty of bringing along some cash," shamar said. "for current expenses and, of course, your retainer." they looked relieved. "excellent, excellent. i might suggest, mr. worker, that we appoint one of the committee as treasurer--perhaps mrs. freetle, here--" the lady smiled--"to take these financial worries off your mind. this will leave you free to devote yourself fully to activities defense." "now that that's out of the way," one of the male committee members said, "let's get right down to business. as you can see, we're moving fast. our overall strategy is this. we must first establish a public image for you, mr. worker, an image the average man can identify with. counselor freemason has described your case to us. i simply don't know what the party's coming to to permit a man like von stutsman to persecute you this way. oh, i tell you, it makes my blood boil, mr. worker!" others of the committee chimed in and the sentiment passed heatedly among them. "well," said counselor freemason, "i guess that about winds it up for the moment. you all know where to reach me. any time, day or night. i guess, mr. worker, if you'll just turn the money over to mrs. freetle. and i think, mr. hall, if you'd hire that speech writer--what's his name? mcgoglhy?--to work with mr. worker on his speeches." "speeches?" shamar asked. "you're going to be our featured speaker at all the rallies, of course," mrs. freetle said. "i know you will do splendidly, just splendidly! your accent is so captivating. i've never heard anything quite like it." vi on the evening of his first public appearance, shamar was given a neatly typed speech. he rehearsed it hurriedly, stammers and all. "fellow citizens! as i stand here, looking over this sea of faces, hearing your applause and seeing how your hearts go out to one poor man in distress, it--i--well, i'm deeply touched. i can't tell you how much it means to me. i prepared a speech for tonight, but i'm not going to use it. i'm just going to stand here, instead, and tell you, just as the words come out, how i feel." here he would pause for applause and then continue. "thank you so very much. thank you. i know you're all behind me--except for the police agents in the audience." here he would wait for laughter. "we all know them, don't we? i see about a dozen. a dozen agents have come down here to find out what i'm going to say. isn't that ridiculous?" here there would be mixed laughter, applause and cries in the affirmative. "all right! thank you. i hope they get an earful tonight." later in the speech he would demand, "why are they doing this to me? i want you to tell me why. what have i done? what am i accused of doing? well, i'll tell you this--i'm not the kind of a man who is going to submit meekly to this persecution. i'm going to fight back. i've got a little money left from my lottery winnings, and i'll spend every cent of it to fight these people doing this thing to me." here he would pause dramatically. "i want to leave you with this point. it's not just shamar the worker that's involved. what am i? a poor, itinerant laborer going from town to town. i'm nothing, i have never had anything, and i guess i never will have anything. i'm no rich black marketeer or businessman. i'm no fat politician. i'm just one little man. but it's not me--and this is the point i want to leave you with--it's not shamar the worker. he's unimportant. what is important is that if they can do this to me, they can do it to you. if they can do it to shamar the worker today, next year one of you will be up here on this platform speaking just the way i am. so you see, this is your fight. it's not me that's important--it's the principle that's important--" the meeting went brilliantly. every time he paused, the audience responded just as the speech-writer had indicated. it was as if they were as well rehearsed as he. the next night, another meeting. and another. and another. he slept no more than four hours a night when the campaign was in full swing. he spoke dozens of times into the bright glare of tv cameras. he paraded down a million streets in an open-topped car. faces poured in front of his own; on and on they came. people with tears in their eyes cried, "god bless shamar the worker!" once the committee hired a brass band. so, for two weeks, it went. then the party threw him back in jail, in an apparent effort to deprive the movement of its momentum. * * * * * after three days, during which time shamar was held incommunicado, counselor freemason obtained permission to interview his client. "we're making marvelous progress! ge-ge is turning into a most effective crusader. you should hear her when she cries, 'give me back my man!' this is a wonderful development for us. it's having the opposite of the intended effect. von stutsman has over-reached himself this time. the party is going to have to back down, and it will cost him dearly." "how's the finances?" "ge-ge has given us some advances--" "how much have you spent?" "well, to tell you the truth, i haven't been keeping track closely. perhaps we've run a little more than we anticipated. the response, you see--" shamar returned to his cell wishing earth's printing presses had worked a little longer. it took nearly two weeks to arrange for ge-ge to visit him. when she arrived, she was nearly on the point of tears. "oh, my darling, how i've missed you!" she brought him up to date on the progress of his case. as counselor freemason had reported, his imprisonment merely increased the vigor of his supporters. now they were at their highest pitch: a pitch which would be difficult to maintain. "i'm just worried sick," she said. "if the party can hold out another week or two. i don't want to worry you, shamar, but i want you to know how you stand. counselor freemason says the worst that could happen would be a short prison sentence, no more than a year, for not filing tax forms. we could keep you out on appeal for quite a while." "ge-ge, how much have we spent so far?" "about three hundred thousand dollars." "good god! they'll have it all when they get through! if i ever get back to earth--" "i don't care about money, shamar! i just want you free!" he took her shoulders. "ge-ge, suppose the party can't afford to back down? maybe they feel they have to stand firm to prevent a lot of future trouble. and when freemason gets all the money ... then what chance will we stand? they might railroad me for years. they'll make an example out of me. now, are you willing to gamble? everybody would jump at the chance to vote them out. if we could--" "please, shamar," ge-ge said. "all this voting thing you've always been so sold on is all right, i guess--but it just won't work. to begin with, there isn't any way to vote." "maybe there is," he said. * * * * * shamar was still in jail the following day when ge-ge appeared on the tv program. pamden had been reluctant to release time to her. pamden was itra's largest industrial co-operative--plastics, agricultural machinery, detergents, electricity and newsprint--and, being the most efficient, was responsible for operating the tv networks. "good heavens," said the station executive. "nobody can say we haven't already given you coverage. miss germadpoldlt." "they've ordered you to stop!" she protested. "they? the party? miss germadpoldlt, do you honestly believe that? nobody tells a station manager what to program. believe me. there is no prior censorship whatsoever. but, on the other hand, we can't turn over the tv stations to minority propaganda either." ge-ge argued and pleaded, and in the end the executive sighed wearily. "i think we've been more than fair. but for you--and this is a personal favor, miss germadpoldlt, because you are a young and attractive woman--for you, i will phone our program director and see if he can get you on the noon interview show for tomorrow. it gives you the itra-wide network, which is certainly more than anyone has the right to ask. you'll have ninety seconds to make your case. that's the best i can do." "oh, thank you, thank you," ge-ge sobbed. "you're so fair and generous." outside his office she took a deep breath, crossed her fingers and went home to revise her speech. she had only expected sixty. ge-ge arrived at the studio well in advance and was handed over to the makeup department. with deft skill they converted her youth to age and contrived to instill in her face weariness and defeat. her protests were ignored. "this is the way you make up for tv," she was told. they clucked collective tongues in disapproval when they were finished and sent her on her way to a brief chat with the m.c. the m.c. assured her that she looked divine and hastily scanned her prepared remarks, which had been heavily edited by some anonymous hand in the news department. the m.c. incorporated a few pointless revisions and dispatched the message to the department handling idiot-board material. it was explained that ge-ge was to read, word for word, from the electronic prompter. ge-ge watched the program from the wings. when she heard a commercial message in favor of the consumption of a particular variety of candy, her heart ran away with itself. her courage faltered. but shamar's face brought it back. the signal came. she walked into the terrible glare which held up every imperfection to microscopic inspection. she shook hands, turned, and the camera closed in, full face. beyond the camera lay the largest daytime tv audience on itra. she felt they were examining her pores with minute and critical attention. she blinked nervously and began to read. "i am here to tell you about shamar the worker." that was as far as she went with the prepared text. before the horrified ears of the auditors in the studio, she plunged into remarks of another kind entirely. "if you want to do something to help shamar the worker, stop buying candy! don't buy any more candy. if you want to help shamar the worker, don't buy any candy until he's free. if you want to help shamar, please, _please_, don't buy--" at this point the technicians cut ge-ge out and, with profound mistiming, faded in an oleogenous taped message from the candy manufacturer which began, "friends, everybody likes red block candy, and millions buy it every day. here's why--" ge-ge surveyed the surrounding confusion and walked unmolested from the studio. when she arrived home, an angry counselor freemason was waiting on her doorstep. inside, she allowed the counselor to present his case. this new move, he explained, would have terrible consequences. shamar's good faith would be prejudiced. one simply did not, with impunity, go outside the law in such matters. there were rules you absolutely _must_ play the game by. he washed his hands of all responsibility for her conduct. "i hope to god nothing comes of it," he concluded. "i'm having the committee prepare a denial of--" the phone rang at this point, and without asking permission, counselor freemason answered it. "yes? this is counselor freemason, go ahead." he listened a moment, said, "they did," in a weary voice and cradled the phone. he turned to ge-ge. "now we're in for it. that was pete freedle from the committee." "well," said ge-ge, "i think we'll just wait a few days and see what happens." a week later, ge-ge was still waiting. counselor freemason, deprived of finances, was powerless to move. he saw everything crashing in shambles at their feet. "but are they selling candy?" ge-ge asked. "that's beside the point!" counselor freemason cried. "look here, every crackpot on the planet will get into the act. they don't care about shamar. all you're going to prove now is that the party is unpopular. everyone already knows that." he struck his forehead in exasperation. * * * * * for two weeks, all was quiet. there were no more rallies for shamar the worker. signs were torn down and destroyed. no bulletins were printed. no word passed over the electronic communications network. the committee, bankrupt, dissolved in mutual recriminations and bickering, convinced that the cause of civil liberties had been set back one hundred years. but candy was not selling. it clogged the distribution channels. it piled up in warehouses. it lay untouched in stores. it grew rancid. mechanically the factories continued to turn it out. the party denied the boycott was having any effect. this did not appease the distributors of candy and the sellers of candy and the producers of candy. their jobs were at stake. they had payrolls to meet. the party stopped production of candy. people suddenly found themselves with no jobs to go to. the economic system was so tightly controlled and organized that the effect was immediate. there was too little money available to purchase the supplies normally purchased. suppliers cut back on their factory orders. this further reduced the need for supplies. at this point, the party decided that the people would, by heaven, eat candy. the party leader himself went on tv to appeal to the patriotism of the people and to order them to resume buying candy. this was a tactical error. but being the idea of the party leader himself, who had always crashed headlong into obstacles, none opposed it. the issue was directly joined. people resented being told that it was their patriotic duty to eat something that all medical opinion held was harmful. furthermore, people realized that they had somehow stumbled on a fatal flaw in the system, which they could exploit without immediate danger. they responded by refusing to buy soap. the people were now in open revolt. at last they had a method for disapproving of things in general. the economy plummeted. the computers were in a frenzy. effects of corrective actions were no longer predictable. the party frantically tried to buy soap and dump it. the people turned to other commodities. pressure now mounted from within the party itself. the supervisor of pamden saw his carefully nurtured empire begin to disintegrate. a massive layoff in consumer plastics (badly hit by a running boycott) took with it valuable key personnel. the supervisor of pamden told the party leader himself that he damned well better do something about the situation, and damned soon, too. the party leader himself ordered the release of shamar the worker. but by then no one was interested in shamar the worker. * * * * * the man came and unlocked shamar's cell door. shamar stood up. the guard tossed in shamar's clothing. "get dressed." shamar got dressed. "come along." shamar came along. shamar had had no word from outside for nearly two months, and it was not until he saw ge-ge's face, radiant with joy, that he realized he had won. "you're free!" she cried excitedly. shamar was given back his belt and possessions. as they waited for the judge to make it official, shamar asked, "i wonder what will happen now?" "nobody knows. everybody says the party's out for sure. individual party members will try to form a new government, but it's going to have to be radically different. they'll try to keep all they can, but the people will wring them dry for every last concession. maybe now when they build the factories, they'll stay built and actually produce something." "for a little while," shamar said. "longer than a little while," ge-ge said. "we've got a way to vote now, when things get too bad." the judge, in his red robe, came in. they stood respectfully. he looked at them for a long time and said nothing. finally, he spoke: "well, shamar the worker, i guess you've got what you want. you pulled down a whole civilization. i hope you're satisfied. what dream will you give us to replace the dream you have taken from us?" his face hardened. "shamar the worker," he said, "the party leader himself has asked us to dismiss the pending charges against you. this i now do. you are free to go." "thank you, sir," shamar said respectfully. "shamar the worker, for your own sake, you better hope that i never see you in my court. you better not get yourself arrested for anything. i will show you no mercy, but justice will be swift and summary. so that you may not rest easily at night, i am having some of my very skillful and competent friends check through your background thoroughly. you should hope, very sincerely, that they find nothing. you may go." ge-ge and shamar stood. they turned in silence. when they were at the door, the judge called, "oh, shamar the worker!" he turned, "yes, sir?" "shamar the worker, i do not like your accent." shamar could feel ge-ge trembling uncontrollably at his side. but when they reached the street, they were greeted by headlines announcing that a delegation from the planet earth had arrived. vii the earth delegation had taken over a suite in the party hotel, grandest and most expensive on itra. usually it was reserved for high party members. shamar and ge-ge presented themselves at the desk. shamar wrote out a note in english. "deliver this to the earthmen," he instructed. shamar and ge-ge retired to await results. less than five minutes passed; the bell hop returned. "sir and madam," he said respectfully, "come with me." when he entered the suite, he felt the personality of shamar the worker drop from him into memory. "captain shaeffer! captain shaeffer! oh, what a magnificent job! i'm gene gibson from the new department of extra-terrestrial affairs. who's this?" "this is my fiancee." "good heavens, man, you intend to marry a _native_?" the man stepped back, shocked. capt. shaeffer turned to ge-ge and performed bilingual introductions. they moved from the hallway to the sitting room and arranged themselves on the furniture. "i must say, captain shaeffer, that your success on itra has surpassed our wildest expectations. the first inkling we had was when, out of the blue, as it were, there was your face looking out at us from the tv screen! you should have been there for our celebration that night! you'd been on itra just a little over two months! you're going down in history as one of the greatest heroes of all time!" capt. shaeffer said, "i think it would be best if ge-ge and i were to board your ship immediately. her life may be in danger. some old-line party men might resent her role in the revolution. actually, she had more to do with it than i did." "oh, now, i'm sure you must be exaggerating a bit on that, captain shaeffer. her life in danger? surely, now! speaking frankly, captain--and mind you, i have no personal objection at all; this is none of my business. but she is, after all, an _itraian_. you know these mixed marriages--" "i don't give a damn what you personally think," capt. shaeffer said. "is that understood once and for all? she goes." "of course. i was just--now don't get huffy. of course she goes. just as you wish, captain." the angry exchange over an unknown but fearfully expected issue caused ge-ge to blink back tears. * * * * * a week later, gene gibson came for the first time to visit them. capt. shaeffer inquired as to progress. "well, captain, things are progressing. we are establishing a government which will be more responsive to the will of the people of itra. we've had several very pleasant, informal chats with the party leader, himself. really a wonderful man. once he got all the facts--which were kept from him the first time we landed--he strikes me as being quite responsible. i think we may have misjudged him. i'm not too sure but what he isn't just the exact man to head up the new government. we've discussed a few details on trade agreements and, i must say, he's been very reasonable." capt. shaeffer said nothing. "yes," gene gibson said, "he's really an exceptional individual. a wealth of administrative experience. a fine grasp of practical politics. i don't regard him as a typical itraian at all. he feels that, with us backing him, we can get this whole mess straightened out in a few months." "mess?" "well, you must admit, i think, captain shaeffer, that you did--well--make negotiations extremely difficult, in view of the, ah, present temper of the populace. "you see, earth would like to have a stable and responsible government. a government, that is, which can see larger issues in perspective. not one which must devote its full time to coping with a group of unpatriotic anarchists running loose in the streets." "what's he saying?" ge-ge asked. "as it is now," gene gibson continued, "we do have several rather difficult problems. i think we'll probably have to quarantine itra for a few months until the party leader himself can form a stable organizational structure. somehow news of our trade discussions have leaked out and for some reason has resulted in a general work stoppage. so you see? by god, i'll just come right out and say it: shaeffer, you've left us one hell of a mess!" with that, gene gibson departed. "what did he say?" ge-ge asked meekly. but shaeffer only shook his head. the following day, the ship's captain came to pay a courtesy call. "a very neat piece of work, merle. your new assignment just came in, by the way, on the space radio." "new assignment? ge-ge and i are on our way back to earth." "no, you're not. we're to drop you off at midway for transhipment to folger's hill. it's a new planet. you're to be earth representative to the people of folger's hill. the first shipload of colonists arrived about a month ago." "i see," capt. shaeffer said. "the salary's good," the ship's captain said. "suppose i don't want to go?" "i've got orders to leave you at midway. i'd want to go if i were you. they want you out of the way for a little while. you can't fight it. you've been appointed a general in the defense forces, so you're now under military law--and it's an order." at this point, ge-ge broke in to say, "how are things going in xxla?" general shaeffer choked back his anger and presented the question. "they don't tell us anything. the crew is confined to the ship." shamar the worker turned to ge-ge. "it's going about the same," he said. * * * * * a year later, general merle s. shaeffer's card popped out of the computer. "general shaeffer's up for re-assignment." "who in hell is general shaeffer?" "never heard of him." the card passed upward. "merle shaeffer is due for re-assignment," a man who knew the name told the secretary of the over council at lunch the following day. "there's a new planet opened up even further away than folger's hill." "he's the one who butchered the itra assignment? send him there. anything new from itra recently, by the way?" "same as usual. i understand the anarchists have formed some kind of government." "terrible. terrible. well, the less said about that the better." a week later, again over lunch, the secretary was told: "i guess we needn't worry about merle shaeffer any more. disappeared from his post, he and that itraian woman of his, a couple of weeks after they arrived on folger's hill. probably a hunting accident got them both. their bodies were never found. these things happen on wild new planets." the secretary was silent for a long time. then he said: "shaeffer dead, eh? i guess it's better that way. well, a genius has passed, and we'll not see his like again. perverted, perhaps, but a genius none the less." they drank solemnly. "to merle shaeffer. you could call him a hero, so let's you and i drink to that. no one else ever will." they drank again. nothing further served to stir the secretary's memory of merle shaeffer, and he retired six months later at the end of his term. the new secretary was not familiar with the itraian affair. he had been in office just a few days less than a year when, one morning, he arrived at his office in a furious rage. "get me the head of the defense forces!" "i'm sorry, sir, all the phones are tied up," his secretary said. "what in hell do you mean, all the phones are tied up?" "i don't know. maybe all at once everybody just left their phones off the hook or something." "why would they do that? that's ridiculous! get a runner over after him." half an hour later, the head of the defense forces arrived. "do you know," the new secretary demanded, "that yesterday all the pennies went out of circulation? people apparently have been saving them for the last couple of months. it finally showed up. all at once, there aren't any pennies. you can't make change. damn it, why would those crazy idiots all decide to save their pennies at the same time? it's not rational. why did they do it?" the head of the defense forces said nothing. the secretary raved at him in anger, but the head of the defense forces did not have the heart to tell him that a hero had returned home. cosmic castaway by carl jacobi within a year earth would be a vassal world, with the sirian invaders triumphant. only standish, earth's defense engineer, could halt that last victorious onslaught--and he was helpless, the lone survivor of a prison ship wrecked in uncharted space. [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from planet stories march 1943. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] standish came back to consciousness, a dull pain surging in his head and a feeling of nausea in his midsection. the room about him was strange: grey _arelium_ walls, a single light burning above the iron cot, and a low vibration that trembled the floor beneath his feet. for a time he lay there, fighting off a cloud of dizziness. then he groped unsteadily to his feet. as he did, the vibration ceased, and far off he fancied he heard voices pitched in alarm. a bell clanged hollowly several times. he recognized those sounds now, as his thoughts struggled to bridge the gap in his brain and the memory of past events came rushing to him. he was on a sirian prison ship! the silence grew upon him, and he stood there uncertainly, listening. something was wrong. there was no familiar drone of atomic motors, and there should be.... when the shock came, he was hurled completely across the room to the far bulkhead. yet it wasn't a severe shock. it was as if the ship faltered suddenly and heeled over on her side. above him, standish saw induction and exhaust pipes, coated with sulphur dioxide frost, writhe and twist like so many serpents. the explosion that followed was deafening. the floor buckled upward under the pressure. the door to the cabin was torn from its hinges, and a sheet of flame and a column of smoke gushed inward. in an instant, standish understood. the prison ship, well on its voyage from earth, had entered the danger zone, that part of space swarming with planetoids and miniature planets. a sleepy pilot had failed to make the proper gravitational allowances. they had struck! the ship was almost over on her beam ends now. it righted slowly, and standish fought his way into the outer passageway, every muscle tensed for instant action. the corridor was empty. gas and smoke searing his nostrils, the earthman made his way to the companion. up he climbed. emerging on the second level, he stood rigid, stark horror gripping him. the cages were there. tier after tier of them stretching into the bowels of the space ship as far as the grey light permitted him to see. in those cages, he knew, were men of his own race: earth soldiers, prisoners of war. but over each cage the heavy ceiling plates had been ripped free by the force of the explosion, and where the imprisoned men had been, only twisted bars and sheets of _arelium_ steel were visible. the entire level was a tomb of silence. standish choked back a sob. his men all dead! crushed like rats in a trap. he crossed to the ladder leading to the third and main level, climbing slowly. reaching the crew deck, he rocked backward again with a cry of dismay. here, too, the fearful destruction was evident on all sides. uniformed sirians lay dead in the scuppers. the entire bridge house was a mass of fallen girders and broken metal. the officers' quarters had been crushed like an eggshell. only the steering cuddy and control room had been spared. but here, too, standish found death had not spared the occupants. a pintax bar, ripped free from its rocker arms, had jammed itself like an exploded cartridge into the pilot's skull. all in the control room had died of fumes forced into the chamber when the motors backcharged through the instrument pipes. * * * * * from cabin to cabin standish went from the living quarters of the crew in the forecastle, to the ammunition chamber in the stern. everywhere he found destruction and death. and slowly the fact dawned upon him that he alone aboard was alive. he had been spared because he had been imprisoned in the lower hull, and that section of the ship had escaped damage. slowly he sank onto a settee and tried to reconstruct his thoughts. a few hours ago as defense engineer for earth, he had generaled a daring undercover attack against the sirian's main base at san francisco. for ten years--since 3010--the war between earth and sirius had been going on, with earth the stage for all battles of the conflict. the cause of the war was long forgotten. earth people only knew that the sirians, greedy for more land, had successfully vanquished mars and venus and were steadily closing in on terrestrial territory. already australia and asia had fallen. with every known device of interplanetary warfare, the sirians had captured district after district, until the american continent alone remained untrampled by the invaders. but standish's story had begun a week before. through an operative in his vast espionage system, he had learned that the sirians under command of the ruthless drum faggard, were preparing for the "big push." with a dozen chosen companions disguised as sirians, the earth engineer had successfully passed through the enemy lines. he had hoped to capture drum faggard and a number of his officers-of-staff and race with them back to the earth's front line breastworks at omaha. it was a wild scheme; but standish knew if faggard were captured, the war would collapse. the plan had failed. counter-spies had warned the sirians. the little band of twelve had been permitted to penetrate deep into sirian territory, then had been overwhelmed. and after that--standish's fists clenched--he had been brought face to face with drum faggard. he was a renegade, this sirian master of conquest. he had been born on earth of low parentage, but at the beginning of hostilities he had wormed his way into the graces of the sirians and by cunning and force of will had risen to chief of command. the sirians were a wafter-headed race with featureless faces and short barrel-like bodies. their legs were the same as those of the men of earth, but their arms possessed tumor-like swellings above the wrists, secondary nerve centers. faggard, a huge man with a gross face, pig-like eyes and thin lips, had smiled sardonically when standish was brought before him. "so your little plan failed, eh?" he said, swallowing a glass of sirian whiskey and wiping his mouth with the flat of his hand. "well, standish, you may as well realize it, you're quite in our power now, and you'll be treated with no more consideration than the rest of the prisoners, unless you answer a few questions." "what sort of questions?" standish had demanded. faggard smiled again. "now that your connections with earth have been forever severed, it can be of little concern to you what happens to that planet. what i want to know is this: how many anti-rocket guns has earth located at its omaha base? what is the number of strato-cruisers stationed at powerville? how heavy are the reserves in the electra city sector? "answer those question, standish, and you will be virtually a free man. you will be released on our colony planet of pluto, with five hundred _planetoles_ in your pocket. that money will enable you to live a life of ease for the rest of your days." for a moment standish had stood there, face emotionless. then like an uncapped bottle spewing forth, he had given in to blind rage. he lunged across the room, seized faggard's thick throat and pounded his right fist into the smirking lips. twice he had struck before a guard had rushed forward and pulled him off. then something hard and heavy had crashed down upon his skull, and he knew no more. he had awakened on this prison ship. but had not this accident occurred he knew well enough the fate that would have been in store for him. all prisoners captured by the sirian army were transported back to sirius where they were put to work as slaves in the marsh fields, extracting hydro-carbon gas for use in the food-distillation plants. it was said a terrestrial man could live only one year there. only one thing puzzled the earthman. why had he been given special quarters on the prison ship instead of being placed in one of the cages with the other prisoners? to that he could give no answer, and as the ringing silence of space closed in on him, he got to his feet and made his way slowly back to the control room. ii glass 5 showed that the forepeak and secondary chamber had been ripped open. glass 5 also showed that bulkhead doors there had automatically closed. for the rest, excluding the motors, everything seemed in order. the oxygen suppliers were functioning smoothly on auxiliary batteries. likewise the heat units, one for each level, showed normal operation. all lights were lit. standish glanced out the port. whatever the ship had struck, it was out of his vision range now. propelled by the forward surge of the dying motors, the ship must have advanced a great distance since the fatal crash. now the ship was drifting. drifting without steerageway. "derelict," standish said slowly. "it looks like i've got a one-way ticket to eternity." he took the elevator down to the lower level again and made his way along the grating to the engine room. carefully he examined the six ato-turbines with an experienced eye. standish had grown up with atomic motors. he had served an apprenticeship at his father's solar plant at sun city, and he had graduated from the new york school of technology. as a boy of sixteen, he had built his first minature atom smasher during vacation days. now he moved along the narrow catwalk between the motors, touching a wire here, an armature there. the two port engines, he found, were wrecked completely. likewise the two starboard. two forward machines remained, and of these he saw one had an inch-wide crack in its combustion chamber. but the other.... standish drew in a breath of satisfaction. the last motor was disabled but not beyond repair. without further ado, he peeled off his coat, seized a stillson wrench and fell to work. it took him a long time, and the task drew his mind away from the horror about him. with the patience of long experience, standish made his repairs. at length it was completed, and he paused with bated breath while he pressed the starting button. the motor began, sluggishly at first, then faster and faster. presently it was droning evenly as if nothing had almost wrecked it earlier. "one motor isn't much," he told himself. "but it may be enough." for the third time he returned to the control room. there, triumph met his gaze. the master indicator showed a definite forward movement through space. the crippled ship was moving, though slowly. standish turned his attention next to the visiscreens and emergency radio with which the liner had kept in contact with earth and sirius. neither the transmitting nor the receiving sets showed any response when he turned on the control switch. a glance back of the panels showed shattered tubes and broken apparatus. he went out on the deck and climbed to the pilot cuddy. one look through the three-directional glassite shield told a grim story. but it was a full minute before the significance of it all probed into him. the view ahead was utterly unfamiliar. strange stars and constellations glowed in the void. far off to his left was the white radiance of a spiral nebula. to the right, the galaxies seemed to blend in a bewildering array of light and matter, stretching on into infinitude. standish's knowledge of cosmography was limited. he knew that straight lines connecting sirius with procyon and betelguese would constitute a nearly equilateral triangle. he knew, too, that betelguese, sirius and regel--all of the first magnitude--formed a lozenge-shaped figure, with orion's belt in the center. but try as he would, he could locate none of these stellar landmarks. * * * * * turning, he looked for the liner's log. with information as to the ship's time of departure from earth and an average calculation of her speed, he might hope to chart his position. the log, however, had not been filled out. the sirians apparently had grown careless in their repeated trips through space. standish's teeth came down hard on his pipe stem. he was lost! hopelessly lost! a solitary spark of life in a man-made projectile, wandering the immensities of the universe. mechanically, the earthman set the automatic directionscope for a larger spot of light far ahead and threw in the massmeter which would effectually warn him of any body within collision range in his path. had the liner pilot paid attention to that dial, he reflected, the crash might have been avoided. stars paraded, swung past. the big dipper flamed away, curiously changed in outlines. or was it the big dipper? standish didn't know. material thoughts supplanted cosmic ones then. there was work to be done, ghoulish work which common decency demanded he perform. the dead must be disposed of. it was a hard task, and he accomplished it by carrying the bodies of the sirian officers and crew to the baggage chamber in the stern and casting them free through the airlock. on the second level which had held the earth prisoners the work was even more difficult. heavy bars and plates had to be lifted free. but at length standish stood alone on the ship. he recognized the gnawing sensation in his midsection then as hunger. finding the galley supplied with both fresh meats and vegetables as well as food concentrates, he ate well. the food served to restore some of his confidence. when he returned to the pilot cuddy, he saw that the bright spot for which he had set the directionscope had enlarged to a great orange globe that covered the entire glassite shield. even as he watched, the outlines of land and seas took form. the needle of the massmeter began to quiver spasmodically, but standish held to his course. it had occurred to him that this world might possibly be inhabited and that he might obtain aid for his return to earth, or at least the proper directions. but as he drew closer, the land resolved itself into thick jungle and smooth eroded mountain tops, barren of any building or structure. the planet, on this hemisphere at least, was devoid of life. a bell clanged above the massmeter, warning him the ship was in the danger zone. he seized the wheel and turned it hard over. at the same time he moved the power switch to the last notch. the liner swung sluggishly. and then the thing standish had feared happened! the single motor buckled under the strain and ceased. without resistance, the ship swept full into the gravitational field of the planet and plunged downward. like a man in a dream standish saw jungle rush up to meet him. an instant later there was a terrific crash, and he felt himself hurled into oblivion. iii an eternity seemed to have passed before he opened his eyes. he was conscious immediately of his left arm which was pinioned under a heavy rock. he wrenched it free and staggered erect, looking about dazedly. his eyes opened in bewilderment. he lay on a shelf, a small escarpment projecting from the side of a cliff. far below him, smashed and broken in two, amid jagged boulders, lay the prison ship. and sweeping on and on to the horizon was a dense matted jungle. the trees resembled giant cat-tails. without branches, the trunks towered up a full three hundred feet to form a huge green protruberance at the top. the rock of the cliff was neither igneous nor sedimentary. instead it was smooth and almost translucent, like glass. in the sky above, two suns blazed, one at the zenith, one a fiery ball dipping over the horizon. the air was warm and humid, and standish knew the oxygen content must be almost the same as on earth. nature-formed rock slabs led in stair formation down the cliff. while he stood there, slowly regaining his strength, the earthman tried to trace the path of the crashing liner. he saw where it had struck, ripping open the entire side and casting him out. then it had rolled end over end down into the ravine. at length, standish began his descent. the moment he swung his body over the edge to hang by his hands, he gave an exclamation of amazement. his body seemed to weigh nothing at all. this planet must be of smaller size than earth, and, therefore, the gravitational attraction was less. on the ravine floor he looked about him warily. titanic rock, smooth and polished from erosion, littered the expanse but stopped at the jungle edge. the trees were all the same, of equal height and girth. they seemed to be arranged in corridors or galleries, the way between them dark and shadow-filled. standish knew he must exercise caution until he could explore those depths. the significance of his plight now swept upon him. he was alone on an alien planet. even granting the sirians would send out scouts to locate their prison ship when it failed to arrive, the chances of his being found were remote. yet on the other hand, he alone had been spared death. and he had come upon a world, one perhaps in millions, which had an atmosphere capable of supporting human life. a sudden high-pitched drone broke the silence. rising up from behind a pile of boulders a hideous winged shape shot toward him! half bird, half saurian, the thing's head was enormous with an inflated cobra hood. even as the creature closed in with incredible speed, standish wheeled and ran for the safety of the wrecked space ship. he reached it and wormed his way through a gaping rent in the hull. the lizard-bird stopped short a few yards from the ship to stare perplexedly. then with its queer droning cry still sounding, it zoomed into the air and flew out of sight. "_holy hell!