transcriber's notes are indicated in the text by [tn-#]. [illustration: _i caught his hand and pulled him to safety._] out around rigel by robert h. wilson [note: an astounding chronicle of two lunarians' conquest of time and interstellar space.] the sun had dropped behind the grimaldi plateau, although for a day twilight would linger over the oceanus procellarum. the sky was a hazy blue, and out over the deeper tinted waves the full earth swung. all the long half-month it had hung there above the horizon, its light dimmed by the sunshine, growing from a thin crescent to its full disk three times as broad as that of the sun at setting. now in the dusk it was a great silver lamp hanging over nardos, the beautiful, the city built on the water. the light glimmered over the tall white towers, over the white ten-mile-long adamantine bridge running from nardos to the shore, and lit up the beach where we were standing, with a brightness that seemed almost that of day. "once more, garth," i said. "i'll get that trick yet." the skin of my bare chest still smarted from the blow of his wooden fencing sword. if it had been the real two-handed lunarian dueling sword, with its terrible mass behind a curved razor edge, the blow would have produced a cut deep into the bone. it was always the same, ever since garth and i had fenced as boys with crooked laths. back to back, we could beat the whole school, but i never had a chance against him. perhaps one time in ten-- "on guard!" the silvered swords whirled in the earth-light. i nicked him on one wrist, and had to duck to escape his wild swing at my head. the wooden blades were now locked by the hilts above our heads. when he stepped back to get free, i lunged and twisted his weapon. in a beautiful parabola, garth's sword sailed out into the water, and he dropped to the sand to nurse his right wrist. "confound your wrestling, dunal. if you've broken my arm on the eve of my flight--" "it's not even a sprain. your wrists are weak. and i supposed you've always been considerate of me? three broken ribs!" "for half a cent--" * * * * * he was on his feet, and then kelvar came up and laid her hand on his shoulder. until a few minutes before she had been swimming in the surf, watching us. the earth-light shimmered over her white skin, still faintly moist, and blazed out in blue sparkles from the jewels of the breastplates and trunks she had put on. when she touched garth, and he smiled, i wanted to smash in his dark face and then take the beating i would deserve. yet, if she preferred him-- [tn- ]and the two of us had been friends before she was born. i put out my hand. "whatever happens, garth, we'll still be friends?" "whatever happens." we clasped hands. "garth," kelvar said, "it's getting dark. show us your ship before you go." "all right." he had always been like that--one minute in a black rage, the next perfectly agreeable. he now led the way up to a cliff hanging over the sea. "there," said garth, "is the _comet_. our greatest step in conquering distance. after i've tried it out, we can go in a year to the end of the universe. but, for a starter, how about a thousand light-years around rigel in six months?" his eyes were afire. then he calmed down. "anything i can show you?" [note: editor's note: the manuscript, of which a translation is here presented, was discovered by the rocket-ship expedition to the moon three years ago. it was found in its box by the last crumbling ruins of the great bridge mentioned in the narrative. its final translation is a tribute at once to the philological skill of the earth and to the marvelous dictionary provided by dunal, the lunarian. stars and lunar localities will be given their traditional earth names; and measures of time, weight, and distance have been reduced, in round numbers, to terrestrial equivalents. of the space ship described, the _comet_, no trace has been found. it must be buried under the rim of one of the hundreds of nearby lunar craters--the result, as some astronomers have long suspected and as dunal's story verifies, of a great swarm of meteors striking the unprotected, airless moon.] * * * * * i had seen the _comet_ before, but never so close. with a hull of shining helio-beryllium--the new light, inactive alloy of a metal and a gas--the ship was a cylinder about twenty feet long, by fifteen in diameter, while a pointed nose stretched five feet farther at each end. fixed in each point was a telescopic lens, while there were windows along the sides and at the top--all made, garth informed us, of another form of the alloy almost as strong as the opaque variety. running half-way out each end were four "fins" which served to apply the power driving the craft. a light inside showed the interior to be a single room, ten feet high at the center of its cylindrical ceiling, with a level floor. "how do you know this will be the bottom?" i asked, giving the vessel a shove to roll it over. but it would not budge. garth laughed. "five hundred pounds of mercury and the disintegrators are under that floor, while out in space i have an auxiliary gravity engine to keep my feet there." "you see, since your mathematical friends derived their identical formulas for gravity and electromagnetism, my job was pretty easy. as you know, a falling body follows the line of least resistance in a field of distortion of space caused by mass. i bend space into another such field by electromagnetic means, and the _comet_ flies down the track. working the mercury disintegrators at full power, i can get an acceleration of two hundred miles per second, which will build up the speed at the midpoint of my trip to almost four thousand times that of light. then i'll have to start slowing down, but at the average speed the journey will take only six months or so." * * * * * "but can anyone stand that acceleration?" kelvar asked. "i've had it on and felt nothing. with a rocket exhaust shoving the ship, it couldn't be done, but my gravitational field attracts the occupant of the _comet_ just as much as the vessel itself." "you're sure," i interrupted, "that you have enough power to keep up the acceleration?" "easily. there's a two-thirds margin of safety." "and you haven't considered that it may get harder to push? you know the increase of mass with velocity. you can't take one-half of the relativity theory without the other. and they've actually measured the increase of weight in an electron." "the electron never knew it; it's all a matter of reference points. i can't follow the math, but i know that from the electron's standards it stayed exactly the same weight. anything else is nonsense." "well, there may be a flaw in the reasoning, but as they've worked it out, nothing can go faster than light. as you approach that velocity, the mass keeps increasing, and with it the amount of energy required for a new increase in speed. at the speed of light, the mass would be infinite, and hence no finite energy could get you any further." "maybe so. it won't take long to find out." a few of the brightest stars had begun to appear. we could just see the parallelogram of orion, with red betelguese at one corner, and across from it rigel, scintillant like a blue diamond. "see," garth said, pointing at it. "three months from now, that's where i'll be. the first man who dared to sail among the stars." "only because you don't let anyone else share the glory and the danger." "why should i? but you wouldn't go, anyway." "will you let me?" i had him there. "on your head be it. the _comet_ could hold three or four in a pinch, and i have plenty of provisions. if you really want to take the chance--" "it won't be the first we've taken together." "all right. we'll start in ten minutes." he went inside the ship. * * * * * "don't go," kelvar whispered, coming into the _comet's_ shadow. "tell him anything, but don't go." "i've got to. i can't go back on my word. he'd think i was afraid." "haven't you a right to be?" "garth is my friend and i'm going with him." "all right. but i wish you wouldn't." from inside came the throb of engines. "kelvar," i said, "you didn't worry when only garth was going." "no." "and there's less danger with two to keep watch." "i know, but still...." "you are afraid for _me_?" "i am afraid for you." my arm slipped around her, there in the shadow. "and when i come back, kelvar, we'll be married?" in answer, she kissed me. then garth was standing in the doorway of the _comet_. "dunal, where are you?" we separated and came out of the shadow. i went up the plank to the door, kicking it out behind me. kelvar waved, and i called something or other to her. then the door clanged shut. seated before the control board at the front of the room, garth held the switch for the two projectors. "both turned up," he yelled over the roar of the generators. his hands swung over and the noise died down, but nothing else seemed to have happened. i turned back again to look out the little window fixed in the door. * * * * * down far below, i could see for a moment the city of nardos with its great white bridge, and a spot that might be kelvar. then there was only the ocean, sparkling in the earth-light, growing smaller, smaller. and then we had shot out of the atmosphere into the glare of the sun and a thousand stars. on and up we went, until the moon was a crescent with stars around it. then garth threw the power forward. "might as well turn in," he told me. "there'll be nothing interesting until we get out of the solar system and i can put on real speed. i'll take the first trick." "how long watches shall we stand?" "eighteen hours ought to match the way we have been living. if you have another preference--" "no, that will be all right. and i suppose i might as well get in some sleep now." i was not really sleepy, but only dazed a little by the adventure. i fixed some things on the floor by one of the windows and lay down, switching out the light. through a top window the sunlight slanted down to fall around garth, at his instrument board, in a bright glory. from my window i could see the earth and the gleaming stars. the earth was smaller than i had ever seen it before. it seemed to be moving backward a little[tn- ], and even more, to be changing phase. i closed my eyes, and when i opened them again, sleepily, the bright area was perceptibly smaller. if i could stay awake long enough, there would be only a crescent again. if i could stay awake--but i could not.... * * * * * only the rattling of dishes as garth prepared breakfast brought me back to consciousness. i got to my feet sheepishly. "how long have i slept?" "twenty hours straight. you looked as if you might have gone on forever. it's the lack of disturbance to indicate time. i got in a little myself, once we were out of the solar system." a sandwich in one hand, i wandered over the vessel. it was reassuringly solid and concrete. and yet there was something lacking. "garth," i asked, "what's become of the sun?" "i thought you'd want to know that." he led me to the rear telescope. "but i don't see anything." "you haven't caught on yet. see that bright yellowish star on the edge of the constellation scorpio. that's it." involuntarily, i gasped. "then--how far away are we?" "i put on full acceleration fifteen hours ago, when we passed neptune, and we have covered thirty billion miles--three hundred times as far as from the moon to the sun, but only one half of one per cent of a light-year." i was speechless, and garth led me back to the control board. he pointed out the acceleration control, now turned up to its last notch forward; he also showed me the dials which were used to change our direction. "just keep that star on the cross hairs. it's pi orionis, a little out of our course, but a good target since it is only twenty-five light-years away. half the light is deflected on this screen, with a delicate photo-electric cell at its center. the instant the light of the star slips off it, a relay is started which lights a red lamp here, and in a minute sounds a warning bell. that indicator over there shows our approach to any body. it works by the interaction of the object's gravitational field with that of my projector, and we can spot anything sizable an hour away. sure you've got everything?" * * * * * it all seemed clear. then i noticed at the top three clock-like dials; one to read days, another to record the speeds of light, and the third to mark light-years traveled. "these can't really work?" i said. "we have no way to check our speed with outer space." "not directly. this is geared with clockwork to represent an estimate based on the acceleration. if your theory is right, then the dials are all wrong." "and how long do you expect to go ahead without knowing the truth?" "until we ought to be at pi orionis. at two weeks and twenty-five light-years by the dials, if we aren't there we'll start back. by your figuring, we shouldn't be yet one light-year on the way. anything more?" "no, i think i can manage it." "wake me if anything's wrong. and look out for dark stars." then he had left me there at the controls. in five minutes he was asleep and the whole ship was in my hands. * * * * * for hours nothing happened. without any control of mine, the ship went straight ahead. i could get up and walk about, with a weather eye on the board, and never was there the flash of a danger light. but i was unable to feel confident, and went back to look out through the glass. the stars were incredibly bright and clear. right ahead were betelguese and rigel, and the great nebula of orion still beyond. there was no twinkling, but each star a bright, steady point of light. and if garth's indicators were correct, we were moving toward them at a speed now seventy-five times that of light itself. if they were correct.... how could one know, before the long two weeks were over? but before i could begin to think of any plan, my eye was caught by the red lamp flashing on the panel. i pressed the attention button before the alarm could ring, then started looking for the body we were in danger of striking. the position indicators pointed straight ahead, but i could see nothing. for ten minutes i peered through the telescope, and still no sign. the dials put the thing off a degree or so to the right now, but that was too close. in five more minutes i would swing straight up and give whatever it was a wide berth. i looked out again. in the angle between the cross hairs, wasn't there a slight haze? in a moment it was clear. a comet, apparently, the two of us racing toward each other. bigger it grew and bigger, hurtling forward. would we hit? the dials put it up a little and far off to the right, but it was still frightening. the other light had come on, too, and i saw that we had been pulled off our course by the comet's attraction. i threw the nose over, past on the other side for leeway, then straightened up as the side-distance dial gave a big jump away. though the gaseous globe, tailless of course away from the sun, showed as big as the full earth, the danger was past. * * * * * as i watched, the comet vanished from the field of the telescope. five minutes, perhaps, with the red danger light flickering all the time. then, with a ghastly flare through the right hand windows, it had passed us. garth sat straight up. "what happened?" he yelled. "just a comet. i got by all right." he settled back, having been scarcely awake, and i turned to the board again. the danger light had gone out, but the direction indicator was burning. the near approach of the comet had thrown us off our course by several degrees. i straightened the ship up easily, and had only a little more difficulty in stopping a rocking motion. then again the empty hours of watching, gazing into the stars. precisely at the end of eighteen hours, garth awakened, as if the consummation of a certain number of internal processes had set off a little alarm clock in his brain. we were forty-one hours out, with a speed, according to the indicator, of one hundred and twenty-eight times that of light, and a total distance covered of slightly over one quarter of a light-year. a rather small stretch, compared to the light-years we had to go. but when i went back for a look out of the rear telescope, the familiar stars seemed to have moved the least bit closer together, and the sun was no brighter than a great number of them. i slept like a log, but awakened a little before my trick was due. * * * * * exactly on schedule, fourteen days and some hours after we had started off, we passed pi orionis. for long there had been no doubt in my mind that, whatever the explanation, our acceleration was holding steady. in the last few hours the star swept up to the brilliance of the sun, then faded again until it was no brighter than venus. venus! our sun itself had been a mere dot in the rear telescope until the change in our course threw it out of the field of vision. at sixty-five light-years, twenty-three days out, beta eridani was almost directly in our path for rigel. slightly less than a third of the distance to the midpoint, in over half the time. but our speed was still increasing miles a second every second, almost four times the speed of light in an hour. our watches went on with a not altogether disagreeable monotony. there was no star to mark the middle of our journey. only, toward the close of one of my watches, a blue light which i had never noticed came on beside the indicator dials, and i saw that we had covered light-years, half the estimated distance to rigel. the speed marker indicated times the speed of light. i wakened garth. "you could have done it yourself," he complained, sleepily, "but i suppose it's just as well." he went over to the board and started warming up the rear gravity projector. "we'll turn one off as the other goes on. each take one control, and go a notch at a time." he began counting, "one, two, three ..." on the twentieth count, my dial was down to zero, his up to maximum deceleration, and i pulled out my switch. garth snapped sideways a lever on the indicators. though nothing seemed to happen, i knew that the speed dial would creep backward, and the distance dial progress at a slower and slower rate. while i was trying to see the motion, garth had gone back to bed. i turned again to the glass and looked out at rigel, on the cross hairs, and kappa orionis, over to the left, and the great nebula reaching over a quarter of the view with its faint gaseous streamers. * * * * * and so we swept on through space, with rigel a great blue glory ahead, and new stars, invisible at greater distances, flaring up in front of us and then fading into the background as we passed. for a long time we had been able to see that rigel, as inferred from spectroscopic evidence, was a double star--a fainter, greener blue companion revolving with it around their common center of gravity. beyond kappa orionis, three hundred light-years from the sun, the space between the two was quite evident. beyond four hundred light-years, the brilliance of the vast star was so great that it dimmed all the other stars by comparison, and made the nebula seem a mere faint gauze. and yet even with this gradual change, our arrival was a surprise. when he relieved me at my watch, garth seemed dissatisfied with our progress. "it must be farther than they've figured. i'll stick at twenty-five times light speed, and slow down after we get there by taking an orbit." "i'd have said it was nearer than the estimate," i tried to argue, but was too sleepy to remember my reasons. propped up on one elbow, i looked around and out at the stars. there was a bright splash of light, i noticed, where the telescope concentrated the radiation of rigel at one spot on the screen. i slept, and then garth was shouting in my ear: "we're there!" i opened my eyes, blinked, and shut them again in the glare. "i've gone around three or four times trying to slow down. we're there, and there's a planet to land on." * * * * * at last i could see. out the window opposite me, rigel was a blue-white disk half the size of the sun, but brighter, with the companion star a sort of faint reflection five or ten degrees to the side. and still beyond, as i shaded my eyes, i could see swimming in the black a speck with the unmistakable glow of reflected light. with both gravity projectors in readiness, we pulled out of our orbit and straight across toward the planet, letting the attraction of rigel fight against our still tremendous speed. for a while, the pull of the big star was almost overpowering. then we got past, and into the gravitational field of the planet. we spiralled down around it, looking for a landing place and trying to match our speed with its rotational velocity. from rather unreliable observations, the planet seemed a good deal smaller than the moon, and yet so dense as to have a greater gravitational attraction. the atmosphere was cloudless, and the surface a forbidding expanse of sand. the globe whirled at a rate that must give it a day of approximately five hours. we angled down, picking a spot just within the lighted area. a landing was quite feasible. as we broke through the atmosphere, we could see that the sand, although blotched with dark patches here and there, was comparatively smooth. at one place there was a level outcropping of rock, and over this we hung. it was hard work, watching through the single small port in the floor as we settled down. finally the view was too small to be of any use. i ran to the side window, only to find my eyes blinded by rigel's blaze. then we had landed, and almost at the same moment rigel set. half overlapped by the greater star, the faint companion had been hidden in its glare. now, in the dusk, a corner of it hung ghostlike on the horizon, and then too had disappeared. * * * * * i flashed on our lights, while garth cut out the projector and the floor gravity machine. the increase in weight was apparent, but not particularly unpleasant. after a few minutes of walking up and down i got used to it. through a stop-cock in the wall, garth had drawn in a tube of gas from the atmosphere outside, and was analyzing it with a spectroscope. "we can go out," he said. "it's unbreathable, but we'll be able to use the space suits. mostly fluorine. it would eat your lungs out like that!" "and the suits?" "fortunately, they've been covered with helio-beryllium paint, and the helmet glass is the same stuff. not even that atmosphere can touch it. i suppose there can be no life on the place. with all this sand, it would have to be based on silicon instead of carbon--and it would have to breathe fluorine!" he got out the suits--rather like a diver's with the body of metal-painted cloth, and the helmet of the metal itself. on the shoulders was an air supply cylinder. the helmets were fixed with radio, so we could have talked to each other even in airless space. we said almost anything to try it out. "glad you brought two, and we don't have to explore in shifts." "yes, i was prepared for emergencies." "shall we wait for daylight to go out?" "i can't see why. and these outfits will probably feel better in the cool. let's see." * * * * * we shot a searchlight beam out the window. there was a slight drop down from the rock where we rested, then the sandy plain stretching out. only far off were those dark patches that looked like old seaweed on a dried-up ocean bed, and might prove dangerous footing. the rest seemed hard packed. my heart was pounding as we went into the air-lock and fastened the inner door behind us. "we go straight out now," garth explained. "coming back, it will be necessary to press this button and let the pump get rid of the poisonous, air before going in." i opened the outer door and started to step out, then realized that there was a five-foot drop to the ground. "go ahead and jump," garth said. "there's a ladder inside i should have brought, but it would be too much trouble to go back through the lock for it. either of us can jump eight feet at home, and we'll get back up somehow." i jumped, failing to allow for the slightly greater gravity, and fell sprawling. garth got down more successfully, in spite of a long package of some sort he carried in his hand. scrambling down from the cliff and walking out on the sand, i tried to get used to the combination of greater weight and the awkward suit. if i stepped very deliberately it was all right, but an attempt to run sank my feet in the sand and brought me up staggering. there was no trouble seeing through the glass of my helmet over wide angles. standing on the elevation by the _comet_, his space-suit shining in the light from the windows, garth looked like a metallic monster, some creature of this strange world. and i must have presented to him much the same appearance, silhouetted dark and forbidding against the stars. * * * * * the stars! i looked up, and beheld the most marvelous sight of the whole trip--the great nebula of orion seen from a distance of less than one hundred and fifty light-years its own width. a great luminous curtain, fifty degrees across, i could just take it all in with my eye. the central brilliancy as big as the sun, a smaller one above it, and then the whole mass of gas stretching over the sky. the whole thing aglow with the green light of nebulium and blazing with the stars behind it. it was stupendous, beyond words. i started to call garth, then saw that he was looking up as well. for almost half an hour i watched, as the edge of the nebula sank below the horizon. then its light began to dim. turning, i saw that the sky opposite was already gray. the dawn! why, the sun had just set. then i realized. it was over an hour since we had landed, and a full night would be scarcely two hours and a half. if we were in a summer latitude, the shorter period of darkness was natural enough. and yet it was still hard to believe as, within ten minutes, it was as bright as earth-light on the moon. still clearer and clearer grew the light. the stars were almost gone, the center of the nebula only a faint wisp. there were no clouds to give the colors of sunrise, but a bluish-white radiance seemed to be trembling on the eastern horizon. and then, like a shot, rigel came up into the sky. the light and heat struck me like something solid, and i turned away. even with my suit reflecting most of the light away, i felt noticeably warm. the _comet_ shone like a blinding mirror, so that it was almost impossible to see garth on the plain below it. stumbling, and shielding my eyes with my hand, i made my way toward him. he was standing erect, in his hands two old lunarian dueling swords. there was hate in his voice as the radio brought it in my ears. "dunal, only one of us is going back to the moon." * * * * * i stared. was the heat getting him? "hadn't we better go inside," i said quietly and somewhat soothingly. he made no reply, but only held out one of the hilts. i took it dumbly. in that instant he could have struck my head from my body, if he wished. "but, garth, old friend--" "no friend to you. you shall win kelvar now, or i. i'm giving you a sporting chance. one of your light cuts letting the fluorine inside will be as deadly as anything i can do. the one who goes back will tell of an accident, making repairs out in space. damn you, if you don't want me to kill you where you stand, come on and fight." "garth, you've gone mad." "i've been waiting ever since i got you to leave the moon. on guard!" with a rush of anger i was upon him. he tried to step back, stumbled, had one knee on the ground, then hurled himself forward with a thrust at my waist that i dodged only by an inch. i had to cover, and in spite of myself, with the cool work of parrying, my animosity began to disappear. and so began one of the strangest battles that the universe has seen. lumbering with our suits and the extra gravity, we circled each other under the blazing sky. the blue-white of rigel shimmered off our suits and the arcs of our blades as we cut and guarded--each wary now, realizing that a touch meant death. as that terrible sun climbed upward in the sky, its heat was almost overpowering. the sweat poured off every inch of my body, and i gasped for breath. and still we fought on, two glittering metal monsters under the big blue star sweeping up to its noon. * * * * * i knew now that i could never kill garth. i could not go back to kelvar with his blood. yet if i simply defended, sooner or later he would wear me down. there was just one chance. if i could disarm him, i could wrestle him into submission. then he might be reasonable, or i could take him home bound. i began leading for the opening i wanted, but with no result. he seemed resolved to tire me out. either i must carry the fight to him, or i would be beaten down. i made a wide opening, counting on dodging his slow stroke. i did, but he recovered too soon. again on the other side, with no better result. still again, just getting in for a light tap on garth's helmet. then i stepped back, with guard low, and this time he came on. his sword rose in a gleaming arc and hung high for a moment. i had him. there were sparks of clashing, locked steel. "damn you, dunal!" he took a great step back, narrowly keeping his balance on the sand. on another chance, i would trip him. my ears were almost deafened by his roar, "come on and _fight_." i took a step in and to the side, and had him in the sun. he swung blindly, trying to cover himself with his whirling point but i had half a dozen openings to rip his suit. when he moved to try to see, i would lock with him again. i watched his feet. and as i watched, i saw an incredible thing. near one of garth's feet the sand was moving. it was not a slide caused by his weight; rather--why, it was being pushed up from below. there was a little hump, and suddenly it had burst open, and a stringy mass like seaweed was crawling toward his leg. "look out, garth," i yelled. * * * * * how he could see through that terrible sun i do not know, but garth swung through my forgotten guard with a blow square across my helmet glass. the force threw me to the ground, and i looked up, dazed. the beryllium glass had not broken to let in the fluorine-filled air, but garth was standing over me. "that's your last trick, dunal." his blade rose for the kill. i was unable even to get up, but with one hand i pointed to the ground. "look!" i shouted again, and on the instant the thing wound itself around garth's foot. he swung down, hacking it loose. i had got to my feet. "run for the ship," i cried, and started off. "not that way." i looked back, and saw that i had run in the wrong direction. but it made no difference. over a whole circle around us the sand was rising, and directly between us and the _comet_ there was a great green-brown mass. we were surrounded. we stood staring at the creatures. spread out to full dimensions, each one made a sphere about four feet in diameter. in the center, a solid mass whose outlines were difficult to discern; and spreading out from this a hundred long, thin, many-jointed arms or legs or branches or whatever one could call them. the things were not yet definitely hostile--only their circle, of perhaps fifty yards radius, grew continually thicker and more impenetrable. within the enclosed area, the only ripples we could see in the sand were heading outward. there was to be no surprise attack from below, at least; only one in mass. what, i wondered, might be a sign of friendship, to persuade them to let us go. * * * * * and then the circle began to close in. the things rolled over and over on themselves, like gigantic tumbleweeds. at one point, to the right of the direct route to the _comet_, the line seemed thinner. i pointed the place out to garth. "break through there, and make a run for it." we charged into the midst of them with swinging blades. the very suddenness of our rush carried us half-way through their midst. then something had my legs from behind. i almost fell, but succeeded in turning and cutting myself free. the creatures from the other side of the circle must have made the hundred yards in four or five seconds. and the rest had now covered the breach in front. it was hopeless. and so we stood back to back, hewing out a circle of protection against our enemies. they seemed to have no fear, and in spite of the destruction our blades worked among them, they almost overcame us by sheer numbers and weight. it was a case of whirling our swords back and forth interminably in the midst of their tentacles. against the light, the long arms were a half-transparent brown. our swords broke them in bright shivers. formed from the predominant silicon of the planet, the creatures were living glass! for perhaps a quarter of an hour we were in the thick of them, hewing until i thought my arms must fall, slashing and tearing at the ones that had got underfoot and were clamping their tentacles around our legs. only for the space-suits, we should have, by this time, been overpowered and torn into bits--and yet these garments could not be expected to hold indefinitely. * * * * * but at last there was a breathing space. the crippled front ranks dragged themselves away, and there was left around us a brief area of sand, covered with coruscating splinters of glass. garth got the breath to say something or other encouraging. it was like old days at school. only this time the odds were all against us. we were still a good hundred yards from the _comet_, and in our path stood a solid wall of the creatures. even if we got free, they could outrace us to the goal. and with our limited strength, we could not hope to kill them all. in a minute or two, they would attack us again. somehow we must fight our way as long as we lasted. perhaps they might be frightened. we threw ourselves at the side next our goal. the line gave perhaps a yard, then stiffened, and we found ourselves swallowed up in a thick cloud of brown smoke. poison gas! it must be shot out of their bodies, at a cost so great that it was kept as a last resort. through the rolling vapor it was just possible to see our opponents, but they made no forward move. they were waiting for us to be overcome. suppose their compound could eat through even our helio-beryllium? but it did not. we were safe. "stand still, garth," i whispered, counting on the radio to carry my voice. "let them think we're dead, and then give them a surprise." "all right." long, long minutes.... if only they did not know that it was the customary thing for a dead man to fall.... slowly they began to move in. then garth and i were upon them. they halted as if stupefied. we had hacked our way half through their mass. the rest fled, and we began running toward the _comet_, praying that we might reach the ship before they could get organized again. how we floundered through the sand in wild and desperate haste. * * * * * before we had covered half the distance, the pursuit began. there was no attempt to drag us down directly, but the two wings raced past to cut us off in front. at the base of the little cliff where the _comet_ lay, the circle closed. "jump," i called, and threw myself up over them toward the stone. garth would have fallen back, but i caught his hand and pulled him to safety. we had won. but had we? joined by reinforcements from somewhere, the creatures were packed all around the base of the cliff and had begun to climb its walls, to cut us off from the ship. we rushed separately toward the two sides, and they backed away. but those in front were now established on the top. we stepped backward, and the whole line came on. but now we turned and ran for the _comet_. we were just able to turn again and clear them away with our swords. in a moment others would be climbing up from behind over the ship. and the door to safety was on a level with our heads. there was just one chance. stamping threateningly, we cleared the things out for ten feet in front of us. but once we turned our backs for a running start they were at us again. "boost you up, dunal," said garth pantingly. "no, you first." but in the midst of my words, he almost threw me into the doorway. i turned to pull him up after me. they were around his legs, and one had jumped down upon his helmet. and he must have known it would happen. "go back to her," he cried, and slammed shut the door. * * * * * there was no time to help him, to interfere with the way of expiation he had chosen. i tried to look away, but a sort of fascination kept me watching him through the glass. he had been dragged to his knees. then he was up again, whirling to keep them away on all sides in a mad, gallant fight. but the creatures knew it was the kill. now they were around his knees, now up to his waist in their overpowering mass. it was only a matter of minutes. garth took a staggering step backward, dragging them all with him. he was facing me, and swung up his sword in the old lunar salute. "good luck, dunal." the words, coming clearly over the radio, had a note of exaltation. then flashing his blade over his head, he hurled it into the midst of the accursed things. with a tremendous effort, garth tore the protecting helmet from his head, and plunged backward over the cliff.... there was nothing to do but get in out of the lock and start for home, and little on the trip is worthy of recounting. without unsurpassable difficulty, i was able to operate the machinery and steer, first for betelguese, then for the sun. counting on the warning bells to arouse me, i managed to get in snatches of sleep at odd intervals. at times the strain of the long watches was almost maddening. by the time the midpoint had been passed, i was living in a sort of waking dream; or rather, a state of somnambulism. i ate; my hands moved the controls. and yet all the while my mind was wandering elsewhere--out to garth's body under the blazing light of rigel, back to the moon and kelvar, or else in an unreal, shadowy world of dreams and vague memories. * * * * * with perfect mechanical accuracy i entered the solar system and adjusted the projectors for the sun's attraction. running slower and slower, i watched venus glide by. and then, gradually, everything faded, and i was walking along the great nardos bridge with kelvar. the ocean was so still that we could see mirrored in it the reflection of each white column, and our own faces peering down, and beyond that the stars. "i shall bring you a handful for your hair," i told her, and leaned over farther, farther, reaching out.... then i was falling, with kelvar's face growing fainter, and in my ears a horrible ringing like the world coming to an end. just before i could strike the water, i wakened to find the alarm bell jangling and the object-indicator light flashing away. through the telescope, the moon was large in the sky. it was an hour, perhaps two, before i approached the sunlit surface and hovered over the shore by nardos. try as i would, my sleep-drugged body could not handle the controls delicately enough to get the _comet_ quite in step with the moon's rotation. always a little too fast or too slow. i slid down until i was only ten or fifteen feet off the ground that seemed to be moving out from under me. in another minute i should be above the water. i let everything go, and the _comet_ fell. there was a thud, a sound of scraping over the sand, a list to one side. i thought for an instant that the vessel was going to turn over, but with the weight of the reserve mercury in the fuel tanks it managed to right itself on a slope of ten or fifteen degrees. from the angle, i could barely see out the windows, and everything looked strange. the water under the bridge seemed too low. the half-full earth had greenish-black spots on it. and the sky? * * * * * so dead with sleep that i could scarcely move, i managed to crane my neck around to see better. there was no sky, only a faint gray haze through which the stars shone. and yet the sun must be shining. i stretched still further. there the sun burned, and around it was an unmistakable corona. it was like airless space. was i dreaming again? with a jerk, i got to my feet and climbed up the sloping floor to the atmosphere tester. my fingers slipped off the stop-cock, then turned it. and the air-pressure needle scarcely moved. it was true. somehow, as the scientists had always told us would be the case eventually, the air of the moon, with so little gravity to hold it back, had evaporated into space. but in six months? it was unthinkable. surely someone had survived the catastrophe. some people must have been able to keep themselves alive in caves where the last of the atmosphere would linger. kelvar _must_ be still alive. i could find her and bring her to the _comet_. we would go to some other world. frantically, i pulled on my space-suit and clambered through the air-lock. i ran, until the cumbersome suit slowed me down to a staggering walk through the sand beside the oceanus procellarum. leaden and dull, the great sea lay undisturbed by the thin atmosphere still remaining. it had shrunk by evaporation far away from its banks, and where the water once had been there was a dark incrustation of impurities. on the land side, all was a great white plain of glittering alkali without a sign of vegetation. i went on toward nardos the beautiful. * * * * * even from afar off, i could see that it was desolate. visible now that the water had gone down, the pillars supporting it rose gaunt and skeletal. towers had fallen in, and the gleaming white was dimmed. it was a city of the dead, under an earth leprous-looking with black spots where the clouds apparently had parted. i came nearer to nardos and the bridge, nearer to the spot where i had last seen kelvar. below the old water level, the columns showed a greenish stain, and half-way out the whole structure had fallen in a great gap. i reached the land terminus of the span, still glorious and almost beautiful in its ruins. whole blocks of stone had fallen to the sand, and the adamantine pillars were cracked and crumbling with the erosion of ages. then i knew. in our argument as to the possible speed of the _comet_, garth and i had both been right. in our reference frame, the vessel had put on an incredible velocity, and covered the nine-hundred-odd light-years around rigel in six months. but from the viewpoint of the moon, it had been unable to attain a velocity greater than that of light. as the accelerating energy pressed the vessel's speed closer and closer toward that limiting velocity, the mass of the ship and of its contents had increased toward infinity. and trying to move laboriously with such vast mass, our clocks and bodies had been slowed down until to our leaden minds a year of moon time became equivalent to several hours. the _comet_ had attained an average velocity of perhaps , miles per second, and the voyage that seemed to me six months had taken a thousand years. a thousand years! the words went ringing through my brain. kelvar had been dead for a thousand years. i was alone in a world uninhabited for centuries. i threw myself down and battered my head in the sand. * * * * * more to achieve, somehow, my own peace of mind, than in any hope of its being discovered, i have written this narrative. there are two copies, this to be placed in a helio-beryllium box at the terminus of the bridge, the other within the comet[tn- ]. one at least should thus be able to escape the meteors which, unimpeded by the thin atmosphere, have begun to strike everywhere, tearing up great craters in the explosion that follows as a result of the impact. my time is nearly up. air is still plentiful on the _comet_, but my provisions will soon run short. it is now slightly over a month since i collapsed on the sands into merciful sleep, and i possess food and water for perhaps another. but why go on in my terrible loneliness? sometimes i waken from a dream in which they are all so near--kelvar, garth, all my old companions--and for a moment i cannot realize how far away they are. beyond years and years. and i, trampling back and forth over the dust of our old life, staring across the waste, waiting--for what? no, i shall wait only until the dark. when the sun drops over the grimaldi plateau, i shall put my manuscripts in their safe places, then tear off my helmet and join the other two. an hour ago, the bottom edge of the sun touched the horizon. transcriber's notes: tn- spaced em dash is found in the original. tn- corrected from litle to little. tn- not capitalised or italicised in the original, but should probably read _comet_ tn- this etext was produced from "astounding stories" december . extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed. +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | transcriber's note | | | | there is no evidence that the u.s. copyright on this | | publication was renewed. | | | | several obvious typographical errors were corrected, one | | possible typographical error was left as is, and hyphenation | | was standardized. a list of these items may be found at the | | end of the text. words and phrases surrounded by _'s _like | | this_ are in italics in the original text. | | | | although the cover page includes the title "stand by for | | mars!" that book is not included in this e-text. | | | | enjoy! | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ danger in deep space the tom corbett space cadet stories by carey rockwell stand by for mars! danger in deep space [illustration] a tom corbett space cadet adventure danger in deep space by carey rockwell willy ley technical adviser grosset & dunlap _publishers_ new york copyright, , by rockhill radio all rights reserved _illustrations by_ louis glanzman printed in the united states of america illustrations _frontispiece_ the three weary cadets assembled on the control deck the junior spaceman maneuvered the great rocket ship toward the air lock the jet cab raced along the highway to venusport tom could see two space-suited figures floating effortlessly mason was frozen into a rigid statue, unable to move "remember," astro cautioned, "set the fuse for two hours" landing, they would tumble out of the jet boat and begin their frantic digging "i know we're going to be sent to the prison asteroid and we deserve it," said loring danger in deep space chapter "stand by to reduce thrust on main drive rockets!" the tall, broad-shouldered officer in the uniform of the solar guard snapped out the order as he watched the telescanner screen and saw the western hemisphere of earth looming larger and larger. "aye, aye, captain strong," replied a handsome curly-haired space cadet. he turned to the ship's intercom and spoke quickly into the microphone. "control deck to power deck. check in!" "power deck, aye," a bull-throated voice bellowed over the loud-speaker. "stand by rockets, astro! we're coming in for a landing." "standing by!" the solar guard officer turned away from the telescanner and glanced quickly over the illuminated banks of indicators on the control panel. "is our orbit to space academy clear?" he asked the cadet. "have we been assigned a landing ramp?" "i'll check topside, sir," answered the cadet, turning back to the intercom. "control deck to radar deck. check in!" "radar bridge, aye," drawled a lazy voice over the speaker. "are we cleared for landing, roger?" "everything clear as glass ahead, tom," was the calm reply. "we're steady on orbit and we touch down on ramp seven. then"--the voice began to quicken with excitement--"three weeks' liberty coming up!" the rumbling voice of the power-deck cadet suddenly broke in over the intercom. "lay off that space gas, manning. just see that this space wagon gets on the ground in one piece. then you can dream about your leave!" "plug your jets, you big venusian ape man," was the reply, "or i'll turn you inside out!" "yeah? you and what fleet of spaceships?" "just me, buster, with my bare hands!" the solar guard officer on the control deck smiled at the young cadet beside him as the good-natured argument crackled over the intercom speaker overhead. "looks like those two will never stop battling, corbett," he commented dryly. "guess they'll never learn, sir," sighed the cadet. "that's all right. it's when they stop battling that i'll start getting worried," answered the officer. he turned back to the controls. "one hundred thousand feet from earth's surface! begin landing procedure!" as cadet tom corbett snapped orders into the intercom and his unit-mates responded by smooth co-ordinated action, the giant rocket cruiser _polaris_ slowly arched through earth's atmosphere, first nosing up to lose speed and then settling tailfirst toward its destination--the spaceport at space academy, u.s.a. far below, on the grounds of the academy, cadets wearing the green uniforms of first-year earthworms and the blue of the upper-classmen stopped all activity as they heard the blasting of the braking rockets high in the heavens. they stared enviously into the sky, watching the smooth steel-hulled spaceship drop toward the concrete ramp area of the spaceport, three miles away. [illustration: space academy u.s.a.] in his office at the top of the gleaming tower of galileo, commander walters, commandant of space academy, paused for a moment from his duties and turned from his desk to watch the touchdown of the great spaceship. and on the grassy quadrangle, warrant officer mike mckenny, short and stubby in his scarlet uniform of the enlisted solar guard, stopped his frustrating task of drilling newly arrived cadets to watch the mighty ship come to earth. young and old, the feeling of belonging to the great fleet that patrolled the space lanes across the millions of miles of the solar system was something that never died in a true spaceman. the green-clad cadets dreamed of the future when they would feel the bucking rockets in their backs. and the older men smiled faintly as memories of their own first space flight came to mind. aboard the _polaris_, the young cadet crew worked swiftly and smoothly to bring their ship to a safe landing. there was tom corbett, an average young man in this age of science, who had been selected as the control-deck and command cadet of the _polaris_ unit after rigid examinations and tests. topside, on the radar bridge, was roger manning, cocky and brash, but a specialist in radar and communications. below, on the power deck, was astro, a colonial from venus, who had been accused of cutting his teeth on an atomic rocket motor, so great was his skill with the mighty "thrust buckets," as he lovingly called the atomic rockets. now, returning from a routine training flight that had taken them to the moons of jupiter, the three cadets, corbett, manning, and astro, and their unit skipper, captain steve strong, completed the delicate task of setting the great ship down on the academy spaceport. "closing in fast, sir," announced tom, his attention focused on the meters and dials in front of him. "five hundred feet to touchdown." "full braking thrust!" snapped strong crisply. deep inside the _polaris_, braking rockets roared with unceasing power, and the mighty spaceship eased itself to the concrete surface of the academy spaceport. "touchdown!" yelled tom. he quickly closed the master control lever, cutting all power, and sudden silence filled the ship. he stood up and faced strong, saluting smartly. "rocket cruiser _polaris_ completes mission"--he glanced at the astral chronometer on the panel board--"at fifteen thirty-three, sir." "very well, corbett," replied strong, returning the salute. "check the _polaris_ from radar mast to exhaust ports right away." "yes, sir," was tom's automatic answer, and then he caught himself. "but i thought--" strong interrupted him with a wave of his hand. "i know, corbett, you thought the _polaris_ would be pulled in for a general overhaul and you three would get liberty." "yes, sir," replied tom. "i'm not sure you won't get it," said strong, "but i received a message last night from commander walters. i think the _polaris_ unit might have another assignment coming up!" "by the rings of saturn," drawled roger from the open hatch to the radar bridge, "you might know the old man would have another mission for us! we haven't had a liberty since we were earthworms!" "i'm sorry, manning," said strong, "but you know if i had my way, you'd certainly get the liberty. if anyone deserves it, you three do." by this time astro had joined the group on the control deck. "but, sir," ventured tom, "we've all made plans, i mean--well, my folks are expecting me." "_us_, you mean," interrupted roger. "astro and i are your guests, remember?" "sure, i remember," said tom, smiling. he turned back to captain strong. "we'd appreciate it if you could do something for us, sir. i mean--well, have another unit assigned." strong stepped forward and put his arms around the shoulders of tom and roger and faced astro. "i'm afraid you three made a big mistake in becoming the best unit in the academy. now every time there's an important assignment to be handed out the name of the _polaris_ unit sticks out like a hot rocket!" "some consolation," said roger dourly. strong smiled. "all right, check this wagon and then report to me in my quarters in the morning. you'll have tonight off at least. unit _dis_-missed!" the three cadets snapped their backs straight, stood rigid, and saluted as their superior officer strode toward the hatch. his foot on the ladder, he turned and faced them again. "it's been a fine mission. i want to compliment you on the way you've handled yourselves these past few months. you boys are real spacemen!" he saluted and disappeared down the ladder leading to the exit port. "and that," said roger, turning to his unit-mates, "is known as the royal come-on for a dirty detail!" "ahhh, stop your gassing, manning," growled astro. "just be sure your radar bridge is o.k. if we do have to blast out of here in a hurry, i want to get where we're supposed to be going!" "you just worry about the power deck, spaceboy, and let little roger take care of his own department," replied roger. astro eyed him speculatively. "you know the only reason they allowed this space creep in the academy, tom?" asked astro. "no, why?" asked tom, playing along with the game. "because they knew any time the _polaris_ ran out of reactant fuel we could just stick manning in the rocket tubes and have him blow out some of his special brand of space gas!" "listen, you venusian throwback! one more word out of you and--" "all right, you two!" broke in tom good-naturedly. "enough's enough! come on. we've got just enough time to run up to the mess hall and grab a good meal before we check the ship." "that's for me," said astro. "i've been eating those concentrates so long my stomach thinks i've turned into a test tube." astro referred to the food taken along on space missions. it was dehydrated and packed in plastic containers to save weight and space. the concentrates never made a satisfactory meal, even though they supplied everything necessary for a healthful diet. a few moments later the three members of the _polaris_ stood on the main slidewalk, an endless belt of plastic, powered by giant subsurface rollers, being carried from the spaceport to the main academy administration building, the great gleaming tower of galileo. space academy, the university of the planets, was set among the low hills of the western part of the north american continent. here, in the nest of fledgling spacemen, boys from earth and the colonies of venus and mars learned the complex science that would enable them to reach unlimited heights; to rocket through the endless void of space and visit new worlds on distant planets millions of miles from earth. this was the year --the age of space! a time when boys dreamed only of becoming space cadets at space academy, to learn their trade and later enter the mighty solar guard, or join the rapidly expanding merchant space service that sent out great fleets of rocket ships daily to every corner of the solar system. as the slidewalk carried the three cadets between the buildings that surrounded the grassy quadrangle of the academy, tom looked up at the tower of galileo dominating the entire area. "you know," he began haltingly, "every time i go near this place i get a lump in my throat!" "yeah," breathed astro, "me too." roger made no comment. his eyes were following the path of the giant telescope reflector that moved in a slow arc, getting into position for the coming night's observations. tom followed his gaze to the massive domed building, housing the giant one-thousand-inch reflector. "you think we'll ever go as far into the deep with a rocket ship as we can see with the big eye?" he asked. "i dunno," replied roger. "that thing can penetrate other star systems in our galaxy. and that's a long way off!" "nearest thing to us is alpha centauri in our own galaxy, and that's twenty-three and a half million million miles away," commented astro. "that's not so far," argued tom. "only a few months ago the solar alliance sent out a scientific exploration to take a look at that baby." "musta been some hop," commented roger. "hey!" cried tom suddenly. "there's alfie higgins!" he pointed in the direction of another slidewalk moving at right angles to their own. the cadet that he singled out on the slidewalk was so thin and small he looked emaciated. he wore glasses and at the moment was absorbed in a paper he held in his hand. "well, what do you know!" cried astro. "the brain!" roger punched astro in the mid-section. "if you were as smart as he is, you big grease monkey, you'd be o.k." "nah!" replied astro. "if i was as smart as alfie, i'd be scared. and besides, what do i need to be smart for? i've got you, haven't i?" when they drew near the other slidewalk, the three members of the _polaris_ unit skipped lightly over and jostled their way past other riders to the slightly built cadet. "alfie!" tom yelled and slapped the cadet on the back. alfie turned, his glasses knocked askew by tom's blow, and eyed the three _polaris_ members calmly. "it gives me great pleasure to view your countenances again, cadets corbett, manning, and astro," he said solemnly, nodding to each one. astro twisted his face into a grimace. "what'd he say, roger?" "he's happy to see you," roger translated. "well, in that case," beamed astro, "i'm happy to see you too, alfie!" "what's the latest space dope around the academy, alfie?" asked tom. "what's this?" he indicated the paper in alfie's hand. "by the sheerest of coincidences i happen to have a copy of your new assignment!" replied alfie. tom, roger, and astro looked at each other in surprise. "well, come on, spaceman," urged roger. "give us the inside info. where are we going?" alfie tucked the paper in his inside pocket and faced roger. he cleared his throat and spoke in measured tones. "manning, i have high regard for your personality, your capabilities, and your knowledge, all of which makes you an outstanding cadet. but even you know that i occupy a position of trust as cadet courier for commander walters and the administrative staff. i am not at liberty to mention anything that i would have occasion to observe while in the presence of commander walters or the staff. therefore, you will please refrain from questioning me any further regarding the contents of these papers!" roger's jaw dropped. "why, you human calculator, you were the one who brought it up in the first place! i oughta knock off that big head of yours!" tom and astro laughed. "lay off, roger," said tom. "you ought to know alfie couldn't talk if he wanted to! we'll just have to wait until captain strong is ready to tell us what our next assignment will be!" by this time the slidewalk had carried them to the front of the main dormitory, and the wide doors were crowded with members of the space academy corps heading in for the evening meal. from all corners of the quadrangle, the slidewalks carried earthworms in their green uniforms, upper-class cadets in deep blue, enlisted spacemen in scarlet red, and solar guard officers in their striking uniforms of black and gold. chatting and laughing, they all were entering the great building. the _polaris_ unit was well known among other cadet units, and they were greeted heartily from all sides. as astro and roger joked with various cadet units, forming up in front of the slidestairs leading down to the mess halls, alfie turned to take a slidestairs going up. suddenly he stopped, grabbed tom by the shoulders, and whispered in his ear. just as abruptly he turned and raced up the ascending slidestairs. "what was that about?" asked roger, as tom stood staring after the little cadet. "roger--he--he said our next assignment would be one of the great experiments in space history. something to be done that--that hasn't ever been done before!" "well, blast my jets!" said astro. "what do you suppose it is?" "ahhh," sneered roger, "i'll bet it's nothing more than taking some guinea pigs to see how they react to jovian gravity. that's never been done before either! why can't we get something exciting for a change?" tom laughed. "come on, you bloodthirsty adventurer, i'm starved!" but tom knew that alfie higgins didn't get excited easily, and his eyes were wide and his voice trembled when he had whispered his secret to tom. the _polaris_ unit was due to embark on a great new adventure! [illustration] chapter "all o.k. here on the relay circuit," yelled astro through the intercom from the power deck. "o.k.," answered tom. "now try out the automatic blowers for the main tubes!" "wanta give me a little juice for the radar antenna, astro?" called roger from the radar deck. "in a minute, manning, in a minute," growled astro. "only got two hands, you know." "you should learn to use your feet," quipped roger. "any normal venusian can do just as much with his toes as he can with his fingers!" back and forth the bantering had gone for twelve hours, while the three members of the _polaris_ unit tested, checked, adjusted, and rechecked the many different circuits, relays, junction boxes, and terminals in the miles of delicate wiring woven through the ship. now, as dawn began to creep pink and gray over the eastern horizon, they made their last-minute search through the cavernous spaceship for any doubtful connections. satisfied there were none, the three weary cadets assembled on the control deck and sipped the hot tea that manning had thoughtfully prepared. [illustration: _the three weary cadets assembled on the control deck_] "you know, by the time we get out of the academy i don't think there'll be a single _inch_ of this space wagon that i haven't inspected with my nose," commented roger in a tired voice. "you know you love it, manning," said astro, who, though as tired as tom and roger, could still continue to work if necessary. his love for the mighty atomic rocket motors, and his ability to repair anything mechanical, was already a legend around the academy. he cared for the power deck of the _polaris_ as if it were a baby. "might as well pack in and grab some sleep before we report to captain strong," said tom. "he might have us blasting off right away, and i, for one, would like to sleep and sleep and then sleep some more!" "i've been thinking about what alfie had to say," said roger. "you know, about this being a great adventure." "what about it?" asked astro. "well, you don't give this kind of overhaul for just a plain, short hop upstairs." "you think it might be something deeper?" asked astro softly. "whatever it is," said tom, getting up, "we'll need sleep." he rose, stretched, and walked wearily to the exit port. astro and roger followed him out, and once again they boarded the slidewalk for the trip back to the main dormitory and their quarters on the forty-second floor. a half hour later the three members of the _polaris_ were sound asleep. early morning found captain steve strong in his quarters, standing at the window and staring blankly out over the quadrangle. in his left hand he clutched a sheaf of papers. he had just reread, for the fifth time, a petition for reinstatement of space papers for al mason and bill loring. it wasn't easy, as strong well knew, to deprive a man of his right to blast off and rocket through space, and the papers in question, issued only by the solar guard, comprised the only legal license to blast off. originally issued as a means of preventing overzealous earthmen from blasting off without the proper training or necessary physical condition, which resulted in many deaths, space papers had gradually become the only effective means of controlling the vast expanding force of men who made space flight their life's work. with the establishment of the spaceman's code a hundred years before, firm rules and regulations for space flight had been instituted. disobedience to any part of the code was punishable by suspension of papers and forfeiture of the right to blast off. one of these rules stated that a spaceman was forbidden to blast off without authorization or clearance for a free orbit from a central traffic control. bill loring and al mason were guilty of having broken the regulation. members of the crew of the recent expedition to tara, a planet in orbit around the sun star alpha centauri, they had taken a rocket scout and blasted off without permission from major connel, the commander of the mission, who, in this case, was authorized traffic-control officer. connel had recommended immediate suspension of their space papers. mason and loring had petitioned for a review, and, to assure impartial judgment, commander walters had sent the petition to one of his other officers to make a decision. the petition had landed on strong's desk. strong read the petition again and shook his head. the facts were too clear. there had been flagrant disregard for the rules and there was no evidence to support the suspended spacemen's charge that they had been unjustly accused by connel. strong's duty was clear. he had to uphold major connel's action and suspend the men for a year. once the decision was made, strong put the problem out of his mind. he walked to his huge circular desk and began sorting through the day's orders and reports. on the top of the pile of papers was a sealed envelope, bordered in red and marked "classified." it was from commander walters' office. thoughtfully he opened it and read: to: captain steve strong: cadet supervisor, _polaris_ unit upon receipt of this communication, you are ordered to transfer the supervisory authority of the cadet unit designated as _polaris_ unit; i.e., cadets tom corbett, roger manning, and astro, and the command of the rocket cruiser _polaris_, to the command and supervisory authority of major connel for execution of mission as outlined herein: . to test range, life, and general performance of audio communications transmitter, type x . . to test the above-mentioned transmitter under conditions of deep space flight. . this test to take place on the planet tara, alpha centauri. this communication and all subsequent information relative to above-mentioned mission shall be classified as _topmost secret_. signed: walters, _commandant_, space academy "so that's it," he thought. "a hop into deep space for the _polaris_ unit!" he smiled. "the cadets of the _polaris_ unit are in for a little surprise in two ways," he thought. "one from the mission and one from major connel!" he almost laughed out loud as he turned to the small desk teleceiver at his elbow. he pressed a button immediately below the screen and it glowed into life to reveal a young man in the uniform of the enlisted guard. "yes, captain strong?" he asked. "call the cadets of the _polaris_ unit," strong ordered. "have them report to me here on the double!" "aye, aye, sir." strong started to turn the set off, but the enlisted man added, "by the way, sir, al mason and bill loring are here to see you." "oh--well--" strong hesitated. "they're quite anxious to know if you've reached any decision regarding their petition for reinstatement." "mmm--yes, of course. very well, send them in." "aye, aye, sir." the teleceiver screen blackened. in a moment the door opposite strong's desk slid back, and loring and mason stepped into the office. they shambled forward and stopped in front of the huge desk, obviously ill at ease. strong stood up, holding their petition in his hand, and glanced over it briefly even though he knew its contents by heart. he motioned to near-by chairs. "sit down, please," he said. the two spacemen settled themselves uncomfortably on the edge of their chairs and waited expectantly as strong continued to look at the paper. loring finally broke the heavy silence. "well, captain strong, have you made a decision?" he asked. loring was a heavy-set man, in his middle forties. he needed a shave, and when he talked, his mouth twisted into an ugly grimace. "hope it's in our favor, sir," suggested mason. he was shorter than loring and, seated, his feet hardly reached the floor. his eyes darted nervously about the huge room, and he kept rolling a dirty black spaceman's cap in his hands. "yes, i've reached a decision," said strong slowly. he faced the two men and looked at both of them with a steady cold stare. "i've decided to sustain major connel's action. you are both grounded for the next twelve months. earth months!" "what?" shouted loring, jumping to his feet. he banged his fist down on the desk and leaned over, his face close to strong's. "you can't do that to us!" captain strong didn't move. "i can," he said coldly. "and i have." "but--but--" mason began to whine. "but space flight is all we know! how will we live?" strong sat down and leaned back in his chair to get away from the foul odor of loring's breath. he stared at the two men. "you should have thought of that before you stole a rocket scout from the expedition and made an unauthorized flight while on tara," strong replied. "you're lucky you're not accused, tried, and convicted of theft of a solar guard spaceship!" "we had permission to take that flight," snarled loring. "that major connel is so blasted space happy he forgot he gave us permission. then when we came back, he slapped us in the brig!" "do you have any proof of that?" asked strong. "no! but it's our word against his!" he slammed his hat down on the desk and shook his finger in strong's face. "you haven't any right to take away our papers just on the say-so of a lousy solar guard officer who thinks he's king of the universe!" "take your filthy hat off my desk, loring!" barked strong. "and watch your language!" loring realized he had made a mistake and tried to backtrack. "well, i apologize for that. but i _don't_ apologize for saying he thinks he's--" "major connel has been in the solar guard for thirty years," said strong emphatically. "he's been awarded the solar medal three times. no other living spaceman has achieved that! not even commander walters! he rose through the ranks of the enlisted solar guard and was commissioned as an officer of the solar guard in space during an emergency. he qualifies higher than any other spaceman, and he has never been found to be unjust! he's one of the finest spacemen ever to hit the wide, deep, and high!" strong stopped, choked for breath, and turned away. it wasn't often he lost his temper, but something had to be said in defense of his fellow officer, and particularly since that officer was connel. he turned back to face the two spacemen, and his voice was hard and cold again. "you are hereby suspended from space flight for twelve earth months. any further petition for appeal of this decision will be denied!" "all right! all right, mr. big!" snapped loring. "does this mean we can't even ride as passengers?" "no rights under the universal bill of rights of the solar alliance have been denied you, except that of actively participating in the flight of a spaceship!" the signal bell of the teleceiver began to chime softly, and on the desk the teleceiver screen glowed again. "cadets corbett, manning, and astro are here for their assignments, sir," announced the enlisted man outside. loring glared at strong. "i suppose you're going to send some punk kids out on the next trip to tara and leave us experienced spacemen to rot on the ground, huh?" strong didn't see the door slide open to admit the three cadets who entered quietly. his whole attention was focused on the ugly glaring faces of bill loring and al mason. "get this, loring!" snapped strong hotly. "the assignments of the _polaris_ unit, whether it be to tara or the moon, has nothing to do with your own breech of conduct. in any case, if they were to be assigned, they'd do a better job than you 'experienced' spacemen who are disrespectful of your superior officers and break regulations! if either of you makes one more crack about the solar guard or space cadets, or _anything_ at all, i'll take you out on the quadrangle and pound some common courtesy into your heads! now get out!" "all right, all right--" muttered loring retreating, but with a sneer on his lips. "we'll meet again, mr. bigshot spaceman!" "i hope so, loring. and if we do, i hope you've taken a bath. you even smell bad!" from the rear of the room came a burst of laughter. tom, roger, and astro, unobserved, had been listening and watching their skipper in action. when loring and mason had left the room, they advanced to the desk, came to attention, and saluted. "_polaris_ unit reporting for duty, sir!" snapped tom crisply. "at ease," said strong. "did you hear all of that?" "yes, sir, skipper!" roger smiled. "and believe me, you really gave it to those two space bums!" "yeah," agreed astro, "but i don't think even _you_ could do much for loring. he's just born to smell bad!" "never mind that," said strong. "i suppose you heard the part about the assignments?" the three cadets assumed looks of pure innocence. "we didn't hear a thing, sir," said tom. "you'll make a fine diplomat, corbett," strong laughed. "all right, sit down and i'll give it to you straight." they hastily took seats and waited for their skipper to begin. "you've been assigned as cadet observers on a mission to test the range of a new long-range audio transmitter." strong paused, then added significantly, "the test is to take place in deep space." the three cadets only beamed their enthusiastic approval. "tara," continued strong, "is your destination--a planet like earth in many respects, in orbit around the sun star alpha centauri. you'll take the _polaris_ directly to the venus space station, where the transmitter has been given primary tests, outfit the _polaris_ for hyperdrive, and blast off!" "excuse me, sir," interrupted tom, "but you say 'you'?" "i mean," replied strong, "_you_, in the sense that i won't be going along with you. oh, don't worry!" said strong, holding up his hand as a sudden look of anticipation spread over the faces of the three boys. "you're not going alone! you'll have a commanding officer, all right. in fact, you'll have the nearest thing to the perfect commanding officer in the solar guard!" he waited just long enough for each boy to search his mind for a suitable candidate and then added, "your skipper will be major connel!" "major connel!" the three cadets cried in unison. "you mean major 'blast-off' connel?" uttered roger unbelievingly. "that's who i mean," said strong. "it's the best thing in the universe that could happen to you!" roger stood up and saluted smartly. "i request permission to be dismissed from this mission on the grounds of incompatibility, sir," he said. "incompatible to what?" asked strong, amused. "to major connel, sir," replied roger. "permission denied," said strong with a smile. "buck up! it isn't so bad." strong paused and stood up. "well, that's it. it's close to eleven a.m. and you're to report to the major at eleven on the nose. i hope you've got the _polaris_ in good shape." "we were up all night, sir," said tom. "she's ready to go." "she's in better shape than we are," said astro. "very well, then. report to major connel immediately. your papers have been transferred, so all you have to do is report." strong rounded the desk and shook hands with each cadet. "this is an important mission, boys," he said soberly. "see that you give major connel all the support i know you're capable of giving. he'll need it. i doubt if i'll see you before you blast off, so this is it. spaceman's luck to each of you!" [illustration] chapter "well, looks like we're big boys now," said tom, as the three cadets strolled down the corridor away from captain strong's office. "they don't hand out secret and important missions to cadet units unless they're really on the ball!" "but we've got major 'blast-off' connel to educate," grumbled roger. "what do you mean 'educate'?" asked astro. "you know he's the roughest officer in the academy," replied the blond-haired cadet. "he eats cadets for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. and then has an extra one for dessert. he isn't just tough--his hide's made of armor plate. but i've got a hunch that if we play dumb at first, then smarten up slowly, we can make him feel that he's done it for us. so he'll be easier on us." "say, it's after eleven!" exclaimed tom. "we'd better hurry!" suddenly, as if a rocket cruiser were blasting off in the corridors, a roar, deafening and powerful, filled their ears. and beneath its ferocity there were four unmistakable words: "_polaris unit--staaaaaaaannnnnndddddd toooooo!_" every muscle, every bone in their three bodies snapped to rigid attention simultaneously. eyes straight, chins in, the cadets waited for whatever calamity had befallen them. from behind came quick, heavy footsteps. they drew closer until they passed alongside and then abruptly stopped. there, in front of them, stood the one and only major "blast-off" connel! though a few inches shorter than astro, he was what astro might become in thirty years, heavily muscular, with a barrel chest that filled the gold-and-black uniform tightly. he stood balanced on the balls of his small feet like a boxer, hands hanging loosely at his sides. a bulldog chin jutted out of his rough-hewn face as if it were going to snap off the head of the nearest cadet. he towered over tom and roger, and though shorter than astro, he made up for this by sheer force of personality. when he spoke, his voice was like a deep foghorn that had suddenly learned the use of vowels. "so this is the great _polaris_ unit, eh?" he bellowed. "you're two minutes late!" tom suddenly felt that he and his unit-mates were all alone in the corridor with the major. he glanced to one side, then the other, cautiously, and saw it was empty. and for good reason! no one wanted to be around when "blast-off" connel was blasting. cadets, enlisted men, and even officers were not safe from his sudden outbursts. he drove himself so hard that he became impatient with others who were not able to match his drive. it was not because of ego but rather to get the job at hand finished. more than once he had dressed down a captain of the solar guard in the same tone he used on a green earthworm. it was legend around the academy that once, believing he was right, he had broken into the council chamber itself to argue his point. he won by a unanimous decision. nothing, but nothing, had been devised or thought of that could stop "blast-off" connel. every waking moment of his adult life had been spent in the pursuit of more and more knowledge about space, space travel, and life on the other planets. now, his wrath at fever pitch at their being tardy, he stood in front of the cadets, turning his anger on roger first. "your name's manning, isn't it?" he growled. "yes, sir!" replied roger. "father got a medal--used to be a solar guard officer?" "that's right, sir. he was killed in space." "i know. he was a good man. _you'll_ never be the man he was, if you live ten thousand years. but if you don't _try_ to be a better man than he was, you won't live five minutes with me! is that clear, cadet manning?" "very clear, sir!" gulped roger. connel turned to astro. "and you're the home-grown atomic-rocket genius, venusian style, eh?" "yes, sir," choked astro. "i'm from venus." "bucked rockets on the old chemical burners as a kid before entering the academy, eh?" asked connel. there was less than an inch and a half between astro's face and major connel's jaw. "yes, sir," answered astro, "i was an enlisted man before coming to the academy." "well, get this, you rocket buster," roared connel. "i want a power deck that will give me what i want, when i want it, or you'll be back in the ranks again. is that clear, cadet astro?" "yes, sir! everything she's got, when you want it, sir." "and i like to have a power deck clean enough to eat off the deck plates!" "yes, sir," stuttered astro, growing more and more confused. "you like to eat off the deck plates, sir!" "_by the craters of luna, no!_ i don't like to eat off the deck plates, _but i want them clean enough to eat there if i want to!_" "yes, sir!" astro's voice was hardly above a whisper. "and you're the tactical wizard that won the space maneuvers recently, singlehanded, eh?" asked connel, bending down to face tom. "our side won, sir. if that answers your question," replied tom. he was as nervous as roger and astro, but he fought for control. he was determined not to be bullied. "i didn't ask you who won!" snapped connel. "but you're the one just the same. control-deck cadet, eh? well, you work with me. on the control deck there's only room for one brain, one decision, one answer. and when i'm on the control deck, that decision, answer, and brain will be mine!" "i understand perfectly, sir," said tom tonelessly. connel stepped back, fists on his hips, eying the three cadets. he had heard about their difficulty in fitting personalities together when they had first arrived at space academy (as described in _stand by for mars!_). and he had heard about their triumph over the martian desert. he was impressed with everything he had learned about them, but he knew that he had a reputation for being tough and that this reputation usually brought out the best in cadets. early in his long and brilliant career he had learned that his life depended on the courage and ingenuity of his fellow spacemen. when he became an instructor at the academy, he had determined that no cadet would ever be anything but the best, and that, when they blasted off in later years, they could be depended on. he looked at the three cadets and felt a tinge of excitement that did not show on his scowling face. "yes," he thought, "they'll make spacemen. it'll take a little time--but they're good material." "_now listen to this!_" he bawled. "we blast off for the venus space station in exactly thirty minutes. get your gear aboard the _polaris_ and stand by to raise ship." he dropped his voice and pushed out his jaw a little farther. "this will be the toughest journey you'll ever make. you'll either come back spacemen, or you'll come back nothing. i'm going to try my best to make it"--he paused and added coldly--"_nothing!_ because if you can't take it from me, then you don't belong in space! unit _dis_-missed!" he turned on his heel and disappeared up the slidestairs without another look at the three rigid cadets. "yeah--we'll educate him, all right," said astro softly, with a wink at tom. "make him think he's done everything for us." "ah, go blast your jets!" snarled roger after he had found his voice. "come on," said tom. "let's get the _polaris_ ready. and, fellows, i mean _ready_!" bill loring and al mason stood near the entrance to the control tower of the academy spaceport and watched the three cadets of the _polaris_ scramble into the giant rocket cruiser. "every time i think about that connel kicking us out of space for twelve months i wanta pound his head in with a wrench!" snarled loring. mason snorted. "well, what's the use of hanging around here?" he asked. "that connel wouldn't have us aboard the _polaris_, even if we were cleared and had our papers. there ain't a thing we can do!" "don't give up so easy. there's a fortune setting up there in space--just waiting for me and you to come and take it. and no big-shot solar guard officer is going to keep me from getting it!" "yeah--yeah," grumbled mason, "but what are you going to do about it?" "i'll show you what i'm going to do!" said loring. "we're heading for venusport." "venusport? by the moons of jupiter, what are we going to do there?" "get a free ride to tara!" "but how? i only got a few hundred credits and you ain't got much more. there ain't nobody going to go fifty billion miles on nothing!" loring's eyes followed the massive figure of major connel on the slidewalk as it swept across the spaceport field toward the _polaris_. "you just buy us a coupla seats on the next rocket to venusport and stop asking stupid questions. when we see major 'blast-off' connel again, we'll be giving the orders with a paralo-ray!" the two disgruntled spacemen turned quickly and walked to the nearest slidewalk, disappearing around a building. aboard the _polaris_, tom confronted his two unit-mates. "now look, fellows. after the hard time major connel just gave us, let's see if we can't really stay on the ball from now on." "all right by me, tom," astro said, nodding his head. "you're having space dreams, corbett!" drawled roger. "no matter what we do for old 'blast-off' we'll wind up behind the eight ball." "but if we really try," urged tom, "if we all do our jobs, there can't be anything for him to fuss about." "we'll make it tough for him to give us any demerits," astro chimed in. "right," said tom. "it won't work," grumbled roger. "you saw the way he chewed us up, and for what? i ask you--for what?" "he was just trying to live up to his reputation, roger," replied tom. "but common sense will tell you that if you're on the ball you won't get demerits." "what's the matter, hot-shot?" growled astro. "afraid of a little work?" "listen, you venusian clunk," sneered roger, "i'll work the pants off you any day in the week, and that includes titan days, too!" "o.k." tom smiled. "save half of that energy for the _polaris_, roger." "yeah, use some of that manning hot air to shine brass!" suggested astro. "come on. let's get this wagon in shape," said tom. he turned to the instrument panel and the great control board. a moment later the three cadets were busy shining the few bits of brass and rechecking the many controls and levers. suddenly there was the sound of a hatch slamming below and then astro's voice came whispering over the intercom, "... watch it, fellows. here he comes!" the airtight hatch leading to the control deck slid back, and major connel stepped inside. with one sweeping glance he took in the control deck and the evidence of their work. "unit--_staaaaand to!_" he roared. astro climbed into the control deck and snapped to attention with his unit-mates as connel began a quick but thorough check of the many dials and switches and relays on the control panel. "ummmmh," he mused. "been doing a little work, i see." "oh, nothing special, sir," said roger. "well, from now on it's going to be special!" roared connel. "yes, sir," acknowledged roger quickly. "all right, at ease," ordered connel. as the three boys relaxed, connel stepped over to the astrogation board and snapped a switch. immediately a solar chart filled the huge chart screen. it was a black-and-white view of the planet venus. "this is where we're going first," he said, placing a finger on a ball-shaped satellite in orbit around the misty planet. "this is the venus space station. as you know, venus has no natural satellite of its own, so we built one. we'll blast off from here and go directly to the space station where the _polaris_ will be fitted with hyperdrive for deep-space operations. while at the station you will acquaint yourselves with the operation of the new audio communications transmitter. when i'm satisfied that you can handle it under the prevailing conditions of an extended space flight, we'll blast off for a test of its range and performance." major connel paused and faced the cadets squarely. then he continued: "this is an important mission--one which i hope will enable the solar guard to establish the first base outside of our solar system. our destination is tara, in the star system of alpha centauri. tara is a planet in a stage of development similar to that of earth several million years ago. its climate is tropical, and lush vegetation--jungles really--covers the land surface. two great oceans separate the land masses. one is called alpha, the other omega. i was on the first expedition, when tara was discovered, and have just returned from the second, during which we explored it and ran tests to learn if it could sustain human life. all tests show that tara can be transformed into a paradise." connel paused, took a deep breath, and continued: "i shall expect more than just hard work from you. i want everything you have to offer. not just good performance, but _excellence_! i will not tolerate anything less, and if i'm forced to resort to extreme disciplinary action to get what i demand, then you can expect to receive every demerit in the book!" he stepped closer to the three cadets. "remember! spacemen--or _nothing!_ now, stand by to blast off!" without a word, the three cadets hurried to their stations and began routine procedure to raise ship. "all departments ready to blast off, major connel," reported tom, saluting sharply. "very well, corbett, proceed," said connel. tom called into the intercom, "stand by for blast-off!" he then opened the circuit to the teleceiver screen overhead and spoke to the spaceport control tower. "_polaris_ to spaceport control. request permission to blast off. request orbit." "spaceport traffic to _polaris_. your orbit has been cleared --repeat --blast off in two minutes ..." "orbit --blast off minus one fifty-nine fifty-eight." "you read me clear, _polaris_ ..." tom clicked off the switch and turned to the intercom. "control deck to radar bridge. do we have a clear tangent forward and up?" "all clear forward and up, tom," replied roger. "control deck to power deck. energize the cooling pumps!" "cooling pumps in operation," answered astro briskly. the giant ship began to shudder as the mighty pumps on the power deck started their slow, whining build-up. tom sat in front of the control panel, strapped himself into the acceleration chair, and began checking the dials and gauges. satisfied everything was in order, he fastened his eyes to the sweeping red second hand on the solar clock. the teleceiver screen brought a sharp picture of the surrounding base of the spaceship, and he saw that it was all clear. the second hand reached the ten-second mark. "stand by to raise ship!" bawled tom into the intercom. the red hand moved steadily, surely, to the zero at the top of the clock face. tom reached for the master switch. "blast off minus five--four--three--two--one--_zero!_" tom threw the switch. slowly the giant ship raised itself from the ground. then faster and faster, pushing the four spacemen deep into their acceleration cushions, it hurtled spaceward. in a few seconds the _polaris_ was gravity-free. once again, earthmen had started another journey to the stars. chapter "stand by to reduce speed three-quarters!" roared major connel. "aye, aye, sir," replied tom, and began the necessary adjustments on the control panel. he spoke into the intercom. "control deck to power deck. stand by to reduce thrust on main drive rockets by three-quarters. we're coming onto the space station, astro." "power deck, aye," acknowledged astro. drifting in a steady orbit around its mother planet, the venus space station loomed ahead of the _polaris_ like a huge metal ball set against a backdrop of cold, black space. it was studded with gaping holes, air locks which served as landing ports for spaceships. inside the station was a compact city. living quarters, communications rooms, repair shops, weather observations, meteor information, everything to serve the great fleet of solar guard and merchant spaceships plying the space lanes between earth, mars, venus, and titan. "i'm getting the identification request from the station, sir. shall i answer her?" asked roger over the intercom. "of course, you space-brained idiot, and make it fast!" exploded connel. "what do you want to do? get us blasted out of space?" "yes, sir!" replied roger. "right away, sir!" tom kept his eyes on the teleceiver screen above his head. the image of the space station loomed large and clear. "approaching a little too fast, i think, sir," volunteered tom. "shall i make the adjustment?" "what's the range?" asked connel. tom named a figure. "ummmmh," mused connel. he glanced quickly over the dials and then nodded in assent. tom turned once more to the intercom. "control deck to power deck," he called. "stand by for maneuvering, astro, and reduce your main drive thrust to minimum space speed." "space station traffic control to rocket cruiser _polaris_. come in, _polaris_. this is traffic control on space station to _polaris_," the audio teleceiver crackled. "rocket cruiser _polaris_ to space station and traffic control. request touchdown permission and landing-port number," replied tom. "permission to touch down granted, _polaris_. you are to line up on approach to landing-port seven--repeat--seven. am now sending out guiding radar beam. can you read beam?" tom turned to the intercom. "have you got the station's guiding beam, roger?" "all lined up, tom," replied roger from the radar bridge. "get that venusian on the power deck to give me a three-second shot on the starboard rocket, if he can find the right handles!" "i heard that, manning!" roared astro's voice on the intercom. "another crack like that and i'll make you get out and push this baby around!" "_you execute that order and do it blasted quick!_" major connel's voice exploded over the intercom. "and watch that loose talk on the ship's intercom. from now on, all directions and orders will be given and received in a crisp, clear manner without unnecessary familiarity!" connel didn't expect them to acknowledge his order. the cadets had heard him and that was enough. he knew it was enough. in the short time it had taken them to traverse the immense gulf of space between the academy and the station connel had handed out demerits by fives and tens! each of the cadets was now tagged with enough black marks to spend two months in the galley working them off! now, working together like the smooth team of junior spacemen they were, tom, roger, and astro maneuvered the great rocket ship toward the gaping hole of the air lock in the side of the white ball-like satellite. "drop your bow one half degree, _polaris_, you're up too high," warned the station control. "a short burst on the upper trim rocket, astro," called tom. the great ship bucked slightly under the force of sudden thrust, and then its nose dropped the required half degree. "cut all thrust and brake your speed to dead ship, _polaris_," ordered traffic control. again tom relayed the order to astro, and a moment later the great ship hung silently in the airless void of space, a scant half mile from the station. [illustration: _the junior spaceman maneuvered the great rocket ship toward the air lock_] through the teleceiver tom could see the jet boats darting out from the station carrying the magnetic cables. in a moment the lines were attached to the steel skin of the ship, and gradually the lines tightened, pulling the mighty spaceship into the waiting port. once inside, the outer air lock was closed and the _polaris_ was slung in the powerful magnetic cradles that held her in a rigid position. elsewhere on the satellite, quick calculations were made for the additional weight, and the station was counterbalanced to assure an even orbit around venus. tom flicked the many switches off on the great board, glanced at the time of arrival on the solar clock, and reported to major connel. "touchdown at one-nine-four-nine, sir." "very well, corbett," answered connel. then he added grudgingly, "that was as fine a job of control-deck operations as i've seen. keep up the good work, spaceman." tom gulped. the unexpected compliment caught him off guard. and he was even more pleased that for the first time connel had referred to him as spaceman! "i'll be needed at the space station commander's quarters for a while, corbett," said connel. "meanwhile, you and manning and astro acquaint yourselves with the station. report to me back aboard the ship in exactly two hours. dismissed." tom saluted, and connel disappeared toward the exit port. "well, _spaceman_," roger drawled casually from behind, "it looks like you've got yourself in solid with the old man!" tom smiled. "with a guy like that, roger, you're never in solid. maybe i did get a pat on the back, but you didn't hear him cancel any of those demerits he gave me for not signing the logbook after that last watch, did you?" "let's get some chow," growled astro, who came hustling through the hatch. "i'm half starved. by the craters of luna, how many times can you change course in five minutes?" astro referred to the countless times tom had had to call for fraction-degree course changes in their approach to the gaping entrance port. tom laughed. "with connel on the bridge, you're lucky i didn't give you twice as many," he replied. "can you imagine what would have happened if we had missed and hit the station?" "brrrrrr!" shuddered roger. "i hate to think about it. come on. let's rustle up some grub for the venusian. i could use some myself." the three boys quickly changed to their dress blue cadet uniforms and left the ship. a moment later they were being whisked up an electric elevator to the main--or "street"--level. the door opened, and they stepped out into a large circular area about the size of a city block in the rear of the station. the area had been broken into smaller sections. one side of the "street" was devoted to shops, a small stereo house which was playing the latest liddy tamal hit, "children of space" (a sensational drama about the lives of men in the future), restaurants, and even a curio shop. the venus space station handled ninety per cent of the traffic into and out of venusport. it was a refueling stop for the jet liners and space freighters bound for the outer planets, and for those returning to earth. some ships went directly to venusport for heavy overhaul or supplies, but the station was established primarily for quick turn arounds. several ex-enlisted spacemen who had been injured or retired were given special permission to open shops for the convenience of the passengers and crews of the ships and the staff of the station. in twenty years the station had become a place where summer tourists from earth and winter tourists from titan made a point of stopping. the first of its kind in the universe, it was as near a perfect place to live as could be built by man. tom, roger, and astro strolled down the short street, pushing through a crowd of tourists admiring the shops. finally they found a restaurant that specialized in venusian dishes. "now you two spindly earthmen are going to have the best meal of your lives! broiled dinosaur on real venusian black bread!" "d-dinosaur!" stuttered tom in amazement. "why--why--that's a prehistoric monster!" "yeah, astro," agreed roger. "what are you trying to hand us?" astro laughed. "you'll see, fellows," he replied. "i used to go hunting for them when i was a kid. brought the best price of any wild game. fifty credits for babies under three hundred pounds. over that, you can't eat 'em. too tough!" tom and roger looked at each other, eyes bulging. "ah, come on, tom," drawled roger. "he's just trying to pull our leg." without a word, astro grabbed them by the arms and rushed them into the restaurant. they were no sooner seated when a recorded voice announced the menu over a small loud-speaker on the table. astro promptly ordered dinosaur, and to his unit-mates' amazement, the voice politely inquired: "would the spacemen prefer to have it broiled à la venusian black bread, baked, or raw?" a sharp look from roger and tom, and astro ordered it broiled. one hour and fifteen minutes later the three members of the _polaris_ unit staggered out of the restaurant. "by the rings of saturn," declared tom, "that wasn't only the most i ever ate--it was the best!" roger nodded in silent agreement, leaning against the plastic window in front of the restaurant. "you see," astro beamed, "maybe you guys will listen to me from now on!" "boy, i can't wait to see mom's face when i tell her that her chicken and dumplings have taken second place to broiled monster!" "by the jumping blazes of the stars!" yelled roger suddenly. "look at the time! we're ten minutes late!" "ohhhhh," moaned tom. "i knew it was too good to be true!" "step on it!" said astro. "maybe he won't notice." "some chance," groaned roger, running after tom and astro. "that old rocket head wouldn't miss anything!" the three boys raced back to the electric elevator and were silently whisked to the air-lock level. they hurried aboard the _polaris_ and into the control room. major connel was seated in a chair near the chart screen, studying some papers. the cadets drew themselves to attention. "unit reporting for duty, sir," tom quavered. connel spun around in the swivel chair, glanced at the clock, put the papers to one side, and slowly advanced toward the cadets. "thirteen and a half minutes late!" he said, dropping his voice to a biting growl. "i'll give you five seconds to think up a good excuse. every man is entitled to an excuse. some have good ones, some have truthful ones, and some have excuses that sound as though they made them up in five seconds!" he eyed the cadets speculatively. "well?" he demanded. "i'm afraid we were carried away by our enthusiasm for a meal astro introduced us to, sir," said tom honestly. "all right," snapped connel, "then here's something else to carry you all away!" he paused and rocked on the balls of his feet. "i had planned to give you three liberty of the station while here, whenever you weren't working on the new transmitter. but since you have shown yourselves to be carried away so easily, i don't think i can depend on your completing your regular duties. therefore, i suggest that each of you report to the officer in charge of your respective departments and learn the operation and function of the station while we're here. this work will be _in addition_ to your assigned duties on the new transmitter operation!" the three cadets gulped but were silent. "not only that," connel's voice had risen to an angry bark, "but you will be logged a demerit apiece for each minute you reported late. thirteen and a half minutes, thirteen and a half demerits!" the gold and black of the solar guard uniform never looked more ominous as the three cadets watched the stern spaceman turn and stomp out the exit port. alone, their liberty taken away from them before they even knew they had it, the boys sat around on the control deck of the silent ship and listened to the distant throb of a pump, rising and falling, pumping free air throughout the station. "well," sighed tom, "i always did want to know how a space station worked. now i guess i'll learn firsthand." "me, too," said astro. he propped his big feet up on a delicate instrument panel of the control board. "me, too!" sneered roger, his voice filled with a bitterness that surprised tom and astro. "but i didn't think i would find out like this! how in the universe has that--that tyrant managed to stay alive this long!" chapter "the space station's biggest headache," said terry scott, a young solar guard officer assigned the job of showing the _polaris_ crew around, "is to maintain perfect balance at all times." "how do you achieve that, sir?" asked tom. "we create our own gravity by means of a giant gyroscope in the heart of the station. when more weight is taken aboard, or weight leaves the station, we have to adjust the gyro's speed." they entered the power deck of the great ball-like satellite. astro's eyes glowed with pleasure as he glanced approvingly from one massive machine to another. the fuel tanks were made of thin durable aluminite; a huge cylinder, covered with heat-resistant paint, was the air conditioner; power came from a bank of atomic dynamos and generators; while those massive pumps kept the station's artificial air and water supply circulating. dials, gauges, meters, were arrayed in seemingly endless rows--but each one of them actually played its part in keeping the station in balance. astro's face was one big, delighted grin. "well," said roger with a sly wink at tom, "you can't tell me that connel has made our venusian unhappy. even if he had given us liberty, i'll bet astro would have spent it down here with the grease monkeys!" astro didn't rise to the bait. his attention was riveted on a huge dynamo, which he watched with appreciative eyes. but then terry scott introduced the _polaris_ unit to an older solar guard officer. "cadets, meet captain jenledge," said scott. "and, sir, this is cadet astro. major connel would like him to work with you while he's here." "glad to know you, boys," said jenledge, "and particularly you, cadet astro. i've heard about your handiness with the thrust buckets on the cruisers. what do you think of our layout?" the officer turned and waved his hand to indicate the power-deck equipment. "this is just about the finest--the most terrif--" the officer smiled at astro's inability to describe his feelings. jenledge was proud of his power deck, proud of the whole establishment, for that matter. he had conceived it, had drawn the plans, and had constructed this space station. throughout the solar system it was considered his baby. and when he had asked for permission to remain on as senior power-deck chief, the solar alliance had jumped at the chance to keep such a good man on the job. the station had become a sort of postgraduate course for power-deck cadets and junior solar guard officers. astro beamed. so, the great jenledge had actually heard of him--of humble cadet astro. he could hardly restrain himself from ripping off his blue uniform and going right to work on a near-by machine that had been torn apart for repairs. finally he managed to gasp, "i think it's great, sir--just wonderful!" "very well, cadet astro," said the officer. "there's a pair of coveralls in my locker. you can start right to work." he paused and his eyes twinkled. "if you want to, that is!" "want to!" roared astro, and was off to the locker room. jenledge turned to scott. "leave him with me, scotty. i don't think cadet astro's going to care much about the rest of the station!" scott smiled, saluted, and walked away. tom and roger came to attention, saluted, and followed the young officer off the power deck. "astro's probably happier now than he'll ever be in his life, tom," whispered roger. "yeah," agreed tom. "did you see the way his eyes lit up when we walked in there? like a kid with a brand-new toy!" a moment later scott, tom, and roger, in a vacuum elevator, were being hurtled to the station's upper decks. they got out on the observation deck, and scott walked directly to a small door at the end of a corridor. a light over the door flashed red and scott stopped. "here's the weather and meteor observation room," he said. "also radar communications. when the red light's on, it means photographs are being taken. we'll have to wait for them to finish." as they waited, tom and roger talked to scott. he had graduated from space academy seven years before, they learned. he'd been assigned to the solar alliance chamber as liaison between the chamber and the solar guard. after four years, he had requested a transfer to active space operations. then, he told them, there'd been an accident. his ship exploded. he'd been badly injured--in fact, both his legs were now artificial. the cadets, who had thought him a bit stuffy at first, were changing their minds fast. why hadn't he quit, they wanted to know? "leave space?" said scott. "i'd rather die. i can't blast off any more. but here at the station i'm still a spaceman." the red light went out, and they opened the door. in sharp contrast to the bustle and noise on the power deck, the meteor, weather, and radar observation room was filled with only a subdued whisper. all around them huge screens displayed various views of the surface of venus as it slowly revolved beneath the station. along one side of the room was a solid bank of four-foot-square teleceiver screens with an enlisted spaceman or junior officer seated in front of each one. these men, at their microphones, were relaying meteor and weather information to all parts of the solar system. now it was roger's turn to get excited at seeing the wonderful radar scanners that swept space for hundreds of thousands of miles. they were powerful enough to pick up a spaceship's identifying outline while still two hundred thousand miles away! farther to one side, a single teleceiver screen, ten feet square, dominated the room. roger gasped. scott smiled. "that's the largest teleceiver screen in the universe," he said. "the most powerful. and it's showing you a picture of the andromeda galaxy, thousands of light years away. most of the lights you see there are no more than that, just light, their stars, or suns, having long ago exploded or burned. but the light continues to travel, taking thousands of years to reach our solar system." "but--but--" gasped tom. "how can you be so accurate with this screen? it looks as though we were smack in the center of the galaxy itself!" "there's a fifty-inch telescope attached to the screen," scott replied, "which is equal to the big one-thousand-inch 'eye' back at the academy." "why is that, sir?" asked roger. "you don't get any distortion from atmosphere up here," replied the young officer. as tom and roger walked silently among the men at the teleceiver screens, scott continued to explain. "this is where you'll be, manning," he said, indicating a large radarscope scanner a little to one side and partially hidden from the glow of the huge teleceiver screen. "we need a man on watch here twenty-four hours a day, though there isn't much doing between midnight and eight a.m. on radar watch. a little traffic, but nothing compared to what we get during the regular working day." "any particular reason for that, sir?" asked tom. "oh, there just aren't many arrivals and departures during that period. we have night crews to handle light traffic, but by midnight the station is pretty much like any sleepy middle western town. rolls up the sidewalks and goes to bed." he motioned to roger to follow him to the radar section and left tom watching the interesting spectacle on the giant teleceiver. a huge star cluster flashed brilliantly, filling the screen with light, then faded into the endless blackness of space. tom caught his breath as he remembered what scott had told him about the light being thousands of years old before reaching the solar system. "manning's all set, corbett," said scott at tom's elbow. "come on. i'll show you the traffic-control deck." tom followed the young officer out of the room. as all true spacemen do at one time or another in their lives, he thought about the pitifully small part mankind had played so far in the conquest of the stars. man had come a long way, tom was ready to admit, but there was still a lot of work ahead for young, courageous spacemen. as scott and tom climbed the narrow stairs to the traffic-control deck, the solar guard officer continued to speak of the man-made satellite. "when the station was first built," he said, "it was expected to be just a way station for refueling and celestial observations. but now we're finding other uses for it, just as though it were a small community on earth, mars, or venus. in fact, they're now planning to build still larger stations." scott opened the door to the traffic-control room. he motioned to tom to follow him. [illustration] this room, tom was ready to admit, was the busiest place he had ever seen in his life. all around the circular room enlisted solar guardsmen sat at small desks, each with a monitoring board in front of him holding three teleceiver screens. as he talked into a mike near by, each man, by shifting from one screen to the next, was able to follow the progress of a spaceship into or out of the landing ports. one thing puzzled tom. he turned to scott. "sir, how come some of those screens show the _station_ from the _outside_?" he asked. tom pointed to a screen in front of him that had a picture of a huge jet liner just entering a landing port. "two-way teleceivers, corbett," said scott with a smile. "when you arrived on the _polaris_, didn't you have a view of the station on your teleceiver?" "yes, sir," answered tom, "of course." "well, these monitors picked up your image on the _polaris_ teleceiver. so the traffic-control chief here could see exactly what you were seeing." in the center of the circular room tom noticed a round desk that was raised about eight feet from the floor. this desk dominated all activity in the busy room. inside it stood a solar guard officer, watching the monitoring teleceivers. he wore a throat microphone for sending out messages, and for receiving calls had a thin silver wire running to the vibrating bone in his ear. he moved constantly, turning in a circle, watching the various landing ports on the many screens. three-thousand-ton rocket liners, solar guard cruisers, scout ships, and destroyers all moved about the satellite lazily, waiting for permission to enter or depart. this man was the master traffic-control officer who had first contacted tom on his approach to the station. he did that for all approaching ships--contacted them, got the recognition signal, found out the ship's destination, its weight, and its cargo or passenger load. then the connection was relayed to one of the secondary control officers at the monitoring boards. "that's captain stefens," said scott in a whisper. "toughest officer on the station. he has to be. from five hundred to a thousand ships arrive and depart daily. it's his job to see that every arriving ship is properly taken into the landing ports. besides that, everything you've seen, except the meteor and weather observation rooms, are under his command. if he thinks a ship is overloaded, he won't allow it to enter and disrupt the balance of the station. instead, he'll order its skipper to dump part of his cargo out in space to be picked up later. he makes hundreds of decisions a day--some of them really hair-raising. once, when a rocket scout crew was threatened with exploding reactant mass, he calmly told them to blast off into a desolate spot in space and blow up. the crew could have abandoned ship, but they chose to remain with it and were blown to atoms. it could have happened to the station. that night he got a three-day pass from the station and went to venusport." scott shook his head. "i've heard venusport will never be the same after that three-day pass of captain stefens." the young officer looked at corbett quizzically. "that's the man you're going to work for." scott walked over to the circular desk and spoke rapidly to the officer inside. as tom approached, stefens gave him a quick, sharp glance. it sent a shiver down the cadet's spine. scott waved to him to come over. "captain stefens, this is cadet tom corbett." tom came to attention. "all right, corbett," said stefens, speaking like a man who had a lot to do, knew how to do it, liked to do it, and was losing time. "stand up here with me and keep your mouth shut. remember any questions you want to ask, and when i have a spare moment, ask them. and by the rings of saturn, be sure i'm free to answer. take my attention at the wrong moment and we could have a bad accident." stefens gave scott a fleeting smile and turned back to his constant keen-eyed inspection of the monitors. the radar watch was reporting the approach of a ship. stefens began his cold, precise orders. "monitor seven, take freighter out of station on port sixty-six; monitor twelve, stand by for identification signal of jet liner coming in from mars. watch her closely. the venusport space line is overloading again...." on and on he went, with tom standing to one side watching with wide-eyed wonder as the many ships were maneuvered into and out of the station. suddenly stefens turned to tom. "well, corbett," he rasped, "what's the first question?" tom gulped. he had been so fascinated by the room's sheer magic and by stefens' sure control of the traffic that he hadn't had a chance to think. "i--i--don't have one--yet, sir," he managed finally. "i want five questions within five minutes!" snapped stefens, "and they better be rocket-blasting _good questions_!" he turned back to the monitors. tom corbett, while he had gained the respect of many elder spacemen, was discovering that a cadet's life got no easier as time went on. he wondered fleetingly how roger and astro were making out, and then he began to think of some questions. beside him, oblivious of his presence, stefens continued to spout directions. "monitor three, take rocket scout out of landing-port eight. one crew member is remaining aboard the station for medical treatment. he weighs one hundred and fifty-eight pounds. make balance adjustments accordingly...." tom's head was spinning. it was all too much for one young cadet to absorb on such short notice. [illustration] chapter "there goes the jet liner to mars," said al mason wistfully. "sure wish we wuz on her." his eyes followed the beautiful slim passenger ship just blasting off from venus. "why?" demanded loring. "anything to get away from venusport. what a stinking hole!" snorted the shorter of the two spacemen. "for what we want to do," said loring, "there ain't another city in the system that's got the advantages this place has!" "don't talk to me about advantages," whined mason. "be darned if i can see any. all we been doing is hang around the spaceport, talk to the spacemen, and watch the ships blast off. maybe you're up to something but i'm blasted if i see what it can be." "i've been looking for the right break to come along." "what kind of break?" growled mason. "that kind," said loring. he pointed to a distant figure emerging from a space freighter. "there's our answer!" said loring, a note of triumph in his voice. "come on. let's get outta here. i don't want to be recognized." "but--but--what's up? what's that guy and the space freighter _annie jones_ got to do with us?" loring didn't answer but stepped quickly to the nearest jet cab and hopped into the back seat. mason tumbled in after him. "spaceman's row," loring directed, "and make it quick!" the driver stepped on the accelerator and the red teardrop-shaped vehicle shot away from the curb into the crowd of cars racing along premier highway number one. in the back seat of the jet cab, loring turned to his spacemate and slapped him on the back. "soon's we get into the row, you go and pack our gear, see! then meet me at the café cosmos in half an hour." "pack our gear?" asked mason with alarm. "are we going some place?" loring shot a glance at the driver. "just do as i tell you!" he growled. "in a few hours we'll be on our way to tara, and then--" he dropped his voice to a whisper. mason listened and smiled. the jet cab slid along the arrow-straight highway toward the heart of the city of venusport. soon it reached the outskirts. on both sides of the highway rose low, flat-roofed dwellings, built on a revolving wheel to follow the precious sun, and constructed of pure titan crystal. farther ahead and looming magnificent in the late afternoon sun was the first and largest of venusian cities, venusport. like a fantastically large diamond, the startling towers of the young city shot upward into the misty atmosphere, catching the light and reflecting it in every color of the spectrum. loring and mason did not appreciate the beauty of the city as they rode swiftly through the busy streets. loring, in particular, thought as he had never thought before. he was busily putting a plot together in his mind--a plot as dangerous as it was criminal. [illustration: _the jet cab raced along the highway to venusport_] the jet cab slammed to a stop at a busy intersection of the city. this was spaceman's row, and it dated back to venusport's first rough and tough pioneering days. for two blocks on either side of the street, in building after building, cafés, pawnshops, cheap restaurants above and below the street level, supplied the needs of countless shadowy figures who came and went as silently as ghosts. spaceman's row was where suspended spacemen and space rats, prospectors of the asteroids for uranium and pitchblende, gathered and found short-lived and rowdy fun. here, skippers of rocket ships, bound for destinations in deep space, could find hands willing to sign on their dirty freighters despite low pay and poor working conditions. no questions were asked here. along spaceman's row, hard men played a grim game of survival. loring and mason paid the driver, got out, and walked down the busy street. here and there, nuaniam signs began to flick on, their garish blues, reds, and whites bathing the street in a glow of synthetic light. it was early evening, but already spaceman's row was getting ready for the coming night. presently, mason left loring, climbing up a long narrow flight of stairs leading to a dingy back hall bedroom to pack their few remaining bits of gear. loring walked on amid the noise and laughter that echoed from cheap restaurants and saloons. stopping before café cosmos, he surveyed the street quickly before entering the wide doors. many years before, the cosmos had been a sedate dining spot, a place where respectable family parties came to enjoy good food and the gentle breezes of a near-by lake. now, with the lake polluted by industry and with the gradual influx of shiftless spacemen, the cosmos had been given over to the most basic, simple need of its new patrons--rocket juice! the large room that loring entered still retained some of the features of its more genteel beginnings, but the huge blaring teleceiver screen was filled with the pouting face of a popular singer. he advanced to the bar that occupied one entire wall. "rocket juice!" he said, slamming down his fist on the wooden bar. "double!" he was served a glass of the harsh bluish liquid, paid his credits, and downed the drink. then he turned slowly and glanced around the half-filled room. almost immediately he spotted a small wizened man limping toward him. "been waiting for you," said the man. "well," demanded loring, "did'ja get anything set up, shinny?" "_mr._ shinny!" growled the little man, with surprising vigor. "i'm old enough to be your father!" "awright--awright--_mr._ shinny!" sneered loring. "did'ja get it?" the little man shook his head. "nothing on the market, billy boy." he paused and aimed a stream of tobacco juice at a near-by cuspidor. loring looked relieved. "just as well. i've got something else lined up, anyway." shinny's eyes sharpened. "you must have a pretty big strike, billy boy, if you're so hot to buy a spaceship!" "only want to take a little ride upstairs, _mr._ shinny," said loring. "don't hand me that space gas!" snapped shinny. "a man who's lost his space papers ain't going to take a chance at getting caught by the solar guard, busting the void with a rocket ship and no papers." he stopped, and his small gray eyes twinkled. "_unless_," he added, "you've got quite a strike lined up!" "hey, loring!" yelled mason, entering the café. he carried two spaceman's traveling bags, small black plastic containers with glass zippers. "so you've got al mason in with you," mused shinny. "pretty good man, al. let's see now, i saw you two just before you blasted off for tara!" he paused. "couldn't be that you've got anything lined up in deep space, now could it?" "you're an old fool!" snarled loring. "heh--heh--heh," chuckled shinny. a toothless smile spread across his wrinkled face. "coming close, am i?" al mason looked at shinny and back at loring. "say! what is this?" he demanded. "o.k., o.k.," said loring between clenched teeth. "so we've got a strike out in the deep, but one word outta line from you and i'll blast you with my heater!" "not a word," said shinny, "not a word. i'll only charge you a little to keep your secret." mason looked at loring. "how much?" he demanded. "a twentieth of the take," said shinny. "and that's dirt cheap." "it's robbery," said loring, "but o.k. we've got no choice!" "loring, wait a minute!" objected mason. "one twentieth! why, that could add up to a million credits!" shinny's eyes opened wide. "twenty million! hey, there hasn't been a uranium strike that big since the old seventeenth moon of jupiter back in !" loring motioned to them to sit down at a table. he ordered a bottle of rocket juice and filled three glasses. "this ain't uranium, _mr._ shinny!" he said. shinny's eyes opened wider still. "what then?" "what's the most precious metal in the system today?" loring asked. "why--gold, i guess." "next to gold?" shinny thought for a moment. "couldn't be silver any more, since they're making the artificial stuff cheaper'n it costs to mine it." the little man's jaw dropped and he stared at loring. "you mean--?" "that's right," said loring, "copper!" shinny's mind raced. in this year of , all major copper deposits had long since been exhausted and only small new deposits were being found, not nearly enough for the needs of the expanding system. in an age of electronics, lack of copper had become a serious bottleneck in the production of electrical and scientific equipment. search parties were out constantly, all over the solar system, trying to find more of the precious stuff. so a deposit of the kind loring and mason were talking about was a prize indeed. shinny's greedy fingers twitched with anticipation. "so that's why you want to buy a spaceship, eh?" "wanted," replied loring. "i don't want to buy one now. the way things look, we'll get what we want for nothing!" mason, who had been sitting quietly, suddenly jumped up. "so that's your angle! well, i don't want any part of it," he shouted. loring and shinny looked up in surprise. "what're you talking about?" demanded loring. "all of a sudden it's come to me. now i know why you've been hanging around the spaceport for the last two weeks. and what you meant when you saw the spaceman get out of that freighter today!" "sit down!" barked loring. "if you weren't so dumb, you'd have caught on long ago." he eyed the shorter man from between half-closed lids. "it's the only way we can get out of here!" "not me. i ain't pulling anything like that!" whined mason. "what's going on here?" demanded shinny. "what're you two space bums talking about?" "i'll tell you what! he's going to try--" loring suddenly stood up and slapped the shorter spaceman across the mouth. mason sat down, a dazed look on his face. "you space-crawling rat!" hissed loring. "you'll do what i tell you to do, see?" "yeah--yeah, sure," bleated mason. "o.k. anything you say. anything." "what is this?" demanded shinny. "you shut up!" growled loring. "i won't!" said shinny, as he also rose from the table. "you may be tough, billy loring, but not as tough as me!" the two men stared at each other for a moment. finally loring smiled and patted mason's shoulder. "sorry, al. i guess i got a little hot for a moment." "quit talking riddles," pleaded shinny. "what's this all about?" "sit down," said loring. they sank back into their chairs. "it's simple," said mason fearfully. "loring wants to steal a spaceship." "a pirate job!" said shinny. he drew in his breath sharply. "you must be outta your mind!" "you've called yourself in on this," loring reminded him. "and you're staying in." "oh, no!" shinny's voice dropped to a husky, frightened whisper. "deal's off. i ain't gonna spend the rest of my life on a prison asteroid!" "shinny, you know too much!" loring's hand darted toward the blaster he wore at his belt. "your secret's safe with me. i give you my spaceman's word on it," said shinny, pushing back his chair. abruptly getting to his feet, he scrambled rapidly out the door of the café cosmos. "loring," said mason, "get him. you can't let him ..." "forget it," shot back the other. "he won't break his spaceman's oath. not shinny." he got up. "come on, mason. we haven't got much time before the _annie jones_ blasts off." "what are we gonna do?" the shorter man wanted to know. "stow away on the cargo deck. then, when we get out into space, we dump the pilots and head for tara, for our first load of copper." "but a job like this'll take money!" "we'll make enough to go ahead on the first load." mason began to get up, hesitated, and then sat down again. "come on," snapped loring. his hand dropped toward his belt. "i'm going to make you rich, mason," he said quietly. "i'm going to make you one of the richest men in the universe--even if i have to kill you first." [illustration] chapter "space freighter _antares_ from venus space station. your approach course is one-nine-seven--corrected. reduce speed to minimum thrust and approach spaceport nine--landing-deck three. end transmission!" tom stood on the dais of the traffic-control room and switched the _antares_ beam to one of his assistants at the monitors in the control room. in less than two weeks he had mastered the difficult traffic-control procedure to the point where captain stefens had allowed him to handle the midnight shift. he checked the monitors and turned to see roger walk through the door. "working hard, junior?" asked roger in his casual drawl. "roger!" exclaimed tom. "what are you fooling around down here for?" "ah, there's nothing to do on the radar deck. besides, i've got the emergency alarm on." he wiped his forehead. "brother! of all the crummy places to be stuck!" "could be worse," said tom, his eyes sweeping the monitors. "nothing could be worse," groaned roger. "but nothing. think of that lovely space doll helen ashton alone on earth--and me stuck here on a space station." "well, we're doing an important job, roger," replied tom. "and doing it well, or major connel wouldn't leave us alone so much. how're you making out with the new equipment?" "that toy?" sneered roger. "i gave it a look, checked the circuits once, and knew it inside out. it's so simple a child could have built one!" "oh, sure," scoffed tom. "that's why the top scientists worked for years on something small, compact, powerful enough to reach through deep space--and still be easy to repair." "quit heckling me, junior," retorted roger, "i'm thinking. trying to figure out some way of getting to the teleceiver set on board the _polaris_." "why can't you get on the _polaris_?" asked tom. "they're jazzing up the power deck with a new hyperdrive unit for the big hop to tara. so many guys buzzing around you can't get near it." "what do you need a teleceiver for?" asked tom. "to give me company," replied roger sourly. "say!" he snapped his fingers suddenly. "maybe if i just changed the frequency--" "what frequency? what are you talking about?" "spaceboy, i'm getting a real hot-rocket idea! see ya later!" and the blond cadet ran for the door. tom watched his unit-mate disappear and shook his head in amused despair. roger, he told himself, might be difficult, but he was certainly never dull. then his attention was brought back to the monitors by the warning of another approaching spaceship. "... jet liner _san francisco_ to venus space-station traffic control ..." the metallic voice crackled over the speaker. "jet liner _san francisco_, this is venus space-station traffic control," replied tom. "you are cleared for landing at port eleven--repeat--eleven. make standard check for approach orbit to station landing. end transmission!" from one side of the circular dais, tom saw major connel enter the room. he snapped to attention and saluted smartly. "morning, corbett," said connel, returning tom's salute. "getting into the swing of the operation?" "yes, sir," said tom. "i've handled about twenty approaches since captain stefens left me alone, and about fifty departures." tom brought his fist up, with the thumb extended and wiped it across his chest in the traditional spaceman's signal that all was clear. "i didn't scratch one of 'em, sir," he said, smiling. "good enough," said connel. "keep it that way." he watched the monitor screen as the liner _san francisco_ settled into landing-port eleven. when she was cradled and secure, he grunted his satisfaction and turned to leave. at the door he suddenly paused. "by the way, isn't manning on radar watch?" "yes, sir," replied tom. "well, it's one forty-eight. how about his standard check-in with traffic control?" tom stammered, "he--uh--he may be plotting some space junk, sir." "he _still_ must report, regardless of what he's doing!" "i--uh--ah--yes, sir!" gulped tom. blast roger anyway, he thought, forgetting the all-important quarter-hour check-in. "i'd better go up and find out if anything's wrong," said connel. "gosh, sir," suggested tom, desperately seeking an excuse for his shipmate. "i'm sure roger would have notified us if anything had happened." "knowing manning as i do, i'm not so sure!" and the irascible officer thundered through the door like a jet-propelled tank! "come on, mason. hurry and put on that space suit," barked loring. "take it easy," grumbled mason. "i'm working as fast as i can!" "of all the rotten luck," growled loring. "who'd ever figure the _annie jones_ would blast off from venus--and then stop at the space station!" "shows you ain't so smart," retorted mason. "lots of ships do that. they carry just enough fuel to get 'em off the surface, so they'll be light while they're blasting out of venus' gravity. then they stop at the space station to refuel for the long haul." "all right," barked loring, "lay off the lecture! just get that space suit on in a hurry!" "listen, wise guy," challenged mason, "just tell me one thing. if we bail out of this tub in space suits, who's going to pick us up?" "we're not bailing out!" said loring. "we're not? then what are we suiting up for?" "just in case," said loring. "now listen to me. in a few minutes the _annie jones_'ll make contact with traffic control. only instead of talking to the pilot--they'll be talking to us. because we'll have taken over." "but unless we land they'll be suspicious. and if we land ..." loring interrupted. "nobody's going to suspect a thing. i'll tell traffic control we've got an extra-heavy load. then they won't let us land. we follow their orders and blast off into space--find an emergency fuel station--head for tara--and nobody suspects anything." mason twisted his face into a scowl. "sounds awful risky to me," he muttered. "sure it's risky," sneered loring, "but you don't hit the jackpot without ever taking a _chance_!" the two men, huddled against a jumble of packing cases in the cargo hold of the _annie jones_, made careful preparations. checking their weapons, they opened their way toward the freighter's control deck. just outside the hatch they stopped, paralo-ray guns ready, and listened. inside, pilot james jardine and leland bangs, his first officer, were preparing for the landing at the space station. "ought to be picking up the approach radar signal pretty soon," said bangs. "better take her off automatic control, jardine. use the manual for close maneuvering." "right," answered his spacemate. "send out a radar blip for them to pick up. i'll check the cargo and make sure it's lashed down for landing. captain stefens is tough when it comes to being shipshape." the freighter blasted evenly, smoothly onward through the darkness of space in a straight line for the man-made satellite. jardine got up from the freighter's dual-control board, picked up a portable light, and headed for the hatch leading to the cargo deck. "he's coming," hissed loring. "we'll take him soon's he reaches us." there was a sharp clank as the hatch opened, and jardine's head came into view. "now!" yelled loring. he swung the heavy paralo-ray gun at jardine's head. "what the--" exclaimed the startled spaceman. "bangs, look out!" he tried to avoid the blow, but loring's gun landed on the side of his head. jardine crumpled to the deck. bangs was out of his seat in a moment, at his pilot's call. the burly redheaded spaceman saw at a glance what was wrong and lunged for the hatch. loring stepped toward him, holding his paralo-ray. "all right, spaceboy!" he grated. "hold it or i'll freeze you stiff!" bangs stopped and stared at the gun and at jardine who was slumped on the deck. mason rushed past him to the controls. "what is this?" demanded bangs. "an old game," explained loring with a sneer. "it's called 'you've got it and i take it.' and if you don't like it, you get it." he gestured with his gun. "you get it--with this." bangs nodded. "o.k.," he said. "o.k. but how about letting me take care of my buddy. he's hurt." [illustration] "just a bump on the head," said loring. "he'll come out of it soon enough." "hey," shouted mason, "i can't figure out these controls!" loring growled angrily. "here, lemme at them!" he forced bangs to lie down on the deck, and then, keeping the gun trained on the redheaded spaceman, stepped quickly to the control board. he handed mason the gun. "keep an eye on them while i figure this baby out." "least you coulda done is steal a decent ship," grumbled mason. "this tub is so old it creaks!" "just shut your mouth and keep your eye on those guys," said the other. he began to mutter to himself as he tried to figure out the complicated controls. [illustration] jardine was now conscious but had the presence of mind not to move. his head ached from the blow. slowly he opened his eyes and saw his two attackers bending over the board. he saw that bangs was lying on the deck facing him. jardine winked at bangs, who returned the signal. then he began, carefully, methodically to send a morse-code message to his companion via his winking eyes. "o-n-l-y--one--gun--between--them. you--take--big--fellow. i'll--charge--gun ..." "can't you figure this thing out either?" asked mason, leaning over loring's shoulder. "ah, this wagon is an old converted chemical burner. these controls are old as the sun. i've got to find the automatic pilot!" "try that lever over there," suggested mason. loring reached over to grasp it, turning away from his prisoners. "bangs, get 'em!" shouted jardine. the two men jumped to their feet and lunged at loring and mason. loring dove to one side, losing the gun in the scramble, but as he fell, he reached for the acceleration control lever. he wrenched it out of its socket and brought it down on bang's head, and the officer slid to the floor. jardine, meanwhile, had mason in a viselike grip, but again loring used the lever, bringing it down hard on the neck of the freighter pilot. jardine dropped to the deck. "thanks, loring," gasped mason. "that was close! good thing we had on these space suits, or we'd have been finished. they couldn't grab onto the smooth plastic." "finished is right!" snarled loring. "i told you to keep an eye on them! if they'd nabbed us we woulda wound up on the prison asteroid!" "loring," shouted mason, "look!" he pointed a trembling finger at the thrust indicator. "we're blasting at full space speed--right for the station!" "by the rings of saturn," cried loring, "i must've jammed the thrust when i yanked the lever out of the control board!" "put it back! slow this ship down!" cried mason, his face ashen with fear. loring jumped to the control board and with trembling fingers tried to replace the lever in the socket. "i can't--can't--" he panted. "we gotta pile outta here! we're heading for the station. we'll crash!" "come on! this way! we left the space helmets back in the cargo hold!" shouted mason. he ran toward the open hatch leading to the companionway. suddenly he stopped. "hey, what about those two guys?" "never mind them!" shouted loring. "keep going. we can't do anything for them now!" and as the two men raced toward the stern, the freighter, her powerful rockets wide open, arrowed straight toward the gleaming white structure of the space station. "it was easy, honey," cooed roger into the microphone on the main control panel of the space-station radar bridge. "i switched the frequency on the station, beamed to a teleceiver trunk line on earth, and called you up, my little space pet! smart, huh? now remember we have a date as soon as i get back from this important and secret mission. i could've got out of it, but they needed me badly. as much as i like you, baby, i had to go along to give the boys a break and ..." "_cadet manning!_" an infuriated roar echoed in the small chamber. "yeah, whaddaya wan--" growled roger, turning to see who had interrupted him. he suddenly gulped and turned pale. "ohhhhhhhhh--good-by, baby!" he flipped the switch and stood up. "uh--ah--good morning, major connel," he stammered. "what's going on here, manning?" barked connel. "i--was--talking, sir," replied roger. "so i heard! but talking to whom?" "to whom, sir?" "that's what i said, manning." connel's voice dropped to a deep sarcastic purr. "to whom?" "i was--ah--talking to earth, sir." "official business, i presume?" "you mean--official--like here on the station, sir?" "official, like here on the station, manning," replied connel in almost a kindly tone. "no, sir." "you failed to make your quarter-hour check to the traffic-control center, i believe?" "yes, sir," gulped roger. the full realization of what he had done was beginning to dawn on him. "and you've tampered with vital station equipment for your own personal use," added connel. with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, roger noticed the major was strangely quiet in his interrogation. it felt like the calm before the storm. "yes, sir," admitted roger, "i changed several circuits." "are you aware of the seriousness of your negligence, manning?" connel's voice began to harden. "yes--yes--i guess so, sir," stumbled roger. "can you repair that radar so that it can be used as it was intended?" "yes, sir." "then do so immediately. there are ships in flight depending on your information and signals." "yes, sir," said roger quietly. then he added quickly, "i'd like the major to know, sir, that this is the first time this has happened." "i have only your word for that, manning!" connel finally began blasting in his all too familiar roar. "since you've done it once, i see no reason to think you couldn't have done it before or that you might not do it again!" the officer's face was now almost purple with rage. "when you've repaired that set, return to your quarters! you are confined until i decide on disciplinary action!" turning abruptly, connel stormed out of the room, slamming the hatch closed behind him. with a sigh roger turned back to the set. with trembling fingers he reconnected the terminals and made delicate adjustments on the many dials. finally, as power began to flow through the proper chain of circuits, the radar scanner glowed into life and the hair-thin line of light swept around the dull green surface of the scope. it had been left on a setting covering two hundred miles around the space station, and seeing the area was clear, roger increased the range to five hundred miles. the resulting scan sent a sudden chill down his spine. a spaceship was roaring toward the station at full thrust! cold sweat beaded roger's forehead as he grabbed for the microphone and called tom. "radar bridge to control deck!" the words tumbled out frantically. "tom! tom! there's a ship heading right for the station! bearing ! distance miles! coming in on full thrust! tom, acknowledge! quick!" down on the control deck, tom had been watching a space freighter easing out of the station when roger's voice came over the speaker in a thin scream. "what?" he yelled. "give me that again, roger!" "spaceship bearing --full thrust! range now four twenty-five!" "by the craters of luna," shouted tom, "why didn't you pick her up sooner, roger?" "never mind that. contact that guy and tell him to change course! he can't brake in time now!" "all right! sign off!" without waiting for a reply, tom cut roger off and switched to a standard space band. his voice quivering, the young cadet spoke quickly and urgently into the microphone. "space station to spaceship approaching on orbit . change course! emergency! reduce thrust and change course or you will crash into us!" as he spoke, tom watched the master screen of his scanner and saw the ship rocketing closer and closer with no change in speed or course. he realized that any action, even now, would bring the craft dangerously close to the station. without hesitation, he flipped on the master switch of the central station communicator, opening every loud-speaker on the station to his voice. "attention! attention! this is traffic-control center! emergency! repeat. emergency! all personnel in and near landing ports five, six, seven, eight, and nine--decks a, b, and c--evacuate immediately to opposite side of the station. emergency crews stand by for crash! spaceship heading for station! may crash! emergency--emergency!" on the endangered decks, men began to move quickly, and in a moment the great man-made satellite was prepared for disaster. on the control deck, tom stayed at his station, sounding the warning. "emergency! emergency! all personnel prepare for crash! all personnel prepare for crash!" [illustration] chapter "there--there!" shouted captain stefens into the mike aboard the jet boat circling around the station. "i think i see something bearing about seventy degrees to my left and up about twenty on the ecliptic! do you see it, scotty?" tom, in the bucket seat of the jet boat, strained his eyes but was unable to see over the control board. terry scott, in a second jet boat ten miles away, answered quickly, "yes, i think i see it, sir." "good!" shouted stefens. "maybe we've found something." he spoke to tom over his shoulder, keeping his eye on the floating objects in the black void of space. "come to the starboard about one-quarter full turn, corbett, and hold it. then up, about twenty-five degrees." "aye, aye, sir," said tom. he began to maneuver the small gnat-sized space craft to the proper position. "that's good!" shouted stefens. "now hold that. let me see. i think we've hit pay dirt." from the right, tom could see the red flash of the rockets of terry scott's jet boat, which astro had volunteered to pilot, coming into view. as soon as order had been restored aboard the station, search parties had been sent out to look for survivors. carefully tom slowed the space craft in response to stefens' brief commands and soon came to a dead halt in space. there, hovering right above them, visible through the crystal dome of the jet boat, tom could see two space-suited figures floating effortlessly. a moment later scott's craft came alongside, and the two small ships were lashed together with magnetic lines. tom and stefens hurriedly pulled on their space helmets. they adjusted the valves regulating the oxygen supply in their suits, and stefens slipped back the sliding top of the jet boat. out on the hull he secured a line to a projecting ring, and ordering tom to stand by, he pushed himself off the ship into the bottomless void of space. the line trailing behind him, stefens drifted toward the two helpless figures. he reached them in less than a minute, secured the line to their belts, and signaled tom to haul in. near by, terry scott and astro watched as the three figures were pulled to safety. quickly the top of the jet boat was closed, oxygen pressure in the craft was restored, and the four men took off their helmets. "whew!" said loring. "i sure want to thank you for pulling us out of the deep!" "we sure do, sir!" added mason. then, with a quick look at loring, he asked softly, "were there any other survivors?" stefens' face was grim. "not one. after we untangled the mess, we found bodies of two men. it was pretty bad. a little later something was spotted on the radar, and we hoped there might be survivors. luckily for you, we came to look!" [illustration: _tom could see two space-suited figures floating effortlessly_] "by the rings of saturn," swore loring softly, "jardine and bangs were brave men. they practically forced us to pile out when they saw they were going to crack up." he turned to mason. "didn't they, al?" "yeah, yeah, sure brave men," al mason agreed. "nothing to be done for them now, of course," said stefens. "what happened?" he paused, and then added, "you don't have to tell me if you don't want to before you make out your report, but i'd sure like to know." "i don't really know what happened, sir," said loring. "we had made a deal for a ride back to earth with jardine and were sleeping back on the cargo deck. all of a sudden, jardine came running in. told us we were about to pile into the station and for us to suit up and get out. we asked him about himself, but he said he was going to stay and try to save the ship. we piled out, and--well, we saw the whole thing from out here. like a big splash of light. it must have been pretty bad on the station, eh?" "plenty bad, but thanks to cadet corbett here, there wasn't a single injury. he warned everybody to get off that side of the station. a lot of damage but no casualties." "don't you have any idea what made the ship crash?" asked tom quietly. loring looked at tom but spoke to stefens. "i told you all i know, sir. can i expect to be questioned by everyone in the solar guard. including cadets?" stefens bristled. "it was a civil question, loring," he said stiffly, "but you don't have to say anything if you don't want to!" loring and mason had not expected such a strong defense of the cadet, and loring was quick to make amends. "i'm sorry--i guess i'm still a bit shaken up," he muttered. stefens grunted. "it wasn't pretty, you know, watching that ship go up and not be able to do anything about it," loring continued plaintively. "jardine and bangs--well, they're--they _were_ sorta friends of mine." they were silent all the way back to the station, each with his own thoughts--stefens puzzling over the cause of the crash, loring and mason exchanging quick furtive glances and wondering how long their story would hold up, and tom wondering how much roger's changing the power circuits on the radar had to do with the crash of the ship. "that's right," snapped connel to the two enlisted spacemen. "i said i wanted the radar section of the communications deck closed and sealed off until further investigations. you can hook up and use one of the monitors in the traffic control meantime." the two red-clad spacemen turned and walked away. stefens stood to one side. "don't you think that's carrying things a little too far, sir?" he asked connel. "i'm doing this as much to protect cadet manning as i am to prosecute him! i want to be sure there was no connection between the crash of the _annie jones_ and his tampering with the radar circuits!" connel replied. "i guess you're right, sir," replied stefens. "those two survivors, loring and mason, are having coffee in the mess if you want to talk to them." "did they change their story?" asked connel. "none at all. they were hooking a ride back to atom city, and they were asleep in the cargo hold. jardine, one of the pilots, came in and told them to pile out. they did." "ummmmh," mused connel. "i know those two, loring and mason. had a little trouble with them recently on a trip to tara. suspended their papers. so if they were just hooking a ride, it might be they're telling the truth!" "i have a report here on the damage to the station, sir, if you'd like to listen to it," said stefens, handing his superior a spool of audiotape. "good! did you make out the report yourself?" asked connel. "yes, sir. with the assistance of terry scott and cadet corbett." "good lad, that corbett," said connel and paused. "the whole unit is good! if it weren't for that hare-brained manning, i'd say they had as bright a future in the solar guard as any unit i've seen!" "i'll buy that, sir!" said stefens with a smile. "that corbett picked up traffic-control operations like a duck takes to water. and it's been a long time since jenledge on the power deck raved about a cadet the way he does about astro." connel smiled. he was reluctant to press for an investigation of the radar deck, knowing that if he did, it would mean a damaging black mark against manning. but justice was justice, and connel came closer to worshiping justice than anything else in space! connel placed the spool of tape in the audiograph and settled in a chair to listen. he didn't like the entire affair. he didn't like to think of losing a cadet of manning's ability because of one stupid mistake. he had recommended a thorough investigation. there was no other way. if manning was cleared of the responsibility for the crash, he was free, and it would not show up against his record. if he wasn't, however, then he'd have to pay. yes, thought connel to himself, as stefens' voice began to crackle harshly on the audiograph, if manning was guilty, then manning would most certainly pay. connel would see to that. deep in the heart of the space station, loring and mason were huddled over steaming cups of coffee whispering to each other cautiously. "want more coffee, mason?" asked loring. "who wants coffee when there's going to be a solar guard investigation?" whined mason. "suppose they find out something?" "relax, will ya?" muttered loring reassuringly. "connel doesn't suspect a thing. besides, he has that cadet under arrest!" "yeah," argued mason, "but you don't know those guys at space academy. all this honor stuff! it's not like a regular investigation. they don't stop digging until they dig up _real facts_! they'll find out we stowed away and ..." loring calmly added cream and sugar to his coffee. "they can't prove a thing. jardine and bangs are dead, and the ship's nothing but a pile of junk." "they'll find out, i tell you, and now we've got murder on our hands!" a door behind mason suddenly opened and stefens appeared. "shut up, you fool!" loring hissed. he turned blandly to face stefens. "well, captain, glad you came. i wanted to talk to you about getting us transportation back to venusport." "you'll have to wait for the jet liner from earth," said stefens. "see me in about two hours. right now, i've got to make arrangements for the investigation of the crash." "sure, sir," said loring. "ah--say, captain, what do you expect the investigation to turn up?" "the true facts," replied stefens. "whether the crash was due to the negligence of cadet manning or something that happened on the ship." "then you really think the cadet may be responsible?" asked loring softly. "he admits to negligence, and the _annie jones_ is a lot of evidence," said stefens with a shrug, and walked out. "there's our answer!" said loring triumphantly. "come on!" "where are we going?" asked mason. "we're going to have a little talk with our fall guy!" "ahhh, sit down, roger," said astro. "everything will be o.k." "yeah," agreed tom. "you're just wearing out the deck and your nerves walking back and forth like that. everything will be o.k." tom tried hard to keep any apprehension out of his voice. "nothing will make those two guys on the spaceship o.k.," said roger. he kicked viciously at a stool and sat down on the side of his bunk. since the crash, roger had been confined to his quarters, with tom and astro bringing him his meals. tom had watched his unit-mate grow more and more bitter over the turn of events and was afraid roger would do something rash. the central communicator over the door suddenly buzzed, and the three cadets waited for the announcement. "... cadets corbett and astro report to rocket cruiser _polaris_ for indoctrination on hyperdrive--on the double--by order of major connel." tom and astro got up. astro found it hard to hide his eagerness to begin indoctrination on hyperdrive, and it was only his deep concern for roger that kept him from letting out one of his bull-throated bellows. "take it easy, roger," said tom. "the investigation will be over and we'll be on our way to tara before you know it." "yeah, you space romeo," growled astro, "crawl in the sack and rest your bones. you're lucky you can miss this." roger managed a weak smile. "i'll be o.k. go ahead and learn about that hyperdrive before you explode." there was an awkward moment while the three cadets stared at one another. the deep friendship between them didn't need to be expressed in words. abruptly, tom and astro turned and left the room. roger stared at the closed door for a moment and then flopped on his bunk. he closed his eyes and tried to go to sleep. whatever happened, he thought, it wouldn't do any good to knock himself out. as he lay there thinking back to the first months at space academy when he had met tom and astro, he heard a knock on the door and he turned to see the steel hatch slide back stealthily. he jumped up. loring stuck his head inside the door. "you alone, manning?" he asked. "yeah. who're you?" asked roger. "my name's loring, and this is my space buddy, al mason. we were on the _annie jones_." roger's eyes lighted up. "then you know i'm not responsible for the crash!" said roger. "i wouldn't say that, kid," said loring grimly. "i wouldn't say that at all." "what do you mean?" demanded roger. "a shame"--loring shook his head--"young fella like you winding up on the prison asteroid." "prison asteroid?" asked roger stupidly. "yeah," grunted loring. "have you ever seen one of them joints, manning? they work from noon to midnight. then they give you synthetic food to eat, because it costs too much to haul up solid grub. once you've been on the prison rock, you can't ever blast off again. you're washed up as a spaceman. think you'll like that?" "why--why--what's that got to do with me?" asked roger. "just this, kid. after the investigation they'll find out your radarscope wasn't working right. then they'll come to me and ask me what happened aboard the _annie jones_." "well," demanded roger, "what did happen?" loring glanced at mason. "just this, kid. jardine and bangs were on the teleceiver and the radar for fifteen minutes trying to pick up your beam. but there wasn't any, because you had it fouled up!" roger sat down on the side of the bunk and stared at the two men. if what they said was true, roger knew there could only be one outcome to the investigation. "why are you telling me this?" asked roger quietly. "very simple. i don't like to see _anyone_ go to the prison rock!" "are you"--roger hesitated--"are you suggesting that i escape?" loring and mason got up and walked to the door. loring turned back to face roger. "i'm not suggesting anything, manning," he said. "you're a big boy and should know what's good for you. but"--he paused and measured his words carefully--"if i were you, i wouldn't wait around for connel or anyone else to blast my life to pieces by sending me to a prison for one little mistake!" the hatch slid closed behind the two spacemen. roger stood up and began packing a small spaceman's bag. there was a jet liner coming in from atom city that would make a stop at venusport. he glanced at his watch. thirty minutes. he didn't have much time. [illustration] chapter "attention! attention! this is a general alert!" tom corbett's voice was hollow as he spoke over a solar-wide audiocast. "wanted! space cadet roger manning. five feet, eleven inches tall, one hundred sixty-five pounds. blue eyes. blond hair. last seen wearing dress blues. cadet manning broke confinement to quarters on venus space station and is believed to be heading back to earth. he is wanted in connection with the crash of the space freighter _annie jones_ and the death of two spacemen. all information regarding the whereabouts of manning should be forwarded to captain isaiah m. patrick, senior security officer, solar guard, space academy, earth. this alert is to be transmitted to all local authorities." tom snapped the switch off and silently watched the glowing audio tubes darken. he turned to one side and saw astro. the big venusian was seated on a desk, slumped over, his head held in his massive hands. "you know," said astro slowly, "i could take that guy manning and break him in two for running out!" tom didn't answer. when they had discovered that roger was missing it had been a terrific blow. unaware that roger, in his confused state of mind, had been an easy victim to loring and mason's trickery and had innocently walked into their trap, the two cadets felt that his escape was a breach of trust. roger had given his spaceman's word that he would confine himself to his quarters. roger had broken that trust, and now the fact was being flashed around the entire solar system; roger manning was an escaped criminal! "there's nothing we can do now," said tom. "the whole universe knows it. he's finished! washed up! the only thing that could save him now would be absolute clearance by the investigation. but since he's run out, i guess it must be the other way around. he was afraid he was going to get caught." tom's voice was cold and bitter. "and we can't blame anyone but--" "_but manning!_" barked a voice behind them. astro jumped up and snapped to attention. tom turned to see major connel stride into the room. it was at connel's insistence that tom had been ordered to broadcast the alert for roger. "that's the last time i ever want to hear any sympathy for a man who broke his word!" snarled connel. "i have something i'd like to say to the major," said astro in a deliberate voice, "as man to man!" even at attention, tom jerked his head involuntarily to look at astro. connel's eyes narrowed. "here it comes," he thought. "well, i've handled rebellion of this sort before." he stepped close to astro. so close in fact that the black and gold of his uniform brushed the massive chest of the cadet from venus. "you have permission to speak, man to man!" snapped connel. astro paused for a moment. then he relaxed and brought his eyes down to the level of the major. "i am a human being, sir," said astro in the deepest voice tom had ever heard. it was strong and full of emotion, yet controlled. "and as long as i am a human being, i shall consider roger manning one of the finest men i'll ever know." "are you finished?" snapped connel. "no, sir, i'm not," said astro. "i speak in defense of the man, the _spaceman_, not the uniform, or the trust he betrayed. and i respectfully request of the major that if his feelings for cadet manning are so violent that he finds it difficult to control them, that he make a special effort to control them"--astro paused and stuck out his chin--"in my presence!" connel stepped back. "and if i don't?" he shouted. "then i shall ask for a transfer from your command, sir, and if that is not granted, then i shall resign from the academy." "and?" asked connel. "and, sir--" astro stumbled. "_and what_, cadet astro?" roared connel. "i have nothing more to say, sir," said astro. tom, who had at first had to control an impulse to laugh at the strange seriousness of astro's manner and tone, now found it equally difficult to hold back the tears that were welling up in his eyes. connel was not going to let the incident stand there. he had secretly hoped that such a situation would present itself, because he wanted to see what material the _polaris_ unit was made of. and he was secretly satisfied. any cadet who would offer to resign from the academy in defense of his unit-mate was a true spaceman. connel wasn't going to allow astro or tom to resign over some foolish trick of roger's, but, at the same time, he couldn't allow them to take too many liberties with discipline. connel turned to tom. "i suppose you feel the same way, corbett?" he asked. "i do, sir," said tom. "of course you know i could make your lives miserable now," he threatened. "we are aware of that, sir," said tom quietly. "very well, cadets corbett and astro. i shall comply with your request. not because of your request but out of respect for your feelings as spacemen. i wouldn't have thought much of you if you hadn't come out in defense of manning. and just for your own sake, astro," said connel, stepping back in front of the big cadet, "never ask to talk to a solar guard officer man to man again. as long as you're still a member of the cadet corps such disrespect will not be tolerated. another man, who might not have understood your feelings, could have used your desire for fair play as a means of trapping you into one of the worst offenses in the spaceman's code--striking a solar guard officer!" "yes, sir," mumbled astro. "thank you, sir." "report aboard the _polaris_"--connel glanced at his watch--"in fifteen minutes. i'm going to put you through your paces on hyperdrive and the operation of the transmitter." "then we're still going to make the trip to tara, sir?" asked tom. "we certainly are, corbett," replied connel. "in two hours another cadet is arriving from the academy to replace roger. his name's alfie higgins. perhaps you know him." tom smiled. "yes, sir, we know him," he replied. "cadet higgins is a friend of mine. he carries the nickname of 'the brain.' has the highest i.q. in the academy." "good. i'm glad you know him, because this is going to be a rough trip. we got off to a bad start, but it's all over now. so forget it. and before i go, i want you to know this. in my personal opinion, manning had nothing to do with the crash. i think the whole trouble was caused on the ship. i have nothing to back up my opinion, except my feelings. but feelings can go a long way in making a man innocent until proved guilty. unit dis-missed!" alfie higgins listened attentively to the story of the crash and roger's disappearance as tom, and then astro, described the situation in detail. "it is a pity, of course, but manning was always the impulsive type. not very definite in his attitude and emotionally unstable," commented alfie when the story was finished. "lay off that talk, you overstuffed brain!" growled astro. "in this outfit, roger is just away on vacation!" "yes--yes, of course!" said alfie quickly. it wasn't wise to get off on the wrong foot in a new unit, especially when one was trying to fill the shoes of a cadet, who, alfie had to admit, had everything. alfie higgins' mother didn't raise any stupid children, he said to himself. he was too happy being a member of the _polaris_ unit, the hottest crew at the academy, to allow anything to interfere with his success. "i've heard a great deal about hyperdrive," he said quickly, changing the subject. "i would appreciate it if you could describe the basis of this new feature in space travel so that i may have at least a surface familiarity with its operation and application." astro gulped and looked at tom. "might as well get used to that kind of chatter, astro," said tom, smiling. "alfie can't talk any other way." "is there something wrong with the way i speak?" asked alfie, wrinkling up his nose a little to see through the thick lenses of his glasses. "you wanta know about hyperdrive?" growled astro. "to be sure, if you'd be so kind," said alfie. "well, if you'll close your trap long enough, i'll tell you about it!" alfie sat back and waited, hands clasped around one knee. "in the first place," began astro, "hyperdrive was developed by joan dale back at the academy. and it's so blasted simple, i get mad at myself for not thinking of it first!" "uhhh," snorted alfie. "i respect your great talent on the power deck, astro, but i would hardly compare myself with dale!" "shut up!" barked astro. "you'll see how simple it is! hyperdrive is based on the idea that the thrust of the rockets acts in the exact same way on _all_ the atoms inside the spaceship. so you can have as much thrust as you want and no one will feel a thing. even if the ship were to accelerate a million times faster than the gravity of the earth you wouldn't feel a thing, because all the atoms inside would be pushed along at the same time!" astro sat back triumphantly. "ummmmh," commented alfie. "that sounds all right as a principle, but will it work out in space?" "listen, you--you--" snorted astro. "sure it will, alfie," said tom. "it's been tested before." "still room for improvement, though," commented alfie. "i'll improve your head," barked astro, "if you don't close that big mouth! how do you like that, tom? we get rid of one space-gassing romeo and now we get one even worse!" astro's reference to roger made tom draw a quick breath. in the short while since alfie's arrival and the week since roger's disappearance there hadn't been time to forget their old unit-mate and get accustomed to a new personality. astro sensed tom's feelings and irritably banged one hamlike fist into the other. alfie was o.k., thought the big venusian, but by the craters of luna, he wasn't roger. "attention--attention!" the intercom crackled into life. "_polaris_ unit--by order of major connel--stand by to blast off immediately. this is first warning! pack your gear and stand by to blast off immediately." tom, astro, and alfie got up, and with the image of roger fresh in their minds, made their way to the landing-port deck where the great gleaming spaceship was slung on magnetic cradles. they were met at the hatch by major connel. "all right," he said, "we leave all thoughts of manning right here on the station. i know it's tough, but we've got a still tougher job to do. this is to be a scientific expedition and we'll need every ounce of energy and intelligence we have--_collectively_--to make a success of this mission. cadet corbett!" "yes, sir," replied tom. "stand by to blast off in five minutes!" chapter "can i speak with you a minute, spaceman?" roger turned from the automatic food dispenser and stared at a wizened little man standing beside him, grinning up at him toothlessly. "what do you want?" asked roger. "just talk. let's sit down at this table, eh?" said the little man, taking the cadet by the arm. "gotta little deal i think you might be interested in." roger cast a quick appraising glance over the shabbily dressed man and walked to the table. unless someone knew roger personally, it would have been hard to recognize him. no longer wearing the vivid blue of the senior space cadet, he was now dressed in black trousers fitting snugly around the legs, a midnight blue pull-over jersey, and the black-billed hat of the merchant spaceman. his once close-cropped blond hair was beginning to grow shaggy around the edges, and with the hat pulled low over his forehead, he might have been another person entirely. leaving the space station on the jet liner had been easy for roger, since no one suspected he would violate his trust. but once his absence was discovered and the warrant issued for his arrest, it had been necessary for him to assume some sort of disguise to elude the solar guard mp's. roger had wound up on spaceman's row in venusport as a matter of course. luckily, when he left the station, he had the foresight to take all of his money with him, so he was not yet in need. on spaceman's row, roger found the new freedom from discipline enjoyable at first, but now the novelty had worn off. having visited all of the interesting places on the row, existence there had become boring. his one attempt to leave spaceman's row had nearly met with disaster. running into a squad of solar guard mp's, he had made a hurried escape into a near-by jet taxi. back on the row, roger had lounged around the cafés, feeling the loneliness that haunts men wanted by the law. and only because he was so lonely he had agreed to talk to the little man who sat and stared at him from across the table. "you a rocket pusher, astrogator, or skipper?" asked the little man. "who wants to know?" asked roger cautiously. "look, sonny boy," was the quick retort. "i'm mr. shinny! i'm the fixer of spaceman's row. you want something, come to me and i'll get it for you. i don't care why you're here. that ain't none of my business. but the fact remains that you're here, and you don't come down here unless you're in trouble space deep!" roger looked at the little man more closely. "suppose i am in something deep? what could you do for me?" he asked. "what would you want done?" asked shinny slyly. "well," said roger casually, "i could use a set of papers." "what happened to your own?" "solar guard picked them up," answered roger simply. "for what?" asked shinny. "taking ice cream away from the skipper's pet monkey!" snapped roger. shinny threw back his head and laughed. "that's good--very good!" he wiped his mouth after spitting at a near-by cuspidor. he reached over and patted roger on the arm. "you'll do, sonny! you'll do right well on the row. join me in a little acceleration sport?" "what's that?" asked roger. "rocket juice!" said shinny. "ain't you never heard of rocket juice?" "i've heard about it," said roger with a smile, "and i'm still here to talk about it because i never drank any of it." roger liked the little man for some reason--he couldn't tell why. he had met several people on the row since his arrival, but they had all wanted to know how many credits he had and where he was staying. "i took a jolt of that stuff once in luna city," said roger. "i was ready to blast off without a rocket ship!" shinny laughed again. "good lad! well, you won't mind if i have just a little one?" he paused and wiped his lips. "on you, of course!" "one"--roger held up his finger--"on me, of course!" "hey, there!" yelled shinny. "you, with the asteroid head! gimme a short bucket of that juice and bring a bottle of martian fizz along with it!" the bartender nodded, and shinny turned back to roger. "martian fizz is nothing more than a little water with sugar in it," he explained. "yeah, i know," replied roger. "what about those papers?" "i'll talk to you, spaceman to spaceman," said shinny, "when you're ready to talk to me, spaceman to spaceman!" they were silent while the bartender slopped a glass full of bluish liquid in front of shinny and the bottle of martian fizz and a glass in front of roger. roger paid for the drinks and poured a glass of the mild sweet water. sipping it silently, he suddenly put the glass down again and looked shinny in the eye. "you know who i am," he stated quietly. "yep!" replied shinny. "you're roger manning, space cadet! breach of honor and violation of the spaceman's oath. escaped from the venus space station on a jet liner. but one of the best men on a radar scanner and astrogation prism in the whole alliance!" shinny related the information rapidly. "he had known all the time," thought roger. "he was testing me." roger wondered why. "what are you going to do about it?" questioned roger, thinking about the one-thousand-credit reward, standard price offered by the solar guard for all wanted men. "if i had wanted to, i could have bought the finest jet liner in space with money made on solar guard rewards," snapped shinny. "we got our own spaceman's code here on the row. it goes something like this. what a man wants to bring with him down here, he brings. what he don't bring, don't exist!" roger smiled and stuck out his hand. "all right, mr. shinny! i want a set of papers--space papers! made out in any name, so that i can get out into space again. i don't care where i go or on what, or how long i'm gone. i just gotta blast off!" "you want papers for the astrogation deck, or control, or as a power pusher?" asked shinny. roger thought a moment. "better make them for the control deck," he said. "credits," said shinny. "you have any credits?" "how much?" asked roger. "one hundred now," said shinny, and then added, "and one hundred when i deliver." "guaranteed papers?" "positively!" snorted shinny. "i don't sell things that ain't good! i'm an honest man!" roger reached inside his jersey and pulled out a small roll of crumpled credit notes. he counted off one hundred and handed them over to shinny. "when do i get the papers?" asked roger. "tomorrow, same place, same time," answered shinny. "what's the name of this place?" asked roger. "café cosmos." roger picked up his glass of sweet water, raising it in a toast to the little man in front of him. "until tomorrow, mr. shinny, when you come here with the papers, or i come looking for you with bare knuckles!" "you don't scare me!" snapped shinny. "i'll be here!" roger tilted his chair back and smiled his casual smile. "i know you'll be back, mr. shinny. you see, i really mean what i say. and more important, _you_ know i mean what i say!" shinny got up. "tomorrow, same time, same place," he said, hurrying out the door. roger finished the bottle of martian fizz, suddenly very depressed. he didn't really want the false papers. he just wanted to get away from the deadly humdrum existence on spaceman's row. he walked wearily back to his scrubby little bedroom to wait for night to come. he hated to go back to the room, because he knew he would think about tom and astro and the space academy. now he couldn't allow himself to think about it any more. it was past. finished. "you got _who_?" asked loring. "i said i got the best astrogator in the deep for ya!" snapped shinny. loring looked at mason and then suddenly burst out laughing, dropping his head on the table. "what's the matter with you?" demanded shinny. "you got space fever or something?" mason, sitting quietly in the dirty hotel room, was grinning from ear to ear. "so you got manning for us, eh?" repeated loring at last. "i wanta tell you something, shinny. i was the one that got that kid to break outta that space station!" "you what?" asked shinny. the little spaceman had come to like the straightforwardness of roger. "that's right," said loring. "when mason and me loused up taking over the _annie jones_, that kid, manning, was on the radar watch at the station. at the same time we were gonna crash into the station he crossed a coupla wires and was talking to his girl back on earth! they think _he_ fouled up the radar and caused the crash!" "then he's your fall guy," commented shinny thoughtfully. "right," said loring. "and now you come along and tell us that we can get him to astrogate us out to tara! i tell ya, mason, this is the greatest gag i've heard in years!" "yeah," agreed mason, his weak mouth still stretched in a stupid grin, "but you have to be careful he never finds out it was us that got him into all his trouble!" "leave that to me," said loring. "he'll never know a thing. in fact, he'll thank us for getting him off the station and then giving him a chance to get back in space." he turned to shinny. "you got the ship?" "i told you before," said shinny, "there ain't anything to be had." "well, we gotta have a ship," said loring. "a fortune waiting for us in the deep and no space wagon to go get it!" "there _is_ a ship," said shinny. "not too good, but a spaceship." "where?" asked loring. "near venusport. out in the jungles, to be exact. needs a little fixing, but it'll make a deep space hop well enough." "who does it belong to?" demanded loring. "me," said shinny, a strange twinkle in his eyes. "_you?_" gasped loring. "by the craters of luna, where did you get a spaceship?" "fifteen years ago a freighter was forced down in the jungles right near venusport," said shinny. "i was prospecting near by for pitchblende, back when everybody thought venus was loaded with it. i saw the crew leave in jet boats. soon as they was out of sight i went over to take a look. i wanted to see if there was any grub i could swipe and save myself a trip back to venusport for more supplies. anyway, i went aboard and found the grub all right, but i got nosy about why they had made an emergency touchdown. i looked around the power deck and found they had busted their reaction timer. i got the idea then of fixing it up and bringing it back to venusport to give them young jerks a surprise. i lifted her off the ground and then figured why should i give it back? just move it someplace else and let the vines and creepers grow over it for a few days." "didn't the crew come back looking for it?" asked loring. "did they?" chortled shinny. "i'll say they did! almost drove them poor fellers crazy. i guess they searched for that old wagon for three months before giving up." "and--and you mean it's still there--and in good condition?" asked loring. "needs a little fuel," said shinny, "and probably a good overhaul, but i don't think there's anything serious the matter with it." "by the craters of luna," exclaimed loring, "we'll blast off immediately!" "hold on," said shinny. "i didn't say i'd give it to you." "well, what do you want for it?" demanded loring. "now let me see," mused shinny. "i figure that if _you_ figure to get as much as twenty million credits out of the copper, a full quarter share ought to be about right." "five million credits for a--a ship that's been rotting in the jungle for fifteen years!" exclaimed loring. "she's in good shape," defended shinny. "i go out there every six months or so and turn over the reactors just to keep 'em from getting rusty." "why didn't you try to do something with it before?" asked loring. "never had no occasion to," answered shinny. "well, is it a deal, or isn't it?" "too much," snapped loring. "that's my price," said shinny. "i could take the ship and not give you anything," sneered loring. "if the solar guard looked for three months in that jungle, with a hundred men and instruments, do you think you'll find it?" "i'll give you a fifth share," said loring. "nope," said shinny, "i've named my price. you either take it or leave it!" he glared at loring. mason finally spoke. "take it, loring," he said, "and let's get out of here. i'm getting jittery over that investigation that's coming up on the station." "all right," said loring, "it's a deal. one quarter share for the ship." "done!" said shinny--"now i guess we'd better go talk to that boy manning, eh?" "don't you think it'll be a little dangerous taking him along?" whined mason. "yeah, maybe you're right," said loring. [illustration] "if it was me," said shinny, "i wouldn't give it a second thought. you're going into _deep_ space. it ain't like a hop to mars or titan. this is as deep as you can go. if i was you, i'd want the best there is in my crew. and from what i've heard about that young feller, he's the best there is on the radar bridge. you know who his father was?" "who?" asked mason. "ken--" shinny suddenly closed his mouth tight. "just another spaceman," he said, "but a good one!" he rose quickly. "well, i'm supposed to meet manning in an hour at the cosmos." [illustration] the three men left the dingy hotel and walked out into the main street of spaceman's row. in a few moments they arrived at the café cosmos. roger was already there, seated at the same table and watching the door. when he saw loring and mason with shinny, he eyed them warily. "hiya, kid!" greeted loring. "glad to see you took my advice and got away from 'blast-off' connel." mason waved a salute, and the three men sat down. roger ignored loring and mason, speaking directly to shinny. "did you complete our deal?" he asked softly. "nope," answered shinny. "i brought you another one instead." roger held out his hand. "my one hundred credits--_now!_" "never mind the credits, kid," said loring, "we've got more important things to talk about." roger continued to look at shinny, his palm outstretched on the top of the table. "one hundred credits," he repeated coldly. reluctantly, shinny handed over the money. slowly, carefully, roger counted the bills, and then, after putting them away, he turned to face loring for the first time. "you said you have something important to discuss with me?" he drawled. "i see you learned fast, kid!" said loring with a crooked smile. "i wouldn't trust shinny as far as i could throw a comet!" mason laughed loudly. the other three merely glared at him, and he stopped abruptly. "here's the proposition, manning," said loring, leaning across the table. "i've gotta ship and i wanta make a hop into deep space. i want you to do the astrogation!" "i'm interested," said roger. "keep talking." briefly loring described the copper satellite, its potential value, and what they expected to get out of it. roger listened without comment. when loring had finished, shinny told him about the ship and its condition. when shinny finished, loring turned to roger. "well, manning," he asked, "how do you like the setup?" "how much do i get out of it?" asked roger. "one twentieth of the take," said loring. "there are four of us. one full quarter-share, nothing less," drawled roger. "one-fourth to shinny and one-fourth to him," whined mason. "that only leaves us a fourth apiece!" "that's more than you've got now," snapped loring. "all right, manning, you're in!" roger smiled for the first time. "when do we blast off?" "as soon as we get that space wagon in shape we hit the deep!" said loring. "i think i need a drink on that," said shinny. he yelled for the bartender, who brought rocket juice and martian fizz. roger picked up the glass of the sweet water and glanced around the table. "what's the name of that space wagon you've got buried in the jungles, mr. shinny?" "ain't got no name," said shinny. roger paused, a slight smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "then i propose we name her after the hearts of each of us here at the table." "what's that?" asked loring. "_space devil_," said roger. shinny grinned, his frail body trembling slightly from his silent laughter. he held up the glass of rocket juice. "i propose a toast to the _space devil_!" "to the _space devil_," said the others together. "and whatever trouble she brings," added roger softly. [illustration] chapter "cadet _higgins_!" major connel's voice roared over the ship's intercom as the giant rocket cruiser _polaris_ blasted smoothly through space. "yes, sir," squeaked alfie in reply. "cadet higgins," said connel, "i thought i had requested a sight on the sun star regulus at fifteen hundred hours!" "you did, sir," replied alfie. "_then why, by the craters of luna, don't i have that position?_" "i was--busy, sir," came the meek reply. "cadet higgins," sighed connel patiently, "would you be so kind as to come down to the control deck?" in the short space of time since their departure from the space station major connel had learned that to scold cadet higgins was not the way to gain his attention. in fact, major connel had not been able to find a way of getting the little cadet's attention in any manner, at any time, on anything. "i can't right now, sir," replied alfie. "what do you _mean_, you can't?" exploded connel. "i mean, sir," explained alfie, "that i've just sighted tara and i have to get a position check on her before we go any farther, to ensure that we traverse the same trajectory on our return trip and thus avoid the problem of finding a new and safe route back." "cadet alfie higgins"--connel's voice climbed to a frenzied shriek--"if you are not on this control deck in ten seconds, i'll personally see that you are fed to a dinosaur when we touch down on tara and you'll never return. _now get down here!_" tom and astro, who could hear the conversation over the intercom, were finding it very difficult to keep from laughing out loud at the innocence of alfie and the outraged wrath of major connel. tom, particularly, had discovered that alfie's innocent refusal to be bullied by connel had made the time pass more quickly on the long haul through deep space. more than once he had seen major connel rage against the underweight cadet and become even more frustrated at his childlike resistance. it had helped tom forget the empty feeling he experienced every time he called the radar deck and heard alfie's mild voice instead of roger's usual mocking answer. astro, too, had managed to forget the loneliness he felt aboard the great cruiser by watching the antics of alfie and major connel. more than once he had instigated situations where alfie would get caught red-handed in a harmless error, and then he lay flat on the power deck, laughing until his sides ached, as he listened to alfie and major connel over the intercom. it had helped. both tom and astro admitted it had helped, but it still didn't take away the dull ache each felt when an occasional remark, situation, or thought would bring roger to mind. tom flipped the teleceiver on and waited for the blank screen to show him tara. connel stood to one side, also watching for the image of the planet to take form on the gray-black screen. a hatch clanked behind them, and alfie stepped into the control deck to snap to his version of attention. "cadet higgins reporting, sir," he said quietly. connel stepped in front of him, placed his hands on his hips, and bent slightly, pushing his face almost into alfie's. "cadet higgins, i want you to know i have taken all the blasted space-brained antics i'm going to take from you," said connel quietly. "yes, sir," replied alfie blandly. "and," said connel, shaking a finger in alfie's face, "_and_ if there is one more--just _one_ more brazen, flagrant disregard of my _specific_ orders, then, cadet higgins, i promise you the most miserable trip back to earth you will ever know in your entire career! i promise you i'll make you sweat! i'll--i'll--" connel stopped short and shuddered. alfie's owl-eyed look of innocence seemed to unnerve him. he tried to resume his tirade, but the words failed him. he finally turned away, growling, "higgins, get up on that radar deck and do as you're told, _when_ you're told to do it and _not_ when you want to do it! is that clear?" "yes, sir," said alfie meekly. he saluted and returned to the radar deck. "corbett!" snapped connel. "if i should appear to be losing control of myself when addressing cadet higgins, you have my official permission to restrain me. use force if necessary!" tom bit his lip to keep from laughing and managed to mumble "yes, sir." he turned quickly to the control board and began focusing on the planet lying dead ahead of the decelerating spaceship. they had been slowing down for several days, since their speed with the added hyperdrive had been increased greatly. the young cadet adjusted the last dial and the blue-green planet sprang into clear sharp focus on the screen. "why," gasped tom. "sir, look! it's just like earth!" "in more ways than one, corbett," replied connel. "what's our range?" "i'd say we're close enough to reduce thrust to a quarter regular space speed, sir." "very well," said connel. "now look to the right on the screen. see that small dark patch over there in the middle of the planet?" "yes, sir," replied tom. "that's where we want to touch down," said connel. "you stay here on the control deck and maneuver the ship closer in while i go to the radar deck and contact space academy on the transmitter. i've got to report that we expect to land soon." "very well, sir," said tom. he turned and flipped the intercom switch. "control deck to power deck," he said. "check in, astro." "power deck here," replied astro. "what's up, tom?" "we just got our first good look at tara. she's dead ahead. major connel's going to contact space academy, and i'm going to maneuver into our preliminary glide. stand by for course changes." "make it an easy touchdown. i wanta get home, you know," replied astro good-naturedly. "o.k.," said tom. "better bring her down to one-quarter space speed." "hyper or regular?" asked astro. "regular!" yelled tom. "you give me a quarter on hyper and we'll go right through that planet!" "one-quarter regular space speed," replied astro. tom adjusted his controls for the speed reduction, while keeping his eyes on the teleceiver screen. he watched the planet grow larger before his eyes, and the terrain become more distinct. he could see two large oceans, the green-blue of the water reflecting the sunlight of alpha centauri brilliantly. nearer and nearer the _polaris_ plummeted, and tom could begin to distinguish the rough outline of mountain ranges along the horizon line. he switched to a larger view of the planet on the magnascope that revealed a splendor rivaling the beauty of his own cherished earth. "we'll be entering the atmosphere in a minute, alfie," yelled tom into the intercom. "stand by to give range for touchdown." "radar deck, aye," reported alfie. "range at present five hundred miles." "power deck, check in!" yelled tom. "power deck, aye," returned astro. "all set below?" asked tom. "all set," said astro. "reduce thrust to minimum!" shouted tom. deep inside the powerful ship, the roar of the mighty atomic rocket motors began to fade to a deep growling purr. "control deck to radar deck. major connel, sir?" "what is it, corbett?" asked connel. "we're ready for a touchdown. do you want to take over the bridge?" "can't you do it, corbett?" asked connel. "yes, sir!" replied tom. "then carry on," replied connel. "i'm having some trouble trying to get through to the academy on the transmitter. can't understand it." there was a pause. "i have them now, corbett! you carry on!" he shouted. "aye, aye, sir," said tom. he turned his attention to the control panel, checking the many dials and gauges with one sweeping glance, and then concentrated on bringing the ship to a safe landing on the foreign planet. his fingers tingled as he reached for the switches that would bring the ship down on the first intergalactic world he had ever visited. in a flash, the curly-haired cadet remembered childhood dreams of doing just what he was doing at this moment, preparing to touch down on a new world, millions of miles away from his home near new chicago. "range one hundred miles," reported alfie over the intercom. "power deck, reduce thrust to absolute minimum!" ordered tom. "i want as little sustaining power as you can give me without cutting out altogether, astro." "can do!" said astro. the ship slowed even more, then suddenly picked up speed again as the gravity of tara began to tug at the space traveler. "stand by to fire braking rockets!" yelled tom. he was all nerves now, sensitive to the throbbing of the great ship's motors, eyes fastened to the dials and meters on the control panel. there was no time to watch the scanner view of the onrushing planet now. he had to touch down blindly, using only his instruments. "radar bridge, report!" snapped tom. "range one thousand feet," reported alfie, his calm voice in striking contrast to the nervous excitement in tom's. "seven hundred fifty--six hundred--five fifty--" "fire braking rockets!" rasped tom into the intercom. the great ship bucked under the sudden thrust of the huge braking rockets. the _polaris_ held steady for a moment, then gradually, as the pull of tara began again, she settled back toward the dark-green jungles beneath her. "two hundred and fifty feet," reported alfie. "one hundred and seventy-five--one fifty--" he droned. "ease her up, astro," shouted tom. "easy! ease her up, you venusian clunk, we're dropping too fast!" once again, from the heart of the _polaris_, there came a roaring blast of the powerful motors. the ship steadied once more and then slipped back into her fall toward the new planet under more sure control. "fifty feet," reported alfie. "forty--thirty--twenty--" there was a brief pause, as if everything had stopped and they were held still by a giant hand, and then, suddenly, a rocking motion, a slight bump and rumble. tom knew they were down. "_touchdown!_" he yelled at the top of his voice. "touchdown! we made it--we made it!" from the power deck, quiet except for the whining of the oxygen feed pump, astro's bellow could be heard vibrating through the passageways. "_yeeeeeeeeeeeeeooooooooooooowwwwwww!_" tom began shutting off the many circuits and switches and made a quick last-minute check of the now dead ship. satisfied, he glanced at the great solar clock, noted the time in the log, and stepped to the ladder leading to the radar bridge. "cadet corbett reporting, sir," said tom, saluting smartly. "i wish to report, sir, that the _polaris_ made touchdown on the planet tara at exactly seventeen fifty-nine, solar time!" connel, his great bulk bent over the tiny transmitter, was twirling the dials, his head encased in a vacuum earphone helmet to ensure perfect silence. he had acquired the knowledge of lip reading out of necessity on the power decks of the old chemical burners thirty years before, and while he couldn't hear what tom had said, he knew what the report was. "very well, corbett," he shouted, not being able to judge the volume of his voice. "good job! can't seem to pick them up at the academy again. had them once, then lost them. am placing you in command of an expedition for a quick look outside. arm yourselves with paralo-ray guns and rifles. take a jet boat and under no circumstances are you to land. dismissed! oh, yes, one more thing. take alfie higgins along with you and keep _your eye on him_. report back in one hour!" tom felt a tingle of excitement run up his backbone as he heard the tough skipper give him permission to explore the planet. he saluted and turned away, alfie trailing him down the ladder. "hey, astrooooo!" yelled tom. "get number-one jet boat out of the hatch. we're going for a look-see at this place!" tom went to the gun locker and took out three paralo-ray guns and rifles. he made sure each of them was fully loaded and then handed them to alfie. "put these on the jet boat, alfie. i'll be along in a minute." alfie took the guns and walked toward the jet-boat catapult deck. tom returned to the radar bridge and stood before connel. "would you see if there is any news of roger, sir, when you make contact with the academy?" connel read the cadet's lips and nodded his head. tom turned and went directly to the jet-boat deck. astro and alfie waited for him inside. "brought along three space suits, tom," said astro. "you can never tell what we might run into." "good idea," said tom. the three cadets climbed into the jet boat, tom taking the pilot's seat. he pushed a release button, and a portion of the _polaris'_ steel hull slid back. tom pressed another button, gripped the wheel of the small space craft, and stepped on the acceleration pedal. the little red ship shot out of the open hatch and zoomed over the giant trees. traveling at a slow speed, tom made a wide arc over the forest, checking his position against that of the _polaris_ before losing sight of it. he pulled the tiny ship up to one thousand feet, leveled off, set the automatic pilot, and took his first close look at tara, four and a half light years from earth. from above, tara seemed to be a quagmire of reptiles, dinosaurs, and dense vegetation reaching as high as the gleaming towers of venusport and atom city. huge trees that spread their branches over an area of a thousand feet soared skyward, limbs and trunks wrapped in jungle creepers. now and then alfie would grasp tom or astro by the arm and point a wavering finger at a moving animal below, then gasp and fall back white-faced into his seat. while tom was inclined to share alfie's reactions, astro took it in stride, having been exposed to the dangers of wild jungles on his own venus. the tiny jet boat raced out across the blue-green sea that swept up in giant swells along the snow-white sandy beaches. it was a temptation to set the small craft down and enjoy the pleasure of a swim after the many days of cramped, tortured living on the _polaris_. but tom remembered connel's orders and also had a lot of respect for some of the things he had seen swimming in the water. "better get back," said tom. he flipped the audiophone switch in the jet boat and spoke into a small mike. "jet boat one to _polaris_. jet boat one to _polaris_. cadet corbett to major connel." there was a crackle of static and then connel's voice, vibrant and clear, filled the small cabin. "corbett!" he roared. "by the craters of luna, i couldn't contact you. return to the _polaris_ on the double!" "is there something wrong, sir?" asked tom, apprehensive after seeing the wildness of the jungle below him. "wrong?" blared connel. "news from earth--from the academy! roger's been cleared of all charges." "cleared?" stammered tom. "absolutely! when i sealed the radar bridge after the crash, a security officer examined the settings on the scanners and transmitting equipment. they showed that roger _had_ been on duty at the time--that he had been tracking the ship as he claimed." "then what was the reason for the crash?" "security isn't sure yet. an acceleration control lever is missing from the wreckage. and it wasn't broken off as a result of the crash. now loring and mason are wanted for further questioning." tom looked at his unit-mate, astro. the big venusian had his head turned to one side; he seemed to be staring out over the vast writhing jungle. "astro, did you hear?" asked tom softly. "yeah," mumbled astro in a small, choked voice. "just don't ask me to turn around." chapter "how much longer before we reach the atmosphere of tara, manning?" asked loring. roger bent over the chart table and quickly measured the distance between his present position and that of tara. "about two hours," he said, straightening up. "good!" said loring. "let me know soon as we get close." "o.k.," replied the cadet. "hey, radar deck!" mason's voice came over the intercom from the power deck of the _space devil_. "don't forget to let me know when i have to cut down on thrust!" "take it easy, spaceboy," snapped roger. "you'll know in plenty of time!" he turned back to the radar scanner and continued the never-ending sweep of space ahead. after a week of checking and reconditioning the _space devil_ in the wild venusian jungles, roger had become more and more disgusted with himself. being a wanted spaceman had had its disadvantages on spaceman's row, but working in the steaming jungles, fighting deadly reptiles and insects, with loring and mason on his neck every minute had soured his appetite for adventure. several times, when roger had suggested a certain part be replaced, loring and he had argued violently, and roger had threatened to quit. now, after the long tedious trip through space, roger's relationship with the others was more strained than ever. the sure dependability of tom on the control deck and astro on the power deck made the work of loring and mason sloppy by comparison. once, when roger had been on radar watch, while the ship roared through the asteroid belt, collision with a small asteroid had threatened. roger ordered a course change, but mason, who had taken over the power deck, had been asleep. luckily, shinny had been near by, had made the course change, and saved the ship. seething with anger, roger had gone to the power deck and given the shiftless spaceman a terrific beating. over and over, conflicts had arisen among them as they blasted through deep space, and always, it seemed to roger, he was in the middle of it. the only satisfaction he could find in the hazardous venture was the prospect of the five million credits. and even this had lost its excitement in the last few days, as his nerves stretched to the breaking point. only the sly humor of shinny had saved roger from the monotony of the long haul through space. roger absently flipped the scanner to its farthest range. he had been observing the planet tara for several hours and knew its shape fairly well. but he suddenly jerked to attention. his hands trembled slightly as he peered intently at the scope. finally he slumped back. there was no doubt about it. on the scanner was a jet boat in flight. "hey, loring! shinny! mason! get up here on the double!" he yelled into the intercom. "what's up?" demanded loring. "get up here!" shouted roger. "we're in for trouble--plenty of trouble!" presently the three spacemen were grouped around the scanner, staring at the unmistakable outline of a jet boat. "by the rings of saturn," declared loring, "it must be connel and his crew!" "what're we going to do?" whined mason. loring's face darkened. "only one thing we can do now," he growled. "what do you mean?" asked roger. "i mean that we're going to blast them!" loring snarled. "connel and whoever else is with him!" "but--but--" stammered roger, "the _polaris_ crew is down there!" "listen, manning!" loring turned to the cadet. "have you forgotten that you're wanted by the solar guard? you give that bunch down there a chance and they'll make you a space crawler on prison rock!" "why--i--" stammered roger. he knew what loring had said was the truth. if it was connel, there would be no question what would happen to him. he faced loring. "what will you do to them?" "one well-placed reactant bomb, and they'll never know a thing!" sneered loring. "but you don't have any bombs aboard," said roger. "a little of the fuel and i can build one easily enough," replied loring. he turned to mason. "go below and suit up to go into the reaction chamber," he ordered. "get an extra lead suit out. i'll go in and help you. and find something we can use for a trigger and a fuse." he smiled at roger. "it might be a little crude, but it'll be fancy enough for what we want. i'm going to blast the _polaris_ from here back to your sweet little space academy!" mason and loring left the radar bridge while shinny and roger watched the white blip of the jet boat. "that could be tom and astro in that jet boat," said roger softly to himself. "i guess i'd better stand by the power deck while we maneuver," said shinny. "we wanta stay hidden until loring and mason get that thing ready." roger nodded, and shinny disappeared. maneuvering cautiously, roger brought the _space devil_ around to the night side of tara opposite to the landing site of the _polaris_. four hours later loring and mason came out of the reactant chamber carrying a small lead box. they placed it gently on the deck and began taking off their lead suits. roger and shinny stared at the box. "there she is," said loring. "not much to look at, but there's enough juice in there to blast the _polaris_ into space junk!" "wait a minute, loring!" said roger. "there'll be no killing! no one gets hurt!" "got a squeamish stomach, eh, kid?" loring laughed. he slapped mason on the back. "our little space cadet is suddenly worrying about his friends. the same friends that wanted to send him away to the prison asteroid." "blast the ship if you want," said roger coldly, "but don't hurt the crew!" "listen, manning!" snarled loring. "if the crew gets hurt it ain't my fault. if they're in the ship, that's tough. if not, then that's o.k. with me. i ain't sending them any letter telling them i'm going to blast their ship and then have them come up after me with a space torpedo!" roger didn't answer. he turned away and climbed back to the radar bridge. loring followed him up the ladder. "don't get any ideas about warning your buddies, manning, 'cause if you do, i'll blast you before i blast them!" "don't worry," replied roger. "it's daytime on the other side of tara now, where the _polaris_ is. the crew might be out on a scouting mission or making observations away from the ship. there's less chance of their being on the ship. if we're going to do it, let's get it over with!" "o.k. with me," said loring. "take this wagon up toward alpha centauri a little way. coming out of the sun, they won't see us. we'll use one of the jet boats to deliver our little present. i'll set the fuse, put the jet boat on automatic, and aim it right for the _polaris_." "all right," agreed manning reluctantly. he turned to the chart table, plotted a course, and issued orders to shinny at the controls and to mason on the power deck. soon the _space devil_ was blasting away from the night side of the planet, heading toward the sun. when they reached an altitude of a thousand miles above the surface of the planet, loring maneuvered the jet boat into position outside the ship and placed the crude reactant bomb inside. ready, he gave roger the signal to make the run out of the sun toward the _polaris_. roger relayed the orders to shinny and mason, and the _space devil_ rocketed back toward the planet again. loring, sitting inside the jet boat, waited until they had reached an altitude of five hundred miles. "all right, manning," said loring, "give me the course!" roger calculated the rotational speed of the planet, the _space devil's_ altitude, and the speed of the jet boat. he drew a line between the _space devil_ and _polaris_, checked it on the astro compass, and reached for the intercom mike. he ran a dry tongue over his lips and called out the course. "course is one forty-three--" he caught himself and stared at the chart. suppose tom or astro or anyone was near the ship? even if he missed by several hundred yards, the bomb would certainly be fatal. if he only changed the course one degree, at a range of five hundred miles, it would miss the _polaris_ by several miles. and loring wouldn't be able to see anything because of the dust cloud. "course corrected," said roger. "new course is one forty-two!" "one forty-two!" repeated loring. roger sat back and waited for the small space craft to blast off from the ship. in his mind, he saw loring setting the trigger on the bomb, adjusting the controls, setting the automatic pilot, and then pressing the acceleration button. roger gripped the sides of the chart table and stared at the radar scanner. a fast-moving blip was streaking across its surface. loring had started the jet boat. his eyes showing his great fear, roger watched the blip as it sped down like a maddened hornet toward the _polaris_ resting on its directional fins in the green jungle. he could hear the hatch slam closed below as loring re-entered the ship, but he continued to watch the rapidly moving blip. suddenly it disappeared, and roger knew it had reached tara. he slumped back in his chair. his eyes were glassy, his ears deaf to the roar of triumph from below as loring and mason, watching the flight of the jet boat on the control deck teleceiver screen, saw it explode. roger couldn't move. he had fired a reactant bomb at tom and astro. "by the craters of luna," roared connel, "we've been attacked!" the four earthmen, exploring a valley several miles north of the _polaris_, had been thrown to the ground when the bomb landed. connel's reaction was immediate and decisive. "get into the jet boat! all of you! we've got to get back to the _polaris_! if our ship is smashed, we'll spend the rest of our lives fighting this jungle!" in a matter of seconds the four spacemen were rocketing over the jungle toward the _polaris_. presently they came to an enormous dust cloud that had mushroomed out over the trees. it was so thick tom found it difficult to pilot the small craft. "any danger of radioactivity in this dust, sir?" asked astro. "always that possibility, astro," answered connel. "we'll know soon enough!" he flipped on a built-in geiger counter on the dashboard of the jet boat, and immediately the cabin was filled with a loud ticking that warned of danger. "the count is up to seven fifty, sir," said astro. "not enough to bother you unless you're in it a long time." "there's the _polaris_, sir," yelled tom. "she's still on her directional fins! they missed her! she's o.k.!" "by the blessed rings of saturn, she is!" exclaimed connel. "go on, tom, give this baby the gun! if we have to die, let's die like spacemen, in space, fighting with spaceman's weapons, not crawling around here in the jungle like worms!" the three boys smiled at their skipper's rousing statement. "this is the time," thought tom, "when i'd rather have major connel in command than anyone else in the solar guard." if there was to be a fight, then they certainly had found the man who knew how to do just that! fight! [illustration] tom swooped over the treetops recklessly, and fearing the blast had damaged the jet-boat air lock, brought the small craft to rest in the blinding dust a few yards away from the _polaris_. three minutes later the four spacemen had separated and were standing by their respective posts. hasty but thorough checks were made to determine the damage, and finding none, they prepared to raise ship. "all clear forward and up," alfie reported in a high squeaking voice. "energize the cooling pumps," shouted tom. astro had already started the mighty pumps, their vibrations rocking the ship, and tom began counting the seconds. "stand by to raise ship. minus five--four--three--two--one--_zeeroooooo!