_" standish inhaled deeply. dangers here were imminent. he must take steps to protect himself at once. although the liner lay on one side with the three entrances and emergency airlock underneath, the hole through which he had entered was the only opening. the hull bottom had been crushed by the great impact. yet the glassite ports and vision shield of the pilot cuddy were unbroken. standish crawled back along the passage to the officers' quarters. on the well of one of the cabins he found two genithode pistols and a portable ray gun. he realized then that his first move toward self preservation lay in making the space ship livable and impregnable to outside attack. he accomplished the latter by removing two bulkhead doors and jamming them across the opening in the hull. the last door he arranged on a swivel so that it could be locked from either side. then, exhausted by the hours of activity, he fell asleep. * * * * * when he awoke and went outside, he saw that the two suns had exactly altered their position. the larger was at the zenith now; the smaller, low on the horizon. the temperature was unchanged, and the air was crystal clear, with only a few fleecy clouds floating overhead. standish ate a hearty breakfast, then strapped one genithode pistol about his waist and headed across the ravine to begin his first trip of exploration. the moment he entered the jungle he was conscious of an electric something that passed before him, telegraphed from tree to tree. the strange plants, neither cyads nor conifers, seemed aware of his presence, whispering among themselves. experimentally he touched one of the trunks. it quivered, the bark split apart, and a spongy tentacle whipped out to drive straight at his throat. standish escaped the clawing coil by inches. the tree quivered again, and the tentacle returned to its hiding place. he kept well away from the trees after that. but as he went on, he saw other forms of life, all manifesting an evolution in mixed stages of development. there was a low plant, brilliant purple in color which gave off a mewling cry whenever he stepped on one of its fronds. there were small lizard-birds, and occasionally he saw bluish masses growing melon-like on the ground. these had a single eye in the center of a spongy body. they watched him as he passed. once a small animal darted out before him. but when he approached, the creature instead of running for safety, thrust one paw in the soft earth, and a whitish blossom leaped up on a wavering stalk from its head. within the flick of an eye, the thing had changed from animal to plant life. it was at high noon by his earth-time watch that standish emerged into the glade. he stopped short, staring, then uttered a short cry. before him were buildings, low mushroom-like buildings arranged in a semi-circle. fashioned of the same translucent rock he had seen on the cliff, they resembled the igloos of his own north country. overhead a network of thick yellowish wire ran back and forth, separated at intervals by heavy white insulators. he saw then that the structures were old. the wires hung slack, and in many places were broken in two. a heavy silk-like grass had sprung up in thick clumps between the buildings. with steps suddenly grown heavy, standish advanced to the nearest house. the rotting remnants of a wooden door hung from elliptical hinges. inside was desertion. there were no furnishings of any kind. over everything lay a heavy coating of dust. there were twelve buildings in the glade, and he examined them one by one. in one he found a skeleton with a skull of enormous size and three leg appendages instead of two. in the last a strange looking machine, partially dismantled, was mounted on the wall. every detail of it, from the mildewed control panel to the eccentric wheels and cogs were unfamiliar to him. on the floor was a stone tablet covered with hieroglyphics. but that was all! depression swept over standish as he mentally supplied the missing details. some race had been here long ago; a foreign race, for the glade was undoubtedly a temporary camp. the wire entanglement and the machine had been constructed as some sort of protection against the animal life of this planet. but whoever these people were, they had come and gone! iv standish left the glade with a heavy heart and returned to the space ship. in the ravine, he made two discoveries. there was a spring of clear water pouring from a fissure in the cliff side. growing about it was an edible variety of moss. although he had concentrated food in the liner's galley to keep him for a long time, these finds were reassuring. he also found that the combination of the mineral soil and the two suns affected growth tremendously. planting a few dried kernels of corn, he was amazed to see them take root almost instantly and reach full maturity within a few hours. he now set upon a task which he had been mulling over in his brain for some time. there were ray cannons mounted on the space liner's stern. two of these had broken muzzles, but the third was intact. standish went down into the bowels of the ship and found a dozen old message projectiles. cigar-shaped objects of heat-resisting corodite, these projectiles were a part of all space crafts' emergency equipment. they were used for distress signals when radio or visiscreen equipment failed. in the hollow chamber of each of the twelve projectiles he placed the same message: castaway. mason standish. lieutenant-defense-engineer earth. on unknown planet, somewhere near sirius-earth route. december 28, 3020. he had no means of astronomical calculation. so he aimed the gun at twelve different points of the heavens and fired haphazardly. chances of intelligent life ever finding those projectiles were millions to one against him. but whatever the odds, he must miss no opportunity. next he made a thorough survey of the wrecked liner, carrying all usable objects to the forecastle, which swiftly took on the appearance of a storage room. as these articles began to grow in number, satisfaction and pride of ownership gripped him. it was in the midst of these labors that he was suddenly struck with an idea. why not construct a space ship from the wrecked parts of the liner? he had six atomic motors, and surely from their wreckage he could salvage enough to build one of half the trajectory power. and with a smaller ship, he might be able to find his way back to earth. standish smoked a pipe over this. when morning came, he began the herculean task of dismantling the motors. day after day he struggled with the cumbersome machinery. when this stage of the work was finally completed, he was startled to discover that six weeks of earth time had slipped by. he then found in the machinists' quarters an electrolic saw. the tool was dull, but he managed to cut free a dozen girders for the framework of his craft. to his dismay he found them too heavy to move even with block and tackle. there was no alternative but to cut them into sections and weld them together, hoping they would stand the strain. that night the first warning of trouble came. absently standish had noticed a chill in the air, a more oblique slant to the twin suns. suddenly from the jungle beyond the ravine came a low rumbling. the earthman switched on a searchlight he had fastened on top of the forecastle. the white glare fastened itself on the wall of trees, revealed five figures advancing directly into the light. * * * * * on all fours they came, huge beasts with long tapered bodies covered with heavy white fur. their heads resembled the saber-toothed tigers of earth's upper miocene. a dozen appeared before standish understood. this zone of the planet was advancing into its cold season. the animals were part of a migrating herd, coming down from the warmer districts. he drew his genithode pistol and fired into their midst. the foremost of the creatures keeled over, and the earthman advanced boldly, firing as he went. here was fresh meat, and with winter coming on, he intended to obtain as much of it as possible. standish was twenty yards from the hull of the liner when a coughing roar sounded behind him. he wheeled and uttered a cry of horror. if the creatures revealed by the light were giants in size, these others were titans. nostrils picking up his scent, they came forward slowly, cutting him off from the ship. he fired twice again, even as two of the monsters hurtled toward him. it was stark struggle then. with only the reflected light of the search lamp and the vague glow of the stars, standish fought desperately. the pistol barrel became hot; the white-haired things went down in two's and three's. and then abruptly there came a lull in the attack. the creatures halted listening. and an instant later the sound reached the earthman's ears like the hum of an angry hornet. from above it came, rapidly drawing nearer. stunned, he saw the saber-toothed monsters turn and slink quietly back into the jungle. up in the sky a light gleamed, and a series of red flashes split the darkness. then a black ball-shaped shadow swept downward with incredible speed. there was a roar and a series of muffled reports as the thing hurtled over the roof of the jungle and swept to a landing at the far end of the ravine. the sounds ceased. standish stood there, frozen to inactivity. then a hysterical shout and a peal of laughter burst from his lips. a space ship ... a rocket ship, landing here on this planet. it ... it wasn't possible! v but it was possible. as standish ran forward, he saw a hatch open in the metal sphere and a man climb out. and yet it wasn't a man. the face and body were normal, but the arms and legs were vine-like appendages with segmented fronds for hands. when this person saw standish, it recoiled and whipped a knife out from a scabbard at its waist. quickly the earthman raised one arm above his head in the common symbol of friendliness. a smile of recognition crossed the little man's face. he nodded and raised his frond-like hand in a similar gesture. then he pointed to himself and said: "ga-marr!" the rocket ship now came under standish's gaze. he saw that it was of a design foreign to any craft he had ever seen before. spherical in shape, with a series of strange-looking fins along the sides, its stern rudders were formed of crude exhaust jettisons, and the several ports were formed of a transparent material that resembled quartz. ga-marr--for it was evident those syllables formed the stranger's name--opened the hatch door and motioned standish to enter. without hesitation, the earthman did so. inside was a single cabin, with a control panel occupying two of the four walls. ga-marr pressed a button, and a panel slid open in the floor, revealing the motor chamber. the stranger pointed downward, then shook his head violently. standish nodded. "motors went dead on you, eh? well, my friend, it looks as though you and i were in the same fix. come along, and i'll show you my diggings." but when ga-marr looked upon the wrecked space liner, he stared incredulously. he walked its entire length as if doubting its proportions. "yes, she's big all right," standish smiled, aware that he was not understood. "but she's no good, the way she is now. now, how about a little food?" in his forecastle home, the earthman set out a bottle of wine and some cakes. he noted that ga-marr used his front hands with great dexterity, but that he betrayed no surprise at standish's own physical appearance. once the stranger had eaten, standish began the necessary task of providing a common means of communication. he used the corelli sound-system--a shortcut method of acquainting the ear and the eye simultaneously with objects of fundamental importance. within two hours, he found he could converse with ga-marr with a minimum amount of difficulty. haltingly then, the stranger began to speak: "i am from the city, calthedra, of the planet lyra, of the system aritorius. my race was once a great people, but raiders from another planet destroyed our civilization. all we have left is a few rocket ships of the kind in which i came. these were built long ago by our ancestors, and only a few of us know how to operate them." standish nodded. "how came you here?" "i was voyaging to visit my brother on our satellite, zora, when those same raiders caught sight of me and gave chase. my space compass broke, and i became lost. i found my way here just as my rocket motors consumed the last of their power." "i see." standish lit his pipe and began to smoke slowly. "and these raiders--they come from near here?" "from sirius," ga-marr replied. "they raid us for funds to continue their war with a planet many light years away." for a full moment standish sat there rigid. then the pipe fell from his hands, and he leaped to his feet. "sirius!" he cried. "so those butchers are not content to place in bondage all the solar system. they must plague other worlds also!" he paced the length of the forecastle. "tell me," he said, whirling abruptly, "do you know of a sirian leader called drum faggard?" ga-marr's eyes gleamed. "aye. the crudest and most bloodthirsty of them all. it was he who led the attack against my people in which my brother was killed. it was he who directed the sacking of our city of calthedra. my one hope is that some day we may meet on common ground." * * * * * the next day standish revealed to the newcomer his plan to build a smaller space ship out of the wreckage of the old. "your own craft is useless without power for its rocket motors," he told ga-marr. "yet it contains parts that will be valuable. have i your consent to dismantle it?" the stranger nodded. "to work then. and remember, if we succeed, we may yet be able to strike at drum faggard." it was the desire for revenge that spurred them on. quickly they set about dismantling ga-marr's ship. rivets were cut, bolts unscrewed, plates ripped off. using the dismantled parts of the space liner's atomic motors, standish fashioned a smaller but powerful engine. gradually out of the mass a crude craft began to take form. but they were working on counted time. days were growing shorter; the nights, longer. icy winds began to sweep across the ravine, bringing sleet and flurries of snow. with the change in seasons came new dangers. strange animal life, following the perverse migrational instinct of the planet, swept out of the jungle. first came the lizard-birds, similar to, but larger than, the one which had attacked standish. they came over the cliff in squadron formation, a dense cloud that blotted out the sky. for two days the men were kept prisoners, while the flock stalked back and forth about the ravine like a vast roman encampment. a week later the thrads came. it was ga-marr who called them thrads. they were a tiny species of anthropoid, no larger than a squirrel, with bright red bodies. inquisitive and bold, they hampered the two men as they gathered close to watch the work. the ship was nearing completion. while standish labored at the control adjustments, ga-marr carried in a supply of food concentrates from the wrecked liner. along the length of the ravine an inclined runway was built for a take-off. at the end of this, standish constructed a rifle-like catapult, using the parts of ga-marr's rocket motor and a quantity of trinitrate cellulose he found in the liner. if the device worked, it would multiply their initial trajectory power and quicken their passage through the planet's gravitational field. at length standish fastened the last bolt of the crude new ship in its place. nervously, he pressed the starting button. the single motor began with a smooth powerful hum. the ship strained at its moorings. "ready, ga-marr? we'll give her a trial flight and see how she handles." the little man grinned, shouted. "cast off!" he cried. "cast off!" standish severed the mooring cable of the ship with one shot from his genithode pistol. the two men yanked shut the hatch, screwed down the air lock. with a yank, the earthman threw over the control lever. up from the ground the ship shot. through the floor panel, standish saw the ground receding. "take the controls," he told ga-marr. "i'm going to try and chart a course for your planet." * * * * * the planet rose up before them like a great ripened peach. it had taken standish long hours to calculate with his elementary astrophysics the location of their destination. ga-marr had supplied what information he could; but he knew only that the planet, lyra, was bordered by a spiral nebulae on one side, and that it revolved about a sun some hundred million miles distant. as they approached now, ga-marr betrayed no emotion. "the city of calthedra is on the other hemisphere," he said. "i'll direct you to the landing." they crept slowly along the surface, and the earthman found himself looking upon a land similar in many respects to his own. nostalgia seized him. here were lakes and woods and broad fields in the state of cultivation. here were lanes, roads and hedges, a tracery of browns and greens that was good to see. but when a moment later ga-marr pointed out the port and said, "calthedra," standish's jaw set hard. the city had been devastated. buildings stood in ruins. towers were crumbling masses of masonry. only one structure seemed to have escaped the fearful onslaught, a globe-shaped building, fashioned of some kind of black metal. the earthman saw the landing place and guided the ship downward. below he could see people milling about excitedly, groups of them pointing upward. the moment the ship came to a rest, ga-marr threw open the hatch and climbed out. standish followed, to find an assemblage drawn up suspiciously in battle array, their weapons ready for any hostile move of the newcomers. in the foreground stood a taller man of lyra, wearing a suit of copper-colored chain mail and a helmet studded with gleaming chips of yellow metal. at his sides were two men in white flowing robes. all had high brows, penetrating eyes and frond-like appendages in lieu of arms and legs. ga-marr ran forward and embraced the man in the helmet. "my father," he said, "this man is mason standish, a great warrior from the planet earth. he has rescued me from certain death, and has brought me back to your empire at the risk of his life." the emperor paced forward, a benevolent smile playing across his lips. "he who befriends my son has my gratitude," he said softly. * * * * * standish was bewildered. ga-marr had made no mention of the fact that he was of royal birth. it was a long time before the earthman found his tongue. "your son tells me that your people and my people are at war with a common enemy. may i ask how long since the sirians made their last attack upon you?" "within the risings of twelve suns," the emperor replied. "but come. let us go to the palace where we may speak alone." * * * * * standish missed no detail of his passage through the city. calthedra, besides being hard hit by the invaders, was quite evidentally in the process of decay. streets were racked and unrepaired. house windows were broken and open to the elements. and on all sides the earthman saw faces devoid of intelligence staring at him. but when he climbed the steps and followed ga-marr and the emperor into the black metal globe, he entered a different world. a vast pillared hall stretched before him. on one side a balustrated ramp led to the upper levels. opposite were a series of high triangular doorways, each opening into separate chambers. the air was cool and exhilarating and seemed to have a different chemical content than that of the street. "this is our palace," ga-marr said, "built thousands of years before when our people were a great civilization. it alone has withstood all the attacks our planet has been exposed to." "why?" demanded standish. "i should think this would be the enemy's first striking place." ga-marr stook his head. "i do not understand the science of it myself. it is something in the black metal. it is an electon-stripped element, i believe, tremendously heavy and impregnable to any weapon of cosmic warfare." they reached the last doorway and entered the royal quarters. the emperor and his son sat down before a circular table and motioned standish to a chair opposite. the older man removed his helmet and closed his eyes as if in weariness. "earthman," he said at length, "you come at a time when my planet is sorely in need of help. i don't know how much my son has told you, but if you will listen i will tell you the history of lyra. but first i have something to show you." he touched a button on the table, and a chime sounded melodiously in the outer corridor. a servant appeared in the doorway. "tell thalia i would see her at once," the emperor said. a moment later light steps sounded and standish looked up curiously. what he saw brought him out of his chair with a cry of pleasure and amazement. the figure of a girl--an earth girl of his own race stood there on the threshold. vi for a full moment as their eyes met, man and girl stared speechless. to standish, who a few short weeks ago had thought himself cut off forever from his people, she was a vision of loveliness. her hair was dark, and her face was a delicate one of natural beauty. "this is thalia," the emperor said, "born on your planet, but brought here as a child. perhaps you recall a liner, the colossus, which was lost and never reached port some twenty years ago?" "glory, yes!" exclaimed standish. "the colossus was destroyed by the sirians. it was their first attack on an earth craft, and i believe the initial act which led them on. thalia was the only survivor when we came upon the ship, drifting, a derelict." the girl stepped forward now shyly. "my greetings," she said. standish took her hand, and a strange thrill shot through him. then the emperor leaned back in his chair, lit a short metal pipe and began his story.... thousands of years before, the sirians had come to raid this planet, lyra, attracted by the wealth of minerals: coronium, thanium, margon, gold and silver. they had destroyed the libraries, the laboratories, the schools. they had killed the scientists and all men suspected of higher intelligence. for generations, the people of lyra had been held in bondage. then an emperor had come into power, gifted with a scientific reasoning far in advance of his time. he had constructed a warp in space on three sides of the planet. this alteration of the space-time coordinates served as an impregnable defense. until drum faggard had come upon the scene. with but one desire--to continue his war on earth and the solar system, faggard had broken through the space warp and destroyed the time machine that operated it. "and so," concluded the emperor, "we of lyra today are but ghosts of our past. our heritage has been stolen from us. we are far removed in space, so have been unable to obtain allies. even your planet, earth, does not know of our presence. the sirians have told us that your observers believe lyra unfit to support life. and the few rocket ships we have left are not capable of crossing that immense distance." standish sat in thoughtful silence. abruptly the girl, thalia, moved to his side. "will you help us?" she said. "you have knowledge, and knowledge is power. will you aid lyra in its fight for freedom?" standish stood up slowly, face a grim line of determination. "yes," he said. "i'll do all i can." * * * * * he began with a survey of the city of calthedra. with ga-marr answering his many questions, standish passed from street to street, building to building, no detail missing his sharp eyes. he saw the wreckage of the space warp machine, broken ray cannon, the debris-choked lower levels where once light-hearted lyrians had their libraries and laboratories. then standish spent two days devising an intelligence test as he remembered them from his earth studies. the test, he instructed ga-marr, was to be given to every able-bodied man in calthedra. he spent a week more checking the results. but at length from the mass of papers he selected twenty-four lyrians whose iq rating and general scientific aptitude seemed in advance of their fellows. the earthman then revealed his plan to ga-marr. "we're going to build a space ship," he said, "a super destroyer with the most powerful atomic motors i've ever designed. we're going to take this war into our own hands--attack, rather than wait to be attacked." a call for workmen was broadcast. the response was overwhelming. all calthedra, all lyra wanted to help the man from earth in the struggle to free them from bondage. with the twenty-four picked men as overseers, the work began. a flat space was selected beyond the outskirts of the city. food depots were thrown up, together with temporary housing quarters. like a colony of ants, the workmen labored in three shifts. at night, the work went on by the light of solar-condensor lamps mounted on towers at every point