_" paying scant attention to the crush of sudden acceleration, tom gave the ship all the power she could take for the climb out of tara's atmosphere, and soon they were rocketing through the airless void of space. alfie and connel hurriedly swept the area with the radar scanner for the attacking intruder. "there she is!" roared connel. "there!" he placed a finger on a white blip on the scanner. "by the craters of luna, that's an earth ship!" the fear of an outer-space invasion by hostile people from another world had been in the back of his mind, but he had been reluctant to voice his fears in front of the cadets. "and she's an old one at that!" he exclaimed. "not even armed. i know that class vessel. corbett!" he shouted. "aye, aye, sir," replied tom. "put the ship on automatic flight, attack-approach pattern number three. then stand by to send a message to whoever's manning that ship!" "aye, aye, sir!" replied tom. he hurriedly set the delicate device that would fly the ship in a preplanned course of zigzag maneuvers and opened the circuits of the teleceivers. "all set for the message, sir," reported tom. "tell them," said connel heavily, his voice cold, "whoever they are, that i'll give them two minutes to surrender. if they don't, i'll blast them into protons!" "very well, sir," said tom. he turned to the teleceiver and began twirling the dials. "attention! attention! rocket cruiser _polaris_ to spaceship x. _polaris_ to spaceship x. you are ordered to surrender within two minutes or we will attack. by order of major connel, senior line officer, solar guard." he switched the teleceiver for reception and waited. in a moment the screen blurred and then an image appeared. tom gasped. it was roger! "tom, tom," yelled roger. "tom, this is me--roger!" "roger! what're you doing out here? how'd you get here?" "i can't explain now," said roger. "i--i--" tom interrupted him. "roger, you've been cleared! the investigation of the crash on the station proved that loring and mason are guilty. they're wanted for the crash and the deaths of jardine and bangs!" "what! you mean--" stammered roger. "yes. loring and mason did the whole thing!" supplied tom. "look, tom," pleaded roger, "give me ten minutes. don't fire for ten minutes! i'm going to try an idea. if i'm not successful, then open up and blast us back to mars!" "roger, wait!" shouted tom. "what's going on? what're you doing on that ship?" "i can't talk now," answered roger. "loring and mason are on the ship with me. remember--ten minutes--and if i don't contact you, then open fire!" chapter roger flipped off the teleceiver. he stared at the darkened screen and began estimating the chances of success for a plan he had in mind. deciding that, regardless of what happened, he had to take over the ship, he got up and turned toward the hatch and the gun locker. he stopped cold. loring stood framed in the doorway, a paralo-ray gun in each hand. "just stand right where you are, spaceboy!" snapped loring. "you want ten minutes, huh? ten minutes for what? i thought there was something funny going on when we missed the _polaris_ with that bomb!" "you knew all along i didn't have anything to do with that crash back on the station, didn't you?" shouted roger. his eyes blazed angrily. "yeah. so what?" growled loring. "hey, mason," he yelled over his shoulder, "get up here in a hurry! we gotta work fast!" "what are you going to do?" asked roger. "you're still valuable to us, manning," said loring with a crooked grin. "you're going to ensure our getting what we came after!" mason stepped through the door. "yeah, loring?" loring quickly told him of roger's attempt to work with connel. "take our spaceboy down below and lock him in a storage compartment." he handed over one of the paralo-ray guns, and mason shoved the muzzle into roger's stomach. "get moving, manning!" he snarled. "i'd like nothing better than to let you have it right now!" roger smiled, knowing mason still harbored a grudge for the beating he had taken earlier on the trip. "when you have him locked up, get back on the control deck," said loring. "we're going to do some old-fashioned bargaining with 'blast-off' connel!" "bargaining?" exclaimed roger. "yeah! one slightly used space cadet for what we came after--the copper satellite!" "connel won't bargain," said roger. "not for me, not for anything. you don't know him!" "i know this, manning!" said loring. "i'm going to get on the teleceiver and tell connel that if he doesn't blast away from here _right now_, you're a dead space cadet!" he jerked his head toward the door. "all right, take him below and tell shinny to stand by on the power deck. in case connel won't bargain, we'll have to make a run for it!" "right," said mason as he shoved the paralo-ray gun deeper into roger's stomach. "move, manning!" roger climbed down the ladder and through the long passageway of the _space devil_. he passed shinny on the way down. "what's going on here?" demanded shinny, seeing mason with the paralo-ray gun. "we missed with the bomb," said mason, "and connel raised ship. he's ready to blast us if we don't surrender right away. loring's trying to make a deal with him." "what kind of a deal?" asked shinny. "hot-shot manning for the satellite!" "he hasn't told you everything, mr. shinny," said roger in his casual drawl. "they are the ones who caused the crash of the _annie jones_ and the deaths of jardine and bangs. they framed me!" "then," mused shinny, "you're cleared?" "yeah," growled mason, "he's cleared! cleared for a long swim in space if connel doesn't do what loring tells him! get in there!" mason shoved roger into the cramped storage compartment. he locked the door and turned to shinny. "loring wants you to stand by the power deck in case connel won't play ball. we might have to make a run for it." "yeah, yeah," said shinny, "i'll stand by the power deck." mason turned and walked away. shinny followed him, a curious gleam in his eyes. up on the control deck, loring was twisting the dials in front of the teleceiver screen. "_space devil_ to _polaris_--_space devil_ to _polaris_--come in, _polaris_." he twisted another dial and watched the darkened screen anxiously. after a moment the screen blurred, and tom's face gradually came into sharp focus. "loring!" gasped tom. "where's roger?" "never mind him, you punk!" snarled loring. "tell that fatheaded connel i wanta talk to him! make it fast!" tom's face disappeared to be replaced by the raging features of major connel. "you murdering space rat!" he roared. "i've given you two minutes to surrender and, by the craters of luna, you've only got thirty seconds left!" "it'll only take ten seconds to tell you that if you don't get outta here cadet manning gets blasted!" "what?" roared connel. "that's right," snarled loring. "you're the one that's got thirty seconds to get out of here, or manning takes a swim in space!" "why, you--" connel's face was twisted with rage. "you can't threaten me!" "i ain't threatening you," said loring, "_i'm telling you!_ if you don't get started, you'll never see manning again. or if you do, you won't recognize him! now make up your mind, connel!" the solar guard officer hesitated. "give me two minutes," he said, "and i'll call you back. two minutes." "two minutes," repeated loring, "and if i don't hear from you by then, or if you try any funny stuff, manning gets it!" aboard the _polaris_, the screen darkened, and connel, his fists clenched, turned to tom. "we're helpless, tom," he said softly. "now that we have proof of roger's innocence, i have to do everything in my power to save him." tom didn't say anything. suddenly connel smashed one huge fist into another. "but by the blessed rings of saturn, when i _do_ get my hands on that loring, i'll--i'll--" he broke off suddenly and turned back to the teleceiver. "i'm going to do what he wants, tom. roger's life is worth a dozen like loring, and we'll have to take a chance that loring will keep his word. after all," continued the big officer softly, "our mission is complete. we've tested the transmitter and found it to be more than we expected. no real reason why we should stay around here any longer." "yes, sir," stammered tom. "sir, i--i--" connel waved him silent with his hand. "you don't need to say anything, tom. it's just one of those things. still i can't help wondering what they came out here for." he turned to the dials on the teleceiver and began twisting them. "i'll call him, and you stand by to blast out of here." nicholas shinny sat on the power deck and listened to loring issue orders over the intercom. "i don't know if connel will go for it, or not," said loring, "but just in case he doesn't, we gotta get outta here fast! you got that, shinny?" "yeah," answered shinny, "i got it!" "mason," yelled loring, "you take over on the radar bridge!" "all ready up here," said mason. "well, be sure we've got a clear trajectory out. better take us into the sun alpha centauri. that way, maybe they'll miss us on their radar. the sun will show all sorts of blips on their screen." "o.k.," said mason. "you think he'll go for it?" "i don't know," answered loring, "but if he doesn't, it's going to be space dust for manning." shinny got up and walked around the deserted power deck. his legs felt weak. the plan he had made was a desperate one. over and over, he checked the operation in his mind. it would have to be quick, sure, and sudden. that was the only thing that would ensure success. "yes, sir," he thought, "if we can surprise 'em, we can get away with it." he dug out a piece of chewing tobacco, took a bite, eyed the remaining piece, and then shoved the whole thing in his mouth. his cheek bulged. he went to the intercom and flipped it on. "hey, loring," he yelled. "i've got to check the timer on number-three rocket. she's not acting just right. it'll take me about a minute." "o.k.," came loring's reply, "but make it snappy." the timers were to the left of the control board, but shinny turned to the right and the ladder leading to the lower deck. he eased the hatch open, glanced around, and then climbed down quickly. he stopped at a locker, opened the doors quietly, and took out two paralo-ray guns and two rifles. then, closing the doors, he made his way to the opposite side of the ship. "hey, manning!" he whispered through the closed storeroom hatch. "can ya hear me?" "who is it?" asked roger. "me--shinny," hissed the wizened spaceman. he opened the hatch and roger quickly stepped out. "what's the idea?" gasped roger when shinny shoved a rifle and pistol into his hands. "i ain't got time to explain now," said shinny. "we've got to hurry if we're going to take over this tub." roger's eyes glowed. "you mean--" "never mind what i mean," said shinny. "just listen. loring's on the control deck and mason's on the radar bridge. loring's just talked to connel. he's trying to make him blast outta here. if connel doesn't, loring's going to dump you in space!" "yeah, i know. that murdering space crawler!" snarled roger. he gripped the rifle tightly. "i'll blast him--" "now wait a minute," hissed shinny. "you go up and get loring, see? make it look like you got out by yourself. if you can handle him, o.k. i'll stay in back, and if anything goes wrong, i'll back you up!" "fine," said roger. he patted the spaceman on the back and smiled. "don't worry, mr. shinny, nothing will go wrong!" "watch your step. that loring is a smart cookie!" roger turned into the passageway and made his way silently to the control-deck hatch. he peered around the edge of the hatch and saw loring sitting in front of the teleceiver screen, his back toward roger. the cadet quickly stepped into the control room, leveled the rifle, and said quietly, "all right, loring, keep your hands in view!" loring spun around and stared openmouthed at roger. "mann--" he gasped. "yeah, me!" said roger. "call mason and tell him to come down here on the double. but one wrong move, loring, and i'll give you a quick freeze with this ray gun!" moving slowly, loring turned to the intercom and flipped the switch. "hey, mason," he yelled. "come down here a minute, will ya?" "what do you want?" growled mason. "i've got to figure out this course." roger stepped close to loring, raising the gun. loring licked his lips and turned back to the intercom. "don't gimme any back talk! i said get down here!" suddenly the teleceiver came to life. "_polaris_ to _space devil_! come in, loring! this is major connel on the _polaris_ calling loring on the _space devil_!" the suddenness of the voice startled roger, and for a split second he took his eyes off loring. in that instant loring leaped for the boy, grabbing at the rifle. the quickness of his lunge caught roger off guard and he was thrown back against the bulkhead, but he held onto the rifle as loring tried to twist it out of his grasp. "what th--" cried mason from the ladder leading to the radar bridge. when he saw roger and loring struggling, he grabbed for the paralo-ray gun at his side. just at that moment shinny stepped through the hatch and fired his rifle. mason was frozen into a rigid statue, unable to move. "all right, loring," yelled shinny, "step back or i'll blast you like i did mason!" roger wrenched the rifle out of loring's grasp and stepped back. "good work, mr. shinny!" he said to the little spaceman. "you sure figured it right!" "attention! attention! this is connel on the _polaris_. come in, loring ..." shinny looked over at roger and winked. "better answer him, while i get this joker locked up." he motioned to loring who stood backed up against the bulkhead, his hands high over his head. "you dirty double-crossing space rat!" he snarled at shinny. "now, now, none of that," said shinny, leveling the rifle. "if you get too noisy, i'll freeze you like i did mason to keep your trap shut!" loring cast a sidelong glance at mason, who stood as if carved out of marble. the effects of the ray blast were devastating, having paralyzed his entire nervous system. while the victim was still able to breathe and his heartbeat remained normal, he was unable to move so much as an eyelid. the gun was developed after all lethal weapons had been outlawed by the solar alliance. though any victim could be released from its paralyzing effect by a neutralizing charge from the same gun, while under its power the victim was reduced to a state of mild hysteria. he was able to hear, see, and think, but not to act. when released, it was not unusual to see a man crumple to the floor from exhaustion. [illustration: _mason was frozen into a rigid statue, unable to move_] loring marched meekly in front of shinny to the storage room that had held roger. the cadet spaceman remained on the control deck. he twisted the dials of the teleceiver and spoke into the mike. "_space devil_ to major connel. come in! this is manning on the _space devil_ calling major connel ..." "manning!" shouted connel. "i thought you were a prisoner!" "ah, it was nothing, skipper," said roger blandly. "i just took over the ship--with a little help, of course!" "a little help?" asked connel. "from whom?" roger then gave the officer a complete review of what had happened to him since leaving the space station, finishing with shinny's aid in his escape. "why would he want to help you?" asked connel. "i don't know, sir," replied roger. "well, never mind," said connel. "i suppose you two can handle that ship all right between you. land on tara as soon as you can. i'll get the details then!" "aye, aye, sir," replied roger. then, just before breaking contact, he yelled into the mike, "hey, astro--tom! see ya in a few minutes!" as the teleceiver screen darkened, shinny reappeared. he had released mason from the effects of the ray charge, and both mason and loring were safe in the storage room. he walked over and slapped roger on the back. "well, it looks like we did it, sonny boy!" he said. roger turned to look at the wizened spaceman who still was chewing on the plug of tobacco. "what made you do this for me, mr. shinny?" asked roger quietly. "tell ya a little secret," said shinny, with a merry twinkle in his eye. "i was in the solar guard for twenty years. enlisted man. got into an accident and hurt my leg, but it wasn't in the line of duty, so i was tossed out without a pension. ever since then i been kinda bitter, you might say. and, strangely enough, it was major connel that kicked me out." "but you--you--" gasped roger. "let's just say," said shinny with a smile, "that once you're a solar guardsman, you're always a guardsman. now, how about getting this wagon down to tara?" "yeah, yeah, sure," said roger absently, his eyes trailing after the small limping figure. once a solar guardsman, always a guardsman, he thought. smiling, he turned to the control board. he felt the same way. he was a guardsman, and it was good to be back home! [illustration] chapter major connel paced nervously in front of the group of spacemen. tom, roger, astro, alfie, and mr. shinny were lounging around the small clearing between the _polaris_ and the _space devil_. a piece of thin space cloth had been stretched between the two ships to shield the men from the blazing sun. connel stopped in front of roger and shinny. "and you say the satellite is three-quarters solid copper?" asked connel. "yes, sir," replied roger, "at least that's what loring and mason told us." "where is it?" asked connel. "i mean, where exactly?" "i spotted her coming in, sir," replied roger. "i'd say she was about three hundred thousand miles outside of tara in perfect orbit." "by the blessed rings of saturn," exclaimed connel, "it's almost too good to be true! the whole solar alliance needs copper desperately. and if what you say is true, that's enough to last for a hundred and fifty years!" "didn't you have any idea they discovered it, sir?" asked tom. "i mean, when they took that unauthorized flight on your first trip out here?" "didn't suspect a thing, tom," replied connel. "i thought they had gotten a little space rocky on some homemade rocket juice and just went on a wingding. imagine the colossal nerve of those two wanting to corner the market with the largest deposit of copper ever found." "how do you plan to get it back, major?" asked shinny. "i don't know, shinny--" "_mr._ shinny!" snapped the wizened spaceman. "_i'm_ not one of your cadets!" "still the hotheaded rocket buster, eh?" asked connel, eying the toothless spaceman. "it was the same thing that got you kicked out of the solar guard twenty years ago!" "wasn't either! and you know it!" snapped shinny. "you retired me because i busted my leg!" "that helped," said connel, "but the main reason was because you were too hotheaded. couldn't take orders!" "well," said shinny doggedly, "i ain't in no solar guard now, and when you talk to me, it's _mr._ shinny!" "why, you old goat!" exploded connel. "i ought to arrest you for aiding criminals!" "you can't do a thing to me," barked shinny. "prospecting is prospecting, whether it's in the asteroid belt or out here on tara!" unable to hold back any longer, the four space cadets suddenly roared with laughter at the sight of the two old space foes jawing at each other. actually, connel and shinny were glad to see each other. and when they saw the boys doubled up with laughter, they couldn't help laughing also. finally connel turned to roger. "can you find that satellite again?" he asked. "yes, sir!" roger grinned. "all right, then," said connel finally, "let's go take a look at it. i still won't believe it until i see it!" "who's hardheaded now?" snorted shinny, climbing into the _polaris_. later, as the rocket cruiser blasted smoothly through space, connel joined roger and alfie on the radar deck. the two cadets were bent over the radar scanner. "pick her up yet?" asked connel. "there she is, right there, sir," said roger, placing a finger on a circular white blip on the scanner. "but the magnascope shows pretty rugged country. i think we'd better take a look on the opposite side. maybe we can find a better place to touch down." "very well, manning," replied connel. "do what you think best. tell tom to land as soon as possible." "aye, aye, sir," replied roger. leaving alfie on watch at the scanner, roger hurried down the ladder to the control deck where tom was seated in front of the great board. "tom," called roger, walking up behind his unit-mate, "we're going to take a look at this baby on the other side. see if we can't find a better place to touch down. stand by to pick up the surface of the satellite on the teleceiver as soon as we get close enough." "o.k., roger," said tom. "where are you going?" "down to loring and mason in the cooler! i want to see their faces when i tell them they finally are getting where they wanted to go, but under slightly different circumstances!" tom laughed and turned back to the board. "power deck, check in!" "power deck, aye," replied astro. "when do we set down on the precious rock, tom?" asked the venusian. "should be soon, astro," said tom. "better stand by for maneuvering." "right!" replied astro. tom turned his full attention to the control board and the teleceiver screen above his head. he was happier than he had ever been in his life. the report sent back to space academy by major connel had been answered with a commendation to both roger and shinny for capturing loring and mason. with roger back in the unit, tom was at peace. even alfie was overjoyed at seeing roger back aboard the _polaris_. and tom had noticed that major connel was beginning to call them by their first names! "radar deck to control deck!" said alfie. "from casual observations, tom, the surface of the far side of the satellite is more suitable for a touchdown. i would suggest you observe the planetoid yourself with the magnascope and draw your own conclusions." "o.k.," replied tom. he switched the teleceiver screen on to the more powerful magnascope and studied the surface of the small celestial body. he saw a deep valley with a flat hard surface set between two tall cliffs. it would be a tricky spot for a landing, but it looked like the best place available. tom snapped open the intercom. "attention! attention! stand by for touchdown. power deck stand by for deceleration. radar bridge stand by for range and altitude checks!" sharply, crisply, tom's orders crackled through the ship. working together with the ease and thoroughness of men well acquainted with their jobs, astro and shinny on the power deck, roger and alfie on the radar bridge, and tom on the control deck handling the delicate maneuvering, combined to bring the great ship to a safe landing on the dry valley floor of the satellite. "touchdown!" yelled tom and began securing the ship. two minutes later the entire crew faced major connel for briefing. "we'll all go out to different parts of the satellite and make geological tests," announced connel. "we'll pair off, two to a jet boat. astro and roger, alfie and mr. shinny, tom and myself. this is a simple test." he held up a delicate instrument and a vial full of colorless liquid. "you simply pour a little of this liquid, about a spoonful, on the ground, wait about five minutes, and then stick the end of this into the spot where you poured the liquid." he held up a two-foot steel shaft a quarter inch in diameter, fastened to a clock-face gauge with numbers from one to a thousand. the other end of the shaft was needle sharp. "when you stick this into the ground, there'll be a reading on the meter. relay it to me. this way well get an estimate of the amount of copper in a three-mile area for a depth of a hundred feet. it must be more than two hundred tons per square mile to make it worth while!" he held up the testing equipment for all to see and explained its use once more. then, giving each team a kit, he ordered them to the jet boats. just before the crew of earthmen left the _polaris_, connel gave them last-minute instructions. "report back to the _polaris_ in one hour. make as many tests as you can over as wide an area as possible. don't forget to leave one man in the jet boat while the other is making the test. keep your audio communicator in the jet boat on at all times. and be sure your belt communicator is always open. check your oxygen supply and space suits. all clear?" one by one, the spacemen checked in through the audio communicators that all was clear. the sliding hatch on the side of the _polaris_ was opened, and the jet boats blasted out into the brilliant sunlight of alpha centauri, going in three different directions. tom piloted his small craft over the rugged surface of the satellite, circling the larger peaks and swooping into the small valleys. connel would indicate when it was time to stop, and tom would set the craft down. while connel made the tests, tom would talk to the others over the audio communicators. the three small ships covered the satellite quickly in evenly divided sections, reporting their readings on the needlelike instrument to connel, who kept recording the reports on a pad at his knee. an hour later the boats returned to the _polaris_ and the earthmen assembled in the control room. connel, tom, and alfie were busy reducing the readings of the tests into recognizable copper ton estimates per square mile. finally connel turned around, wiped his brow, and faced the others. "this is one of the greatest discoveries for earthmen since they learned how to blast off!" the big officer paused and then held up the results of the tests. "this satellite is _really_ three-quarters solid copper!" there was a loud mumble as everyone began talking at once. "how are we going to get it back home, sir?" asked tom. "wouldn't hauling it back in spaceships cost too much?" "yes, it would, corbett," answered connel, "but i've got an idea how we can lick that problem." "can't see how you can lick it," snorted shinny, "unless you take the whole blasted satellite back!" "that's exactly what i'm going to do!" answered connel. "what?" exclaimed roger, momentarily forgetting he was addressing a senior officer. "how in blazes are you going to do that?" connel turned to the chart-screen projector and switched it on. immediately an image of earth and its moon, and much farther away the sun, was visible. connel stepped to the screen and pointed to moon. "the moon is a captive satellite of earth, revolving around earth the same way earth revolves around the sun. it's the same situation we have here. this satellite is a captive of tara, and tara is a captive of alpha centauri. the difference is that the satellite is a peanut compared in size to the moon, being only about fifteen miles in diameter. i'm not sure, but i think i can get enough reactant energy out of the _space devil's_ fuel supply to blast the satellite out of tara's grip and send it back to our solar system in one piece!" "you mean, sir," asked tom, perplexed, "you'll tear the satellite out of tara's gravitational pull?" "that's right, tom," replied connel, "using the same principle to clear gravity that we use on the _polaris_ or any spaceship. enough power from the rockets will blast the _polaris_ off tara. well, if you can get enough power, you can blast this satellite out of tara's grip also, since the only thing holding it here is the gravity of tara--the same thing that holds the moon in orbit around earth!" astro's eyes bulged. he looked at connel blankly. "why, sir," he stammered, "it'd take--take--a _ton_ of reactant fuel to pull something that size away from tara. the _polaris_ is a kiddy car in comparison!" "you're right, astro," said connel, "but there's one thing you've forgotten. the copper of the satellite itself. that's going to be the main source of power. the reactant fuel from the _space devil_ will serve only as a starter, a trigger, you might say, to make use of the copper as fuel!" once again astro gasped. "then--then--there isn't anything to stop you, sir," he finished slowly. connel smiled. "i know there isn't. i'm going to contact space academy now for permission to pitch the biggest ball in the history of man!" [illustration] chapter "well, i'll be a star-gazing lunatic!" exclaimed roger a few minutes later. "you really think that you can blast this satellite out of its orbit?" "not only that, manning," said connel with a smile, "but i might be able to get it back to our sun faster than we could get back ourselves." "why that would be the biggest project ever attempted by man, sir," said tom. "you'd be transporting an entire satellite from one star system to another!" "that's right, corbett," said connel. "i've just finished talking to space academy and they've given me permission to do anything i think necessary to accomplish just that. now pay close attention to me, all of you. we haven't much time." tom, roger, astro, alfie, and mr. shinny gathered in a close circle around the major on the control deck of the _polaris_ and watched him as he drew several rough diagrams on a piece of paper. "getting the satellite back is the trickiest part of the whole operation. astro, are you sure you made a correct estimate on the amount of reactant fuel in the _space devil_?" "yes, sir," replied astro. "i checked it four times, and mr. shinny checked it, too!" "all right, then, listen," said connel. "i've given the satellite a name. from now on we call it junior. and this will be known as junior's pitch! i've explained how junior is a captive satellite revolving around tara, the same way our moon revolves around earth. we have two problems. one is to blast it out of tara's grip. and the other is to take advantage of tara's orbital speed around its sun alpha centauri, _and_ junior's orbital speed around tara. we've got to combine the velocities of the orbits, so that when we do spring junior loose, he'll gain in speed!" "but how do we get the orbital speeds to help us, major?" asked alfie. his glasses had slipped to the very end of his nose. "if you'd give the major a chance, he'd tell you, big brain," drawled roger. alfie gave roger a withering look and turned back to the major. "do you remember when you were kids and tied a rock on the end of a rope and then swung it around your head?" asked connel. "sure, sorta like a slingshot," said astro. "that's right, astro," said connel, "and if you released the rope, the rock would fly in the direction it was headed, _when you let go_!" "i get it," cried tom excitedly. "the gravity of tara is the rope holding junior--ah"--he fumbled--"making it swing around!" "and the reactant power of the _space devil_ placed in the right spot would be the trigger to make it let go!" commented roger. "it's as simple as that, boys!" said connel with a smile. "but how in the blazing beams of the sun are you going to _stop_ that blasted thing when you get it rolling?" asked shinny. "the chances of junior hitting anything on the way home are so small it doesn't present a problem. so we just aim junior for our solar system! later on, arrangements can be made to steer it into an orbit around our sun." "you know," wheezed shinny, his merry eyes twinkling, "that sounds pretty neat!" "it is," replied connel. he leaned against the control-board desk top and folded his arms across his massive chest. he looked at each of the cadets and shinny a long time before speaking. finally he stepped forward and stood among them, turning now and then to speak directly to each of them. "we have only four days, five hours, and some few minutes to pull junior out of tara's grip, and later, the grip of alpha centauri. you boys will have to work as you've never worked before. you'll do things you never dreamed you could do. you'll work until your brains ache and your bodies scream. but when you're finished, you will have accomplished one of man's greatest challenges. you're going to do all this because i know you can--and i'm going to see that you do! is that clear?" there was a barely audible "yes, sir" from the cadets. "the six of us, working together, are going to send a hunk of copper fifteen miles in diameter hurtling through twenty-three million million miles of space, so let's get that ball rolling. _right now!_" with major connel roaring, pleading, and blasting, four young cadets and a derelict spaceman began the monumental task of assembling the mass of information necessary for the satellite's big push through space. during the three days that their project had been under way, tom, roger, astro, alfie, and mr. shinny worked, as major connel promised, as they had never worked before. late in the afternoon of the third day connel stepped through the hatch of the control deck where tom was busy over a table of ratios for balancing the amount of thrust from each of the reactant-power units. the power units were to give junior its initial thrust out of the gravity of tara. "well, corbett," asked connel, "how're you making out with the ratios?" "i've finished them, sir," replied tom, looking up at the major. his face was drawn, his eyes red from lack of sleep. "but i just can't seem to get a time for escaping the orbit on a true tangent." "have you tried making an adjustment for the overall pull of both components?" asked connel. "that of tara and of alpha centauri on junior?" he picked up the paper tom had been working on and glanced over the figures. "yes, sir," replied tom, "but i still can't seem to make it come out right!" "you'll get it, tom," said connel. "go over it again. but remember. time's running out. just one day and about twenty hours left." connel's voice was friendly--more friendly than at any time tom could remember. he smiled, and taking a fresh sheet of paper, he began the complicated calculations of escape time all over again. connel slipped out of the control room and went below to the power deck, where astro and mr. shinny had been working without sleep for over fifty hours. when connel slipped into the room he found the two men puzzling over a drawing board. "what seems to be the trouble, astro?" asked connel. astro turned, startled. "we've tried building that lead baffle for the reactant units five times now, sir," said astro. "we're having a hard time getting the correct amount of reactant power we need in a unit this small." "maybe you're trying to make it _too_ small, astro," commented connel, looking over the drawing. "remember, this unit has but one job. to _start_ the reaction. when the reaction fuel gets hot enough, it'll start a reaction of the copper on junior and sustain itself. try a smaller amount of the reactant. but whatever you do, keep working. only a day and a few hours left." connel looked at shinny. "keep him working, mr. shinny," he ordered. "i know he can do it. just keep him going." shinny grinned and nodded. "i'll try, sir," said astro, shaking his head, "but i won't guarantee it--" connel cut him off with a roar. "cadet astro, i don't want your guarantee! _i want that unit. now build it!_" hour after hour the cadets racked their brains for what seemed like impossible answers to an impossible task. working until their eyes closed fast shut, they would lie down right where they were--power deck, control deck, or radar bridge--and sleep. they would awake, still groggy, drink hot tea, eat cold sandwiches, and continue their struggle with time and astrophysics. one by one, the problems were solved and set aside for newer ones that arose on the way. each cadet worked in his particular field, and all of their information was assembled and co-ordinated by major connel. more than once, connel had found the clever minds of his cadets reaching for answers to questions he knew would have troubled the professors back at space academy. connel, his eye on the clock, his sharp tongue lashing out when he thought he detected unclear thinking, raced from one department to another while the incessant work continued. on the morning of the fourth day he walked into the radar bridge where roger and alfie had been working steadily for seventy-two hours on an electronic fuse to trigger the reactant units. "there you are, skipper," said roger. "the fuse is all yours. delivered twelve hours ahead of time!" "good work, roger. you too, alfie. excellent!" said connel, his eyes appraising the fuse. "ah, that's nothing, skipper," said roger with a smile. "anyone could have done it with alfie here to help. he's got a brain like a calculator!" "now, i want to see how smart you two really are!" said connel. "huh?" asked roger stupidly. alfie had slumped to the deck, holding his head in his hands. "i want a communications unit," said connel, "that can send out a constant beam, a signal space academy can pick up to follow junior in transit back to earth." "in twelve hours?" exploded roger. "impossible, skipper!" "_cadet manning_," roared connel, "i don't want your _opinion_, i asked for that _unit_!" "but one day, sir," said roger. "not even a day. twelve hours. i can't, sir. i'm sorry. i'm so tired i can't see straight." alfie let out a low moan. connel studied the two cadets. he was aware that he had already asked them to do the impossible, and they had done it. and they deserved to be let alone. but major connel wasn't himself unless he had given every ounce of energy he had left, or the energy left in those around him. he patted roger on the shoulder and spoke softly. "roger, did i ever tell you that i think you have one of the finest brains for electronics i've ever seen? and that alfie is sure to have a brilliant future in astrophysics?" roger stammered. "why--ah--thank you, sir--" alfie looked up at connel and then struggled to his feet. "you know, roger," he said haltingly, "if we took that unit we came out here to test--you know, the transmitter unit--" [illustration] roger cut him off. "yeah, i was just thinking the same thing. we could borrow some of the reaction mass that astro got out of the _space devil_ and use that as a power source." connel backed away from the two cadets and tiptoed off the bridge. he smiled to himself. he was going to win his race with time yet! and he was going to do it because he had learned long before that you could only push a man so far, then you had to sit down, pat him on the back, tell him how smart he was, and he would push himself. connel almost laughed out loud. six hours later connel sat in his quarters puzzling over one of the many minor problems of junior's pitch when he heard footsteps behind him. he turned. astro, tom, roger, alfie, and shinny walked silently into the room. connel stared. "wha--what is it?" he demanded. [illustration] "we're finished, sir," said tom simply. "finished?" exploded connel. "you mean--" "that's what he means, skipper," said shinny. his eyes were bloodshot for want of sleep, but there was a merry twinkle left tugging at the corners. "everything?" asked connel. "everything, sir," said roger. "the power units are built and the fuses installed. all it needs is to be set. tom's worked out the ratios and the amount of reactant fuel needed in each unit for escape tangent. the escape time, combining orbital speeds of tara and junior, are completed, and we have six hours and fifty-five minutes before blast-off!" he turned and rumpled alfie's hair. "alfie and i have completed the communications unit and have tested it. junior is ready to get his big kick in the pants!" connel stood up. he was speechless. it was almost too much to believe. "_get below_," he roared, "and go to sleep! if i catch one of you awake in five minutes, i'll log you fifty demerits!" the tired workers grinned back at their commander. "i'll get everything set," said connel, "and wake you up an hour before we have to get things ready. now _hit the sack!_" their grins spreading even wider on their haggard faces, they turned away. connel stepped to the desk on the control deck and wrote across the face of the logbook page. "... october nd, . space cadets corbett, manning, astro, and higgins and ex-enlisted spaceman nicholas shinny completed this day all preparation for operation junior's pitch. by authority vested in me as senior officer, solar guard, i hereby recommend official commendation of "_well done_" to the above-mentioned spacemen, and that all honors pursuant to that commendation be officially bestowed on them. signed, connel, major, so--sg ..." he closed the book and wiped the corners of his eyes with the back of his hand. [illustration] chapter "well, fellows," said tom, stifling a yawn, "it looks like we did it. but i could use some more sleep. that five hours was just enough to get started on!" "yeah," agreed roger sourly, "but where does this venusian lummox get off grabbing all the credit." he looked at astro. "if i hadn't built the fuses for your little firecrackers--" "_firecrackers!_" yelped astro. "why, you skinny space fake! if i hadn't built those nuclear reactors, _you_ wouldn't have anything to set off!" connel appeared in the small messroom of the _polaris_, his hands full of papers and drawings. "when you've finished congratulating each other, i'd like to say a few things!" he snapped. "congratulate _him_?" exclaimed roger. "skipper, his head's so thick, the noise on the power deck can't even reach his eardrums!" "just one more word, manning," growled astro, "and i'll take a deep breath and blow you away!" "_one more word out of either of you_," roared connel, "and i'll throw you both in the brig with mason and loring!" suddenly he glared at the five spacemen. "who's on prisoner watch today?" he asked. the four cadets and mr. shinny looked at each other then at roger. "uhhh--i am, sir," roger confessed. "i had a sneaking suspicion you would be!" said connel. "cadet manning, one of the first things an officer of the solar guard learns is to care for the needs of his men and prisoners before himself. did you know that, cadet manning?" "uhhh--yes, sir. i was just going to--" mumbled roger. "then go below and see that mason and loring get their rations!" "yes, sir," said roger. he got up and collected a tray of food. "all of you report to the control deck in five minutes for briefing," said connel and followed roger out of the door. "how do you like that?" said astro. "we break our backs for the guy and we're no sooner finished then he starts the old routine again!" "that has nothing to do with it, astro," said tom. "put yourself in his position. we've only got one or two things to think about. he's responsible for it all." "just like he was when i sailed with him twenty-five years ago," said shinny. he swallowed the remains of his tea and reached for a plug of tobacco. "he's all spaceman from the top of his head to the bottom of his space boots." "i'm rather inclined to agree with you, tom," said alfie mildly. "leadership carries with it the greatest of all burdens--responsibility for other peoples' lives. you, corbett, as a control-deck cadet, would do well to mark major connel's pattern of behavior." "listen," growled astro, "if tom ever turned out to be a rocket buster like connel--i'd--i'd--" "don't worry, astro," tom said, laughing. "i don't think there'll be another major connel in a million light years!" shinny laughed silently, his small frame shaking slightly. "say it again, tommy. not in the whole universe will there ever be another like old 'blast-off' connel!" on the deck below the messroom, roger, balancing a tray carefully on one hand, opened the electronic lock of the brig and then stepped back quickly, leveling a paralo-ray gun. "all right, mason, loring," he yelled, "come and get it!" the door slid open, and loring stuck his head out. "any funny business," roger warned, "and i'll stiffen you so fast, you won't know what hit you!" "it's about time you showed up!" growled loring. "whaddaya trying to do, starve us to death?" "that's not a bad idea!" said roger. loring took the tray. roger motioned him back inside the brig and slammed the door shut. he locked it and leaned against the grille. "better eat it while you can," he said. "they don't serve it so fancy on a prison asteroid." "you'll never get us on a prison asteroid," whined mason. "don't kid yourself," said roger. "as soon as we get the reactor units set, we're going to send this hunk of copper back to earth and then take you back. they'll bury you!" "who's going to do all that?" snapped loring. "a bunch of punk kids and a loudmouthed solar guard officer?" "yeah," retorted roger. "_cadet manning!_" connel's voice roared over the intercom. "you were ordered to report to the control deck in five minutes! you are already one minute late! report to the control deck on the double and _i mean double!_" loring and mason laughed. "old 'blast-off' connel's really got your number, eh, kid?" "ah, rocket off, you pinheaded piece of space junk! it didn't take him long to dampen _your_ tubes!" connel roared again. "_blast your hide, manning, report!_" "better raise ship, manning," said loring, "you might get another nasty demerit!" roger turned away and raced to the control deck. he entered breathlessly and stood beside his unit-mates while connel eyed him coldly. "thank you, cadet manning," said connel. "we appreciate your being here!" "yes, sir," mumbled roger. "all right," barked connel, "you know your assignments. we'll take the jet boats as before and go out in pairs. tom and myself, astro and roger, and shinny and alfie. we'll set up the reaction charges on junior at the points marked on the chart screen here." he indicated the chart on the projection. "copy them down on your own charts. each team will take three of the reaction units. my team will set up at points one, two, and three. astro and roger at four, five, and six. alfie and shinny at seven, eight, and nine. after you've set up the charges, attach the triggers for the fuses and return to the ship. watch your timing! if we fail, it'll be more than a year before junior will be in the same orbital position again. how much time do we have left, corbett?" tom glanced at the clock. "exactly two hours, sir," he said. "not much," said connel, "but enough. it shouldn't take more than an hour and a half to set up the units and get back to the ship to blast off. all clear? any questions?" there were no questions. "all right," said the officer, "put on your space gear and move out!" handling the lead-encased charges carefully, the six spacemen loaded the jet boats and, one by one, blasted off from the _polaris_ to positions marked on the map. working rapidly, each of the teams of two moved from one position to another on the surface of the desolate satellite. connel, referring constantly to his watch, counted the minutes as one by one the teams reported the installation of a reactor unit. "this is shinny. just finished installing reaction charge one at point seven ..." "this is manning. just finished installing reaction charge at point four ..." one after the other, the teams reported. connel, with tom piloting the jet boat, finished setting up their units at points one, two, and three and headed back to the _polaris_. "how much time, sir?" asked tom as he slowed the small craft for a landing. "less than a half hour, corbett," said connel nervously. "i'd better check on shinny and alfie." he called into the audiophone. "major connel to shinny and higgins, come in shinny--higgins!" "shinny here!" came the reply. "we're just finishing up the last unit. should be back in five minutes." "make it snappy!" said connel. "less than a half hour left!" "we'll make it," snorted shinny. "coming in for a touchdown," said tom. "better strap in, sir!" connel nodded. he laced several straps across his lap and chest, gripping the sides of the seat. tom sent the jet boat in a swooping dive, cut the acceleration, and brought the small ship smoothly inside the huge air lock in the side of the _polaris_. "i'd better get right up on the control deck and start warming up the circuits, sir," said tom. "good idea, tom," said connel. "i'll try and pick up manning and astro." tom left the officer huddling over the communicator in the jet boat. "major connel to manning and astro, come in!" called connel. he waited for a moment and then repeated. "manning--astro, come in! by the rings of saturn, come in!" there was the loud roar of an approaching jet boat. shinny guided the ship into the _polaris_ with a quick violent blast of the braking rockets. the noise was deafening. "belay that noise, you blasted space-brained idiot!" roared connel. "cut that acceleration!" shinny grinned and cut the rockets. the jet-boat catapult deck was quiet, and connel turned back to the communicator. "come in, manning--astro! this is major connel. come in!" on the opposite side of the airless satellite, roger and astro were busy digging a hole in the hard surface. near by lay the last of the explosive units to be installed. connel's voice thundered through their headset phones. "boy, is he blasting his jets!" commented roger. "yeah," grunted astro. "he should have to dig this blasted hole!" "well, this is where it's got to go. if the ground is hard, then it's our tough luck," said roger. "if we stick it anywhere else, it might mess up the whole operation." astro nodded and continued to dig. he held a small spade and jabbed at the ground. "how much--time--have we got left?" he gasped. "twenty minutes," replied roger. "you'd better hurry." "finished now," said astro. "get the reactor unit over here and set the fuse." roger picked up the heavy lead box and placed it gently inside the hole. "remember," astro cautioned, "set the fuse for two hours." "no, you're wrong," replied roger. "i've set the fuses each time, subtracting the amount of time since we left the _polaris_. i set this one for twenty minutes." "you're wrong, roger," said astro. "it's maximum time is two hours." "listen, you venusian clunk," exploded roger, "_i_ built this thing, so i know what i'm doing!" "but, roger--" protested astro. "twenty minutes!" said roger, and twisted the set-screw in the fuse. "o.k., it's all set. let's get out of here!" the two cadets raced back to the jet boat and blasted off immediately. once in space, astro turned to roger. "better check in with major connel before he tears himself to pieces!" "yeah," agreed roger. "i guess you're right." he flipped on the audio communicator. "attention! attention! manning to major connel. am making flight back to _polaris_. all installations complete." [illustration: "_remember," astro cautioned, "set the fuse for two hours._"] "what took you so long, manning?" barked connel in reply. "and why didn't you answer me?" "couldn't, sir," said roger. "we had a tough time digging a hole for the last unit." "come back to the _polaris_ immediately," said connel. "we're blasting off in fifteen minutes." "very well, sir," said roger. presently the jet boat circled the _polaris_ and made a landing run for the open port. roger braked the small craft and brought it to rest alongside the others. "that's it, spaceboy," he said to astro. "all out for the _polaris_ express back home!" "just be sure you give me a good course, manning," grunted astro, heaving his huge frame out of the small cabin of the jet boat, "and i'll give you all the thrust you want!" astro secured the jet boats while roger closed the air-lock hatch, shutting out the last view of the rugged little planetoid. roger threw the landscape a mocking kiss. "so long, junior! see you back home!" the two cadets climbed the ladder leading to the control deck. seated in front of the control panel, tom watched the sweeping hand of the solar clock. connel paced nervously up and down behind him. shinny and alfie stood to one side also watching the great clock. "how much time, corbett?" asked connel for the dozenth time. "junior gets his kick in the pants in ten minutes, sir," replied tom. "fine," said connel. "that gives me just enough time to notify space academy to get ready to receive junior's signal. you know what to do?" "i don't have to do anything, sir," answered tom, nodding to the solar clock over his head. "in nine minutes and twenty seconds, the reactor units go off automatically at one-second intervals." roger and astro entered the control deck and came to attention. connel returned their salute and put them at ease. "all right, our work here is done," said connel. "no point in hanging around any longer. tom, you can blast off immediately." "yes, sir," replied tom. connel climbed the ladder to the radar bridge to contact space academy. astro, roger, shinny, and alfie went to their posts and began quick preparations for the blast-off. one by one, they checked in to tom on the control deck. "power deck, ready to blast off!" reported astro. "radar bridge, all set. clear trajectory forward and up," said roger. "energize the cooling pumps!" bawled tom into the intercom. the great pumps began to wheeze under the strain of astro's sudden switch to full load without the usual slow build-up. tom watched the pressure needle rise slowly in front of him and finally reached out and gripped the master switch. "stand by to raise ship!" he yelled. "blast off minus five--four--three--two--one--_zeroooooo!_" he threw the switch. the great ship shivered, vibrated, and then suddenly shot away from the precious satellite. tom quickly adjusted for free fall by switching on the synthetic-gravity gyro generators and then announced over the intercom, "major connel! cadet corbett reporting. ship space-borne at exactly thirty-one, sir!" "very well, corbett," replied connel. "space academy sends the crew a '_well done!_' everything's set back home to take over the beam as soon as junior starts on his way back. how much time until zero blast-off on the satellite?" tom glanced at the clock. "less than two minutes, sir!" "all right," said connel over the intercom, "everybody to the control deck if you want to see junior do his stuff!" in a moment the six spacemen were gathered around the magnascope waiting for the final act of their great effort. breathlessly, their eyes flicking back and forth from the solar clock to the magnascope, they waited for the red hand to sweep around. "here it comes," said tom excitedly. "one second--two seconds--three--four--_five!_" on the surface of the planetoid, giant mushrooming clouds appeared climbing into the airless void. one by one the reactor units exploded. connel counted them as they blew up. "one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight--" he paused. junior began moving away from them. "nine!" shouted connel. "what happened to nine?" "roger," shouted astro, "you made a mistake on the timer!" "but i couldn't. i--i--" connel spun around, his eyes blazing, breathing hard. "what time did you set the last one for, roger?" he demanded. "why, twenty minutes to blast-off time, sir," answered the blond-headed cadet. "then it won't go off for another forty minutes," said connel. "but, sir--" began roger, and then fell silent. the room was quiet. everyone looked at roger and then at connel. "honestly, sir, i didn't mean to make a mistake. i--" pleaded roger. connel turned around. his face suddenly looked very tired. "that's all right, roger," he said quietly. "we've all been working pretty hard. one little mistake is bound to show up in an operation like this." he paused. "it's my fault. i should have checked those fuses myself." "does it make so much difference, sir?" asked astro. "a lot of difference, astro," said connel. he sat down heavily. "but how, sir?" asked tom. "it's very simple, tom," answered connel. his voice was strangely quiet. "junior spins on its axis in two hours, just as earth spins in twenty-four hours. i thought we had the explosions timed so at the proper moment we'd push junior out of his orbit around tara, and the greater orbit around alpha centauri, by utilizing both speeds, plus the initial thrust. but by being one blast short, forty minutes late, the explosion will take place when junior is forty minutes out of position"--he paused and calculated rapidly in his mind--"that's about forty-eight thousand miles out of position. when it goes off, instead of sending junior out into space, it'll blast it right into its own sun!" "isn't there something we can do, sir?" asked tom. "nothing, corbett," answered connel wearily. "instead of supplying the solar alliance with copper, in another week junior will be hardly more than a molten piece of space junk." he looked at the teleceiver screen. all ready, junior was falling away. "stand by for full acceleration, hyperdrive," said the big officer in a hoarse whisper. "we're heading home!" chapter the subdued whine of the hyperdrive filled the power deck and made roger wince as he stepped through the hatch and waved at astro. he climbed down the ladder and stopped beside the big venusian who stood stripped to the waist, watching the pressure gauges on the power-deck control board. "hiya, roger," said astro with a big grin. "hello, astro," replied roger and sat down on a stool near by. "excuse me a minute, hot-shot," said astro. "gotta check the baffling around reaction tube three." the big cadet hurriedly donned a lead-lined protective suit and entered the reaction chamber. after a moment he reappeared and took off the suit. he poured a glass of water, handed it to roger, and poured another for himself. "gets pretty hot down here," he said. "i don't like to use the air conditioner when i'm on hyperdrive. sucks my power output and reduces pressure on the oxygen pumps." roger nodded absently at the needlessly detailed explanation. astro looked at him sharply. "say, what's eating you?" "honestly, astro," said roger, "i've never felt more miserable in my life." "don't let it get you down, roger," said astro. "the major said it was a mistake anyone could make." "yeah," flared roger, "but have you seen the way he just--_talks_?" "talks?" asked astro blankly. "yeah, talks," said roger. "no yelling, or blasting off, or handing out demerits like they were candy. nothing! why he hasn't even chewed alfie out since we left junior. he just sits in his quarters." astro understood now and nodded his head in agreement. "yeah, you're right. i'd rather have him fusing his tubes than the way he is now." "tom must feel pretty rotten, too," said roger. "i haven't seen much of him either." "or alfie," put in astro. "neither of them have done anything but work. i don't think either of them has slept since we left tara." "it's all my fault!" said roger. "i'm nothing but a loudmouthed bag of space gas--with an asteroid for a head!" he got up and lurched toward the ladder. "hey, where you going?" yelled astro. "almost forgot," yelled roger from the top of the ladder. "i've got to feed our prisoners a meal. and the way i feel, i'd like to shove it down their throats!" roger went directly to the galley off the control deck and prepared a hasty meal for loring and mason. he piled it on a tray and went below to the brig. "all right, loring," he growled, "come and get it!" "well, well, well," sneered loring. "where's the big manning spirit? you boys are kinda down since you blew that little operation, huh?" "listen, you space crawler," said manning coldly, "one more word out of you and i'll bring you out in the passageway and pound that head of yours into space junk!" "i wish you'd try that, you little squirt!" snarled loring. "i'd break you in two!" "o.k., pal," said roger, "i'm going to give you that chance!" he opened the door to the cell and loring stepped out. holding the paralo-ray gun on him, roger relocked the door. left inside, mason stuck his face close to the grille. "give it to him, loring," he hissed. "take him apart!" roger threw the paralo-ray gun in the corner of the passageway and faced the heavier spaceman. he held his arms loosely at his side, and he balanced on the balls of his feet. a slight smile played at the corners of his mouth. "start breaking, loring," he said quietly. "why, you--" snarled loring and rushed in. he swung wildly for roger's head, but the cadet slipped inside the punch and drove a hard right to loring's mid-section. the prisoner doubled over, staggered back, and slowly straightened up. roger's lips were drawn tightly in a grimace of cold anger. his eyes were shining hard and bright. he stepped in quickly and chopped two straight lefts to loring's jaw, then doubled the spaceman up again with a hard right to the heart. loring gasped and tried to clinch. but roger threw a straight jolting right to his jaw. the prisoner slumped to the floor, out cold. the fight was finished. roger went over, picked up the paralo-ray gun, and opened the cell door again. "all right, mason," he said coldly, "drag him inside. and if you want to try me for size, just say so." mason didn't answer. he merely hurried out, and grabbing loring by the feet, dragged him inside. roger slammed the door and locked it. [illustration] rubbing his knuckles and feeling better than he had felt for days, he started back to the radar bridge. as he neared major connel's quarters, he heard connel's voice. he stopped and listened outside the door. "it's a beautiful job of calculation, tom," connel was saying. "i don't see how you and higgins could have done it in so short a time. and without an electronic computer to aid you. beautiful job--really excellent--but i'm afraid it's too risky." "i've already talked to astro and mr. shinny, sir," said tom, "and they've volunteered. i haven't spoken to roger yet, but i'm sure he'd be willing to try." roger stepped through the door. "whatever it is," said roger, "i'm ready." "eavesdropping on your commanding officer," said connel, eying the blond-headed cadet speculatively, "is a very serious offense." "i just happened to hear my name mentioned, sir," replied roger with a smile. connel turned back to tom. "go over that again, tom." "well, sir," said tom, "junior's falling into the sun at a speed of twenty-two miles a second right now. but we could still land a jet boat on junior, set up more nuclear explosions to blast him out of the sun's grip, and send him on his way to our solar system. we wouldn't get as much speed as before, but we'd still save the copper." by this time, astro and shinny had joined the group and were standing outside the door in the passageway, listening silently. connel tugged at his chin. "let's see," he said, "if we could get back to tara in three days ..." he looked up at astro. "do you think you could get us back in three days, astro?" "major connel, for another crack at junior," roared the big venusian, "i'd get you back in a day and a half!" "all right," said connel. "that's one problem. but there are others." "what, sir?" asked tom. "we have to prepare reactant fuses and we have to build new reactor units. if we could do that--" "if astro can get us back," said shinny, "and roger and this smart young feller here, alfie, can make up some fuses, i'll build them there units. after all, astro showed me how once. i guess i can follow his orders!" "good!" said connel. "now there is the element of time. how much time would we need on junior?" he looked at tom. "let me answer this way, sir," said tom. "we'd only have two hours to plant the reaction charges and trigger them, but that should be enough." "why so close, tom?" asked roger. "it has to be," answered tom. "we know what the pull of the sun is, and the power of the jet boat. when the sun's pull becomes greater than the escape speed of the jet boat, the boat would never clear. it would keep falling into the sun. i've based this figure on reaching junior at the last possible moment." "it'd take at least five men to set up the five explosions we need," mused connel. "that means one of us will have to stay on the _polaris_." there was an immediate and loud chorus of "not me!" from everyone. "all right," said connel, "we'll draw numbers. one, two, three, four, five, and six. the man who draws number six will stay with the _polaris_. all right?" "yes, sir," said tom, glancing around. "we agree to that." connel went to his desk and wrote quickly on six slips of paper. he folded each one, dumped them in his cap, and offered it to astro. "all right, astro," said connel, "draw!" astro licked his lips and stuck in his big paw. the venusian fingered several, then pulled out a slip of paper. he opened it and read aloud. "number two! i go!" he turned and grinned at the others. connel offered his cap to alfie. alfie dipped in two fingers and pulled out a slip. "number four! i go!" he squealed. roger and shinny drew numbers one and three. tom looked at the major. "go ahead, corbett," said connel. "after you, sir," said tom. "i said draw one!" roared connel. "yes, sir," said tom. he reached in and quickly pulled out one of the two remaining slips. "number six," he said quietly. "i stay." connel, not bothering to open the last one, slapped the hat on his head and turned away. "but, sir," said tom, "i--ah--" connel cut him off with a wave of his hands. "no _buts_!" he turned to the others. "manning, higgins! get me a course back to junior and make it clean and straight. astro, shinny, stand by on the power deck for course change. tom, get on the control deck. we're going back to snatch a hot copper filling right out of a sun's teeth!" once again the energy of the six spacemen was burned in twenty-four hour stretches of improvisation and detailed calculations. roger and alfie redesigned the fuse to ensure perfect co-ordination of the explosions. astro and shinny surpassed their previous efforts by putting enough power in the five small reaction units to more than do the job required. tom, standing long watches on the control deck, devoted his spare time to the torturous equations that would mean failure or success to the whole project. and major connel, alert and alive once more, drove his crew toward greater goals than it had achieved before. nearly three days later, the _polaris_ appeared over the twin oceans of tara and glided into an orbit just beyond the pull of the planet's gravity. aboard the spaceship, last-minute preparations were made by the red-eyed spacemen. in constant contact with space academy, using the resources of the academy's scientific staff to check the more difficult calculations, the six men on the _polaris_ worked on. connel appeared on the radar bridge and flipped on the long-range scanner. "have to find out where junior is," he said to roger and alfie. "that doesn't work, sir," said roger. "what do you mean it doesn't work?" exploded connel. "junior's falling into the sun, sir. the radiations are blocking it out from our present position." "couldn't we move to another position?" asked the officer. "yes, sir," said roger, "we could. but to do that would take extra time, and we haven't got it." "then how are you going to find junior?" asked connel. "alfie's busy with a special scanner, sir, one that's especially sensitive to copper. since the sun is composed mostly of gas, with this filter only junior will show up on the screen." "by the rings of saturn," exclaimed connel, "you mean to tell me that alfie higgins is building a new radar scanner, just like that?" "why, yes, sir," answered roger innocently. "is there something wrong with that?" "no--no--" said connel, backing off the bridge. "just--just go right on. you're doing fine! yessirree, fine!" he literally ran from the bridge. "most humorous of you, manning," said alfie, smiling. "i'll tell you something funnier than that," said roger. "i feel the same way he does. is there anything you _can't_ do, alfie?" alfie thought a moment. "yes, there is," he said at last. "what?" demanded roger. "i can't--shall i say?--make as much progress as you do with--er--space dolls." roger's jaw dropped. "space dolls! you mean--girls?" alfie nodded his head. "listen," said roger, "when we get junior on his way home, and we get back to the academy, i promise you i'll show you how to really blast your jets with the space lovelies in atom city!" alfie put out his hand seriously. "and if you do that for me, roger, i'll show you how to use the new electronic brain they recently acquired at the academy. only one other person can operate it. but you definitely have the potential." roger stared at him stupidly. "huh? yeah. oh, sure!" gradually the mass of data was brought together and co-ordinated, and finally, as tom stood beside him, major connel checked over his calculations. "i can't see a thing wrong with it, tom," connel said at last. "i guess that's it. figuring we land on junior at exactly seventeen hundred hours, we'd reach the point of no return exactly two hours later." "shall i alert stations to blast off for junior?" asked tom. "yes," said connel, "bring the _polaris_ to dead ship in space about three hundred miles above junior. that's when we'll blast off in jet boats." "yes, sir," said tom. his eyes bright, he turned to the intercom. "all right, you space babies," he announced, "this is it. stand by to blast junior. here we come!" [illustration] chapter dawn broke over the tangled jungles of tara, followed by the bright sun of alpha centauri rising out of the eastern sea and slowly climbing higher and higher. in the dense unexplored wilderness, living things, terrible things, opened their eyes and resumed their never-ending quest for food. once again alpha centauri had summoned one hemisphere of its satellite planet to life. meanwhile, high in the heavens above tara, six earthmen blasted into the flaming brilliance of the sun star. using delicate instruments instead of claws, and their intelligence instead of blind hunger, they prepared to do battle with the sun star and force it to release the precious copper satellite from its deadly, consuming grasp. the crew of the _polaris_ assembled on the control deck of the great spaceship, and facing their commanding officer, waited patiently for the word that would send them hurtling out to their target. "the jet boats are all ready, sir," reported tom. "we're dead ship in orbit around junior at an altitude of about three hundred miles." "does that mean we're falling into the sun too?" gasped shinny. "it sure does, mr. shinny," said alfie, "at more than twenty miles per second." "the jet boats have enough power to get back from junior to the _polaris_, mr. shinny," reassured tom. "and then the _polaris_ can blast off from here. the jet boats wouldn't go much higher off junior this close to the sun." "but if we go beyond the two-hour limit, the _polaris_ can't blast off either," commented roger dryly. "all right. is everything set?" asked connel. "astro, is the reactant loaded?" "no, sir," said astro, "but it's all ready to go in." "good!" said connel. "now we all know how important--and how dangerous--this operation is. i don't have to tell you again. you stay here on the control deck, tom, and keep in touch with us on junior at all times. you know what to do?" "yes, sir," replied tom. "i'm to stand by and give you a minute-by-minute warning check until final blast-off time." "right," said connel. "and remember, we're counting on you to tell us when to blast off. we'll be too busy down there to pay any attention." "i understand, sir," replied tom. his face was passive. he was well aware of the responsibility. "very well," said connel finally, "the rest of you board your jet boats! this is going to be the hottest ride we'll ever take, and i don't want it to get any hotter!" silently, their faces grim masks, the five spacemen filed out of the control room, leaving tom alone. presently he heard the cough of the rockets in the jet boats as one by one the small space craft blasted out of the _polaris_. suddenly tom began to shake as he realized the importance of his task--the responsibility of counting time for five men, time that could cost them their lives. if he made a single mistake, miscounted by a minute, the expedition to junior would end not only in failure, but in tragedy. as quickly as the thought came, tom pushed it aside and turned to the control board. no time now for fear. now, more than any other time in his life, he had to keep himself alert and ready for every emergency. as a child he had often dreamed of the day when, as a spaceman, he would be faced with an emergency only he could handle. and in the dreams he had come through with flying colors. but now that it was a reality, tom felt nothing but cold sweat breaking out on his forehead. he turned his whole attention to the great solar clock overhead. time had already begun slipping away. ten minutes of the two hours had swept past. they must be on junior by now, he thought, and flipped on the teleceiver. he focused on the satellite's surface. there in front of him were the three jet boats. major connel, roger, astro, alfie, and mr. shinny were so close that tom felt as though he could touch them. they were unloading the first reactor unit, with astro and shinny digging the hole. tom glanced at the clock, turned to the microphone, and announced clearly: "attention! attention! corbett to connel. one hour and forty-eight minutes until blast-off time--one hour and forty-eight minutes to blast-off." he flipped the switch and watched the screen with rising excitement. the crew on the satellite had completed the installation of the first reactor unit. he saw them blasting off in their jet boats for the second spot. he adjusted the teleceiver and tried to follow them, but they disappeared. he glanced at the clock. "attention! attention! corbett to connel. one hour and forty-seven minutes to blast-off--one hour and forty-seven minutes to blast-off." on the satellite, in the deep shadow of a protecting cliff, each of the five earthmen paused involuntarily when they heard tom's warning. "forget about the time!" snapped connel. "by the blessed rings of saturn, we'll finish this job if it's the last thing we do!" connel went to each of the working figures and adjusted the valve, regulating the air-cooling humidity control on their space suits. "getting pretty hot, eh, boys?" he joked, as he stopped one and then the other to make the delicate adjustment counteracting the heat that was increasing each second they remained on the satellite. "how hot do you think it is, sir?" asked roger. "never mind the heat," said connel. "these suits were designed to withstand the temperature of the light side of mercury! it gets boiling there, so i guess we can stand it here for a while." one by one, alfie, shinny, roger, and astro completed their assigned roles, digging the holes, placing the reactors inside, setting the fuse, covering it up, then quickly gathering the equipment, piling back into the three jet boats, and heading for the next point. landing, they would tumble out of the small space craft almost before the rocket had stopped firing and begin their frantic digging in the hard surface. [illustration: _landing, they would tumble out of the jet boat and begin their frantic digging_] over and over, they heard tom's crisp clear count of time. five minutes passed, then ten, and before they knew it, a full half-hour of the precious time had vanished. they completed the installation of the second unit and climbed back into the jet boats. the first two units had been buried at points protected from the sun by cliffs, and they had been sheltered from the burning rays. but, approaching the position for the third reactor unit, connel searched in vain for some shade. he wasted five precious minutes, scouting an area of several miles, but he could find nothing to protect them on the flat plain. "better put in the ultraviolet glass shields in our helmets, boys," he called into the jet-boat communicator. "it's going to be mighty hot, and dangerous." "aye, aye, sir," came the replies from the other two jet boats soaring close by. roger began refitting their space helmets with the dark glass that would shield them from the strong rays of the enlarging sun. "ever been outside in the direct path of the sun with no protection, roger?" asked astro. "no," replied roger. "have you?" "once," said astro softly. "on the second moon of mars, phobos. i was bucking rockets on the old chemical burners. i was on a freighter called the _happy spaceman_. a tube blew on us. luckily we were close enough to phobos to make a touchdown, or the leak would have reached the main fuel tanks and blown us clean out to another galaxy." "what happened?" asked roger. "i had to go outside," said astro. "i was junior rocketman in the crew, so naturally i had to do all the dirty work." tom's warning call from the _polaris_ control deck, tuned to the open communicators of all the jet boats, broke through the loud-speaker. "attention! attention! corbett to connel. one hour and twenty minutes to blast-off time. one hour and twenty minutes to blast-off time." the two cadets looked at each other as they heard tom's voice, but neither spoke. finally roger asked, "what happened on phobos?" "no one bothered to tell me," continued astro, "that i had to protect myself from the ultraviolet rays of the sun, since phobos didn't have an atmosphere. it was one of my first hops into space and i didn't know too much. i went outside and began working on the tube. i did the job all right, but for three weeks after, my face was swollen and i couldn't open my eyes. i almost went blind." roger grunted and continued to line the clear plastic fish-bowl helmets with the darker protective shields. connel's voice rang through the cabin over the communicator: "i guess we'd better go down and get it over with. i don't see anything that will give us any protection down there. be sure your humidity control is turned up all the way. as soon as you step outside the jet boat, you're going to be hit by a temperature of four hundred degrees!" "aye, aye, sir," came shinny's reply over the intercom. roger flipped the communicator on and acknowledged the order. astro and shinny followed connel's jet boat in a long sweeping dive to the surface of the satellite. stepping out of the air-cooled jet boat onto the torrid unprotected surface of the flat plain was like stepping into a furnace. even with space suits as protection, the five earthmen were forced to work in relays in the digging of the hole for the reactor unit. "attention! attention! corbett to connel. one hour exactly to blast-off time! one hour--sixty minutes--to blast-off time." tom flicked the teleceiver microphone off, and on the teleceiver screen, watched his spacemates work under the broiling sun. they were ahead of time. one hour to complete two more units. tom allowed himself a sigh of hope and relief. they could still snatch the copper satellite from the powerful pull of the sun. suddenly tom heard a sound behind him and whirled around. his eyes bulged in horror. "loring!" he gasped. "take your hand off that microphone, corbett," snarled loring, "or i'll freeze you!" "how--how did you get out?" tom stammered. "your buddy, manning," sneered loring with a short laugh, "decided he wanted to paste my ears back. so i let him. he was so anxious to make me lose a few teeth that he didn't notice the spoon i kept!" "spoon?" asked tom incredulously. "yeah," said mason, stepping through the door, a paralo-ray gun leveled at tom. "a few teeth for a spoon. a good trade. we waited for your pals to leave the ship, and then i short-circuited the electronic lock on the brig." tom stared at the two men unbelievingly. "all right, corbett, get over there to that control board," growled loring, waving the paralo-ray gun at tom. "we're going back to tara." "tara?" exclaimed tom. "but major connel and the others--they're--they're down on the satellite. if i don't pick them up, they'll fall into the sun!" "well, ain't that too bad," sneered loring. "listen to that, mason. if we don't hang around and pick them up, they'll fall into the sun!" mason laughed harshly and advanced toward tom. "i only got one regret, corbett. that i can't stay around to see connel and the manning punk fry! now get this wagon outta here, and get it out quick!" [illustration] chapter "major!" shouted astro. "look! the _polaris_! the _polaris_ is blasting off!" the five earthmen stared up at the silvery spaceship that was rapidly disappearing into the clear blue void of space. without hesitation, connel raced for the nearest jet boat and roared into the communicator. "corbett! corbett! come in, tom!" he waited, the silence of the loud-speaker more menacing than anything the spaceman had ever encountered before. again and again, the solar guard officer tried to raise the cadet on the _polaris_. finally he turned back to the four crewmen who hovered around the jet boat, hoping against hope. "whatever it is," he said, "i'm sure tom is doing the right thing. we came down here to do a job and we're going to do it! get moving! we still have to set up the rest of these reactor units." without a word, the five men returned to their small ships and followed their commanding officer. the sun grew larger and the heat more intense with each minute, since each minute brought them almost thirteen hundred miles closer to the sun's blazing surface. with the humidity-control and air-cooling mechanisms in the space suits working at top capacity but affording little relief, alfie, roger, shinny, and astro buried the fourth reactor unit and headed for the fifth and last emplacement. occasionally one of them would turn and cast a swift glance at the clear blue space overhead, secretly hoping to find the rocket cruiser had returned. or, they would strain their ears for tom's voice counting off the minutes so carefully for them. but they saw nothing and they heard nothing. they concentrated on their jobs, working like demons to complete the installations as planned. they could not stop now and wonder what had happened to the _polaris_, or even hope for its speedy return. they had a job to do, and they went about it silently, efficiently, and surely. astro stood up, the small spade in his hand hanging loosely at his side. he watched roger and alfie bring the last of the reactor units from major connel's jet boat. they gently lowered it into the hole and stepped back while shinny, under the watchful eyes of major connel, set the fuse. shinny stepped back, and astro began covering up the lead box. "that's it," said connel. "we're finished!" what connel meant was that they were finished with the placement of the reactor units, but he knew immediately that his words had been taken to mean something each felt but had not dared to put into words. connel started to correct this misunderstanding but caught himself in time. it would not do, he thought, for him to make excuses for what they knew to be the truth. "all right, everyone in my jet boat," he snapped. "astro, you and roger take all the fuel out of the other boats and pour it into mine. it'll be a tight squeeze, but we can all fit into one craft. no use expending fuel wastefully." astro and roger bent to the task of draining the fuel from their jet boats and loading it into connel's. alfie came over to join them, while shinny and connel scanned the sky overhead for some sign of the _polaris_. "this is really a desperate situation to be in, isn't it, roger?" asked alfie. "offhand, i'd say yes," drawled roger, "but since we've got two big huskies like astro and major connel along, i don't think we'll have much trouble." "why not?" asked alfie. "we'll just let them get out and help push!" "and if that doesn't work," snorted astro, "we'll stick manning outside and let him talk about himself. that oughta give us enough gas to get us away from this hunk of copper." "i believe," said alfie emphatically, "that you're joshing me, manning." "now, whatever gave you that idea?" asked roger in a hurt tone. "this _is_ a serious situation, isn't it?" asked alfie, looking at astro. "it sure is, alfie," said astro soberly, "and i'm the first one to say i'm a little scared!" alfie smiled. "i'm very glad you said that, astro," he said, "because i feel exactly the same way!" he turned and walked back to major connel. "what was the idea of telling him that?" hissed roger at astro. "what are you trying to do? get the little guy space happy, or something?" "look at him!" said astro. "i'm twice his size. he figures if a big guy like me is scared, then he's got a right to be scared too!" roger grunted in appreciation of the way astro had treated alfie's fears and turned back to the loading of the fuel. major connel walked over and watched them transfer the last of the fuel into the tanks. "how much have you got there, astro?" he asked. "i'd say enough to sustain flight for about three hours, sir. considering we'll have such a big load." "ummmmh," mused connel. "you know we're up against big odds, don't you?" roger and astro nodded. "if tom doesn't come back soon, we'll be so far into the pull of the sun, even a ship the size of the _polaris_ wouldn't be able to break out." "how much time have we got, sir?" asked roger. "not too much, manning," said connel. "of course we can blast off in the jet boat and get up a few hundred miles, in case tom does come back. then he won't have to bring the _polaris_ down here. but if time runs out on us up there, we'll have to come back and take our chance on junior being blasted out of the sun's grip." there was a pause while astro and roger considered this. "that would mean," asked roger, "that we'd be here when the reactor units go off, wouldn't it, sir?" "that's right, manning," said connel, admitting to the danger. "even if junior were blasted out of the pull of the sun, we couldn't survive the explosions." "couldn't we blast off in the jet boat and then land after the explosions, sir?" asked astro. "yes," admitted connel, "we could do that. but the radioactivity would be so powerful we couldn't last more than a few days. we have no antiradiation gear. not even food or water." he paused and scanned the sky. "no," he said in a surprisingly casual voice, "the only way we can get out of this is for tom to come back and get us." shinny and alfie came over and joined the group around the jet boat. no one said anything. there wasn't anything to say. each of them felt the heat burning through his space suit. each felt the same fear tugging at his throat. there was nothing to say. the _polaris_ was not to be seen; the sky was empty of everything except alpha centauri, the great burning mass of gases that once they had all seen only as a quiet twinkling star in the heavens, never dreaming that someday it would be pulling them relentlessly into its molten self. tom corbett had a plan. he sat at the control board of the great rocket cruiser, apparently watching the needles and gauges on the panel, but his mind was racing desperately. the two-hour deadline had just passed. the great solar clock had swung its red hand past the last second. only a miracle could save the five men on junior now. but tom was not counting on miracles. he was counting on his plan. "keep this space wagon driving, corbett!" ordered loring from behind him. "keep them rockets wide open!" "listen, loring," pleaded tom. "how about giving those fellows a break? if i don't pick them up, they'll all be killed." "ain't that too bad," snarled mason. "look," said tom desperately, "i'll promise you nothing will happen to you. we'll let you go free. we'll--" loring cut him off. "shut your trap and concentrate on them controls! you and major connel and them other punks are the only guys between me staying free or going back to a prison asteroid. so you don't think i'm going to let them stay alive, do you?" he grinned crookedly. "you dirty space crawler!" growled tom and suddenly leaped up from the control seat. loring raised the paralo-ray gun threateningly. "one more move outta you and i'll freeze you so solid you'll think you're a chunk of ice!" he yelled. mason stepped to the other side of the control deck. they had tom blocked on either side. "now get back to them controls, corbett," snarled loring, "or i'll give it to you right now." "o.k., loring, you win," said tom. he sat down and faced the control panel. he tried hard not to smile. they had fallen for it. now they were separated. mason remained on the opposite side of the room. tom took a deep breath, crossed his fingers, and put the next step of his plan into action. he reached out and pulled the master acceleration switch all the way back. the _polaris_ jumped ahead as if shot out of a cannon. "hey," growled mason, "what're you doing?" "you want more speed, don't you?" demanded tom. "o.k.," said mason, "but don't try any funny stuff!" "i don't see how i can. you've got me nailed with that paralo-ray," tom replied. he got up leisurely, so as not to excite the nervous trigger finger of loring, and turned slowly. "what is it this time?" demanded loring. "i just gave you an extra burst of speed. all the _polaris_ will take. now i've got to adjust the mixture of the fuel, otherwise she'll kick out on you and we'll have to clean out the tubes." "yeah," sneered loring. "well, i happen to know you do that right on the control board." he motioned with the paralo-ray gun. "get back down!" "on regular space drive, you do," agreed tom. "but we're on hyperdrive now. it has to be done there"--he pointed to a cluster of valves and wheels at one side of the control deck--"one of those valve wheels." "stay where you are," said mason. "i'll do it!" he moved to the corner. "which one is it?" he asked. tom gulped and struggled hard to keep the terrible nervousness out of his voice. he had to sound as casual as possible. "the red one. turn it to the right, hard!" he said. loring sat down and mason bent over the valve wheel. he gave the wheel a vicious twist. suddenly there was the sound of a motor slowing down somewhere inside the great ship. tom gripped the edge of the control board and waited. slowly at first, but surely, tom felt himself beginning to float off his chair. "hey!" yelled mason. "i'm--i'm floating!" "it's the gravity generators," yelled loring. "corbett's pulled a fast one. we're in free fall!" tom lifted his feet and pushed as hard as he could against the control panel. he shot out of the chair and across the control room just as loring fired his ray gun. there was a loud hiss as the gun was fired, and then the thud of a body against the wall, as loring was suddenly shoved by the recoil of the charge. tom huddled in the upper corner of the control deck like a spider, his legs drawn up underneath him waiting for mason to fire. but the smaller spaceman was tumbling head over heels in the center of the room. the more he exerted himself, the more helpless he became. his arms and legs splayed out in an effort to level himself, as he kept trying to fire the ray gun. tom saw his chance and lunged through the air again, straight at the floating spaceman. he passed him in mid-air. mason made an attempt to grab him, but tom wrenched his body to one side and pulled the ray gun out of the other's hand. he flipped over and turned his attention to loring who was more dangerous, since he was now backed up against a bulkhead waiting for tom to present a steady target. loring started to fire, but tom saw him in time and shot away from the wall toward the hatch. he twisted his body completely around, and with his shoulder hunched over, fired at loring with his ray gun. the charge hit the target and loring became rigid, his body slowly floating above the deck. his back to the wall, braced for the recoil, tom brought his arm around slowly and aimed at mason. he fired, and the spaceman stiffened. tom smiled. neither of the spacemen would give him any more trouble now. he pushed slightly to the left and shot over to the valve that mason had unwittingly turned off. tom turned it on and clung to an overhead pipe until he felt the reassuring grip of the synthetic gravity pull him to the deck. loring and mason, in the same positions they had been in when tom fired, settled slowly to the deck. tom walked over and looked at both of them. he knew they could hear him. "for smart spacemen like you two," said tom, "you sure forgot your basic physics. newton's laws of motion, remember? everything in motion tends to keep going at the same speed, unless influenced by an outside force. firing the ray gun was the outside force that will land you right on a prison asteroid! and you'd better start praying that i can pull those fellows off that satellite, because if i don't, you'll wind up frying in the sun with us!" he started to drag them to a locker and release them from the effects of the ray blast, but, remembering their cold-blooded condemnation of connel and the others to death on the satellite, he decided to let them remain where they were. he turned to the control board and flipped on the microphone. he was too far away to pick up an image on the teleceiver, but the others could hear him on the audio, if, thought tom, they were still alive. "attention! attention! _polaris_ to major connel! major connel, can you hear me? come in, major connel--astro--roger--somebody--come in!" he turned away from the mike and fired the starboard jets full blast, making a sweeping curve in space and heading the _polaris_ back to junior. [illustration] chapter "there's only one answer, boys," said connel. "loring and mason have escaped and taken over the ship. i can't think of any other reason tom would abandon us like this." the jet boat was crowded. alfie, the smallest, was sitting on astro's lap. for more than an hour they had circled above the copper satellite, searching the surrounding skies in vain for some sign of the _polaris_. "major," said roger, who was hunched over the steering wheel of the small space craft, "we're almost out of fuel. we'd better drop down on the night side of junior, the side away from the sun. at least there we'd be out of the direct heat." "very well, roger," said connel. "in fact, we could keep shifting into the night side every hour." then he added quietly, thoughtfully, "but we're out of fuel, you said?" "yes, sir," said roger. "there's just enough to get down." roger sent the craft in a shallow dive. suddenly the rockets cut out. the last of the fuel was gone. roger glided the jet boat to a smooth stop on the night side of the planetoid. "how much longer before the reactor units go up?" asked shinny. connel turned, thinking he had heard something on the communicators, then answered shinny's question. "only four hours," he said. the crew of spacemen climbed out of the jet boat into the still blackness of the night side of the planet. there wasn't anything left to do. they sat around on the hard surface of the planet, staring at the strange stars overhead. "you know," said astro, "i might be able to set up something to convert some of the u in the reactors to fuel the jet boat." "impossible, astro," said alfie. "you'd need a reduction gear. and not only that, but you haven't any tools to handle the mass. if you opened one of those boxes, you'd be fried immediately by the radiation!" "alfie's right," said connel. "there's nothing to do but wait." major connel turned his face up as far as he could in the huge fish-bowl helmet to stare at the sky. his eyes wandered from star cluster to star cluster, from glowing regulus, to bright and powerful sirius. he stifled a sigh. how much he had wanted to see more--and more--and more of the great wide, high, and deep! he remembered his early days as a youth on his first trip to luna city; his first sensation at touching an alien world; his skipper, old, wise, and patient, who had given him his creed as a spaceman: "travel wide, deep, and high," the skipper had said to the young connel, "but never so far, so wide, or so deep as to forget that you're an earthman, or how to act like an earthman!" even now, years later, the gruff voice rang in his ears. it wasn't long after that that he had met shinny. connel smiled behind the protection of his helmet, as he looked at the wizened spaceman, who was now old and toothless, but who still had the same merry twinkle in his eye that connel had noticed the first time he saw him. connel had signed on as first officer on a deep spacer bound for titan. shinny had come aboard and reported to connel as rocketman. shinny had promptly started roaring through the passageways of the huge freighter in his nightshirt singing snatches of old songs at the top of his voice. it had taken connel four hours to find where shinny had hidden the bottle of rocket juice! connel laughed. he looked over at the old man fondly. [illustration] "say, nick," said connel, addressing the man by his given name for the first time, "you remember the time it took me four hours to find that bottle of rocket juice you hid on that old titan freighter?" shinny cackled, his thin voice coming over the headphones of the others as well as connel's. "i sure do, lou!" replied shinny, using connel's first name. they were just old spacemen now, reliving old times together. "funny thing, though, you never knew i had two more bottles hidden in the tube chamber!" "why, you old space crawler!" roared connel. "you put one over on me!" [illustration] roger and astro and alfie had never known connel's first name. they rolled the name over in their minds, fitting the name to the man. unknown to each other, they decided that the name fitted the man. lou connel! "say, lou," asked shinny, "where in the blessed universe did you come from? you never told me." there was a long pause. "a place called telfair estates, in the deep south on the north american continent. i was raised on a farm close by. i used to go fishing late at night and stare up at the stars." he paused again. "i ran away from home. i don't know if--if--anyone's still there or not. i never went back!" there was a long silence as each man saw a small boy fishing late at night, barefoot, his toes dangling in the water, a worm wiggling on the end of a string, more interested in the stars that twinkled overhead than in any fish that might swim past and seize the hook. "where are you from, nick?" asked connel. "born in space," cackled shinny, "on a passenger freighter carrying colonists out to titan. never had a breath of natural fresh air until i was almost a grown man. nothing but synthetic stuff under the atmosphere screens. my father was a mining engineer. i was the only kid. one night a screen busted and nearly everybody suffocated or froze to death. my pa and ma was among 'em. i blasted off after that. been in the deep ever since. and you know, by the blessed rings of saturn, i'd be on a nice farm near venusport, living on a pension, if you hadn't kicked me out of the solar guard!" "why, you broken down old piece of space junk," roared connel, "i oughta--" connel never finished what he was going to say. "attention! attention! roger--astro--major connel--come in, please! this is tom on the _polaris_!" as if they had been struck by a bolt of lightning, the five spacemen sat up and then raced to the jet boat. "connel to corbett!" roared the major. "where are you? what happened?" "i haven't got time to explain now, sir," said tom. "loring and mason escaped and forced me to take them to tara. i managed to overcome them and blast back here. meet me up about fifty miles above junior, sir. i'm bringing the _polaris_ in!" "no!" yelled connel. "it's no use, tom. we're out of fuel. we've used up all our power." "then stand by," said tom grimly. "i'm coming in for a landing!" "no, tom!" roared connel. "there's nothing you can do. we're too far into the sun's pull. you'll never blast off again!" "i don't care if we all wind up as cinders," said tom, "i'm coming in!" the communicator went dead and from the left, over the close horizon of the small satellite, the _polaris_ swept into view like a red-tailed fire dragon. it shot up in a pretouchdown maneuver, and then began to drop slowly to the surface of the planetoid. no sooner had the _polaris_ touched the dry airless ground than the air-lock hatch was opened. from the crystal port on the control deck, tom waved to the men below him. shinny climbed into the lock first, followed by astro, alfie, roger, and connel. while roger and alfie closed the hatch, astro and connel adjusted the oxygen pressure and waited for the supply to build to normal. at last the hissing stopped, and the hatch to the inner part of the ship opened. tom greeted them with a smile and an outstretched hand. "glad to have you aboard!" he joked. after the back slapping between roger, astro, and tom was over, connel questioned tom on his strange departure from the satellite. "it was just like i told you, sir," explained tom. "they got out of the brig," he paused, not mentioning the spoon that loring had used or how he had gotten it. "they forced me to take them to tara. i managed to get the gravity turned off and gave them a lesson in free-fall fighting. they're still frozen stiff up on the control deck." "good boy!" said connel. "i'll go and have a talk with them. meantime, astro, you and shinny and alfie get below and see how much fuel we have in emergency supply. we're going to need every ounce we have." "aye, aye, sir," said astro. the three hurried to the power deck. connel followed roger and tom to the control deck. loring and mason were still in the positions they were in when tom had fired his paralo-ray. connel took tom's gun and switched to the neutralizer. he fired twice and the two men rose shakily to their feet. connel faced them, his eyes burning. "i'm going to say very little to you two space-crawling rats!" snapped connel. "i'm not going to lock you in the brig; i'm not going to confine you in any manner. but if you make one false move, i'll court-martial you right here and now! you've caused enough trouble with your selfishness, jeopardizing the lives of six men. if we fail to get off this satellite, it'll be because _you_ put us in this position. now get below and see what aid you can give astro. and if either of you so much as raises your voice, i'm going to let _him_ take care of you! is that clear?" "yes, sir!" mumbled loring. "we understand, sir. and we'll do everything we can to--to--make up for what we've done." "the only thing you can do is to stay out of my sight!" said connel coldly. loring and mason scuttled past connel and climbed down to the power deck. "attention! attention! control deck--major connel! sir, this is roger on the radar bridge. i just checked over tom's figures on thrust, sir, and i'm not sure, but i think we've passed the point of safety." "thanks, roger," said connel. he turned to the intercom. "power deck, check in!" "power deck, aye," said astro. "loring and mason there?" asked connel. "yes, sir. i'm putting them right to work in the radiation chamber, sir. i'm piling all emergency fuel into the reaction chambers to try for one big push!" "why?" asked connel. "i heard what roger said, sir," replied astro. "this'll give us enough thrust to clear the sun's gravity, but there's something else that might not take it." "what?" asked connel. "the cooling pumps, sir," said astro. "they may not be able to handle a load as hot as this. we might blow up." connel considered this a moment. "do what you can, astro. i have absolute faith in you." "aye, aye, sir," said astro. "and thank you. if this wagon holds together, i'll get her off." connel turned to tom who stood ready at the control panel. "all set, sir," said tom. "roger's given me a clear trajectory forward and up. all we need is astro's push!" "unless astro can build enough pressure in those cooling pumps to handle the overload of reactant fuel, we're done for. we'll get off this moon in pieces!" "power deck to control deck." "come in, astro," said tom. "almost ready, tom," said astro. "maximum pressure is eight hundred and we're up to seven seventy now." "very well, astro," replied connel. "let her build all the way to an even eight hundred and blast at my command." "aye, aye, sir," said astro. the mighty pumps on the power deck began their piercing shriek. higher and higher they built up the pressure, until the ship began to rock under the strain. "stand by, tom," ordered connel, "and if you've ever twisted those dials, twist them now!" "yes, sir," replied tom. "pressure up to seven ninety-one, sir," reported astro. "attention! all members strap into acceleration cushions!" one by one, shinny and alfie, loring and mason, astro and roger strapped themselves into the acceleration cushions. roger set the radar scanner and strapped himself in on the radar bridge. connel slumped into the second pilot's chair and took over the controls of the ship, strapping himself in, while tom beside him did the same. the whine of the pumps was now a shrill whistle that drowned out all other sounds, and the great ship bucked under the force of the thrust building in her heart. in front of the power-deck control panel astro watched the pressure gauge mount steadily. "pressure up to seven ninety-six, sir," he called. "stand by to fire all rockets!" roared connel. "make it good, you venusian clunk," yelled roger. "seven ninety-nine, sir!" bellowed astro. astro watched the gauge of the pressure creep slowly toward the eight-hundred mark. in all his experience he had never seen it above seven hundred. shinny, too, his merry eyes shining bright, watched the needle jerk back and forth and finally reach the eight-hundred mark. "eight hundred, sir," bellowed astro. "fire all stern rockets!" roared connel. astro threw the switch. on the control board, connel saw a red light flash on. he jammed the master switch down hard. it was the last thing he remembered. [illustration] chapter tom stirred. he rolled his head from side to side. his mouth was dry and there was a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. he opened his eyes and stared at the control panel in front of him. instinctively he began to check the dials and gauges. he settled on one and waited for his pounding heart to return to normal. his eyes cleared, and the gauge swam into view. he read the figures aloud: "distance in miles since departure--fourteen thousand, five hundred ..." something clicked. he let out a yell. "we made it! we made it!" he turned and began to pound connel on the back. "major connel! major, wake up, sir! we made it. we're in free fall! junior's far behind us!" "uh--ah--what--tom? what?" connel said, rolling his eyes. in all his experience he had never felt such acceleration. he glanced at the gauge. "distance," he read, "fifteen thousand miles." the gauge ticked on. "we made it, sir!" said tom. "astro gave us a kick in the pants we'll never forget!" connel grinned at tom's excitement. there was reason to be excited. they were free. he turned to the intercom, but before he could speak, astro's voice roared into his ears. "report from the power deck, sir," said astro. "acceleration normal. request permission to open up on hyperdrive." "permission granted!" said connel. "look, sir," said tom, "on the teleceiver screen. junior is getting his bumps!" connel glanced up at the screen. one by one the white puffs of dust from the reactor units were exploding on the surface of the planetoid. soon the whole satellite was covered with the radioactive cloud. "i'm sure glad we're not on that baby now," whispered tom. "same here, spaceman!" said connel. it was evening of the first full day after leaving junior before the routine of the long haul back to space academy had begun. the _polaris_ was on automatic control, and everyone was assembled in the messroom. "well, boys," said connel, "our mission is a complete success. i've finished making out a report to space academy, and everything's fine. incidentally, manning," he continued, "if you're worried about having broken your word when you escaped from the space station, forget it. you more than made up for it by your work in helping us get loring and mason." roger smiled gratefully and gulped, "thank you, sir." loring and mason, who had eaten their meal separately from the others, listened silently. loring got up and faced them. the room became silent. loring flushed. [illustration: _"i know we're going to be sent to the prison asteroid and we deserve it," said loring._] "i'd like to say something," he began haltingly, "if i can?" "go ahead," said connel. "well," said loring, "it's hard to say this, but mason and myself, well--" he paused. "i don't know what happened to us on the first trip out here, major, but when we saw that satellite, and the copper, something just went wrong inside. one thing led to another, and before we knew it, we were in so deep we couldn't get out." the faces around the table were stony, expressionless. "nobody deserves less consideration than me and mason. and--well, you know yourself, sir, that we were pretty good spacemen at one time. you picked us for the first trip out to tara with you." connel nodded. "and well, sir, the main thing is about jardine and bangs. i know we're going to be sent to the prison asteroid and we deserve it. but we been thinking, sir, about jardine's and bang's wives and kids. they musta lost everything in that crash of the _annie jones_, so if the major would recommend that mason and me be sent to the titan mines, instead of the rock, we could send our credits back to help take care of the kids and all." no one spoke. "that's all," said loring. he and mason left the room. connel glanced around the table. "well?" he asked. "this is your first struggle with justice. each of you, tom, roger, astro, alfie, will be faced with this sort of thing during your careers as spacemen. what would you do?" the four cadets looked at each other, each wondering what the other would say. finally connel turned to alfie. "you're first, alfie," said connel. "i'd send them to the mines, sir," said alfie. connel's face was impressive. "roger?" "same here, sir," replied roger. "astro?" asked connel. "i'd do anything to help the kids, sir," said astro, an orphan himself. "tom?" tom hesitated. "they deserve the rock, sir. i don't have any feeling for them. but if they go to the rock, that doesn't do any more than punish them. if they go to the mines, they'll be punished and help someone else too. i'd send them to titan and exile them from earth forever." connel studied the cadets a moment. he turned to shinny. "think they made a good decision, nick?" "i like what young tommy, here, had to say, lou," answered shinny. "best part about justice is when the man himself suffers from his own guilty feelings, rather than what you do to him as punishment. i think they did all right!" "all right," said connel. "i'll make the recommendation as you have suggested." suddenly he turned to shinny. "what about you in all this, nick? i don't mean that you were hooked up with loring and mason. i know you were just prospecting and you've proved yourself to be a true spaceman. but what will happen to you now?" "i'll tell you what's going to happen to me," snapped shinny. "you're going to re-enlist me in the solar guard, right here! right now!" "what?" exploded connel. "and then you're going to retire me, right here, right now, with a full pension!" "why you old space-crawling--" suddenly he looked around the table and saw the laughing faces of tom, roger, astro, and alfie. "all right," he said, "but between your enlistment and your retirement, i'm going to make you polish every bit of brass on this space wagon, from the radar mast to the exhaust tubes!" shinny smiled his toothless smile and looked at tom. "get the logbook, tommy," he said. "this is official. i'm going to do something no other man in the entire history of the solar guard ever did before!" "what's that, mr. shinny?" asked tom with a smile. "enlist, serve time, and retire with a full pension, all on the same blasted spaceship, the _polaris_!" [illustration] +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | transcriber's note | | | | typographical errors corrected: | | | | ) familarity changed to familiarity | | ) but's changed to buts | | ) word changed to work | | | | possible typographical error left as is: | | | | all ready possibly should read already | | | | standardized hyphenation: | | | | ) paralo ray changed to paralo-ray | | ) upperclassmen changed to upper-classmen | | | | in addition, the nickname blast-off occurs in two forms | | throughout the text: "blast-off" and 'blast-off'. one is | | used consistently in descriptive text ("blast-off") the | | other is used consistently in dialog ('blast-off'), | | as such both forms have been retained. | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ operation: outer space by murray leinster chapter one jed cochrane tried to be cynical as the helicab hummed softly through the night over the city. the cab flew at two thousand feet, where lighted buildings seemed to soar toward it from the canyons which were streets. there were lights and people everywhere, and cochrane sardonically reminded himself that he was no better than anybody else, only he'd been trying to keep from realizing it. he looked down at the trees and shrubbery on the roof-tops, and at a dance that was going on atop one of the tallest buildings. all roofs were recreation-spaces nowadays. they were the only spaces available. when you looked down at a city like this, you had cynical thoughts. fourteen million people in this city. ten million in that. eight in another and ten in another still, and twelve million in yet another ... big cities. swarming millions of people, all desperately anxious--so cochrane realized bitterly--all desperately anxious about their jobs and keeping them. "even as me and i," said cochrane harshly to himself. "sure! i'm shaking in my shoes right along with the rest of them!" but it hurt to realize that he'd been kidding himself. he'd thought he was important. important, at least, to the advertising firm of kursten, kasten, hopkins and fallowe. but right now he was on the way--like a common legman--to take the moon-rocket to lunar city, and he'd been informed of it just thirty minutes ago. then he'd been told casually to get to the rocket-port right away. his secretary and two technical men and a writer were taking the same rocket. he'd get his instructions from dr. william holden on the way. a part of his mind said indignantly, "_wait till i get hopkins on the phone! it was a mixup! he wouldn't send me off anywhere with the dikkipatti hour depending on me! he's not that crazy!_" but he was on his way to the space-port, regardless. he'd raged when the message reached him. he'd insisted that he had to talk to hopkins in person before he obeyed any such instructions. but he was on his way to the space-port. he was riding in a helicab, and he was making adjustments in his own mind to the humiliation he unconsciously foresaw. there were really three levels of thought in his mind. one had adopted a defensive cynicism, and one desperately insisted that he couldn't be as unimportant as his instructions implied, and the third watched the other two as the helicab flew with cushioned booming noises over the dark canyons of the city and the innumerable lonely lights of the rooftops. there was a thin roaring sound, high aloft. cochrane jerked his head back. the stars filled all the firmament, but he knew what to look for. he stared upward. one of the stars grew brighter. he didn't know when he first picked it out, but he knew when he'd found it. he fixed his eyes on it. it was a very white star, and for a space of minutes it seemed in no wise different from its fellows. but it grew brighter. presently it was very bright. it was brighter than sirius. in seconds more it was brighter than venus. it increased more and more rapidly in its brilliance. it became the brightest object in all the heavens except the crescent moon, and the cold intensity of its light was greater than any part of that. then cochrane could see that this star was not quite round. he could detect the quarter-mile-long flame of the rocket-blast. it came down with a rush. he saw the vertical, stabbing pencil of light plunge earthward. it slowed remarkably as it plunged, with all the flying aircraft above the city harshly lighted by its glare. the space-port itself showed clearly. cochrane saw the buildings, and the other moon-rockets waiting to take off in half an hour or less. the white flame hit the ground and splashed. it spread out in a wide flat disk of intolerable brightness. the sleek hull of the ship which still rode the flame down glinted vividly as it settled into the inferno of its own making. then the light went out. the glare cut off abruptly. there was only a dim redness where the space-port tarmac had been made incandescent for a little while. that glow faded--and cochrane became aware of the enormous stillness. he had not really noticed the rocket's deafening roar until it ended. the helicab flew onward almost silently, with only the throbbing pulses of its overhead vanes making any sound at all. "_i kidded myself about those rockets, too_," said cochrane bitterly to himself. "_i thought getting to the moon meant starting to the stars. new worlds to live on. i had a lot more fun before i found out the facts of life!_" but he knew that this cynicism and this bitterness came out of the hurt to the vanity that still insisted everything was a mistake. he'd received orders which disillusioned him about his importance to the firm and to the business to which he'd given years of his life. it hurt to find out that he was just another man, just another expendable. most people fought against making the discovery, and some succeeded in avoiding it. but cochrane saw his own self-deceptions with a savage clarity even as he tried to keep them. he did not admire himself at all. the helicab began to slant down toward the space-port buildings. the sky was full of stars. the earth--of course--was covered with buildings. except for the space-port there was no unoccupied ground for thirty miles in any direction. the cab was down to a thousand feet. to five hundred. cochrane saw the just-arrived rocket with tender-vehicles running busily to and fro and hovering around it. he saw the rocket he should take, standing upright on the faintly lighted field. the cab touched ground. cochrane stood up and paid the fare. he got out and the cab rose four or five feet and flitted over to the waiting-line. he went into the space-port building. he felt himself growing more bitter still. then he found bill holden--doctor william holden--standing dejectedly against a wall. "i believe you've got some orders for me, bill," said cochrane sardonically. "and just what psychiatric help can i give you?" holden said tiredly: "i don't like this any better than you do, jed. i'm scared to death of space-travel. but go get your ticket and i'll tell you about it on the way up. it's a special production job. i'm roped in on it too." "happy holiday!" said cochrane, because holden looked about as miserable as a man could look. he went to the ticket desk. he gave his name. on request, he produced identification. then he said sourly: "while you're working on this i'll make a phone-call." he went to a pay visiphone. and again there were different levels of awareness in his mind--one consciously and defensively cynical, and one frightened at the revelation of his unimportance, and the third finding the others an unedifying spectacle. he put the call through with an over-elaborate confidence which he angrily recognized as an attempt to deceive himself. he got the office. he said calmly: "this is jed cochrane. i asked for a visiphone contact with mr. hopkins." he had a secretary on the phone-screen. she looked at memos and said pleasantly: "oh, yes. mr. hopkins is at dinner. he said he couldn't be disturbed, but for you to go on to the moon according to your instructions, mr. cochrane." cochrane hung up and raged, with one part of his mind. another part--and he despised it--began to argue that after all, he had better wait before thinking there was any intent to humiliate him. after all, his orders must have been issued with due consideration. the third part disliked the other two parts intensely--one for raging without daring to speak, and one for trying to find alibis for not even raging. he went back to the ticket-desk. the clerk said heartily: "here you are! the rest of your party's already on board, mr. cochrane. you'd better hurry! take-off's in five minutes." holden joined him. they went through the gate and got into the tender-vehicle that would rush them out to the rocket. holden said heavily: "i was waiting for you and hoping you wouldn't come. i'm not a good traveller, jed." the small vehicle rushed. to a city man, the dark expanse of the space-port was astounding. then a spidery metal framework swallowed the tender-truck, and them. the vehicle stopped. an elevator accepted them and lifted an indefinite distance through the night, toward the stars. a sort of gangplank with a canvas siderail reached out across emptiness. cochrane crossed it, and found himself at the bottom of a spiral ramp inside the rocket's passenger-compartment. a stewardess looked at the tickets. she led the way up, and stopped. "this is your seat, mr. cochrane," she said professionally. "i'll strap you in this first time. you'll do it later." cochrane lay down in a contour-chair with an eight-inch mattress of foam rubber. the stewardess adjusted straps. he thought bitter, ironic thoughts. a voice said: "mr. cochrane!" he turned his head. there was babs deane, his secretary, with her eyes very bright. she regarded him from a contour-chair exactly opposite his. she said happily: "mr. west and mr. jamison are the science men, mr. cochrane. i got mr. bell as the writer." "a great triumph!" cochrane told her. "did you get any idea what all this is about? why we're going up?" "no," admitted babs cheerfully. "i haven't the least idea. but i'm going to the moon! it's the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me!" cochrane shrugged his shoulders. shrugging was not comfortable in the straps that held him. babs was a good secretary. she was the only one cochrane had ever had who did not try to make use of her position as secretary to the producer of the dikkipatti hour on television. other secretaries had used their nearness to him to wangle acting or dancing or singing assignments on other and lesser shows. as a rule they lasted just four public appearances before they were back at desks, spoiled for further secretarial use by their taste of fame. but babs hadn't tried that. yet she'd jumped at a chance for a trip to the moon. a panel up toward the nose of the rocket--the upper end of this passenger compartment--glowed suddenly. flaming red letters said, "_take-off, ninety seconds._" cochrane found an ironic flavor in the thought that splendid daring and incredible technology had made his coming journey possible. heroes had ventured magnificently into the emptiness beyond earth's atmosphere. uncountable millions of dollars had been spent. enormous intelligence and infinite pains had been devoted to making possible a journey of two hundred thirty-six thousand miles through sheer nothingness. this was the most splendid achievement of human science--the reaching of a satellite of earth and the building of a human city there. and for what? undoubtedly so that one jed cochrane could be ordered by telephone, by somebody's secretary, to go and get on a passenger-rocket and get to the moon. go--having failed to make a protest because his boss wouldn't interrupt dinner to listen--so he could keep his job by obeying. for this splendid purpose, scientists had labored and dedicated men had risked their lives. of course, cochrane reminded himself with conscious justice, of course there was the very great value of moon-mail cachets to devotees of philately. there was the value of the tourist facilities to anybody who could spend that much money for something to brag about afterward. there were the solar-heat mines--running at a slight loss--and various other fine achievements. there was even a nightclub in lunar city where one highball cost the equivalent of--say--a week's pay for a secretary like babs. and-- the panel changed its red glowing sign. it said: "_take-off forty-five seconds._" somewhere down below a door closed with a cushioned soft definiteness. the inside of the rocket suddenly seemed extraordinarily still. the silence was oppressive. it was dead. then there came the whirring of very many electric fans, stirring up the air. the stewardess' voice came matter-of-factly from below him in the upended cylinder which was the passenger-space. "we take off in forty-five seconds. you will find yourself feeling very heavy. there is no cause to be alarmed. if you observe that breathing is oppressive, the oxygen content of the air in this ship is well above earth-level, and you will not need to breathe so deeply. simply relax in your chair. everything has been thought of. everything has been tested repeatedly. you need not disturb yourself at all. simply relax." silence. two heart-beats. three. there was a roar. it was a deep, booming, numbing roar that came from somewhere outside the rocket's hull. simultaneously, something thrust cochrane deep into the foam-cushions of his contour-chair. he felt the cushion piling up on all sides of his body so that it literally surrounded him. it resisted the tendency of his arms and legs and abdomen to flatten out and flow sidewise, to spread him in a thin layer over the chair in which he rested. he felt his cheeks dragged back. he was unduly conscious of the weight of objects in his pockets. his stomach pressed hard against his backbone. his sensations were those of someone being struck a hard, prolonged blow all over his body. it was so startling a sensation, though he'd read about it, that he simply stayed still and blankly submitted to it. presently he felt himself gasp. presently, again, he noticed that one of his feet was going to sleep. he tried to move it and succeeded only in stirring it feebly. the roaring went on and on and on.... the red letters in the panel said: "_first stage ends in five seconds._" by the time he'd read it, the rocket hiccoughed and stopped. then he felt a surge of panic. he was falling! he had no weight! it was the sensation of a suddenly dropping elevator a hundred times multiplied. he bounced out of the depression in the foam-cushion. he was prevented from floating away only by the straps that held him. there was a sputter and a series of jerks. then he had weight again as roarings began once more. this was not the ghastly continued impact of the take-off, but still it was weight--considerably greater weight than the normal weight of earth. cochrane wiggled the foot that had gone to sleep. pins and needles lessened their annoyance as sensation returned to it. he was able to move his arms and hands. they felt abnormally heavy, and he experienced an extreme and intolerable weariness. he wanted to go to sleep. this was the second-stage rocket-phase. the moon-rocket had blasted off at six gravities acceleration until clear of atmosphere and a little more. acceleration-chairs of remarkably effective design, plus the pre-saturation of one's blood with oxygen, made so high an acceleration safe and not unendurable for the necessary length of time it lasted. now, at three gravities, one did not feel on the receiving end of a violent thrust, but one did feel utterly worn out and spent. most people stayed awake through the six-gravity stage and went heavily to sleep under three gravities. cochrane fought the sensation of fatigue. he had not liked himself for accepting the orders that had brought him here. they had been issued in bland confidence that he had no personal affairs which could not be abandoned to obey cryptic orders from the secretary of a boss he had actually never seen. he felt a sort of self-contempt which it would have been restful to forget in three-gravity sleep. but he grimaced and held himself awake to contemplate the unpretty spectacle of himself and his actions. the red light said: "_second stage ends ten seconds._" and in ten seconds the rockets hiccoughed once more and were silent, and there was that sickening feeling of free fall, but he grimly made himself think of it as soaring upward instead of dropping--which was the fact, too--and waited until the third-stage rockets boomed suddenly and went on and on and on. this was nearly normal acceleration; the effect of this acceleration was the feel of nearly normal weight. he felt about as one would feel in earth in a contour-chair tilted back so that one faced the ceiling. he knew approximately where the ship would be by this time, and it ought to have been a thrill. cochrane was hundreds of miles above earth and headed eastward out and up. if a port were open at this height, his glance should span continents. no.... the ship had taken off at night. it would still be in earth's shadow. there would be nothing at all to be seen below, unless one or two small patches of misty light which would be earth's too-many great cities. but overhead there would be stars by myriads and myriads, of every possible color and degree of brightness. they would crowd each other for room in which to shine. the rocket-ship was spiralling out and out and up and up, to keep its rendezvous with the space platform. the platform, of course, was that artificial satellite of earth which was four thousand miles out and went around the planet in a little over four hours, traveling from west to east. it had been made because to break the bonds of earth's gravity was terribly costly in fuel--when a ship had to accelerate slowly to avoid harm to human cargo. the space platform was a filling station in emptiness, at which the moon-rocket would refuel for its next and longer and much less difficult journey of two hundred thirty-odd thousand miles. the stewardess came up the ramp, moving briskly. she stopped and glanced at each passenger in each chair in turn. when cochrane turned his open eyes upon her, she said soothingly: "there's no need to be disturbed. everything is going perfectly." "i'm not disturbed," said cochrane. "i'm not even nervous. i'm perfectly all right." "but you should be drowsy!" she observed, concerned. "most people are. if you nap you'll feel better for it." she felt his pulse in a businesslike manner. it was normal. "take my nap for me," said cochrane, "or put it back in stock. i don't want it. i'm perfectly all right." she considered him carefully. she was remarkably pretty. but her manner was strictly detached. she said: "there's a button. you can reach it if you need anything. you may call me by pushing it." he shrugged. he lay still as she went on to inspect the other passengers. there was nothing to do and nothing to see. travellers were treated pretty much like parcels, these days. travel, like television entertainment and most of the other facilities of human life, was designed for the seventy-to-ninety-per-cent of the human race whose likes and dislikes and predilections could be learned exactly by surveys. anybody who didn't like what everybody liked, or didn't react like everybody reacted, was subject to annoyances. cochrane resigned himself to them. the red light-letters changed again, considerably later. this time they said: "_free flight, thirty seconds._" they did not say "free fall," which was the technical term for a rocket coasting upward or downward in space. but cochrane braced himself, and his stomach-muscles were tense when the rockets stopped again and stayed off. the sensation of continuous fall began. an electronic speaker beside his chair began to speak. there were other such mechanisms beside each other passenger-chair, and the interior of the rocket filled with a soft murmur which was sardonically like choral recitation. "_the sensation of weightlessness you now experience_," said the voice soothingly, "_is natural at this stage of your flight. the ship has attained its maximum intended speed and is still rising to meet the space platform. you may consider that we have left atmosphere and its limitations behind. now we have spread sails of inertia and glide on a wind of pure momentum toward our destination. the feeling of weightlessness is perfectly normal. you will be greatly interested in the space platform. we will reach it in something over two hours of free flight. it is an artificial satellite, with an air-lock our ship will enter for refueling. you will be able to leave the ship and move about inside the platform, to lunch if you choose, to buy souvenirs and mail them back and to view earth from a height of four thousand miles through quartz-glass windows. then, as now, you will feel no sensation of weight. you will be taken on a tour of the space platform if you wish. there are rest-rooms--._" cochrane grimly endured the rest of the taped lecture. he thought sourly to himself: "_i'm a captive audience without even an interest in the production tricks._" presently he saw bill holden's head. the psychiatrist had squirmed inside the straps that held him, and now was staring about within the rocket. his complexion was greenish. "i understand you're to brief me," cochrane told him, "on the way up. do you want to tell me now what all this is about? i'd like a nice dramatic narrative, with gestures." holden said sickly: "go to hell, won't you?" his head disappeared. space-nausea was, of course, as definite an ailment as seasickness. it came from no weight. but cochrane seemed to be immune. he turned his mind to the possible purposes of his journey. he knew nothing at all. his own personal share in the activities of kursten, kasten, hopkins and fallowe--the biggest advertising agency in the world--was the production of the dikkipatti hour, top-talent television show, regularly every wednesday night between eight-thirty and nine-thirty o'clock central u. s. time. it was a good show. it was among the ten most popular shows on three continents. it was not reasonable that he be ordered to drop it and take orders from a psychiatrist, even one he'd known unprofessionally for years. but there was not much, these days, that really made sense. in a world where cities with populations of less than five millions were considered small towns, values were peculiar. one of the deplorable results of living in a world over-supplied with inhabitants was that there were too many people and not enough jobs. when one had a good job, and somebody higher up than oneself gave an order, it was obeyed. there was always somebody else or several somebodies waiting for every job there was--hoping for it, maybe praying for it. and if a good job was lost, one had to start all over. this task might be anything. it was not, however, connected in any way with the weekly production of the dikkipatti hour. and if that production were scamped this week because cochrane was away, he would be the one to take the loss in reputation. the fact that he was on the moon wouldn't count. it would be assumed that he was slipping. and a slip was not good. it was definitely not good! "_i could do a documentary right now_," cochrane told himself angrily, "_titled 'man-afraid-of-his-job.' i could make a very authentic production. i've got the material!_" he felt weight for a moment. it was accompanied by booming noises. the sounds were not in the air outside, because there was no air. they were reverberations of the rocket-motors themselves, transmitted to the fabric of the ship. the ship's steering-rockets were correcting the course of the vessel and--yes, there was another surge of power--nudging it to a more correct line of flight to meet the space platform coming up from behind. the platform went around the world six times a day, four thousand miles out. during three of its revolutions anybody on the ground, anywhere, could spot it in daylight as an infinitesimal star, bright enough to be seen against the sky's blueness, rising in the west and floating eastward to set at the place of sunrise. there was again weightlessness. a rocket-ship doesn't burn its rocket-engines all the time. it runs them to get started, and it runs them to stop, but it does not run them to travel. this ship was floating above the earth, which might be a vast sunlit ball filling half the universe below the rocket, or might be a blackness as of the pit. cochrane had lost track of time, but not of the shattering effect of being snatched from the job he knew and thought important, to travel incredibly to do something he had no idea of. he felt, in his mind, like somebody who climbs stairs in the dark and tries to take a step that isn't there. it was a shock to find that his work wasn't important even in the eyes of kursten, kasten, hopkins and fallowe. that he didn't count. that nothing counted ... there was another dull booming outside and another touch of weight. then the rocket floated on endlessly. a long time later, something touched the ship's outer hull. it was a definite, positive clanking sound. and then there was the gentlest and vaguest of tuggings, and cochrane could feel the ship being maneuvered. he knew it had made contact with the space platform and was being drawn inside its lock. there was still no weight. the stewardess began to unstrap the passengers one by one, supplying each with magnetic-soled slippers. cochrane heard her giving instructions in their use. he knew the air-lock was being filled with air from the huge, globular platform. in time the door at the back--bottom--base of the passenger-compartment opened. somebody said flatly: "space platform! the ship will be in this air-lock for some three hours plus for refueling. warning will be given before departure. passengers have the freedom of the platform and will be given every possible privilege." the magnetic-soled slippers did hold one's feet to the spiral ramp, but one had to hold on to a hand-rail to make progress. on the way down to the exit door, cochrane encountered babs. she said breathlessly: "i can't believe i'm really here!" "i can believe it," said cochrane, "without even liking it particularly. babs, who told you to come on this trip? where'd all the orders come from?" "mr. hopkins' secretary," said babs happily. "she didn't tell me to come. i managed that! she said for me to name two science men and two writers who could work with you. i told her one writer was more than enough for any production job, but you'd need me. i assumed it was a production job. so she changed the orders and here i am!" "fine!" said cochrane. his sense of the ironic deepened. he'd thought he was an executive and reasonably important. but somebody higher up than he was had disposed of him with absent-minded finality, and that man's secretary and his own had determined all the details, and he didn't count at all. he was a pawn in the hands of firm-partners and assorted secretaries. "let me know what my job's to be and how to do it, babs." babs nodded. she didn't catch the sarcasm. but she couldn't think very straight, just now. she was on the space platform, which was the second most glamorous spot in the universe. the most glamorous spot, of course, was the moon. cochrane hobbled ashore into the platform, having no weight whatever. he was able to move only by the curious sticky adhesion of his magnetic-soled slippers to the steel floor-plates beneath him. or--were they beneath? there was a crew member walking upside down on a floor which ought to be a ceiling directly over cochrane's head. he opened a door in a side-wall and went in, still upside down. cochrane felt a sudden dizziness, at that. but he went on, using hand-grips. then he saw dr. william holden looking greenish and ill and trying sickishly to answer questions from west and jamison and bell, who had been plucked from their private lives just as cochrane had and were now clamorously demanding of bill holden that he explain what had happened to them. cochrane snapped angrily: "leave the man alone! he's space-sick! if you get him too much upset this place will be a mess!" holden closed his eyes and said gratefully: "shoo them away, jed, and then come back." cochrane waved his hands at them. they went away, stumbling and holding on to each other in the eerie dream-likeness and nightmarish situation of no-weight-whatever. there were other passengers from the moon-rocket in this great central space of the platform. there was a fat woman looking indignantly at the picture of a weighing-scale painted on the wall. somebody had painted it, with a dial-hand pointing to zero pounds. a sign said, "_honest weight, no gravity._" there was the stewardess from the rocket, off duty here. she smoked a cigarette in the blast of an electric fan. there was a party of moon-tourists giggling foolishly and clutching at everything and buying souvenirs to mail back to earth. "all right, bill," said cochrane. "they're gone. now tell me why all the not inconsiderable genius in the employ of kursten, kasten, hopkins and fallowe, in my person, has been mobilized and sent up to the moon?" bill holden swallowed. he stood up with his eyes closed, holding onto a side-rail in the great central room of the platform. "i have to keep my eyes shut," he explained, queasily. "it makes me ill to see people walking on side-walls and across ceilings." a stout tourist was doing exactly that at the moment. if one could walk anywhere at all with magnetic-soled shoes, one could walk everywhere. the stout man did walk up the side-wall. he adventured onto the ceiling, where he was head-down to the balance of his party. he stood there looking up--down--at them, and he wore a peculiarly astonished and half-frightened and wholly foolish grin. his wife squealed for him to come down: that she couldn't bear looking at him so. "all right," said cochrane. "you're keeping your eyes closed. but i'm supposed to take orders from you. what sort of orders are you going to give?" "i'm not sure yet," said holden thinly. "we are sent up here on a private job for hopkins--one of your bosses. hopkins has a daughter. she's married to a man named dabney. he's neurotic. he's made a great scientific discovery and it isn't properly appreciated. so you and i and your team of tame scientists--we're on our way to the moon to save his reason." "why save his reason?" asked cochrane cynically. "if it makes him happy to be a crackpot--" "it doesn't," said holden, with his eyes still closed. he gulped. "your job and a large part of my practice depends on keeping him out of a looney-bin. it amounts to a public-relations job, a production, with me merely censoring aspects that might be bad for dabney's psyche. otherwise he'll be frustrated." "aren't we all?" demanded cochrane. "who in hades does he think he is? most of us want appreciation, but we have to be glad when we do our work and get paid for it! we--" then he swore bitterly. he had been taken off the job he'd spent years learning to do acceptably, to phoney a personal satisfaction for the son-in-law of one of the partners of the firm he worked for. it was humiliation to be considered merely a lackey who could be ordered to perform personal services for his boss, without regard to the damage to the work he was really responsible for. it was even more humiliating to know he had to do it because he couldn't afford not to. babs appeared, obviously gloating over the mere fact that she was walking in magnetic-soled slippers on the steel decks of the space platform. her eyes were very bright. she said: "mr. cochrane, hadn't you better come look at earth out of the quartz earthside windows?" "why?" demanded cochrane bitterly. "if it wasn't that i'd have to hold onto something with both hands, in order to do it, i'd be kicking myself. why should i want to do tourist stuff?" "so," said babs, "so later on you can tell when a writer or a scenic designer tries to put something over on you in a space platform show." cochrane grimaced. "in theory, i should. but do you realize what all this is about? i just learned!" when babs shook her head he said sardonically, "we are on the way to the moon to stage a private production out of sheer cruelty. we're hired to rob a happy man of the luxury of feeling sorry for himself. we're under holden's orders to cure a man of being a crackpot!" babs hardly listened. she was too much filled with the zest of being where she'd never dared hope to be able to go. "i wouldn't want to be cured of being a crackpot," protested cochrane, "if only i could afford such a luxury! i'd--" babs said urgently: "you'll have to hurry, really! they told me it starts in ten minutes, so i came to find you right away." "what starts?" "we're in eclipse now," explained babs, starry-eyed. "we're in the earth's shadow. in about five minutes we'll be coming out into sunlight again, and we'll see the new earth!" "guarantee that it will be a new earth," cochrane said morosely, "and i'll come. i didn't do too well on the old one." but he followed her in all the embarrassment of walking on magnetic-soled shoes in a total absence of effective gravity. it was quite a job simply to start off. without precaution, if he merely tried to march away from where he was, his feet would walk out from under him and he'd be left lying on his back in mid-air. again, to stop without putting one foot out ahead for a prop would mean that after his feet paused, his body would continue onward and he would achieve a full-length face-down flop. and besides, one could not walk with a regular up-and-down motion, or in seconds he would find his feet churning emptiness in complete futility. cochrane tried to walk, and then irritably took a hand-rail and hauled himself along it, with his legs trailing behind him like the tail of a swimming mermaid. he thought of the simile and was not impressed by his own dignity. presently babs halted herself in what was plainly a metal blister in the outer skin of the platform. there was a round quartz window, showing the inside of steel-plate windows beyond it. babs pushed a button marked "_shutter_," and the valves of steel drew back. cochrane blinked, lifted even out of his irritableness by the sight before him. he saw the immensity of the heavens, studded with innumerable stars. some were brighter than others, and they were of every imaginable color. tiny glintings of lurid tint--through the earth's atmosphere they would blend into an indefinite faint luminosity--appeared so close together that there seemed no possible interval. however tiny the appearance of a gap, one had but to look at it for an instant to perceive infinitesimal flecks of colored fire there, also. each tiniest glimmering was a sun. but that was not what made cochrane catch his breath. there was a monstrous space of nothingness immediately before his eyes. it was round and vast and near. it was black with the utter blackness of the pit. it was earth, seen from its eight-thousand-mile-wide shadow, unlighted even by the moon. there was no faintest relief from its absolute darkness. it was as if, in the midst of the splendor of the heavens, there was a chasm through which one glimpsed the unthinkable nothing from which creation was called in the beginning. until one realized that this was simply the dark side of earth, the spectacle was one of hair-raising horror. after a moment cochrane said with a carefully steadied voice: "my most disparaging opinions of earth were never as black as this!" "wait," said babs confidently. cochrane waited. he had to hold carefully in his mind that this visible abyss, this enormity of purest dark, was not an opening into nothingness but was simply earth at night as seen from space. then he saw a faint, faint arch of color forming at its edge. it spread swiftly. immediately, it seemed, there was a pinkish glowing line among the multitudinous stars. it was red. it was very, very bright. it became a complete half-circle. it was the light of the sun refracted around the edge of the world. within minutes--it seemed in seconds--the line of light was a glory among the stars. and then, very swiftly, the blazing orb which was the sun appeared from behind earth. it was intolerably bright, but it did not brighten the firmament. it swam among all the myriads of myriads of suns, burning luridly and in a terrible silence, with visibly writhing prominences rising from the edge of its disk. cochrane squinted at it with light-dazzled eyes. then babs cried softly: "beautiful! oh, beautiful!" and cochrane shielded his eyes and saw the world new-born before him. the arc of light became an arch and then a crescent, and swelled even as he looked. dawn flowed below the space platform, and it seemed that seas and continents and clouds and beauty poured over the disk of darkness before him. he stood here, staring, until the steel shutters slowly closed. babs said in regret: "you have to keep your hand on the button to keep the shutters open. else the window might get pitted with dust." cochrane said cynically: "and how much good will it have done me to see that, babs? how can that be faked in a studio--and how much would a television screen show of it?" he turned away. then he added sourly: "you stay and look if you like, babs. i've already had my vanity smashed to little bits. if i look at that again i'll want to weep in pure frustration because i can't do anything even faintly as well worth watching. i prefer to cut down my notions of the cosmos to a tolerable size. but you go ahead and look!" he went back to holden. holden was painfully dragging himself back into the rocket-ship. cochrane went with him. they returned, weightless, to the admirably designed contour-chairs in which they had traveled to this place, and in which they would travel farther. cochrane settled down to stare numbly at the wall above him. he had been humiliated enough by the actions of one of the heads of an advertising agency. he found himself resenting, even as he experienced, the humbling which had been imposed upon him by the cosmos itself. presently the other passengers returned, and the moonship was maneuvered out of the lock and to emptiness again, and again presently rockets roared and there was further feeling of intolerable weight. but it was not as bad as the take-off from earth. there followed some ninety-six hours of pure tedium. after the first accelerating blasts, the rockets were silent. there was no weight. there was nothing to hear except the droning murmur of unresting electric fans, stirring the air ceaselessly so that excess moisture from breathing could be extracted by the dehumidifiers. but for them--if the air had been left stagnant--the journey would have been insupportable. there was nothing to see, because ports opening on outer space were not safe for passengers to look through. mere humans, untrained to keep their minds on technical matters, could break down at the spectacle of the universe. there could be no activity. some of the passengers took dozy-pills. cochrane did not. it was against the law for dozy-pills to produce a sensation of euphoria, of well-being. the law considered that pleasure might lead to addiction. but if a pill merely made a person drowsy, so that he dozed for hours halfway between sleeping and awake, no harm appeared to be done. yet there were plenty of dozy-pill addicts. many people were not especially anxious to feel good. they were quite satisfied not to feel anything at all. cochrane couldn't take that way of escape. he lay strapped in his chair and thought unhappily of many things. he came to feel unclean, as people used to feel when they traveled for days on end on railroad trains. there was no possibility of a bath. one could not even change clothes, because baggage went separately to the moon in a robot freight-rocket, which was faster and cheaper than a passenger transport, but would kill anybody who tried to ride it. fifteen-and twenty-gravity acceleration is economical of fuel, and six-gravity is not, but nobody can live through a twenty-gravity lift-off from earth. so passengers stayed in the clothes in which they entered the ship, and the only possible concession to fastidiousness was the disposable underwear one could get and change to in the rest-rooms. babs deane did not take dozy-pills either, but cochrane knew better than to be more than remotely friendly with her outside of office hours. he did not want to give her any excuse to tell him anything for his own good. so he spoke pleasantly and kept company only with his own thoughts. but he did notice that she looked rapt and starry-eyed even through the long and dreary hours of free flight. she was mentally tracking the moonship through the void. she'd know when the continents of earth were plain to see, and the tints of vegetation on the two hemispheres--northern and southern--and she'd know when earth's ice-caps could be seen, and why. the stewardess was not too much of a diversion. she was brisk and calm and soothing, but she became a trifle reluctant to draw too near the chairs in which her passengers rode. presently cochrane made deductions and maliciously devised a television commercial. in it, a moon-rocket stewardess, in uniform and looking fresh and charming, would say sweetly that she went without bathing for days at a time on moon-trips, and did not offend because she used whoosit's antistinkum. and then he thought pleasurably of the heads that would roll did such a commercial actually get on the air. but he didn't make plans for the production-job he'd been sent to the moon to do. psychiatry was specialized, these days, as physical medicine had been before it. an extremely expensive diagnostician had been sent to the moon to tap dabney's reflexes, and he'd gravely diagnosed frustration and suggested young dr. holden for the curative treatment. frustration was the typical neurosis of the rich, anyhow, and bill holden had specialized in its cure. his main reliance was on the making of a dramatic production centering about his patient, which was expensive enough and effective enough to have made him a quick reputation. but he couldn't tell cochrane what was required of him. not yet. he knew the disease but not the case. he'd have to see and know dabney before he could make use of the extra-special production-crew his patient's father-in-law had provided from the staff of kursten, kasten, hopkins and fallowe. ninety-some hours after blast-off from the space platform, the rocket-ship turned end for end and began to blast to kill its velocity toward the moon. it began at half-gravity--the red glowing sign gave warning of it--and rose to one gravity and then to two. after days of no-weight, two gravities was punishing. cochrane thought to look at babs. she was rapt, lost in picturings of what must be outside the ship, which she could not see. she'd be imagining what the television screens had shown often enough, from film-tapes. the great pock marked face of luna, with its ring-mountains in incredible numbers and complexity, and the vast open "seas" which were solidified oceans of lava, would be clear to her mind's eye. she would be imagining the gradual changes of the moon's face with nearness, when the colorings appear. from a distance all the moon seems tan or sandy in tint. when one comes closer, there are tawny reds and slate-colors in the mountain-cliffs, and even blues and yellows, and everywhere there is the ashy, whitish-tan color of the moondust. glancing at her, absorbed in her satisfaction, cochrane suspected that with only half an excuse she would explain to him how the several hundreds of degrees difference in the surface-temperature of the moon between midnight and noon made rocks split and re-split and fracture so that stuff as fine as talcum powder covered every space not too sharply tilted for it to rest on. the feeling of deceleration increased. for part of a second they had the sensation of three gravities. then there was a curious, yielding jar--really very slight--and then the feeling of excess weight ended altogether. but not the feeling of weight. they still had weight. it was constant. it was steady. but it was very slight. they were on the moon, but cochrane felt no elation. in the tedious hours from the space platform he'd thought too much. he was actually aware of the humiliations and frustrations most men had to conceal from themselves because they couldn't afford expensive psychiatric treatments. frustration was the disease of all humanity, these days. and there was nothing that could be done about it. nothing! it simply wasn't possible to rebel, and rebellion is the process by which humiliation and frustration is cured. but one could not rebel against the plain fact that earth had more people on it than one planet could support. merely arriving at the moon did not seem an especially useful achievement, either to cochrane or to humanity at large. things looked bad. chapter two cochrane stood when the stewardess' voice authorized the action. with sardonic docility he unfastened his safety-belt and stepped out into the spiral, descending aisle. it seemed strange to have weight again, even as little as this. cochrane weighed, on the moon, just one-sixth of what he would weigh on earth. here he would tip a spring-scale at just about twenty-seven pounds. by flexing his toes, he could jump. absurdly, he did. and he rose very slowly, and hovered--feeling singularly foolish--and descended with a vast deliberation. he landed on the ramp again feeling absurd indeed. he saw babs grinning at him. "i think," said cochrane, "i'll have to take up toe-dancing." she laughed. then there were clankings, and something fastened itself outside, and after a moment the entrance-door of the moonship opened. they went down the ramp to board the moon-jeep, holding onto the hand-rail and helping each other. the tourist giggled foolishly. they went out the thick doorway and found themselves in an enclosure very much like the interior of a rather small submarine. but it did have shielded windows--ports--and babs instantly pulled herself into a seat beside one and feasted her eyes. she saw the jagged peaks nearby and the crenelated ring-mountain wall, miles off to one side, and the smooth frozen lava of the "sea." across that dusty surface the horizon was remarkably near, and cochrane remembered vaguely that the moon was only one-fourth the size of earth, so its horizon would naturally be nearer. he glanced at the stars that shone even through the glass that denatured the sunshine. and then he looked for holden. the psychiatrist looked puffy and sleepy and haggard and disheveled. when a person does have space-sickness, even a little weight relieves the symptoms, but the consequences last for days. "don't worry!" he said sourly when he saw cochrane's eyes upon him. "i won't waste any time! i'll find my man and get to work at once. just let me get back to earth...." there were more clankings--the jeep-bus sealing off from the rocket. then the vehicle stirred. the landscape outside began to move. they saw lunar city as they approached it. it was five giant dust-heaps, from five hundred-odd feet in height down to three. there were airlocks at their bases and dust-covered tunnels connecting them, and radar-bowls about their sides. but they were dust-heaps. which was completely reasonable. there is no air on the moon. by day the sun shines down with absolute ferocity. it heats everything as with a furnace-flame. at night all heat radiates away to empty space, and the ground-temperature drops well below that of liquid air. so lunar city was a group of domes which were essentially half-balloons--hemispheres of plastic brought from earth and inflated and covered with dust. with airlocks to permit entrance and exit, they were inhabitable. they needed no framework to support them because there were no stormwinds or earthquakes to put stresses on them. they needed neither heating nor cooling equipment. they were buried under forty feet of moon-dust, with vacuum between the dust-grains. lunar city was not beautiful, but human beings could live in it. the jeep-bus carried them a bare half mile, and they alighted inside a lock, and another door and another opened and closed, and they emerged into a scene which no amount of television film-tape could really portray. the main dome was a thousand feet across and half as high. there were green plants growing in tubs and pots. and the air was fresh! it smelled strange. there could be no vegetation on the rocket and it seemed new and blissful to breathe really freshened air after days of the canned variety. but this freshness made cochrane realize that he'd feel better for a bath. he took a shower in his hotel room. the room was very much like one on earth, except that it had no windows. but the shower was strange. the sprays were tiny. cochrane felt as if he were being sprayed by atomizers rather than shower-nozzles until he noticed that water ran off him very slowly and realized that a normal shower would have been overwhelming. he scooped up a handful of water and let it drop. it took a full second to fall two and a half feet. it was unsettling, but fresh clothing from his waiting baggage made him feel better. he went to the lounge of the hotel, and it was not a lounge, and the hotel was not a hotel. everything in the dome was indoors in the sense that it was under a globular ceiling fifty stories high. but everything was also out-doors in the sense of bright light and growing trees and bushes and shrubs. he found babs freshly garmented and waiting for him. she said in businesslike tones: "mr. cochrane, i asked at the desk. doctor holden has gone to consult mr. dabney. he asked that we stay within call. i've sent word to mr. west and mr. jamison and mr. bell." cochrane approved of her secretarial efficiency. "then we'll sit somewhere and wait. since this isn't an office, we'll find some refreshment." they asked for a table and got one near the swimming pool. and babs wore her office manner, all crispness and business, until they were seated. but this swimming pool was not like a pool on earth. the water was deeply sunk beneath the pool's rim, and great waves surged back and forth. the swimmers--. babs gasped. a man stood on a board quite thirty feet above the water. he prepared to dive. "that's johnny simms!" she said, awed. "who's he?" "the playboy," said babs, staring. "he's a psychopathic personality and his family has millions. they keep him up here out of trouble. he's married." "too bad--if he has millions," said cochrane. "i wouldn't marry a man with a psychopathic personality!" protested babs. "keep away from people in the advertising business, then," cochrane told her. johnny simms did not jounce up and down on the diving board to start. he simply leaped upward, and went ceilingward for easily fifteen feet, and hung stationary for a full breath, and then began to descend in literal slow motion. he fell only two and a half feet the first second, and five feet more the one after, and twelve and a half after that.... it took him over four seconds to drop forty-five feet into the water, and the splash that arose when he struck the surface rose four yards and subsided with a lunatic deliberation. watching, babs could not keep her businesslike demeanor. she was bursting with the joyous knowledge that she was on the moon, seeing the impossible and looking at fame. they sipped at drinks--but the liquid rose much too swiftly in the straws--and cochrane reflected that the drink in babs' glass would cost dabney's father-in-law as much as babs earned in a week back home, and his own was costing no less. presently a written note came from holden: "_jed: send west and jamison right away to dabney's lunar laboratory to get details of discovery from man named jones. get moon-jeep and driver from hotel. i will want you in an hour.--bill._" "i'll be back," said cochrane. "wait." he left the table and found west and jamison in bell's room, all three in conference over a bottle. west and jamison were cochrane's scientific team for the yet unformulated task he was to perform. west was the popularizing specialist. he could make a television audience believe that it understood all the seven dimensions required for some branches of wave-mechanics theory. his explanation did not stick, of course. one didn't remember them. but they were singularly convincing in cultural episodes on television productions. jamison was the prophecy expert. he could extrapolate anything into anything else, and make you believe that a one-week drop in the birthdate on kamchatka was the beginning of a trend that would leave the earth depopulated in exactly four hundred and seventy-three years. they were good men for a television producer to have on call. now, instructed, they went out to be briefed by somebody who undoubtedly knew more than both of them put together, but whom they would regard with tolerant suspicion. bell, left behind, said cagily: "this script i've got to do, now--will that laboratory be the set? where is it? in the dome?" "it's not in the dome," cochrane told him. "west and jamison took a moon-jeep to get to it. i don't know what the set will be. i don't know anything, yet. i'm waiting to be told about the job, myself." "if i've got to cook up a story-line," observed bell, "i have to know the set. who'll act? you know how amateurs can ham up any script! how about a part for babs? nice kid!" cochrane found himself annoyed, without knowing why. "we just have to wait until we know what our job is," he said curtly, and turned to go. bell said: "one more thing. if you're planning to use a news cameraman up here--don't! i used to be a cameraman before i got crazy and started to write. let me do the camera-work. i've got a better idea of using a camera to tell a story now, than--" "hold it," said cochrane. "we're not up here to film-tape a show. our job is psychiatry--craziness." to a self-respecting producer, a psychiatric production would seem craziness. a script-writer might have trouble writing out a psychiatrist's prescription, or he might not. but producing it would be out of all rationality! no camera, the patient would be the star, and most lines would be ad libbed. cochrane viewed such a production with extreme distaste. but of course, if a man wanted only to be famous, it might be handled as a straight public-relations job. in any case, though, it would amount to flattery in three dimensions and cochrane would rather have no part in it. but he had to arrange the whole thing. he went back to the table and rejoined babs. she confided that she'd been talking to johnny simms' wife. she was nice! but homesick. cochrane sat down and thought morbid thoughts. then he realized that he was irritated because babs didn't notice. he finished his drink and ordered another. half an hour later, holden found them. he had in tow a sad-looking youngish man with a remarkably narrow forehead and an expression of deep anxiety. cochrane winced. a neurotic type if there ever was one! "jed," said holden heartily, "here's mr. dabney. mr. dabney, jed cochrane is here as a specialist in public-relations set-ups. he'll take charge of this affair. your father-in-law sent him up here to see that you are done justice to!" dabney seemed to think earnestly before he spoke. "it is not for myself," he explained in an anxious tone. "it is my work! that is important! after all, this is a fundamental scientific discovery! but nobody pays any attention! it is extremely important! extremely! science itself is held back by the lack of attention paid to my discovery!" "which," holden assured him, "is about to be changed. it's a matter of public relations. jed's a specialist. he'll take over." the sad-faced young man held up his hand for attention. he thought. visibly. then he said worriedly: "i would take you over to my laboratory, but i promised my wife i would call her in half an hour from now. johnny simms' wife just reminded me. my wife is back on earth. so you will have to go to the laboratory without me and have mr. jones show you the proof of my work. a very intelligent man, jones--in a subordinate way, of course. yes. i will get you a jeep and you can go there at once, and when you come back you can tell me what you plan. but you understand that it is not for myself that i want credit! it is my discovery! it is terribly important! it is vital! it must not be overlooked!" holden escorted him away, while cochrane carefully controlled his features. after a few moments holden came back, his face sagging. "this your drink, jed?" he asked dispiritedly. "i need it!" he picked up the glass and emptied it. "the history of that case would be interesting, if one could really get to the bottom of it! come along!" his tone was dreariness itself. "i've got a jeep waiting for us." babs stood up, her eyes shining. "may i come, mr. cochrane?" cochrane waved her along. holden tried to stalk gloomily, but nobody can stalk in one-sixth gravity. he reeled, and then depressedly accommodated himself to conditions on the moon. there was an airlock with a smaller edition of the moon-jeep that had brought them from the ship to the city. it was a brightly-polished metal body, raised some ten feet off the ground on outrageously large wheels. it was very similar to the straddle-trucks used in lumberyards on earth. it would straddle boulders in its path. it could go anywhere in spite of dust and detritus, and its metal body was air-tight and held air for breathing, even out on the moon's surface. they climbed in. there was the sound of pumping, which grew fainter. the outer lock-door opened. the moon-jeep rolled outside. babs stared with passionate rapture out of a shielded port. there were impossibly jagged stones, preposterously steep cliffs. there had been no weather to remove the sharp edge of anything in a hundred million years. the awkward-seeming vehicle trundled over the lava sea toward the rampart of mighty mountains towering over lunar city. it reached a steep ascent. it climbed. and the way was remarkably rough and the vehicle springless, but it was nevertheless a cushioned ride. a bump cannot be harsh in light gravity. the vehicle rode as if on wings. "all right," said cochrane. "tell me the worst. what's the trouble with him? is he the result of six generations of keeping the money in the family? or is he a freak?" holden groaned a little. "he's practically a stock model of a rich young man without brains enough for a job in the family firm, and too much money for anything else. fortunately for his family, he didn't react like johnny simms--though they're good friends. a hundred years ago, dabney'd have gone in for the arts. but it's hard to fool yourself that way now. fifty years ago he'd have gone in for left-wing sociology. but we really are doing the best that can be done with too many people and not enough world. so he went in for science. it's non-competitive. incapacity doesn't show up. but he has stumbled on something. it sounds really important. it must have been an accident! the only trouble is that it doesn't mean a thing! yet because he's accomplished more than he ever expected to, he's frustrated because it's not appreciated! what a joke!" cochrane said cynically: "you paint a dark picture, bill. are you trying to make this thing into a challenge?" "you can't make a man famous for discovering something that doesn't matter," said holden hopelessly. "and this is that!" "nothing's impossible to public relations if you spend enough money," cochrane assured him. "what's this useless triumph of his?" the jeep bounced over a small cliff and fell gently for half a second and rolled on. babs beamed. "he's found," said holden discouragedly, "a way to send messages faster than light. it's a detour around einstein's stuff--not denying it, but evading it. right now it takes not quite two seconds for a message to go from the moon to earth. that's at the speed of light. dabney has proof--we'll see it--that he can cut that down some ninety-five per cent. only it can't be used for earth-moon communication, because both ends have to be in a vacuum. it could be used to the space platform, but--what's the difference? it's a real discovery for which there's no possible use. there's no place to send messages to!" cochrane's eyes grew bright and hard. there were some three thousand million suns in the immediate locality of earth--and more only a relatively short distance way--and it had not mattered to anybody. the situation did not seem likely to change. but--the moon-jeep climbed and climbed. it was a mile above the bay of the lava sea and the dust-heaps that were a city. it looked like ten miles, because of the curve of the horizon. the mountains all about looked like a madman's dream. "but he wants appreciation!" said holden angrily. "people on earth almost trampling on each other for lack of room, and people like me trying to keep them sane when they've every reason for despair--and he wants appreciation!" cochrane grinned. he whistled softly. "never underestimate a genius, bill," he said kindly. "i refer modestly to myself. in two weeks your patient--i'll guarantee it--will be acclaimed the hope, the blessing, the greatest man in all the history of humanity! it'll be phoney, of course, but we'll have marilyn winters--little aphrodite herself--making passes at him in hopes of a publicity break! it's a natural!" "how'll you do it?" demanded holden. the moon-jeep turned in its crazy, bumping progress. a flat area had been blasted in rock which had been unchanged since the beginning of time. here there was a human structure. typically, it was a dust-heap leaning against a cliff. there was an airlock and another jeep waited outside, and there were eccentric metal devices on the flat space, shielded from direct sunshine and with cables running to them from the airlock door. "how?" repeated cochrane. "i'll get the details here. let's go! how do we manage?" it was a matter, he discovered, of vacuum-suits, and they were tricky to get into and felt horrible when one was in. struggling, cochrane thought to say: "you can wait here in the jeep, babs--" but she was already climbing into a suit very much oversized for her, with the look of high excitement that cochrane had forgotten anybody could wear. they got out of a tiny airlock that held just one person at a time. they started for the laboratory. and suddenly cochrane saw babs staring upward through the dark, almost-opaque glass that a space-suit-helmet needs in the moon's daytime if its occupant isn't to be fried by sunlight. cochrane automatically glanced up too. he saw earth. it hung almost in mid-sky. it was huge. it was gigantic. it was colossal. it was four times the diameter of the moon as seen from earth, and it covered sixteen times as much of the sky. its continents were plain to see, and its seas, and the ice-caps at its poles gleamed whitely, and over all of it there was a faintly bluish haze which was like a glamour; a fey and eerie veiling which made earth a sight to draw at one's heart-strings. behind it and all about it there was the background of space, so thickly jeweled with stars that there seemed no room for another tiny gem. cochrane looked. he said nothing. holden stumbled on to the airlock. he remembered to hold the door open for babs. and then there was the interior of the laboratory. it was not wholly familiar even to cochrane, who had used sets on the dikkipatti hour of most of the locations in which human dramas can unfold. this was a physics laboratory, pure and simple. the air smelled of ozone and spilled acid and oil and food and tobacco-smoke and other items. west and jamison were already here, their space-suits removed. they sat before beer at a table with innumerable diagrams scattered about. there was a deep-browed man rather impatiently turning to face his new visitors. holden clumsily unfastened the face-plate of his helmet and gloomily explained his mission. he introduced cochrane and babs, verifying in the process that the dark man was the jones he had come to see. a physics laboratory high in the fastnesses of the lunar apennines is an odd place for a psychiatrist to introduce himself on professional business. but holden only explained unhappily that dabney had sent them to learn about his discovery and arrange for a public-relations job to make it known. cochrane saw jones' expression flicker sarcastically just once during holden's explanation. otherwise he was poker-faced. "i was explaining the discovery to these two," he observed. "shoot it," said cochrane to west. it was reasonable to ask west for an explanation, because he would translate everything into televisable terms. west said briskly--exactly as if before a television camera--that mr. dabney had started from the well-known fact that the properties of space are modified by energy fields. magnetic and gravitational and electrostatic fields rotate polarized light or bend light or do this or that as the case may be. but all previous modifications of the constants of space had been in essentially spherical fields. all previous fields had extended in all directions, increasing in intensity as the square of the distance ... "cut," said cochrane. west automatically abandoned his professional delivery. he placidly re-addressed himself to his beer. "how about it, jones?" asked cochrane. "dabney's got a variation? what is it?" "it's a field of force that doesn't spread out. you set up two plates and establish this field between them," said jones curtly. "it's circularly polarized and it doesn't expand. it's like a searchlight beam or a microwave beam, and it stays the same size like a pipe. in that field--or pipe--radiation travels faster than it does outside. the properties of space are changed between the plates. therefore the speed of all radiation. that's all." cochrane meditatively seated himself. he approved of this jones, whose eyebrows practically met in the middle of his forehead. he was not more polite than politeness required. he did not express employer-like rapture at the mention of his employer's name. "but what can be done with it?" asked cochrane practically. "nothing," said jones succinctly. "it changes the properties of space, but that's all. can you think of any use for a faster-than-light radiation-pipe? i can't." cochrane cocked an eye at jamison, who could extrapolate at the drop of an equation. but jamison shook his head. "communication between planets," he said morosely, "when we get to them. chats between sweethearts on earth and pluto. broadcasts to the stars when we find that another one's set up a similar plate and is ready to chat with us. there's nothing else." cochrane waved his hand. it is good policy to put a specialist in his place, occasionally. "demonstration?" he asked jones. "there are plates across the crater out yonder," said jones without emotion. "twenty miles clear reach. i can send a message across and get it relayed twice and back through two angles in about five per cent of the time radiation ought to take." cochrane said with benign cynicism: "jamison, you work by guessing where you can go. jones works by guessing where he is. but this is a public relations job. i don't know where we are or where we can go, but i know where we want to take this thing." jones looked at him. not hostilely, but with the detached interest of a man accustomed to nearly exact science, when he watches somebody work in one of the least precise of them all. holden said: "you mean you've worked out some sort of production." "no production," said cochrane blandly. "it isn't necessary. a straight public-relations set-up. we concoct a story and then let it leak out. we make it so good that even the people who don't believe it can't help spreading it." he nodded at jamison. "right now, jamison, we want a theory that the sending of radiation at twenty times the speed of light means that there is a way to send matter faster than light--as soon as we work it out. it means that the inertia-mass which increases with speed--einstein's stuff--is not a property of matter, but of space, just as the air-resistance that increases when an airplane goes faster is a property of air and not of the plane. maybe we need to work out a theory that all inertia is a property of space. we'll see if we need that. but anyhow, just as a plane can go faster in thin air, so matter--any matter--will move faster in this field as soon as we get the trick of it. you see?" holden shook his head. "what's that got in it to make dabney famous?" he asked. "jamison will extrapolate from there," cochrane assured him. "go ahead, jamison. you're on." jamison said promptly, with the hypnotic smoothness of the practiced professional: "when this development has been completed, not only will messages be sent at multiples of the speed of light, but matter! ships! the barrier to the high destiny of mankind; the limitation of our race to a single planet of a minor sun--these handicaps crash and will shatter as the great minds of humanity bend their efforts to make the dabney faster-than-light principle the operative principle of our ships. there are thousands of millions of suns in our galaxy, and not less than one in three has planets, and among these myriads of unknown worlds there will be thousands with seas and land and clouds and continents, fit for men to enter upon, there to rear their cities. there will be starships roaming distant sun-clusters, and landing on planets in the milky way. we ourselves will see freight-lines to rigel and arcturus, and journey on passenger-liners singing through the void to andromeda and aldebaran! dabney has made the first breach in the barrier to the illimitable greatness of humanity!" then he stopped and said professionally: "i can polish that up a bit, of course. all right?" "fair," conceded cochrane. he turned to holden. "how about a public-relations job on that order? won't that sort of publicity meet the requirements? will your patient be satisfied with that grade of appreciation?" holden drew a deep breath. he said unsteadily: "as a neurotic personality, he won't require that it be true. all he'll want is the seeming. but--jed, could it be really true? could it?" cochrane laughed unpleasantly. he did not admire himself. his laughter showed it. "what do you want?" he demanded. "you got me a job i didn't want. you shoved it down my throat! now there's the way to get it done! what more can you ask?" holden winced. then he said heavily: "i'd like for it to be true." jones moved suddenly. he said in an oddly surprised voice: "d'you know, it can be! i didn't realize! it can be true! i can make a ship go faster than light!" cochrane said with exquisite irony: "thanks, but we don't need it. we aren't getting paid for that! all we need is a modicum of appreciation for a neurotic son-in-law of a partner of kursten, kasten, hopkins and fallowe! a public-relations job is all that's required. you give west the theory, and jamison will do the prophecy, and bell will write it out." jones said calmly: "i will like hell! look! i discovered this faster-than-light field in the first place! i sold it to dabney because he wanted to be famous! i got my pay and he can keep it! but if he can't understand it himself, even to lecture about it ... do you think i'm going to throw in some extra stuff i noticed, that i can fit into that theory but nobody else can--do you think i'm going to give him starships as a bonus?" holden said, nodding, with his lips twisted: "i should have figured that! he bought his great discovery from you, eh? and that's what he gets frustrated about!" cochrane snapped: "i thought you psychiatrists knew the facts of life, bill! dabney's not unusual in my business! he's almost a typical sponsor!" "when you ask me to throw away starships," said jones coldly, "for a publicity feature, i don't play. i won't take the credit for the field away from dabney. i sold him that with my eyes open. but starships are more important than a fool's hankering to be famous! he'd never try it! he'd be afraid it wouldn't work! i don't play!" holden said stridently: "i don't give a damn about any deal you made with dabney! but if you can get us to the stars--all us humans who need it--you've got to!" jones said, again calmly: "i'm willing. make me an offer--not cash, but a chance to do something real--not just a trick for a neurotic's ego!" cochrane grinned at him very peculiarly. "i like your approach. you've got illusions. they're nice things to have. i wouldn't mind having some myself. bill," he said to dr. william holden, "how much nerve has dabney?" "speaking unprofessionally," said holden, "he's a worm with wants. he hasn't anything but cravings. why?" cochrane grinned again, his head cocked on one side. "he wouldn't take part in an enterprise to reach the stars, would he?" when holden shook his head, cochrane said zestfully, "i'd guess that the peak of his ambition would be to have the credit for it if it worked, but he wouldn't risk being associated with it until it had worked! right?" "right," said holden. "i said he was a worm. what're you driving at?" "i'm outlining what you're twisting my arm to make me do," said cochrane, "in case you haven't noticed. bill, if jones can really make a ship go faster than light--" "i can," repeated jones. "i simply didn't think of the thing in connection with travel. i only thought of it for signalling." "then," said cochrane, "i'm literally forced, for dabney's sake, to do something that he'd scream shrilly at if he heard about it. we're going to have a party, bill! a party after your and my and jones' hearts!" "what do you mean?" demanded holden. "we make a production after all," said cochrane, grinning. "we are going to take dabney's discovery--the one he bought publicity rights to--very seriously indeed. i'm going to get him acclaim. first we break a story of what dabney's field means for the future of mankind--and then we prove it! we take a journey to the stars! want to make your reservations now?" "you mean," said west incredulously, "a genuine trip? why?" cochrane snapped at him suddenly. "because i can't kid myself any more," he rasped. "i've found out how little i count in the world and the estimation of kursten, kasten, hopkins and fallowe! i've found out i'm only a little man when i thought i was a big one, and i won't take it! now i've got an excuse to try to be a big man! that's reason enough, isn't it?" then he glared around the small laboratory under the dust-heap. he was irritated because he did not feel splendid emotions after making a resolution and a plan which ought to go down in history--if it worked. he wasn't uplifted. he wasn't aware of any particular feeling of being the instrument of destiny or anything else. he simply felt peevish and annoyed and obstinate about trying the impossible trick. it annoyed him additionally, perhaps, to see the expression of starry-eyed admiration on babs' face as she looked at him across the untidy laboratory table, cluttered up with beer-cans. chapter three it is a matter of record that the american continents were discovered because ice-boxes were unknown in the fifteenth century. there being no refrigeration, meat did not keep. but meat was not too easy to come by, so it had to be eaten, even when it stank. therefore it was a noble enterprise, and to the glory of the kingdoms of castile and aragon, to put up the financial backing for even a crackpot who might get spices cheaper and thereby make the consumption of slightly spoiled meat less unpleasant. which was why columbus got three ships and crews of jailbirds for them from a government still busy trying to drive the moors out of the last corner of spain. this was a precedent for the matter on hand now. cochrane happened to know the details about columbus because he'd checked over the research when he did a show on the dikkipatti hour dealing with him. there were more precedents. the elaborate bargain by which columbus was to be made hereditary high admiral of the western oceans, with a bite of all revenue obtained by the passage he was to discover--he had to hold out for such terms to make the package he was selling look attractive. nobody buys anything that is underpriced too much. it looks phoney. so cochrane made his preliminaries rather more impressive than they need have been from a strictly practical point of view, in order to make the enterprise practical from a financial aspect. there was another precedent he did not intend to follow. columbus did not know where he was going when he set sail, he did not know where he was when he arrived at the end of his voyage, and he didn't know where he'd been when he got back. cochrane expected to improve on the achievement of the earlier explorer's doings in these respects. he commandeered the legal department of kursten, kasten, hopkins, and fallowe to set up the enterprise with strict legality and discretion. there came into being a corporation called "spaceways, inc." which could not possibly be considered phoney from any inspection of its charter. expert legal advice arranged that its actual stock-holders should appear to be untraceable. deft manipulation contrived that though its stock was legally vested in cochrane and holden and jones--cochrane negligently threw in jones as a convenient name to use--and they were officially the owners of nearly all the stock, nobody who checked up would believe they were anything but dummies. stockholdings in west's, and jamison's and bell's names would look like smaller holdings held for other than the main entrepreneurs. but these stock-holders were not only the legal owners of record--they were the true owners. kursten, kasten, hopkins and fallowe wanted no actual part of spaceways. they considered the enterprise merely a psychiatric treatment for a neurotic son-in-law. which, of course, it was. so spaceways, inc., quite honestly and validly belonged to the people who would cure dabney of his frustration--and nobody at all believed that it would ever do anything else. not anybody but those six owners, anyhow. and as it turned out, not all of them. the psychiatric treatment began with an innocent-seeming news-item from lunar city saying that dabney, the so-and-so scientist, had consented to act as consulting physicist to spaceways, inc., for the practical application of his recent discovery of a way to send messages faster than light. this was news simply because it came from the moon. it got fairly wide distribution, but no emphasis. then the publicity campaign broke. on orders from cochrane, jamison the extrapolating genius got slightly plastered, in company with the two news-association reporters in lunar city. he confided that spaceways, inc., had been organized and was backed to develop the dabney faster-than-light-signalling field into a faster-than-light-travel field. the news men pumped him of all his extrapolations. cynically, they checked to see who might be preparing to unload stock. they found no preparations for stock-sales. no registration of the company for raising funds. it wasn't going to the public for money. it wasn't selling anybody anything. then cochrane refused to see any reporters at all, everybody connected with the enterprise shut up tighter than a clam, and jamison vanished into a hotel room where he was kept occupied with beverages and food at dabney's father-in-law's expense. none of this was standard for a phoney promotion deal. the news story exploded. let loose on an overcrowded planet which had lost all hope of relief after fifty years in which only the moon had been colonized--and its colony had a population in the hundreds, only--the idea of faster-than-light travel was the one impossible dream that everybody wanted to believe in. the story spread in a manner that could only be described as chain-reaction in character. and of course dabney--as the scientist responsible for the new hope--became known to all peoples. the experts of kursten, kasten, hopkins and fallowe checked on the publicity given to dabney. strict advertising agency accounting figured that to date the cost-per-customer-mention of dabney and his discovery were the lowest in the history of advertising. surveys disclosed that within three earth-days less than . of every hundred interviews questioned were completely ignorant of dabney and the prospect of travel to the stars through his discovery. more people knew dabney's name than knew the name of the president of the united states! that was only the beginning. the leading popular-science show jumped eight points in audience-rating. it actually reached top-twenty rating when it assigned a regular five-minute period to the dabney field and its possibilities in human terms. on the sixth day after jamison's calculated indiscretion, the public consciousness was literally saturated with the idea of faster-than-light transportation. dabney was mentioned in every interview of every stuffed shirt, he was referred to on every comedy show (three separate jokes had been invented, which were developed into one thousand eight hundred switcheroos, most of them only imperceptibly different from the original trio) and even marilyn winters--little aphrodite herself--was demanding a faster-than-light-travel sequence in her next television show. on the seventh day bill holden came into the office where cochrane worked feverishly. "doctor cochrane," said holden, "a word with you!" "doctor?" asked cochrane. "doctor!" repeated holden. "i've just been interviewing my patient. you're good. my patient is adjusted." cochrane raised his eyebrows. "he's famous," said holden grimly. "he now considers that everybody in the world knows that he is a great scientist. he is appreciated. he is happily making plans to go back to earth and address a few learned societies and let people admire him. he can now spend the rest of his life being the man who discovered the principle by which faster-than-light-travel will some day be achieved. even when the furor dies down, he will have been a great man--and he will stay a great man in his own estimation. in short, he's cured." cochrane grinned. "then i'm fired?" "we are," said holden. "there are professional ethics even among psychiatrists, jed. i have to admit that the guy now has a permanent adjustment to reality. he has been recognized as a great scientist. he is no longer frustrated." cochrane leaned back in his chair. "that may be good medical ethics," he observed, "but it's lousy business practice, bill. you say he's adjusted to reality. that means that he will now have a socially acceptable reaction to anything that's likely to happen to him." holden nodded. "a well-adjusted person does. dabney's the same person. he's the same fool. but he'll get along all right. a psychiatrist can't change a personality! all he can do is make it adjust to the world about so the guy doesn't have to be tucked away in a straight-jacket. in that sense, dabney is adjusted." "you've played a dirty trick on him," said cochrane. "you've stabilized him, and that's the rottenest trick anybody can play on anybody! you've put him into a sort of moral deep-freeze. it's a dirty trick, bill!" "look who's talking!" said holden wearily. "i suppose the advertising business is altruistic and unmercenary?" "the devil, no!" said cochrane indignantly. "we serve a useful purpose! we tell people that they smell bad, and so give them an alibi for the unpopularity their stupidity has produced. but then we tell them to use so-and-so's breath sweetener or whosit's non-immunizing deodorant they'll immediately become the life of every party they attend! it's a lie, of course, but it's a dynamic lie! it gives the frustrated individual something to do! it sells him hope and therefore activity--and inactivity is a sort of death!" holden looked at cochrane with a dreary disinterest. "you're adjusted, jed! but do you really believe that stuff?" cochrane grinned again. "only on tuesdays and fridays. it's about two-sevenths true. but it does have that much truth in it! nobody ever gets anything done while they merely make socially acceptable responses to the things that happen to them! take dabney himself! we've got a hell of a thing coming along now just because he wouldn't make the socially acceptable response to having a rich wife and no brains. he rebelled. so mankind will start moving to the stars!" "you still believe it?" cochrane grimaced. "yesterday morning i sweated blood in a space-suit out in the crater beyond jones' laboratory. he tried his trick. he had a small signal-rocket mounted on the far side of that crater,--twenty-some miles. it was in front of the field-plate that established the dabney field across the crater to another plate near us. jones turned on the field. he ignited the rocket by remote control. i was watching with a telescope. i gave him the word to fire.... how long do you think it took that rocket to cross the crater in that field that works like a pipe? it smashed into the plate at the lab!" holden shook his head. "it took slightly," said cochrane, "slightly under three-fifths of a second." holden blinked. cochrane said: "a signal-rocket has an acceleration of about six hundred feet per second, level flight, no gravity component, mass acceleration only. it should have taken a hundred seconds plus to cross that crater--over twenty miles. it shouldn't have stayed on course. it did stay on course, inside the field. it did take under three-fifths of a second. the gadget works!" holden drew a deep breath. "so now you need more money and you want me not to discharge my patient as cured." "not a bit of it!" snapped cochrane. "i don't want him as a patient! i'm only willing to accept him as a customer! but if he wants fame, i'll sell it to him. not as something to lean his fragile psyche on, but something to wallow in! do you think he could ever get too famous for his own satisfaction?" "of course not," said holden. "he's the same fool." "then we're in business," cochrane told him. "not that i couldn't peddle my fish elsewhere. i'm going to! but i'll give him old-customer preference. i'll want him out at the distress-torp tests this afternoon. they'll be public." "this afternoon?" asked holden. "distress-torp?" a lunar day is two earth-weeks-long. a lunar night is equally long-drawn-out. cochrane said impatiently: "i got out of bed four hours ago. to me that's morning. i'll eat lunch in an hour. that's noon. say, three hours from now, whatever o'clock it is lunar time." holden glanced at his watch and made computations. he said: "that'll be half-past two hundred and three o'clock, if you're curious. but what's a distress-torp?" "shoo!" said cochrane. "i'll send babs to find you and load you on the jeep. you'll see then. now i'm busy!" holden shrugged and went away, and cochrane stared at his own watch. since a lunar day and night together fill twenty-eight earth days of time, a strictly lunar "day" contains nearly three hundred forty earth-hours. to call one-twelfth of that period an hour would be an affectation. to call each twenty-four earth hours a day would have been absurd. so the actual period of the moon's rotation was divided into familiar time-intervals, and a bulletin-board in the hotel lobby in lunar city notified those interested that: "_sunday will be from o'clock to o'clock a.m._" there would be another sunday some time during the lunar afternoon. cochrane debated momentarily whether this information could be used in the publicity campaign of spaceways, inc. strictly speaking, there was some slight obligation to throw extra fame dabney's way regardless, because the corporation had been formed as a public-relations device. any other features, such as changing the history of the human race, were technically incidental. but cochrane put his watch away. to talk about horology on the moon wouldn't add to dabney's stature as a phoney scientist. it didn't matter. he went back to the business at hand. some two years before there had been a fake corporation organized strictly for the benefit of its promoters. it had built a rocket-ship ostensibly for the establishment of a colony on mars. the ship had managed to stagger up to luna, but no farther. its promoters had sold stock on the promise that a ship that could barely reach luna could take off from that small globe with six times as much fuel as it could lift off of earth. which was true. investors put in their money on that verifiable fact. but the truth happened to be, of course, that it would still take an impossible amount of fuel to accelerate the ship--so heavily loaded--to a speed where it would reach mars in one human lifetime. taking off from luna would solve only the problem of gravity. it wouldn't do a thing about inertia. so the ship never rose from its landing near lunar city. the corporation that had built it went profitably bankrupt. cochrane had been working feverishly to find out who owned that ship now. just before the torp-test he'd mentioned, he found that the ship belonged to the hotel desk-clerk, who had bought it in hope of renting it sooner or later for television background-shots in case anybody was crazy enough to make a television film-tape on the moon. he was now discouraged. cochrane chartered it, putting up a bond to return it undamaged. if the ship was lost, the hotel-clerk would get back his investment--about a week's pay. so cochrane had a space-ship practically in his pocket when the public demonstration of the dabney field came off at half-past o'clock. the site of the demonstration was the shadowed, pitch-dark part of the floor of a crater twenty miles across, with walls some ten thousand jagged feet high. the furnace-like sunshine made the plain beyond the shadow into a sea of blinding brightness. the sunlit parts of the crater's walls were no less terribly glaring. but above the edge of the cliffs the stars began; infinitely small and many-colored, with innumerable degrees of brightness. the earth hung in mid-sky like a swollen green apple, monstrous in size. and the figures which moved about the scene of the test could be seen only faintly by reflected light from the lava plain, because one's eyes had to be adjusted to the white-hot moon-dust on the plain and mountains. there were not many persons present. three jeeps waited in the semi-darkness, out of the burning sunshine. there were no more than a dozen moon-suited individuals to watch and to perform the test of the dabney field. cochrane had scrupulously edited all fore-news of the experiment to give dabney the credit he had paid for. there were present, then, the party from earth--cochrane and babs and holden, with the two tame scientists and bell the writer--and the only two reporters on the moon. only news syndicates could stand the expense-account of a field man in lunar city. and then there were jones and dabney and two other figures apparently brought by dabney. there was, of course, no sound at all on the moon itself. there was no air to carry it. but from each plastic helmet a six-inch antenna projected straight upward, and the microwaves of suit-talkies made a jumble of slightly metallic sounds in the headphones of each suit. as soon as cochrane got out of the jeep's air-lock and was recognized, dabney said agitatedly: "mr. cochrane! mr. cochrane! i have to discuss something with you! it is of the utmost importance! will you come into the laboratory?" cochrane helped babs to the ground and made his way to the airlock in the dust-heap against the cliff. he went in, with two other space-suited figures who detached themselves from the rest to follow him. once inside the odorous, cramped laboratory, dabney opened his face-plate and began to speak before cochrane was ready to hear him. his companion beamed amiably. "--and therefore, mr. cochrane," dabney was saying agitatedly, "i insist that measures be taken to protect my scientific reputation! if this test should fail, it will militate against the acceptance of my discovery! i warn you--and i have my friend mr. simms here as witness--that i will not be responsible for the operation of apparatus made by a subordinate who does not fully comprehend the theory of my discovery! i will not be involved--" cochrane nodded. dabney, of course, didn't understand the theory of the field he'd bought fame-rights to. but there was no point in bringing that up. johnny simms beamed at both of them. he was the swimmer babs had pointed out in the swimming-pool. his face was completely unlined and placid, like the face of a college undergraduate. he had never worried about anything. he'd never had a care in the world. he merely listened with placid interest. "i take it," said cochrane, "that you don't mind the test being made, so long as you don't have to accept responsibility for its failure--and so long as you get the credit for its success if it works. that's right, isn't it?" "if it fails, i am not responsible!" insisted dabney stridently. "if it succeeds, it will be because of my discovery." cochrane sighed a little. this was a shabby business, but dabney would have convinced himself, by now, that he was the genius he wanted people to believe him. "before the test," said cochrane gently, "you make a speech. it will be recorded. you disclaim the crass and vulgar mechanical details and emphasize that you are like einstein, dealing in theoretic physics only. that you are naturally interested in attempts to use your discovery, but your presence is a sign of your interest but not your responsibility." "i shall have to think it over--," began dabney nervously. "you can say," promised cochrane, "that if it does not work you will check over what jones did and tell him why." "y-yes," said dabney hesitantly, "i could do that. but i must think it over first. you will have to delay--" "if i were you," said cochrane confidentially, "i would plan a speech to that effect because the test is coming off in five minutes." he closed his face-plate as dabney began to protest. he went into the lock. he knew better than to hold anything up while waiting for a neurotic to make a decision. dabney had all he wanted, now. from this moment on he would be frantic for fear of losing it. but there could be no argument outside the laboratory. in the airlessness, anything anybody said by walkie-talkie could be heard by everybody. when dabney and simms followed out of the lock, cochrane was helping jones set up the device that had been prepared for this test. it was really two devices. one was a very flat cone, much like a coolie-hat and hardly larger, with a sort of power-pack of coils and batteries attached. the other was a space-ship's distress-signal rocket, designed to make a twenty-mile streak of red flame in emptiness. nobody had yet figured out what good a distress signal would do, between earth and moon, but the idea was soothing. the rocket was four feet long and six inches in diameter. at its nose there was a second coolie-hat cone, with other coils and batteries. jones set the separate cone on the ground and packed stones around and under it to brace it. his movements were almost ridiculously deliberate. bending over, he bent slowly, or the motion would lift his feet off the ground. straightening up, he straightened slowly, or the upward impetus of his trunk would again lift him beyond contact with solidity. but he braced the flat cone carefully. he set the signal-torpedo over that cone. the entire set-up was under six feet tall, and the coolie-hat cones were no more than eighteen inches in diameter. he said flatly: "i'm all ready." the hand and arm of a space-suited figure lifted, for attention. dabney's voice came worriedly from the headphones of every suit: "i wish it understood," he said in some agitation, "that this first attempted application of my discovery is made with my consent, but that i am not aware of the mechanical details. as a scientist, my work has been in pure science. i have worked for the advancement of human knowledge, but the technological applications of my discovery are not mine. still--if this device does not work, i will take time from my more important researches to inquire into what part of my discovery has been inadequately understood and applied. it may be that present technology is not qualified to apply my discovery--" jones said without emotion--but cochrane could imagine his poker-faced expression inside his helmet: "that's right. i consulted mr. dabney about the principles, but the apparatus is my doing, i take the responsibility for that!" then cochrane added with pleasant irony: "since all this is recorded, mr. dabney can enlarge upon his disinterest later. right now, we can go ahead. mr. dabney disavows us unless we are successful. let us let it go at that." then he said: "the observatory's set to track?" a muffled voice said boredly, by short-wave from the observatory up on the crater's rim: "_we're ready. visual and records, and we've got the timers set to clock the auto-beacon signals as they come in._" the voice was not enthusiastic. cochrane had had to put up his own money to have the nearside lunar observatory put a low-power telescope to watch the rocket's flight. in theory, this distress-rocket should make a twenty-mile streak of relatively long-burning red sparks. a tiny auto-beacon in its nose was set to send microwave signals at ten-second intervals. on the face of it, it had looked like a rather futile performance. "let's go," said cochrane. he noted with surprise that his mouth was suddenly dry. this affair was out of all reason. a producer of television shows should not be the person to discover in an abstruse scientific development the way to reach the stars. a neurotic son-in-law of an advertising tycoon should not be the instrument by which the discovery should come about. a psychiatrist should not be the means of associating jones--a very junior physicist with no money--and cochrane and the things cochrane was prepared to bring about if only this unlikely-looking gadget worked. "jones," said cochrane with a little difficulty, "let's follow an ancient tradition. let babs christen the enterprise by throwing the switch." jones pointed there in the shadow of the crater-wall, and babs moved to the switch he indicated. she said absorbedly: "five, four, three, two, one--" she threw the switch. there was a spout of lurid red flame. the rocket vanished. it vanished. it did not rise, visibly. it simply went away from where it was, with all the abruptness of a light going out. there was a flurry of the most brilliant imaginable carmine flame. that light remained. but the rocket did not so much rise as disappear. cochrane jerked his head up. he was close to the line of the rocket's ascent. he could see a trail of red sparks which stretched to invisibility. it was an extraordinarily thin line. the separate flecks of crimson light which comprised it were distant in space. they were so far from each other that the signal-rocket was a complete failure as a device making a streak of light that should be visible. the muffled voice in the helmet-phones said blankly: "_hey! what'd you do to that rocket?_" the others did not move. they seemed stunned. the vanishing of the rocket was no way for a rocket to act. in all expectation, it should have soared skyward with a reasonable velocity, and should have accelerated rather more swiftly from the moon's surface than it would have done from earth. but it should have remained visible during all its flight. its trail should have been a thick red line. instead, the red sparks were so far separated--the trail was so attenuated that it was visible only from a spot near its base. the observatory voice said more blankly still: "_hey! i've picked up the trail! i can't see it nearby, but it seems to start, thin, about fifty miles up and go on away from there! that rocket shouldn't ha' gone more than twenty miles! what happened?_" "_watch for the microwave signals_," said jones' voice in cochrane's headphones. the voice from the observatory squeaked suddenly. this was not one of the highly-placed astronomers, but part of the mechanical staff who'd been willing to do an unreasonable chore for pay. "_here's the blip! it's crazy! nothing can go that fast!_" and then in the phones there came the relayed signal of the auto-beacon in the vanished rocket. the signal-sound was that of a radar pulse, beginning at low pitch and rising three octaves in the tenth of a second. at middle c--the middle of the range of a piano--there was a momentary spurt of extra volume. but in the relayed signal that louder instant had dropped four tones. cochrane said crisply: "jones, what speed would that be?" "_it'd take a slide-rule to figure it_," said jones' voice, very calmly, "_but it's faster than anything ever went before._" cochrane waited for the next beep. it did not come in ten seconds. it was easily fifteen. even he could figure out what that meant! a signal-source that stretched ten seconds of interval at source to fifteen at reception ... the voice from the observatory wailed: "_it's crazy! it can't be going like that!_" they waited. fifteen seconds more. sixteen. eighteen. twenty. the beep sounded. the spurt of sound had dropped a full octave. the signal-rocket, traveling normally, might have attained a maximum velocity of some two thousand feet per second. it was now moving at a speed which was an appreciably large fraction of the speed of light. which was starkly impossible. it simply happened to be true. they heard the signal once more. the observatory's multiple-receptor receiver had been stepped up to maximum amplification. the signal was distinct, but very faint indeed. and the rocket was then traveling--so it was later computed--at seven-eighths of the speed of light. between the flat cone on the front of the distress-torpedo, and the flat cone on the ground, a field of force existed. the field was not on the back surface of the torpedo's cone, but before the front surface. it went back to the moon from there, so all the torpedo and its batteries were in the columnar stressed space. and an amount of rocket-push that should have sent the four-foot torpedo maybe twenty miles during its period of burning, had actually extended its flight to more than thirty-seven hundred miles before the red sparks were too far separated to be traced any farther, and by then had kicked the torpedo up impossibly close to light-speed. in a sense, the dabney field had an effect similar to the invention of railways. the same horsepower moved vastly more weight faster, over steel rails, than it could haul over a rutted dirt road. the same rocket-thrust moved more weight faster in the dabney field than in normal space. there would be a practical limit to the speed at which a wagon could be drawn over a rough road. the speed of light was a limit to the speed of matter in normal space. but on a railway the practical speed at which a vehicle could travel went up from three miles an hour to a hundred and twenty. in the dabney field it was yet to be discovered what the limiting velocity might be. but old formulas for acceleration and increase-of-mass-with-velocity simply did not apply in a dabney field. jones rode back to lunar city with cochrane and holden and babs. his face was dead-pan. babs tried to recover the mien and manner of the perfect secretary. "mr. cochrane," she said professionally, "will you want to read the publicity releases mr. bell turns out from what mr. west and mr. jamison tell him?" "i don't think it matters," said cochrane. "the newsmen will pump west and jamison empty, anyhow. it's all right. in fact, it's better than our own releases would be. they'll contradict each other. it'll sound more authentic that way. we're building up a customer-demand for information." the small moon-jeep rolled and bumped gently down the long, improbable highway back to lunar city. its engine ran smoothly, as steam-engines always do. it ran on seventy per cent hydrogen peroxide, first developed as a fuel back in the s for the pumps of the v rockets that tried to win the second world war for germany. when hydrogen peroxide comes in contact with a catalyst, such as permanganate of potash, it breaks down into oxygen and water. but the water is in the form of high-pressure steam, which is used in engines. the jeep's fuel supplied steam for power and its ashes were water to drink and oxygen to breathe. steam ran all motorized vehicles on luna. "what are you thinking about, jones?" asked cochrane suddenly. jones said meditatively: "i'm wondering what sort of field-strength a capacity-storage system would give me. i boosted the field intensity this time. the results were pretty good. i'm thinking--suppose i made the field with a strobe-light power-pack--or maybe a spot-welding unit. even a portable strobe-light gives a couple of million watts for the forty-thousandth of a second. suppose i fixed up a storage-pack to give me a field with a few billion watts in it? it might be practically like matter-transmission, though it would really be only high-speed travel. i think i've got to work on that idea a little ..." cochrane digested the information in silence. "far be it from me," he said presently, "to discourage such high-level contemplation. bill, what's on your mind?" holden said moodily: "i'm convinced that the thing works. but jed! you talk as if you hadn't any more worries! yet even if you and jones do have a way to make a ship travel faster than light, you haven't got a ship or the capital you need--." "i've got scenery that looks like a ship," said cochrane mildly. "consider that part settled." "but there are supplies. air--water--food--a crew--. we can't pay for such things! here on the moon the cost of everything is preposterous! how can you try out this idea without more capital than you can possibly raise?" "i'm going to imitate my old friend christopher columbus," said cochrane. "i'm going to give the customers what they want. columbus didn't try to sell anybody shares in new continents. who wanted new continents? who wanted to move to a new world? who wants new planets now? everybody would like to see their neighbors move away and leave more room, but nobody wants to move himself. columbus sold a promise of something that had an already-established value, that could be sold in every town and village--that had a merchandising system already set up! i'm going to offer just such a marketable commodity. i'll have freight-rockets on the way up here within twenty-four hours, and the freight and their contents will all be paid for!" he turned to babs. he looked more sardonic and cynical than ever before. "babs, you've just witnessed one of the moments that ought to be illustrated in all the grammar-school history-books along with ben franklin flying a kite. what's topmost in your mind?" she hesitated and then flushed. the moon-jeep crunched and clanked loudly over the trail that led downhill. there was no sound outside, of course. there was no air. but the noise inside the moon-vehicle was notable. the steam-motor, in particular, made a highly individual racket. "i'd--rather not say," said babs awkwardly. "what's your own main feeling, mr. cochrane?" "mine?" cochrane grinned. "i'm thinking what a hell of a funny world this is, when people like dabney and bill and jones and i are the ones who have to begin operation outer space!" chapter four cochrane said kindly into the vision-beam microphone to earth, "cancel section c, paragraph nine. then section b( ) from paragraph eleven. then after you've canceled the entire last section--fourteen--we can sign up the deal." there was a four-second pause. about two seconds for his voice to reach earth. about two seconds for the beginning of the reply to reach him. the man at the other end protested wildly. "we're a long way apart," said cochrane blandly, "and our talk only travels at the speed of light. you're not talking from one continent to another. save tolls. yes or no?" another four-second pause. the man on earth profanely agreed. cochrane signed the contract before him. the other man signed. not only the documents but all conversation was recorded. there were plugged-in witnesses. the contract was binding. cochrane leaned back in his chair. his eyes blinked wearily. he'd spent hours going over the facsimile-transmitted contract with joint networks, and had weeded out a total of six joker-stipulations. he was very tired. he yawned. "you can tell jones, babs," he said, "that all the high financing's done. he can spend money. and you can transmit my resignation to kursten, kasten, hopkins and fallowe. and since this is a pretty risky operation, you'd better send a service message asking what you're to do with yourself. they'll probably tell you to take the next rocket back and report to the secretarial pool, i'm afraid. the same fate probably awaits west and jamison and bell." babs said guiltily: "mr. cochrane--you've been so busy i had to use my own judgment. i didn't want to interrupt you--." "what now?" demanded cochrane. "the publicity on the torp-test," said babs guiltily, "was so good that the firm was worried for fear we'd seem to be doing it for a client of the firm--which we are. so we've all been put on a leave-with-expenses-and-pay status. officially, we're all sick and the firm is paying our expenses until we regain our health." "kind of them," said cochrane. "what's the bite?" "they're sending up talent contracts for us to sign," admitted babs. "when we go back, we would command top prices for interviews. the firm, of course, will want to control that." cochrane raised his eyebrows. "i see! but you'll actually be kept off the air so dabney can be television's fair-haired boy. he'll go on marilyn winter's show, i'll bet, because that has the biggest audience on the planet. he'll lecture little aphrodite herself on the constants of space and she'll flutter her eyelashes at him and shove her chest-measurements in his direction and breathe how wonderful it is to be a man of science!" "how'd you know?" demanded babs, surprised. cochrane winced. "heaven help me, babs, i didn't. i tried to guess at something too impossible even for the advertising business! but i failed! i failed! you and my official gang, then, are here with the firm's blessing, free of all commands and obligations, but drawing salary and expenses?" "yes," admitted babs. "and so are you." "i get off!" said cochrane firmly. "forward my resignation. it's a matter of pure vanity. but kursten, kasten, hopkins and fallowe do move in a mysterious way to latch onto a fast buck! i'm going to get some sleep. is there anything else you've had to use your judgment on?" "the contracts for re-broadcast of the torp-test. the original broadcast had an audience-rating of seventy-one!" "such," said cochrane, "are the uses of fame. our cash?" she showed him a neatly typed statement. for the original run of the torp-test film-tape, so much. it was to be re-run with a popularization of the technical details by west, and a lurid extrapolation of things to come by jamison. the sponsors who got hold of commercial time with that expanded and souped-up version would expect, and get, an audience-rating unparalleled in history. dabney was to take a bow on the rebroadcast, too--very much the dignified and aloof scientist. there were other interviews. dabney again, from a script written by bell. and jones. jones hated the idea of being interviewed, but he had faced a beam-camera and answered idiotic questions, and gone angrily back to his work. spaceways, inc., had a bank-account already amounting to more than twenty years of cochrane's best earning-power. he was selling publicity for sponsors to hang their commercials on, in a strict parallel to christopher columbus' selling of spices to come. but cochrane was delivering for cash. freight-rockets were on the way moonward now, whose cargoes of supplies for a space-journey cochrane was accepting only when a bonus in money was paid for the right to brag about it. so-and-so's oxygen paid for the privilege of supplying air-reserves. what's-his-name's dehydrated vegetables were accepted on similar terms, with whoosit's instant coffee and somebody else's noodle soup in bags. "if," said cochrane tiredly, looking up from the statement, "we could only start off in a fleet instead of a single ship, babs, we'd not only be equipped but so rich before we started that we'd want to stay home to enjoy it!" he yawned prodigiously. "i'm going to get some sleep. don't let me sleep too long!" he went off to his hotel-room and was out cold before his head had drifted down to its pillow. but he was not pleased with himself. it annoyed him that his revolt against being an expendable employee had taken the form of acting like one of his former bosses in collecting ruthlessly for the brains--in the case of jones--and the neurotic idiosyncrasies--in the case of dabney--of other men. the gesture by which he had become independent was not quite the splendid, scornful one he'd have liked. the fact that this sort of gesture worked, and nothing else would have, did not make him feel better. but he slept. he dreamed that he was back at his normal business of producing a television show. nobody but himself cared whether the show went on or not. the actual purpose of all his subordinates seemed to be to cut as many throats among their fellow-workers as possible--in a business way, of course--so that by their own survival they might succeed to a better job and higher pay. this is what is called the fine spirit of teamwork by which things get done, both in private and public enterprise. it was a very realistic dream, but it was not restful. while he slept, the world wagged on and the cosmos continued on its normal course. the two moons of earthâ��one natural and one artificialâ��swung in splendid circles about their primary. the nine moons of saturn spun about that planetâ��s divided rings. the red spot of jupiter and the bands on that gas-giant world moved in orderly fashion about its circumference. light-centuries away, giant cepheid suns expanded monstrously and contracted again, rather more rapidly than their gravitational fields could account for. double stars sedately swung about each other. comets reached their farthest points and, mere aggregations of frigid jagged stones and metal, prepared for another plunge back into light and heat and warmth. and various prosaic actions took place on luna. when cochrane waked and went back to the hotel-room in use as an office, he found babs talking confidentially to a woman--girl, rather--whom cochrane vaguely remembered. then he did a double take. he did remember her. three or four years before she'd been the outstanding television personality of the year. she'd been pretty, but not so pretty that you didn't realize that she was a person. she was everything that marilyn winters was not--and she'd been number two name in television. cochrane said blankly: "aren't you alicia keith?" the girl smiled faintly. she wasn't as pretty as she had been. she looked patient. and an expression of patience, on a woman's face, is certainly not unpleasant. but it isn't glamorous, either. "i was," she said. "i married johnny simms." cochrane looked at babs. "they live up here," explained babs. "i pointed him out at the swimming-pool the day we got here." "wonderful," said cochrane. "how--" "johnny," said alicia, "has bought into your spaceways corporation. he got your man west drunk and bought his shares of spaceway stock." cochrane sat down--not hard, because it was impossible to sit down hard on the moon. but he sat down as hard as it was possible to sit. "why'd he do that?" "he found out you had hold of the old mars colony ship. he understands you're going to take a trip out to the stars. he wants to go along. he's very much like a little boy. he hates it here." "then why live--." cochrane checked the question, not quite in time. "he can't go back to earth," said alicia calmly. "he's a psychopathic personality. he's sane and quite bright and rather dear in his way, but he simply can't remember what is right and wrong. especially when he gets excited. when they fixed up lunar city as an international colony, by sheer oversight they forgot to arrange for extradition from it. so johnny can live here. he can't live anywhere else--not for long." cochrane said nothing. "he wants to go with you," said alicia pleasantly. "he's thrilled. the lawyer his family keeps up here to watch over him is thrilled, too. he wants to go back and visit his family. and as a stockholder, johnny can keep you from taking a ship or any other corporate property out of the jurisdiction of the courts. but he'd rather go with you. of course i have to go too." "it's blackmail," said cochrane without heat. "a pretty neat job of it, too. babs, you see holden about this. he's a psychiatrist." he turned to alicia. "why do you want to go? i don't know whether it'll be dangerous or not." "i married johnny," said alicia. her smile was composed. "i thought it would be wonderful to be able to trust somebody that nobody else could trust." after a moment she added: "it would be, if one could." a few moments later she went away, very pleasantly and very calmly. her husband had no sense of right or wrong--not in action, anyhow. she tried to keep him from doing too much damage by exercising the knowledge she had of what was fair and what was not. cochrane grimaced and told babs to make a note to talk to holden. but there were other matters on hand, too. there were waivers to be signed by everybody who went along off luna. then cochrane said thoughtfully: "alicia keith would be a good name for film-tape ..." he plunged into the mess of paper-work and haggling which somebody has to do before any achievement of consequence can come about. pioneer efforts, in particular, require the same sort of clearing-away process as the settling of a frontier farm. instead of trees to be chopped and dug up by the roots, there are the gratuitous obstructionists who have to be chopped off at the ankles in a business way, and the people who exercise infinite ingenuity trying to get a cut of something--anything--somebody else is doing. and of course there are the publicity-hounds. since spaceways was being financed on sales of publicity which could be turned on this product and that, publicity-hounds cut into its revenue and capital. back on earth a crackpot inventor had a lawyer busily garnering free advertisement by press conferences about the injury done his client by spaceways, inc., who had stolen his invention to travel through space faster than light. somebody in the senate made a speech accusing the spaceway project of being a political move by the party in power for some dire ultimate purpose. ultimately the crackpot inventor would get on the air and announce triumphantly that only part of his invention had been stolen, because he'd been too smart to write it down or tell anybody, and he wouldn't tell anybody--not even a court--the full details of his invention unless paid twenty-five million in cash down, and royalties afterward. the project for a congressional investigation of spaceways would die in committee. but there were other griefs. the useless spaceship hulk had to be emptied of the mining-tools stored in it. this was done by men working in space-suits. occupational rules required them to exert not more than one-fourth of the effort they would have done if working for themselves. when the ship was empty, air was released in it, and immediately froze to air-snow. so radiant heaters had to be installed and powered to warm up the hull to where an atmosphere could exist in it. its generators had to be thawed from the metal-ice stage of brittleness and warmed to where they could be run without breaking themselves to bits. but there were good breaks, too. presently a former moonship-pilot--grounded to an administrative job on luna--on his own free time checked over the ship. jones arranged it. with rocket-motors of adamite--the stuff discovered by pure accident in a steel-mill back on earth--the propelling apparatus checked out. the fuel-pumps had been taken over in fullness of design from fire-engine pumps on earth. they were all right. the air-regenerating apparatus had been developed from the aeriating culture-tanks in which antibiotics were grown on earth. it needed only reseeding with algae--microscopic plants which when supplied with ultraviolet light fed avidly on carbon dioxide and yielded oxygen. the ship was a rather involved combination of essentially simple devices. it could be put back into such workability as it had once possessed with practically no trouble. it was. jones moved into it, with masses of apparatus from the laboratory in the lunar apennines. he labored lovingly, fanatically. like most spectacular discoveries, the dabney field was basically simple. it was almost idiotically uncomplicated. in theory it was a condition of the space just outside one surface of a sheet of metal. it was like that conduction-layer on the wires of a cross-country power-cable, when electricity is transmitted in the form of high-frequency alterations and travels on the skins of many strands of metal, because high-frequency current simply does not flow inside of wires, but only on their surfaces. the dabney field formed on the surface--or infinitesimally beyond it--of a metal sheet in which eddy-currents were induced in such-and-such a varying fashion. that was all there was to it. so jones made the exterior forward surface of the abandoned spaceship into a generator of the dabney field. it was not only simple, it was too simple! having made the bow of the ship into a dabney field plate, he immediately arranged that he could, at will, make the rear of the ship into another dabney field plate. the two plates, turned on together, amounted to something that could be contemplated with startled awe, but jones planned to start off, at least, in a manner exactly like the distress-torp test. the job of wiring up for faster-than-light travel, however, was not much more difficult than wiring a bungalow, when one knew how it should be done. two freight-rockets came in, picked up by radar and guided to landings by remote control. the lunar city beam receiver picked up music aimed up from earth and duly relayed it to the dust-heaps which were the buildings of the city. the colonists and moon-tourists became familiar with forty-two new tunes dealing with prospective travel to the stars. one work of genius tied in a just-released film-tape drama titled "_child of hate_" to the lunar operation, and charmed listeners saw and heard the latest youthful tenor gently plead, "_child of hate, come to the stars and love._" the publicity department responsible for the masterpiece considered itself not far from genius, too. there was confusion thrice and four and five times confounded. cochrane came in to dispute furiously with holden whether it was better to have a psychopathic personality on the space-ship or to have a legal battle in the courts. cochrane won. jones arrived, belligerent, to do battle for technical devices which would cost money. "look!" said cochrane harassedly. "i'm not trying to boss you! don't come to me for authority! if you can make that ship take off i'll be in it, and my neck will be in as much danger as yours. you buy what will keep my neck as safe as possible, along with yours. i'm busy raising money and fighting off crackpots and dodging lawsuits and getting supplies! i've got a job that needs three men anyhow. all i'm hoping is that you get ready to take off before i start cutting out paperdolls. when can we leave?" "we?" said jones suspiciously. "you're going?" "if you think i'll stay behind and face what'll happen if this business flops," cochrane told him, "you're crazy! there are too many people on earth already. there's no room for a man who tried something big and failed! if this flops i'd rather be a frozen corpse with a happy smile on my face--i understand that in space one freezes--than somebody living on assisted survival status on earth!" "oh," said jones, mollified. "how many people are to go?" "ask bill holden," cochrane told him. "remember, if you need something, get it. i'll try to pay for it. if we come back with picture-tapes of outer space--even if we only circumnavigate mars!--we'll have money enough to pay for anything!" jones regarded cochrane with something almost like warmth. "i like this way of doing business," he said. "it's not business!" protested cochrane. "this is getting something done! by the way. have you picked out a destination for us to aim at?" when jones shook his head, cochrane said harassedly; "better get one picked out. but when we make out our sail-off papers, for destination we'll say, 'to the stars.' a nice line for the news broadcasts. oh, yes. tell bill holden to try to find us a skipper. an astrogator. somebody who can tell us how to get back if we get anywhere we need to get back from. is there such a person?" "i've got him," said jones. "he checked the ship for me. former moon-rocket pilot. he's here in lunar city. thanks!" he shook hands with cochrane before he left. which for jones was an expression of overwhelming emotion. cochrane turned back to his desk. "let's see ... that arrangement for cachets on stamps and covers to be taken along and postmarked outer space. put in a stipulation for extra payment in case we touch on planets and invent postmarks for them ..." he worked on, while babs took notes. presently he was dictating. and as he talked, frowning, he took a fountain-pen from his pocket and absently worked the refill-handle. it made ink exude from the pen-point. on the moon, the surface tension of the ink was exactly the same as on earth, but the gravity was five-sixths less. so a drop of ink of really impressive size could be formed before the moon's weak gravity made it fall. dictating as he worked the pen, cochrane achieved a pear-shaped mass of ink which was quite the size of a large grape before it fell into his waste-basket. it was the largest he'd made to date. it fell--slow-motion--and splashed--violently--as he regarded it with harried satisfaction. more time passed. a moon-rocket arrived from earth. there were new tourists under the thousand-foot plastic dome. out by the former mars-ship jones made experiments with small plastic balloons coated with a conducting varnish. in a vacuum, a cubic inch of air at earth-pressure will expand to make many cubic feet of near-vacuum. if a balloon can sustain an internal pressure of one ounce to the square foot, a thimbleful of air will inflate a sizeable globe to that pressure. jones was arranging tiny dabney field robot-generators with tiny atomic batteries to power them. each such balloon would be a dabney field "plate" when cast adrift in emptiness, and its little battery would keep it in operation for twenty years or more. baggage came up from earth for johnny simms. it was mostly elephant-guns and ammunition for them. johnny, as the heir to innumerable millions back on earth, had had a happy life, but hardly one to give him a practical view of things. to him, star-travel meant landing on such exotic planets as the fictioneers had been writing about for a hundred years or so. he really looked upon the venture into space as a combined big-game expedition and escape from lunar city. and he did look forward, too, to freedom from his family's legal representative and the constant reminder of ethical and moral values which johnny preferred happily to ignore. film-tape came up, and cameras to use it in. every imaginable item an expedition to space could use or even might use, was thrust upon spaceways, inc. manufacturers yearned to have their products used in connection with the hottest news story in decades. there was a steady trailing of moon-jeeps from the airlocks of lunar city to the ship. the time of lunar sunset arrived-- : o'clock, half-past five hundred and three hours. time was measured from midnight to midnight, astronomical fashion. the great, blazing sun whose streamer prominences, even, were too bright to be looked at with the naked eye--the sun neared and reached the horizon. there was no change in the star-studded sky. there were no sunset colorings. the incandescent brightness on the mountains was not lessened in the least. only the direction of the stark black shadows shifted. the glaring sun descended. its motion was almost infinitely slow. its disk was of the order of half a degree of arc, and it took a full hour to be fully obscured. and then there was at first no difference in the look of things save that the _mare imbrium_--the solidified, arid sea of showers--was as dark as the shadows in the mountains. they still gleamed brightly. for a very long time the white-hot sunshine glowed on their flanks. the brightness rose and rose, and blackness followed it. at long last only the topmost peaks of the apennines blazed luridly against a background of stars whose light seemed feeble by comparison. then it was night indeed. but the earth shone forth, a half-globe of seas and clouds and continents, vast and nostalgic in the sky. and now earthshine fell upon the moon. it was many times brighter than moonlight ever was upon the earth. even at lunar sunset the earthlight was sixteen times brighter. at midnight, when the earth was full, it would be bright enough for any activity. actually, the human beings on luna were nearly nocturnal in their habits, because it was easier to run moon-jeeps in frigidity and keep men and machines warm enough for functioning, than it was to protect them against the more-than-boiling heat of midday on the moon. so the activity about the salvaged space-ship increased. there were electric lights blazing in the demi-twilight, to guide freight vehicles with their loads. the tourist-jeeps went and returned and went and returned. the last shipload of travelers from earth wanted to see the space-craft about which all the world was talking. even cochrane presently became curious. there came a time when all the paper-work connected with what had happened was done with, and conditional contracts drawn up on everything that could be foreseen. it was time for something new to happen. cochrane said dubiously: "babs, have you seen the ship?" she shook her head. "i think we'd better go take a look at it," said cochrane. "do you know, i've been acting like a damned business man! i've only been out of lunar city three times. once to the laboratory to talk, once to test a signal-rocket across the crater, and once when the distress-torp went off. i haven't even seen the nightclub here in the city!" "you should," said babs matter-of-factly. "i went once, with doctor holden. the dancing was marvelous!" "bill holden, eh?" said cochrane. he found himself annoyed. "took you to the nightclub; but not to see the ship!" "the ship's farther," explained babs. "i could always be found at the nightclub if you needed me. i went when you were asleep." "damn!" said cochrane. "hm ... you ought to get a bonus. what would you rather have, babs, a bonus in cash or spaceways stock?" "i've got some stock," said babs. "mr. bell--the writer, you know--got in a poker game. he was cleaned out. so i gave him all the money i had--i told you i cleared out my savings-account before we came up, i think--for half his shares." "either you got very badly stuck," cochrane told her cynically, "or else you'll be so rich you won't speak to me." "oh, no!" said babs warmly. "never!" cochrane yawned. "let's get out and take a look at the ship. maybe i can stow cargo or something, now there's no more paper-work." babs said with an odd calm: "mr. jones wanted you out there today--in an hour, he said. i promised you'd go. i meant to mention it in time." cochrane did not notice her tone. he was dead-tired, as only a man can be who has driven himself at top speed for days on end over a business deal. business deals are stimulating only in their major aspects. most of the details are niggling, tedious, routine, and boring--and very often bear-trapped. cochrane had done, with only babs' help, an amount of mental labor that in the offices of kursten, kasten, hopkins and fallowe would have been divided among two vice-presidents, six lawyers, and at least twelve account executives. the work, therefore, would actually have been done by not less than twenty secretaries. but babs and cochrane had done it all. in the moon-jeep on the way to the ship he felt that heavy, exhausted sense of relaxation which is not pleasurable at all. babs annoyed him a little, too. she was late getting to the airlock, and seemed breathless when she arrived. the moon-jeep crunched and clanked and rumbled over the gently undulating lava sea beneath its giant wheels. babs looked zestfully out of the windows. the picture was, of course, quite incredible. in the relatively dim earthlight the moonscape was somehow softened, and yet the impossibly jagged mountains and steep cliffsides and the razor-edged passes of monstrous stone,--these things remained daunting. it was like riding through a dream in which everything nearby seemed fey and glamorous, but the background was deathly-still and ominous. there were the usual noises inside the jeep. the air had a metallic smell. one could detect the odors of oil, and ozone, and varnish, and plastic upholstery. there were the crunching sounds of the wheels, traveling over stone. there was the paradoxic gentleness of all the jeep's motions because of the low gravity. cochrane even noted the extraordinary feel of an upholstered seat when one weighs only one-sixth as much as back on earth. all his sensations were dreamlike--but he felt that headachy exhaustion that comes of overwork too long continued. "i'll try," he said tiredly, "to see that you have some fun before you go back, babs. you'll go back as soon as we dive off into whatever we're diving into, but you ought to get in the regular tourist stuff up here, anyhow." babs said nothing. pointedly. the moon-jeep clanked and rumbled onward. the hissing of steam was audible. the vehicle swung around a pinnacle of stone, and cochrane saw the space-ship. in the pale earthlight it was singularly beautiful. it had been designed to lure investors in a now-defunct promotion. it was stream-lined, and gigantic, and it glittered like silver. it stood upright on its tail-fins, and it had lighted ports and electric lights burned in the emptiness about it. but there was only one moon-jeep at its base. a space-suited figure moved toward a dangling sling and sat in it. he rose deliberately toward an open airlock-hatch, and the other moon-jeep moved soundlessly away back toward lunar city. there was no debris about. there was no cargo waiting to be loaded. cochrane did see a great metal plate, tilted on the ground, with a large box attached to it by cables. that would be the generators and the field-plate for a dabney field. it was plainly to remain on the moon. it was not underneath the ship. cochrane puzzled tiredly over it for a moment. then he understood. the ship would lift on its rockets, hover over the plate--which would be generating its half of the field--and then jones would switch on the apparatus in the ship itself. the forward, needle-pointed nose of the ship would become another generator of the dabney field. the ship's inertia, in that field, would be effectively reduced to a fraction of its former value. the rockets, which might give it an acceleration of a few hundred feet per second anywhere but in a dabney field, would immediately accelerate the ship and all its contents to an otherwise unattainable velocity. the occupants of the rocket would lose their relative inertia to the same degree as the ship. they should feel no more acceleration than from the same rocket-thrust in normal space. but they would travel-- cochrane felt that there was a fallacy somehow, in the working of the dabney field as he understood it. if there was less inertia in the dabney field--why--a rocket shouldn't push as hard in it, because, it was the inertia of the rocket-gases that gave the rocket-thrust. but cochrane was much too tired to work out a theoretic objection to something he knew did work. he was almost dozing when babs touched his arm. "space-suits, mr. cochrane." he got wearily into the clumsy costume. but he saw again that babs wore the shining-eyed look of rapturous adventure that he had seen her wear before. they got out of the moon-jeep, one after the other. the sling came down the space-ship's gleaming side. they got in it, together. it lifted them. the vast, polished hull of the space-ship slid past them only ten feet away. the ground diminished. they seemed less to be lifted than to float skyward. and in this sling, in this completely unreal ascent, cochrane roused suddenly. he felt the acute unease which comes of height. he had looked down upon earth from a height of four thousand miles with no feeling of dizziness. he had looked at earth a quarter-million miles away with no consciousness of depth. but a mere fifty feet above the surface of the moon he felt like somebody swinging out of a skyscraper window. then the airlock opening was beside them, and the sling rolled inward. they were in the lock, and cochrane found himself pushing babs away from the unrailed opening. he was relieved when the airlock closed. inside the ship, with the space-suits off, there was light and warmth, and a remarkably matter-of-fact atmosphere. the ship had been built to sell stock in a scheme for colonizing mars. prospective investors had been shown through it. it had been designed to be a convincing passenger-liner of space. it was. but cochrane found himself not needed for any consultation, and jones was busy, and bill holden highly preoccupied. he saw alicia keith--but her name was simms now. she smiled at him but took babs by the arm. they went off somewhere. cochrane waited for somebody to tell him what to look at and to admire. he saw jamison, and bell, and he saw a man he had not seen before. he settled down in a deeply upholstered chair. he felt neglected. everybody was busy. but mostly he felt tired. he slept. then babs was shaking his arm, her eyes shining. "mr. cochrane!" she cried urgently. "mr. cochrane! wake up! go on up to the control-room! we're going to take off!" he blinked at her. "we!" then he started up, and went five feet into the air from the violence of his uncalculated movement. "we? no you don't! you go back to lunar city where you'll be safe!" then he heard a peculiar drumming, rumbling noise. he had heard it before. in the moonship. it was rockets being tested; being burned; rockets in the very last seconds of preparation before take-off for the stars. he didn't drop back to the floor beside the chair he'd occupied. the floor rose to meet him. "i've had our baggage brought on board," said babs, happily. "i'm going because i'm a stockholder! hold on to something and climb those stairs if you want to see us go up! i'm going to be busy!" chapter five the physical sensations of ascending to the ship's control-room were weird in the extreme. cochrane had just been wakened from a worn-out sleep, and it was always startling on the moon to wake and find one's self weighing one-sixth of normal. it took seconds to remember how one got that way. but on the way up the stairs, cochrane was further confused by the fact that the ship was surging this way and swaying that. it moved above the moon's surface to get over the tilted flat dabney field plate on the ground a hundred yards from the ship's original position. the dabney field, obviously, was not in being. the ship hovered on its rockets. they had been designed to lift it off of earth--and they had--against six times the effective gravity here, and with an acceleration of more gravities on top of that. so the ship rose lightly, almost skittishly. when gyros turned to make it drift sidewise--as a helicopter tilts in earth's atmosphere--it fairly swooped to a new position. somebody jockeyed it this way and that. cochrane got to the control-room by holding on with both hands to railings. he was angry and appalled. the control-room was a hemisphere, with vertical vision-screens picturing the stars overhead. jones stood in an odd sort of harness beside a set of control-switches that did not match the smoothly designed other controls of the ship. he looked out of a plastic blister, by which he could see around and below the ship. he made urgent signals to a man cochrane had never seen before, who sat in a strap-chair before many other complex controls with his hands playing back and forth upon them. a loudspeaker blatted unmusically. it was dabney's voice, highly agitated and uneasy. "_ ... my work for the advancement of science has been applied by other minds. i need to specify that if the experiment now about to begin does not succeed, it will not invalidate my discovery, which has been amply verified by other means. it may be, indeed, that my discovery is so far ahead of present engineering--._" "see here!" raged cochrane. "you can't take off with babs on board! this is dangerous!" nobody paid any attention. jones made frantic gestures to indicate the most delicate of adjustments. the man in the strap-chair obeyed the instruction with an absorbed attention. jones suddenly threw a switch. something lighted, somewhere. there was a momentary throbbing sound which was not quite a sound. "take it away," said jones in a flat voice. the man in the strap-chair pressed hard on the controls. cochrane glanced desperately out of one of the side ports. he saw the moonscape--the frozen lava sea with its layer of whitish-tan moondust. he saw many moon-jeeps gathered near, as if most of the population of lunar city had been gathered to watch this event. he saw the extraordinary nearness of the moon's horizon. but it was the most momentary of glimpses. as he opened his mouth to roar a protest, he felt the upward, curiously comforting thrust of acceleration to one full earth-gravity. the moonscape was snatched away from beneath the ship. it did not descend. the ship did not seem to rise. the moon itself diminished and vanished like a pricked bubble. the speed of its disappearance was not--it specifically was not--attributable to one earth-gravity of lift applied on a one-sixth-gravity moon. the loudspeaker hiccoughed and was silent. cochrane uttered the roar he had started before the added acceleration began. but it was useless. out the side-port, he saw the stars. they were not still and changeless and winking, as they appeared from the moon. these stars seemed to stir uneasily, to shift ever so slightly among themselves, like flecks of bright color drifting on a breeze. jones said in an interested voice: "now we'll try the booster." he threw another switch. and again there was a momentary throbbing sound which was not quite a sound. it was actually a sensation, which one seemed to feel all through one's body. it lasted only the fraction of a second, but while it lasted the stars out the side-ports ceased to be stars. they became little lines of light, all moving toward the ship's stern but at varying rates of speed. some of them passed beyond view. some of them moved only a little. but all shifted. then they were again tiny spots of light, of innumerable tints and colors, of every conceivably degree of brightness, stirring and moving ever-so-slightly with relation to each other. "the devil!" said cochrane, raging. jones turned to him. and jones was not quite poker-faced, now. not quite. he looked even pleased. then his face went back to impassiveness again. "it worked," he said mildly. "i know it worked!" sputtered cochrane. "but--where are we? how far did we come?" "i haven't the least idea," said jones mildly as before. "does it matter?" cochrane glared at him. then he realized how completely too late it was to protest anything. the man he had seen absorbed in the handling of controls now lifted his hands from the board. the rockets died. there was a vast silence, and weightlessness. cochrane weighed nothing. this was free flight again--like practically all of the ninety-odd hours from the space platform to the moon. the pilot left the controls and in an accustomed fashion soared to a port on the opposite side of the room. he gazed out, and then behind, and said in a tone of astonished satisfaction: "this is good!--there's the sun!" "how far?" asked jones. "it's fifth magnitude," said the pilot happily. "we really did pile on the horses!" jones looked momentarily pleased again. cochrane said in a voice that even to himself sounded outraged: "you mean the sun's a fifth-magnitude star from here? what the devil happened?" "booster," said jones, nearly with enthusiasm. "when the field was just a radiation speed-up, i used forty milliamperes of current to the square centimetre of field-plate. that was the field-strength when we sent the signal-rocket across the crater. for the distress-torpedo test, i stepped the field-strength up. i used a tenth of an ampere per square centimetre. i told you! and don't you remember that i wondered what would happen if i used a capacity-storage system?" cochrane held fast to a hand-hold. "the more power you put into your infernal field," he demanded, "the more speed you get?" jones said contentedly: "there's a limit. it depends on the temperature of the things in the field. but i've fixed up the field, now, like a spot-welding outfit. like a strobe-light. we took off with a light field. it's on now--we have to keep it on. but i got hold of some pretty storage condensers. i hooked them up in parallel to get a momentary surge of high-amperage current when i shorted them through my field-making coils. couldn't make it a steady current! everything would blow! but i had a surge of probably six amps per square centimetre for a while." cochrane swallowed. "the field was sixty times as strong as the one the distress-torpedo used? we went--we're going--sixty times as fast?" "we had lots more speed than that!" but then jones' enthusiasm dwindled. "i haven't had time to check," he said unhappily. "it's one of the things i want to get at right away. but in theory the field should modify the effect of inertia as the fourth power of its strength. sixty to the fourth is--." "how far," demanded cochrane, "is proxima centaurus? that's the nearest star to earth. how near did we come to reaching it?" the pilot on the other side of the control-room said with a trace less than his former zest: "that looks like sirius, over there ..." "we didn't head for proxima centaurus," said jones mildly. "it's too close! and we have to keep the field-plate back on the moon lined up with us, more or less, so we headed out roughly along the moon's axis. toward where its north pole points." "then where are we headed? where are we going?" "we're not going anywhere just yet," said jones without interest. "we have to find out where we are, and from that--" cochrane ran his hand through his hair. "look!" he protested. "who's running this show? you didn't tell me you were going to take off! you didn't pick out a destination! you didn't--" jones said very patiently: "we have to try out the ship. we have to find out how fast it goes with how much field and how much rocket-thrust. we have to find out how far we went and if it was in a straight line. we even have to find out how to land! the ship's a new piece of apparatus. we can't do things with it until we find out what it can do." cochrane stared at him. then he swallowed. "i see," he said. "the financial and business department of spaceways, inc., has done its stuff for the time being." jones nodded. "the technical staff now takes over?" jones nodded again. "i still think," said cochrane, "that we could have done with a little interdepartmental cooperation. how long before you know what you're about?" jones shook his head. "i can't even guess. ask babs to come up here, will you?" cochrane threw up his hands. he went toward the spiral-ladder-with-handholds that led below. he went down into the main saloon. a tiny green light winked on and off, urgently, on the far side. babs was seated at a tiny board, there. as cochrane looked, she pushed buttons with professional skill. bill holden sat in a strap-chair with his face a greenish hue. "we took off," said holden in a strained voice. "we did," said cochrane. "and the sun's a fifth magnitude star from where we've got to--which is no place in particular. and i've just found out that we started off at random and jones and the pilot he picked up are now happily about to do some pure-science research!" holden closed his eyes. "when you want to cheer me up," he said feebly, "you can tell me we're about to crash somewhere and this misery will soon be over." cochrane said bitterly: "taking off without a destination! letting babs come along! they don't know how far we've come and they don't know where we're going! this is a hell of a way to run a business!" "who called it a business?" asked holden, as feebly as before. "it started out as a psychiatric treatment!" babs' voice came from the side of the saloon where she sat at a vision-tube and microphone. she was saying professionally: "i assure you it's true. we are linked to you by the dabney field, in which radiation travels much faster than light. when you were a little boy didn't you ever put a string between two tin cans, and then talk along the string?" cochrane stopped beside her scowling. she looked up. "the press association men on luna, mr. cochrane. they saw us take off, and the radar verified that we traveled some hundred of thousands of miles, but then we simply vanished! they don't understand how they can talk to us without even the time-lag between earth and lunar city. i was explaining." "i'll take it," said cochrane. "jones wants you in the control-room. cameras? who was handling the cameras?" "mr. bell," said babs briskly. "it's his hobby, along with poker-playing and children." "tell him to get some pictures of the star-fields around us," said cochrane, "and then you can see what jones wants. i will do a little business!" he settled down in the seat babs had vacated. he faced the two press-association reporters in the screen. they had seen the ship's take off. it was verified beyond any reasonable question. the microwave beam to earth was working at capacity to transmit statements from the moon observatory, which annoyedly conceded that the spaceways, inc., salvaged ship had taken off with an acceleration beyond belief. but, the astronomers said firmly, the ship and all its contents must necessarily have been destroyed by the shock of their departure. the acceleration must have been as great as the shock of a meteor hitting luna. "you can consider," cochrane told them, "that i am now an angel, if you like. but how about getting a statement from dabney?" a press-association man, back on luna, uttered the first profanity ever to travel faster than light. "all he can talk about," he said savagely, "is how wonderful he is! he agrees with the observatory that you must all be dead. he said so. can you give us any evidence that you're alive and out in space? visual evidence, for broadcast?" at this moment the entire fabric of the space-ship moved slightly. there was no sound of rockets. the ship seemed to turn a little, but that was all. no gravity. no acceleration. it was a singularly uncomfortable sensation, on top of the discomfort of weightlessness. cochrane said sardonically: "if you can't take my word that i'm alive, i'll try to get you some proof! hm. i'll send you some pictures of the star-fields around us. shoot them to observatories back on earth and let them figure out for themselves where we are! displacement of the relative positions of the stars ought to let them figure things out!" he left the communicator-board. holden still looked greenish in his strap-chair. the main saloon was otherwise empty. cochrane made his way gingerly to the stair going below. he stepped into thin air and descended by a pull on the hand-rail. this was the dining-saloon. the ship having been built to impress investors in a stock-sales enterprise, it had been beautifully equipped with trimmings. and, having had to rise from earth to luna, and needing to take an acceleration of a good many gravities, it had necessarily to be reasonably well-built. it had had, in fact, to be an honest job of ship-building in order to put across a phoney promotion. but there were trimmings that could have been spared. the ports opening upon emptiness, for example, were not really practical arrangements. but everybody but holden and the two men in the control-room now clustered at those ports, looking out at the stars. there was jamison and bell the writer, and johnny simms and his wife. babs had been here and gone. bell was busy with a camera. as cochrane moved to tell him of the need for star-shots to prove to a waiting planet that they were alive, johnny simms turned and saw cochrane. his expression was amiable and unawed. "hello," said johnny simms cheerfully. cochrane nodded curtly. "i bought west's stock in spaceways," said johnny simms, amusedly, "because i want to come along. right?" "so i heard," said cochrane, as curtly as before. "west said," johnny simms told him gleefully, "that he was going back to earth, punch kursten, kasten, hopkins and fallowe on their separate noses, and then go down to south carolina and raise edible snails for the rest of his life." "an understandable ambition," said cochrane. he frowned, waiting to talk to bell, who was taking an infernally long time to focus a camera out of a side-port. "it's going to be good when he tries to cash my check," said johnny simms delightedly. "i stopped payment on it when he wouldn't pick up the tab for some drinks i invited him to have!" cochrane forced his face to impassiveness. johnny simms was that way, he understood. he was a psychopathic personality. he was completely insensitive to notions of ethics. ideas of right and wrong were as completely meaningless to him as tones to a tone-deaf person, or pastel tints to a man who is color-blind. they simply didn't register. his mind was up to par, and he could be a charming companion. he could experience the most kindly of emotions and most generous of impulses, which he put into practice. but he also had a normal person's impulse to less admirable behavior, and he simply could not understand that there was any difference between impulses. he put the unpleasing ones into practice too. he'd been on the moon to avoid extradition because of past impulses which society called murderous. on this ship it was yet to be discovered what he would do--but because he was technically sane his lawyers could have prevented a take off unless he came along. cochrane, at the moment, felt an impulse to heave him out an airlock as a probable danger. but cochrane was not a psychopathic personality. he stopped bell in his picture-taking and looked at the first of the prints. they were excellent. he went back to the vision-set to transmit them back to luna. he sent them off. they would be forwarded to observatories on earth and inspected. they literally could not be faked. there were thousands of stars on each print--with the milky way for background on some--and each of those thousands of stars would be identified, and each would have changed its relative position from that seen on earth, with relation to every other star. astronomers could detect the spot from which the picture had been taken. but to fake a single print would have required years of computation and almost certainly there would have been slip-ups somewhere. these pictures were unassailable evidence that a human expedition had reached a point in space that had been beyond all human dreaming. then cochrane had nothing to do. he was a supernumerary member of the crew. the pilot and jones were in charge of the ship. jamison would take care of the catering, when meal-time came. probably alicia keith--no, alicia simms--would help. nothing else needed attention. the rockets either worked or they didn't. the air-apparatus needed no supervision. cochrane found himself without a function. he went restlessly back to the control-room. he found babs looking helpless, and jones staring blankly at a slip of paper in his hands, while the pilot was still at a blister-port, staring at the stars through one of those squat, thick telescopes used on luna for the examination of the planets. "how goes the research?" asked cochrane. "we're stumped," said jones painfully. "i forgot something." "what?" "whenever i wanted anything," said jones, "i wrote it out and gave a memo to babs. she attended to it." "my system, exactly," admitted cochrane. "i wrote out a memo for her," said jones unhappily, "asking for star-charts and for her to get somebody to set up a system of astrogation for outside the solar system. nobody's ever bothered to do that before. nobody's ever reached even mars! but i figured we'd need it." cochrane waited. jones showed him a creased bit of paper, closely written. "i wrote out the memo and put it in my pocket," said jones, "and i forgot to give it to babs. so we can't astrogate. we don't know how. we didn't get either star-charts or instructions. we're lost." cochrane waited. "apparently al was mistaken in the star he spotted as our sun," added jones. he referred to the pilot, whom cochrane had not met before. "anyhow we can't find it again. we turned the ship to look at some more stars, and we can't pick it out any more." cochrane said: "you'll keep looking, of course." "for what?" asked jones. he waved his hand out the four equally-spaced plastic blister-ports. from where he stood, cochrane could see thousands of thousands of stars out those four small openings. they were of every conceivable color and degree of brightness. the milky way was like a band of diamonds. "we know the sun's a yellow star," said jones, "but we don't know how bright it should be, or what the sky should look like beyond it." "constellations?" asked cochrane. "find 'em!" said jones vexedly. cochrane didn't try. if a moon-rocket pilot could not spot familiar star-groups, a television producer wasn't likely to see them. and it was obvious, once one thought, that the brighter stars seen from earth would be mostly the nearer ones. if jones was right in his guess that his booster had increased the speed of the ship by sixty to the fourth power, it would have gone some millions of times as fast as the distress-torpedo, for a brief period (the ratio was actually something over nineteen million times) and it happened that nobody had been able to measure the speed of that test-object. cochrane was no mathematician, but he could see that there was no data for computation on hand. after one found out how fast an acceleration of one earth-gravity in a dabney field of such-and-such strength speeded up a ship, something like dead reckoning could be managed. but all that could be known right now was that they had come a long way. he remembered a television show he'd produced, laid in space on an imaginary voyage. the script-writer had had one of the characters say that no constellation would be visible at a hundred light-years from the solar system. it would be rather like a canary trying to locate the window he'd escaped from, from a block away, with no memories of the flight from it. cochrane said suddenly, in a pleased tone: "this is a pretty good break--if we can keep them from finding out about it back home! we'll have an entirely new program, good for a thirteen-week sequence, on just this!" babs stared at him. "main set, this control-room," said cochrane enthusiastically. "we'll get a long-beard scientist back home with a panel of experts. we'll discuss our problems here! we'll navigate from home, with the whole business on the air! we'll have audience-identification up to a record! everybody on earth will feel like he's here with us, sharing our problems!" jones said irritably: "you don't get it! we're lost! we can't check our speed without knowing where we are and how far we've come! we can't find out what the ship will do when we can't find out what it's done! don't you see?" cochrane said patiently: "i know! but we're in touch with luna through the dabney field that got us here! it transmitted radiation before, faster than light. it's transmitting voice and pictures now. now we set up a television show which pays for our astrogation and lets the world sit in on the prettier aspects of our travels. hm.... how long before you can sit down on a planet, after you have all the navigational aids of--say--the four best observatories on earth to help you? i'll arrange for a sponsor--." he went happily down the stairs again. this was a spiral stair, and he zestfully spun around it as he went to the next deck below. at the bottom he called up to babs: "babs! get bell and alicia keith and come along to take dictation! i'm going to need some legal witnesses for the biggest deal in the history of advertising, made at several times the speed of light!" and he went zestfully to the communicator to set it up. and time passed. data arrived, which at once solved jones' and the pilot's problem of where they were and how far they had come--it was, actually, . light-years--and they spent an hour making further tests and getting further determinations, and then they got a destination. they stopped in space to extrude from the airlock a small package which expanded into a forty-foot plastic balloon with a minute atomic battery attached to it. the plastic was an electric conductor. it was a field-plate of the dabney field. it took over the field from earth and maintained it. it provided a second field for the ship to maintain. the ship, then, could move at any angle from the balloon. the dabney field stretched . light-years through emptiness to the balloon, and then at any desired direction to the ship. the ship's rockets thrust again--and the booster-circuit came into play. there were maneuverings. a second balloon was put out in space. at : central u. s. time, on a period relinquished by other advertisers--bought out--a new program went on the air. it was a half-hour show, sponsored by the intercity credit corporation--"buy on credit guaranteed"--with ten straight minutes of commercials interjected in four sections. it was the highest-priced show ever put on the air. it showed the interior of the ship's control-rooms, with occasional brief switches to authoritative persons on earth for comment on what was relayed from the far-off skies. the first broadcast ensured the success of the program beyond possible dispute. it started with curt conversation between jones and the pilot, al--jones loathed this part of it, but al turned out to be something of a ham--on the problems of approaching a new solar system. cut to computers back on earth. back to the control-room of the starship. pictures of the local sun, and comments on its differentness from the sun that had nourished the human race since time began. then the cameras--bell worked them--panned down through the ship's blister-ports. there was a planet below. the ship descended toward it. it swelled visibly as the space-ship approached. cochrane stood out of camera-range and acted as director as well as producer of the opus. he used even johnny simms as an offstage voice repeating stern commands. it was corny. there was no doubt about it. it had a large content of ham. but it happened to be authentic. the ship had reached another planet, with vast ice-caps and what appeared to be no more than a twenty-degree-wide equatorial belt where there was less than complete glaciation. the rockets roared and boomed as the ship let down into the cloud-layers. television audiences back on earth viewed the new planet nearly as soon as did those in the ship. the time-lag was roughly three seconds for a distance of . light-years. the surface of the planet was wild and dramatic beyond belief. there were valleys where vegetation grew luxuriantly. there were ranges of snow-clad mountains interpenetrating the equatorial strip, and there were masses of white which, as the ship descended, could be identified as glaciers moving down toward the vegetation. but as the ship sank lower and lower--and the sound of its rockets became thunderous because of the atmosphere around it--a new feature took over the central position in one's concept of what the planet was actually like. the planet was volcanic. there were smoking cones everywhere--in the snow-fields, among the ice-caps, in between the glaciers, and even among the tumbled areas whose greenness proved that here was an environment which might be perilous, but where life should thrive abundantly. the ship continued to descend toward a great forest near a terminal moraine. chapter six jamison declaimed, wearing a throat-mike as bell zestfully panned his camera and the ship swung down. it was an impressive broadcast. the rockets roared. with the coming of air about the ship, they no longer made a mere rumbling. they created a tumult which was like the growl of thunder if one were in the midst of the thunder-cloud. it was a numbing noise. it was almost a paralyzing noise. but jamison talked with professional smoothness. "this planet," he orated, while pictures from bell's camera went direct to the transmitter below, "this planet is the first world other than earth on which a human ship has landed. it is paradoxic that before men have walked on mars' red iron-oxide plains and breathed its thin cold air, or fought for life in the formaldehyde gales of venus, that they should look upon a world which welcomes them from illimitable remoteness. here we descend, and all mankind can watch our descent upon a world whose vegetation is green; whose glaciers prove that there is air and water in plenty, whose very smoking volcanoes assure us of its close kinship to earth!" he lifted the mike away from his throat and framed words with his lips. "_am i still on?_" cochrane nodded. cochrane wore headphones carrying what the communicator carried, as this broadcast went through an angled dabney field relay system back to lunar city and then to earth. he spoke close to jamison's ear. "go ahead! if your voice fades, it will be the best possible sign-off. suspense. good television!" jamison let the throat-mike back against his skin. the roaring of the rockets would affect it only as his throat vibrated from the sound. it would register, even so. "i see," said jamison above the rocket-thunder, "forests of giant trees like the sequoias of mother earth. i see rushing rivers, foaming along their rocky beds, taking their rise in glaciers. we are still too high to look for living creatures, but we descend swiftly. now we are level with the highest of the mountains. now we descend below their smoking tops. under us there is a vast valley, miles wide, leagues long. here a city could be built. over it looms a gigantic mountain-spur, capped with green. one would expect a castle to be built there." he raised his eyebrows at cochrane. they were well in atmosphere, now, and it had been an obvious defect--condition--necessity of the dabney field that both of its plates should be in a vacuum. one was certainly in air now. but cochrane made that gesture which in television production-practice informs the actors that time to cutting is measured in tens of seconds, and he held up two fingers. twenty seconds. "we gaze, and you gaze with us," said jamison, "upon a world that future generations will come to know as home--the site of the first human colony among the stars!" cochrane began to beat time. ten, nine, eight--. "we are about to land," jamison declaimed. "we do not know what we shall find--what's that?" he paused dramatically. "a living creature?--a living creature sighted down below! we sign off now--from the stars!" the ending had been perfectly timed. allowing for a three-second interval for the broadcast to reach the moon, and just about two more for it to be relayed to earth, his final word, "stars!" had been uttered at the precise instant to allow a four-minute commercial by intercity credit, in the united states, by citroen in europe, by fabricanos unidos in south and central america, and near east oil along the mediterranean. at the end of that four minutes it would be time for station identification and a time-signal, and the divers eight-second flashes before other programs came on the air. the rockets roared and thundered. the ship went down and down. jamison said: "i thought we'd be cut off when we hit air!" "that's what jones thought," cochrane assured him. he bellowed above the outside tumult, "bell! see anything alive down below?" bell shook his head. he stayed at the camera aimed out a blister-port, storing up film-tape for later use. there was the feel of gravitation, now. actually, it was the fact that the ship slowed swiftly in its descent. cochrane went to a port. the ship continued its descent. "living creature? where?" jamison shrugged. he had used it as a sign-off line. an extrapolation from the fact that there was vegetation below. he looked somehow distastefully out the port at a swiftly rising green ground below. he was a city man. he had literally never before seen what looked like habitable territory of such vast extent, with no houses on it. in a valley easily ten miles long and two wide, there was not a square inch of concrete or of glass. there was not a man made object in view. the sky was blue and there were clouds, but to jamison the sight of vegetation implied rooftops. there ought to be parapets where roofs ended to let light down to windows and streets below. he had never before seen grass save on elevated recreation-areas, nor bushes not arranged as landscaping, and certainly not trees other than the domesticated growths which can grow on the tops of buildings. to jamison this was desolation. on the moon, absence of structures was understandable. there was no air. but here there should be a city! the ship swayed a little as the rockets swung their blasts to balance the descending mass. the intended mars-ship slowed, and slowed, and hovered--and there was terrifying smoke and flame suddenly all about--and then there was a distinct crunching impact. the rockets continued to burn, their ferocity diminished. they slackened again. and yet again. they were reduced to a mere faint murmur. there was a remarkable immobility of everything. it was the result of gravity. earth-value gravity, or very near it. there was a distinct pressure of one's feet against the floor, and a feeling of heaviness to one's body which was very different from lunar city, and more different still from free flight in emptiness. nothing but swirling masses of smoke could be seen out the ports. they had landed in a forest, of sorts, and the rocket-blasts had burned away everything underneath, down to solid soil. in a circle forty yards about the ship the ground was a mass of smoking, steaming ash. beyond that flames licked hungrily, creating more dense vapor. beyond that still there was only coiling smoke. cochrane's headphones yielded babs' voice, almost wailing: "_mr. cochrane! we must have landed! i want to see!_" cochrane pressed the hand-mike button. "are we still hooked up to lunar city?" he demanded. "we can't be, but are we?" "_we are_," said babs' voice mutinously. "_the broadcast went through all right. they want to talk to you. everybody wants to talk to you!_" "tell them to call back later," commanded cochrane. "then leave the beam working--however it works!--and come up if you like. tell the moon operator you'll be away for ten minutes." he continued to stare out the window. al, the pilot, stayed in his cushioned seat before the bank of rocket-controls. the rockets were barely alight. the ship stayed as it had landed, upright on its triple fins. he said to jones: "it feels like we're solid. we won't topple!" jones nodded. the rocket-sound cut off. nothing happened. "i think we could have saved fuel on that landing," said jones. then he added, pleased, "nice! the dabney field's still on! it has to be started in a vacuum, but it looks like it can hold air away from itself once it's established. nice!" babs rushed up the stairs. she gazed impassionedly out of a vision-port. then she said disappointedly: "it looks like--" "it looks like hell," said cochrane. "just smoke and steam and stuff. we can hope, though, that we haven't started a forest fire, but have just burned off a landing-place." they stared out. presently they went to another port and gazed out of that. the smoke was annoying, and yet it could have been foreseen. a moon-rocket, landing at its space-port on earth, heated the tarmac to red-hotness in the process of landing. tender-vehicles had to wait for it to cool before they could approach. here the ship had landed in woodland. naturally its flames had seared the spot where it came down. and there was inflammable stuff about, which caught fire. so the ship was in the situation of a phoenix, necessarily nesting in a conflagration. anywhere it landed the same thing would apply, unless it tried landing on a glacier. but then it would settle down into a lake of boiling water, amid steam, and could expect to be frozen in as soon as its landing-place cooled. now there was nothing to do. they had to wait. once the whole ship quivered very slightly, as if the ground trembled faintly under it. but there was nothing at which to be alarmed. they could see that this particular forest was composed mainly of two kinds of trees which burned differently. one had a central trunk, and it burned with resinous flames and much black and gray-black smoke. the other was a curious growth--a solid, massive trunk which did not touch ground at all, but was held up by aerial roots which supported it aloft through very many slender shafts widely spread. possibly the heavier part was formed on the ground and lifted as its air-roots grew. it was irritating, though, to be unable to see from the ship so long as the fire burned outside. the pall of smoke lasted for a long time. in three hours there were no longer any fiercely blazing areas, but the ashes still smouldered and smoke still rose. in three hours and a half, the local sun began to set. there were colorings in the sky, beyond all comparison glorious. which was logical enough. when krakatoa, back on earth, blew itself to bits in the eighteen hundreds, it sent such volumes of dust into the air that sunsets all around the globe were notably improved for three years afterward. on this planet, smoking cones were everywhere visible. volcanic dust, then, made nightfall magnificent past description. there was not only gold and crimson in the west. the zenith itself glowed carmine and yellow, and those in the space-ship gazed up at a sky such as none of them could have imagined possible. the colors changed and changed, from yellow to gold all over the sky, and still the glory continued. presently there was a deep, deep red, deep past imagining, and presently faint bluish stars pierced it, and they stared up at new strange constellations-some very bright indeed--and all about the ship there was a bed of white ash with glowing embers in it, and a thin sheet of white smoke still flowed away down the valley. it was long after sunset when cochrane got up from the communicator. communication with earth was broken at last. there was a balloon out in space somewhere with an atomic battery maintaining all its surface as a dabney field plate. the ship maintained a field between itself and that plate. the balloon maintained another field between itself and another balloon a mere . light-years from the solar system. but the substance of this planet intervened between the nearer balloon and the ship. jones made tests and observed that the field continued to exist, but was plugged by the matter of this newly-arrived-at world. come tomorrow, when there was no solid-stone barrier to the passage of radiation, they could communicate with earth again. but cochrane was weary and now discouraged. so long as talk with earth was possible, he'd kept at it. there was a great deal of talking to be done. but a good deal of it was extremely unsatisfactory. he found bill holden having supper with babs, on the floor below the communicator. very much of the recent talk had been over cochrane's head. he felt humiliated by the indignation of scientists who would not tell him what he wanted to know without previous information he could not give. when he went over to the dining-table, he felt that he creaked from weariness and dejection. babs looked at him solicitously, and then jumped up to get him something to eat. everybody else was again watching out the ship's ports at the new, strange world of which they could see next to nothing. "bill," said cochrane fretfully, "i've just been given the dressing-down of my life! you're expecting to get out of the airlock in the morning and take a walk. but i've been talking to earth. i've been given the devil for landing on a strange planet without bringing along a bacteriologist, an organic chemist, an ecologist, an epidemiologist, and a complete laboratory to test everything with, before daring to take a breath of outside air. i'm warned not to open a port!" holden said: "you sound as if you'd been talking to a biologist with a reputation. you ought to know better than that!" cochrane protested: "i wanted to talk to somebody who knew more than i did! what could i do but get a man with a reputation?" holden shook his head. "we psychiatrists," he observed, "go around peeping under the corners of rugs at what people try to hide from themselves. we have a worm's-eye view of humanity. we know better than to throw a difficult problem at a man with an established name! they're neurotic about their reputations. like dabney, they get panicky at the idea of anybody catching them in a mistake. no big name in medicine or biology would dare tell you that of course it's all right for us to take a walk in the rather pretty landscape outside." "then who will?" demanded cochrane. "we'll make what tests we can," said holden comfortingly, "and decide for ourselves. we can take a chance. we're only risking our lives!" babs brought cochrane a plate. he put food in his mouth and chewed and swallowed. "they say we can't afford to breathe the local air at all until we know its bacteriology; we can't touch anything until we test it as a possible allergen; we can't." holden grunted. "what would those same authorities have told your friend columbus? on a strange continent he'd be sure to find strange plants and strange animals. he'd find strange races of men and he ought to find strange diseases. they'd have warned him not to risk it. _they_ wouldn't!" cochrane ate with a sort of angry vigor. then he snapped: "if you want to know, we've got to land! we're sunk if we don't go outside and move around! we'll spoil our story-line. this is the greatest adventure-serial anybody on earth ever tuned in to follow! if we back down on exploration, our audience will be disgusted and resentful and they'll take it out on our sponsors!" babs said softly, to holden: "that's my boss!" cochrane glared at her. he didn't know how to take the comment. he said to holden: "tomorrow we'll try to figure out some sort of test and try the air. i'll go out in a space-suit and crack the face-plate! i can close it again before anything lethal gets in. but there's no use stepping out into a bed of coals tonight. i'll have to wait till morning." holden smiled at him. babs regarded him with intent, enigmatic eyes. neither of them said anything more. cochrane finished his meal. then he found himself without an occupation. gravity on this planet was very nearly the same as on earth. it felt like more, of course, because all of them had been subject only to moon-gravity for nearly three weeks. jones and the pilot had been in one-sixth gravity for a much longer time. and the absence of gravity had caused their muscles to lose tone by just about the amount that the same time spent in a hospital bed would have done. they felt physically worn out. it was a healthy tiredness, though, and their muscles would come back to normal as quickly as one recovers strength after illness--rather faster, in fact. but tonight there would be no night-life on the space-ship. johnny simms disappeared, after symptoms of fretfulness akin to those of an over-tired small boy. jamison gave up, and bell, and al the pilot fell asleep while jones was trying to discuss something technical with him. jones himself yawned and yawned and when al snored in his face he gave up. they retired to their bunks. there was no point in standing guard over the ship. if the bed of hot ashes did not guard it, it was not likely that an individual merely sitting up and staring out its ports would do much good. there were extremely minor, practically unnoticeable vibrations of the ship from time to time. they would be volcanic temblors--to be expected. they were not alarming, certainly, and the forest outside was guarantee of no great violence to be anticipated. the trees stood firm and tall. there was no worry about the ship. it was perfectly practical, and even necessary simply to turn out the lights and go to sleep. but cochrane could not relax. he was annoyed by the soreness of his muscles. he was irritated by the picture given him of the expedition as a group of heedless ignoramuses who'd taken off without star-charts or bacteriological equipment--without even apparatus to test the air of planets they might land on!--and who now were sternly warned not to make any use of their achievement. cochrane was not overwhelmed by the achievement itself, though less than eighteen hours since the ship and all its company had been aground on luna, and now they were landed on a new world twice as far from earth as the pole star. it is probable that cochrane was not awed because he had a television-producer's point of view. he regarded this entire affair as a production. he was absorbed in the details of putting it across. he looked at it from his own, quite narrow, professional viewpoint. it did not disturb him that he was surrounded by a wilderness. he considered the wilderness the set on which his production belonged, though he was as much a city man as anybody else. he went back to the control-room. with the ship standing on its tail that was the highest point, and as the embers burned out and the smoke lessened it was possible to look out into the night. he stared at the dimly-seen trees beyond the burned area, and at the dark masses of mountains which blotted out the stars. he estimated them, without quite realizing it, in view of what they would look like on a television screen. when light objects in the control-room rattled slightly, he paid no attention. his rehearsal-studio had been rickety, back home. babs seemed to be sleepless, too. there was next to no light where cochrane was--merely the monitor-lights which assured that the dabney field still existed, though blocked for use by the substance of a planet. babs arrived in the almost-dark room only minutes after cochrane. he was moving restlessly from one port to another, staring out. "i thought i'd tell you," babs volunteered, "that doctor holden put some algae from the air-purifier tanks in the airlock, and then opened the outer door." "why?" asked cochrane. "algae's earth plant-life," explained babs. "if the air is poisonous, it will be killed by morning. we can close the outer door of the lock, pump out the air that came from this planet, and then let air in from the ship so we can see what happens." "oh," said cochrane. "and then i couldn't sleep," said babs guilelessly. "do you mind if i stay here? everybody else has gone to bed." "oh, no," said cochrane. "stay if you like." he stared out at the dark. presently he moved to another port. after a moment he pointed. "there's a glow in the sky there," he said curtly. she looked. there was a vast curving blackness which masked the stars. beyond it there was a reddish glare, as if of some monstrous burning. but the color was not right for a fire. not exactly. "a city?" asked babs breathlessly. "a volcano," cochrane told her. "i've staged shows that pretended to show intellectual creatures on other planets--funny how we've been dreaming of such things, back on earth--but it isn't likely. not since we've actually reached the stars." "why since then?" "because," said cochrane, half ironically, "man was given dominion over all created things. i don't think we'll find rivals for that dominion. i can't imagine we'll find another race of creatures who could be--persons. heaven knows we try to rob each other of dignity, but i don't think there's another race to humiliate us when we find them!" after a moment he added: "bad enough that we're here because there are deodorants and cosmetics and dog-foods and such things that people want to advertise to each other! we wouldn't be here but for them, and for the fact that some people are neurotics and some don't like their bosses and some are crazy in other fashions." "some crazinesses aren't bad," argued babs. "i've made a living out of them," agreed cochrane sourly. "but i don't like them. i have a feeling that i could arrange things better. i know i couldn't, but i'd like to try. in my own small way, i'm even trying." babs chuckled. "that's because you are a man. women aren't so foolish. we're realists. we like creation--even men--the way creation is." "i don't," cochrane said irritably. "we've accomplished something terrific, and i don't get a kick out of it! my head is full of business details that have to be attended to tomorrow. i ought to be uplifted. i ought to be gloating! i ought to be happy! but i'm worrying for fear that this infernal planet is going to disappoint our audience!" babs chuckled again. then she went to the stair leading to the compartment below. "what's the matter?" he demanded. "after all, i'm going to leave you alone," said babs cheerfully. "you're always very careful not to talk to me in any personal fashion. i think you're afraid i'll tell you something for your own good. if i stayed here, i might. goodnight!" she started down the stairs. cochrane said vexedly: "hold on! confound it, i didn't know i was so transparent! i'm sorry, babs. look! tell me something for my own good!" babs hesitated, and then said very cheerfully: "you only see things the way a man sees them. this show, this trip--this whole business doesn't thrill you because you don't see it the way a woman would." "such as how? what does a woman see that i don't?" "a woman," said babs, "sees this planet as a place that men and women will come to live on. to live on! you don't. you miss all the real implications of people actually living here. but they're the things a woman sees first of all." cochrane frowned. "i'm not so conceited i can't listen to somebody else. if you've got an idea--" "not an idea," said babs. "just a reaction. and you can't explain a reaction to somebody who hasn't had it. goodnight!" she vanished down the stairs. some time later, cochrane heard the extremely minute sound of a door closing on one of the cabins three decks down in the space-ship. he went back to his restless inspection of the night outside. he tried to make sense of what babs had said. he failed altogether. in the end he settled in one of the over-elaborately cushioned chairs that had made this ship so attractive to deluded investors. he intended to think out what babs might have meant. she was, after all, the most competent secretary he'd ever had, and he'd been wryly aware of how helpless he would be without her. now he tried painstakingly to imagine what changes in one's view the inclusion of women among pioneers would involve. he worked out some seemingly valid points. but it was not a congenial mental occupation. he fell asleep without realizing it, and was waked by the sound of voices all about him. it was morning again, and johnny simms was shouting boyishly at something he saw outside. "get at it, boy!" he cried enthusiastically. "grab him! that's the way--" cochrane opened his eyes. johnny simms gazed out and down from a blister-port, waving his arms. his wife alicia looked out of the same port without seeming to share his excited approval. bell had dragged a camera across the control-room and was in the act of focussing it through a particular window. "what's the matter?" demanded cochrane. he struggled out of his chair. and johnny simms' pleasure evaporated abruptly. he swore nastily, viciously, at something outside the ship. his wife touched his arm and spoke to him in a low tone. he turned furiously upon her, mouthing foulnesses. cochrane was formidably beside him, and johnny simms' expression of fury smoothed out instantly. he looked pleasant and amiable. "the fight stopped," he explained offhandedly. "it was a good fight. but one of the creatures wouldn't stay and take his licking." alicia said steadily: "there were some animals there. they looked rather like bears, only they had enormous ears." cochrane looked at johnny simms with hot eyes. it was absurd to be so chivalrous, perhaps, but he was enraged. after an instant he turned away and went to the port. the burned-over area was now only ashes. at its edge, charcoal showed. and now he could see trees and brushwood on beyond. the trees did not seem strange, because no trees would have seemed familiar. the brush did not impress him as exotic, because his experience with actual plants was restricted to the artificial plants on television sets and the artificially arranged plants on rooftops. he hardly let his eyes dwell on the vegetation at all. he searched for movement. he saw the moving furry rumps of half a dozen unknown creatures as they dived into concealment as if they had been frightened. he looked down and could see the hull of the ship and two of the three take-off fins on which it rested. the airlock door was opening out. it swung wide. it swung back against the hull. "holden's making some sort of test of the air," cochrane said shortly. "the animals were scared when the outside door swung open. i'll see what he finds out." he hurried down. he found babs standing beside the inner door of the airlock. she looked somehow pale. there were two saucers of greenish soup-like stuff on the floor at her feet. that would be, of course, the algae from the air-purifying-system tanks. "the algae were alive," said babs. "dr. holden went in the lock to try the air himself. he said he'd be very careful." for some obscure reason cochrane felt ashamed. there was a long, a desperately long wait. then sounds of machinery. the outer door closing. small whistlings--compressed air. the inner door opened. bill holden came out of the lock, his expression zestfully surprised. "hello, jed! i tried the air. it's all right! at a guess, maybe a little high in oxygen. but it feels wonderfully good to breathe! and i can report that the trees are wood and the green is chlorophyll, and this is an earth-type planet. that little smoky smell about is completely familiar--and i'm taking that as an analysis. i'm going to take a walk." cochrane found himself watching babs' face. she looked enormously relieved, but even cochrane--who was looking for something of the sort without realizing it--could not read anything but relief in her expression. she did not, for example, look admiring. "i'll borrow one of johnny simms' guns," said holden, "and take a look around. it's either perfectly safe or we're all dead anyhow. frankly, i think it's safe. it feels right outside, jed! it honestly feels right!" "i'll come with you," said cochrane, "jones and the pilot are necessary if the ship's to get back to earth. but we're expendable." he went back to the control-room. johnny simms zestfully undertook to outfit them with arms. he made no proposal to accompany them. in twenty minutes or so, cochrane and holden went into the airlock and the door closed. a light came on automatically, precisely like the light in an electric refrigerator. cochrane found his lips twitching a little as the analogy came to him. seconds later the outer door opened, and they gazed down among the branches of tall trees. cochrane winced. there was no railing and the height bothered him. but holden swung out the sling. he and cochrane descended, dangling, down fifty feet of unscarred, shining, metal hull. the ground was still hot underfoot. holden cast off the sling and moved toward cooler territory with an undignified haste. cochrane followed him. the smells were absolutely commonplace. scorched wood. smokiness. there were noises. occasional cracklings from burned tree-trunks not wholly consumed. high-pitched, shrill musical notes. and in and among the smells there was an astonishing freshness in the feel of the air. cochrane was especially apt to notice it because he had lived in a city back on earth, and had spent four days in the moon-rocket, and then had breathed the lunar city air for eighteen days more and had just come from the space-ship whose air was distinctly of the canned variety. he did not notice the noise of the sling again in motion behind him. he was all eyes and ears and acute awareness of the completely strange environment. he was the more conscious of a general strangeness because he was so completely an urban product. yet he and holden were vastly less aware of the real strangeness about them than men of previous generations would have been. they did not notice the oddity of croaking sounds, like frogs, coming from the tree-tops. when they had threaded their way among leaning charred poles and came to green stuff underfoot and merely toasted foliage all around, cochrane heard a sweet, high-pitched trilling which came from a half-inch hole in the ground. but he was not astonished by the place from which the trilling came. he was astonished at the sound itself. there was a cry behind them. _"mr. cochrane! doctor holden!"_ they swung about. and there was babs on the ground, just disentangling herself from the sling. she had followed them out, after waiting until they had left the airlock and could not protest. cochrane swore to himself. but when babs joined them breathlessly, after a hopping run over the hot ground, he said only: "fancy meeting you here!" "_i--i couldn't resist it_," said babs in breathless apology. "and you do have guns. it's safe enough--oh, look!" she stared at a bush which was covered with pale purple flowers. small creatures hovered in the air about it. she approached it and exclaimed again at the sweetness of its scent. cochrane and holden joined her in admiration. in a sense they were foolishly unwary. this was completely strange territory. it could have contained anything. earlier explorers would have approached every bush with caution and moved over every hilltop with suspicion, anticipating deadly creatures, unparalleled monsters, and exotic and peculiar circumstances designed to entrap the unprepared. earlier explorers, of course, would probably have had advice from famous men to prepare them for all possible danger. but this was a valley between snow-clad mountains. the river that ran down its length was fed by glaciers. this was a temperate climate. the trees were either coniferous or something similar, and the vegetation grew well but not with the frenzy of a tropic region. there were fruits here and there. later, to be sure, they would prove to be mostly astringent and unpalatable. they were broad-leafed, low-growing plants which would eventually turn out to be possessed of soft-fleshed roots which were almost unanimously useless for human purposes. there were even some plants with thorns and spines upon them. but they encountered no danger. by and large, wild animals everywhere are ferocious only when desperate. no natural setting can permanently be so deadly that human being will be attacked immediately they appear. an area in which peril is continuous is one in which there is so much killing that there is no food-supply left to maintain its predators. on the whole, there is simply a limit to how dangerous any place can be. dangerous beasts have to be relatively rare, or they will not have enough to eat, when they will thin out until they are relatively rare and do have enough to eat. so the three explorers moved safely, though their boldness was that of ignorance, below gigantic trees nearly as tall as the space-ship standing on end. they saw a small furry biped, some twelve inches tall, which waddled insanely in the exact line of their progress and with no apparent hope of outdistancing them. they saw a gauzy creature with incredibly spindly legs. it flew from one tree-trunk to another, clinging to rough bark on each in turn. once they came upon a small animal which looked at them with enormous, panic-stricken blue eyes and then fled with a sinuous gait on legs so short that they seemed mere flippers. it dived into a hole and vanished. but they came out to clear space. they could look for miles and miles. there was a savannah of rolling soil which gradually sloped down to a swift-running river. the grass--if it was grass--was quite green, but it had multitudes of tiny rose-colored flowers down the central rib of each leaf. nearby it seemed the color of earth-grass, but it faded imperceptibly into an incredible old-rose tint in the distance. the mountain-scarps on either side of the valley were sheer and tall. there was a great stony spur reaching out above the lowland, and there was forest at its top and bare brown stone dropping two thousand feet sheer. and up the valley, where it narrowed, a waterfall leaped out from the cliff and dropped hundreds of feet in an arc of purest white, until it was lost to view behind tree-tops. they looked. they stared. cochrane was a television producer, and holden was a psychiatrist, and babs was a highly efficient secretary. they did not make scientific observations. the ecological system of the valley escaped their notice. they weren't qualified to observe that the flying things around seemed mostly to be furry instead of feathered, and that insects seemed few and huge and fragile,--and they did not notice that most of the plants appeared to be deciduous, so indicating that this planet had pronounced seasons. but holden said: "up in greenland there's a hospital on a cliff like that. people with delusions of grandeur sometimes get cured just by looking at something that's so much greater and more splendid than they are. i'd like to see a hospital up yonder!" babs said, shining-eyed: "a city could be built in this valley. not a tall city, with gray streets and gardens on the roofs. this could be a nice little city like people used to have. there would be little houses, all separate, and there'd be grass all around and people could pluck flowers if they wanted to, to take inside.... there could be families here, and homes--not living-quarters!" cochrane said nothing. he was envious of the others. they saw, and they dreamed according to their natures. cochrane somehow felt forlorn. presently he said depressedly: "we'll go back to the ship. you can work out your woman's viewpoint stuff with bell, babs. he'll write it, or you can give it to alicia to put over when we go on the air." babs made no reply. the absence of comment was almost pointed. cochrane realized that she wouldn't do it, though he couldn't see why. they did go back to the ship. cochrane sent babs and holden up the sling, first, while he waited down below. it was a singular sensation to stand there. he was the only human being afoot on a planet the size of earth or larger, at the foot of a cliff of metal which was the space-ship's hull. he had a weapon in his hand, and it should defend him from anything. but he felt very lonely. the sling came down for him. he felt sick at heart as it lifted him. he had an overwhelming conviction of incompetence, though he could not detail the reasons. the rope hauled him up, swaying, to the dizzy height of the air-lock door. he could not feel elated. he was partly responsible for humankind's greatest achievement to date. but he had not quite the viewpoint that would let him enjoy its contemplation. the ground quivered very faintly as he rose. it was not an earthquake. it was merely a temblor, such as anyone would expect to feel occasionally with six smoking volcanic cones in view. the green stuff all around was proof that it could be disregarded. chapter seven in the united states, some two-hundred-odd light-years away, it happened to be tuesday. on this tuesday, the broadcast from the stars was sponsored by harvey's, the national men's clothing chain. harvey's advertising department preferred discussion-type shows, because differences of opinion in the shows proper led so neatly into their tag-line. "you can disagree about anything but the quality of a harvey suit! that's superb!" therefore the broadcast after the landing of the ship on the volcanic planet was partly commercial, and partly pictures and reports from the spaceways expedition, and partly queries and comments by big-name individuals on earth. inevitably there was dabney. and dabney was neurotic. he did his best to make a shambles of everything. the show started promptly enough at the beginning. there was a two-minute film-strip of business-suited puppets marching row on row, indicating the enormous popularity of harvey's suits. then a fast minute hill-billy puppet-show about two feuding mountaineers who found they couldn't possibly retain their enmity when they found themselves in agreement on the quality of harvey suits. "that's superb!" the commercial ended with a choral dance of madly enthusiastic miniature figures, dancing while they lustily sang the theme-song, "you can disagree, yes siree, you can disagree, about anything, indeed everything, you and me, but you can't, no you can't disagree, about the strictly super, extra super, qualitee of a har-ve-e-e-e suit! that's superb!" and thereupon the television audience of several continents saw the faded-in image of mankind's first starship, poised upon its landing-fins among trees more splendid than even television shows had ever pictured before. the camera panned slowly, and showed such open spaces as very few humans had ever seen unencumbered by buildings, and mountains of a grandeur difficult for most people to believe in. the scene cut to the space-ship's control-room and al the pilot acted briskly as the leader of an exploration-party just returned--though he actually hadn't left the ship. he introduced jamison, wearing improvised leggings and other trappings appropriate to an explorer in wilderness. jamison began to extrapolate from his observations out the control-room port, adding film-clips for authority. smoothly and hypnotically, he pictured the valley as the ship descended the last few thousand feet, and told of the human colony to be founded in this vast and hospitable area just explored. mountainside hotels for star-tourists would look down upon a scene of tranquility and cozy spaciousness. this would be the first human outpost in the stars. in the other valleys of this magnificent world there would be pasture-lands, and humankind would again begin to regard meat as a normal and not-extravagant part of its diet--on this planet, certainly! there were minerals beyond doubt, and water-power. the estimate was that at least the equivalent of the asian continent had been made available for human occupation. and this splendid addition to the resources of humanity ... the second commercial cut jamison off. naturally. the sponsor was paying for time. so for jamison was substituted the other fiction about the poor young man who found himself envied by the board of directors of the firm which employed him. his impeccable attire caused him to be promoted to vice-president without any question of whether or not he could fill the job. because, of course, he wore a harvey suit. alicia keith showed herself on the screen and gave the woman's viewpoint as written about by bell. she talked pleasantly about how it felt to move about on a planet never before trodden by human beings. she was interrupted by the pictured face of the lady editor of joint networks' feminine programs, who asked sweetly: "tell me, alicia, what do you think the attainment of the stars will mean to the average american housewife in the immediate future? right now?" then dabney came on. his appearance was fitted into the sequence from lunar city, and his gestures were extravagant as anybody's gestures will be where their hands and arms weigh so small a fraction of earth-normal. "i wish," said dabney impressively, "to congratulate the men who have so swiftly adapted my discovery of faster-than-light travel to practical use. i am overwhelmed at having been able to achieve a scientific triumph which in time will mean that mankind's future stretches endlessly and splendidly into the future!" here there was canned applause. dabney held up his hand for attention. he thought. visibly. "but," he said urgently, "i admit that i am disturbed by the precipitancy of the action that has been taken. i feel as if i were like some powerful djinni giving gifts which the recipients may use without thought." more canned applause, inserted because he had given instructions for it whenever he paused. the communicator-operator at luna city took pleasure in following instructions exactly. dabney held up his hand again. again he performed feats of meditation in plain view. "at the moment," he said anxiously, "as the author of this truly magnificent achievement, i have to use the same intellect which produced it, to examine the possibility of its ill-advised use. may not explorers--who took off without my having examined their plans and precautions--may not over-hasty users of my gift to humanity do harm? may they not find bacteria the human body cannot resist? may they not bring back plagues and epidemics? have they prepared themselves to use my discovery only for the benefit of mankind? or have they been precipitous? i shall have to apply myself to the devising of methods by which my discovery--made so that humanity might attain hitherto undreamed-of-heights--i shall have to devise means by which it will be truly a blessing to mankind!" dabney, of course, had tasted the limelight. all the world considered him the greatest scientist of all time--except, of course, the people who knew something about science. but the first actual voyagers in space had become immediately greater heroes than himself. it was intolerable to dabney to be restricted to taking bows on programs in which they starred. so he wrote a star part for himself. the bearded biologist who followed him was to have lectured on the pictures and reports forwarded to him beforehand. but he could not ignore so promising a lead to show how much he knew. so he lectured authoritatively on the danger of extra-terrestrial disease-producing organisms being introduced on earth. he painted a lurid picture, quoting from the history of pre-sanitation epidemics. he wound up with a specific prophecy of something like the black death of the middle ages as lurking among the stars to decimate humanity. he was a victim of the well-known authority-trauma which affects some people on television when they think millions of other people are listening to them. they depart madly from their scripts to try to say something startling enough to justify all the attention they're getting. the broadcast ended with a sentimental live commercial in which a dazzlingly beautiful girl melted into the arms of the worthy young man she had previously scorned. she found him irresistible when she noticed that he was wearing a suit she instantly knew by its quality could only come from harvey's. on the planet of glaciers and volcanoes, holden fumed. "dammit!" he protested. "they talk like we're lepers! like if we ever come back we'll be carriers of some monstrous disease that will wipe out the human race! as a matter of fact, we're no more likely to catch an extra-terrestrial disease than to catch wry-neck from sick chickens!" "that broadcast's nothing to worry about," said cochrane. "but it is!" insisted holden. "dabney and that fool biologist presented space-travel as a reason for panic! they could have every human being on earth scared to death we'll bring back germs and everybody'll die of the croup!" cochrane grinned. "good publicity--if we needed it! actually, they've boosted the show. from now on every presentation has a dramatic kick it didn't have before. now everybody will feel suspense waiting for the next show. has jamison got the purple death on the planet of smoky hilltops? will darling alicia keith break out in green spots next time we watch her on the air? has captain al of the star-roving space-ship breathed in spores of the swelling fungus? are the space-travellers doomed? tune in on our next broadcast and see! my dear bill, if we weren't signed up for sponsors' fees, i'd raise our prices after this trick!" holden looked unconvinced. cochrane said kindly: "don't worry! i could turn off the panic tomorrow--as much panic as there is. kursten, kasten, hopkins and fallowe had a proposal they set great store by. they wanted to parcel out a big contest for a name for mankind's second planet. they had regional sponsors lined up. it would have been worldwide! advertisers were drooling over the prospect of people proposing names for this planet on box-tops! they were planning five million prize-money--and who'd be afraid of us then? but i turned it down because we haven't got a helicopter. we couldn't stage enough different shows from this planet to keep it going the minimum six weeks for a contest like that. instead, we're taking off in a couple of hours. jones agrees. the astronomers back home have picked out another sol-type star that ought to have planets. we're going to run over and see what pickings we can find. not too far--only twenty-some light-years!" he regarded holden quizzically to see how the last phases affected him. holden didn't notice it. "a contest--it doesn't make sense!" "i know it isn't sense!" said cochrane. "it's public-relations! i'm beginning to get my self-respect back. i see now that a space-exploration job is only as good as its public-relations man!" he went zestfully to find babs to tell her to leave the communicator-set and let queries go unanswered as a matter of simple business policy. the sling which swung out of the airlock now became busy. they had landed on this planet, and they were going to leave it, and there had been a minimum of actual contact with its soil. so jamison took his leggings--put on for the show--and he and bell went down to the ground and foraged through the woods. jamison carried one of johnny simms' guns, which he regarded with acute suspicion, and bell carried cameras. they photographed trees and underbrush, first as atmosphere and then with fanatic attention to leaves and fruits or flowers. bell got pictures of one of the small, furry bipeds that cochrane and holden had spied when babs was with them. he got a picture of what he believed to be a spider-web--it was thicker and heavier and huger than any web on earth--and rather fearfully looked for the monster that could string thirty-foot cables as thick as fishing-twine. then he found that it was not a snare at all. it was a construction at whose center something undiscoverable had made a nest, with eggs in it. some creature had made an unapproachable home for itself where its young would not be assailed by predators. al, the pilot, went out of the lock and descended to the ground and went as far as the edge of the ash-ring. but he did not go any farther. he wandered about unhappily, pretending that he did not want to go into the woods. he tried to appear quite content to view half-burnt trees for his experience of the first extra-terrestrial planet on which men had landed. he did kick up some pebbles--water-rounded--and one of them had flecks of what looked like gold in it. al regarded it excitedly, and then thought of freight-rates. but he did scrabble for more. presently he had a pocket-full of small stones which would be regarded with rapture by his nieces and nephews because they had come from the stars. actually, they were quite commonplace minerals. the flecks of what looked like gold were only iron pyrates. jones did not leave the ship. he was puttering. nor alicia. holden urged her to take a walk, and she said quietly: "johnny's out with a gun. he's hunting. i don't like to be with johnny when he may be disappointed." she smiled, and holden sourly went away. there had been no particular consequences of johnny simms' inability to remember what was right and what was wrong. but holden felt like a normal man about men whose wives look patient. even psychiatrists feel that it is somehow disreputable to illtreat a woman who doesn't fight back. this attitude is instinctive. it is what is called the fine, deep-rooted impulse to chivalry which is one of the prides of modern culture. holden settled dourly down at the communicator to get an outgoing call to earth, when there were some hundreds of incoming calls backed up. by sheer obstinacy and bad manners he made it. he got a connection to a hospital where he was known, and he talked to its bacteriologist. the bacteriologist was competent, but not yet famous. with holden giving honest guesses at the color of the sunlight, and its probable ultra-violet content, and with careful estimates of the exactness with which burning vegetation here smelled like earth-plants, they arrived at imprecise but common sense conclusions. of the hundreds of thousands of possible organic compounds, only so many actually took part in the life-processes of creatures on earth. yet there were hundreds of thousands of species prepared to make use of anything usable. if the sunlight and temperature of the two worlds were similar, it was somewhat more than likely that the same chemical compounds would be used by living things on both. so that there could be micro-organisms on the new planet which could be harmful. but on the other hand, either they would be familiar in the toxins they produced--and human bodies could resist them--or else they would be new compounds to which humans would react allergically. basically, then, if anybody on the ship developed hives, they had reason to be frightened. but so long as nobody sneezed or broke out in welts, their lives were probably safe. this comforting conclusion took a long time to work out. meanwhile babs and cochrane had swung down to the ground and went hiking. cochrane was armed as before, though he had no experience as a marksman. in television shows he had directed the firing of weapons shooting blank charges--cut to a minimum so they wouldn't blast the mikes. he knew what motions to go through, but nothing else. they did not explore in the same direction as their first excursion. the ship was to take off presently, as soon as this planet had turned enough for the space-ship's nose to point nearly in the direction of their next target. they had two hours for exploration. they came upon something which lay still across their path, like a great serpent. cochrane looked at it startledly. then he saw that the round, glistening seeming snake was fastened to the ground by rootlets. it was a plant which grew like a creeper, absorbing nourishment from a vast root-area. somewhere, no doubt, it would rear upward and spread out leaves to absorb the sun's light. it used, in a way, the principle of those lateral wells which in dry climates gather water too scarce to collect in merely vertical holes. they went on and on, admiring and amazed. all about them were curiosities of adaptation, freaks of ecological adjustment, marvels of symbiotic cooperation. a botanist would have swooned with joy at the material all about. a biologist would have babbled happily. babs and cochrane admired without information. they walked interestedly but unawed among the unparalleled. back on earth they knew as much as most people about nature--practically nothing at all. babs had never seen any wild plants before. she was fascinated by what she saw, and exclaimed at everything. but she did not realize a fraction of the marvels on which her eyes rested. on the whole, she survived. "it's a pity we haven't got a helicopter," cochrane said regretfully. "if we could fly around from place to place, and send back pictures ... we can't do it in the ship ... it would burn more fuel than we've got." babs wrinkled her forehead. "doctor holden's badly worried because we can't make as alluring a picture as he'd like." cochrane halted, to watch something which was flat like a disk of gray-green flesh and which moved slowly out of their path with disquieting writhing motions. it vanished, and he said: "yes. bill's an honest man, even if he is a psychiatrist. he wants desperately to do something for the poor devils back home who're so pitifully frustrated. there are tens of millions of men who can't hope for anything better than to keep the food and shelter supply intact for themselves and their families. they can't even pretend to hope for more than that. there isn't more than so much to go around. but bill wants to give them hope. he figures that without hope the world will turn madhouse in another generation. it will." "you're trying to do something about that!" said babs quickly. "don't you think you're offering hope to everybody back on earth?" "no!" snapped cochrane. "i'm not trying anything so abstract as furnishing hope to a frustrated humanity! nobody can supply an abstraction! nobody can accomplish an abstraction! everything that's actually done is specific and real! maybe you can find abstract qualities in it after it's done, but i'm a practical man! i'm not trying to produce an improved psychological climate, suitable for debilitated psychos! i'm trying to get a job done!" "i've wondered," admitted babs, "what the job is." cochrane grimaced. "you wouldn't believe it, babs." there was an odd quivering underfoot. trees shook. there was no other peculiarity anywhere. nothing fell. no rocks rolled. in a valley among volcanoes, where the smoke from no less than six cones could be seen at once, temblors would not do damage. what damage mild shakings could do would have been done centuries since. babs said uneasily: "that feels--queer, doesn't it?" cochrane nodded. but just as he and babs had never been conditioned to be afraid of animals, they had been conditioned by air-travel at home and space-travel to here against alarm at movements of their surroundings. temblors were evidently frequent at this place. trees were anchored against them as against prevailing winds in exposed situations. landslides did not remain poised to fall. really unstable slopes had been shaken down long ago. "i wish we had a helicopter," cochrane repeated. "the look of the mountains as we came down, with glaciers between the smoking cones--that was good show-stuff! we could have held interest here until we worked that naming contest. we could use the extra capital that would bring in! as it is, we've got to move on with practically nothing accomplished. the trouble is that i didn't think we would succeed as we have! heaven knows i could have gotten helicopters!" he helped her up a small steep incline, where rock protruded from a hillside. the ground trembled again. not alarmingly, but babs' hold of his hand tightened a little. they continued to climb. they came out atop a small bare prominence which rose above the forest. here they could see over the treetops in a truly extensive view. the mountains all about were clearly visible. some were ten and some twenty miles away. some, still farther, were barely visible in the thin haze of distance. but there was a thick pall of smoke hovering about one of the farthest. it was mushroom-shaped. at one time in human history, it would have seemed typically a volcanic cloud. to cochrane and babs, it was typically the cloud of an atomic explosion. the ground shook sharply underfoot. babs staggered. flying things rose from the forests in swarms. they hovered and darted and flapped above the tree-tops. temblors did not alarm the creatures of the valley. but ground-shocks like this last were another matter. a great tree, rearing above its fellows, toppled slowly. with ripping, tearing noises, it bent sedately toward the smoking, far-away mountain. it crashed thunderously down upon smaller trees. there were other rending noises. the flying things rose higher, seeming agitated. echoes sounded in the ears of the two atop the hill. there was another sharp shock. babs gave a little, inarticulate cry. she pointed. there was much smoke in the distance. over the far-away cone, which was indistinct in the smoke of its own making--over the edge of the distant mountains a glare appeared. it was a thin line of bright white light. with infinite deliberation it began to creep down the slanting, blessedly remote mountainside. the ground seemed to shift abruptly, and then shift back. across and down the valley, five miles away, a portion of the stony wall detached itself and slid downward in seeming slow motion. two more great trees made ripping sounds. one crashed. there was an enormous darkness above one part of the sky. its under side glowed from fires as of hell, in the crater beneath it. there were sparkings above the mountaintop. very oddly indeed, the sky overhead was peacefully blue. but at the horizon a sheet of fire rolled down mile-long slopes. it seemed to move with infinite deliberation, but to move visibly at such a distance it must have been traveling like an express-train. it must have been unthinkably hot, glaring-white molten stone, thin as water, pouring downward in a flood of fire. there was no longer a sensation of the ground trembling underfoot. now the noticeable sensation was when the ground was still. temblors were practically continuous. there were distinct sharp impacts, as of violent blows nearby. babs stared, fascinated. she glanced up at cochrane. his skin was white. there were beads of sweat on his forehead. "we're safe here, aren't we?" she asked, scared. "i think so. but i'm not going to take you through falling trees while this is going on! there's another tree down! i'm worrying about the ship! if it topples--." she looked at the nose of the space-ship, gleaming silver metal, rising from the trees about the landing-spot it had burned clear. a third of its length was visible. "if it topples," said cochrane, "we'll never be able to take off. it has to point up to lift." babs looked from the ship to him, and back again. then her eyes went fearfully to the remote mountain. rumblings came from it now. they were not loud. they were hardly more than dull growlings, at the lower limit of audible pitch. they were like faint and distant thunder. there were flashings like lightning in the cloud which now enveloped the mountain's top. cochrane made an indescribable small sound. he stared at the ship. as explosion-waves passed over the ground, a faint, unanimous movement of the treetops became visible. it seemed to cochrane that the space-ship wavered as if about to fall from its upright position. it was not designed to stand such violence as a fall would imply. its hull would be dented or rent. it was at least possible that its fuel-store would detonate. but even if its fall were checked by still-standing trees about it, it could never take off again. the eight humans of its company could never juggle it back to a vertical position. rocket-thrust would merely push it in the direction its nose pointed. toppled, its rocket-thrust would merely shove it blindly over stones and trees and to destruction. the ship swayed again. visibly. ground-waves made its weight have the effect of blows. part of its foundation rested on almost-visible stone, only feet below the ground-level. but one of the landing-fins rested on humus. as the shocks passed, that fin-foot sank into the soft soil. the space-ship leaned perceptibly. flying creatures darted back and forth above the tree-tops. miles away, insensate violence reigned. clouds of dust and smoke shot miles into the air, and half a mountainside glowed white-hot, and there was the sound of long-continued thunder, and the ground shook and quivered.... there were movements nearby. a creature with yellow fur and the shape of a bear with huge ears came padding out of the forest. it swarmed up the bare stone of the hill on which babs and cochrane stood. it ignored them. halfway up the unwooded part of the hill, it stopped and made plaintive, high-pitched noises. other creatures came. many had come while the man and girl were too absorbed to notice. now two more of the large animals came out into the open and climbed the hill. babs said shakily: "do you--think they'll--do you think--" there was a nearer roaring. the space-ship leaned, and leaned.... cochrane's lips tensed. the space-ship's rockets bellowed and a storm of hurtling smoke flashed up around it. it lifted, staggering as its steering-jets tried frantically to swing its lower parts underneath its mass. it lurched violently, and the rockets flamed terribly. it lifted again. its tail was higher than the trees, but it did not point straight up. it surged horribly across the top of the forest, leaving a vast flash of flaming vegetation behind it. then it steadied, and aimed skyward and climbed.... then it was not. obviously the dabney field booster had been flashed on to get the ship out to space. the ship had vanished into emptiness. the dabney field had flicked it some hundred and seventy-odd light-years from earth's moon in the flicker of a heart-beat. it might have gone that far again. whoever was in it had had no choice but to take off, and no way to take off without suicidal use of fuel in any other way. cochrane looked at where the ship had vanished. seconds passed. there came the thunderclap of air closing the vacuum the ship's disappearance had left. there were squealings behind the pair on the hilltop. eight of the huge yellow beasts were out in the open, now. tiny, furry biped animals waddled desperately to get out of their way. smaller creatures scuttled here and there. a sinuous creature with fur but no apparent legs writhed its way upward. but all the creatures were frightened. they observed an absolute truce, under the overmastering greater fear of nature. far away, the volcano on the skyline boomed and flashed and emitted monstrous clouds of smoke. the shining, incandescent lava on its flanks glared across the glaciers. babs gasped suddenly. she realized the situation in which she and cochrane had been left. shivering, she pressed close to him as the distant black smoke-cloud spread toward the center of the sky. chapter eight before sunset, they reached the area of ashes where the ship had stood. cochrane was sure that if anybody else had been left behind besides themselves, the landing-place was an inevitable rendezvous. only three members of the ship's company had been inside when babs and cochrane left to stroll for the two hours astronomers on earth had set as a waiting-period. jones had been in the ship, and holden, and alicia simms. everybody else had been exploring. their attitude had been exactly that of sight-seers and tourists. but they could have gotten back before the take-off. apparently they had. nobody seemed to have returned to the burned-over space since the ship's departure. the blast of the rockets had erased all previous tracks, but still there was a thin layer of ash resettled over the clearing. footprints would have been visible in it. anybody remaining would have come here. nobody had. babs and cochrane were left alone. there were still temblors, but the sharper shocks no longer came. there was conflagration in the wood, where the lurching ship had left a long fresh streak of forest-fire. the two castaways stared at the round, empty landing-place. overhead, the blue sky turned yellow--but where the smoke from the eruption rose, the sky early became a brownish red--and presently the yellow faded to gold. unburned green foliage all about was singularly beautiful in that golden glow. but it was more beautiful still as the sky turned rose-pink and then carmine in turn, and then crimson from one horizon to the other save where the volcanic smoke-cloud marred the color. then the east darkened, and became a red so deep as to be practically black, and unfamiliar bright stars began to peep through it. before darkness was complete, cochrane dragged burning branches from the edge of the new fire--the heat was searing--and built a new and smaller fire in the place where the ship had been. "this isn't for warmth," he explained briefly, "but so we'll have light if we need it. and it isn't likely that animals will be anything but afraid of it." he went off to drag charred masses of burnable stuff from the burned-out first forest fire. he built a sort of rampart in the very center of the clearing. he brought great heaps of scorched wood. he did not know how much was needed to keep the fire going until dawn. when he finished, babs was silently at work trying to find out how to keep the fire going. the burning parts had to be kept together. one branch, burning alone, died out. two red-hot brands in contact kept each other alight. "i'm sorry we haven't anything to eat," cochrane told her. "i'm not hungry," she assured him. "what are we going to do now?" "there's nothing to do until morning." unconsciously, cochrane looked grim. "then there'll be plenty. food, for one thing. we don't know, actually, whether or not there's anything really edible on this planet--for us. it could be that there are fruits or possibly stalks or leaves that would be nourishing. only--we don't know which is which. we have to be careful. we might pick something like poison ivy!" babs said: "but the ship will come back!" "of course," agreed cochrane. "but it may take them some time to find us. this is a pretty big planet, you know." he estimated his supply of burnable stuff. he improved the rampart he had made at first. babs stared at him. after four or five minutes he stepped back. "you can lean against this," he explained. "you can watch the fire quite comfortably. and it's a sort of wall. the fire will light one side of you and the wall will feel comforting behind you when you get sleepy." babs nodded. she swallowed. "i--think i see what you mean when you say they may have trouble finding us, because this planet is so large." cochrane nodded reluctantly. "of course there's this burned-off space for a marker," he observed cheerfully. "but it could take several days for them to see it." babs swallowed again. she said carefully: "the--ship can't hover like a helicopter, to search. you said so. it doesn't have fuel enough. they can't really search for us at all! the only way to make a real search would be to go back to earth and--bring back helicopters and fuel for them and men to fly them.... isn't that right?" "not necessarily. but we do have to figure on a matter of--well--two or three days as a possibility." babs moistened her lips and he said quickly: "i did a show once about some miners lost in a wilderness. a period show. in it, they knew that part of their food was poisoned. they didn't know what. they had to have all their food. and of course they didn't have laboratories with which to test for poison." babs eyed him oddly. "they bandaged their arms," said cochrane, "and put scraps of the different foodstuffs under the bandages. the one that was poisonous showed. it affected the skin. like an allergy-test. i'll try that trick in the morning when there's light to pick samples by. there are berries and stuff. there must be fruits. a few hours should test them." babs said without intonation: "and we can watch what the animals eat." cochrane nodded gravely. animals on earth can live on things that--to put it mildly--humans do not find satisfying. grass, for example. but it was good for babs to think of cheering things right now. there would be plenty of discouragement to contemplate later. there was a flicker of brightness in the sky. presently the earth quivered. something made a plaintive, "_waa-waa-waaaaa!_" sound off in the night. something else made a noise like the tinkling of bells. there was an abstracted hooting presently, which now was nearby and now was far away, and once they heard something which was exactly like the noise of water running into a pool. but the source of that particular burbling moved through the dark wood beyond the clearing. it was not wholly dark where they were, even aside from their own small fire. the burning trees in the departing ship's rocket-trail sent up a column of white which remaining flames illuminated. the remarkably primitive camp cochrane had made looked like a camp on a tiny snow-field, because of the ashes. "we've got to think about shelter," said babs presently, very quietly indeed. "if there are glaciers, there must be winter here. if there is winter, we have to find out which animals we can eat, and how to store them." "hold on!" protested cochrane. "that's looking too far ahead!" babs clasped her hands together. it could have been to keep their trembling from being seen. cochrane was regarding her face. she kept that under admirable control. "is it?" asked babs. "on the broadcast mr. jamison said that there was as much land here as on all the continent of asia. maybe he exaggerated. say there's only as much land not ice-covered as there is in south america. it's all forest and plain and--uninhabited." she moistened her lips, but her voice was very steady. "if all of south america was uninhabited, and there were two people lost in it, and nobody knew where they were--how long would it take to find them?" "it would be a matter of luck," admitted cochrane. "if the ship comes back, it can't hover to look for us. there isn't fuel enough. it couldn't spot us from space if it went in an orbit like a space platform. by the time they could get help--they wouldn't even be sure we were alive. if we can't count on being found right away, this burned-over place will be green again. in two or three weeks they couldn't find it anyhow." cochrane fidgeted. he had worked out all this for himself. he'd been disturbed at having to tell it, or even admit it to babs. now she said in a constrained voice: "if men came to this planet and built a city and hunted for us, it might still be a hundred years before anybody happened to come into this valley. looking for us would be worse than looking for a needle in a haystack. i don't think we're going to be found again." cochrane was silent. he felt guiltily relieved that he did not have to break this news to babs. most men have an instinctive feeling that a woman will blame them for bad news they hear. a long time later, babs said as quietly as before: "johnny simms asked me to come along while he went hunting. i didn't. at least i--i'm not cast away with him!" cochrane said gruffly: "don't sit there and brood! try to get some sleep." she nodded. after a long while, her head drooped. she jerked awake again. cochrane ordered her vexedly to make herself comfortable. she stretched out beside the wall of wood that cochrane had made. she said quietly: "while we're looking for food tomorrow morning, we'd better keep our eyes open for a place to build a house." she closed her eyes. cochrane kept watch through the dark hours. he heard night-cries in the forest, and once toward dawn the distant volcano seemed to undergo a fresh paroxysm of activity. boomings and explosions rumbled in the night. there were flickerings in the sky. but there were fewer temblors after it, and no shocks at all. more than once, cochrane found himself dozing. it was difficult to stay in a state of alarm. there was but one single outcry in the forest that sounded like the shriek of a creature seized by a carnivore. that was not nearby. he tried to make plans. he felt bitterly self-reproachful that he knew so few of the things that would be useful to a castaway. but he had been a city man all his life. woodcraft was not only out of his experience--on overcrowded earth it would have been completely useless. from time to time he found himself thinking, instead of practical matters, of the astonishing sturdiness of spirit babs displayed. when she waked, well after daybreak, and sat up blinking, he said: "er--babs. we're in this together. from now on, if you want to tell me something for my own good, go ahead! right?" she rubbed her eyes on her knuckles and said, "i'd have done that anyhow. for both our good. don't you think we'd better try to find a place where we can get a drink of water? water has to be right to drink!" they set off, cochrane carrying the weapon he'd brought from the ship. it was babs who pointed out that a stream should almost certainly be found where rain would descend, downhill. babs, too, spotted one of the small, foot-high furry bipeds feasting gluttonously on small round objects that grew from the base of a small tree instead of on its branches. the tree, evidently, depended on four-footed rather than on flying creatures to scatter its seeds. they gathered samples of the fruit. cochrane peeled a sliver of the meat from one of the round objects and put it under his watchstrap. they found a stream. they found other fruits, and cochrane prepared the same test for them as for the first. one of the samples turned his skin red and angry almost immediately. he discarded it and all the fruits of the kind from which it came. at midday they tasted the first-gathered fruit. the flesh was red and juicy. there was a texture it was satisfying to chew on. the taste was indeterminate save for a very mild flavor of maple and peppermint mixed together. they had no symptoms of distress afterward. other fruits were less satisfactory. of the samples which the skin-test said were non-poisonous, one was acrid and astringent, and two others had no taste except that of greenness--practically the taste of any leaf one might chew. "i suppose," said cochrane wryly, as they headed back toward the ash-clearing at nightfall, "we've got to find out if the animals can be eaten." babs nodded matter-of-factly. "yes. tonight i'm taking part of the watch. as you remarked this morning, we're in this together." he looked at her sharply, and she flushed. "i mean it!" she said doggedly. "i'm watching part of the night!" he was desperately tired. his muscles were not yet back to normal after the low gravity on the moon. she'd had more rest than he. he had to let her help. but there was embarrassment between them because it looked as if they would have to spend the rest of their lives together, and they had not made the decision. it had been made for them. and they had not acknowledged it yet. when they reached the clearing, cochrane began to drag new logs toward the central place where much of last night's supply of fuel remained. matter-of-factly, babs began to haul stuff with him. he said vexedly: "quit it! i've already been realizing how little i know about the things we're going to need to survive! let me fool myself about masculine strength, anyhow!" she smiled at him, a very little. but she went obediently to the fire to experiment with cookery of the one palatable variety of fruit from this planet's trees. he drove himself to bring more wood than before. when he settled down she said absorbedly: "try this, jed." then she flushed hotly because she'd inadvertently used his familiar name. but she extended something that was toasted and not too much burned. he ate, with weariness sweeping over him like a wave. the cooked fruit was almost a normal food, but it did need salt. there would be trouble finding salt on this planet. the water that should be in the seas was frozen in the glaciers. salt would not have been leached out of the soil and gathered in the seas. it would be a serious problem. but cochrane was very tired indeed. "i'll take the first two hours," said babs briskly. "then i'll wake you." he showed her how to use the weapon. he meant to let himself drift quietly off to sleep, acting as if he had a little trouble going off. but he didn't. he lay down, and the next thing he knew babs was shaking him violently. in the first dazed instant when he opened his eyes he thought they were surrounded by forest fire. but it wasn't that. it was dawn, and babs had let him sleep the whole night through, and the sky was golden-yellow from one horizon to the other. more, he heard the now-familiar cries of creatures in the forest. but also he heard a roaring sound, very thin and far away, which could only be one thing. "jed! jed! get up! quick! the ship's coming back! the ship! we've got to move!" she dragged him to his feet. he was suddenly wide-awake. he ran with her. he flung back his head and stared up as he ran. there was a pin-point of flame and vapor almost directly overhead. it grew swiftly in size. it plunged downward. they reached the surrounding forest and plunged into it. babs stumbled, and cochrane caught her, and they ran onward hand in hand to get clear away from the down-blast of the rockets. the rocket-roaring grew louder and louder. the castaways gazed. it was the ship. from below, fierce flames poured down, blue-white and raging. the silver hull slanted a little. it shifted its line of descent. it came down with a peculiar deftness of handling that cochrane had not realized before. its rockets splashed, but the flame did not extend out to the edge of the clearing that had been burned off at first. the rocket-flames, indeed, did not approach the proportion to be seen on rockets on film-tape, or as cochrane had seen below the moon-rocket descending on earth. the ship settled within yards of its original landing-place. its rockets dwindled, but remained burning. they dwindled again. the noise was outrageous, but still not the intolerable tumult of a moon-rocket landing on earth. the rockets cut off. the airlock door opened. cochrane and babs waved cheerfully from the edge of the clearing. holden appeared in the door and shouted down: "sorry to be so long coming back." he waved and vanished. they had, of course, to wait until the ground at least partly cooled before the landing-sling could be used. around them the noises of the forest continued. there were cooling, crackling sounds from the ship. "i wonder how they found their way back!" said babs. "i didn't think they ever could. did you?" "babs," said cochrane, "you lied to me! you said you'd wake me in two hours. but you let me sleep all night!" "you'd let me sleep the night before," she told him composedly. "i was fresher than you were, and today'd have been a pretty bad one. we were going to try to kill some animals. you needed the rest." cochrane said slowly: "i found out something, babs. why you could face things. why we humans haven't all gone mad. i think i've gotten the woman's viewpoint now, babs. i like it." she inspected the looming blister-ports of the ship, now waiting for the ground to cool so they could come aboard. "i think we'd have made out if the ship hadn't come," cochrane told her. "we'd have had a woman's viewpoint to work from. yours. you looked ahead to building a house. of course you thought of finding food, but you were thinking of the possibility of winter and--building a house. you weren't thinking only of survival. you were thinking far ahead. women must think farther ahead than men do!" babs looked at him briefly, and then returned to her apparently absorbed contemplation of the ship. "that's what's the matter with people back on earth," cochrane said urgently. "there's no frustration as long as women can look ahead--far ahead, past here and now! when women can do that, they can keep men going. it's when there's nothing to plan for that men can't go on because women can't hope. you see? you saw a city here. a little city, with separate homes. on earth, too many people can't think of more than living-quarters and keeping food enough for them--them only!--coming in. they can't hope for more. and it's when that happens--you see?" babs did not answer. cochrane fumbled. he said angrily: "confound it, can't you see what i'm trying to say? we'd have been better off, as castaways, than back on earth crowded and scared of our jobs! i'm saying i'd rather stay here with you than go back to the way i was living before we started off on this voyage! i think the two of us could make out under any circumstances! i don't want to try to make out without you! it isn't sense!" then he scowled helplessly. "dammit, i've staged plenty of shows in which a man asked a girl to marry him, and they were all phoney. it's different, now that _i_ mean it! what's a good way to ask you to marry me?" babs looked momentarily up into his face. she smiled ever so faintly. "they're watching us from the ports," she said. "if you want my viewpoint--if we were to wave to them that we'll be right back, we can get some more of those fruits i cooked. it might be interesting to have some to show them." he scowled more deeply than before. "i'm sorry you feel that way. but if that's it--" "and on the way," said babs. "when they're not watching, you might kiss me." they had a considerable pile of the red-fleshed fruits ready when the ground had cooled enough for them to reach the landing-sling. once aboard the ship, cochrane headed for the control-room, with jamison and bell tagging after him. bell had an argument. "but the volcano's calmed down--there's only a wall of steam where the lava hit the glaciers--and we could fix up a story in a couple of hours! i've got background shots! you and babs could make the story-scenes and we'd have a castaway story! perfect! the first true castaway story from the stars--. you know what that would mean!" cochrane snarled at him. "try it and i'll tear you limb from limb! i've put enough of other people's private lives on the screen! my own stays off! i'm not going to have even a phoney screen-show built around babs and me for people to gabble about!" bell said in an injured tone: "i'm only trying to do a good job! i started off on this business as a writer. i haven't had a real chance to show what i can do with this sort of material!" "forget it!" cochrane snapped again. "stick to your cameras!" jamison said hopefully: "you'll give me some data on plants and animals, mr. cochrane? won't you? i'm doing a book with bell's pictures, and--" "let me alone!" raged cochrane. he reached the control-room. al, the pilot, sat at the controls with an air of special alertness. "you're all right? for our lined up trip, we ought to leave in about twenty minutes. we'll be pointing just about right then." "i'm all right," said cochrane. "and you can take off when you please." to jones he said: "how'd you find us? i didn't think it could be done." "doctor holden figured it out," said jones. "simple enough, but i was lost! when the ground-shocks came, everybody else ran to the ship. we waited for you. you didn't come." it had been, of course, because cochrane would not risk taking babs through a forest in which trees were falling. "we finally had to choose between taking off and crashing. so we took off." "that was quite right. we'd all be messed up if you hadn't," cochrane told him. jones waved his hands. "i didn't think we could ever find you again. we were sixty light-years away when that booster effect died out. then doctor holden got on the communicator. he got earth. the astronomers back there located us and gave us the line to get back by. we found the planet. even then i didn't see how we'd pick out the valley. but doc had had 'em checking the shots we transmitted as we were making our landing. we had the whole first approach on film-tape. they put a crowd of map-comparators to work. we went in a space platform orbit around the planet, transmitting what we saw from out there--they figured the orbit for us, too--and they checked what we transmitted against what we'd photographed going down. so they were able to spot the exact valley and tell us where to come down. we actually spotted this valley last night, but we couldn't land in the dark." cochrane felt abashed. "i couldn't have done that job," he admitted, "so i didn't think anybody could. hm. didn't all this cost a lot of fuel?" jones actually smiled. "i worked out something. we don't use as much fuel as we did. we're probably using too much now. al--go ahead and lift. i want to check what the new stuff does, anyhow. take off!" the pilot threw a switch, and jones threw another, a newly installed one, just added to his improvised control-column. a light glowed brightly. al pressed one button, very gently. a roaring set up outside. the ship started up. there was practically no feeling of acceleration, this time. the ship rose lightly. even the rocket-roar was mild indeed, compared to its take-off from luna and the sound of its first landing on the planet just below. cochrane saw the valley floors recede, and mountain-walls drop below. from all directions, then, vegetation-filled valleys flowed toward the ship, and underneath. glaciers appeared, and volcanic cones, and then enormous stretches of white, with smoking dots here and there upon it. in seconds, it seemed, the horizon was visibly curved. in other seconds the planet being left behind was a monstrous white ball, and there were patches of intolerable white sunlight coming in the ports. and cochrane felt queer. jones had given the order for take-off. jones had determined to leave at this moment, because jones had tests he wanted to make.... cochrane felt like a passenger. from the man who decided things because he was the one who knew what had to be done, he had become something else. he had been absent two nights and part of a day, and decisions had been made in which he had no part-- it felt queer. it felt even startling. "we're in a modification of the modified dabney field now," observed jones in a gratified tone. "you know the original theory." "i don't," acknowledged cochrane. "the field's always a pipe, a tube, a column of stressed space between the field-plates," jones reminded him. "when we landed the first time, back yonder, the tail of the ship wasn't in the field at all. the field stretched from the bow of the ship only, out to that last balloon we dropped. we were letting down at an angle to that line. it was like a kite and a string and the kite's tail. the string was the dabney field, and the directions we were heading was the kite's tail." cochrane nodded. it occurred to him that jones was very much unlike dabney. jones had discovered the dabney field, but having sold the fame-rights to it, he now apparently thought "dabney field" was the proper technical term for his own discovery, even in his own mind. "back on the moon," jones went on zestfully, "i wasn't sure that a field once established would hold in atmosphere. i hoped that with enough power i could keep it, but i wasn't sure--" "this doesn't mean much to me, jones," said cochrane. "what does it add up to?" "why--the field held down into atmosphere. and we were out of the primary field as far as the tail of the ship was concerned. but this time we landed, i'd hooked in some ready-installed circuits. there was a second dabney field from the stern of the ship to the bow. there was the main one, going out to those balloons and then back to earth. but there was--and is--a second one only enclosing the ship. it's a sort of bubble. we can still trail a field behind us, and anybody can follow in any sort of ship that's put into it. but now the ship has a completely independent, second field. its tail is never outside!" cochrane did not have the sort of mind to find such information either lucid or suggestive. "so what happens?" "we have both plates of a dabney field always with us," said jones triumphantly. "we're always in a field, even landing in atmosphere, and the ship has practically no mass even when it's letting down to landing. it has weight, but next to no mass. didn't you notice the difference?" "stupid as it may seem, i didn't," admitted cochrane. "i haven't the least idea what you're talking about." jones looked at him patiently. "now we can shoot our exhaust out of the field! the ship-field, not the main one!" "i'm still numb," said cochrane. "multiple sclerosis of the brain-cells, i suppose. let me just take your word for it." jones tried once more. "try to see it! listen! when we landed the first time we had to use a lot of fuel because the tail of the ship wasn't in the dabney field. it had mass. so we had to use a lot of rocket-power to slow down that mass. in the field, the ship hasn't much mass--the amount depends on the strength of the field--but rockets depend for their thrust on the mass that's thrown away astern. looked at that way, rockets shouldn't push hard in a dabney field. there oughtn't to be any gain to be had by the field at all. you see?" cochrane fumbled in his head. "oh, yes. i thought of that. but there is an advantage. the ship does work." "because," said jones, triumphant again, "the field-effect depends partly on temperature! the gases in the rocket-blast are hot, away up in the thousands of degrees. they don't have normal inertia, but they do have what you might call heat-inertia. they acquire a sort of fictitious mass when they get hot enough. so we carry along fuel that hasn't any inertia to speak of when it's cold, but acquires a lunatic sort of substitute for inertia when it's genuinely hot. so a ship can travel in a dabney field!" "i'm relieved," acknowledged cochrane. "i thought you were about to tell me that we couldn't lift off the moon, and i was going to ask how we got here." jones smiled patiently. "what i'm telling you now is that we can shoot rocket-blasts out of the dabney field we make with the stern of the ship! landing, we keep our fuel and the ship with next to no mass, and we shoot it out to where it does have mass, and the effect is practically the same as if we were pushing against something solid! and so we started off with fuel for maybe five or six landings and take-offs against earth gravity. but with this new trick, we've got fuel for a couple of hundred!" "ah!" said cochrane mildly. "this is the first thing you've said that meant anything to me. congratulations! what comes next?" "i thought you'd be pleased," said jones. "what i'm really telling you is that now we've got fuel enough to reach the milky way." "let's not," suggested cochrane, "and say we did! you've got a new star picked out to travel to?" jones shrugged his shoulders. in him, the gesture indicated practically hysterical frustration. but he said: "yes. twenty-one light-years. back on earth they're anxious for us to check on sol-type suns and earth-type planets." "for once," said cochrane, "i am one with the great scientific minds. let's go over." he made his way to the circular stairway leading down to the main saloon. on his clumsy way across the saloon floor to the communicator, he felt the peculiar sensation of the booster-current, which should have been a sound, but wasn't. it was the sensation which had preceded the preposterous leap of the space-ship away from luna, when in a heart-beat of time all stars looked like streaks of light, and the ship traveled nearly two light-centuries. sunshine blinked, and then shone again in the ports around the saloon walls. the second shining came from a different direction--as if somebody had switched off one exterior light and turned on another--and at a different angle to the floor. cochrane reached the communicator. he felt no weight. he strapped himself into the chair. he switched on the vision-phone which sent radiation along the field to a balloon two hundred odd light-years from earth--that was the balloon near the glacier planet--and then switched to the field traveling to a second balloon then the last hundred seventy-odd light-years back to the moon, and then from luna city down to earth. he put in his call. he got an emergency message that had been waiting for him. seconds later he fought his way frantically through no-weight to the control-room again. "jamison! bell!" he cried desperately. "we've got a broadcast due in twenty minutes! i lost track of time! we're sponsored on four continents and we damwell have to put on a show! what the devil! why didn't somebody--" jamison said obviously from a blister-port where he swung a squat star-telescope from one object to another: "noo-o-o. that's a gas-giant. we'd be squashed if we landed there--though that big moon looks promising. i think we'd better try yonder." "okay," said jones in a flat voice. "center on the next one in, al, and we'll toddle over." cochrane felt the ship swinging in emptiness. he knew because it seemed to turn while he felt that he stayed still. "we've got a show to put on!" he raged. "we've got to fake something--." jamison looked aside from his telescope. "tell him, bell," he said expansively. "i wrote a script of sorts," said bell apologetically. "the story-line's not so good--that's why i wanted a castaway narrative to put in it, though i wouldn't have had time, really. we spliced film and jamison narrated it, and you can run it off. it's a kind of show. we ran it as a space-platform survey of the glacier-planet, basing it on pictures we took while we were in orbit around it. it's a sort of travelogue. jamison did himself proud. alicia can find the tape-can for you." he went back to his cameras. cochrane saw a monstrous globe swing past a control-room port. it was a featureless mass of clouds, save for striations across what must be its equator. it looked like the lunar observatory pictures of jupiter, back in the sun's family of planets. it went past the port, and a moon swam into view. it was a very large moon. it had at least one ice-cap--and therefore an atmosphere--and there were mottlings of its surface which could hardly be anything but continents and seas. "we've got to put a show on!" raged cochrane. "and now!" "it's all set," bell assured him. "you can transmit it. i hope you like it!" cochrane sputtered. but there was nothing to do but transmit whatever bell and jamison had gotten ready. he swam with nightmarelike difficulty back to the communicator. he shouted frantically for babs. she and alicia came. alicia found the film-tape, and cochrane threaded it into the transmitter, and bitterly ran the first few feet. babs smiled at him, and alicia looked at him oddly. evidently, babs had confided the consequence of their casting-away. but cochrane faced an emergency. he began to check timings with far-distant earth. when the ship approached a second planet, cochrane saw nothing of it. he was furiously monitoring the broadcast of a show in which he'd had no hand at all. from his own, professional standpoint it was terrible. jamison spouted interminably, so cochrane considered. al, the pilot, was actually interviewed by an offscreen voice! but the pictures from space were excellent. while the ship floated in orbit, waiting to descend to pick up babs and cochrane, bell had hooked his camera to an amplifying telescope and he did have magnificent shots of dramatic terrain on the planet now twenty light-years behind. cochrane watched the show in a mingling of jealousy and relief. it was not as good as he would have done. but fortunately, bell and jamison had stuck fairly close to straight travelogue-stuff, and close-up shots of vegetation and animals had been interspersed with the remoter pictures with moderate competence, if without undue imagination. an audience which had not seen many shows of the kind would be thrilled. it even amounted to a valid change of pace. anybody who watched this would at least want to see more and different pictures from the stars. halfway through, he heard the now-muffled noise of rockets. he knew the ship was descending through atmosphere by the steady sound, though he had not the faintest idea what was outside. he ground his teeth as--for timing--he received the commercial inserted in the film. the u. s. commercials served the purpose, of course. he could not watch the other pictures shown to residents of other than north america in the commercial portions of the show. he was counting seconds to resume transmission when he felt the slight but distant impact which meant that the ship had touched ground. a very short time after, even the lessened, precautionary rocket-roar cut off. cochrane ground his teeth. the ship had landed on a planet he had not seen and in whose choice he had had no hand. he was humiliated. the other members of the ship's company looked out at scenes no other human eyes had ever beheld. he regarded the final commercial, inserted into the broadcast for its american sponsor. it showed, purportedly, the true story of two girl friends, one blonde and one brunette, who were wall-flowers at all parties. they tried frantically to remedy the situation by the use of this toothpaste and that, and this deodorant and the other. in vain! but then they became the centers of all the festivities they attended, as soon as they began to wash their hair with rayglo shampoo. holden and johnny simms came clattering down from the control-room together. they looked excited. they plunged together toward the stair-well that would take them to the deck on which the airlock opened. holden panted, "jed! creatures outside! they look like men!" the communicator-screen faithfully monitored the end of the commercial. two charming girls, radiant and lovely, raised their voices in grateful song, hymning the virtues of rayglo shampoo. there followed brisk reminders of the superlative, magical results obtained by those who used rayglo foundation cream, rayglo kisspruf lipstick, and rayglo home permanent--in four strengths; for normal, hard-to-wave, easy-to-wave, and children's hair. cochrane heard the clanking of the airlock door. chapter nine he made for the control-room, where the ports offered the highest and widest and best views of everything outside. when he arrived, babs and alicia stood together, staring out and down. bell frantically worked a camera. jamison gaped at the outer world. al the pilot made frustrated gestures, not quite daring to leave his controls while there was even an outside chance the ship's landing-fins might find flaws in their support. jones adjusted something on the new set of controls he had established for the extra dabney field. jones was not wholly normal in some ways. he was absorbed in technical matters even more fully than cochrane in his own commercial enterprises. cochrane pushed to a port to see. the ship had landed in a small glade. there were trees nearby. the trees had extremely long, lanceolate leaves, roughly the shape of grass-blades stretched out even longer. in the gentle breeze that blew outside, they waved extravagantly. there were hills in the distance, and nearby out-croppings of gray rocks. this sky was blue like the sky of earth. it was, of course, inevitable that any colorless atmosphere with dust-particles suspended in it would establish a blue sky. holden was visible below, moving toward a patch of reed-like vegetation rising some seven or eight feet from the rolling soil. he had hopped quickly over the scorched area immediately outside the ship. it was much smaller than that made by the first landing on the other planet, but even so he had probably damaged his footwear to excess. but he now stood a hundred yards from the ship. he made gestures. he seemed to be talking, as if trying to persuade some living creature to show itself. "we saw them peeping," said babs breathlessly, coming beside cochrane. "once one of them ran from one patch of reeds to another. it looked like a man. there are at least three of them in there--whatever they are!" "they can't be men," said cochrane grimly. "they can't!" johnny simms was not in sight. "where's simms?" "he has a gun," said babs. "he was going to get one, anyhow, so he could protect doctor holden." cochrane glanced straight down. the airlock door was open, and the end of a weapon peered out. johnny simms might be in a better position there to protect holden by gun-fire, but he was assuredly safer, himself. there was no movement anywhere. holden did not move closer to the reeds. he still seemed to be speaking soothingly to the unseen creatures. "why can't there be men here?" asked babs. "i don't mean actually men, but--manlike creatures? why couldn't there be rational creatures like us? i know you said so but--" cochrane shook his head. he believed implicitly that there could not be men on this planet. on the glacier planet every animal had been separately devised from the creatures of earth. there were resemblances, explicable as the result of parallel evolution. by analogy, there could not be exactly identical mankind on another world because evolution there would be parallel but not the same. but if there were even a mental equal to men, no matter how unhuman such a creature might appear, if there were a really rational animal anywhere in the cosmos off of earth, the result would be catastrophic. "we humans," cochrane told her, "live by our conceit. we demand more than animality of ourselves because we believe we are more than animals--and we believe we are the only creatures that are! if we came to believe we were not unique, but were simply a cleverer animal, we'd be finished. every nation has always started to destroy itself every time such an idea spread." "but we aren't only clever animals!" protested babs. "we _are_ unique!" cochrane glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "quite true." holden still stood patiently before the patch of reeds, still seemed to talk, still with his hands outstretched in what men consider the universal sign of peace. there was a sudden movement at the back of the reed-patch, quite fifty yards from holden. a thing which did look like a man fled madly for the nearest edge of woodland. it was the size of a man. it had the pinkish-tan color of naked human flesh. it ran with its head down, and it could not be seen too clearly, but it was startlingly manlike in outline. up in the control-room bell fairly yipped with excitement and swung his camera. holden remained oblivious. he still tried to lure something out of concealment. a second creature raced for the woods. tiny gray threads appeared in the air between the airlock and the racing thing. smoke. johnny simms was shooting zestfully at the unidentified animal. he was using that tracer ammunition which poor shots and worse sportsmen adopt to make up for bad marksmanship. the threads of smoke seemed to form a net about the running things. they dodged and zig-zagged frantically. both of them reached safety. a third tried it. and now johnny simms turned on automatic fire. bullets spurted from his weapon, trailing threads of smoke so that the trails looked like a stream from a hose. the stream swept through the space occupied by the fugitive. it leaped convulsively and crashed to earth. it kicked blindly. cochrane swore. between the instant of the beginning of the creature's flight and this instant, less than two seconds had passed. the threads which were smoke-trails drifted away. then a new thread streaked out. johnny simms fired once more at his still-writhing victim. it kicked violently and was still. holden turned angrily. there seemed to be shoutings between him and johnny simms. then holden trudged around the reed-patch. there was no longer any sign of life in the still shape on the ground. but it was normal precaution not to walk into a jungle-like thicket in which unknown, large living things had recently been sighted. johnny simms fired again and again from his post in the airlock. the smoke which traced his bullets ranged to the woodland. he shot at imagined targets there. he fired at his previous victim simply because it was something to shoot at. he shot recklessly, foolishly. alicia, his wife, touched jamison on the arm and spoke to him urgently. jamison followed her reluctantly down the stairs. she would be going to the airlock. johnny simms, shooting at the landscape, might shoot holden. a thread of bullet-smoke passed within feet of holden's body. he turned and shouted back at the ship. the inner airlock door clanked open. there was the sound of a shot, and the dead thing was hit again. the bullet had been fired dangerously close to holden. there were voices below. johnny simms bellowed enragedly. alicia cried out. there was silence below, but cochrane was already plunging toward the stairs. babs followed closely. when they rushed down onto the dining-room deck they found alicia deathly white, but with a flaming red mark on her cheek. they found johnny simms roaring with rage, waving the weapon he'd been shooting. jamison was uneasily in the act of trying to placate him. "----!" bellowed johnny simms. "i came on this ship to hunt! i'm going to hunt! try and stop me!" he waved his weapon. "i paid my money!" he shouted. "i won't take orders from anybody! nobody can boss me!" cochrane said icily: "i can! stop being a fool! put down that gun! you nearly shot holden! you might still kill somebody. put it down!" he walked grimly toward johnny simms. johnny was near the open airlock door. the outer door was open, too. he could not retreat. he edged sidewise. cochrane changed the direction of his advance. there are people like johnny simms everywhere. as a rule they are not classed as unable to tell right from wrong unless they are rich enough to hire a psychiatrist. yet a variable but always-present percentage of the human race ignores rules of conduct at all times. they are the handicap, the burden, the main hindrance to the maintenance or the progress of civilization. they are not consciously evil. they simply do not bother to act otherwise than as rational animals. the rest of humanity has to defend itself with police, with laws, and sometimes with revolts, though those like johnny simms have no motive beyond the indulgence of immediate inclinations. but for that indulgence johnny would risk any injury to anybody else. he edged further aside. cochrane was white with disgusted fury. johnny simms went into panic. he raised his weapon, aiming at cochrane. "keep back!" he cried ferociously. "i don't care if i kill you!" and he did not. it was the stark senselessness which makes juvenile delinquents and hitlers, and causes thugs and hoodlums and snide lawyers and tricky business men. it was the pure perversity which makes sane men frustrate. it was an example of that infinite stupidity which is crime, but is also only stupidity. cochrane saw babs pulling competently at one of the chairs at one of the tables nearby. he stopped, and johnny simms took courage. cochrane said icily: "just what the hell do you think we're here for, anyhow?" johnny simms' eyes were wide and blank, like the eyes of a small boy in a frenzy of destruction, when he has forgotten what he started out to do and has become obsessed with what damage he is doing. "i'm not going to be pushed around!" cried johnny simms, more ferociously still. "from now on i'm going to tell you what to do--" babs swung the chair she had slid from its fastenings. it came down with a satisfying "_thunk_" on johnny simms' head. his gun went off. the bullet missed cochrane by fractions of an inch. he plunged ahead. some indefinite time later, babs was pulling desperately at him. he had johnny simms on the floor and was throttling him. johnny simms strangled and tore at his fingers. sanity came back to cochrane with the effect of something snapping. he got up. he nodded to babs and she picked up the gun johnny simms had used. "i think," said cochrane, breathing hard, "that you're a good sample of everything i dislike. the worst thing you do is make me act like you! if you touch a gun again on this ship, i'll probably kill you. if you get arrogant again, i will beat the living daylights out of you! get up!" johnny simms got up. he looked thoroughly scared. then, amazingly, he beamed at cochrane. he said amiably: "i forgot. i'm that way. alicia'll tell you. i don't blame you for getting mad. i'm sorry. but i'm that way!" he brushed himself off, beaming at alicia and jamison and babs and cochrane. cochrane ground his teeth. he went to the airlock and looked down outside. holden was bent over the creature johnny simms had killed. he straightened up and came back toward the ship. he went faster when the ground grew hot under his feet. he fairly leaped into the landing-sling and started it up. "not human," he reported to cochrane when he slipped from the sling in the airlock. "there's no question about it when you are close. it's more nearly a bird than anything else. it was warm-blooded. it has a beak. there are penguins on earth that have been mistaken for men. "i did a show once," said cochrane coldly, "that had clips of old films of cockfighting in it. there was a kind of gamecock called cornish game that was fairly manshaped. if it had been big enough--pull in the sling and close the lock. we're moving." he turned away. babs stood by alicia, offering a handkerchief for alicia to put to her cheek. jamison listened unhappily as johnny simms explained brightly that he had always been that way. when he got excited he didn't realize what he was doing. he said almost with pride that he hadn't ever been any other way than that. he didn't really mean to kill anybody, but when he got excited--. "what happened?" demanded holden. "our little psychopath," said cochrane in a grating voice, "put on an act. he threatened me with a rifle. he hit alicia first. jamison, trace that bullet-hole. see if it got through to the skin of the ship." he started for the stairs again. then he was startled by the frozen immobility of holden. holden's face was deadly. his hands were clenched. johnny simms said with a fine boyish frankness: "i'm sorry, cochrane! no hard feelings?" "yes," cochrane snapped. "hard feelings! i've got them!" he took holden's arm. he steered him up the steps. holden resisted for the fraction of a second, and cochrane gripped his arm tighter. he got him up to the deck above. "if i'd been here," said holden, unsteadily, "i'd have killed him--if he hit alicia! psychopath or no psychopath--" "shut up," said cochrane firmly. "he shot at me! and in my small way i'm a psychopath too, bill. my psychosis is that i don't like his kind of psychosis. i am psychotically devoted to sense and my possibly quaint idea of decency. i am abnormally concerned with the real world--and you'd better come back to it! look here! i'm pathologically in revolt against such imbecilities as an overcrowded earth and people being afraid of their jobs and people going crackpot from despair. you don't want me to get cured of that, do you? then get hold of yourself!" bill holden swallowed. he was still white. but he managed to grimace. "you're right. lucky i was outside. you're not a bad psychologist yourself, jed." "i'm better," said cochrane cynically, "at putting on shows with scrap film-tape and dream-stuff. so i'm going to look at the films bell took as we landed on this planet, and work out some ideas for broadcasts." he went up another flight, and holden went with him in a sort of stilly, unnatural calm. cochrane ran the film-tape through the reversed camera for examination. outside, there waved long green tresses of extraordinarily elongated leaves. the patches of reed-like stuff stirred in the breeze. jamison appeared in the control-room. he began to question holden hopefully about the ground-cover outside. it was not grass. it was broad-leaved. there would be, jamison decided happily, an infinitude of under-leaf forms of life. they would most likely be insects, and there would be carnivorous other insects to prey upon them. some species would find it advantageous to be burrowing insects. there must be other kinds of birds than the giant specimens that looked like men at a distance, too. on the glacier planet there had been few birds but many furry creatures. possibly the situation was reversed here, though of course it need not be ... "hm," said cochrane when the films were all run through. "ice-caps and land and seas. plenty of green vegetation, so presumably the air is normal for humans. since you're alive, holden, we can assume it isn't instantly fatal, can't we? the gravity's tolerable--a little on the light side, maybe, compared to the glacier planet." he was silent, staring at the blank wall of the control-room. he frowned. suddenly he said: "does anybody back on earth know that babs and i were castaways?" "no," said holden, still very quiet indeed. "alicia ran the control-board. she told everybody you were too busy to be called to the communicator. it was queer with you away! jamison and bell tied themselves in chairs and spliced tape. johnny, of course"--his voice was very carefully toneless--"wouldn't do anything useful. i was space-sick a lot of the time. but i did help alicia figure out what to say on the communicator. there must be hundreds of calls backed up for you to take." "good!" said cochrane. "i'll go take some of them. jones, could we make a flit to somewhere else on this planet?" jones said negligently, "i told you we've got fuel to reach the milky way. where do you want to go?" "anywhere," said cochrane. "the scenery isn't dramatic enough here for a new broadcast. we've got to have some lurid stuff for our next show. things are shaping up except for the need of just the right scenery to send back to earth." "what kind of scenery do you want?" "animals preferred," said cochrane. "dinosaurs would do. or buffalo or a reasonable facsimile. what i'd actually like more than anything else would really be a herd of buffalo." jamison gasped. "buffalo?" "meat," said cochrane in an explanatory tone. "on the hoof. the public-relations job all this has turned into, demands a careful stimulation of all the basic urges. so i want people to think of steaks and chops and roasts. if i could get herds of animals from one horizon to another--." "meat-herds coming up," said jones negligently. "i'll call you." cochrane did not believe him. he went down to the communicator again. he prepared to take the calls from earth that had been backed up behind the emergency demand for an immediate broadcast-show that he'd met while the ship came to its landing. there was an enormous amount of business piled up. and it was slow work handling it. his voice took six seconds to pass through something over two hundred light-years of space in the dabney field, and then two seconds in normal space from the relay in lunar city. it was twelve seconds between the time he finished saying something before the first word of the reply reached him. it was very slow communication. he reflected annoyedly that he'd have to ask jones to make a special dabney field communication field as strong as was necessary to take care of the situation. the rockets growled and roared outside. the ship lifted. johnny simms came storming up from below. "my trophy!" he cried indignantly. "i want my trophy!" cochrane looked up impatiently from the screen. "what trophy?" "the thing i shot!" cried johnny simms fiercely. "i want to have it mounted! nobody else ever killed anything like that! i want it!" the ship surged upward more strongly. cochrane said coldly: "it's too late now. get out. i'm busy." he returned his eyes to the screen. johnny simms raced for the stairs. a little later cochrane heard shoutings in the control-room. but he was too busy to inquire. the ship drifted--with all the queasy sensation of no-weight--and lifted again, and then there was a fairly long period of weightlessness. at such times holden would be greenish and sick and tormented by space-sickness. which might be good for him at this particular time. for a long time, it seemed, there were alternating periods of lift and free fall, which in themselves were disturbing. once the free fall lasted until cochrane began to feel uneasy. but then the rockets roared once more and boomed loudly as if the ship were leaving the planet altogether. but cochrane was talking business. in part he bluffed. in part, quite automatically, he demanded much more than he expected to get, simply because it is the custom in business not to be frank about anything. whatever he asked, the other man would offer less. so he asked too much, and the other man offered too little, each knowing in advance very nearly on what terms they would finally settle. considering the cost of beam-phone time to lunar city, not to mention the extension to the stars, it was absurd, but it was the way business is done. presently cochrane called babs and alicia and had them witness a tentative agreement, which had to be ratified by a board of directors of a corporation back on earth. that board would jump at it, but the stipulation for possible cancellation had to be made. it was mumbo-jumbo. cochrane felt satisfyingly competent at handling it. while the formalities were in progress, the ship surged and fell and swayed and surged again. cochrane said ruefully: "i hate to ask you to work under conditions like this, babs." babs grinned. he flushed a little. "i know! when you were working for me i wasn't considerate." "who am i working for now?" "us," said cochrane. then he looked guiltily at alicia. he felt embarrassment at having said anything in the least sentimental before her. considering johnny simms, it was not too tactful. her cheek, where it had been red, now showed a distinct bruise. he said: "sorry, alicia--about johnny." "i got into it myself," said alicia. "i loved him. he isn't really bad. if you want to know, i think he simply decided years ago that he wouldn't grow up past the age of six. he was a rich man's spoiled little boy. it was fun. so he made a career of it. his family let him. i"--she smiled faintly, "i'm making a career of taking care of him." "something can be done even with a six-year-old," growled cochrane. "holden--. but he wouldn't be the best one to try." "he definitely wouldn't be the best one to try," said alicia very quietly. cochrane turned away. she knew how bill holden felt. which might or might not be comforting to him. the communicator again. the pictures of foot-high furry bipeds on the glacier planet had made a sensation on television. a toy-manufacturer wanted the right to make toys like them. the pictures were copyrighted. cochrane matter-of-factly made the deal. there would be miniature extra-terrestrial animals on sale in all toy-shops within days. spaceways, inc., would collect a royalty on each toy sold. the rockets boomed, and lessened their noise, and wavered up and down again. then there was that deliberate, crunching feel of the great landing-fins pressing into soil with all the ship's weight bearing down. the rockets ran on, drumming ever-so-faintly, for a little longer. then they cut off. "we're landed again! let's see where we are!" they went up to the control-room. johnny simms stood against the wall, sulking. he had managed his life very successfully by acting like a spoiled little boy. now he had lost any idea of saner conduct. at the moment, he looked ridiculous. but alicia had a bruised cheek and cochrane could have been killed, and holden had been in danger because johnny simms wanted to and insisted on acting like a rich man's spoiled little boy. it occurred to cochrane that alicia would probably find recompense for her humiliation and pain in the little-boy penitence--exactly as temporary as any other little-boy emotion--when she and johnny simms were alone together. the ship had come down close to the sunset-line of the planet. away to the west there was the glint of blue sea. dusk was already descending here. there were smoothly contoured hills in view, and there was a dark patch of forest on one hilltop, and the trees at the woodland's edge had the same drooping, grass-blade-like foliage of the trees first seen. but there were larger and more solid giants among them. the ship had landed on a small plateau, and downhill from it a spring gushed out with such force that the water-surface was rounded by pressure from below. the water overflowed and went down toward the sea. "i think we're all right," said al, the pilot. but he stayed in his seat, in case the ship threatened to sway over. cochrane inspected the outer world. "well?" "we sighted what i think you want," said jones. he looked dead-pan and yet secretly complacent. "just watch." the dusk grew deeper. colorings appeared in the west. they were very similar to the sunset-colorings on earth. "not many volcanoes here." the amount of dust was limited, as on earth. a great star winked into view in the east. it was as bright as venus seen from earth. it had a just-perceptible disk. close to it, infinitely small, there was a speck of light which seemed somehow unlike a star. cochrane squinted at it. he thought of the great gas-giant world he'd seen out a port on the way here. it had an attendant moon-world which itself had icecaps and seas and continents. he called jamison. "i think that's the planet," agreed jamison. "we passed close by it. we saw it." "it had a moon," observed cochrane. "a big one. it looked like a world itself. what would it be like there?" "cooler than this," said jamison promptly, "because it's farther from the sun. but it might pick up some heat from reflection from its primary's white clouds. it would be a fair world. it has oceans and continents and strings of foam-girt islands. but its sea is strange and dark and restless. gigantic tides surge in its depths, drawn by the planetary colossus about which it swings. its animal life--." "cut," said cochrane dryly. "what do you really think? could it be another inhabitable world for people to move to?" jamison looked annoyed at having been cut off. "probably," he said more prosaically. "the tides would be monstrous, though." "might be used for power," said cochrane. "we'll see ..." then jones spoke with elaborate casualness: "here's something to look at. on the ground." cochrane moved to see. the dusk had deepened still more. the smooth, green-covered ground had become a dark olive. where bare hillsides gave upon the sky, there were dark masses flowing slowly forward. the edges of the hills turned black, and the blackness moved down their nearer slopes. it was not an even front of darkness. there were patches which preceded the others. they did not stay distinct. they merged with the masses which followed them, and other patches separated in their places. all of the darkness moved without haste, with a sort of inexorable deliberation. it moved toward the ship and the valley and the gushing fountain and the stream which flowed from it. "what on earth--" began cochrane. "you're not on earth," said jones chidingly. "al and i found 'em. you asked for buffalo or a reasonable facsimile. i won't guarantee anything; but we spotted what looked like herds of beasts moving over the green plains inland. we checked, and they seemed to be moving in this direction. once we dropped down low and bell got some pictures. when he enlarged them, we decided they'd do. so we lined up where they were all headed for, and here we are. and here they are!" cochrane stared with all his eyes. behind him, he heard bell fuming to himself as he tried to adjust a camera for close-up pictures in the little remaining light. babs stood beside cochrane, staring incredulously. the darkness was beasts. they blackened the hillsides on three sides of the ship. they came deliberately, leisurely onward. they were literally uncountable. they were as numerous as the buffalo that formerly thronged the western plains of america. in black, shaggy masses, they came toward the spring and its stream. nearby, their heads could be distinguished. and all of this was perfectly natural. the cosmos is one thing. where life exists, its living creatures will fit themselves cunningly into each niche where life can be maintained. on vast green plains there will be animals to graze--and there will be animals to prey on them. so the grazing things will band together in herds for self-defense and reproduction. and where the ground is covered with broad-leaved plants, such plants will shelter innumerable tiny creatures, and some of them will be burrowers. so rain will drain quickly into those burrowings and not make streams. and therefore the drainage will reappear as springs, and the grazing animals will go to those springs to drink. often, they will gather more densely at nightfall for greater protection from their enemies. they will even often gather at the springs or their overflowing brooks. this will happen anywhere that plains and animals exist, on any planet to the edge of the galaxy, because there are laws for living things as well as stones. great dark masses of the beasts moved unhurriedly past the ship. they were roughly the size of cattle--which itself would be determined by the gravity of the planet, setting a maximum favorable size for grazing beasts with an ample food-supply. there were thousands and tens of thousands of them visible in the deepening night. they crowded to the gushing spring and to the stream that flowed from it. they drank. sometimes groups of them waited patiently until the way to the water was clear. "well?" said jones. "i think you filled my order," admitted cochrane. the night became starlight only, and cochrane impatiently demanded of al or somebody that they measure the length of a complete day and night on this planet. the stars would move overhead at such-and-such a rate. so many degrees in so much time. he needed, said cochrane--as if this order also could be filled--a day-length not more than six hours shorter or longer than an earth-day. jones and al conferred and prepared to take some sort of reading without any suitable instrument. cochrane moved restlessly about. he did not notice johnny simms. johnny had stood sullenly in his place, not moving to look out the windows, ostentatiously ignoring everything and everybody. and nobody paid attention! it was not a matter to offend an adult, but it was very shocking indeed to a rich man's son who had been able to make a career of staying emotionally at a six-year-old level. cochrane's thoughts were almost feverish. if the day-length here was suitable, all his planning was successful. if it was too long or too short, he had grimly to look further--and spaceways, inc., would still not be as completely a success as he wanted. it would have been much simpler to have measured the apparent size of the local sun by any means available, and then simply to have timed the intervals between its touching of the horizon and its complete setting. but cochrane hadn't thought of it at sunset. presently he wandered down to where babs and alicia worked in the kitchen to prepare a meal. he tried to help. the atmosphere was much more like that in a small apartment back home than on a space-ship among the stars. this was not in any way such a journey of exploration as the writers of fiction had imagined. jamison came down presently and offered to prepare some special dish in which he claimed to excel. there was no mention of johnny simms. alicia, elaborately ignoring all that was past, told jamison that babs and cochrane were now an acknowledged romance and actually had plans for marriage immediately the ship returned to earth. jamison made the usual inept jests suited to such an occasion. presently they called the others to dinner. jones and johnny simms were long behind the others, and jones' expression was conspicuously dead-pan. johnny simms looked sulkily rebellious. his sulking had not attracted attention in the control-room. he had meant to refuse sulkily to come to dinner. but jones wouldn't trust him--alone in the control-room. now he sat down, scowling, and ostentatiously refused to eat, despite alicia's coaxing. he snarled at her. this, also, was not in the tradition of the behavior of voyagers of space. they dined in the over-large saloon of a ship that had never been meant really to leave the moon. the ship stood upright under strange stars upon a stranger world, and all about it outside there were the resting forms of thousands upon thousands of creatures like cattle. and the dinner-table conversation was partly family-style jests about babs' and cochrane's new romantic status, and partly about a television broadcast which had to be ready for a certain number of earth-hours yet ahead. and nobody paid any attention to johnny simms, glowering at the table and refusing to eat. it was a mistake, probably. much, much later, cochrane and babs were again in the control-room, and this time they were alone. "look!" said cochrane vexedly. "do you realize that i haven't kissed you since we got back on the ship? what happened?" "you!" said babs indignantly. "you've been thinking about something else every second of the time!" cochrane did not think about anything else for several minutes. he began to recall with new tolerance the insane antics of people he had been producing shows about. they had reason--those imaginary people--to act unreasonably. but presently his mind was working again. "we've got to make some plans for ourselves," he said. "we can live back on earth, of course. we've already made a neat sum out of the broadcasts from this trip. but i don't think we'll want to live the way one has to live on earth, with too many people there. i'd like--." somebody came clattering up the stairs from below. "johnny?" it was bell. "is he up here?" cochrane released babs. "no. he's not here. why?" "he's missing," said bell apprehensively. "alicia says he took a gun. a gun's gone, anyhow. he's vanished!" cochrane swore under his breath. a fool asserting his dignity with a gun could be a serious matter indeed. he switched on the control-room lights. he was not there. they went down and hunted over the main saloon. he was not there. then holden called harshly from the next deck down. there was alicia by the inner airlock door. her face was deathly pale. she had opened the door. the outer door was open too--and it had not been opened since this last landing by anybody else. the landing-sling cables were run out. they swung slowly in the light that fell upon them from the inside of the ship. a smell came in the opening. it was the smell of beasts. it was a musky, ammoniacal smell, somehow not alien even though it was unfamiliar. there were noises outside in the night. grunting sounds. snortings. there were such sounds as a vast concourse of grazing creatures would make in the night-time, when gathered by thousands and myriads for safety and for rest. "he--went out," said alicia desperately. "he meant to punish us. he's a spoiled little boy. we weren't nice to him. and--he was afraid of us too! so he ran away to make us sorry!" cochrane went to look out of the lock and to call johnny simms back. he gazed into absolute blackness on the ground. he felt a queasy giddiness because there was no hand-railing at the outer lock door and he knew the depth of the fall outside. he raged, within himself. johnny simms would feel triumphant when he was called. he would require to be pleaded with to return. he would pompously set terms for returning before he was killed.... cochrane saw a flash of fire and the short streak of a tracer-bullet's patch before it hit something. he heard the report of the gun. he heard a bellow of agony and then a scream of purest terror from johnny simms. then, from the ground, arose a truly monstrous tumult. every one of the creatures below raised its voice in a horrible, bleating cry. the volume of sound was numbing--was agonizing in sheer impact. there were stirrings and clickings as of horns clashing against each other. another scream from johnny simms. he had moved. it appeared that he was running. cochrane saw more gun-flashes, there were more shots. he clenched his hands and waited for the thunderous vibration that would be all this multitude of animals pounding through the night in blind stampede. it did not come. there was only that bleating, horrible outcry as all the beasts bellowed of alarm and created this noise to frighten their assailants away. twice more there were shots in the night. johnny simms fired crazily and screamed in hysterical panic. each time the shots and screaming were farther away. there were no portable lights with which to make a search. it was unthinkable to go blundering among the beasts in darkness. there was nothing to do. cochrane could only watch and listen helplessly while the strong beast-smell rose to his nostrils, and the innumerable noises of unseen uneasy creatures sounded in his ears. inside the ship alicia wept hopelessly. babs tried in vain to comfort her. chapter ten the sun rose. cochrane noted the time, it was fourteen hours since sunset. the local day would be something more than an earth-day in length. the manner of sunrise was familiar. there was a pale gray light in the sky. it strengthened. then reddish colors appeared, and changed to gold, and the unnamed stars winked out one after another. presently the nearer hillsides ceased to be black. there was light everywhere. alicia, white and haggard, waited to see what the light would show. but there was heavy mist everywhere. the hill-crests were clear, and the edge of the visible woodland, and the top half of the ship's shining hull rose clear of curiously-tinted, slowly writhing fog. but everything else seemed submerged in a sea of milk. but the mist grew thinner as the sun shone on it. its top writhed to nothingness. all this was wholly commonplace. even clouds in the sky were of types well-known enough. which was, when one thought about it, inevitable. this was a sol-type sun, of the same kind and color as the star which warmed the planet earth. it had planets, like the sun of men's home world. there was a law--bode's law--which specified that planets must float in orbits bearing such-and-such relationships to each other. there must also be a law that planets in those orbits must bear such-and-such relationships of size to each other. there must be a law that winds must blow under ordinary conditions, and clouds form at appointed heights and times. it would be very remarkable if earth were an exception to natural laws that other worlds obey. so the strangeness of the morning to those who watched from the ship was more like the strangeness of an alien land on earth than that of a wholly alien planet. the lower dawnmist thinned. gazing down, cochrane saw dark masses moving slowly past the ship's three metal landing-fins. they were the beasts of the night, moving deliberately from their bed-ground to the vast plains inland. there were bunches of hundreds, and bunches of scores. there were occasional knots of dozens only. from overhead and through the mist cochrane could not see individual animals too clearly, but they were heavy beasts and clumsy ones. they moved sluggishly. their numbers dwindled. he saw groups of no more than four or five. he saw single animals trudging patiently away. he saw no more at all. then the sunlight touched the inland hills. the last of the morning mist dissolved, and there were the dead bodies of two beasts near the base of the ship. johnny simms had killed them with his first panicky shots of the night. there was another dead beast a quarter-mile away. cochrane gave orders. jones and al could not leave the ship. they were needed to get it back to earth, with full knowledge of how to make other starships. cochrane tried to leave babs behind, but she would not stay. bell had loaded himself with a camera and film-tape besides a weapon, before cochrane even began his organization. holden was needed for an extra gun. alicia, tearless and despairing, would not be left behind. cochrane turned wryly to jamison. "i don't think johnny was killed," he said. "he'd gotten a long way off before it happened, anyhow. we've got to hunt for him. with beasts like those of last night, there'll naturally be other creatures to prey on them. we might run into anything. if we don't get back, you get to the lawyers i've had representing spaceways. they'll get rich off the job, but you'll end up rich, too." "the best bet all around," said jamison in a low tone, "would be to find him trampled to death." "i agree," said cochrane sourly. "but apparently the beasts don't stampede. maybe they don't even charge, but just form rings to protect their females and young, like musk-oxen. i'm afraid he's alive, but i'm also afraid we'll never find him." he marshaled his group. jones had walkie-talkies ready, deftly removed for the purpose from space-suits nobody had used since leaving lunar city--and holden took one to keep in touch by. they went down in the sling, two at a time. cochrane regarded the two dead animals near the base of the ship. they were roughly the size of cattle, and they were shaggy like buffalo. they had branching, pointed, deadly horns. they had hoofs, single hoofs, not cloven. they were not like any earth animal. but horns and hoofs will appear in any system of parallel evolution. it would seem even more certain that proteins and amino acids and such compounds as hemoglobin and fat and muscle-tissue should be identical as a matter of chemical inevitability. these creatures had teeth and they were herbivorous. bell photographed them painstakingly. "somehow," said cochrane, "i think they'd be wholesome food. if we can, we'll empty a freezing-locker and take a carcass for tests." holden fingered his rifle unhappily. alicia said nothing. babs stayed close beside her. they went on. they came to another dead animal a quarter-mile away. the ground was full of the scent and the hoofmarks of the departed herd. bell photographed again. they did not stop. johnny simms had been this way, because of the carcass. he wasn't here now. they topped the next rise in the ground. they saw two other slaughtered creatures. it was wholly evident, now, that these animals did not charge but only stood their ground when alarmed. johnny simms had fired blindly when he blundered into their groupings. the last carcass they saw was barely two hundred yards from the one patch of woodland visible from the ship. cochrane said with some grimness. "if his eyes had gotten used to the darkness, he might have seen the forest and tried to get into it to get away from those animals." and if johnny simms had not stopped short instantly he reached the woods and presumable safety, he would be utterly lost by now. there could be nothing less hopeful than the situation of a man lost on a strange planet, not knowing in what direction he had blundered on his first starting out. even nearby, three directions out of four would be wrong. farther away, the chance of stumbling on the way back to the ship would be nonexistent. alicia saw a human footprint on the trodden muck near the last carcass. it pointed toward the wood. they reached the wood, and search looked hopeless. then by purest chance they found a place where johnny had stumbled and fallen headlong. he'd leaped up and fled crazily. for some fifteen yards they could track him by the trampled dried small growths he'd knocked down in his flight. then there were no more such growths. all signs of his flight were lost. but they went on. there were strangenesses everywhere, of which they could realize only a small part because they had been city-dwellers back on earth. there was one place where trees grew like banyans, and it was utterly impossible to penetrate them. they swerved aside. there was another spot where giant trees like sequoias made a cathedral-like atmosphere, and it seemed an impiety to speak. but holden reported tonelessly in the walkie-talkie, and assured jones and al and jamison that all so far was well. they heard a vast commotion of chattering voices, and they hoped that it might be a disturbance of johnny simms' causing. but when they reached the place there was dead silence. only, there were hundreds of tiny nests everywhere. they could not catch a glimpse of a single one of the nests' inhabitants, but they felt that they were peeked at from under leaves and around branches. cochrane looked unhappy indeed. in cold blood, he knew that johnny simms had left the ship in exactly the sort of resentful bravado with which a spoiled little boy will run away from home to punish his parents. quite possibly he had intended only to go out into the night and wait near the ship until he was missed. but he'd found himself among the unknown beasts. he'd gone into blind panic. now he was lost indeed. but one could not refuse to search for him simply because it was hopeless. cochrane could not imagine doing any less than continuing to search as long as alicia had hope. she might hope on indefinitely. they heard the faint, distant, incisive sound of a shot. holden's voice reported it in the walkie-talkie. cochrane nodded brightly to alicia and fired a shot in turn. he was relieved. it looked like everything would end in a commonplace fashion. the party from the ship headed toward the source of the other sound. in half an hour cochrane was about to fire again. but they heard the hysterical rat-tat-tat of firing. it seemed no nearer, but it could only be johnny simms. cochrane and holden fired together for assurance to johnny. bell took pictures. again they marched toward where the shots had been fired. again they trudged on for a long time. seemingly, johnny had moved away from them as they followed him. they breasted a hill, and there was a breeze with the smell of water in it, and they saw that here the land sloped very gradually toward the sea, and the sea was in view. it was infinitely blue and it reached toward the most alluring of horizons. between them and the sea there was only low-growing stuff, brownish and sparse. there was sand underfoot--a curious bluish sand. only here and there did the dry-seeming vegetation grow higher than their heads. more shots. between them and the sea. cochrane and holden fired again. "what the devil's the matter with the fool?" demanded holden irritably. "he knows we're coming! why doesn't he stand still or come to meet us?" cochrane shrugged. that thought was disturbing him too. they pressed forward, and suddenly holden exclaimed. "that looks like a man! two men!" cochrane caught the barest glimpse of something running about, far ahead. it looked like naked human flesh. it was the size of a man. it vanished. another popped into view and darted madly out of sight. they did not see the newcomers. "he shot something like that, back where we first landed," said cochrane grimly. "we'd better hurry!" they did hurry. there was a last flurry of shooting. it was automatic fire. it is not wise to shoot on automatic if one's ammunition is limited, johnny simms' firearm chattered furiously for part of a second. it stopped short. he couldn't have fired so short a burst. he was out of bullets. they ran. when they drew near him, a hooting set up. things scattered away. large things. birds the size of men. they heard johnny simms screaming. they came panting to the very beach, on which foam-tipped waves broke in absolutely normal grandeur. the sand was commonplace save for a slight bluish tint. johnny simms was out on the beach, in the open. he was down. he had flung his gun at something and was weaponless. he lay on the sand, shrieking. there were four ungainly, monstrous birds like oversized cornish game gamecocks pecking at him. two ran crazily away at sight of the humans. two others remained. then they fled. one of them halted, darted back, and took a last peck at johnny simms before it fled again. holden fired, and missed. cochrane ran toward the kicking, shrieking johnny simms. but alicia got there first. he was a completely pitiable object. his clothing had been almost completely stripped away in the brief time since his last burst of shots. there were wounds on his bare flesh. after all, the beak of a bird as tall as a man is not a weapon to be despised. johnny simms would have been pecked to death but for the party from the ship. he had been spotted and harried by a huntingpack of the ostrich-sized creatures at earliest dawn. a cooler-headed man would have stood still and killed some of them, then the rest would either have run away or devoured their slaughtered fellows. but johnny simms was not cool-headed. he had made a career of being a rich man's spoiled little boy. now he'd had a fright great enough and an escape narrow enough to shatter the nerves of a normal man. to johnny simms, the effect was catastrophic. he could not walk, and the distance was too great to carry him. holden reported by walkie-talkie, and jones proposed to butcher one of the animals johnny had killed and put it in a freezer emptied for the purpose, and then lift the ship and land by the sea. it seemed a reasonable proposal. johnny was surely not seriously wounded. but that meant time to wait. alicia sat by her husband, soothing him. holden moved along the beach, examining the shells that had come ashore. he picked up one shell more glorious in its coloring than any of the pearl-making creatures of earth. this shell grew neither in the flat spiral nor the cone-shaped form of earth mollusks. it grew in a doubly-curved spiral, so that the result was an extraordinary, lustrous, complex sphere. bell fairly danced with excitement as he photographed it with lavish pains to get all the colors just right. cochrane and babs moved along the beach also. it was not possible to be apprehensive. cochrane talked largely. presently he was saying with infinite satisfaction: "the chemical compounds here are bound to be the same! it's a new world, bigger than the glacier planet. those beasts last night--if they're good food-stuff--will make this a place like the old west, and everybody envies the pioneers! this is a new earth! everything's so nearly the same--." "i never," observed babs, "heard of blue sand on earth." he frowned at her. he stooped and picked up a handful of the beach stuff. it was not blue. the tiny, sea-broken pebbles were ordinary quartz and granite rock. they would have to be. yet there was a blueness--the blue grains were very much smaller than the white and tan and gray ones. cochrane looked closely. then he blew. all the sand blew out of his hand except--at last--one tiny grain. it was white. it glittered greasily. cochrane moved four paces and wetted his hand in the sea. he tried to wet the sand-grain. it would not wet. he began to laugh. "i did a show once," he told babs, "about the old diamond-mines. ever hear of them? they used to find diamonds in blue clay which was as hard as rock. here, blue clay goes out from the land to under the waves. this is a tiny diamond, washed out by the sea! this is the last thing we need!" then he looked at his watch. "we're due on the air in two hours and a half! now we've got what we want! let's go have holden tell jones to hurry!" but babs complained suddenly, "jed! what sort of life am i going to lead with you? here we are, and--nobody can see us--and you don't even notice!" cochrane was penitent. in fact, they had to hurry back down the beach to join the others when the space-ship appeared as a silvery gleam, high in the air, and then came swooping down with fierce flames underneath it to settle a quarter-mile inland. bell had a picture of the tiny diamond by the time the ground was cool enough for them to re-enter the ship. the way he photographed it, against a background which had nothing by which its size could be estimated, the little white stone looked like a kohinoor. it was two transparent pyramids set base to base, and he even got color-flashes from it. and jamison, forewarned, took pictures from the air of the blue-sand areas. they showed the tint the one tiny diamond explained. the broadcast was highly successful. it began with a four-minute commercial in which the evils of faulty elimination were discussed with infinite delicacy, and it was clearly proved--to an audience waiting to look beyond the stars--that only greshham's intestinal emollient allowed the body to make full use of vitamins, proteins, and the very newest enzymatic foundation-substances which everybody needed for really perfect health. there followed the approach shots to this planet, shots of the great beast-herds on the plains, views of luxuriant, waving foliage, the tide of shaggy animals as they came at dusk to their drinking-place, and there was an all-too-brief picturing of the blue-tinted soil which the last film-clip of all declared to be diamondiferous. cochrane's direction of this show was almost inspired. the views of the animal herd were calculated to make any member of his audience think in simultaneous terms of glamour and adventure--with perfect personal safety, of course!