of vantage. the ship began to take form. a long cigar-shaped blue-black hull was fashioned out of "_feloranium_", a metal peculiar to lyra which standish toughened by the addition of five alloys. at intermittent spaces along that hull, disappearing ray guns were swivel-mounted, operated and loaded by remote control. the earthman personally supervised the installation of the atomic motors. each he had given the most strenuous block tests. switched on, they purred like six gargantuan cats, alive with effortless strength. finally ga-marr climbed out of the huge cabin and smiled. "it is completed," he said. "only the heat units remain to be tested. what now?" "now," said standish.... but his words were never finished. from the roof of the palace the warning siren burst into a wailing clamor. ga-marr's face blanched. "the sirians!" he cried. "they'll destroy all we've done." with a single leap standish was across to the microphone of the field amplifying system. "wait!" his voice boomed out. "if you run, all your work will be for nothing. we still have a chance, but we must hide this ship. i want each of you to bring here every movable object you can find. do you understand? every movable object!" the field saw strange activity then. while the siren continued to scream out its warning, an endless procession of lyrians raced in and out of calthedra, carrying stone blocks, furniture, doors, articles of every description. "looks like moving day back on earth," standish said to ga-marr with a lightness he didn't feel. his fists clenched. "we'll beat them yet." he ran for the palace. even as he raced up the inclined ramp of the rear entrance, he saw five sirian battle cruisers land with a roar in the central square. inside, standish moved swiftly to the quarters of the emperor. the old man was leaning weakly against a chair, eyes smoldering. without preamble the earthman explained what he had done. then he had barely time to leap through the doorway into the adjoining room. * * * * * heavy steps sounded in the hall. a moment later six men entered the chamber and strode belligerently to the emperor. five of them were sirians. the sixth was a man of earth--a tall broad shouldered man with a bullet head and a cruel predatory face. this was drum faggard. he wore the sirian uniform and a flowing scarlet cloak hung from his shoulders. at his waist were holstered two long barreled genithode pistols. "your mines are lying idle," faggard snarled. "why?" through the crevice between the partially closed door standish saw the emperor shrug eloquently. "we have had troubles." "what troubles?" the emperor hesitated. "labor," he said. "my workers refuse to toil further when the results of their work are stolen from them. they see no reason to struggle for the benefit of murdering raiders." blunt anger crimsoned faggard's face. he struck the emperor hard across the face. "watch your tongue, fool!" standish made fists of his hands. he had an overpowering desire to leap into the room and seize the renegade. to do that, however, he knew, would mean failure for his plans. drum faggard paced to a window. "what is the meaning of all that material piled outside the city?" quietly the emperor continued to play his part. "we are moving to new grounds," he explained, "moving higher into the hills. the weather on lyra is changing, growing warmer due to the planet's gradual approach to our sun. surely your observers must have noticed it." for a long moment the renegade stood there motionless, digesting this information. then he crossed back to the table, slammed a mailed fist down upon it. "old man, i give you one more chance. either those mines are worked and a double amount of ore made ready for us, or we level calthedra to the ground. do you understand? we will return later." he turned on his heel, and the five sirians followed puppet-like into the corridor. darting across to the window, standish saw them march pompously across the square and enter the space cruisers. a moment later, with a roar of rocket exhaust, the six armored vessels shot upward. standish turned and ran out the door, heading for the landing field. half way he met ga-marr. "the ruse worked," the emperor's son exulted. "they've gone." "order the ship cleared!" standish commanded. "we take off at once." quickly the screen of material was torn from the new ship. a vat of necessary water and a case of food concentrate were hastily carried into the storage chamber. the twenty-four chosen lyrians took their places. in the pilot cuddy, standish nodded to ga-marr and pulled down the microphone of the ship address-system. "close stern hatch!" he ordered. a dial flicked on the panel before him, and from the loudspeaker a voice answered: "hatch closed, sir." "close midships-tower." "midships-tower closed." "gunner's mate!" standish called. "test all gun swivels, air locks and automatic loaders." there was a moment's pause. then: "all guns tested, sir." standish motioned ga-marr to shut the pilot cuddy hatch. but before ga-marr could swing the hermetic barrier into position, a lithe figure leaped down the ladder. it was the earth girl--thalia. "i'm going with you," she said. "this is my battle as well as yours." standish looked into her defiant black eyes and frowned. but the refusal that rose to his lips died unsounded. he nodded and motioned her to the settee on the far side of the cuddy. in rotation then, he snapped on the six atomic motors. a dull tremor of life and power shook the ship. then standish seized an electro-welder left behind by some workman, flung open the hatch and ran outside to the stern of the ship. roughly, while ga-marr watched bewildered, he seared the name, _phantom_, on the _feloranium_ hull. he leaped back to the cuddy, slammed shut the hatch and threw over the acceleration lever. the huge ship lifted from the field of its birth and roared up into the stratosphere. vii it was standish's plan to permit the six departing sirian cruisers to cover sufficient distance that they would not associate him--immediately at least--with the plundered planet, lyra. with unleashed power at his fingertips, he planned to pass his quarry on a higher plane, then circle and return. the _phantom_ functioned like a dream. up through space she bored, annihilating distance, sweeping out into the star fields in hot pursuit. warm clear air circulated out from the oxygizers. each dial and gauge told its proper story. even the heat units, which had not been properly tested, operated smoothly. standish pulled down the cosmoscope and surveyed the way ahead. he saw star clusters and constellations. ahead, tail sweeping out in a blaze of glory, a comet crossed his path. but nowhere did he sight the sirian cruisers. "i'm afraid they've got too great a start on us," said ga-marr. thalia drew in her breath sharply. "that black speck ahead...." standish threw over the accelerator another notch and twisted helm sharply. the _phantom_ answered her controls. the earthman was maneuvering for position now. far below him, he saw the six cruisers materialize in his vision. and then, with a dull roar, the _phantom_ swung and leaped for the attack. "they see us!" thalia cried. "they're going into battle-formation!" with drum faggard's flag ship in the lead, the six cruisers turned and headed toward them in squadron formation. it was evident that they were still unaware of the identity of the black ship. the visiscreen clicked on, and faggard's face appeared in the panel. "we are section one, general sirian expeditionary force, sirius to earth, heading for regular interplanetary lanes," he said, following the customary salutation. "who are you?" standish flipped on his own microphone, but disconnected the vision panel so that no return image would be broadcast. "destroyer _phantom_," he replied, muffling his voice. "captain ether commanding. stand by for boarding or we open fire on you." faggard's gross face, crimson with rage, flashed back on the screen. "are you mad? we are six to your one. from what planet do you come? show your colors." "i'll show my colors," standish muttered, a grim smile playing about his lips. he switched on the ship address system. "port gunner. stand by for shot across enemy's bows. elevation six. trajectory five." there was an excited reply. standish twisted his helm a fraction of a turn. "fire!" * * * * * the _phantom_ recoiled slightly, but there was no sound, no tell-tale streak of flame. only on the sirian flagship was there any evidence of what had happened. a gaping hole appeared in the vessel's hull. the ship faltered momentarily. then, standish knew, hermetic bulkheads automatically closed, and she swung on a wide arc. "they're spreading out," ga-marr said. "they're going to attack from both sides." the flagship shot into another plane. the remaining five cruisers surged toward the _phantom_, firing as they came. standish saw the strategy and realized he was pitted against no amateur fighter. he signaled to fire both forward guns, holding his position boldly. at that moment, one of the cruisers attempted a maneuver old in space warfare. charging head-on toward the _phantom_, the cruiser's commander sought to frighten standish into turning broadside. thalia uttered a scream. "they're going to ram us!" she cried. the earthman nodded. "let them. if they do, they'll be in for a surprise." on came the cruiser. the _phantom_ did not alter her course. and then, at the moment the sirian realized the ruse had failed, standish threw his helm, heading directly toward the enemy. the two vessels struck squarely. in the pilot cuddy standish, ga-marr and thalia were hurled to the floor. the earthman struggled erect, helped the girl to her feet. "are you hurt?" he asked. "no, but the ship...." "look!" standish pointed out the port. a horrible sight met the girl's eyes. the _phantom's_ stout _feloranium_ sides were unharmed. but the sirian cruiser had broken into three sections. even as she watched, figures were catapulted out into space, and the whole mass of debris began to rotate slowly around another enemy ship, forming a macabre satellite. the remaining four cruisers circled and began to close in. "all starboard guns," standish ordered. "elevation one. double charge. fire!" the recoil was jarring. two cruisers fell back, rocket motors stilled, huge rents in their forward quarters. and with that, drum faggard's flag ship and the other cruiser turned about and fled. "they've had enough," ga-marr exulted. "faggard is the one i want," standish said. "we'll come back and tow in those two disabled ships later." but the earthman had reckoned without the huge planetoid swarm which lay directly in their path. the two sirian ships plunged into the midst of these miniature worlds and in an instant were lost. power control wide open, standish zoomed in pursuit. but though he swung the cosmoscope to every angle he saw no sign of his quarry. "he's slid through our fingers this time," he told ga-marr bitterly. "but our chance will come again." heavily he swung the tiller and returned to the area of combat. the two helpless cruisers and the portions of the third were drifting idly without steerageway. standish steered the _phantom_ alongside, shot out the magnetic grappling bars and secured the two derelicts. then he headed the big ship back to lyra. a great crowd awaited them. as the _phantom_ and its twin burden settled slowly downward, hundreds of lyrians ran to the landing field. the court guard, resplendent in shining armor, took their places in formation, and the emperor and his ministers hastily assembled on a raised pavilion. then the two wrecked cruisers were opened, and the prisoners led forth. "you will be well treated," the emperor addressed them collectively. "we do not subjugate our captives of war after your fashion; but until the sirians cease their raids upon this planet, you will not be permitted to leave." standish ordered the _phantom_ inspected and such damage as had been inflicted by drum faggard's guns repaired. then with thalia at his side, he moved slowly toward the palace. "some day," he said, "all this will be over. i don't know how, but i'm going to do everything in my power to bring this bloody war to an end. then ..." the girl smiled and lowered her eyes. "then?" she prompted softly. but standish colored and became suddenly silent. even during the heat of the battle, his heart had not beat as fast as it was beating now. viii six lyrian months had passed since standish and ga-marr had escaped from the unknown planet. during those months the fame of the _phantom_ had spread fast as light. from the constellation cygnus to the twelfth and fifteenth magnitude stars, the name of captain ether, behind which standish hid his identity swept through the interplanetary lanes. transports from powerful and peaceful alpha centauri moved with extra convoys, ready for instant action. no one knew when the _phantom_ would strike. no one knew from what planet it came to attack like a black meteor without warning. yet standish challenged no ship but those of sirius. haunting the lanes between sirius and earth, he seized enemy prison ships and troop transports alike with daring regularity. the city of calthedra was filled to overflowing with sirian prisoners. but the man standish wanted most, drum faggard, was never on a captured ship. desire to capture faggard became almost an obsession as the earthman went on. through the powerful radio which he had built on lyra, he learned of the situation on earth, day by day. the news was black. canada, mexico and central america were now a part of the armed camp of the invaders. the greater united states alone had managed to remain independent. breastworks a quarter of a mile high had been erected on the canadian and mexican frontiers. the only bright spot was the fact that faggard's "big push" had failed. often standish smiled as he listened in on radio messages between the sirian government and drum faggard at his frisco base. "the _phantom_ has been sighted, lurking near ganymede. dispatch five cruisers to that satellite immediately." and again: "the _phantom_, it is learned on definite authority, comes from some point in future time. it is able to maintain a speed in excess of light, violating the fitzgerald contraction, riding the fourth dimensional continuum." to which drum faggard always snarled the same reply. "whoever captain ether is, i'll get him. give me time." * * * * * it was the day of his return from his most successful raid; and standish and thalia were walking arm in arm through the palace garden on lyra. flowers were in the full bloom of the planet's early summer, and the sun glowed upon them warmly. "the _phantom_ is not enough," the earthman said. "powerful as she is, she can only plague the sirians like a single hornet. with all my efforts, i have not halted the war against earth one iota." thalia shook her head. "you've done all one person possibly could do." "i need an army and a fleet," standish said. "yet on all lyra there will not be sufficiently trained men to furnish either for a long time." the girl stood there, idly plucking the petals of a flower. abruptly she turned. "the sirian prisoners! even the private soldiers are equipped with scientific knowledge. why not use them?" but standish shook his head. "they would refuse. we could force them to do physical work, of course. but that's all ... i ..." "listen." excitement suddenly entered thalia's voice. "in the laboratories in the lower levels there is a machine built by the early lyrians long ago. no one understands its operation now. but its some kind of an electro-hypnotic machine. couldn't you use it on the sirians and make them _want_ to help us?" a glitter in his eyes, standish considered a moment, then leaped to his feet. "let's have a look," he said. they left the garden, crossed the square and entered the ancient tunnel that led to the old laboratories. in the first level the earthman found nothing that answered the girl's description. but in a storage room far back in the second tier he came upon two of the strange machines, dust covered, in places red with rust. mounted on wheels, the instruments consisted of a small cart with twin panels and a confusing array of dials. above each machine was a helix of tightly wound silver wire. at the bottom was a transparent globe still half-filled with a thick greenish liquid. "according to ga-marr," thalia said, "these machines were used by the early sirians for medical purposes. they found in the principal of applied hypnosis a cure for a great many ills." standish nodded. without further word, he took up a small wrench and removed the panel from one of the instruments, carefully examining the revealed wiring. "they seemed to be constructed for use on ordinary electric power. but not the power supplied by calthedra's dynamoes. i'll have to step up the frequency." he opened a wall switchboard and quickly connected two wires to the machine. on a table he found a transformer. thalia stood by in silence while he hooked up wires, condensers, and a small loading coil. presently he looked up with a nod. "we'll give her a try and see what happens." "stand over there in front of the helix," standish said. "i don't think there's any danger. unless i'm wrong, the thing simply places the patient in an electro magnetic field and transmits an alternating vibration to the human brain." he played with the dials a long time, twisted a rheostat experimentally. "notice anything?" "yes, i ..." the earth girl's voice died off. a vacant look entered her eyes. "what is your wish?" she asked suddenly. standish made a quick adjustment to the controls. "sit down," he commanded. obediently, thalia moved across to a chair and sat stiffly erect. "you have studied some mathematics," standish said then. "tell me, what is the principal of the algebraic curve?" without hesitation thalia replied, "a curve, the equation of which contains no transcendental quantities; a figure the intercepted diameters of which bear always the same proportion to their respective ordinates." standish uttered a low cry of triumph and threw over the reverse lever of the machine. an instant later thalia stared at him in bewilderment. "what happened?" "it worked," standish replied. "with that device and a hundred more like it i will build, i can control every last sirian prisoner. i can make them help us build an entire fleet, using all their scientific knowledge." thalia's eyes glowed. "we'll be fighting them with their own people," she said. ix the electro-hypnosis machines finished, standish enlisted ga-marr's aid and proceeded to try them on a group of sirian prisoners. "after all," the earthman said, "what we're doing is for the sake of your planet and mine. these prisoners will suffer no ill effect, but by organizing their efforts, we can aid a great cause." he turned a control knob, and a low hum sounded in the machine. the green liquid in the globe began to bubble, and a column of mist climbed upward through the connecting tube. improved as they were by standish, the machines immediately placed the sirians in a mental state where they were receptive to all commands. yet they retained full control of their mental faculties. the work began. frameworks for twenty space destroyers were laid. like automatons the sirians toiled, worked side by side with the men of lyra. the twenty hulls were completed, and the atomic motors were being installed when standish called ga-marr aside. "i'm going to leave you in charge," the earthman said, "while i take the _phantom_ out again. the more prisoners, the quicker we'll have a fleet. besides the sirians will have grown careless again by now." this time, however, standish steadfastly refused to take thalia along. "i'm going to skirt the very stratosphere of earth," he told her, "and it'll be too dangerous. but i'll be back soon." thalia pouted, but standish was firm. with another lyrian, dar-ley, as his lieutenant, standish took off. he headed at full speed for the interplanetary lane between sirius and earth. as he went on, suspicion assailed him. not a single sirian ship did he see. once a slow-moving freighter from far off protorus crossed his path. the freighter clapped on all speed in a frantic attempt to escape. but standish viewed it without interest. he was drawing close to earth. alert, standish kept the moon between him and his home planet, advancing cautiously. but there was no sign of trouble. the spaceways were empty. now the cold expanse of the moon opened before him. the _phantom_ soared over tycho, aristotle and petavius, dipped downward and came to a rest on a barren lava plain. standish took down a space suit, and a small magno telescope and went out through the air lock. pacing slowly across the frigid flat, he tried to fathom the growing puzzle. a hundred yards from the ship he trained his scope on earth, staring long and intently. but the range was too great and the scope too weak for detailed observation. and then abruptly he stiffened. through the powerful retinite lens a tiny dot focused his vision. a rocket ship! he adjusted the glass and studied her lines. unquestionably she was sirian and heading toward the moon on an oblique angle. standish ran for the _phantom_. the air lock closed; he threw over the control lever, and the big ship headed with a lurch for the enemy. in the pilot cuddy dar-ley watched the cosmoscope and intoned the distance measurements. "thirty thousand miles. enemy still following same course." "twenty thousand. no change." "eight hundred." a frown crossed standish's face. the sirian ship must have seen them by now. alone and without convoy, it should have turned and fled. puzzled, the earthman ordered a shot across the enemy's bows. the sirian did not change her course. and then dar-ley gave a frantic cry. "behind us. look!" * * * * * six sirian ships were racing out from the surface of the moon in battle formation. even as standish looked, he saw four more cruisers join the others, spread out to cut off the _phantom_. he realized then that he had blundered into a trap. the sirians had been waiting for him. the single cruiser had been the bait which he had swallowed blindly. "we'll have to run for it," dar-ley cried. "they're too many for us." standish's teeth came together grimly. "we'll give them a fight for their money first." on toward the cruiser the _phantom_ raced. the ship staggered as the sirian opened fire, and two of the shots glanced harmlessly off the _feloranium_ hull. but with five well-placed shots standish demolished the sirian's guns and left her floating helplessly. then the _phantom_ turned helm and ran alongside on the opposite side of the cruiser. in an instant dar-ley saw standish's strategy. the _phantom_ was now protected with the cruiser between her and the fleet. the earthman flipped open his microphone switch. "rocket bomb. full charge. point four." there was a deafening report as the bomb erupted from its cylinder. through the port standish saw the nearest sirian ship explode into fragments. he smiled grimly and swung his helm far over. "here we go, dar-ley. if they catch us, they'll have to move." but fast though the _phantom_ was, the fleet hung steadily in her wake. finally the earthman switched on the boosters, auxiliary machines which drew power from intra-spacial emanations and built up the speed of the atomic motors. gradually the fleet dropped behind. "close call!" standish breathed. "faggard almost got me that time." x standish had never believed in hunches, yet the moment he entered the stratosphere of lyra he knew something was wrong. a moment later he was free of the cloud level and over calthedra. a wave of despair shot through him. the city was a ruin. not a single building remained. the great palace was a mass of debris, and the choked streets were deserted. with a great fear he headed the _phantom_ for the landing field. here a cry of dismay escaped his lips. the sleek space ships which had dotted the level were no more. twisted lumps of metal and scattered pieces of broken machinery were all that remained of the fleet. "in heaven's name," cried dar-ley, "what has happened?" "drum faggard," said standish heavily. "he attacked while we were gone. it must have been only his lieutenants we met off the moon." the _phantom_ dropped to a landing, and the two men climbed out, followed by the crew. a death-like silence reigned. as he stood there staring at the grim devastation, the earthman's fists clenched. the lyrians, the prisoners, the emperor ... had they all gone? and then he thought of thalia! he lurched into a stumbling run and headed for the ruined city. in the metropolis the destruction was even more terrible. ray guns had leveled every structure to the ground. dead lyrians lay on all sides. every labor-saving device which had been constructed through standish's efforts had been shattered. but an instant later, in the midst of this wreckage, he saw a familiar figure stagger toward him. ga-marr! the emperor's son's face was caked with blood and his clothing was torn to shreds, but he managed to gasp a single word: "water...!" standish dispatched dar-ley back to the _phantom_ for a canteen, then tore off his coat and rolled it into a pillow, forcing ga-marr to rest his head upon it. but when the lyrian struggled up on one elbow and drank thirstily from dar-ley's canteen, standish choked out the question that was uppermost in his mind. "thalia! where is she?" ga-marr's voice was a sob. "drum faggard! he surprised us with an entire fleet while you were gone. he kidnaped my father, and he took thalia." a blur rose up before standish's eyes. "and the others?" he demanded. "the rest of your people? can it be they all are dead?" ga-marr shook his head. "they fled to the hills. i alone remained here because i knew you would return." it was time, standish realized, for action. but what action? his fleet was gone, all his work destroyed. even the girl he had come to love had been taken from him. he turned and stared helplessly at the black hulled _phantom_ resting on its mooring platform. powerful as that ship was, he knew it was not enough. he might raid more sirian ships, destroy more transports, but what would it avail him. he had played his hand, and he had lost. he was up against a blank wall. * * * * * and then a single object on the far side of the palace ruins focused in his vision. stone and debris were piled high there, but the little, crudely-built space ship with which he and ga-marr had escaped from the unknown planet had escaped damage. for a moment standish's brow furrowed in thought; then he uttered an exclamation. "to the _phantom_!" he said. "there may yet be a way...." with ga-marr supported by standish, they hurried down the debris-choked streets and across to the landing field. reaching the ship, the earthman turned his crew of twenty-four over to dar-ley, ordering them to leave at once for the hills where they were to aid the lyrians. "but what are you going to do without a crew?" objected dar-ley. standish's face was a block of granite. "i'm going to fight trickery with trickery," he said. then the earthman and ga-marr entered the destroyer alone. slowly, standish guided the big ship over the ruins of the city of calthedra. above the palace, he suddenly shot out the magnetic grappling bars and secured the little space ship. "what can you do with that?" ga-marr frowned. "the thing has little power and...." but standish, lips set hard, was moving the controls with silent determination. up the _phantom_ shot, boring forward like a hound to the hunt, carrying the crude little ship with it. standish threw over the accelerator to the farthest notch and switched on both boosters. he motioned ga-marr into the control seat. "head directly for earth. i'm going back and see if i can get a little more speed out of those motors." hour after hour the big ship plunged, rocketing madly across the star-filled heavens. time and space were dropping behind them like falling grains of sand. standish, returning from the motor chamber, saw the planets of pluto and uranus rise up far ahead. then earth came into sight, a pin-point almost at the limit of his vision. the earthman glanced at the chronometer on the instrument panel. it would be approximately midnight when they reached the north american continent, judging by their present speed. unless the sirians at their frisco base were watching closely, they might be able to pass unobserved. earth grew. now the _phantom_ was zooming down through the stratosphere. over new california they swept, checking trajectory by reversing motors. over omaha, standish looked through the floor plate. were the front-line breastworks still here? or had his people been forced to retreat farther toward the atlantic seaboard? "i see lights," ga-marr said abruptly. "there seem to be fortifications below us." with a sigh of relief standish guided the _phantom_ downward. he was at home again. xi officers and soldiers formed a cheering circle as he climbed out of the hatch, followed by ga-marr. old companions rushed forward to shake the earthman's hand and bombard him with questions. smiling, standish pushed his way through the throng to the building marked ghq. an orderly ushered him inside, and a moment later he was facing attack-engineer mcclellan whose eyes were wide with amazement. "listen," standish began without preamble, "i want to see a detailed map and an aerial photograph of the sirian's frisco base. have you got one?" mcclellan bit into his cigar and nodded. he opened a cabinet and laid out two large sheets. "the pilot who made these barely got out with his life," he said. "i don't suppose you'd care to tell me where you've been or what you've got in mind, standish." without answering standish gazed at the maps and the photograph. presently he looked up. "prepare for a big push," he said. "get all your guns and men ready for immediate movement. and keep your observers watching this point, sector five"--he indicated the area with his forefinger--"as soon as the firing stops there, go through." he turned then and ran back to the ship. straight into the stratosphere standish guided the ship. as he continued to climb higher into the night sky, ga-marr watched puzzled, but made no comment. one thousand, two, three thousand miles slid behind them. at length the earthman turned. "set off the emergency rocket flares," he ordered. ga-marr stared. "are you mad, mason? the sirians will see us and...." "which is just what i want," standish replied. "hurry, man!" obediently ga-marr strode back along the passageway, began to push contact buttons at regular intervals along the bulkhead wall. as he did, long streamers of crimson fire erupted from the _phantom's_ side. in a moment the destroyer was a flaming mass. standish set his controls and took down two space suits. he donned one of them, motioned ga-marr into the other. then he tied a rope to the lever controlling the magnetic grappling bar, trailing it across the floor to the airlock. "all right, ga-marr," he said. "here we go." the lock door slid open at his touch. then and not until then did ga-marr understand. directly below them, held to the _phantom's_ hull by the magnetic bars was their crude space ship. balancing himself cautiously, standish reached down and opened the hatch. he climbed in, and ga-marr quickly followed. then the earthman gave the rope a jerk. the grappling bars released, and the two ships drifted apart. alone and unmanned, the _phantom_ swept downward, her exploding rockets a blaze of glory in the black sky. "and there goes the fleet!" standish said. "they've sighted the _phantom_." * * * * * aware that hundreds of glasses must now be turned upward, he headed south beyond the outskirts of the city. he selected a flat open space by the ocean shore and glided quickly to a landing. a hundred yards away the white expanse of a highway snaked through the dark countryside. no one apparently had noticed their descent. at a run, standish headed for that highway. twin head lights swept around a curve as he reached it, and a heavy gyro truck rumbled into sight. the truck slowed to manipulate the curve. an instant later standish and ga-marr leaped, clutched at the swaying tailboard and drew themselves aboard. before a large white building the two men dropped from the truck, darted across to the entrance. a sirian guard stopped them armed with a ray gun. "halt!" standish used his pistol this time, smashing its barrel down on the sirian's skull. then a muffled voice sounded directly before them, and the earthman leaped across to a door and ripped it open. on the threshold he stood rigid, staring inward. the room was a richly furnished office. at a large desk in the center sat a familiar figure. it was drum faggard, cigarette between his lips, microphone in his hand. "put down that microphone, faggard," standish commanded. "if you speak so much as a single word, i fire." "standish!" faggard gasped. the earthman dropped silently into a chair, while ga-marr pulled a small knife switch, disconnecting the microphone. ga-marr then paced to the window and drew the blinds. a gleam of cunning crossed faggard's face. he turned the knob of the radio and leaned forward. then his right hand shot into the desk drawer and clawed forth a small genithode gun. but standish had been expecting that move. his hand clamped over the gun wrist, twisted the weapon free. jamming his own gun hard into the sirian leader's ribs, standish said, "talk. call your officers and tell them to stand by for important orders." there were beads of perspiration on faggard's brow now as he twisted a dial of the radio and began to speak slowly and haltingly. on the indicator panel on the far wall standish saw little red lights flash on as outpost-officer after officer acknowledged the call. the entire sirian army was listening in. * * * * * even as he finished, a terrific vibrating roar sounded from a distant point of the city. the sound trembled the walls of the building, shook the floor beneath their feet. "the _phantom_!" said ga-marr. "she struck!" faggard's face was livid. "you fool!" he snarled. "do you realize what you've done?" standish betrayed no emotion. "perfectly. i've divided your army in half. i've cut an aisle through your defense, through which my people even now are beginning to advance." abruptly the earthman's teeth clicked together. "now what have you done with thalia and the emperor. tell me or...." faggard's shoulders slumped in defeat. he groped to his feet like a blind man and stumbled across the room. "i'll show you," he said huskily. he open a connecting door, and standish saw two familiar figures in the adjoining room, an older man and a young girl. but in that instant faggard acted. he lunged across the room, reached up to a shelf filled with chemical tubes and vials. seizing a bottle of colorless liquid, he threw it straight at standish. the bottle struck the door frame, and acid geysered in all directions. the earthman felt a hot stab of agony lance across his left arm. but ga-marr was not taken off guard. his genithode pistol exploded even as faggard reached for a second bottle. the sirian threw up his arms, staggered and pitched forward on his face. thalia was in standish's arms then, sobbing. but in the outer corridor running steps sounded. a heavy fist banged on the door. "in here," the girl cried. "this door. it leads to a tunnel that passes under the city. it's drum faggard's secret avenue of retreat. he has the key in his pocket." as they sped to safety standish felt a wave of elation sweep over him. he had won...! * * * * * three days later a small cruiser took off from omaha, swept through the stratosphere and headed for the planet, lyra, many light years distant. four persons occupied her pilot cabin: standish, thalia, ga-marr and the emperor. "it's all over," the earthman said to the girl. "the war is ended. sirius' power is forever broken, and even now the work of reconstruction has begun. earth and the whole solar system can return to peace." ga-marr nodded. "what now?" he asked. "now, we're going home." standish drew thalia close. "your home and mine. our future lies out there in the new frontier." the serpent river by don wilcox [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from other worlds may 1957. extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] the code was rigid--no fraternization with the peoples of other planets! earth wanted no "shotgun weddings" of the worlds of space! "split" campbell and i brought our ship down to a quiet landing on the summit of a mile-wide naked rock, and i turned to the telescope for a closer view of the strange thing we had come to see. it shone, eighteen or twenty miles away, in the light of the late afternoon sun. it was a long silvery serpent-like _something_ that crawled slowly over the planet's surface. there was no way of guessing how large it was, at this distance. it might have been a rope rolled into shape out of a mountain--or a chain of mountains. it might have been a river of bluish-gray dough that had shaped itself into a great cable. its diameter? if it had been a hollow tube, cities could have flowed through it upright without bending their skyscrapers. it was, to the eye, an endless rope of cloud oozing along the surface of the land. no, not cloud, for it had the compactness of solid substance. we could see it at several points among the low foothills. even from this distance we could guess that it had been moving along its course for centuries. moving like a sluggish snake. it followed a deep-worn path between the nearer hills and the high jagged mountains on the horizon. _what was it?_ "split" campbell and i had been sent here to learn the answers. our sponsor was the well known "eggwe" (the earth-galaxy good will expeditions.) we were under the eggwe code. we were the first expedition to this planet, but we had come equipped with two important pieces of advance information. the keynes-roy roving cameras (unmanned) had brought back to the earth choice items of fact about various parts of the universe. from these photos we knew (1) that man lived on this planet, a humanoid closely resembling the humans of the earth; and (2) that a vast cylindrical "rope" crawled the surface of this land, continuously, endlessly. we had intentionally landed at what we guessed would be a safe distance from the rope. if it were a living thing, like a serpent, we preferred not to disturb it. if it gave off heat or poisonous gases or deadly vibrations, we meant to keep our distance. if, on the other hand, it proved to be some sort of vegetable--a vine of glacier proportions--or a river of some silvery, creamy substance--we would move in upon it gradually, gathering facts as we progressed. i could depend upon "split" to record all observable phenomena with the accuracy of split-hairs. split was working at the reports like a drudge at this very moment. i looked up from the telescope, expecting him to be waiting his turn eagerly. i misguessed. he didn't even glance up from his books. rare young campbell! always a man of duty, never a man of impulse! "here campbell, take a look at the 'rope'." "before i finish the reports, sir? if i recall our code, section two, order of duties upon landing: a--" "forget the code. take a look at the rope while the sun's on it.... see it?" "yes sir." "can you see it's moving? see the little clouds of dust coming up from under its belly?" "yes sir. an excellent view, captain linden." "what do you think of it, split? ever see a sight like that before?" "no sir." "well, what about it? any comments?" split answered me with an enthusiastic, "by gollies, sir!" then, with restraint, "it's precisely what i expected from the photographs, sir. any orders, sir?" "relax, split! that's the order. relax!" "thanks--thanks, cap!" that was his effort to sound informal, though coming from him it was strained. his training had given him an exaggerated notion of the importance of dignity and discipline. he was naturally so conscientious it was painful. and to top it all, his scientific habit of thought made him want to stop and weigh his words even when speaking of casual things such as how much sugar he required in his coffee. needless to say, i had kidded him unmercifully over these traits. across the millions of miles of space that we had recently traveled (our first voyage together) i had amused myself at his expense. i had sworn that he would find, in time, that he couldn't even trim his fingernails without calipers, or comb his hair without actually physically splitting the hairs that cropped up in the middle of the part. that was when i had nicknamed him "split"--and the wide ears that stuck out from his stubble-cut blond hair had glowed with the pink of selfconsciousness. plainly, he liked the kidding. but if i thought i could rescue him from the weight of dignity and duty, i was mistaken. now he had turned the telescope for a view far to the right. he paused. "what do you see?" i asked. "i cannot say definitely. the exact scientific classification of the object i am observing would call for more detailed scrutiny--" "you're seeing some sort of object?" "yes sir." "what sort of object?" "a living creature, sir--upright, wearing clothes--" "a _man_?" "to all appearances, sir--" "you bounder, give me that telescope!" 2. if you have explored the weird life of many a planet, as i have, you can appreciate the deep sense of excitement that comes over me when, looking out at a new world for the first time, i see a man-like animal. walking upright! wearing adornments in the nature of clothing! i gazed, and my lungs filled with the breath of wonderment. a man! across millions of miles of space--a man, like the men of the earth. six times before in my life of exploration i had gazed at new realms within the approachable parts of our universe, but never before had the living creatures borne such wonderful resemblance to the human life of our earth. a man! he might have been creeping on all fours. he might have been skulking like a lesser animal. he might have been entirely naked. he was none of these--and at the very first moment of viewing him i felt a kinship toward him. oh, he was primitive in appearance--but had my ancestors not been the same? was this not a mirror of my own race a million years or so ago? i sensed that my own stream of life had somehow crossed with his in ages gone by. how? who can ever know? by what faded charts of the movements through the sky will man ever be able to retrace relationships of forms of life among planets? "get ready to go out and meet him, campbell," i said. "he's a friend." split campbell gave me a look as if to say, sir, you don't even know what sort of animal he is, actually, much less whether he's friendly or murderous. "there are some things i can sense on first sight, campbell. take my word for it, he's a friend." "i didn't say anything, sir." "good. don't. just get ready." "we're going to go _out_--?" "yes," i said. "orders." "and meet both of them?" split was at the telescope. "both?" i took the instrument from him. both! "well!" "they seem to be coming out of the ground," split said. "i see no signs of habitation, but apparently we've landed on top of an underground city--though i hasten to add that this is only an hypothesis." "one's a male and the other's a female," i said. "another hypothesis," said split. the late evening sunshine gave us a clear view of our two "friends". they were fully a mile away. split was certain they had not seen our ship, and to this conclusion i was in agreement. they had apparently come up out of the barren rock hillside to view the sunset. i studied them through the telescope while split checked over equipment for a hike. the man's walk was unhurried. he moved thoughtfully, one might guess. his bare chest and legs showed him to be statuesque in mold, cleanly muscled, fine of bone. his skin was almost the color of the cream-colored robe which flowed from his back, whipping lightly in the breeze. he wore a brilliant red sash about his middle, and this was matched by a red headdress that came down over his shoulders as a circular mantle. the girl stood several yards distant, watching him. this was some sort of ritual, no doubt. he was not concerned with her, but with the setting sun. its rays were almost horizontal, knifing through a break in the distant mountain skyline. he went through some routine motions, his moving arms highlighted by the lemon-colored light of evening. the girl approached him. two other persons appeared from somewhere back of her.... three.... four.... five.... "where do they come from?" split had paused in the act of checking equipment to take his turn at the telescope. if he had not done so, i might not have made a discovery. the landscape was _moving_. the long shadows that i had not noticed through the telescope were a prominent part of the picture i saw through the ship's window when i looked out across the scene with the naked eye. the shadows were moving. they were tree shadows. they were moving toward the clearing where the crowd gathered. and the reason for their movement was that the trees themselves were moving. "notice anything?" i asked split. "the crowd is growing. we've certainly landed on top of a city." he gazed. "they're coming from underground." looking through the telescope, obviously he didn't catch the view of the moving trees. "notice anything else unusual?" i persisted. "yes. the females--i'm speaking hypothetically--but they _must_ be females--are all wearing puffy white fur ornaments around their elbows. i wonder why?" "you haven't noticed the trees?" "the females are quite attractive," said split. i forgot about the moving trees, then, and took over the telescope. mobile trees were not new to me. i had seen similar vegetation on other planets--"sponge-trees"--which possessed a sort of muscular quality. if these were similar, they were no doubt feeding along the surface of the slope below the rocky plateau. the people in the clearing beyond paid no attention to them. i studied the crowd of people. only the leader wore the brilliant garb. the others were more scantily clothed. all were handsome of build. the lemon-tinted sunlight glanced off the muscular shoulders of the males and the soft curves of the females. "those furry elbow ornaments on the females," i said to split, "they're for protection. the caves they live in must be narrow, so they pad their elbows." "why don't they pad their shoulders? they don't have anything on their shoulders." "are you complaining?" we became fascinated in watching, from the seclusion of our ship. if we were to walk out, or make any sounds, we might have interrupted their meeting. here they were in their native ritual of sunset, not knowing that people from another world watched. the tall leader must be making a speech. they sat around him in little huddles. he moved his arms in calm, graceful gestures. "they'd better break it up!" split said suddenly. "the jungles are moving in on them." "they're spellbound," i said. "they're used to sponge-trees. didn't you ever see moving trees?" split said sharply, "those trees are marching! they're an army under cover. look!" i saw, then. the whole line of advancing vegetation was camouflage for a sneak attack. and all those natives sitting around in meeting were as innocent as a flock of sitting ducks. split campbell's voice was edged with alarm. "captain! those worshippers--how can we warn them? oh-oh! too late. look!" all at once the advancing sponge-trees were tossed back over the heads of the savage band concealed within. they were warriors--fifty or more of them--with painted naked bodies. they dashed forward in a wide semicircle, swinging crude weapons, bent on slaughter. 