--and of steaks, chops and roasts. the more gifted viewers back on earth might even envision filets mignon. the infinitesimal diamond with its prismatic glitterings, of course, roused cupidity of another sort. there were four commercials cut into these alluring views, the last was superimposed upon a view bell had taken of the sunset-colors. and it might have seemed that the television audience would confuse the charm of the new world as pictured with the product insistently praised. but the public was pretty well toughened up against commercials nowadays. it was not deceived. as usual, it only deceived itself. but there was no deception about the fact that there was a new and unoccupied planet fit for human habitation. that was true. and the fretting overcrowded cities immediately became places where everybody made happy plans for his neighbor to move there. but the more irritable people would begin to think vaguely that it might be worth going to, for themselves. the ship took off two hours after the broadcast. part of that time was taken up with astrogational conferences with astronomers on earth. cochrane had this conference taped for the auxiliary broadcast-program in which the audience shared the problems as well as the triumphs of the star-voyagers. cochrane wanted to get back to earth. so far as television was concerned, it would be unwise. the ship and its crew would travel indefinitely without a lack of sponsors. but for once, cochrane agreed entirely with holden. "we're heading back," he told babs, "because if we keep on, people will accept our shows as just another superior kind of escape-entertainment. they'll have the dream quality of 'you win a million' and the lottery-shows. they'll be things to dream about but never to think of doing anything about. we're going to make the series disappointingly short, in order to make it more convincingly factual. we won't spin it out for its entertainment-value until it practically loses everything else." "no," said babs. she put her hand in his. she'd found it necessary to remind him, now and then. so the ship started home. and it would not return direct to earth--or lunar city--for a very definite reason. cochrane meant to have all his business affairs neatly wrapped up before landing. they could get another show or two across, and some highly involved contracts could be haggled to completion more smoothly if one of the parties--spaceways, inc.--was not available except when it felt like being available. the other parties would be more anxious. so the astrogation-conference did not deal with a direct return to earth, but with a small sol-type star not too far out of the direct line. the pole star could have been visited, but it was a double star. cochrane had no abstract scientific curiosity. his approach was strictly that of a man of business. he did the business. there was, of course, a suitable pause not too far from the second planet--the planet of the shaggy beasts. they put out a plastic balloon with a dabney field generator inside it. it would float in emptiness indefinitely. the field would hold for not less than twenty years. it would serve as a beacon, a highway, a railroad track through space for other ships planning to visit the third world now available to men. ultimately, better arrangements could be made. jones was already ecstatically designing ground-level dabney field installations. there would be dabney fields extending from star to star. along them, as along pneumatic tubes, ships would travel at unthinkable speeds toward absolutely certain destinations. true, at times they could not be used because of the bulk of planets between starting-points and landing-stations. but with due attention to scheduling, it would be a simple matter indeed to arrange for something close to commuters' service between star-clusters. he explained all this to cochrane, with holden listening in. "oh, surely!" said cochrane cynically. "and you'll have tax-payers objecting because you make money. you'll be regulated out of existence. were you thinking that spaceways would run this transportation system you're planning, without cutting anybody else in on even the glory of it?" jones looked at him, dead-pan. but he was annoyed. "i want some money," he said. "i thought we could get this thing set up, and then i could get myself a ship and facilities for doing some really original work. i'd like to work something out and not have to sell the publicity-rights to it!" "i'll arrange it," promised cochrane. "i've got our lawyers setting up a deal right now. you're going to get as many tricky patents as you can on this field, and assign them all to spaceways. and spaceways is going to assign them all to a magnificent space development association, a sort of chamber of commerce for all the outer planets, and all the stuffed shirts in creation are going to leap madly to get honorary posts on it. and it will be practically beyond criticism, and it will have the public interest passionately at its heart, and it will be practically beyond interference and it will be as inefficient as hell! and the more inefficient it is, the more it will have to take in to allow for its inefficiency--and for your patents it has to give us a flat cut of its gross! and meanwhile we'll get ours from the planets we've landed on and publicized. we've got customers. we've built up a market for our planets!" "eh?" said jones in frank astonishment. "we," said cochrane, "rate as first inhabitants and therefore proprietors and governments of the first two planets ever landed on beyond earth. when the moon-colony was formed, there were elaborate laws made to take care of surviving nation prides and so on. whoever first stays on a planet a full rotation is its proprietor and government--until other inhabitants arrive. then the government is all of them, but the proprietorship remains with the first. we own two planets. nice planets. glamorized planets, too! so i've already made deals for the hotel-concessions on the glacier world." holden had listened with increasing uneasiness. now he said doggedly: "that's not right, jed! i don't mind making money, but there are things that are more important! millions of people back home--hundreds of millions of poor devils--spend their lives scared to death of losing their jobs, not daring to hope for more than bare subsistence! i want to do something for them! people need hope, jed, simply to be healthy! maybe i'm a fool, but the human race needs hope more than i need money!" cochrane looked patient. "what would you suggest?" "i think," said holden heavily, "that we ought to give what we've got to the world. let the governments of the world take over and assist emigration. there's not one but will be glad to do it ..." "unfortunately," said cochrane, "you are perfectly right. they would! there have been resettlement projects and such stuff for generations. i'm very much afraid that just what you propose will be done to some degree somewhere or other on other planets as they're turned up. but on the glacier planet there will be hotels. the rich will want to go there to stay, to sight-see, to ride, to hunt, to ski, and to fly in helicopters over volcanoes. the hotels will need to be staffed. there will be guides and foresters and hunters. it will cost too much to bring food from earth, so farms will be started. it will be cheaper to buy food from independent farmers than to raise it with hired help. so the farmers will be independent. there will have to be stores to supply them with what they need, and tourists with what they don't need but want. from the minute the glacier planet starts up as a tourist resort, there will be jobs for hundreds of people. it won't be long before there are jobs for thousands. there'll be a man-shortage there. anybody who wants to can go there to work, and if he doesn't go there expecting a certified, psychologically conditioned environment, but just a good job with possible or probable advancement ... that's the environment we humans want! presently the hotels won't even be tourist hotels. they'll just be the normal hotels that exist everywhere that there are cities and people moving about among them! then it won't be a tourist-planet, and tourists will be a nuisance. it'll be home for one hell of a lot of people! and they'll have made every bit of it themselves!" holden said uncomfortably: "it'll be slow ..." "it'll be sure!" snapped cochrane. "the first settlements in america were failures until the people started to work for themselves! look at this planet we're leaving! how many people will come to work that silly diamond mine! how many will hunt to supply them with meat? how many will farm to supply the hunters and the miners with other food? and how many others will be along to run stores and manufacture things ..." he made an impatient gesture. "you're thinking of encouraging people to move to the stars to make more room on earth. you'd get nice passive colonists who'd obediently move because the long-hairs said it was wise and the government paid for it. i'm thinking of colonists who'll fight and quite possibly cheat and lie a little to get jobs where they can take care of their families the way they want to! i want people to move to get what they want in spite of any discouragement anybody throws at them. now shoo! i'm busy!" jones asked mildly: "at what?" "the latest proposed deal," said cochrane impatiently, "is for rights to bore for oil. the uranium concessions are farmed out. water-power is pending--not for cash, but a cut--and--." holden said uneasily: "there's one other thing, jed. all your plans and all your scheming could still be blocked if back on earth they think we might bring plagues back to earth. remember dabney suggested that? and some biologist or other agreed with him?" cochrane grinned. "there's a diamond-mine. there are herds of what people will call cattle. there's food and riches. there's scenery and adventure. there's room to do things! nobody could keep political office if he tried to keep his constituents from food and cash and adventure--even by proxy when they send expendable cousin albert out to see if he can make a living there. we've got to take reasonable precautions against germs, of course. we'll have trouble enforcing them. but we'll manage!" al called down from the control-room. the ship was sufficiently aligned, he thought, for their next stopping-place. he wanted jones to charge the booster-circuit and flash it over. jones went. a little later there was the peculiar sensation of a sound that was not a sound, but was felt all through one. the result was not satisfactory. the ship was still in empty space, and the nearest star was still a star. there was a repetition of the booster-jump. still not too good. thereafter the ship drove, and jumped, and jumped, and drove. jamison came down to where cochrane conducted business via communicator. he waited. cochrane said: "dammit, i won't agree! i want twelve per cent or i take up another offer!--what?" the last was to jamison. jamison said uneasily: "we found another planet. about earth-size. ice-caps. clouds. oceans. seas. even rivers! but there's no green on it! it's all bare rocks!" cochrane thought concentratedly. then he said impatiently: "the whiskered people back home said that life couldn't have gotten started on all the planets suited for it. they said there must be planets where life hasn't reached, though they're perfectly suited for it. make a landing and try the air with algae like we did on the first planet." he turned back to the communicator. "you reason," he snapped to a man on far-away earth, "that all this is only on paper. but that's the only reason you're getting a chance at it! i'll guarantee that jones will install drives on ships that meet our requirements of space-worthiness--or government standards, whichever are strictest--for ten per cent of your company stock plus twelve per cent cash of the cost of each ship. nothing less!" he heard the rockets make the louder sound that was the symptom of descent against gravity. the world was lifeless. the ship had landed on bare stone, when cochrane looked out the control-room ports. there had been trouble finding a flat space on which the three landing-fins would find a suitable foundation. it had taken half an hour of maneuvering to locate such a place and to settle solidly on it. then the look of things was appalling. the landing-spot was a naked mass of what seemed to be basalt polygons, similar to the giants' causeway of ireland back on earth. there was no softness anywhere. the stone which on other planets underlay soil, here showed harshly. there was no soil. there was no microscopic life to nibble at rocks and make soil in which less minute life could live. the nudity of the stones led to glaring colors everywhere. the colors were brilliant as nowhere else but on earth's moon. there was no vegetation at all. that was somehow shocking. the ship's company stared and stared, but there could be no comment. there was a vast, dark sea to the left of the landing-place. inland there were mountains and valleys. but the mountains were not sloped. there were heaps of detritus at the bases of their cliffs, but it was simply detritus. no tiniest patch of lichen grew anywhere. no blade of grass. no moss. no leaf. nothing. the air was empty. nothing flew. there were clouds, to be sure. the sky was even blue, though a darker blue than earth's, because there was no vegetation to break stone down to dust, or to form dust by its own decay. the sea was violently active. great waves flung themselves toward the harsh coastline and beat upon it with insensate violence. they shattered into masses of foam. but the foam broke--too quickly--and left the surging water dark again. far down the line of foam there were dark clouds, and rain fell in masses, and lightning flashed. but it was a scene of desolation which was somehow more horrible even than the scarred and battered moon of earth. cochrane looked out very carefully. alicia came to him, a trifle hesitant. "johnny's asleep now. he didn't sleep at first, and while we were out of gravity he was unhappy. but he went off to sleep the instant we landed. he needs rest. could we--just stay landed here until he catches up on sleep?" cochrane nodded. alicia smiled at him and went away. there was still the mark of a bruise on her cheek. she went down to where her husband needed her. holden said dourly: "this world's useless. so is her husband." "wait till we check the air," said cochrane absently. "i've checked it," holden told him indifferently. "i went in the port and sniffed at the cracked outer door. i didn't die, so i opened the door. there is a smell of stone. that's all. the air's perfectly breathable. the ocean's probably absorbed all soluble gases, and poisonous gases are soluble. if they weren't, they couldn't be poisonous." "mmmmmm," said cochrane thoughtfully. jamison came over to him. "we're not going to stay here, are we?" he asked. "i don't like to look at it. the moon's bad enough, but at least nothing could live there! anything could live here. but it doesn't! i don't like it!" "we'll stay here at least while johnny has a nap. i do want bell to take all the pictures he can, though. probably not for broadcast, but for business reasons. i'll need pictures to back up a deal." jamison went away. holden said without interest: "you'll make no deals with this planet! this is one you can do what you like with! i don't want any part of it!" cochrane shrugged. "speaking of things you don't want any part of--what about johnny simms? speaking as a psychiatrist, what effect will that business of being in the dark all night and nearly being pecked to death--what will it do to him? are psychopaths the way they are because they can't face reality, or because they've never had to?" holden stared away down the incredible, lifeless coastline at the distant storm. there was darkness under many layers of cloud. the sea foamed and lashed and instantly was free of foam again. because there were no plankton, no animalcules, no tiny, gluey, organic beings in it to give the water the property of making foam which endured. there was thunder, yonder in the storm, and no ear heard it. over a vast world there was sunshine which no eyes saw. there was night in which nothing rested, and somewhere dawn was breaking now, and nothing sang. "look at that, jed," said holden heavily. "there's a reality none of us wants to face! we're all more or less fugitives from what we are afraid is reality. that is real, and it makes me feel small and futile. so i don't like to look at it. johnny simms didn't want to face what one does grow up to face. it made him feel futile. so he picked a pleasanter role than realist." cochrane nodded. "but his unrealism of last night put him into a very realistic mess that he couldn't dodge! will it change him?" "probably," said holden without any expression at all in his voice. "they used to put lunatics in snake-pits. when they were people who'd taken to lunacy for escape from reality, it made them go back to reality to escape from the snakes. shock-treatments used to be used, later, for the same effect. we're too soft to use either treatment now. but johnny gave himself the works. the odds are that from now on he will never want to be alone even for an instant, and he will never again quite dare to be angry with anybody or make anybody angry. you choked him and he ran away, and it was bad! so from now on i'd guess that johnny will be a very well-behaved little boy in a grown man's body." he said very wryly indeed, "alicia will be very happy, taking care of him." a moment later he added: "i look at that set-up the way i look at the landscape yonder." cochrane said nothing. holden liked alicia. too much. it would not make any difference at all. after a moment, though, he changed the subject. "i think this is a pretty good bet, this planet. you think it's no good. i'm going to talk to the chlorella companies. they grow edible yeast in tanks, and chlorella in vats, and they produce an important amount of food. but they have to grow the stuff indoors and they have a ghastly job keeping everything sterile. here's a place where they can sow chlorella in the oceans! they can grow yeast in lakes, out-of-doors! suppose they use this world to grow monstrous quantities of unattractive but useful foodstuff--in a way--wild? it will be good return-cargo material for ships taking colonists out to our other planets.--i suppose," he added meditatively, "they'll ship it back in bulk, dried." holden blinked. he was jolted out of even his depression. "jed!" he said warmly. "tell that to the world--prove that--and--people will stop being afraid! they won't be afraid of starving before they can get to the stars! jed--jed! this is the thing the world needs most of all!" but cochrane grimaced. "maybe," he admitted it. "but i've tasted the stuff. i think it's foul! still, if people want it ..." he went back down to the communicator to contact the chlorella companies of earth, to find out if there was any special data they would need to pass on the proposal. * * * * * and so presently the ship took off for home. it landed on the moon first, and johnny simms was loaded into a space-suit and transferred to lunar city, where he could live without being extradited back to earth. he wouldn't stay there. alicia guaranteed that. they'd move to the glacier planet as soon as hotels were built. maybe some day they'd travel to the planet of the shaggy beasts. johnny would never be troublesome again. he was pathetically anxious, now, to have people like him, and stay with him, and not under any circumstances be angry with him or shut him away from them. alicia would now have a full-time occupation keeping people from taking advantage of him. but the ship went back to earth. and on earth jamison became the leading television personality of all time, describing and extrapolating the delicious dangers and the splendid industrial opportunities of star-travel. bell was his companion and co-star. presently jamison conceded privately to cochrane that he and bell would need shortly to take off on another journey of exploration with some other expedition. neither of them thought to retire, though they were well-off enough. they were stock-holders in the spaceways company, which guaranteed them a living. cochrane put spaceways, inc., into full operation. he fought savagely against personal publicity, but he worked himself half to death. he spent hours every day in frenzied haggling, and in the cynical examination of deftly booby-trapped business proposals. his lawyers insisted that he needed an office--he did--and presently he had four secretaries and there developed an entire hierarchy of persons under him. one day his chief secretary told him commiseratingly that somebody had waited two hours past appointment-time to see him. it was hopkins, who had not been willing to interrupt his dinner to listen to a protest from cochrane. hopkins was still exactly as important as ever. it was only that cochrane was more so. it woke cochrane up. he stormed, to babs, and ruthlessly cancelled appointments and abandoned or transferred enterprises, and made preparations for a more satisfactory way of life. they went, in time, to the spaceways terminal, to take ship for the stars. the terminal was improvised, but it was busy. already eighteen ships a day went away from there in dabney fields. eighteen others arrived. jones was already off somewhere in a ship built according to his own notions. officially he was doing research for spaceways, inc., but actually nobody told him what to do. he puttered happily with improbable contrivances and sometimes got even more improbable results. holden was already off of earth. he was on the planet of the shaggy beasts, acting as consultant on the cases of persons who arrived there and became emotionally disturbed because they could do as they pleased, instead of being forced by economic necessity to do otherwise. but this day babs and cochrane went together into the grand concourse of the spaceways terminal. there were people everywhere. the hiring-booths of enterprises on the three planets now under development took applications for jobs on those remote worlds, and explained how long one had to contract to work in order to have one's fare paid. chambers of commerce representatives were prepared to give technical information to prospective entrepreneurs. there were reservation-desks, and freight-routing desks, and tourist-agency desks ... "hmmm," said cochrane suddenly. "d'you know, i haven't heard of dabney in months! what happened to him?" "dabney?" said babs. she beamed. women in the terminal saw the clothes she was wearing. they did not recognize her--cochrane had kept her off the air--but they envied her. she felt very nice indeed. "dabney?--oh, i had to use my own judgment there, jed. you were so busy! after all, he was scientific consultant to spaceways. he did pay jones cold cash for fame-rights. when everything else got so much more important than just the scientific theory, he got in a terrible state. his family consulted doctor holden, and we arranged it. he's right down this way!" she pointed. and there was a splendid plate-glass office built out from the wall of the grand concourse. it was elevated, so that it was charmingly conspicuous. there was a chastely designed but highly visible sign under the stairway leading to it. the sign said; "_h. g. dabney, scientific consultant._" dabney sat at an imposing desk in plain view of all the thousands who had shipped out and the millions who would ship out in time to come. he thought, visibly. presently he stood up and paced meditatively up and down the office which was as eye-catching as a gold-fish bowl of equal size in the same place. he seemed to see someone down in the concourse. he could have recognized cochrane, of course. but he did not. he bowed. he was a great man. undoubtedly he returned to his wife each evening happily convinced that he had done the world a great favor by permitting it to glimpse him. cochrane and babs went on. their baggage was taken care of. the departure of a ship for the stars, these days, was much less complicated and vastly more comfortable than it used to be when a mere moon-rocket took off. when they were in the ship, babs heaved a sigh of absolute relief. "now," she said zestfully, "now you're retired, jed! you don't have to worry about anything! and so now i'm going to try to make you worry about me--not worry about me, but think about me!" "of course," said cochrane. he regarded her with honest affection. "we'll take a good long vacation. first on the glacier planet. then we'll build a house somewhere in the hills back of diamondville ..." "jed!" said babs accusingly. "there's a fair population there already," said cochrane, apologetically. "it won't be long before a local television station will be logical. i was just thinking, babs, that after we get bored with loafing, i could start a program there. really sound stuff. not commercial. and of course with the dabney field it could be piped back to earth if any sponsor wanted it. i think they would ..." presently the ship with babs and cochrane among its passengers took off to the stars. it was a perfectly routine flight. after all, star-travel was almost six months old. it wasn't a novelty any longer. operation outer space was old stuff. the end. * * * * * transcriber's notes the following typos have been corrected. hyphenation adjusted to reflect the most common usage in the text. page typo correction expendible expendable calmy calmly takeoff's take-off's takeoff take-off night-club nightclub business-like businesslike takeoff take-off moonjeep moon-jeep the pyschiatrist the psychiatrist buisinesslike businesslike appenines apennines arcturis arcturus why? why?" tryin trying stockholders stock-holders possiblities possibilities columbus', columbus' three of four three or four moonrocket moon-rocket epidomologist epidemiologist "why? "why?" wrily wryly chlorophyl chlorophyll panic-striken panic-stricken roup croup cochrone cochrane behind behind besides wrily wryly 'we'd have "we'd have back-ground background sun-light sunlight 'we're in a "we're in a virtures virtues normal normal, maintainance maintenance extraterrestrial extra-terrestrial collossus colossus facsimilie facsimile eveywhere everywhere star-ships starships the following differently hyphenated words have been left as they were, since there was no clearly predominant usage. air-lock airlock food-stuff foodstuffs ice-caps icecaps moon-dust moondust re-broadcast rebroadcast roof-tops rooftops side-rail siderail space-ship spaceship tree-tops treetops ultra-violet ultraviolet there are one or more lines of text missing on page , marked by [missing text]. this was a printer's error. [illustration: tom corbett space cadet the space pioneers by carey rockwell willy ley, technical adviser] [illustration] the space pioneers the tom corbett space cadet stories by carey rockwell stand by for mars! danger in deep space on the trail of the space pirates the space pioneers the revolt on venus treachery in outer space sabotage in space the robot rocket [illustration] a tom corbett space cadet adventure the space pioneers by carey rockwell willy ley _technical adviser_ grosset & dunlap _publishers_ new york copyright, , by rockhill radio all rights reserved illustrations by louis glanzman printed in the united states of america [transcriber's note: extensive research can find no evidence of the required copyright renewal on this work.] illustrations _frontispiece_ her nose pointed skyward, the _polaris_ was ready to blast off the solar guard worked late into the night, examining every ship in the alliance the speedy little ship shot ahead of the fleet toward the gigantic mass of asteroids the _polaris_ landed safely on the surface of the satellite bush pulled a paralo-ray gun from his belt and said, "all right, march!" "hasn't anybody figured out why four hundred ships crashed in landing?" strong asked. "we better take it easy, astro," said tom. "turn off the lights." the space pioneers chapter "go on, astro," shouted the young space cadet. "boot that screwy ball with everything you've got!" the three cadets of the _polaris_ unit raced down the academy field toward the mercuryball, a plastic sphere with a vial of mercury inside. at the opposite end of the field, three members of the _arcturus_ unit ran headlong in a desperate effort to reach the ball first. astro, the giant space cadet from venus, charged toward the ball like a blazing rocket, while his two unit mates flanked him, ready to block out their opponents and give astro a clear shot at the ball. on the left wing, tom corbett, curly-haired and snub-nosed, ran lightly down the field, while on the opposite wing, roger manning, his blond hair cut crew style, kept pace with him easily. the two teams closed. roger threw a perfect block on his opposing wingman and the two boys went down in a heap. tom side-stepped the _arcturus_ cadet on his side and sent him sprawling to the ground. he quickly cut across the field and threw his body headlong at the last remaining member of the opposition. astro was free to kick the ball perfectly for a fifty-yard goal. jogging back toward their own goal line, the three _polaris_ cadets congratulated each other. astro's kick had tied the score, two-all. "that was some feint you pulled on richards, tom," said roger. "you sucked him in beautifully. i thought he was going to tear up the field with his nose!" tom grinned. compliments from roger were few and far between. astro clapped his hands together and roared, "all right, fellas, let's see if we can't take these space bums again! another shot at the goal--that's all i need!" [illustration] lining up at the end of the field again, the cadets kept their eyes on the cadet referee on the side lines. they saw him hold up his hand and then drop it suddenly. once again the teams raced toward the ball in the middle of the field. when they met, roger tried to duplicate tom's feat and feint his opponent, but the other cadet was ready for the maneuver and stopped dead in his tracks. roger was forced to break stride just long enough for the _arcturus_ cadet to dump him to the ground and then race for astro. tom, covering astro on the left wing, saw the cadet sweeping in and lunged in a desperate attempt to stop him. but he missed, leaving astro unprotected against the three members of the _arcturus_ unit. with his defense gone, astro kicked at the ball frantically but just grazed the side of it. the mercury inside the ball began to play its role in the game, and as though it had a brain of its own, the ball spun, stopped, bounced, and spiraled in every direction, with the cadets kicking, lunging, and scrambling for a clean shot. finally astro reached the tumbling sphere and booted it away from the group. there was a roar of laughter from the _arcturus_ unit and a low groan from tom and roger. astro saw that he had kicked the ball over his own goal line. [illustration] "why, you clobber-headed venusian hick!" yelled roger. "can't you tell the difference between our goal and theirs?" astro grinned sheepishly as the three jogged back to their own goal to line up once more. "lay off, roger," said tom. "how come you didn't get richards on that play?" "i slipped," replied the blond cadet. "yeah, you slipped all right," growled astro good-naturedly, "with a great big assist from richards." "ah, go blast your jets," grumbled roger. "come on! let's show those space crawlers what this game is all about!" but before the cadet referee could drop his hand, a powerful, low-slung jet car, its exhaust howling, pulled to a screeching stop at the edge of the field and a scarlet-clad enlisted solar guardsman jumped out and spoke to him. sensing that it was something important, the two teams jogged over to surround the messenger. "what's up, joe?" asked roger. the enlisted spaceman, an earthworm cadet who had washed out of the academy but had re-enlisted in the solar guard, smiled. "orders for the _polaris_ unit," he said, "from captain strong." "what about?" asked roger. "report on the double for new assignments," replied the guardsman. "_yeeeeooooow!_" astro roared in jubilation. "at last we can get out of here. i've been doing so blamed much classroom work, i've forgotten what space looks like." "know where we're going, joe?" asked tom. "uh-uh." joe shook his head. he turned away, then stopped, and called back, "want a lift back to the tower?" before tom could answer, richards, the captain of the _arcturus_ unit spoke up. "how about finishing the game, tom? it's been so long since we've had such good competition we hate to lose you. come on. only a few more minutes." tom hesitated. it had been a long time since the two units had played together, but orders were orders. he looked at roger and astro. "well, what about it?" "sure," said roger. "we'll wipe up these space jokers in nothing flat! come on!" there was a mock yell of anger from the _arcturus_ unit and the two teams raced back to their starting positions. in the remaining minutes of play, the cadets played hard and rough. first one team would score and then the other. a sizable crowd of cadets had gathered to watch the game and cheered lustily as the players tore up and down the field. finally, when both teams were nearly exhausted, the game was over and the score was eight to seven in favor of the _polaris_ unit. roger had made the final point after tony richards had left the game with a badly bruised hip. a substitute called in from the bystanders, an earthworm cadet, had eagerly joined the _arcturus_ team for the last minutes of play but had been hopelessly outclassed by the teamwork of the _polaris_ unit. promising a return match soon, roger, tom, and astro hurried to their lockers, showered, and dressed in their senior cadet uniforms of vivid blue, then raced to the nearest slidewalk to head toward the main group of buildings that made up space academy. whisked along on the moving belt of plastic that formed the principle method of transportation in and around the academy grounds, tom turned to his unit mates. "what do you think it'll be?" he asked. "you mean the assignment?" asked roger, answering his own question in the next breath. "i don't know. but anything to get out of here. i've been on earth so long that i'm getting gravity-itis!" tom smiled. "it'll sure be nice to get up in the wide, high, and deep again," he said, glancing up at the cloudless sky. "say it again, spaceman," breathed astro. "one more lesson on the differential potential between chemical-burning rocket fuels and reactant energy and i'll blast off without a spaceship!" roger and tom laughed. they both sympathized with the big cadet's inability to cope with the theory of atomic energy and fuel conservation in spaceships. in charge of the power deck on the _polaris_, astro earlier had gained firsthand experience in commercial rocket ships as an able spaceman and later had been accepted in the academy for cadet training. the son of colonists on venus, the misty planet, his formal education was limited, and though he had no equal while on the power deck of a rocket ship, in theory and classroom study he had to depend on roger and tom to help him get passing grades. the slidewalk moved smoothly and easily toward the gleaming tower of galileo, the largest and most imposing of the structures of space academy. made entirely of clear crystal mined on titan, satellite of saturn, the tower rose over the smaller buildings like a giant shimmering jewel. housing the administration offices of the solar guard and the space academy staff, it also contained galaxy hall, the museum of space, which attracted thousands of visitors from every part of the solar alliance. tom corbett, his eyes caressing the magnificent gleaming tower, remembered the first time he had seen it. while it hadn't been so long in months or years since becoming a space cadet, it seemed as though he had been at the academy all of his life and that it was his home. in the struggle to develop into a well-knit dependable rocket team, composed of an astrogator, power-deck cadet, and a command cadet, tom had assumed the leadership of the unit, and the relationship between astro, roger manning, and himself had ripened until they were more like brothers than three young men who had grown up millions of miles apart. as they rode toward the tower, the three cadets could see the green-clad first-year earthworms getting their first taste of cadet life--hours of close-order formations and drills. the nearer they came to the tower, the more intense and colorful became the activity as the crisscrossing slidewalks carried enlisted guardsmen in their red uniforms, and the officers of the solar guard in magnificent black and gold, across the quadrangle to the various dormitories, laboratories, lecture rooms, mess halls, and research rooms. space academy was a beehive of activity, with the education of thousands of cadets and the operational mechanics of the solar guard going on incessantly, day and night, never stopping in its avowed task of defending the liberties of the planets, safeguarding the freedom of space, and upholding the cause of peace throughout the universe. as their slidewalk glided over the quadrangle, roger suddenly turned to his unit mates. "think we might get assigned to that radar project they're setting up on the moon?" he asked. "i have a few ideas--" tom laughed. "he can't wait until he gets his hands on that new scanner dr. dale just finished, astro," he said with a wink. the big venusian snorted. "can you imagine the ego of that guy? dr. dale spends almost a year building that thing, with the help of the leading electronic scientists in the alliance, and _he_ can't wait to _tell_ them about a few of _his_ ideas!" "i didn't mean that," complained roger. "all i said was--" "you don't have to say a word, hot-shot," interrupted astro. "i can read your thoughts as though they were flashed on a stereo screen!" "oh, yeah!" growled roger. "you should be that telepathic for your exams. why didn't you read my thoughts when i beat my brains out trying to explain that thrust problem the other night?" he turned to tom, shrugging his shoulders in mock despair. "honestly, tom, if i didn't know that he was the best power jockey in the academy, i'd say he was the dumbest thing to leave venus, _including_ the dinosaurs in the academy zoo!" with a hamlike hand astro suddenly grabbed for roger's neck, but the wiry cadet dashed along the slidewalk out of reach and the big venusian rumbled after him. tom roared with laughter. as he started to follow his unit mates, one of the passengers on the slidewalk grabbed tom by the arm and he turned to see mike mckenny, chief warrant officer in the enlisted solar guard and the first instructor the _polaris_ unit had met on their arrival at the academy. "corbett!" demanded mckenny. "are those two space crawlers still acting like monkeys out of their cages?" tom laughed and shook hands with the elderly spaceman. "yes, sir," he said. "but you could hardly call astro a monkey!" "more along the lines of a venusian gorilla, if you ask me!" snorted mckenny. the short, squat spaceman's eyes twinkled. "i've been hearing some mighty fine things about you three space bongos, tommy. it's a wonder the solar guard didn't give you a unit citation for aiding in the capture of coxine, the pirate!" "thanks, mike. coming from you that compliment really means something!" "just be sure you keep those two space lunatics in their proper cages," said mike, indicating roger and astro, who at the moment were racing back and forth along the slidewalk bumping passengers left and right, "and you'll all be heroes someday." "yes, sir," said tom. he glanced up, and noticing that he was in front of the tower building, hopped to the walkway, waving a cheery good-by to mike. "blast over to our mess and have dinner with us some night, mike!" he yelled to the departing figure. "and interrupt the happiest hours in astro's life?" bawled mike. "no thank you!" tom laughed and turned to the huge open doorway of the tower where roger and astro waited for him impatiently. in a few moments the three were being carried to the upper floors of the crystal structure by a spiraling band of moving plastic that stretched from the top of the tower to the many floors below surface level. tom glanced at his wrist chronograph as they stepped off the slidestairs and headed for captain strong's quarters. "we're about twenty minutes late," he said to roger and astro. "hope captain strong's in good spirits!" "if he isn't," said roger, "we can--" "don't say it," protested astro. "i only just finished working off my last bunch of galley demerits." they stopped in front of a door, straightened their uniforms, and then slid the door to one side and stepped smartly into the room. they came to rigid attention before a massive desk, flanked by two wall windows of clear sheet crystal reaching from ceiling to floor. standing at the window, captain steve strong, _polaris_ unit cadet supervisor, his broad shoulders stretching under his black-and-gold uniform, turned to face them, his features set in grim lines of trouble. "_polaris_ unit reporting for orders, sir," said tom. the three cadets saluted crisply. strong snapped a return salute and walked to the front of his desk. "getting pretty big for your britches, aren't you?" he growled. "i've been watching you from this window. i saw the messenger deliver my orders to you, and then, i saw you return to your game and finish it, apparently deciding that the business of the solar guard can wait!" "but, sir--" roger started to say. "close your exhaust, manning!" snapped strong. "i'm doing the talking!" "yes, sir," stammered the blond-haired cadet. "well, cadets," asked strong in a silken voice, "if i sent you to commander walters' office _on the double_, do you think i could trust you to get there on the _double_?" "oh, yes, sir," replied tom. "_yes, sir!_" the other two boys nodded violently. "then blast out of here and report to commander walters for your assignments. tell him i'll be there in a few minutes." "yes, sir!" said tom, and the three cadets saluted sharply. "unit--" bawled strong, "_dis_--missed!" outside in the hall once more, the three cadets wiped their faces. "captain strong definitely was not in a good mood!" commented roger. "i've never seen him so angry!" said tom. "wonder why." "think it might be something to do with our assignments?" asked astro. "never can tell, astro," said tom. "and there's only one way to find out. that's to get to commander walters' office on the double!" without another word the cadets hurried to the slidestairs, each of them hungry for excitement. already having participated in three outstanding adventures, the cadet members of the _polaris_ unit were eager to begin a fourth. [illustration] chapter "there's no doubt that the success or failure of this project will influence the thinking of the solar alliance with regard to further expansion, governor hardy," said commander walters to the man sitting stiffly in front of him. "and my congratulations on your appointment to head the expedition." a tall, lean man with iron-gray hair, the commander of space academy, sat behind his desk, back ramrod straight in his black-and-gold senior officer's uniform, and casually toyed with a paper cutter on his desk as he spoke to christopher hardy, a short, thin man with a balding head and sharp features. "thank you, commander," replied hardy, in a thin, reedy voice. "it's a great honor and i certainly don't foresee anything that can prevent the expedition from being a complete success. we have the best equipment and, i hope, we'll have the finest men." the soft chime of a muted bell interrupted walters as he was about to reply. he opened the switch to the interoffice teleceiver behind his desk, then watched the image of his aide appear on the teleceiver screen. "what is it, bill?" asked walters. "_polaris_ unit reporting for orders, sir," replied the enlisted guardsman. "cadets corbett, manning, and astro." "very well, send them in," said walters. switching off the teleceiver, he turned back to governor hardy. "ever hear of the _polaris_ unit, sir?" he asked. hardy paused, rubbing his chin before answering. "no, can't say that i have." he smiled. "from the look on your face, i see i should know about them, though." walters smiled back. "i'll just say this about them. of all the cadet units trained here at the academy in the last twenty years, these three lads are just about perfection. just the material you'll need on your initial operation." governor hardy raised his hand in mock protest. "please! no brain trusts!" "well, they have the brains all right." walters laughed. "but they have something else, an instinctive ability to do the right thing at the right time and that indefinable something that makes them true men of space, rather than ordinary ground hogs simply transplanted into space." as the commander spoke, the massive door to his office rolled back and tom, roger, and astro stepped in briskly, coming to stiff attention in front of the desk. "_polaris_ unit reporting for duty, sir," said tom. "cadets corbett, manning, and astro." "at ease," said walters. the three boys relaxed and glanced quickly at the governor who had watched their entrance with interest. walters came around in front of the desk and gestured toward hardy. "boys, i want you to meet governor hardy." the three cadets nodded respectfully. they knew all about the governor's achievements in establishing the first colony on ganymede, and his success with the first exploratory expedition to outer space. "sit down, boys," said walters, indicating a near-by couch. "governor hardy will explain things from here on in. where is captain strong?" "he said he'd be along in a few moments, sir," replied roger. "well," said walters, turning to hardy, "no sense in beginning without steve. only have to repeat yourself." he turned to astro but not before he saw a grimace of annoyance cloud the governor's face. "how are you making out with your classroom studies, astro?" "uh--ah--" stammered the giant venusian, "i'm doing all right, sir," he managed finally. walters suppressed a smile and turned to hardy. "one of the most important aspects of our training methods here at the academy, governor," began walters, returning to his desk, "is for the cadet to learn to depend on his unit mates. take astro, for instance." the two men glanced at the big cadet who shuffled his feet in embarrassment at being the center of attention. "astro," continued walters, "is rather shaky in the field of theory and abstract-scientific concepts. yet he is capable of handling practically any situation on the power deck of a spaceship. he literally thinks with his hands." "most commendable," commented hardy dryly. "but i should think it would be difficult if he ever came face to face with a situation where his hands were bound." there was the lightest touch of sarcasm in his voice. "i assure you, governor," said walters, "that wouldn't stop him either. but my point is this: since a cadet unit is assembled only after careful study of their individual psychograph personality charts and is passed and failed as a unit, even though a boy like cadet astro might make a failing grade, his unit mates, cadets manning and corbett, can pull him through by making higher passing marks. you see, an average is taken for all three and they pass or fail as a unit." "then they are forced, more or less, to depend on each other?" asked hardy. "yes. in the beginning of their training. later on, the cadets learn for themselves that it is better for all of them to work together." once again the bell in back of walters' desk chimed and he turned to speak on the teleceiver to his aide. "captain strong is here, sir," repeated the enlisted man. "send him right in," said walters. seconds later the door slid back and steve strong entered and saluted. after the introductions were completed and the solar guard captain had taken a seat with his cadet unit, commander walters immediately launched into the purpose of the meeting. "steve," he began, "governor hardy here has been appointed by the solar council to head one of the most important projects yet attempted by the alliance." the cadets edged to the front of the couch and listened intently for what the commander was about to say. "but perhaps i had better let the governor tell you about it himself," concluded walters abruptly and settled back in his chair. captain strong and the cadets swung around to face the governor, who rose and looked at each of them steadily before speaking. "commander walters stressed the fact that this was an important project," he said finally. "no one can say how important it will be for the future. it might mean the beginning of an entirely new era in the development of mankind." he paused again. "the solar alliance has decided to establish a new colony," he announced. "the first colony of its kind outside the solar system in deep space!" "a star colony!" gasped strong. the cadets muttered excitedly among themselves. "the decision," continued the governor, "has been made only after much debate in the solar council chamber. there have been many arguments pro and con. a week ago a secret vote was taken, and the project was approved. we are going to establish a solar alliance colony on a newly discovered satellite in orbit around the sun star wolf , a satellite that has been named roald." "wolf !" exclaimed roger. "that's more than thirteen light years away--" he was stopped by tom's hand clamped across his mouth. governor hardy looked at roger and smiled. "yes, wolf is pretty far away, especially for a colony. but preliminary expeditions have investigated and found the satellite suitable for habitation, with fertile soil and an atmosphere similar to our own. with the aid of a few atmosphere booster stations, it should be as easy for a colonist to live there as he would on venus--or any tropical planet." "where are you going to get the colonists, sir?" asked strong. hardy began to pace back and forth in front of walters' desk, waving his hands as he warmed up to his subject. "tonight, on a special combined audioceiver and teleceiver broadcast to all parts of the solar alliance, the president of the solar council will ask for volunteers--men who will take man's first step through deep space to the stars. it is a step, which, in the thousands of years ahead, will eventually lead to a civilization of earthmen throughout all space!" tom, roger, and astro sat in silent awe as they listened to the plans for man to reach toward the stars. spacemen by nature and adventurers in spirit, they were united in the belief that some day earthmen would set foot on all the stars and never stop until they had seen the last sun, the last world, the last unexplored corner of the cosmos. "the colonists," continued hardy, "will come from all over the system. one thousand of them--the strongest and sturdiest men out of the billions that inhabit the planets around us; one thousand, to live on roald for a period of seven years." tom, his eyes bright, asked, "won't everybody want to go, sir?" walters and hardy smiled. "we expect a rush, corbett," answered walters. "you three and captain strong have been selected to aid in screening the applicants." "will there be any special tests, sir?" asked strong. "i have to agree with corbett that just about everyone will want to go." "yes, strong," said hardy. "everyone _will_ want to go. in fact, we estimate that there will be literally millions of applicants!" roger emitted a long, low whistle. "it'll take years to screen all of them, sir." hardy smiled. "not really, manning. the psychographs will eliminate the hundreds of thousands of misfits, the men who will want to go for selfish reasons, who are running away from the past, or are dissatisfied with their lack of success in life and embittered because of failure. we can expect many criminal types. those will be eliminated easily. we have set a specific quota from each of the satellites, planets, and asteroid colonies. i have already established the stations for the preliminary screening. we will screen the remainder until we have the required thousand." "what will our part be, sir?" asked tom. "once each applicant has been approved by the psychographs, his background will be thoroughly investigated. we may find criminal types who show the blackest of careers, but who would turn over a new leaf if given the chance and prove to be more valuable than men with the best of backgrounds who merely want to get away from it all. we don't want that kind of colonist. we want people who have faith in the project; people who are not afraid of work and hardships. your screening job will be simple. each of you has a special talent which commander walters feels is outstanding. corbett in leadership, administration, and command; manning in electronics; astro in atomic power and propulsion. you will talk to the applicants and give them simple tests. an important point in any applicant's favor will be his ability to improvise and handle three, four, or five jobs, where a less imaginative person would do but one. talk to them, sound them out, and then write your report. captain strong will review your opinions and make recommendations to me. i will finally approve or disapprove the applications." "will this cost the applicants anything, sir?" asked roger. "for instance, will the rich applicants have a better chance than the poor?" hardy's face turned grim. "only the people that fit our standards will be allowed to go, manning. regardless." "yes, sir," said roger. "the solar alliance," continued hardy, "has established a fund for this project. each applicant will be lent as much in material as he needs to establish himself on roald. if he operates an exchange, for instance, selling clothes, equipment, or food, then the size of his exchange will determine the size of the loan. he will repay the solar alliance by returning one-fourth of his profits over a period of seven years. each colonist will be required to remain on the satellite for that seven-year period. after that, should he leave, he would be required to sell all his rights and property on roald." "and the farmers, sir," asked tom, "and all the rest. will they all be treated the same way?" "exactly the same, according to their individual abilities. of course we wouldn't take a man who had been a shoemaker and advance him the capital to become a farmer." "will the quota of one thousand colonists include women and children?" asked astro. "no, but allowances have been made for them. one thousand colonists means one thousand men _who can produce_. however, a man may take his family," hardy went on, adding, "providing, of course, that he doesn't mean twenty-three children, aunts, uncles, and so forth." the three cadets looked at each other dumfounded. the very idea of the project was staggering, and as strong, hardy, and commander walters began to discuss the details of the screening system, they turned to each other excitedly. "this is the greatest thing that's happened since jon builker made his trip into deep space!" whispered tom. "yeah," nodded astro, "but i'm scared." "about what?" asked roger. "having the responsibility of saying no to a feller that wants to go." the big cadet seemed to be worried and tom attempted to explain what the job would really be. "it's not a question of saying an outright no," said tom. "you just ask the applicant about his experience with motors and reactors to see if he really knows his stuff." astro seemed to accept tom's explanation, but he still seemed concerned as they all turned to commander walters, who had finished the discussion around the desk and was giving captain strong his orders. "you and the cadets, along with governor hardy, will blast off tonight and go to venusport for the first screenings." he faced the cadets. "you three boys have a tremendous responsibility. in many cases your decisions might mean the difference between success or failure in this mission. see that you make good decisions, and when you've made them, stick by them. you will be under the direct supervision of captain strong and governor hardy. this is quite different from your previous assignments, but i have faith in you. see that you handle yourselves like spacemen." the three cadets saluted sharply, and after shaking hands with their commander, left the room. later that evening, their gear packed, the three members of the _polaris_ unit were checked out of the academy by the dormitory officer and were soon being whisked along on a slidewalk to the academy spaceport. as they neared the spacious concrete field, where the mighty fleet of the solar guard was based, they could see the rows of rocket cruisers, destroyers, scouts, and various types of merchant space craft, and in the center, on a launching platform, the silhouette of the rocket cruiser _polaris_ stood out boldly against the pale evening sky. resting on her directional fins, her nose pointed skyward, her gleaming hull reflecting the last rays of the setting sun, the ship was a powerful projectile ready to blast off for distant worlds. [illustration: _her nose pointed skyward, the_ polaris _was ready to blast off_] reaching the _polaris_, the three cadets scrambled through the air lock into the spaceship and prepared for blast-off. on the control deck, tom began the involved check of the control panel. one by one, he tested the dials, gauges, and indicators on the instrument panel that was the brains of the mighty ship. on the radar bridge, above the control deck, roger adjusted the sights of the precious astrogation prism and took a checking sight on the pole star to make sure the instrument was in true alignment. then turning to the radar scanner, the all-seeing eye of the ship, he began a slow, deliberate tracking of each circuit in the maze of wiring. and below on the power deck, astro, stripped to the waist, a leather belt filled with the rocketman's wrenches and tools slung around his hips, tuned up the mighty atomic engines. he took longer than usual, making sure the lead baffling around the reactor units and the reaction chamber was secure, before firing the initial mass. finally tom's voice crackled over the intercom, "control deck to all stations. check in!" "radar bridge, aye!" came roger's reply. "ready for blast-off!" "power deck, aye!" said astro, his booming voice echoing through the ship. "ready for blast-off!" "control deck, ready for blast-off," said tom, and then turned to the logbook and jotted down the time in the ship's journal. the astral chronometer over the control board read exactly hours. fifteen minutes later captain strong and governor hardy climbed aboard and tom received the order to raise ship. the young curly-haired cadet turned to the control board and flipped on the teleceiver. "rocket cruiser _polaris_ to spaceport control tower," he called. "request blast-off orbit and clearance!" the traffic-control officer in the spaceport tower answered immediately. "control tower to _polaris_. you are cleared for blast-off at hours, orbital tangent ." tom repeated the instructions and turned to the intercom and began snapping out orders. "power deck, energize the cooling pumps!" "power deck, aye!" replied astro. the slow whine of the powerful pumps began to scream through the ship. tom watched the pressure indicator and when it reached the blast-off mark called to roger for clearance. "all clear, forward and up!" declared roger. "feed reactant at d- rate!" ordered tom. and far below on the power deck, astro began to feed the reactant energy into the firing chambers. hardy looked at strong and nodded in appreciation of the cadets' smooth efficient work. they strapped themselves into acceleration cushions and watched the red second hand of the astral chronometer sweep around, and then heard tom counting off the seconds. "blast off--" bawled tom, "minus five--four--three--two--one--_zeroooo!_" the giant ship lurched off the blast-off platform a few feet, the exhaust of the powerful rockets deflected against the concrete surface. then, poised delicately on the roaring rockets, the mighty ship picked up speed and began to accelerate through the atmosphere. pushed deep in his acceleration chair in front of the control board, unable to move because of the tremendous pressure against his body, tom corbett thought about his new adventure. and as the ship hurtled into the black velvet depths of space, he wondered what the future held for him as he and his unit mates began a new adventure among the stars. chapter "control deck to power deck, check in!" tom's voice crackled over the power-deck loud-speaker and astro snapped to quick attention. "power deck, aye!" replied the giant venusian into the intercom microphone. "what's up?" "stand by for course change," said tom. "roger's picked up a meteor on the radar scanner and--" "here's the course change," roger's voice broke in over the intercom. "three degrees up on the plane of the ecliptic and five degrees starboard!" "get that, astro?" snapped tom. "stand by for one-quarter burst on steering rockets!" "one-quarter--right!" acknowledged the power-deck cadet and turned to the massive panel that controlled the rockets. on the control deck tom corbett continued talking to roger. "relay the pickup to the control-deck scanner, roger," he ordered. "let me take a look at that thing." in a moment the thin sweeping white line on the control-deck scanner swept around the green surface of the screen, picking out the blip that marked the meteor. tom watched it for a moment and then barked into the intercom, "stand by to execute change course!" he watched the meteor a few more seconds, making sure the course change would take them out of its path, and then gave the command. "fire!" before he could draw another breath, tom felt himself pressed into his seat as the _polaris_ quickly accelerated and curved up and away from the onrushing meteor in a long, smooth arc. captain strong suddenly stepped through the hatch into the control deck. glancing quickly at the scanner screen, he saw the white blip that was the meteor flashing away from the _polaris_ and he smiled. "that was nice work, corbett!" said strong. "get us back on course as soon as you can. governor hardy wants to get to venusport as quickly as possible." "shall i tell astro to pour on extra thrust, sir?" asked tom. "no, just maintain standard full space speed. no need to use emergency power unless it's really an emergency." "yes, sir," said tom. strong walked around on the control deck, making a casual check of the ship's operation. but he knew he wouldn't find anything to complain about. past experience had taught him that the three cadets kept a tight ship. at the sound of the hatch opening, he turned to see governor hardy standing just inside the hatch. "i have to compliment you, captain," hardy said as he watched tom operate the great control panel. "your cadets really know their business. you've trained them well." "thank you, sir," replied strong, "but they did it themselves. one thing i've learned since i've become an instructor at the academy and that is you can't make a spaceman. he's born with the feeling and the instinct, or he isn't a spaceman." hardy nodded. "i've got some important messages to send out, captain. i'd like to use the teleceiver for a while." "of course, sir," said strong. "right up that ladder there." the solar guard captain pointed to the ladder leading to the radar deck. "manning's on duty now and will take care of you, sir." "thank you," said the governor, turning to the ladder. a moment later, as captain strong and tom were idly discussing the forthcoming screening operations on venusport, they were surprised to see roger climb down the ladder from the radar bridge. "what are you doing down here, manning?" inquired strong. "i thought you were sending out messages for governor hardy." roger dropped into the co-control pilots' seat and shrugged. "the governor said he'd handle it. said the messages were top secret and that he wouldn't _burden_ me with their contents, since he knew how to operate a teleceiver!" puzzled, tom looked at roger. "what could be so secret about this mission?" he asked. "i don't know," answered roger. "after that speech the president of the solar council made the other night, the whole alliance must know about the project, the screening, and practically everything else." strong laughed. "you space brats see adventure and mystery in everything. now, why wouldn't a man in charge of a project as large as this have secret messages? he might be talking to the president of the council!" tom blushed. "you're right, sir," he said. "i guess i let my imagination run riot." "just concentrate on getting this wagon to venus in one piece, corbett, and leave the secret messages to the governor," joked strong. "and any time you get too suspicious, just remember that the governor was appointed head of this project by the solar alliance itself!" blasting through space, leaving a trail of atomic exhaust behind her, the _polaris_ rocketed smoothly through the dark void toward the misty planet of venus. in rotating watches, the cadets ran the ship, ate, slept, and spent their few remaining spare hours attending to their classroom work with the aid of soundscribers and story spools. each of them was working for the day when he would wear the black-and-gold uniform of the solar guard officer that was respected throughout the system as the mark of merit, hard work, distinction, and honor. [illustration] once, captain strong and astro donned space suits and went outside to inspect the hull of the _polaris_. the ship had passed through a swarm of small meteorites, each less than a tenth of an inch in diameter but traveling at high speeds, and some had pierced the hull. it was a simple and quick job to seal the holes with a special atomic torch. like a giant silver bullet speeding toward a bull's-eye, the rocket ship pin-pointed the planet venus from among the millions of worlds in space and was soon hovering over venusport, nose up toward space, ready for a touchdown at the municipal spaceport. as the braking rockets quickly stopped all forward acceleration, the main rockets were cut in and the giant ship dropped toward the surface of the tropical planet tailfirst. tom's face glowed with excitement as he adjusted one lever and then another, delicately balancing the ship in its fall, meanwhile talking into the intercom and directing astro in the careful reduction of thrust. on the radar deck roger kept his eyes glued to the radar scanner and posted tom on the altitude as the ship drew closer and closer to the ground. "one thousand feet!" yelled roger over the intercom. "nine hundred--eight--seven--six--" "open main rockets one half!" called tom. "reduce rate of fall!" the thunder of the rockets increased and the mighty ship quivered as its plummeting descent was checked slightly. tom quickly adjusted the stabilizer trim tabs to keep the ship perpendicular to the ground, then watched the stern scanner carefully as the huge blast-pitted concrete ramp loomed larger and larger. "five hundred feet to touchdown," tolled roger in more slow and measured tones. "four hundred--three--two--" on the scanner screen tom could see the exhaust flare begin to lick at the concrete ramp, then splash its surface until it was completely hidden. he grasped the main control switch tightly and waited. "one hundred feet," roger's voice was tense now. "seventy-five, fifty--" tom barked out a quick order. "blast all rockets!" in immediate response, the main tubes roared into thunderous life and the _polaris_ shook as the sudden acceleration battled the force of gravity. the ship's descent slowed perceptibly until she hovered motionless in the air, her stabilizer fins only two feet from the concrete ramp. "cut all power!" tom's voice blasted through the intercom. a split second later there was a deafening silence, followed by a heavy muffled thud and the creak of straining metal as the _polaris_ came to rest on the ramp. "_touchdown!_" yelled tom. he quickly cut all power to the control board and watched as one by one the gauges and dials registered zero or empty. the cadet stood up, noticed the time on the astral chronometer, and turned to face captain strong, rising from the chair beside him. "_polaris_ made touchdown, planet venus, at exactly , sir," he said and saluted crisply. strong returned the salute. "good work, corbett," he said. "you handled her as though she was nothing more than a baby carriage!" roger came bouncing down the ladder, grinning. "well," he said, "we're back on the planet where the monkeys walk around and call themselves men!" "i heard that, manning!" roared astro, struggling through the hatch from the power deck. "one more crack like that and i'll stand you on your head and blast you off with your own space gas!" "listen, you overgrown venusian ape," replied roger, "i'll--" "yeah--" growled astro, advancing on the smaller cadet. "you'll what?" "all right, you two!" barked strong. "plug your jets! by the craters of luna, one minute you act like hot-shot spacemen, and the next, you behave like children in a kindergarten!" suddenly the compartment echoed to hearty laughter. the cadets and their skipper turned to see governor hardy standing on the radar-bridge ladder, brief case in hand, roaring with laughter. he climbed down and faced the three cadets. "if kindergarten behavior will produce spacemen like you, i'm all for it. congratulations, all three of you. you did a good job!" "thank you, sir," said tom. hardy turned to strong. "captain, i'm going ahead to the solar council building and get things set up for the screening. i imagine there are many anxious colonists ready to be processed!" as strong and the cadets came to attention and saluted, governor hardy turned and left the control deck. strong turned to the cadets. "from now on, you might as well forget that you're spacemen. report to the administration building in one hour. you're going to do all your space jockeying in a chair from now on!" * * * * * for the next week, the three space cadets spent every waking hour in the solar council administration center, interviewing applicants who had passed their psychograph personality tests. endlessly, from early morning until late at night, they questioned the eager applicants. ninety-nine out of one hundred were refused. and when they were, they all had different reactions. some cried, some were angry, some threatened, but the three cadets were unyielding. it was a thankless job, and after more than a week of it, tempers were on edge. "what would you do," roger would ask an applicant, "if you were suddenly drifting in space, in danger, and found that you had lost the vacuum in your audio tubes? how would you get help?" not one in over three hundred had realized that space itself was a perfect vacuum and could be substituted for the tubes. roger had turned thumbs down on all of them. astro and tom found their interviews equally as rough. one applicant admitted to tom that he wanted to go to the satellite to establish a factory for making rocket juice, a highly potent drink that was not outlawed in the solar system, but was looked on with strong disfavor. when tom turned down his application, the man tried to get tom to enter into partnership with him, and when tom refused, the man became violent and the cadet had to call enlisted solar guardsmen to throw him out. while tom and roger made decisions quickly and decisively, astro, on the other hand, patiently listened to all the tearful stories and sympathized with the applicants when they were unable to tear down a small reactor unit and rebuild it blindfolded. painfully, sometimes with tears in his own eyes, he would tell the applicant he had failed, just when the would-be colonist would think astro was going to pass him. the three cadets were doing their jobs so well that in the one hundred and fifty-three applications approved by them strong did not reject one, but sent them all on to governor hardy for final approval. on the morning of the tenth day of screening, hyram logan and his family entered roger's small office. a man of medium height with a thick shock of iron-gray hair and ruddy, weather-beaten features logan looked as though he was used to working in the outdoors. flanked by his son and daughter, he stood quietly before the desk as the young cadet, without looking up, scanned his application quickly. "how old are the children?" asked roger brusquely. "i'm nineteen," replied a low musical voice, "and billy's twelve." roger's head suddenly jerked up. he stared past hyram logan and a small towheaded boy, to gaze into the warm brown eyes of jane logan, a slender, pretty girl whose open, friendly features were framed by neatly combed reddish blond hair. roger sat staring at her, openmouthed, until he heard a loud cough and saw logan trying to hide a smile. he quickly turned back to the application. "i see here you're a farmer, mr. logan," said roger. he stole a glance at the young girl, but billy saw him and winked. roger flushed and turned to logan as the older man answered his questioner. "that's right," said logan. "i'm a farmer. been a farmer all my life." "why do you want to go to roald, mr. logan?" asked roger. "well," said logan, "i have a nice piece of land south of venusport a ways. me and my wife developed it and we've been farming it for over twenty-five years. but my wife died last year and i just sort of lost heart in this place. i figured maybe that new satellite will give me a start again. you'll have to have farmers to feed the people. and i can farm anything from chemicals to naturals, in hard rock or muddy water." he paused and clamped his jaws together and said proudly, "my father was a farmer, and his father before him. one of the first to put a plow into venusian topsoil!" "yes--uh--of course, mr. logan," mumbled roger. "i don't think there'll--er--be any trouble about it." the young cadet hadn't heard a word hyram logan had said, but instead had been gazing happily into the eyes of jane logan. he stamped the application and indicated the door to tom's screening room, following the girl wistfully with his eyes. he muttered to himself, "there ought to be more applicants like farmer logan and his daughter for the brave new world of roald!" "and if there were, cadet manning," roared captain strong, standing in the doorway from the hall, "we'd probably wind up with a satellite filled with beautiful women!" "yes, sir! er--no, sir," stuttered roger, jerking himself to attention. "i mean, what's wrong with that?" "by the rings of saturn," declared strong, "you'll never change, manning!" roger grinned. "i hope not, sir." the door to tom's room opened and the curly-haired cadet walked in holding an application. "captain strong," he said, "could i see you a minute?" "sure, tom. any trouble?" asked strong. tom handed him the application silently and waited. strong read the sheet and turned to tom. "you know what to do in a case like this, tom. why come to me?" tom screwed up his face, thinking. "i don't know, sir. there's something different about this fellow. astro passed him with flying colors. said he knew as much about a reactor unit as he did. roger passed him too." "who is it?" asked roger. strong handed him the paper. "sure, i passed him," said roger. "that guy really knows his electronics." strong looked at tom. "how do you feel about it, tom?" "well, sir," began tom, "i would pass him in a minute. he's had experience handling men and he's been in deep space before. he's logged an awful lot of time on merchant spaceships, but--" "but what?" asked strong. he took the paper and studied it again. "looks to me as if he's what we're looking for," he said. "i know, sir," said tom. "but why would a man like that, with all that experience, want to bury himself on roald? he could get practically any job he wants, right here in the system." "ummh," mused strong. he reread the application. in the blank space for reason for going, the applicant had written simply: _adventure._ he handed the application back to tom. "i think i see what you mean, tom. it does look too good. better not take a chance. seven years is a long time to get stuck with a misfit, or worse, a--" he didn't finish, but tom knew he meant a man not to be trusted. "tell paul vidac his application has been rejected," said strong. [illustration] chapter "you mean captain strong has been recalled to the academy?" gasped roger. "that's right," replied tom. "he had a talk with governor hardy last night and this morning he took the jet liner back to earth. special orders from commander walters." "well, blast my jets!" exclaimed astro. "wonder what's up?" "i don't know," said tom. "but it must be something more important than the roald project for him to pull out now!" "it might have something to do with the project, tom," suggested roger. tom shook his head. "maybe, but it just isn't like captain strong not to say anything to us before he left. i wouldn't have known about it if one of the enlisted guardsmen hadn't asked me if we were going with him." astro and roger looked at each other. "you mean," asked roger, "captain strong didn't tell you he was going?" "that's just it!" replied tom. "we've been traveling all over space together screening the applicants, and then captain strong just leaves when we start the final screening." the three cadets were seated in a snack shop in luna city on the moon, sipping hot tea and eating spaceburgers. for six weeks they had been interviewing the applicants for the new satellite colony and were getting near the end. their task had gone fairly smoothly except for some difficulty on mars when strong and the cadets had rejected scores of applicants with shady backgrounds; criminals and gamblers; spacemen who had had their space papers picked up for violation of the space code, and men who had been dismissed from the enlisted solar guard for serious misconduct. but now, finally, the quotas of all the colonies and planets but luna city on the moon had been filled. soon the expedition would blast off for roald. "well," said tom, sipping the last of his tea, "we have a heavy day ahead of us tomorrow. i guess we'd better get back to the _polaris_ and sack in." "yeah," agreed astro, tossing some credits on the counter and following tom and roger out into the street. they walked past the shops, their blue cadet uniforms reflecting the garish colors of the nuanium signs in the shop windows. at the first corner they hailed a jet cab and were soon speeding out of the city toward the municipal spaceport. the boys didn't talk much on the way out, each wondering why captain strong was recalled on such short notice, and why he had left without saying good-by to them. they knew they would see him in a few days when the processing of the luna city applicants was over and they would return to space academy, but the relationship between the cadets and the solar guard captain had developed into a deeper association than just a cadet crew and officer supervisor. they were friends--spacemates! and the boys sensed trouble ahead when they arrived at the luna city spaceport. they stood in the shadow of the _polaris_ and stared into the sky to watch the globe that was earth revolve in the depths of space. the outline of the western hemisphere, flanked by the shimmering atlantic and pacific oceans, could be seen clearly. it was a breath-taking view of a world that had given birth to all the men who now took the travel from one world to another for granted. "gosh," said tom, staring at the magnificent sight. "i see the earth like that every time we blast off from luna. i should be used to it by now, but--" he stopped suddenly and sighed. "i know what you mean, tom," said astro. "it's the same with me. gets me right here," and he put his hand to his heart. "you don't know your anatomy yet, pal," drawled roger. "move your hand down a couple of inches. things only get you in the stomach." "oh, is that a fact?" growled the big venusian. suddenly, without any apparent effort, he picked up the blond cadet and held him high in the air. "which way shall i drop him, tom? on his head or the seat of his pants? seems to me it won't make much difference." tom laughed at the spectacle of roger flailing the air helplessly, then suddenly stopped and grabbed astro by the arm. "wait, astro," he called. "look! there's someone in the ship!" "what?" cried astro, dropping roger and turning to the _polaris_. the three cadets saw light gleaming from the control-deck viewport. "well, i'll be a space monkey!" exclaimed roger. "who could it be?" "i don't know," replied tom. "governor hardy is at the luna city hotel, and captain strong is the only one besides us who has the light key to open the air lock!" "well, what're we waiting for!" said roger. "let's find out what's going on!" the three cadets climbed into the ship and raced up the companionway to the control deck. "no one here," announced roger as he stepped through the hatch. he turned to astro. "you were the last one out of the ship. are you sure you locked it up?" "the ship was locked, cadet manning!" said a voice in back of them. the three cadets whirled around to face a tall, wiry man with dark hair, dressed in civilian clothes and holding a cup of coffee. he smiled at the three startled cadets and casually drained the cup. "i opened her," he continued in a deep voice. "governor hardy gave me the key." "who are you?" asked tom, almost indignant at the man's self-assurance. and then he stopped, frowning, "say, haven't i seen you before?" "you're right, tom," cried astro. "i've seen him too!" "who are you, mister?" demanded roger. the man turned back to the messroom just off the control deck, put the coffee cup down on the table, and returned to face the three cadets. "my name is paul vidac. i'm the new lieutenant governor of roald." "you're what?" gasped tom. "you're space happy!" exclaimed roger. "your application was refused. captain strong rejected it himself." "fortunately for the project of roald," said vidac with a half-smile playing at his lips, "captain strong has been taken off the roald project." he paused and lounged against the bulkhead to announce, "i have replaced him." "you couldn't replace captain strong digging a hole in the ground, mister!" snapped roger sarcastically. "you might have taken over his work, but you couldn't touch him with an atomic blaster," growled astro. "captain strong is--" "wait, fellows," said tom. "let's find out what this is all about." "that's all right, corbett," vidac broke in. "i appreciate your allegiance. i wouldn't like anyone who would accept another person in place of a friend without putting up a beef." his voice was as smooth as the purr of a cat. "how could you have replaced him, mister?" asked tom, with just a little more self-control than roger or astro had shown. "very simple," said vidac. "governor hardy has the final say on all applications, as you know. he has unquestioned authority to appoint, approve, and select anyone he wants. in view of my experience, governor hardy was delighted to have me join the roald expedition." the three cadets looked at each other in bewilderment. finally tom walked over and stuck out his hand. "we're glad to have you aboard, sir." he managed a smile. reluctantly roger and astro followed suit. "thank you, boys," said vidac with a smile. "i'm sure we'll learn to work together smoothly in these last few days. there are a few changes to be made of course. but it really doesn't matter. you'll be finished with the screening soon." "what kind of changes, sir?" asked tom. "oh, just routine," answered vidac. "instead of you seeing the applicants first, i will speak with each one briefly before sending them on to you." "what's the matter with the way we've been doing it?" asked roger with a slight edge to his voice that did not go unnoticed. vidac looked at the cadet. his mouth was smiling, but his eyes were hard. "i think, cadet manning," purred vidac, "that it will be better for you not to question me, or any of my practices. a space cadet's first rule is to take orders, _not_ to question them." tom was thinking quickly. it was obvious that vidac had gone straight to governor hardy and had prevailed on him to review his application. tom could see how vidac's background would impress the governor. he remembered that there wasn't any real evidence against vidac. in fact, tom thought, it was only because vidac's background was so superior to most of the applicants that he had aroused suspicion at all. now, with captain strong recalled to the academy, it was only natural for the governor to get the best man for the job. tom was ready to admit that vidac's background certainly spoke for itself. he looked at the man and grinned. "i'll tell you honestly, sir. when captain strong refused your application, it was because--well--" vidac was watching tom shrewdly. "well?" he asked quietly. "it was because we couldn't understand how a man like you would want to bury yourself on a satellite for seven years when you could get most any kind of job you would want, right here in the alliance." vidac hesitated just a second, and then his face broke into a broad grin. "you know, corbett, you're right! absolutely right! i can see where you three boys have done a fine job for the governor." he slapped astro on the back and threw his arm around tom's shoulder, speaking to them in a suddenly confidential tone. "as a matter of fact, i was offered the directorship of the galactic space lanes only last week," he said. "do you know why i refused it?" tom shook his head. "because i'm a spaceman, just like yourselves." he looked at astro. "cadet astro, would you take a job with an outfit and give up space to sit behind a desk eight hours a day?" "no, sir!" said astro emphatically. "well, that's exactly the way i feel. but i commend you on your observations about me, corbett. i think i would have been a little suspicious myself." the three cadets smiled. "thank you, sir," said tom. "and forget what we just said. if governor hardy's okayed you, that's good enough for us." "thanks, corbett," said vidac. "i appreciate that." "i guess we'd better turn in now," said roger. "we have a hard day ahead of us. those applicants come at you like dinosaurs." "right!" said vidac. "i'll take over captain strong's quarters. see you in the morning." the three cadets went to their quarters without saying a word. when the hatch was closed, roger turned and faced his unit mates. "well, it sure looks like we made a mistake about that spaceman!" he said. "i think he's all right!" "yeah," said astro, "you can't blame a guy for not wanting to take a desk job." tom merely sat in his bunk, starting to pull off one of his soft leather space boots. he held it a moment, thinking, and then looked up at his two unit mates. "you know, i think i'm going to have a talk with the governor." "about what?" asked roger. "vidac," said tom simply. "what could you say that he doesn't already know?" asked astro. "why--" tom stopped. after a moment he dropped his boot to the deck, looked up at roger and astro, and smiled. "nothing, i guess." "come on," said roger, yawning. "let's turn in. just the thought of facing those applicants tomorrow makes me tired." astro turned out the light and hopped into bed. tom lay in his bunk, hands under his head, wondering about vidac, and then he began to think about the colony of roald. he lay a long time, thinking about the fine people who were giving up comfortable homes, successful businesses. he thought of hyram logan and family; the shopkeeper from titan with three sets of twin boys; the martian miner who had spent twenty-five futile years searching for uranium in the asteroid belt. they were all ready to go over fifty billion miles into deep space and begin their lives again. tom shook his head. he wondered if he had a choice whether he would chance the mystery and danger of deep space. with the steady hum of the electronic generator on the power deck droning in his ears the curly-haired cadet soon fell asleep. * * * * * "what did you say your name was?" asked roger of the applicant standing before him. he was a man badly in need of a shave and his clothes looked as if he had slept in them. he was the sixty-sixth applicant roger had seen that morning. "tad winters," replied the man in a surly tone, "and hurry up with this business. i haven't got all day!" roger looked up sharply. "you'll wait until i've had time to check your application, sir. or you can leave right now!" "listen, punk," snarled winters, "i just saw your boss--" "my boss?" asked roger, puzzled. "yeah," said winters. "your boss, vidac! and he said i was to tell you to pass me!" roger stood up and looked the man in the eye. "you've had your space papers suspended twice, mr. winters. once for smuggling, and once for insubordination on a deep-space merchantman. your application to go to roald is rejected." "we'll see about that!" growled winters. "gimme that, you space jerk!" he snatched the application out of roger's hand and stomped out of the room. roger smiled. it was nothing new to him for the applicants to threaten him and seek higher authority. he buzzed for the next applicant. meanwhile, tom was interviewing a small man with heavy eyebrows and a thin face. one side of his mouth twitched continually, making the man look as though he were laughing. tom read over the application and looked up quickly. "mr. bush," said tom, "you've stated here that you were once a messenger for the spaceways bonded messenger service and that you were dismissed. why was that?" ed bush's mouth twitched as he played with his hat and stirred uneasily in his chair. "i was framed," he said finally. "framed?" asked tom. "yeah, framed!" snapped bush. "i was taking a credit pouch to venusport from atom city when it was stolen from me." "could you prove it?" asked tom. "how could i prove it when i don't know what happened to it?" growled bush. "listen, corbett, you can't hold a little thing like that against me. a man is entitled to one mistake--" tom held up his hand. "mr. bush, you also had your space papers suspended for six months and were caught during the suspension blasting off with false papers. was that a mistake?" "well, what do you expect a man to do? go hungry? i've been a spaceman longer than you've been alive. i had to have a job. there wasn't anything else i could do." his voice trailed off into a whine. "but you did, willfully and with full knowledge of your act, violate the space code by using false papers, didn't you?" pursued tom. "yeah, but--" whined bush. "i'm sorry," said tom, standing up. "your application has been rejected." bush stood up and snatched the application from tom. his mouth began to twitch furiously. "why, you little--" "that's enough, bush!" snapped vidac, who had suddenly entered the room. "leave your application on the desk and get out!" bush turned and looked at vidac, nodded, and glared at tom before stalking from the room. vidac smiled at tom's questioning look and walked over. he sat on the edge of tom's desk and picked up bush's application. "funny thing about bush, tom," vidac mused. "what, sir?" asked tom. "notice the nervous twitch he has on the side of his face?" "yes, sir," said tom. "i've known bush a long time. many years. he used to be the happiest little space joker in the system, singing all the time, playing a concertina. and then he lost that credit pouch. it bothered him real bad." "i guess it would, sir," said tom. "and then he got caught blasting off with false papers and of course that made him a marked man. he developed the nervous twitch right after that. he's a good man, tom. and i think we ought to give him another chance." [illustration] tom gasped. "but, sir, he's broken the space code!" vidac looked at tom and smiled. "i know, tom, and it's a serious thing. but i think he deserves another chance." "we've refused people for a lot less than that, sir," said tom emphatically, "before you came." vidac's face hardened. "i said we were going to give him another chance!" tom met the lieutenant governor's eyes coolly. "yes, sir." he stamped the application and handed it to vidac. "it's pretty easy to sit in judgment of others, tom," said vidac, smiling again. "if there are any more--ah--questionable applicants, i suggest you send them to me. and if i want to give them another chance, you will, of course, follow orders." "very well, sir," replied tom, tight-lipped. "if you say so." vidac's eyes hardened. "_i say so_, corbett!" he turned and walked from the room. tom sat down weakly. as he was about to buzz for the next applicant, the door burst open and roger came into the room. the blond-haired cadet's lips were pulled tight in a grim line. "there's something rocket-blasting screwy around here, tom!" he exclaimed. "what do you mean?" asked tom. "i just rejected a real low-down space crawler--a guy named tad winters." "yes?" tom was alert, anticipating roger's answer. "he went to vidac and came back later with his application approved." tom slammed his fist on the desk. "that proves it! governor hardy has to be told what's going on!" he flipped on the teleceiver near by and asked the central communications operator to connect him with the governor's office. in a moment the face of christopher hardy sharpened into focus on the screen. "what is it, corbett?" asked the governor. "i'd like to talk to you, sir, if i may. something's just come up and i'm not sure what to do." "well, whatever it is, i'm sure governor vidac will be able to take care of it. speak to him." tom gulped and glanced at roger. "but, sir," he stammered, "it's--it's--" "it's what, corbett? hurry, lad! i haven't got all day." "what i have to say is--is--about the lieutenant governor, sir," tom managed finally. "now listen, son," said hardy, "i have a lot of confidence in you three boys. you've all done a fine job. but i screened mr. vidac myself, and i'm satisfied that he is just the man i need. after captain strong was recalled to the academy, i had to have a man to take over for him. and i am satisfied that mr. vidac is about as fine a man as i could get! now don't bother me again. you've done a fine job, as i said. but don't let it go to your heads!" "yes, sir," said tom, clamping his teeth together. "very well, sir!" "one more thing," said hardy. "we've about finished here at luna city. when you've processed the last of the applicants, prepare the _polaris_ for a return trip to space academy." he paused and smiled. "i think i might be able to convince commander walters you need a two weeks' leave!" he smiled again and then his face disappeared from the screen. tom looked up at roger. "i don't like it, roger. maybe i'm wrong, but either the governor is pretty dumb or vidac is the slickest thing in space!" "could be both," drawled roger. tom looked at the pile of applications on his desk, and then at the door to vidac's office. "whatever it is, we've got to tell captain strong!" chapter "for the last time, captain strong has been sent on a special mission to pluto!" said the supervisory officer at the academy. "now stop bothering me or i'll log all three of you with twenty galley demerits!" "very well, sir," said tom. "but could you tell us if the mission had anything to do with the roald project?" "cadet corbett," replied the officer wearily, "even if i knew i couldn't tell you. it was a special order from commander walters' office. captain strong blasted off three days ago with a full crew of guardsmen in a rocket cruiser." "and he didn't--" began roger. "and he didn't leave any message for you," concluded the officer. "thank you, sir," said tom. "come on, fellows, let's go. we've got to blast off for mars in half an hour and we haven't got our gear packed." the officer watched the three cadets leave and then called after them. "if captain strong returns before you get back from mars, corbett, i'll ask him to leave a message!" "thanks, sir," said tom. the three boys left the tower building and hopped on a slidewalk for the spaceport. the academy was buzzing with activity as solar guard officers, scientists, and enlisted men attended to the millions of details of the mass flight of the colonists into deep space. they met mike mckenny, the stubby warrant officer, at the air lock of the solar guard rocket destroyer that would take them to mars. after they had climbed into the ship, they waited for a full hour before they could get clearance to blast off. and, in flight, they were forced to maintain constant alert and careful position in the heavy flow of traffic to and from earth. "never saw the academy so busy in all my life," commented mike. "must be a thousand ships there and in the atom city fitting docks." "yeah," agreed roger. "this is going to be some push!" from mars, titan, ganymede, luna city, venus, the asteroid colonies, and as far away as the uranium mines of pluto, the colonists arrived, to be quartered at space academy. excited, and anxious to begin their new life, they assembled for their antibiotic shots and the last medical check by the solar guard doctors. there were crystal miners from titan, farmers from venus, mars, and earth, prospectors from the new sahara desert of mars, engineers from the atmosphere booster stations on ganymede, and just plain citizens who wanted a new life on the distant satellite of wolf . all had gathered for the great mass flight into space. at the same time the giant fleet of ships needed to carry the colonists to roald was being assembled. officers of the solar guard worked late into the night, examining the construction of every ship in the alliance for use in the flight to roald. if a jet liner or merchantman was found to be satisfactory, it was purchased at full price from the owners and flown to refitting docks at space academy and atom city where work was begun converting it to a special use. every ship was to be cannibalized on roald, its hull taken apart to provide housing and its power decks converted into electropower plants. now working with mike mckenny, the three space cadets were part of a large group of transfer crews engaged in flying ships to earth. [illustration: _the solar guard worked late into the night, examining every ship in the alliance_] returning from mars, where they had picked up a giant jet liner, the three cadets landed on the crowded academy spaceport and turned hopefully to mike. "you think we can get a twenty-four-hour pass, mike?" asked roger. "yeah," growled astro. "governor hardy promised us a two-week leave, but i guess he got swamped under details!" mike scratched his head. "i don't know, boys," he said. "i can't give it to you, but i'll speak to commander walters for you. i know it's been a pretty rough grind for all of you." "thanks, mike," said tom. "we'd appreciate it." later, when the three boys had signed over the giant ship to the refitting crews, they headed for their dormitory for a refreshing shower. as astro began to strip off his jacket, he suddenly asked, "do you think captain strong has returned from pluto yet?" "i doubt it," answered roger. "i'm sure there would have been a message for us on the chatter wire if he had." roger referred to a tape recorder that was standard equipment in each of the dormitory rooms, used expressly for messages. "you know something," said tom. "i think we ought to go directly to commander walters about vidac." "commander walters!" growled astro. "are you off your rocket?" "why shouldn't we?" agreed roger. "i'll tell you why!" said astro. "commander walters probably is so busy you couldn't get near him with a six-inch atomic blaster. and what are we going to say after we get there? just that vidac has let some space crawlers into the expedition?" "that's enough, isn't it?" asked roger. "we can't let this slide, astro," said tom determinedly. "somebody's got to do something about vidac, and if the governor won't, it should be brought to commander walters' attention." "come on. let's do it right now," urged roger. "we'll be sticking our necks out, but since when have we ever let that stop us?" astro shrugged his shoulders and quickly redressed. the three boys left the dormitory building and started hopping from one slidewalk to another, as they made their way to the tower building. all around them the activity of the academy seemed to have increased. everyone seemed to be rushing somewhere. even the green-clad earthworm cadets had been pressed into service as messengers. and mixed in with the officials were the colonists wandering around sight-seeing. "say!" exclaimed astro. "isn't that jane logan?" "where?" asked roger. astro pointed to a parallel slidewalk where the girl colonist from venus was being whisked along in the same direction. "well, blast my jets!" cried roger. "so it is!" "relax, roger," said astro with a wink at tom. "business before pleasure!" "yeah--yeah, but this is business too," said roger, jumping lightly to the near-by slidewalk beside the pretty young colonist. "well," he exclaimed, "if it isn't the little space doll from venus!" jane logan turned around and smiled. "well, cadet manning!" and seeing astro and tom come up, she smiled a greeting to them. "and cadets astro and corbett!" "never mind them," said roger. "i'm the only one that counts." "why, cadet manning," said the girl archly, "i had no idea you were so important." "as a matter of fact, i'm going up to see commander walters right now on some important business." "commander walters?" gasped jane. "ohhhh!" roger grinned. "sure, and while i'm up there, i'll get a twenty-four-hour pass and we'll take in the sights at atom city tonight. o.k.?" "well, i don't know what my father would say about that!" "ah, tell him you're going to go out with me," said roger, "and there won't be any trouble." "psst! roger!" astro hissed suddenly, punching roger in the ribs. roger gave the big cadet a frowning look and turned back to jane. "we'll have dinner, and then see a stereo, and i know a nice quiet spot where we can talk--" "talk?" demanded a gruff voice behind roger. the cadet whirled to find himself staring into the grim face of hyram logan. "just what would you talk about, cadet manning?" demanded jane's father. billy stood at his father's side, grinning broadly. "uh--er--ah--radar, sir, the--er--problems we find in radar." logan turned to jane. "are you interested in radar, jane?" "not particularly, father," said jane, a twinkle in her eye. tom and astro were trying unsuccessfully to stifle their laughter. his face suddenly flushing crimson, roger looked around and stammered, "i--uh--i just remembered--got to see a feller about a hot rocket!" and roger jumped off the slidewalk to disappear into the tower building. laughing out loud now, tom and astro said good-by to jane and her father and followed roger. inside the gleaming tower of galileo, the two boys raced up the slidestairs and caught up with roger. "well, romeo," said astro, slapping him on the back, "that was what i call a strategic retreat in the face of overwhelming odds." "ah, go blast your jets!" snarled roger. "never mind, roger," said tom, "we probably won't get the pass, anyway." suppressing smiles, astro and tom followed roger down the long corridor toward the office of commander walters. in the anteroom they waited while an aide announced them to the commander. standing before the aide's desk, they could see the commander's face come into focus on the small teleceiver screen, and they were alarmed to see governor hardy seated beside him. "what is it, sergeant?" asked commander walters. "cadets corbett, manning, and astro of the _polaris_ unit to see you, sir," said the enlisted guardsman. "send them right in," said walters. the aide flipped off the teleceiver and smiled up at the cadets. "go ahead, fellows. he's in a good mood today, so you don't have to worry about demerits." tom thanked the guardsman and started for the door to the inner office, but roger grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back. "we can't go in there now, tom," he whispered. "not with governor hardy sitting there!" "i know," replied tom. "but we can't back out now. he's been told we're here. we'll just go in and ask him for the week-end pass." "good idea," agreed astro. "say, are you guys going in or not?" called the sergeant. the three cadets nodded quickly and stepped inside the room. governor hardy and the commander were studying a blueprint which was spread out on the desk. the three cadets came to attention in front of the desk as walters looked up inquiringly. "_polaris_ unit reporting on a special privilege request, sir," announced tom. walters smiled. "yes, i know why you're here, boys. warrant officer mckenny spoke to me a little while ago. here's your pass. after the job you've done, you deserve it." he held out the slip of paper. governor hardy stood up and snapped his fingers. "you know, commander, i owe these boys an apology. when we left luna city, i promised them that i would speak to you about giving them a two-weeks' leave, and it completely slipped my mind!" "it's a good thing it did," said walters. "i've had these boys doing some important work and i'll have even more need for them now. come here, boys. i want you to look at something." he waved them around his desk and pointed to the blueprint on his desk. tom, roger, and astro gasped. it was the plan for a large city. "that will be the first settlement on roald," said walters. "you boys will be remembered for a long time to come." he looked up at the governor and winked. "how is that, sir?" asked tom. walters placed his finger on the many intersecting lines in the blueprint that designated streets. "each of these streets, avenues, roads, and expressways will be named after a member of the first colonial expedition to roald. your names will be among them." "ours!" exclaimed tom. "does that mean that--" "i've been talking to governor hardy," walters continued casually. "he tells me you've done a fine job. i think a tour of duty as cadet observers on roald will just about round out your training." the three boys looked at each other, eyes wide with surprise and pleasure. "we'll actually go with the colonists?" asked astro. "that's right, cadet astro," said walters. "and i'm sorry that i can't give you more than a twenty-four-hour pass. but time is very short." "twenty-four hours will be fine, sir," said tom. "and we appreciate your giving us the opportunity to go to roald." "it won't be easy, corbett," cautioned walters. "you'll have to work harder than you've worked before. you'll have to maintain your studies and i'll expect you to send back a report every month." he turned to governor hardy. "do you have anything to add, sir?" "not a thing, commander," replied hardy. "i've worked with these boys for weeks and i know what to expect of them. i know i can depend on them to take orders." "all right," said walters, turning to the cadets. "go to atom city and have yourself a good time. report back to the academy tomorrow at eighteen hundred hours. unit dismissed!" the three cadets saluted and left the room. in the corridor they slumped against the wall. "that," announced roger, "is as close as i ever want to come to getting a rocket shell in the side of the head." "you can say that again, spaceboy," sighed astro. "just think what would have happened if we'd opened our mouths about vidac!" "come on," said tom. "we've got twenty-four hours to soak up as much of this earth as we can. and i, for one, am going to have a good time!" without a word, the three cadets left the tower building and made their way to the monorail station, where they would catch the streamlined express to atom city. each of the cadets was acutely aware of the trouble that lay ahead of them, and with captain strong at the outer edge of the solar system on a long haul to pluto, not even a miracle could get him back to space academy in time to help them. [illustration] chapter a thousand spaceships, freighters, converted luxury liners, auxiliary supply vessels, rocket cruisers, destroyers and scouts, all led by the _polaris_, blasted in even formation through the last charted regions of the solar system. inside the gleaming ships the colonists had settled down for the long voyage to the new satellite of roald. their quarters were cramped and uncomfortable. there was very little to do and their only entertainment was the shipboard stereos. many spent endless hours at the long-range telescanners watching the sun star wolf , seeing it come closer and closer. aboard the _polaris_, tom, roger, and astro worked an endless tour of duty, maneuvering the great fleet of ships into ordered formation so that any vessel could be found without difficulty. now that the fleet was in position, and the early confusion of forming up was over, they had hoped for a little rest, but were disappointed when vidac suddenly ordered them to report to his quarters. standing at the hatch outside of vidac's room, tom and roger waited for astro as he climbed up the ladder to join them. the big cadet finally made the top and stood breathing heavily. "by the rings of saturn," he grumbled, "i'm so tired i could sleep right here. right now!" "yeah," growled roger. "you'd think vidac would give us a break after what we've done." "we'll have plenty of time to rest on this trip," said tom. "this is just the beginning. i'll bet by the time we reach roald we'll be wishing we had something to do to pass away the time." he turned and pressed the annunciator button and the hatch slid open. the three cadets entered the room and snapped to attention. "_polaris_ unit reporting as ordered, sir," said tom. vidac swung around in his chair and stared up at the three cadets, a hint of a smile curling his lips. "you've done a fine job, boys," he said. "the fleet is in good formation." he paused as he settled back in his chair. "but i'm not the one who believes in idle hands. i've assigned you to professor sykes. he needs help in charting the unexplored regions of space we're approaching. and you three need that kind of training. report to him in one hour." "one hour," gasped roger. "but we're completely blasted out!" "yes, sir," agreed astro. "couldn't we log some sack time before we start another assignment?" vidac stood up and faced them. "you might as well learn right now," he said sharply, "that when i give an order i expect it to be carried out without suggestions, complaints, or whining excuses!" "but--!" stammered roger. tom quickly stepped forward. his back ramrod straight, he saluted the lieutenant governor. "we understand, sir." he executed a perfect about-face and, followed by astro and roger, he left the lieutenant governor's quarters. outside, the three cadets walked wearily toward the messroom just off the control deck. after preparing a hasty cup of tea, they sat about the table silently, each thinking about the long trip ahead of them and the difficulties they were sure to encounter with vidac. they all three jumped when jeff marshall, professor sykes's aide, entered and boomed a cheerful greeting. "hi, fellas!" "hiya," muttered tom. astro and roger merely nodded. "say!" cried jeff, his usually cheerful face showing concern. "what's the matter with you three guys? you look as though someone told you there isn't any moon!" "worse than that," said roger. "vidac just assigned us to work with professor sykes on charting the new space regions." jeff smiled. "nothing wrong with that. the old professor isn't so bad. he sounds worse than he really is." "listen," growled astro, "you don't have to tell me what professor sykes is like. i had a class with him at the academy. that guy is so sour, vinegar is sweet by comparison." astro's outburst was said with such fierce conviction that tom, roger, and jeff burst out laughing. "it isn't that we mind working with professor sykes," said tom. "he's a real brain and we could learn a lot from him, but--" "but what?" asked jeff. "it's the way vidac has suddenly--well, taken over around here. we're supposed to be under the direct orders of governor hardy." "well, vidac is hardy's executive officer," said jeff. "yeah," muttered roger. "we're finding that out, the hard way." "i still can't understand why governor hardy would make him lieutenant governor, with his background," mused tom. jeff grinned. "you three guys have been jockeying with so many space crawlers since you came to the academy, you're suspicious of everyone you meet. i'm surprised you haven't decided that i'm an arch space criminal myself!" the three cadets smiled. jeff marshall was so gentle and mild, his manner so quietly humorous, it was impossible to picture him as any kind of a criminal. during the few minutes they had left, they casually discussed the chances of the senior space cadets against the enlisted guardsmen in a forthcoming mercuryball game, and then went up to the forward compartment of the _polaris_, which served as a temporary observatory for professor sykes. the chief astrophysicist of space academy, professor barnard sykes, was a man of great talent and even greater temper. referred to as barney by the cadet corps, he was held in high regard and downright fear. there were few cadets who had escaped his scathing tongue when they had made a mistake and practically the entire student body had, at one time or another, singly and in unison, devoutly wished that a yawning hole would open up and swallow them when he began one of his infamous tirades. even perfection in studies and execution by a cadet would receive a mere grunt from the cantankerous professor. such temperament was permissible at the academy by an instructor only because of his genius and for no other reason. and professor sykes fitted the bill. it was by sheer devotion to his work and single-mindedness of purpose that he was able to become a leading scientist in his field. professor sykes had been assigned, at his request, to the roald expedition. as the leading scientist, it was his job to evaluate every new discovery made during the trip out to the distant satellite, and later make observations on the colony itself. scientifically, and in a sense ultimately, the success or failure of the roald expedition would rest on his round hunched shoulders. when the three cadets and jeff marshall entered the observatory, they found professor sykes bending over a calculating machine checking some figures. apparently finding a mistake, he muttered to himself angrily and started over again. roger stepped forward. "i can handle a calculator pretty well, sir," roger said. "you want me to do it for you?" sykes whirled around and glared at the blond-haired cadet. "what's your name?" he snapped. "why--cadet manning, sir," replied roger. "cadet manning, do you see this calculator?" sykes pointed to the delicate instrument that could add, subtract, divide, and multiply, in fractions and whole numbers, as well as measure the light years in sidereal time. "yes, sir," said roger. "cadet manning," continued sykes, "i perfected that machine. built the first one myself. now offhand, wouldn't you say i would know how to operate it?" "yes, sir," stammered roger. "but i just wanted to help, sir." "when i need your help i'll ask for it!" snorted the little professor. he turned to jeff. "what are they doing here? you know i don't like to be interrupted when i'm making observations!" jeff smiled slowly. "they've been assigned to work with you, sir. they're your new assistants." "my assistants!" screamed sykes. "what space-blasting idiot got the idea that i needed any assistants?" "the lieutenant governor, sir," said jeff. "oh, he did, did he!" sykes turned to the teleceiver, flipped it on, and waited impatiently for the machine to warm up. in a moment vidac's face came into view. before the lieutenant governor could say a word, sykes began to scream at him. [illustration] "what's the idea of sending these brainless space cadets to me! assistants--bah! can't you find something else for them to do?" bawled sykes. "is my work considered so unimportant that i should be impeded by these--these--" he sputtered and turned to wave at tom, roger, and astro who still stood at rigid attention. sykes got no further. vidac simply cut off his teleceiver and left the professor staring into a blank screen. his face became beet red, and he screamed at jeff marshall. "get them out of here! put them to work--scrubbing the decks, cleaning up the place, anything! but keep them out of my way!" then wagging a finger in roger's face, he screamed his last warning. "don't ever speak to me again, unless i speak to you _first!_" smarting under the continuous blast of anger from the professor, roger could no longer restrain himself. slowly, with the calm deliberate manner and slow casual drawl that characterized him at his sarcastic best, the cadet stepped forward. he saluted, and with his face a bare six inches from sykes, said evenly, "to speak to you, sir, under any conditions, sir, would be such a stroke of bad luck, sir, that i wouldn't wish it on the last spaceman in the world, sir." with another curt salute he wheeled smartly and walked out of the room. flabbergasted, professor sykes could manage no more than a hoarse bubbling sound and he finally turned to jeff marshall, waving his arms violently. "get them out of here--get them out of here. get them out!" the sergeant nodded quickly at tom and astro, who, repressing smiles, saluted and followed roger out of the observatory. within the hour, professor sykes was still screaming loudly, this time to governor hardy himself. standing before his desk the eccentric scientist babbled his complaint of vidac's rebuff and roger's outrageous insolence. "i won't stand for it, governor! my work is more important than having to wipe the noses of three loudmouthed sassy cadets! and as for that--that man vidac, if he ever turns off the teleceiver again when i'm talking to him, i'll go to the solar council itself. i'm an officer of the solar guard and demand respect!" his harangue concluded, sykes turned and stalked toward the hatch. "just a moment," called hardy, stepping around the desk to confront the little scientist. "all of us are assigned to important jobs," he said calmly. "yours is scientific research; the cadets have a specific job of education; i am the co-ordinator of the whole project and lieutenant governor vidac is my immediate executive officer. we all have to work together. let's see if we can't do it a little more smoothly, eh?" hardy smiled and turned back to his chair. "but one thing more, sykes. if there are any more petty disagreements, please settle them with vidac. don't come up here again, unless i order you to!" "_you_ order _me_," gasped sykes. "that's all, sykes!" said hardy coldly, picking up some papers in an obvious gesture of dismissal. his fury redoubled, the professor backed out of the room and hurried below to vidac's quarters. expecting another cold interview, he was surprised when vidac met him with a smile and asked him to enjoy a cup of coffee with him. "no need for us to antagonize each other over the foolish mistakes and bunglings of the cadets, professor," said vidac evenly. "i apologize for cutting you off, but i make it a point never to talk to a man when he's angry. come, sit down, and have a cup of coffee. i'm sure we can work out the answer." he paused and then added pointedly, "without bothering governor hardy." "yes--yes--of course," said sykes, accepting the proffered cup. within a half-hour, vidac had sykes laughing at his jokes and stories, and when they parted, the professor's temper had abated. when the scientist finally left, vidac turned to the ship's intercom and paged the cadets. a few minutes later they entered his quarters for the second time that evening. vidac was ready and waiting when they entered the room and came to attention. he leaned back against his desk and looked at each cadet through half-closed eyes. finally, after a full minute of silence, he began to speak. "i gave you specific instructions to report to professor sykes for work as his assistants," he said in a cold, hard voice. "i also told you i wanted my order carried out without complaints or whining excuses. you saw fit to start an argument as soon as you reported, thereby interrupting his work. the professor went to the governor and interrupted _his_ work. the professor came to see me, interrupting _my_ work. three men had to stop their jobs because you didn't feel like carrying out orders." "but, sir--" said tom. "the professor--" "shut up, corbett!" said vidac coldly. "don't ever interrupt me again while i'm talking!" "yes, sir!" said tom through tight lips. "you boys have been enjoying considerable latitude under captain strong. but i would like to remind you that captain strong isn't here. there's no one here but me. you will do as i say, when i say it, and as long as i say it. if you don't, i promise you, you will regret it." "may i speak, sir?" asked roger. "no, manning. i've heard about your tongue. i warn you, never use it on me, or--" he paused. "just never use it, that's all." he walked about the room, but kept his eyes on the cadets. "there's just one more thing i want you to understand, before you're dismissed. i know that all three of you refused my application as a colonist originally. i know what your feelings must be now that i am your superior. and because i know, i feel i should warn you not to try to express your feelings. you can't win. you can only lose. if i ever catch you going to governor hardy, by-passing my authority, i'll make your lives so miserable you'll wish you were dead. now get out of here!" as one man, the cadets of the _polaris_ unit saluted, turned a perfect about-face, and walked once again from the room. outside in the passageway, they relaxed and headed for their quarters. none of them could say a word, for the simple reason that each of them was so boiling mad he couldn't speak. finally, after they had showered and were climbing into their bunks, tom spoke for the first time since leaving vidac. "i have to write a report to captain strong," he said, when roger started to turn out the light. "better leave it on a while, roger." "o.k., tom," said roger. "are you going to tell him what's going on here?" "yeah," growled astro. "give him the whole works. there's something wrong here somewhere. i can understand the professor blasting his jets. he does that all the time. but i can't understand vidac acting the way he does." "i feel the same way, astro," said tom, "but actually what are we going to say to captain strong? so far nothing concrete has happened." he shook his head. "i'm afraid if i put what happened down on an audioscriber that it'll look as though we've suddenly become cry-babies!" "i'm ready to quit!" said roger. "grab a freighter and blast outta here. a whole year with this guy! there's no telling what he's liable to do!" tom leaned over the table and stared at the bulkhead in front of him. he clenched his fists. needless to say, he agreed with roger, he had the same feelings. but he was powerless to do anything about it. chapter "all set, tom," called roger, adjusting the valves that supplied a steady stream of oxygen into his space suit. tom nodded and turned to astro, seated behind them, his hand on the remote-control switch governing the huge air-lock portal on the jet-boat deck. "open her up, astro," he ordered, his voice crackling through the spacephones inside his space helmet. astro pressed the lever opening the sliding panel in the side of the hull of the _polaris_ and the cold blackness of outer space came into view. seated at the controls of the jet boat, tom pressed down on the acceleration pedal, sending the tiny ship rocketing out of the _polaris_ like a projectile. as they circled their mother ship, roger pointed out the vessel they were going to and tom settled down to full throttle in the direction of roald colony vessel number twelve. the huge converted luxury liner carrying many of the colonists was several lanes away in the sprawling formation of ships and it would take several minutes for them to traverse the four hundred miles to number twelve. the three cadets were under orders to tour the fleet and observe conditions aboard the other ships. it was obviously a nuisance assignment since any extraordinary conditions could have been reported by teleceiver. but they were glad to get away from vidac and professor sykes if only for a little while. holding the small vessel at full throttle, tom settled back and pointed out several of the large star clusters in the clear airless void of space around them. andromeda galaxy whirled above them like a fourth-of-july pin wheel. and the sun stars of regulus, sirius, and the seven sisters sparkled like diamonds on black velvet. "think we'll ever reach those babies?" mused tom in a quiet voice. "we're on the first step right now with this expedition," replied astro. "a short step," commented roger. "to us wolf is a long way off, but when you stack it up against the distance to regulus, for instance, it's just an inch." "i'd sure like to go to regulus," said astro. "so would i," snorted roger. "but we'd probably wind up with a space crawler like vidac for a skipper. that you can have!" nearing the first stop in their tour, tom signaled ahead to number twelve to be taken aboard. he waited for the outer portal of the ship's air lock to be opened and then sent his tiny spacecraft into a shallow dive, applying his braking jets expertly to bring it to a dead stop inside the jet-boat deck of the converted space liner. the outer portal slid closed and a moment later the air pressure on the deck had been built up enough for them to remove their space helmets. as they climbed out of the jet boat, the inner air-lock portal slid open and tad winters, the civilian captain of the liner, appeared. there was a scowl on his face and he made no attempt to hide his annoyance. "whose idea was this to come snooping around while we're in flight?" he snarled. astro bristled and stepped forward, towering over the smaller spaceman. "if we had anything to say about it, mr. winters, your company would be the last we'd want!" winters glanced at tom and roger who stood to one side silently, their faces grim. tom stepped forward. "vidac sent us, winters. we're here to check the departments and see that everything is in order." "vidac, eh?" sneered winters. "what's the matter? can't he do it himself, instead of sending a bunch of space squirts?" [illustration] "the lieutenant governor is busy," said roger sarcastically. "very busy, in fact." "doing what?" asked winters. "trying to keep the rest of his space rats in line!" snapped roger. "listen, you!" growled winters, taking a threatening step toward roger. "i don't have to take that from you. one word outta me, and vidac'll bury you in the brig." [illustration] tom quickly stepped between roger and the angry civilian spaceman to prevent the impending fight. he stared at winters and smiled. "what's the matter, winters? need vidac's help in everything you do?" "aw, go blast your jets, you space-brained jerks!" snorted winters. he turned back toward the hatch, but there was noticeably less swagger to his walk. the three cadets smiled at each other and followed him into the main body of the ship. while the _polaris_ was the command ship of the fleet, the nerve center of the entire operation, it was still hardly more than a prison ship for the cadets. in direct contrast, the space liner was bright, gay, and full of life. everything imaginable for the convenience of the colonists had been installed aboard the massive ship. as the three cadets walked through the ship on their way to the control deck, they passed the auditorium where stereos were shown in the evenings and indoctrination lectures were given during the day. they passed a number of compartments that served as a school for the children of the colonists. there were workshops where the colonists could make objects for their future homes in their spare time. and in the heart of the ship was one of the most complete and extensive libraries in the solar alliance. audioslides, soundscribers, story spools, question-and-answer tapes, everything designed to answer just about any question the human mind could ask. the main living quarters of the ship were arranged so that each family had a small apartment, complete in every detail, to preserve as much of the family life as possible. there were no governors or supervisors to control the colonists. it had been decided to allow the colonists to choose their own leaders aboard the ships. but they were living together so peacefully, they hadn't found it necessary to select any one individual to be a leader. the ship was a miniature city. as the space cadets made their rounds of the power deck, control deck, and radar deck, they were amazed by the excellence of the equipment and the care given it. and because they saw nothing to substantiate their suspicions of vidac, and his hand-picked crew, on number twelve, they found themselves confused about their feelings toward him. on the power deck, astro had questioned a rocketman closely about the arrangement of the baffling around one of the firing chambers. the power-deck officer, shilo speed, heard astro's questions, agreed with the cadet, and made the rocketman rearrange the baffling. then, on the control deck, the pilot had been careless in maintaining his position with the other ships in the fleet. tom mentioned it to winters, and winters immediately ordered the man off the bridge, and replaced him. such action for the safety of the colonists had made the cadets wonder about vidac's ability. after inspecting the ship from radar mast to jet exhausts, the three cadets started back for the jet-boat deck. as they retraced their steps, they passed through the library and encountered hyram logan and his son billy. "hello, mr. logan," greeted tom with a big smile. "well, hello, corbett," logan replied. "didn't know you were aboard number twelve." "we're not assigned to her, sir," replied tom. "we're just making an inspection for the lieutenant governor. how do you like the way she's being run?" logan's endorsement was immediate. "just fine, corbett. this ship is almost a colony in itself." "yeah, including school," chimed in billy sourly. the three cadets laughed. then the boy grinned and stuck a finger gently into roger's stomach. "she ain't here, cadet manning. my sister is teaching kindergarten right now." "be quiet, billy!" barked his father. roger's face turned a slow red while tom and astro grinned. after a few more words, the three cadets again headed for the jet-boat deck. "that billy will make a fine radarman someday," drawled astro. "how do you figure that, astro?" asked tom. "did you see the way he spotted roger's roving eye looking for his pretty sister? why, in ten years, he'll be picking up asteroids the same way." back in their jet boat a few minutes later, blasting through space on the rest of their tour, tom turned to his unit mates, a troubled look on his face. "did you notice anything aboard number twelve that looked--well, suspicious?" he asked. astro and roger shook their heads. "me neither," said tom. "maybe we've got vidac pegged wrong. maybe--" "i thought of that, tom," interrupted roger. "but there's one thing that doesn't seem right." "what's that?" asked tom. "your report to captain strong," roger replied. "you sent it to him ten days ago. you should have had an answer by now." "he's out on pluto," said astro. "space academy might not have forwarded it to him." "you know the rules," said roger. "any official communication to a solar guard officer is sent through regardless of where he is in the universe, if communications are at all possible." "you're right, roger," said tom finally. "i should have had some sort of answer by now." "you think," mused astro slowly, "maybe vidac didn't send the report?" roger hesitated and then replied, "there's one way to find out." "how?" asked tom. "take a look in the communications logbook on the control deck." "we can't, roger." tom shook his head. "vidac's got his own men planted in every one of our departments." "yeah," growled astro. "i been watching the way that guy smith takes care of the power deck and, believe me, it makes me burn. why, he hasn't washed down the atomic motor casing once since we blasted off!" "wait a minute!" cried roger suddenly. "jeff marshall!" "jeff?" asked tom. "what about him?" "he can get to the control deck and take a look at the logbook," answered roger. "say, that's right," said tom. "come on," said roger. "let's finish off this tour and get back to the _polaris_. if vidac's on the level, he'll have sent your report to captain strong. if not, we know where we stand." astro shook his head slowly. "honestly, fellas, i don't know whether to hope he did or didn't." * * * * * their tour completed, the three cadets returned to the _polaris_. they quickly audioscribed their report to vidac and then hurried to the observatory to find jeff marshall. luckily the sergeant was alone and they were able to give him all the reasons for their suspicions of vidac and tell him what they wanted him to do. "but what can i say i'm looking for in the logbook?" jeff marshall protested. "we passed through a cloud of meteor dust the other day, didn't we?" asked tom. "yeah," replied jeff, "but what's that got to do--" "you had to report it to central weather control," said tom. "tell the pilot you lost your own copy of the report and want to get the official path out of the log. tell him the professor wants it." jeff thought a moment, then nodded his head. "o.k. i'll see you later." the three cadets returned to their quarters to wait while jeff went up to the control deck. he walked in with a smile, chatted with the pilot a few moments, and then made his request. "i want to take a look at the log a minute, johnny," he said casually. "the professor lost his notes on the meteor dust we passed through the other day." "sure," said the pilot. he tossed the dog-eared book to the sergeant. jeff flipped through the pages and found the day tom's report was to have been sent. he checked carefully, continuing through the entries for the succeeding days, ending with the last entry made just an hour before. there was no mention of tom's report. jeff turned to give the logbook to the pilot when vidac and professor sykes stepped through the hatch. seeing jeff with the log in his hands, vidac frowned. "what are you doing here, marshall?" he snapped. jeff was trapped. he came to attention and remained silent. vidac walked across the control deck and stood in front of him. "well, marshall?" he barked. "answer me!" "i needed some information about the meteor dust we passed through recently, sir," said jeff. vidac turned to the professor. "did you send him up here?" sykes merely shook his head. "i lost the professor's notes and needed the information in the logbook, sir," said jeff. "what are you talking about?" growled sykes. "the notes are still in my work journal. you put them there yourself!" "what have you got to say to that?" demanded vidac. "i repeat, sir," said jeff, "that was my reason for looking in the log." vidac paused, and when he spoke, his voice was cold. "the control-deck logbook contains classified information, marshall. you know that. i won't say you're lying about reasons for looking at it, but that does not excuse the fact that you _did_ look at it without my permission. i'm confining you to the brig for ten days." jeff didn't bat an eyelash. the fact that he had found no entry of tom's report to captain strong in the log, and the unreasonable annoyance vidac expressed over his having looked into the logbook, convinced him that the cadets were not wrong in their suspicions concerning the lieutenant governor. vidac dismissed him and the enlisted sergeant was escorted to the _polaris_' brig by two hastily summoned crewmen. when the cadets learned of jeff's punishment they immediately went to vidac's quarters and requested permission to speak with him. after making them wait for nearly three hours, vidac finally received them. "well, what now?" demanded vidac. "we would like to ask a question, sir," said tom. "speak up!" snorted vidac impatiently. "it's about sergeant marshall, sir," said tom. "what about him?" "we would like to know, sir, under what article of the space code was sergeant marshall sentenced to the brig?" vidac's eyes sharpened. he spoke quickly and crisply. "i suspected that there was some connection between marshall looking in the log and your coming here to see me. i don't know what you have in mind, corbett, but i'm going to lay it on the line. this is the last time you will question my authority. from this moment on, and until you are released from my jurisdiction, _i_ am the space code. do i make myself clear?" "very clear, sir," said tom tightly. "then will the lieutenant governor please put in writing any further orders he might have for us?" "i will not!" snarled vidac. "but i tell you what i will do. i'll confine you to your quarters for ten days for that impertinent request! and if i so much as see your noses outside your quarters, i'll really get tough! dismissed!" [illustration] chapter "this is highly irregular, logan," said vidac to the venusian farmer, "but i guess you can see the cadets. perhaps a little advice from you will help them mend their ways." logan nodded. "i have a boy of my own, governor," he said, "and i know how rambunctious they can get." vidac smiled thinly. "you'll find them in their quarters. the first ladder to your right and down two decks." "thank you, sir," replied logan. he left vidac's quarters and two minutes later stepped through the hatch leading into the cadet's room. after seven days of confinement, the three boys greeted logan with a yell of pure joy. "we have guests!" bellowed astro, grabbing roger who was asleep in his bunk and then banging on the shower door where tom was taking a shower. roger tumbled out of the bunk and tom came rushing out of the shower wrapped in a towel. they all began talking at once. "how'd you know we were confined to quarters, sir?" asked tom. "it's a wonder vidac allowed you to come see us!" yelled roger. "never mind the questions, sir," said astro. "it's just plain good to see a different face besides these two space jokers. one more game of space chess with manning and i think i'd--" logan laughed at the cadets' enthusiasm, holding up both hands to stem their eager babbling questions. after tom had dressed hastily and roger had cleared off a bunk, they began to talk calmly. "i didn't know you boys were in trouble," said logan, "until i came over to the _polaris_ to see you. then vidac told me all about it." "was there any special reason why you wanted to see us, sir?" asked tom. "well, as a matter of fact, there was a little reason. billy, my son, has been pestering me to get some of your academy books and audioscripts so he can study to become a space cadet when he gets old enough." the three cadets grinned at each other and soon the venusian farmer was piled high with manuals, audioscripts, tapes, and general information about the academy. "thank you, boys," said logan. "that's real nice of you, but--" "but what, sir?" asked tom. "that was the little reason for coming to see you. i have a big reason too." "what's that, sir?" asked roger. "i don't know how to say it exactly," began logan, his voice low and hesitant, "but do you remember when you three came over to inspect number twelve?" the boys all nodded and logan continued in a hushed voice. "well, i told you then that everything was as nice as it could be. at that time it was. but now--" "what's happened, sir?" asked tom. "what hasn't happened you mean!" snorted logan. "the very next day we had a visit from vidac himself. he made a routine check of all the departments, stopped and talked to some of the colonists, and he seemed, in general, like a nice fellow. then all of a sudden it started." "what?" asked astro. "our skipper winters and another fellow, ed bush, began treating us like--well, like prisoners!" "prisoners!" cried tom. "yes!" said logan. "they began to tell us when we couldn't go to the workshop and to the stereos, and made us eat our meals together in the main assembly room, with the wives taking turns doing all the cooking. and the schooling has been cut altogether." "why, why--" tom was floored by the information. "but how can that be?" "i don't know," said logan, "but that's the way it is. i came over to tell you boys about it, since you were the only ones i knew. you struck me as being honest and i felt i could trust you." "what else have winters and bush done?" asked astro tensely. "i guess the worst of all is the fact that we're having to pay for everything we eat," said logan. "pay!" exclaimed roger. "but, but--how can you? you don't have any credits. the solar council decided to let the colony work on a barter basis--share and share alike--until it could take its place in the over-all economy of the solar alliance." "i know, i know," said logan resignedly. "we're having to pay for the things we get by signing over a percentage of our future profit over the next seven years." the three cadets looked at each other in disbelief. the idea of two men openly violating the laws of the expedition, treating the solar alliance citizens as if they were prisoners, was overwhelming. tom got up and began to pace the deck. finally he turned and faced logan. "have you said anything to vidac about this?" he asked. "ummmpf!" snorted logan. "every one of us signed a petition and had it sent to the governor himself. we didn't even get a reply. vidac must have heard about it and told winters and bush to take it easy, because the next day we were allowed to eat again without having to sign over part of our profit to them. but everything else is the same." "but how could they force you to pay?" asked roger. "couldn't you refuse?" "sonny," declared logan emphatically, "i'm brave as the next man. but you don't argue against a paralo-ray gun, especially when there are women and children to worry about." tom whirled around and faced roger and astro. "i guess we don't need any more proof now," he said coldly. "jeff marshall is thrown into the brig for looking into a logbook; we're relieved of our jobs here on the _polaris_; my monthly report to captain strong isn't sent to space academy, and now this. one of two things is happening. either governor hardy is in on this with vidac, or vidac is taking over without hardy knowing anything about it." "all right--all right," growled astro, "but what are we going to do about it?" "we've got to get word to space academy or captain strong someway, somehow. we've got to let them know what's going on." "there's only one way to do that," said roger. "but with the communications controlled by vidac's men, we don't have the chance of a snowball on the sunny side of mercury!" "then," announced tom firmly, "we'll have to build our own communications unit." "but how?" asked logan. "roger here can make a communicator out of spit and bailing wire," said astro. "all he needs is the essential parts." "look," said tom tensely, "jeff marshall will be getting out of the brig when we do. he'll be working with professor sykes, along with us. why can't we build one on the sly in the observatory?" roger thought a moment. "it's the only thing we can do. i just hope that mr. logan's coming here hasn't aroused suspicion." "don't worry about that," said logan. "i told vidac i wanted this information about space academy for billy. that seemed to satisfy him." "i don't know," mused tom. "he's pretty smart." "what else can we do?" asked astro. "nothing," said tom bitterly. "not a space-blasting thing until we get out of here!" * * * * * "we've _got_ to have that triple vacuum tube," declared roger. "that's the only thing that will transmit a voice quickly back to earth from this fix out in space." the three boys and jeff marshall were back in their quarters after their first week of active duty again. they had surreptitiously begun collecting parts for the communicator and were sorting them out on one of the bunks when roger mentioned the necessity for the special vacuum tube. "how quickly?" asked astro. tom explained. "the equipment we have now is strong enough to talk to the academy, but it'll take about six hours for my voice to reach it. and then another six hours for the academy's answer to get back to us. at the end of twelve hours we might not be ready to receive and the communications officer might pick up their answer. then we'd be in the middle of a space hurricane!" "i see," said astro. "you've got to be able to talk directly to the academy, so that when they answer, you'll be ready!" "right," said tom. "we might only get ten or fifteen minutes of free time, when the professor would be away from the observatory." "where do you think i could get one of those tubes, besides on the radar bridge, roger?" asked jeff. he had been the main source of supply for the equipment used in the communicator. since getting out of the brig, his movements had not been as restricted as the cadets'. "that's just it," said roger. "i remember distinctly loading all of them in the locker near the main scanner on the radar deck." "then we have to get it from another ship," said tom. "the chances of getting one here, aboard the _polaris_, are zero." "say, roger," suddenly asked astro, "do you think you remember enough about that triple vacuum tube to draw me a blueprint?" "sure," said roger. "and you could probably build it too. but how are you going to get the inside tube vacuumized, then the second one, and finally the third. they have to be absolutely clean!" "how about outside in space?" astro suggested. "we could take the parts of the tube with us and assemble it out there. you can't ask for a better vacuum than outer space." tom grinned and slapped the big venusian on the back. "astro, you're the hero of the day. come on, roger, start drawing that tube! astro can make it on the power deck as if he were repairing something. make it as simple as possible." "right," said roger, "all i need is the vacuum and of course the copper filament inside the inner third tube for sending and receiving. we can make it so the tubes screw together inside of each other and then seal them." "right," said astro. "meantime," said tom, "jeff and i will get you a set of earphones, if we have to tear them off the head of the radarman!" meanwhile, in vidac's quarters, the second-in-command was facing the irascible professor sykes. "say that again, professor," said vidac. sykes was standing before him holding a slip of paper in his hand. "i said," the professor snorted, "that in forty-eight hours and some odd minutes we will be passing through a very thick cluster of asteroids, about ten thousand miles in depth." "is it on our present course?" asked vidac. "yes," replied sykes. "we'll have to go around it. i wouldn't give you a plugged credit for our chances of getting through it." "i didn't ask you for your opinion!" snapped vidac. "all right, you've given me your information. now get out!" sykes abruptly turned and left the lieutenant governor's compartment. alone, vidac paced the floor. after a moment of deep thought he snapped his fingers in decision and turned on the ship's intercom. "corbett! manning! astro!" he bellowed. "report to the control deck on the double." a few moments later the three cadets stood before vidac at rigid, stone-faced attention. vidac turned on the chart projection screen and pointed to their position in space. "professor sykes has just warned me that the fleet is approaching a freakish asteroid cluster," he announced. "he estimates it to be of this size." vidac swept his arm over the chart, taking in most of the space directly in front of their path. "to go around it, over it, or under it would mean altering the course of the whole fleet and losing about six days' transit time." he turned back to the cadets who had been watching closely. "i want you three to see if you can find a route through the belt and save us the detour time." he glanced at his wrist chronograph. "the belt is about forty-one hours ahead of us now. take a rocket scout, look it over, and report back to me." "yes, sir," said tom. "anything else, sir?" "yes," said vidac. he stepped closer to the three boys. "this is not a joy ride. i expect you to find a way through that cluster. you have enough time to explore the greater part of it." "but you said forty-one hours, sir," retorted tom. "that's plenty of time if you travel at full space speed." "full thrust!" exploded roger. "in an unknown asteroid cluster? why, the odds are better than a thousand to one that we'll be ripped open by a space rock. the best we can do is one-quarter space speed." "you'll open those jets wide or you'll spend the rest of the trip to roald in the brig and i'll send a report back to the academy on your cowardice!" vidac paused, then added quietly, "do i make myself clear?" "yes, sir," said tom, tight-lipped. "you make yourself perfectly clear!" chapter "do you think it will be safe there?" asked roger, as he watched tom and astro push the half-completed communications set under a workbench behind several large cartons. "as safe as any place," replied tom. "if vidac has any idea we're building it, we could hide it any place and he'd find it. so, as the saying goes, the least hidden is the best hidden. we'll have to take a chance." "besides," chimed in astro, "here in the storeroom, jeff will have his eye on it all the time. if vidac starts getting nosy, jeff will be able to shift it to another hiding place without too much trouble." "well, that's all we can do now," said tom, straightening up. "come on. let's get to the scout ship and blast off before vidac wants to know what we're doing." checking the hiding place one last time, the three cadets left the storeroom and headed for the jet-boat deck. in a few moments they were blasting through space toward the rear of the fleet where a rocket scout was waiting for them. the scouts were being carried by the larger space freighters to save fuel. now one had been fueled and was blasting alongside its carrier ship with a skeleton crew. when the cadets' jet boat came alongside, the crew of the scout transferred into the jet boat and the three cadets took over the scout. on the control deck, tom checked his instruments and made preliminary tests on the circuits. suddenly roger's voice crackled over the ship's intercom. "blast that guy vidac!" he yelled. "he's one jump ahead of us again!" startled, tom called into the intercom. "what do you mean, roger?" "the ship's communicator," snorted roger. "i figured once we got aboard the scout we'd be able to use this set to contact the academy instead of having to monkey around with the homemade job back on the _polaris_. but it's no soap." "why not?" boomed astro over the intercom. "the only open circuit here is beamed to the _polaris_. and the radar is too complicated to change over to audio communications. we haven't got enough time." tom clenched his teeth. he had had the same idea about using the communications set on the scout to contact the academy. now there was nothing to do but hope vidac wouldn't find the one they were building. he called into the intercom again. "is the radar working well enough for us to search the asteroid cluster without plowing into any space junk?" "yeah," growled roger. "he left it in working condition all right, but if we burn out a tube, we're blacked out until we get back. there isn't a spare nut or bolt in the locker for repairs." "but what happens if something happens to the radar when we're in the cluster," called astro. "we'll be sitting ducks for every asteroid!" "that's the chance we have to take, astro," said tom. "if we complained, you know what he'd do." "i sure do," growled astro. "he'd call us yellow again, because we'd refused to make the trip!" "that's the way it adds up," said tom. "so i guess we'd better get started. stand by to blast!" "all clear fore and aft," reported roger. "full thrust, astro," ordered tom, "but stand by for emergency maneuvers. this is going to be a tough trip, fellows. perhaps the toughest trip we've ever made. so keep your eyes and ears open and spaceman's luck!" "spaceman's luck!" echoed his unit mates. under full thrust the speedy little ship shot ahead of the fleet toward the gigantic mass of asteroids, planetoids, and millions of lesser space bodies, whirling and churning among themselves at an incredible rate of speed. hardly had they left the fleet when roger's voice crackled over the intercom again. "say, you space monkeys!" he yelled. "i got an idea! how about taking this wagon and heading back for the academy?" "can't," replied astro, "we've only got forty-eight hours of fuel, water, and oxygen--and no reserves. we couldn't get one-tenth of the way back before we ran out of everything, even if we wanted to go back." "what do you mean--_if_?" snapped roger. "wouldn't you go back? how about you, tom?" "i'd think a long time before i would," said tom. "remember, vidac hasn't done anything we can actually pin on him." "what about making the colonists pay for their food," sneered roger. "vidac could say it was a precautionary measure," said tom. "what kind of precaution?" asked astro. "well, vidac could say that the colonists were using too much of the supplies simply because it was free. and instead of imposing rationing, he's making them pay, but that he wouldn't actually take their profit." [illustration: _the speedy little ship shot ahead of the fleet toward the gigantic mass of asteroids_] "yeah," growled astro. "and there's just enough hokum in that to make everyone back at the academy happy." "i'm afraid we'll have to go on with it," said tom. "not only this exploration of the asteroid belt, but we'll have to wait for vidac to really tip his hand." "from the way he operates," said roger disgustedly, "that might be never." blasting farther ahead through the unexplored region of outer space, the cadets, who had seen a great many space phenomena, were awed by the thickening groups of stars around them. it was tom who finally realized that they were getting closer to the inner ring of their galaxy and that the stars and suns they were unable to see from earth, or other solar alliance planets, were some fifty to sixty billion miles closer. gulping a cup of tea and a few sandwiches, the three cadets continued their advance toward the uncharted, unknown dangers of the asteroid belt that lay ahead of them. meanwhile, back on the _polaris_, jeff marshall walked into the observatory quietly. he stood and watched professor sykes adjust the prisms of his telescopes, then settle himself to an hour of observation. jeff knew that the professor would remain there for the next two hours. he felt safe in going to the storeroom and taking out the communications unit to work on it. but just to make sure, he called out, "will you be needing anything, sir?" "no, i won't!" barked sykes. "if i did, i'd ask for it!" "yes, sir!" said jeff. he turned away with a slight smile on his face and left the observatory. he walked quickly through the passageways of the ship until he came to the storeroom hatch. he glanced around quickly and then stepped into the quiet chamber. pulling the cartons away from the bench, he took out the half-completed tangle of wires, and by the light of a small flashlight, he peered into the maze, trying to figure out where roger had left off. he had traced the connections and was about to go to work when suddenly the overhead light was switched on, bathing the storeroom in light. jeff whirled around to see vidac, standing in the open hatch, staring at him. "well, sergeant marshall," he said, advancing toward the enlisted spaceman, "some secret experiment, no doubt!" "yes, sir," replied jeff. "i've--i've been working on a new type of communications set." vidac stepped closer to the set and gave it a quick look. suddenly, without warning, he picked up the delicate instrument, smashed it to the floor, and then trampled on it. he whirled around and faced marshall. "what's the meaning of this, marshall?" he demanded. jeff was stunned by vidac's violent action and could only stammer, "i have nothing to say, sir." "is corbett or manning or astro in on this?" asked vidac. "no, sir," marshall said quickly. "i warn you, it won't go easy with you if i catch you shielding those cadets," snapped vidac. "no, sir," said marshall, swallowing hard several times, "i am not shielding them." "very well, then. tell me, what was the purpose of this 'experimental' communications set?" "to make contact with amateur communicators back in our solar system, sir." "i'll bet!" said vidac coldly. "all right, pick up this piece of junk and get out of here. any more experiments will take place in the observatory, and not unless i give my permission, is that clear?" "yes, sir," said jeff. "i understand, sir." vidac turned and walked away without returning jeff's salute. the enlisted spaceman looked down at the twisted mass of wire and metal and muttered a low oath. then, picking up the pieces, he turned and walked wearily back to the observatory. all of roger's effort was destroyed. but worse than that, now vidac knew about the attempt to build the set. * * * * * "watch out, tom." roger's voice blasted through the intercom from the radar deck. "there's the biggest hunk of space junk i've ever seen bearing down on us!" tom flipped on the control-deck scanner of the rocket scout quickly, estimated range, angle, and approach of the onrushing asteroid, and called to astro on the power deck. "emergency course change!" he bellowed. "one-quarter blast on the starboard jets, ten degrees down on the exhaust steering vanes! execute!" in the cramped space of the power deck, the giant venusian quickly responded to his unit-mate's orders. opening the induction valves leading to the reactors, the cadet shot full power into the radiation chambers, sending the little space scout into a long downward curve, safely out of the path of the dangerous asteroid. "whew!" breathed roger over the intercom. "that was fast thinking, tom. i wouldn't have had time to plot a course change. and with all that other stuff around here, we might have missed this one and hit two others!" "yeah," agreed astro. "it must have been good, because i'm still here!" "got your radar sweeping ahead, roger?" asked tom. "any sign of an opening in this stuff?" "radar's going all the time, tom," replied roger. "but i don't think we're going to find a passage large enough to take the whole fleet through." "i'm afraid you're right," said tom. "i guess we'd better get out of here. how much fuel do we have left, astro?" "enough to hang around here for another fifteen minutes. but let's not cut it too fine. we might have to spend a little time looking for the fleet." "i don't imagine vidac would lose any sleep," sneered roger, "if we got lost!" "well, fifteen minutes is fifteen minutes," said tom, "so we might as well take a look." roger gave the course change to tom and the small ship shot to another section of the asteroid cluster while the electronic finger of the radar probed ahead, searching for an opening through the mass of hurtling rock. time and again in the past fifteen hours, the cadets had discovered what they thought to be a way through, only to find it too small for the massed flight of spaceships to maneuver safely. now after the many hours of concentration the boys were tired and more than willing to return to the fleet. "time's up," tom finally announced. "plot a course back to the _polaris_, roger. stand by for a course change, astro. we're heading home!" tom's remark about heading "home" went unnoticed, since the three cadets had long since thought of the giant rocket cruiser as being their home, more than space academy or their real homes with their families. after making contact with the _polaris_, roger quickly plotted an intersecting course that would put them alongside the command ship of the fleet in a few hours. then, safely out of the dangerous cluster of flying meteors and asteroids, the three cadets gathered on the control deck and relaxed for the first time since the beginning of their scouting trip. they discussed their chances of contacting space academy with the communications set they had left hidden in the storeroom. "how far did you get with the tube, astro?" asked roger. "you'll be able to send out a message four hours after we get back," replied astro between bites of sandwich. "too bad we don't have the tube with us," said tom. "now that we're alone we could vacuumize it without worrying about vidac." "i've already tried to make another one here," said astro. "but these scouts don't have any kind of tools or equipment. we'll have to wait till we get back." in a few hours roger picked up the welcome outline of the _polaris_ on his scanner and, shortly after, the rest of the fleet. after receiving instructions from vidac to return the scout to the freighter and come aboard, the three cadets made quick work of transferring to the jet boat and a short while later were waiting impatiently for the hiss of oxygen to fill the air lock of the _polaris_. no sooner had the dial indicated the equal pressure with the rest of the ship than the inner portal opened to reveal vidac waiting for them. "well?" he demanded at once. "is there a way through the asteroid cluster?" "no, sir," said tom. "we searched practically the whole thing. there are a few openings, but none large enough to let the whole fleet through." "i thought so," sneered vidac. "you just blasted to the edge of the cluster and waited for enough time to pass and then came running back here!" "why, you--" growled astro. he took a menacing step toward vidac. the older spaceman didn't move. "yes, cadet astro?" said vidac coldly. "did you want to say something?" before astro could speak, tom stepped forward. "regardless of what you may think, sir," he said, "we did search the belt and there wasn't any way through it." "i have to accept your word, corbett," said vidac. he turned and started back down the companionway, then stopped and whirled around to face them again. "incidentally, something happened while you were away. jeff marshall was found experimenting with a homemade communicator. do you know anything about it?" the three cadets were dumfounded. finally roger shook his head. "no--no, sir," he muttered. "we don't know anything about it." vidac smiled. "all right. that's all. make out a full report on the scouting mission and send it to me immediately." when the lieutenant governor had disappeared, roger turned to face tom and astro. "well, what do we do now?" tom answered between clenched teeth. "we're going to see governor hardy!" chapter "now, now, boys," purred governor hardy, "i think you're jumping to conclusions. personally i'm very much pleased with the way lieutenant governor vidac is handling details. and as far as the asteroid cluster is concerned, we'll go under it, or over it, or whatever is the shortest route." "yes, sir," said tom, "but--" "no _buts_, corbett," said hardy, still smiling. "this is a great undertaking and we need the co-operation of every member of the expedition. in a few days we'll be arriving at roald and the strain of this long trip will be over. mr. vidac is a capable man and i trust him implicitly, no matter how strange his methods may appear. i urge you to bury any differences you might have with him and work for the success of the colony. now what do you say?" tom glanced at his two unit mates. roger shuffled his feet and looked down at the deck, while astro studied the bulkhead behind the governor's desk. "if that's the way you want it, sir," said tom, "then i guess we'll have to play along." "i guess you will," said hardy, a slight edge creeping into his voice. "and if you tell me any more wild, unsubstantiated stories such as vidac sending you to scout an unknown asteroid cluster in a poorly equipped rocket scout--well, i'll have to take stronger measures to ensure your co-operation. do i make myself clear?" "yes, sir," chorused the cadets. they saluted and left the room. "well," said tom, when they had reached the safety of their quarters, "i guess that just about does it." "yeah. we played our last card," grumbled roger. "either hardy is the smoothest crook in the world, or vidac really has him space happy." "i wouldn't bet that it isn't a little bit of both," commented astro. the hatch suddenly opened and the cadets spun around nervously. "jeff!" they yelled in unison. "hello, guys," said the enlisted man glumly as he entered the room. he slumped on tom's bunk. "i've got bad news." "we already know," said roger. "vidac met us before we got out of the air lock. he couldn't wait to tell us." "he asked us if we knew anything about it," said tom. "we told him no." "i lied myself," said marshall. "i--i was going to do a little work on it, hoping to have it ready for you when you got back, but--" he stopped and shrugged his shoulders. "never mind, jeff," said tom. "if vidac suspected we were building that communicator, he'd have found it sooner or later. the thing is, what are we going to do now?" "i'll tell you in three words," growled astro. the others looked at the big cadet. "sweat it out," he said finally. tom nodded his head. "you're right, astro. we're tied hand and foot to this guy for the next eleven months." "how about governor hardy?" suggested jeff. "we just saw the illustrious governor," said roger bitterly. "and the only question left in our minds is whether hardy is working for vidac, or vidac for hardy. no one could be as blind to what's going on as hardy seems to be." "three words," said tom half to himself. "sweat it out!" * * * * * like a gleaming diamond on the black velvet of space, the sun star wolf loomed ahead of the giant fleet, solitary and alone in its magnificence. with the _polaris_ leading the way for the mass of space vessels that stretched back and away, the pioneers and their families blasted through the last million miles that separated them from their new home in deep space. fifty-five billion miles from their own sun, they were about to establish a colony as their forefathers had done centuries before them. like the first colony in the new world, then on the moon, mars, venus, mercury, titan, and ganymede, and hundreds of outposts in the asteroid belt, these earthmen were braving new dangers and hardships, leaving the comfort of their homes to establish the first star colony. inside each of the massive ships, earthmen gathered around the scanners to look ahead across the abyss of space and gaze at their new home. finally the momentous order came crackling through the teleceivers. "_polaris_ to fleet! single up for landing! ships to follow the _polaris_ and touch down in order of their fleet numbers!" on the control deck of the command ship, vidac began barking orders to tom. the three cadets had been reassigned to their original stations because of their intimate knowledge and sure handling of the giant ship. "prepare the ship for touchdown, corbett!" yelled vidac. "yes, sir," said tom. he flipped on the intercom and barked orders to astro below on the power deck. "stand by to reduce thrust to one-quarter space speed, astro. stand by forward nose braking rockets." "right," replied astro. "hey, roger!" yelled tom. "how far are we from the surface?" "estimated distance to touchdown is two hundred thousand feet," answered roger crisply. "reduce thrust to minimum, astro," barked tom, his eyes watching every dial and meter on the control board. "distance one hundred fifty thousand feet," reported roger. "looks like an open plain right below us. maybe we'd better try for it, eh?" "i guess so," said tom. "relay your scan down here to the control-deck scanner." tom gave it a quick glance, saw that there was plenty of room on the plain roger had mentioned to hold the entire fleet, and turned to vidac. "request permission to touch down, sir," said tom. "granted," replied vidac. the curly-haired cadet turned back to the control board and once again checked his instruments. behind him, vidac and governor hardy watched the surface of roald as the _polaris_ began to turn for her tailfirst landing. "cut all thrust at one hundred thousand feet, astro," ordered tom. "aye, aye," replied astro. "one hundred ten thousand feet," reported roger. "one-o-seven, one-o-four, one hundred!" almost immediately, the blasting roar of the rockets was cut to a whisper and the ship began to drop toward the surface of the satellite. vidac jumped forward and grabbed tom's shoulder. "what're you trying to do, corbett? we're falling!" "i have no data on the gravity of roald," said tom calmly. "the best way to find out is to check our rate of fall. i can then gauge the amount of braking power necessary." behind the two spacemen, governor hardy smiled. he stepped forward and tapped vidac on the shoulder. "whatever your difficulties coming out here with them, paul, you've got to admit that they know how to handle this ship." "yeah," growled vidac. "too bad they don't know how to handle themselves as well." tom smarted under the sarcasm but concentrated on the task of getting the ship safely to the ground. "fifty thousand feet," reported roger. "i'd say that the gravity of roald is about . over earth's, tom." "o.k., roger," replied tom. "give her one-quarter thrust, astro. we'll have to feel our way down." as the rumble of the main rockets started again, tom waited for the ship's descent to be checked, and sudden concern welled up within him as the ship failed to respond. "thirty-five thousand feet," reported roger from the radar deck. "full thrust, astro," called tom, anxiously watching the approaching surface of roald. he checked his instruments again and his heart jumped up into his throat. the needles of all the gauges and meters were dancing back and forth as though they were being flicked with invisible fingers. tom grabbed the intercom and shouted wildly. "astro! emergency space speed! we've got to get out of here!" tom whirled around to face vidac and hardy. "you'd better call professor sykes up here, right away," he declared. "why? what's the matter?" stuttered hardy. "something's interfering with our whole electrical system, sir," replied the cadet. "what's that, corbett?" snapped sykes, stepping quickly through the hatch into the control room. tom was about to repeat his statement when suddenly the rockets blasted loudly, and the ship tossed and rocked, throwing everyone off his feet. astro had applied emergency power to his reactors, sending the _polaris_ hurtling back into the safety of space. "by the rings of saturn," bawled sykes, after he had adjusted to the sudden acceleration, "i'll have that space-brained idiot court-martialed for this!" "it's not his fault, professor," said hardy, getting to his feet again. "if corbett hadn't ordered emergency space speed, we'd all be smeared across that plain down there." he pointed to the scanner screen where the surface of roald could be seen receding rapidly. "umph!" snorted sykes, "let me take a look at that control board." quickly and surely, the professor tested every major circuit in the giant panel. finally he straightened up and turned to face hardy. "governor," he said quietly, "i'm afraid you'll have to forget about landing on roald until i can find the reason for the disturbance." "then it's not caused by any malfunction aboard the ship?" vidac broke in. sykes shook his head. "whatever force field caused those instruments to react the way they did came from roald. you'll have to stand off until i can go down and make a complete investigation." "well, what do you think it is?" asked hardy. "it might be one of a hundred things," replied the professor. "but i wouldn't attempt to land down there until we know what's causing the interference and can counteract it." "space gas!" exploded vidac. "is this another of your tricks, corbett?" "tricks, sir?" asked tom stupidly, so incredible did the lieutenant governor's question seem. "yes, _tricks!_" roared vidac. "get out of the way. i can take this ship down." he sat down in the pilot's chair and called roger on the radar bridge. "notify all the other ships they are to stand off until we have made a secure touchdown!" "yes, sir!" replied roger. "professor," whispered tom, "do something!" sykes looked at tom a moment and then turned to leave the control deck. he paused in the hatch to call back in a low voice, "what can you do with a madman?" helplessly, tom turned to appeal to governor hardy but changed his mind and stood beside hardy, crossing his fingers. at the controls vidac gripped the acceleration lever and called into the intercom, "stand by for touchdown. power deck, cut all thrust!" "power deck, aye, sir," reported astro. as the main rockets were cut out again and the _polaris_ slipped back through space toward the surface of roald once more, tom stood behind vidac with hardy and watched the instruments begin their strange gyrations again. the cadet glanced at hardy, whose face was impassive. "sir," asked tom quietly, "isn't there something we can do?" "keep quiet, corbett," snapped hardy. "that's what you can do!" "yes, sir," replied tom. he turned away to climb into the nearest acceleration chair and strap himself in. he knew it was possible for the _polaris_ to land successfully. he felt sure he could have made a touchdown on the satellite without trouble, but his first thought had been for the safety of the others aboard the ship. now it was out of his hands and he grudgingly admired the way vidac was handling the giant rocket cruiser. "twenty-five thousand feet to touchdown," reported roger. so far, vidac had kept the ship dropping at a steadily decreasing rate. but the tension on the control deck mounted as the surface of roald loomed closer and closer. "fifteen thousand feet," reported roger. governor hardy walked to a near-by acceleration chair and strapped himself in. "ten thousand feet!" yelled roger. "power deck, give me three-quarters thrust!" ordered vidac. tom heard the whine of the rockets on the power deck increase with a sharp surge. "seven thousand feet," reported roger. vidac remained cool, staring at the control board. tom wondered what it was he was watching, since there wasn't one instrument that registered properly. "five thousand feet!" screamed roger. "spaceman's luck!" [illustration: _the_ polaris _landed safely on the surface of the satellite_] immediately vidac ordered astro to apply full thrust to the main rockets. the great ship bucked under the sudden acceleration, and tom could feel the tug of war between the cruiser's thrust and the satellite's gravity. the ship continued to drop at slightly lessened speed, but still too fast to land safely. tom waited for vidac to order emergency thrust to counter the pull of the satellite. they were dropping too fast. he watched vidac and waited for the only order that would save the ship. if he doesn't do it now, thought tom, it will be too late. "vidac!" yelled tom. "emergency power! we're falling too fast!" vidac didn't answer. "vidac!" screamed tom again. "emergency power!" the man didn't move. he sat in front of the control panel as though paralyzed. tom slipped off the straps of the acceleration chair and raced to the intercom. vidac made no attempt to stop him. "astro! full emergency thrust! hit it!" in immediate reply, a jolting burst of power blasted through the tubes, jerking the ship convulsively and throwing tom to the deck. a loud, crashing sound filled the ship, followed by a strange stillness. dimly tom realized that the rockets had been cut and they were safely on the surface of the satellite. he picked himself up and turned to face vidac. the lieutenant governor was unstrapping himself from the pilot's chair. his face was ashen. he stalked out of the control deck without a word. "touchdown!" screamed roger from the radar deck. "we made it. we're on roald!" tom heard the blond-haired cadet, but his unit mate's excitement did not register. he was staring at the open hatch. "he lost his nerve," said tom aloud, half to himself and half to governor hardy who was unstrapping himself from the acceleration chair. "he quit cold!" "he certainly did," said hardy. "and if it wasn't for your quick thinking, we'd be spread all over this satellite!" roger tumbled down the ladder from the radar deck. "nice work, tom," he shouted, slapping his unit mate on the back. he followed tom's gaze past hardy to the empty hatch. "say, can you imagine a guy like that suddenly losing his nerve?" asked roger. "no," replied tom. "if i hadn't seen it with my own eyes i wouldn't believe it!" "this will go on your official record of course," said hardy. "i'll see that you're rewarded in some way, corbett." "thank you, sir," said tom. "but if you could just assure me that my reports back to the academy will get through, i'll be very happy." "you mean they're not being sent?" asked hardy, seemingly quite concerned. "no, sir," replied tom. "at least i don't think so. and this is the first time i've had a chance to tell you." "well," said hardy, "there's a lot to be done now that we've arrived, corbett. i'll take this matter up with vidac as soon as i get a chance." he turned and walked off the control deck. "well, i'll be a space monkey!" exclaimed roger. "yeah," agreed tom, "i'll be two of them!" [illustration] chapter "of the thousand ships that blasted off from earth there are only six hundred thirteen left that can be used in the construction of the first colony of roald." governor hardy's voice was firm as he addressed the assembled colonists and spacemen from the air lock of a space freighter. there was a murmur among the colonists at this news. they knew that the landings on the satellite had been costly; that many ships had crashed as a result of the unexplained interference with the ships' instruments. and since each ship had been designed to be cannibalized into houses, workshops, and power plants, they realized the plans for the settlement would have to be radically revised. once the _polaris_ had landed safely, the other ships of the fleet had followed, each trying to find the delicate balance between the pull of the satellite and the thrust of their rockets. and since many of vidac's hand-picked crewmen were in control, a large number of the valuable and irreplaceable ships and their supplies had been lost. they didn't burn when they crashed. fire could have been easily extinguished. instead, deadly radiation from the cracked firing chambers flooded the ships and their cargo, rendering them useless. tom, roger, and astro stood with jeff marshall and the logan family as the governor outlined their initial objectives on the satellite. "first," declared hardy, "we have to build atmosphere booster stations. we can't live without oxygen and there isn't enough oxygen in the atmosphere to sustain us very long. second, we have to establish our ownership boundaries and begin planting our crops. we can't live without food. third, we have to live more frugally than ever before in order to maintain our reserves of food and essential items. the nearest supply center is fifty billion miles from here." he paused and surveyed the sea of grim faces before him. "we've had a hard blow," he continued, "in losing so many ships and their supplies, but it will not defeat us. we all came here with the understanding that it would be difficult. we did not expect an easy life. we knew it would be tough, but not quite as tough as it's going to be now. but we will win! and remember, we are no longer people of venus, earth, mars, or titan, we are citizens of roald!" there was a roar of approval from the colonists. a band began to play and the assembly was adjourned. "he talks sense," hyram logan commented. "real fighting sense!" "i'd like it a lot better, though," replied astro, "if he didn't make it sound like a rally." "yeah," agreed roger. "he sounded as though he was pepping up his team to do or die in a mercuryball game." "this is no game," said tom. "we're fighting starvation, perhaps death! and, believe me, if this colony goes the way of all space dust, it will be a long time before there'll be another fleet of a thousand ships gambled on a star colony!" logan nodded his head. "that's the way i look at it, tom," he said. "regardless of what kind of beef we might have with hardy or vidac and his crew, we all have to work together to make roald a colony. a successful colony!" returning to fleet ship number twelve, which was to be used for quarters by the colonists until their homes could be erected, the three cadets and jeff marshall said good-by to the venusian farmer and continued on toward the _polaris_. "did professor sykes find any indication of what might have caused the instruments to act up during the landing, jeff?" asked tom. the curly-haired cadet referred to the professor's investigation started as soon as the _polaris_ had landed. "nothing so far, tom," replied jeff. "but it must be something big. he packed a lot of gear into a jet boat and blasted out of here this morning." "what do you suppose it is?" asked astro. "i don't know," replied jeff. "i can't even guess." "i can," said roger, "and if it's what i think it is--well, i just hope it isn't, that's all." the blond-haired cadet stopped talking abruptly. tom, astro, and jeff looked at each other. finally tom asked, "well, what do you think it is?" "there's only one thing i know really well, tom," replied roger. "just one thing, and that's electronics. i may be a jerk about a lot of things, but i know electronics." "o.k.," said astro. "you know electronics. but what has that got to do with the instruments going out of whack?" "the only natural element that would cause such disturbance is uranium." "uranium!" breathed tom. "you mean uranium pitchblende?" "i mean uranium!" snapped roger. "uranium pitchblende isn't concentrated enough to cause a reaction like that on the instruments. it would take a big chunk of pure uranium to do the job." "but if that were so," astro protested, "wouldn't the instruments still be acting up? in fact, wouldn't we start feeling the effects of the radiation?" "not necessarily, astro," said tom. "i understand what roger's getting at. the uranium could be located in another sector of the satellite, on the other side, maybe. it could be throwing radiation out into space without affecting us here." "you mean we're _under_ the effects?" asked astro. "looks like it," replied tom. "but on the other hand," he continued, "why wasn't there some report of it when the first expedition came out to look over the satellite?" "i can't answer that question, tom," answered roger. "but i'd be willing to bet my last credit that there's uranium on this space-forsaken rock. and a whopping big deposit of it!" they reached the air lock of the _polaris_ and climbed wearily aboard. at the end of the first day, on the new satellite, they were exhausted. a few minutes after entering the giant cruiser they were all sound asleep. dawn of the second day on roald saw the vast plain crowded with men at work. the first community objective was the construction of an atmosphere station, and before the woman and children had finished lunch, they were breathing synthetically produced air. working from a master plan that had been devised back at space academy before the expedition blasted off, the colonists were divided into three separate crews: the wreckers, those who would remove essential parts from the spaceships as they were needed; the movers, those who would haul the parts to construction sites; and the builders, those who would take the parts and construct the community buildings. the first and most difficult job was building a gigantic maneuverable derrick and jet barge for removing, hauling, and installing the heavy machinery. astro had been assigned to the crew responsible for the construction of the jet barge. with many of the vital parts aboard the crashed freighters still hot with radioactivity, the crew had to improvise. and astro, with his native talent for mechanics, soon became the unspoken leader of the crew. even the supervisor acknowledged the young cadet's superior ability and allowed him a free hand in the construction of the barge. after six hours of hard labor, the "mover" was finished. it was not the streamlined machine its designer had conceived, but it was effective, in some cases, more so than the designer imagined. a low, flat table roughly three hundred feet square, it moved on sledlike runners and was powered by two dozen rockets. on each of the four sides there was a two-hundred-foot boom which could be swung around in a ° arc and was capable of lifting three hundred tons. astro's most outstanding improvement on the original design was what he termed "adjustment rockets," placing single rockets that could be individually controlled on all four sides, so that the operator of the giant jet barge could jockey into perfect position anywhere. the machine quickly demonstrated it could move anything, anywhere. roger worked with the supervisor of the assembly groups, ordering supplies and machinery as they were needed from the wrecking crews and seeing that they were sent to the right place at the right time. one of his first jobs was the assembling of materials for the construction of the administration building of the colony. less than five days after the foundation had been dug, the last gleaming sheets of titan crystal were welded together and the building towered over the plain, a glistening monument to man's first flight to the stars. tom had been assigned to work closely with vidac, who was responsible for all the construction on roald. the young cadet welcomed the chance to observe the man in action, and time after time he found contradictions in the character of the lieutenant governor. vidac's attitude and behavior in his drive to build the colony were completely different from his actions on the long space flight. he was a man of firmness and immediate decision. shooting from one project to another in a jet boat, he would listen to the supervisors' complaints, make a snap decision, and then head for another project. once tad winters and ed bush, who had taken over astro's jet barge, had hesitated when trying to transfer a four-hundred-ton lift. a bank of atomic motors from fleet ship number twelve was to be installed in the main power plant for the colony. the motors were in a position where it was impossible to use more than one of the booms for the lift. bush and winters tried futilely to maneuver the jet barge into position where they could use two booms, and when vidac arrived he promptly took charge. using tom as signalman, vidac stood at the controls of the giant derrick, and after testing the strain on the five-inch cables, he yelled down to the cadet: "think they'll hold, corbett?" tom looked at the derrick, the motors, and the boom astro had constructed. finally he nodded his head. if anyone else had built the jet barge, tom would have said no, but he knew when the venusian built something it was built solidly. stepping back out of range, tom watched vidac slowly apply power to the rockets on the jet barge. slowly, inch by inch, the boom began to bend under the load. vidac continued to apply power. the boom bent even more and still the motors would not lift free of the ground. the rocket exhausts on the jet barge glowed fiery red under the sustained surge of power. all over the colony, men stopped work to see if the jet barge would handle the outsized lift. vidac sat at the controls calmly and watched tom. the curly-haired cadet continued to wave his hand to lift the motors. the boom continued to bend, and just as tom thought it must snap, the motors lifted free and vidac swung them around to the table top of the barge. he climbed down and walked over to bush and winters. [illustration] "next time you're afraid to try something and waste valuable time," he barked, "you'll pay for it!" he turned to tom. "let's go, corbett," he said casually. day after day the work continued and finally, at the end of three weeks, the dry barren plain had been transformed into a small city. towering above the city, the administration building glistened in the light of their new sun, wolf , and streets named after the colonists radiated from it in all directions, like the spokes of a giant wheel. [illustration] there were houses, stores, and off the central square a magnificent assembly hall that could be transformed into a gymnasium. there were smaller community buildings for sanitation, water, power, and all vital services necessary to a community. along the wide spacious streets, still being paved, converted jet boats hummed. women began to shop. men who had helped build the city the day before, now appeared in aprons and began keeping account books until a monetary system could be devised. a medical exchange that also happened to sell spaceburgers and martian water was dubbed the "space dump" and crowds of teen-agers were already flocking in to dance and frolic. a pattern of living began to take form out of the dead dust of the star satellite. several of the colonists who had lost everything aboard the crashed ships were made civilian officials in charge of the water, sanitation, and power departments. the three cadets worked harder than they had ever worked before. once, when the jet barge needed to be refueled, vidac had ordered them to salvage the remaining reactant from the crashed ships and they worked forty-eight hours in lead-lined suits transferring the reactant fuel to the jet barge. in addition, roger was now hard at work building a communications center and a network all over the satellite. communicators were placed at intervals of ten miles, so that any stranded colonist was within walking distance of help. the four hundred ships that had crashed had been loaded mostly with farming equipment, and the seriousness of the situation was discussed at great length by logan and other farmer colonists. vidac had tried to salvage some of the more basic tools needed in farming the dusty satellite soil, but nothing had come of it. three to five years had to pass before the radioactivity would be harmless. "we'll have to farm with chemicals," announced vidac finally to a meeting of the farmers. "i know that chemical crops are not as tasteful as naturals, but they are larger, more abundant, and nourishing." he paused and looked at the men. "however, even chemicals are not the whole answer." "well," said hyram logan, who had become the unofficial spokesman for the farmers, "give us the chemicals and let's get to work. everyone here knows how to grow crops out of a test tube!" "i'm afraid it won't be as simple as that," said vidac. "perhaps you remember that you paid over part of your future profits during the trip out from atom city?" there was a murmur from the group of men as the outrageous incident was brought up. most of the men felt that vidac had been directly responsible. vidac held up his hand. "quiet, please!" the men became silent. "you will have to purchase the necessary material for farming from me. you will sign over one-half of your future profits to the treasurer of the roald city fund, or you don't farm." "what's the roald city fund?" demanded isaac tupin, a short, thin man with an uncanny knack for farming. he had been very successful on mars and had been asked to institute his methods of desert farming on the dusty satellite. "the roald city fund," said vidac coldly, "is an organization dedicated to the good and welfare of the citizens of roald." "who's the treasurer?" asked logan. "i am," said vidac. "governor hardy is now in the process of setting up roald currency. each of you will be allowed to borrow against future yields, a maximum amount of five thousand roald credits. this will be your beginning. if your crops fail"--vidac shrugged his shoulders--"you will forfeit your land holdings!" there was a storm of protest from the assembled farmers. they stood up in their chairs and hooted and howled. vidac faced them coldly. at last they fell silent and vidac was able to speak again. "i would advise you to consider carefully the proposal i've made here. your equipment--the equipment given to you by the solar alliance--has been lost. the chemicals which you are now being offered are the property of the official governing body of roald. we cannot give you the material. we can loan it to you, providing that you guarantee the loan with your future profits. all those interested may draw the necessary supplies from tad winters and ed bush in the morning." he turned and walked out of the hall. "we'll go to the governor!" shouted logan. "we won't be treated like this. we're free citizens of the solar alliance and under their jurisdiction. we know our rights!" suddenly tad winters and ed bush appeared, seemingly from nowhere. a sneering smile on his face, winters held two paralo-ray guns and covered the group of farmers while bush slipped up behind logan and hit him on the back of the neck. the elderly man sank to the floor. "now get this!" snarled winters to the colonists. "the joy ride is over! you take orders, or else!" chapter "what do you want?" growled ed bush. he stood at the air lock of the _polaris_, a brace of paralo-ray guns strapped to his side. "why ain't you out growing corn?" hyram logan smiled. he held out the books and study spools the cadets had given him on the trip out. "i wanted to return these to the cadets. they lent them to my son. he wants to be a space cadet when he's old enough." "i can think of a lot better things he could be," sneered bush. he jerked his thumb toward the entrance port of the giant spaceship. "all right, get aboard. you got a half-hour." logan entered the cruiser quickly and made his way to the cadets' quarters. tom was asleep. roger and astro were playing a game of checkers. when logan entered, the two cadets quickly forgot their game and turned to greet the farmer. "hiya, mr. logan!" said astro. "you saved me from doing a wicked deed." logan stared at the big cadet, puzzled. "how's that again, astro?" roger laughed. "he's joking, sir. i was about to clean him out in a game of checkers." logan sat wearily on the side of the nearest bunk. "i wish all i had to lose was a game of checkers." he quickly filled in the details of the meeting between vidac and the farmers. tom had awakened by this time and heard the last of the older man's story. he turned to his unit mates. "well, it looks as though we're right back where we started," he said. "and here i thought vidac was o.k. after the way he worked during the past ten days setting up roald city." "i've been talking to some of the other men," said logan bitterly. "they feel the same way i do. something's got to be done about this!" "but what?" asked roger. "and how?" chimed in astro. "force, by the stars!" yelled logan. "and when i say force, i mean throwing vidac and hardy and his crew out!" "you can't do a thing like that, sir," said tom. "it would be playing right into their hands. remember, vidac and hardy represent the solar alliance here on roald. if you tried force, you would be charged with rebellion against the solar alliance!" "well," snorted logan, "what have _you_ got in mind?" "when the enemy is in full control, mr. logan," said tom quietly, "the best thing to do is draw back and regroup, then wait for the right moment to attack. vidac wants you to revolt now. he's expecting it, i'm sure. but if we wait, he can't get away with making you mortgage your land holdings or your profits. somewhere along the line he'll slip up, and when he does, that's when we start operating!" meanwhile, in his luxurious office in the administration building, vidac sat behind a massive desk, talking to tad winters. "now that the land boundaries have been established, and the colonists have their little pieces of dirt," he said, "we can go right to work. i've told the farmers that they'll have to sign over half of their profits to get chemicals to farm with. they're already talking about revolt, which is just what i want them to do. let them rebel. we can throw them into the brig, send them back to earth, and take over their property in the name of the city of roald!" "which is you," said tad winters with a smile. "that's the smartest idea you've ever had, boss!" "in a short while," continued vidac, "the entire satellite will be mine. ships, houses--and--" suddenly the door opened and ed bush hurried into the room. "boss!