3. they were waving short clubs or whips with stones tied to the ends. they charged up the slope, about sixty yards, swinging their weird clubs with a threat of death. wild disorder suddenly struck the audience. campbell and i believed we were about to witness a massacre. "captain--_jim_! you're not going to let this happen!" our sympathies had gone to the first groups, the peaceable ones. i had the same impulse as campbell--to do something--anything! yet here we sat in our ship, more than half a mile from our thirty-five or forty "friends" in danger. our friends were panicked. but they didn't take flight. they didn't duck for the holes in the rocky hilltop. instead, they rallied and packed themselves around their tall leader. they stood, a defiant wall. "can we shoot a ray, jim?" i didn't answer. later i would recall that split _could_ drop his dignity under excitement--his "captain linden" and "sir." just now he wanted any sort of split-second order. we saw the naked warriors run out in a wide circle. they spun and weaved, they twirled their deadly clubs, they danced grotesquely. they were closing in. closer and closer. it was all their party. "jim, can we shoot?" "hit number sixteen, campbell." split touched the number sixteen signal. the ship's siren wailed out over the land. you could tell when the sound struck them. the circle of savage ones suddenly fell apart. the dancing broke into the wildest contortions you ever saw. as if they'd been spanked by a wave of electricity. the siren scream must have sounded like an animal cry from an unknown world. the attackers ran for the sponge-trees. the rootless jungle came to life. it jerked and jumped spasmodically down the slope. and our siren kept right on singing. "ready for that hike, campbell? give me my equipment coat." i got into it. i looked back to the telescope. the tall man of the party had behaved with exceptional calmness. he had turned to stare in our direction from the instant the siren sounded. he could no doubt make out the lines of our silvery ship in the shadows. slowly, deliberately, he marched over the hilltop toward us. most of his party now scampered back to the safety of their hiding places in the ground. but a few--the brave ones, perhaps, or the officials of his group--came with him. "he needs a stronger guard than that," campbell grumbled. sixteen was still wailing. "set it for ten minutes and come on," i said. together we descended from the ship. we took into our nostrils the tangy air, breathing fiercely, at first. we slogged along over the rock surface feeling our weight to be one-and-a-third times normal. we glanced down the slope apprehensively. we didn't want any footraces. the trees, however, were still retreating. our siren would sing on for another eight minutes. and in case of further danger, we were equipped with the standard pocket arsenal of special purpose capsule bombs. soon we came face to face with the tall, stately old leader in the cream-and-red cloak. split and i stood together, close enough to exchange comments against the siren's wail. fine looking people, we observed. smooth faces. like the features of earth men. these creatures could walk down any main street back home. with a bit of makeup they would pass. "notice, captain, they have strange looking eyes." "very smooth." "it's because they have no eyebrows ... no eye lashes." "very smooth--handsome--attractive." then the siren went off. the leader stood before me, apparently unafraid. he seemed to be waiting for me to explain my presence. his group of twelve gathered in close. i had met such situations with ease before. "eggwe" explorers come equipped. i held out a gift toward the leader. it was a singing medallion attached to a chain. it was disc-shaped, patterned after a large silver coin. it made music at the touch of a button. in clear, dainty bell tones it rang out its one tune, "trail of stars." as it played i held it up for inspection. i placed it around my own neck, then offered it to the leader. i thought he was smiling. he was not overwhelmed by the "magic" of this gadget. he saw it for what it was, a token of friendship. there was a keenness about him that i liked. yes, he was smiling. he bent his head forward and allowed me to place the gift around his neck. "tomboldo," he said, pointing to himself. split and i tried to imitate his breathy accents as we repeated aloud, "tomboldo." we pointed to ourselves, in turn, and spoke our own names. and then, as the names of the others were pronounced, we tried to memorize each breathy sound that was uttered. i was able to remember four or five of them. one was gravgak. gravgak's piercing eyes caused me to notice him. suspicious eyes? i did not know these people's expressions well enough to be sure. gravgak was a guard, tall and muscular, whose arms and legs were painted with green and black diamond designs. by motions and words we didn't understand, we inferred that we were invited to accompany the party back home, inside the hill, where we would be safe. i nodded to campbell. "it's our chance to be guests of tomboldo." nothing could have pleased us more. for our big purpose--to understand the serpent river--would be forwarded greatly if we could learn, through the people, what its meanings were. to analyze the river's substance, estimate its rate, its weight, its temperature, and to map its course--these facts were only a part of the information we sought. the fuller story would be to learn how the inhabitants of this planet regarded it: whether they loved or shunned it, and what legends they may have woven around it. all this knowledge would be useful when future expeditions of men from the earth followed us (through eggwe) for an extension of peaceful trade relationships. tomboldo depended upon the guard gravgak to make sure that the way was safe. gravgak was supposed to keep an eye on the line of floating trees that had taken flight down the hillside. danger still lurked there, we knew. and now the siren that had frightened off the attack was silent. our ship, locked against invaders, could be forgotten. we were guests of tomboldo. gravgak was our guard, but he didn't work at it. he was too anxious to hear all the talk. in the excitement of our meeting, everyone ignored the growing darkness, the lurking dangers. gravgak confronted us with agitated jabbering: "wollo--yeeta--vo--vandartch--vandartch! grr--see--o--see--o--see--o!" "see--o--see--o--see--o," one of the others echoed. it began to make sense. they wanted us to repeat the siren noises. the enemy had threatened their lives. there could very well have been a wholesale slaughter. but as long as we could make the "see--o--see--o" we were all safe. split and i exchanged glances. he touched his hand to the equipment jacket, to remind me we were armed with something more miraculous than a yowling siren. "see--o--see--o--see--o!" others of tomboldo's party echoed the demand. they must have seen the sponge-trees again moving toward our path. "_see--o--see--o!_" our peaceful march turned into a spasm of terror. the sponge-trees came rushing up the slope, as if borne by a sudden gust of wind. they bounced over our path, and the war party spilled out of them. shouting. a wild swinging of clubs. and no cat-and-mouse tricks. no deliberate circling and closing in. an outright attack. naked bodies gleaming in the semi-darkness. arms swinging weapons, choosing the nearest victims. the luminous rocks on the ends of the clubs flashed. shouting, screeching, hurling their clubs. the whizzing fury filled the air. i hurled a capsule bomb. it struck at the base of a bouncing sponge-tree, and blew the thing to bits. the attackers ran back into a huddle, screaming. then they came forward, rushing defiantly. our muscular guard, gravgak was too bold. he had picked up one of their clubs and he ran toward their advance, and to all of tomboldo's party it must have appeared that he was bravely rushing to his death. yet the gesture of the club he swung so wildly could have been intended as a _warning_! it could have meant, run back, you fools, or these strange devils will throw fire at you. i threw fire. and so did my lieutenant. he didn't wait for orders, thank goodness. he knew it was their lives or ours. zip, zip, zip--blang-blang-blang! the bursts of fire at their feet ripped the rocks. the spray caught them and knocked them back. three or four warriors in the fore ranks were torn up in the blasts. others were flattened--and those who were able, ran. they ran, not waiting for the cover of sponge-trees. not bothering to pick up their clubs. but the operation was not a complete success. we had suffered a serious casualty. the guard gravgak. he had rushed out too far, and the first blast of fire and rock had knocked him down. now tomboldo and others of the party hovered over him. his eyes opened a little. i thought he was staring at me, drilling me with suspicion. i worked over him with medicines. the crowd around us stood back in an attitude of awe as split and i applied ready bandages, and held a stimulant to his nostrils that made him breath back to consciousness. suddenly he came to life. lying there on his back, with the club still at his fingertips, he swung up on one elbow. the swift motion caused a cry of joy from the crowd. i heard a little of it--and then blacked out. for as the muscular gravgak moved, his fingers closed over the handle of the club. it whizzed upward with him--apparently all by accident. the stone that dangled from the end of the club crashed into my head. i went into instant darkness. darkness, and a long, long silence. 4. vauna, the beautiful daughter of tomboldo, came into my life during the weeks that i lay unconscious. i must have talked aloud much during those feverish hours of darkness. "campbell!" i would call out of a nightmare. "campbell, we're about to land. is everything set? check the instruments again, campbell." "s-s-sh!" the low hush of split campbell's voice would somehow penetrate my dream. the voices about me were soft. my dreams echoed the soft female voices of this new, strange language. "campbell, are you there?... have you forgotten the code, campbell?" "quiet, captain." "who is it that's swabbing my face? i can't see." "it's vauna. she's smiling at you, captain. can't you see her?" "is this the pretty one we saw through the telescope?" "one of them." "and what of the other? there were two together. i remember--" "omosla is here too. she's vauna's attendant. we're all looking after you, captain linden. did you know i performed an operation to relieve the pressure on your brain? you must get well, captain." the words of campbell came through insistently. after a silence that may have lasted for hours or days, i said, "campbell, you haven't forgot the eggwe code?" "of course not, captain." "section four?" "section four," he repeated in a low voice, as if to pacify me and put me to sleep. "conduct of eggwe agents toward native inhabitants: a, no agent shall enter into any diplomatic agreement that shall be construed as binding--" i interrupted. "clause d?" he picked it up. "d, no agent shall enter into a marriage contract with any native.... h-m-m. you're not trying to warn me, are you, captain linden? or are you warning _yourself_?" at that moment my eyes opened a little. swimming before my blurred vision was the face of vauna. i did remember her--yes, she must have haunted my dreams, for now my eyes burned in an effort to define her features more clearly. this was indeed vauna, who had been one of the party of twelve, and had walked beside her father in the face of the attack. deep within my subconscious the image of her beautiful face and figure had lingered. i murmured a single word of answer to campbell's question. "myself." in the hours that followed, i came to know the soft footsteps of vauna. the caverns in which she and her father and all these benzendella people lived were pleasantly warm and fragrant. my misty impressions of their life about me were like the first impressions of a child learning about the world into which he has been born. sometimes i would hear vauna and her attendant omosla talking together. often when campbell would stop in this part of the cavern to inquire about me, omosla would drop in also. she and campbell were learning to converse in simple words. and vauna and i--yes. if i could only avoid blacking out. i wanted to see her. so often my eyes would refuse to open. a thousand nightmares. space ships shooting through meteor swarms. stars like eyes. eyes like stars. the eyes of vauna, the daughter of tomboldo. the sensitive stroke of vauna's fingers, brushing my forehead, pressing my hand. i regained my health gradually. "are you quite awake?" vauna would ask me in her musical benzendella words. "you speak better today. your friend campbell has brought you more recordings of our language, so you can learn to speak more. my father is eager to talk with you. but you must sleep more. you are still weak." it gave me a weird sensation to awaken in the night, trying to adjust myself to my surroundings. the benzendellas were sleep-singers. by night they murmured mysterious little songs through their sleep. strange harmonies whispered through the caves. and if i stirred restlessly, the footsteps of vauna might come to me through the darkness. in her sleeping garments she would come to me, faintly visible in the pink light that filtered through from some corridor. she would whisper melodious benzendella words and tell me to go back to sleep, and i would drift into the darkness of my endless dreams. the day came when i awakened to see both vauna and her father standing before me. stern old tomboldo, with his chalk-smooth face and not a hint of an eyebrow or eyelash, rapped his hand against my ribs, shook the fiber bed lightly, and smiled. from a pocket concealed in his flowing cape, he drew forth the musical watch, touched the button, and played, "trail of stars." "i have learned to talk," i said. "you have had a long sleep." "i am well again. see, i can almost walk." but as i started to rise, the wave of blackness warned me, and i restrained my ambition. "i will walk soon." "we will have much to talk about. your friend has pointed to the stars and told me a strange story of your coming. we have walked around the ship. he has told me how it rides through the sky. i can hardly make myself believe." tomboldo's eyes cast upward under the strong ridge of forehead where the eyebrows should have been. he was evidently trying to visualize the flight of a space ship. "we will have much to tell each other." "i hope so," i said. "campbell and i came to learn about the _serpent river_." i resorted to my own language for the last two words, not knowing the benzendella equivalent. _i_ made an eel-like motion with my arm. but they didn't understand. and before i could explain, the footsteps of other benzendellas approached, and presently i looked around to see that quite an audience had gathered. the most prominent figure of the new group was the big muscular guard of the black and green diamond markings--gravgak. "you get well?" gravgak said to me. his eyes drilled me closely. "i get well," i said. "the blow on the head," he said, "was not meant." i looked at him. everyone was looking at him, and i knew this was meant to be an occasion of apology. but the light of fire in vauna's eyes told me that she did not believe. he saw her look, and his own eyes flashed darts of defiance. with an abrupt word to me, he wheeled and started off. "get well!" the crowd of men and women made way for him. but in the arched doorway he turned. "vauna. i am ready to speak to you alone." she started. i reached and barely touched her hand. she stopped. "i will talk with you later, gravgak." "now!" he shouted. "alone." he stalked off. a moment later vauna, after exchanging a word with her father, excused herself from the crowd and followed gravgak. from the way those in the room looked, i knew this must be a dramatic moment. it was as if she had acknowledged gravgak as her master--or her lover. he had called for her. she had followed. but her old father was still the master. he stepped toward the door. "vauna!... gravgak!... come back." (i will always wonder what might have happened if he hadn't called them! was my distrust of gravgak justified? had i become merely a jealous lover--or was i right in my hunch that the tall muscular guard was a potential traitor?) vauna reappeared at once. i believe she was glad that she had been called back. gravgak came sullenly. at the edge of the crowd in the arched doorway he stood scowling. "while we are together," old tomboldo said quietly, looking around at the assemblage, "i must tell you the decision of the council. soon we will move back to the other part of the world." there were low murmurs of approval through the chamber. "we will wait a few days," tomboldo went on, "until our new friend--" he pointed to me--"is well enough to travel. we would never leave him here to the mercy of the savage ones. he and his helper came through the sky in time to save us from being destroyed. we must never forget this kindness. when we ascend the _kao-wagwattl_, the ever moving _rope of life_, these friends shall come with us. on the back of the kao-wagwattl _they shall ride with us across the land_." 