--boss!" he shouted breathlessly. "logan is spilling everything to the space cadets!" "what?" cried vidac. "how did that happen?" "he came to the _polaris_," whined bush. "said he had some books and stuff he wanted to return, so i let him aboard. luckily i followed him and listened outside the door." "what did they talk about?" demanded vidac. "logan told them about the meeting with the farmers the other night. he wanted to get the colonists together to start a rebellion, but corbett convinced him it would be the wrong thing to do." "what?" yelled vidac. he rose and grabbed bush around the throat. "you dirty space crawler! you've ruined everything. all my plans messed up, because you let a hick and a kid outsmart you!" "i'm sorry, boss," bush whined. "i didn't know." "get out of here!" vidac snarled. "i should have known better than to jeopardize the whole operation by signing on a couple of space jerks like you two! get out!" the two men left hurriedly and vidac began to pace the floor. he was acutely aware that his scheme was out in the open. all of the careful planning to keep the cadets off balance and unsure of him until he could make his move was lost. he regretted not having gotten rid of them before, out in space, where unexplained accidents would be accepted. he had placed too much confidence in bush and winters and had underestimated the cadets. something had to be done--and fast! but it couldn't be anything obvious, or his plans of taking over roald would fail. the buzz of the teleceiver on his desk interrupted his train of thought and he flipped open the small scanner. "professor sykes to see you, sir," reported his aide in the outer office. "tell him to come back later," said vidac. "i'm busy." "he says it's very important," replied the aide. "all right--all right, send him in," snapped vidac and closed the key on the teleceiver irritably. a second later the door opened and professor sykes entered hurriedly. he was dirty and dusty from his ten-day stay in the desert wastes of the satellite. "vidac!" cried sykes excitedly. "i've just made the most tremendous discovery in the history of the solar alliance!" vidac eyed the professor calculatingly. he had never seen the old man excited before. "sit down, professor," he said. "you look as if you just walked through the new sahara on mars. here, drink this!" vidac offered the professor a glass of water and waited expectantly. sykes drank the water in one gulp and poured another glass before taking his seat. he began digging into his pouch and pulling out sheets of what appeared to be exposed film. he rummaged around for his glasses, and after adjusting them on his hawklike nose, began to sort the sheets of film. "when the instruments on the _polaris_ went crazy out in space," began sykes nervously, "i knew there was only one thing that could cause such a disturbance. radioactivity! as soon as we landed, i began to look for the source. at first i used a geiger counter. but i couldn't get an accurate count. the counter was as erratic as the instruments. so i tried film. here is the result." he handed the exposed film to vidac. "this film was protected by lead sheeting. it would take a deposit of pitchblende richer than anything i've ever heard of to penetrate the lead. but look at it! the film is completely exposed. the only thing that could do that is a deposit of uranium at least seventy-five per cent pure!" [illustration] vidac studied the films closely. "where is this strike?" he asked casually. "is it on land that has been parceled out to the colonists?" "i don't know whose land it's on. but i'm telling you this! it's going to make someone the richest man in the solar alliance!" sykes fumbled in his pouch again and this time brought out a dirty piece of paper. "this is a report giving the location and an assay estimate. it has to be sent back to the solar council right away. have communications with earth been established yet?" vidac shook his head and reached out for the report. "if what you say is true," he said coolly, "we can always send it back on the _polaris_." he took the report and read it over. he recognized immediately the danger of sykes's discovery. he laid the film and the report on his desk and faced the professor. "and you are absolutely sure of your findings?" sykes snorted. "i've been working with uranium all my life. and i should know a deposit like this when i see one!" vidac didn't answer. he turned to the teleceiver and flipped it on. "send winters and bush in here right away," he told the aide. "you going to send those two back with this report?" asked sykes. "personally i'd feel a lot safer if you'd send those space cadets and my assistant, jeff marshall. they may be young, but they can be depended on." "i'd rather send men _i_ can depend on, professor," said vidac. "as you say, the cadets are still quite young. and this report is too important to take chances." the door opened and winters and bush entered. vidac stuffed the report and the exposed film into a dispatch case and quickly sealed it. he handed it over to winters. "guard this with your life," said vidac seriously. "wait a minute," said sykes. "aren't you going to tell governor hardy about this?" "this is so important, professor," said vidac, "that i think we should get it off at once. there's plenty of time to tell the governor." "well, all right." sykes got up and stretched. "after almost two weeks in that desert, i'm ready for a nice clean bed and something to eat besides synthetics." he turned to winters and bush. "that pouch is worth more than any man ever dreamed of. be sure you guard it well!" "you can depend on us, professor," said winters. "yeah," said bush. "don't worry about a thing." the three spacemen watched the professor leave. as soon as the door closed, vidac grabbed the pouch out of winters' hand. his face hardened and his eyes were narrow slits. "you messed up one operation for me, but luck has given us another chance. if you mess this one up, i'll dump you into space for a long swim. now listen to me!" the two spacemen crowded close to vidac's desk. "sykes has just made the biggest discovery in the universe. it's worth billions! the cadets are in our way, and as long as the professor is alive, so is he! we're going to wipe them out. i want you to take the professor to that asteroid we spotted a few days ago and keep him there. i'm going to accuse the cadets of getting rid of the old man, so we can eliminate the cadets, the professor, and keep the uranium secret for ourselves. his report says it's located at section three, map eight. that's the property given to logan. after we get rid of the cadets and the professor, we'll have plenty of time to bounce old logan. this is the sweetest operation this side of paradise. and it's all mine!" "but what kind of proof will you have that the cadets did something to the old man?" asked winters. "getting rid of space cadets is a pretty tricky job." "tomorrow i'll assign the cadets to work with the professor again. that jerk, manning, has a sharp tongue. i'll set up something that will get them into an argument in the presence of some of the colonists. when sykes disappears right after that, we'll have witnesses to prove that manning was gunning for the old man!" "but how do you know that manning will get mad enough?" asked bush. vidac smiled. "i know manning. and besides, i know what i'm going to do, to _make_ manning blast his tubes!" [illustration] chapter the first real community problem came when it was learned that the entire supply of school study spools were lost in the crashed ships. there was talk among the colonists of sending a ship back to earth at once for replacements, but vidac stepped in and took over. he called a meeting with the three space cadets, jeff marshall, and professor sykes, and told them of his plan. "i want you to make new study spools on every subject you can remember," vidac ordered. "simple arithmetic, spelling, geography, celestial studies, physics, in fact, everything that you learned in prep school--and before that." "that may be all right for boys," grumbled professor sykes, still smarting under the refusal of his violent protest at being taken from his uranium studies and placed in charge of the school problem. "but what about the girls? there are quite a few of them and they need special consideration." "what kind of consideration?" asked vidac. "well, whatever it is a girl has to know. sew, cook, keep house, take care of children and--and--" the professor sputtered, hesitated, and concluded lamely, "a--a lot of things!" vidac smiled. "very well. i'll speak to a few of the mothers and see if i can't get you some assistance. in the meantime, i want you, corbett, manning, astro, and marshall to do what you can about beginning the children's schooling." "all right," snorted sykes, "but i can think of better ways to spend the next two or three weeks." "and one more thing, professor," continued vidac. "i want it clearly understood that you are responsible for the cadets. for what they do, or _don't_ do!" the faces of the three cadets began to flush under the sarcasm. "and i want you to pay particular attention to manning," vidac went on. "he seems to have the biggest mouth in the unit." "well, he'd better watch his step with me or he'll find himself in a space hurricane!" sykes said gruffly. vidac turned to roger, but the blond-haired cadet was staring down at his boots. vidac suppressed a smile. a few days under the whiplash tongue of sykes, who would be anxious to finish the project and return to his own studies, and manning would either buckle or flare up in open revolt. the lieutenant governor considered the possibilities and nodded in satisfaction. "that's all, professor sykes," he said, rising and then turning to the cadets. "and i'd advise you boys to give the professor all the aid you can." "yes, sir," said tom. "we understand. we'll do our best." "dismissed," said vidac. the three cadets and marshall saluted sharply and filed out of the room. but professor sykes hesitated and turned to vidac. "i'd like to speak to you a moment about the--ah--" "that's been taken care of, professor," replied vidac. "nothing to worry about." "has the complete report been sent back?" asked sykes. "i said it had been taken care of," answered vidac coolly. "that's all you have to know! dismissed!" sykes hesitated, nodded, and finally followed the cadets from the room. vidac turned and flipped on the intercom. "i want ed bush in here and i want him fast!" he barked. then, swinging his chair around, he gazed out the window. he could see the entire city of roald spread out before him and the sight filled him with pleasure. with the ownership of the uranium deposit and full control of the colony, mastery of the entire satellite and possibly the star system itself was only one short step away. the door opened and ed bush hurried breathlessly into the room. "you sent for me, boss?" he asked. vidac swung around to face his lieutenant. "how much do you know about electronics and astrophysics?" he snapped. "why, as much as the average guy, i guess," answered bush. "well, you're going to learn more," said vidac. he began to outline his plan quickly. "i want you to hang around sykes and the cadets on this new education project. they're going to make study spools for the colony kids. manning will be in charge of electronics and astrophysics. now here's what i want you to do...." while the lieutenant governor was outlining his plan to his henchman, the three cadets were entering their new quarters on the lower floor of the administration building. "can you imagine that guy?" asked astro. "picking on roger in front of professor sykes? he as good as told the professor to give roger a hard time!" as the big venusian slammed one hamlike fist into the other, tom nudged him in the ribs and then turned to roger with a smile. "don't worry about it, roger," said tom. "we've got a job to do. getting the school system going here on roald is important, and whether you like him or not, professor sykes is the best man to handle it." "i realize that, tom," said roger. "but i don't know how long i can--" jeff marshall suddenly appeared in the doorway of their quarters. "professor sykes wants to see us right away, fellows," he announced. "and watch your temper, roger. just do the best you can, and the professor will leave you alone." "you said it," agreed tom. "nothing in the universe talks as loudly as hard work. let's all show him." the three cadets followed the enlisted spaceman out of the room and headed toward sykes's quarters. tom's thoughts were confused. he wasn't sure of his feelings any more. so much had happened since their departure from space academy. then, suddenly, he realized that he hadn't sent his second report to captain strong. he wasn't even sure whether his first report had gotten through. he turned to astro and remarked casually, "i wonder what captain strong is doing right now?" "i don't know," replied astro. "but i sure wish he was here!" "say it again, spaceboy," growled roger. "say it again!" at that moment over fifty-five billion miles away, in his office high in the tower of galileo, commander walters was talking with captain steve strong and dr. joan dale. the stern-faced, gray-haired commander of space academy frowned as he read a report joan dale had just given him. "are you sure of this, joan?" he asked. "i'm positive, commander," replied the beautiful young doctor of astrophysics. "the tests are conclusive. there is uranium on roald!" [illustration] "but i don't understand why it wasn't discovered before this?" mused strong. "it's been nearly a year since the first exploratory expedition out to roald." "samplings of the soil of roald were taken from all sections of the satellite, steve," replied joan. "on-the-spot tests were made by the scientists of course, but there were no indications of uranium then. but cadets majoring in planetary geology tested the soil samples as part of their training. several of them reported uranium findings. and i checked all their examinations carefully, besides making further tests of my own. that report is the result." she indicated the paper on walters' desk. "but you say the deposit is probably a large one," walters protested. "how could it have been missed?" "not necessarily large, sir," said joan, "but certainly of the purest quality." walters looked up at strong. "well, steve?" "joan told me about it, sir," said strong. "and since an investigation is probably the next step, i came over, hoping you'd let me go along." he paused and looked at joan. "steve would also like to see his crew of space cadets." joan smiled. "he hasn't received a report from them yet, and i think he's worried they might be involved in some mischief!" "no report, eh?" asked walters. "no, sir," replied steve. "i thought one would be waiting for me when i got back from pluto. but there wasn't any." "ummmh!" mused walters. he looked at his calendar. "about time for them to send in a second report too. tell you what, steve. they might be having a tough time setting up things out there on roald. suppose you get things organized to investigate the uranium report. and if no word comes in from the cadets by the end of the week, then you can blast off." "thank you, sir," said strong. "will you excuse me, sir? i'd like to get to work right away." at walters' nod, strong saluted briskly and left the office. walters turned to joan. "you know, i don't think he's half as interested in finding a big uranium deposit as he is in seeing those boys!" * * * * * in four separate soundproof cubicles in a small office in the administration building on roald, the three space cadets and jeff marshall racked their brains to remember simple equations and formulas, knowledge learned years ago but long-since forgotten, for the more complicated subjects of space, time, and rocket travel. now, trying to recall simple arithmetic and other elementary studies, the cadets and marshall worked eighteen hours a day. speaking directly into soundscribers and filling what seemed to be miles of audio tape, the four spacemen attempted to build a comprehensive library of a hundred carefully selected subjects for the children of roald. professor sykes listened to the study spools as they were completed. he listened carefully, reviewed their work, edited it, and made notes for follow-up comment. then, at the end of the day, he would hold a final meeting with them, outline what he wanted the next day, and reject spools that he felt were not satisfactory. for older children's studies, the three cadets and jeff had divided their work into four classifications. roger covered electronics, astrophysics, astrogation, and allied fields. astro took charge of rockets, missiles, power machinery, and applied uses of atomic energy. jeff's work was biological, bacteriological, mineralogical, and geological. tom covered social studies, government, economy, and history. resting as comfortably as possible, each of the four spacemen would sit and think. and when he had gone as far back as he could in his memory of formal education and acquired knowledge, he would begin to talk into the soundscriber. of all the spools, tom's were edited the least. and professor sykes had unbent enough to compliment the curly-haired cadet for his lucid thinking and acute memory. astro's work needed the most editing. the giant venusian found it difficult to explain what he did when he repaired atomic power plants, or how he could look at a piece of machinery and know instinctively when it was out of order. he worked twice as hard as the others, simply because sykes made him do everything over. on the other hand, roger sailed along as smoothly as a jet boat. his grasp of the fundamentals in his field made it easy for him to fill the study spools with important information. jeff, too, found it easy to explain the growth of plants, the function of bacteria, the formation of planet crusts, and other allied subjects. so, day after day, tom, astro, roger, and jeff marshall spent their waking hours in the cubicles searching their minds for every last precious drop of knowledge they could impart to the children of roald. vidac's warning to professor sykes to keep an eye on roger had been forgotten by everyone in the concerted effort to do a good job. and when the cadets and jeff left their work one night after a loud argument between the professor and roger over the best way to explain the theory of captive planets, they thought nothing of it. the argument hadn't been unusual. it had happened many times on the same score. professor sykes was prone to favor dry, factual explanations. and the cadets believed some of the theories needed explanations in terms a youngster could understand. sykes did not object to this method, but was wary of losing facts and clarity in the method of instruction. in this particular case, roger had given in to sykes, but only after a heated argument. and when they went back to their quarters, there was none of the usual discussion. they were too tired. they fell asleep as soon as their heads touched their pillows. the next morning, still groggy, their heads filled with facts and figures, buzzing with dates and explanations, they returned to their cubicles for more of the same. sykes met them at the office door. "well, manning!" he snapped. "you still insist you know more, _and_ can teach better than i, eh?" he glowered at the cadet. "i don't understand, sir," said roger. "you don't, eh?" screamed sykes. "you came back here last night and changed that spool to _your_ liking!" "i did what?" asked roger, incredulous. only a few moments before he could hardly drag himself from his bunk. the idea of returning to the office before the required time was incredible. "i'm sorry, sir," he said, "but i only got out of bed a few minutes ago." ed bush and several colonists suddenly appeared and sykes whirled around to face them. "well! what do you want?" he demanded. "governor vidac said we could pick up some of the spools that were ready," said bush. "well, there isn't anything ready now," growled sykes. "when i'm finished, i'll let vidac know." he turned back to roger. "well, manning? what have you got to say for yourself?" "i don't know what you're talking about, sir!" answered roger. "cadet manning," shouted sykes, "do you remember our conversation last night on the subject of circular motion of captive planets around a sun star?" "yes, sir," said roger. "and do you recall your childish manner of explaining it?" sneered sykes. "now just a minute, sir," said roger, "i might be wrong--but--" "quiet!" the professor was screaming now. he turned around and inserted a study spool in a soundscriber. turning it on he waited, glaring at roger. the blond-haired cadet's voice came over the machine's loud-speaker clearly and precisely. " ... the idea of motion of one satellite around a mother planet, or planet around a sun star, can best be explained by the use of a rock tied to the end of a rope. if you swing the rope around your head, the rock will maintain a steady position, following a measured orbit. the planets, and their captive satellites, work on the same principle, with the gravity of the mother planet substituted for the rope, and the satellite for the rock...." sykes stopped the machine, turned, and glared at roger. "do you deny that that is your voice?" roger shook his head. "it's my voice all right but--" "_and_ do you deny that last night, before we left, it was decided that my explanation would be used?" roger's face reddened. "no, sir," he said tightly. "then how do you explain that _your_ voice with _your_ explanation is now on the master spool?" screamed sykes. "i--i--can't explain it, sir," said roger, fighting to control his temper. "i can!" snapped sykes. "you sneaked back in here last night and substituted your original recording--the one i threw out!" "but he couldn't have done that, professor," interjected tom. "he was asleep all night!" "were you awake all night, corbett?" asked sykes coldly. "no, sir," replied tom. "then you couldn't possibly know if he was sleeping or down here recording, could you?" "no, sir," said tom quietly. "cadet manning, this is the most disgusting, disgraceful performance i've ever seen by a space cadet!" "then you're calling me a liar, sir," said roger quietly, "when i deny that i did it." "can you explain it?" demanded sykes. roger shook his head and remained silent. "get out!" screamed sykes. "vidac warned me about you! go on! get out! i won't work with a liar and a cheat!" before anyone could stop him, roger leaped forward and stood in front of sykes, grabbing him by the front of his uniform. "i've had enough of your insults and accusations!" he shouted. "if you weren't an old man, i'd drag you out of that solar guard uniform and beat your ears off! you're so crazy, you make everyone around you nuts! if you have any complaints about my work, put them in writing and give them to the governor!" he turned and stalked out of the office. "roger, wait!" called tom, rushing after his unit mate with astro at his heels. the colonists began to whisper to each other excitedly, but ed bush merely stood in the doorway and smiled! [illustration] chapter "that's right," sneered winters. "professor sykes has disappeared and vidac wants to talk to you!" the burly spaceman stood in the open door of the cadets' quarters, legs spread apart, hands on the paralo-ray guns strapped to his side. tom, roger, and astro eyed the man sleepily. "say that again," said tom. "i said vidac wants to talk to you!" winters shouted. "now pile out of those bunks before i pull you out!" astro sat up and looked at winters. his voice rumbled menacingly. "i'll give you five seconds to get out of here," he said quietly. "and if you don't, i'll ram those ray guns down your throat! one--two--three--" winters tried to match astro's withering gaze and finally backed out the doorway. "vidac wants to see you on the double, and that means, _double!_" he disappeared from view. tom and roger were already out of their bunks and pulling on their uniforms. "what do you think?" asked roger, looking at tom. "i don't know, roger," said tom, "but i don't like the looks of it." astro jumped lightly to the floor. "i kinda wish winters had tried something," he said with a smile. "i need a little early-morning exercise." "good thing he didn't," commented roger dryly. "we're in enough trouble without you mauling one of vidac's pet boys." tom listened halfheartedly to the chatter of his unit mates. he was thinking ahead to their meeting with vidac. since roger's argument with the professor, they had continued their work, but under a severe strain. they had finally finished the series of study spools the night before, and tom felt sure that vidac had waited until the work was finished before he called them on the carpet. and then, too, there was the disappearance of professor sykes that winters had mentioned. the young cadet felt there was trouble ahead. a few moments later the three cadets presented themselves to vidac in his office in the administration building. the lieutenant governor was seated behind his desk and appeared to be very tired. tom saluted smartly and stepped forward. "_polaris_ unit reporting, sir," said tom. "where is professor sykes?" demanded vidac abruptly without even acknowledging the salute. "why, i--i don't know, sir," replied tom. "how about you, manning? astro?" asked vidac, turning to the other cadets. "you have anything to say?" "we only heard about it ten minutes ago, sir," volunteered roger. "i'll bet!" snapped vidac. he got up and stepped around his desk to face the cadets. "you three were the last ones to be seen with the professor. what happened last night?" "we finished the study spools and left him in the office, sir," said tom. "then we went for a swim in the pool and had a bite to eat before hitting the sack. that's all." "did anyone see you in the pool?" asked vidac. "i doubt it, sir. we didn't notice anyone around," said astro. "it was pretty late." "did anyone see you at the mess hall when you went to get a bite?" pursued vidac. "surely there must be someone who can substantiate your story." the three cadets looked at each other. "i guess not, sir," said roger. "it was pretty late. after midnight." vidac eyed them curiously. "and you're sure you saw no one, and that no one saw you?" "we can't be sure that no one saw us, sir," said tom, "but i doubt it. as roger said, it was after midnight." vidac whirled and sat down again. he pressed a small button on his desk and waited, silently considering the cadets, his eyes cool and level. the door opened and governor hardy walked in, followed by several men. tom suddenly realized that it was the first time they had seen the governor in nearly six weeks. "have you found professor sykes?" he demanded. vidac shook his head, then turned to the other men. tom, with a sudden sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, recognized them as the colonists who had been with ed bush when roger had his last argument with the professor. "did you hear cadet manning threaten professor sykes?" asked vidac. "yes, sir," replied one of the colonists. "what did he say?" asked vidac. "repeat it for governor hardy." the colonist quoted roger's threat almost word for word and tom noted grimly that the witness made the most of the fact that he and astro had followed roger out of the office after the argument. the implication was clear that they were part of the threat. vidac then turned to ed bush. "bush, did you see the cadets last night?" "yes, sir," said bush. "where?" demanded vidac. "leaving the swimming pool with the professor." "with the pro--!" exclaimed tom. "shut up, corbett!" barked vidac, and then turned to astro. "did you say you went swimming _alone?_" "we did!" exclaimed the venusian. "we left the professor at the office. we did not see him again after that. he did not go swimming with us." vidac turned to winters. "did you see the cadets last night, winters?" "yes, sir," replied the spaceman. "i had the graveyard watch and i was in the galley having a cup of coffee. i saw the cadets enter the galley just as i was leaving." "were they alone?" asked vidac. "no, sir," said winters. "professor sykes was with them." "that's a lie!" shouted roger. "we were alone!" vidac merely looked at roger and then turned back to winters. "then what happened?" "well," said winters, "they got into an argument, the cadets and sykes. it was about the movement of a captive planet, or something like that. anyway, there was a scuffle, and all of a sudden the big cadet"--he indicated astro--"picked up the professor and carried him out of the galley. the other two followed." "didn't the professor put up a fight?" asked vidac. "oh, yes, sir," said winters. "but he didn't have a chance against the three cadets." "why didn't you do something about it?" governor hardy suddenly broke in. "i tried, sir," replied winters calmly. "i ran after them, but they all piled into a converted jet boat and blasted out of there." "then what did you do?" asked vidac. "that's when i came to get you, sir," said winters. "and we started looking for them." winters paused. "ah--pardon me, sir, but can i go now? i've been up all night and i'm pretty tired." vidac nodded and winters left the room. "you mean you've been up all night looking for the cadets?" asked hardy. "weren't they in their quarters?" "no, sir," replied vidac and turned to the cadets. "well," he demanded, "what have you got to say for yourselves?" the three cadets were silent. "i must warn you," continued vidac, "this is a serious matter and anything you say may be used against you. but on the other hand, if you speak freely and are willing to co-operate, i will do what i can to lessen your punishment." hardy suddenly stepped forward and slammed his fist on vidac's desk. "none of that! there'll be no favors to criminals!" he turned to the cadets angrily. "what did you do with the professor?" he demanded. the cadets kept silent. "where did you take him?" he shouted. neither tom, roger, or astro batted an eyelash. they kept their eyes front and their lips tight. "i warn you, you'll spend the rest of your lives on a prison rock if you don't answer!" tom finally turned and looked straight at the governor. "may i speak, sir?" "only if you tell me what you did with professor sykes," replied hardy angrily. "you have not asked us, sir," said tom coolly, "to tell our side of the story. you are accusing us of a crime and have already assumed that we are guilty. we are not." [illustration: _bush pulled a paralo-ray gun from his belt and said, "all right, march!"_] "do you deny it?" asked hardy. "we deny everything," said tom flatly. hardy whirled around to face the colonists, vidac, and bush. "i want it clearly understood by everyone here that space cadets tom corbett, roger manning, and astro, in the face of testimony given by eyewitnesses as to their argument with professor sykes, and their later abduction of the professor, do now conspire to withhold information which might help save the professor's life!" he turned to vidac. "i want them arrested and held for investigation of their activities last night. confine them to their quarters." vidac stood up and nodded his head to bush. "take them away. keep a guard outside their quarters at all times." "yes, sir," said bush. he pulled a paralo-ray gun from his belt and cocked it. "all right, march!" the cadets of the _polaris_ unit spun on their heels in unison and marched from the room in perfect order. * * * * * "attention! attention! this is captain strong in rocket cruiser _orion_ calling central communications control, roald! come in, roald! _orion_ to roald! come in!" aboard the space cruiser, captain steve strong tried again and again to contact the star colony. for nearly five days, blasting through space at emergency speed, the solar guard captain had tried to contact the satellite, but to no avail. he snapped off the audioceiver and slumped back in his chair, a worried frown on his face. when the second report from the _polaris_ unit had failed to come in, strong had received permission from commander walters to blast off immediately for roald. walters agreed that it would be better for the captain to go alone, since the uranium discovery must be kept an absolute secret. working by remote control relays from the control deck, captain strong handled the ship as easily as a jet boat and he kept the atomic reactors wide open. he stared into the astrogation prism and sighted on the cold light of the sun star wolf . still unable to see the satellite circling the star, the captain's thoughts were on the past rather than the future. he still couldn't find any reasonable explanation for his suddenly having been taken off the roald colony project and sent on the minor mission to pluto. he had often thought about the man who had replaced him, paul vidac. strong had heard the name before and associated it with something unpleasant. he couldn't put his finger on what it was, since he had never met the man. certainly there was nothing illegal about him. his record had been carefully checked, or he would never have been put in the position of trust he held now. still there was a persistent notion in strong's head that something was wrong. the young captain turned and walked the deck of the huge empty ship, still deep in thought. he considered the fact that no reports had come through to the academy from the colony at all. not merely from the space cadets, but from the expedition itself. only the sketchiest details had been audioed back during the trip and absolutely nothing since their scheduled arrival on the satellite. a sudden cold wave of fear gripped the space officer. he wondered if they had arrived safely! he shook off the horrible thought. there must be a simple, logical explanation for it all. establishing a star colony was no easy matter. communications could be easily disrupted for any number of reasons. strong forced himself to forget it. it was still a long way to the satellite and there was no point in worrying about a fact until it was established to be a fact. he stretched out on a bunk and moments later was asleep, while the giant ship hurtled through the dark void toward its destination with a thousand electronic hands and eyes to guide it safely across the immense gulf of space. [illustration] chapter "is he still out there?" tom whispered. "yeah," growled astro. "he hasn't moved." "they're not taking any chances," said roger. "when they change the guard, they take out their ray guns, just in case." the three cadets were crowded around the door of their quarters with astro down on his hands and knees, trying to see through a small crack. the big cadet straightened up and shook his head. "i guess it's useless," he sighed. "vidac is making sure we stay here." "well," said roger disgustedly, "if we don't get out pretty soon, we won't--" he didn't finish the sentence. at that moment the door suddenly opened and bush stepped in, two paralo-ray guns in his hands, cocked and ready to fire. behind him was hyram logan and his daughter, jane. "you got ten minutes," said bush, "and one funny move out of any of you and i'll blast you silly." he closed the door and the click of the lock could be heard ominously. "mr. logan!" exclaimed tom. "how'd you manage to get in here?" "sonny," replied the venusian farmer, "when you're dealing with crooks, you have to act like a crook!" he smiled and added, "i bought my way in here!" "you mean that vidac doesn't know you're here?" asked astro. "no," said jane. "but we had to come. vidac was going to--" she stopped and turned to her father. "maybe you'd better tell them, father." "well," said logan slowly, "we just heard that vidac is going to hold trial for you three boys right here on roald." "trial!" exclaimed astro. "how'd you find that out?" asked tom. "they called all the colonists together and gave us pieces of paper with numbers on them," said logan. "then they put all the numbers into a bowl and picked twelve of them out again. the people that held those numbers were told that they were going to be the jury at your trial for the murder of professor sykes!" "murder?" exclaimed roger. "blast my jets!" roared astro. "they can't do that! we're under solar guard jurisdiction!" "that's what i told them," snorted logan. "you see, my number was pulled. i got up and opened my big mouth. i should have kept quiet and sat on the jury, and then had my say where it would have meant something!" "then they took you off the jury?" asked roger. "yep," said logan. "me and everyone else they thought might be prejudiced!" "we came to tell you," said jane, "because we wanted you to know what was going on and to see if there was anything we could do to help." "we already tried to help in a lot of ways," said logan. "we tried to get that space jerk outside to let you escape. i offered him--well, i offered him a lot, but he wouldn't do it." "what are you going to do?" asked jane, looking at tom. "i don't know, jane," said tom. "but we've certainly got to do something. if we ever stand trial here on roald--" tom was interrupted by a loud banging on the door, followed by the click of the lock. then the door was opened and bush stepped inside. "all right, logan," said bush. "time's up!" "but--but," complained logan, "we've only been here two minutes!" "time's up, i said," sneered bush. he raised his ray guns threateningly. "well, i guess we'd better go," said logan. he turned and shook hands with each of the cadets. "good luck, boys," he said with a smile. "don't worry. we'll find someway of getting you out of this mess!" "thanks for telling us, sir," said tom. "telling you what?" demanded bush. "that the world is round and that you're a square-headed space crawler," said roger casually. "a real big mouth, eh!" snarled bush. "why, i oughta--" he raised his guns again, but just at the moment jane walked into the line of fire and stood there quietly. bush stepped back. it was just enough to break the tension. "go on!" bush growled. "get out of here!" "don't get rough," said logan, "or i might tell your boss you took a bribe to let us see the cadets!" with a parting wink at the boys, he followed jane out. just as bush started to close the door, tom stepped forward. "how about something to eat," he demanded, "and some story tapes to pass away the time?" "yeah," said roger, picking up tom's cue, "and we don't want anything you'd select either. it might be too infantile! send jeff marshall up here so we can get what we want!" "i'll see about it," sneered bush, slamming the door behind him. "are you thinking what i'm thinking?" roger asked tom. "yes. if there is anyone we can trust, it's jeff. let's hope that space jerk outside comes through!" "well," growled astro, "if worse comes to worse, we can always jump him." "uh--uh," said tom, shaking his head. "we wouldn't get past the first corridor. if we escape, and we will, we've got to have help from someone on the outside!" "but won't they be watching jeff too?" asked astro. "sure they will, but we've got to take that chance. if vidac holds us for trial here on roald, and we're convicted, the only place for a review of the case will be the solar council chamber back on earth." "well, what's wrong with that?" asked astro. "i'll tell you what's wrong with it," said roger. "before the case would come up for a review, we would have already spent at least two years on a prison rock!" meanwhile, in his office in the administration building, lieutenant governor vidac listened with mounting apprehension to a report from the communications control officer of roald. "we just received a message from captain strong aboard the solar guard cruiser _orion_ requesting landing data here on roald," the voice crackled impersonally over the teleceiver. "how far out is he?" asked vidac, suddenly growing pale. "he should arrive within four hours." "all right," said vidac, regaining his composure. "give him all the information he needs." "what about the instrument disturbance?" "tell him everything." "yes, sir," replied the control officer, and the teleceiver screen went blank. vidac got up and began to pace the floor, pondering the reasons for strong's sudden unannounced visit. he could be coming to check on the space cadets, he thought. or it might be a routine check of the progress of the colony. or he might know about the uranium. there had been an investigation of the soil on the satellite by the original expedition. but if they had known anything about it, reasoned vidac, it would have been claimed for the solar alliance. no, vidac shook his head. he's not here to investigate the uranium, he's here either to check on the cadets or make a routine inspection of the colony. and if it's the former, he'd give strong enough proof to bury the cadets on a prison rock for life. vidac turned to the teleceiver. "get the spaceport," he ordered. "tell the spaceport officer to prepare a welcoming party to blast off in ten minutes. they will meet captain strong of the solar guard in the cruiser _orion_. communications control will give them his position." he flipped off the teleceiver and settled back in his chair, smiling. nothing in the world like a big fuss to throw a man off guard, he thought. and steve strong, as the first visitor from earth since the colony was founded, would get a tremendous welcome! * * * * * " ... are you sure?" asked tom, his face brightening. "you heard it yourself?" jeff marshall smiled. "roald is going crazy. they're preparing the biggest welcome for a spaceman since jon builker's return from his first trip in space!" "boy," said astro, "what a break!" he slapped roger on the back. "we'll be out of this can an hour after captain strong lands!" "i knew you wanted me to help you try to escape," said jeff. "i had already begun to make plans." "no need for that now," said tom. "if we tried to escape, we'd be doing the very thing vidac would want us to do. he could say it was an admission of guilt." roger agreed with a nod of his head. "there's only one thing that bothers me now." "what's that?" asked astro. "professor sykes," he said. "we've been so worried about our own necks, we've forgotten about him." "well," said astro, "what about him?" "what really happened to him," mused roger, "and why?" "i wish i knew," said tom. "but i'll bet vidac knows." "sure," agreed roger. "but i still say why and what?" the blond-haired cadet looked around at the faces of his friends. there was no reply to his question. * * * * * every citizen of roald, man, woman, and child, was at the spaceport to watch the giant cruiser _orion_ settle slowly to the ground. vidac watched it through squinting eyes. he had secretly hoped that the uranium disturbances would cause the ship to crash, thus eliminating his difficulties before they could begin, but he couldn't help admiring the way the big cruiser was handled. when the hatch opened and captain strong stepped out, resplendent in his black-and-gold uniform, there was a spontaneous roar of welcome from the ground. vidac stepped forward immediately to greet the solar guard officer. "i'm paul vidac, captain strong. lieutenant governor of roald. governor hardy is very busy and asked me to welcome you and to convey his apologies for not greeting you personally." "thank you," said strong and shook hands with vidac. he turned around and looked over the crowd. "but i seem to be missing several other welcomers." "ah, i presume you mean the space cadets," stammered vidac. strong looked at the lieutenant governor. "yes, i mean the space cadets. where are they?" vidac tried to meet strong's level gaze, but his eyes fell away. "they are under arrest!" he said finally. "arrest!" cried strong. "for what?" "the murder of professor sykes." "murder? professor sykes?" asked strong. "explain yourself!" "this is hardly the place to discuss it. shall we go to my office?" asked vidac. "where is the professor's body?" asked strong. "it hasn't been found yet," replied vidac uneasily. "then how can the cadets be charged with murder if you can't produce a body?" demanded strong. vidac paused a moment. he was thrown off guard by strong's shrewd observation. "they are also being held for abduction of the professor," said vidac. "we have eyewitnesses." "take me to them," said strong. "i'm afraid that will be impossible at the moment," said vidac. "the colonists are expecting a little show for their enthusiastic welcome." "take me to the cadets," strong demanded. "and that means immediately!" vidac wavered under the solar guard captain's withering gaze. he nodded and turned away. as strong pushed through the crowd of welcoming colonists, someone tugged at his sleeve and whispered into his ear. "don't believe all you hear!" strong turned to see the face of hyram logan. before he could reply, logan disappeared into the crowd. "well, captain strong? are you coming?" asked vidac. strong turned and followed him through the crowd. he could feel danger on this satellite. he could feel it and he could read it in the faces of the people around him. [illustration] chapter "i'll leave you here," said vidac to captain strong as the two spacemen stood in front of the administration building. "take the slidestairs up to the seventh floor. first corridor to the left. there will be a guard outside their door. give him this note and there won't be any trouble." strong looked at the lieutenant governor coolly. "there better not be," he said. "that's a strange attitude to take, captain," said vidac. "vidac," said strong coldly, "i want you to know right now that i don't like this setup. there are many things cadets might be, but they are not kidnappers or murderers!" "i intend to prove otherwise!" asserted vidac. "i figured you would," said strong, "but you still have to produce professor sykes's body." "don't worry, captain." vidac smiled. "my men are searching for it now. we'll find it." "when you do, vidac," said strong grimly, "and he happens to be alive, make sure he stays that way, eh?" the solar guard captain wheeled and entered the administration building before vidac could answer. inside, he found the slidestairs and rode up to the seventh level. taking the first corridor to the left, he rounded a corner to find ed bush standing in front of the door to the cadets' quarters. as he approached, bush took out his paralo-ray gun and held it on strong. "that's far enough, mister," said bush. "do you realize what you're doing?" demanded strong. "never mind what i'm doing," snapped bush. "who are you and what do you want?" "you'd better get spacewise, mister! it's against the law to hold a weapon on an officer of the solar guard! i'm captain strong and i want to see the cadets!" "no one gets inside without a pass from governor vidac," bush answered surlily. strong pulled out the note and handed it over brusquely. bush glanced at it and handed it back. "o.k.," he said. "you got ten minutes." he unlocked the door and stepped aside. strong was furious at this treatment. but he held his temper in check, realizing he had to talk to the cadets first and find out what had happened. he would deal with bush later. he stepped past bush and opened the door. "_polaris_ unit--stand to!" he yelled. seated around the table, the three cadets stared at their captain in disbelief, then instinctively rose and snapped to attention. their backs were straight and their eyes forward, but it was impossible for them to keep smiles off their faces. suppressing his own elation, strong managed to stride in front of them in mock inspection, but then could no longer hold back an answering smile. "unit--stand easy!" like three happy puppies the cadets swarmed over their skipper, pounding him on the back, grabbing his hands, and mauling him until he had to cry out for peace. "take it easy," he cried. "relax, will you! you'll tear me apart!" "you're the happiest sight i've seen in weeks, sir!" shouted tom. "yeah," drawled roger, grinning from ear to ear. "i couldn't be happier if you had brought along a ship full of space dolls!" "when did you get here, sir?" asked astro. "why didn't you let us know?" the questions tumbled out of the boys' mouths thick and fast, and strong let them chatter until their initial burst of elation had worn itself out. then, after quickly bringing them up to date on all news of the academy, and news of earth, he pulled up a chair and faced them solemnly. the three cadets braced themselves to tell him about their experiences since leaving atom city. "there's a lot to tell, sir," began tom. "but we're only going to give you the facts as we know them, sir. and then let you decide." then starting from the beginning, when they were first relieved of their stations on the _polaris_ on the way out to the satellite, the three cadets related their experiences with vidac, hardy, and professor sykes. they ended with a detailed account of their being held for the disappearance of the professor. "and you say that the colonists were forced to pay for their food on the trip out?" asked strong incredulously. "yes, sir," said tom. "and later, after the ships crashed, there was a shortage of farm tools and equipment, which meant that the colonists would have to farm with chemicals. vidac made them sign over part of their future profits and mortgage their land holdings to get the chemicals." "and four hundred ships crashed in landing? hasn't anybody figured out why yet?" strong asked. roger shook his head. "the instruments just went out, sir," he said. "i never saw anything like it, and when the professor wanted to go down in a jet boat first to investigate, vidac insisted on taking the _polaris_ down, anyway. he brought her in by the seat of his pants...." "only because tom took over when he got cold feet," chimed in astro. "yeah," agreed roger. "but the others couldn't do it. they just splashed in." "and there hasn't been any explanation of why the instruments went out?" "i haven't heard any, sir," said astro. "professor sykes started out right after we landed to investigate the satellite, but i never heard anything more about it. when i asked him one day if he had found anything, he told me to mind my own business." "and now you're accused of abducting and murdering the professor," mused strong. "that's it, sir," said tom. "as i said, we didn't want to give you anything but the facts as we know them. there are a lot of incidents that would show vidac is trying to pull something funny, but nothing that could be proved." strong nodded. "well, it certainly looks as though vidac is--" strong was suddenly interrupted by bush who stepped into the room arrogantly, paralo-ray gun in hand. "time's up!" he yelled, waving the gun at strong. "i've warned you about holding a weapon on a solar guard officer," snapped strong, rising to face the man. "either put that thing away or use it." [illustration: _"hasn't anybody figured out why four hundred ships crashed in landing?" strong asked._] bush glanced at the smiling cadets and turned back to strong. "your time is up," he growled. "get out!" "i said," replied strong coldly, "either use that thing or put it away!" bush glared at strong, but the gun in his hand began to waver. "i said your time's up!" he repeated, but there was considerably less conviction in his voice. suddenly strong stepped forward and grabbed the man's wrist, forcing the gun down. as bush started to struggle, strong tightened his grip, and the victim's face grew white with pain. slowly bush's fingers opened and the paralo-ray weapon dropped to the floor. "now pick it up and get out of here!" barked strong, releasing bush's arm. "i'm going to stay with the cadets as long as i want. and if you ever pull a gun on me again, i'll make you eat it!" he turned his back to bush and faced the cadets again. bush dove for the gun, raised it threateningly, then suddenly walked out of the room, slamming the door as hard as he could. the cadets sighed in relief and strong smiled. "let's see what vidac makes of that," he said. "now, let's get down to business. there's only one thing i can do right now." "yes, sir?" asked tom, waiting attentively. "i'm going to talk with a few of the colonists and see what else i can pick up. meantime, you just take it easy. and if that space jerk outside gives you any trouble"--strong paused and smiled--"show him a few of your wrestling tricks, astro." the big venusian nodded enthusiastically. "my pleasure, captain." strong stood up and shook hands with each of them. "from what you've told me," he said, "i think i should see hyram logan first." "yes, sir," said tom. "he's sort of the spokesman for the rest of the colonists. he can give you a lot of information." "good!" said strong. "where will i find him?" tom gave directions and the captain left the three cadets with a smile. "don't worry. we'll see this through. in a short while you'll be on duty again." a half-hour later, in one of the converted jet boats, steve strong sped along the smooth broad streets and flat level highways of the colony. he was heading for the logan farm and the long drive through the roald countryside would ordinarily have been interesting and enjoyable. but the solar guard captain was preoccupied with his own thoughts. a name kept repeating itself over and over in his mind. hardy--hardy--hardy. why hadn't the governor done something about vidac? where was he when the colonists were forced to pay for their food? why hadn't he checked on the cadets' statement that their report hadn't been sent out? strong made a mental note to check the logbook of the _polaris_ when he returned. suddenly, ahead of him, he saw a young boy walking along the highway. he slowed down and stopped beside him. "hello, sonny," called strong with a smile. "can you tell me where i can find the logan farm?" the boy stared at strong, eyes wide. "sure thing, mister, er--i mean--captain. i'm billy logan." "well, hop in, billy!" said strong. "i'll give you a lift!" "thanks," replied the boy and jumped in beside strong. "it's about a mile up the road, then we turn off." he couldn't keep his eyes off strong's black-and-gold uniform. "i'm going to be a space cadet when i get old enough," he gulped breathlessly. "you are?" asked strong. "that's fine. you have to study very hard." "i know," said billy, "i'm starting already! tom, roger, and astro lent me books and study spools to work on. why, i bet i know every single academy regulation right now!" strong laughed. "i wouldn't be surprised!" "we turn off here," said billy, indicating a narrow road branching off the main highway. "we live about three miles down. out in the wilderness. by the stars, it's so lonely out here sometimes, i wish i was back on venus!" "if you want to be a spaceman," said strong, "you have to learn not to be lonely. why, i just made a trip out from atom city all by myself. didn't bother me a bit!" "you did?" cried billy. "gosh!" he was so awed by strong's solo trip out to the satellite that he remained silent the rest of the trip. a few moments later strong pulled up at a small crystal structure, just off the road. he had no sooner stopped, than billy was out of the car yelling to his father and sister at the top of his voice that they had a visitor. hyram logan came from around the back of the house to greet strong, and jane, who had been busy in the kitchen preparing supper, came to meet the young officer, wiping her hands on her apron. "mighty glad to see the solar guard remembered we're out here," said logan as he led strong into the house. seated comfortably in the living room, strong brought up the purpose of his visit right away. "i've just finished talking to the cadets, mr. logan, and they've been telling me some strange stories about vidac and governor hardy. i'd like to hear what you have to say about it." "i can say everything in one sentence, captain," snorted logan. "those space crawlers are trying to take everything we have away from us!" and for three hours strong listened as the venusian farmer talked. when the farmer had finished, strong asked only one question. "why didn't governor hardy do something?" "i can't explain that," said logan. "when we were forced to pay for our food on the way out, we signed a petition and sent it to the governor. but we never heard anything about it. of course vidac could have intercepted it." "well, thank you, mr. logan," said strong, getting up. "won't you stay for supper, captain?" asked jane. "yeah, please stay, sir," pleaded billy. "i'd like to hear about your trip out here all by yourself." strong laughed. "some other time, billy." he ruffled the lad's hair. "i have to get back and see if the cadets are all right." a few moments later strong was speeding along the superhighway back toward the city. there was only one thing on his mind--to get the cadets out of the trap they were in. but it would be a hard job. vidac had witnesses against them. he mentally probed the situation further. why would vidac abduct professor sykes? surely not to frame the cadets. he must have wanted to be rid of sykes too. sykes must have known something. but what? strong suddenly thought of the professor's investigation of the landing disturbance. it could only have been the result of radioactivity in a large mass. so the professor must have discovered a large deposit of uranium. strong's mind raced on. sykes would have taken the report to vidac or hardy, or both, and-- strong forced himself to stop thinking. he was violating one of the cardinal laws of the solar alliance. he was presuming that vidac or hardy was guilty--and he didn't have an atom's worth of proof. there was only one way to get the proof. the cadets would have to escape to find it. * * * * * strong sidled around the corner of the corridor. down at the end of the hall, still standing in front of the cadet's door, bush leaned against the wall, idly picking his teeth. strong realized that he would have to sneak up behind the guard. he couldn't afford to be seen. he had to wait until bush turned around. he waited and watched while the man shifted from one foot to the other. and after what seemed like hours, bush shifted his position and turned his back on the solar guard officer. strong quickly darted around the corner and ran lightly down the hall. if bush turned around now, strong would be frozen stiff by the paralo ray. with ten feet to go, the captain lunged at bush in a diving tackle, sending the man sprawling face forward. in a flash he was on top of him, and with a quick snapping blow on the back of the neck he knocked the man cold. strong snatched up the paralo-ray gun, then unlocked the door and threw it open. the cadets were sprawled on their bunks, listening to a story spool. "captain strong!" yelled tom. "quiet!" ordered strong. "you've got three minutes. you'll find a jet car at the side entrance of the building. i can't explain now, but get out of here!" "but what do you want us to do?" asked tom. the three cadets were already grabbing their clothes and other items they would need. "the only way you're going to prove that you didn't abduct or murder the professor is to find him," said strong. "and pray to your stars that he's still alive. if he isn't, it'll be up to you to find out who killed him!" "but what about you, sir?" asked roger. "won't vidac know that you helped us?" "undoubtedly," said strong. "after what i said to the guard today, vidac will arrange for a hundred witnesses to prove that i helped you escape. you'll have to bring back the professor, not only to save your own necks, but my neck as well." the three cadets nodded. "all right," said strong. "spaceman's luck, and remember, you'll be wanted criminals when you walk out of that door. so act like criminals. fight them the same way they will fight you. this is not a space maneuver. it's your lives against theirs!" without another word, the three cadets slipped out of the room and disappeared down the corridor. strong took a last look at bush lying unconscious on the floor and hurried silently back to the front of the building. his heart was racing with excitement. the ball had begun to roll. [illustration] chapter "where do we cut off?" asked vidac. he sat beside winters in the converted jet boat, speeding down the smooth highway that strong had passed over only a few minutes before. "it's right along here, somewhere," said winters. "better slow down," said vidac. "we don't want to miss it. we haven't much time. if strong starts nosing around he might discover something." "lucky for us we found out so quickly where the uranium is," replied winters. "it won't mean a thing unless we can get logan to sign over his land holdings." winters braked the jet car suddenly, throwing vidac up against the windshield. "what are you doing?" snapped vidac. "sorry, boss," replied winters. "there's the road leading to the logan place up ahead." winters slowed for the turn off the main highway and then accelerated to full power again on the side road. "how are you going to get old logan to sign the release?" asked winters. "suppose he knows his land is worth about ten billion credits?" "how could he know?" asked vidac. "the only ones that know are me, you, bush, and sykes." winters nodded. "then as soon as we get logan to sign over the land, we take care of sykes, bring back his body as proof against the cadets, and everything's set, eh?" "something like that," said vidac. "we still have to watch our step with strong, though," said vidac. the two men were silent as the jet car raced down the side road. a moment later they could see the lights in the small crystal farmhouse. "cut your lights," said vidac. "we don't want to scare them." "o.k.," replied winters. he switched off the powerful beams and slowed the car to a crawl. they rolled past the outer farm buildings and came to a stop in front of the main house. "say, boss," said winters suddenly. "look! tracks in the road! car tracks! somebody's been out here! logan doesn't have a car!" "so what?" snarled vidac. "get hold of yourself. it could have been anyone." a powerful light from the farmhouse suddenly flooded them and logan's voice cracked in the night air. "who's there?" called the farmer. "good evening, mr. logan," said vidac, climbing out of the car. "this is the governor." "vidac!" said logan, startled. "what do you want?" "this is what we want!" snarled winters, whipping his ray gun into view. "get back inside!" "wha--?" gasped logan. "what's the meaning of this?" "you'd better do as the man says, mr. logan," said vidac. jane suddenly appeared behind logan, her hands still soapy from washing the supper dishes. "who is it, father?" she asked, and then seeing vidac and winters she stepped back inside the house. "nothing to get alarmed about," said vidac, pushing logan into the house before him. "we just want to have a little talk." he smiled. "business talk." "isn't it too bad, winters," said vidac, "that we just missed supper?" "what do you want?" demanded logan belligerently. he stepped in front of jane protectively. "now don't get excited mr. logan," said vidac, his voice smooth. "we just want you to sign a little paper, that's all." "what kind of paper?" asked logan. "say," said winters suddenly, "ain't you got a kid?" "if you mean my son, billy," said logan, "he's asleep." "i'd better check," said winters, starting forward. "never mind him," said vidac. "we haven't got all night and there's nothing a kid could do." he pulled out a paper from his pocket and unfolded it, keeping his eyes on logan. "mr. logan, we're going to foreclose your mortgage." "foreclose!" gasped logan. "but--but i haven't even had time to gather in my first crop!" "we've taken a look at your fields and we don't think you're doing a good job," said vidac. "in this mortgage you signed there's a clause that states i can foreclose any time i want." "but how can you judge a crop by just looking at the fields?" asked jane. "oh, we have ways, miss logan." vidac smiled. he walked to a near-by table, and pushing a stack of study spools to the floor, spread the paper in front of him. he looked up at logan and indicated the paper. "do you have a pen, or would you like to use mine?" "i'm not signing anything until i read it," snapped logan. vidac smiled and pushed the paper across the table. logan came forward and picked it up. he scanned it hurriedly and then glared at vidac. "you can't do this!" he snapped. "i won't sign!" winters suddenly leaped across the room and grabbed jane by the wrist, jamming his gun in her back. vidac leered at the farmer. "have you ever been frozen by a ray gun, mr. logan?" logan shook his head. "let me tell you about it," said vidac coolly. "the effects are very simple, but very powerful. you are paralyzed! you can still see, hear, think, and breathe. your heart continues to beat, but otherwise, you are absolutely powerless. the aftereffects are even worse. the person who has been frozen comes out completely whole, but"--vidac suddenly shuddered--"believe me, mr. logan, you feel like ten thousand bells were vibrating in your brain at one time. it isn't pleasant!" "why--why--are you telling me this?" asked logan. "you wouldn't want to see your daughter undergo such an experience, would you?" "if--if i sign the paper," stammered logan, "will you leave jane alone?" "i give you my word as a spaceman that nothing will happen to her. in fact, when you sign, you will continue to work the farm as before. only you'll be working for me. i wouldn't want to deprive you of your livelihood." suddenly the door to the bedroom opened and young billy burst into the room, clad only in his pajamas. "don't sign, pa!" he screamed. "wait and tell captain strong first!" "strong!" exclaimed vidac. "has he been here?" logan nodded his head, and taking vidac's pen, started to sign the paper. "no--no, don't, pa!" cried billy. "don't--!" logan paid no attention and finished signing. a look of deep hurt filled the boy's eyes. "a--a spaceman--" he stammered, "a solar guardsman would never have given up!" crying, he turned away and buried his head in his sister's arms. logan silently gave vidac the paper and turned away. "thank you, mr. logan," said vidac with a smile. "that's all. good night!" he turned and motioned for winters to follow him. "come on. let's get back to the city!" billy, jane, and their father silently watched the two men leave the house. even as the roar of the super-charged jet car faded away in the distance, they still stood in silence. finally logan turned to his son and daughter. "there ain't but one thing left to do. go back to venus as soon as we can get passage. i'm sorry, billy, but--" "that's all right, pa," said billy. "i guess i would have done the same thing--for jane." * * * * * "can't you get any more out of this jalopy?" asked roger. astro shook his head. "i've got her wide open now!" the big cadet sat hunched over the steering wheel of the small jet car strong had used a short time before, racing along the same smooth highway toward the spaceport on the other side of the hills. tom was wedged in between astro and roger, his eyes straight ahead on the road. "where do we start first?" asked roger. "we've got to get a ship. the _polaris_, if possible. we can't begin to look for the professor without one. as soon as vidac learns that we've escaped, the whole satellite will be crawling with colonists and his boys, looking for us." [illustration: _"we better take it easy, astro," said tom. "turn off the lights."_] "colonists!" cried astro. "why would they want to help him?" "vidac will think of something to convince them that we're dangerous criminals," said roger grimly. "tom's right. we've got to get the _polaris_." they were just leaving the crystal city behind them and winding through the hill section surrounding the flat plain. astro's handling of the jet car was perfect as he took the curves in the road at full throttle. they still had a long way to go to reach the spaceport that had been built on the other side of the hills. "you sure did a fine job of conversion on these jet boats," said tom to astro. "this baby feels as though she was going to take off." "i wish it was," said roger, looking up at the hills on either side of them. "it would be a lot easier to blast over these things than go through them." the car sped up to the last summit that separated them from the spaceport. "we'd better take it easy," said tom. "turn off the lights, astro. we'll ditch this jet car about a mile from the spaceport and walk the rest of the way." "right," said astro. he gunned the little vehicle for the last burst of speed necessary to take them over the top. the jet car shuddered under the extra power and a moment later the spaceport lay spread before them. below them, in a five-mile circle, they could see the few remaining ships of the great fleet. the _polaris_ was easily recognized, and fortunately, was on the nearer side of the giant landing area. "there's home," said roger. "yes," agreed tom. "and she sure looks good to me--" the curly-haired cadet suddenly stopped as powerful headlights loomed on the highway ahead. "that's vidac's jet car," said roger. "i recognize the lights. we've got to get out of here!" astro braked the small vehicle and it screamed to a stop. the three cadets hastily piled out and raced for the darkness of the surrounding hills. no sooner had they disappeared than vidac's jet car slammed to a stop beside the deserted jet car. in a flash vidac was out of the seat and examining the vehicle. he turned to winters, holding a small disk in his hand. "tom corbett's identification tag!" said vidac. "the cadets have escaped! organize a search! the orders are _shoot to kill!_" [illustration] chapter governor hardy was not to be found. strong made inquiries around the administration building and among the colonists but he could find no trace of the governor. the only thing strong learned was that hardy had spent the last two weeks wandering around in the outlying wilderness areas of the satellite, alone, apparently searching for something. but the solar guard captain realized that it would be a waste of time to race around the planet searching aimlessly for the governor. he became more and more convinced that hardy was hiding. his suspicions were increased when he found vidac waiting for him in the deserted lobby of the administration building with a warrant for his arrest. the warrant had been signed by hardy. "before i place myself in your hands," said strong, "i want to see the governor." "considering that you committed a crime by aiding the escape of the space cadets," said vidac, "that will not be possible." "i demand to see the governor!" vidac turned to winters who was standing by his side. "take him," he ordered. winters whipped out his paralo-ray gun, and before he could move, a paralyzing charge froze the solar guard captain in his tracks. "take him to my quarters," said vidac. "and stay with him. i'm going to organize a searching party and find those cadets." "right," said winters. as vidac walked away, winters picked up the paralyzed body of the solar guard officer and carried him awkwardly to the slidestairs. though under the effects of the paralo-ray, strong's mind still continued to function. even as winters carried him across his shoulder like a stick of wood, strong was planning his escape. he figured winters would release him from the ray charge once inside vidac's quarters and he was ready to go into action. winters opened the panel to vidac's spacious office and carried strong through to the other side where the lieutenant governor's sleeping quarters were located. he put the helpless man down on the bed, and stepping back to the panel, flipped on the neutralizer of the ray gun. he fired, releasing strong from the frozen suspension. strong felt the jolts of the neutralizer charge but he clamped his teeth together to keep them from chattering and stayed rigid. he had to remain still, as if the neutralizer charge had not released him, in order to make his plan work. winters waited for strong to move, and when he didn't, stepped closer, prodding him with the barrel of the gun. in a flash strong leaped up and grabbed the ray gun. twisting it out of the surprised man's hand, he brought the weapon down on the man's neck. winters dropped to the floor like a stone. then strong scrambled to his feet and cold-bloodedly turned the ray on winters, blasting him into immobility. he turned grimly toward the panel and raced to the slidestairs. if vidac had a warrant for his arrest, signed by hardy, then vidac knew where hardy was. if he could follow the lieutenant governor, he might possibly learn just where the mystery of roald began and who was after what and why. * * * * * after leaving the jet car and climbing into the desolate hills surrounding roald city, tom, roger, and astro watched from the safety of a ridge the quick search vidac and winters had made to find them. when the two men had returned to the superhighway and blasted back toward the city, taking both jet cars, the three boys made their way slowly through the night down the opposite side of the hills and headed for the logan farm. when the sun star rose over the satellite's horizon, the three boys were stretched out flat on their stomachs in a field, watching the morning activity of jane, billy, and hyram logan about the farm. "think we can get them to help us?" asked roger. "it's the only thing we can do," said astro. "if they won't, we might as well give ourselves up. i'm so hungry i could eat a whole cow!" "what kind of a cow?" asked roger. "there aren't any on roald, remember? we drink synthetic milk." "i could even eat a synthetic cow!" was astro's grim rejoinder. "come on, you two," said tom. "we might as well try it. you think they're alone?" "they don't act as though there's anyone around but themselves," said roger. "but i don't know--" "i thought i saw a curtain move at that window on the left a while ago," commented astro, "and all three of them were outside." "probably a breeze," said tom. "you cut over to the right, astro. i'll go straight in, and you take the left, roger. that way, if anything goes wrong, one or two of us might get away." "all set?" asked roger. "ready," nodded astro. "let's go." the three boys separated, and a moment later, when his unit mates were in position, tom stood up and walked across the clearing, exposing himself to the house. out of the corner of his eye he saw astro and roger moving in on the left and right. billy was working in the front yard with his father, mixing chemicals. jane was standing by the doorway of the house digging in a bed of flowers. tom continued to walk right through the front yard and was only ten feet away from billy before the youngster looked up. "tom!" logan turned and saw the cadet walking toward him. he stared. after a night scrambling around the hills, tom looked as if he had been shoveling coal. "hello, mr. logan," said tom, looking around. "are you alone?" "yes," logan replied. "where are the other boys?" "they're coming," said tom, waving his arm toward his friends. astro and roger rose from their places of concealment and darted forward. "get in the house, quick!" ordered logan. "vidac and his flunky winters were out here last night and--" he didn't finish. the unmistakable roar of a jet car approaching rapidly was heard. the cadets raced for the house, following jane into the farmer's bedroom, where they hid in a closet. jane returned to the front of the house and stood with her father and billy to watch the cloud of dust kicked up by the jet car as it raced along the dirt road toward them. "if it's them space crawlers again," said logan to his children, "let me do the talking." "who else could it be?" asked jane. "i don't know," said logan. "but remember, if it is vidac, we might be the only thing between those three boys inside and a long term on a prison rock!" the jet car entered the cleared area in front of the house and stopped in a cloud of dust. logan, grim-faced, followed by billy and jane walked across the yard to the car and waited. the door opened and a man in the uniform of an enlisted spaceman climbed out. "jeff marshall!" yelled billy. "hello, mr. logan, jane, billy." jeff noticed the sudden look of relief that passed over logan's face. "is there something wrong?" "not a thing, jeff," said logan. "come on in the house. we've got a surprise for you." "thank you, sir," said jeff. "but i'm afraid i'm not in the mood for surprises. the cadets have escaped and the whole countryside is crawling with vidac's men looking for them. there's a reward of a thousand credits for their capture--dead or alive!" logan patted the sergeant on the shoulder. "stop worrying, jeff. the cadets are in the house." "what?" logan nodded his head. "come on inside." he paused and spoke to his son. "billy, you scoot down the road to the bend and watch the main highway. if anyone turns off into our road, you let me know right away!" "yes, sir," replied billy and dashed down the road. jeff followed jane and logan into the house, and a few moments later, after exchanging enthusiastic greetings, he and the cadets waited hungrily for jane to prepare breakfast. finishing the hearty meal in short order and sipping hot bracing coffee, the three cadets took turns in telling jeff of their conversations with strong, their escape, and their near encounter with vidac on the highway the night before. "what made you come out here, jeff?" tom finally asked. "well, when i discovered that you had escaped, i knew you'd head for one of two places, the spaceport or here. i hung around the spaceport all night waiting for you to show up, and when you didn't, i came here." "that's dangerous," said logan. "if you figured it that way, vidac can do the same thing. i wouldn't want him to find you boys here. not that i don't want to help you, but vidac might try to connect me with you and the missing professor. i couldn't take a risk like that with billy and jane. we're in enough trouble." the farmer then told them how vidac had forced him to sign a release on his land while threatening jane with a ray gun. "we have to get to the bottom of this mess," said tom. "the only trouble is we don't know what he's after or why he's trying to frame us." "well," said roger, glancing at his watch, "whatever we decide, we'd better do it quickly. it's almost noon." "noon!" exclaimed logan. "why it can't be more than nine at the most!" he pulled out a large gold watch from his coverall pocket. "sure--it's a quarter to nine!" jeff looked at his watch. "same here!" he smiled. "you must be wrong, roger." "you probably forgot to wind it," said tom. he glanced casually at his own watch and suddenly exclaimed. "say, my watch has three-thirty!" "and mine says four twenty-two!" cried astro. roger and tom looked at each other, eyes widening. "you don't think--?" began tom, hardly daring to breathe. "yes, i do!" said roger. "remember what happened to the instruments?" [illustration] "uranium!" exclaimed astro. the word echoed in the kitchen like the blast of a bomb. the boys looked at each other, too startled to explain to logan and jane, who, though they were listening intently, were unable to fathom the boys' reasoning. "where were you last night?" asked jeff quickly. roger described as nearly as he could remember the exact route that they had traveled in making their way to the logan farm. "hey, i think i've got the answer, fellows!" tom suddenly exclaimed. "if vidac came out here last night and took over mr. logan's farm, and we're falsely accused of getting rid of the professor, and the professor is missing, there must be something to tie it all together. vidac wouldn't do the things he's done, unless he's got a rocket-blasting good reason!" roger quickly added, "and he wouldn't try to buck captain strong unless he was playing for high stakes!" "right," said tom. "the only thing that could have caused our watches to go haywire, like the ships instruments, would be uranium. lots of uranium. and uranium is the only thing valuable enough to make vidac take such long chances." "but how can you tell it's uranium?" asked logan. "our watches are not ordinary timepieces, sir," explained tom. "they are specially constructed for use in space travel. each watch is electrically controlled and highly sensitive." "electric?" repeated logan in amazement. "electric wrist watches? that small thing?" tom smiled. "each is charged by a miniature power pack, sir." "the uranium deposits out in the hills affected these watches," continued astro, "the same way they affected the electronic instruments on the spaceships coming in to roald." "i'll tell you what," said jeff. "i'll make a check." "wait a minute," said logan. "i just remembered something--" "what, sir?" asked tom. "professor sykes! he was out here poking around in my fields and up in the hills from dawn till dark. said he was making some soil tests. i yelled at him for stepping all over some baby fruit trees." "that's it, then," said roger grimly. "this area is jumping with uranium and vidac now has title to the land!" "don't be so sure," said tom. "we still need proof." "isn't using force to take the land away proof enough?" snapped logan. "wait a minute!" said jeff. "if you want proof, i know where to get it." "where?" asked tom. "the professor's work journal!" "think he'd record it in there?" asked tom. "it's pretty valuable information." "yes," said jeff. "he even logs the amount of coffee he drinks in the morning! he puts down everything!" "you think the journal is still in the lab?" asked tom. "sure it is. i saw it before i left." "then we've got vidac right where we want him!" exclaimed roger. "no, we haven't," said tom. "we haven't got the professor to prove it! vidac's still the boss on this hunk of space rock, and we're still wanted for murder!" the door burst open and billy raced into the room. "a jet car just turned off the highway! it's coming here!" "we've got to get out of here!" said tom. he turned to jeff. "if it's vidac, tell him you've come to take jane out on a date. that should explain your presence. then get the professor's journal and give it to captain strong. he'll know what to do!" roger and astro were cramming food in their pockets. "come on, tom," said roger. "i can hear the jets." "what are you boys going to do?" asked jane. "try to get to the _polaris_," replied tom. "then we'll hunt for the professor. if we don't find him, we're sunk. he's the key to the whole thing." astro and roger had tumbled out the window and were racing toward the safety of the near-by hills. tom gave jeff a final handshake and dived out the window after them. running toward the clump of bushes where astro and roger had just disappeared, he dived for cover, just as vidac's car roared into the clearing. the boys saw vidac and bush get out of the car, and after inspecting jeff's, turn and stride into the house. "come on," said tom. "we've got to get to the _polaris!_" the three boys turned away and hurried from the farm. in a few minutes, after scrambling to the top of the nearest hill, they turned back to look down on the farmhouse and saw jeff escorting jane to his car. "so far so good," said tom. "let's go." they walked off and were soon lost in the tangle of scrub grass and dry gullies, their destination the _polaris_ and the solution to the mystery of professor sykes's disappearance. chapter strong's plan to follow vidac in order to locate hardy had paid off. while vidac and bush were rounding up citizens of roald city and sending them out to search for the space cadets, the solar guard captain had checked the frequency setting on the communicator in the lieutenant governor's jet car. then hiding in professor sykes's laboratory, strong tuned the lab communicator to the same frequency and waited. he knew he was taking a chance. vidac might not contact the governor on that setting if he contacted the governor at all, but there was no other way at the moment. strong waited three hours before hearing the click of vidac's communicator on the laboratory speaker. "able one to able two. can you hear me, able two? come in, able two!" vidac's voice crackled through the set. strong listened intently and was rewarded by the sound of another click and another voice speaking. "able two to able one. come in." "i've got strong," reported vidac, "and the cadets are somewhere in the hills between here and the spaceport. i've just organized the colonists into searching parties and am about to leave." "good. contact me the minute you find them." "right. keep an eye out for them. they might try to reach the spaceport." "very well. i've set up an alarm on the outer hatch. no one can get aboard without my knowing it." "right. able one out." "able two out." strong heard the clicks of the two communicators and sat back, breathing hard. he had recognized the voice of able two instantly. it was governor hardy. he was at the spaceport, hiding aboard a spaceship. but why? could he be mixed up in this affair? pacing the floor restlessly, strong tried to figure out the connection. hardy's reputation was spotless. it seemed inconceivable that he could be involved with vidac. and yet hardy had selected vidac as his right-hand man. and vidac couldn't have gotten away with his treatment of the colonists unless hardy had silently endorsed his orders. the solar guard captain left the laboratory and watched the colonists as they milled around in front of the administration building. vidac's jet car was in the middle of the group of men and strong saw him jump up on top of the car and begin addressing them. he couldn't hear the lieutenant governor's words, but he knew the men were being urged to hunt the cadets down like common criminals. he watched until vidac rocketed off in his jet car, followed by a stream of colonists in various types of vehicles. in a few moments the area in front of the administration building was quiet and deserted. strong began searching for a jet car. * * * * * jeff marshall turned sideways in his seat and looked at the pretty face of jane logan. her brow was furrowed with worry. "are you afraid?" asked jeff as he guided the car down the private road leading to the highway. "i'm frightened to death!" murmured jane. "that man vidac is so ruthless!" jeff grunted. "i have to agree with you there. but tom is right. we need proof before we can stop him." the girl shrank back. as far as one could see, the road was lined with jet cars. colonists with paralo-ray guns and anything that could be used as a weapon were scrambling around in the hills. "what does it mean?" asked jane. "i don't know," replied jeff. "but i think it's a search for the cadets!" "oh, no!" cried jane. "i hope they'll let us through," said jeff. he pressed down on the accelerator and started moving along the line of cars. on either side of the highway, he saw colonists beating the bushes, looking behind rocks and boulders, shouting at each other as they pressed their hunt for astro, tom, and roger. jeff managed to get halfway past the line of cars when ahead of him another jet car pulled out across the highway, blocking it. he was forced to stop. "hold on there!" roared a man suddenly appearing at the side of the car, holding a paralo-ray gun pointed directly at jeff. jeff looked at him in mock surprise. "what's going on here?" he asked. "who are you?" demanded the man roughly. "jeff marshall. and this is jane logan. what's all the fuss about?" "we're looking for the space cadets. they murdered old professor sykes!" snapped the man. his eyes narrowed and he looked at jeff closely. "you were pretty chummy with them, weren't you?" he asked. "sure, i knew them," replied jeff calmly. "but if they've done anything to the professor, i want them caught as badly as you do. i've been the professor's assistant for years. he's--he's like a father to me." several of the other men had gathered around the car and were listening. "that's right, joe," said a man on the outside of the group. "this feller's okay. and that's logan's daughter, all right. they ain't done nothing." "when was the last time you saw the cadets?" demanded the man called joe. "why, a couple of days ago," jeff replied. there was a long pause while the man continued to look at jeff ominously. finally he stepped back and lowered the paralo-ray gun. "all right, go on. but if you see those murdering cadets, let us know. we're out to get them, and when we do, we're going to--" "but what right have you to do this on your own?" cried jane. "we ain't," said joe. "governor vidac made us all special deputies this morning." "but we'd do it, anyway," cried someone from the rear of the crowd. "those space cadets are guilty and we're going to see that they get what's coming to them!" there was a roar of agreement. jeff nodded, stepped on the accelerator, and eased the car slowly through the group of men. as soon as he was free, he stepped down hard and sent the jet car racing along the highway back toward roald city. "jeff--jeff," asked jane despairingly, "do you think they'll catch the boys?" "i don't know," replied jeff grimly. "but if they are caught, the only way we can save them is to find the professor's journal and pray that the uranium report is in it." "but you said the information would be there," said jane. "when you need something as badly as we need that report," replied jeff, "you never find it." * * * * * the three space cadets were watching their pursuers from a high ridge. they had been driven back all day, and now they could go no farther. caught while climbing down the other side of the hills from the logan farm, they had narrowly escaped detection at the very beginning and had been racing from cover to cover ever since. now there was no place to go. it was only a question of time before the colonists would reach the top of the ridge and find them. "what do you think they'll do?" asked roger. "we'll be sent off this satellite so fast," answered tom, "you'll get sick from acceleration." "why?" asked astro. "vidac won't want us hanging around. not since captain strong is here. he'll give us a trial within an hour, sentence us to life on a prison rock, and delegate some of his boys to take us back. we don't have a chance." astro let out a low animal-like growl. "if that happens," said the giant venusian, "i'll get off that rock someway, somehow. and i'll find mr. vidac. and when i do--" "no need to talk like that now," said tom. "let's just not get caught!" "but how?" asked roger. "look, over there! they've already reached the top of that ridge on the left. the party on the right will be up there soon too. we're trapped!" "wait a minute," said astro. he picked up a huge boulder and hefted it in his arms. "we can stand them off all day by tumbling rocks down on them." "and kill innocent people who don't know what they're doing?" asked tom. "no--put it down, astro!" "all right, brains!" snapped roger. "what have you got to suggest?" "there's only one thing we can do!" said tom. "down on the side of the hill here i noticed a small cave. two of us could squeeze inside." "why only two?" asked astro. "somebody would have to cover the entrance from the outside with a boulder and then give himself up!" astro slapped tom on the back. "that's a terrific idea. come on. you two hide and i'll move the rock over." "wait a minute, you goof," said roger. "don't be in such a hurry to be a blasted hero!" he turned to tom. "just like that venusian hick to be ready to sacrifice himself to get a solar medal!" "don't argue, junior," snapped astro. "i'm the only one strong enough to move one of those rocks. you two hide and i'll cover you." "now wait a minute, astro," tom protested. "i didn't mean...." "you should have," replied astro. "and if you don't get moving now, you'll never make it!" roger looked at tom and nodded. "guess he's right for once in his life, tom. he's the only one strong enough to do it." tom hesitated and then slapped astro on the back. "all right, astro," he said. "but there's more to it than just giving yourself up! you've got to make them think that roger and i ran out on you. that way they'll continue to search for us, but in another direction. and vidac won't try to do anything to you alone. he'll wait until he's got all of us." "o.k.," said astro. "i get it. come on. get in that cave." the three boys scrambled down the side of the hill and found the cave tom had seen. after a quick search astro found a boulder that half-covered the front of the cave, and the three boys pushed it close to the entrance. "go on. get inside now," said astro. "i'll push this one into position and then pile a few smaller ones on top and around it. that way you'll be able to get air and still be hidden." tom and roger crawled into the hole and settled themselves as astro pushed the boulder up against the opening. he piled the other stones around it quickly. when he had just about finished he heard someone behind him. he turned and saw one of the colonists scrambling down the side of the hill, heading for him. "here they come," astro whispered hoarsely. "spaceman's luck!" he dropped the last stone in place and turned to face the man who was now almost upon him. tom and roger crouched in the darkness and listened intently. "you there!" they heard the colonist cry. "halt! don't move or i'll freeze you!" astro stood still. the man came up to him and felt the cadet's uniform for a hidden weapon. then he jammed the ray gun into astro's back and ordered him down the hill. astro started walking, hardly daring to breathe, but suddenly the man stopped. "where are the others?" he demanded. "they ran out on me." "ran out on you. i thought you three were supposed to be such good buddies?" "when the chips were down," said astro as harshly as he could, "they turned out to be nothing but yellow rats!" "which way did they go?" "i don't know," said astro. "it happened last night. we went to sleep, and when i woke up, they were gone." "where'd they go?" snarled the man, pushing the ray gun into astro's back. "i--i--" astro pretended he didn't want to talk. "i'll freeze you, so help me," said the man. "i'm going to count five--one, two, three, four--" "don't! i'll tell you!" cried astro. "i'm not sure, but i think they headed back for the city. we were talking about it last night. we figured it would be the best place to hide." "ummm. that makes sense," said the man. "i guess you're telling the truth. now get down the hill. one false move and i'll blast you!" astro turned and stumbled down the hill in front of the paralo-ray gun. a smile tugged at his lips. vidac and bush were waiting for them on the highway at the bottom of the hill. "where are corbett and manning?" vidac demanded, looking at astro. astro repeated the story about tom and roger having deserted him. vidac eyed him speculatively. "they just walked out on you?" he asked. astro nodded. vidac turned to the colonists who were standing around listening to the giant venusian's story. "all right, men," he said, "i guess he's telling the truth. back to the city. there aren't too many places they could be hiding." the men turned and ran for their cars. vidac continued to look at astro, a thin smile tugging at his lips, his eyes twinkling. "you stay here with me, bush," said vidac. "but you said--" "never mind what i said," snapped vidac. "i'm telling you to stay here. have some of the colonists double up and leave a jet car here." in a few moments the rest of the jet cars were roaring off toward the city. vidac waited until the last car had vanished down the road, then he turned to astro, "do you really think you fooled me with that stuff about manning and corbett running out on you?" "what happened to them then?" asked astro innocently. "we'll see," said vidac softly, looking up into the hills. holding a paralo-ray gun on the giant cadet, vidac forced him into his jet car. bush slid under the wheel and started the jets. "you think the cadets are still up there in the hills?" asked bush. "never mind what i think," snapped vidac. "head for the spaceport." vidac spun around in his seat and looked back along the highway. he punched astro in the shoulder and motioned for him to look. astro turned to see the jet car left by vidac pulling away from the hills. "they must have heard every word i said," mused vidac. he turned to bush. "when they reach the spaceport, don't bother waiting for them to get out of the car. blast them on sight!" "what are you going to do?" asked astro tightly. "don't you remember your space code laws, astro?" asked vidac. "article sixteen? it specifically states that in cases of emergency, the commanding officer of a solar guard community can be the judge and jury, and can pass sentence for felonies or worse. in two hours you and your buddies will be aboard the _polaris_, under guard, and headed for a life sentence on a prison rock!" he laughed. "and i'll make it stick!" chapter jeff marshall was just turning the jet car into the plaza in front of the administration building when jane suddenly grabbed his arm. "jeff, look!" she cried. "isn't that captain strong?" the enlisted spaceman slowed the car and followed the direction of jane's pointing finger. he saw strong step around the corner of the administration building, stop, then scurry back around to the side. the streets of the city were deserted. "he's running away from us," said jeff. "probably thinks we're part of that searching party coming back." he brought the car to a screaming halt in front of the building and jumped out, calling, "captain strong!" his voice echoed through the deserted streets. "this is jeff marshall!" peering around the corner of the administration building, strong saw marshall clearly and then recognized the daughter of hyram logan. he dashed out of his hiding place and greeted them with a yell. "jeff! jeff! over here!" the three friends of the space cadets were soon telling each other the latest developments. strong listened to jeff's story of the professor's work journal and shook his head disgustedly. "i was in that lab for nearly four hours this morning," he said. "if i had only known." "don't blame yourself, sir," said jeff. "you didn't know it was there!" "let's find it now," said jane desperately. "we're losing time. those men back in the hills may catch the boys." "they haven't been caught yet," asserted strong. "and if i know my cadets, those men will have a hard time nailing them. come on!" he turned and raced into the administration building, heading for professor sykes's laboratory. in less than five minutes jeff was searching through the pages of the professor's work journal. "there's no telling when he made the discovery," said jeff, scanning the mass of complicated diagrams and figures. "it must have been soon after our arrival on roald," said jane. "that was when we saw him searching the hills around our farm." jeff flipped the pages back to the front of the book and began to read it from the beginning. "here's something!" he quoted some figures from the book and looked at strong. "that make any sense to you, sir?" he asked. "it sure does!" said strong. "that's a preliminary survey on uranium! he's just getting the scent there. keep reading." jeff turned a few more pages and suddenly stopped. "here it is!" he exclaimed. "and say--look at this!" he handed the journal over to strong who began to read quickly. "'... conclusive proof found today in hills surrounding farming area of hyram logan. potentially the biggest hot metal strike i've ever seen. am going to make a report to vidac today. this could mean the beginning of a new era in space travel. enough fuel to send fleets of ships on protracted voyages to any part of the universe....'" strong stopped reading and looked at jane and jeff. "this was dated the tenth." he turned the page and continued, "this is the day after, the eleventh. listen to this! '... vidac is sending my information to the solar council immediately. he was very impressed.' and so forth and so forth." strong closed the journal and faced jeff and jane again, a triumphant smile on his lips. "this is just what we needed. this journal is admissible in solar courts as evidence the same way a ship's log is! come on. now we've got to get vidac before he gets the cadets!" "wait," said jane in a fearful whisper. "listen." strong and jeff stood still. in the distance they heard the unmistakable roar of jet cars converging on the plaza. strong turned to jeff. "they've either found the cadets or--" "or what?" asked jeff. "i--i won't say it," said strong hesitantly, "but if anything has happened to those boys, i'll personally dig vidac's grave!" jane had moved to the window and was watching the wild activity in the plaza below. "they're spreading out!" she cried. "they must be searching the city." strong rushed to the window and looked down. "that means they haven't found the cadets!" he exclaimed. "i've been thinking, sir," said jeff. "do you think we really have enough proof of vidac's guilt to make the colonists understand it was vidac and not the cadets who could have done something to the professor?" "we've got to try!" said strong. "we've got to try!" the two spacemen and jane left the laboratory and raced down the slidestairs and through the halls of the administration building to the double doors that opened onto the plaza. they stepped into view just as the colonists were about to spread out and search the city. one of the men was standing on the steps shouting orders. jeff recognized him as joe, the man who had stopped him on the highway. there was a roar from the crowd when they noticed strong, jeff, and jane standing in the open doorway. strong held the black journal high over his head and called for order. the colonists crowded around at the base of the steps not knowing what to make of his sudden appearance. "what are you doing here?" demanded the colonist deputy. "you're captain strong of the solar guard, aren't you?" "that's right," replied strong. "and you're making a big mistake accusing the cadets of the murder of professor sykes, when you're not even sure the professor has been murdered! the man you want to question about that is lieutenant governor vidac!" a startled murmur ran through the assembled men. strong continued, "i have absolute proof that vidac received information about the biggest uranium strike in the history of the universe from professor sykes and plans to keep it for himself. his accusation of the cadets is a cover-up to clear himself and to throw you off the track." the word _uranium_ spread through the crowd like wildfire. "you're pretty friendly with the cadets," sneered the deputy. "how do we know you're telling us the truth, and not just trying to save them?" "yeah. answer that one!" roared a voice from back of the crowd. "do any of you understand physics?" asked strong. "physics?" asked the deputy. "what's that got to do with it?" "plenty! i have information here in this journal that will prove what i just said! read it for yourself. it's in the professor's own handwriting." "i can read it," said a small man in front of strong. "gimme that thing!" strong handed him the black book and told the man where to look. the man considered it for five minutes, then turned to the crowd. "he's right! we're sitting on the hottest uranium rock in this galaxy!" "where is it?" cried someone from the crowd. "tell us where the uranium is!" the mob of men, forgetting all about the cadets, were now seized with the greed for riches. strong took the journal back and tucked it under his arm. "i'll tell you where it is," said strong, "when we put vidac where he belongs! behind bars!" "what are we waiting for?" cried the colonists. "let's get that murdering space crawler!" the deputy pushed his way through the crowd and raced for his car. others followed and once more the plaza echoed to the roar of jets. strong turned to jeff. "you'll find winters up in vidac's quarters. i had to freeze him." he handed over the paralo-ray gun. "get him and follow us to the spaceport. tell him we know everything, and if he doesn't talk, he'll get life on a prison rock." "right," said jeff. "i'll get a confession out of him if i have to wring his neck--and i'll get it on a soundscriber!" "good. come on, jane," said strong. "this is the finish of a would-be tyrant!" jeff turned and dashed back into the building, while strong and jane climbed into the jet car and roared off toward the spaceport. "if we only had a paralo-ray gun," muttered roger as he and tom sped after vidac's powerful jet car. "yes," agreed tom. "this could be a trap, but what can we do?" roger was silent. they had moved out of the cave as soon as astro had been taken down the hill and they knew exactly what vidac had in mind. but their need for information about professor sykes and their concern for astro forced them to follow the powerful jet car into what they were certain was a trap. "we'll ditch the jet car after we find out where they're going," said tom, "and figure out something afterward." "you think they'll go to sykes?" asked roger. [illustration] "it's a pretty safe bet, roger. the professor's been well hidden, so why not hide astro in the same place, hoping in the meantime to get us also." "but i can't see walking into a trap, simply because we know it's there!" "roger--look! vidac's stopping the car! astro's trying to get away!" "astro's fighting with bush!" shouted roger. "come on! can't you get any more push out of this wagon?" tom jammed the accelerator down to the floorboard and the jet car fairly leaped ahead. fifty yards from vidac's stalled car, tom slammed on the brake, bringing the little car to a screaming halt only two feet away. roger was halfway out before the car had stopped moving. beside vidac's car, bush was wrestling with astro. [illustration] "tom! roger! get back! it's a trap!" yelled astro. astro's warning came too late. while tom and roger sprang to help their unit mate, vidac slipped up on the other side and fired quickly and accurately with a paralo-ray gun. tom and roger were frozen just as they were about to pull bush from astro's back. vidac swung the ray gun around toward astro. "see that, big boy?" he laughed. "well, you're going to get the same thing if you make one funny move. now pile those two stiffs into the back of my car! get moving!" seething with frustration and rage, astro turned to roger and tom, standing like solid slabs of stone. he picked up roger and carried him gently to the car, placing him in the back. then he turned and walked toward tom. he made a slight movement toward vidac and bush, but they leveled their guns quickly. "none of that," warned vidac. astro's shoulders drooped. he was almost in tears as he walked toward tom. the curly-haired cadet stood immovable, staring at his friend. the venusian leaned over and picked up tom gently. "take it easy, astro," whispered tom, not moving his lips. "i'm not frozen. he missed me!" astro nearly jumped at the sound of tom's voice. he recovered quickly, fighting back a grin of triumph. he threw a quick glance at vidac and bush, then carefully picked tom up and carried him to the car. as he was about to turn around again, he felt the sudden jolt of the paralo ray, and in the split-second before the ray took effect, astro nearly laughed. * * * * * under the effects of a paralo-ray charge the body is paralyzed and there is no feeling. tom, however, lying beside roger but beneath astro in the back seat of the car, began to suffer painful muscular cramps. he gritted his teeth, trying to lie rigidly still, but his arms and legs began to jerk spasmodically and he had to move. slowly he eased one arm from beneath astro's heavy body and shifted his legs into a more comfortable position. though the venusian's weight still pressed him down in the seat, the muscular cramps were relieved. he began to pay attention to what vidac and bush were saying in the front seat of the car. "we'll blast off as soon as we reach the spaceport," said vidac, "and get up to the asteroid." "why so fast?" asked bush. "i want to get rid of those nosy space rats as quickly as possible. then i'll go after strong." bush shook his head. "that won't be easy. strong's not a space cadet. he's solar guard. and good solar guard at that!" tom smiled in wholehearted agreement with the lieutenant governor's henchman. vidac sneered. "don't make me laugh! didn't you see the way i convinced those dumb colonists that the cadets were responsible for the professor's murder? if they'd stopped to think about it, they would have realized i was putting one over on them. all you have to do is keep talking, fast and loud. keep them off balance, and don't let them think." "there's the spaceport road," said bush. "and there's the _polaris_. i hope we don't have any trouble with the grease monkeys when they see us hauling the cadets out." "if they start anything," said vidac with a sneer, "you know what to do." "sure," said bush, patting his paralo-ray gun. the car roared through the gates of the spaceport and sped across the hard surface of the field. a moment later it came to a shuddering stop at the base of the giant rocket cruiser. "all right," said vidac. "get them aboard the ship. hardy will blow a gasket if we don't get this over with in a hurry." hardy! the name hit tom like a trip hammer. so hardy was mixed up in it! hardy, the respected governor of roald, the man responsible for the welfare of the colony and the lives of the colonists, was really a swindler and a thief. now if jeff only had professor sykes's journal they could tie everything together, providing he could stop vidac from sending them off to a prison rock! tom's thoughts were suddenly interrupted by the movement of astro's heavy body on top of him. the young cadet broke out into a cold sweat. when he had been supposedly hit by the paralo ray his arms had been outstretched! he had been so busy thinking about hardy's connection with vidac that he had forgotten to resume his original position. astro was hauled out of the car and bush reached in the car to get tom. the boy braced himself and waited as the spaceman grabbed him by the feet. he was pulled roughly out of the door and stood on his feet. out of the corner of his eye he could see that astro had been stood up beside the car like a tree. vidac turned away from the giant cadet and started to give bush a hand. suddenly he stopped and pulled out his paralo-ray gun. "boss, what're you doing?" cried bush, jumping away from tom and leaving the cadet rocking on his feet, trying to pretend he was still paralyzed. he toppled forward, and before he realized what he had done, threw out his hands to break his fall. vidac laughed. "i have to hand it to you, corbett. that was the best bit of acting i've ever seen in my life." tom picked himself up from the ground and glared at vidac. bush stood to one side, too startled to realize what had happened. "you mean, he--he--" bush stammered, his eyes wide with alarm. "that's right," said vidac. "the wonder boy of the space lanes acted as if he was frozen. what were you going to do, corbett? take over, maybe?" "you'll never get away with it, vidac," said tom through clenched teeth. "you're through and you know it!" "not yet, my friend," said vidac. "you've had your fun. now get your friend out of the car and carry him aboard the _polaris_. we're all going for a little ride!" tom turned reluctantly and began pulling roger out of the back of the car. he realized that he could take no more chances with the paralo ray. as long as he was awake, there was a chance for him to do something. he lifted roger gently to his shoulder, turned, and staggered toward the cruiser. just as he was about to step inside the hatch, he heard the faint roar of jets in the distance. he stumbled and fell purposely to stall for time. he and roger sprawled full length on the deck. as tom sat up and rubbed his knee, bush rushed over, leaving vidac to struggle with the immense bulk of astro. "get up!" snarled bush. he poked the gun within an inch of tom's face. the cadet knew that if bush fired at such a close range, his brains would be burned to a crisp. he fell away from the gun. "i wrenched my knee," he whined. "i can't get up!" "if you don't get up by the time i count three," growled bush, "i'll blast you! one, two--" the roar of the jets was closer now and tom's heart began to race. feigning pain in his leg, he started to pull himself to his feet. he glanced toward the spaceport entrance and saw a stream of jet cars pouring into the field, heading for the _polaris_. suddenly tom leaped for bush from the crouching position. he lashed out with his right fist, while grabbing for the ray gun with his left. bush was not to be tricked so easily. he fired just as the cadet jumped. but in trying to evade tom's crashing right hand, he missed his shot and was grazed by tom's fist. he fell back out of the spaceship, his gun falling inside the air-lock portal. tom lay on the deck, wincing in pain. the wild shot had caught him in the right leg and he was unable to move it. he crawled across the deck, reaching for the gun as bush came charging up the ramp. meanwhile, vidac, seeing the commotion in the hatch of the spaceship, pulled his gun and leveled it at tom. but bush charged through the hatch just as vidac fired and he caught the full blast of vidac's shot. he landed on the deck beside tom, stiff as a board. tom reached for the gun, preparing to fight it out with vidac. but the odds were against him. his leg was completely paralyzed and vidac was climbing into the ship. he knew he couldn't reach the gun in time. suddenly vidac became aware of the jet cars streaming into the spaceport. he stopped and turned to look at them. then, sensing something was wrong, he turned back to dash into the _polaris_. the second his back was turned was sufficient time for tom to grab the gun and fire. vidac was stopped cold, his bright eyes burning with hate, unable to move. "you can drop that now," said a voice in back of tom. the curly-haired cadet whirled around to face governor hardy, holding a paralo-ray rifle up to his shoulder, aimed and ready to fire. "you're a good spaceman, corbett," said hardy in a cold, harsh voice, "but this is the last time you'll ever get into my hair!" tom's leg prevented him from moving and he had turned in an awkward sitting position to face hardy. all he could do was bring his gun up quickly and fire over his left shoulder. hardy fired at the same instant. at such close range neither could miss. when captain strong and the colonists dashed into the ship they found two perfect statues. [illustration] chapter "and you kept giving hardy wrong information?" asked strong with a laugh. "yes!" snorted professor sykes with a wry grin. "you see, i knew right away vidac was doing something funny way back--" he paused to sip his tea. "way back before we landed on roald." he grinned broadly at the people seated around the table in the dining room of the logan house, roger, astro, jeff, tom, jane, billy, hyram, and strong. after strong had released the space cadets from the effects of the paralo rays, they had searched the _polaris_ and found the professor locked in one of the cabins. placing vidac and hardy under arrest and confining them in the brig of the ship with winters and bush, they had returned to the logan farm to clear a few of the mysteries surrounding the nightmare of violence since their landing on roald. "when vidac and hardy refused to let me go down and make an inspection of the satellite after the instruments conked out, i knew there was something fishy," sykes continued. "any fool could have seen that radioactivity would be the only thing to cause an instrument disturbance like that!" "then vidac and hardy knew about the uranium?" asked strong. "we only discovered it at space academy ourselves a little while ago." "they knew about it all right," asserted sykes. "hardy told me so himself. he got the information from an old prospector who had made application to come to roald as a colonist. the space rat had been here before, as a sailor on a deep spacer that had wandered off course. the ship was running low on water so the skipper sent him down to the satellite to see if he could find any. he found the water and the uranium too. but he clammed up about that, hoping to keep it a secret until he could go back and claim it. his only chance was to become a colonist, and when he washed out in the screening, he told hardy, hoping to bribe his way. of course hardy double-crossed him to get the uranium himself. that was why you were pulled off the project and sent to pluto, strong. then he got vidac to be his aide and everything looked rosy." "it's still hard to believe that hardy was behind the whole operation," said astro, shaking his head. "imagine--the governor of the colony ratting on his own people." "it's happened before, unfortunately," commented strong. "better men than hardy have succumbed to the lure of riches and power." "you're right, strong," snapped sykes. "that's just what happened to hardy. while i was his prisoner on the _polaris_, he kept boasting about how rich he was going to be--how powerful. when i reminded him of his past achievements and of his responsibility to the colony, he just laughed. he said getting the uranium meant more to him than anything in the world." the little professor sighed. "if it hadn't been for the cadets, he would have gotten away with it." "but wait a minute," said roger. "if you suspected vidac, why did you give him the information on the uranium to send back to the solar guard?" "i just told him about a puny little deposit near the logan farm," replied sykes. "the big strike is on the other side of the satellite. i figured that if vidac was honest it wouldn't hurt to delay sending information back about the big strike until later." he paused and added, "but then, of course, i had to tell him about the big strike." "you had to tell him!" exclaimed jeff. "but why?" "to stay alive, you idiot!" barked sykes. "as long as i had something they wanted, they'd keep me alive until they found out about it. they gave me truth serum, but i'm immune to drugs. all solar guard scientists are. they didn't know that. so i told them to look here, then there, acted as though i had lost my memory. it worked, and here i am." "what about the way they antagonized us?" asked tom. "refusing to let us contact space academy and sending us out on a stripped-down rocket scout to investigate the asteroid cluster. it seems to me they should have acted a little more friendly to throw us off the track. all they did was arouse suspicion and get us sore." "but they hoped that you would get angry enough to do something rebellious, so that they could send you back," said sykes. "well, that makes sense," said strong. "but what about their treatment of the colonists?" "humph. a clear case of attempting to get the colonists to rebel which would give them the right to absolute control of the entire satellite and the people. cadet tom corbett here is to be congratulated for not allowing mr. logan to go around like a vigilante and get us all in a space hurricane!" hyram logan blushed and cleared his throat noisily. the door suddenly opened and a uniformed messenger thrust a dispatch into strong's hands. "what's this?" asked strong, tearing the solar guard seal. "message from spaceport control, sir," said the messenger. "they report a fleet of ships approaching roald, under full thrust." "a fleet!" gasped strong. "but how? why?" sykes laughed, winked at jane, and slapped his thigh. "the solar guard coming to the rescue!" "solar guard!" chorused the others at the table. "yes! solar guard. i sent for them. i figured if the cadets could build a communicator, i could too. i did it on the _polaris_ when hardy went searching for the uranium. i told the whole story to commander walters back at space academy." "well," sighed roger, "with the confession jeff got from winters on the audioscriber, i guess we can consider the first civil disorder of the star satellite of roald finished. peace and harmony will reign. and speaking of harmony, jane, would you like to take a walk in the starlight?" "i'm sorry, roger," answered jane, blushing prettily, "but i've already been invited." roger's face fell. "you've already been invited?" jane nodded. "ready, astro?" "sure!" replied the giant venusian. he rose, offered jane his arm ceremoniously, and the two walked out of the house. roger's face turned a deep scarlet. the others around the table burst into laughter. "ah, go blow your jets," growled roger. billy's eyes were shining. he turned to strong. "captain strong, how old do you have to be to get into space academy?" strong's eyes twinkled. "since roger doesn't seem to be too busy, why don't you ask him for all the academy dope?" "would you help me, roger?" pleaded billy. "i can recite the whole book of academy 'regs' by heart!" roger glanced around the table with a sheepish grin. "there isn't but one regulation that's really important, billy." "oh? what's that?" "i'll answer that, billy," said tom. "roger means the one that goes like this ... 'no cadet will be allowed to entertain any work, project, or ideas that will not lend themselves directly to his immediate or future obligation as a spaceman.'" tom stopped and smiled broadly. "and that means girls!" * * * * * calling all boys and girls to mercury, venus, jupiter and all points in outer space-- you, too, can be a part of the group of daring adventurers from the space academy who travel to mysterious lands in outer space on dangerous and exciting missions. it's as simple as opening a book ... if the book is tom corbett, space cadet you'll discover the earth of the future, where you can hurtle through space at breath-taking speed, and a trip to mars will be as simple as taking a walk around the block. don't miss these thrill-packed books: . stand by for mars! . danger in deep space . on the trail of the space pirates . the space pioneers . the revolt on venus . treachery in outer space . sabotage in space . the robot rocket grosset & dunlap, inc., _publishers_ new york , n. y. transcribers notes: standardized punctuation and added missing quotes. pages and : changed well to we'll (printer errors). page : changed watch to watch (printer error). page : changed became to become (printer error). the lamps of the angels by richard sabia illustrated by dick francis [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy magazine june . extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] the golden guardians denied mankind the stars. they were irresistible in their might ... and they were something more! "why did you come creeping into the house last night like a thief?" mrs. sanchez asked her son. lithe, dark roberto set down his breakfast coffee and smiled up at her. "ah, mama, you are the owl. i was certain i moved quiet as moonlight." "i always hear the sounds of my children. even the little one when he stirs in his grave. it is the way of a mother." she drew a cup of coffee and sat with them at the table in the small kitchen patio. "the hour was late," roberto said, "and i did not wish to disturb you with greetings that would keep until morning. you sleep little enough as it is. though the hard days are gone, the sun still rises after you." roberto's father looked up from his newspaper. "she will always be full of the old ways," he said with fond gruffness. "for her there is no change. our children have grown proud and fine and freed us from bondage to the soil. yet she still behaves as a peon. to her we still toil in the fields of the patron, bent with exhaustion over the planting or harvesting consoles, struggling to control the many field machines. she bakes her own bread. the market vegetables do not please her so she chafes her hands with the buttons and switches of a garden. and a robot to scrub the floors she will not hear of. perhaps she thinks it would be prettier than she and i might run off with it to mexico city." "foolish old man," mrs. sanchez said with mock severity, "you have lost even the memory of what it is to run." "mama," roberto said, "i have a present for you." something of an eager little girl looked out of the wise eyes. "i have no need of a present," she said but her eyes searched the leafy little patio. "all i ask as a gift is for you to come out of the sky for a little while and marry." roberto smiled. "have not my brothers and sisters given you grandchildren enough? and what woman will marry the captain of a space vessel? with my journeys to jupiter and saturn and outermost nyx, i would forever be a stranger to my children and an occasional guest to my wife." from under his napkin he drew forth a small silvery box. "mama, your present." she gasped with delight when she opened it. in a black velvet womb nested a strange glittering jewel suspended on a delicate, spider-strand, silver chain. "roberto!" she exclaimed with a feeble remonstrance. "like the others i have brought it is not expensive," roberto said. "the stone is a common one on nyx. but it is very beautiful and when i found it i thought of you." * * * * * a bell-light flashed on the kitchen console. mrs. sanchez went to it as a shallow dish slid from the oven. she set it, sizzling softly, on the table. "and a present for you," she said. "your favorite, quinquaños. fresh from venus yesterday, or so the vendor tells me." she shrugged dubiously. "in this sinful age even the machines lie." "but, mama, the money i send is not to be wasted on me! these are so expensive." "and small," mrs. sanchez said. "why is there not a garden manufactured that can be programmed for quinquaños so that i might grow my own?" "because five fortunes could not pay for it," mr. sanchez said. "try as they might, such delicacies come only through the grace of god and not general electric." he set aside his newspaper and accepted another coffee. "does this not complete your collection?" he asked his wife. "roberto has brought for you a stone from every planet he has touched. even the moon and the grand asteroids." "i know not how many worlds there are in the sun's family. but if it is done, then it is done." she tried to make her words unconcerned but there was a shadow of regret across them. "the stones are beautiful. but they are frivolous and the end to them is not to be mourned." "ha!" mr. sanchez snorted. "she pretends, the sly one, she does not care. but i know how she delights in them, these gifts from her son. i have seen her in a stolen moment open the box and gaze with pleasure upon them. and when we go to the opera in mexico city it is one of your single-stoned necklaces which adorns her simple black dress. she will have no other ornament." "i no longer have a husband in this house," mrs. sanchez said, "only an old woman whose mouth talks away the day." "old woman, eh?" mr. sanchez leered and playfully slapped his wife on her backside. she pretended to be shocked. "in front of the child! but what can one expect from an evil old lecher?" the three of them laughed and basked in the warmth of their blood bonds. mr. sanchez resumed his coffee. "is it really done, roberto? have you taken cargoes from all twelve planets?" "yes." "even the one just beyond pluto? is it oceanus or atlas? i can never remember which it is ... but for a long while you were missing one of them." "i have them all. i am still a young man and yet i have taken my ship to all the planets in many voyages. but of course that is not unusual," he lectured, for he knew that was what they wanted, "for in the thousand years since man first stepped forth on the moon the solar commerce has so increased that there are hardly enough suitable men for the ships that bridge the now familiar worlds. so familiar, i could fly to the rings of saturn or to dark nyx in my slumber." "then you also must also feel a sadness because there will be no more stones to pluck from a new planet," mr. sanchez said. "perhaps there is a thirteenth yet to be found." "no, papa. it is certain. there are no more children of our sun. but i am not sad. the stones are _not_ finished. mama shall have other pretty baubles to be caged in fine silver or gold and hung about her neck." * * * * * mrs. sanchez was programming a day of cooking and baking on the autochef. at her son's words her hands poised in mid-flight over the console. she did not quite comprehend but an intuitive wisp of alarm darkened her face. she turned to her husband, as if for some reassurance that her dread was of no substance. mr. sanchez said in perplexity, "i do not understand, roberto. if there are no more planets--" "in this system!" roberto said. neither of his parents said a word. they stared at him and waited. "in a few days it will be officially announced," roberto said. "with the perfection of the new korenyik propulsion, a starship will be built. a starship! and i have been selected to take it through the other space to alpha centauri." mr. sanchez embraced his son. "roberto, i am so proud." he turned to his wife. "is it not a great--" he stopped at the look of her. "this alpha centauri," she said, pronouncing it badly, "it is a planet?" "it is a star, mama. like our sun. it may have a family of planets. it will be exciting to discover them." "why?" she asked with a mother's quiet challenge. the word echoed in roberto's mind--_why?_ the very core of his being strained to shout out why. _space_ was why! each blazing star was a compelling, beckoning finger. every constellation a covenant with his heart. and somewhere out in the majestic, wheeling galaxy his soul wandered, waiting for him to come. "mama, i will show you why," he replied as quietly. "as i promised papa the last time, i have borrowed from the company a star projector. this time you must put aside the household and watch and listen and learn something about the universe out of which my life and my dreams are made. of all your children i am the only stranger to you. and before i go out to the stars i want you to know something of that which fills my heart." he went to his room and returned with a foot-square case which he set on a table in the living area. he pressed a stud. a transparent globe inflated over it to a four foot diameter. he dimmed the lights, manipulated the controls and a tiny sun burned in the center of the globe. another adjustment brought into view the solar planets orbiting around it. the device was an educational tool; it projected as desired, within the envelope of gas, three-dimensional mockups of the solar system, star clusters and galaxies that moved almost as incandescently beautiful as the originals. mrs. sanchez was delighted with the views of the solar system and the surface scenes of the various planets. she had as much general knowledge of the planets as she had of india or france--which had all come to her through the distorting medium of television dramas. the moon had observatories and mad scientists; india had elephants and sinister maharajas; mars had deserts and fragile ghost people; venus had quinquaños and swamp dragons; and france was overflowing with sin. roberto did not utilize the projector narrative. he explained with his own intense words as he took his parents across the gulf to the constellations. he skipped about the galaxy, astounding them with the sheer billions of stars. he insinuated the possibility of millions of inhabited planets and then he flung them across the abyss of space to view the local group of the milky way, its sister andromeda and the satellite galaxies. then he plunged them into infinity for a time-lost glimpse of the billion other galaxies thus far discovered. * * * * * the globe deflated, the lights went on and roberto leaned toward his mother. "does not the thought of all this catch at your heart a little?" there was an uncertainty in her voice that roberto missed because he was so intent upon her answer. "all those stars," she said. "something like that i saw once on the television--about strange people who lived on those stars. i did not like it very much. perhaps because it is not true." "not true?" roberto echoed. "yesterday, yes. today, not quite. tomorrow ... your own son is going to the stars!" "it is beyond my understanding why men cannot be content to remain where they were meant to be." "but the stars _were_ meant for us. they are our destiny!" roberto realized he was speaking too loudly. mrs. sanchez looked squarely at her son. her words were measured and solemn like some solitary, tolling bell. "if god meant us to be on those stars he would have put us there. roberto, take care. listen to the word of your mother. i have not the cleverness of my children but i know things here." she touched her hand over her heart. "it may be as you say, all the millions of great stars. but they are god's high places and i tell you, my son, whoever dares violate them will be struck down." "but, mama! in ancient times, when man first took to the air, there were those who proclaimed man presumed too much and would be punished. and a thousand years ago there were people who spoke as you do when man first went into space. they too said god gave us the earth and to covet the moon and the planets was a grievous sin." mrs. sanchez shrugged. "there are always the fanatics. your mama is not one of them. god gave men the sun and the moon and the planets and set them apart from the stars for him to work out his salvation. it is natural and right." "and he did not give us the stars also?" "in the sky he put them as a testament to his glory. you have shaken my poor head with the measure of their distance. but it serves to show that they would not have been placed out of reach if they were intended for us to have." "but mama, soon they will no longer be out of reach. your own son will go to the first one in a great new ship." mrs. sanchez turned troubled eyes on her son. "i will pray for you." she averted her face and would no longer look directly at him. roberto angrily snatched up the star projector and went to his room. his father followed. "you must understand," he said, "your mother is a simple woman. she would rather think of the stars as the lamps of the angels than the huge blazing spheres that they are." "i do understand," roberto said bitterly. "i have heard her words a thousand times from as many mouths. they have sounded through history and are chains meant to bind man to his few worlds. it is the eternal voice of the heavy, peasant mind which tries to shout down every soaring dream of mankind." "your words are too hard," his father said. roberto's lips curled to say something cruel but he refrained, not wanting to hurt this fine, little man whose blood was his own. "yes," roberto said, softening, "for after all there are always the minds which struggle free and lift us up. they have carried us to the threshold of the stars. and the time will come, a thousand years perhaps, when we will be ready to try for our sister galaxy, andromeda." roberto smiled. "of course it is certain we will still have our simple folk who will warn us and tell us to beware; that it is not the will of the almighty that we leave the milky way; that we presume too much and we will be struck down. and--" roberto stopped in mild surprise. he saw in his father's expression the reflection of his mother's apprehension. roberto turned away sadly and began to pack away the star projector. someday, he thought, in spite of the little minds, we will have one of these that will show the other space as commonly as our own. and all their phantom angels and devils shall not bar man from the universe. * * * * * time passed. the ship was launched. six long years, roberto thought. long years of preparation, testing and training. hard, bone-wearying hours of familiarization and shakedown with nerve-straining, experimental jumps into the other space. now at last they were in that other space--that strange, blazing white elsewhere that korenyik had given to mankind as the trail to the stars--the horsehead nebula clear before them. six years of frantic activity ... and now he was launched and there was nothing to do in transit but wait. six years since he had been to the little sun-faded stone house near mexico city and felt the warm blood-tug of his parents. papa now dead and mama with her dark forebodings of angels and god. he gazed at the dark screens in the starship and wondered what he might see if they were on. * * * * * in the intense, brilliant region under the vault of heaven the two great creatures, their golden coruscating substance flung across the white space, sensed their coming. my-ky-el limned the ship with a golden halo and knew the creatures within. he linked with ra-fa-el and they communed in soaring crystal carillions of thought. --they are come from the black space hell. the brood of satan has broken its bonds and penetrated the barrier! --how is it so? the fallen were shrivelled of substance and energy; shorn of motion and thrust down into the black space with no memory of their origin.... --nevertheless they are here in a devious shape and white space is once again threatened.... --they must be annulled now! * * * * * !!!a-roorrr-uh!!!a-roorrr-uh!!! the klaxon howled out the alarm. the control board erupted into a swiftly spreading plague of red warning lights, indicating the korenyik matrix units were being subjected to incredible strain. roberto punched a row of screen tabs. the normal-space view screens showed nothing. he punched in the e-screens. he gasped at the sight, struck with an awful dread. great golden mists were clustering, bursting, swirling and spiralling in the blinding whiteness. they wreathed the ship, and the km units sobbed as they strained against the rending golden energies. roberto fought against odd, thick fear that tried to prostrate him on the deck and make him grovel in utter, abject terror. _this icy dread that freezes my blood is not of my making_, roberto thought. with a desperate effort of will he hurled his leaden fingers at the keys and punched in the omega beams. eyes burning, he saw ashen whorls spin through the golden mists and crystal screams seemed to splinter in his mind. for a fragment of time the km units ceased their belabored sobbing and the fear drained from roberto. in the instant he slammed the jump bar and they were in their own black space. "we'll never get home this way," the navigator said. he was trembling with shock. roberto struggled to keep his own body from quivering. "i will take us home. we will dodge in and out of the two spaces. the danger seems unable to follow. can you navigate such a course?" * * * * * the navigator was trembling violently and he began to sob. "what were they? so ma--magnificent ... and ... terrifying ... like great golden angels...." "shut up! shut up!" roberto screamed, his control shattering. he leaned to the limit of his pad straps and struck once and again at the navigator. roberto pulled his hands back and crowded his anger and fear to the back of his mind. "can you skip us home?" he again demanded of the navigator. the man's voice was steadier. "i'll need three minutes in black each time to compute position and plot the next jump. but, yes, i can do it." "i make you a gift of three hours right now." _and perhaps more we will need_, roberto thought, _to recover the courage for venturing again into the white space. and my navigator spoke of angels but where were the faces and wings? and why did i also think of angels almost as if i felt a nebulous ancient memory of them? and do the others feel as my navigator and i?_ they did! roberto had gone around the ship carefully questioning his men. no matter how delicately he inquired, whenever he touched upon what they might have seen on the e-screen the fear would come into their eyes. some spoke directly of heavenly creatures, others embarrassedly admitted such impressions and a few averted their eyes and denied such thoughts. but the words of them all were edged with terror and awe. roberto and his shaken crew were slowly regaining confidence. they had made a jump into the white space and remained there for some hours before being frightened back into the black by a vague alarm. nothing more than a quivering needle and a lighter patch on an e-screen; but they had remained hidden in black for many hours and now they were ready to make another jump. roberto pressed the jump bar, throwing them into white space ... and the golden fury struck!!!! a-roorrr-uh!!! a roorrr-uh!!! the board blazed red. there were screams on the intercom. there was heat and savage bucking with a crashing and screeching tear of ultra-steel. the e-screens flared with a terrible molten dancing of golden fire. roberto punched in the omega beams in a shell pattern, cut them and snapped on the force shield in full crackling power. it flared greenly against the golden furies. the reactive thrust slammed hard against the hull and the ship went hurtling end over end. roberto slapped the jump bar but the ship remained trapped in the white space. blue energy licked along the heaving bulkheads and decks. there were more cries and an odor of scorched flesh, and the corpse of his first officer went spinning limply through the control cabin. something wrenched loose and crunched heavily on roberto's leg before bouncing away. _too much red!_ roberto cried within, looking from his crimsoning leg to the carmine lights of the board. he pounded his fists on the unresponsive jump bar. "_mama_," he whispered in agony, and suddenly something connected, and the tortured ship tumbled shudderingly into black space. * * * * * mrs. sanchez sat in the twilight with the darkened house at her back and unmovingly faced the mountains. she heard the jet whine of the taxi helicopter but could not see it because it landed in front of the house. she listened as the whine faded. and in the silence she heard an odd step that she could not recognize. "mama." the voice was different. there was no longer a smile under it. but it was roberto's. she did not answer, but as she stood the noise of her chair brought him limping toward her. she started to move to him but he stopped abruptly and she suddenly felt a new bitter distance between them that mere steps could never cross. in the dusk she stared at his twisted leg. "roberto," she whispered sadly. "call me jacob," he said harshly. "i have wrestled with angels." he thrust out his crippled leg. "... and behold a _man_ wrestled with him till morning. and when he saw that he could not overcome him he touched the sinew of his thigh and forthwith it shrank!" with no triumph, but only a mother's distressed remonstrance, mrs. sanchez softly wailed, "o roberto, roberto, i warned you. i told you." "yes, mama, you told me," he said. "but you did not tell me the thing most important. you did not tell me that we are devils!" she stared at him, uncomprehending. "yes, my fine, good mama! with all your thoughts of heaven, we are a world of devils. how or why or from whence i do not yet know. but i am going back to the white space to seek and i only come now to see you once more and say good-by ... and...." roberto faltered and leaned toward her as if straining to see her face in the evening gloom that had almost deepened into night. "... and ... ask your blessing." the words were hardly more than a whisper. "going back?" she said incredulously. "i must." anger was in her voice as she pointed to his leg. "even with the mark of wrath you carry? you dare make more sacrilege?" she turned to go into the house. roberto limped a few steps after her. "mama, as you love me, your blessing! for your son." she turned in the doorway, her face hard. "i can only pray for you." roberto watched her go inside. no light appeared and he knew she would be kneeling before the shelf of holy things in the small flickering light of the votive candle. he made his way to the front of the house to the waiting heli-taxi. he looked back at the house. _this is no longer my home_, he thought. and then, a moment later: _was it ever?_ he looked up at the stars and thought of the pure brilliance of white space and the magnificent golden creatures. _why the sweet anguish in the depths of my being when i think of them and the white place? why in spite of my fear am i drawn to it more than i am to this house which is my home? home?_ roberto climbed into the machine and it moved upward a little closer to the stars before turning south. delay in transit by f. l. wallace illustrated by sibley [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy science fiction september . extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] an unprovoked, meaningless night attack is terrifying enough on your own home planet, worse on a world across the galaxy. but the horror is the offer of help that cannot be accepted! "muscles tense," said dimanche. "neural index . , unusually high. adrenalin squirting through his system. in effect, he's stalking you. intent: probably assault with a deadly weapon." "not interested," said cassal firmly, his subvocalization inaudible to anyone but dimanche. "i'm not the victim type. he was standing on the walkway near the brink of the thoroughfare. i'm going back to the habitat hotel and sit tight." "first you have to get there," dimanche pointed out. "i mean, is it safe for a stranger to walk through the city?" "now that you mention it, no," answered cassal. he looked around apprehensively. "where is he?" "behind you. at the moment he's pretending interest in a merchandise display." a native stamped by, eyes brown and incurious. apparently he was accustomed to the sight of an earthman standing alone, adam's apple bobbing up and down silently. it was a godolphian axiom that all travelers were crazy. cassal looked up. not an air taxi in sight; godolph shut down at dusk. it would be pure luck if he found a taxi before morning. of course he _could_ walk back to the hotel, but was that such a good idea? a godolphian city was peculiar. and, though not intended, it was peculiarly suited to certain kinds of violence. a human pedestrian was at a definite disadvantage. "correction," said dimanche. "not simple assault. he has murder in mind." "it still doesn't appeal to me," said cassal. striving to look unconcerned, he strolled toward the building side of the walkway and stared into the interior of a small cafe. warm, bright and dry. inside, he might find safety for a time. damn the man who was following him! it would be easy enough to elude him in a normal city. on godolph, nothing was normal. in an hour the streets would be brightly lighted--for native eyes. a human would consider it dim. "why did he choose me?" asked cassal plaintively. "there must be something he hopes to gain." "i'm working on it," said dimanche. "but remember, i have limitations. at short distances i can scan nervous systems, collect and interpret physiological data. i can't read minds. the best i can do is report what a person says or subvocalizes. if you're really interested in finding out why he wants to kill you, i suggest you turn the problem over to the godawful police." "godolph, not godawful," corrected cassal absently. that was advice he couldn't follow, good as it seemed. he could give the police no evidence save through dimanche. there were various reasons, many of them involving the law, for leaving the device called dimanche out of it. the police would act if they found a body. his own, say, floating face-down on some quiet street. that didn't seem the proper approach, either. "weapons?" "the first thing i searched him for. nothing very dangerous. a long knife, a hard striking object. both concealed on his person." cassal strangled slightly. dimanche needed a good stiff course in semantics. a knife was still the most silent of weapons. a man could die from it. his hand strayed toward his pocket. he had a measure of protection himself. "report," said dimanche. "not necessarily final. based, perhaps, on tenuous evidence." "let's have it anyway." "his motivation is connected somehow with your being marooned here. for some reason you can't get off this planet." that was startling information, though not strictly true. a thousand star systems were waiting for him, and a ship to take him to each one. of course, the one ship he wanted hadn't come in. godolph was a transfer point for stars nearer the center of the galaxy. when he had left earth, he had known he would have to wait a few days here. he hadn't expected a delay of nearly three weeks. still, it wasn't unusual. interstellar schedules over great distances were not as reliable as they might be. was this man, whoever and whatever he might be, connected with that delay? according to dimanche, the man thought he was. he was self-deluded or did he have access to information that cassal didn't? * * * * * denton cassal, sales engineer, paused for a mental survey of himself. he was a good engineer and, because he was exceptionally well matched to his instrument, the best salesman that neuronics, inc., had. on the basis of these qualifications, he had been selected to make a long journey, the first part of which already lay behind him. he had to go to tunney to see a man. that man wasn't important to anyone save the company that employed him, and possibly not even to them. the thug trailing him wouldn't be interested in cassal himself, his mission, which was a commercial one, nor the man on tunney. and money wasn't the objective, if dimanche's analysis was right. what _did_ the thug want? secrets? cassal had none, except, in a sense, dimanche. and that was too well kept on earth, where the instrument was invented and made, for anyone this far away to have learned about it. and yet the thug wanted to kill him. wanted to? regarded him as good as dead. it might pay him to investigate the matter further, if it didn't involve too much risk. "better start moving." that was dimanche. "he's getting suspicious." cassal went slowly along the narrow walkway that bordered each side of that boulevard, the transport tide. it was raining again. it usually was on godolph, which was a weather-controlled planet where the natives like rain. he adjusted the controls of the weak force field that repelled the rain. he widened the angle of the field until water slanted through it unhindered. he narrowed it around him until it approached visibility and the drops bounced away. he swore at the miserable climate and the near amphibians who created it. a few hundred feet away, a godolphian girl waded out of the transport tide and climbed to the walkway. it was this sort of thing that made life dangerous for a human--venice revised, brought up to date in a faster-than-light age. water. it was a perfect engineering material. simple, cheap, infinitely flexible. with a minimum of mechanism and at break-neck speed, the ribbon of the transport tide flowed at different levels throughout the city. the godolphian merely plunged in and was carried swiftly and noiselessly to his destination. whereas a human--cassal shivered. if he were found drowned, it would be considered an accident. no investigation would be made. the thug who was trailing him had certainly picked the right place. the godolphian girl passed. she wore a sleek brown fur, her own. cassal was almost positive she muttered a polite "arf?" as she sloshed by. what she meant by that, he didn't know and didn't intend to find out. "follow her," instructed dimanche. "we've got to investigate our man at closer range." * * * * * obediently, cassal turned and began walking after the girl. attractive in an anthropomorphic, seal-like way, even from behind. not graceful out of her element, though. the would-be assassin was still looking at merchandise as cassal retraced his steps. a man, or at least man type. a big fellow, physically quite capable of violence, if size had anything to do with it. the face, though, was out of character. mild, almost meek. a scientist or scholar. it didn't fit with murder. "nothing," said dimanche disgustedly. "his mind froze when we got close. i could feel his shoulderblades twitching as we passed. anticipated guilt, of course. projecting to you the action he plans. that makes the knife definite." well beyond the window at which the thug watched and waited, cassal stopped. shakily he produced a cigarette and fumbled for a lighter. "excellent thinking," commended dimanche. "he won't attempt anything on this street. too dangerous. turn aside at the next deserted intersection and let him follow the glow of your cigarette." the lighter flared in his hand. "that's one way of finding out," said cassal. "but wouldn't i be a lot safer if i just concentrated on getting back to the hotel?" "i'm curious. turn here." "go to hell," said cassal nervously. nevertheless, when he came to that intersection, he turned there. it was a godolphian equivalent of an alley, narrow and dark, oily slow-moving water gurgling at one side, high cavernous walls looming on the other. he would have to adjust the curiosity factor of dimanche. it was all very well to be interested in the man who trailed him, but there was also the problem of coming out of this adventure alive. dimanche, an electronic instrument, naturally wouldn't consider that. "easy," warned dimanche. "he's at the entrance to the alley, walking fast. he's surprised and pleased that you took this route." "i'm surprised, too," remarked cassal. "but i wouldn't say i'm pleased. not just now." "careful. even subvocalized conversation is distracting." the mechanism concealed within his body was silent for an instant and then continued: "his blood pressure is rising, breathing is faster. at a time like this, he may be ready to verbalize why he wants to murder you. this is critical." "that's no lie," agreed cassal bitterly. the lighter was in his hand. he clutched it grimly. it was difficult not to look back. the darkness assumed an even more sinister quality. "quiet," said dimanche. "he's verbalizing about you." "he's decided i'm a nice fellow after all. he's going to stop and ask me for a light." "i don't think so," answered dimanche. "he's whispering: 'poor devil. i hate to do it. but it's really his life or mine'." "he's more right than he knows. why all this violence, though? isn't there any clue?" "none at all," admitted dimanche. "he's very close. you'd better turn around." * * * * * cassal turned, pressed the stud on the lighter. it should have made him feel more secure, but it didn't. he could see very little. a dim shadow rushed at him. he jumped away from the water side of the alley, barely in time. he could feel the rush of air as the assailant shot by. "hey!" shouted cassal. echoes answered; nothing else did. he had the uncomfortable feeling that no one was going to come to his assistance. "he wasn't expecting that reaction," explained dimanche. "that's why he missed. he's turned around and is coming back." "i'm armed!" shouted cassal. "that won't stop him. he doesn't believe you." cassal grasped the lighter. that is, it had been a lighter a few seconds before. now a needle-thin blade had snapped out and projected stiffly. originally it had been designed as an emergency surgical instrument. a little imagination and a few changes had altered its function, converting it into a compact, efficient stiletto. "twenty feet away," advised dimanche. "he knows you can't see him, but he can see your silhouette by the light from the main thoroughfare. what he doesn't know is that i can detect every move he makes and keep you posted below the level of his hearing." "stay on him," growled cassal nervously. he flattened himself against the wall. "to the right," whispered dimanche. "lunge forward. about five feet. low." sickly, he did so. he didn't care to consider the possible effects of a miscalculation. in the darkness, how far was five feet? fortunately, his estimate was correct. the rapier encountered yielding resistance, the soggy kind: flesh. the tough blade bent, but did not break. his opponent gasped and broke away. "attack!" howled dimanche against the bone behind his ear. "you've got him. he can't imagine how you know where he is in the darkness. he's afraid." attack he did, slicing about wildly. some of the thrusts landed; some didn't. the percentage was low, the total amount high. his opponent fell to the ground, gasped and was silent. cassal fumbled in his pockets and flipped on a light. the man lay near the water side of the alley. one leg was crumpled under him. he didn't move. "heartbeat slow," said dimanche solemnly. "breathing barely perceptible." "then he's not dead," said cassal in relief. foam flecked from the still lips and ran down the chin. blood oozed from cuts on the face. "respiration none, heartbeat absent," stated dimanche. * * * * * horrified, cassal gazed at the body. self-defense, of course, but would the police believe it? assuming they did, they'd still have to investigate. the rapier was an illegal concealed weapon. and they would question him until they discovered dimanche. regrettable, but what could he do about it? suppose he were detained long enough to miss the ship bound for tunney ? grimly, he laid down the rapier. he might as well get to the bottom of this. why had the man attacked? what did he want? "i don't know," replied dimanche irritably. "i can interpret body data--a live body. i can't work on a piece of meat." cassal searched the body thoroughly. miscellaneous personal articles of no value in identifying the man. a clip with a startling amount of money in it. a small white card with something scribbled on it. a picture of a woman and a small child posed against a background which resembled no world cassal had ever seen. that was all. cassal stood up in bewilderment. dimanche to the contrary, there seemed to be no connection between this dead man and his own problem of getting to tunney . right now, though, he had to dispose of the body. he glanced toward the boulevard. so far no one had been attracted by the violence. he bent down to retrieve the lighter-rapier. dimanche shouted at him. before he could react, someone landed on him. he fell forward, vainly trying to grasp the weapon. strong fingers felt for his throat as he was forced to the ground. he threw the attacker off and staggered to his feet. he heard footsteps rushing away. a slight splash followed. whoever it was, he was escaping by way of water. whoever it was. the man he had thought he had slain was no longer in sight. "interpret body data, do you?" muttered cassal. "liveliest dead man i've ever been strangled by." "it's just possible there are some breeds of men who can control the basic functions of their body," said dimanche defensively. "when i checked him, he had no heartbeat." "remind me not to accept your next evaluation so completely," grunted cassal. nevertheless, he was relieved, in a fashion. he hadn't _wanted_ to kill the man. and now there was nothing he'd have to explain to the police. he needed the cigarette he stuck between his lips. for the second time he attempted to pick up the rapier-lighter. this time he was successful. smoke swirled into his lungs and quieted his nerves. he squeezed the weapon into the shape of a lighter and put it away. something, however, was missing--his wallet. the thug had relieved him of it in the second round of the scuffle. persistent fellow. damned persistent. it really didn't matter. he fingered the clip he had taken from the supposedly dead body. he had intended to turn it over to the police. now he might as well keep it to reimburse him for his loss. it contained more money than his wallet had. except for the identification tab he always carried in his wallet, it was more than a fair exchange. the identification, a rectangular piece of plastic, was useful in establishing credit, but with the money he now had, he wouldn't need credit. if he did, he could always send for another tab. a white card fluttered from the clip. he caught it as it fell. curiously he examined it. blank except for one crudely printed word, stab. his unknown assailant certainly had tried. * * * * * the old man stared at the door, an obsolete visual projector wobbling precariously on his head. he closed his eyes and the lettering on the door disappeared. cassal was too far away to see what it had been. the technician opened his eyes and concentrated. slowly a new sign formed on the door. travelers aid bureau murra foray, first counselor it was a drab sign, but, then, it was a dismal, backward planet. the old technician passed on to the next door and closed his eyes again. with a sinking feeling, cassal walked toward the entrance. he needed help and he had to find it in this dingy rathole. inside, though, it wasn't dingy and it wasn't a rathole. more like a maze, an approved scientific one. efficient, though not comfortable. travelers aid was busier than he thought it would be. eventually he managed to squeeze into one of the many small counseling rooms. a woman appeared on the screen, crisp and cool. "please answer everything the machine asks. when the tape is complete, i'll be available for consultation." cassal wasn't sure he was going to like her. "is this necessary?" he asked. "it's merely a matter of information." "we have certain regulations we abide by." the woman smiled frostily. "i can't give you any information until you comply with them." "sometimes regulations are silly," said cassal firmly. "let me speak to the first counselor." "you are speaking to her," she said. her face disappeared from the screen. cassal sighed. so far he hadn't made a good impression. travelers aid bureau, in addition to regulations, was abundantly supplied with official curiosity. when the machine finished with him, cassal had the feeling he could be recreated from the record it had of him. his individuality had been capsuled into a series of questions and answers. one thing he drew the line at--why he wanted to go to tunney was his own business. the first counselor reappeared. age, indeterminate. not, he supposed, that anyone would be curious about it. slightly taller than average, rather on the slender side. face was broad at the brow, narrow at the chin and her eyes were enigmatic. a dangerous woman. * * * * * she glanced down at the data. "denton cassal, native of earth. destination, tunney ." she looked up at him. "occupation, sales engineer. isn't that an odd combination?" her smile was quite superior. "not at all. scientific training as an engineer. special knowledge of customer relations." "special knowledge of a thousand races? how convenient." her eyebrows arched. "i think so," he agreed blandly. "anything else you'd like to know?" "sorry. i didn't mean to offend you." he could believe that or not as he wished. he didn't. "you refused to answer why you were going to tunney . perhaps i can guess. they're the best scientists in the galaxy. you wish to study under them." close--but wrong on two counts. they were good scientists, though not necessarily the best. for instance, it was doubtful that they could build dimanche, even if they had ever thought of it, which was even less likely. there was, however, one relatively obscure research worker on tunney that neuronics wanted on their staff. if the fragments of his studies that had reached earth across the vast distance meant anything, he could help neuronics perfect instantaneous radio. the company that could build a radio to span the reaches of the galaxy with no time lag could set its own price, which could be control of all communications, transport, trade--a galactic monopoly. cassal's share would be a cut of all that. his part was simple, on the surface. he was to persuade that researcher to come to earth, _if he could_. literally, he had to guess the tunnesian's price before the tunnesian himself knew it. in addition, the reputation of tunnesian scientists being exceeded only by their arrogance, cassal had to convince him that he wouldn't be working for ignorant earth savages. the existence of such an instrument as dimanche was a key factor. her voice broke through his thoughts. "now, then, what's your problem?" "i was told on earth i might have to wait a few days on godolph. i've been here three weeks. i want information on the ship bound for tunney ." "just a moment." she glanced at something below the angle of the screen. she looked up and her eyes were grave. "_rickrock c_ arrived yesterday. departed for tunney early this morning." "departed?" he got up and sat down again, swallowing hard. "when will the next ship arrive?" "do you know how many stars there are in the galaxy?" she asked. he didn't answer. * * * * * "that's right," she said. "billions. tunney, according to the notation, is near the center of the galaxy, inside the third ring. you've covered about a third of the distance to it. local traffic, anything within a thousand light-years, is relatively easy to manage. at longer distances, you take a chance. you've had yours and missed it. frankly, cassal, i don't know when another ship bound for tunney will show up on or near godolph. within the next five years--maybe." * * * * * he blanched. "how long would it take to get there using local transportation, star-hopping?" "take my advice: don't try it. five years, if you're lucky." "i don't need that kind of luck." "i suppose not." she hesitated. "you're determined to go on?" at the emphatic nod, she sighed. "if that's your decision, we'll try to help you. to start things moving, we'll need a print of your identification tab." "there's something funny about her," dimanche decided. it was the usual speaking voice of the instrument, no louder than the noise the blood made in coursing through arteries and veins. cassal could hear it plainly, because it was virtually inside his ear. cassal ignored his private voice. "identification tab? i don't have it with me. in fact, i may have lost it." she smiled in instant disbelief. "we're not trying to pry into any part of your past you may wish concealed. however, it's much easier for us to help you if you have your identification. now if you can't _remember_ your real name and where you put your identification--" she arose and left the screen. "just a moment." he glared uneasily at the spot where the first counselor wasn't. his _real_ name! "relax," dimanche suggested. "she didn't mean it as a personal insult." presently she returned. "i have news for you, whoever you are." "cassal," he said firmly. "denton cassal, sales engineer, earth. if you don't believe it, send back to--" he stopped. it had taken him four months to get to godolph, non-stop, plus a six-month wait on earth for a ship to show up that was bound in the right direction. over distances such as these, it just wasn't practical to send back to earth for anything. "i see you understand." she glanced at the card in her hand. "the spaceport records indicate that when _rickrock c_ took off this morning, there was a denton cassal on board, bound for tunney ." "it wasn't i," he said dazedly. he knew who it was, though. the man who had tried to kill him last night. the reason for the attack now became clear. the thug had wanted his identification tab. worse, he had gotten it. "no doubt it wasn't," she said wearily. "outsiders don't seem to understand what galactic travel entails." outsiders? evidently what she called those who lived beyond the second transfer ring. were those who lived at the edge of the galaxy, beyond the first ring, called rimmers? probably. * * * * * she was still speaking: "ten years to cross the galaxy, without stopping. at present, no ship is capable of that. real scheduling is impossible. populations shift and have to be supplied. a ship is taken off a run for repairs and is never put back on. it's more urgently needed elsewhere. the man who depended on it is left waiting; years pass before he learns it's never coming. "if we had instantaneous radio, that would help. confusion wouldn't vanish overnight, but it would diminish. we wouldn't have to depend on ships for all the news. reservations could be made ahead of time, credit established, lost identification replaced--" "i've traveled before," he interrupted stiffly. "i've never had any trouble." she seemed to be exaggerating the difficulties. true, the center was more congested. taking each star as the starting point for a limited number of ships and using statistical probability as a guide--why, no man would arrive at his predetermined destination. but that wasn't the way it worked. manifestly, you couldn't compare galactic transportation to the erratic paths of air molecules in a giant room. or could you? for the average man, anyone who didn't have his own inter-stellar ship, was the comparison too apt? it might be. "you've traveled outside, where there are still free planets waiting to be settled. where a man is welcome, if he's able to work." she paused. "the center is different. populations are excessive. inside the third ring, no man is allowed off a ship without an identification tab. they don't encourage immigration." in effect, that meant no ship bound for the center would take a passenger without identification. no ship owner would run the risk of having a permanent guest on board, someone who couldn't be rid of when his money was gone. cassal held his head in his hands. tunney was inside the third ring. "next time," she said, "don't let anyone take your identification." "i won't," he promised grimly. * * * * * the woman looked directly at him. her eyes were bright. he revised his estimate of her age drastically downward. she couldn't be as old as he. nothing outward had happened, but she no longer seemed dowdy. not that he was interested. still, it might pay him to be friendly to the first counselor. "we're a philanthropic agency," said murra foray. "your case is special, though--" "i understand," he said gruffly. "you accept contributions." she nodded. "if the donor is able to give. we don't ask so much that you'll have to compromise your standard of living." but she named a sum that would force him to do just that if getting to tunney took any appreciable time. he stared at her unhappily. "i suppose it's worth it. i can always work, if i have to." "as a salesman?" she asked. "i'm afraid you'll find it difficult to do business with godolphians." irony wasn't called for at a time like this, he thought reproachfully. "not just another salesman," he answered definitely. "i have special knowledge of customer reactions. i can tell exactly--" he stopped abruptly. was she baiting him? for what reason? the instrument he called dimanche was not known to the galaxy at large. from the business angle, it would be poor policy to hand out that information at random. aside from that, he needed every advantage he could get. dimanche was his special advantage. "anyway," he finished lamely, "i'm a first class engineer. i can always find something in that line." "a scientist, maybe," murmured murra foray. "but in this part of the milky way, an engineer is regarded as merely a technician who hasn't yet gained practical experience." she shook her head. "you'll do better as a salesman." he got up, glowering. "if that's all--" "it is. we'll keep you informed. drop your contribution in the slot provided for that purpose as you leave." a door, which he hadn't noticed in entering the counselling cubicle, swung open. the agency was efficient. "remember," the counselor called out as he left, "identification is hard to work with. don't accept a crude forgery." he didn't answer, but it was an idea worth considering. the agency was also eminently practical. the exit path guided him firmly to an inconspicuous and yet inescapable contribution station. he began to doubt the philanthropic aspect of the bureau. * * * * * "i've got it," said dimanche as cassal gloomily counted out the sum the first counselor had named. "got what?" asked cassal. he rolled the currency into a neat bundle, attached his name, and dropped it into the chute. "the woman, murra foray, the first counselor. she's a huntner." "what's a huntner?" "a sub-race of men on the other side of the galaxy. she was vocalizing about her home planet when i managed to locate her." "any other information?" "none. electronic guards were sliding into place as soon as i reached her. i got out as fast as i could." "i see." the significance of that, if any, escaped him. nevertheless, it sounded depressing. "what i want to know is," said dimanche, "why such precautions as electronic guards? what does travelers aid have that's so secret?" cassal grunted and didn't answer. dimanche could be annoyingly inquisitive at times. cassal had entered one side of a block-square building. he came out on the other side. the agency was larger than he had thought. the old man was staring at a door as cassal came out. he had apparently changed every sign in the building. his work finished, the technician was removing the visual projector from his head as cassal came up to him. he turned and peered. "you stuck here, too?" he asked in the uneven voice of the aged. "stuck?" repeated cassal. "i suppose you can call it that. i'm waiting for my ship." he frowned. he was the one who wanted to ask questions. "why all the redecoration? i thought travelers aid was an old agency. why did you change so many signs? i could understand it if the agency were new." the old man chuckled. "re-organization. the previous first counselor resigned suddenly, in the middle of the night, they say. the new one didn't like the name of the agency, so she ordered it changed." she would do just that, thought cassal. "what about this murra foray?" the old man winked mysteriously. he opened his mouth and then seemed overcome with senile fright. hurriedly he shuffled away. cassal gazed after him, baffled. the old man was afraid for his job, afraid of the first counselor. why he should be, cassal didn't know. he shrugged and went on. the agency was now in motion in his behalf, but he didn't intend to depend on that alone. * * * * * "the girl ahead of you is making unnecessary wriggling motions as she walks," observed dimanche. "several men are looking on with approval. i don't understand." cassal glanced up. they walked that way back in good old l.a. a pang of homesickness swept through him. "shut up," he growled plaintively. "attend to the business at hand." "business? very well," said dimanche. "watch out for the transport tide." cassal swerved back from the edge of the water. murra foray had been right. godolphians didn't want or need his skills, at least not on terms that were acceptable to him. the natives didn't have to exert themselves. they lived off the income provided by travelers, with which the planet was abundantly supplied by ship after ship. still, that didn't alter his need for money. he walked the streets at random while dimanche probed. "ah!" "what is it?" "that man. he crinkles something in his hands. not enough, he is subvocalizing." "i know how he feels," commented cassal. "now his throat tightens. he bunches his muscles. 'i know where i can get more,' he tells himself. he is going there." "a sensible man," declared cassal. "follow him." boldly the man headed toward a section of the city which cassal had not previously entered. he believed opportunity lay there. not for everyone. the shrewd, observant, and the courageous could succeed if--the word that the quarry used was a slang term, unfamiliar to either cassal or dimanche. it didn't matter as long as it led to money. cassal stretched his stride and managed to keep the man in sight. he skipped nimbly over the narrow walkways that curved through the great buildings. the section grew dingier as they proceeded. not slums; not the show-place city frequented by travelers, either. abruptly the man turned into a building. he was out of sight when cassal reached the structure. he stood at the entrance and stared in disappointment. "opportunities inc.," dimanche quoted softly in his ear. "science, thrills, chance. what does that mean?" "it means that we followed a gravity ghost!" "what's a gravity ghost?" "an unexplained phenomena," said cassal nastily. "it affects the instruments of spaceships, giving the illusion of a massive dark body that isn't there." "but you're not a pilot. i don't understand." "you're not a very good pilot yourself. we followed the man to a gambling joint." "gambling," mused dimanche. "well, isn't it an opportunity of a sort? someone inside is thinking of the money he's winning." "the owner, no doubt." dimanche was silent, investigating. "it is the owner," he confirmed finally. "why not go in, anyway. it's raining. and they serve drinks." left unstated was the admission that dimanche was curious, as usual. * * * * * cassal went in and ordered a drink. it was a variable place, depending on the spectator--bright, cheerful, and harmonious if he were winning, garish and depressingly vulgar if he were not. at the moment cassal belonged to neither group. he reserved judgment. an assortment of gaming devices were in operation. one in particular seemed interesting. it involved the counting of electrons passing through an aperture, based on probability. "not that," whispered dimanche. "it's rigged." "but it's not necessary," cassal murmured. "pure chance alone is good enough." "they don't take chances, pure or adulterated. look around. how many godolphians do you see?" cassal looked. natives were not even there as servants. strictly a clip joint, working travelers. unconsciously, he nodded. "that does it. it's not the kind of opportunity i had in mind." "don't be hasty," objected dimanche. "certain devices i can't control. there may be others in which my knowledge will help you. stroll around and sample some games." cassal equipped himself with a supply of coins and sauntered through the establishment, disbursing them so as to give himself the widest possible acquaintance with the layout. "that one," instructed dimanche. it received a coin. in return, it rewarded him with a large shower of change. the money spilled to the floor with a satisfying clatter. an audience gathered rapidly, ostensibly to help him pick up the coins. "there was a circuit in it," explained dimanche. "i gave it a shot of electrons and it paid out." "let's try it again," suggested cassal. "let's not," dimanche said regretfully. "look at the man on your right." cassal did so. he jammed the money back in his pocket and stood up. hastily, he began thrusting the money back into the machine. a large and very unconcerned man watched him. "you get the idea," said dimanche. "it paid off two months ago. it wasn't scheduled for another this year." dimanche scrutinized the man in a multitude of ways while cassal continued play. "he's satisfied," was the report at last. "he doesn't detect any sign of crookedness." "_crookedness?_" "on your part, that is. in the ethics of a gambling house, what's done to insure profit is merely prudence." * * * * * they moved on to other games, though cassal lost his briefly acquired enthusiasm. the possibility of winning seemed to grow more remote. "hold it," said dimanche. "let's look into this." "let me give _you_ some advice," said cassal. "this is one thing we can't win at. every race in the galaxy has a game like this. pieces of plastic with values printed on them are distributed. the trick is to get certain arbitrarily selected sets of values in the plastics dealt to you. it seems simple, but against a skilled player a beginner can't win." "every race in the galaxy," mused dimanche. "what do men call it?" "cards," said cassal, "though there are many varieties within that general classification." he launched into a detailed exposition of the subject. if it were something he was familiar with, all right, but a foreign deck and strange rules-- nevertheless, dimanche was interested. they stayed and observed. the dealer was clumsy. his great hands enfolded the cards. not a godolphian nor quite human, he was an odd type, difficult to place. physically burly, he wore a garment chiefly remarkable for its ill-fitting appearance. a hard round hat jammed closely over his skull completed the outfit. he was dressed in a manner that, somewhere in the universe, was evidently considered the height of fashion. "it doesn't seem bad," commented cassal. "there might be a chance." "look around," said dimanche. "everyone thinks that. it's the classic struggle, person against person and everyone against the house. naturally, the house doesn't lose." "then why are we wasting our time?" "because i've got an idea," said dimanche. "sit down and take a hand." "make up your mind. you said the house doesn't lose." "the house hasn't played against us. sit down. you get eight cards, with the option of two more. i'll tell you what to do." cassal waited until a disconsolate player relinquished his seat and stalked moodily away. he played a few hands and bet small sums in accordance with dimanche's instructions. he held his own and won insignificant amounts while learning. it was simple. nine orders, or suits, of twenty-seven cards each. each suit would build a different equation. the lowest hand was a quadratic. a cubic would beat it. all he had to do was remember his math, guess at what he didn't remember, and draw the right cards. "what's the highest possible hand?" asked dimanche. there was a note of abstraction in his voice, as if he were paying more attention to something else. cassal peeked at the cards that were face-down on the table. he shoved some money into the betting square in front of him and didn't answer. "you had it last time," said dimanche. "a three dimensional encephalocurve. a time modulated brainwave. if you had bet right, you could have owned the house by now." "i did? why didn't you tell me?" "because you had it three successive times. the probabilities against that are astronomical. i've got to find out what's happening before you start betting recklessly." "it's not the dealer," declared cassal. "look at those hands." they were huge hands, more suitable, seemingly, for crushing the life from some alien beast than the delicate manipulation of cards. cassal continued to play, betting brilliantly by the only standard that mattered: he won. * * * * * one player dropped out and was replaced by a recruit from the surrounding crowd. cassal ordered a drink. the waiter was placing it in his hand when dimanche made a discovery. "i've got it!" a shout from dimanche was roughly equivalent to a noiseless kick in the head. cassal dropped the drink. the player next to him scowled but said nothing. the dealer blinked and went on dealing. "what have you got?" asked cassal, wiping up the mess and trying to keep track of the cards. "how he fixes the deck," explained dimanche in a lower and less painful tone. "clever." muttering, cassal shoved a bet in front of him. "look at that hat," said dimanche. "ridiculous, isn't it? but i see no reason to gloat because i have better taste." "that's not what i meant. it's pulled down low over his knobby ears and touches his jacket. his jacket rubs against his trousers, which in turn come in contact with the stool on which he sits." "true," agreed cassal, increasing his wager. "but except for his physique, i don't see anything unusual." "it's a circuit, a visual projector broken down into components. the hat is a command circuit which makes contact, via his clothing, with the broadcasting unit built into the chair. the existence of a visual projector is completely concealed." cassal bit his lip and squinted at his cards. "interesting. what does it have to do with anything?" "the deck," exclaimed dimanche excitedly. "the backs are regular, printed with an intricate design. the front is a special plastic, susceptible to the influence of the visual projector. he doesn't need manual dexterity. he can make any value appear on any card he wants. it will stay there until he changes it." cassal picked up the cards. "i've got a loreenaroo equation. can he change that to anything else?" "he can, but he doesn't work that way. he decides before he deals who's going to get what. he concentrates on each card as he deals it. he can change a hand after a player gets it, but it wouldn't look good." "it wouldn't." cassal wistfully watched the dealer rake in his wager. his winnings were gone, plus. the newcomer to the game won. he started to get up. "sit down," whispered dimanche. "we're just beginning. now that we know what he does and how he does it, we're going to take him." * * * * * the next hand started in the familiar pattern, two cards of fairly good possibilities, a bet, and then another card. cassal watched the dealer closely. his clumsiness was only superficial. at no time were the faces of the cards visible. the real skill was unobservable, of course--the swift bookkeeping that went on in his mind. a duplication in the hands of the players, for instance, would be ruinous. cassal received the last card. "bet high," said dimanche. with trepidation, cassal shoved the money into the betting area. the dealer glanced at his hand and started to sit down. abruptly he stood up again. he scratched his cheek and stared puzzledly at the players around him. gently he lowered himself onto the stool. the contact was even briefer. he stood up in indecision. an impatient murmur arose. he dealt himself a card, looked at it, and paid off all the way around. the players buzzed with curiosity. "what happened?" asked cassal as the next hand started. "i induced a short in the circuit," said dimanche. "he couldn't sit down to change the last card he got. he took a chance, as he had to, and dealt himself a card, anyway." "but he paid off without asking to see what we had." "it was the only thing he could do," explained dimanche. "he had duplicate cards." the dealer was scowling. he didn't seem quite so much at ease. the cards were dealt and the betting proceeded almost as usual. true, the dealer was nervous. he couldn't sit down and stay down. he was sweating. again he paid off. cassal won heavily and he was not the only one. the crowd around them grew almost in a rush. there is an indefinable sense that tells one gambler when another is winning. this time the dealer stood up. his leg contacted the stool occasionally. he jerked it away each time he dealt to himself. at the last card he hesitated. it was amazing how much he could sweat. he lifted a corner of the cards. without indicating what he had drawn, determinedly and deliberately he sat down. the chair broke. the dealer grinned weakly as a waiter brought him another stool. "they still think it may be a defective circuit," whispered dimanche. the dealer sat down and sprang up from the new chair in one motion. he gazed bitterly at the players and paid them. "he had a blank hand," explained dimanche. "he made contact with the broadcasting circuit long enough to erase, but not long enough to put anything in it's place." the dealer adjusted his coat. "i have a nervous disability," he declared thickly. "if you'll pardon me for a few minutes while i take a treatment--" "probably going to consult with the manager," observed cassal. "he is the manager. he's talking with the owner." "keep track of him." * * * * * a blonde, pretty, perhaps even earth-type human, smiled and wriggled closer to cassal. he smiled back. "don't fall for it," warned dimanche. "she's an undercover agent for the house." cassal looked her over carefully. "not much under cover." "but if she should discover--" "don't be stupid. she'll never guess you exist. there's a small lump behind my ear and a small round tube cleverly concealed elsewhere." "all right," sighed dimanche resignedly. "i suppose people will always be a mystery to me." the dealer reappeared, followed by an unobtrusive man who carried a new stool. the dealer looked subtly different, though he was the same person. it took a close inspection to determine what the difference was. his clothing was new, unrumpled, unmarked by perspiration. during his brief absence, he had been furnished with new visual projector equipment, and it had been thoroughly checked out. the house intended to locate the source of the disturbance. mentally, cassal counted his assets. he was solvent again, but in other ways his position was not so good. "maybe," he suggested, "we should leave. with no further interference from us, they might believe defective equipment is the cause of their losses." "maybe," replied dimanche, "you think the crowd around us is composed solely of patrons?" "i see," said cassal soberly. he stretched his legs. the crowd pressed closer, uncommonly aggressive and ill-tempered for mere spectators. he decided against leaving. "let's resume play." the dealer-manager smiled blandly at each player. he didn't suspect any one person--yet. "he might be using an honest deck," said cassal hopefully. "they don't have that kind," answered dimanche. he added absently: "during his conference with the owner, he was given authority to handle the situation in any way he sees fit." bad, but not too bad. at least cassal was opposing someone who had authority to let him keep his winnings, _if he could be convinced_. the dealer deliberately sat down on the stool. testing. he could endure the charge that trickled through him. the bland smile spread into a triumphant one. "while he was gone, he took a sedative," analyzed dimanche. "he also had the strength of the broadcasting circuit reduced. he thinks that will do it." "sedatives wear off," said cassal. "by the time he knows it's me, see that it has worn off. mess him up." * * * * * the game went on. the situation was too much for the others. they played poorly and bet atrociously, on purpose. one by one they lost and dropped out. they wanted badly to win, but they wanted to live even more. the joint was jumping, and so was the dealer again. sweat rolled down his face and there were tears in his eyes. so much liquid began to erode his fixed smile. he kept replenishing it from some inner source of determination. cassal looked up. the crowd had drawn back, or had been forced back by hirelings who mingled with them. he was alone with the dealer at the table. money was piled high around him. it was more than he needed, more than he wanted. "i suggest one last hand," said the dealer-manager, grimacing. it sounded a little stronger than a suggestion. cassal nodded. "for a substantial sum," said the dealer, naming it. miraculously, it was an amount that equaled everything cassal had. again cassal nodded. "pressure," muttered cassal to dimanche. "the sedative has worn off. he's back at the level at which he started. fry him if you have to." the cards came out slowly. the dealer was jittering as he dealt. soft music was lacking, but not the motions that normally accompanied it. cassal couldn't believe that cards could be so bad. somehow the dealer was rising to the occasion. rising and sitting. "there's a nerve in your body," cassal began conversationally, "which, if it were overloaded, would cause you to drop dead." the dealer didn't examine his cards. he didn't have to. "in that event, someone would be arrested for murder," he said. "you." that was the wrong tack; the humanoid had too much courage. cassal passed his hand over his eyes. "you can't do this to men, but, strictly speaking, the dealer's not human. try suggestion on him. make him change the cards. play him like a piano. pizzicato on the nerve strings." dimanche didn't answer; presumably he was busy scrambling the circuits. the dealer stretched out his hand. it never reached the cards. danger: dimanche at work. the smile dropped from his face. what remained was pure anguish. he was too dry for tears. smoke curled up faintly from his jacket. "hot, isn't it?" asked cassal. "it might be cooler if you took off your cap." the cap tinkled to the floor. the mechanism in it was destroyed. what the cards were, they were. now they couldn't be changed. "that's better," said cassal. * * * * * he glanced at his hand. in the interim, it had changed slightly. dimanche had got there. the dealer examined his cards one by one. his face changed color. he sat utterly still on a cool stool. "you win," he said hopelessly. "let's see what you have." the dealer-manager roused himself. "you won. that's good enough for you, isn't it?" cassal shrugged. "you have bank of the galaxy service here. i'll deposit my money with them _before_ you pick up your cards." the dealer nodded unhappily and summoned an assistant. the crowd, which had anticipated violence, slowly began to drift away. "what did you do?" asked cassal silently. "men have no shame," sighed dimanche. "some humanoids do. the dealer was one who did. i forced him to project onto his cards something that wasn't a suit at all." "embarrassing if that got out," agreed cassal. "what did you project?" dimanche told him. cassal blushed, which was unusual for a man. the dealer-manager returned and the transaction was completed. his money was safe in the bank of the galaxy. "hereafter, you're not welcome," said the dealer morosely. "don't come back." cassal picked up the cards without looking at them. "and no accidents after i leave," he said, extending the cards face-down. the manager took them and trembled. "he's an honorable humanoid, in his own way," whispered dimanche. "i think you're safe." it was time to leave. "one question," cassal called back. "what do you call this game?" automatically the dealer started to answer. "why, everyone knows...." he sat down, his mouth open. it was more than time to leave. outside, he hailed an air taxi. no point in tempting the management. "look," said dimanche as the cab rose from the surface of the transport tide. a technician with a visual projector was at work on the sign in front of the gaming house. huge words took shape: warning--no telepaths allowed. there were no such things anywhere, but now there were rumors of them. * * * * * arriving at the habitat wing of the hotel, cassal went directly to his room. he awaited the delivery of the equipment he had ordered and checked through it thoroughly. satisfied that everything was there, he estimated the size of the room. too small for his purpose. he picked up the intercom and dialed services. "put a life stage cordon around my suite," he said briskly. the face opposite his went blank. "but you're an earthman. i thought--" "i know more about my own requirements than your life stage bureau. earthmen do have life stages. you know the penalty if you refuse that service." there were some races who went without sleep for five months and then had to make up for it. others grew vestigial wings for brief periods and had to fly with them or die; reduced gravity would suffice for that. still others-- but the one common feature was always a critical time in which certain conditions were necessary. insofar as there was a universal law, from one end of the galaxy to the other, this was it: the habitat hotel had to furnish appropriate conditions for the maintenance of any life-form that requested it. the godolphian disappeared from the screen. when he came back, he seemed disturbed. "you spoke of a suite. i find that you're listed as occupying one room." "i am. it's too small. convert the rooms around me into a suite." "that's very expensive." "i'm aware of that. check the bank of the galaxy for my credit rating." he watched the process take place. service would be amazingly good from now on. "your suite will be converted in about two hours. the life stage cordon will begin as soon after that as you want. if you tell me how long you'll need it, i can make arrangements now." "about ten hours is all i'll need." cassal rubbed his jaw reflectively. "one more thing. put a perpetual service at the spaceport. if a ship comes in bound for tunney or the vicinity of it, get accommodations on it for me. and hold it until i get ready, no matter what it costs." he flipped off the intercom and promptly went to sleep. hours later, he was awakened by a faint hum. the life stage cordon had just been snapped safely around his newly created suite. "now what?" asked dimanche. "i need an identification tab." "you do. and forgeries are expensive and generally crude, as that huntner woman, murra foray, observed." * * * * * cassal glanced at the equipment. "expensive, yes. not crude when we do it." "_we_ forge it?" dimanche was incredulous. "that's what i said. consider it this way. i've seen my tab a countless number of times. if i tried to draw it as i remember it, it would be inept and wouldn't pass. nevertheless, that memory is in my mind, recorded in neuronic chains, exact and accurate." he paused significantly. "you have access to that memory." "at least partially. but what good does that do?" "visual projector and plastic which will take the imprint. i think hard about the identification as i remember it. you record and feed it back to me while i concentrate on projecting it on the plastic. after we get it down, we change the chemical composition of the plastic. it will then pass everything except destructive analysis, and they don't often do that." dimanche was silent. "ingenious," was its comment. "part of that we can manage, the official engraving, even the electron stamp. that, however, is gross detail. the print of the brain area is beyond our capacity. we can put down what you remember, and you remember what you saw. you didn't see fine enough, though. the general area will be recognizable, but not the fine structure, nor the charges stored there nor their interrelationship." "but we've got to do it," cassal insisted, pacing about nervously. "with more equipment to probe--" "not a chance. i got one life stage cordon on a bluff. if i ask for another, they'll look it up and refuse." "all right," said dimanche, humming. the mechanical attempt at music made cassal's head ache. "i've got an idea. think about the identification tab." cassal thought. "enough," said dimanche. "now poke yourself." "where?" "everywhere," replied dimanche irritably. "one place at a time." cassal did so, though it soon became monotonous. dimanche stopped him. "just above your right knee." "what above my right knee?" "the principal access to that part of your brain we're concerned with," said dimanche. "we can't photomeasure your brain the way it was originally done, but we can investigate it remotely. the results will be simplified, naturally. something like a scale model as compared to the original. a more apt comparison might be that of a relief map to an actual locality." "investigate it remotely?" muttered cassal. a horrible suspicion touched his consciousness. he jerked away from that touch. "what does that mean?" "what it sounds like. stimulus and response. from that i can construct an accurate chart of the proper portion of your brain. our probing instruments will be crude out of necessity, but effective." "i've already visualized those probing instruments," said cassal worriedly. "maybe we'd better work first on the official engraving and the electron stamp, while i'm still fresh. i have a feeling...." "excellent suggestion," said dimanche. cassal gathered the articles slowly. his lighter would burn and it would also cut. he needed a heavy object to pound with. a violent irritant for the nerve endings. something to freeze his flesh.... dimanche interrupted: "there are also a few glands we've got to pick up. see if there's a stimi in the room." "stimi? oh yes, a stimulator. never use the damned things." but he was going to. the next few hours weren't going to be pleasant. nor dull, either. life could be difficult on godolph. * * * * * as soon as the life stage cordon came down, cassal called for a doctor. the native looked at him professionally. "is this a part of the earth life process?" he asked incredulously. gingerly, he touched the swollen and lacerated leg. cassal nodded wearily. "a matter of life and death," he croaked. "if it is, then it is," said the doctor, shaking his head. "i, for one, am glad to be a godolphian." "to each his own habitat," cassal quoted the motto of the hotel. godolphians were clumsy, good-natured caricatures of seals. there was nothing wrong with their medicine, however. in a matter of minutes he was feeling better. by the time the doctor left, the swelling had subsided and the open wounds were fast closing. eagerly, he examined the identification tab. as far as he could tell, it was perfect. what the scanner would reveal was, of course, another matter. he had to check that as best he could without exposing himself. services came up to the suite right after he laid the intercom down. a machine was placed over his head and the identification slipped into the slot. the code on the tab was noted; the machine hunted and found the corresponding brain area. structure was mapped, impulses recorded, scrambled, converted into a ray of light which danced over a film. the identification tab was similarly recorded. there was now a means of comparison. fingerprints could be duplicated--that is, if the race in question had fingers. every intelligence, however much it differed from its neighbors, had a brain, and tampering with that brain was easily detected. each identification tab carried a psychometric number which corresponded to the total personality. alteration of any part of the brain could only subtract from personality index. the technician removed the identification and gave it to cassal. "where shall i send the strips?" "you don't," said cassal. "i have a private message to go with them." "but that will invalidate the process." "i know. this isn't a formal contract." removing the two strips and handing them to cassal, the technician wheeled the machine away. after due thought, cassal composed the message. travelers aid bureau murra foray, first counselor: if you were considering another identification tab for me, don't. as you can see, i've located the missing item. he attached the message to the strips and dropped them into the communication chute. * * * * * he was wiping his whiskers away when the answer came. hastily he finished and wrapped himself, noting but not approving the amused glint in her eyes as she watched. his morals were his own, wherever he went. "denton cassal," she said. "a wonderful job. the two strips were in register within one per cent. the best previous forgery i've seen was six per cent, and that was merely a lucky accident. it couldn't be duplicated. let me congratulate you." his dignity was professional. "i wish you weren't so fond of that word 'forgery.' i told you i mislaid the tab. as soon as i found it, i sent you proof. i want to get to tunney . i'm willing to do anything i can to speed up the process." her laughter tinkled. "you don't _have_ to tell me how you did it or where you got it. i'm inclined to think you made it. you understand that i'm not concerned with legality as such. from time to time the agency has to furnish missing documents. if there's a better way than we have, i'd like to know it." he sighed and shook his head. for some reason, his heart was beating fast. he wanted to say more, but there was nothing to say. when he failed to respond, she leaned toward him. "perhaps you'll discuss this with me. at greater length." "at the agency?" she looked at him in surprise. "have you been sleeping? the agency is closed for the day. the first counselor can't work all the time, you know." sleeping? he grimaced at the remembrance of the self-administered beating. no, he hadn't been sleeping. he brushed the thought aside and boldly named a place. dinner was acceptable. dimanche waited until the screen was dark. the words were carefully chosen. "did you notice," he asked, "that there was no apparent change in clothing and makeup, yet she seemed younger, more attractive?" "i didn't think you could trace her that far." "i can't. i looked at her through your eyes." "don't trust my reaction," advised cassal. "it's likely to be subjective." "i don't," answered dimanche. "it is." * * * * * cassal hummed thoughtfully. dimanche was a business neurological instrument. it didn't follow that it was an expert in human psychology. * * * * * cassal stared at the woman coming toward him. center-of-the-galaxy fashion. decadent, of course, or maybe ultra-civilized. as an outsider, he wasn't sure which. whatever it was, it did to the human body what should have been done long ago. and this body wasn't exactly human. the subtle skirt of proportions betrayed it as an offshoot or deviation from the human race. some of the new sub-races stacked up against the original stock much in the same way cro-magnons did against neanderthals, in beauty, at least. dimanche spoke a single syllable and subsided, an event cassal didn't notice. his consciousness was focused on another discovery: the woman was murra foray. he knew vaguely that the first counselor was not necessarily what she had seemed that first time at the agency. that she was capable of such a metamorphosis was hard to believe, though pleasant to accept. his attitude must have shown on his face. "please," said murra foray. "i'm a huntner. we're adept at camouflage." "huntner," he repeated blankly. "i knew that. but what's a huntner?" she wrinkled her lovely nose at the question. "i didn't expect you to ask that. i won't answer it now." she came closer. "i thought you'd ask which was the camouflage--the person you see here, or the one at the bureau?" he never remembered the reply he made. it must have been satisfactory, for she smiled and drew her fragile wrap closer. the reservations were waiting. dimanche seized the opportunity to speak. "there's something phony about her. i don't understand it and i don't like it." "you," said cassal, "are a machine. you don't have to like it." "that's what i mean. you _have_ to like it. you have no choice." murra foray looked back questioningly. cassal hurried to her side. the evening passed swiftly. food that he ate and didn't taste. music he heard and didn't listen to. geometric light fugues that were seen and not observed. liquor that he drank--and here the sequence ended, in the complicated chemistry of godolphian stimulants. cassal reacted to that smooth liquid, though his physical reactions were not slowed. certain mental centers were depressed, others left wide open, subject to acceleration at whatever speed he demanded. murra foray, in his eyes at least, might look like a dream, the kind men have and never talk about. she was, however, interested solely in her work, or so it seemed. * * * * * "godolph is a nice place," she said, toying with a drink, "if you like rain. the natives seem happy enough. but the galaxy is big and there are lots of strange planets in it, each of which seems ideal to those who are adapted to it. i don't have to tell you what happens when people travel. they get stranded. it's not the time spent in actual flight that's important; it's waiting for the right ship to show up and then having all the necessary documents. believe me, that can be important, as you found out." he nodded. he had. "that's the origin of travelers aid bureau," she continued. "a loose organization, propagated mainly by example. sometimes it's called star travelers aid. it may have other names. the aim, however, is always the same: to see that stranded persons get where they want to go." she looked at him wistfully, appealingly. "that's why i'm interested in your method of creating identification tabs. it's the thing most commonly lost. stolen, if you prefer the truth." she seemed to anticipate his question. "how can anyone use another's identification? it can be done under certain circumstances. by neural lobotomy, a portion of one brain may be made to match, more or less exactly, the code area of another brain. the person operated on suffers a certain loss of function, of course. how great that loss is depends on the degree of similarity between the two brain areas before the operation took place." she ought to know, and he was inclined to believe her. still, it didn't sound feasible. "you haven't accounted for the psychometric index," he said. "i thought you'd see it. that's diminished, too." logical enough, though not a pretty picture. a genius could always be made into an average man or lowered to the level of an idiot. there was no operation, however, that could raise an idiot to the level of a genius. the scramble for the precious identification tabs went on, from the higher to the lower, a game of musical chairs with grim over-tones. she smiled gravely. "you haven't answered my implied question." the company that employed him wasn't anxious to let the secret of dimanche get out. they didn't sell the instrument; they made it for their own use. it was an advantage over their competitors they intended to keep. even on his recommendation, they wouldn't sell to the agency. moreover, it wouldn't help travelers aid bureau if they did. since she was first counselor, it was probable that she'd be the one to use it. she couldn't make identification for anyone except herself, and then only if she developed exceptional skill. the alternative was to surgery it in and out of whoever needed it. when that happened, secrecy was gone. travelers couldn't be trusted. * * * * * he shook his head. "it's an appealing idea, but i'm afraid i can't help you." "meaning you won't." this was intriguing. now it was the agency, not he, who wanted help. "don't overplay it," cautioned dimanche, who had been consistently silent. she leaned forward attentively. he experienced an uneasy moment. was it possible she had noticed his private conversation? of course not. yet-- "please," she said, and the tone allayed his fears. "there's an emergency situation and i've got to attend to it. will you go with me?" she smiled understandingly at his quizzical expression. "travelers aid is always having emergencies." she was rising. "it's too late to go to the bureau. my place has a number of machines with which i keep in touch with the spaceport." "i wonder," said dimanche puzzledly. "she doesn't subvocalize at all. i haven't been able to get a line on her. i'm certain she didn't receive any sort of call. be careful. this might be a trick." "interesting," said cassal. he wasn't in the mood to discuss it. her habitation was luxurious, though cassal wasn't impressed. luxury was found everywhere in the universe. huntner women weren't. he watched as she adjusted the machines grouped at one side of the room. she spoke in a low voice; he couldn't distinguish words. she actuated levers, pressed buttons: impedimenta of communication. at last she finished. "i'm tired. will you wait till i change?" inarticulately, he nodded. "i think her 'emergency' was a fake," said dimanche flatly as soon as she left. "i'm positive she wasn't operating the communicator. she merely went through the motions." "motions," murmured cassal dreamily, leaning back. "and what motions." "i've been watching her," said dimanche. "she frightens me." "i've been watching her, too. maybe in a different way." "get out of here while you can," warned dimanche. "she's dangerous." * * * * * momentarily, cassal considered it. dimanche had never failed him. he ought to follow that advice. and yet there was another explanation. "look," said cassal. "a machine is a machine. but among humans there are men and women. what seems dangerous to you may be merely a pattern of normal behavior...." he broke off. murra foray had entered. strictly from the other side of the galaxy, which she was. a woman can be slender and still be womanly beautiful, without being obvious about it. not that murra disdained the obvious, technically. but he could see through technicalities. the tendons in his hands ached and his mouth was dry, though not with fear. an urgent ringing pounded in his ears. he shook it out of his head and got up. she came to him. the ringing was still in his ears. it wasn't a figment of imagination; it was a real voice--that of dimanche, howling: "huntner! it's a word variant. in their language it means hunter. _she can hear me!_" "hear you?" repeated cassal vacantly. she was kissing him. "a descendant of carnivores. an audio-sensitive. she's been listening to you and me all the time." "of course i have, ever since the first interview at the bureau," said murra. "in the beginning i couldn't see what value it was, but you convinced me." she laid her hand gently over his eyes. "i hate to do this to you, dear, but i've got to have dimanche." she had been smothering him with caresses. now, deliberately, she began smothering him in actuality. cassal had thought he was an athlete. for an earthman, he was. murra foray, however, was a huntner, which meant hunter--a descendant of incredibly strong carnivores. he didn't have a chance. he knew that when he couldn't budge her hands and he fell into the airless blackness of space. * * * * * alone and naked, cassal awakened. he wished he hadn't. he turned over and, though he tried hard not to, promptly woke up again. his body was willing to sleep, but his mind was panicked and disturbed. about what, he wasn't sure. he sat up shakily and held his roaring head in his hands. he ran aching fingers through his hair. he stopped. the lump behind his ear was gone. "dimanche!" he called, and looked at his abdomen. there was a thin scar, healing visibly before his eyes. "dimanche!" he cried again. "dimanche!" there was no answer. dimanche was no longer with him. he staggered to his feet and stared at the wall. she'd been kind enough to return him to his own rooms. at length he gathered enough strength to rummage through his belongings. nothing was missing. money, identification--all were there. he could go to the police. he grimaced as he thought of it. the neighborly godolphian police were hardly a match for the huntner; she'd fake them out of their skins. he couldn't prove she'd taken dimanche. nothing else normally considered valuable was missing. besides, there might even be a local prohibition against dimanche. not by name, of course; but they could dig up an ancient ordinance--invasion of privacy or something like that. anything would do if it gave them an opportunity to confiscate the device for intensive study. for the police to believe his story was the worst that could happen. they might locate dimanche, but he'd never get it. he smiled bitterly and the effort hurt. "dear," she had called him as she had strangled and beaten him into unconsciousness. afterward singing, very likely, as she had sliced the little instrument out of him. he could picture her not very remote ancestors springing from cover and overtaking a fleeing herd-- no use pursuing that line of thought. why did she want dimanche? she had hinted that the agency wasn't always concerned with legality as such. he could believe her. if she wanted it for making identification tabs, she'd soon find that it was useless. not that that was much comfort--she wasn't likely to return dimanche after she'd made that discovery. * * * * * for that matter, what was the purpose of travelers aid bureau? it was a front for another kind of activity. philanthropy had nothing to do with it. if he still had possession of dimanche, he'd be able to find out. everything seemed to hinge on that. with it, he was nearly a superman, able to hold his own in practically all situations--anything that didn't involve a huntner woman, that is. without it--well, tunney was still far away. even if he should manage to get there without it, his mission on the planet was certain to fail. he dismissed the idea of trying to recover it immediately from murra foray. she was an audio-sensitive. at twenty feet, unaided, she could hear a heartbeat, the internal noise muscles made in sliding over each other. with dimanche, she could hear electrons rustling. as an antagonist she was altogether too formidable. * * * * * he began pulling on his clothing, wincing as he did so. the alternative was to make another dimanche. _if_ he could. it would be a tough job even for a neuronic expert familiar with the process. he wasn't that expert, but it still had to be done. the new instrument would have to be better than the original. maybe not such a slick machine, but more comprehensive. more wallop. he grinned as he thought hopefully about giving murra foray a surprise. ignoring his aches and pains, he went right to work. with money not a factor, it was an easy matter to line up the best electronic and neuron concerns on godolph. two were put on a standby basis. when he gave them plans, they were to rush construction at all possible speed. each concern was to build a part of the new instrument. neither part was of value without the other. the slow-thinking godolphians weren't likely to make the necessary mental connection between the seemingly unrelated projects. he retired to his suite and began to draw diagrams. it was harder than he thought. he knew the principles, but the actual details were far more complicated than he remembered. functionally, the dimanche instrument was divided into three main phases. there was a brain and memory unit that operated much as the human counterpart did. unlike the human brain, however, it had no body to control, hence more of it was available for thought processes. entirely neuronic in construction, it was far smaller than an electronic brain of the same capacity. the second function was electronic, akin to radar. instead of material objects, it traced and recorded distant nerve impulses. it could count the heartbeat, measure the rate of respiration, was even capable of approximate analysis of the contents of the bloodstream. properly focused on the nerves of tongue, lips or larynx, it transmitted that data back to the neuronic brain, which then reconstructed it into speech. lip reading, after a fashion, carried to the ultimate. finally, there was the voice of dimanche, a speaker under the control of the neuronic brain. for convenience of installation in the body, dimanche was packaged in two units. the larger package was usually surgeried into the abdomen. the small one, containing the speaker, was attached to the skull just behind the ear. it worked by bone conduction, allowing silent communication between operator and instrument. a real convenience. it wasn't enough to know this, as cassal did. he'd talked to the company experts, had seen the symbolical drawings, the plans for an improved version. he needed something better than the best though, that had been planned. the drawback was this: _dimanche was powered directly by the nervous system of the body in which it was housed_. against murra foray, he'd be over-matched. she was stronger than he physically, probably also in the production of nervous energy. one solution was to make available to the new instrument a larger fraction of the neural currents of the body. that was dangerous--a slight miscalculation and the user was dead. yet he had to have an instrument that would overpower her. cassal rubbed his eyes wearily. how could he find some way of supplying additional power? abruptly, cassal sat up. that was the way, of course--an auxiliary power pack that need not be surgeried into his body, extra power that he would use only in emergencies. neuronics, inc., had never done this, had never thought that such an instrument would ever be necessary. they didn't need to overpower their customers. they merely wanted advance information via subvocalized thoughts. it was easier for cassal to conceive this idea than to engineer it. at the end of the first day, he knew it would be a slow process. twice he postponed deadlines to the manufacturing concerns he'd engaged. he locked himself in his rooms and took anti-sleep against the doctor's vigorous protests. in one week he had the necessary drawings, crude but legible. an expert would have to make innumerable corrections, but the intent was plain. one week. during that time murra foray would be growing hourly more proficient in the use of dimanche. * * * * * cassal followed the neuronics expert groggily, seventy-two hours sleep still clogging his reactions. not that he hadn't needed sleep after that week. the godolphian showed him proudly through the shops, though he wasn't at all interested in their achievements. the only noteworthy aspect was the grand scale of their architecture. "we did it, though i don't think we'd have taken the job if we'd known how hard it was going to be," the neuronics expert chattered. "it works exactly as you specified. we had to make substitutions, of course, but you understand that was inevitable." he glanced anxiously at cassal, who nodded. that was to be expected. components that were common on earth wouldn't necessarily be available here. still, any expert worth his pay could always make the proper combinations and achieve the same results. inside the lab, cassal frowned. "i thought you were keeping my work separate. what is this planetary drive doing here?" the godolphian spread his broad hands and looked hurt. "planetary drive?" he tried to laugh. "this is the instrument you ordered!" cassal started. it was supposed to fit under a flap of skin behind his ear. a three world saurian couldn't carry it. he turned savagely on the expert. "i told you it had to be small." "but it is. i quote your orders exactly: 'i'm not familiar with your system of measurement, but make it tiny, very tiny. figure the size you think it will have to be and cut it in half. and then cut _that_ in half.' this is the fraction remaining." it certainly was. cassal glanced at the godolphian's hands. excellent for swimming. no wonder they built on a grand scale. broad, blunt, webbed hands weren't exactly suited for precision work. valueless. completely valueless. he knew now what he would find at the other lab. he shook his head in dismay, personally saw to it that the instrument was destroyed. he paid for the work and retrieved the plans. back in his rooms again, he sat and thought. it was still the only solution. if the godolphians couldn't do it, he'd have to find some race that could. he grabbed the intercom and jangled it savagely. in half an hour he had a dozen leads. the best seemed to be the spirella. a small, insectlike race, about three feet tall, they were supposed to have excellent manual dexterity, and were technically advanced. they sounded as if they were acquainted with the necessary fields. three light-years away, they could be reached by readily available local transportation within the day. their idea of what was small was likely to coincide with his. he didn't bother to pack. the suite would remain his headquarters. home was where his enemies were. he made a mental correction--enemy. * * * * * he rubbed his sensitive ear, grateful for the discomfort. his stomach was sore, but it wouldn't be for long. the spirella had made the new instrument just as he had wanted it. they had built an even better auxiliary power unit than he had specified. he fingered the flat cases in his pocket. in an emergency, he could draw on these, whereas murra foray would be limited to the energy in her nervous system. what he had now was hardly the same instrument. a military version of it, perhaps. it didn't seem right to use the same name. call it something staunch and crisp, suggestive of raw power. manche. as good a name as any. manche against dimanche. cassal against a queen. he swung confidently along the walkway beside the transport tide. it was raining. he decided to test the new instrument. the godolphian across the way bent double and wondered why his knees wouldn't work. they had suddenly become swollen and painful to move. maybe it was the climate. and maybe it wasn't, thought cassal. eventually the pain would leave, but he hadn't meant to be so rough on the native. he'd have to watch how he used manche. he scouted the vicinity of travelers aid bureau, keeping at least one building between him and possible detection. purely precautionary. there was no indication that murra foray had spotted him. for a huntner, she wasn't very alert, apparently. he sent manche out on exploration at minimum strength. the electronic guards which dimanche had spoken of were still in place. manche went through easily and didn't disturb an electron. behind the guards there was no trace of the first counselor. he went closer. still no warning of danger. the same old technician shuffled in front of the entrance. a horrible thought hit him. it was easy enough to verify. another "reorganization" _had_ taken place. the new sign read: star travelers aid bureau stab _your hour of need_ delly mortinbras, first counselor cassal leaned against the building, unable to understand what it was that frightened and bewildered him. then it gradually became, if not clear, at least not quite so muddy. stab was the word that had been printed on the card in the money clip that his assailant in the alley had left behind. cassal had naturally interpreted it as an order to the thug. it wasn't, of course. the first time cassal had visited the travelers aid bureau, it had been in the process of reorganization. the only purpose of the reorganization, he realized now, had been to change the name so he wouldn't translate the word on the slip into the original initials of the bureau. now it probably didn't matter any more whether or not he knew, so the name had been changed back to star travelers aid bureau--stab. that, he saw bitterly, was why murra foray had been so positive that the identification tab he'd made with the aid of dimanche had been a forgery. _she had known the man who robbed cassal of the original one, perhaps had even helped him plan the theft._ * * * * * that didn't make sense to cassal. yet it had to. he'd suspected the organization of being a racket, but it obviously wasn't. by whatever name it was called, it actually was dedicated to helping the stranded traveler. the question was--which travelers? there must be agency operatives at the spaceport, checking every likely prospect who arrived, finding out where they were going, whether their papers were in order. then, just as had happened to cassal, the prospect was robbed of his papers so somebody stranded here could go on to that destination! the shabby, aging technician finished changing the last door sign and hobbled over to cassal. he peered through the rain and darkness. "you stuck here, too?" he quavered. "no," said cassal with dignity, shaky dignity. "i'm not stuck. i'm here because i want to be." "you're crazy," declared the old man. "i remember--" cassal didn't wait to find out what it was he remembered. an impossible land, perhaps, a planet which swings in perfect orbit around an ideal sun. a continent which reared a purple mountain range to hold up a honey sky. people with whom anyone could relax easily and without worry or anxiety. in short, his own native world from which, at night, all the constellations were familiar. somehow, cassal managed to get back to his suite, tumbled wearily onto his bed. the show-down wasn't going to take place. everyone connected with the agency--including murra foray--had been "stuck here" for one reason or another: no identification tab, no money, whatever it was. that was the staff of the bureau, a pack of desperate castaways. the "philanthropy" extended to them and nobody else. they grabbed their tabs and money from the likeliest travelers, leaving them marooned here--and they in turn had to join the bureau and use the same methods to continue their journeys through the galaxy. it was an endless belt of stranded travelers robbing and stranding other travelers, who then had to rob and strand still others, and so on and on.... * * * * * cassal didn't have a chance of catching up with murra foray. she had used the time--and dimanche--to create her own identification tab and escape. she was going back to kettikat, home of the huntners, must already be light-years away. or was she? the signs on the bureau had just been changed. perhaps the ship was still in the spaceport, or cruising along below the speed of light. he shrugged defeatedly. it would do him no good; he could never get on board. he got up suddenly on one elbow. he couldn't, but manche could! unlike his old instrument, it could operate at tremendous distances, its power no longer dependent only on his limited nervous energy. with calculated fury, he let manche strike out into space. "there you are!" exclaimed murra foray. "i thought you could do it." "did you?" he asked coldly. "where are you now?" "leaving the atmosphere, if you can call the stuff around this planet an atmosphere." "it's not the atmosphere that's bad," he said as nastily as he could. "it's the philanthropy." "please don't feel that way," she appealed. "huntners are rather unusual people, i admit, but sometimes even we need help. i had to have dimanche and i took it." "at the risk of killing me." her amusement was strange; it held a sort of sadness. "i didn't hurt you. i couldn't. you were too cute, like a--well, the animal native to kettikat that would be called a teddy bear on earth. a cute, lovable teddy bear." "teddy bear," he repeated, really stung now. "careful. this one may have claws." "long claws? long enough to reach from here to kettikat?" she was laughing, but it sounded thin and wistful. manche struck out at cassal's unspoken command. the laughter was canceled. "now you've done it," said dimanche. "she's out cold." there was no reason for remorse; it was strange that he felt it. his throat was dry. "so you, too, can communicate with me. through manche, of course. i built a wonderful instrument, didn't i?" "a fearful one," said dimanche sternly. "she's unconscious." "i heard you the first time." cassal hesitated. "is she dead?" dimanche investigated. "of course not. a little thing like that wouldn't hurt her. her nerve system is marvelous. i think it could carry current for a city. beautiful!" "i'm aware of the beauty," said cassal. * * * * * an awkward silence followed. dimanche broke it. "now that i know the facts, i'm proud to be her chosen instrument. her need was greater than yours." cassal growled, "as first counselor, she had access to every--" "don't interrupt with your half truths," said dimanche. "huntners _are_ special; their brain structure, too. not necessarily better, just different. only the auditory and visual centers of their brains resemble that of man. you can guess the results of even superficial tampering with those parts of her mind. and stolen identification would involve lobotomy." he could imagine? cassal shook his head. no, he couldn't. a blinded and deaf murra foray would not go back to the home of the huntners. according to her racial conditioning, a sightless young tiger should creep away and die. again there was silence. "no, she's not pretending unconsciousness," announced dimanche. "for a moment i thought--but never mind." the conversation was lasting longer than he expected. the ship must be obsolete and slow. there were still a few things he wanted to find out, if there was time. "when are you going on drive?" he asked. "we've been on it for some time," answered dimanche. "repeat that!" said cassal, stunned. "i said that we've been on faster-than-light drive for some time. is there anything wrong with that?" nothing wrong with that at all. theoretically, there was only one means of communicating with a ship hurtling along faster than light, and that way hadn't been invented. _hadn't been until he had put together the instrument he called manche._ unwittingly, he had created far more than he intended. he ought to have felt elated. dimanche interrupted his thoughts. "i suppose you know what she thinks of you." "she made it plain enough," said cassal wearily. "a teddy bear. a brainless, childish toy." "among the huntners, women are vigorous and aggressive," said dimanche. the voice grew weaker as the ship, already light-years away, slid into unfathomable distances. "where words are concerned, morals are very strict. for instance, 'dear' is never used unless the person means it. huntner men are weak and not over-burdened with intelligence." the voice was barely audible, but it continued: "the principal romantic figure in the dreams of women...." dimanche failed altogether. "manche!" cried cassal. manche responded with everything it had. "... is the teddy bear." the elation that had been missing, and the triumph, came now. it was no time for hesitation, and cassal didn't hesitate. their actions had been directed against each other, but their emotions, which each had tried to ignore, were real and strong. the gravitor dropped him to the ground floor. in a few minutes, cassal was at the travelers aid bureau. correction. now it was star travelers aid bureau. and, though no one but himself knew it, even that was wrong. quickly he found the old technician. "there's been a reorganization," said cassal bluntly. "i want the signs changed." the old man drew himself up. "who are you?" "i've just elected myself," said cassal. "i'm the new first counselor." he hoped no one would be foolish enough to challenge him. he wanted an organization that could function immediately, not a hospital full of cripples. the old man thought about it. he was merely a menial, but he had been with the bureau for a long time. he was nobody, nothing, but he could recognize power when it was near him. he wiped his eyes and shambled out into the fine cold rain. swiftly the new signs went up. star travelers aid bureau s. t. a. _with us_ denton cassal, first counselor * * * * * cassal sat at the control center. every question cubicle was visible at a glance. in addition there was a special panel, direct from the spaceport, which recorded essential data about every newly arrived traveler. he could think of a few minor improvements, but he wouldn't have time to put them into effect. he'd mention them to his assistant, a man with a fine, logical mind. not really first-rate, of course, but well suited to his secondary position. every member quickly rose or sank to his proper level in this organization, and this one had, without a struggle. business was dull. the last few ships had brought travelers who were bound for unimaginably dreary destinations, nothing he need be concerned with. he thought about the instrument. it was the addition of power that made the difference. dimanche plus power equaled manche, and manche raised the user far above the level of other men. there was little to fear. but essentially the real value of manche lay in this--it was a beginning. through it, he had communicated with a ship traveling far faster than light. the only one instrument capable of that was instantaneous radio. actually it wasn't radio, but the old name had stuck to it. manche was really a very primitive model of instantaneous radio. it was crude; all first steps were. limited in range, it was practically valueless for that purpose now. eventually the range would be extended. hitch a neuronic manufactured brain to human one, add the power of a tiny atomic battery, and manche was created. the last step was his share of the invention. or maybe the credit belonged to murra foray. if she hadn't stolen dimanche, it never would have been necessary to put together the new instrument. the stern lines on his face relaxed. murra foray. he wondered about the marriage customs of the huntners. he hoped marriage was a custom on kettikat. cassal leaned back; officially, his mission was complete. there was no longer any need to go to tunney . the scientist he was sent to bring back might as well remain there in obscure arrogance. cassal knew he should return to earth immediately. but the galaxy was wide and there were lots of places to go. only one he was interested in, though--kettikat, as far from the center of the galaxy as earth, but in the opposite direction, incredibly far away in terms of trouble and transportation. it would be difficult even for a man who had the services of manche. cassal glanced at the board. someone wanted to go to zombo. "delly," he called to his assistant. "try . this may be what you want to get back to your own planet." delly mortinbras nodded gratefully and cut in. cassal continued scanning. there was more to it than he imagined, though he was learning fast. it wasn't enough to have identification, money, and a destination. the right ship might come in with standing room only. someone had to be "persuaded" that godolph was a cozy little place, as good as any for an unscheduled stopover. it wouldn't change appreciably during his lifetime. there were too many billions of stars. first he had to perfect it, isolate from dependence on the human element, and then there would come the installation. a slow process, even with murra to help him. someday he would go back to earth. he should be welcome. the information he was sending back to his former employers, neuronics, inc., would more than compensate them for the loss of dimanche. suddenly he was alert. a report had just come in. once upon a time, he thought tenderly, scanning the report, there was a teddy bear that could reach to kettikat. with claws--but he didn't think they would be needed. an elephant for the prinkip by l. j. stecher, jr. illustrated by dick francis [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy magazine august . extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] a delta class freighter can carry anything--maybe more than its skipper can bear! a delta class freighter isn't pretty to look at, but it can be adapted to carry most anything, and occasionally even to carry it profitably. so when i saw one i didn't recognize sitting under the gantry at helmholtz spaceport, i hurried right over to operations. it looked as if i might be able to get my gasha root off-planet before it started to spoil, after all. it was the _delta crucis_, they told me. she was a tramp, and she hadn't yet been signed for a cargo. the skipper was listed as his own agent. they told me where they thought i could find him, so i drifted over to the spaceport bar, and looked around. i found my man quickly enough. he had the young-old look of a deep spacer. he wore a neat but threadbare blue uniform, with the four broad gold rings of command--rather tarnished--on each sleeve. he had a glass of rhial--a liquor that was too potent for my taste--in front of him at ten o'clock in the morning, and that wasn't a good sign. but he looked sober enough. so i picked up a large schooner of beer at the bar and strolled over to his table in the far corner away from the window. "mind if i join you?" i asked casually. "i hate to drink alone." he stared at me for a minute out of those pale-blue spacer's eyes of his, until i figured he thought he had me catalogued. then he motioned me to the chair across from his at the small table. we sat for a few minutes in silence, sizing each other up. "that's a mighty nice looking freighter out there on pad seven," i said at last. "yours?" * * * * * he uncapped his glass, took a sip of rhial, snicked the cover back, and let the heady stuff evaporate in his mouth. he breathed in sharply in the approved manner, but he didn't even shudder. he just nodded slowly, once. that appeared to pass the conversational ball back to me. "i might have a cargo for you, if you can handle it," i said. "i hear these delta class ships can manage almost anything, but this is a rough one. the _annabelle_ is the only ship in the area built to take my stuff, and she's grounded with transposer troubles." he cocked one sandy eyebrow at me. i interpreted this to be a request for the nature of my cargo, so i told him, and let him ponder about it for a while. "gasha root," he said at last, and nodded once. "i can handle it. that'll be easy, for _delta crucis_. like you said, she can handle anything. her last cargo was a live elephant." we completed our deal without much trouble. he drove a hard bargain, but a fair one, and he had plenty of self-confidence. he signed a contingent-on-satisfactory-delivery contract, and that's unusual for a ship that's handling gasha. hadn't thought i'd be so lucky. gasha is tricky stuff. we went over to the government office to complete the deal--customs arrangements, notarizations, posting bonds and so forth--but we finally signed the contract, all legal and binding. his name turned out to be bart hannah. then, by unspoken consent, we went back to the bar. it was after noon, by that time, so i had a scotch, and then i had another. i was so relieved to have found a ship for my cargo that i didn't even think about lunch. * * * * * i got more and more mellow and talkative as time went by, but the skipper just sat there, breathing rhial. he didn't seem to change a bit. something had been bothering me, though, and i finally figured out what it was. so i stopped talking about my farming troubles, and asked captain hannah a direct question. "you say you carried an _elephant_?" i asked. "a _live_ elephant? in a _space ship_?" he nodded. "it's an animal," he said. "a very large animal. from earth." "i know all about that," i said. "we're civilized here. we're not just a bunch of back-planet hicks, you know. we study all about the home planet at school. but why--and how--would anyone take an elephant into space?" he stared at me for a while, then took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "i'll tell you," he said. "after all, it's nothing to be really ashamed of." he pondered for a full minute. "it all started just a few standard months ago, on condor--over in sector sixty-four w." "sixty-four w?" i broke in. "that's clear over on the other side of the galaxy." he looked at me for awhile, and then went on just as if i hadn't spoken. "i'd been doing all right with _delta crucis_," he said, "and salting away plenty of cash, but i wasn't satisfied. it was mostly short-haul stuff--ten or twenty light years--and it was mostly run-of-the-mill loads. fleeder jewels, kharran, morab fur--that sort of thing, you know. i was getting bored. they said a delta class freighter could carry just about anything, and i wanted to prove it. so when i heard that a rich eccentric, one planet out, on penguin, might have an interesting job for me, i flitted right over. "the prinkip of penguin wasn't just rich. he was _rich_ rich. penguin has almost twice the diameter of this planet, but it's light enough to have about the same surface gravity. to give you an idea, its two biggest bodies of water are about the size of the atlantic ocean, back on the earth you've studied so much about. on penguin they call them lakes. and the prinkip owns the whole planet--free and clear. i should be so lucky with _delta crucis_. * * * * * "the prinkip is a little skinny man, but that doesn't keep him from having a large-size hobby to go with his large-size planet. the prinkip collects animals--one from each planet in his sector. he had a zoo with nearly three hundred monsters in it--always a sample of the largest kind from whatever planet it came from. "he showed me around. it was the damndest sight you ever saw. he had one animal called a pfleeg. it was almost two hundred feet long; it walked around on two legs and sang like a bird. he had another one that had two hundred and thirty-four legs on a side. i counted them. it had four sides. didn't care which one was up. he had animals under glass that didn't breathe at all. he had one animal under a microscope that was about a thousandth of an inch long, but he told me that it was the biggest one on fartolp. he had a big satellite stuck up overhead in a one-revolution-a-day orbit for animals that needed light gravity. he had thirty-seven more beasts in that. all in all, he had one animal from every planet in sector sixty-four w that had life. he figured that he needed just one more animal to complete his collection. he wanted a sample of a creature from the home planet; one live and healthy sample of earth's biggest animal. and he wanted to know if i could ship it to him. "well, i didn't give the matter too much thought. after all, i said to myself, if somebody had managed a three hundred ton monster almost two hundred feet long, i ought to be able to manage a little bitty elephant. so i said yes, and i gave him a contingent-on-satisfactory-delivery contract, for one adult specimen of earth's largest animal, male or female, in good condition. "it wasn't until about that time that the prinkip told me how that biggest monster had been shipped. it had arrived in a cardboard box, wrapped in cotton. it seems that pfleeg eggs weigh just a little under three ounces. well, i'd been done but i still figured i could make delivery." * * * * * he lapsed into silence for a moment, thinking deeply. "did you know that there are two kinds of elephants on earth, the african and the indian, and that they aren't exactly the same size?" he asked. i shook my head. "our schools don't go that far," i said. he nodded. "neither do ours. so i immediately bought an indian elephant. they're the kind, back on the home planet, that you can find tame and easy to handle. they're also the wrong kind. the only reason i didn't head right back with it is that i was having trouble figuring out how to carry it in the _crucis_. even an indian elephant weighs about six tons. at least, mine did. in itself, that's not a very big load, but the trip back would take a good many months of subjective time, and of course elephants eat on subjective time. and how they eat! the food i carried would weigh the same as the elephant. "i wondered how elephants would like weightlessness, so i took my indian elephant up on a little jaunt around earth's satellite. the moon, they call it. elephants don't like weightlessness at all." he paused, and signaled the bartender for another drink. "i hope you never have to clean up after a space-sick elephant," he said darkly. "that meant that i'd have to put spin on the _crucis_ for the entire trip back to penguin. it's hard enough to try to navigate in hyperspace with spin on your ship, but that wasn't the worst of it. an elephant is a tremendous amount of off-center load for a ship with a large fraction of a one-gee spin on it. too much load even to think about handling. even though i couldn't come up with an answer, right off hand, i went ahead and turned in my indian elephant on an african model. beulah was her name, and she was a husky girl. she weighed in at just a little more than eight tons." i waved my whisky glass at captain hannah. "but i don't see your problem," i said. "if you put the elephant on one side and his food on the other, there wouldn't be any off-balanced load, would there?" "not until the food was eaten, anyway," said the skipper witheringly, and i subsided with a fresh drink. * * * * * "beulah was kind of cute, for all of her tonnage," said the skipper. "she had two enormous tusks, and a pair of ears like wings, and a nose that was longer than her tail. but she was mighty friendly, after she got to know me. she'd pick me up and carry me around, if i asked her to. and she'd eat right out of my hand. she turned out to be even tamer than the indian elephant. all i had to do was figure out how to carry her. "for a starter, i figured like you said, to have beulah on one side of the cargo compartment, and her chow on the other. then i calculated to have my own supplies on the other two sides of the space, so that i could move them away from her as her food stocks got smaller, and hold the balance that way. that wasn't enough, of course, so i built a couple of water tanks on the opposite side of the ring from beulah. "as you know, not much can be done about moving water around in a space ship--it's got its own cooling chores to perform--but every little bit helped. finally, i jockeyed the master computer and the auxiliary computer down and ran them on tracks, so i could slide them around to compensate for beulah's appetite. some lead slugs brought the auxiliary's weight up equal to the master's, and they also brought my total load up to the absolute maximum that i could carry. "it was almost enough. but a miss is as good as a mile, for a space ship. i was stuck, and there didn't seem to be a thing i could do about it. even if i could have carried more weight it wouldn't have helped. any more mass in the cargo compartment would have thrown the c.g. too far aft." he beckoned for more rhial. "so what did you do?" i prompted. "you did say that you carried the elephant, didn't you?" "sure. like i said, a delta class freighter can do almost anything. beulah gave me the answer herself. if you've ever lived with an elephant, one thing becomes clear mighty fast. they're a mighty efficient machine for converting fodder into elephant droppings. so i made a bin on the opposite side of the compartment from beulah, and let her gradually fill it while she ate me out of balance. the weight of the--what's a nice word for it?--was just enough to let me keep the whole setup in dynamic balance." "compost heap?" i suggested dreamily, picturing the arrangement in my mind. there was poetry in it. or was it poetic justice that i had in mind? * * * * * "that's it," said captain hannah. "compost heap. well, i started the journey with the ship full and beulah and the compost heap empty. i finished pretty much the other way around. i suppose it sounds easy, but it wasn't. "i started off with beulah chained down in the middle of the compartment, and everything stacked around her. she didn't want me to leave when i went up to the bridge to take off, and hollered as piteously as you can imagine. but i couldn't have a nurse for her--mahout, they call them. i couldn't spare the weight. or the salary, for that matter. she was chained down, so she couldn't move around and upset the balance. "after chemical take off, we slid into parking orbit as sweet as you please. i hurried down to shift the load around. i didn't want to stay weightless any longer than i had to, because i remembered that sick indian elephant--and beulah outweighed him by almost two tons, and had a larger stomach to match. of course, the indian elephant had gone into orbit on a full belly, and i hadn't let beulah have a bite to eat for hours. it made a difference, let me tell you. "beulah made trouble in her own way, though. as soon as i got within reach, she grabbed me with that long nose of hers, and wouldn't let go. she didn't hurt me or anything like that; she just wanted company in her misery. i couldn't coax her with food. the very thought of food made her shudder. "i couldn't reach her chains to cut her loose, and i couldn't reach the radio to call for help. if it hadn't been for the ionosphere guard, i might have starved to death. i'd hired the parking orbit for twelve hours, and when i was still in it after that time, port control started to holler. i could hear them on my loud speaker, but i couldn't answer them. so the ionosphere guard finally sent up a small craft with a lieutenant and a three-man crew in it to see what was wrong. * * * * * "those sailors were good. they didn't even look surprised; they just went to work as if they handled elephants in space every day. they drove four lines through the ring bolts i'd welded in the spin-deck, cast beulah loose and hauled her over to her new spot as neat as you please. "then, no nonsense, the lieutenant ordered beulah to let loose of me. she did, too. "after that they left, stopping for just one drink of my good bourbon. i didn't drink rhial then. "i wirelessed port control my penalty fees and another twelve hour's hire in the orbit, and started shifting the load. i was working on an empty stomach, and beulah still didn't feel hungry, so she didn't remind me that i hadn't eaten. i almost collapsed before i got the job done. "then i put spin on, which made beulah comfortable at last, and tried to juggle the ship into a hyper-trajectory, still without stopping for food or sleep. it didn't take long before beulah started squalling for supper. after i fed her i had to adjust balance all over again. by that time i was pushing my new twelve-hour limit, and i didn't give much of a damn any more. i just counted to ten and pushed the button. then i turned in and slept until beulah started squalling for breakfast. i ignored her until i ate about three squares in a row, then i fed her and adjusted balance. after that i checked my trajectory. "it was the best i've ever made in twenty-four years of jumping. it was beautiful. "so i turned back in again and slept until beulah woke me for lunch. i didn't know it at the time, but beulah was eating for two. that possibility probably should have occurred to me earlier, what with the name 'beulah', but you can't think of everything, and there i was, the first man to go into hyperspace with an elephant. anyway, it didn't even worry me, even when i found out about it. i checked the contract. everything seemed to be well covered. and according to my book on elephants, beulah should still be only a potential mother when we reached penguin. as a matter of fact, the whole idea made me feel just a little bit proud. like a father, you know? "what with having to shift weights after every meal, and beulah setting the schedule for meals, i was kept mighty busy. my self-winding wristwatch overwound itself and stopped, in spite of the advertisements about it, and i didn't find out for almost two weeks, subjective, that beulah's stomach ran fast. what's more, i think she knew it. because when i finally woke up to what was going on, and started to run her schedule by the clock, she didn't fuss a bit. beulah's a clever girl. "i was so worn out when we finally reached penguin that i just slid into orbit, kept spin on, laid out a couple of extra meals for beulah and slept the clock around. the prinkip was mighty mad about it when i finally turned on my radio, but i told him i had my cargo ready for delivery and where did he want me to put it? so he calmed down and gave me the coordinates. * * * * * "of course, i had to take off the spin and shift beulah back to the landing deck, and there wasn't any ionosphere guard around to help me if i got into any kind of trouble. so i was mighty careful. i put the chains on beulah again, and then set up trip ropes so i could cut her loose without getting inside of reach of that nose of hers. then i ran lines back to the first set of ring bolts, so i could drag her back, weightless, without any trouble. beulah looked a little unhappy, but didn't make any fuss about it all. i started to take spin off, giving the orders to the angle jets through the computer right down in the cargo compartment, so the old girl wouldn't worry about where i was. "beulah didn't squall as her weight came off this time. she just reached down and tripped loose the chains around her ankles. did i tell you that she was mighty clever?" i nodded. "well, she started around that spin deck after me. i punched into the computer the maximum order for spin reduction, and started around the spin deck to keep away from her. beulah grabbed hold of the computer with her nose--for support, i guess--when she got over there. she yanked the whole thing clear off the deck, breaking its cable. _crucis_ lurched once. "and i ended up in the compost heap. "with beulah way off center, and with that last wild burst from the jets before they cut off, the ship was gyrating in a way that made _my_ stomach uneasy. it didn't seem to bother beulah, though. she just wanted to be near me. i got out of there fast, and went up onto the bridge. "the main computer was out, of course. i couldn't interrogate the auxiliary computer remotely, so i had to fly that wobbling ship to a stop by the seat of my pants. i did it, too. "then i went back to the cargo compartment and hauled beulah into the center. she didn't make any more trouble--she was sorry for what she had done. "the coordinates the prinkip had given me looked almighty close to a big pond that i didn't recall having seen before, but i was too busy making a landing with minimum fuel to ask him about it. i finally fought her down safely with one leg of my tripod actually in the pond, and clouds of steam rising up around _delta crucis_. i call it a pond. but on a normal-size planet it would be a good big lake. "anyway, i had made it safely to penguin, and my elephant was alive and healthy. i congratulated beulah when i untied her, and then i took her outside to meet the prinkip. i think i was a little proud of myself, and of beulah, and of _delta crucis_, too." * * * * * i was so stirred by hearing about this successful conclusion of captain hannah's mission that i shook his hand warmly and ordered a round of drinks for everyone in the room. fortunately, it was not very crowded at the time. "that's not quite the end of the story," said the skipper. "you see, the prinkip had built the pond to keep beulah in. he had somehow gotten the idea that i was bringing him a whale." i looked blank. "an earth mammal. it lives in the oceans, and runs to maybe seventy or eighty tons." i sat down slowly, and then made a sudden dive for my contract for the use of the _delta crucis_. the skipper nodded. "i had a contingent contract with the prinkip, too," he said, "and i hadn't delivered. i still haven't figured out how to make delivery of a whale, but i will some day. "and if you're looking for that part of our contract where you agree to store any residual cargo i may be carrying, it's all legal and binding. until i get back from hauling your gasha root, you'll have to care for one adult female african elephant. but i'm sure you'll get to like beulah as much as i have. she's a mighty clever elephant." i called the waiter over and ordered a beaker of rhial. "but you're lucky at that," said hannah. "check subparagraph f of paragraph of our contract: incidental accrual. when beulah has her baby, the little tyke will be all yours." now i know why captain hannah drinks rhial in the morning. so do i. alien minds by e. everett evans fantasy press, inc. reading, pennsylvania copyright by e. everett evans no part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. [transcriber's note: extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] first edition printed in u. s. a. by e. everett evans man of many minds the planet mappers alien minds for mother to whom i owe so much alien minds chapter "were you looking for a roch, nyer?" an oily voice spoke up just by the elbow of george hanlon. "i have some excellent ones here, sir." "yes, nyer, i want several, if i can find ones to suit me," the young man replied. nor could anyone, glancing at him, know he was not a native of this planet, szstruyyah, which the inter-stellar corpsmen, in self-defense, called "estrella." for the cosmetic-specialist who handled the secret servicemen's disguises had done a marvelous job in transforming the blond young corpsman into an estrellan native. hanlon continued looking into the outside cages containing these tailless roches, the estrellan equivalent of wild dogs. "i want eight, all as near the same size, coloring and age as possible." "eight, did you say?" the merchant looked at him in astonishment. hanlon, carefully reading the surface of the man's mind, sensed the conflict there between the ethics his religion and philosophy had taught him, his natural love of haggling, and a desire to make as much profit as possible. but he could not sense the slightest suspicion that the man confronting him was not another estrellan. this was a great relief to hanlon, for he was still afraid he might be recognized as a stranger and an alien. in his disguise he was still humanoid in shape, and still his five feet eleven inches in height. but in addition to the ragged beard and longish hair, he had undergone outward structural differences that made him seem almost totally unhuman. "that's right. eight. i want them to be about two years old, in good health. can you supply them?" "i can if you can pay for them," the native looked somewhat questioningly at hanlon's cheap clothing. the young secret serviceman smiled, and jingled coins in his pocket. "i can pay." "then come with me, nyer, and we will find the ones you want." hanlon followed him inside the peculiar little open-faced stall that was one of the hundreds surrounding the great market square of this city of stearra, largest on the west continent of estrella. his nose wrinkled against the stench of the uncleaned kennels. the roches, seeing a stranger and, perhaps, being somewhat upset by his strange, alien effluvia, set up the peculiar, frenzied yelping that was their customary sound. to hanlon, it was reminiscent of the wail of earthly coyotes. the young corpsman was on a very hair-trigger of caution and tenseness. despite his splendid disguise, he had plodded through the crowd of the market place with a great deal of trepidation. he had seemingly come through all right so far, and he began to relax a bit, yet was still somewhat fearful that he might give himself away by some difference of action, or speech, or by breaking one of their customs or taboos about which he knew all too little, despite his briefing and study before coming here. "have you decided which ones you want, nyer?" the proprietor asked, waving his hand toward the various cages, hardly able to believe he was to make such a large sale. hanlon said nothing, continuing to scan closely the roches, for his thoughts were still very much on this, his first prolonged venture into the streets and among the crowds of this strange new world to which he had been assigned on his second problem. his mind was constantly contacting others, for george spencer newton hanlon was the only member of the secret service who was at all able to read minds. but he could read only their surface thoughts--and these estrellans had such peculiar mental processes, so different from those of the humans with whom he was familiar, that they were almost non-understandable. so he was still a bit hesitant to start the bickering he knew he must engage in to stay in character. to delay a bit further he continued examining the animals in the cages, not only with his eyes but mentally scanning the brain of each, that he might be sure of finding those in perfect health, with minds he could most easily control. "though how i can expect to find healthy ones in a filthy dump like this, i don't know," he thought. but he finally did. while he was doing this, however, he was reminded of the time he had discovered this ability to "read" animal minds, and how his subsequent studies had enabled him to control their minds and bodily actions with amazing skill. it was this ability that had led him to this market place on his unusual quest. "i'll take that one, and that, and that," he said at last, pointing out, one after another, the eight animals he wanted. "yes, nyer, yes," the puzzled but delighted proprietor said, as he transferred the indicated animals to a single, large cage. "that will cost you ..." he eyed hanlon carefully to see if he could get away with an exorbitant price. something seemed to tell him the stranger did not know just how much roches customarily sold for, and he decided to raise his asking price considerably. "... they will be seven silver pentas each, nyer, and believe me, you are getting a fine price. i usually get ten each,"--he was lucky to get two, hanlon read in his mind--"but since this is such a large sale i can afford to make you a bargain." hanlon grinned to himself as he computed quickly. five iron pentas, he knew, made one copper penta, five coppers one tin penta, five of these one silver penta, and five silvers a gold one. this made the silver piece worth about one-half a federation credit. the price seemed ridiculously low, even with this big mark-up. hanlon would willingly have paid it, but he had learned from the briefing tapes, and again now from his reading of this merchant's mind, that they loved to haggle over their sales--made a sort of game of it--so he turned away, registering disgust. "a fool you think me, perhaps," he said witheringly. "seven silver pentas, indeed. one would be a great price for such ill-fed, scrawny, pitiable animals as those." the merchant raised his hands and voice in simulated rage--which did not prevent him from running around to face hanlon's retreating figure, and bar his way. "'robber', he calls me, then tries to rob me in turn. six?" he suggested hopefully. hanlon was now enjoying the game, and threw himself into it with vigor. "i call on zappa to witness that you are, indeed, the worst thief unhung," he also spoke loudly, angrily, largely for the benefit of the crowd of natives that was swiftly gathering to watch and listen to this sport. "look, that one is crooked of leg, this one's hair is ready to fall out, that one is fifteen years old if a day. i'll give you two." yet he knew all the animals were in perfect health, and all about two years old. he had carefully selected only such. "i ask anyone here," the seller wailed as he waved toward the crowd that was watching and listening with huge enjoyment, "i ask anyone here who knows roches to examine these you have chosen. they are all exceptional, all perfect. the best in my shop. five and a half." hanlon turned away again. "i'll go find an _honest_ dealer," he started to push through the crowd, but the merchant hurried after him and grasped his smock. "wait, nyer, wait. it breaks my heart to do this. i'll lose a month's profit, but i'll sell them to you for five pentas each. to my best friend i wouldn't give a better price." "that shows why you have no friends. three even, take it or leave it," hanlon was still pretending indifference. "i'm ruined; i'll be forced out of business," the dealer screamed. "they cost me more than that. oh, why did i rise this morning. give me four?" hanlon grinned and dug out a handful of the pentagonal-shaped gold and silver pieces. he counted into the merchant's quivering but dirty hands the agreed-upon thirty-two pentas. the native looked at them, wordlessly, but his face was a battleground of mixed emotions. finally he reluctantly counted out half of them into his other hand, and held them out to hanlon. "no, nyer, i cannot over-charge you. two is the price." "you're an honest man after all, and i apologize," hanlon said, smiling, as he pushed back the outstretched hand. "those i chose are fine animals, perfect, and the best in your shop. so keep the money. send them to my room this midday," he commanded. "it's on the street of the seven moons, at the corner of the street of the limping caval--the house painted pink in front. second floor to the rear. my name--gor anlo--is on the door." he had taken that name on this planet since it most nearly corresponded to his own from among the common estrellan names. the roch-dealer, well pleased with the outcome, bobbed obsequiously. "it shall be done as you say, nyer, and i shall include feeding and drinking dishes. what about food for them?" "that's right, they'll need dishes, and thank you. let's see your meat." but after examining the poor quality food the merchant displayed, he would not buy. "i'll get something elsewhere, if this is the best you have," hanlon told the man with a disarming smile. "such fine roches deserve the best." "yes, my food is poor," the dealer moved his hand deprecatingly. "i'm glad the roches are to have such a considerate master." and hanlon could read in his mind that the merchant actually was pleased. the s s man felt that he had passed this first public test with high grades. in one of the better-class food stalls hanlon found some good, clean meat, and the other foods such animals ate. after the customary game of haggling, he ordered a two days' supply to be delivered at once, and the order duplicated every other day until further notice. then he hunted up a suit-maker. here it took a lot of persuasion, and the showing of his money, before the tailor would even believe that hanlon really meant what he said when he tried to order nine uniforms, eight of them of such outlandish shape and size. for one of them was for himself, the others for his newly-bought roches. it was only when hanlon finally lost patience and said sharply, "you stupid lout, i want them for a theatrical act," that the uniform-maker realized the reason for such an unusual order. then things ran smoothly. the design was sketched, and material of a red to harmonize with the grayish-tan of the roches was chosen. the tailor consented also, for an added fee, to rush the job. hanlon's way home led through part of the district where the larger, better-class shops were located. he stopped in front of one of these. he knew from his studies and from what he had seen here, that estrella was just at the beginning of a mechanical culture. what sciences and machines they had were unbelievably crude and primitive to him, accustomed as he was to the high technologies of terra and the colonized planets. this display he was scanning featured their means of personal transportation. there were, of course, no moving slideways, nor even automobiles nor ground cabs nor copters. instead, the estrellans used motorized tricycles. even the smallest of these was heavy, cumbersome, crude and inefficient, but they were speedier and easier than walking--when they worked. the tricycles had large wheels, about three feet in diameter, with semi-hard, rubber-like tires. there were two wheels in back and one in front, steered by a tiller lever. because of the weight of the engine and tank for the gas, even the smallest trike weighed several hundred pounds. the fuel was acetylene gas, hanlon found to his dismay. electricity had been discovered here, but as yet they knew only direct current. no ac--no vacuum tubes--no telephones--no radios--no television--"ner nothing," hanlon snorted in disgust. but the native scientists and technicians had found how to use their d c to manufacture calcium carbide. thus, they had plenty of acetylene gas, and many ways of using this for power. "i'd lots rather have a good two-wheeled bike," hanlon thought to himself, but decided, "guess i'd better buy one of these. probably have to do a lot of chasing around, and since there's no 'for hire' ground cabs, i don't want to have to walk all the time. besides, i might have to get somewhere in a hurry." the salesman had first tried to sell him one of the larger three- or four-place family-sized tricycles that steered with a wheel. but hanlon finally made the man understand that he wanted only a one-man machine, and the purchase was haggled into completion--at a price so low it surprised the young secret serviceman. "sure is one screwy world," he shook his head as he rode back toward his apartment, after learning how to operate his new machine and its tricky engine. back in his room, hanlon reviewed the situation to date on this, his second assignment for the secret service of the inter-stellar corps. he had been at the head of the commission sent to algon where he (hanlon) had been largely instrumental in freeing from slavery the strange, vegetable-like people, the guddus.[ ] the commission had helped them make a treaty with the federated planets by which the natives allowed the humans to mine certain valuable metals from their planet, and to maintain the spaceship-yards that had been built by the men who had formerly enslaved them, in return for protection from exploiters, and for certain cultural assistance. just as his work there was about finished, a message had come for captain hanlon to report back to the planet simonides. [footnote : see "man of many minds," fantasy press, .] there he met his father, regional admiral newton, second in command of the secret service. (this discrepancy of names was due to the fact that after young spencer newton's mother died, and his father "disappeared"--at the time he joined the secret service--the boy was adopted by george hanlon, an ex-corpsman, and his wife, and had taken his foster-father's name.) "we're not getting anywhere on estrella," his father had begun abruptly once they had warmly greeted each other. "i've come to the conclusion, and the council agrees, that we need your special mental abilities there. but take it easy, spence ... er, i never can seem to get used to calling you 'george'. don't try to go it alone ... and you can wipe that cocky smirk off your face, mister," he commanded sternly. "this time it's an official order from the top brass. those estrellans are distinctly alien--not humans gone wrong." hanlon sobered down a bit, but secretly could not entirely shake off his attitude, feeling sure he was more than a match for any trouble he might run into. hadn't he proved it, on algon and right here on simonides? sure he had. great snyder, he wasn't a kid any more. he was a secret serviceman of the inter-stellar corps, whom they called in when the rest of them, even his adored dad, failed. "just what's the problem there?" he asked, trying not to let these thoughts show in his face. "the people of estrella are not colonists from terra or any of the colonized planets," the admiral explained slowly. "they are native to that world--the first such, by the way, that we have discovered who are advanced enough to be asked to join the federation with equal status. they are quite man-like in shape, and of a high order of civilization. their culture is much like earth's was two hundred and fifty or three hundred years ago." "just beginning their real introduction to scientific and mechanical technologies on a planetary scale, eh?" "that's it. their system was discovered and mapped a few years ago. the colonial board immediately sent psychologists and linguists there to learn their language and study the natives and their form of government, their economics and general advancement. what they found, although far different from our own, was so surprisingly high that we sent them a formal offer to join the federation. but ..." he stopped, frowning. "yes?" hanlon was interested now, and paying close attention. "but what?" "that's what we don't know. at first they seemed very pleased with the offer. they studied it carefully and, at our suggestion, sent a picked group of statesmen, scientists and merchants on a trip to our various worlds in one of our ships. these men and women seemed delighted with what they found, and enthusiastic about their world joining us. but, shortly after their return home and before the final treaties were signed, opposition began to develop." "what kind of...?" "all kinds. enough to make the plans slow down and halt. the embassy sent there couldn't discover the reason--we have trouble enough understanding their way of thinking at all--and they yelled for help. we sent a couple of s s men there, and when they failed, i went there myself, to help them, and the embassy came home." he shook his head. "i can't find a thing, either, that seems significant. oh, the surface opposition is easily discernable. papers, handbills, inflammatory speeches by spellbinders, whispering campaigns, all calling for keeping estrella for the estrellans and running out all foreigners bent on plundering the planet for their own enrichment--that sort of thing." "maybe some natives who want to take over, themselves," hanlon ventured. "could be. we've thought of that, but have found no proof. we have no proof of anything except the opposition. only one thing, that may or may not have something to do with this. we've discovered that almost simultaneously with this opposition an unprecedented crime wave started there--every type of criminal activity imaginable, and that is almost unheard of on that world. but we can't even get the first leads as to _who_ is behind it all. that's why i suggested you be called in, and the staff agreed." the admiral paused and his piercing gray eyes bored earnestly into the blue ones of his son. "keep this in mind at all times, spence, for it is most important. we _must_ succeed there. this is the first non-terran world we've found equal in cultural advancement to ours. but surely it won't be the last. and we must win them over. all civilized worlds must band together for mutual growth and well-being. so this is our most important project just now." "yes," seriously, "i can see that. also, that if we do get them to join us, we can point out that fact to any other planets we may discover and try to bring into the federation in the future." _and lying at ease on a heavily-padded bench before the control board of a space cruiser, a stranger looked deeply into a multiphased scanner that worked on scientific principles not yet discovered by humans._ _for long, long months its mind had been studying this new world and its inhabitants. the language had been learned, after a fashion, as had much of the planetary economics and governmental intricacies. now the minds of the people were being studied; it was searching, always searching, for certain types._ _but part of that mind remained continually in that of one certain estrellan it had long ago selected._ chapter so now ssm george hanlon was here on this planet they called estrella, trying to see what he could find out. it was hard, devilishly and maddeningly hard, to discern what these people were really thinking. it wasn't their language--that had been fairly easy to sleep-learn from the reels. no, it was their mental processes--the way they thought. he was not too sure of himself yet, even with his ability to read their surface thoughts, for so often those thoughts held connotations he was not sure he understood. for the estrellan mind was so different from those of humans--its texture was coarser, for one thing, and the thought-concept symbols largely non-understandable to him so far. he had studied--he winced to think how hard he had studied--and he had practiced assiduously since arriving here. but he still could get only an occasional thought-idea of whose meaning he felt at all sure ... it was far worse than with humans. true, he was making some progress, but it was so--he grinned mirthlessly--"fast like a turtle." yet he did not allow discouragement to keep him from continuing with his work. for during the week he had been here he had managed to pick up some facts of which he felt sure. he decided his best method of approach lay with this new criminal element, for he was convinced from his study of the problem that they were, somehow, tied in with whoever was behind all the opposition to estrella's joining the federation of planets. the tremendous increase in crime, so foreign to the general nature of these high-principled beings, and coming simultaneously with the development of that opposition, was not, he felt sure, coincidental. working from the inside against a criminal gang had worked on simonides--it might be equally successful here. he had found what he felt was proof that a certain ino yandor, this world's greatest purveyor of entertainment, was actually a ring-leader in the criminal web, in this city, at least. and he had figured that the best way to get acquainted with this man was to pose as an entertainer. because of his ability to control the minds and muscles of animals, he decided to be an animal trainer. hence his apparently strange action in buying eight estrellan roches, or dogs. he had figured out an act that he thought was a dilly. "at least," he grinned to himself, "it would knock 'em in the aisles on terra or the human planets. but with these folks ..." he shrugged away the doubts. suddenly, as hanlon was sitting there thinking all these things, he heard a tremendous commotion outside the house. there were the excited yells of many children, a terrific uproar of yelps and whines that he recognized as made by his roches, and the shrill complainings of the elders living in this and the adjacent houses. "oh, oh, my pups are being delivered," hanlon grinned, and ran out to meet the messenger. as soon as he was in sight of the crowd, he began touching one rochian mind after another, sending them calming thoughts, and quieting their frenzied yelpings. by the time the eight dogs were in his rooms, they were well under control, and lay down as soon as they were inside. hanlon good-naturedly answered many of the questions hurled at him by the inquisitive youngsters; assured the apprehensive neighbors that he would see to it that the roches did not bother them; dismissed the man who had delivered the animals, with thanks and a gold penta, then hurriedly closed the door against the crowd still in the hallway. he then settled down into a comfortable seat, and proceeded to get acquainted with his new pets. he first had to learn the texture of their individual minds, which were like yet different from those of earthly animals. then each roch's individual characteristics had to be studied and learned, and the animal's wild nature more or less tamed and subdued, which last he found quite easy to do--from within. the animals, in turn, had to become used to hanlon's taking control of their minds and bodily functions, and of allowing him to handle them mentally without fighting back or trying not to obey. this was eminently tricky work, but hanlon's previous practice with many animals, birds and insects, both here and on simonides and algon, had given him facility so he was able to do it fairly easily. "why, they're really just nice little pooches at heart, in spite of that snout that looks like a pig's, set in that flat face. but i like 'em, and i think this'll work out ok." he fed and watered his pseudo-dogs, then let them go to sleep, as he was preparing to do. right after he and the roches had breakfasted the next morning, he set to work in earnest on their training for the special routines he had planned. as the day sped swiftly by he found his ideas working out even more satisfactorily than he had hoped. it would not be too long before he was ready to make contact with that ino yandor, the theatrical agent. the following day hanlon stayed in his room again, working with the animals, training them in group maneuvers, having learned how to handle them individually. it was a weird feeling, dissociating part of his mind and placing it in that of a roch, and with that portion of his mind consciously controlling the animal's brain to direct its nerves and muscles to do what he wanted done. and when he did this to eight roches simultaneously--well, even though he had done similar things before, it was still hard to get used to the idea that it was possible. so hard had he been working that he was surprised when he happened to notice how dark it was getting. he went over and looked out of the window in his room, and saw it was night outside. a glance at the estrellan time-teller on the wall, and he saw it was the dinner hour. he rose and stretched, yawning vigorously. "better get out and get some fresh air," he thought. he took the dogs for a half hour's run outside, then brought them back, fed and watered them. he impressed on their minds that when they were finished they were to go to sleep. then again he left the building. he couldn't help grinning a bit as he was walking down the street, thinking of the screwy way these people handled the problem of where to live. for the common, ordinary, not-too-rich people, there were apartment buildings, such as the one in which he lived, owned and operated by the government. when anyone wanted a room or an apartment, he merely hunted around in the district in which he wished to live until he found an empty place that suited him, then moved in. there was no landlord, no rent. taxes paid for it. you were supposed to take care of your own cleaning and minor repairs, or any special decorating you wanted done. major repairs were handled upon request, by men paid by the government. if your furniture wore out, or no longer suited you, you simply moved to a place you liked better--and some other poorer person had to take what you had left, if all other rooms were occupied. yet so considerate of others were the average estrellans, that they seldom did this, preferring to replace the worn-out things themselves, if financially able to do so. "imagine the average terran doing that," hanlon had thought, wonderingly, when he first heard of it. he had been lucky enough to find a three-room apartment fairly close to the downtown section of the city, yet far enough away so the crowd-noise did not bother him. the building in which he lived was of four stories, and he was on the second floor, near the back. it was the third place he had looked at when he first came to estrella. he could not at first make himself believe that all the rooms had such bad smells in them. but he soon found it to be true, largely because these natives had nothing that could be called efficient plumbing. when he had finally picked these rooms, he spent a full day airing them out, cleaning them thoroughly, and using what disinfectants and smell-eradicators he was able to find and buy in the stalls here. the peculiar-looking, five-sided rooms were comfortably furnished, by estrellan standards, and not too bad even from earthly ones. the walls and ceilings and floors were painted in fairly harmonious colors, and there was a sort of half-matting, half-carpet rug on the floors. what corresponded to the living room contained two of their low, backless stools, and one quite comfortable lounging chair. there was a large and a small table, and an empty case where one could store any reading scrolls he might possess. the bedroom had a low, foot-high, five-sided bed, but it was hard and uncomfortable until hanlon figured how to make it softer, and more to his liking. there were several pegs on the wall from which to hang his clothing, two more of the backless stools, and the open place--a sort of well running from roof to basement--that was the toilet. hanlon found a large piece of heavy cloth something like canvas, in one of the stalls, and made a hanging to cover this in lieu of a door, which shut out some of the smell-source. the kitchen had shelves, a stove, and table and backless stools. in one corner, suspended through the ceiling, was an open water pipe with a sort of concrete drain beneath. this was both the source of water for cooking or drinking, and the bathing place--a primitive shower. the reels furnished by survey had told hanlon that few of the estrellan buildings were more than five stories high. "some, in the business districts, may run to six or seven stories. we have concluded that the main reason for this is that the natives do not have elevators, except a few crude rope-and-pulley freight elevators in some of the stores and office buildings." now hanlon sauntered slowly along the street, enjoying the fresh night air, warmed to about sixty-five degrees fahrenheit, while he worked the kinks out of his tension-wearied body. this business of controlling the roches demanded such intense concentration that his mind and body were highly keyed up when he finished, and he had trouble relaxing. he saw, almost without noticing this time, the primitive street lighting system that made flickering lights and shadows on the tree-shaded walks and roads. these people used natural gas for their nighttime outdoor illuminating--just semi-ornate standards with the flames rising a foot or so above them. men went around at dusk to light them, and again at dawn to turn them off. hanlon had walked slowly for several blocks when he saw a native approaching him. when they came abreast the man stopped him. "i do not remember seeing you about here before," he said, looking closely at hanlon in the flickering light. "i am the peace keeper for this district," he added as he saw hanlon's questioning look. "no, i just moved in a few days ago," hanlon answered. "what do you do here? do you have a job?" "he thinks i'm a vag," hanlon grinned to himself, and said aloud, in a courteous voice, "i just came from the eastern continent, nyer, and hope to become a public entertainer. i have enough money to support myself until i can earn more." "that is good. if i can ever be of service in helping you to get acquainted, please look me up. i like to see all the people in my district happy and busy." "i shall do that, nyer, and thank you for your courtesy." and as the man moved to one side, hanlon gave him a cheery half-salute, and went on his way. "darned nice people, really," he said to himself. "they'll make good federation citizens." when hanlon had started out on this stroll he had had no special destination--was merely out for a breather. but as he ambled along a thought came to him, and he quickened his pace and walked more purposefully toward the downtown section and a certain building he had previously spotted. it was a small "place where men drank," and his investigations had convinced him that many of this city's criminal element went there for relaxation. the cafe occupied the street floor of a small two-storied building that was, as were almost all the estrellan buildings, a five-sided one. for _five_ was the sacred number of the native religion and philosophy. hanlon had learned that the number five was consistently used wherever possible, even in their architecture, their ornaments, and their coined money. their religion was based on five basic truths taught by he who died for them. these were: love, faith, brotherliness, honor, and loyalty. their philosophy (they called it their "code of living") was also composed of five parts: to be religious; to attain the highest possible mentality; to live physically clean lives; to be considerate of others always, and to be honest in all dealings. the terrans had found that while, of course, there were individuals who did not subscribe either to their religion or their code of living, that on the whole the race held a very high standard of ethics. now, as he walked inside the drinking place, the young s s man saw that the pentagonal room was brilliantly lighted, rather than kept dim as were most terran and simonidean cafes. "probably because they can't turn 'em low," he thought. for the lights were lamps burning a carbide compound, that gave out a harsh but very bright light. as hanlon took a seat at a small table, he looked about him interestedly. there was a bar across the back or third side, where the drinks were mixed. on the other four sides, except where the windows or doors interferred, were several small booths, with drawn curtains across their entrances for privacy. the balance of the floor was filled with two-, three- and five-place pentagonal tables, and their chairs, or rather, backless stools. "what is your wish?" an attendant came to hanlon's table. "glass of mykkyl, please." while the waiter was bringing the barely-intoxicating but very popular drink, and later as hanlon was slowly sipping it, the s s man let his mind roam throughout the small room, touching mind after mind, seeking and hoping to find those he had come here trying to locate. he had to grit his teeth to keep from showing the frustration he felt on this world when trying to understand what these people were thinking. for he had long since found that, whatever a human might be speaking in words, his thoughts showed his true feelings simultaneously with and despite what he was saying. and hanlon could usually read those surface thoughts and understand them fully. but with the estrellans, he had found this was not always true. there was sometimes an ... an _obliqueness_ ... that could not be directly translated by one no more used to their thought-patterns than he was so far. george hanlon was the only member of the inter-stellar corps' secret service who could read minds at all--one of the very few humans ever to possess this ability to any demonstrable extent. and he was still young enough to feel occasionally that he was being badly treated by his inability to read these native minds at will. while he was on that simonidean assignment, and on the planet of algon, he had even learned to telepath with the natives, the guddu "greenies," or plant-men. but here he could not do that at all. he could read and control animal minds, "and these lousy estrellans are almost animals," he had growled beneath his breath at first, "so why can't i handle their minds?" but even through this rude shock to his vanity he did not entirely lose his ability to think and reason logically. he had studied the problem intensively for these past days, and had come to certain preliminary conclusions. "it's not, after all, that they're lower in the evolutionary scale than we terrans are," he finally concluded. "it's just that they haven't advanced as far in scientific and technological knowledge. they may look like apes, but they sure aren't. probably, when we get to really know them--if we ever do--we'll find they are 'way ahead of us in many things. they certainly, as a whole, practice their 'code of living' far better than most of our people do their professed religion." this conclusion was another shock to his confident young mind. for he had more than half expected, when he first came here, to have an easy time of it in solving the problem on which he and the other secret servicemen were working. yet how quickly he had been disabused. and now, in this little place where men drank, he was finding it out anew. none of the minds he was scanning with all the ability he possessed, was quite of the calibre he sought, although most of them displayed leanings toward larceny and other criminal tendencies. for this drinking place was not one which the more generally law-abiding and decent people of stearra cared to patronize. maddeningly meager were the thoughts he could interpret, but when he finally came to scan the minds of four natives who were seated at a five-place table near the back, close to the bar, he made an almost unconscious exclamation of surprise and delight. he "listened in" more closely to the four, who were leaning toward each other, talking together in low, earnest tones. hanlon could read the surface thoughts in each mind, but only occasionally at first could he understand what they were discussing. however, as he became more accustomed to their individual peculiarities of thought, he began to get enough to convince him that these were the ones he was seeking. at least, they were planning some deviltries, and one spoke as though he had received orders as to what they were to do. hanlon even finally got their names, although of the latter he soon became interested mainly in that of the slender, blondishly-hairy native with the steely blue eyes. that one, ran auldin, was their leader, hanlon decided. more intently now, hanlon studied their minds, paying no further attention to the others in the room. he lingered over his drinks for nearly an hour, "listening in" on the conversation of these mobsters, and learning quite a bit about their criminal activities, and better how to interpret their thoughts. suddenly he stiffened in even closer attention. "the leader," auldin was saying to his henchmen, but hanlon knew from his side thoughts that the fellow meant ino yandor, "wants us to start a series of fires and wreckings about the city. we'll get a list of places tomorrow or next day, and that night we'll do the job." "in the name of zappa, why?" one of the men asked. "why would he want us to do that?" "who cares why?" auldin shrugged. "the leader, he tells us 'do this', and we do it, that's all." "sure," another chimed in. "we get paid for our work, and good pay, too. so let the big fellows worry about why they want certain things done." "that's the way to look at it," auldin said. "we'll meet here tomorrow evening, and i'll probably have the list. if not tomorrow, then next day. but meet here tomorrow, anyway." so, hanlon thought swiftly. just like small-time crooks everywhere. somebody with brains does the bossing, and they stupidly follow orders, interested only in the pay they receive, caring nothing about who or what gets hurt. these fellows were certainly worth watching, he decided. even if it did not lead him to the larger goal he was seeking--and he felt sure it would--he would spike their plans somehow. he felt he had heard enough for the time being, so he rose and left the drinking place before they should notice him. he walked slowly back to his apartment, thinking about this new plan, wondering, as the mobster had done, why such orders were given. it made no sense to him, unless it was that the chief criminals were merely intent on spreading a reign of terror and destruction. "or are they," he thought suddenly, "planning later to make it seem as though we terrans are doing it? perhaps planning to start a whispering campaign of such rumors?" more than ever now he was determined that such activities must be stopped. "we've got to clean up this planet, and get it into the federation. if they keep on this way, they can be a real menace. but with this criminal activity wiped out, and estrella a member of the federation, we can help them so much--and they have a lot to teach us, too." chapter the following day hanlon continued working with his roches. he now "drilled" them as soldiers are drilled. he taught himself how to control their minds in unison, making them march in all the various complicated maneuvers of squads and columns, all in perfect alignment and cadence. it was tricky, delicate work, requiring as it did placing a portion of his mind in each roch's brain, giving that mind and body individual commands, yet keeping enough central control in his own mind so they all performed exactly together. so much of his mind was transferred to theirs, that he had to learn how to make his own body "stand at attention" during these maneuvers, with but minimum control over his own functions. hour after hour he worked with them, giving them fifteen minutes of rest out of each half-hour--and thus giving his own brain rest at the same time. for this was tiring work for him, as well as for them. when dusk fell he stopped the training, saw to it that the roches were well-fed and watered, then put them all to sleep. he dressed for the street, went out and found an eating place, where he did full justice to a good meal. "one thing you've got to hand these folks," he thought thankfully, "they certainly can cook, even though some of their dishes have a most unusual taste." it had taken him several days to discover which native dishes he liked and could digest, for some of them almost made him ill, others had a taste he could not stomach, but most of them were delicious--and hanlon was ordinarily a good trencherman. his meal finished, hanlon paid and went back to the drinking place where he sat, toying with a glass of mykkyl while waiting for auldin and the others to appear. they came in shortly, one by one, and hanlon "listened in" on auldin's mind as the chief mobster gave his fellows directions as to the places they were to burn or wreck. hanlon had already prepared a note, addressed to the head of the local peace-keepers. to this he now added the addresses auldin was giving. when he was sure he had them all, he slipped out of the little cafe. he went swiftly along the streets toward the stearra police headquarters, which he had previously located, keeping watch until he saw a dog-like roch running along. quickly reaching out and taking control of its mind, hanlon made the animal follow him until he could duck into a deserted doorway. hanlon made his messenger take the prepared note carefully in its mouth, then trot down the street and into the "police station." there it ran up to the man in charge, and raised itself up with its front paws on the man's knees. "what in the name of...?" the official looked down, eyes bugging and mouth slack at the beast's unexpected action. for several moments he seemed not even to notice the paper in the roch's mouth. when he did, he took it gingerly, opened and read it. "an attempt will be made just before half-night," hanlon had written, "to set fire to or wreck the following places of business. if you watch carefully, you can catch the criminals in the act, and save these pieces of property from damage or destruction." then followed the five addresses. the man read the note twice, a puzzled, anxious frown on his face. he did not quite know what to make of it--or so his attitude seemed to indicate. there had been no "crime" on this planet that he had ever had occasion to try to stop. for he was not a police officer in the ordinary sense. the estrellan "peace keepers" merely watched to see that crowds or individuals did not get too boisterous, aided in handling crowds at large gatherings, or assisted home those who may have imbibed too freely. the fellow scratched the back of his head while he considered the matter at length. "some phidi trying to make a fool of me," he finally said aloud, as hanlon heard through his roch's ears, as he had been watching through its eyes. "but how in the name of zappa did whoever it was train this roch to bring me the note like this?" this latter problem seemed to have greater interest for him than the warning. for his eyes were still watching the roch with puzzled inquiry ... but he did nothing about acting upon hanlon's suggestion. as the s s man watched the roch leave the peace keeper's headquarters, he fumed because it was apparent that the official was going to take no action on his warning. were they in on this criminal activity, he wondered? was it that wide-spread, that even the supposed law-keepers were party to it? no, he finally decided, probably this fellow was just a dumb, unimaginative sort of dope. he watched miserably as the fires were set and the business buildings wrecked. there was nothing else he could do to stop it, for he knew it would only put himself in useless danger to try--would jeopardize what he and the other secret servicemen were trying to accomplish here. but as soon as the damage had been done he found another roch, and sent it back to headquarters with another scathing note. "you paid no attention to my previous warning, and as a result two of the buildings i told you about have been set on fire, the windows smashed on another, and two others have been wrecked by explosions. why don't you use what small brains you possess, and stop this wave of crime? or are you being paid to ignore it?" through the eyes of the roch hanlon watched the official read the note, and saw him fly into a rage and pace the floor ... but what the man was thinking hanlon was too far away to read. "one thing sure, i'll have to get busy and make contact with these gangsters," hanlon thought bitterly as he went back to his room and to bed. "guess i'm near enough ready to tackle yandor now. let's see, shall i do it directly, or...?" he undressed and climbed into the low, foot-high, five-sided bed these estrellans used. there was no mattress or springs, but fortunately his rooms had several extra blankets, and these he had folded beneath him to make his sleeping more comfortable. he was still wrestling with his problem when he finally dropped off to sleep. but the next day he figured it out to his satisfaction. he worked with his roches until evening, then went out and got himself a meal. later he went, purposefully late, into the drinking place. seeing auldin and his men already at their table, he went directly up to them. "greetings, ran auldin," he said boldly. "i've been looking for you, for i want to join your group. i'm fast and clever with knife or flamegun, and i've got plenty of ideas. i can do us both a lot of good." the other three half-rose, staring at him with hostile eyes. but their chief made a gesture that said "wait", and himself looked hanlon up and down coolly. "you are mistaken, my friend," he said at last. "we are not engaged in such activities as might require the use of ... of knife or gun. we are lawful businessmen." hanlon fitted his face to a crooked smile and his voice was almost sarcastic as he replied, "sure, sure, i know. but listen, friend. a fellow out to make a big pile of pentas doesn't do it by being asleep. i've done a lot of scouting 'round and asking questions in a discreet way. i know who i'm talking to." his mind, always in touch with that of the others, read in their surface thoughts the surprised, "oh, so that's why we've had the feeling the past few days we were being watched." he could tell that this conclusion made them jittery, and more cautious and ready for instant action. but hanlon had to keep on the path he had taken. aloud, auldin merely said again, in a voice he kept mild and low, "i'm sorry, my friend, but you are still mistaken. we work for another man, helping him hunt out talented people and make entertainers out of them." "during the day, yes," hanlon gave him a wise smile, "and i can help him a lot in that, too." he knew the three other men had been growing more and more angry at his interruption. he could interpret their thoughts well enough so he was tensed for quick-action, determined not to be caught off guard. "but what i'm really interested in," hanlon continued, "is your evening activities. by the way, i hope none of you got hurt or burned last...." he wheeled swiftly, for one of the natives had suddenly leaped up and toward him, a dagger in his hand, slashing at him. hanlon met him with a light, contemptuous laugh. he ducked beneath the other's knife-slash, then stepped in close. his left fist traveled only a few inches, but all the strength of his powerful shoulder and arm muscles was in the blow. his fist sank to the wrist in the man's solar plexus. wind _whooshing_ out, the gangster doubled up in pain. hanlon chopped down with the edge of his hand on the other's wrist, and the knife clattered to the floor. the corpsman swung viciously with a right uppercut that lifted his attacker and drove him backward. he crashed into a chair with such force that as man and stool fell to the floor, the wooden seat was splintered. the other two leaped to their feet and started forward. as though he had eyes in the back of his head and had seen them coming, hanlon swivelled toward them, his lips thinned in a fighting grin, while several of the cafe attendants were running up. "leave him alone," ran auldin commanded sharply, and his men looked back at him in astonishment. "the stranger was only defending himself against an unprovoked attack by ugen," auldin explained to the cafe's men. he turned to his fellows. "you two take ugen home and put him to bed. i want to talk to this stranger." as the surly guards picked up the limp body of their fallen companion and bore him out, the drink-servers returned to their posts. evidently ran auldin was known and respected here. he now faced hanlon and motioned toward one of the stools. "sit down, my friend," he said courteously. "perhaps we can do a bit of talking." "no use for knives, eh?" hanlon grinned as he sat down. but immediately he sobered. "i figured maybe you'd be willing to talk, although i didn't expect to have to slap down one of your boys to make you. i'm sorry if i hurt him." and hanlon was sincere in this. he had momentarily forgotten that he was on a lighter planet, with a gravity only about % that of terra, and that consequently he would naturally be stronger than the average estrellan native. while this would not have kept him from defending himself from that sudden, vicious attack, he would have pulled his punches a bit had he thought. he did not like killing or injuring people. but auldin was answering, and hanlon knew he had better be on his toes and pay strict attention. there were undertones and concepts behind the spoken words that were hard for his terran mind to interpret. "you needn't be sorry," auldin assured him. "ugen was useful, in a way, but he's stupid. i don't especially like stupid people." he studied hanlon closely. "i don't think you're stupid." "i don't know it all, by any means," the s s man said with disarming candor, "but i never considered myself simple." "now, what makes you think we are engaged in anything ... illegal ... during our evenings?" "look, nyer, let's not you and me chase ourselves around a flowertree. if i'm out of line, say so and i'll take a run. but since we're talking here together, all peaceful-like, and there's nobody within hearing distance if we talk low, let's put it on the penta, shall we, huh?" ran auldin looked at hanlon another moment, his face and thoughts showing puzzlement at the stranger's choice of words. then he laughed quietly. "by zappa, i like you, my friend. what's your name?" "gor anlo." "you're a cool one, all right. where are you from? i've not seen you around stearra before." "no, i'm from lura, over on the eastern continent. the goody-goodies are mostly in charge there, and there's no way for a hustler to make a fast pile. so i came here, hoping there'd be more chances for me. i've been here six-seven days, looking over the ground, and making a little investigation. the best leads pointed to your boss, ino yandor." auldin started at that name, and while he was staring anew at hanlon, the latter's mind flashed back over that investigation. his first day had been spent getting the "feel" of the city through wide-open mental searchings. not so much from individuals at first, but from the mass-thoughts of the many. he had later touched hundreds of minds and studied them, trying to learn how to interpret those alien thoughts. he had no trouble getting the thoughts themselves--it was what they meant that puzzled and troubled him. now, having noted the start auldin made at mention of ino yandor's name, and the close, searching look the mobster bent toward him, hanlon continued quickly with an appearance of great intensity and seriousness. "i figured that i could get to him easier through one of his seconds in command, and picked on you." "one of his...?" auldin started to ask, then quickly changed his mind. "because you thought i was more weak-minded?" there was now a hint of anger in the cold eyes. "not on your life, ran auldin. because i figured, after studying the set-up, that you were about ready to take over in his place one of these days, probably soon, and that would put me closer to the real power ... and the big money." "hmmm, i see." auldin was silent for some time, digesting all this in his mind. he was pleased at the compliment, but somewhat startled at two pieces of information hanlon had so carelessly tossed out. one, that apparently auldin was not yandor's chief or only "second in command" and, two, that this stranger had so quickly and easily divined his secret ambition. hanlon, reading his mind, could discern and understand all this. also, he knew when auldin began trying to figure out whether this newcomer was legitimately on the make, or whether he was a spy sent by someone--perhaps even yandor--to check up on him. that last statement of hanlon's really upset him more than the first, which he had sometimes suspected. he worried about the latter now. it was the truth, all right, but he had not thought anyone else knew it or even suspected it. did yandor suspect it? if so, auldin knew he was in for trouble ... bad trouble. hanlon decided it was time for him to do a little steering. "look, auldin," he interrupted the other's somewhat frightened thinking. "why not take me to yandor and introduce me? let him decide whether he wants to let me in or not?" for a long moment auldin stared again at hanlon, but when he finally answered there was a note of relief in his voice he tried to conceal. yet he was not entirely convinced that this might not be all part of an espionage trick formed in the fertile but hellishly devious mind of his superior, ino yandor. but auldin was one who preferred to meet his dangers face to face ... when they could not be avoided. "that might not be a bad idea," he said as calmly as he could. "but look, my friend. don't try to play me for an easy fool. i'd do things about it if you did." "sure, i know that," hanlon's voice was bland and ingenuous. "i'm not figuring on your job--being a yunner i know i've got to begin low and work up. a chance to get started is all i want ... for now." auldin rose, took some of the five-sided silver pentas from his pocket and dropped them on the table. "fair enough. come on." the two were mostly silent as they walked along the narrow, unpaved, crooked streets, past the not-too-tall, five-sided buildings of the mercantile establishments of this district. after a few blocks of the winding, twisted streets--"didn't these folks ever learn anything about surveying?" hanlon often wondered--they turned down a tree-shaded residential street. they walked past increasingly pretentious houses, which hanlon knew were of the ubiquitous pentagonal construction so general on this planet. it was this unusual type of buildings that hanlon found it hard to adjust to. the first day or two on this planet and in this city the odd shapes and crooked streets had so distracted him he had trouble concentrating on his job. now he looked interestedly at the almost-universal green-tiled roofs, and also at the gardens of beautiful but strangely-unearthly flowers. he saw, too, the thick-trunked, low but wide-spreading flowertrees that lined the streets and were heavily planted in most of the yards surrounding the houses. he tried, naturally, to see if these latter had any minds he could touch--ever since knowing those plant-like guddus this had become almost automatic with him at sight of any new kind of tree, bush or plant. but he drew a blank here, as he had elsewhere. those alien growths on algon might be unique in the universe, he thought. hanlon was glad of auldin's silence as they walked along. it enabled him to get his own thoughts in order, and to try to plan as best he could for this coming interview with yandor, not knowing what to expect ... except that it would undoubtedly try his abilities to the utmost. there were some slight traces of fear in his mind, for he was, after all, still a very young and inexperienced man playing a dangerous game. but his success in his first assignment--the dangers he had faced and the victories he had wrested because of his unusual and growing wild talent--thought of them brought back his self-confidence and with it an almost contemptuous view of the dangers here. there was really nothing to fear after all, he told himself. but still.... hanlon and auldin came to a place in the street where it climbed a fairly steep hill--there were many such throughout this city--and were nearly winded when they finally reached the top. still wordless, they were both glad of the chance to stop and rest a moment. then they started on again, along a much nicer part of the street, rapidly approaching the home of ino yandor. this entertainment entrepreneur (that was, in effect, the nearest approach to a familiar profession of which hanlon could think) was the one the young secret serviceman's investigations had led him to believe was the first rung on the ladder he must climb to find the knowledge that lay at the top. "ah, here's the place," auldin said at last, as they turned up a sort of cobbled walk leading to the fairly imposing residence. it was an ornately-decorated, two-story house, pentagonal in shape, and with a green-tiled roof, of course. the three sides hanlon could see were painted in different, though mutually complementary colors. the surrounding lawns were made of the peculiar grass so general here, with its minutely-petalled flower-tips. there were also numerous beds of the strange, native flowers, highly-perfumed, but not heavily blossomed except in the mass. hanlon thought he caught large numbers of thought-emanations from animal minds of various kinds, but before he could investigate, auldin spoke. "one word of warning. don't be too eager. yandor may seem slow thinking and calculating, but don't make the mistake of thinking him stupid. and don't irritate him--he seldom shows his temper, but he is deadly vindictive to those he takes a dislike to. but he is a good employer--and generous to those who serve him well and efficiently." "thanks for the tip. i'll be on my good behavior." but hanlon grinned to himself as he read the reason for that warning in auldin's mind. if this stranger was spying for yandor, he would have to make a good report on auldin. then, as the mobster used the ornate knocker, hanlon tensed himself for--literally--anything. chapter after a considerable wait the door was opened. by the light from inside george hanlon saw a fairly tall native, his hair and beard sleek and burnished from much brushing, and trimmed with unusual care. he was wearing a sort of slip-on gown of heavy cloth, probably a lounging robe. perhaps the man had already gone to bed--in which case he would undoubtedly be quite provoked at their untimely call, hanlon thought. indeed, the man's face showed surprise and petulance at this interruption. but hanlon could see shrewdness and a crafty trickiness inherent in the black eyes, that caused an inward tremor. "i'd sure better be on my toes with this fellow," he thought. yandor scanned the two for a long moment, without a word, then beckoned them inside. but as soon as the door was shut--and locked--he turned angrily on auldin. "well now, what's the big idea, you stupid idiot, of coming here, and at night, and bringing someone with you. are you trying to cross me, ran? you know that isn't healthy." ran auldin cringed somewhat and made his voice apologetic. "it's because it was night, nyer, and we wouldn't be noticed, that i came now. besides, i think this is important. i want you to meet gor anlo, who's just come from lura, looking for a chance, he says, to get into our businesses." auldin slightly emphasized that last word, and yandor's eyes snapped wide. he swung about and faced hanlon, studying him carefully. the young man bore the scrutiny without flinching, a smile of greeting on his face, but without a sign of boldness or brashness. after a moment yandor motioned them into an adjoining room, and himself went to sit behind a large, ornate, wooden table-desk. "sit," he waved a delicate hand at the two chairs facing him in such a manner that the desk-lamp's light was strong in the faces of the two, while leaving his own more or less in the shadows. hanlon could barely repress a grin at this--it smacked so intimately of the old terran police-questioning technique. during the short moments they had been in the hallway, however, hanlon had noticed a small roch standing there, apparently one that yandor must have partially tamed and kept as a pet. quickly the s s man had transferred a part of his mind into that of the beast. now, while his own body and nine-tenths of his mind were in that office room for the interview with ino yandor, the other tenth, inside the brain of the roch, was making the animal roam the house, seeking whatever secrets it might find there. the impresario looked at hanlon searchingly. "well now, so you think you'd like to get into the entertainment business, eh?" he said with an attempt at joviality. "yes, nyer, that ... and other things," hanlon answered calmly. "back in lura where i come from, sir, the people seem to be against the idea of a young fellow getting ahead in the world. so," shrugging, "i came here where i thought there was a better chance of doing myself some good. me, i'm out after a basketful of gold pentas ... and not too particular how i get 'em," he added levelly, but in his eyes was an unmistakable message the estrellan could not help reading correctly. "but there are entertainment procurers on the eastern continent," yandor was sparring for time to evaluate this situation better. "if you have a good way of pleasing the people, they would be glad to take you in hand." "anlo isn't stupid, yandor," auldin interrupted ... and hanlon was glad he did at just that moment. for the roch had just peered through the half-open doorway of a room upstairs, and found a man, probably a servant, lying there on the bed, apparently reading from a scroll. hanlon did not especially like this spying on anyone, but he _had_ to learn all he could about what was going on here, no matter how he gained the information. so he reached out and studied the man's mind. the fellow was not reading at the moment, he found, but was thinking of the "payback" he owed someone named ovil esbor, who had obtained this position for him. this esbor was much like a terran "ward boss"--a minor politician, but connected with many shady dealings. hanlon had not previously heard that name, but made a mental note to investigate the man further. he might be another lead. the s s man withdrew his mind after a bit, and sent the roch searching the other rooms. he noticed quite a few animal pets about the house, but thought nothing special of it at the moment. meanwhile he, in his own person, began paying more attention to what auldin and yandor were saying. "... been in town several days, he says, looking over the situation. how he found out i don't know, but he knows _all_ our businesses." yandor barely repressed a start of surprise, and his crafty black eyes narrowed. "why are you spying on ... no, _who_ are you spying on us _for_?" he demanded in cold tones that again sent a shiver down hanlon's spine. for there was no mercy or lack of ruthlessness in that tone. nor in the man's attitude. yet, at the same time, the young man realized stunningly that yandor, too, was as much afraid of _his_ superior as auldin was of yandor ... and hanlon knew after a fleet scanning of the gangster's mind that he now felt relief that yandor had not been investigating him through hanlon. but the young s s man had been reading the impresario's thoughts as best he could, as well as hearing what he was saying. he felt that he knew now how to handle this agent. "as auldin said, i'm not stupid, and i am on the make for my fortune. i knew the only way was to check first and talk later. so i asked seemingly innocuous questions here and there--and i'm wise enough never to ask more than one from any one person. that way i found out a lot. i do know something about the entertainment business and can hold up my end of the performance. but i also know the really big money is in the other things you control." yandor did gasp at that. his face grew black and he half-rose and opened his mouth to say something--but hanlon beat him to it. "incidentally," he lowered his voice but still kept it penetrant as he leaned forward confidentially, "there's someone in the next room, listening through that door there, to what we're saying." at hanlon's quiet words, ino yandor's eyes opened wide, while ran auldin barely repressed an exclamation. neither guessed, of course, that the stranger was looking through the eyes of yandor's pet roch which, in the course of its investigation of the house for hanlon's benefit, had come to the open doorway of that adjoining room, and had seen the man kneeling there, his ear pressed against the door-panels, listening intently. now yandor reached into a sort of pigeon-hole in his table-desk and quietly took out a flamegun. tensing himself, he suddenly swung his chair about and leaped to the door. flinging it open he found, indeed, another man there, before that other could rise and run. grabbing the spy's collar with one surprisingly strong hand, yandor yanked him to his feet and into the light. "_ondo!_" he exclaimed. "well now, what in the name of zappa were you doing?" the small man cringed. "pardon, nyer, i was ... was only trying to make sure that no one was attempting to harm you ... and ... and standing by to help you if they were." "i think he's lying," hanlon said, knowing from his quick probe into the other's mind that he was. "i'll bet he's a spy for someone." this last, he knew however, was not correct. ondo was regularly employed by yandor as a houseman. but he was one of those intensely curious and inquisitive people who always try to find out everything that goes on in any house they happen to be working in. "by zappa, you'll never spy again," yandor's face grew livid. "you know better'n to cross me. you know it isn't healthy." and before anyone could guess what he was about to do, the raging impresario chopped down with the butt of his flamer, and ondo fell unconscious to the floor, blood welling from a gash in his forehead. the furious entrepreneur was swinging the weapon into firing position to kill the fallen man when hanlon leaped forward and grasped his arm, holding him back. "wait, nyer. don't cinder him," he said almost in a tone of command. "it wouldn't look well for a man of your public position, if word of it ever leaked out." "i say kill the snake," ran auldin spat. "there's no sense taking chances with a man we know is a spy." "no!" hanlon was still quietly determined to save ondo's life. he spoke as impressively as he could. "such a killing, with a body to dispose of, would most certainly be traced back to you in time, nyer, and you would lose much of the respect the public holds for you. your success in your ... other ... endeavors is largely due to the fact that everyone knows you for such a high-principled, public-spirited citizen, that no one suspects you of being anything else. don't take chances on spoiling that reputation." yandor was swayed by this impassioned appeal, it was plain to be seen. his respect for hanlon's quick good sense and sound judgment mounted, and he looked at the young man with new interest. "anlo's right, ran," he told his lieutenant. "we mustn't have a killing on our hands that can be so easily traced to us." he turned back to hanlon, who was grinning inwardly at yandor's almost-panic that made him forget for the moment that there were no real police detectives on this world who could so easily trace back a killing, especially if only ordinary precautions were used to dispose of the body. "well now, i thank you for saving me from the risk my temper might have caused. what would you suggest we do with this ... this ...", he pushed at the body with his foot. "it's easy to see that ondo is only a scared rat, and when he wakes up he'll know he'd better keep away from you or he'll really be killed," hanlon spoke carelessly. "just have auldin take him out and dump him on the next street. ondo will never bother you again, i'm positive." auldin seemed about to protest, but yandor forestalled him. "that's good advice. take care of it, auldin." and after the gangster had left the house with his burden, yandor resumed his seat and motioned hanlon to take the one he had formerly occupied. but while they were doing this, the young s s man had sent his mind outdoors, found a sleeping bird and taken over its mind. he made it follow auldin, so he would know where ondo's body was taken. he would try to save the fellow's life if he could--he had got him into this predicament, it was up to him to get the chap safely out of it. "well now," yandor was saying, "i'm beginning to believe you will be a valuable man in our group. i'll think about it some more, and see you sometime tomorrow and we'll talk further about it. but i'm only promising to talk," he added hurriedly, "i'm not saying what my decision will be." "that's all i could ask for now, for i know i can prove my worth." he rose and bowed courteously. "so i'll see you at your place of business in the morning." "you know where it is?" surprisedly. "but of course." as soon as he was out of the house, hanlon went carefully to the weed-infested vacant lot where auldin had dumped ondo's body. when he saw the gangster returning, hanlon quickly hid behind a great flowertree. hanlon had brought the bird back to yandor's house, and now made it perch where it could look through a window. through the bird's eyes he saw the two inside, talking together for some minutes, yandor apparently very angry, auldin on the defensive. then the slender mobster slunk from the house, and started back toward the downtown section. hanlon made the bird follow him, to make sure auldin was really going home, and was not circling about to try to find out what hanlon was doing or where he was going. then the ss man went to the vacant lot to find ondo sitting up, holding his aching head. almost roughly he jerked him to his feet. "look, you phidi," hanlon made his voice deadly menacing, "i don't like people who go around trying to find out about me and my business. yandor merely insisted that i see to it that you left town immediately, but i'm not that soft-hearted. i'm going to kill you, then i'll know you've done your last snooping." he reached toward his pocket, as though for a knife or flamegun. the man was a small, terror-stricken rat. but he was not entirely lacking in the universal will to live. suddenly he half-stooped, then jumped forward, his shoulder crashing into hanlon's body. the young corpsman could have maintained his balance, but he let himself fall, as though he had been knocked down by the blow. ondo took off like a scared dara, and in brief seconds was out of sight. hanlon waited several minutes, then went down the street toward his rooming house, grinning to himself. he was happy that it could be worked out this way. he was sure this ondo would leave stearra without delay. hanlon's hint about that was enough, he was sure--especially since he knew ondo was convinced that he would be killed out of hand if he ever allowed himself to be seen hereabouts again. as he walked swiftly along, hanlon released the bird from its mental spell, for it was now apparent auldin was really going downtown, or home. but before releasing the bird, hanlon guided it back to a comfortable perch in a tree, and put it to sleep. he could not help feeling gratitude--yet still with an awed sense of wonder--about his ability to control animal minds. he remembered so vividly that day on the great spaceliner _hellene_, when he had discovered this tremendous ability with the little puppy ... what was its name...? oh, yes, gypsy. and the still greater thrill when he was experimenting later with the dogs on the kennel deck, and had found that he could not only read their complete minds and control their nerves and muscles to make them follow his bidding, but that he could also _dissociate_ a portion of his mind, put it in their brains and leave it there, connected with the balance of his own mind merely by a slender thread of consciousness, yet able to think and act independently. but it certainly came in mighty handy in his work as a secret serviceman, and he was thankful to whatever powers may be that had given him this ability to do these amazing things. now if he could only learn how to read and control the whole mind and body of a human, instead of being able to read only their surface thoughts! but he was trying to learn to be content with what he had, and to use it thankfully. yet he never ceased trying to learn more--to be able to do more along these lines. finally back in his room hanlon grinned again to himself as he began undressing. he felt good. he had put it over again. he was sure he was "in". he sat down on a chair and removed the special shoes he was wearing. these native estrellans were very man-like in shape as well as mentality, but there were enough structural differences so it had taken the expert cosmetician many hours to fix him up to look like one of them. these shoes, for instance, because estrellans had unusually large feet, were really shoes-within-shoes, to fit his feet correctly inside and yet appear large enough on the outside not to attract attention. * * * * * _in the spaceship high above, intent thoughts had been coursing through the mind of the being. finally, certain commands were impressed upon the mind of the estrellan native the being controlled, that would set in motion a new train of events._ _the native cringed as those thoughts came into his mind. they were not the kind of things he would ever consider, of himself. they outraged his every sense of right and justice. it made him actually, physically sick even to contemplate them, and he wondered briefly how he had ever come to get such ideas._ _yet something, he could not guess what, forced him to do them, despite his every struggling, heartsick effort not to obey the commands he did not even know were commands._ chapter as ssm george hanlon continued undressing, he recalled his parting with his father on simonides. "how soon do i start?" he had asked, boyishly eager, at the close of their interview. "right away?" "whoa, son, not so fast," the admiral laughed. "you'll have to have a series of inoculation-shots against the estrellan diseases. then you'll have to learn a lot, and especially, you'll have to be disguised to look like a native, which isn't easy. here are reels of the language, customs and geography. get a room in the hotel here and sleep-learn them. i think you'll find the language not too hard--it's a simple, uncomplicated one, outside of their habit of putting the verbs ahead of the nouns, and then the adjectives or adverbs. as to their way of thought--well, that's far different. even with your ability to read their minds, i'll bet you have trouble in really understanding them for some time. i'm not always sure i do, even yet." "tough, eh?" "that they are. you can't work them like you do humans--their concepts seem not at all like ours in so many things. we can get in serious trouble through misunderstanding their apparently straight-forward words. so go slow and easy." "i'll watch for that, dad, and bone up on the rest as fast as i can. meanwhile, how's about going out and wrapping ourselves around a couple of thick steaks--or some of that good _poyka_ at the golden web? i'd like to see hooper again." "the grub i'll buy. but curt isn't here--he's one of the boys working estrella with me." the lessons learned in time, hanlon visiphoned admiral hawarden at base, who sent the cosmetician to him at the hotel. the shoes had been only part of the job. there was the smock-coat, which hanlon was now removing in his room in stearra. estrellans had narrow, sloping shoulders, so a tailor had made special clothes--the coat almost like a knee-length, slipover sweater only of a heavy cloth like homespun, with shoulders whose cut and padding gave them the proper sloping look. there was also the divided-skirt sort of pantaloons, that gathered at the ankle. as he undressed hanlon looked at himself in the mirror, and grinned. trevor had dyed his skin all over--not the dark red of terran indians, not yet the black of negroes nor the brown of malayans, but a sort of deep pink. hanlon had been warned not to take either tub or shower baths, but had been supplied with a bottle of a special chemical. naked at last, he scratched luxuriously and stretched hugely. he poured a bowlful of water, added seven drops of the chemical, then gave himself a sponge bath. as he was washing his face he noticed with amusement the way his ears had been built up with plastic to almost twice their natural size, and the way his nose had been made so much broader--like a giant ape's it spread over half the width of his face. he was careful not to pull off any of the hair that had been so painstakingly glued to his body to simulate the general hairiness of the estrellans. and, of course, he had neither shaved nor had a haircut since being assigned this job, and his beard was growing nicely. but it, and the body hair, was the most uncomfortable part of his imposture--the darned stuff itched, but bad. he scratched. anyway, he thought thankfully, trevor had really done a job on him. no one yet met here had seemed to notice anything out of the way with him, as far as his looks went. he had easily passed everywhere as a real native. a two-man speedster had brought him to this planet, and had landed him just outside this city they called stearra, in the dead of night. his father, he knew, had preceded him by nearly two weeks, was here somewhere, as were manning and hooper, the two other s s men assigned here. a sneak boat came every two weeks, and stayed at a designated spot near the principal city on each continent from midnight until three in the morning, in case any of the men wanted to send messages or needed assistance of any kind. undressed--and scratched--and washed--and scratched--hanlon lay down on his bed and gave himself up to thoughts of the coming interview at ino yandor's office. he tried to analyze what he had learned and its possible connection with whatever it was that was keeping estrella from joining the federation of planets; from becoming the fifty-eighth member of that far-flung union of self-governing worlds. it seemed to him he had made a good start--although he was slightly dissatisfied with the speed at which he was _not_ getting ahead. yet he had felt all along--and still so thought--that with his way of working his best course lay through the criminal gangs of stearra--that by working up through them he would eventually come to the ones who were behind all this. and he was sure this ino yandor was his best lead to date, even though it seemed strange that an entertainment agent would be the top man in the criminal world. his father had not been too certain that this was a logical channel of investigation, but was quite willing to let hanlon try it--the corps _had_ to have that information, and each man of the secret service should work the way that seemed best to him. nor could the admiral argue against hanlon's insistence that this sudden rise of hitherto-unknown criminal activity just at this time was not purely coincidental. but the whole thing was such a seemingly insoluble puzzle. from his own investigation since he had arrived--from the "feel" of the city and its inhabitants to his sensitive perceptions--hanlon knew the people on the whole were such swell folks; the kind that would make wonderful federation citizens, even if they did look so peculiar and animal-like to terrans. any race with a religion and a code of living based on such common decencies and high-principled honesties as theirs, was bound to be a good one. from all he had been able to learn, hanlon thought the ruler, elus amir, a decent fellow and extremely capable. amir certainly had shown by his actions all during his tenure of office that while their system of government was a sort of limited autocracy, that he, at least, was trying to make it a benevolent one. unless all the information hanlon and the s s had gathered was haywire, this amir was certainly not behind all this sudden opposition. he had seemed--especially at first--to be very much in favor of joining. then who in the name of snyder was? suddenly a new idea brought hanlon upright on the bed. was amir merely a tool--like the emperor of sime had been under bohr? was there someone here who was comparable to that devilish highness? somebody with bohr's brains and driving lust for power and ever more power? hanlon sucked in his breath in sudden wonder--and worry. was this unknown another alien from the same, or some other advanced and far-away planet as yet unknown to the corps, working to take over estrella and possibly--or finally--the rest of the federated planets and the whole galaxy? it took hanlon a long time to go to sleep... nor had he found the answers to his puzzle when he finally did drop off. * * * * * when george hanlon appeared in ino yandor's office just before midday, the dapper impresario ushered his visitor into an inner room and closed the door. "i think ondo has left town--or died. for i have heard nothing more of him, nor have any of my men. you were right about a killing that could be traced to me being bad for my carefully-built reputation. well now, about your working for me. you said you knew something about the entertainment business. what can you do?" "well, i can't sing or posture, and i'm not much good at acrobatics. i can whistle a little, and...." "'blow'? what is that?" yandor used his definition of the word hanlon had translated as meaning "whistle." oh, oh. hanlon knew he had blundered. in an effort to cover up he said, "this," and puckered up his lips and whistled a few discordant notes, concealing the fact that he was an excellent whistler, and could do perfectly dozens of bird-call imitations. "no, i'm afraid that is nothing our people would care for." "then how about an animal act?" this was the crucial point. hanlon had given a lot of thought to this, and had worked out the idea he thought might apply here. it certainly would go big back on terra, he knew, but he was not yet conversant enough with estrellan theatrical acts--even though he had gone to the theatre several times to study them--to know if these strange people would like it or not. but he had to get in the good graces of yandor. "what sort of an animal act do you have in mind?" the impresario asked doubtfully. "our audiences are very particular. it has to be good, very good, and unusual." "i think they'll like mine," confidently. "i have eight pet roches, and as...." "roches!" yandor looked incredulous. "you mean you've actually trained some roches?" "that's right. i've trained them as a hobby. i drill 'em just like our ruler's residence guards do--and other things as well. i'm sure the people will like the act. i'll bring 'em down and show you what they can do." "well now," still hesitantly, "that may be all right. it sounds most unusual, to say the least. i'll look at them, say, the day after tomorrow--yes, i think i'll have time then." "thank you, nyer. then, after i've shown you what i can do about that, we can talk about ... other things." there was a flash of anger in the snapping, black eyes. "don't press me, anlo. i go slow about things like this, and i'll want to know all about you first." "sure, i know that. i didn't mean to hurry you--i just wanted to remind you i was still thinking about the main thing, not merely about a little matter like being an animal trainer." he left the offices then, and started toward home. but on the way he began thinking about that man, ovil esbor, he had heard mentioned. he took a couple of hours out, then, to investigate many minds to see what he could learn about the fellow. he found that his initial information was correct--esbor was a small-time, local politician, but was also connected with many other businesses about the city. he ran a sort of employment agency as his business "front", but there were rumors that he was also a "fence" for stolen goods, a panderer and narcotics agent, and many other illegal things. these latter, however, hanlon registered in his mind as merely rumors, not facts, for he could get no direct evidence of them, even though he "read" about such things in many minds. but he was convinced that the man was one about whom he should learn a lot more, as he had time for such investigation. he felt sure that esbor fitted in somewhere in the chain of criminals hanlon was so sure was tied in with the group who were trying to keep estrella out of the federation. he went back to his apartment then, and to the training of his roches. he was well satisfied with them--he liked them as pets, and they had learned to like him. when he first came in they swarmed all over him, and all of them had a good romp before he got them down to serious business. he was also quite happy about the way things were going. he was putting it over again, for he felt certain that through yandor he could get the dope he needed on the higher-ups. yandor had never even so much as denied that he had other irons in the fire than his theatrical business. and from vague ideas hanlon had seen in the man's mind from time to time, he felt surer than ever that he was on the right track. that evening he again went out for some fresh air. as he was strolling aimlessly down the street he saw an elderly estrellan native approaching. the fellow seemed very friendly, wanting to stop and chat--and hanlon found himself grinning inwardly at the old man's garrulous good nature, so like that of terran elders, something he had not before found here. the young s s man touched the other's mind almost as a matter of course at the outset, and discovered that the man had lived in stearra all his life, but was now a lonesome old widower, all his family and friends gone on before him or moved away. here was a good chance, hanlon thought, both to be nice to an oldster and to get some more general and perhaps specific information. "will you do me the honor to have a drink with me, nyer?" he asked courteously the first time the old chap gave him an opening. "there is a very nice place where men drink close by." "that's mighty kind of you, yunner, mighty kind. don't many people act that way to me any more. but there was a time ..." his voice trailed off, but hanlon read in his thoughts of the days when the fellow was an important and popular man in this city. as they walked along the street to the drinking place, hanlon listened with half an ear to the old fellow's chatter, while he was thinking swiftly. it had not taken him long to learn that in this secret service business he had to take information wherever, and from whomever, it was to be gained. and this old geezer ought to be quite a mine of gossip. hanlon hoped he could steer it into channels of real information. once seated at a small table, and their glasses of mykkyl before them, hanlon broke into the monologue to say engagingly, "i've been in stearra such a short time, nyer, that i don't know much about it. and since i intend to make it my home from now on, i want to know all i can about things and people here." "heh, heh, you came to the right place for that, yunner. where you from?" "i was born in lura, over on the eastern continent. but i found there was not much chance for a young fellow to make his fortune over there--everything is owned by a few rich people who keep all the businesses in their own families. so i came here." "yes, you did right. there are plenty of chances for bright young fellows to make fortunes here in stearra. hey ah, i remember well ..." and the old fellow started in on what hanlon knew would be a long, uninteresting resume of his past life. so he interrupted with a question, or rather, a request. "please tell me who are the most important people here, and what you know about them." for nearly an hour he kept the old fellow on this topic, in spite of the innumerable lapses when the man started wandering in his reminiscences. once, when hanlon had ventured to ask directly about yandor, he learned a very interesting fact that he gave considerable thought to when he was back in his own room. this was the fact that the impresario was crazy about animal pets. "he has what almost amounts to a menagerie at his home," the old fellow cackled. "always on the lookout for new and unusual types and kinds. why, they say he even has cages outdoors, containing lots of wild animals--even has them brought to him from the east continent and the polar regions." hanlon remembered now, that when he first went to yandor's house he had seemed to sense many animal minds near him, but had not taken the time to investigate. also, that the roch had shown him quite an unusual number of pets about the house. so, after hanlon had bid the old man good night, the young s s man settled himself in his most comfortable seat to consider this angle, as well as the other things he had learned that night. actually, while great in quantity they had been meager in quality, telling him little that he desired to know. the oldster had not known anything about any organized opposition to estrella's joining the federation nor, more particularly, who was behind it. oh, he could repeat glibly much of the propaganda that was making the rounds, and which hanlon already knew. how, if estrella joined the terran planets it would lose its own planetary sovereignty, and become merely a minor cog in the great schemes of the people led by terra, who were out to grab the whole galaxy for their own ends of power and greed. that estrella's people would have to conform to human standards rather than their own, and that their splendid estrellan culture would soon be entirely lost. that they would end up by being little more than slaves. "why," he cried with genuine dismay and anger at one point, "it is those terrans who are doing all the criminal things that have been making life here so dangerous recently--all those robberies, fires, murders, and so on, that our people would never even dream of doing." "where'd you hear that?" hanlon queried sharply, aghast that his surmise should thus quickly prove correct. "why, everyone knows that; everyone's talking about it," there was surprise at his question. "you mean you didn't know it? "but it's true. that's the sort terrans are. they don't even consider us real people," he added indignantly, almost crying in his drink. "they actually think we are inferior to them--that we are just semi-intelligent animals. hey ah, how stupid can they get? they should know we estrellans are the highest form of life in the whole universe!" hanlon knew this vicious propaganda was false, of course. he wanted to tell the oldster about how they actually worked with the primitive but intelligent races of other planets--what he, himself, had helped plan for the guddus. but, of course, he could not. he could have told this old man that while the corps and the federation statesmen recognized that the estrellans were not as far advanced in some sciences and technologies as were the terrans and their colonists on other worlds, they did respect these people as possessors of excellent minds and abilities. that they readily acknowledged that the estrellans were far ahead of them in ethics and in ways of living together peacefully. he could have added that these statesmen knew, and stated, that if the estrellans wanted to learn the sciences and techniques the federationists possessed, they could assimilate that knowledge in a very short time. but, also, that the federation would never try to _force_ their knowledge or culture on the estrellans or any other peoples. that they never tried to make any of the less-educated or less-advanced beings of other worlds conform to any mold those people, themselves, did not desire and specifically request be taught them. but at the moment this other thought interested hanlon more than a political review. so yandor liked pets, did he? well, how better get in his good graces than give him one never seen on estrella before? hanlon would get him a brand new animal, one far different from those on this planet, where all the native animals were tailless. yes, and it would be one with a brain that could give hanlon a real chance to see and hear what was going on in the man's private life when hanlon could not be near him. "let's see now, when's that sneakboat due ... hey, it's tomorrow night. that's great. i'll be there to meet it." chapter _it was nearing dawn on the eastern continent of estrella, and high above in the stratosphere, in its spaceship, the strange being that had been studying this planet so carefully, suddenly stiffened to closer attention. its mind had just contacted a group of beings below whose minds were of a far different texture--finer, somehow--than those of the natives of this world. the language was different, too, which did not make so much difference. but the thought-processes of these newcomers, in many cases, were almost incomprehensible to the alien._ _what were they? was there more than one race here on this planet, after all? the being activated its multiphased scanners, and studied and pondered._ * * * * * ssm george hanlon was waiting in the shadows of the great forest enclosing the hidden clearing when the spacer came in. when it had landed, the lock-door opened. hanlon ran over and, after giving the correct password, was helped inside the ship. "hi, fellows," he greeted the two secret servicemen who were assigned as crew of this ship, and went with them into the control room. "how's everything in the great big universe outside of this dump?" "not bad," they grinned. "nothing special going on. mars just won the interplanet baseball championship...." "... and there's a new singer on stereo that's a doll, boy, a doll...." "... we saw hoop and manny at our stop on the other side, and they said the admiral was coming here. we got some letters for him, but you'd better take 'em in case he doesn't show before we have to leave." "oke, will do. hey, you fellows got any candy bars? can't get sweets here, and i'm sugar starved." "sure, plenty." and while one of the men went to the storeroom, the other asked hanlon if he would like a cup of coffee. "gee, i sure would. that's another thing these folks don't have. that herb tea of theirs ... ugh!" the first returned with a dozen candy bars that hanlon stuffed in his pocket, and continued drinking his coffee. "oh, yes, better give me some estrellan money. i've had to spend quite a bit recently. about five hundred credit's worth should be enough." they gave him that from a supply in a drawer. "now for the most important thing," hanlon said. "next trip i want you to bring me a cat--a nice black...." "a cat?" it was a duet of surprise. "yeh, a nice, tame, house-broken earth cat. all black, or maybe with a white star in its forehead. about a year old, and quite large. be sure it has nice, sleek fur." "can do, all right," doubtfully, "but for john's sake, why?" "one of the men i'm working on here loves pets and collects all the different kinds he can get. so i want to give him something he doesn't have. all the animals here are tailless, so get me one with a really nice, long, well-furred tail. a thorough-bred, not an alley-cat. i figure it will help me get in good with him." "right." one of them made a note. "anything else?" "not a thing, thanks. 'specially for the coffee and candy. wonder when da ... the admiral will get here?" he hoped they had not noticed that near-slip, for it had been decided the relationship should not be generally told, and so far only a few s s men and high officials knew of it. "haven't the faintest." "then i guess i'll stick around awhile and see, if you don't mind." "glad to have you aboard, mister. we have to stay here several hours anyway, and we like company. getting sick of old tom's ugly face anyway," one of them quipped. "yeh, i 'spose you think you're a beauty queen." "you play poker?" "lead me to it." though hanlon carefully avoided using his special mental abilities, when admiral newton came aboard an hour or so later, the young corpsman was a few credits ahead. the cards had just fallen right for him. after the two secret servicemen had left the cruiser and it had blasted off, they started back toward town. hanlon had very much wanted to see his father, for he had been vaguely disturbed and dissatisfied with his rate of progress. true, he was making a good start at getting where he wanted to go, but it seemed to him he was taking far too much time for what little he had accomplished. he said as much to his father. "well, i don't know," the admiral said thoughtfully, as they rode along the flowertree-shaded but dusty road. "these things take time, and it seems to me you haven't done so badly, considering the short time you've been here." "thanks for being generous, but i seem to be taking so long for next to nothing." "what do you plan to do now?" newton asked, and hanlon explained more in detail what he was after. "what makes you so sure this fellow yandor leads to the higher ups?" the admiral asked slowly at last. "all the clues i've managed to pick up so far point to him as a key figure," hanlon said earnestly. "i've read in a number of minds facts--or snatches--that point to him as one of the leaders, despite his reputable position as the leading theatrical entrepreneur...." "or because of it," his father interjected. "yes, perhaps because of it. when auldin introduced us and i hinted at my knowledge of his 'other activities'--and when i've mentioned them since--yandor didn't react as i'm sure he would if he wasn't engaged in something off-color." "hmmm, it all sounds reasonable. and as far as the time it is taking you is concerned, you needn't worry yet. it always takes time to open up a line of investigation. you took three months or more off to go to algon, remember, but you got the answers finally." they had arrived at the house where hanlon lived so they parked their trikes in the back yard, and went up to his room. "yes, what you say is true," hanlon seemed more relieved now. "what have you and the others found out?" his father's short laugh was not a pleased one. "hardly a thing worth mentioning. we don't even have any leads that may be successful, as you have. manning has been working as a clerk in a government office, but can't find a thing. hooper is in lumina, the secondary capital where the study and suggestion body holds forth...." hanlon's mind remembered from the reels that this body was not exactly a legislature or congress, since it had no power to make laws. it studied all questions and problems that came up, and reported or made suggestions to the ruler, who had the final say. it was something fairly recent, introduced by elus amir. "... and managed to get a job on an estrellan equivalent of a newspaper there. but he hasn't found a thing, either, except that he's been in a position to learn where the propaganda is strongest, and is keeping charts and graphs, with dates and percentages, of its spread. but so far they haven't shown anything conclusive, except that the rumors are spreading rapidly, and that lately they have included the whispers that terrans are back of the crime wave." "yeh, i've heard that. obviously a 'whisper campaign' started by the real conspirators. but what're you doing, dad?" "mostly i'm just traveling here and there, keeping as quiet and undercover as possible, trying to find out what people all over the planet are really thinking. the percentage who believe the propaganda seems very small, but is growing. about the only thing i've found out at all curious or extraordinary is that adwal irad, the second-in-line seems to have a much greater than ordinary place in the counsel and affections of amir, the ruler." hanlon laughed. "that 'second-in-line' business is screwy, isn't it?" the admiral sat back in his chair, lighted a cigarro, and grew thoughtful. "yes, from our standpoint it is most peculiar, and one of the things that make it so hard for us to understand the estrellans at all well. how it is done i haven't been able to find out, but the men of the ruling class are specially bred--reminds me of the way queen bees are developed. they are larger physically, less hairy, and far more brainy than the average males here. however, it seems to sap their strength to handle the job, for while the new ruler takes over at the age of thirty, at the end of his fifteen-year term of office he is an old man--yet the average estrellan life-expectancy is ninety." he shook his head. "sure is alien all right," the younger s s man furrowed his brow in concentration. "never heard of anything like it before." he was silent a moment, then looked up. "but what about irad that's different--i should think the rulers would want their successors to learn as much as possible about the job before they took over." "i gather they do, but usually in a perfunctory sort of way. however, ever since he came back to estrella--irad was one of the natives who went on that personally-conducted tour of the federation--he has been with the ruler almost every day. it is said the old man treats him more like a son than a successor; they seem, from reports, to be closer even than amir and his own son." "aren't the two related?" "not that closely. i believe irad is a sort of second-cousin's son. there's an examination among each generation of ruler-possibilities, and the high man is designated 'second-in-line', and so on down." "what d'you 'spose it all means?" "have no data yet. it could be something--or nothing." "i'll keep irad in mind, then, and watch for a place to fit him in. oh, by the way, how long before he takes over?" "about two years, i think. why?" "just thought that might be important. i'll hunt around and find out." hanlon paused a moment, then continued slowly, "but the more you tell me of what you and the boys have _not_ found out, the more certain i am that my way is best--for me, at least--and that i can get some dope through the gangs here." "i'm willing to buy that now. i'll grant that whoever is back of all this opposition may be, and probably is, using the criminals, and you may get the first leads, at that. in fact, you already have more than we have. but i think we'll find--if we ever learn--that someone far above their level is the prime operator." "you think there's a possibility it might be some alien--like bohr was on simonides?" his father sat upright and looked at him penetratingly. "i hadn't thought of that." then he slumped down again. "but i wouldn't say so. it would really be stretching coincidence 'way out of shape for it to be the same sort of set-up you found there. you haven't found anything to make you think that, have you?" "no, i don't really suspect anything of the sort--just can't forget how surprised we were back there when we found out about bohr." "well, we'll just have to keep on plugging. the campaign is so obvious--so open with all its use of pamphlets, spreaders of rumor, and the same arguments everywhere ... it seems we certainly ought to find some leads somewhere. but ..." he shrugged helplessly. "there's certainly a clever propagandist in the background somewhere. and he sure keeps well hidden." the elder made a pained grimace. "you can say that again." "say, i've got an idea. how about having hooper or manning, or bring in still another ss man, to come here and let me brief him on what i've found out about two or three other natives who seem to be up in the gang world? i've got leads on some others who are apparently lesser gang bosses, but i haven't time to follow them up and keep on with my other lines of investigation, even though i think they're important enough to study. having someone else here to work on them would get rid of a lot of the criminal activity, i'm sure, and would leave me more free to work on yandor and his superiors. this yandor is fond of pets, and the sneakboat's bringing me a cat next trip, and through its mind and eyes and ears i can watch him when he's at home, and so on." his father stared at him in surprise. "a cat...?" then he shook his head with a helpless movement, but grinned feebly. "you continually amaze me, spence. i hope it works out." "oh, i'm sure it will. yandor makes a hobby of animals, and anything as strange and wonderful--to estrellans--as a tailed cat he'll undoubtedly keep with him most of the time. especially after i impress on tabby's mind that it is to love yandor wholeheartedly, and be very distressed when away from him." he grinned wolfishly. "sounds good if you can work it, and i am sure _you_ can. as to the other...." he thought in silence for several minutes, then, "i'll have manning come here and go to work with you. being a government clerk, he could pretend he wants to get into local politics, and it'll all seem natural to the natives." "fine. one of the locals i suspect is a sort of political boss. i'll brief morrie on all i know, and suggest some things he can look into to start with." "and hooper and i will check more closely into the gangs over on the eastern continent," the admiral said. then he leaned forward earnestly. "we've got to solve this. at first it was merely asking a new world with a high civilization to join us for mutual benefits. but now that this opposition has grown so strong, if we fail here we'll have that much more trouble with other non-terran worlds we discover. you know colonial has dozens of survey ships out all the time, and since they cracked that new-type drive of bohr's, and increased our speed nearly %, those exploring trips go both farther and faster." "we'll get 'em, dad," and hanlon got up as his father rose. admiral newton was still not too optimistic. "i certainly hope so. well, keep trying, son, and don't get into any more trouble than's necessary." "i won't, dad. safe flights," and the admiral left. after his father had gone, hanlon sat thinking seriously, and trying to make plans. the roches, which he had kept asleep while he and his father were talking, he awakened and fed, then romped with them for a time. but hanlon was not really in the mood for play, even though he had come to feel a great affection for these fine animals, and they for him. he had too much on his mind for such recreation just now. one thing, he suddenly realized--the roches had brought it to his mind--he had been forgetting. that was the series of burnings and wreckings that auldin and his men were continuing nightly. despite his notes to the local peace-keepers, hanlon knew they had done nothing to stop these depredations, and it made him angry. "what sort of dopes are those peacers, anyway?" he growled to himself. "are they in on all this, too? they must be. and yet, i must remember they've never run up against anything like this before and probably haven't sense enough to figure out what to do. so, it's time i did something about it. but how? should i try the same thing, or something else?" he slept most of the day, making up for his wakefulness of the previous night. when he awoke he considered his problem. due to the fact that he would probably be working his roches in public in a few days, and in a way he believed estrellans had never seen them drilled or trained before, he was afraid that if he sent another note by means of a roch, as he had done before, someone in authority might be clever enough to put two and two together and not get five. so he decided to use an ordinary messenger. after dinner hanlon went again to the little cafe that auldin and his men patronized, but this time he did not go in. having been in touch with auldin's mind so many times, he now knew its texture and individual characteristics well. so when the mobster and his men went into the cafe, hanlon not only knew it but had no trouble "hearing" auldin give his crew their assignments for that night's dirty work. he had again prepared a note for the peace officers, and now he added the new addresses to it. then he went down the street until he found an estrellan boy, to whom he gave the note, directions and a coin. the boy ran to the peace station and gave the paper to the official there. "we are giving you one last chance to serve the taxpayers and citizens who support you," the note said. "you paid no attention to the previous warnings, but we are giving you the benefit of the doubt. we believe you simply did not know how to handle such a situation. it is simple--send a number of men to each of the places listed below, and have them hide and watch. then, when they see the criminals come to start their nefarious work, have them run out and arrest the men, and bring them back to your station. there they can be held for trial, by the ruler or someone he appoints. now get busy, or else...." "where did you get this?" the official asked the boy after reading the note. "some man gave it to me on the street, and gave me a silver penta to bring it to you," the youth answered, then ran out before he could be questioned further. three of the gangsters were arrested that night, but somehow--either through his own shrewdness or through someone's blundering--auldin escaped. * * * * * _in the spaceship the strange being knew a feeling of profound disquiet. it had followed the two of those strange minds that flew the space-cruiser to its second landing place on this world. it had known when these beings met one and then another additional one of these unknowns who were not like the natives of this world. from the fact that the first two came in a spaceship--which these natives did not possess--the deduction was simple that they were all from some other and unknown--to it--planetary system._ _but one of these newest minds could not be touched at all! the scanning intellect knew only that such a mentality was there because the first two (and later, a third) were so evidently holding a long conversation with someone ... and in its multiphased scanner the being could see that that someone was apparently an estrellan native._ _why, then, could not its mind be touched?_ _in its scanner the two were followed as they returned to the city and to a dwelling place, and one side of their conversation was "listened to." they were clearly, the mind was forced to conclude, a menace to its carefully-laid plans._ _but why could that one mind not be read?_ chapter in the morning, although still fuming about auldin's escape, hanlon had to put it out of his mind as he prepared for the try-out of his act before yandor. the new and gaudy uniforms had been delivered and the roches had grown used to wearing them. now hanlon dressed himself and the animals and left the house. they marched down the street toward the downtown section where yandor's office was located. naturally, the procession attracted considerable attention, for hanlon made the roches follow him sometimes in single file, then close up to double file. they always kept evenly spaced, all in perfectly cadenced step. he, himself, strutted in a sort of drum-major's fashion, for he considered all this excellent advertising. "wish i had a brass band," he grinned to himself. "then these folks would really wake up." by the time he reached the more densely-peopled business section, a large crowd was watching him and his unusually-trained and dressed dogs, and comments were lively and pleasantly surprised. as on terra--or any other planet, for that matter--this parade attracted an ever-growing crowd of excited children, who tagged along with laughter and shouts of joy. into yandor's office hanlon and his roches marched, and at his brisk command they lined up before the startled entrepreneur's table-desk in a double rank of four. "salute," hanlon said, and the dogs stood on their hind legs simultaneously, and raised their right forepaws in salute. "well now," yandor gasped, "what have we here?" but hanlon, without answering, turned to his roches. "attention." the roches dropped to all fours, and aligned themselves. in rapid order hanlon made them do columns right and left, right and left turns, left and right by twos and fours, right and left obliques, and finally right into company front. then, "company, halt. parade, rest." the roches, who had obeyed every order with precision and unanimity, sank to their haunches and crossed their front feet. the impresario had stood watching with open mouth and bugging eyes during this miracle of training. now he rushed up and seized both hanlon's hands. "well now, that's wonderful. perfect. i've never seen anything like it. marvelous. can they do anything else, too?" "certainly," and hanlon explained rapidly the various other things he had trained his roches, individually and as a group, to do. "well now, we certainly can use this. the people have never seen anything like it. they'll be enraptured. let's talk terms." hanlon faced the roches, who had not moved. "at rest." they relaxed and lay down, although still keeping their places. most of them hung out their tongues and panted in the manner of dog-like animals everywhere. nor did they move from their places during the half hour or so hanlon and yandor were talking business. all during that discussion hanlon carefully watched the mind of the man before him, paying more attention to any stray and extraneous thoughts than he did to their talk about bookings--which actually did not especially interest him. for he had begun to find that in those side thoughts of the natives during a conversation usually lay his greatest mine of information. hanlon was becoming more and more certain that this man yandor had much on his mind besides the entertainment business that was his front. he was not able--yet--to get any direct clues as to who yandor's superior or superiors might be, but he did glean enough to make him certain there were such higher-ups. just as they were closing their interview hanlon said, "i understand, nyer, that you have quite a collection of rare animals." "well now, that's right. i do have quite a number, and am always looking for new and unusual ones." "do you happen to have a terran _cat_ among them?" "a cat? what is that? i never heard of such an animal." "oh, but you must have one of those. they are not only the finest pets anyone could possibly have, but they have long, furry tails." a gleam of interested desire came into yandor's eyes. "i've heard of animals with tails, on other planets, but i've never even seen one. well now, such a thing would be most wonderful--a magnificent addition to my collection. but how can i get one?" "if you'll permit me the pleasure, nyer, i can get one for you. i know a certain man on the eastern continent who obtained a pair when he was on that trip to the terran planets. lately they have had a litter of kittens, as the young are called. i am sure i can buy one or ... or ... well, i'll get you one," he grinned. "oh, i would so like to have one--though i hesitate to let you take such risks. but from you, my friend, i'll accept it. well, yes, i'll gladly accept it from you. when can i have it?" "it may take some days, but have it you shall. i'll bring it as soon as i can. meanwhile, where and when do you want me to perform first?" "well now, let me think. the national theatre would be best, i think. yes, it is the finest and largest here in the capital, and i'll make a special presentation of your opening. i'll invite all the finest people, including our glorious ruler and his staff. yes, three days should be sufficient to arrange it all, if the ruler is free that evening. where do you live? i'll send you word." the next three days were extremely busy ones for hanlon--and he had little time for spying on the mind of yandor, save when he saw him briefly. feeling in a way that he was being derelict in his duty, hanlon nevertheless decided that to gain the best results later he would have to concentrate for the time being on getting ready for his debut. so much depended on that being a success. he had attended the so-called theatrical performances--more like variety acts or what he had read that the old-time vaudeville shows were like--since he had decided to make his bid for contact with yandor by this means. now he went to the "place of performances" to study the layout more carefully and minutely. it was nothing like the various types of theatres he had known so well on terra. for one thing, it was not in a building at all, but merely a specially-prepared plot of ground, surrounded by a high stone wall. naturally, being estrellan, it was five-sided. inside the wall the hard-packed and smoothed ground sloped gently downward from all sides toward a level, tile-floored, foot-high place in the center that was the stage. the customers stood during the performance, although hanlon had never been able to understand why. "sure seems as though it would be easy, and not too expensive, to at least give them benches of some sort to sit on," he thought. near one corner of the stage was the entrance to a flight of stone steps that led downward into the dressing rooms and property-storage for the theatre. when it was their turn, the actors had to come up these steps and so onto the stage to begin their turn, without benefit of curtain. also, because of the peculiar construction it was impossible to use "backdrops" or "sets" as hanlon knew them. the morning hanlon went to investigate the place there was no one around, so he was not stopped nor disturbed while he made a complete tour of the underground rooms, and stepped off the measurements of the stage. one great lack amused him. "what?" he chuckled, "no popcorn or soft drink dispenser robots?" he had noticed when attending previous performances, that they used no type of footlights or other illumination whatever, and that it was hard for those in the back of the enclosure to see what was going on down in the center. by judicious inquiry he found that on the nights when it stormed or was cloudy, or when estrella's two moons were not in the sky, there was no performance. following his inspection of the theatre, hanlon went to the market place again. he hunted out a stall where lamps were sold, and after the usual considerable haggling and dickering, bought twenty of the most powerful of the peculiar carbide lamps at a fairly reasonable price. then he hunted up a metal-worker, and had reflectors made to his order and specifications, and fitted to one side of the lamps. "i'll introduce 'em to something new," he grinned, then was suddenly worried. "or are such new customs and innovations taboo on this screwy world?" another thought occurred to him the second day, and he hunted around for some time until he found a place where masks were made. the customer, who specialized in things for actors, did not have what hanlon wanted, but after it had been described, the merchant said it would not be hard to make, and that it could be delivered the next afternoon. so hanlon ordered a face-mask for himself, that would look like the head of a roch. meantime, he continued working with the animals whenever he had time. he was now well satisfied with his ability to control them under all circumstances. he felt sure he would have no trouble in "putting on a good act", and his only worry was whether or not he could please these strange people. for so much depended upon his making good--if he did, he would be more solidly in the good graces of the impresario, yandor. and that was the main thing he was after right now. the night of hanlon's first performance finally arrived--and so did a nice large attack of stage-fright. there were "butterflies in his stomach", and he was by turns wet with sweat and almost petrified. peeking out from the top of the stairs leading to the dressing rooms, the sight gave hanlon a prime case of the jitters. for it seemed all the high officials, business and professional men, and the "social group" of stearra, with their wives and families, were there. even the ruler was seated at stage-side in a large, ornate throne-chair, having been persuaded by yandor that he would see something most exceptional. hanlon went slowly down into the cubicle assigned him and the roches, and there fought for calmness. and it was a measure of his innate strength of character that he succeeded. the jitters passed, the butterflies went into hibernation, and his nerves calmed down. the first acts were the usual type seen on estrellan stages--singers, posturers (they did not seem to have any dancers in the sense that terran theatres do), and acrobats. hanlon had always been interested in these, for almost none of the things they did were like what he was used to seeing or hearing. the music, however, he could not get used to. estrellan music was based on a five-toned scale, of course, and was--to his ears--more of a cacophony than chinese music. yet the estrellan singers had clear, beautiful, flutelike voices. the footlights that hanlon had finally persuaded yandor to have set in place around the edge of the stage, and lighted, occasioned great comment at first. but once the performance started, and the people found how much better they could see, were acclaimed as a great achievement. "how did you ever happen to think of them?" yandor had asked when hanlon first spoke of them and showed the impresario what he had made. hanlon shrugged. "i always feel cheated because i can't see better when i go to a performance," he said. "when i got to thinking of my act, i knew it wouldn't show up well if people couldn't see clearly exactly what my roches were doing. so i figured out these lights. don't you like the idea?" "well now, yes, i like them. but i don't know. people are peculiar about change. they may do something about it if they don't approve of them." "well," hanlon made a nonchalant gesture, "we can always turn 'em off if they yell." but after the first few moments, when the customers had seen how much better they could watch the posturer who came on first, the value of the footlights was clearly seen, and they gave their whole-hearted approval. a new custom was born on estrella. hanlon had been below in the cubicle assigned him and his roches, so had not seen nor heard the crowd's reactions to the acts that preceded him. when it came his turn to go on, he was glad to find that his nervousness was gone, and that he was perfectly calm. yandor stopped him near the head of the stairway leading up from underground, while the native who was manager and a sort of master or announcer of acts, made a brief speech. "nyers and nyas and you, most gracious k'nyer," he addressed the throng and the ruler, "tonight you are to see something most unusual in trained animals. i have been connected with performances for many, many years, but never have i seen anything to equal this. i will not attempt to tell you what is coming--you must see and marvel and judge for yourselves. next on our program is gor anlo and his friends." hanlon came up the stairway and onto the stage, followed in single line by his eight roches. there was a titter of laughter at first sight of hanlon in the roch-mask and the dogs in their gaudy uniforms, but this soon quieted in amazed surprise at the exhibition they were witnessing. across the entire stage-place the roches marched, while hanlon took his place in the center. he did not utter aloud a single word of command as the eight roches marched about the platform and stopped in a circle facing the audience on all sides, all the dogs equidistant from the others. as one they rose on their hind legs, and their forepaws bent to their heads in a salute. a moment they held this, then still without a spoken word of command, dropped to all fours and in rapid succession formed and marched in company front and lines of two and four, made left and right turns, marched across the stage in oblique lines, did about face and to the rear, and all the complicated maneuvers the ruler's residence guards did on the parade ground. then they added some things hanlon had never seen estrellan guards do, but which were more or less common to terran drill teams. they did full wheels in lines of eight and four, formed wheeling stars and circles. never once did hanlon utter a word of command that anyone could hear; never once did the roches falter or break that perfectly-cadenced step; never once was one of them out of line. there was never any hesitation, never any breaking of ranks even when, about half-way through their drill they changed to quick time--almost double the cadence in which they had first drilled. how could any of that great, stunned audience guess that the trainer was actually controlling each animal mind, that his own mind was divided and parts of it superimposed on each animal brain, so that it was impossible for them to act counter to his central--yet individual--command? all the audience could see was the most perfect, the most incredibly flawless precision of training they had ever witnessed. led by the ruler they began a rhythmic chant of "yi, yi, yi, yi," in cadence with the roch's marching tempo. the chant grew louder by the moment until it was a deafening roar. at their first sounds hanlon almost lost his poise--for he did not know that this was their method of giving highest applause--and that very few acts ever received it at all. he had never heard it when he had attended their performances before. to him, now, it sounded more like they were giving him earthly "boos", and he was afraid he had somehow offended them. he withdrew part of his mind from each of the roches, even as they were marching across the stage, and sent it out to contact the mind of the ruler and several others. he was pleasantly surprised at what he read there, for it was not dissatisfaction, but a combined wonder and delight at what they were seeing. quickly he again sent full measure of his mind into each of his roches to continue the drill--nor had anyone noticed any break in their routine during the second or so of this mind-searching. finally, after a full five minutes of this, hanlon silently commanded each one, in unison, "company, halt. right, dress. parade, rest. salute." he himself came to a stiff salute, his directed at the ruler. higher and still louder grew the chanted roar. even the ruler sprang to his feet, his sounds of approval nearly as loud and unrestrained as the rest. when the noise subsided a bit, hanlon gave the roches "at rest," and they relaxed, lay down, and panted ... but each still in his place. hanlon stepped forward and facing first one way and then the other said, "thank you for your kind reception of our poor efforts. now, with your permission, i would like to show you some of the individual abilities of my little friends." but while he was speaking four of the animals had gone off to the side near the entrance to the stairway. hanlon had fixed up a specially prepared chair. to the bottoms of each of the legs he had affixed light wooden rods that extended out several inches. now the four roches each picked up a rod in its teeth and thus lifted the stool, which they brought out and set before hanlon. he looked down at them in pretended surprise, then out at his audience, and smiled. "my friends are so thoughtful. they must think i am tired and need a rest. well, far be it from me to disappoint them." and he sat down, while the roches went back to their places and lay down. instantly there was a loud, angry hissing from the audience. there was no mistaking this--it was censure, not praise. hanlon was dumb-founded. what had he done wrong? quickly he scanned a number of minds, and found he had broken one of their most sacred taboos. nobody--but _nobody_--ever sat in the presence of their beloved ruler without his express invitation. "oops, tilted!" hanlon groaned, quickly rising and shoving the offending stool off the edge of the stage. but the audience was not mollified. if anything, their clamor rose louder. it was the ruler, himself, who quieted them. he rose and held up his hand in a gesture of silence, smiling forgivingly. "boy, what a swell egg he is," hanlon mentally wiped the sweat from his mind's brow. "i still don't understand these folks. i'll have to watch myself more carefully, all the time." he bowed his thanks to the ruler, spreading his hands in a gesture of apology. then he quickly made the roches begin their other tricks. he had one do some acrobatics, in imitation of the type their native acrobats did. two of the others "danced" together. another balanced himself and rolled about the stage on a large plastic ball hanlon had secured. three of them did intricate circlings about each other, without ever getting in each other's way or breaking step at any time. another stood on its hind legs and "sang" in imitation of the singers. another "walked" on its front legs. these, being more to the liking of his audience, yet something they had never seen animals do, or so well, soon recaptured their interest. after a bit they began again that "yi, yi" of applause. by the time hanlon's turn was over the people seemed to have forgotten his one blooper, and were solidly "with him." as he left the stage and went below with his roches, their yells were the loudest yet. ino yandor was wildly enthusiastic, and those who had seen the first night's performance spread the word. in days the fame of hanlon and his roches had spanned the continent, and other cities were clamoring to see his act, while the national theatre there in stearra was packed nightly with capacity crowds. during those days hanlon spent as much of his time as he could wandering about the city, the marketplace, the recreation parks, and sitting in various places where people ate or drank. with his mind he was hunting not only for whatever points of specific information he might glean, but also to get a more general and better "feel" of the people and conditions here. he was confirmed in his early beliefs that as a whole these were wonderful people; that they would make excellent citizens of the federation. they had such a high sense of social justice; such deep feelings of right and wrong; such splendid habits of co-operative living. more even than the terrans and the colonists, who had come far along the road of brotherliness in the past centuries, these estrellans had an innate belief in the brotherhood of man. what a great gap there was between the great mass of estrellans and those few criminals with whom he was working? he remembered one time when he had been talking with his father about the way he worked. "you want to be mighty careful," admiral newton warned. "being around gangsters and criminals so much, you'll have to watch not to begin thinking like they do." "you never need worry about that, dad," hanlon had been very earnest. "the more i see of 'em, the less i like 'em, and the more i'm sure the common decencies of life are best. we must have law, government and order, and all decent citizens must always 'live and let live'. i could never be contented otherwise." chapter the night the sneak boat was due to return, hanlon early sent word to yandor that he was ill, and could not perform that night. the entrepreneur came, boiling over with anger, to hanlon's rooms. "well now," he began, "what's all this about...?" "ooh, quiet, please," hanlon moaned. he had been ready for just some such thing, and was lying in bed, face contorted with pain, and now pressed his hands to his ears as though yandor's loud voice was more than he could stand. "can't you see i'm sick? why must you make so much noise?" the agent was taken aback by this counterthrust. he calmed a bit then, but asked many questions. hanlon's partial answers and evident pain finally convinced the impresario that his star performer was, indeed, too ill to appear. "these attacks come only once or twice a year, and usually last only a day or two," hanlon assured him in a weak voice. "i'll try my best to be on hand tomorrow." "very well, i'll expect you then. well now, there is something i've been meaning to talk to you about, and now is a good time. i want you to work into your act various things to say against the terrans; about how such wonderful performances as yours would be impossible if we were to submit to them and accept their so-called invitation to join their federation. suggest to the audience that we would all become slaves, and that neither would performers have time to prepare their acts, nor would the others be allowed to come and watch them." hanlon was slightly prepared for this because he had seen it forming in yandor's mind, but he did not like it any the better. he was just about to make an angry retort when he took himself in hand, and continued keeping in the character he had assumed. he groaned a bit louder, and twisted more violently on the bed. "please, nyer, leave me now. i hate for anyone to see me while i'm like this. as for what you've just said, we'll talk about it later and see what can be worked out." and, reluctantly, it seemed, yandor finally left. when night at last brought its cloak of darkness, hanlon put the roches to sleep and slipped quietly from his room. down in the back, though, he could not seem to get his tricky acetylene-powered engine to start. he fussed and tinkered for nearly two hours before he could finally get it going. "so help me, i'm never going to cuss out a real ground-car after this because it acts up occasionally," he said as he rode out of the yard and down the dusty street. he drove as fast as he could out to the clearing where the sneakboat had already landed. "sorry to be late, fellows," he said as soon as he had given the password and been allowed aboard. he accepted gratefully the cup of coffee they gave him, and griped for five solid minutes about those gosh-awful excuses for transportation these so-and-so natives used. "here, have a box of candy bars, and quit belly-aching," one of them said at last. the other held out another gift, a pound can of pulverized instant coffee. "hey, these are wonderful," hanlon's spirits rose as if by magic. "you guys are my friends for life." "why, georgie," one of them simpered. "i didn't know you cared." "you'll have to choose between us, though," the other said owlishly. "i'm not going to be a partner to bigamy." then they both laughed. "look, he's blushing." "aw, i am not," hanlon spluttered. "it's just this pink skin-dye," he added weakly. "anyway, here's your cat," the s s men got down to business, and fetched the crate containing the beautiful animal. "we happened to remember hearing that these people don't have milk, so we got you one that's accustomed to a meat and vegetable diet." "gee, thanks for that. i'd completely forgotten that point." hanlon examined the big, black cat, and his mind reached out and quieted its fright at the strange surroundings and this hairy being who was now handling it. he talked with the men for some further time, told them he had not yet got any sure clues, but was beginning to get an "in" with some people he felt sure would lead him to some. they told him the other three men had reported about the same, although hooper said the curve was rising steadily on the belief that terrans were behind the crime wave here. "yeh, i've heard that bilge, too. it's just another of the things we'll have to stamp out before we can win out here. but we will." "sure you will," the two agreed. "anything else you need?" "no, can't think of a thing. the cat was the most important for now. it will really get me in more solid with yandor, the guy i'm working on." "hope so, han. well, cheerio." "safe flights, you guys, and thanks again." on the ride back he was glad he had a tricycle instead of a two-wheeled bike, for the crate was heavy and rather awkward with the cat in it, shifting its weight about from time to time. back in his room once more, hanlon released the animal, which immediately dived under the bed, where it cowered in fright, having seen and smelled the roches who were sleeping in various places about the rooms. but again hanlon reached out and touched its mind, calmed its fear, and soon had it out of hiding and creeping into his arms. it lay there, purring, while he stroked it and impressed on its mind--whose texture he learned while doing this--that it was safe and with friends. after he had done that, he woke the roches. at first sight of the feline a couple of them started toward it in curiosity. swiftly hanlon took over their minds and halted them where they were. he then brought each of them to the realization that this was a new friend and playmate. that was not too hard, for the roches had never seen a cat, and only its strangeness had made them curious. he had more trouble with the cat, for the ages-old dislike and fear of dogs was strong within it. but he finally calmed it by implanting the knowledge firmly in its mind that these strange beings were not dogs, actually, and that they meant it no harm, and all were to be friends. soon he was grinning at his ability, as he saw the nine animals eating, drinking and playing together, as though they had been the best of comrades all their lives. "i'm really quite an animal trainer," he chuckled to himself as he watched them. * * * * * _high above the strange being lay on its padded bench and frustrated thoughts ran through its mind. it had noticed the two different minds who again had come briefly to this planet in their ship of space, talked with the three other different ones, and then had come to this western continent in its night time. the mind "heard" them conversing with that other but unreadable mind again, but still no sort of contact could be made. why? it wondered again. what sort of mind was it, that it could not be touched?_ _through its multiphased scanner the being carefully watched that entity below which appeared so like an estrellan native--but after it had left on that peculiar conveyance, bearing a container with a strange animal, sight of the entity had been lost among the crowds of the city streets._ _so now the mind above seethed with questions, to which it could find no logical answers, even though it was beginning to understand the thought-concepts of those others it could "read."