5. from that moment on, there was more buzzing around the caverns than a hive of bees. it was like a spaceport before the blastoff of a big interplanetary liner. the excitement was enough to cause a sick man to have a relapse--or get well in a hurry to join in on the commotion. i did my best to get well quick! "where is campbell? bring me my friend campbell, please." omosla, the pretty attendant and companion of vauna, was always glad, i noticed, to be sent on an errand to split campbell, wherever he was. from all reports he was reinforcing the defenses at one point or another where these caverns led up to the surface. they told me he was a busy man. the attacks of the savage ones had grown more vicious. they had evidently learned that the benzendellas intended to move back to other lands; so they had grown bold in their raids, attempting to steal not only the benzendellas' treasurers but also their women. they had not been successful. my good lieutenant, navigator and scientist, equipped with capsule explosives, had blown one group of them into a fountain of dismembered arms and legs. i could just picture him hurling those miniature bombs at the split-second when they would create the most panic. the benzendellas had been quick to recognize a good thing. they only wished he were quadruplets or better, to stand guard continuously at many entrances. they brought him their rare foods, and furnished him with a comfortable couch; they offered him gifts. in short, they loved him for his efficiency, and for himself. especially (according to the rumors that reached my ears) omosla. pretty little omosla, i fear, loved him with a love that might have overwhelmed a lesser man. but i knew that split campbell would not be swerved. he was devoted to duty, dignity, and the code. the code forbade intermarriage with the natives. why did i keep thinking of the code? it shouldn't have crossed my thoughts so often. i hardly dared stop to ask myself what continually brought it to mind. but i knew. the flare of jealously i had felt when gravgak had tried to call vauna away from the crowd.... "you are feeling better, captain?" vauna said to me as she watched me pace the floor. "you find that you can walk, so you keep walking?" "i need to walk so i can think." "if you wish to think, you should sit out on the hillside at the time of sunset. you understand my words?" "i understand," i smiled. then, rashly, i added, "i understand your words. i don't always understand you." "and you wish to understand me?" "yes." "why?" i could think of more answers than my vocabulary could handle. i said simply, "when i go back to my own world i should be able to say that i understand the people of this world." "but you _do_ understand us. you see how we live. you hear how we talk. there." she pressed my hand. "that is all you need to understand, isn't it? i am the one who does not understand you." "how do you mean?" "i do not see how you live. i do not hear how you talk." she gave a little laugh. "only see how you walk when you think, but i do not know what you think." "i think about you," i said. "that is very nice. i think about you, too, jim. since the night you saved us from the savage ones, i have thought about you." i stopped walking in circles and looked at her. the soft light from the luminous rock walls gave an ivory tint to her bare shoulders. she wore a dress of soft woven material, designed with a diagonal line of little hand-painted sponge-trees. from the curve of her breasts to the lithe gracefulness of her thighs, the close-fitting garment accentuated her beauty. she was backing away from me, smiling as if wondering if i would follow her. her arms were bare except for the ornaments of fur around her elbows. these were evidently an insignia of benzendella womanhood, for no woman of this realm was to be seen without them. "come," vauna said, beckoning me. "put your ear against the wall. what do you hear?" she pressed her head against the wall and i did the same. finally i made out the faint vibrations of some distant rumbling. i asked, "what is it?" "kao-wagwattl." "the round river that moves like a serpent?" "it is an endless rope," she said. "it is life." "life?" "it gathers water and food within itself. it gives life to those who seek life. it gives life--" she stopped, and her pretty poetic expression vanished. my hands touched her hands, my fingers moved gently along her wrists, her forearms--then as my touch neared her fur-covered elbows, a look of shock came into her eyes. "jim!" "yes, vauna?" "i was trying to tell you--" "_what?_" for a moment she only looked at me, searching my eyes. "we _don't_ understand each other, do we?" finally i said, "then why don't we ask each other questions?" "yes.... yes, ask me questions." "all right." i had an impulse to start pacing again. i walked about for a moment. "tell me, vauna. when your friend gravgak demanded that you come and talk with him alone, what would have happened if your father hadn't called you back?" she smiled faintly. "i will tell you a secret, jim. i had already made my father promise to call me back. i whispered to him, 'call me back.'" "why?" she gave an evasive little laugh. "you understand enough already. now it is my question. tell me, captain jim, why do you keep saying that you are going back to another world?" "because i am. that's my duty." "when you ride with us on the kao-wagwattl you will come with us to another part of this world. it is more beautiful than here. we are only a few. our race lives in the other part. my father came here only to study, but soon the kao-wagwattl will take us all back. and you and your friend campbell will go with us and belong to us." the self-discipline of an eggwe agent is supposed to be his defense against any natives' invitations, no matter how beautiful or charming the native. all i could say was, "you don't understand us, do you, vauna?" "don't i?" "your people i love. and you, vauna. but our orders are to return. i must not think of disobeying my orders. and i assure you campbell is one who would never disobey." "the big silver shell will take you away from us?" "yes." "you will remember me?" "yes, always." "thank you, jim." she was weeping. i started to take her in my arms, but thought better of it. she dried her eyes. "i will remember you too. when i see campbell and omosla, i will have a dream of this hour, and how we didn't understand." i was quick to make a correction. "you'll not be seeing campbell. i'll have to take him back with me, you know." "no, he will be here. it is our rule that he should stay." "why?" "because he has become the mate of our girl, omosla." i looked at her, not believing i had heard her words correctly. a fever swept my brain. in my own language i said harshly, "it's a lie! campbell would never violate--" "i do not understand your words," vauna said softly. then in my broken benzendella accents i asserted, calmly but decisively, "i don't believe what you say. i don't believe that campbell has become the mate of omosla." "you will believe," vauna said, "when omosla's baby is born." 6. i had already sent for campbell. mentally i chastized myself for having sent omosla. for if what i had been told was true, his life had become complicated enough already. (i must admit that for the moment i had something less than proper consideration for _her_.) omosla didn't return from the errand for campbell. maybe the news of my concern for him had frightened her away. one of her friends told me that campbell was out on the surface somewhere; that he couldn't be located just now. when he returned they would send him to _me_. i then sought the counsel of tomboldo. "it can't be true, this story about campbell," i said. "there's been some mistake." tomboldo's answer was soft spoken. "much has happened. you have been ill for many weeks. you must take our word. do you find the news not to your liking? omosla is a devoted girl. and if our hero campbell became her husband, all of us would be proud." there was no use talking of the eggwe code to him, that was plain. all i could say at the moment was, "i'll talk with campbell." for the next few nights, after the whole cavern city seemed to be asleep, i would walk forth a little distance. this was more than pacing. it was a test of my strength and my wits, and most of all my confidence that i would not black out. it was proof to myself that i was a well man again. it was a willful act of striking out on my own purposes. i would find campbell. each night i ventured a little farther. the artificial lights burned low. all was quiet. the luminous rock walls stared out from among the cavern furnishings. i walked steadily. i was getting used to the planet's stronger gravity. i was learning to like the sandals they had given me to wear, cushioned with shreds of sponge-tree vegetation. tonight as always i walked to the right from the arch, through one of tomboldo's rooms, and on past the storage rooms. the way opened into a long amber-lighted tunnel. the city branched off in little tunneled avenues from this passageway. would campbell be found on guard tonight--this way--or this way--or-i heard light footsteps, sounds of two persons somewhere in the distance. i moved back toward tomboldo's part of the cave to wait until the ways had cleared. two men were coming through the corridor, conversing in low whispers. i moved back into the shadows, scarcely breathing. the glow of amber light from the corridor revealed them, silhouetted. the taller man was driving the smaller one ahead of him, threatening him with a short-bladed knife. they slowed their steps. their low whispers were audible. "if you breathe a word i'll rip you." the agitated words of the tall guard, gravgak. the light revealed the lines of green-and-black diamonds painted on his thighs. the smaller man, also a guard, muttered, "have i ever told anything?" "you understand, then," said gravgak. "if anything happens, you'll swear there was an intruder--one of the savages." "i'll swear it. i'll say that i--" "say that he knocked you down and forced his way in. like this!" gravgak struck him with his fist. the guard tumbled in a heap against the cavern wall. he lay there, eyes closed. gravgak tiptoed past my hiding place. his eyes glinted with purpose. he paused at tomboldo's door, weighed the knife in his hand, then sheathed it. he went on toward vauna's room. i skipped to one side of the storage room where i had seen my equipment coat hanging. without it i could have been no match for this man. my fingers caught it off the wall, i got into it as i hurried back. automatically my hands checked the contents, everything in place-gravgak was conversing with vauna through the partly opened door. "i told you i would come." "you have no right. i told you--" there was strength, not fear, in vauna's low voice. "your father means for me to win you, if necessary by force." "you lie. go or i'll sound the alarm." "you are in love with that stranger." his voice trembled with rage. "see, you don't answer. if you want him to live, get rid of him. send him back in his silver shell." "you threaten my father's guest?" "the great tomboldo will not live long. i have heard the savages plan to come in some night soon and murder him." at that instant old tomboldo's voice sounded from the next room. "who's there, vauna?" "gravgak!" it was gravgak himself who answered. "i came to protect you, tomboldo. there's danger--" tomboldo's voice thundered with anger at this unaccountable intrusion. "what do you mean?" "they mean to kill you, and if they do--" "who?" "the savages. and if they succeed, i am your successor. tell your daughter it's so. tell her that if a knife blade descends from some dark corner--_look out_! someone behind you!" it was a ruse to cause old tomboldo to whirl about and turn his back to gravgak. tomboldo didn't whirl. but he must have seen what i saw, glittering in the dim light--the knife in gravgak's hand. it flashed up-i flung a capsule bomb at the arch. fire flashed, and the voices were swallowed up in the concussion. 7. the swirl of yellow dust sifted through the cavern passages. coughing and puffing hard, i fought my way into the heap--in time to catch sight of gravgak staggering off toward an exit tunnel. the three of us stood together. a strange trio. two benzendellas, one earth man. bound together in an allegiance that all the space in the universe could never divide. vauna was weeping softly, holding her arms tight about herself, her hands cupped over the fur wrappings of her elbows. she said she could not understand gravgak's behavior. once he had had a chance to become the leader. was it all because he was insane with jealousy--because she loved me? her father thought it was more than this. he had evidently read signs of disloyalty in gravgak, even before my coming. too many plans had filtered out to the savage enemies. for a long time gravgak had been impatient for a chance to succeed tomboldo; my coming had thwarted the original plan--the murderous attack on the sunset meeting. yes, gravgak had been twisting the sponge-tree bands into his own schemes even then. the fine boldness showed in tomboldo's eyes as he talked. people had gathered, and they saw clearly the truth of his charges. but now there were delays in getting ready to go to the better land on another side of this planet. part of the delay was caution. gravgak would probably lie in waiting for the benzendella migration to the serpent river. he would plan an attack. some waiting, some scouting and much preparation would be a matter of wisdom. meanwhile, if gravgak could be found, let him be killed on sight. several weeks passed. secret preparations for the twenty mile migration were completed. i was pleased to hear that campbell had had a share in these plans. he had made several night hikes back to the ship, and had kept watch through the telescope by day, and made valuable observations by means of infra-red photography by night. he knew where the nests of the savage bands were located. moreover, i learned that he and a few of tomboldo's choice scouts, under cover of darkness, crossed through the sponge-tree area to examine the serpent river at close range and determine upon a suitable place for getting the benzendella tribe aboard. for these observations, and for an abundance of scientific data which he picked up about the serpent river itself, i was deeply grateful. if this expedition succeeded in its purposes, the success would be to his credit, not mine. nevertheless, when i was at last conducted to his quarters at the end of one of the tunnels--my long awaited visit--i did not spend all my time complimenting him for his fine achievements. "you're going to be ready to make the trip with the tribe, i presume?" i asked, when we got around to the plans for the migration. "and leave the ship here? i shall follow orders, captain, but i should prefer to stay with the ship, and to proceed with the remainder of the scientific assignments." he handed his field glasses over to one of the relief guards, and led me to a bench in his primitive quarters. a slice of sunlight knifed through from the out-of-doors, the first i had seen for a long time. "a little sunlight's not a bad thing," i said casually. "i've been needing a little light." he looked up at me as if he knew what was coming. "if you've been hearing a rumor, don't believe it." "you've heard it too?" "they say i'm supposed to become the husband of omosla." "all i want is your word, lieutenant campbell," i said. "my word. captain." split said dryly. "you know i wouldn't break the code." "i believe you.... okay, we're in a spot. the fact is, the girl's going to have a baby. when she does, she'll declare you her mate. and the tribe will be proud. have you thought this through?" "i've tried to." i began to pace. "you know we can't afford to offend the tribe. if you bluntly deny that you've had anything to do with the girl, they'll be insulted. they're ready to believe her, not you." "how soon will the child be born?" "within a few days." "how long have we been here?" "long enough." "why doesn't her true mate speak up, whoever he is?" i said, "that's one of the strange circumstances. i haven't heard them mention any other man but you. you see, split, you're the hero of the hour. you're the one they want." "i hope you're not suggesting that _i_ marry this girl." "i _haven't_ suggested it, have _i_? but i will ask this: do you like the girl?... love her??... enough to marry her?" "under more favorable conditions--yes. i've never loved anybody before. but omosla--from the first time i saw her, that evening, in the sunset--" "all right, split. but you still tell me you haven't made love to her?" "absolutely, _no_. you may not know it, jim, but i was with you almost constantly for days and nights after your knockout. you came through the operation--the riskiest thing i ever tried in my life. when you began to pull out of it, i could have gladly taken you back to the ship and blasted off for home. but they were giving you care--vauna and omosla--and damned intelligent care, according to my orders. by that time the savages were knocking on our doors again, and i went onto the defense job with my pockets full of scare bombs, and the other kind too. from then on, i couldn't have held to tighter discipline if i'd been in a planetary war, i swear it." i beat my fist lightly on split's shoulder. the fellow was great, no doubt about it, and i felt like a fool asking him questions about matters outside the bounds of duty. "you're okay, split. you could violate a hundred codes, as far as i'm concerned, and i'd swear before any court in the world that you're tops. but we've still got a problem with this tribe--and this girl." "i'm not asking for compliments," split said. "for the record i'm telling you what _did_ happen, and what didn't. and here's what did." now it was his turn to pace twice around the bench. "how do i begin?" "with omosla." "omosla comes to me often. she brings me food and drink. she hangs around like a pet. she doesn't touch me--anymore. i put a stop to that soon after the first time she put her arms around me. yes, she did that. i was busy watching the sponge-trees move down the valley. she was nearby, murmuring words, most of which i could only half understand. i didn't stop her when she slipped her arms around me--not for quite awhile. i remember plenty well the way those pins in her elbow furs scratched my arms. they stuck in like thorns. look, you can still see the marks." he rolled up his sleeves to show me the slight scars on his upper arms, just above the elbows. "i figured either she didn't know those pins were sticking me, or else it was some sort of tricky test that girls use on men to test their metal. so i took it, and didn't wince. sure, i was enjoying letting her hug me. but after that one time i always kept my distance. this all happened when we first came. you'd think she'd have forgotten. especially if she had a real husband somewhere on the scene." i groaned. "every tribe has strange customs. when the baby comes, that's when they'll insist on a husband." "i wonder who it really is." "unfortunately we can't prove anything by giving the baby a blood test. these primitives wouldn't understand." "proofs are out," campbell said. "however, we still have the eyelash test," i suggested. "you mean--" "i mean that you and i are the only two human animals on this planet with eyebrows and eyelashes. when omosla's baby arrives without a trace of an eyelash, that might go a long way toward convincing--" "you'll help me fight it, then?" "if you're sure you don't want to change your mind, throw out the code, and claim the girl." a look of disdain was all the answer campbell gave me, at first. finally he said, "you'd had ample reasons for nicknaming me split, captain. but so far, i've given you no grounds for applying the term to my personality. i prefer to remain a member of eggwe, in good standing, and to return to earth with a clear record. let omosla name the true father, whoever he is." 8. the whole benzendella tribe made its way across to the kao-wagwattl with only one casualty reported. leeger, the short, slight guard who had once been brutally knocked out by gravgak, was reported missing. everyone else came through without a scratch. it was a triumph for old tomboldo. his superhuman courage had carried the day. children were delighted over the adventure. old folks were happy over achieving what they had feared would be an impossible undertaking. they could believe, now, that they would live all through to the end of the journey--for kao-wagwattl, the serpent river, was a legendary giver of life. campbell did not come. that was according to plan. he kept in touch with me by radio through the final hours of the twenty-mile crossing. "... do you read me, captain? i've drawn them to the north with fire bombs from the ship's guns.... they've never guessed your course." "no signs of gravgak? or leeger?" "not a sign. the city's empty." "keep on the radio, campbell." "right, captain. by the way, how is omosla?" "expecting. i'll let you know. she still talks about the bravest man on the planet, someone named campbell." "h-m-m. you'll sort of look after her, won't you?" it was two hours before dawn when the last of the tribe (leeger excepted) gathered at the mountainside station to board kao-wagwattl. we waited for daylight. strange smells filled our nostrils. smells of wood fires, sparked to life by friction under the pressures of the crawling monster. smells of rocks being ground to powder. smells of the saccharine-sweet breathing from the pores of the thing itself, the giant kao-wagwattl. the faint gray of dawn gradually changed to pink. in the growing light we could make out the contour of the vast misty creeping form. its rounded sides moved along only yards from where we stood. as the light of morning came on we could distinguish the immense box-shaped scales that covered its sides. clouds of sponge-trees rose and fell around it. unrooted vegetation would sift downward, to be bumped into the air again, or to be rolled under. small fires were continually being ignited by friction, and often smothered before they were well started. sometimes the burning would creep up around the curved sides, only to be snuffed out by the surface-breathing of the massive thing. i was relieved to note that the curved top--the "spine", so to speak--was so gradually rounded that there could be no danger of anyone's falling off. its immensity had to be seen to be appreciated. as to its length, i took the word of tomboldo and others. it was endless. it wound around the whole planet like a fifty-thousand mile serpent that had swallowed its own tail. an unbroken rope of life, forever crawling. a gigantic creature? a gargantuan vine? a living thing! i should not say that it was more animal than plant. when i asked tomboldo's counsellors, was it animal or vegetable, their answer was, yes. yes, _what_? yes, it was animal or vegetable. they stressed the or. must it be one and not the other? evidently the kao-wagwattl was not to be compared, not to be classified, but to be accepted--and utilized. for this wandering tribe it was a means of escape from enemies, and a mode of travel. with the coming of daylight, they went to work. crude cranes. swinging baskets. hoists. one group after another was tossed up into the rubbery purplish-gray scales that covered the kao-wagwattl's spine. no one cried out. the landing was soft. and harmless. the speed of the crawl was not great. it must have averaged not more than ten or fifteen miles an hour. but there were variations, to be taken advantage of. the outsides of a curve moved swiftly. foresighted tomboldo had selected the inside of a curve for our mounting, where the movement was sluggish. younger members could leap across from an overhanging platform. once safely in the folds of the surface, they could climb the rounded wall at their leisure. three or four hours were required for the entire tribe to get aboard. this meant that a long line was formed. over