_ * * * * * late the next day--for hanlon had quickly adopted the actors' habit of beginning his day at noon--he fed and watered his animals, then got his own meal and ate it. then he impressed on the minds of his roches that they were to behave themselves, and not destroy things about the room in their play, and not to make too much noise. "sure is handy to be able to do this," he smiled. "boy, what a baby sitter i'd make if i could control humans this way." he called the cat to him, snapped on the harness and leash the s s men had brought with it, and took it down to yandor's office. he had worked carefully on the cat's mind, and knew the characteristics and texture thoroughly. he had practiced seeing through its eyes and hearing through its ears under all conditions--from ordinary daylight to bright carbides, from dusk to the blackness of a closet. he felt certain he could use the animal as planned, under any and all conditions. "this is 'ebony'," he explained to yandor as he presented the cat. at the same time he was impressing on the feline's mind that this was to be its new master, that it must always obey him, and must allow itself to be the man's constant pet and companion without hesitation or animosity. "'ebony'," hanlon went on saying to yandor, "is the terran word for 'black', and that is probably why its former owner gave it that name." the impresario took the big, beautiful animal in his arms and exclaimed over and over at its wonderful appearance, its sleek lines, soft fur and intelligent face. but it was the cat's long, furry tail that was his greatest delight. he stroked and petted it as though he could not really believe such a thing was true. hanlon was careful to explain to yandor how he must stroke _with_ the lay of the fur, and never _against_ it. "well now, i can never thank you enough, my friend, for this marvelous gift," yandor said. "i hope it didn't cost you too much." hanlon made himself cough in an embarrassed manner. "well ... er ... it really didn't cost me ..." he grinned and left it at that, nor did yandor, after a knowing look, refer to the matter again. instead, he said, "it shall be the prize of my collection. i shall treasure this above all others." yandor really was in the transports of delight, known only to collectors who have made an unusual find. hanlon read from the surface of his mind the thought that this man was a wonderful friend, "and probably no menace to our plans at all. i am sure we can trust him--and use him." the latter phrase delighted hanlon, although he was careful not to let his feelings show in his face. this was what he was after. he had only to learn who "we" was. but he was making progress; he could really begin to learn things. "you do not need to keep the harness on ebony all the time," he explained aloud. "just when you want to go out with him. in your home or office, leave it off, as it is probably not too comfortable. i'm sure," he decided to do a bit of direct suggesting, "that you'll soon grow to love the cat enough so you'll want to keep it with you all the time. it will lie on your desk, or in your lap, and be the finest sort of companion." "yes, and be the envy of all my friends," yandor swelled with importance. hanlon explained rapidly about its feeding and drinking habits, and that while it was house-broken it should be taken outdoors several times a day. when he was sure yandor knew how to care for the animal, hanlon left the office and went back to his rooms. after the performance that night, hanlon went quickly home and lay down on the bed. he sent out a portion of his mind to contact that of ebony, which yandor had taken to his own room and installed in a padded basket, as hanlon had suggested. through the cat's eyes he could see the interior of yandor's bedroom, and watched while the latter prepared for bed and finally dropped off to sleep. then hanlon withdrew his mind, and did the same. he had set the wake-up on his time-teller for fairly early the next morning. immediately upon awakening he sent part of his mind back into that of the cat. all during the day--which he spent mainly lying down or sprawled in his easy chair, when he was not preparing or eating his meals, or attending to the wants of his roches--he watched yandor at his daily activities. for the impresario, delighted with his new pet, kept the cat with him all the time, even to taking it into the office-like study of his home with him. there, as soon as they were inside, hanlon made ebony leap up onto the table-desk, and curl up on the one corner. he wanted this habit to become a permanent one--and it, too, delighted the estrellan. now the cat was in the best possible place for hanlon's spying while yandor was at home. later in the day, when it was time for the entrepreneur to go to his downtown office, he put into effect another suggestion hanlon had made. he put the small, ornate harness hanlon had given him for that purpose onto the cat, snapped the leash to it, and took ebony with him. dozens of yandor's friends stopped him and complimented him--though somewhat jealously--upon his acquisition, which made him prouder than ever. for ebony created such a sensation that it took yandor nearly an hour longer than usual to get to his office. he had not yet reached there, in fact, when hanlon was surprised and a little nettled by a knock on his apartment door. somewhat angrily he got up off the bed, and went and opened it. a native was standing there, grinning. "what d'you want?" hanlon growled querulously. "boy, are you in a temper this morning?" a voice said in terran, while the grin grew lop-sided. "morrie!" hanlon yelled, throwing his arms about the other. then, over his shoulder, he noticed a number of his neighbors peering out of their doors, or standing about in the hall, listening, and knew with a sinking feeling that they must have heard the terran words, and be wondering about them. his mind raced, then he spoke even more loudly in estrellan. "my brother, it is such a surprise to see you here. how did you happen to come from lura to visit me?" then he dragged the surprised s s man into his room, and shut the door. "what gives? why that 'my brother' routine?" "noticed the neighbors gawking, and knew they had heard us talking terran. but i sure am glad to see you, even if i was so curt at first. was concentrating on a job, and didn't like being interrupted just then." "oh, sorry. want me to come back later?" "no, no, it wasn't really that important." hanlon was silent a short moment while he disengaged the part of his mind that was in ebony, and brought it back into his own. "come on, take that chair. go ahead and gab while i get dressed." manning did as requested, and they talked seriously for some time, each bringing the other up to date on all they knew about their part of this business, and what they were planning. in particular, hanlon told manning about the local aspects of the work of the criminal elements, and what he suspected as well as what he actually knew and had done. "i'm almost certain now," he said, "that the criminals and the folks who're trying to keep estrella out of the federation are tied in together, but i haven't any real proof ... yet. but i think i soon will have, with the line of investigation i'm on." "we've about come to the same conclusion," manning said thoughtfully, "but we haven't any more proof than you have, if as much." hanlon told him about stopping auldin's "wrecking crew", and a few other possible leads he had uncovered to local men who seemed to be in on the activities here, especially one ovil esbor, a local politician. "he's a sort of gang-boss or district captain," hanlon added, "but i think he has quite a lot of fingers in different illegal pies." "i'll get right at it," manning said. "the admiral--he sent his regards, by the way--said we were to work together as closely as possible, and that you would feed me leads whenever you got 'em--as i will you." "sure, i will. maybe i'm sticking my neck out, trying for the big fellows and asking you to take care of the smaller fry, but it seems...." "think nothing of it, little chum," manning waved his hand airily. "as long as we clean out his hoo-raw's nest, i don't care how we do it, and i'm ready to work at anything. the admiral said--and what you've told me clinches it--that i'd better be an aspirant for a spot in the political set-up here, so i'll pretend i heard about esbor, and go right to him." for another hour they discussed ways and means, and then manning rose to go, after telling hanlon where he was living here in stearra. "we'll see each other every few days," he said. as soon as manning was gone, hanlon threw himself on the bed and again sent part of his mind back into that of the cat, now with yandor in the latter's office. and hanlon kept it in ebony's brain all the rest of that day and early evening. but nothing in which he was particularly interested happened--and he was beginning to wonder if his ideas about yandor were right after all. nothing but legitimate theatrical business had been transacted all day--at least while hanlon was watching. there had been those two hours or more while manning was at his rooms.... during the time hanlon was on the stage that night, he had to concentrate all his mental faculties on his roches, and had to withdraw from the cat's brain. but once back in his dressing room and while going home and after he got there, hanlon watched carefully the party the impresario gave to a group of friends in his palatial home. through the cat's eyes hanlon carefully studied each one of the guests and listened avidly to their talk--and at times had to tighten his control of ebony's mind and muscles to keep it acting friendly toward some of those people. they seemed to "rub its fur the wrong way" ... and did, literally, on occasions. also, they had an effluvia ebony distinctly did not like. but under hanlon's compulsion, it continued to act in as friendly a manner as cats usually do ... most of the time with customary feline indifference. chapter the next day hanlon also spent in the cat's mind, when he was not playing with or attending to his roches, or eating. it happened that he had transferred part of his mind to each of the eight, and was giving them a short workout, when there was a sudden noise at his door, and it was roughly flung open--he had not locked it while at home. nine parts of his mind saw through nine pairs of eyes the man who stormed in. nine pairs of ears heard him snarl, "what's the big idea of having my men arrested?" as quickly as he could hanlon started bringing the portions of his mind from the roches into his own brain. he sat up on the bed, and made his face look blank--but inside he was thunderstruck. how had ran auldin found out he was behind those arrests? "why ... why," he pretended to stammer. "i don't know what you're talking about, ran. what arrests? what's happened?" the usually fastidious gang-boss was now dirty and his clothing soiled and rumpled. his eyes were red, apparently from sleeplessness, or worry, or both. his voice was still accusing as he answered, "my men were surprised at their work the other night, and i only escaped by luck. been hiding ever since." "but what's it all about? why were they arrested? i don't know anything about what you were doing--yandor didn't tell...." "it must have been you. nobody else knew." "and i tell you i was not told, either, so how could i know? i've been too busy getting my act ready and putting it on, and yandor hasn't even mentioned you to me." auldin stepped close to the side of the bed as hanlon struggled to get up, and pushed him down again. now hanlon could see that the mobster was carrying in each hand a piece of large rope, approximately half an inch in diameter and about two feet long. the far end of each was tied into a knot, in which pieces of wires had been woven to add weight. "maybe you didn't have anything to do with the arrests," auldin admitted, "but i still think you did. anyway, you used me to get in good with yandor, then turned him against me. i don't like that." oh, so that was what had really touched him off. hanlon saw that the slim man was spoiling for a fight--and that he was using almost any excuse to try to take it out of a fellow who was making good where he had failed. hanlon thought, "i don't want to hurt the guy, now that he's down, but i sure don't want to get hurt, either." he had never seen exactly such weapons as auldin was carrying, but he had a good idea the native was adept in their handling. they looked old and well-used. hanlon rolled suddenly across the bed and jumped to his feet on the other side. but auldin ran swiftly around the foot of the bed, and hanlon was more or less cornered in a narrow space. first one of those strange weapons flicked out, then the other, and hanlon quickly found out how effective they were. the way auldin snapped and whipped them, made them almost impossible to dodge, and hanlon felt their burnings across his shoulders--although he was able to protect his face from those first quick flicks. hanlon had to get out of that corner, so the next time both ropes flashed out toward him he ducked beneath, down and forward, under auldin's arms--and was in the center of the room. the s s man reached out and took over the minds of two of his roches, and made them run between auldin's legs. then, as the ropes with those terrible knots at the ends flashed out, hanlon grabbed them and yanked. the combination of that pull and the roches entangled between his legs was enough to upset the gangster, and he stumbled forward. hanlon quickly swarmed onto him and got a judo hold on auldin the man could not break. holding him thus, hanlon took the two ropes from his powerless hands, and threw them into a far corner. "now get this, and get it straight," hanlon panted, but as impressively as he could. "i still don't know what this is all about, but i don't like your barging into my room and attacking me like this. now get out and stay away from me. you try anything like this again, and so help me i'll kill you. and just so you'll remember...." hanlon put all his pent-up wrath into his fist and threw it at the now-deflated auldin's jaw. this, he knew, was the only way really to impress a man of that type. he then forced the half-groggy gangster out of the room and loosed him in the hallway, then shut and locked his door. he listened intently, and finally heard the fellow's mumblings and footsteps going down the stairs. from the window hanlon watched the thoroughly-frightened native scuttle off down the street, looking furtively all about to see that he was not being followed or observed. hanlon felt satisfied that he would have no further trouble from him. as he went back to bed, hanlon tried to figure this one out. evidently auldin did not really know hanlon had caused those arrests, but was merely using that as an excuse to provoke a fight with one whom he hated for making a success at the same time he, auldin, was a failure in hiding. had auldin reported this to yandor? hanlon had not seen the two together--either through his own or ebony's eyes--nor had he found anything of the sort in yandor's mind. but he would have to try to find out that answer, also, among the many others. he sent his mind back into that of the cat, and took up his spying of the theatrical agent. about an hour later yandor had a caller, and hanlon "listened in" with interest and growing delight. for it was ovil esbor, the politician. from the talk between the two, in yandor's inner, closed office--into which ebony had also gone--hanlon got further confirmation of his suspicions. he was more sure than ever now that yandor was the "top boss" here in stearra, at least, while esbor was boss of many other local gangs, including thieves, dope peddlers and panderers. hanlon, in his room, made copious notes. "there," he exclaimed after the two men had parted. "that ought to give morrie enough info to hang 'em. i'll take these notes to him right away." but manning was not in his room when hanlon got there, and since his door was padlocked, hanlon could not get in. he took a chance and slid his notes under the door. all this time, however, hanlon had been watching yandor through ebony's mind. he had just barely got back to his apartment when the impresario had another visitor ... a masked man. (hanlon doubted the man had gone through the streets masked--probably had put it on just before entering yandor's office.) "ha! this should be good," and the young s s man paid even closer attention, even as he was putting his motor-trike away, and running up to his room. he heard the two distant men discussing many matters of policy, closeted in that inner room of yandor's. hanlon found that the criminal activities were, as he and the other secret servicemen had deduced, planet-wide and under one general control. he knew positively, when this conversation ended, that yandor was in charge of the activities of this half of the world--the largest continent--and that the masked man was above him in authority. was this other king-pin of the whole thing? or was he, perhaps, what might be termed the "executive director" of the planetary criminal ring? whatever he was, he was the man hanlon must get next to and unmask. the corpsman thrilled. he was gradually but surely climbing that ladder, tediously and maddeningly slow though it seemed sometimes. "one thing looks sure," hanlon thought to himself. "whether or not this bunch is the one that is opposing estrella's joining the federation, if we can eliminate them it will mean curbing, if not entirely stopping, this planet-wide crime wave. that'll be worthwhile, even if it's not really our job." he tried to figure some way to get rid of these two men. if he could lop off the head, the body would die--unless it was a hydra, with self-regenerating heads. but after an hour or so of further study and thought, it was borne in upon his consciousness that this was not his job at all. he must quit trying to be the big cheese. if he got any leads, the information must be turned over to his father and the secret service general staff, and let them--not him--worry about how to get rid of these men, or punish them in whatever way estrellan law provided. * * * * * when hanlon went to the theatre that night, he found yandor there, with ebony on its leash--as he had known he would from watching the man through the cat's senses. there was another man with the agent, whom hanlon had been studying, puzzled by the curious ... blocking? ... in the man's mind. yandor now introduced him as "my good friend, egon," and the three chatted together until it was time for hanlon to go and prepare. egon complimented him highly on his act, which he said he had seen twice already, and upon the perfect training of his animals. "how in the name of zappa do you do it?" he asked. "it's hard enough even to tame roches, to say nothing of training them as you've done." hanlon grinned. "professional secret, nyer." then he sobered and added, "actually, it's mainly a matter of hours and days and months of hard work with them, until they know me and like me well enough to do what i tell them, and i know what they are able to do." he broke away, then, before they could question him further. in his dressing room, while he was putting the uniforms on his dogs and himself, and donning his roch-mask, he pondered seriously a thing that had struck him a stunning blow. for ebony's mind and delicate senses seemed to detect a distinct similarity between the tones of egon's voice and those of the masked man--as well as a sameness of effluvia--even though the two spoke in different keys and timbre of voice. profoundly stirred, hanlon studied this seeming fact with intense concentration. how could he make certain? but his call came just then, and he had to let this new matter rest while he devoted his entire mind to the work of controlling his roches for their act. later, in his room, as he again watched yandor through the cat's eyes, he saw him in his home with egon and two other men, playing cards, but merely as a group of friends. nothing whatever was said, during the hours, about any special activities of a criminal nature. no sedition nor revolution was talked; neither terra nor the matter of estrella's joining the federation was so much as mentioned. still hanlon was not sure--and he must become so. perhaps, he reasoned, the other two men were not in on any of these activities, and for that reason yandor and egon could not discuss these matters in their presence. or perhaps egon, himself, was not part of yandor's criminal group after all. there must be some way of getting proof, hanlon thought anxiously. how could he positively connect the two, and make sure whether or not the cat's feelings were correct--that egon was the masked man? the opportunity came just before the party broke up for the night, many hours later. egon had picked up the cat and was petting it, as the men were preparing to leave yandor's house. not being used to cats, and not knowing the manner in which they like to be petted--rubbing the fur the way it naturally lies down--egon was ruffling it and rubbing his hands forth and back across ebony's body. the cat did not like it. it was only hanlon's firm control that kept it from ... "hey, that's it!" he released control of the cat's actions, while still watching through its eyes and ears. egon's hand again rubbed heavily upward across the cat's fur. almost light-swift was the slash of a clawed paw ... and egon yelped as he dropped ebony to clap his hand to his chin, on which blood began seeping from several deep and painful scratches. egon aimed a hard kick in its direction, but ebony dodged safely away and ran under a large piece of furniture. "what happened?" yandor sprang forward, a cloth in his hand to wipe away the blood from egon's chin. "wait a minute. i'll get medicine to put on that." "get rid of that cursed animal or i'll kill it," egon blazed. "well now, you must have hurt it some way," yandor said placatingly as he daubed medicine on his friend's chin, stopping the bleeding and relieving the pain. "ebony is so friendly and quiet, i can't understand it. he never acted that way before." "well, keep the vicious thing caged after this, then," and egon stomped out of the house, the other two men silently following. nor could hanlon detect anything in yandor's mind, which he invaded as quickly as possible, that this was anything more than the grumbling of a friend who had been accidentally injured. yet there was a bit of fear of that other man there, and a resolution to keep the cat out of sight when egon was around. did yandor, himself, know that egon and the masked man were the same--or were hanlon and ebony wrong? if not, why was yandor afraid? there were many questions, but no answers--and hanlon fumed. he must get facts. he was getting a lot of suspicions and possible clues, and certainly more information all the time. but none of them tied in together as yet; none of them were provable facts. slowly, as he thought this out, it became more and more apparent to hanlon that he must no longer be tied down to his work at the theatre. it--and taking care of the roches daytimes--was demanding entirely too much of his time. besides, it had only been undertaken to give him a chance to get acquainted with ino yandor and, later, to give hanlon a reason for presenting the cat to this pet-collector. so, when he went to the theatre that night, hanlon was, to all intents and purposes, roaring drunk. he was surly and insolent to everyone he met, and his performance was terrible. the roches did not stay in straight lines, they were out of step often, and fumbled and stumbled in one way or another much of the time. the master of ceremonies finally came out, forced hanlon off the stage, then apologized to the stunned audience. "what made you think you could get away with anything like this?" the manager demanded hotly, down in hanlon's dressing room. "you're through here--the act is cancelled. and i'll make sure no other theatre hires you." "well now, that's right," another angry voice broke in, and hanlon turned to see yandor, his face black. "your entire contract is broken as of now. i'll not tolerate such a disgraceful performance from anyone under me." hanlon blustered and cursed, and yanked off his costume to get into his street clothes. he apparently was not concerned with the roches--did not even take off their costumes--but actually he was seeing to it that none of this anger touched their minds or affected them in any way. back in his room he considered the matter for some time, and decided he had put it across all right--that these touchy men would not connect him with any reverses they might suffer later in their outside criminal work. he considered the problem of his roches. he had always loved dogs, and having become so intimate with these estrellan pooches, he hated to part with them. they were such lovable pets, so gentle and affectionate and loyal. knowing their minds so intimately, hanlon knew they had often wondered at the way they were being handled and made to do things beyond their ordinary ability--yet not one of them had ever had the least rebellious thought of ill-feeling toward this master who made them do such unusual things. but hanlon knew he could no longer take care of them as they deserved, that they would only be in his way from now on. his first act the next morning after they had been fed, was to see to it that they were taken out and good homes found for them. there were many children living in his own and neighboring houses, who were glad to receive gifts of such fine pets. that worry solved, hanlon went back to his room and spent most of the day there, a great deal of it lying down on his bed or sprawled out in his easy chair, his mind in that of ebony, the cat, or roaming the city watching the minds of the people he knew and suspected. during the afternoon the masked man called on yandor again. through ebony's sharp eyes hanlon carefully scrutinized and studied the lower part of the visitor's face, which luckily the mask did not cover. "hah!" he exclaimed gleefully. for those scratches were quite plainly visible to one who knew exactly where they were, and who was specifically looking for them, even though it was apparent there had been a careful attempt to conceal them with cosmetics. egon and the masked man, then, were one and the same! but who was he, really? that was hanlon's next important problem. the following night, through the cat's eyes, hanlon again saw egon and the other two men coming into yandor's house for one of their usual card games. now, perhaps, was his chance to find out who the man was, and where he lived. ebony had been banished to the next room, but through its ears hanlon was listening carefully, to know that the four were still in the house. meanwhile, he dressed and rode his motor-tricycle to the vicinity of yandor's home. there he hid himself in a dense shadow, always in possession of ebony's mind, waiting for signs that the men were getting ready to leave. unexpectedly, however, as they were going out, a large, ornate, motorized-tricycle with double seats drove up to the house. egon entered it and was driven rapidly away, far faster than hanlon's smaller machine could possibly go. the young s s man was caught flat-footed. or wait, was he? there was a way, after all ... for him. swiftly his mind sought about and quickly found a sleeping bird in a nearby tree. taking control of its mind, he sent it winging after the speeding car, and by this method was able to follow it as it drove swiftly out into the country. * * * * * _in the spaceship above, a decision was made. by means of the multiphased scanner, certain entities on the planet below, whose general position was already known, were hunted out. for the alien now definitely concluded that they were highly inimical to its plans._ _by certain means those beings were captured and taken forcibly to a place that had been prepared._ chapter immediately after ssm george hanlon had sent part of his mind into that of a bird and had made it follow egon's car, the young man followed on his own trike, driven at its top speed out along the road the faster machine had taken. he cussed the slowness of this clumsy vehicle, wishing he had a fast terran jet-cycle or car. but he had to make do with what he had, and finally calmed himself with the knowledge that he could see where the other went, through the bird's eyes, even if he himself could not close up the distance separating them. "you oughtta be ashamed of yourself," he scolded himself. "who else could turn this into success? be thankful for your great luck in having such a wonderful talent--and quit this eternal griping the minute something goes the tiniest bit haywire." thus he saw when the other car turned in through the gates leading to the drive before a rather small, but excellent cottage. the tricycle stopped at the doorway, and egon got out and entered the house. the chauffeur drove into a shed behind the house, left the machine and then, himself, went into the main house through a back door. making the bird peer in through the windows, hanlon was able to see that this house, while small, was richly and comfortably furnished according to estrellan standards. by the time he arrived in the vicinity in person, ready to take over the inspection himself, hanlon had a fairly good idea of the ground-floor layout. the upper story was still in darkness, none of the rooms yet lighted. hanlon's first act was to direct the bird to a comfortable perch in a nearby tree, close to a semi-rotted spot where there were dozens of grubs for its breakfast, and let it go back to sleep. he was always so thankful to his various animal and bird assistants that he was careful to be thoughtful of their ease and well-being. now, after parking his machine in the shadows of a large flowertree, hanlon dodged from shadow to shadow, scouting the house and neighborhood carefully. as best he could judge the estate must be about three acres in extent. there were quite an unusual number of flower beds, and a few quite large flowertrees that should give him considerable cover if he wanted to get closer--which he did not care to risk at this time. "mmmm, must be about seven rooms," he mused as he examined the little house. as was usual with estrellan buildings, it was pentagonal in shape, and with a green-tile roof. behind it, in addition to the shed where the tricycle was kept, there was another small stone building. but it was dark, and hanlon could not tell what it was used for. after seeing all he could from a distance of the outside of egon's place, hanlon looked about the neighborhood. it was not too closely built up, but some distance down the street he saw what appeared to be a shopping district. one building was lighted up even at this hour, and he shrewdly guessed it might be a place where men drank. so it proved, and hanlon entered. while sipping a glass of mykkyl, he did some discreet investigating, both by talking to the serving girl, and by searching the minds of the customers in the cafe. he was almost rocked back on his heels when he found that the house he had scouted was the home of adwal irad--the second in line. "ow!" he yelped mentally. "so egon and irad are the same? where does that put me?" he again investigated the minds of the few men and women there in the drinking place, looking for thoughts about irad. then he left, and slowly rode home, thinking seriously. this was really startling news--and yet, it was half-expected at that. so many clues had pointed that way. so this really meant that irad was in back of all the pernicious activities that were going on. but in the name of snyder, _why_? that question had him stopped ... for the present. oh, he could think of a dozen reasons, yes. but there was no way--at the moment--of knowing which if any of them was correct. also, it didn't square with irad's position, nor with what he had so far learned about the man--not even what his neighbors thought of him, as hanlon had learned there in the cafe. it was distinctly not in character, and was certainly not what one would expect of the heir to the planetary rulership. the next day hanlon devoted to wandering about the city, hunting for information and thoughts about adwal irad. many times he got into conversation with people of high and low degree, asking questions that forced them to think about the second in line, so he could read the real thoughts about the man in the minds of these selected people. twice he rode his trike to the house where manning lived, to tell what he had learned and to discuss it with him, but neither time was his fellow-operative at home. now, the more hanlon investigated--the more people he talked to and the more minds he studied--the more puzzled he became. irad just wasn't that kind of a man--at least, he had never been associated in the minds of his future subjects with that sort of thing. he was really well liked. in fact, the general attitude was almost that of hero-worship. and hanlon knew that where there is hero-worship there first has to be someone worthy of being thought a hero. something was screwy somewhere. with what hanlon was beginning to learn about irad.... brash and self-confident as he was, hanlon knew this was something that must be brought to the attention of his father and the other s s men here. how could he most quickly contact the admiral? "manning probably knows exactly how to get in touch with dad," he thought. "he talked with him only a few days ago." but again manning was not at home, and hanlon could not banish the thoughts of worry and frustration from his mind as he rode slowly back to his own rooms. he again set the wake-up on his time-teller for an early hour, and went to sleep. when the call came he hurriedly rose, dressed and breakfasted. then he went out of his room and the house. just as he reached the street and turned toward the part of the city where manning lived, he swivelled about sharply as he heard the _splat, splat_ of running feet coming up behind him. running--staggering, rather--down the narrow, rutty road was a native, his great feet raising clouds of dust. something in the fellow's wild manner held hanlon's attention. as the runner drew nearer, his wildly waving arms, his blood-shot, almost unseeing eyes, told all too plainly that he was badly frightened. yet, so far as hanlon could see, nothing or no one was pursuing him. as the native drew closer, hanlon gave a start. why, he knew ... but it couldn't be--he was on the eastern continent, thousands of miles away. hanlon's mind must be playing tricks on him. but he scanned the fellow more closely, touching his mind, and at last was sure. it was! disguised as a native humanoid though he was, hanlon knew this was curt hooper, another of the secret servicemen who was working on this planet. hanlon stepped into the road to intercept the runner. he spoke as the man came abreast him, but hooper paid no attention--seemed not even to see him. more puzzled than ever, the young s s man ran alongside and reached out to grasp the runner's arm, forcing him to a halt. "hey, curt, it's me, hanlon," he said. "what's the matter?" he was now deeply concerned. "don't stop me; gotta run; gotta get away," came gasping terran words, even as the other tried to loosen himself from hanlon's grasp. hanlon probed quickly into the man's mind but, as usual, he could read only the surface thoughts. these told of some terrible danger threatening--that only running, always running away, could possibly save him. what the danger was; who or what was threatening him, was not in those surface thoughts. "snyder help me," hanlon begged bitterly beneath his breath. why couldn't he learn how to penetrate deeper into human minds, as he could with animals, and read everything that was there, instead of merely whatever thoughts were passing across the surface? but hooper was fighting as only a madman can fight, and hanlon was barely able to hold him. yet he must. he _had_ to learn what this was all about--why hooper was here in the town of the ruler, instead of back where he had been stationed. what the danger was, and if it threatened the work of the secret servicemen, and possibly the other terrans. it was clear that hooper was either drugged or that his mind had become _un_sane in some manner--whether permanently or temporarily, hanlon could not as yet figure out. acting on sudden impulse, hanlon switched his grasp to a neo-judo hold he had been taught, that made hooper powerless in his hands. he dragged his companion back inside. once in his room hanlon forced hooper's unwilling body down on the bed, and pressed certain nerve-ends that temporarily paralyzed his body. in this way hanlon could be more free to study that sick mind, which was not paralyzed, without having to watch every minute lest the deranged man escape him. while hanlon was able only to read the surface thoughts, he had learned from experience that by asking leading questions he could often make the other think of things he wanted to know, and this method he now put into practice. what he learned now, in spite of all the leading questions he could think of to ask, was pitifully meager. hooper had been made a prisoner and brought to this continent and confined, but had escaped. but he did not know--or could not be made to reveal--why he was on this western continent at all, nor how he had been captured or by whom. hanlon guessed that the man had been held in a small house somewhere fairly near, since he had been running away from there a fairly short time, even though it had seemed an eternity to the frightened man. suddenly a stray wisp of thought brought hanlon upright in his chair. "give me that again, curt!" he demanded, and under his questioning brought out the fact that his father, admiral newton, was also a prisoner of these unknowns, as was the fourth member of the s s who had been assigned to estrella--morris manning. "mannie couldn't stand the pain, he died," hooper's thought was strangely calm and apparently heartless--which hanlon knew could not be the man's true feelings, for hooper and manning had been close friends of long standing. "what kind of pain? who was hurting him?" hanlon demanded, sick with dread. "were all of you being tortured? was dad?" oh, god, _why_ couldn't he get in there and read the true answers? as best he could figure it out, they had never seen their captor, but had felt his mind probing theirs, asking questions, _interrogating_ them--in the estrellan language. whoever was doing it apparently did not intend it to be torture, for when manning died the other two received a curiously surprised yet apologetic thought, "your nerve sensitivity is greater than ours. it was not intended to force this entity's life-force out of physical embodiment. greater care shall be used in the future." "tell me more about dad," hanlon commanded, agonizedly. "where is he held? who has him? what's it all about?" but the dazed hooper relapsed back to the only words he seemed able to say aloud, "gotta run; gotta get away." "but you're safe here, curt. no one's following you, and i won't let anyone or anything hurt you. relax." "gotta run; gotta get away." and so powerful was the urge that the supine body twitched restlessly, as it began breaking out of that paralysis hanlon had imposed on it. frantically, hanlon continued his mind-scanning, asking innumerable questions that he hoped would penetrate the other's consciousness and force his mind to think along the lines hanlon wanted to know. and slowly, sketchily, he began to piece together a picture of sorts--like a jigsaw puzzle of which many of the pieces were missing. the three s s men had been brought together in some little stone building. there the unknown, whom they never saw nor heard, had interrogated them mentally, a process that was extremely painful in a way that hooper could not, or did not, specify, save that his mind seemed to wince and recoil from any thought of the method, despite hanlon's utmost attempts to learn it. there seemed to have been days and nights of this painful questioning, although hooper could not tell exactly how long--and hanlon knew it could not have been very many days, since he had seen manning so recently. then, early this morning, shortly after manning's death, and while hooper was being questioned, it seemed to him the mental voice had gone away abruptly, leaving him in full command of his senses. he had immediately begun to examine the room, and soon found that the low door was unfastened. cautiously he opened it, and discovered that it opened to the outside of the building. the admiral had not been in the room with him at the time, nor could hooper find a way into the other parts of the building--if there were any other parts to it. therefore, he had lost no time in leaving by that providentially open door. he started running across a lawn toward the nearest road. down this he ran, knowing only a terrified compulsion to run, to hide, to get away from that horrible inquisition. "how long have you been running?" hanlon asked sympathetically, yet in hopes it might give him a clue. "gotta run; gotta get away," hooper's words said, but the thought flashed across his mind, "since after dawn." "then dad's not too far away," hanlon thought, and began trying to guess where or in what direction the prison might be, and how he could locate it most quickly. he was awakened to reality to see hooper rise from the bed, the paralysis broken by that inner compulsion to flee. before hanlon could jump up to stop him, hooper was out of the room. hanlon let him go. he hated to do it, but there was no apparent way he could save hooper now ... and he _had_ to get to his father just as fast as he could. not only because the admiral was his adored dad, but because he was second in command of the whole i-s c's secret service, and in charge of this mission, and thus the more important at the moment. "but where is he?" hanlon's thoughts were an agonized wail. for the first time in months he felt very young, and inexperienced, and unsure. he jumped to his feet to leave the house and start searching, but restrained himself before he got to the door. "whoa, boy, not so fast. i haven't got the faintest idea where dad is. must think this out first, and not waste a lot of time during which he might die or be killed." he sank back into his chair again, and his mind swiftly reviewed the pitifully small bits of information he had been able to glean from the deranged mind of his friend hooper. someone, or something, or some group, who were the main support of this opposition, had a mental ability hanlon thought he knew the estrellans did not have. at least, he had not found any traces of it anywhere here. or, wait now. did the rulers have it? was this one of the traits and abilities especially bred into them in the course of making them capable of handling their tremendous task of being planetary ruler? could be. he had not yet had the chance to scan mentally elus amir, the present ruler, except for that one night at the theatre, and then he had not really tried to see what the man had in the way of mental equipment. hanlon had been so relieved to find he and the audience were applauding, instead of booing, that he had not tried to do so. if elus amir as ruler had it, did adwal irad as second-in-line also have those mental powers? whoever or whatever it was--and that would have to be studied more thoroughly later--some mind or minds had forced the other three secret servicemen to go to a certain place ... at present unknown to hanlon ... and had there imprisoned them and tried to extract information from their minds. information about what ... and why? what could these unknowns want to know that couldn't be learned by asking direct questions? for the federation statesmen and survey men had been glad and anxious to answer fully and truthfully every question that had been asked of them. and that puzzling thought hooper had said they received when manning died. "your nerve sensitivity is greater than ours--we had not realized it would kill you to be thus interrogated." or words to that effect. as far as hanlon knew, the native estrellans did not have unusual resistance to pain. he had had several encounters with them so far, and had known cases where they were hurt or wounded, and had not noticed any great immunity to pain. was this, then, another special attribute of the rulers? but egon, or irad, had certainly felt pain when ebony scratched his chin, and had made quite a fuss about it. was it real--or was he "putting on an act" to conceal his immunity? somehow, hanlon was not willing to accept that last. dimly, in the back of his mind, there seemed to be another puzzling thought. what was it? hanlon worried at it like one of the roches might worry a bone ... and finally it struck him--hard. if the other three had been captured, why hadn't he? * * * * * _at its multiphased scanner in the spaceship high above, the being stiffened suddenly. for long minutes the mind concentrated on this new problem. the plan put into operation that morning had been partially successful. the "location" of that unreadable mind before noticed, found once and then lost--was now known again._ _but still, despite every effort, contact with that mind could not be made._ _after a time, therefore, with the utmost precision a thought was insinuated into the estrellan mind constantly being held captive. the thought was seen to take hold, then its strength and urgency was increased._ _soon, although the native was at a loss to account for the reason why such a thought should come to him at that particular time, he nevertheless sent a note to a certain person, giving forceful orders that were to be obeyed immediately._ chapter at that thought, fear struck at george hanlon's vitals, almost like a physical blow. what was planned for _him_? for certainly if these unknowns were onto what the terrans--or the corps and the secret service--were trying to do here, and had already captured and tortured three of the four, they would not leave him free to continue working against them. cold sweat starting from all his pores, hanlon sank into a chair, nails digging into palms. his bravado, his cockiness, his belief in his own superiority--all ebbed away like a swift-falling tide. he had been used to working alone in the service. he had been mostly by himself on simonides, and altogether alone on algon. yet he had not felt such an _aloneness_, such an absolute withdrawal of all support, as he knew in this awful moment. for at the other places he could contact the s s through the safety deposit boxes, or by the "andromeda seven" password, and get almost instant response, and the entire resources of the corps to back him up. and here on estrella, while he had been working alone, he met the others occasionally, and the men with the corps' sneakboat every fortnight. he had known they were _there_. but now they were gone. and hanlon was to be the next victim ... and he had no idea who, when, what, where, or why. for long minutes he sat, shaking with dread, his mind a chaos of nothingness but a swirling, roiling, panic fear. this was far, far different from that terrible fear he had known back on the _hellene_ when he had first realized he was tangling with trained, unprincipled and viciously-conscienceless killers. or the time he had been chained in the prime minister's dungeon on simonides. for then he had been facing known problems. this one was totally unknown ... and man has always felt far more fear of the terrors he cannot see, than of those he can face. "blast back," he thought determinedly, ashamed of his fear and resolved to conquer it, "i got through those other troubles all right in the end. how do i know i won't with this? at least, i can be a man, not a cry-baby, especially before i'm actually in danger." it was sorry advice, and he knew it, but it was just enough at the moment to help him pull himself together. "so maybe they can kill me ... after torturing me. so what? i don't expect to live forever, and i knew when i got into this service that it was dangerous. after all, i could get killed any minute just performing routine corps duties--or if i'd remained a civilian, at my daily job, or walking the streets of terra." by main force of will and character, hanlon forced the fear back and away from the surface of his mind. he concentrated on the problem at hand: how to find where his father was held captive. hooper had apparently been running for about two hours when hanlon first discovered him, his mind had told. all right, where's that map of stearra and vicinity he had bought. ah, there on the table. let's see now, a man in hooper's condition could run maybe ten or twelve miles in that time, since his mental terror would have overcome physical fatigue until his muscles could absolutely obey no longer. all right, circle this point with a ring with a twelve-mile radius ... so. but curt was coming from the south. concentrate on that direction for the moment. what lies ten to twelve miles from here to the south? he examined the map carefully, trying to visualize in his mind what lay out in that direction. the ruler's palace was more or less south, but nearer to fifteen miles. could hooper have run that far since dawn? hanlon didn't think so, though the man had so evidently been running until almost exhausted. the section hanlon was visualizing was, he remembered now, mostly filled with the larger homes and estates of the more influential and wealthy. yandor's house? no, that was more to the west, and only about two miles from here. of course, hooper could have been circling and zigzagging during those hours--oh, but not that much, surely. carefully hanlon pored over the map, trying to figure where his father could possibly be held. suddenly, a bit to the east, and about eleven miles from the street where hanlon lived, he noticed a pencilled dot he had previously made on the map. _irad's house!_ of course, hanlon gasped. and that enigmatic stone building--hooper had thought "stone"--behind the house. also, all indications up to the present pointed toward the second-in-line as the head man of the criminal element ... and that probably meant of the opposition, as well. but hooper's thoughts had been that the s s men's torture and inquisition had been mental. did irad have that power? hanlon had asked himself that before, but now it became increasingly evident that he did, he must have. besides, now that hanlon was concentrating on the subject, there had been that curious sensation of a mental block or barrier hanlon thought he had felt in egon-irad's mind. what was behind that curtain? "well," hanlon shivered, "there's only one way to find out. i'll have to scout this place more closely, and see if he's _it_." he rose determinedly to start out. but halted as he realized it was broad daylight, and that he could not go there and investigate the house and grounds--and that stone building in the back--without being seen. he would have to take this slow and easy. too much depended on him, and there was very little chance of his making it undiscovered even under the best of circumstances. he must not take chances that he knew beforehand were doomed to failure. for he was now the sole and only possibility of his father being freed. that sneakboat was not due for another week and a half, and with manning and hooper out of the picture.... chafing at the delay, his mind a turmoil of tortured thoughts, conflict between his desire to rush and the logical knowledge that he must wait until dark, hanlon passed the most miserable time of his young life. he had thought he had plumbed the depths of mental agony during those dreadful seven minutes when he had stood at rigid attention in the office of admiral rogers, commandant of cadets. but that had been a mere child's game compared to all this fretful waiting. but those deep, inner and innate characteristics which made george hanlon what he was, came to the fore during those hours, as he forced himself to endure the wait he knew he must accomplish. and in that period george hanlon reached closer to full maturity. he touched, examined and accepted the tremendous concept that man's highest pinnacle of success, his greatest heights of achievement in personal integration, lay in working _with_ others for the common good of all, not in feeling that any one man is indispensable; one man--himself, of course--better than others, and more capable than they of achieving all goals. sure, he had an ability none of the others had. but that did not make him any better than, nor above them. they, in turn, had many capabilities he did not possess, that were actually as valuable as his mental abilities--if not more so. as an individual, any of them could fail. as a _team_, each giving of his best, they could win out. and now someone or some group had broken up the team. well, it was up to him to get it back together again. george hanlon suddenly awoke. he sprang from his chair, astonished to see through the window of his room that it was dark outside. he grinned mirthlessly. he had actually fallen asleep there in his chair, in the midst of all his worry. then suddenly he realized why. he had thought the matter through, reached definite conclusions and had known, inwardly, that everything was now as it must be until a certain time. thus calmed and facing that fact, however unconsciously, he had fallen asleep to gain strength for that coming ordeal. now it was time to go, therefore he had awakened. he took another half hour to prepare and eat a good meal--he would need all the strength he could get--then left his room and the house. mounting his trike, he sped away at its swiftest pace toward the neighborhood where adwal irad's house lay. * * * * * _the alien, watching from above in its scanners, saw that entity with the unreadable mind leave its home and start away on its mechanical carrier. tracing its course, the being was soon able to make a shrewd guess as to its destination._ _instantly the alien's mind went into action, and under its compulsion four armed men hastened to irad's house, and hid themselves within its partially-darkened interior, yet kept careful watch of the outside premises._ hanlon had long since decided just how to approach the place. leaving his machine concealed in the deep shadows of a spreading flowertree, he slipped quietly through the edge of the grounds next door, dodging from tree to tree to bush, carefully watching all about to make sure he was not seen nor followed. he came to a large tree close to the irad property, hurdled a low hedge and dashed across the dividing line, to come to a stop beneath another tree well into the grounds of the second-in-line. from that one he made his cautious, soundless way, until he was only about ten yards from the house itself. there were only a couple of lights showing through the windows, but his heart sank at the realization that someone was at home. "i should have had a bird watching to see if irad left," he scolded himself. but he continued on, making a final dash across the remaining yardage until he was right beside the house itself, in a deep shadow. carefully he inched his way along toward the nearest window from which a light showed. reaching it he very slowly rose and peered through the lower corner of the pane. this was apparently a sort of living room or library, as he could see a number of easy chairs, carbide lamps on standards for reading, a couple of small tables with art objects or flowers on them. along one wall were recesses holding reading scrolls. but there was no one in the room he could see. he crept on to another window, and repeated his inspection. this one was a bedroom, but again no one was there. "maybe irad just leaves a couple of lights on when he's away," hanlon considered. he crept on to another window, but there was no light and he could not see what was within. he rounded a corner of the five-sided house, going toward the back, but there were no lighted windows in that side. he ran along it to the back, noting as he did so that he passed a closed door. he now was close to that little stone building at the rear which he had previously noted, and in which he was sure his father was imprisoned. there was no light showing, and apparently no windows at all. he ran toward it swiftly, and ducked into its shadow. he circled it completely, but there was only one door--locked. george hanlon probed with his mind toward the interior, and faintly, just barely on the threshold of his consciousness, he caught a familiar thought-pattern. "it is dad," he exulted, but silently. almost forgetting caution, he doubled back and was attacking that locked door, when a sound behind made him whirl about. a number of men were boiling swiftly out of that door in the main house he had passed a few moments before. and the light now shining out reflected on the unmistakable flameguns in their hands. in that first quick glance he had recognized yandor as one of the men. "yipe!" hanlon knew a deep disappointment--which did not stop him from starting away from there on a dead run. he increased his speed as he heard the pounding of heavy feet behind him. he dashed toward the nearest yard, trying always to keep in the shadows. fortunately, he was fleeter than his pursuers, and gained considerable yardage on them. around that next house he ran, and across the next yard. a couple of flamegun flashes sprang out at him, but not close. the gangsters were also flashing the lights from reflector-lanterns, trying to locate and spotlight him for more accurate shooting. in the drive of that neighboring house hanlon saw one of the estrellan motor-trikes. it took him but a moment to activate the engine that, for a wonder, caught almost immediately. he jumped onto the seat and was picking up speed as he reached the street and swung down it. behind he heard an outcry as the owners saw the theft of their machine. also, the angry yells of the men chasing him. these little tricycles were made for local trips only, and were not powered for speed or distance. the best he was able to coax out of the acetylene-powered engine was about twenty miles an hour. he had not gone a mile before he heard behind him the sound of one of the larger trikes, whose greater-sized motor, he knew, had a top speed of nearly thirty miles an hour. pushing his little machine as fast as it would go, hanlon looked wildly all about him for some place of safety. he knew he had only a few minutes before the bigger trike would catch up with him--or at least be within shooting distance. but how had they known he was coming? they must have been lying in wait, to have taken him so completely off guard. else why or how could they have been hiding in semi-darkness, to come rushing out of that door, their flamers ready to cinder him? a momentary blackness of fear struck at him, but he threw it off by an effort of will. they hadn't caught him yet; and by the great john snyder, they wouldn't! hah! off there to the left was a little patch of woods. and just ahead was a corner. he made as though to keep straight on, then swerved at the last moment toward the left. his tires shrieked at the sudden braking and swift turn, and the little machine almost overturned--but he made it. glancing back he saw the larger, swifter tricycle hurtle past the corner he had so unexpectedly turned. that would give him a little extra leeway, before they could stop, turn around, and come back down the road he was on. soon he reached the beginning of the wood, and was in the shadows its trees cast across the road. luckily, he thought, his little machine had no lights, and it would be that much harder for them to spot him in the darkness. he went a little farther, then slowed a bit, swung his right leg over onto the left side of the trike, and threw himself off, allowing it to continue on without him. how far it would go, unguided, he did not know, but hoped it would be some distance. glancing backward over his shoulder as he ran, he saw the lights of the gangster's car pass. for some minutes he continued running, zigzagging a bit around the trees, hoping to get far enough away so they could not find him. as he ran he continued thinking what had happened. "were those goons actually waiting for me?" it didn't seem possible anyone could have suspected him, personally, or have had any idea he was going to be around irad's house tonight. how could they, possibly. he hadn't told anyone. that unknown mind-power again? memory of that _someone_ with the extraordinary mental powers who had captured and imprisoned and questioned the other s s men, came to him and again, involuntarily, he shuddered. it probably was not that one or ones, he tried to deny the belief. undoubtedly those gun-carrying men were merely guarding the house on general principles, either because irad was second-in-line, or else because.... "gosh, i almost forgot. i'm sure dad's there, for those were his thoughts i was just beginning to catch, i know. his mind-texture is unmistakable. i'll bet those guys were there as guards for that reason. i'll have to...." he stopped short and dodged behind a tree, for his quick ear had caught a crackling in the underbrush behind him. he tried to peer out through the dimness, but could not see anyone, although he could see two or three lances of lights that he knew were the reflectors of the gangsters. "i didn't realize they'd get this close this quick," he almost wailed. "i gotta get out of here, but fast." he started off as quietly as he could. but there were so many fallen leaves and dead twigs and branches underfoot that he could not help making some noise. suddenly a lance of flame almost caught him. he dodged quickly again. there was another shot in his general direction that did not hit him--but it did touch a dried, dead branch. instantly there was a flare of light as the wood caught fire, and in moments a considerable blaze was started that made further concealment impossible. only flight was left. hanlon turned and ran toward the farther edge of the wood. behind him he could hear footsteps rapidly following, and a voice bellowing, "here he is!" chapter george hanlon ran as he had never run before, but somehow, surprisingly, that estrellan native not only kept up with him, but the young s s man could tell from the sound that he was catching up. this guy must be half greyhound, hanlon thought--although he, himself, was slowed down by those huge shoes to which he was not yet too accustomed, so that when running he had trouble not stumbling over his own feet. it was hard remembering to keep his legs spread further apart than normal. he finally saw just ahead of him the far edge of the wood, and beyond that a great, open meadow. he would be in clear sight out there, unless he could outdistance his pursuers. and this closest one was much too near for that. he would have to stop this gunnie somehow, and now. hanlon ducked behind a great tree, and peered out carefully. in his hands he held a knob of wood he had picked up. soon he saw the native come running between the trees, straight in his direction. hanlon took a firmer grip on his club, and raised it above his head. the mobster came alongside the tree, the club came down--hard. one down. hanlon started on across the meadow then, for the woods was afire and he felt there was no chance of escape that way. he hoped he could find some sort of a hiding place out there--quite sure in his mind he could not outdistance the men following. he zigzagged a bit as he ran, and kept looking back over his shoulder from time to time. hanlon had covered nearly two hundred yards, and was again looking back over his shoulder, when suddenly his foot struck something, and he pitched headlong. the breath _whooshed_ out of him as he landed. he felt as though he was a mass of cuts and bruises. he fought to regain his breath, drawing in great gulps of air. his back hurt, and his legs. one arm seemed almost useless. "oh, no, not broken!" he wailed inwardly. tentatively he tried to move it, and found to his joy that it was only badly jammed. he remembered now, he had landed on that hand. he glanced around and saw that he had fallen over a great, exposed rock-edge, perhaps a foot high, half as wide, but eight or nine feet long. despite the inconvenience of dozens of pieces of broken rock on the ground there, he swung his body around so he was lying along the length of the rock, hoping thus to hide a bit while he regained his breath and a measure of strength. "if i'm lucky, i can hide here until they leave," he panted, striving to calm his nerves and slow his breathing. he peered cautiously over the top of the rock, back toward the burning wood. soon he saw another of the men emerge carefully from the edge of the wood, but a considerable distance away. he watched this fellow as he crept out into the meadow, looking from side to side in his search for their quarry. so intent was hanlon on watching this man that he did not see nor hear the approach of a third man, until the other jumped the stone, almost landing on hanlon. the s s man could not entirely stifle an exclamation, and instantly the man swiveled and shone his light directly on hanlon. swiftly the corpsman snaked out his hand, caught the goon's foot and yanked. the man fell backward, and hanlon, injuries forgotten, leaped up. but with a lithe, swift movement his attacker was on his feet, swinging at hanlon with the hand holding his lantern. it was, the s s man saw now, the fellow he thought he had knocked out with his club. the terran's hands darted out and grabbed the man's other wrist, pushing it up and away. for in the gyrations of the lamp he had seen that the fellow carried a flamer. forth and back they wrestled. by dint of extra effort hanlon kept the gun's muzzle pointed away from him. but he realized sickeningly that his antagonist was stronger and heavier than he. for an estrellan, this goon was really a giant. hanlon decided on a desperate chance. instead of pushing _against_ the man's strength, he suddenly lunged backward. the goon cursed as he strove to keep his own footing, and pulled back as best he could. hanlon's reflexes were faster than the mobster's, and he took full advantage of the change of leverage. he twisted half-sideways, and let go with his right hand. he swung with all his strength at the soft belly before him. the man grunted and tottered, for he had not quite regained full equilibrium. again and again hanlon struck. the man staggered, reeled backward. a quick snatch, and hanlon had the flamer ... and used it. swiftly he looked to see if the man he had been watching had noticed the fight--and the flash. apparently he had, for he was coming on a run. hanlon snapped a shot at him--and missed. an answering lance of flame almost got him. hanlon tried another ... and got only a weak sizzle. the first gunman's flamegun was dead. only flight was left. hanlon dropped the useless weapon and started off across the field as fast as he could run. he had not fully recovered his breath, and every muscle in his body shrieked from that fall and his unusual exertions. he stumbled and staggered, but kept on running as fast as he could. behind he could hear the yells of the gunman who was on his trail, apparently calling to someone else. the beam of the lantern held hanlon almost steadily. still the corpsman ran. he had no idea what lay ahead, or whether he was running toward safety or into more danger. there was no other cover he could see in the almost-dark--no trees nor bushes. merely this meadow, almost flat, covered with a sort of blossomy grass not more than two or three inches high. nor, even if he did find something, would he be long concealed from the lantern and the man who carried it. hanlon swerved, and ran toward but behind the lantern-carrier, hoping thus to elude him. in fact, he had passed behind the fellow before the light-rays picked him out again. the beam held him steadily again, and hanlon could hear those pounding feet coming nearer. a gun flamed out again, and hanlon felt the excruciating pain of a burn on the side of his arm. "yipe, that was close," he gritted as he clamped his other hand over the wound, and tried to increase his speed. weariness seemed forgotten for the moment, and he was able to spurt ahead. suddenly he saw twin beams of stronger light coming across the field to intercept him. "oh, no," he gasped, "the trike!" he swerved sharply to the right again, and ran on. ahead he heard a strange sort of roar, and only after a moment or so could identify it. it sounded like the boom of breakers. "am i that near the sea?" again a sword of flame almost caught him. the car was roaring toward him, closer each second. he knew starkly that death or capture was a matter of moments only. his mind had been reaching out, searching for any sort of animal life that might come to his assistance. but in this hour of need even that avenue of help seemed to have detoured. that roar sounded closer--yet curiously distant. yet he was almost sure it was the sound of breaking water. "if it's close enough, maybe i can find safety there. it's my only hope now," he prayed. he pounded on and suddenly, almost straight ahead, the nearer of estrella's two moons swung above the horizon. both moons were far closer to estrella than luna was to terra. neither was nearly as large, but they gave considerable light, and this nearer moon was almost at the full tonight. hanlon could see better now--but he knew his pursuers could, too, and that he was now plain in their sight. "sorry, dad, but it looks like i've failed," he groaned. the sound of the water was closer now, and it had more the texture of breakers than of surf. he devoutly hoped so. breakers would mean rocks, and rocks would be hard to avoid if he had to dive. but, more important, they would mean greater chances for safety if this meadow ran directly into them, so he could find a hiding place. now both gunmen behind were closer. they were firing steadily--and even in his anxiety to escape hanlon found time to sneer at their marksmanship. "wish i had a gun or a blaster--i'd show them some real shooting." almost blinded now with fatigue, and his run barely more than a stagger, he struggled on ... and suddenly skidded to a halt just on the lip of a sharp drop-off. he peered downward, and his heart did flip-flops. this cliff was well over a hundred and fifty feet high--and straight down to the water's edge. it was the slapping of the water against it he had heard. even in the moon's rays he could see that it was too vertical, too smooth, for a swift downward climb. he looked wildly to right and to left, but could see no possible safety. the car with its gunmen was closer now, and one of the flames from their guns almost hit him. there was only one possible escape. he ran back from the cliff's edge for several yards, straight toward the onrushing car. then he turned and sprinted for that edge. he took off like a broad jumper, as far outward as he could, curving his body downward into a dive. "oh, god, please," he prayed earnestly, "deep water and no rocks." it seemed an interminable age that george hanlon fell through the air on that incredible dive toward the water so far away. not knowing what was below made the moments seem dreadful eternities. his mind persisted in painting ghastly pictures.... at long last hanlon struck--and was instantly numbed from the force of the blow and chilled by the icy water. his bruises, burns and cuts smarted painfully from the salt. he plummeted into the depths, deeper, deeper, until he thought his lungs would burst, despite the great gulp of air he had breathed in just before he hit. slowly he let out a little bit--and as he sank ever deeper, a bit more. he just couldn't take it any longer. he would have to let go soon, and try to breathe. but from some hidden source he drew on new reserves of will and of strength, and fought on. he felt his descent slowing, and clawed his way upward. his head finally burst through the surface, and he trod water while he gratefully gulped in the reviving air. all at once he heard a sharp _ping_, and water splashed in his face. one of those goons above had a pellet gun. hanlon struck out away from the shore, swimming under water as fast and as far as his breath and strength would allow, coming up only to gulp another lungful of air, then submerging again. finally he surfaced and looked back toward the cliff-top. he could dimly see three forms standing there. another pellet struck close by ... and another. why, he wondered, hadn't they used that gun on him before? never too strong a swimmer, the exhaustion and weakness of his wounds and that long run made swimming almost impossible for the young secret serviceman. but he knew his life--and the success of his mission here--depended on his keeping going. he kicked off the heavy, water-logged special shoes that made his feet look estrellan. ridding himself of their weight helped a little. he had felt hundreds of tiny waves of strange thought beating at the fringes of his mind, and now he opened it wide to receive these impressions. "fish," he said disgustedly after a moment, as he kept swimming further out. "what good...?" he stopped and thought carefully. "if it was a big enough fish, maybe...." he sent his mind purposefully out and around. he was still trying to swim, but his body was worn out. he knew desperation, for even if he outdistanced their pellets, there was just not enough strength left in him to swim back to shore. he turned over on his back and floated, resting as much as possible, but still kept his mind searching, searching through the waters. it was his only chance, he felt sure, and sent it ever farther out. finally he contacted a larger, stronger thought. avidly he seized it, insinuated his mind into it, and realized at once that it was the brain of a fish. he forced it to swim at its top speed toward him. from the size and texture of the mind it felt like a large fish. he hoped it was big enough. soon it came up to him, and he saw that it was shark-like, almost eight feet long, but rounder, and with a head and face much like that of a terran sea-elephant. eagerly and thankfully he grasped one of the small fins protruding from its underside, and his mind started it swimming along parallel to the coast. the musket-type gun had been _splatting_ at him from time to time--evidently as fast as the shooter could reload. he looked up toward the cliff-top, and could see men running along it. "must be they can see me," although he doubted if they could see the fish, that swam just below the surface. "probably," he grinned mirthlessly, "they're wondering how i can swim so fast." another pellet plowed into the water close ahead of his face. the portion of his mind inside the fish felt the intolerable, burning shock of pain. the fish seemed almost to stumble. it twisted and coiled about until hanlon was able to tighten his control and calm it. in the dim moonlight he could see the water becoming discolored--and knew the fish was bleeding profusely. his mind in the fish knew where the wound was, and hanlon reached up for that place and found a gaping hole. he put the tip of a finger into it to stop the bleeding as much as possible. but he realized at once that this would not save his carrier, which by now he knew was not a true fish, but an amphibious mammal, just as terran's whales are mammals, not fish. what could he do? as weak as he was, and as poor a swimmer as he was at best, there was absolutely no chance of his making it back to shore under his own power. and even if he did get back, there was no beach, only that unscalable rocky escarpment ... and the gunmen on top of that. the fish was his only hope, for he had not been able to locate another fish-mind of the same calibre. and now his savior was dying. more carefully now, with his mind inside the amphibian, he examined the structure of its brain and nervous and muscular systems. would it be possible to close that terrible wound? he traced the nerves to the muscles of that portion of the body and skin. he tested and tried everything he could figure out. finally, hanlon found the nerve-muscle combination that controlled exactly that portion of the body. he made it contract--and felt the muscle tighten about his fingertip. gently he withdrew the latter from the wound, and made the muscles close it tightly and completely. it was necessary to keep doing it consciously, for the moment he relaxed his concentration it opened again. he noted subconsciously that there had been no more shots for some time. "maybe the guy's outta bullets," he thought. "or perhaps they think i'm dead--can see the blood-stains and think they're mine. or maybe," as an after-thought, "they've lost track of me in the dimness and the choppy waters." whatever the reason, hanlon knew a deep thankfulness. he relaxed as best he could, shivering in the icy waters, still holding loosely onto the fin of the fish-thing. he did not try to make it swim. in fact, he kept it from doing so. he would take time out to try to regain some of his own strength, while letting the fish overcome, if possible, some of its own weakness and shock from the pellet-wound. * * * * * _adwal irad had been growing strangely worried. acting on a compulsion he did not realize existed, he moved admiral newton to a different and, a certain being in a spaceship high above hoped, a more concealed place of imprisonment._ chapter "if i wait here awhile, perhaps the fish's strength will build up again," george hanlon had thought wearily. "then it can carry me back to shore." so he continued concentrating on the job of keeping those muscles closed around the wound in the amphibian's side, finding it required full use of his mind to think of holding that constriction, and of nothing else. only partially was that possible, of course. humans are just not constituted so they can think of only one thing for long periods of time. "at least," he grimaced, "not this human." for nearly an hour he and the fish lay there quietly, riding out the waves, while he waited for the great mammal-thing to regain some of its energy. he kept close watch of that mind, and knew it was gradually feeling less pain, less anguish. he had sent it "calming" thoughts as best he could, and they had taken effect. the panic was gone. it was almost asleep, floating there. hanlon looked toward the cliff-top, but there were no longer figures there he could see. had the pursuers, thinking him dead, left? he strained his ears for the sound of the trike motor. "maybe, though, they'd already gone before i thought to start listening," he thought. finally he decided the fish was strong enough to take him to shore. his own body felt so much more comfortable. then he realized with a twinge of panic that the reason was that while he had thrown his mind into the healing of the fish his body had become numb with the cold. now he again became conscious of his various cuts and bruises, aching and flaming from the action of the salt water. under his compulsion the fish swam slowly and with some difficulty back toward the shore. when it finally got close to the wall of rock hanlon let his feet downward, hoping to be able to touch bottom. but the water was far too deep there. "i hate to do this to you, fellow, but you're my only hope for the time being," hanlon said feelingly to the great fish-thing, and made it start swimming along the rocky wall. he kept his eyes constantly looking ahead for a break in the escarpment, or for a bit of beach where he could rest. after a mile or so it seemed the cliff was getting lower, and hanlon's hopes rose a bit. another couple of thousand yards, and he was sure of it. it was sloping downward quite sharply toward sea-level. also it seemed, in the moonlight, that the rocky surface was getting rougher, more climbable. finally they came to a place where the cliff was only about twenty yards high--nor did it seem to get lower on ahead. too, it looked scalable. hanlon stopped the fish and examined that facing carefully. yes, he decided at last, there were enough protuberances and cracks so that it could be climbed. _if_ he had strength enough. "well, gotta try sometime. and my poor fish is about all done." he made it swim right up until he could reach out and get a firm grip in a large crack. "goodbye, fellow. thanks for saving my life. hope you make out all right," he told the great mammalian shark-thing. he released his hold on its fin and his control from its mind. it turned and swam away, still feebly. hanlon focused his attention on the task before him. slowly and painfully he climbed, hunting for handhold and foot rest. he had known he was tired, but had not realized how weak he was. it seemed he could never make even that short climb. his fingers, hands and arms were numb with cold, his feet and legs unresponsive leaden weights. but from the deeps of his subconscious and will, and his urge to survival, he brought renewed strength and scrambled upward. at last, utterly spent, he pulled himself over the edge, and lay gasping and shivering on the top of the cliff. he was almost ready to blank out, when a thought struck him, and he struggled to retain consciousness. he could not just lie here and sleep. probably those goons would still be looking for him. he must get away, somehow, somewhere. again he sent his mind outward, and felt whispers of thought quite a little distance away across the meadow. he followed the strongest of these, and found a mind quite powerful, and intelligent in an animalistic way. he followed that mind into the brain that housed it, and took control. he made the animal, whatever it was, start swiftly toward him. while it was coming he examined the mind more closely, and suddenly realized he was inside the brain of an estrellan _caval_. these animals, which the terrans thought of as horses, because they could be ridden or trained to draw carriages, were about the size of a terran cow-pony. they were striped almost like a zebra, but the colors were brown and yellow, rather than black and white. the animals were quite vicious in the wild state, and none too tractable even when trained. as usual with estrellan animals, they were tailless, and had heavy, sharp hooves, nearly twice the size of those of earthly horses, and snouts much like a roch's. when the caval came up to him, hanlon saw it was a stallion, slightly larger than average. from its mind he already knew it was a wild one, not domesticated or broken to saddle or harness. nevertheless, he could control it, and made it stand quietly while he climbed slowly and laboriously to his feet, and from there managed to wriggle onto its back. he knew he was due to faint in a few seconds, but kept his consciousness long enough to impress on the animal's mind that it was to take him back toward stearra. he thought he knew the direction, and he thought he could keep awake the one part of his mind that was dissociated and in the caval. however, because he might blank out completely, he instructed it to keep straight on the road to town. he leaned down and threw his arms tightly about the caval's neck, then with a sigh of thankfulness, let himself go. he had endured so much ... he was so tired ... so ... tir.... * * * * * yandor and his men had finally come to the conclusion that gor anlo was dead, out there in the ocean. they had been unable to see him for some time. yet they waited around for nearly half an hour, searching both the waters and along the cliff. finally, he said they might as well go home. so all piled in their large trike and started back to the city. but they had not quite reached his home when yandor found a disturbing thought persisting in his mind. he worried and puzzled over it for some time, then issued sharp commands. thus, when they arrived at his house, two of the men hurried into the back yard, and soon came back with two of the beasts yandor kept caged there. "what's up, chief?" one of the men asked as the tricycle sped back the way they had just come. "i ... i don't really know," the impresario said slowly. "i ... i have a ... a sort of feeling ... that maybe we can find anlo after all. we'd better go back and look some more." * * * * * _for the watcher above knew hanlon was not dead._ * * * * * all of george hanlon's mind must have become unconscious, for the next thing he knew was when the caval suddenly reared to escape those who were trying to stop it, and hanlon's body was dumped unceremoniously to the ground. the caval, released from its compulsion, took off across the meadow at top speed. hanlon began to recover consciousness as rough hands slapped him awake. he first noticed that the sun was rising, for its rays were shining directly in his eyes. he blinked and turned his head away--and became aware of his captors. he saw ino yandor standing there, beside a large trike. beside him was one of his henchmen, holding the leashes of two straining _tamous_. these cat-like beasts, somewhat like terran black panthers save they were a deep red in color, and had fangs much longer and sharper--and no tails--hanlon knew to be trackers _par excellence_--as good as bloodhounds. nor were they usually as fierce and blood-thirsty as they seemed. the third man was the one who was holding him. "well now," yandor eyed him angrily, "you think you're pretty clever, don't you?" hanlon shrugged. "doesn't look like it, does it?" "who are you spying for?" "who says i was spying?" "don't try to quibble with me, gor anlo. i want answers, and correct answers, or i'll let my pretty pets here take over, and see if you can elude them." "and after i get through answering you'll cinder me anyway," hanlon sneered. "whatever gave you the idea i'd talk--if i had anything to say, that is?" the mobster holding him cuffed him. "don't talk to ino yandor that way, you phidi." hanlon turned his head and sneered into the man's face. "watch who you're calling a snake." he twisted suddenly, drove his heel backwards into the man's shin, and pulled free. the fellow, even while yelping with pain, started to draw a flamer when yandor commanded sharply, "let him be. he can't outrun the tamous." hanlon spoke as though nothing had happened. "what gave you the idea i've been doing anything like you said?" he asked in a conversational tone. "what's this all about?" "what were you doing, trying to look into--or get into--adwal irad's house?" "that the name of the guy that owns it? just looking for anything worthwhile i could pick up. since you got me fired just because i drank a little too much one night, i got to make a living someway." "well now, i hope you don't expect me to believe that. i know who you are, and my patience is at an end. do you tell me who you are working for, and what you're after, or do i let the tamous loose?" "i've got nothing to ..." hanlon began, but the man who had been holding him suddenly interrupted. "look, yandor, at the man's ear!" "yes, and his feet," the other pointed downward. they all stared closely, and hanlon wondered as he saw their eyes widen. then, with a start, he remembered kicking off his oversized shoes, and now he noticed that the dye had come off his hands. he guessed with sickening certainty that the long immersion in the salt-water had also loosened the plastic ears and nose, and that at least one of them had fallen off. "by zappa," yandor stepped closer. "one of his ears is very small ..." he reached out quickly and tugged at the other. loosened at it was, it came off easily in his hand. "an alien," yandor exclaimed, and then "your skin--it's not like ours." "his nose seems false, too," the third man said. knowing his imposture was over, hanlon himself pulled off the plastic overlay and disclosed his nose in its original size and shape. "yes, i'm a terran. what're you going to do about it?" "loose the tamous!" yandor snapped, and the man dropped the leashes he held. but hanlon had read that command in the impresario's mind even before he uttered it, and had already taken over the minds of the two beasts. they were well equipped by nature to be deadly, even if that was not their true nature. the female whirled, and jumped on the man who had been holding them. the male made two quick leaps, and was on the other gunman. both men were borne backwards, and in seconds the great cat-things had torn out their throats. "you should have remembered i'm the world's greatest animal trainer," hanlon said evenly. yandor shrank back, sure he was next. "you fiend!" he cried, then his inherent cowardice showed and he threw himself on his knees. "don't let them kill me," he pleaded in agonized tones. "i'll do anything--i'll give you everything i have. only please, please keep those awful beasts away from me." hanlon hated a cowardly bully. also, much as he detested killing or maiming, he had learned not to let it get him down too much in this work when it was necessary. but with such an unprincipled killer and abject wretch as the one before him, he felt no such compunction. he looked contemptuously down at the thing grovelling at his feet in a very paroxysm of fear. disgusted, hanlon turned away, climbed into the motor-trike in which yandor and his men had come here, and started its engine. as he drove away he impressed a command on those now-slavering beasts, who began bellying toward the helpless yandor. but hanlon could not repress a shudder of revulsion at what he felt forced to do. after a half mile or so of driving, however, the weariness, the pain and chill struck him, and he nearly fainted again. he struggled to keep himself conscious so he could get back home--a matter of vital necessity now that he was not disguised. when he finally came to the more populated part of the city, in which people were beginning to be seen outside the houses and on the streets, he had himself fairly well under control. he kept his head down and made himself as inconspicuous as possible while driving at the highest allowable speed toward his rooming house. there he jumped from the car almost before it stopped, and ran in. he passed several of his neighbors in the hallways, but held his hank before his face and ignored their stares of surprise at his condition as he raced to his room. once inside, he locked the door, then breathed a sigh of deep relief. he began stripping off his wet and bedraggled clothes, thankful, as he remembered the loss of his shoes, that he had an extra pair of those specially-made ones. when he saw that much of the hair so meticulously glued onto his body was also coming loose, he thankfully ripped the rest of it from him, then went in and turned on the shower--really only a stream of water from the end of a pipe. for nearly a quarter of an hour he stood under it, revelling in the first feeling of real cleanliness he had known since leaving simonides, relieved as the warm water washed the salt from his wounds and pores. finally, having treated his burns and bruises, he put on a dressing gown to partially cover his nakedness, and sank into his comfortable chair. then he let his mind review the happenings of the past night. hanlon was once more in a cockily jaunty mood. he had taken some terrific risks, had been in almost-fatal jeopardy several times, had had adventures and escapes no one would believe if he tried to tell them--except some of the few s s men who knew about his special talents, and dad, of course.... _dad!_ he had almost forgotten his father's predicament in the excitement of the night. now, as he considered and concentrated on this problem, hanlon began to realize--dimly, sketchily, and much against his will--that things were not at all right as he had felt for the moment. he tried to dodge that flickering thought, but it persisted, grew stronger, would not be denied. he finally was forced to consider it more thoroughly. and slowly it dawned upon him that he had not _won_--he had lost. he had smeared up the works, but good. his campaign was done, finished, kaput. he had put his foot in it, clear up to the sacro-iliac. worse than that--far worse--he had undoubtedly gummed up this whole estrellan business. not only was his own work undone, but now the natives would know that the terrans were here, just as that propaganda machine had said. now it would be practically impossible to make them believe that the terrans were _not_ responsible for their crime wave--and all the other things said about them. "me and my big swelled head," he castigated himself furiously. "i oughtta be horse-whipped." almost he cried. his body was by turns ice-cold and feverish. he cringed mentally and physically. was there any way--any possible way--he could redeem himself? could he publicly admit that he and he alone was to blame, that he was here entirely on his own initiative, because he wanted to see estrella join the family of nations? no, that was absurd. he wouldn't be believed. no one in their right mind would ever conceive that a young man like him would do such a thing without some backing--undoubtedly full federation backing. he would have to resign from the secret service. or--he gasped--were its members allowed to resign? admiral rogers had said it was for life, once he got in. "but he didn't guarantee how long my life would last," hanlon grimaced. well, he drew himself up proudly, there was a way. he was not afraid to die. "whoa, now, wait a minute. let's think this out. death's no answer." for a new idea had just struck him. he forced the worry, the fear, the ... the self-pity ... from his mind, and settled down to consider this new concept. maybe it wasn't as bad as he had thought, after all. "yandor and his goons were the only ones who knew i was a terran, and they're dead," he thought. "so they can't tell on me. and no one else knows it. maybe i can go ahead, just as i was." he rose to get dressed. there was still his father's imprisonment to be taken care of--if possible. hanlon was sure now that it was in that little stone house back of irad's mansion that the admiral was being held prisoner. a casual glance in the glass, and he was suddenly conscious of his appearance. hey, he couldn't go out like this, in broad daylight. not looking like a terran. swiftly he considered the possibilities. he would have to disguise himself again enough to escape notice on the street. but he was no cosmetician ... even if he had the dyes, the plastics.... he sank into his chair again, and thought seriously. but even while he was trying to think and plan, his worn, tired body--exhausted as it had never been before, and depleted of all strength--could bear no more. without even realizing it, he sank parsecs deep into profound slumber. sometime during the day, without his knowing it, he must have gotten up and lain down on the bed, for it was there he finally awoke. the room was dark; only a small ray of light came in obliquely through the window, from a distant street-light. he got up, wincing at his lameness and stiffness. he went through some calesthenics to take the soreness from his body, then washed, dressed, and prepared and ate something. he hunted through his duffel bag and found a pair of gloves to cover his hands. before putting them on, however, he wound a scarf about his head and face, covering most of it except his eyes. he pulled his hat well down, then put on the gloves. leaving his room, he went inconspicuously along the darkest parts of the streets until he came to the market place, and a certain stall that specialized in theatrical costumes and make-up. it was the same place where he had bought that roch-mask. walking purposefully, as though he had legitimate business there, he went to the rear of the shop. it was not too hard to break in and crawl inside. there, using his utmost care not to be discovered, he hunted about among the shelves until he found some facial putty, skin dyes, and other articles he needed. he left a couple of gold pentas on the counter in payment. then, just as cautiously, he retraced his way to his rooms. chapter the next morning when ssm george hanlon awoke, his first thought was one of concern for his father. an impatient, driving urge for action seized him and made him jump out of bed. then logic and clear thinking came to the fore, although it required conscious effort for him to prepare and eat his breakfast first of all. hurriedly finished, though, he set to work on his new make-up, doing his level best to keep his thoughts on the difficult task at hand. he had let his whiskers and hair grow from the time he first received this assignment, of course, so was not too much concerned about the hairiness he must present to the world when dressed. luckily, although it had often been a source of annoyance--he was one of those men whose beard grows clear down his face and neck to join, with hardly a break, the hair on his chest. as for the body hair that had been so painstakingly glued onto his body before, he decided not to attempt that. he had not yet had to disrobe in front of anyone here; he was certain he would be able to avoid doing so in the future. he rubbed liquid rouge, of a dark shade, well into the skin of his face, neck, hands and high up on his wrists, which took care of his coloring. his main worry was the nose and ears, especially the nose. that would be most quickly noticed if it looked artificial. his first few attempts were not only badly done, but almost ludicrous. his usually fine muscular coordination seemed to be lacking. but he persevered and finally, after several hours, managed to mold a fairly reasonable snout and to so blend its edges into the skin of his face adjoining that it would, he felt sure, pass muster on casual inspection. he built up his ears in like manner, but to help with this deception, in case of any close scrutiny, he covered them with a head bandage. he put his hat on, pulled it well down in front and on the sides, then examined himself critically in the mirror. "boy, that's a sloppy job, and how," he exclaimed, disgusted with his handiwork. "trevor would disown me if he could see it." but he finally decided it would do ... he hoped. now that he had finished he discovered he was sweating like a nervous caval. he held out his shaking hands, and looked at them critically. what, in john's name, was wrong with him, anyway? and a thought he had, perhaps subconsciously, pushed far down into the furthest recesses of his mind, swept over him with full force. he did not want to think that thought. more, he did not want to have to make that decision. but.... manning was dead. hooper was fleeing insanely, perhaps also dead by now. his father was captive, imprisoned, tortured ... if still alive. only he, hanlon, of the four, was left. and he was ... alone. again to his mind came his father's earnest and incisive statement, that getting estrella to accept membership in the federation was the most important thing that had come up in ages. it _had_ to be accomplished, and quickly. deep down hanlon knew what that meant. individuals were expendable--the plan was not. he was beginning to learn that while plans may blow up in one's face--as now--such happenings must be accepted philosophically, without too much backward longing, without too great remorse, and certainly--which was the hardest to accept--without letting personal feelings or sympathy for those lost or in danger keep the one or ones remaining from going ahead with new attempts to bring the mission to a successful conclusion. for a long time hanlon sat there. resolutely now, he put his father out of his mind, and concentrated only on how he was to accomplish the task that confronted him--alone. finally he began to look at the larger aspects of the problem; to realize that he must quit hunting for individual criminals and possible members of the opposition, and work from the other end--the top. "after all," he thought, "it is the ruler who makes the decisions. perhaps ... no, i _must_ go to work on him. i've got enough dope now as to who is behind this intrigue. now i must reach elus amir himself, and swing him our way. but, in snyder's name, how am i going to get to him?" plan after possible plan he discarded. he could not go to amir as a terran. in the first place, his word would have no weight. in the second place, he would undoubtedly have considerable trouble making the approach to the ruler, if it was possible at all. no, he would have to get close to him as a native. and to do that, he first had to know more--a lot more--about the ruler as a man, his habits and usual daily routine. hanlon left the house and went to a number of places where men ate or drank, both for information, and to try out his new disguise. the latter must have been better than he thought, for no one seemed to notice. and in each place he visited, while eating or sipping his mild drink, hanlon asked one or two discreet questions. none of these, by themselves, seemed to mean anything. but the answers, put together as hanlon did when he returned to his rooms, gave him a fairly detailed picture. he knew now that the ruler stuck quite closely to his residence--"palace", hanlon thought of it--although occasionally his duties took him to other cities on either continent, and sometimes he went out for an evening at the theatre, as he had done on hanlon's opening night. otherwise, he was a hard worker, an excellent and well-loved ruler, always studying carefully all suggested legislation that was presented for his consideration, always thinking of ways to better the condition of his people. but to one thing he had learned hanlon gave the most consideration at the moment. elus amir, he found, went out almost every day for a ride on his caval, and usually along the same route. hanlon knew what road that was. accustomed as he now was to thinking more in terms of animals than of men, the natural thought for hanlon was to wonder how he could meet or study the ruler through his caval. the next day, therefore, the s s man rode out into the country, and posted himself at a convenient spot where he could watch without attracting too much attention, yet could see for several miles. he took one of the wheels off his motor-tricycle and demounted the tire. this was to be his excuse for being so handy at the time of his planned meeting with the ruler. but something apparently changed elus amir's habits, for he did not ride that road that day. ruefully doing a bit of under-breath griping, hanlon replaced tire and wheel, then rode back toward town. but after he had gone part way through the city streets, he thought of something else that must be done, and headed towards the place morris manning had found rooms. luckily, no one else had moved in, and no one appeared in the hall when hanlon came back, after a quick trip to a tool stall in the market place, where he was able to buy a hacksaw. for manning, as did the other s s men, had attached a hasp and pick-proof padlock to his door. the estrellans locks were ingenious, but could quite easily be unfastened even without the key. these locks consisted of a metal rod, like a sliding bolt, that ran inside the wood of the door. there was a slip in the wood on either side of the door through which a key, inserted in the rod, could move it forth or back. when the bolt was moved into position with one end seated in the holder in the doorjamb, a turn of the key opened flanges on the rod that fitted vertically into prepared slots. but a little patience easily enabled one who wished to get in, to trip those flanges with almost any small, flat-pointed instrument, even a penknife blade. now hanlon cut through the hasp, evidently without attracting anyone's attention, for none of the neighbors came out to investigate the strange sounds. inside manning's room, he went about the sad business of collecting the dead secret serviceman's gear and belongings, to be sent back home on the sneakboat. as he was cleaning out one of the chests, however, hanlon discovered a small notebook he knew was of estrellan make. he opened it idly, and found it was filled with native writing. excited now, for he was sure manning would have written in terran or i-s c code if it had been his work, hanlon slowly began deciphering the words. "yow, this is hot stuff," he exclaimed after less than a page. "wonder where morrie got this? from esbor's office or home, i'll bet." he stuffed the book into his pocket for later study. he packed the balance of manning's things, then left, mounted his trike and rode back to his own rooms. all the balance of the afternoon and evening he worked at the translation of the entries in that book. it was, he found with great glee, a list of the names of various criminals who had been working under esbor, and brief details of their various activities, as well as many other notes of similar nature. one recent item caused a brief exclamation. "ran auldin came seeking a safe hiding place today," he read. "it having already been decided by adwal irad that the man's usefulness was over, he was cindered." "dirty killers," hanlon growled, his brief moment of joy at the direct mention of irad dimmed by the import of that entry. "no conscience whatever." all in all, however, he was vastly pleased, and grew more so as he continued translating. for there were several mentions of adwal irad, and always pointing to him as the top man. now he had real evidence of what he had believed--that this crime wave was directed by the second-in-line. hanlon was vastly relieved. in the morning, as he was preparing to go out again to see if he could contact amir, a thought sent him to the mirror, attempting some changes in his make-up. he worked subtly and soon made himself look considerably older--about middle-aged. this, he felt, would make the ruler listen more carefully to his evidence than he might to a younger man. then he rode out to that country road. sometime later he saw elus amir riding that way. from hanlon's vantage point he saw the ruler and a single groom on their mounts while they were still some distance away. hanlon's mind reached out and touched that of the ruler's steed. there were a few moments of anxious trying, and then he was in full control of the animal's mind. through its eyes hanlon looked out carefully along the road. it seemed fairly smooth, and he felt sure that if amir was at all a good cavalman--as he must be after riding nearly every day--he would be able to stay in the saddle safely during the wild ride planned. hanlon made the beast suddenly snort and shy to one side, then break into a wild gallop straight down the road, despite the ruler's frantic efforts at control. swiftly the caval pounded down the road, amir working desperately to control it, yet seeming not to be too frightened by the runaway. the groom kicked up his own mount, but was hopelessly outdistanced. meanwhile the caval, controlled by hanlon's mind within its own, paid no attention to the sawings and pullings on rein and bit, and continued its apparently frightened bolt. as they neared the place where hanlon was working on his machine, the young man straightened, looked, then jumped into the road. he started trotting toward them, waving his arms in an effort to make the caval stop its mad rush. but, although he let the animal slow somewhat, it kept running wildly. as it drew closer, hanlon moved a bit to one side, but still in the road. when the horse and rider were almost upon him he turned his back to them and started running in the same direction, looking back across his shoulder. just as the caval came abreast, hanlon suddenly leaped toward it, and grasped the bridle. at the same time his mind calmed that of the beast, and commanded it to slow and stop. to the ruler, hanlon seemed to be dragged for several yards, still holding grimly to the reins he had grasped. when he finally brought the caval to a stop, it stood with heaving flanks and blowing nostrils. "whew," elus amir wiped his face, "that was fine work, my man. many thanks. i don't know what got into the stupid beast. it has never done that before." "something must have frightened it," hanlon said. he pretended he did not know who the rider was, having considered this point carefully. "sure you can handle it now?" "yes, i think there'll be no more trouble. by the way, is there anything i can do to show my gratitude?" hanlon looked surprised. "why, i didn't do anything special. couldn't let you get hurt." the ruler gazed at him peculiarly. "don't you know who i am?" "no, should i?" "i am elus amir." "oh!" hanlon made himself look properly surprised, then bent his knee in the estrellan salute to the ruler. "i beg your pardon, k'nyer, if i've spoken wrongly, for i did not know." amir smiled. "well, now that you do, i ask again, is there anything i can do for you? you must want something." hanlon shook his head. "thank you, sire, but i wouldn't dream of imposing on your generosity. i'm sure i can find a job somewhere." "oh, you're looking for work?" "yes, k'nyer. i only recently came here from lura." "what can you do?" another shrug. "farm work, tending animals, that sort of thing. i love animals, especially cavals. i'd hoped to get a job as stableman on one of the estates here." the ruler looked at his groom who had come galloping up, relieved to see that his master was unharmed, glancing curiously at this stranger who had saved the ruler, and with whom he could see amir had been talking. "are there any vacancies in our stable-force, endar?" the ruler asked. "why ... why, no, k'nyer, not at present." "make one then," snapped amir. "i want to give this man a good position. he is to take care of my personal string of cavals." "as you order, sire." "i don't like to make trouble for anyone, k'nyer." hanlon protested. "i don't want a job if it means putting someone else out of work." the ruler's eyes lighted up with a friendly smile. "i assure you it won't. i like your attitude, my man. it is good to find someone who thinks of others before himself." once more hanlon shrugged deprecatingly. "i've found in my lifetime, k'nyer, that it doesn't hurt me any to think of the other fellow. and the best part of it is, i've also found, that when i do so think unselfishly, i always receive far more happiness than otherwise." "ah, a philosopher. i must have many talks with you. can you get to the residence all right?" "yes, sire, as soon as i finish fixing my tire." "report to endar here, then, when you get there. i'll instruct him as we ride back." "my thanks, k'nyer. i promise to serve you well and faithfully." the ruler nodded briefly and rode away, the groom following at a respectful distance. hanlon hurriedly replaced tire and wheel, then rode off toward the palace. watching through the caval's eyes, he timed it so he rode into the courtyard just behind the ruler and groom. elus amir was cordial as he dismounted. "i see you got here all right ... by the way, you never told me your name." "i am called ergo lona, k'nyer." "all right, lona. endar, see that this man has good quarters and whatever clothing he needs. introduce him to the work." "as you order, sire." the two men bent their knees, then led the cavals to the stables as the ruler went up the steps into the residence. hanlon noticed the groom was inclined to be a bit surly, and deduced the man was afraid of his job. he determined to make friends, if possible. it would hamper his work of spying if he had to watch for enemies close to him, like this man could be. "please tell me how i may help, endar," he made his voice cordial, yet with a touch of servility. "i'm proud that our ruler has given me work, i assure you i want to do everything to make good here. i know you must be important here, to be allowed to ride with k'nyer amir, and i hope you will teach me the regulations. i realize i can never be anything but a stable helper, but i do want to be a good one. i hope we can become good friends." the man unbent a little. "all right, i'll show you around." they stabled the cavals and then the groom led hanlon to a nearby building. it was of stone construction, five-sided, surrounded by flower beds and trees. it was not only harmonious with the palace and other buildings and grounds, but a pretty little house by itself. "these are the living quarters for the grooms," endar said as they mounted the steps. inside he pointed out the dining room, then led the way upstairs and down a short hall. "this will be your room," he opened a door, disclosing a small but well-furnished, comfortable room. "i have a few things in stearra," hanlon said. "when will it be convenient for me to go get them?" "we have lunch in a few minutes, then you might as well go," endar said. "i'll give you a note to the official tailor, and have him fit you with the proper clothes." hanlon looked at him as though with new respect. "oh, you must be the head groom then, nyer. i hadn't thought about that. please pardon my presumption in suggesting that we be friends." endar merely looked at him a moment, then turned and left without a word. hanlon grinned to himself as the door closed. "it won't be too hard to keep ahead of that guy. only i'll have to watch him all the time, or he could get nasty." chapter hanlon was awakened shortly after dawn the next morning. "darn this having to pretend to such jobs," he growled to himself as he rose, washed and dressed. he had always preferred to sleep as late as possible, and getting up at such ungodly hours did not tend to make him too happy the first few hours of the day. yet, young as he was, he had developed the philosophy of accepting what must be as gracefully as possible, and now consoled himself with the hope that he would probably not have to keep up this imposture very many days. his first care was to examine minutely, in the mirror, the make-up he had applied. the ears and nose still seemed to be all right and holding tightly. but he was careful, when no one was around during the days that followed, to look at them as often as he could in a pocket mirror he carried. after a good breakfast in the dining room he was put to work cleaning, feeding and watering the cavals. endar brought two of the horses from their stalls, snapped their halters into rings in a post, and was busy currying them. when he finished he saddled the two and led them out, after first telling hanlon to make sure the stables were clean, in case the ruler came to inspect them. there were three other stablemen, working at the same general tasks. hanlon, without neglecting his own work, made it a point to try to engage them in conversation. "i love this kind of work, don't you?" he asked confidingly. "i'm so proud the ruler gave me this job." all the time he was studying their surface minds, trying to get a line on what manner of men they were--whether they would be inclined to be too friendly and intruding. but to his relief, he found they were rather stupid, loutish fellows, not caring too greatly what they did nor who was working with them, as long as they had a good place to live, plenty to eat, and fair pay. they seemed mildly surprised at his evident enthusiasm. one of them answered, in a churlish voice, "it's only a job--why get so excited about it?" his mind-probings told him, however, that none of them was the type to be involved in any plot that might be going on, even as the most humble participants or workers. he had nothing to fear from them in any way. when the work was finished for the morning, the other three men went into the tackroom and began playing cards. they ignored hanlon, not asking him to play with them, seemingly not caring what he did. he went outside, sought the shade of a large flowertree, and sat down with his back leaning against the bole. he closed his eyes, the better to concentrate, and strengthened his mental control of the cavals ridden by elus amir and endar, in which he had put a smallish portion of his mind when they started out. he knew that so far no untoward incident had occurred--the ruler was riding along that country road, wrapped in thought, not talking, not meeting anyone, paying no attention to the groom following him. hanlon had not expected anything would occur, but wanted to know if it did, and especially wanting to be sure he could perfectly control the ruler's caval at all times, no matter what the distance. early the next morning a houseman approached the stables. "k'nyer amir says to get his son's caval ready, for he rides with him today." endar indicated a certain animal to hanlon. "bring that one out and get it saddled. the young man's gear is the second set on the right of the door in the tack room." hanlon hurriedly led the caval out, snapped its halter ring in a nearby post, then ran to get the blanket, saddle and bridle. "those back legs aren't smooth," the head groom snapped. "curry and brush them again. inver is particular." "yes, nyer, thank you," hanlon made haste to obey, and was careful in his work. when the beasts were ready, the groom took the reins in his hands, and led them to the mounting block. hanlon implanted parts of his mind in each of the two cavals. thus he was ready for his spying when the two men came out of the residence. through the eyes, wide set in the only-slightly elongated, broad heads of the steeds, hanlon studied this important new character, of whom he had heard much. he saw a tallish, very intelligent-looking native, guessed him to be in his middle or late twenties. the fellow had a slight though wiry build, and reddish-blond hair and trimmed beard. hanlon liked this inver on sight, and decided instantly that what he had heard was somehow wrong. the ruler's son certainly did not look half-crazy. he pondered the matter. was that impression being sowed about the planet deliberately? was someone trying to tear down any reputation or influence the young man might have? "this," his eyes gleamed, "is going to be good. i'm sure going to watch and listen carefully today." hanlon crowded into the brains of the two cavals all of his mind they could hold, finding that the animals had enough capacity to take a full half of his own mind. he had barely enough left in his body to keep on with his work which, luckily, did not require much mental effort. he still had more left than the other stablemen possessed. the riders had barely left the palace grounds when hanlon, through the caval's ears, heard the young man speak. "i hope, father, that you have thought about the subject i broached to you the other day, and the reasons i suggested for your further study. i pray you have decided that our world will do well to join the federation of planets, as we have been invited to do." hanlon could tell, by the tone, that the ruler's mind and voice were troubled. "son, i don't know what to decide. there are so many things to think about. there are many good reasons why we should, it is true. there are also many equally good reasons why we should not. i am, as you know, very jealous of estrella's independence. i should hate to see it made subservient to any other power." "but, father," inver said earnestly, "we would not be. i have studied very carefully the proposition made us by the federation council, and the copy of their constitution they sent with it. they guarantee each planet complete autonomy, and state very plainly that the council is only a judicial body set up to negotiate intra-planetary treaties and to see that the various worlds remain in harmony with each other. the advantages...." "but it's all a trick of those terrans to get control of the entire galaxy," his father broke in. "that's not only nonsense, father, but a deliberate lie. i'm sure you know who is fostering it, and i think you can guess the reason." "i presume you're still talking about the second-in-line. but irad isn't like that, at all. he has a good mind, and he has presented some excellent reasons and arguments as to why we should not join the federation." "sure, he would. he wants to keep estrella free, so that when he takes over he can pluck it like a...." "that's a strong indictment, son. i hope it is not jealousy because he won out over you in the tests." "it is not jealousy, and while i haven't the proof yet, k'nyer, i do know it's true," the young man said hotly. "you can be sure that when i do get the truth i shall call for irad's impeachment. no, father, i and many friends are concerned over this matter, and are satisfied we are correct." hanlon could guess at the troubled eyes of the older man, and that he was shaking his head sadly. "i hate to think that of adwal irad," he said. "he has always seemed so interested in helping me to build up estrella's economy and is constantly bringing new ideas for her betterment. he seems to be making every effort to become worthy of his post when he succeeds me." "i know," sadly. "he wasn't like this until recently. but he has changed someway, father. now he is power mad. also, he is trying to make me out as a fool and a brainless dara," inver snapped. "why ... why ... i never heard him say anything like that," there was astonishment in the elder's voice. "he always speaks well of you." "naturally, k'nyer, he wouldn't be crass enough to say anything of that sort to you. but he and his henchmen are spreading that story all over our world." "oh, i'm sure you must be mistaken." "i'm not," grimly. "the evidence on that is unmistakable." there was decisiveness now in the ruler's voice. "if that's true, i'll certainly put a stop to it." "don't, father, not at once," his son pleaded quickly. "do not even mention it to adwal yet, please. nor make a public pronouncement about it. that would put him on his guard, and i and my friends need time to prove the other things i'm talking about." "i'll not have word spread that my son is a ... a weakling, or stupid," the elder's voice was angry, and hanlon felt the jerk on the reins of his caval that told of the sudden gesture. "just so you don't believe it, father, is all i care at the moment." hanlon felt the two animals swerve and touch sides, and knew that amir had drawn closer to his son, and shrewdly guessed he was touching the boy lovingly. "you need never fear that, inver. i've always been proud of the way you've taken hold of things, ever since you were a boy." "i've tried, k'nyer, to make myself a worthy son of a great father," there was emotion in the young man's voice. "i've studied everything i thought would help me--economics, psychology, statecraft, history, and all. and especially, since the federation first made contact with us, i've tried to learn all i could about them, their various forms of government, their history, and everything. that's why i'm so sure they mean us well, not harm." "but we're not terrans. we're just semi-civilized beasts in their eyes." "another of adwal's dirty lies," inver snapped. "if they felt that, would they have asked us to join them as a full-fledged world? no, they would have come here with a fleet of warships of space, and conquered us. they could have, easily, you know. they made no effort to hide the fact that they had such power from the ones who were taken on that inspection trip." "no, we have no spaceships, and nothing that could stop one," his father admitted. "that's one of the things that has made me hesitate to decide against them--the fact that they have them but did not use them. on the other hand, if we decide not to join, how do we know they won't send their fleet here and...." "because they aren't that kind of people. why, sire, in their history i learned that when the terrans first started exploring space, one of their great men, named john snyder, who seems to have had quite a lot of power at the time, promulgated a ruling that says, 'man must never colonize any planet having inhabitants intelligent enough to show cultural activity and growth'. and that concept has never been broken, and is still in force." "why, i never heard that." "i told you, k'nyer, i have been studying them diligently, and so know much about them." for the balance of their ride that morning, the two continued their discussion, and hanlon--working through the ears of the two cavals--listened closely, and learned much. the two were almost back to the residence when inver's caval stepped into a hole, and stumbled badly. it wrenched its leg so it could barely stand on it. inver immediately dismounted and examined the leg as best he could. "it looks bad, father," he said after a minute or so. "i'll walk the rest of the way, and lead it slowly. it's not too far from here, so you go ahead if you wish." "well," slowly, "all right. i'll have the doctor meet you at the stables, and see if the beast can be healed. if not, it should be destroyed to save it pain." "yes, i know that would be best, although i dislike to think of it, for this is my favorite." the ruler cantered on, and the young man followed slowly, letting the caval hobble along at its own gait. when inver finally reached the stables, he talked with the head groom, endar, and with the animal physician, who arrived shortly afterwards. "i'm not sure," was the doctor's statement after much studying. "i'll try to save it, but i don't know if such an injury will heal or not. the ligament seems to have been torn loose, and being inside the leg it is hard to get at it with medicine. see how badly it has swollen already." the caval was put into its stall, and after treating it as best he could with the limited knowledge and techniques known, the doctor left. hanlon knew about the accident, of course, and had been keeping the caval from feeling too much of the pain. he made it a point to be standing near while the animal was being examined and treated, and was surprised at how little the doctor could do. the estrellan veterinarian did not even apply hot or cold compresses, nor bandage the swollen leg in any way. also, apparently, he did not know about hypodermics for injecting medicine into the injured parts. later in the afternoon, after their work was done and he had some free time, hanlon thought more concisely about the matter. if he could help any, he would make a friend of inver, he felt sure. more than ever he liked the young fellow, whom he decided was a real man in every respect. but he must be careful not to give himself away--not to display knowledge estrellans did not know. suddenly he recalled the shooting of the fish, and what he had been able to do there. "i wonder if i can help this healing in any way, with my mind?" he pondered. the other grooms, including endar, had left the stables for the bunkhouse, so hanlon was there alone. he sat down near the injured caval's stall, insinuated his mind into that of the animal, and began studying its brain, nerves and muscles. after considerable intensive study he found the way to make its muscles relax--he had already long since established a nerve block so that the caval felt no pain. now he learned to make those muscles and nerves contract or relax, even to the point of almost causing a temporary paralysis. deeper and ever deeper he probed into its physical structure. especially now, he tried to trace the nervous system connecting with its various glands, looking for confirmation or refutation of a startling concept he had glimpsed. after much study and experimentation by the trial and error method, he was beginning to find it possible to partially control the increase or decrease of flow of the secretions of its glands--but far from perfectly. for it was an intricate and involved method, necessitating as it did the locating of the nerves that led to and controlled those glands, and then learning how to activate or inhibit them--nor could he be sure it was not chance only the few times he made them operate as he wished. yet he watched carefully to see the results of the activations of each gland, and finally believed he had found the one that was the master gland in charge of the body's healing functions. he now worked on this, trying to direct the added secretions through the blood stream and into the caval's injured parts. soon, even though his forcings were spasmodic and infrequent, he could begin to perceive that this was actually the way it should be done--the wounded ligaments and flesh and muscles showed signs of starting to heal a bit faster than nature was doing it. his deep concentration was rudely broken by a heavy hand on his shoulder, and an angry voice saying, "what d'you think you're doing here?" looking up, he saw that it was endar. hanlon recalled the portion of his mind from that of the caval. "oh," he scrambled to his feet and fixed his face in a look of deep concern. "i was just studying inver's poor caval, and trying to figure out a way to help cure its leg." the head groom sneered. "i suppose you think you know more about it than i do, or the doctor." hanlon was certain he knew far more than the groom, and probably things the doctor had never even guessed. but he kept his voice humble and almost servile. "i didn't say or mean that, nyer. but i have had some experience with animals, as i told you and the ruler, and i've helped cure many injured ones. since it was my off time, i didn't think i was overstepping my place to see what i could do." "you been handling it?" endar asked sharply. "oh, no, nyer, i was just sitting here thinking about it, and trying to remember all i had learned or heard about how such injuries have been healed. then i was going to come and suggest them to you." "well, it's none of your business, so get out and leave it alone," was the surly command ... and hanlon left. but that night, after he was sure the others were all sound asleep, he sent his mind back to the stables and into the brain of inver's injured mount. * * * * * _in its spaceship the strange being was feeling a depth of frustration almost unknown to one of its cold, logical race. its "interrogation" of the prisoners had yielded surprising but already-deduced information. in its rational yet impersonal way the being was somewhat regretful for the death of the one entity. not because of the death itself, but because there was no logical reason why the entity should be dead, and therefore unable to yield further data._ _the one still remaining imprisoned had given up much additional knowledge of a kind that had shocked the being, for it told of conditions never before considered as obtaining in the galaxy. yet the being did not see how that information could help in this present project--it was, in fact, decidedly inimical to that project's success._ _as for the one that had been allowed to "escape," that one had led to the unreadable mind as hoped. although still kept controlled and unsane, the being was allowing that one to remain in what it considered a safe hiding place, rather than continually on the run._ _but even though the being had now been following that enigmatic entity's body, through its powerful, multiphased scanners, it still could not make any sort of contact with that mind. thus it did not yet know whether or not that mind was like the other three, or the two that came occasionally and briefly in their ship of space. under its easily-penetrated disguise, the entity appeared to be like the others, but that could or could not mean anything worth knowing._ _it was all very puzzling, and the alien being came as near feeling anger as was possible to one of its phlegmatic nature. but it coldly resolved that that one must, also, die ... and soon._ chapter darkness made no difference to george hanlon in dealing with animal minds, for it was not with his eyes that he "saw" what was inside them. in this particular instance he was grateful for the dark--it made concentration far easier. he made himself comfortable on his bed, then fitted his mind to that of the wounded animal in the stable. deeper and ever deeper he probed, tracing line and connectors and synapses carefully. a stray thought brought a grin to his face. "i bet i'm learning things no veterinarian ever learned about animals." then he sobered quickly. "perhaps i should write this up for them--the physiology and endocrinology of it, i mean." he filed the thought away in his mind for future reference. it would be a great contribution to those branches of science, he felt--if he was successful. now he traced nerves, blood vessels, cells, glands. he bored in with every newly-awakened sense alert to catch each particle of new knowledge. he began to learn even more of how the healing and regeneration of cells and tissues worked ... and after awhile he achieved real beginnings of success. the things he had been able to do that afternoon, with his first studies, had started the healing of the caval's leg somewhat faster than nature ordinarily did it, but not much more. now, however, he was able more surely and quickly to continue that work, and by the time he noticed the false dawn lightening the night a bit, and he knew he must get some sleep, the injury was almost entirely healed. "what a surprise endar's going to get when he looks at that leg in the morning," he chuckled. for the swelling was reduced, the inflammation all gone, and the caval was able to stand and walk on the foot without limping or apparent pain. in fact, from his ability to read the beast's mind, hanlon knew the pain was all gone. if nothing happened to irritate it, the leg would be as good as new in a day or so without further attention. hanlon was sleeping so soundly the next morning that endar had trouble waking him, and that did not help in dispelling the anger and distrust in him the head groom knew. hanlon tried to work hard enough, and was careful to appear willing and ready even for the mean, dirty jobs endar assigned him, so as not to make the groom any more irritated than he already was. shortly after daylight inver came to the stables to see how his favorite caval was getting along. he and endar were very much surprised to see that the animal was apparently entirely well, and that the leg showed no signs of the injury of the day before. "i can't understand it," the young man shook his head. "it must not have been as badly hurt as we thought." endar may have had his doubts--and hanlon saw him throw a quick, wondering glance in his direction--but the groom wisely said nothing, since he had no proof ... and such a thought was ridiculous, anyway. when it came time for the ruler's morning ride, hanlon was still working inside. but elus amir asked to see the new man, and endar had to call him out. "ah, my savior," amir said as hanlon appeared. "are they treating you well, lona?" hanlon bent the knee. "oh, yes, k'nyer. i have everything to make me happy here, and i love the work. and endar has been most kind about showing me around, and helping me learn all my duties here so i may serve you better." "good. i'd like to have you ride with me this morning," the ruler said as he mounted. hanlon glanced at endar. he could see that the head groom was not pleased by this, though he said nothing, merely handing the reins of the second mount to hanlon, then turning away. hanlon was quickly astride, and the two riders started off at a brisk canter. as soon as they were well away from the residence, amir slowed down and motioned hanlon to come to his side. "now, tell me all about the eastern continent--what conditions are like there, and what the people are saying about things in general." hanlon dredged his mind for any and all information he could remember from his studies of the reels of estrella furnished him by the secret service, as well as what he had learned from others since he came to this planet. for nearly a penta-period he told what he knew, then said, "one thing is quite noticeable there, k'nyer. the ordinary people i talked to over there--of course, i don't know any of the important ones--all seem very anxious for our world to join the terran federation of planets." "they are?" the ruler seemed surprised, but interested. "i thought there was quite a bit of sentiment against it." hanlon shrugged as though it was of no importance. "oh, you hear a lot of talk going around that we would lose our freedom, and that the people of the federation just want to enslave us, but no one i talked to seemed really to believe it. they think someone there is putting out a lot of propaganda because of some personal reasons. the ordinary people think they would benefit greatly by such a union with more advanced people. one of our newssheets printed a copy of the federation agreement, and it states very clearly that all worlds are to have full right to choose their own form of government, and that they keep their full ... their full...." "sovereignty," the ruler supplied the missing word. "thank you, k'nyer ... their full sovereignty at all times. it also went on to say that all the other worlds do just as they please, and that the only purpose of the federation is to encourage trade and the spread of knowledge among the various planets in an equitable way, and yet see to it that they never get into war with each other, by settling all possible disputes before they get to the explosive point." elus amir was silent for long minutes, thinking seriously, and hanlon followed those thoughts as they chased themselves across the screen of the ruler's mind. finally amir raised his head. "er ... yes, yes, that's all true enough, lona. but if it is so, why is there such a seemingly-determined effort to persuade me and the people here that it is not true?" "may i speak my thoughts, k'nyer?" "eh? why, of course," amir looked up in surprise. "that's why i wanted you to come along today." "well, sire, it looks to me--and please remember that i'm just a simple countryman, and not used to politics or statesmanship--but it looks to me as though someone wanted to keep us by ourselves so they could run this world the way they want to, and be able to make themselves rich or powerful at the expense of our common people." "but that's impossible as long as our government is on its guard." "exactly, k'nyer. it could not be done as long as you are ruler, but suppose you...." elus amir's head snapped up irritably at this unfinished warning. "the second-in-line is just as jealous of estrella's welfare as i am," he snapped. "it would not happen under him either." but hanlon, reading the ruler's surface thoughts, knew he must keep quiet for the moment. for amir was disturbed by hearing this idea from a simple groom. he did not want to give it credence, but doubt had been forced into his mind, first by his son, and now by this man. but before he could formulate any decisive answer, hanlon decided boldly to jolt him again. "i have a friend, k'nyer," he reached into his inner pocket and brought out some papers, "who has been actively studying this matter for some time. he has found out a number of things i am sure will interest you, and about which i doubt very much you know." the ruler looked at him sharply. "what do you mean?" "you know that there has been an unprecedented crime wave all over our planet recently," hanlon said, and amir nodded sorrowfully. "my friend has found proof that, while a lot of people have been engaged in those criminal activities, there is a complete program that is being carefully carried on by a staff of head men, each with his own group of lower criminals, but all headed by one...." "by the terrans--it is well known here." "no, k'nyer, not by the terrans. the real leader of this campaign of destruction is the same man who is the leader of the opposition to estrella's joining the federation." "and that man?" the ruler snapped, but his face was drawn, as though he already knew ... but would not let himself believe. "that leader, k'nyer, is adwal irad." "prove it, or by zappa i'll have you executed," amir's voice crackled. "have a care, lona, and don't try my patience. i don't allow myself to be talked to in that manner." "i crave pardon, sire, if i have spoken out of line. but you asked me for my reactions and knowledge, and i must be truthful." "whatever gave you such foolish notions? and who are you, anyway? a countryman such as you claim to be would not know about such things ... or use such precise language." "you might be surprised, k'nyer, if you knew how many of your humbler subjects are vastly interested in the welfare of our world, and who read and think much about these things, even though they know they cannot fully understand them. as to how i got such ideas, the answer is, many things. and facts collected by my friend. including this little book," handing him esbor's notebook, "which was found in ... well, in a certain place. it contains a lot of information we were sure you would want to study, which is the reason he asked me to give it to you if i got the chance." the ruler took the book, opened and glanced through it. hanlon could see the start of surprise he made, and read the thoughts that flashed through the ruler's mind as he saw some of the notations. during the remainder of the ride, now at a slow walk, there was complete silence, until they were nearing the residence's courtyard. then amir looked at hanlon, a shrewd look on his face. "you're a curious fellow, lona. who are you, really?" "one of the many who have the interests of yourself and this world very much at heart," hanlon said honestly. "please do not ask me more, but believe that we are honest and sincere. your son has many friends ..." he stopped, letting it go at that, knowing the ruler's memory would flash back to the talk with inver the day before, and hoping amir would not pursue his questioning. elus amir began studying hanlon closely, an examination the young man knew might quickly disclose his imposture. he made his caval suddenly shy away, and took several moments controlling it enough so he could ride back to the ruler's side--but stayed a bit further behind than he had been before. as he had hoped, this maneuver had given amir time to think. "very well," the ruler said, "i'll not inquire too closely at the moment, although you may be sure," more sternly now, "that i shall be on my guard to know if you are really working for me or not." he was silent a moment, then added slowly, "but as to what you have said, and this book ... well, i promise to study them thoroughly." hanlon thanked elus amir for his courtesy to a humble groom. "and thank you for the great privilege of riding with you, and talking to you. i have always felt, k'nyer," he made bold to add, "that we have a truly great ruler. now," he smiled sincerely, "i am more sure of it than ever." "why, thank you, lona. i do try to watch out for the best interests of our people." "a groom should not presume to advise his ruler, but i feel emboldened to say that your people would be glad if you decide to join the terran federation," hanlon said humbly, then added more earnestly, "and i beg you, sire, watch out for yourself. there are human tamous abroad." the ruler looked startled, but said nothing to this, although he became very thoughtful as he left. hanlon, except for one point, was well content with his morning's work, as he led the cavals back to the stable. for hanlon had so much wanted to tell amir how he could know for a certainty who among his attendants and guards was really trustworthy, but did not dare mention it at this time. it would have been fairly easy for hanlon to be inconspicuously present--perhaps hidden by a screen--while the ruler called his guards and servants in one by one and questioned them. for hanlon could then have read their minds or surface thoughts, and undoubtedly have been able to tell which ones, if any, were lying. but to have even mentioned such a thing would have been to reveal too much that he was not yet ready to have known. "i'll have to hang around the guards as much as possible, and study their minds for any traitorous thoughts," he decided. "especially, i want to know if any of them are irad's tools." endar was surly when hanlon brought the mounts into the stable, although he did nothing overt as the young man carefully rubbed down the cavals, and returned them to their stalls. but endar did come up then and ask, "what did amir have to talk to you about?" "we did very little talking," hanlon answered with apparent truthfulness. "he asked me a few questions about lura and the eastern continent, but i told him i was just a farm worker and didn't know much about general conditions. that seemed to disappoint him, and he said nothing more." "but i saw him talking to you as he dismounted, and you were answering him." "yes, he was kind enough to say he enjoyed the ride, and that the cavals were in fine condition. i told him that was largely due to you, that you were careful to see that they were well cared for, and that we kept the stables clean." "that reminds me, how did it happen that inver's caval was all healed this morning?" the man's eyes bored suspiciously into hanlon's. "why, i don't know," he answered evasively, his face bland. "i suppose it was the medicine and treatment the doctor gave it. he must really be good--but then, he wouldn't be the ruler's animal physician if he wasn't, would he?" "_hmmpff_," endar swung away, but his attitude and surface thoughts told hanlon that he was only partially satisfied. he had no real idea, of course, of what had happened. such a thing was just beyond his simple comprehension. * * * * * george hanlon could not know it, of course, but as soon as the ruler had returned to his rooms, he settled himself comfortably in his favorite chair, and gave orders that he was not to be disturbed. then he set his mind to considering every aspect of this curious business, and to studying more thoroughly the papers and that notebook of esbor's, with its disquieting notations. finally he called in the man who was not only a sort of confidential secretary, but a life-long friend and confidant whom he trusted implicitly. he gave this man definite orders as to certain investigations to be made at once. during the balance of the day, while this man was gone, amir's mind was a turmoil of doubt. and worry--for hanlon's final suggestion that the ruler's life was in great danger, made him pause to think. of course, rulers were always fair targets for assassins, even on this world where such things were very rare, indeed. but ... lona had hinted that this was no ordinary assassination he was to watch out for, but a part of the so-called "plot" of a group who were out to keep estrella from joining the terran-led federation. and if the groom was right, then how safe was amir? even in his own residence ... was his personal guard loyal? or had the conspirators ... supposing there was such a group...? the ruler was still reluctant to believe irad was at the head of any such organization, or even connected with it in any way, despite the mounting evidence ... including more than one entry in esbor's revealing notebook. had these conspirators, whoever they might be, been able to infiltrate members into his hitherto highly-trusted household? wait, come to think of it, there were several new servants and guards, come to work there within the past half year or so! elus amir had never heard of truth serums, or lie-detectors, for such things had not yet been discovered or invented on estrella. nor did he even suspect that it was possible to read a man's mind. now the ruler's thoughts strayed back to that enigmatic groom. just who and what was he, anyway? he certainly was not a common, simple countryman, as he pretended to be. and the way he had met the ruler, saved his life and obtained work here. looking back now amir could see that it was all too pat. was he one of those "friends" inver had spoken about, who were working with his son to find out the truth about whatever it was that was going on here? it was apparent he was part of a group of some kind, or else his talk of a "friend" who had obtained that damning notebook was false, and lona himself had managed to get possession of it. acting on a sudden impulse, amir sent a servant to ask inver to come to see him. when the young man arrived, the ruler looked at him a moment. "just one question, my son. are some of those 'friends' you spoke to me about yesterday numbered among the residence servants or guards?" inver looked startled, but his reply was patently honest. "yes, father. we have been checking the others carefully, and when we find those we distrust in the least, we manage to get them discharged, and others we can trust brought in to replace them. why?" but the ruler did not answer that last. he merely said, "thank you, inver. that is all for the present." now the young man really was astonished at this abrupt dismissal, but left without further words. elus amir felt better now. he had always considered himself a fairly good judge of character--although he was beginning to wonder now if all that was being told him about irad was true, for if so, then he had made a bad mistake in judging the second-in-line, for he had always had full confidence in his integrity. but about this lona? he sent a servant to bring endar, the head groom, to see him. when the man arrived, amir asked him many questions as to what endar thought of the new man. he realized almost from the first that endar was jealous of lona's popularity with the ruler, but endar produced no actual facts against the new stableman, and grudgingly had to admit that he was a good and willing worker. yes, amir now decided, whatever else this lona might be, he was a true patriot, trying to serve the best interests of his country and his ruler in every way he could. there was a straight-forwardness about him that amir liked, and evidently inver also had confidence in him. yet there was a tantalizing _something_ about lona's looks that had the ruler a bit puzzled, although it was more subconsciously than consciously. for the time being, he decided, he would allow lona to remain here. it would be easier to keep watch on him here than if he let him go and the groom should disappear entirely. also, amir determined to have further talks with this strange man ... and with inver, about the latter's "group of friends." * * * * * finally, some time after dinner that evening, the ruler's secretary came back to report. "i have examined the news records, k'nyer, and the first mention i can find of anything like propaganda against our world's accepting the invitation of the federation council was printed in the stearran papers about a week after the group returned from that trip made to visit the terran planets." "hmmm, not until then, eh ... but that seems to tally with some other things i've heard. still, it is curious. another point is still bothering me, and i'd like your thoughts on it. the terrans evidently discovered us long before we knew it, and studied us even to the extent of learning our language, while still keeping us in ignorance of their existence. it was this apparent stealth that has led many of us to wonder if they are sincere, or if there is some underlying motive of conquest behind them. what do you think?" "as you know, k'nyer," the secretary reached up to tug at his beard while thinking and replying, "i was permitted to be present at the meetings you had with the federation representatives, and i was very much impressed with them. i have also talked much with those who went on the trip to the terran planets. i cannot conceive the possibility that these federationists are practicing duplicity. besides, let us consider our own actions in such a case. suppose we had space travel, and found a new world inhabited with intelligent beings. would we not, if possible, study them thoroughly before trying to make contact with them?" elus amir shrugged, and his answer was to the first part of his friend's speech. "that might depend upon how well they were able to conceal their true feelings--upon how good actors they were." "perhaps, but...." "never mind that for now. what about the rumors concerning my son, inver?" "those were much harder to check, but in my own mind there is no recollection of ever having heard of any such thing until the past year. however, i have heard reports of it since, and it seems to be spreading rapidly all over." "and you never reported this to me?" the secretary hung his head. "i did not believe it, sire, and i didn't like to worry...." "it's all right. so it was just about a year ago that the opposition to our joining the federation appeared, and also these rumors." "why ... why, yes, sire. do you connect the two?" amir did not answer that last question. he sat very quietly as to body, but with mind active and ill at ease. after a bit he raised his eyes and asked suddenly, "just what is your personal opinion of adwal irad. speak freely--i want the truth." the secretary's eyes clouded, but he did not hesitate. "i have noticed a great change in the second-in-line, growing more pronounced recently. as though something were preying on his mind. his actions have become ... well, 'shifty' is the nearest word i can think of to describe it. i no longer trust him unreservedly, i am sorry to say." "hmmm," amir thought about that for some time. "i have had the same thing told me by others these past few days," he said at last. "i wish i knew...." "may i suggest, k'nyer, that you invite him to ride with you tomorrow, and study him; ask him leading questions, and so on?" "that might not be a bad idea. i'll do it. send him an invitation in my name, please." * * * * * _after the note had been received, and while irad was changing his plans so as to accept this command, he suddenly seemed to get a feeling that he must do a certain thing. the second-in-line recoiled in horror. he did not want to comply--did not even want to think such a thought. this was far worse than the other things he had been forced to do in the past months. but something ... he could not imagine what, nor why ... was forcing him to do this, as it had the others._ _reluctantly, fighting with all his will not to do what he somehow had to do, he sent word to several of his men and, when they arrived at his home, gave them explicit instructions. they seemed surprised, and reluctant, but he insisted and, somewhat to their surprise, the plan soon seemed like a good one._ chapter the next morning hanlon was told to take two cavals out to the mounting block, for adwal irad was to ride with the ruler that day. as the two men came out of the residence and hanlon got his first good look at the second-in-line for some time, he was thunderstruck at the man's appearance--it was so changed from when he had seen him the other times. irad's face was drawn and the red of his skin was an unhealthy hue. deep lines were beginning to show in his face, the eyes were so dim and lack-lustre, the mouth so drawn, that hanlon wondered if irad was ill, or had been these past few days. for the one who had passed highest in all his tests from among those eligible in his generation as to knowledge and fitness for the position of second-in-line, and successor to the rulership, such a breakdown seemed incredible. hanlon invaded irad's mind to see if he could learn why all this was. but at first touch there seemed something wrong with it ... as though there was a block or barrier there in that mind unlike any he had ever before found. it seemed even worse than it had been before when he had tested that mind--and he wondered anew what it could possibly be. he could still read irad's surface thoughts, but the "feel" of the man's mind was different and disturbing. hanlon's mind-scanning, however, was just in time to catch the partial thought, "... this the fellow? he'll bear watching." it was not much to go on, but hanlon instantly became more alert. "what in snyder's name does that mean?" he asked himself. "wish i had some way of watching this bozo when he isn't around me." but he did not know of any way it could be done, for he could not very well leave the palace grounds while he was working here as a groom, to spy in person upon irad's coming and goings, and he knew of no animal or bird kept in the home of the second-in-line. "wonder what became of ebony?" hanlon thought parenthetically. "hope he found a way to get out of yandor's house, and that he has a new, good home." and this brought up the sternly-repressed memory of his father. oh, how he wanted to drop everything and go hunt for his dad. but he had already thought the matter through, and knew his duty kept him at his work--work that was far more important than one man's liberty. yes, his mind knew that, but his heart did not. but hanlon could and did keep in touch with the two men through the minds of their cavals as they rode that morning, even as he returned to his work in the stables. and it was well he did so. for hardly were they outside the gates when irad began again to argue against estrella's joining the federation. but today his so-called evidence met stiffer opposition than formerly. for the ruler had been thinking more seriously than before, and was studying what irad said with that in mind. the things hanlon--as lona, the groom--had said had been disturbing. at first amir had been tempted to dismiss them as ridiculous, even though they more or less echoed what his own son, inver, had told him. but that damning notebook and its entries was something the ruler could not dismiss, nor the reports and comments of his life-long friend and respected secretary. he was still undecided--but he was no longer to be duped by sincere-seeming words. now, as the two men rode along, amir was remembering those things and judging each statement irad made with what he had heard. and ssm george hanlon, "listening in" via the minds and senses of the two cavals he was controlling, shivered a bit in the distant stables. he felt a premonition ... but could not deduce what, nor how, nor even if. but he determined to keep closer watch than ever, and so tightened his control of the two steeds cantering along that dusty road several miles away. as he had found he was able to do, the portions of his mind in each of the animals was, in a large sense, complete and able to act of and by itself. yet both portions were connected with each other, and with the balance of his mind in his own brain, by a thin thread of consciousness. he had never quite gotten used to the sensation of apparently being in several places at the same time--of being several distinct individualities. he still remembered the thrill he had known when it was first demonstrated, and the times it had saved him. yet it was a weird feeling, even though he had found how wonderfully it could and did help him in the important work assigned him by the secret service high command. only a few minutes later, however, he was glad he had the power. the ruler and irad were passing a small wood, when suddenly several other cavalmen came racing from it, and surrounded them. two of the new men--all of whom were masked--caught the bridles of the two animals from the residence, and halted them abruptly. "what is the meaning of this?" elus amir cried imperiously, apparently more angry than frightened. but hanlon, so far distant he could not possibly get to the place personally, in time to be of any help, was worried and scared. this attack had all the earmarks of assassination and, knowing what he knew, he was sure it was intended as such. he must do something, but quick. dropping his pitchfork, he raced into the tackroom where he knew there was a cot. throwing his body down on this, he sent all the remainder of his mind out to contact and control the cavals of the newcomers--working outward from the two he was already controlling that were at the scene. he did not have mind enough to fully take over all of them at once, for cavals had potentially much mind-power, and four or five could absorb all his. however, by temporarily dropping control of amir's animal, he was able to take over enough regulation to overcome the commands of the riders. he made the horses of four of the assassins, those holding flameguns, rear back and begin fighting their riders. they pitched and bucked and shortly started dashing off on a wild runaway gallop across the meadow, in different directions. he impressed on each caval's mind as well as he could that it must keep on running, no matter what was done to stop it. then he wrenched control from their minds and sent it into the other four animals. he found he was just in time. one of the men, who had been holding amir's caval--hanlon could see through its eyes--was drawing his flamegun. hanlon made this caval rear suddenly, pitching the man off onto the road. the animal swivelled about while in the air and landed its heavy feet on the prone body. it kicked and pawed the helpless gangster until there was nothing left but a battered and bloody mass. the remaining attacker's caval was, meanwhile, racing off across the meadow in much the same runaway fashion as the ones that had preceded it. when it was well away, hanlon withdrew control. meanwhile, he had been watching carefully through the eyes and ears of the two steeds that bore the ruler and the second-in-line, what they were doing and saying. through irad's mount he could see the look of surprise and fright that had come upon the ruler's face. fright, hanlon rightly guessed, at amir's near approach to death, surprise that the attack had been made at all, and especially at the unbelievable manner of his deliverance. "what could possibly have made all those cavals start running away just at the crucial moment?" he asked irad, whom he did not yet suspect. "and even more amazing, the way that one threw and then so savagely killed its rider, yet is now standing quietly there, munching grass at the roadside?" but both amir, and hanlon--who saw it through the ruler's caval's eyes--saw the look of hatred and rage that came onto the face of the second-in-line, giving it almost the appearance of a completely different person. amir was so shocked by it that for a moment he could not speak--could only stare in open-mouthed amazement. hanlon too was startled, momentarily failing to watch the actions of irad. and in that instant the conspirator tried to act. from a hidden pocket in his clothing he drew a flamer, and aimed it at the ruler. "maybe this will spoil my plans," he snarled, "but by zappa, you die anyway." but even as he was speaking, and while he was pressing the stud in the gun's handle, hanlon snapped himself into awareness, and made irad's mount rear back and wheel on its hind legs, while at the same time he forced the ruler's caval to dodge to one side. but he was not quick enough. there was a flash of flame, a stench of burning cloth and flesh, and a hastily-suppressed groan, all clearly apparent through the cavals' senses, that told the distant hanlon that amir had been hit. he felt the ruler reel in his saddle, and hoped the blast was not fatal. but he had no time then save for an incidental inspection, despite the abilities of his divided mind. for he was intent on trying to make irad's caval unseat its rider, so that he might have the beast trample the conspirator. even so he could feel amir--through the senses of the steed the ruler was riding--clutch the pommel with both hands to hold himself on his mount's back. but adwal irad was an excellent cavalman. he managed to keep his seat, but was too busy with this either to look to see if his shot had killed his ruler, or to fire another. in a moment he had to drop the gun, anyway, in order to use both hands in trying to quiet the raging animal beneath him. for the caval was rearing, bucking, sun-fishing--every unusual maneuver hanlon's agile mind was able to make it perform. it did things no caval, and no estrellan, had ever heard of before. through its mind hanlon could feel the cruel whipping irad was giving it, and this made both hanlon and the beast--never more than half-tame at best--viciously angry and more determined than ever to get rid of the burden. realizing at last that he could not unseat so skillful a rider, hanlon changed his tactics. he made the caval start off on a dead run--but into the woods, not across the meadow as the others had done. "maybe it will run under a low branch and knock irad off his back," he hoped. but he was worried about amir, and turned most of his mind back to seeing how the ruler was faring. he knew the man was still astride, and with part of his mind he could read pain, but knew amir was not fatally injured. hanlon made his mount turn back toward the residence, and at its gentlest speed hasten back until he saw the servants come running out to take care of their master. knowing the ruler was now in safe hands, hanlon was free to think of his own situation. he opened his eyes ... and stared with growing astonishment at totally unfamiliar surroundings. jerkily he sat up on the bunk on which his body was now lying. his eyes roved about the small, stone-walled room, trying to figure out where he was ... and why. he had gone into the familiar tackroom of the stables, he knew, to lie down on the cot there while he sent all of his mind out of his body to contact and control the cavals of the would-be assassins. he guessed he had been "gone" for about half an hour. what had happened in the meantime? he got up and went across the small room to a heavy wooden door, which he found to be locked. he had to stand on tiptoes to look through the small, barred window in it. but his only view was of a narrow corridor, on the other side of which was another' stone wall containing, in the limited portions he could see to either side, three doors similar to the one behind which he was confined. "looks like i'm in the _juzgado_," he grimaced. "wonder why, and how?" he called out, in hopes someone would come and explain. but repeated calls brought no one, nor any response from the other cells. "must be no one else here," he thought, and went back to lie down on the bunk. there he used his special talents, sending his mind outside and hunting for some bird or animal through whose eyes he could try to discover where he was. he finally contacted a bird, and soon discovered he was in a small stone building at one of the farther corners of the residential grounds. there did not seem to be any guards hanging about the outside. hanlon made the bird fly up and hover near one of the windows, and peer inside. no one there, either, nor any to be seen through either of the other windows that opened to the outer wall. he sent the bird higher until he could see the entire palace grounds and thus orient himself. then he flew it to the stables. endar was talking to two other grooms, and seemed in high spirits. as the bird found a perch close to the little group he heard endar saying, "... drunk, so i had the guards arrest him." "never knew he drank," one of the stablemen said. "i was surprised, myself, but he was dead to the world, and i couldn't rouse him." but hanlon could detect, in the man's voice and attitude, that endar felt he had achieved his revenge for all the fancied wrongs hanlon (as lona) had done or contemplated doing to him. satisfied for the time being, although not too happy at the situation in which he found himself, hanlon withdrew his mind from the bird, and twisted his body into a more comfortable position on the bunk. there was so much he had to think about, and now that he was undisturbed was a splendid time. he felt confident that the ruler, elus amir, knew the truth about adwal irad and the conspiracy, and would no longer hesitate about joining the federation. "he might, though, at that," hanlon thought seriously. "especially if he happens to get it into his noggin that we terrans were back of all that has happened. it's a dirty shame he doesn't understand us better--or that we don't know their ways of thinking better. but then, that's the cause of half the troubles between individuals, nations, races and worlds--they simply don't understand the basic motivations of the other fellow. but about amir--i wonder if now isn't the time to prod him a bit? if--or as soon as--i get out of here, i'll try someway to get in touch with the federation, and suggest we have the ambassadors come back and talk to him again. he ought to be ripe now." it was only after some time that he remembered to wonder if irad had been hurt or killed by his runaway caval. "i should have stayed in its mind until i knew if he got home or what." hanlon again sought out a bird, and when he was in control of its mind, sent it winging across the roofs and the country-side to the home of the second-in-line. when it got there, nothing could be seen to indicate that anyone was at home, nor was anyone visible when the bird peered through each of the windows. hanlon perched the bird on a tree-limb while he thought seriously for some moments. then he sent the bird on the ovil esbor's house. "maybe i can pick up a clue there." but, as soon as the bird started looking through windows, hanlon knew he had uncovered more than a clue. for irad was there, talking to three or four men. hanlon wanted very much to hear their conversation. but how? the bird hunted in vain, but could find no open door or window by which it could enter. nor were there open chimneys as are so common on terran worlds, for the estrellans covered their smoke-and-fume vents with fine screens. hanlon made the bird perch on a tree-limb and go to sleep. then he sent that portion of his mind from its brain, seeking some small animal, rodent or insect inside the house. he finally found one of their rat-things in its hole beneath the foundation. he took over its mind, wincing as he did so at the vicious, stark ferocity there. but he made it scamper through the walls until it came to the room where the conspirators were talking. the rat had already gnawed an entrance hole through the bottom of the wall there, and hanlon had it crouch just inside, listening. it took him only a few seconds to realize that the angry irad must have told the others about their strange fiasco that morning, and that they were planning how they could finish the thing they had started. "i don't dare go back to the palace, myself, for some time, at least," irad scowled blackly. "i lost my head and gave the whole thing away back there, i know. came right out and told amir i was going to kill him. who'd have guessed those fool cavals would act the way they did?" "there's something mighty funny about that, adwal," one of the men said in a puzzled tone that almost contained a hint of accusation. "one caval could quite easily have become frightened at something, or taken it into its silly head to bolt. you never can tame or train 'em completely. but you said all of your group did the same thing. that just doesn't sound right to me. what made them do it, just at the wrong time, and spoil your plans?" hanlon could hear the second-in-line laugh sneeringly. "you suggesting magic of some sort, ovil?" "i'm not suggesting anything--i'm just asking," and now the man's voice carried even more of suspicion and accusation. "it all sounds mighty strange and unbelievable to me. we'd like to know more about it." there was a dangerous sharpness in adwal irad's voice. "are you questioning the truth of my report, esbor?" "i'm not doubting you ... yet. but there's something going on here that looks peculiar, to say the least, and we want to know all about it. that assassination was planned so carefully. and all the men with you were good riders. it just doesn't seem possible that all of them should have lost control of their cavals at exactly the same time. and that business about the animal yllo was riding--throwing him and then killing him, as you reported." hanlon, through the rat's ears, could hear the other men muttering agreement to this. irad sprang to his feet, his voice shrill. "you calling me a liar, esbor?" "not exactly, but i do think we deserve a better explanation of your failure than that silly story. we're all in this, too, and our lives are more at stake than yours, since you're second...." "you won't have to worry about your life any more," irad screamed, and almost too swiftly to follow he yanked out his flamegun and cindered the politician's body before any of the others could object or stop him. as the man's body--what was left of it--fell to the floor, irad swung his gun about menacingly, covering the others, who had risen in fright. "any of the rest of you phidis want to call me a liar?" he rasped. "no, of course not, adwal," one of them spoke in a placating manner. "we've never doubted you." "anybody with any sense could figure out that you really tried to kill amir," another said. "why, look. you're the one who started all this, and you sure wouldn't have worked so hard, or spent so much on this campaign, if you hadn't intended going through with it." "that's right. what happened was just some tough luck. and esbor was getting ideas that were bigger than he was. so let's forget what's passed, and settle down to planning something else, and making sure it's fool-proof this time." but hanlon, disgusted as he was at the way they truckled to irad, afraid of their skins, touched their minds and read the wonder they felt as to what had so changed irad this past year. he had always been ambitious and, since being designated second-in-line, somewhat inclined to be dictatorial and overbearing. but, their puzzled thoughts said, he had never been vicious, or displayed the killing instinct he was now showing. too, his looks, his aging, worried them. they shook their heads with anxiety, as they began making new plans. chapter it was some two hours later when hanlon, in his own body, heard steps outside, and the sound of a key in his prison door. it opened, and one of the palace guard officers stood in the doorway. "well, you're awake," he said. "you sober now?" "i never was drunk," hanlon snapped, sitting erect to give his thought-out alibi. "i was working there in the stables, and felt myself getting faint. i managed to stagger into the tackroom, where i knew there was a cot--and that's all i remember until i found myself here." "the head groom said you were drunk, and had us arrest you and bring you here. but you don't look like a man who had been dead drunk a few hours ago." "come smell my breath. you'll see i wasn't. in fact, i very seldom take even a drink of mild toxo and i haven't had any of that for many periods. mykkyl's my drink." the guard came close, sniffing, and hanlon continued his prepared but necessary lie. "ever since i was a boy i've been subject to these fainting spells. i'm getting so i can usually feel one coming on, and go lie down somewhere. in half an hour or so i wake up and am all right again until the next seizure. they usually come only two or three times a year." the officer scratched his head. "can't smell no liquor. guess you must be telling the truth. in that case, there's no sense keeping you here. you can leave if you want to." "thanks, friend. i suppose it was a natural reaction, after seeing me unconscious." hanlon walked out of the little residence jail, and went back to his room in the groom's quarters. there he sat down to plan what his next moves would be. "i've got to warn the ruler some way, and make sure he is really protected," he thought. "but how can i do that? maybe he likes me well enough to promote me to a place in his guards. oh, if i could only talk to dad about all this. i need his help and advice. dare i take the time to start hunting for him again? or must i keep on working here?" his heart clamored for him to do so, but he made himself consider every angle and connotation of his situation as coldly and logically as possible, as though the admiral was just that, and not also his beloved father. he should, hanlon supposed, warn the ruler. on the other hand, he knew amir was no fool, and that as a result of his near-death the past few hours, he would certainly be taking greater care of himself than ever? incidentally, hanlon wondered, how badly was amir hurt? was there anything further he (hanlon) could do about it? he thought and thought, but could not see just how, without giving everything away. perhaps he could get word to young inver, to keep a more careful watch over his father. but trying that, too, would be a give-away. was it time for that? time for him to come out into the open and appear as a terran and a member of its inter-stellar corps? ssm george hanlon had matured tremendously under all the experiences he had undergone since joining the secret service, but he was still only a very young man. such problems as these were really far above him, he felt--were things he simply did not have sense enough to figure out correctly. not enough experience; not enough brains, he told himself with what he thought was an honest evaluation. nevertheless, he knew he was alone, that it was up to him, and that he had to make a decision one way or another. but part of that decision was not left up to him. he was interrupted in the midst of his cogitations by the sudden opening of his room's door. he looked up in annoyance--and it was endar. "pack your things and get out," the head groom said harshly. "i've seen the ruler, told him about your disgraceful act of being drunk on duty, and have his permission to discharge you. he was very disappointed in you, he said." beneath his harshness hanlon could easily detect the man's fierce satisfaction at having thus rid himself of a potential (as he thought) competitor. from his reading of the other's mind, hanlon knew that endar had _not_ talked this over with the ruler, and was doing it on his own. but the young s s man did not dare reveal his knowledge of that fact at this moment. so he made himself say plaintively, "but i wasn't drunk. i felt one of my fainting spells coming on, and ran into the tackroom to lie down while it was on me." "a trumped-up excuse, which doesn't help," endar sneered. "even if it was true, which i know it isn't, we don't want such people working here. so get out--and fast." he threw some money on the bed, as wages, and left. in a way hanlon was rather glad. it did help solve some of his problems, in that it left him freer to go and come where and when he wished. so he made no further protests, but silently packed his things, pocketed the money endar had left, and went out and got his trike and rode back to stearra. he wondered if his old rooms had yet been taken by someone else. when he reached the building where he had been living, he parked his tricycle in the shed in the back yard, and went up to his old apartment. the padlock and hasp had been forced, and the door was closed but unlocked. he opened it and went in just the same, for there were still some of his things there. he was determined to get them, even if someone else was living here now. but the moment he got inside he sensed something changed. he stood quietly, letting his mind _sniff_ at the feeling, trying to figure out what it was. he thought he heard a slight noise in the next room, and tiptoed softly across to the door. it was, he now saw, slightly ajar, and he peered through the crack. someone was lying on his bed--an older estrellan male, he judged by the longer, heavier beard. something about that face seemed familiar. * * * * * _the being in the spaceship high above the surface of this planet had been growing more and more puzzled and unsure of itself during the past several days. its plans seemed to be going all awry--and it was not quite sure why._ _that native it had been controlling had not acted as he was supposed to act. or rather, things had happened that had made it impossible for him to act always as directed. even to the being the strange behavior of those four-legged beasts for riding, that had ruined its carefully prepared plan, was completely unexplainable._ _and there was still the problem of that one unreadable mind on this world. various things the being had done or caused to be done had enabled it, through its high-powered, multiphased scanner, to see the entity and keep track of its various goings and comings, but all its most intense efforts had not yet been able to touch that mind._ _that this entity was working with those others who had such a different mind-texture from the usual run of estrellans, it had long since proved to its satisfaction. the being now knew what these others were, and what they were trying to do on this planet. but who or what that unreadable entity was, what it was doing, and why--all this had so far defied the being's utmost powers._ _so it was puzzled and as nearly worried as it was possible for one of its race to be. also, for the first time during its very long life, the being was beginning to lose a little of its supreme faith in its own abilities. it was almost beginning to wonder if it was possible for itself to fail in its mission? but that was unthinkable._ _and yet, it almost wailed mentally, that entity must be working toward the same ends as those others. was it their master?_ _for nearly two estrellan days and nights it had been considering carefully and minutely all the data so far acquired, and what its next actions should be. one thing it had early decided--there was no further use for confining or controlling those other two strange-minded creatures from that other system. it therefore released the "flee" compulsion from the one, and caused the "jailer" to open the doors and allow the other to leave its prison._ * * * * * as george hanlon stared at that figure on the bed, he reached out mentally and touched its mind. instantly he let out a yell of delight, flung wider the door, and ran to the bedside. "dad, you're free!" admiral newton woke, saw his son, and pushed himself erect. but as he did so a grimace of pain crossed his face, and hanlon was all solicitude. "what's the matter, dad?" "guess i'm not in very good shape," his father managed to grin. "been half-starved and tortured a bit. but never mind that now. i'm glad to see you. when i was freed, i figured the quickest way to find you was to come here and wait. guessed you'd be back sometime." "just lucky i did. things worked out a bit differently than i expected, or i might never have come back here." he explained in short, terse sentences what he had been doing and what he thought he had accomplished so far. "so you see, dad," he concluded, "why i'm doubly glad to see you, both because it means you're free, and so you can advise me what we're to do next." "hmmm," the admiral thought swiftly. "we've got to do something immediately, that's for sure. of course, i have the authority to approach amir as a terran, in case of need. but do you know for sure," he bent a penetrating gaze on the young man, "whether or not the ruler has decided in our favor?" "no," hanlon said honestly. "i don't know that. but it seems as though he should have, now that he knows what irad was trying to do, and why. if we go to him at once, and urge him properly, as well as explain why we are here and how we were trying to protect him, he should swing over our way. at least, that's what i'd about decided i ought to do." the admiral was again silent, his brow creased in a deep frown of thought. suddenly he snapped his fingers in decision, and looked up. "we'll do it. i have uniforms hidden in one of my hide-outs here, and we'll get rid of our disguises and go see him." he climbed from the bed, and hanlon gasped as he saw how emaciated his father was, and the marks of his torture. but the admiral dressed, then both went down and climbed aboard hanlon's motor-trike. but when they got to newton's room, another surprise awaited them. for hooper was there, waiting for newton as the admiral had waited for hanlon. after mutual exchanges of experience, the three thankfully began removing their estrellan disguises, worn so long and so uncomfortably. their clothing off, they jumped beneath the pipe-shower, and as the water softened the hair and plastic, they took off their false ears and noses, and ripped the hair from their bodies. then they shaved their beards, and more or less trimmed each other's hair to the best of their ability. "boy, does this feel good?" hanlon cavorted, naked, about the little room, while his father and hooper laughed their own relief. admiral newton pulled a large travelling-case from beneath his low bed, unlocked the three complicated and pick-proof locks, and took out some uniforms. the others looked their astonishment, and he grinned. "didn't know i had yours, too, did you?" clean, shaved and dressed in their uniforms, with the symbols of their ranks on the collars and shoulder tabs, the three sat comfortably in easy chairs, discussing plans and telling more fully what each had discovered. hanlon learned that the plot had been far more wide-spread than he realized. almost every city on the planet had a cell working at the spreading of the propaganda against estrella's joining the terran federation, and the lesser rumors about the insanity of inver, the ruler's son. he now learned the real reason for that whispering campaign, and wondered how he had missed it before. inver stood third-in-line, and would become the ruler after amir if anything happened to irad. both hooper and newton, who had worked more exclusively in other cities than stearra, knew the names of most of the native estrellans who headed these cells, and they could be picked up and arrested when the time came. the crime wave had been quite wide-spread, also, as had the whispers that the terrans were to blame for it. the other two were loud in their praise of hanlon's work in uncovering the real head of the plot, and his splendid work in saving the ruler's life when his assassination had been so carefully planned. it was noticeable that the junior s s man no longer took their praise with the cockiness he had formerly exhibited. in fact, he was actually apologetic and uncomfortable. he squirmed and blushed, and tried to minimize what he had done. george spencer newton hanlon, secret serviceman of the inter-stellar corps, had finally grown up. it was so late when they completed their plans that admiral newton decided they had best wait until morning before seeking an audience with the planetary ruler. besides, he and hooper both needed all the rest they could get, before embarking on any new campaign. hanlon prepared the best meal he could from the meager supplies in the admiral's room, and they all ate, then went to bed. but deep down in his inner consciousness, a warning bell seemed to be ringing as george hanlon lay in bed. it took him many long, anxious minutes of intense concentration before he was able to isolate the feeling from the many new items that had been talked about that evening. but he finally brought it into focus in his mind. he sat upright, disturbing his father, who was almost asleep. "what's the matter, spence?" sleepily. "amir," hanlon said with agitation. "he ought not to be left unguarded like this. those gangsters, led by irad, are sure to make another attempt to kill him--and quickly, now that irad has tipped his hand." "but what can we do?" hooper was also sitting up on the blanket-pallet that had been spread for him on the floor of this small, one-bed room. "i ... don't ... know," hanlon said slowly. "i ... i can probably watch, through a bird or something, what's going on. but if they try anything...." newton started to climb out of bed. "i'll go notify the residence officials. maybe we can alert his guards to be more watchful." hanlon was still worried. "i don't know about that, either. maybe some of them have been planted by irad ... and if we say anything to the wrong ones it might merely hasten their plans." "that sounds reasonable," hooper said. "irad would certainly never overlook a chance like that." "if he could make it," newton admitted, lying down again. "maybe you'd better keep watch, spence, since you know how. if you see anything starting, we'll do our darnedest to break it up." * * * * * _and in its spaceship the alien being awoke the estrellan native it had been controlling for so long, and impressed certain commands on his mind--nor was the native able any longer to make any attempt, however feeble, to resist. continued compulsion had at last weakened his will to the point where all suggestions and commands were instantly obeyed without question._ _he therefore rose, dressed, equipped himself with a flamegun and certain other instruments, and left the house where he had been hiding out._ chapter although george hanlon had become adept at the use of the minds of birds, animals, fish, rodents and insects even at a considerable distance, he could not project his mind to any great length to find and gain control of such a mind, unless he had already used that mind and knew its texture and characteristics, or unless another part of his mind was already at that distant point in another brain. thus, in the present instance, he could not project his mind the many miles between his present location and the residence of the ruler, elus amir, and find an animal or bird mind he could take over. he could have done it, that is, with one of the cavals he had at various times handled, but one of them could not get into the palace and the ruler's suite. nor could he locate any of the birds he had used out there. he did, however, project his mind into inver's caval--the one he had helped heal--and from that vantage point tried to find a bird he could control. but none seemed to be anywhere near the stables. so, he had to start closer to where he was, and work outward. with time of the essence at the moment, a bird must be used. just how he was to get a bird into the residence, and more or less keep it inconspicuous and unseen during his survey, was a problem that would have to be tackled when the time came. lying on the bed in the little room, therefore, he quested about the nearby neighborhood trees until he found a swift-flying bird he could use. it took but a moment to do so, and to take full and complete control of its mind and body. then the bird, whose brain now contained as large a portion of hanlon's mind as he could force into it, was winging at its top speed toward the official residence of amir, the ruler. "the palace is in sight," hanlon's voice was low but penetrant, after a time. "i'm looking for an open window or door." the other men watched with amazement and intense curiosity as the young man lay there on the bed, his eyes closed and his face drawn with concentration, as they could see in the dim light of the shaded lamp hooper had risen and lighted. both of the other s s men knew much of what hanlon could thus do, yet watching him do it was a new experience to both, and one that filled them with deepest wonder and a sort of awe. the silence, even though of only two or three minutes duration, seemed like hours to the waiting watchers, then a jubilant "ah!" let them know hanlon had succeeded in the first part of his quest. "got in through an open window in an upper story ... heck, the door's shut." another pause, and then the voice continued, "here's another. hah, this one opens into a hallway. now, which way is amir's suite?" they waited with impatience while they knew the bird hanlon was controlling was seeking the proper portion of the interior of that great building. it seemed long and long before the soft voice spoke again. "he must have gone to bed--the door is shut. i'll have to get outside and try again, but now that i know where it is i'll see if i can get directly into his room." hooper whispered in a tone he thought only newton could hear. "by the shade of snyder, but this is spooky. if i didn't know he could really do it, i'd swear it was impossible." but only a portion of hanlon's mind was in that distant avian brain. the rest was here in his own body, and heard the comment. "yeh," he drawled, "i know it's weird, and even i'm not used to thinking about it yet. never thought how it would affect others. you don't need to whisper, though. the two parts of my mind are separate and distinct, so that i know what is going on in both ... ah, one of the windows in the bedroom is opened, but only a crack. maybe i can squeeze ... did it, but i lost a few feathers. but i'm inside now. let's see. there's a molding quite high up on the wall. it's wide enough so i can roost on that, sideways. now we'll just have to wait and watch." "is amir all right?" his father asked anxiously. hanlon grinned. "the way he's snoring he must be." but the question reminded hanlon that the ruler had been wounded. he made the bird fly down to the bed, and through its eyes saw only a small bandage on one of amir's arms--luckily for him the ruler slept with his arms outside the covers. "must be he got only a slight burn, after all," he said. "is there anyone close to his room--or can't you tell?" the admiral asked after a few moments of silence. "i'll see if i can find out." hanlon sent his mind questing out from the bird, and soon reported, "there're two men in an adjoining room ... they're guards ... from what i can read of their minds they're not thinking any seditious or murderous thoughts. just playing a game of some sort while keeping on watch." "better keep checking them from time to time, though, hadn't you?" hooper asked. "yeh, it'd be a good idea." the other men were tired and not well, and despite their efforts to keep awake, dropped off to sleep. surprisingly, even hanlon's body and the main portion of his mind also lapsed into the unconsciousness of sleep. but the part in the bird kept awake--and so did the tiny thread of consciousness that connected it with hanlon. some time later, about midnight, hanlon, through the bird, heard a stirring sound in the anteroom, and investigated. the guard was being changed, and these two newcomers, he found from their minds, were tools of irad. along that thread of thought sped the warning, and hanlon's body and the balance of his mind came fully awake. he lay there for some time, studying the situation, but nothing seemed to be happening. he was almost back to sleep again--his body, that is--when the bird heard a fumbling at the door of amir's room, although the sound was softly muted as though the one out there was using the utmost stealth in hopes of not being discovered. hanlon's mind quickly investigated, and found only one mind there. evidently the guards had left, for this was a new personality. hanlon reached out a hand and shook his father into wakefulness. "someone's outside, trying to get amir's door unlocked, or opened," he reported. newton called hooper, who sat up, rubbing sleep from his eyes while the admiral explained in swift words. "the door's locked from the inside, and the key is still in the lock," hanlon told them. "i made the bird fly down and look ... whoever is at it must be using something like pliers to try to turn the key." admiral newton jumped out of bed, lit the lamp, and commanded hooper, "get up and dress. we'll have to rush out there." he turned to hanlon. "can you come with us, and still keep _en rapport_ with your bird?" "sure," hanlon was already throwing off the covers, and getting up. "the fellow, whoever he is, although i would imagine it might be irad, is having trouble with the key, but he'll probably make it sooner or later." "d'you suppose we can get out there in time?" hooper asked. "we'll certainly try," the admiral grunted, leaning down to fasten his shoes. "can you wake the ruler?" he asked anxiously, a few moments later. "he might have a better chance, if awake." "sure," hanlon said, and a moment later, "the bird flew down and brushed its wingtips across his face. he's awake now ... he's sitting up ... lighting the lamp ... i sent the bird close to him then over to the door ... he's watching it ... now he sees the key turning ... he's jumped out of bed ... running to another door leading out of the room." the three finished dressing, and now ran from the room and down the stairs. outside the admiral commanded "follow me," and ran toward the back of the house. they saw the dim outlines of a shed, and a high-powered, family-sized touring tricycle. they piled into the seats even as the admiral was getting it started. swiftly he backed the car out and into the street, and then took off with a full-throated roar from the powerful, souped-up engine. "special job the corps' experts fixed up for me," he explained as the others gasped at the unexpected speed. hanlon, through the bird's eyes, was still watching that distant effort to unlock the door, and relaying to the others from time to time what he was seeing. "ah, it's unlocked ... it's opening ... but the ruler is in the other room and has locked that door." "the old boy's not so dumb," hooper applauded. "i'll say he isn't," hanlon agreed joyfully. "he's plugging the keyhole." he was silent a moment, then exclaimed, "the intruder's irad, just as i thought it might be ... he's surprised the ruler isn't in bed asleep ... he's gone over to try the other door ... he's found it's locked and the keyhole plugged ... he seems to have lost his head--he's pounding on that door, and yelling." he half-straightened, then slumped down into his seat, and his face strained with concentration. hooper, in the back seat, leaned forward and started to speak, but newton restrained him. "let him alone, curt--he must be working on something difficult." hanlon was beating at the barriers in adwal irad's mind, trying to get in, even though he knew he had never been able to do so before. but it was all he could think of to do at the moment, and he had to do something. besides, it was plain to him now that the man was completely insane--the way irad was acting and the things he was saying and thinking showed it so clearly. so hanlon had withdrawn entirely from the bird's mind, and was now working on irad's with all his power. the second-in-line had drawn his flamegun and was firing at the door, trying to burn out the lock or through the door panels. hanlon was almost in a frenzy of desperation. they had to stop this madman someway. he knew his father was pushing his car at its unexpected top speed, and that they would be there in a matter of minutes. but he was afraid that even those minutes might be too late. he did not see how they could possibly get there in time. for the door was beginning to burn from the fierce heat of the flamer. hanlon still beat at that barrier in irad's mind. he seemed to sense somehow that it was weakening, was ... was disintegrating ... was changing horribly under the influence of hatred and the madness the man seemed to feel. all this time the admiral had been trying to coax even more speed out of his souped-up tricycle, and now in the swiftly-nearing distance they could see the few lights that denoted the residence. soon they were close enough to see that the gates were closed. "those gates strong ones?" newton asked without turning his head. "no, mostly ornamental." "hang on, then, we're going through. curt, grab the kid." hooper leaned forward, took hold of hanlon's shoulders with his strong hands, and braced himself against the back of the front seat in which the younger man was sitting. a couple of guards had run up to the gate at sight and sound of that speeding machine. but they ducked hastily back as they saw it was neither going to stop nor swerve. there was a rocking jolt, a crash, and the car was past the crumpled gates, careening wildly. the admiral fought the wheel with all his strength. by the time they came close to the steps leading up to the main entrance, he had it under control. there was a screech of brakes that brought several attendants on the run through the door. the trike slid to a halt, and two of the three men in it jumped out and dashed up the stairs. "the ruler's being attacked," the admiral cried imperiously. "one of you show us his rooms." a servant, half-dazed by sight of those strangers in their peculiar uniforms, and subconsciously controlled by the command in newton's voice, obeyed. they raced across the entrance foyer to the great stairs that led to the upper story. other servants were coming into the hallway, sleepily rubbing their eyes, and most of them only partially dressed. their wondering eyes followed the racing men in a stupefied way, but none tried to stop the intruders. "down here," the servant dashed into a side hallway, and the two secret servicemen pounded after him. they turned another corner, and the servant slid to a stop. two guards were standing there, flamers in their hands, menacing a small group of servants. newton took it all in with a single glance. from what hanlon had said he knew the men were irad's. "burn those guards!" he snapped the command at hooper, and the latter's blaster spoke twice--fierce blasts of death that made the flashes of the flameguns seem like candle-flames. the two guards died instantly. newton and the servant were already dashing into amir's bedroom. meanwhile, back in the machine where he had stayed, hanlon was still working on irad's mind. now he thought he perceived a minute opening toward one edge of that decomposing barrier. he attacked it with all his mental strength, and it began to crumble a bit faster. further and further hanlon dug away at that tottering mentality until there was an orifice completely through the shield. instantly he pushed his mind through ... down and down, in and into the deeper parts of irad's thoughts and memories. and his body stiffened suddenly at what he found. newton and the servant pushed on ahead into the bedroom, just in time to see the man, irad, sink to the floor, writhing in apparent pain. but even so there was still enough control in the maddened conspirator so that he swung his flamegun and sent a streak of fire flashing toward the intruders. the servant, not expecting such a thing, and slow of reflexes, caught most of the blast, and died almost instantly. newton, trained to quick action and always expecting the unexpected, ducked down and away. even so, an edge of the flame caught him in the shoulder. the sudden, intolerable pain threw him off balance, and he sank to the floor, his uninjured hand grasping the wound, trying to stanch the flow of blood. george hanlon was still in the tricycle, his mind a welter of conflicting emotions. he must be nuts--such a thing as he had just discovered was simply not possible. "but it is," a cold, precise, soundless voice spoke in his mind. "it is not the mind of this adwal irad you are now contacting, but that of another, who has been controlling this entity for some time now." "who ... who are you, then?" hanlon gasped. "i am from another, distant section of this galaxy, here on much the same errand as yourself and your assistants. i am banding together the various inhabited planets in my sector the same as your federation is doing in yours. this planet is about midway between the two groups. i discovered it some time ago, and after thorough study of it decided to annex it to my oligarchy. but i have failed, and you have won." "you mean you were responsible for all the opposition we've encountered?" hanlon asked in surprise. "that is correct. working through the mind of this now-dying entity called adwal irad, i caused certain things to be done, including the increase in what you call crimes, in hopes they would alienate these people from your federation's invitation, which was made shortly before i came here to work. it was my plan to make them join with me after denying you, and for certain things promised this irad in the way of personal power, he more or less agreed--although i had to force him on several occasions." "so that's why he changed so," hanlon now knew the answers to many puzzles. "yes, there was continual conflict in irad's mind. it was conditioned to a love and loyalty for his world, and certain ethics of what he considered the fundamentals of right and wrong, that are totally unknown to me. in fact, these people are almost non-understandably different from the races in my oligarchy, but they have many resources i need. thus the disturbance between what this irad innately felt and what i forced him to do, drove him insane. even now his body is dead, and i am keeping his mind alive merely while i converse with you--a thing i have wished to do for long and long. i shall leave now, for my project has failed. i congratulate you on your victory." there was a moment's hesitation, then the thought came again to hanlon. "but there is one thing i would like to know before i go." there was almost a trace of pleading, of indecision in that hitherto coldly logical, precise thought--and hanlon wondered anew what sort of being this could possibly be with whom he was telepathing. for he could perceive nothing whatever as to the bodily shape or size of this enigmatic stranger. "why was i unable to make contact with your mind?" the alien asked, and its thoughts were almost a wail. "i perceive now that you are very young, very immature and inexperienced. i should have been able to read you easily. my abilities must be very small indeed, even though i have always considered myself so competent. are you of a different race from those others with whom you worked? i know you are not a native of this planet, for your mind texture is far different from theirs, as is your fellows'. even as yours, in some ways, differs from theirs." "i honestly do not know the answer," hanlon thought frankly. "i am of the same race as my companions, but i have some slight additional mental powers not usually found in my people. it may be i have a natural block or barrier in my mind they do not possess." "it must be so. i could make no contact with you at all, whereas i could penetrate and control easily with the others. it is only now, while we are jointly tenanting this weaker mind, that i can converse with you through its brain--i still cannot do so directly. it is very puzzling ..." and hanlon felt the withdrawal of that mind. irad's body, now that the mind which had been keeping it not-dead, or semi-alive, had slumped to the floor in full death. chapter captain george hanlon jumped from the big tricycle and ran into the residence. none of the guards or servants tried to stop him, so dumb-founded were they by all that had been happening. knowing the way from his controlling of the bird that had found amir's rooms, hanlon was soon there. he did not stop to see what was happening to the others, but ran across the bedroom to that far door, and rapped on it to attract the attention of the ruler, hiding behind it. "everything is safe now, k'nyer," he called through the badly charred panels. "the assassin is dead. you can come out now." "is this some new trick?" a voice came thinly. "no, sire, it is no trick, but the truth. you are safe now." "who are you?" "i'm ..." hanlon started to give his name, then remembered that the ruler did not know anything about him. he quickly changed it to, "i'm ergo lona, the groom with whom you talked on the ride the other morning." "lona? where did you disappear to--and why?" suspiciously. "endar discharged me, but i have been watching over you, just the same. on my honor, k'nyer, you may believe me." after some further hesitation there was the sound of the padding being removed from the keyhole, the insertion and turning of the key. as the door opened a mere crack, elus amir peered cautiously out. but instead of the clothing of a groom or a countryman, he saw the brilliant space-blue and silver of an inter-stellar corps uniform. he started to pull shut the door, but hanlon had stuck the toe of his boot in it. "it's all right, k'nyer. i am lona, the groom. i am also george hanlon, a captain in the terran inter-stellar corps. we discovered that another attempt was being made on your life, and were lucky enough to get here in time to block it." he took hold of the edge of the door and pulled it open, for the ruler was so surprised by this revelation that he made no real effort to hold it shut. amir came slowly, surprisedly into the bedroom, staring keenly at hanlon. "you don't look like lona ... but the voice does seem to be the same. how does it happen the federation has men here? were you spying on me?" "not on you, sire, but on your enemies," hanlon said earnestly. "let me introduce you to admiral new...." he had half-turned back as he spoke, and now for the first time saw his father on the floor, a hand clutching his shoulder, from which a great stain of blood was drenching the uniform sleeve. "ring for your physician," hanlon turned and commanded the ruler. then, realizing this was no way for him to be addressing a planetary head, he quickly but entreatingly added, "please, k'nyer." elus amir called in one of the servants clustered outside, and commanded curtly, "get the doctor here, immediately." then he went over to the two on the floor. "let me look," he half-pushed hanlon aside, and stooped to peer closely at that wounded shoulder. "help me get him onto the bed," he said after a quick inspection. "i don't think any of the bone is gone--it's just a bad flesh burn." tenderly the two men raised the admiral, who protested weakly that he could get up by himself, and lifted him onto the bed. amir himself began pulling off the admiral's tunic, while hanlon helped. by the time the doctor came running in, and took over the dressing of the wound, they had the arm and shoulder bared. but the elder newton, in spite of his protestations, had fainted from the loss of blood and shock. amir sent the assembled servants away, retaining only his dresser, who helped him on with his day clothes. the doctor worked swiftly, as hanlon watched anxiously, applying ointments to the burn, and finally bandaging it. "he's weak from all the blood he lost, and doesn't seem to have been in too good condition anyway," the doctor said at last. "i hope the man is strong enough to pull through." "then give him some plasma," hanlon said frantically. "he needs it." "i don't know what you mean," the doctor was bewildered by the word, for hanlon had had to use the terran word "plasma", not knowing any translation for it. "a blood transfusion, then, or at least some glucose." "i don't know anything about those, either ... say, you're not an estrellan, are you?" "no, we're terrans. you mean you folks don't know anything about giving one person's blood to another?" "sorry, but i've never heard of such a thing. how is it done?" the doctor was apparently more interested in this new idea than in the admiral's desperate condition. hanlon felt faint. he staggered away from the bedside without answering, and went into the anteroom, where hooper stood talking to inver and some other officials, who had heard the commotion and had come to see what it was all about. hooper saw hanlon's haggard face, and knew something was wrong. "were we too late?" he gasped. "oh, no, we got irad and saved amir, but dad was blasted--shoulder. the doctor has fixed him up as best he can, but dad's in shock, and these backward fools never heard of plasma or blood transfusions." hooper jumped forward. "i can give a transfusion. what's your dad's blood type?" he asked as they hurried to the bedside. "same as mine," hanlon was peeling off his coat as he spoke, his eyes lighting with relief. hooper rapped quick questions at the doctor, but the latter shook his head. more questions, and more negative answers, then hooper turned disconsolately to hanlon. "they don't even have anything i could use to give a transfusion; no hollow needles; not even hypodermics." the doctor pulled on hooper's arm. "please, tell me what you mean by blood transfusions, and plasma. how do you give them? what for? and what did the other man mean when he said he had the same blood type as the wounded man?" hanlon went to sit beside his father's bedside, and sank into an apparent mood of despair. meanwhile, the ruler had finished dressing, and with his son, inver, went over to listen to what major hooper was telling the doctor. "will you please tell me what all is going on here?" amir asked so plaintively that the s s man had trouble concealing a grin. but hooper sobered instantly. "the federation's inter-stellar corps, sire," he began his explanation, "found out about the fact that opposition to your desire to accept their invitation was becoming stronger--and dangerous to you and to the peace of your planet. they sent four of us here to study the situation and to protect you if possible. to do that it was necessary for us to disguise ourselves as natives of your world, so we could move about freely and unnoticed. that is why captain hanlon worked it so you would notice him, hire him as a servant of some sort here, and he would thus be able to watch over you and conditions in general from close at hand. we had found out that adwal irad was at the head of this opposition and crime wave, and that his plans included your death." "but now you're all in uniform--and your disguises removed." "yes, k'nyer. we were planning to come as ourselves tomorrow--or rather, this morning--and seek an audience with you. we knew about the attempt to assassinate you that was made on your daily ride, and so were watching you more carefully than ever. when we saw irad trying to get into your room, and his men he had planted in your guards keeping back the servants who wished to come to your assistance, we hurried here to help protect you. it was so apparent irad was determined to complete the killing he failed at the other time." elus amir, ruler of estrella, took that startling news with barely a tremor. he motioned them to a seat along the side of the bedroom, to continue his questioning. the doctor was dismissed, although it was plain he wanted to stay and ask this terran more about those strange and new methods of treating wounds. so until dawn the ruler and his son--now second-in-line following the death of irad--sat talking to major hooper about the federation of planets, and the benefits estrella would obtain from joining the other worlds. "such things as the advances in medicines in which your doctor is so interested, are but minor matters among the many we can and gladly will tell you if you wish," hooper said. the corpsman was able to convince amir of the falsity of the rumors and arguments irad had spread, about how estrella would lose her sovereignty if she joined, and that terra would make slaves of her people. "that is such a damnable thing to say, k'nyer," hooper was almost angry, but very much in earnest. "you have only to send some trusted advisors to the various planets of the federation--we will gladly furnish them transportation as we did before--and have them talk to the common people of any or all of our worlds. they will find that while we of terra were the ones who developed space travel and sent people to colonize the first discovered and habitable planets, that the citizens of each world choose their own form of government, and that many of them are now even stronger than is terra, the mother world. and there are peoples of several worlds who are natives and not terrans or their descendants, whom we have not only not enslaved, but are helping to grow culturally so they may some day be advanced enough to join us as full-fledged equal members of the federation, just as you, with your advanced civilization, were invited to do." while all this conversation was going on in low tones across the room, george hanlon sat by the side of his father's bed, almost in a trance, so deep was his concentration. from what he had learned while breaking past the disintegrating barriers in adwal irad's mind, and from the techniques he had learned to apply in his previous excursions into other minds, he now found that, because his father was unconscious rather than merely asleep, he could, in a way, by-pass those barriers and get down into the depths of cell and gland in his father's mind and body, even though he could not fully penetrate the block into the memories, nor control the elder's actions. carefully hanlon studied those depths, aided also by what he had learned in his healing of the caval, and from his intensive studies of human physiology and neurones and allied sciences. using the totality of his admittedly meager knowledge, yet guided by things no human physician had so far learned, he at last began to trace the pattern of how human cells, tissues and nerves regenerated themselves, and how new blood leucocytes are made in the glands of the lymph and the spleen. he was able to trace the connectors between the minute organisms and the brain that directed their activities. then he set himself to the delicate task of activating those functions to begin and hasten the healing process. hour after hour he sat there, oblivious to all else taking place around him, his own body lolling almost lifelessly in the big chair while all his mental powers were engaged in the monumental and hitherto unheard-of task to which he had set himself. the other three men concluded their conference at last, and got up, stretching hugely to pull themselves more awake after their half-night vigil. amir called in his servants, and ordered them to prepare and serve breakfast here for himself and his guests. inver ran back to his own apartment to dress more completely for the day. hooper walked over to where hanlon was sitting. "asleep?" he half-whispered, doubtful because of the way the young man's body was sprawled in the deep chair. george hanlon stirred and sat up, flashing a smile. "you didn't need to whisper, curt," he said. "i wasn't asleep. just been helping dad get well." the major stared at him in amazement. "what d'you mean?" "you're half a doctor, curt. take a look at dad's wound." doubtfully, not fully understanding even yet what his companion meant, hooper removed the bandage. he stared unbelievingly at the wounded shoulder. the deeper portions of that terrible burn were completely regenerated with healthy tissue. there was no sign of inflammation, no scarred tissue or fused flesh as usually shows in a fresh flamegun burn. the upper parts of the injury, too, were already beginning to heal toward the center. "why ... why," he was astounded. "that should've taken weeks. i never knew a wound to heal that fast." "i found out how to speed up the cells and things," hanlon said simply. admiral newton roused as they talked, perhaps at the touch of hooper's gentle hands removing the bandage. now he opened his eyes, and after a moment to realize his surroundings and recall the events of his injuries, smiled at his co-workers. "hi, fellows. everything under control?" "yes, sir, all o k," hooper answered. "i think the ruler is about ready to sign up." "good. good work. say, i feel fine. no pain--yet i seem to have a memory of being blasted ... of fainting." he frowned, then shrugged. "couldn't have been much after all." "it was very bad, sir," hooper assured him gravely. "the burn was almost to the bone in your shoulder, and you lost a lot of blood. but now the wound is over half-healed." "great john. how long was i out?" "only a few hours, dad," hanlon said. "oh, you found the kit, then?" "what kit?" "there's a complete emergency medi-surgical kit under the seat in my tricycle." "now he tells us," hooper spread his hands and spoke in mock despair. "probably just as well," hanlon said. "if we'd known about that i might never have felt the necessity of discovering how to heal wounds as i did." "what're you talking about?" the admiral looked from one to the other in perplexity. "the kid's too modest to tell you, sir," hooper broke in, ignoring hanlon's signal to keep quiet. "i don't pretend to know how he did it, but somehow or other he managed, with his mind, to stimulate and speed up the healing, so that at the rate it's been going, your wound should be all well in another twenty-four hours. i'll bandage it up again, and then, unless you're too weak, you can get up and help us eat breakfast the ruler is having sent up for us all." young inver, who had returned to the bedroom, was standing there, listening to all this. now his expressive eyes lighted up, and he touched hanlon's arm. when the young s s man turned to face him, inver breathlessly asked, "was that the way my caval got well so fast?" hanlon grinned at him. "i knew it was your favorite mount, and i didn't want to see it destroyed." he turned quickly back to help his father get up. the admiral found that, while he was still a little shaky, he could stand up without dizziness. the ruler had sent his uniform jacket out to be cleaned and mended, and this newton donned. soon the men were seated about the table the servants had set up, eating the splendid breakfast they brought and served. meantime, the five talked about the problem that so much interested them all, and that meant so much to all the peoples of their worlds. "our colonial and survey bureaus are constantly seeking throughout space for other planets having intelligent races, and we feel sure yours will not be the last we'll find," admiral newton told the ruler and his son. "it is egotistical and silly to think we terrans are the only civilized peoples in the universe." "chances are we'll find others who are as far ahead of us in intelligence, science and technologies as you estrellans are ahead of us in ethics," hanlon added honestly. amir and inver looked up in astonishment at that simple statement. "you ... you actually mean ... honestly ... that you terrans do not believe you are the highest form of life in the universe?" inver put their questioning into words. "great john, no!" admiral newton exploded. "oh, i suppose," he added more slowly, "that there are some earth people who may still feel that way, but the majority of us do not, especially those who have travelled at all extensively. we used to think that; used to believe, hundreds of years ago, that we were the _only_ intelligent life in the cosmos. but we know better now that we're spreading out. i, personally, have been on at least six planets that contain intelligent life that did not stem from terra, although yours is the highest of the six, and none of the rest are yet at the point where they can be asked to affiliate with the federation as equal members. but those others are being taught and coached as best we can--and as much as they want to be. in a few more generations they'll probably have reached the point where they will be ready to be seriously considered for equality status with us, as far as federation membership is concerned." "just how do you determine the fitness of a race for membership in your federation?" inver leaned forward, his expressive eyes questioning. his father started to rebuke him for his forwardness, but the admiral interrupted. "no, that's a good question, and we're glad to answer it--just as we're glad to answer _any_ questions to which we know the answers. as to this one, we look first for signs of intelligence great enough to enable the people to govern themselves without continual warfare," he said earnestly. "their knowledge of science and technology is not so important, we feel, although their ability to learn is. some races will probably never have real need for machines of any sort--races like the plant-men of algon, where captain hanlon was recently instrumental in freeing them from slavery." he paused a moment to marshal his thoughts. "then we look to see if they are making a conscious effort to advance in education and learning--no matter along what lines that may be," he continued. "we study their knowledge of and interest in ethical matters--their religion, and their belief in the general concept of right and wrong, of decency and observance of the rights of others. if they have these things, and have, above all, the desire and determination to continue their cultural growth, then we consider them worthy of equal federation membership." "and your wonderful people certainly measure up to all of those concepts," hanlon added sincerely. chapter the five had finished eating by now, and the ruler rose. "i will call my advisors together, and discuss this matter with them," he said. "but i can tell you now that i am more than ever disposed to accept your invitation. i could do so this moment," he said with a deprecating smile, "but i like to make sure that the leaders of my people agree with my decisions, as much as possible. i will have a servant show you to my study, where you can discuss your own plans while my ministers, my son and myself talk in the council chambers. i will let you know as soon as we reach a definite decision." "thank you, k'nyer. we will gladly await your answer," admiral newton rose, too, and bowed, as did hanlon and hooper. "and thanks for the fine meal," hanlon grinned. "i was really hungry." inver came up to him and laid his hand on hanlon's shoulder. "i like you," he said simply but from the heart. "i hope we shall always be friends, and shall meet often through the coming years." in the little study the three found easy chairs, and admiral newton turned first to major hooper. "as far as i know now, we'll all be going back when the sneakboat comes in a day or so. i suggest you go back to simonides and get in touch with the high command to get your next assignment." "right, sir, will do." "about you, spence, i want you to come with me and...." "excuse me, dad, but if i can have some free time, there is some very important research i want to do, that i think will benefit humanity much more than another detective assignment." "what's on your mind, son?" "this new ability i'm beginning to get," hanlon said seriously. "i've found i can get down to the level of the body cells and glands, with my mind, and i think with more study and research i can learn things no one else has ever known before. but i'll need a lot of help from research doctors and endocrinologists, to tell me things i don't know. i may be all wet, but i have an idea i can, in time, make some very important contributions to medical science--with their help in telling me what to look for, and if it can be arranged so i can have the time to devote to that. i don't mean," he added, flushing with embarrassment, "that i think i'm...." "you are, whether you think so or not," his father interrupted, eyes gleaming with pride and some amusement. "with those special gifts of yours, you can do things no one else ever hoped to do. such research would certainly be worthwhile, especially if you can help others learn how to heal wounds as fast as you did mine." "speaking of which," hooper broke in, "i suggest, admiral that you lie down while we're talking. it will be less strain on your body and heart, and you're still weak, even if you won't admit it," he added as he saw a protest forming on newton's lips. when hanlon added his entreaties to hooper's, the admiral grinned and lay down on a couch there in the study. "anybody'd think you guys were the head men, not me," he growled, but good-naturedly. then he sobered quickly and went back to their discussion. "i'll have to take it up with the board, of course, but i think they'll agree. i know of nothing definite needing you right at the moment, so they'll probably give you a leave of absence for that research." "i'd like to go to some other planet than terra or simonides," hanlon said. "one where i'm not known, so i won't have to be watching out for anyone who might recognize me. and if i'm to do the study, i'll want authorization to work at some of their insane asylums, too." "why those, in john's name?" "when i tackled irad's mind towards the end, i was able to get down inside of it, further than i've ever been in any other person's mind, because he was insane at the last, and his mind was breaking down. there seems to be a block or barrier in every sane person's mind that i can't get through." "but you got into your father's ..." hooper looked puzzled. "in dad's case, curt, it was only because he was unconscious, rather than asleep or awake, that i could penetrate. even then, i had to sort of ... well, by-pass the barrier ... to get down deep enough to touch the cells and glands and such things. of course, with more study and practice, now that i know more about it, i may be able to reach those depths in spite of the block ... oh, heck, i sound like i considered myself a sort of superman," he flushed again, and his eyes implored them not to think him conceited. "we know you neither are a superman nor think you are," his father assured him quickly. "you have a special gift, and you are trying to use it to benefit others, that's all. don't be modest--it's really false modesty, in a way. go ahead with your ideas." "well, i'd also like to try working with engineers and technies, to see if it would be possible to rig up some sort of a mechanical method of doing the same thing." newton shook his head in puzzled wonder. "you're completely beyond understanding, spence. i sometimes wonder if you're human ... if you're really the son of martha and myself." "why, no," hanlon grinned then. "didn't you know? i'm a changeling the little elves left on your doorstep." his father and hooper laughed away the tension. "could be, at that," the admiral said. "well, i'll certainly recommend to the board that they grant you all the time and opportunity you need. if you can get to the bottom of this, and especially if you can teach other doctors how to get at those glands and use them...." "that'll be the hard part, dad. what i do hope to be able to do is to perhaps find out more exactly how the nerves and cells and glands work, and then doctors would be better able to diagnose and treat various diseases and injuries." they were interrupted by inver, who came in to ask certain questions the ruler and advisors wished to know. "would it be possible, or rather, is it something you would permit," he asked, "for us to set up some sort of an advanced school or university here, and have you send us instructors? a place where our best young men and women could go to study the many things we know nothing about?" "it certainly will be possible, and it is a wonderful idea," admiral newton assured him. "and one thing we want to make clear, that you do not yet seem sure of. that is that there is no question of our 'permitting' you to do what you want to do. none whatever, in any way, shape or form. your government is and will always be completely autonomous--always handled as you people see fit to work it. we never, under any circumstances, try to make other races 'conform' to any standards or regulations they do not wish to make their own. we will give freely of our knowledge, our science and technologies, our beliefs and concepts--but you estrellans will be the sole and only judge of what you want to accept. "and we will want to have you send some of your people to our universities, to teach us the advanced things you know that we don't. your system of ethics, for instance, and the way you have learned to live together so closely and honestly." after inver had gone back to the conference, the three men sat about waiting. newton had almost fallen asleep--hooper was completely so--when hanlon stirred. "i don't know, though," he ruminated aloud. "maybe there's something else more important than that research at the moment." "what?" his father roused himself sufficiently to ask. "that alien being i contacted in irad's mind." "what in snyder's name are you talking about?" newton raised up in excitement. "what alien?" "oh, that's right, i didn't tell you. you're being hurt and my trying to heal you made me forget it." hanlon explained swiftly about that strange mind and its startling communication. admiral newton swung his feet to the floor, all thoughts of sleep banished. "and you waited all this time to tell me a thing as important as that?" he demanded incredulously and almost angrily. "sorry, dad, i just happened to feel your life was more important at the moment, because the other could wait for a...." "ok, ok, i'll buy that for now. but we'll have to make other arrangements immediately. we'll have to find out where it came from and whether this other oligarchy or federation or whatever it is, is a menace to us." "i don't think it is," hanlon said slowly. "the being's mind was very peculiar, but it appeared to be extremely logical in its thoughts. it said that since it had lost and we have won here, it was withdrawing--and i don't believe it meant temporarily, either. i think it meant it was all through here and...." "don't be silly or childish, son," the admiral was intense and forceful. "that one being may have felt that way, but his bosses won't. with two groups of planets so near in space--both with means of space travel--there's bound to be war of some sort, whether actual, ideological or economic remains to be seen. we'll have to hunt them up, and find out what it's all about--and immediately." hanlon shook his head. "i'll acknowledge your greater experience, dad, but i still have a feeling you're wrong about this. i believe that other race is entirely different in their way of thinking to ours--that they are coldly logical and not the type to keep on fighting for something they've already lost. but, of course," he shrugged, "it's up to the high command to decide. i'd still like to get on with that other research." "i'll put both problems up to the board," newton said. "but i bet i know how they'll decide. there's the fact that those beings can read and control all our minds--except yours. it looks like your job, son--yours and no one else's ... although we'll all be behind you in every way we can, of course. meanwhile," stretching out on the couch again, "until amir and his advisors want us, i think we'd both better take a nap." "i am kinda pooped, at that," hanlon said, and sprawled out in his chair. the admiral was soon asleep, but only hanlon's body and part of his mind relaxed. the balance of his mind was inside his father's body again, speeding the healing of that shoulder burn. finally inver came to call the three terrans into the council chamber. his broadly smiling face, and the thoughts hanlon read from the surface of his mind, told him the decision had been favorable--a fact he signalled to the others at once. "we are completely convinced now," elus amir told them when the terrans were seated about the conference table, "that our world will be best served by joining your federation as we were asked to do. if you have the treaty papers at hand, i will gladly sign them. and my son," looking proudly at young inver, "will sign with me as the next ruler of szstruyyah." "we do not have the proper documents," admiral newton said. "but our ship will be here tomorrow night, and it has long-range communicators with which i will immediately get in touch with the federation council, who will send accredited ambassadors here at once. they should be here within five days." "now that we have made up our minds, we are anxious to affiliate with the other worlds. we feel it is a tremendous honor, being the first non-terran race asked to join them." "as it is an honor for us to have such a high-principled peoples joined to us," admiral newton said with a courtly bow. "may i suggest, k'nyer and nyers, that when our ambassadors arrive, you ask them for whatever help you desire in the way of teachers, goods or materials. they will gladly explain what we have to offer, and i know they will study you and your people to find the things they will ask for in exchange. remember always, please, that it is our steadfast policy to teach only what you really want to know, and which you specifically ask for, not what we might 'think you ought to know'." "that one thing alone," elus amir said, deeply moved as were the members of his council, "would be enough to confirm us in our belief that we will be doing the right thing for our people in joining you." amir, his son and the councillors, rose and bowed. the three terrans had also risen, and saluted punctiliously. then newton stepped forward impulsively and held out his hand, which amir grasped as though he had always used the gesture. "welcome to the federation of planets, sire," newton's voice was filled with emotion. the ruler silently wrung his hand. when it was time for the corpsmen to leave, after some general conversation between them all, the ruler and his son were again profuse in their gratitude for what the men had done, personally, to save amir's life, and the peace of their world. they escorted the three downstairs and out to newton's tricycle, and stood at estrellan salute as the terrans got into their machine. "oh, one thing, lona," the ruler came forward just as hanlon was getting in. amir's eyes were filled with puzzled wonderment. "how did you know adwal irad was coming to attack me while i was asleep, locked in my room?" hanlon's eyes danced, but he kept his face straight. "we have a saying on terra, k'nyer, that explains it--'a little bird told me'." and he bowed again as he entered the machine, and admiral newton drove away, leaving behind a more than ever puzzled ruler of the soon-to-be newest member of the federation of planets. the end to save earth by edward w. ludwig illustrated by van dogen [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from worlds of tomorrow october 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, co 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-co 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 when you giffle... by l. j. stecher, jr. [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from worlds of tomorrow december extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] they were like any other boys sporting in their old swimming hole--in the depths of space! i was a little bit worried when i saw captain hannah again. i thought he might have decided he wanted his elephants back, and i'd grown sort of attached to them. although i couldn't break the baby of the habit of nibbling on gasha leaves, in spite of the fact that they're not good for him. a few months earlier, captain hannah had conned me into taking the elephants off his hands and out of his tramp spaceship. he had suffered from intellectual terrestrial zoological insufficiency--or in other words, he hadn't known whales are mammals, and had delivered the multi-ton beulah instead, to the prinkip of penguin, as an adult sample of earth's largest mammal. the prinkip had quite properly refused delivery, and hannah had stuck me with her and her incipient progeny. i needn't have worried. captain hannah didn't want her back. he just wanted to relax and talk to someone. i bought him a drink, but i refused one myself, remembering what had happened to me the times before, when i had listened to captain hannah with a glass in my hand. * * * * * captain hannah ran a leathery hand over his leathery face. he looked haggard. "i came here because i've got to talk to somebody," he said, "and you make a good listener. "do you remember after i completed my contract with you for the delivery of the gasha root, and after you had talked me into leaving beulah with you for the sake of the little one, how we had a few drinks together to celebrate our mutual success, before i headed out?" well, my memory about who had talked whom into what about beulah didn't agree with his, but i told him i remembered our last get-together, and he went on. "anyone who tries to set up an interstellar jump with a hangover should be permanently barred from the spaceways," he said with some feeling. "i guess that the only reason they aren't, is that the ones who make a mistake are never heard from again." he paused and sipped. "except me." "when i left you that last time, and pushed _delta crucis_ up into parking orbit, i was full of rhial and a grim determination to deliver a whale to the prinkip. i must have made some mistake or other in setting up the jump coordinates, because when i popped out of limbo, alarm bells went off in all directions. the main computer told me it didn't have the faintest idea where we had arrived, and the auxiliary computer agreed noisily. i turned off the alarms and uncovered the viewports to check for myself, without much hope. "the view from the ones on the starboard side didn't show me anything i recognized, so i pushed myself across the room and slid off the covers on the port side. "the stars there were unfamiliar, too, but i'm afraid that i didn't notice for awhile. the foreground was taking up all of my attention. there were two towheaded kids--about eight or nine years old, i should judge--floating in empty space, with their noses flattened against the viewport glass. they were as brown as berries, and as naked as jaybirds, and as cute as chipmunks, and as alike as two peas, and as improbable as virtue. "the one on the left--my left, that is--backed off enough so that his nose straightened out, smiled angelically and asked politely whether he and his twin brother might come in. that is, his lips moved and i heard the words, and they made sense. only they didn't. nothing made sense when somebody talking in a vacuum could be heard as if he were right beside you. anyway, i nodded that they could come in. * * * * * "the two boys swam forward, using a sort of self-taught kind of a breast stroke, right through the solid glass of the viewport, until they were in the ship beside me, and then they stood up. that's no small feat in itself, standing up in a spaceship in the absence of gravity or spin." captain hannah beckoned the waiter for a refill, and then asked me if i wouldn't change my mind and drink with him. the way this story of his was going, i figured i might as well, and he didn't start in talking again until we had both had a sip. "they were skinny, and they looked explosively energetic, the way kids that age usually do. but they just stood quietly facing me side by side, giving out with cheerful gaptoothed small-boy smiles. somehow or other it was reassuring to notice that they both had belly buttons. it was an indication to me--whether it made sense or not--that they were just human beings; that they had been born of women in the usual way--and that there must be some rational explanation for what looked like miracles. "'is there anything i can do for you two kids?' i asked, as politely as i knew how. "'well, sir,' said the one who had spoken before, 'please excuse us for barging in on you like this, with no clothes on and all....' "the other boy picked up the conversation without a break, 'but you have materialized your spaceship right in the middle of our swimming hole ...' "'... and it's muddying everything up something fierce,' finished boy number one. "i glanced out through the view ports at the illimitable and untrammeled reaches of space, and then back at the boys. "'we're afraid you'll just have to take our word for it, sir. this is our swimming hole,' said boy number one earnestly. 