a span of many miles this headless, tailless serpent became inhabited with tiny human fleas, figuratively speaking. among the stragglers who boarded last were a few older persons who had to be coaxed and pampered before they would get into the swinging basket. then, too, there was omosla, looking very pretty and thoroughly frightened. she caused a slight delay at the very last by deciding it was time for her to have her baby. 9. finally we were all aboard, and the mighty kao-wagwattl, unaffected by this addition of a few specks of human dust, moved on at its dogged pace through the mountain valleys. no lives had been lost. no one had been seriously injured. tomboldo was the heroic leader. i went forward over the lumpy slabs of scales, to find him and congratulate him. he said, "the glad feelings are to be shared," and he spoke with high praise of my own help and that of my friend campbell. "but we are not yet out of danger. pass the word." pass the word. keep down. out of sight. for several days we would be crawling through the lands of savages. vauna found me. she had made sure that omosla and the baby would have the best of care, and now she meant to look after me. "my dear one," she called me. "here, my dear one. i have your valuable coat. come out of sight. the enemy must not see you." i glanced up the long curved spine of kao, moving steadily through the sunshine. little groups of benzendellas could be seen ahead, as far as the eye could reach. the young children of the party had never had such a trip before, and the older ones found it a strenuous game to keep them down out of sight. following tomboldo's order, they rapidly ducked down into hiding. the great rubber-like scales resembled up-ended boxes, set in criss-cross rows. the deep flexible crevices thus formed were ideal for hiding. i needed my radio. i must talk with campbell. vauna had taken my coat. she called to me. "come, my dear one." she slipped down into a crevice a little to one side of the crest. "come, i hear the voice of your friend campbell in the box." "i'm coming. speak to him, vauna. tell him to wait." "shall i tell him the news?" i didn't answer. the vertical surfaces of the scales folded together, parted, folded again, with the motions of the great creature, and for a moment i lost sight of vauna. but i could hear her voice as i fought my way down to her hiding place. she was talking through the radio with campbell. "you are safe on the big silver ship?... yes, we are on kao-wagwattl. i have been looking after omosla...." i could hear the eagerness in campbell's voice as he asked about omosla. vauna answered him in accents of joy. "she has had her baby ... a little girl! very beautiful. already she looks like you. _she has precious little lines of hair on her eyelids, and above her eyes, just like yours._" the damage was done! there was no point in my lying to campbell to spare his feelings. her words were the simple innocent truth. she was happy and proud to tell the wonderful news. her words implied that campbell would of course come and join us when his work was done, so he could be omosla's husband, as all the benzendellas expected. about all i could say to campbell was, "what she says is true, split. it's a beautiful baby. any father should be proud. i have nothing to add." for hours afterward i could think of nothing else. i sat hidden among the deep soft scales, listening. now and then the gentle movement would cause the crevices around me to gape open, wide enough to reveal a strip of sky. i wondered if sometime i might catch sight of a space ship bolting off into the blue. the only sounds i heard were the faint muffled rumblings of the kao-wagwattl moving along, like gentle thunder echoing up from somewhere down in the earth. it lulled me into relaxation, yet i could not dispel the mental image of campbell sitting there in the ship, alone, brooding over the news. and tempted, no doubt, to touch the controls and leave this planet behind him. later i talked with him again, but we did not mention omosla. he said he was busy with his scientific findings. i relayed to him descriptions of the kao-wagwattl--the "inside" story, from one who was concealed within its scales. we were back to our original assignment, now. for days and days to come, we pursued the scientific facts, comparing notes by radio. at air-cruise speed, campbell made trips around the planet, and completed his charts and maps. he reported that the beautiful land toward which we were moving was indeed a land of promise. but he gave slower estimates of the kao-wagwattl's speed, and he estimated that it would take us the larger part of a year to reach our destination. however, he managed to get an inside view of the larger benzendella tribes who dwelt there. they were truly waiting for old tomboldo's return, and were firm in their faith that the rope of life, kao-wagwattl, would bring him. such were the scientific and ethnological studies that campbell and i were to share, by radio, in the weeks and months to come.... now vauna was beside me. we, like the others, were settled down for the long journey. innocent vauna! she was trying so hard to please me. she sat very close, whispering to me. i listened, and smiled, and tried to take my thoughts away from the image of campbell, his honor shattered by her recent words to him about the baby--a baby with eyelashes--a baby that resembled him. if i remained silent, vauna would tease me into talking with her. "do my words displease you, captain?" "your words please me very much." "you do not look at me. you only look away. do you want me to sit close beside you?" i drew her in my arms and held her. in silence i thought a thousand thoughts that i had brought with me across millions of miles of space. later i said to her, "your arms are warm. why don't you take these fur things off your elbows, to be more comfortable?" she smiled, and kissed me as i had taught her to kiss. "you want me to?" and she removed the furry white elbow ornaments. it was very strange.... while we hovered close, she whispered to me of the secrets of life on this planet, unlike any other world i had known. and there were curious legends of kao-wagwattl, things she had carried in her heart to tell me if such a time as this should ever come. as she talked, the pressure of the scale walls around us increased. the great kao-wagwattl was evidently moving through a dip, so that its upper surfaces were compressed. there was no lack of air for breathing, but the darkness and the pressure added strangeness to the sensation. the tightness of vauna's arms against my own caused my head to spin. perhaps it was the fever returning from my recent illness. my arms felt the stinging sensation of being penetrated by needles. my thoughts flicked back to something split campbell had once told me.... later, when the kao curved over a summit, and the patches of sunlight dashed in, i suggested that vauna go forward to see about her father. she answered me with a curious smile. i snuggled deeper into the shade of the scales and slept. hours later, when i awakened, she was again beside me. 10. if omosla's baby had been a boy, i believe that old tomboldo would have named it for the highest honor in the benzendella world. he was searching for a successor. not among the grown-up warriors and counsellors. among the infants. he sought a child favored by nature. omosla was a beauty and a court favorite, even though she had been a servant. and campbell, who was considered to be her mate, (though marriage had been delayed by circumstances) was of course a renowned hero. if the child had only been a boy! i was kept busy reporting the reasons for campbell's absence. he had stayed with our ship to guarantee benzendella safety. yes, it was true that he could fly through the air and catch up with us. but there were duties which kept him away. my excuses wore thin. vauna and her father begged me to tell him, over the radio, that omosla was growing into a person of sorrow. the shadow of tragedy hovered over her. i complied. i talked, by radio, with campbell. he was in another part of the land, now, pursuing the purposes for which we had come. my mention of omosla's plight aroused his defiance. he said he would rather be a deserter than serve a captain who did not accept his word. "for the last time, captain linden, i repeat that i am not the mate of omosla. do you believe me?" "i don't know what to believe," i said. his radio clicked off. vauna and her father and i secluded ourselves among the scales and talked. my one question was, could there have been any other person among them who had come from another planet? "you and campbell. no others." "how can you be sure?" i pursued. "suppose someone from my world wished to pass for a native. suppose he should pluck the hairs from his eyelids and cut away his eyebrows. would you know him to be an outsider?" "come," vauna said. "we'll walk from one end of the tribe to the other." while the great endless kao-wagwattl carried us on, through deep valleys and across wide plains, vauna and i went about, day by day, studying the looks of each male member of the tribe. i scrutinized the eyes of each. i listened to the native enunciations. i got acquainted with each man by name and personality. vauna's friendship to all was a help. through her i began to gain a bond of affection for all these people, deep and solid. their ways became natural to me. in the night their sleep-singing could be heard, welling up softly through the scales within which they rested. in the mornings one could see the parties of agile ones gathering food and liquid fruits that rolled within reach along the sides of the moving kao. we crossed a series of islands. for long spaces there would be danger of dips under the surfaces of waters. we would close ourselves tightly within the waterproof interstices until the danger had passed. later, when the slimy surfaces of the scales had dried off, we would emerge. and now, out of a chance conversation, i learned of another danger which had been with us all along. gravgak was also on the kao-wagwattl. "how did you know this?" i asked vauna sharply. "didn't my father tell you? i received a warning soon after we began the journey." "warning--from whom?" "from leeger." "leeger! i thought he was missing." "he reappeared. he had known of our plan. he had boarded, somewhere. he was back there, beyond the end of our party. he shouted the warning to me. that is why you and i moved up the line, and have kept ourselves hidden." "he shouted a warning to you--" "that gravgak is also on board, looking for me." 11. weeks earlier, a search party had given up. it had all happened quietly. tomboldo had kept a few of his top scouts on the job (as i now learned) and for months after our journey had begun they had scoured the scaly surfaces of kao-wagwattl, looking in vain for gravgak. could we rest assured, then, that gravgak had been bluffed out? that he had given up his purpose of trying to take vauna? that he had long since climbed off the kao-wagwattl and gone back home? we hoped so. nevertheless we moved cautiously as our searches took us back through the long line of benzendellas. then, without warning, we suddenly came upon leeger. he saw us from a distance of fifty yards or less. we had come to the end of our tribe's settlement--evidently beyond the end; for in the last quarter of a mile we had found no persons dwelling among the scales. "he motioned to us," vauna said. "i'm sure it was leeger." but leeger had disappeared from view. back of us now was the wilderness of scales, their curved surface glistening and alive with color as the endless crawling spine followed us out of the distant blue haze. miles of kao-wagwattl, and nothing showing on the surface. we were down, now, almost out of sight, yet peering over. suddenly the form of leeger bobbed up again, only a few feet from us. "go back!" leeger cried, flinging a hand at us. "go back! he's coming!" it all happened in less time than it can be told. leeger rose up to warn us. we saw the knife fly through the air at him. he fell with the blade through his throat. on the instant we saw the dark muscular form of gravgak rearing up among the scales. the green-and-black diamond-shaped markings on his arms and legs glinted in the light. he had hurled his knife true. triumph shone in his murderous eyes. he had killed the man who had stalked him to protect vauna and tomboldo. and now he must have believed that one of his prizes was within easy reach. his arm flashed upward. it held one of those rockstrung clubs that the savages used so skillfully. the weighted club whizzed through the air. i swung vauna off her feet. i'll swear the rolling movement of kao-wagwattl helped me or i wouldn't have succeeded. we tumbled into the crevice. then i scrambled upward. another glimpse of gravgak. he dived down among the crevices, moving in our direction. a moment of darkness. the scale-tops closed out the light. when they opened, he was there, coming at us. i locked with him. we fought. the movement of the surfaces gave us an upward thrust. i kicked and tumbled to the surface. he caught my wrist, but the upthrust of the kao favored me and i jerked him upward, onto the top of the scales. we fought in the open. the rubbery footing was deadly, but it played no favorites. i struck a heavy blow that made the green-and-black lined arms shudder. gravgak's eyes flashed as he plunged back at me. i struck him again, with the full force of my body. he bounced and tumbled. he rolled out of sight. but not for long. it was an intentional trick. he disappeared in the crevice where leeger had fallen. when he came up, the bloody knife was in his hand. i heard vauna's warning cry. i leaped down into the crevice. she was trying to get my coat. she knew there were explosives in it, if she could only get them into my hands. no time for that. gravgak leaped down at me. the knife was rigid from his hand, coming down with a plunge. i kicked back, floundering against the tricky walls of the scales, and gravgak fell down deep where i had been. i saw it happen. a sight i never expect to see repeated. his descent to the base of the scales, where the walls joined, might have been a harmless fall. yet who knows how sensitive is the material of the vast living thing called kao-wagwattl? the knife plunged into deep _kao flesh_ beneath our feet. the flesh opened. gravgak whirled, tried to escape the opening. his arm twisted under him. and went down. as if something drew it. his back--his whole body, from hips to shoulders--was caught in the gaping hole that he had seemingly opened with a plunge of the knife blade. it closed on him. it severed him. part of him was gone. before our eyes there remained his legs, cut clean away. and his head, and part of one shoulder. the rest of him? it would not return to sight. kao-wagwattl was a living thing. when it wished it could devour. many of the tribe came back to this spot to examine what remained of the traitorous guard. i too observed him closely. i examined his eyes with a glass. also the eyes of the murdered leeger. neither showed any traces of eyelashes or eyebrows. 12. the tribe rode on tranquilly. there would be new legends of kao-wagwattl, after what had occurred. many were the stories, and i relayed them to campbell, at the ship, who faithfully recorded them all. there was a tragedy to be added. it could not have been otherwise. for some months the news of omosla and her little daughter had been vague. it was the benzendella tradition that weddings should not be delayed for long after the arrival of the first-born child. it was rumored that this young mother now faced the shame of having been left without a mate. it was hard to get exact information. even though vauna and i had always sought an understanding between us, some things were not talked about freely. deepest, most important truths in new worlds are often the most elusive. now i questioned vauna closely, and i learned of the tragic end of omosla. "she and her baby are no longer with us," vauna said quietly. "it happened one night when the stars seemed very close. they say she had studied the sky each night, wondering which of the worlds beyond was the world of campbell." "and then?" "two of her caretakers saw it happen, but they could not stop it. with the babe in her arms, she walked over the side of kao-wagwattl. and went down. under." vauna went on to tell me that tomboldo had urged silence about it. he would always believe that the girl had lost faith too soon--that campbell might have come back when his work was done. moreover, tomboldo felt that it was important to the morale of the tribe that both campbell and i be held in high esteem. when vauna finished telling me these things, she said she would ask me the questions she had been saving for many days. "did you believe, jim, that you would find some other person among us from your world?" "i didn't know." "if you had found such a person, what would you have believed then?" "that he, and not campbell, was the father of omosla's child." "and what," vauna asked, "are you going to believe about us when our child is born?" 13. we were around on the other side of the planet by now. i estimated that we had traveled more than seven thousand hours. by this time many things had happened. so much that i doubted my ability to convey all the news to campbell so that he would get a clear understanding. i had lain awake nights trying to formulate my message. if my words failed, i only hoped that my tone of voice would convey my appreciation. my appreciation of him. of what he had gone through. of what he must yet go through. he talked with me quietly through the radio, and i could visualize him as if i were sitting beside him again in the space ship. "yes, linden. go on. i'm listening." i told him of the death of omosla and the child. he was deeply grieved. it was a long time before he found voice to speak. "go ahead, linden. i'm listening." "i have more news," i said. "but tell me of yourself, campbell. have you gone ahead, playing your lone hand?" "i've found my way into the customs of the savages, linden. they have their own legends of kao-wagwattl. i can predict that in time the gap can be bridged between them and the benzendellas. if we work carefully--men like you, linden, working from within, and other agents from eggwe that are sure to follow. i believe this planet can be spared the torments of great wars." "yes, campbell ... and you, personally ... are you well? are you still bristling with your usual self-discipline?" "in case you have any doubts about the matter," his voice was slightly caustic, "i haven't broken the code." "in omosla's case i wish you had," i said. "i wish it too," campbell's voice came back, now in a lowered tone. "i loved omosla. i would have been her mate, gladly." "but you were, campbell." "now, don't start that again, linden, or i'll--" "wait, campbell, don't cut me off. you must hear all of my news, first. most important of all, old tomboldo has chosen my own son to be his successor. he'll be groomed for the job all through his childhood, and i've decided to stay right here, code or no code, and see him through." "your _son_?" campbell's voice was mostly breath. "who are you talking about?" "our baby--vauna's and mine. it's several days old. doing fine. has eyebrows just like mine. chalk-dust skin like hers." campbell blurted. "do you mean to tell me that as soon as you and vauna boarded the kao--" "the ways of life on this planet are something you and i ought to know about, campbell. listen closely--" "shoot!" in words of one syllable i explained, then, what i had at last learned: that the human beings of this planet were not precisely like those of the earth. they were unquestionably related, somewhere back down through the ages. but nature had worked a significant change in the process by which new life could be started. fertilization in the female was accomplished by her own action and her own preference. nature had equipped her arms-"arms, did you say?" campbell fairly shouted through the radio. "go on." i continued. nature had equipped her arms, i explained, with tiny thorn-like projections which could penetrate the arms or sides of the male like needles. by this means she drew blood from his bloodstream. a very slight transfusion of male blood into the female bloodstream was the act that accomplished fertilization. "you see, campbell, woman does not bear a child except by her own premeditated choice," i explained. "you and i were puzzled by the elbow furs all these women wear. now you see. it's a natural bit of extra clothing. the dictates of modesty." "well!" campbell said. "then you and i allowed ourselves--" "we were simply chosen. not knowing the score, we were innocent bystanders--well, more or less innocent--and pitifully ignorant. unfortunately for us, these were matters the benzendellas don't talk about freely." campbell paused for a moment of confused thinking. "just a minute, captain. i've been observing these savages--home life and all. there's no lack of normal affections among them, in our own sense of the word. they're equipped physically, just as we are--plus the arm thorns. they have the same organs, the same functions--" "for purposes of affection, yes. but the arms--that's separate--for conception." "well i'll be blasted!" campbell was speechless for a long moment. then, "i think i'll go back to earth." i was not surprised at his decision. it was what i expected, what i would have advised. he had had more than one man's share of this planet, for one who didn't expect to take root here. but my own life here was just beginning. i had thought it out. my guess was that my long record of service for the eggwe could withstand some variation. an application for release would very likely win an approval, especially in view of my change to serve the eggwe purposes even better by becoming a benzendella. when i announced this plan, by radio, to the new captain campbell, formerly known as split, but now commonly referred to on this planet as the hero of the benzendella migration, he said he was not surprised. "congratulations, linden, for knowing what you wanted. stay aboard that kao-wagwattl. there's a beautiful land waiting for you up ahead." 