'there aren't many ...' "'... spots like this in space,' number two picked up. 'it has something to do with gravity balances and radiation zones and thought-energy sumps and a lot of other ...' "'... things like that that we don't understand either because we haven't had it in school yet. but we do know that it's the best place we can reach for space swimming, only ...' "'... it's too far for us to get to and pull along our clothes too. besides which, what boy would want to go swimming with his clothes on anyway?' they both came to a full stop. "'the only thing wrong with it,' the speaker had shifted again, 'is, it's even too far to bring along any sandwiches and cookies and stuff.' "i stopped swinging my head back and forth from one to the other as the speaker shifted, and shook myself awake. 'how about some chocolate cake and a bulb or two of milk? i've got plenty of both,' i told them." * * * * * "oh, come now," i said to captain hannah, glancing at the row of rhial beakers in front of him. in spite of his space tan, i could see him blush. "well, i like chocolate cake," he said defensively. "and drinking milk when i'm in space gets my stomach back in shape for going ashore again with the likes of you. what's wrong with that, i'd like to know?" i signified "nothing at all," with an elaborate gesture, and he went back to his story after dipping his nose. "well, i gave each of them some cake and milk, and they sat down politely at my table to eat it ... and the plates stayed on the table and the cake stayed on the plates even though there wasn't any gravity and i didn't have any spin on the ship. "'now what's all this about my muddying up your swimming hole?' i asked, when they had finished eating all my cake and drinking three bulbs of milk each. "'that's all there is to it, sir,' said the first boy. 'you have changed the gravity balance and the radiation pattern and everything else ...' "'... and that's taken all the fun out of swimming. and when you have taken all the chances we have in playing hooky just because this is such a good place to swim ...' "'... it's a shame to have it all spoiled. so would you please leave, sir?' "'oh, i'd be glad to jump out of here, boys,' i told them. 'but you see, i've got a little problem. i'm lost. i don't have the faintest idea where in the universe i am, so how can i set the right coordinates to jump somewhere else?' "'oh!' said the two boys together. 'we didn't realize....' they stopped, and looked at each other. they acted as if they were carrying on an argument although their lips didn't move and i couldn't hear anything. at any rate, they soon reached some sort of agreement. "'we'll have to get help,' said the first boy at last. 'we'd call dad, except he'd warm both of us real good if he knew we were out here swimming when we're supposed to be in school. but....' "'there's our big brother jim. we've got enough on him so maybe he won't squeal. and he's grown up enough to know what to do.' "'and he was real good at narking and giffling in school.' "'he got an a in narking, and a b plus in giffling, but of course it wasn't _advanced_ giffling.' "'still, he should be able to do the job, all right.' * * * * * "their faces went blank and they both stared off into space as if they were concentrating as hard as they could. suddenly, with no warning and no noise, a young man of about fifteen or so was standing beside them with his hands on his hips. he wore a kilt and a singlet of some soft, shiny material, but no shoes. "'well, if it isn't mike and aloysius,' he said conversationally. 'boy, are you two going to get it when you show your faces around home. dad's been looking for you.' "'the older boy turned and stuck his hand out at me. 'captain hannah, sir,' he said. 'my name's jim monahan. i must apologize for the brats. they bother everybody. they have asked me to help get you out of your difficulties.' "'i must have set the wrong jump pattern,' i stammered. 'it's incredibly lucky that i came back out of limbo in a place where i could ask for help. if you can give it to me, i would be most grateful.' "'well, sir,' said jim, 'your appearing here isn't quite as incredible as you might think. dad says that several of you bumblejumpers....' he stopped and looked embarrassed. 'i'm sorry, sir. several of you who have made errors in your jump setting have ended up here.' "'not in our swimming hole,' asserted aloysius. "'in this general area of space. dad calls it the delta of a psionic river. he says that we who are psionic adepts should stop bouncing back and forth between here and the established sectors so much, or we'll groove the psionic channels so much that everybody who goofs will end up here. and we may even increase the probability of goofing.' "'i just want to get back to where i can recognize the stars,' i told the boy. "'if you don't mind my saying so, sir, i nark the impression that you want something more. something about getting a whale to the planet penguin ii?' * * * * * "i nodded. 'if these kid brothers of yours can run around mald-bottom in space without catching cold, then i guess you can probably send a whale from one planet to another by mind power--by psionics.' "'but that's not really what you want?' the boy persisted. "i nodded. 'even psionics can't do what i really want. a _delta_ class freighter can do almost anything, but it can't transport an adult blue whale across space. still, that's what i really want it to do, and it's that desire that you are apparently picking out of my mind.' "jim frowned for a couple of minutes in deep concentration while mike and aloysius nudged each other slyly, gradually got more rambunctious, and finally lost their tempers and started a half-wrestling, half-boxing tussle. "jim clapped his hands together sharply, twice. the kids quieted down abruptly, looking at jim indignantly and rubbing their posteriors. at the same time, jim picked a small box out of the air and handed it to me with a flamboyant gesture. "lettered on the box was the neatly printed instruction 'eat me'. "'shades of lewis carroll,' i said to myself, opening the box and looking at the little cakes inside. "'go ahead, sir,' chorused mike and aloysius, 'don't be chicken!' "i looked at the pill-sized cakes for a minute. then i shrugged my shoulders and tossed them all down at once, like taking a shot of whiskey neat. for a few seconds nothing happened except for an odd sort of fizzling feeling inside, and then suddenly i started to shrink, just like alice in wonderland. i hardly had time to notice that the whole monahan tribe was shrinking right along with me, before i found that i was having trouble breathing, and it was as if my insides were trying to climb up past my adam's apple. i couldn't talk, so i tried hard to give jim monahan a dirty look before i passed out, which i promptly did. * * * * * "i couldn't have been unconscious for more than a few seconds. i woke up to find that i had shrunk to a height of maybe two feet, and that jim was looking at me with a very worried expression. "'boy, was that a lousy job of giffling,' i heard aloysius say, irreverently. at least, it was aloysius unless the two boys had exchanged positions while i had been out. "'yup, you've got to be careful when you giffle,' agreed his twin sagely. "'what happened?' i asked weakly. 'and why have you shrunk us down this way?' "'shrunk us down?' asked jim blankly, and then he laughed. 'oh, i didn't do anything like that to us. that sort of thing is too dangerous to try unless you're a master giffler. i don't think even dad would try a thing like that with a human being. all i did was to enlarge the spaceship. at the same time, of course, i increased the strength of the intermolecular bonds, so that the ship is just as sturdy as it was before. only now it's big enough to carry a whale.' "'only the big jerk forgot that with the space in this room suddenly increased to twenty-five or thirty times as big as it was before, there still wasn't any more ...' "'... air in it, so you nearly suffocated.' i think it ended with mike. "'but he finally had sense enough to gather the air in a ball around your head, so you woke up all right, and i nark that now he had brought in enough air ...' "'... to fill the room and all your tanks, so you'll be all right now.' "'and now you can get yourself out of our swimming hole, sir,' aloysius, i think, concluded. "i was still a little dazed. but i tried to put my brain in gear, while i looked from one smiling, expectant monahan face to another. 'i've got one question,' i said at last. "'yes, sir?' asked jim, all eagerness to be helpful. "'does this psionic ability all of you are playing around with so freely make you basically any smarter than an ordinary untalented run-of-the-mill human of the same age?' "'well of course, sir,' said jim, and then looked at the two brats, who were staring at him with their mouths open. "'well, of course, we have a lot more to learn than the normals,' he began again. 'but then, i've studied hard instead of playing hooky like the imps here.' "now all three of us were staring at him. "'well, to be truthful, sir, dad says that we've got about the same basic intelligence as the normals, and that we shouldn't try to get uppity because of our special talents. but most normals that i've seen usually don't act very bright.' "'then,' i asked with elaborate patience, 'all you did was to make my _delta crucis_ bigger, and to increase the strength of the components to match? nothing else?' * * * * * "jim nodded warily. 'that's it, sir.' "'it didn't occur to you, son, that while that might be all right for the hull and the jumping equipment, you just don't change the size of a rocket motor to change its power rating? don't you realize that if i turned on my landing rockets right now, i'd probably blow us all to kingdom come?' "jim thought for a minute. 'i nark it now, sir,' he said slowly. 'and the hull probably isn't right too, i'm afraid.' "'you're probably right, son,' i answered him. 'don't you think you had just better put things right back the way they were before?' "i added hastily, 'not forgetting to get rid of the extra air you giffled in.' "'no, sir. i can't do that!' the boy's forehead was all wrinkled with his effort at thinking. 'dad says that when you start in to giffling, you've got to carry through what you start.' "'but it's my life you're giffling around with,' i protested. 'you don't have to worry. _you_ can stay alive in the vacuum of space, or jump around without a ship, but i can't. just leave me alone, why don't you? just show me the way to go home and then leave me alone, like a good boy.' "jim shook his head. 'i'm just going to have to get help, sir,' he said. "mike and aloysius both looked scared. 'jim, why don't you just do like captain hannah says,' asked one of them. "'if you get dad into this,' said the other, 'he'll for sure give it to the two of us, but good. and we'll just bet that he won't think you're too old to get it, either.' "jim waved the argument aside. 'he'll probably be right, too,' he commented absently, acting as if he were listening to something the rest of us couldn't hear. then he nodded decisively. "'your _delta crucis_ is all fixed up right, now, sir,' he told me in positive tones. 'there's even a tank for you to keep the whale in. but i suggest you not waste any time in getting the beast to penguin, because the ship won't stay this way too long. then it'll revert to the way it used to be before you ran into us.' "he noticed my expression of concentrated unhappiness. "'oh, not while you are carrying the blue whale,' he assured me. 'as soon as you finish the job, or in a couple of months if you don't get started on it. there is nothing to be worried about, sir.' "then he heaved a kind of deep, shuddering sigh, and said, 'we have got to go now. good luck to you.' "'the same to you,' i said automatically. the two brats gave me a withering look of scorn, apparently for expressing such impossible sentiments, and then all three monahans disappeared." captain hannah took another whiff of rhial and then stared at the beaker broodingly. * * * * * "well," i asked. "did you get the whale to penguin? and was the prinkip pleased? or did you just sit around and drink rhial until your ship popped back to its normal size?" "oh, i couldn't pass up a chance like that," he said. "i delivered the whale all right. she turned out to be gravid, too. i seem to make a habit out of picking up pregnant cargoes. the prinkip was very pleased, and gave me a bonus. "then _delta crucis_ went back to being herself again. and i found this note, along with a small gift, in the control room." he fished a sheet of paper out of the breast pocket of his blue uniform coat and passed it across the table to me. it was an unsigned letter written in a beautiful flowing script. it said: my dear captain hannah: congratulations to you on the success of your venture. all seems to have worked out well for you. for three monahans, things were less pleasant. for a considerable period of time they experienced difficulty in sitting down in comfort. you are welcome at any time to pay a return visit to our remote sector of space and reestablish your acquaintance with the adepts. it is not beyond the bounds of possibilities that normals can be taught to demonstrate our psionic abilities. until you return then, farewell! the note was unsigned. "well," i said, "you are going to take them up on it, aren't you? this is a chance in a lifetime. in a hundred lifetimes--it's a chance in a million years. what are you waiting for, man?" captain hannah shook his head. "i don't know," he said. "but does that note sound as if it had been written by a mature adept--by, say, the father of those boys? "doesn't it seem more like something written by a teenage boy? or even by a precocious nine-year-old?" "well, what of it?" i asked. "provided that it gets you back there, so that you will have the chance of talking with the father?" "i'm afraid that one or more of the monahan children may hold a grudge against me. after all, i apparently did cause the whole tribe of them considerable humiliation and pain, in the end. if they want to get even, they have a lot of power--whatever narking and giffling may be. so here's a present for you, and i advise you to throw it away, even if i can't bring myself to do so." captain hannah slammed something down on the table, jammed his head, and stalked out of the bar. i picked up his gift and examined it. it was a small bottle. on the tag attached to it, neatly and mockingly printed, were the words, "drink me." i stared at it for a long time, thinking of opportunity--and of snarks and of boojums. end counterweight by jerry sohl _every town has crime--but especially a town that is traveling from star to star!_ [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from worlds of if science fiction, november . extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] _sure i'm a nilly, and i've died seven times, always in the blackness of the outer reaches, and i'm not alone, although there aren't very many of us, never were._ it made sense. interstellar was new and they wanted him on the ship because he was a trained observer. they wanted facts, not gibberish. but to ask a man to give up two years of his life--well, that was asking a lot. two years in a sardine can. still, it had an appeal keith ellason knew he couldn't deny, a newsman's joy of the clean beat, a planetary system far afield, a closeup view of the universe, history in the making. interstellar chief rexroad knocked the dottle from his pipe in a tray, saying, "transworld press is willing to let you have a leave of abscence, if you're interested." he knew secretary phipps from years of contacting, and now phipps said, "personally, i don't want to see anybody else on the job. you've got a fine record in this sort of thing." keith ellason smiled, but just barely. "you should have called me for the first trip." phipps nodded. "i wish we had had you on the _weblor i_." "crewmen," rexroad said, "make poor reporters." the _weblor i_ had taken off on the first trip to antheon five years before with a thousand families, reached the planet with less than five hundred surviving colonists. upon the return to earth a year later, the crew's report of suffering and chaos during the year's outgoing voyage was twisted, distorted and fragmentary. ellason remembered it well. the decision of interstellar was that the colonists started a revolution far out in space, that it was fanned by the ignorance of captain sessions in dealing with such matters. "space affects men in a peculiar way," phipps said. "we have conquered the problem of small groups in space--witness the discovery of antheon, for example--but when there are large groups, control is more difficult." "sessions," rexroad said, "was a bully. the trouble started at about the halfway point. it ended with passengers engaging in open warfare with each other and the crew. sessions was lucky to escape with his life." "as i recall," ellason said, "there was something about stunners." phipps rubbed his chin. "no weapons were allowed on the ship, but you must remember the colonists were selected for their intelligence and resourcefulness. they utilized these attributes to set up weapon shops to arm themselves." "the second trip is history," rexroad said. "and a puzzle." * * * * * ellason nodded. "the ship disappeared." "yes. we gave control to the colonists." "assuming no accident in space," phipps said, "it was a wrong decision. they probably took over the ship." "and now," ellason said, "you're going to try again." rexroad said very gravely, "we've got the finest captain in interplanetary. harvey branson. no doubt you've heard of him. he's spent his life in our own system, and he's handpicking his own crew. we have also raised prerequisites for applicants. we don't think anything is going to happen, but if it does, we want to get an impersonal, unprejudiced view. that's where you come in. you do the observing, the reporting. we'll evaluate it on your return." "if i return," said ellason. "i suppose that's problematical," phipps said, "but i think you will. captain branson and his fifty crewmen want to return as badly as you do." he grinned. "you can write that novel you're always talking about on your return trip on the _weblor ii_." _being a nilly is important, probably as important as running the ship, and i think it is this thought that keeps us satisfied, willing to be what we are._ * * * * * the _weblor ii_ had been built in space, as had its predecessor, the _weblor i_, at a tremendous cost. basically, it was an instrument which would open distant vistas to colonization, reducing the shoulder-to-shoulder pressure of a crowded solar system. a gigantic, hollow spike, the ship would never land anywhere, but would circle antheon as it circled earth, shuttling its cargo and passengers to the promised land, the new frontier. a space-borne metropolis, it would be the home for three thousand persons outward bound, only the crew on the return trip. it was equipped with every conceivable facility and comfort--dining rooms, assembly hall, individual and family compartments, recreation areas, swimming pool, library, theater. nothing had been overlooked. the captain's briefing room was crowded, the air was heavy with the breathing of so many men, and the ventilators could not quite clear the air of tobacco smoke that drifted aimlessly here and there before it was caught and whisked away. in the tradition of newspaperman and observer, keith ellason tried to be as inconspicuous as possible, pressing against a bulkhead, but captain branson's eyes sought his several times as branson listened to final reports from his engineers, record keepers, fuel men, computermen, and all the rest. he grunted his approval or disapproval, made a suggestion here, a restriction there. there was no doubt that branson was in charge, yet there was a human quality about him that ellason liked. the captain's was a lean face, well tanned, and his eyes were chunks of blue. "gentlemen," branson said at last, as ellason knew he would, "i want to introduce keith ellason, whose presence interstellar has impressed upon us. on loan from transworld, he will have an observer status." he introduced him to the others. all of them seemed friendly; ellason thought it was a good staff. branson detained him after the others had gone. "one thing, mr. ellason. to make it easier for you, i suggest you think of this journey strictly from the observer viewpoint. there will be no story for transworld at the end." ellason was startled. while he had considered the possibility, he had not dwelt on it. now it loomed large in his mind. "i don't understand, captain branson. it seems to me--" "let me put it differently. let me say that you will not understand why i say that until the journey ends." he smiled. "perhaps i shouldn't have mentioned it." * * * * * ellason left the captain's quarters with an odd taste in his mouth. now why had branson said that? why hadn't rexroad or phipps said something, if it was important? he made himself comfortable in his seven-foot-by-seven-foot cubicle, which is to say he dropped on his bed, found it more comfortable than he thought it would be, put his arms behind his head, stared at the ceiling. metal walls, no windows, one floor vent, one ceiling vent, and a solitary ceiling molding tube-light. this would be his home for a year, just as there were homes like it for three thousand others, except that the family rooms would be larger. his quarters were near the front of the spike near the officers' quarters. he felt rather than heard the dull rumble. it was a sound he knew would be with him for two years--one year going and one year returning. he looked at his watch, picked up his notebook and made an entry. the ship right now would be slipping ever so slowly away from earth. he got up. he'd have to go forward to the observation dome to see that. last view of earth for two years. _the penetration of space by large groups is the coming out from under the traditions of thousands of years, and as these planet-orginated rules fall away, the floundering group seeks a new control, for they are humanity adrift, rudderless, for whom the stars are no longer bearings but nonexistent things, and values are altered if they are not shown the way._ the theft of carver janssen's attache case occurred on the thirty-first day out. in ellason's mind the incident, though insignificant from the standpoint of the ship as a whole, could very well be the cause of dissension later on. his notes covering it were therefore very thorough. janssen's case contained vegetable and flower seeds--thousands of them, according to the captain's bulletin, the ship's daily newsletter which went to all hands and passengers. in the bulletin the captain appealed to the thief to return the case to mr. janssen. he said it was significant that all en route had passed stability tests, and that it was to the ship's discredit that someone with criminal tendencies should have been permitted aboard. ellason had to smile at that. what did captain branson think of those colonists who killed each other on the _weblor i_? they had passed stability tests too. this, then, was what happened when you took three thousand strangers and stuck them in a can for a year. * * * * * when ellason saw branson about it, the captain said, "of course i realize it takes only a little thing like this to set things off. i know people get tired of seeing each other, playing the same tapes, looking at the stars from the observation dome, walking down the same corridors, reading the same books, eating the same meals, though god knows we try to vary it as much as we can. space creates rough edges. but the point is, we know all this, and knowing it, we shouldn't let it happen. we've got to find that thief." "what would he want seeds for? have you thought of that?" "of course. they'd have real value on antheon." ellason sought out carver janssen. he was a middle-aged man with a tired face and sad eyes. he said, "now what am i going to antheon for? i could only take along so much baggage and i threw out some comfort items to make room for the seeds. i'm a horticulturist, and interstellar asked me to go along. but what use am i now? where am i going to get seeds like those? do you know how long it took me to collect them? they're not ordinary seeds, mr. ellason." there was an appeal from janssen in the next day's newsletter describing the seeds, telling of their value, and requesting their return in the interests of the antheon colony and of humanity. on the thirty-fourth day a witness turned up who said he had seen a man emerging from janssen's compartment with the black case. "i didn't think anything of it at the time," jamieson dievers said. branson asked him to describe the man. "oh, he was about six feet tall, stocky build, and he wore a red rubber mask that covered his head completely." "didn't you think that was important?" branson asked in an outraged voice. "a man wearing a red mask?" dievers shrugged. "this is a spaceship. how would i know whether a red mask--or a blue or green one--does or doesn't belong on a spaceship?" although dievers' account appeared in the newsletter, it was largely discounted. "if it is true," branson told ellason, "the theft must be the work of a psychotic. but i don't believe jamieson dievers. it may well be he's the psychotic." he snorted. "red rubber mask! i think i'll have dievers put through psychiatry." attendant to taking notes on this incident, ellason noted a strange thing. janssen lived in that part of the ship known as the first quadrant, and those who lived in that quadrant--more than seven hundred men, women and children--felt that the thief must surely live in quadrant two or four. elias cromley, who had the compartment next to janssen's, sounded the consensus when he said, "surely a man wouldn't steal from his own quadrant, now would he, mr. ellason?" and so, ellason observed in his notebook, are wars created. _seen in space, stars are unmoving, silent, sterile bright eyes ever watchful and accusing. to men unused to it, such a sight numbs, compresses, stultifies. he introduces a countermeasure, proof he exists, which is any overt act, sometimes violent._ * * * * * on the forty-fifth day june failright, the young wife of one of the passenger meteorologists, ran screaming down one of the long corridors of the third quadrant. she told the captain she had been attacked in her compartment while her husband was in the ship's library. she was taken to one of the ship's doctors, who confirmed it. she said the culprit was a husky man wearing a red rubber mask, and though her description of what he had done did not appear in the story in the newsletter, it lost no time in penetrating every compartment of the ship. ellason was present when a delegation from the third quadrant called on captain branson, demanding action. branson remained seated behind his desk, unperturbed, saying, "i have no crewmen to spare for police duty." the delegation commenced speaking vehemently, to be quieted by branson's raised hand. "i sympathize," branson said, "but it is up to each quadrant to deal with its problems, whatever they may be. my job is to get us to antheon." the group left in a surly mood. "you wonder at my reluctance, mr. ellason," captain branson said. "but suppose i assign the crew to patrol duties, the culprit isn't caught, and further incidents occur. what then? it soon becomes the crew's fault. and soon the colonists will begin thinking these things might be the crew's doing in the first place." "yes," ellason said, "but what if the intruder is a crewman?" "i know my men," branson said flatly. "you could have a shake-down for the mask and the seed case." "do you think it is a member of the crew?" branson's eyes were bright. "no, i trust my men. i won't violate that trust." ellason left, feeling uneasy. if he were branson, he'd initiate an investigation, if nothing else than to prove the crew guiltless. why couldn't branson see the wisdom of setting an example for the colonists? _as a nilly, i knew that space breeds hate. there is a seed of malevolence in every man. it sometimes blossoms out among the stars. on the_ weblor ii _it was ready for ripening._ raymond palugger was killed in the ship's hospital on the sixty-first day. palugger, a fourth quadrant passenger, had complained of feeling ill, had been hospitalized with a diagnosis of ileus. he had put his money belt in the drawer of the small stand beside his bed. a man in a red mask was seen hurrying from the hospital area, and a staff investigation revealed that palugger had died trying to prevent the theft of the belt. captain branson did not wait for the newsletter. through the ship's speaker system, he reported that palugger had a fortune in credits in the belt and had died of a severe beating. he said that since the incident occurred in the staff section of the ship, his crew would be forced to submit to a thorough inspection in an effort to find the mask, the seed case, the money and the man. "i will not countenance such an act by a crewman," branson said. "if and when he is found, he will be severely dealt with. but he might not be a member of the crew. i am ordering an assembly of all passengers at nine tomorrow morning in the auditorium. i will speak to you all then." * * * * * faces were angry, tongues were sharp at the meeting, eyes suspicious and tempers short. above it all was the overpowering presence of captain branson speaking to them. "it is not my desire to interfere in passenger affairs," he said. "insofar as the ship is concerned, it is my duty to make certain no crewman is guilty. this i am doing. but my crew is not and cannot be a police force for you. it is up to you people to police and protect yourselves." "how can we protect ourselves without stunners?" one colonist called out. "has red mask a gun?" branson retorted. "it seems to me you have a better weapon than any gun." "what's that?" "this ship is only so wide, so long and so deep. if every inch is searched, you'll find your man. he has to be somewhere aboard." the colonists quieted. benjamin simpson, one of the older men, was elected president of the newly formed quadrant council. one man from each of the quadrants was named to serve under him. each of these men in turn selected five others from his own group. those assembled waited in the hall while each team of six inspected the compartments of the others. these compartments were then locked, everyone returned to his compartment, and the larger search was conducted. it took twenty hours. no mask was found. no mask, no case, no money, no man. the captain reported that his search had been equally fruitless. at another assembly the following day it was decided to make the inspection teams permanent, to await further moves on the part of red mask. the quadrant council held periodic meetings to set up a method of trial for him when he was caught. it was all recorded in the newsletter and by keith ellason. _we nillys know about hate and about violence. we know too that where there is hate there is violence, and where there is violence there is death._ * * * * * during sleep time on the seventy-ninth day barbara stoneman, awakened by a strange sound, sat up in the bed of her compartment to find a man in a red mask in her room. her cries brought neighbors into the corridor. the flight of the man was witnessed by many, and several men tried to stop him. but the intruder was light on his feet and fast. he escaped. the quadrant council confronted the captain, demanding weapons. "are you out of your minds?" branson exclaimed. tom tilbury, fourth quadrant leader, said, "we want to set up a police force, captain. we want stunners." "there's no law against it," branson said, "but it's a rule of mine that no weapons are to be issued en route." "if we had had a gun, we'd have got red mask," tilbury said. "and i might have a murder on my conscience." tilbury said, "we've also thought of that. suppose you supply us with half-power stunners? that way we can stun but not kill." they got their guns. now there were twenty-four policemen on duty in the corridors--eight on at a time. ellason observed that for the first time the passengers seemed relaxed. let red mask move against armed men, they said. yeah, let him see what happens now. red mask did. * * * * * on the st day he was seen in a corridor in quadrant four. emil pierce, policeman on duty, managed to squeeze off several shots at his retreating figure. red mask was seen again on the th day, on the th day, and the th day. he was seen, shot at, but not hit. he was also unable to commit any crime. we've got him on the run, the colonists said. he's afraid to do anything, now that we've got police protection, they said smugly. the quadrant council congratulated itself. the passengers were proud of themselves. a special congratulatory message from captain branson appeared one day in the bulletin newsletter. the colonists settled down to living out the rest of the voyage until the landing on antheon. but on the th day calamity struck. red mask appropriated one of the stunners, made his way down one whole corridor section in quadrant two, put occupants to sleep as he went, taking many articles of value and leaving disorder behind. ellason interviewed as many victims as he could, noted it all in his book. the things taken were keepsakes, photographs and items of personal value. it seemed to be the work of a madman. if red mask wanted to make everyone furious, he certainly succeeded. "what does he want that stuff for?" casey stromberg, a passenger doctor, asked. "i can see him taking my narcotics, my doctor's kit--but my dead wife's picture? that i don't understand." it was the same with others. "the man's insane, mr. ellason. positively insane." many people said it. the council issued orders that all passengers from now on would be required to lock their compartments at all times. more guns were obtained from the captain. more policemen were appointed. ellason was busy noting it all in his book. it became filled with jottings about innocent people being accidentally stunned when trigger-happy policemen thought their movements suspicious, about one man's suspicion of another and the ensuing search of compartments, people who saw red mask here, saw him there. hardly a day went by without some new development. "oh, yes, mr. ellason, we're going to get him," said tilbury, now chief of police, cracking his knuckles, his eyes glowing at the thought. "we're bound to get him. we've got things worked out to the finest detail. he won't be able to get through our fingers now. just let him make so much as a move." "and what will you do when you get him?" "kill him," tilbury said, licking his lips, his eyes glowing more fiercely than ever. "without a trial?" "oh, there'll be a trial, mr. ellason, but you don't think any jury'd let him live after all the things he's done, do you?" * * * * * red mask was stunned in quadrant four in a corridor by a policeman named terryl placer on the st day. the criminal was carried to the assembly room surrounded by guards, for he surely would have been mauled, if not killed, by angry colonists who crowded around. in the assembly hall his mask was whipped off. the crowd gasped. nobody knew him. ellason's first thought was that he must be a stowaway, but then he remembered the face, and captain branson, who came to have a look at him, unhappily admitted the man was a member of the crew. his name was harrel critten and he was a record keeper third class. "well, critten," branson roared at him, "what have you got to say for yourself?" "go to hell," critten said quietly. as if it were an afterthought, he spat at the captain. branson looked as if he were going to kill the man himself right there and then. it was a long trial--from the th to the st day--and there didn't seem to be much doubt about the outcome, for critten didn't help his own cause during any of it. lemuel tarper, who was appointed prosecutor, asked him, "what did you do with the loot, critten?" critten looked him square in the eye and said, "i threw it out one of the escape chutes. does that answer your question?" "threw it away?" tarper and the crowd were incredulous. "sure," critten said. "you colonists got the easy life as passengers, just sitting around. i had to work my head off keeping records for you lazy bastards." the verdict was, of course, death. they executed harrel critten on the morning of the th day with blasts from six stunners supplied with full power. it was witnessed by a great crowd in the assembly hall. a detail from the ship's crew disposed of his body through a chute. it was all duly recorded in keith ellason's notebooks. _dying is easy for a nilly. especially if it's arranged for beforehand, which it always is._ * * * * * the _weblor ii_ was only one day out of orbit when captain branson sent for ellason and introduced him to the executed man. "hello," critten said, grinning from ear to ear. "i figured as much," ellason said. "i've been doing a lot of thinking." "you're perhaps a little too good as an observer," branson said. "or maybe it was because you really weren't one of the colonists. but no matter, critten did a good job. he was trained by an old friend of mine for this job, gelthorpe nill. nill used to be in counter-espionage when there were wars." "you were excellent," ellason said. "can't say i enjoyed the role," said critten, "but i think it saved lives." "let me get this straight. interstellar thought that it was idleness and boredom that caused the killings on the _weblor i_, so they had you trained to be a scapegoat. is that right?" critten nodded. "when great numbers are being transported, they are apt to magnify each little event because so little happens. it was my job to see that they directed none of their venom against each other or the crew, only toward me." branson smiled. "it made the time pass quickly and interestingly for the passengers." "to say nothing of me," critten said. "and you, mr. ellason, were along to observe it all," captain branson put in. "interstellar wanted an accurate picture of this. if it worked, they told me they'd use it on other trips to antheon." ellason nodded. "no time for brooding, for differences of opinion on small matters. just time to hate mr. critten. unanimously." "probably," critten said, "you are wondering about the execution." "naturally." "we removed the charges before the guns were used." "and carver janssen's case?" "he'll get it back when he's shuttled to antheon. and all the other items will be returned. they're all tagged with their owner's names. captain branson will say they were found somewhere on the ship. you see, i was a liar." "how about that assault on june failright?" critten grinned again. "she played right into our hands. she ran out into the hall claiming i'd attacked her, which i did not. she was certainly amazed when the ship's physicians agreed with her. of course captain branson told them to do that." "and the murder?" "raymond palugger died in the hospital all right, but he died from his illness on the operating table. we turned it into an advantage by making it look suspicious." ellason brightened. "and by that time everybody was seeing red mask everywhere and the colonists organized against him." "gave them something to do," branson said. "every time things got dull, i livened them up. i got a stunner and robbed along the corridor. that really stirred them. lucky nobody got hurt during any of it, including that stoneman woman. i was trying to rob her when she woke up." * * * * * branson cleared his throat. "ah, ellason about that story. you understand you can't write it, don't you?" ellason said regretfully that he did understand. "the colonists will never know the truth," branson went on. "there will be other ships outward bound." critten sighed. "and i'll have to be caught again." _yes, we're anonymous, nameless, we nillys, for that's what we call each other, and are a theme, with variations, in the endless stretches of deep space, objects of hatred and contempt, professional heels, dying once a trip when the time is ripe, antidote to boredom, and we'll ply our trade, our little tragedies, on a thousand ships bringing humanity to new worlds._ ... so they baked a cake by winston marks (_illustrated by tom beecham_) [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from dynamic science fiction january . extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] he was tired of people--a "human interest" columnist, who specializes in glamorizations of the commonplace and sordid is likely to get that way. so ... this starship seemed to offer the ideal escape from it all. sure, i was one of the tough guys who said it would be great, just great, to get away from the boiling mess of humanity that stank up every inhabitable rock on earth. not being the daniel boone type, this was my private qualification for the job--being fed up to here with people, with the smothering bureaucracy of world government, with restrictions and rationing and synthetic diet supplements and synthetic blondes and mass hypochondria and phony emotions and standing in line to get into a pay toilet. i hated my profession, trying to wring glamorous interviews out of bewildered heroes and press-agents' darlings and pompous politicians and snotty millionaires and brave little wronged chorus girls. their lives were no more glamorous than their readers. they were the same mixture of greed and fear and smelly sweat and deceit and two-bit passion. my particular prostitution was to transform their peccadilloes into virtues, their stubbed toes into tragedies and their fornications into romance. and i'd been at it so long i couldn't stand the odor of my own typewriter. of course, i was so thunderstruck at being chosen as one of the -man crew for the _albert e._ that i never got to gloating over it much until we were out in deep space. yes, it was quite an honor, to say nothing of the pure luck involved. something like winning the luna sweepstakes, only twice as exclusive. we were the pioneers on the first starship, the first to try out the _larson drive_ in deep space. at last, man's travel would be measured in parsecs, for our destination was trillion miles down near the celestial south pole. not much more than a parsec--but a parsec, nonetheless. as a journalist, such distances and the fabulous velocities involved were quite meaningless to me. my appointment as official scribe for the expedition was not based on my galactic know-how, but rather on my reputation as a nobel-winning columnist, the lucky one out of fifty-six who entered the lottery. larson, himself, would keep me supplied with the science data, and i was to chronicle the events from the human interest side as well as recording the technical stuff fed to me. actually, i had no intentions of writing a single word. to hell with posterity and the immortality of a race that couldn't read without moving its lips. the square case i had carried aboard so tenderly contained not my portable typewriter, but six bottles of forbidden rye whiskey, and i intended to drink every drop of it myself. * * * * * so, at last we were in space, after weeks of partying, dedications and speech-making and farewell dinners, none of which aroused in me a damned regret for my decision to forsake my generation of fellow-scrabblers. yes, we were all warned that, fast as the _larson drive_ was, it would take us over years, earth-measured time, to reach our destination. even if we found no planets to explore, turned around and came right back, the roundtrip would consume the lifetimes of even the new babies we left behind. to me this was a perversely comforting thought. all i wanted to know was how they expected me to live long enough to complete the journey? i could think of pleasanter ways to spend my last days than cooped up in this sardine can with a passel of fish-faced, star-happy scientists. i was when we departed, which would make me a lucky if i was still wiggling when we hove into our celestial port. but the mathematicians said to relax. their space-time theory provided, they claimed, a neat device for survival on our high-velocity journey. the faster a body moves in reference to another, the slower time appears to act on the moving body. if, they said, man could travel at the speed of light, supposedly time would stand still for him. this, i reflected, would mean human immortality--much too good for people. anyway, since our average velocity for the trip was planned to come out around a tenth of the speed of light, to us on the _albert e._, only about five months would seem to have elapsed for the journey that would consume - / years, earth-time. it seemed to me they were laying a hell of a lot of faith in a theory that we were the first to test out. our food, water and air-supplies gave us a very small safety margin. with strict rationing we would be self-sufficient for just months. that left us just two months to fool around looking for a place to sit down. i mentioned this item to larson on the second day out. i found him at coffee mess sitting alone, staring at his ugly big hairy hands. he was a tall swede with a slight stoop and the withdrawn manner of a myopic scholar. as commander of the ship he had the right to keep aloof, but as scribe, i had the privilege of chewing him for information. i said, "skipper, if it took us generations to discover all the planets in our own little solar system, what do you figure the chances are of our spotting a planet near our goal, in the short time of two months?" * * * * * he was silent while i drew my ration of coffee and sugar, then he opened his hands and seemed to find words written on his palms. his eyes never did come up from beneath his shaggy eyebrows. "if they exist," he said slowly, "we might find one. we have better telescopes and our vantage point in space will be superior." he was a sorry-looking specimen, and i remembered that the fifty-year-old scientist had left behind a youngish wife who adored the ground he walked on. the handsome, blonde woman had stood heroically beside the ramp and watched, dry-eyed, as her husband ascended. there had been no visible exchange of farewells at the end, as he stood beside me in the air-lock. they just stared into each other's eyes oblivious to all but the maudlin sorrow of their separation. then the portal had closed and widowed her, and i had the feeling that larson was going to tear at the great, threaded door with his bare hands and renounce the whole project. but he just stood there breathing a little heavy and clenching those tremendous hands until it was time to take off. in a way i envied him an emotion that was long dead in me, dead of the slow corrosive poison of contempt for the whole human race. dead and pickled in the formaldehyde of ten thousand columns for which the syndicates had paid me nothing but cold money. here was a man whose heart could still love, and i hated him for it. i said, "you look like you still have regrets. maybe this isn't worth your personal sacrifices, after all. if we don't find an inhabitable planet we won't have accomplished much." "you are wrong," he said quickly. "we have already served our purpose." "testing the drive, you mean?" he nodded. "this morning in our last radio contact with earth i dispatched the word. the _larson drive_ is successful. we have passed from our solar system on schedule, and our measurements of ship-objective time check out with the theory--roughly, at least." he spread his hands out on the table. "this was our primary goal. the expedition ahead is subsidiary. colonization may result from our exploration, true; but now we have opened the universe." it was nice to know that things were progressing as planned. i asked, "what do you mean about things checking 'roughly'? is there some error?" he nodded and swallowed the dregs from the magnesium cup. "a considerable error, but it's on the safe side. our velocity checks perfectly, but our estimate of the time-shrinkage factor is so far off that mr. einstein's formulae will take some major revision to reconcile what has happened." "we'll arrive sooner than planned?" larson nodded again. "according to shipboard elapsed time we will arrive in the vicinity of our destination in just ninety-two hours from now--a total of hours since take-off. you were worrying earlier about our scanty supplies; this should put your mind at rest." it didn't displease me. the lack of privacy on this tin bathtub was even worse than i had anticipated. the news came as sort of a reprieve. i looked at larson, and suddenly i knew why the long face. his tina! for her, ten years would already have passed, and as we sat there talking, weeks of her existence were fading into oblivion--and hans larson was begrudging every second of it. damned fool, should have stayed at home. i left him brooding into his empty cup and went forward to the little control dome. one wonderful attribute of the _larson drive_ was that there was no acceleration discomfort. gravity was nullified at the outset, and ship's gravity was kept at an comfortable one-half "g". * * * * * mac hulbert, chief navigator, was alone up there, one foot cocked up on the edge of the broad instrument-board that looked like a cluttered desk-top with handles. he was staring out into the void. yes, void! they had said it would be black in space, but not even a glimmer of light showed through the transparent dome. as you looked to the side and back, faint, violent specks seemed to catch at your peripheral vision, but it was impossible to focus on a single heavenly body. mac didn't turn or greet me. his face was no longer that of the carefree adventurer with whom i had tied on a fair binge less than a week ago. "getting you down, too, mac?" i asked. he was about the only one aboard i could even tolerate. he wasn't as sour on humanity as i, but he granted me the right to my opinions, which was something. "god, yes!" he said. "skipper tell you about the time-error?" i said, "yes, but what's there to be sad about? you don't mind that part, do you?" to my knowledge, mac hadn't left anything behind but his dirty laundry. hulbert was in his mid-thirties, slender, balding and normally as cheerful and stupidly optimistic as they come. now he looked worse off than larson. "yeah, i mind that," he said kind of resentfully. "i thought we'd have more time to--sort of get used to the idea of--well, outgrowing our generation. but think, by now many of my older buddies will be dead. a dozen world series will be over. who knows, maybe there's a war going on back there?" of all the morbid nonsense. yearning for the obituary column, the sports page and the headlines. but then people are rarely sensible when something disturbs their tidy little universe that they take for granted. it was a little terrifying, though, staring out into that smothering lamp-black. we were moving so fast and living so slowly that even the light-waves from the galaxies toward which we moved had disappeared. we were reversing the "redshift" effect of receding light sources. we approached the stars before us at such a velocity that their light impinged at a rate above the visible violet spectrum. mac blurted out, "it will never work out." "what won't?" "colonization. not at these unholy distances, even if we do find an earth-type planet or two. people won't leave everything behind them like this. i--i feel cut off. something's gone, everything, everybody we knew back there. it's terrible to consider!" * * * * * i sat down beside him, stared out into the india-ink and faced a few over-due realities myself. our chances of finding a habitable planet were remote. finding intelligent life on it was even more unlikely. that such life would resemble men, was so improbable that the odds in favor were virtually nonexistent. so--what had i really to look forward to? a quick survey of the star-system in the company of these nincompoop ideo-savants, then a return to a civilization of complete strangers--a culture in which we would all be anachronisms, almost a century behind the times. a parade of faces began peering at me out of the darkness. there was bess with the golden hair, and carol and petite annette--and cliff, my red-headed old room-mate who knew how to charcoal-broil a steak--and our bachelor apartment with the battered old teevee set and my collection of books and pipes, and there was my out-board jet up on lovely lake vermillion where a man could still catch a fat pike. what would it be like when we got back? more people, less food, tighter rationing, crowding beyond conception. hell! when the rest of the crew learned of our sharply-revised estimated time of arrival they came down with the same emotional cramps afflicting larson and hulbert. it was sickening, a bunch of so-called mature technicians and scientists moping around like a barracks full of drafted rookies, matching miniature billfold photos of cuties that were now approaching crone-hood. the whole venture had become a tragic affair overnight, and for the next few days all thoughts turned backward. so nobody was remotely prepared for what happened. they were even unprepared to think straight--with their heads instead of their hearts. and larson was worst of all! on the last day larson eased off our -mile-per-second velocity, and as the stars started showing again, shifting from faint violet down into the more cheerful spectrum, spirits aboard began lifting a little. * * * * * i was in the control-room with larson and mac when we got our first inkling. mac was fooling with the electronic search gear, sweeping for planets, when he gave a yip and pointed a jabbing finger at the scope. "audio," he stammered. "look at that!" he lengthened the sweep and the jumble of vertical lines spread out like a picket fence made of rubber. "a carrier wave with audio modulation," he said with disbelief all over his face. larson remained calm. "i hear you, lad. don't shout." he studied the signal and frowned deeply. "it's faint, but you can get a fix." as they played with the instruments i looked forward through the green shield that protected us from alpha c's heavy radiation. our destination star was now a brilliant blob dominating our piece of heaven. it was a difficult thing to grasp that we had travelled almost trillion miles--in five days, ship's time. mac said, "it's a planet, sure enough, but that audio--" larson snapped, "forget the audio! give me a bearing, and let's be getting on course. that may be the only planet in the system, and i don't want to lose it." his arms pumped and his big hands pawed at the controls as he brought the inertialess drive into manual manipulations. for the next few, tense hours we stalked the planet at a discreetly low velocity. when his navigation problem was complete and we were on a slow approach orbit, mac began playing with the communication rig again. the ship's intercom was cut in, and we had to chase people out as excitement mounted over our discovery. finally, when his elbow had been jostled once too often, larson ordered the control room cleared of all hands but hulbert and me. when we were alone larson said, "this is fantastic." mac's face was tied into an amazed scowl, too, as he studied the feeble little patterns on his wave analyzer. "you said it," he breathed. "we've got ourselves a sweet little earth-type planet, if we can believe the spectro, and unless i'm stark space-happy, there's something or somebody down there beaming a broadcast smack in our direction, following us around like the string on a yo-yo." "how do you figure that?" larson wanted to know. mac replied, "at this distance the field strength is too strong for anything but a beamed transmission. mister, _they have us bracketed_." mac swung to the panel on his left and cut in the communication circuit. "it's strong enough to listen to, now. let's see what kind of gibberish we can wring out of that carrier wave." he threw a couple of switches and hunted for the exact frequency. a whisper and a rustle of the carrier brushed the speaker. mac centered in and turned up the volume. then even i sucked air. a voice issued from the sound-cone. a man's voice: "--lcome to new columbia. welcome, _albert e._ come in, please. welcome to new columbia. welcome, _albert e._ come in please." * * * * * it repeated over and over. larson let his breath go first with a nervous snort. mac and larson both looked at me as if maybe i had something to do with it. hands trembling, mac picked up the microphone and reached for the transmitter switch. larson grabbed the mike from his hand. "not so fast, dammit!" "but they know we're up here," mac protested. "they even know the name of our ship!" "and our language," i added. i wasn't bored any more. larson nodded slowly. "what kind of devilish intelligence have we run into? i need time--to think." the way he said it sent a cold draught down my spine, and then my imagination started catching up to his. at our rate of approach to the star system, how could any living being have had time to sense our presence, pick our brains to learn our ship's name, our language, master our method of communication, contrive a transmitter and get on the air? the magnitude of the accomplishment sent the importance of our little triumph of space travel tumbling into a cocked limbo of insignificance. for a moment i considered the old curvature of space concept. could we have somehow doubled back--completing a mystic circle? was that old sol up there burning through our green shield? what a laugh that would be! the mental giants of our times backtracking and circling like a tenderfoot lost in the woods on lake minnetonka. mac cut off the transmitter reluctantly, but he said, "yeah, i guess i see what you mean, skipper." larson got to his feet and paced the crowded wedge of space, punching a fist into his other hand with meaty slaps. he stopped and listened to the soft muttering of the speaker and shook his head. "it makes no sense. it's impossible. utterly impossible!" the man's voice from the planet implacably continued repeating the message--no trace of an accent, nothing to suggest an alien origin in its tone, pitch or enunciation. perhaps that's what threw larson so hard. if there had been the faintest taint of other worldliness about it, i think he'd have hauled stakes and gotten us out of there. but the song of the siren was too powerful--the irresistible mental image of a fellow human out here in the bottom of space was salt in the bleeding wounds of larson's loneliness. he stared out where the planet must be, some million miles before us. suddenly the tenseness relaxed from his face and he got the damndest expression of mixed incredulity, hopefulness and sorrow. tears began welling from his eyes and streaming down the rugged contours of his cheeks. it didn't add. nor could i reason a motive for his laconic command: "intersection orbit, mr. hulbert. we'll take her down," he said quietly. that was all. he hunched over the control board and moved things according to mac's computations. * * * * * soon i could make out the planet. we came in from an obtuse angle with its sun, so it showed first as a crescent of pale, green silver. then it filled the viewing dome, and mac began working the homing equipment. "may i acknowledge their message now, skipper?" larson shook his head with compressed lips. "but if we are going in anyway--" mac argued. "no!" larson exploded. then his voice softened. "i think i know the mystery of the voice," he said. "it must be, it must be! but if it isn't--if i'm wrong--god alone knows. we must chance it. i don't want to know differently--until it's too late." this was just real great. larson had some fantastic notion, and he wanted it to be true so damned badly that he was taking us into blind jeopardy when we had the means to probe it first. real scientific, that. humans! men, and their so-called sense of reason! larson was a crowning example of the sloppy-hearted thing i was fleeing when i embarked on this joy-ride, and now it would probably be my undoing. we were homing in on the transmission from "new columbia", easing down into the atmosphere, and now clouds and land and water formations took shape. the beam led us to the sunlit rim of dawn, and suddenly we were hovering over a great forest, slit at intervals with streaks of glittering blue that looked like deep, wide rivers. now mac touched a switch, and the cw whistle gave us a tight audio beam to follow to the source of the signal. larson switched to the micro landing controls to ride in like a jet liner on the frisco-shanghai run. we slanted gently down until the forest became trees, and the little blue-green splotches were lush, grassy meadows. and there was the tower, and the low buildings--and the spaceship! something happened to me inside when i saw that. it was a kind of tremolo feeling, like a note in a new symphony, a note that springs free and alone, wavering uncertainly, and you don't know which way it will turn. in seconds that seemed like hours, we were on the ground, the ramp was jammed out and larson was blundering down it crying like a baby. * * * * * i stood in the port breathing the warm air redolent with exotic new scents and yawped like an idiot, trying to make sense of the huge banner strung a hundred yards across one whole side of the little village. the banner read: welcome, hans! welcome albert e. we knew you were coming, so-- and near the center of the banner was the largest chocolate cake, or facsimile thereof, in all creation. it must have been ten feet high and twenty feet in diameter. but hans larson wasn't amused by the cosmic gag. he galloped off that gang-plank like a love-sick gorilla. and i'm a comet's uncle if tina wasn't there, racing out to meet him, larson had guessed the truth, and no wonder he hadn't had the guts to test it beforehand! by the time i got down, out and over to where they were all wrapped up mingling tears, i had it pretty well doped out myself. i don't know why we had figured that all progress and improvement in interstellar flight would cease just because we had left earth. the eternal, colossal conceit of men, i guess. when our last signal back to earth had given the okay sign, sure, they started building bigger ships and recruiting another crew. but by the time that the _albert e. ii_, was ready to take off for a more extended expedition, the _larson drive_ was now the _larson-mckendrick drive_, with a velocity of a full half the speed of light, some five times our velocity. somehow, tina had managed to get herself in the party, as hans had sensed she would. and the time-differential, as it worked out, wasn't serious at all. tina had been only when we left her on earth. including the year and a half she had already been with the colony on new columbia, she was still quite a bit younger than hans, and just twice as pretty as the day of their separation. the tremolo note was rising now, the soft, mystic pitch of excitement inherent in the new world. i turned to mac, who was grinning like to split his face. i said, "looks like you were wrong, old boy--about the impossibility of colonizing." he nodded his head readily, but he wouldn't tear his eyes away from that monsterous, preposterous chocolate cake. the attraction, i discovered, was a little bevy of on-lookers who stood at its base. they were a dozen or more most attractive colonists in the younger age-bracket and unmistakably of the opposite sex. mac said, "yeah, i was wrong about colonizing prospects. dead wrong. aren't you glad?" and now the tremolo feeling split into a crescendo of sub-harmonics and overtones, a magnificent chord of attunement with life and humanity everywhere in the universe. and all at once i knew _i was glad_, happy as hell to see these people from the old hometown of earth. cakewalk to gloryanna by l. j. stecher, jr. [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from worlds of tomorrow june extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] the job was easy. the profit was enormous. the only trouble was--the cargo had a will of its own! captain hannah climbed painfully down from the _delta crucis_, hobbled across the spaceport to where beulah and i were waiting to greet him and hit me in the eye. beulah--that's his elephant, but i have to take care of her for him because beulah's baby belongs to me and beulah has to take care of it--kept us apart until we both cooled down a little. then, although still somewhat dubious about it, she let us go together across the field to the spaceport bar. i didn't ask captain hannah why he had socked me. although he has never been a handsome man, he usually has the weathered and austere dignity that comes from plying the remote reaches among the stars. call it the look of eagles. captain hannah had lost the look of eagles. his eyes were swollen almost shut; every inch of him that showed was a red mass of welts piled on more welts, as though he had tangled with a hive of misanthropic bees. the gold-braided hat of his trade was not clamped in its usual belligerent position slightly over one eye. it was riding high on his head, apparently held up by more of the ubiquitous swellings. i figured that he figured that i had something to do with the way he looked. "shipping marocca to gloryanna iii didn't turn out to be a cakewalk after all?" i suggested. he glared at me in silence. "perhaps you would like a drink first, and then you would be willing to tell me about it?" i decided that his wince was intended for a nod, and ordered rhial. i only drink rhial when i've been exposed to captain hannah. it was almost a pleasure to think that _i_ was responsible, for a change, for having _him_ take the therapy. "a _delta_ class freighter can carry almost anything," he said at last, in a travesty of his usual forceful voice. "but some things it should never try." * * * * * he lapsed back into silence after this uncharacteristic admission. i almost felt sorry for him, but just then beulah came racking across the field with her two-ton infant in tow, to show her off to hannah. i walled off my pity. he had foisted those two maudlin mastodons off onto me in one of our earlier deals, and if i had somehow been responsible for his present troubles, it was no more than he deserved. i rated winning for once. "you _did_ succeed in getting the marocca to gloryanna iii?" i asked anxiously, after the elephants had been admired and sent back home. the success of that venture--even if the job had turned out to be more difficult than we had expected--meant an enormous profit to both of us. the fruit of the marocca is delicious and fabulously expensive. the plant grew only on the single planet mypore ii. transshipped seeds invariably failed to germinate, which explained its rarity. the myporians were usually, and understandably, bitterly, opposed to letting any of the living plants get shipped off their planet. but when i offered them a sizable piece of cash plus a perpetual share of the profits for letting us take a load of marocca plants to gloryanna iii, they relented and, for the first time in history, gave their assent. in fact, they had seemed delighted. "i got them there safely," said captain hannah. "and they are growing all right?" i persisted. "when i left, marocca was growing like mad," said captain hannah. i relaxed and leaned back in my chair. i no longer felt the need of rhial for myself. "tell me about it," i suggested. * * * * * "it was you who said that we should carry those damn plants to gloryanna iii," he said balefully. "i ought to black your other eye." "simmer down and have some more rhial," i told him. "sure i get the credit for that. gloryanna iii is almost a twin to mypore ii. you know that marocca takes a very special kind of environment. bright sun most of the time--that means an almost cloudless environment. a very equable climate. days and nights the same length and no seasons--that means no ecliptical and no axial tilt. but our tests showed that the plants had enough tolerance to cause no trouble in the trip in _delta crucis_." a light dawned. "our tests were no good?" "your tests were no good," agreed the captain with feeling. "i'll tell you about it first, and _then_ i'll black your other eye," he decided. "you'll remember that i warned you that we should take some marocca out into space and solve any problems we might find before committing ourselves to hauling a full load of it?" asked captain hannah. "we couldn't," i protested. "the myporians gave us a deadline. if we had gone through all of that rigamarole, we would have lost the franchise. besides, they gave you full written instructions about what to do under all possible circumstances." "sure. written in myporian. a very difficult language to translate. especially when you're barricaded in the head." i almost asked him why he had been barricaded in the bathroom of the _delta crucis_, but i figured it was safer to let him tell me in his own way, in his own time. "well," he said, "i got into parking orbit around mypore without any trouble. the plastic film kept the water in the hydroponic tanks without any trouble, even in a no-gravity condition. and by the time i had lined up for gloryanna and jumped, i figured, like you said, that the trip would be a cakewalk. "do you remember how the plants always keep their leaves facing the sun? they twist on their stems all day, and then they go on twisting them all night, still pointing at the underground sun, so that they're aimed right at sunrise. so the stem looks like a corkscrew?" i nodded. "sure. that's why they can't stand an axial tilt. they 'remember' the rate and direction of movement, and keep it up during the night time. so what? we had that problem all figured out." "you think so? that solution was one of yours, too, wasn't it?" he gazed moodily at his beaker of rhial. "i must admit it sounded good to me, too. in limbo, moving at multiple light-speeds, the whole universe, of course, turns into a bright glowing spot in our direction of motion, with everything else dark. so i lined up the _delta crucis_ perpendicular to her direction of motion, put a once-every-twenty-one hour spin on her to match the rotation rates of mypore ii and gloryanna iii, and uncovered the view ports to let in the light. it gradually brightened until 'noon time', with the ports pointing straight at the light source, and then dimmed until we had ten and one-half hours of darkness. "of course, it didn't work." * * * * * "for heaven's sake, why not?" "for heaven's sake why should it? with no gravity for reference, how were the plants supposed to know that the 'sun' was supposed to be moving?" "so what did you do?" i asked, when that had sunk in. "if the stem doesn't keep winding, the plants die; and they can only take a few extra hours of night time before they run down." "oh," said captain hannah in quiet tones of controlled desperation, "it was very simple. i just put enough spin on the ship to make artificial gravity, and then i strung a light and moved it every fifteen minutes for ten and one-half hours, until i had gone halfway around the room. then i could turn the light off and rest for ten and one-half hours. the plants liked it fine. "of course, first i had to move all the hydroponic tanks from their original positions perpendicular to the axial thrust line of the ship to a radial position. and because somehow we had picked up half of the plants in the northern hemisphere of mypore and the other half in the southern hemisphere, it turned out that half of the plants had a sinistral corkscrew and the other half had a dextral. so i had to set the plants up in two different rooms, and run an artificial sun for each, going clockwise with one, widdershins with the other. "i won't even talk about what i went through while i was shifting the hydroponic tanks, when all the plastic membranes that were supposed to keep the water in place started to break." "i'd like to know," i said sincerely. he stared at me in silence for a moment. "well, it filled the cabin with great solid bubbles of water. water bubbles will oscillate and wobble like soap bubbles," he went on dreamily, "but of course, they're not empty, like soap bubbles. the surface acts a little like a membrane, so that sometimes two of the things will touch and gently bounce apart without joining. but just try _touching_ one of them. you could drown--i almost did. several times. "i got a fire pump--an empty one. you know the kind; a wide cylinder with a piston with a handle, and a hose that you squirt the water out of, or can suck water in with. the way you use it is, you float up on a big ball of water, with the pump piston down--closed. you carefully poke the end of the hose into the ball of water, letting only the metal tip touch. _never_ the hose. if you let the hose touch, the water runs up it and tries to drown you. then you pull up on the piston, and draw all the water into the cylinder. of course, you have to hold the pump with your feet while you pull the handle with your free hand." "did it work?" i asked eagerly. "eventually. then i stopped to think of what to do with the water. it was full of minerals and manure and such, and i didn't want to introduce it into the ship's tanks." "but you solved the problem?" * * * * * "in a sense," said the captain. "i just emptied the pump back into the air, ignored the bubbles, repositioned the tanks, put spin on the ship and then ladled the liquid back into the tanks with a bucket." "didn't you bump into a lot of the bubbles and get yourself dunked a good deal while you were working with the tanks?" he shrugged. "i couldn't say. by that time i was ignoring them. it was that or suicide. i had begun to get the feeling that they were stalking me. so i drew a blank." "then after that you were all right, except for the tedium of moving the lights around?" i asked him. i answered myself at once. "no. there must be more. you haven't told me why you hid out in the bathroom, yet." "not yet," said captain hannah. "like you, i figured i had the situation fairly well under control, but like you, i hadn't thought things through. the plastic membranes hadn't torn when we brought the tanks in board the _delta crucis_. it never occurred to me to hunt around for the reasons for the change. but i wouldn't have had long to hunt anyway, because in a few hours the reasons came looking for me. "they were a tiny skeeter-like thing. a sort of midge or junior grade mosquito. they had apparently been swimming in the water during their larval stage. instead of making cocoons for themselves, they snipped tiny little pieces of plastic to use as protective covers in the pupal stage. i guess they were more like butterflies than mosquitoes in their habits. and now they were mature. "there were thousands and thousands of them, and each one of them made a tiny, maddening whine as it flew." "and they bit? that explains your bumps?" i asked sympathetically. "oh, no. these things didn't bite, they itched. and they got down inside of everything they could get down inside, and clung. that included my ears and my eyes and my nose. "i broke out a hand sprayer full of a ddt solution, and sprayed it around me to try to clear the nearby air a little, so that i could have room to think. the midges loved it. but the plants that were in reach died so fast that you could watch their leaves curl up and drop off. "i couldn't figure whether to turn up the fans and dissipate the cloud--by spreading it all through the ship--or whether to try to block off the other plant room, and save it at least. so i ended up by not doing anything, which was the right thing to do. no more plants died from the ddt. * * * * * "so then i did a few experiments, and found that the regular poison spray in the ship's fumigation system worked just fine. it killed the bugs without doing the plants any harm at all. of course, the fumigation system is designed to work with the fumigator off the ship, because it's poisonous to humans too. "i finally blocked the vents and the door edges in the head, after running some remote controls into there, and then started the fumigation system going. while i was sitting there with nothing much to do, i tried to translate what i could of the myporian instructions. it was on page eleven that it mentioned casually that the midges--the correct word is carolla--are a necessary part of the life cycle of the marocca. the larvae provide an enzyme without which the plants die. "of course. i immediately stopped slapping at the relatively few midges that had made their way into the head with me, and started to change the air in the ship to get rid of the poison. i knew it was too late before i started, and for once i was right. "the only live midges left in the ship were the ones that had been with me during the fumigation process. i immediately tried to start a breeding ground for midges, but the midges didn't seem to want to cooperate. whatever i tried to do, they came back to me. i was the only thing they seemed to love. i didn't dare bathe, or scratch, or even wriggle, for fear of killing more of them. and they kept on itching. it was just about unbearable, but i bore it for three interminable days while the midges died one by one. it was heartbreaking--at least, it was to me. "and it was unnecessary, too. because apparently the carolla had already laid their eggs, or whatever it is that they do, before i had fumigated them. after my useless days of agony, a new batch came swarming out. and this time there were a few of a much larger thing with them--something like an enormous moth. the new thing just blundered around aimlessly. "i lit out for the head again, to keep away from that intolerable whining. this time i took a luxurious shower and got rid of most of the midges that came through the door with me. i felt almost comfortable, in fact, until i resumed my efforts to catch up on my reading. "the mothlike things--they are called dingleburys--also turn out to provide a necessary enzyme. they are supposed to have the same timing of their life cycle as the carolla. apparently the shaking up i had given their larvae in moving the tanks and dipping the water up in buckets and all that had inhibited them in completing their cycle the first time around. "and the reason they had the same life cycle as the carolla was that the adult dinglebury will eat only the adult carolla, and it has to fill itself full to bursting before it will reproduce. if i had the translation done correctly, they were supposed to dart gracefully around, catching carolla on the wing and stuffing themselves happily. "i had to find out what was wrong with my awkward dingleburys. and that, of course, meant going out into the ship again. but i had to do that anyway, because it was almost 'daylight', and time for me to start shifting the lights again. * * * * * "the reason for the dingleburys' problem is fairly obvious. when you set up artificial gravity by spinning a ship, the gravity is fine down near the skin where the plants are. but the gravity potential is very high, and it gets very light up where things fly around, going to zero on the middle line of the ship. and the unfamiliar gravity gradient, together with the coriolis effect and all, makes the poor dingleburys dizzy, so they can't catch carolla. "and if you think i figured all that out about dingleburys getting dizzy at the time, in that madhouse of a ship, then you're crazy. what happened was that i saw that there was one of the creatures that didn't seem to be having any trouble, but was acting like the book said it should. i caught it and examined it. the poor thing was blind, and was capturing her prey by sound alone. "so i spent the whole day--along with my usual chore of shifting the lights--blindfolding dingleburys. which is a hell of a sport for a man who is captain of his own ship." i must say that i agreed with him, but it seemed to be a good time for me to keep my mouth shut. "well, after the dingleburys had eaten and propagated, they became inquisitive. they explored the whole ship, going into places i wouldn't have believed it to be possible for them to reach, including the inside of the main computer, which promptly shorted out. i finally figured that one of the things had managed to crawl up the cooling air exhaust duct, against the flow of air, to see what was going on inside. "i didn't dare to get rid of the things without checking my book, of course, so it was back to the head for me. 'night' had come again--and it was the only place i could get any privacy. there were plenty of the carolla left to join me outside. "i showered and swatted and started to read. i got as far as where it said that the dingleburys continued to be of importance, and then i'm afraid i fell asleep. "i got up with the sun the next morning. hell, i had to, considering that it was i who turned the sun on! i found that the dingleburys immediately got busy opening small buds on the stems of the marocca plants. apparently they were pollinating them. i felt sure that these buds weren't the marocca blossoms from which the fruit formed--i'd seen a lot of those while we were on mypore ii and they were much bigger and showier than these little acorn-sized buds. "of course, i should have translated some more of my instruction book, but i was busy. "anyway, the action of the dingleburys triggered the violent growth phase of the marocca plants. did you know that they plant marocca seedlings, back on mypore ii, _at least_ a hundred feet apart? if you'll recall, a mature field, which was the only kind we ever saw, is one solid mass of green growth. * * * * * "the book says that it takes just six hours for a marocca field to shift from the seedling stage to the mature stage. it didn't seem that long. you could _watch_ the stuff grow--groping and crawling along; one plant twining with another as they climbed toward the light. "it was then that i began to get worried. if they twined around the light, they would keep me from moving it, and they would shadow it so it wouldn't do its job right. in effect, their growth would put out the sun. "i thought of putting up an electrically charged fence around the light, but the bugs had put most of my loose equipment out of action, so i got a machete. when i took a swing at one of the vines, something bit me on the back of the neck so hard it almost knocked me down. it was one of the dingleburys, and it was as mad as blazes. it seems that one of the things they do is to defend the marocca against marauders. that was the first of my welts, and it put me back in the head in about two seconds. "and what's more, i found that i couldn't kill the damn things. not if i wanted to save the plants. the growth only stops at the end of six hours, after the blossoms appear and are visited by the dingleburys. no dingleburys, no growth stoppage. "so for the next several hours i had to keep moving those lights, and keep them clear of the vines, and keep the vines from shadowing each other to the point where they curled up and died, and i had to do it _gently_, surrounded by a bunch of worried dingleburys. "every time they got a little too worried, or i slipped and bumped into a plant too hard, or looked crosseyed at them, they bit me. if you think i look bad now, you should have seen me just about the time the blossoms started to burst. "i was worried about those blossoms. i felt sure that they would smell terrible, or make me sick, or hypnotize me, or something. but they just turned out to be big, white, odorless flowers. they did nothing for me or to me. they drove the dingleburys wild, though, i'm happy to say. made them forget all about me. "while they were having their orgy, i caught up on my reading. it was necessary for me to cut back the marocca vines. for one thing, i couldn't get up to the area of the bridge. for another, the main computer was completely clogged. i could use the auxiliary, on the bridge, if i could get to it, but it's a poor substitute. for another thing, i would have to cut the stuff way back if i was ever going to get the plants out of the ship. and i was a little anxious to get my _delta crucis_ back to normal as soon as possible. but before cutting, i had to translate the gouge. * * * * * "it turns out that it's all right to cut marocca as soon as it stops growing. to keep the plants from dying, though, you have to mulch the cuttings and then feed them back to the plants, where the roots store whatever they need against the time of the next explosive period of growth. of course, if you prefer you can wait for the vines to die back naturally, which takes several months. "there was one little catch, of course. the cuttings from the vines will poison the plants if they are fed back to them without having been mixed with a certain amount of processed mulch. enzymes again. and there was only one special processor on board. "i was the special processor. that's what the instructions said--i translated very carefully--it required an 'organic processor'. "so i had to eat pounds of that horrible tasting stuff every day, and process it the hard way. "i didn't even have time to scratch my bites. i must have lost weight everywhere but in the swollen places, and they looked worse than they do now. the doctor says it may take a year before the bumps all go away--if they ever do--but i have improved a lot already. "for a while i must have been out of my head. i got so caught up in the rhythm of the thing that i didn't even notice when we slipped out of limbo into real space near gloryanna iii. it was three days, the control tower on gloryanna iii told me, that they tried continuously to raise me on the communications gear before i heard the alarm bell and answered them, so i had to do a good deal of backtracking before i could get into parking orbit around the planet, and then set _delta crucis_ down safely. even as shaky as i was, _delta crucis_ behaved like a lady. "i hadn't chopped off all of the new growth, although i had the plants down to manageable size. some of the blossoms left on the plants had formed fruit, and the fruit had ripened and dried, and the seeds had developed fully. they were popping and spreading fine dust-like spores all over the ship, those last few hours before i landed. "by that time, though, an occasional sneezing fit and watering eyes didn't bother me any. i was far beyond the point where hay fever could add to my troubles. "when i opened the airlock door, though, the spores drifting outside set the customs inspectors to sneezing and swearing more than seemed reasonable at the time." captain hannah inhaled a sip of rhial, and seemed to be enjoying the powerful stuff. he acted as if he thought he had finished. "well, go on," i urged him. "the marocca plants were still in good shape, weren't they?" hannah nodded. "they were growing luxuriously." he nodded his head a couple of more times, in spite of the discomfort it must have given him. he said, "they made me burn the entire crop right away, of course. they didn't get all of the carolla or dingleburys, though. or spores." * * * * * "gloryanna iii is the original home planet of marocca. they hated the stuff, of course, but they liked the profit. then, when a plague almost wiped out the dingleburys, they introduced khorram furs as a cash crop. it wasn't as lucrative, but it was so much more pleasant that they outlawed marocca. took them almost fifty years to stamp it out completely. meanwhile, some clever native shipped a load of the stuff to mypore ii. he took his time, did it without any trouble and made his fortune. and got out again quickly. "the gloryannans were going to hold my _delta crucis_ as security to pay for the cost of stamping out marocca all over again--those spores sprout fast--and for a time i was worried. "of course, when i showed them our contract--that you alone were responsible for everything once i landed the plants safely on gloryanna iii, they let me go. "they'll send you the bill. they don't figure it will take them more than a few months to complete the job." captain hannah stopped talking and stood up, painfully and a little unsteadily. i'm afraid i didn't even notice when he blacked my other eye. i was too busy reaching for the rhial. end all he wanted to do was go round-and-round trip from here to there--but somehow the entire milky way had been converted into a squirrel cage. by h. b. fyfe illustrated by wood [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy magazine december . extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] when the passengers from epseri ii had been chauffeured from the _centaur queen_ to the administration building of the spaceport, the man whose papers identified him as robert l. winstead trailed the others to the interstellar travel agency counter. his taking an unobtrusive place near the end of the line was entirely in keeping with his unobtrusive appearance. of medium height but somewhat underweight, winstead looked like a tired clerk who had not slept well in space. the wide trousers of his conservative maroon suit flapped about his thin shins and drew attention to the fact that he had donned one blue and one green sock. the processing was rapid; most of the two dozen passengers meant to stay here on st. andrew v. only a few, of whom winstead was one, carried "ultimate destination" tickets. they remained after the locals had been taken in charge by a guide who would see them into the adjacent city. winstead finally reached a clerk, a dark, extremely brisk young man. he presented his papers. the young man riffled through them, stamped the date of arrival on the travel record according to both local and terran calendar, then turned back abruptly to the card showing winstead's destination. he shook his head in puzzled annoyance. "i'm very sorry, mr.--uh--winstead. is this the proper ticket you've given me? could you have gotten it mixed up with someone else's?" the traveler coughed and spluttered worried, questioning noises. a look of vague alarm spread over his undistinguished features. his wispy gray hair had become rumpled when he had pulled off and stuffed into a side pocket his rather sporty maroon-and-white checked cap. this, plus the fact that he had to look up to the clerk, lent him an air of the typical little man in the wrong queue. it did not help that he wore old-fashioned sunglasses instead of colored contacts, and had forgotten to remove them before peering at the ticket. "why--er--yes, yes, this is right," he said. "see, here's my name on it." * * * * * the clerk sighed as he looked around, but his partner was busy. "someone seems to have blown a nova, sir," he condescended to explain. "it says here your ultimate destination is altair iv." "quite right, quite right," said winstead. "going out there to see what the sales possibilities are for--" "and they sent you _here_ from epseri? that can't be, sir." "but--they told me--don't you agency people take care of picking out the routes?" "yes, sir, of course. beyond the local terran sphere of travel, there are very few scheduled flights and most of them are for important cargo. that's why your ticket simply shows your ultimate destination, and that's why the interstellar travel agency was developed--to arrange for the traveler's progress by stages." "yes," said winstead. "that is how they explained it to me." the clerk met his worried gaze for a few moments before shaking himself slightly. he prodded the ticket on the counter between him and winstead with a disdainful forefinger. "let me put it as simply as possible, mr.--uh--winstead," he said very patiently. "somebody at your last stop sent you in the wrong direction." "but--but--you just said it went by stages. i realize i can't go in a direct line. it depends on whether you can find me the right ship, doesn't it?" the young man glanced about once more for help, but none was available. "we'll see what we can do," he said, examining the ticket sourly. he thumbed a button to roll out a length of note paper from a slot in the counter top and scribbled upon it with his lectropen. "now, if you will please accompany that young lady to the agency hotel with those other travelers, we will notify you the moment a desirable ship is scheduled to leave." winstead thanked him gratefully and turned away to locate his baggage. under the conditions imposed by space travel, only the barest minimum was permitted. even so, some little time was required to find his bag--an unlikely occurrence that the clerk accepted with a resigned air. finally, with the half dozen who also would be traveling onward, winstead was off to the hotel and a day's rest. as a matter of fact, it was three days' rest, before he was summoned. he was, perhaps by intent, confronted upon his arrival by a different clerk, a solid, square-faced girl. winstead's nervous questions were reflected unanswered from a shield of impervious calm. he received all the information the agency seemed to feel was good for him and was sent out with a personal guide. the guide delivered him to a thick thing named the _stellar streak_, clearly a workhorse freighter. somehow, it never did become plain to winstead until after he had emerged from his acceleration net that the destination was topaz iv. "but, captain!" he protested. "are you sure the people at the spaceport have not made some mistake? that is more or less the direction i came from." the pilot stared impatiently at the papers thrust under his nose. "can't say, sir. we have our work cut out just to take the ship to where they tell us. only reason we carry passengers is that regulations require cooperation with the agency. don't believe in it myself." * * * * * mr. winstead sighed and returned to his quarters. at least, on this ship, he still had a private compartment in which to float his net. there was even a chair, equipped with a safety belt and folding table, bolted to the deck. what he did miss was the general dining saloon of the liner he had taken from epseri ii. _still_, he reflected, _travel can't always be luxurious._ he spent some time, after the ship had slipped into stellar drive, in unpacking his one small suitcase. he found that he had to take his shaver to the general head to plug it in, but otherwise got along comfortably enough. one or two of the crew who shared his turn at the galley counter, in fact, took him for an old space hopper and began to exchange yarns. this sort of semi-suspended living passed the four-day hop to the topaz system and the extra day necessary for planetary approach. when they landed, winstead was the only passenger, either incoming or outgoing, to show up at the cargo shed designated as the spaceport administration building. here on topaz iv, the agency clerk was a part-time man who had to be called from the mines on the far side of the city. he arrived to find winstead dozing on a cot at the end of the shed. "billy callahan," he introduced himself. "they say you're not for the mines." "that is correct," answered winstead, stretching a kink out of his back. "i have my destination here in these papers ... if you will bear with me a moment...." he fumbled out his identification, travel record, and ticket. callahan, rubbing his carroty hair with a large, freckled hand, pored over them. a few minutes of searching through the battered desk that was his headquarters revealed the official arrival stamp. its inky smear was duly added to the record. "now for your way outa here," grunted callahan. "meanwhile, how about a cigar, mr. winstead?" "why--thanks very much." winstead regarded the torpedo doubtfully. he wondered upon which planet the tobacco for it--if it was tobacco--had been grown. "this might take a little while," said callahan, applying to the ends of their cigars a lighter that could have welded i-beams. "it ain't every day we get a through traveler here. i gotta look up the galatlas an' the shipping notices." he hoisted a bulky catalogue from a side table onto his desk and blew off a cloud of dust. winstead seized the excuse to cough out a lungful of smoke. his host reached out for the ticket. "ultimate destination fomalhaut viii," he read off. "say! that ain't one i ever had to handle before!" he leafed through the volume for some minutes, reexamined the ticket, then dug into two or three appendices. he tapped a knobby knuckle against his chin. "it don't look to me, mr. winstead," he said thoughtfully, "like you shoulda wound up here at all. fomalhaut viii! that's a hell of a way from here!" "the clerk at the last spaceport _did_ seem to think there had been a mistake," winstead volunteered cautiously. "somethin' sure slipped. maybe some jet-head read his directions wrong an' sent you so many degrees sol north instead of sol south. best you can say is you're still on the right general side of the solar system." "oh, dear!" winstead said, flustered. "what can you do about that?" "depends what ships, if any, are due here. if i was you, i'd take the first one out. get to a bigger settlement, where you'll get a better choice of ships." * * * * * he flicked ash from his cigar and inquired whether winstead had retained quarters aboard the _stellar streak_. he was undaunted by the negative reply. "never mind," he said heartily. "we're too small to have an agency hotel here, but i'll fix you up a place to stay in town." they left winstead's bag under the desk and set off by dilapidated groundcar for topaz city. this turned out to be a crude, sprawling village of adobe walls and corrugated plastic roofs. the varied colors of the roofs contrasted in desperate gaiety with the dun walls. as soon as callahan skidded to a halt, the car was enveloped by its own dust cloud. "phew!" coughed callahan. "some day they're gonna have to pave the street!" winstead pulled out a handkerchief to mop his tear-flooded eyes. his thin chest heaved and he spat out muddy saliva. "i'm sorry about that," apologized callahan. "tell you what--we don't have much civilization yet, but we do have a little cocktail lounge. come along an' i'll get you somethin' to clear your throat." the traveler allowed himself to be helped out of the car and guided along the "street" to a low building marked by a small parking jam. most of the men and women that passed them on the way shouted out a greeting to his companion. they dressed with little distinction between the sexes in rough shirts, boots, and pants of a narrower pattern than winstead's conservative suit. he was introduced to six or seven people he never expected to lay eyes upon again. _frontier culture_, he deduced. _where humans are rare, each one counts for more._ the first thing he saw in the lounge was the girl guitarist. she was the only woman he had yet seen who was not wearing pants. in fact, it had hardly occurred to him that there might be someone in town who was not connected with the mines. this girl was hardly connected to her own brief costume. the second thing he saw was a wall of friendly, weather-beaten faces, turning his way in response to callahan's cheerful whoop. the third was a man-size drink somebody thrust at him. after listening for quite a while to a repertoire of apparently ribald songs, most of them too local in humor for winstead to follow, the traveler was led by callahan to a sort of restaurant just down the street. winstead thought later that he had eaten something there, but what it might have been he forgot as soon as they returned to the cocktail lounge, for a bottle-swinging brawl broke out almost immediately in a far corner. after a form of order had been restored, there was a girl who danced; and presently callahan was shaking him up and down on a spine-stiffening bed in a small, darkened room. winstead promptly discovered that he had, indeed, eaten. when he recovered, he followed callahan out on wobbly legs to seek a remedy. it was a bright, sunny day, but he could not even guess at the local time. a little while after they had been successful in finding the remedy, he forgot about it. "take care of bobby winstead for me a little while, george," he heard callahan say to someone. "i gotta stop out at the port to check a ship for him. be right back." * * * * * the hospitality shown him shamed winstead into inquiring where he might cash a traveler's check. with the proceeds, he was permitted to buy about one round in a dozen, and to join in the singing. he was eagerly pumped between stops along the street for the latest news of terra. his least little knowledge was of interest to those he encountered. at one point, he came to himself in the midst of drawing a current dress design on the bar for one of the girls. callahan, whose return he had missed, dissuaded the lady from taking his charge home with her as a gesture of pure gratitude. he declared that winstead had just enough time for a nap. winstead's next awakening was in the echo of a terrified scream. a light was turned on and he discovered that the man-eating vine which had been strangling him was in reality an acceleration net. the face that floated before him was clean-shaven and anxious. with considerable mental effort, winstead deduced that the face was inquiring as to his health. "quite ... fine ... thank ... you," he answered with difficulty. "haven't we met somewhere?" "sure! last week, mr. winstead, when we took you to topaz iv," said the face. winstead tried shaking his head. it did not hurt--very much--but he felt that his thinking was terribly slow. then things began to click. he recognized the man as the second pilot of the _stellar queen_. it might have been easier had the spacer not been standing upside down to winstead's twisted position. he groped dizzily for a question that would not make him sound a complete idiot. the pilot saved him. "callahan, back on topaz iv," he volunteered, "asked us to tell you the best routing he could figure was to go on with us to queen bess iii. it's a busy spaceport, so he thinks you can make better connections." "oh. i ... see," murmured winstead. unzipping the opening of his net, he floated himself out gingerly. "i hope it's all right, mr. winstead," said the spacer. "i know you went in there on an altair iv destination, but old callahan seemed to think he was sending you to fomalhaut viii. to tell the truth, i think he was a little over-fueled." "i ... didn't notice," said winstead. "tell me--how long were you down at topaz?" "three days," the spacer told him. "they sure took a liking to you there, mr. winstead. a big crowd brought you out to the spaceport with callahan. we found your bag under his desk by ourselves, but i don't know where you got that orange suit." winstead looked down at his clothing for the first time and flinched. "but that was yesterday," continued the pilot. "you ought to be feeling like some chow by now, eh? hey wait--the door is down here, mr. winstead!" in six days, including one of landing maneuvers, they reached queen bess iii, a very terran world that was a minor crossroads of space travel. here, winstead bade farewell to the _stellar queen_. his first stop was the communications office. he left a message to be transmitted to callahan on topaz iv by "fastest means"--_i. e._, by the next spaceship headed that way. he said, simply, "thanks for everything." * * * * * he found a good many travelers wandering about the clean, beautifully furnished waiting room of the agency here. winstead sank into a softly upholstered armchair, opened his bag, and began to sort out his papers. no sooner did he look up from this task than there appeared before him a pleasantly smiling, gray-haired man. he was about winstead's height, but chunky and full of bounce. "my name is john aubrey," he announced. "i trust i can be of service. are you stopping here on bessie?" "no, i--i'm just passing through," said winstead. "i assume you are the agency official here?" "one of them," aubrey said. "ah, your papers? thank you. we can just step this way into my office if you like." he threaded his way between chairs, tables, and occasional travelers to one of a row of offices. it was the size of a large closet, but cheerfully decorated. aubrey gave winstead a chair and sat himself down behind an extremely modern desk to commit the required formalities upon the traveler's papers. the ultimate destination ticket winstead had included gave him pause. "well, well, well!" he exclaimed. "achernar x! really! you must be with the government, i suppose? or a scientist? as i recall, achernar is rather blue for human use, except our research outpost there, isn't it?" "i--er--i am engaged in a little research," said winstead. "you did very well to remember the place offhand." "it _is_ a long way out. interesting. i wonder how i can get you there. someone seems to have sent you--well, no matter. just leave it to me. you'll be staying at our hotel, of course? might as well, since you have paid for the service, eh? i'll have you flown over right away." an aircar carried winstead to the roof of a hotel overlooking a considerable metropolis. having left his bag in his room, he found his way to the hotel department store and ordered another suit. he spent the rest of the afternoon sightseeing and decided that he might just as well have been on terra. when he sat down to an excellent dinner that evening, he discovered that his appetite, unfortunately, had not recovered from his stay on topaz iv. he was awakened before dawn by the soft chime of his bedside screen. a touch of the button brought on the happy features of aubrey. _does he never rest?_ thought winstead. he pushed the audio button and answered. "good morning, mr. winstead," said the agency man brightly. "sorry to call so early, but i was extremely lucky to find you a passage toward achernar." "not sure i want to go," winstead muttered into his pillow. aubrey, apparently not hearing him, bubbled merrily on. there would be an aircar on the hotel roof for winstead in half an hour. haste was necessary because the ship was leaving from a spaceport fifty miles outside the city. indeed, winstead could count himself fortunate to have had the chance so quickly. aubrey had found it only by checking all the private spacelines. after all, achernar was a long way off. winstead thanked him blearily before switching off. he then dialed the hotel store, but got no more answer than he expected. giving up thoughts of his new suit, he rose and struggled into his clothes. * * * * * queen bess had not yet poked her corona above the horizon when the aircar delivered him to a little island spaceport south of the city. a stocky, taciturn shadow met him. they walked silently out to a ship that towered darkly overhead. "no inside elevator?" asked winstead, peering at the skeleton framework rising beside the ship. "too much load." they rode a creaking platform up through the chilly breeze until winstead thought they would go past the nose of the monster. clutching his bag in one hand and the single railing in the other, he edged across a narrow gangway to an airlock. inside, he followed the crewman down a short, three-foot-diameter shaft to a square chamber, catching his bag on the ladder no more than a few times. in the more adequate light here, the spacer was revealed as a swarthy man with a muscular, dark-stubbled face. he wore tight trousers and shirt of navy blue and a knit cap that might once have been white. with a preoccupied air, he pulled open a small door on the bulkhead at chest level. "let's have your bag," he said. winstead handed it over. the spacer shoved it into what seemed to be a spacious compartment in spite of the yard-square door. "now you," he said. "i'll give you a hand up." "up where?" asked winstead innocently. "in there. that's your acceleration compartment. plenty of room. armored, air-conditioned, has its own emergency rations of air and water." winstead stooped to peer into the opening. it was deeper than he had thought, but a three-foot square was not much of a cross section. all surfaces inside were thickly padded and springy to the touch. "here's the light switch," the spacer said, turning on a soft interior light. "the rest of the facilities and instructions are on this plate beside the hatch. okay now, grab that handhold up there so you go in feet first. alley-oop!" _as long as i don't come out that way_, thought winstead, sliding into the compartment with surprising ease. he twisted around and discovered that the door had a small window. "make yourself comfortable," said the spacer. "just don't forget to close the hatch when the takeoff buzzer sounds. you'd better listen for it." he turned away. winstead saw him look into several other little windows along the bulkhead. "are there other passengers?" asked winstead. "no. just checking to see if all my crew stayed. always seems to be one that slides down the pipe before takeoff. dunno why they sign on if they don't like the risk." "what--what risk?" "didn't the agency tell you? we've got nothing below here but tanks of concentrated landing fuel for the station on gelbchen ii. the idea makes some of them nervous now and then. they talk quiet, they walk quiet, and they wouldn't wear an orange suit." he pulled open a door and nodded in gloomy satisfaction when the compartment proved to be empty. "_is_ it dangerous?" asked winstead. * * * * * the spacer gnawed upon a very short thumbnail. "what's dangerous?" he retorted at last. "you can get killed any day under a downcoming aircar." winstead considered. "where's the captain?" he inquired. "i'm the captain." "but--aren't you preparing to blast off?" "i generally let my second pilot do it," said the spacer. "but why? i thought--" "why? because i own the ship, that's why." "what has that got to do with it?" said winstead. "i should think you'd want all the more to handle it yourself!" "listen--i sweated out years in space, saving the price of this can. if she blows up, d'you think i want to know that i did it? there's the buzzer. button up!" he pulled himself into a compartment like winstead's and clapped the door shut. winstead, beginning to perspire gently, found the safety straps, secured himself, and awaited the worst. the _leaky dipper_ sped through interstellar space for five silent and introverted days before reaching the little yellow sun named gelbchen. the highlight of the flight was the day one of the crew dropped his mess tray on the deck, causing one faint, one case of palpitations, and one fist fight, in approximately that order. the captain spent two days groping his way into an orbit about the second planet. when he announced that the cargo would be pumped into a number of small local tankers that had risen from the surface to meet them, winstead volunteered to go down in the first one. "don't blame you," said the swarthy spacer. "i'd like to go too. don't worry--they'll be good and careful landing. the stuff's that much more expensive now that it's been freighted out here." "that is a--a great relief," said winstead. "it's been very interesting. good-by and good luck!" "likewise," said the captain. _if i ever meet aubrey again!_ thought winstead. on the surface of the planet, he met with a thriving community that lived in a peculiar milieu blended of well-being and isolation. the spaceport was a center for refueling and repair. it was supported by mines and mills, and by just enough agricultural organization to get by. the standard of living was comfortably high because of the services rendered and charged for; but some of the customs struck winstead as being almost too informal. "i think you're pulling my leg!" exclaimed the slim blonde at the agency counter when winstead was escorted in from the field. "nobody would travel on the _leaky dipper_ without being paid for it. you must have real nerve!" she leaned uninhibitedly across the counter and planted a kiss on his cheek. he could not help noticing that she was not slim everywhere. "i assure you, miss--er--here are my papers." "oh, those! let me see, i have a stamp somewhere in one of my drawers." * * * * * she rummaged through several hiding places under the counter. winstead thought of the compartments on the _leaky dipper_. he leaned wearily on one elbow. "oh, well, it's time to close up anyway," the girl decided. she swept his papers into a drawer, after a fast glance at them. "we can fix these up tomorrow, bob." "you are a very quick reader," winstead said. "it said 'robert l.,' didn't it? that's all i was looking for--your name. mine's carole, just to keep things straight. now, since no more ships are due and no passengers can leave tonight, let's get out of here." winstead looked around, but the mechanic who had brought him in from the field had long since disappeared. other clerks went about their own affairs in the background without showing any interest in him. carole hoisted herself onto the counter and twisted across in a swirl of skirts. there was no way for winstead to avoid catching her. he saw that she was not really slim _anywhere_. grabbing his hand, she set off at a smart pace. he had just time to hook his bag off the counter as they passed it. "you'll be wanting a place to stay," she said. "i'll bet you never slept well on that spaceship." this so neatly paralleled winstead's own opinion that he rejected a half-formed impulse to drag his feet. they dashed pell-mell through a wide exit from the building to a parking lot. carole led the way to a monstrous groundcar that looked as if its mother had been frightened by a truck. a moment later, they were boosting up to stellar speed along a more-or-less paved road to the city. "they call it 'junction,'" carole informed him. "you'd think they could have picked a better name for the only real city on the planet." they buzzed through a narrow band of suburbs, along the edge of an open square and decelerated at a well-lighted avenue that looked like an entertainment section. winstead noted that most of the men and women strolling past the taverns and theaters were dressed in work clothes. "just finishing their shifts, like me," carole explained. she slowed the monster a bit more upon entering a side street. they came to a section of four- and five-storied buildings whose metal curtain walls had the air of business offices. it developed immediately that they were apartment houses. carole pulled into an opening in a row of parked vehicles similar to hers. winstead got out quickly, since his hostess seemed about to crawl across his lap to reach the door. he stared at the groundcar meditatively. "awful heap, isn't it?" said the blonde. "they have to make them that way here, so they can be converted for trucking. the spaceships count on gelbchen ii; everything else--including us--is what can be scraped up to do the job. well, come on in!" _i really must be very tired_, winstead thought as he meekly followed the girl into the lobby of the building. * * * * * inside, two youths in coveralls were lounging on wooden chairs of austere design. one leaped to his feet at the sight of carole. as he strode toward them, winstead glanced over his shoulder to make sure of the door. turning back, he was just in time to find the young man seizing carole in an enthusiastic embrace. the two melted together in a passionate kiss. then the young man stepped back, checked his wristwatch and dashed for the door. "good night, kid," he called to her over his shoulder. carole waved jauntily. she took winstead by the elbow. "that was wilfie," she explained. "we'll be getting married if we can ever get our job shifts straightened out. i hope i didn't make him late, poor boy--it was his only chance to see me until tomorrow." winstead was hardly aware of having been steered into an elevator. when they reached the second floor, carole led him a few steps along the hall. she used a simple light-key to open an apartment door. winstead followed her inside wordlessly. "let me take your bag," she said. "in here is the bedroom. i'll bet you didn't have that much room on the spaceship." "well...." "now let's go in the kitchen and see what we can get you for dinner. i might as well feed you, since i figure to charge you fifty credits for the night." winstead remained silent by a considerable effort. he wondered what his expression showed. carole did not seem to notice anything. she prattled on about the folly of trying to find a room in one of the few hotels boasted by the city of junction. most of them, she claimed, would be full of carousing spacers. meanwhile, she rummaged through a frozen food unit. winstead agreed to something in a foil package without knowing what. she popped it into an automatic infra-red heater. he allowed himself to be led by the hand to a large chair in the living room. "there's the entertainment program for the tv," she told him. "not that we have much here--most of it is old tapes from terra. make yourself comfortable while i change." she pattered off into the bedroom, leaving winstead weighing the program in a limp hand. he looked around the room. there were two doors to rooms or exits he had not been shown. what he had seen or could examine from where he sat was very comfortably furnished, with a resilient carpet substitute from wall to wall and new-looking furniture of the simple gelbchen style. carole seemed partial to reds and other bright colors. only the pastels of the walls had prevented a disaster. _is it worth fifty credits?_ he asked himself. _on the other hand, if i go out looking for a hotel, will i just happen to have a hard time getting a ship?_ he glanced indecisively at the door to the bedroom into which carole had vanished. it had been left slightly ajar. about the time he became aware of this, a tinny chime began to sound from the direction of the kitchen. it continued until winstead realized that he would have to investigate for himself. he entered the kitchen to find that the automatic heater had flipped up a small sign saying, "_hot!_" * * * * * he guessed the right button to get the door of the appliance open, looked around until he located a tray and tongs, and removed his dinner. further search supplied him with cutlery. he opened the foil, discovering that he had chosen a meal of roast beef with mashed potatoes and two vegetables he had never seen on terra. carole still had not appeared, so he carried his tray out to the dining area, which was furnished with bronze-colored metal chairs and table. it looked like a dinner for one, he reflected, but he was on a strange planet. as he hesitated, the bedroom door was flung back and footsteps sounded behind him. "go ahead and enjoy it," called carole. "wine in the sideboard there. then make yourself at home for the night." winstead turned. the girl was bending to zip the front of one shoe. she was clad in coveralls of a yellow that made winstead blink. "i'm off," she announced cheerfully. "got a second-shift job as an ambulance driver. i tell you, it's one big rat race to meet expenses on gelbchen ii! it helps when i can bring home guests from the spaceport, but wilfie wants me to cut that out when we get married." she waved and bustled out to the elevator. winstead wondered whether he had said good night. he discovered after some minutes that he was leaning on the table with one thumb in the hot potatoes. he sat down, examining his thumb attentively. after due consideration, he licked off the potato, found a fork, and began to prod dubiously at the local idea of vegetables.... he awoke next morning with a start of surprise at finding himself in neither a net nor a padded compartment. the bed was soft. it invited him to roll over for another half hour's snooze in the faintly perfumed room. perfume? bedroom ... _carole!_ winstead sat straight up as full memory returned. everything was quiet. he threw back the electric blanket, checked a clock that must be set to planetary time, and decided that it was early morning. the window filters yielded to trial-and-error manipulation, flooding the room with cheerful sunlight not unlike that of a terran summer morning. winstead walked softly to the door and opened it a crack. the room outside remained dim and silent. he washed in the adjoining bathroom and dressed rapidly. feeling better prepared for the day, he sallied out to seek breakfast. the first sight that met his eyes was that of carole sleeping on a couch under an aquamarine blanket she had plugged in at the socket of a floor lamp. the thought of fifty credits restrained the impulse to pat her blonde head in commiseration. he thought of it a little more, thereby fighting down a mild attack of conscience over appropriating the bed. _after all_, he thought, _here i have to get my own breakfast. she's probably tired out, but that's the reward of moonlighting. it's her planet, not mine._ * * * * * winstead tiptoed to the kitchen door, slipped furtively through, and closed the door as quietly as possible behind him. two men eating breakfast at a small table looked up at him amiably. "gaagh!" said winstead. "good morning," replied one man, who wore a rather feminine dressing gown. the other, a ruddy, farmerish individual, grunted past a mouthful of toast. "i beg your pardon," winstead said. "you must be another star traveler," said the gentleman in the dressing gown. "we knew there must be one when we saw carole on the couch. i hope she gets you out of here quicker than she's finding a ship for me." "you have been waiting for a spaceship?" winstead asked. "over two weeks now," said the other. "the kid's fair enough about it, i must admit. she can't ship me toward epseri, so she's been giving me a discount on my room." "sit down and have some eggs," invited the farmer type. "brought 'em into town myself, along with my other produce." winstead eyed the platter of fried eggs. they were entirely too large to have come from chickens, but they looked good. he decided not to ask any questions. it developed after he joined them at the table that the farmer was in the habit of boarding with carole whenever he came to junction on business. the traveler, one cecil feigelson, excused his borrowing carole's robe on grounds of the scanty baggage allowed space travelers and the fact that he had been hanging about for so long. they assured him that he looked fine in pink. winstead drained his cup of coffee substitute, considered having another. "you know," he said thoughtfully, "it hardly seems necessary to spend all that time finding a ship headed for epseri. i--uh--happen to be going that way too. i suspect that a good, close look at the schedules down at the spaceport might show us a way." "but carole is the clerk in charge." "i also happen to know a little about how it's done," said winstead quietly. he added, "from traveling so much you know." "well, if you think anything can be done, i'm all for it." "when the kid wakes up, she could drive you down," suggested the farmer. "that should require only a moment to arrange," said winstead, rising to fill a pitcher with ice water. _fifty credits a night!_ he thought. _wait till i get my hands on her shipping schedules!_ hardly five minutes later, they all spilled out of the elevator into the lobby. carole was still rather damp and angry. cecil feigelson's suitcase zipper was only three-quarters closed. fortunately, he was wearing pants under the girl's dressing gown, which clashed horribly with winstead's rumpled orange suit. "hey!" someone yelped as they blazed through the lobby. young wilfie catapulted from a chair where he appeared to have been dozing. _doesn't he have a home?_ wondered winstead. * * * * * by the time they reached carole's groundcar outside, the youth had somehow inserted himself into the group in place of the farmer. winstead set the machine in motion while the others were scrambling for seats. "do you know how to drive one of these, friend?" asked feigelson. "i am an expert groundcar operator," winstead assured him. unfortunately, he was soon forced to admit, he was accustomed to terran cars that floated on cushions of air. although bumps in the spaceport road encouraged a good deal of floating at the speed he was making, the gelbchen vehicle was really designed for less intermittent wheel-to-ground contact. the trip seemed shorter, though, than it had the previous evening. winstead skidded to a halt at their destination and discovered that he was perspiring slightly. his passengers were in a frank sweat and lost several yards trailing him into the terminal and over to the agency counter. when they arrived, still quite pale, winstead was already up to his elbows in shipping schedules and blank forms. a few passing clerks glanced curiously at feigelson's frilly pink dressing gown, but they were used to outworld garb. "wait! that's my galatlas you're tearing apart!" carole protested breathlessly. "how would you know, my dear?" asked winstead, riffling the pages furiously. "hah! just as i thought--this cruise ship down here for supplies, the _virgo_, is listed to make new ceres next. the galatlas shows that new ceres is halfway to epseri, feigelson!" "wilfie!" wailed carole. "make him stop tearing the place apart like a saloon! look at that stack of folders spilled all over the floor!" wilfie bestirred himself, but he was handicapped by being on the other side of the counter with carole and feigelson. "what do you think you're doing?" he demanded truculently. "where did you come from, anyway?" "i came from terra," said winstead, pausing in filling out a form, "and i am more than ready to return. combining a vacation with a business inspection trip occasionally becomes too exciting for a man of my years." "inspection trip?" echoed carole, freezing. "my hobby," said winstead. "it keeps one in touch with the people who make the agency go. this place, now, is the most slapdash, disorganized--young man! you quit one of your jobs and take over this branch of the interstellar travel agency. don't argue--of course you can! what is your full name?" "_me?_" gasped wilfie. "wilfred evans." "all right, evans, you're hired. you'll be able to get married and put a stop to all this nonsense of renting rooms while ships go out without our passengers." "what authority have you to--" began carole indignantly. "the first test of a chief agent," said winstead, scribbling upon a business card, "is to know when to tell an assistant manager to button her hatch." wilfie accepted the card and glanced at both print and scribbling. "button your hatch!" he ordered carole over his shoulder. * * * * * she stood silent, her mouth open about the same distance as feigelson's. winstead looked about for a local clock, and snatched up one of the sheets strewn about the counter. a departure time listed upon it made him swear. he leaped to carole's phone, switching on sound and screen with one swipe of his thumb. the blonde advanced a timid step, to read the card bearing wilfie's appointment. "robert winstead lewis, terra ... president, interstellar travel agency...." "winstead" was shouting at a face on the phone screen. "you tell them who i am!" he demanded, holding up another of his cards to the scanner. "they'll manage to hold the ship three minutes until we reach her!" he switched off, mopping his forehead with the back of his hand, and started around the counter. carole swayed weakly against feigelson's supporting arm. "now, then!" snapped winstead. "this branch will be checked in the near future, evans. i trust that you are the sort of man who can show a firm hand, should he return home to discover a star traveler in his bedroom." he smacked the flat of his own hand significantly upon the counter, staring at carole between the eyes. wilfie nodded thoughtfully. robert winstead lewis flagged down an unwary porter driving by on an empty baggage truck. "bring the bags, feigelson!" he commanded, hopping aboard and seizing the controls. "as far as new ceres, anyhow, we'll be going first-class!" picking up speed, the baggage truck squealed around a turn and headed for an exit to the spaceport. the porter looked back with a horrified expression, the pink gown fluttered beside the orange suit one last time, and they disappeared through the portal. the air about the disorganized counter and reorganized agents continued to vibrate for some minutes. finally, the distant roar of a ship lifting for space penetrated to restore a sense of relative peace. perfect answer by l. j. stecher, jr. illustrated by dick francis [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy science fiction june . extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] getting there may be half the fun ... but it is also all of a society's chance of survival! "as one god to another--let's go home," jack bates said. bill farnum raised a space-gloved hand in negligent acknowledgment to a hastily kneeling native, and shook his head at bates. "let's try deneb--it's almost in line on the way back--and then we can call it quits." "but i want to get back and start making some profit out of this. the galaxy is full of _homo sapiens_. we've hit the jackpot first trip out. let's hurry on home and cash in." "we need more information. this is too much of a good thing--it doesn't make sense. i know there isn't much chance of finding anything out by stopping at one more solar system. but it won't delay us more than a few weeks, and it won't hurt to try." "yeah," said bates. "but what's in it for us? and what if we find an inhabited planet? you know the chances are about two to one that we will. that'll make thirteen we've found on this trip. why risk bad luck?" "you're no more superstitious than i am," said farnum. "you just want to get back earthside. i'll tell you what. we'll toss a coin for it." bates gestured futilely toward his coverall pocket, and then remembered he was wearing a spacesuit as a precaution against possible contamination from the natives. "and we'll use one of _my_ coins this time," said farnum, noticing the automatic motion. "i want to have a chance." the coin dropped in farnum's favor, and their two-man scout ship hurled itself into space. * * * * * farnum operated the compact computer, aligning the ship's velocity vector precisely while the stars could still be seen. bates controlled the engines, metering their ravenous demand for power just this side of destructive detonation, while the ship sucked energy from space--from the adjacent universe on the other side of limbo. finally the computer chimed, relays snicked, and the ship slid into the emptiness of limbo as the stars winked out. with two trained men working as a team with the computer and the elaborate engine room controls, and with a certain amount of luck, the ship would drop back into normal space a couple of weeks later, close beside their target. "well, that's that," said farnum, relaxing and wiping the perspiration off his forehead. "we're back once again in the nothingness of nowhere. as i recall, it's your week for k.p. where's the coffee?" "coming right up," said bates. "but you won't like it. it's the last of the 'god-food' the korite priests made for us." farnum shuddered. "pour it out and make some fresh. with a skillet, you stink, but you're a thousand times better than korites." "thanks," bates said, getting busy. "it was the third place we stopped that they were such good cooks, wasn't it?" "nope. our third stop was the porandians. they tried to kill us--called us 'devil spawn from the stars.' you're thinking of the fourth stop; the balanites." bates shrugged. "it's kind of hard to keep them all straight. either they fall on their knees and worship us, or they try to kill us without even asking questions. maybe it's lucky they're all so primitive." "it may be lucky, but it doesn't add up. more than half the stars we visit have planets that can support human life. and every one that can does. once there must have been an interstellar empire. so why are all their civilizations so backward? they aren't primitive--they're decadent. and why do they all have such strong feelings--one way or the exact opposite--about people from the stars?" "isn't that why you want to try one more system?" asked bates. "to give us another chance to get some answers? here's your coffee. try to drink it quietly. i'm going to get some shuteye." * * * * * the trip through the limbo between adjacent universes passed uneventfully, as always. the computer chimed again on schedule, and a quick check by farnum showed the blazing sun that suddenly appeared was deneb, as advertised. seventeen planets could be counted, and the fifth seemed to be earth type. they approached it with the easy skill of long practice and swung into orbit about it. "this is what we've been looking for!" exclaimed farnum, examining the planet through a telescope. "they've got big cities and dams and bridges--they're civilized. let's put the ship down." "wait up," said bates. "what if they've got starman-phobia? remember, they're people, just like us; and with people, civilization and weapons go together." "i think you've got it backwards. if they hate us, we can probably get away before they bring up their big artillery. but what if they love us? they might want to keep us beside them forever." bates nodded. "i'm glad you agree with me. let's get out of here. nobody but us knows of the beautiful, profitable planets we've found, all ready to become part of a terran empire. and if we don't get back safe and sound, nobody _will_ know. the information we've got is worth a fortune to us, and i want to be alive to collect it." "sure. but we've got the job of trying to find out why all those planets reverted to barbarism. this one hasn't; maybe the answer's here. there's no use setting up an empire if it won't last." "it'll last long enough to keep you and me on top of the heap." "that's not good enough. i want my kids--when i have them--to have their chances at the top of the heap too." "oh, all right. we'll flip a coin, then." "we already did. you may be a sharp dealer, but you'd never welch on a bet. we're going down." bates shrugged. "you win. let's put her down beside that big city over there--the biggest one, by the seashore." as they approached the city, they noticed at its outskirts a large flat plain, dotted with gantries. "like a spaceport," suggested bill. "that's our target." they landed neatly on the tarmac and then sat there quietly, waiting to see what would happen. * * * * * a crowd began to form. the two men sat tensely at their controls, but the throng clustering about the base of the ship showed no hostility. they also showed no reverence but, rather, a carefree interest and joyful welcome. "well," said farnum at last, "looks like we might as well go outside and ask them to take us to their leader." "i'm with you as usual," said bates, starting to climb into his spacesuit. "weapons?" "i don't think so. we can't stop them if they get mad at us, and they look friendly enough. we'll start off with the 'let's be pals' routine." bates nodded. "after we learn the language. i always hate this part--it moves so slowly. you'd think there'd be some similarity among the tongues on different planets, wouldn't you? but each one's entirely different. i guess they've all been isolated too long." the two men stepped out on the smooth plain, to be instantly surrounded by a laughing, chattering crowd. farnum stared around in bewilderment at the variety of dress the crowd displayed. there were men and women in togas, in tunics, in draped dresses and kilts, in trousers and coats. others considered a light cloak thrown over the shoulders to be adequate. there was no uniformity of style or custom. "you pick me a boss-man out of this bunch," he muttered to bates. finally a couple of young men, glowing with health and energy, came bustling through the crowd with an oblong box which they set down in front of the earthmen. they pointed to the box and then back at farnum and bates, laughing and talking as they did so. "what do you suppose they want us to do?" farnum asked. one of the young men clapped his hands happily and reached down to touch the box. "what do you suppose they want us to do?" asked the box distinctly. "oh. a recording machine. probably to help with language lessons. might as well help them out." * * * * * farnum and bates took turns talking at the box for half an hour. then the young man nodded, laughed, clapped his hands again, and the two men carried it away. the crowd went with them, waving merrily as they departed. bates shrugged his shoulders and went back into the ship, with farnum close behind. a few hours after sunrise the following morning, the crowd returned, as gay and carefree as before, led by the two young men who had carried the box. each of these two now had a small case, about the size of a camera, slung by a strap across one brawny shoulder. as the terrestrials climbed out to meet them, the two men raised their hands and the crowd discontinued its chatter, falling silent except for an occasional tinkle of surprised laughter. "welcome," said the first young man clearly. "it is a great pleasure for us to have our spaceport in use again. it has been many generations since any ships have landed on it." farnum noticed that the voice came from the box. "thank you for your very kind welcome," he said. "i hope that your traffic will soon increase. may we congratulate you, by the way, on the efficiency of your translators?" "thanks," laughed the young man. "but there was nothing to it. we just asked the oracle and he told us what we had to do to make them." "may we meet your--oracle?" "oh, sure, if you want to. but later on. now it's time for a party. why don't you take off those clumsy suits and come along?" "we don't dare remove our spacesuits. they protect us from any disease germs you may have, and you from any we may have. we probably have no resistance to each others' ailments." "the oracle says we have nothing that will hurt you. and we're going to spray you with this as soon as you get out of your suits. then you won't hurt any of us." he held up a small atomizer. farnum glanced at bates, who shrugged and nodded. they uneasily unfastened their spacesuits and stepped out of them, wearing only their light one-piece coveralls, and got sprayed with a pleasant-smelling mist. the party was a great success. the food was varied and delicious. the liquors were sparkling and stimulating, without unpleasant after-effects. the women were uninhibited. when a native got tired, he just dropped down onto the soft grass, or onto an even softer couch, and went to sleep. the earthmen finally did the same. * * * * * they awoke the following morning within minutes of each other, feeling comfortable and relaxed. bates shook his head experimentally. "no hangover," he muttered in surprise. "no one ever feels bad after a party," said one of their guides, who had slept nearby. "the oracle told us what to do, when we asked him." "quite a fellow, your oracle," commented bates. "does he answer you in riddles, like most oracles?" the guide was shocked. "the oracle answers any questions promptly and completely. he _never_ talks in riddles." "can we go to see him now?" asked farnum. "certainly. come along. i'll take you to the hall of the oracle." the oracle appeared to live in a building of modest size, in the center of a tremendous courtyard. the structure that surrounded the courtyard, in contrast, was enormous and elaborate, dominating the wildly architectured city. it was, however, empty. "scholars used to live in this building, they tell me," said one of their guides, gesturing casually. "they used to come here to learn from the oracle. but there's no sense in learning a lot of stuff when the oracle has always got all the answers anyway. so now the building is empty. the big palace was built back in the days when we used to travel among the stars, as you do now." "how long ago was that?" asked farnum. "oh, i don't know. a few thousand years--a few hundred years--the oracle can tell you if you really want to know." bates raised an eyebrow. "and how do you know you'll always be given the straight dope?" the guide looked indignant. "the oracle _always_ tells the truth." "yes," bates persisted, "but how do you _know_?" "the oracle told us so, of course. now why don't you go in and find out for yourselves? we'll wait out here. we don't have anything to ask him." * * * * * bates and farnum went into the building and found themselves in a small, pleasant room furnished with comfortable chairs and sofas. "good morning," said a well-modulated voice. "i have been expecting you." "you are the oracle?" asked farnum, looking around curiously. "the name that the people of this planet have given me translates most accurately as 'oracle'," said the voice. "but are you actually an oracle?" "my principal function, insofar as human beings--that is, _homo sapiens_--are concerned, is to give accurate answers to all questions propounded me. therefore, insofar as humans are concerned, i am actually an oracle." "then you have another function?" "my principal function, insofar as the race that made me is concerned, is to act as a weapon." "oh," said bates. "then you are a machine?" "i am a machine," agreed the voice. "the people who brought us here said that you always tell them the truth. i suppose that applies when you are acting as an oracle, instead of as a weapon?" "on the contrary," said the voice blandly. "i function as a weapon by telling the truth." "that doesn't make sense," protested bates. the machine paused for a moment before replying. "this will take a little time, gentlemen," it said, "but i am sure that i can convince you. why don't you sit down and be comfortable? if you want refreshments, just ask for them." "might as well," said bates, sitting down in an easy chair. "how about giving us some korite god-food?" "if you really want that bad a brew of coffee, i can make it for you, of course," said the voice, "but i am sure you would prefer some of better quality." farnum laughed. "yes, please. some good coffee, if you don't mind." * * * * * "now," said the oracle, after excellent coffee had been produced, "it is necessary for me to go back into history a few hundred thousand of your years. at that time, the people who made me entered this galaxy on one of their periodic visits of routine exploration, and contacted your ancestors. the race that constructed me populates now, as it did then, the greater magellanic cloud. "frankly, the magellanic race was appalled at what they found. in the time since their preceding visit, your race had risen from the slime of your mother planet and was on its way toward stars. the speed of your development was unprecedented in millions of years of history. by their standards, your race was incredibly energetic, incredibly fecund, incredibly intelligent, unbelievably warlike, and almost completely depraved. "extrapolation revealed that within another fifty thousand of your years, you would complete the population of this galaxy and would be totally unstoppable. "something had to be done, fast. there were two obvious solutions but both were unacceptable to my makers. the first was to assume direct control over your race and to maintain that rule indefinitely, until such time as you changed your natures sufficiently to become civilizable. the expenditure of energy would be enormous and the results probably catastrophic to your race. no truly civilized people could long contemplate such a solution. "the second obvious answer was to attempt to extirpate you from this universe as if you were a disease--as, in a sense, you are. because your depravity was not total or necessarily permanent, this solution was also abhorrent to my makers and was rejected. "what was needed was a weapon that would keep operating without direct control by my people, which would not result in any greater destruction or harm to humans than was absolutely necessary; and one which would cease entirely to operate against you if you changed sufficiently to become civilizable--to become good neighbors to my makers. "the final solution of the magellanic race was to construct several thousand spaceships, each containing an elaborate computer, constructed so as to give accurate answers throughout your galaxy. i am one of those ships. we have performed our function in a satisfactory manner and will continue to do so as long as we are needed." "and that makes you a weapon?" asked bates incredulously. "i don't get it." * * * * * farnum felt a shiver go through him. "i see it. the concept is completely diabolical." "it's not diabolical at all," answered the oracle. "when you become capable of civilization, we can do you no further harm at all. we will cease to be a weapon at that time." "you mean you'll stop telling the truth at that time?" asked bates. "we will continue to function in accordance with our design," answered the voice, "but it will no longer do you harm. incidentally, your phrase 'telling the truth' is almost meaningless. we answer all questions in the manner most completely understandable to you, within the framework of your language and your understanding, and of the understanding and knowledge of our makers. in the objective sense, what we answer is not necessarily the truth; it is merely the truest form of the answer that we can state in a manner that you can understand." "and you'll answer any question at all?" asked bates in some excitement. "with one or two exceptions. we will not, for example, tell you how we may be destroyed." bates stood up and began pacing the floor. "then whoever possesses you can be the most powerful man in the universe!" "no. only in this galaxy." "that's good enough for me!" "jack," said farnum urgently, "let's get out of here. i want to talk to you." "in a minute, in a minute," said bates impatiently. "i've got one more question." he turned to face the wall from which the disembodied voice appeared to emanate. "is it possible to arrange it so that you would answer only one man's questions--mine, for example?" "i can tell you how to arrange it so that i will respond to only your questions--for so long as you are alive." "come on," pleaded farnum. "i've got to talk to you right now." "okay," said bates, smiling. "let's go." * * * * * when they were back in their ship, farnum turned desperately to bates. "can't you see what a deadly danger that machine is to us all? we've got to warn earth as fast as we can and get them to quarantine this planet--and any other planets we find that have oracles." "oh, no, you don't," said bates. "you aren't getting the chance to have the oracle all to yourself. with that machine, we can rule the whole galaxy. we'll be the most powerful people who ever lived! it's sure lucky for us that you won the toss of the coin and we stopped here." "but don't you see that the oracle will destroy earth?" "bushwah. you heard it say it can only destroy people who aren't civilized. it said that it's a spaceship, so i'll bet we can get it to come back to earth with us, and tell us how we can be the only ones who can use it." "we've got to leave here right away--without asking it any more questions." bates shook his head. "quit clowning." "i never meant anything more in my life. once we start using that machine--if we ask it even one question to gain advantage for ourselves--earth's civilization is doomed. can't you see that's what happened to those other planets we visited? can't you see what is happening to this planet we're on now?" "no, i can't," answered bates stubbornly. "the oracle said there are only a few thousand like him. you could travel through space for hundreds of years and never be lucky enough to find one. there can't be an oracle on every planet we visited." "there wouldn't have to be," said farnum. "there must be hundreds of possible patterns--all of them destructive in the presence of greed and laziness and lust for power. for example, a planet--maybe this one--gets space travel. it sets up colonies on several worlds. it's expanding and dynamic. then it finds an oracle and takes it back to its own world. with all questions answered for it, the civilization stops being dynamic and starts to stagnate. it stops visiting its colonies and they drift toward barbarism. "later," farnum went on urgently, "somebody else reaches the stars, finds the planet with the oracle--and takes the thing back home. can you imagine what will happen to these people on this world if they lose their oracle? their own learning and traditions and way of life have been destroyed--just take a look at their anarchic clothing and architecture. the oracle is the only thing that keeps them going--downhill--and makes sure they don't start back again." "it won't happen that way to us," bates argued. "we won't let the oracle get into general use, so earth won't ever learn to depend on it. i'm going to find out from it how to make it work for the two of us alone. you can come along and share the gravy or not, as you choose. i don't care. but you aren't going to stop me." bates turned and strode out of the ship. * * * * * farnum pounded his fist into his palm in despair, and then ran to a locker. taking out a high-power express rifle, he loaded it carefully and stepped out through the airlock. bates showed clearly in his telescopic sights, still walking toward the hall of the oracle. farnum fired at the legs, but he wasn't that good a shot; the bullet went through the back. farnum jittered between bringing bates back and taking off as fast as the ship could go. the body still lay there, motionless; there was nothing he could do for the oracle's first earth victim--the first and the last, he swore grimly. he had to speed home and make them understand the danger before they found another planet with an oracle, so that they could keep clear of its deadly temptations. the magellanic race could be outwitted yet, in spite of their lethal cleverness. then he felt a sudden icy chill along his spine. alone, he could never operate the spaceship--and bates was dead. he was trapped on the planet. for hours, he tried to think of some way of warning earth. it was imperative that he get back. there had to be a way. he realized finally that there was only one solution to his problem. he sighed shudderingly and walked slowly from the spaceship toward the hall of the oracle, past bates' body. "one question, though," he muttered to himself. "only one." brain teaser by tom godwin _how can a ship travel both forward and backward and sideways in two different directions, be going twice as fast as the speed of light--and still be completely motionless?_ [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from worlds of if science fiction, october . extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] carl engle stood aside as the flight preparation crew filed out of the _argosy_'s airlock. barnes was the last; fat and bald and squinting against the brightness of the arizona sun. "all set, carl," he said. "they had us to check and countercheck, especially the drives." engle nodded. "good. ground control reports the slug cruiser still circling seven hundred miles out and they think the slugs suspect something." "damned centipedes!" barnes said. "i still say they're telepathic." he looked at his watch. zero hour minus twenty-six minutes. "good luck, boy, and i hope this space warp dingus works like they think it will." he waddled down the boarding ramp and engle went through the airlock, frowning a little as he threw the switches that would withdraw the ramp and close the airlock behind him. barnes' implied doubt in the success of the space warp shuttle was not comforting. if the shuttle failed to work, the _argosy_ would be on the proverbial spot with the slug cruiser eager to smear it well thereupon.... access to the control room was up through the room that housed the space warp shuttle. dr. harding, the tall, bristle-browed physicist, and his young assistant, garvin, looked up briefly as he entered then returned their attention to their work. the master computer, borrowed from m.i.t., stood like a colossal many-dialed refrigerator along one wall. a protective railing around it bore a blunt keep out sign and it was never left unwatched. garvin was seated before it, his fingers flitting over the keyboard and the computer's answer panel replying with strange mathematical symbols. the space warp shuttle sat in the middle of the room, a cube approximately two-thirds of a meter along the edge, studded with dials and knobs and surmounted by a ball of some shining silvery alloy. dr. harding was talking into the transdimensional communicator mounted beside the shuttle. engle went on to the computer and waited outside the railing until garvin finished with his work and turned in his seat to face him. "the last check question," garvin said. "now to sweat out the last twenty minutes." "if you've got the time, how about telling me about the shuttle," said engle, "i've been kept in the dark about it; but from what i understand, the shuttle builds up a field around the ship, with the silver ball as the center of the field, and this field goes into another dimension called the 'space warp'." "ah--it could be described in that manner," garvin said, smiling a little. "a clear description could not be made without the use of several special kinds of mathematics, but you might say this field in normal space is like a bubble under water. the air bubble seeks its own element, rises rapidly until it emerges into free air--in this case, the space warp. this transition into the warp is almost instantaneous and the shuttle automatically ceases operation when the warp is fully entered. the shuttle is no longer needed; the hypothetical bubble no longer exists--it has found its own element and merged with it." "i know that a light-hour of travel in the warp is supposed to be equivalent to several light-years in normal space," engle said, "but what about when you want to get back into normal space?" "the original process is simply reversed: the shuttle creates a 'bubble' that cannot exist in the warp and seeks its own element, normal space." "i see. but if the shuttle should--" he never completed the question. dr. harding strode over, his eyes blue and piercing under the fierce eyebrows as he fixed them on him. he spoke without preamble: "you realize the importance of this test flight with the shuttle, of course? entirely aside from our personal survival should the slug cruiser intercept us." "yes, sir," he answered, feeling the question suggested an even lower opinion of his intelligence than he had thought harding held. project space warp existed for the purpose of sending the _argosy_ to sirius by means of the space warp shuttle and bringing back the _thunderbolt_ by the same swift method. the _thunderbolt_, earth's first near-to-light-speed interstellar ship, was a huge ship; armed, armored, and invincible. it had been built to meet every conceivable danger that might be encountered in interstellar exploration--but the danger had come to the solar system from the direction of capella nine years after the departure of the _thunderbolt_. eight cruisers of the pulpy, ten-foot centipede-like things called slugs had methodically destroyed the colonies on mars and venus and established their own outposts there. earth's ground defenses had held the enemy at bay beyond the atmosphere for a year but such defense could not be maintained indefinitely. the _thunderbolt_ was needed quickly and its own drives could not bring it back in less than ten years.... "we will go into the warp well beyond the atmosphere," harding said. "transition cannot be made within an atmosphere. since a very moderate normal space velocity of the ship will be transformed into a greater-than-light velocity when in the warp, it is desirable that we make turn-over and decelerate to a very low speed before going into the warp." "yes, sir," he said. "i was briefed on that part and i'll bring us as near to a halt as that cruiser will permit." "there will be communication between us during the flight," harding said. "i will give you further instructions when they become necessary." he turned away with an air of dismissal. engle went to the ladder by the wall. he climbed up it and through the interroom airlock, closing the airlock behind him; the routine safety measure in case any single room was punctured. he went to the control board with a vague resentment gnawing for the first time at his normally placid good nature. so far as harding was concerned--and garvin, too--he might as well have been an unusually intelligent baboon. * * * * * zero hour came and the _argosy_ lifted until earth was a tremendous, curving ball below and the stars were brilliant points of light in a black sky. the slug cruiser swung to intercept him within the first minute of flight but it seemed to move with unnatural slowness. it should have been driving in at full speed and it wasn't.... "something's up," ground control said. "it's coming in too slowly." "i see that," he answered. "it must be covering something beyond it, in your radar shadow." it was. when he was almost free of the last traces of atmosphere he saw the other cruiser, far out and hidden from ground control's radar by the radar shadow cast by the first one. he reported, giving its position and course as given him by the robot astrogating unit. "we'll have the greatest amount of time if i make turn-over now and decelerate," he finished. the voice of harding came through the auxiliary speaker: "do so." the _argosy_ swung, end for end, and he decelerated. the cruiser behind him increased its speed, making certain it would be in position to cut off any return to earth. the other cruiser altered its course to intersect the point in space the _argosy_ would soon occupy, and the _argosy_ was between the rapidly closing jaws of a trap. he made reports to ground control at one-minute intervals. at : he said: "our velocity is approaching zero. we'll be within range of the second cruiser's blasters in two more minutes." harding spoke again to him: "we'll go into the warp now. _do not_ alter the deceleration or the course of the ship while we're in the warp." "i won't," he said. there was a faint mutter from the auxiliary speaker as harding gave some instructions to garvin. engle took a last look at the viewscreen; at blue-green earth looming large in the center, orion and sirius glittering above it and the sun burning bright and yellow on the right. it was a scene he had observed many times before, all very familiar and normal-- the chronometer touched : and normalcy vanished. earth and sun and stars fled away from him, altering in appearance as they went, shrinking, dwindling. the seas and continents of earth erupted and shook and boiled before earth faded and disappeared. the sun changed from yellow to green to blue, to a tiny point of bright violet light that raced away into the blackness filling the screen and faded and disappeared as earth had done. then the viewscreen was black, utterly, completely, dead black. and the communicator that had connected him with ground control was silent, without the faintest whisper of background sound or space static. in the silence the voice of harding as he spoke to garvin came through the speaker; puzzled, incredulous, almost shocked: "our velocity couldn't have been that great--_and the sun receded into the ultraviolet!_" there was the quick sound of hurrying footsteps then the more distant sound of the computer's keys being operated at a high rate of speed. he wanted to ask what had gone wrong but he knew no one would answer him. and it would be a pointless question--it was obvious from harding's tone that he did not know, either. he had an unpleasant feeling that man's first venture into another dimension had produced catastrophic results. what had caused sun and earth to disappear so quickly--and what force had riven and disfigured earth? then he realized the significance of harding's statement about the sun receding into the ultraviolet. if the ship had been traveling at a high velocity away from the sun, the wave length of the sun's light would have been increased in proportion to the speed of the ship. the sun should have disappeared in the long-wave infrared end of the spectrum, not the short-wave ultraviolet. with the thought came the explanation of the way the continents and oceans of earth had quivered and seethed. the shifting of the spectrum range had shortened normally visible rays into invisibly short ultraviolet radiations while at the same time formerly invisible long infrared radiations had been shortened into visible wave lengths. there had been a continuous displacement into and past the ultraviolet and each wave length would have reflected best from a different place--mountains, valleys, oceans, deserts, warm areas, cool areas,--and the steady progression into the ultraviolet had revealed each area in quick succession and given the appearance of agitated movement. so there was no catastrophe and everything had a logical explanation. except how they could have been approaching a sun that he had seen clearly, visibly, racing away from them. "engle--" the voice of harding came through the speaker. "we're going back into normal space to make another observation. i don't know just where we are but we're certain to be far from the cruisers. don't alter our course or velocity." "yes, sir," he said. they came out of the warp at : . the communicator burped suddenly and the viewscreen came to life; a deep, dull red that brightened quickly. a tiny coal flared up, swelling in size and shifting from red to orange to yellow--the sun. earth appeared as a hazy red dot that enlarged and resolved itself into a planet with distorted continents that trembled and changed, to resume their natural shapes and colors. within a few seconds the sun was shining as ever, earth loomed large and blue-green before them and the stars of orion glittered unchanged beyond. even their position in space was the same--they had not moved. but the slug cruisers had. one was very near and from its forward port came the violet haze that always preceded a blaster beam. there was no time to escape--no chance at all. he spoke into the mike, harsh and urgent: "_into the warp!_ there's a blaster beam coming--_move!_" there was a silence from below that seemed to last an eternity, then the sound of a switch being slapped hastily. at the same time, the violet haze before the cruiser erupted into blue fire and the blaster beam lanced out at them. it struck somewhere astern. the power output needle swung jerkily as the generators went out and the emergency batteries took the heavy load of the shuttle's operation. there was a sensation of falling as the ship's artificial gravity units ceased functioning. the auxiliary speaker rattled wordlessly and there was a sound like a hard rush of wind through it, accompanied by quick bumping sounds. then the speaker was still and there was no sound of any kind as the viewscreen shifted into the ultraviolet and earth and stars and sun once again raced away and disappeared in the blackness. * * * * * a myriad of lights above the board informed him the generators were destroyed, the stern section riddled and airless, the emergency batteries damaged and reduced to quarter charge, the shuttle room punctured and airless. and, of course, harding and garvin were dead. he felt a surge of futile anger. it had all been unnecessary. if only they had not considered him incompetent to be entrusted with anything more than the ship's operation--if only they had installed an emergency switch for the shuttle by his control board, there would not have been the two-second delay following his order and they would have been safely in the warp before the blaster beam struck. but they had not trusted him with responsibility and now he was alone in a space warp he did not understand; sole and full responsibility for the shuttle suddenly in his hands. he considered his course of action, then got into a pressure suit. magnets in the soles of its heavy boots permitted him to walk in the absence of gravity and he went to the interroom airlock with metallically clicking steps. he let himself through the lock and walked down what had been the room's wall, then across to the center of its floor. but for the fact there was no one in the room, it was as he had last seen it. the shuttle, computer, and other equipment stood in their orderly positions with their lighted dials unchanged. until one looked at the gash ripped in the hull and saw the stains along its edge where the occupants had been hurled through it by the escaping air. he went on to the next room and the next. the damage increased as he proceeded toward the stern. the power generators were sliced into ribbons and the emergency batteries in such condition it seemed a miracle they were functioning at all. the drives had received the greatest damage; they were an unrecognizable mass of wreckage. he made his way back to the shuttle room, there to appraise his circumstances. he reached automatically for a cigarette and stopped when his glove bumped the breast plate of his pressure suit. first, he would have to make the shuttle room livable; get out of the pressure suit. he would have to question the computer and he could not do that with the thick, clumsy gloves on his hands. the job didn't take long. there were repair plates on the ship and a quick-hardening plastic spray. he closed the sternward airlock when he was done and opened the airlock leading to the control room, as well as the locks beyond. air filled the shuttle room, with only a minor over-all loss of air pressure. he removed the suit, attached a pair of magnetic soles to his shoes so he could operate the keys of the computer without the movements sending him floating away, and went to it. he had never been permitted to touch it before, nor even stand close enough to see what the keyboard looked like. now, he saw that the alphabetical portion of the keyboard was minor compared with the mathematical portion, many of the symbols strange to him. the operation of an interplanetary ship required a certain knowledge of mathematics, but not the kind used by theoretical physicists. he typed, doubtfully: are you capable of answering questions presented in non-mathematical form? the word, yes, appeared at once in the answer panel and relief came to him like the lifting of a heavy burden. the computer knew as much about the space warp as harding or anyone else. it was connected with his drive controls and instruments and knew how far, how fast, and in what directions the flight had taken place. it had even been given blueprints of the ship's construction, in case the structure of the ship should affect the ship's performance in the warp, and knew every nut, bolt, plate and dimension in the ship. there was supposed to be a certain method of procedure when questioning the computer. "it knows--but it can't think," garvin had once said. "it lacks the initiative to correlate data and arrive at conclusions unless the procedure of correlation is given it in detail." perhaps he could manage to outline some method of correlation for the computer. the facts of his predicament were simple enough: he was in an unknown medium called "the space warp." something not anticipated occurred when a ship went into the warp and harding had not yet solved the mystery when he died. the physicists in observation would be able to find the answer but he could not ask them. the forward movement of the ship was not transferred with it into the warp and if he emerged into normal space the waiting slug cruisers would disintegrate him before he spoke three words to observation. there was a pencil and a tablet of paper by the computer. he used them to calculate the time at which the charge in the damaged batteries would reach a critical low, beyond which the charge would be insufficient to activate the shuttle. the answer was : . he would have to go out of the warp at : or remain in it forever. he had a great deal less than two hours in which to act. he typed the first question to the computer: what is the position of this ship relative to normal space? the answer appeared on the panel at once; the coordinates of a position more than a light-year toward ophiuchus. he stared at the answer, feeling it must be an error. but it could not be an error--the computer did not make mistakes. how, then, could the ship have traveled more than a light-year during its second stay in the warp when it had not moved at all during the first stay? had some factor of the warp unknown to him entered the picture? as a check he typed another question: what was our position, relative to normal space, immediately before this ship was shuttled back out of the warp? the answer was a position light-days toward ophiuchus. he typed: impossible. the computer replied: this statement conflicts with previous data. he recalled the importance of keeping the computer free of all faulty or obscure data and typed quickly: cancel conflicting statement. conflicting statement canceled, it replied. he tried another tack. this ship emerged from the space warp into the same normal space position it had occupied before going into the warp. he thought the computer would proceed to give him some sort of an explanation. instead, it non-committally replied: data acknowledged. he typed: explain this discrepancy between space warp and normal space positions. it answered: insufficient data to account for discrepancy. he asked, how did you determine our present position? it replied: by triangulation, based on the recession of earth, the sun, sirius, orion, and other stars. but the receding sun went into the ultraviolet, he objected. again it answered with the non-commital, data acknowledged. did you already have this data? he asked. yes. explain why the receding sun shifted into the ultraviolet instead of the infrared. it replied: data insufficient to arrive at logical explanation. he paused, pondering his next move. time was speeding by and he was learning nothing of value. he would have to move the ship to some place in the warp where emergence into normal space would not put him under the blasters of the slug cruisers. he could not know where to move the ship until he knew where the ship was at the present. he did not believe it was in the position given him by the computer, and its original space warp position had certainly not been the one given by the computer. the computer did not have the ability to use its knowledge to explain contradictory data. it had been ordered to compute their space warp position by triangulation of the receding sun and stars and was not at all disturbed by the contradicting shift of the sun into the ultraviolet. suppose it had been ordered to calculate their position by computations based on the shift of the sun's and stars' spectrum into the ultraviolet? he asked it: what is our position, ignoring the triangulation and basing your computations on the shift of the spectrums of the sun and orion into the ultraviolet? it gave him the coordinates of a position almost two light-years toward orion. the triangulation computations had shown the ship to be going backward at many times the speed of light; the spectrum-shift computations showed it to be going forward with approximately the same speed. this ship cannot simultaneously be in two positions three light-years apart. neither can it simultaneously be going forward and backward. data acknowledged, it agreed. use that data to explain the contradictions of the two positions you computed. data insufficient to arrive at logical explanation, it answered. are you certain there was no error in your calculations? there was no error. do you know that if we dropped back into normal space, it would be at neither of the positions you gave me? it replied with the characteristic single-mindedness: data shows our two positions to be those given. he paused again. he was still getting nowhere while time fled by. how swiftly less than a hundred minutes could pass when they were all a man had left to him.... the computer was a genius with the mental initiative of a moronic child. it could find the answer for him but first he would have to take it by the hand and lead it in the right direction. to do that he would have to know more about the warp. he wrote: explain the nature of the space warp as simply as possible and without using mathematics higher than algebra. it answered at once: this cannot be done. the chronometer read : . he typed: this ship will have to return to normal space no later than : . it must be moved to a different position while still in the warp. data acknowledged, it replied. this ship cannot occupy two positions at the same time. your memory files should contain sufficient data to enable you to find the explanation of this two-positions paradox. find that explanation. submit method of procedure, it answered. i do not know how. you will have to arrive at the explanation unaided. this cannot be done, it replied. he wrote, with morbid curiosity: if you do not find the answer unaided you will be destroyed along with me at : . don't you give a damn? it answered: give a damn is a semantic expression i do not understand. clarify question. he got out of the computer seat and walked about the room restlessly. he passed by the transdimensional viewscreen and communicator and pressed the communicator's signal button. a dial flickered in return, showing his signal was going out, but there was no sound in response. if only he could make contact with the brains in observation-- he was umpty billion miles east of the sun and umpty billion miles west of the sun. he was racing faster than light in two different directions at once and he was sitting motionless under the blasters of two slug cruisers. another thought came to him: even if he could move the ship while in the warp, where could he go? he would have to go far beyond the outer limits of the solar system to escape detection by the slug cruisers. and at that distance the sun would be only a yellow star, incapable of energizing the little solar power units. he would not live long after the last of the power was drained from the batteries and the air regeneration equipment ceased functioning. he would not even dare sleep, toward the last. there were no convection currents in the air of a ship without gravity, and it was imperative that the air be circulated constantly. the air circulation blowers would cease functioning while the ship still contained pure air but he would have to move about continually to breathe that air. should he lie down to sleep he would smother to death in a carbon dioxide bubble of his own making. if he managed to emerge into normal space at some point just outside earth's atmosphere, beyond range of the cruisers, his driveless ship would descend as a blazing meteor. if, by some miracle, he could emerge into normal space just a few inches above the space-field it would be to materialize into space already occupied by air. such a materialization would be simultaneously fatal to him and to the electronic components of the shuttle and computer. and if he did not move the ship, the slug cruisers would disintegrate him. he had four hypothetical choices of his way to die, all equally unpleasant. he smiled wanly at his reflection in the bright metal bordering the viewscreen and said, "brother--you've had it!" * * * * * he went to the control room, there to brush his fingers across the useless control buttons and look into the viewscreen that revealed only black and limitless nothing. what was the warp? surely it must have definite physical laws of some kind. it was difficult to imagine any kind of existence--even the black nothing of the warp--as being utterly without rule or reason. if he knew the laws of the warp he might find some means of survival hitherto hidden from him. there was only one way he could learn about the warp. he would have to question the computer and continue questioning it until he learned or until his time was up. he returned to the computer and considered his next question. the computer had calculated their positions from observations of the sun and other stars in front of the ship--what would similar calculations based on observations of the stars behind the ship reveal? he typed: use first the triangulation method and then the spectrum-shift method to determine our position from observations made of the stars of ophiuchus. the answers appeared. they showed the ship to be simultaneously speeding away from ophiuchus and toward it. he asked: do these two positions coincide with those resulting from the observations of orion? yes, it answered. was the paradox limited to the line of flight? he asked the computer: what is our position, course and speed as indicated by the stars at right-angles to our forward-backward course; by the stars of ursa minor and crux? the answer appeared on the panel: the ship was racing sideward through the warp in two diametrically opposed directions, but at only one-third the speed with which it was racing forward and backward. so now the ship had four impossible positions and two different speeds. he frowned at the computer, trying to find some clue in the new data. he noticed, absently, that the hand of one of the dials was near zero in the red section of the dial. he had not noticed any of the dials registering in the danger zone before.... he jerked out of his preoccupation with apprehension and typed: tell me in non-technical language the meaning of the hand near zero on the dial labeled _max. et. ref_. it answered: one of my circuits was damaged by the sudden release of air pressure. i will cease functioning at the end of four more minutes of operation. he slammed the master switch to off. the lights on the board went out, the various needles swung to zero, leaving the computer a mindless structure more than ever resembling an overgrown refrigerator. four minutes more of operation ... and he had so many questions to ask before he could hope to learn enough about the warp to know what he should do. he had wasted almost an hour of the computer's limited life, leaving it turned on when he was not using it. if only it had told him ... but it was not the nature of a machine to voluntarily give information. besides, the receding hand of the dial was there for him to see. the computer neither knew nor cared that no one had thought it worthwhile to teach him the rudiments of its operation and maintenance. it was : . one hour and one minute left. he put the thought aside and concentrated on the problem of finding the key to the paradox. what conceivable set of circumstances would cause receding stars to have a spectrum shift that showed them to be approaching the ship? or, to rephrase the question, what conceivable set of circumstances would cause approaching stars to appear to dwindle in size? the answer came with startling suddenness and clarity: there was no paradox--the ship was expanding. he considered the solution, examining it for flaws of logic, and found none. if he and the ship were expanding the wave length of light would diminish in proportion to the increasing size of the retinas of his eyes and the scanner plates of the transdimensional viewscreens: would become shorter and go into the ultraviolet. at the same time, the increasing size of himself and the ship would make the earth and sun relatively smaller and therefore apparently receding. the same theory explained the two different speeds of the ship: its length was three times its diameter so its longitudinal expansion would proceed at three times the speed of its cross-sectional expansion. everything checked. how large was the ship now? he made a rough calculation and stared almost unbelievingly at the results. he was a giant, more than a third of a light-year tall, in a ship that was six light-years long and two light-years in diameter. far centauri, which had required thirty years to reach in the fastest interplanetary ship, floated seventy-one feet away in the blackness outside the hull. and the sun and earth were in the room with him, going into the shuttle's silvery focal ball. he would have to ask the computer to make certain his theory was valid. his time was too critically short for him to waste any of it with speculation based on an erroneous theory. he switched on the computer and it lighted up again. he typed rapidly: assume this ship to be motionless and expanding would that theory satisfactorily explain all the hitherto contradictory phenomena? there was a brief pause as the computer evaluated its data, then it answered with one word: yes. he switched it off again, to squander none of its short period of usefulness until he had decided upon what his further questions should be. at last, he had some grounds for conjecture; had learned something about the warp the designers of the shuttle had not suspected. their calculations had been correct when they showed a ship would travel in the warp at many times the normal space speed of light. but somewhere some little factor had been overlooked--or never found--and their precise mathematics had not indicated that the travel would be produced by expansion. _nature abhors a vacuum._ and the black, empty warp was a vacuum more perfect than any that existed in normal space. in the normal space universe there were millions of stars in the galaxy and millions of galaxies. in the warp there was utter nothing. did the physical laws of the warp demand that matter be scattered throughout it, in emulation of its rich neighbor in the adjoining dimension? was the warp hungry for matter? he rejected the thought as fantasy. there was some explanation that the physicists would eventually find. perhaps there was a vast size-ratio difference between the two dimensions; perhaps the warp was far larger than the normal space universe and some co-universal law demanded that objects entering it become proportionally larger. none of that aspect of his circumstances, however, was of importance. there was only one prime problem facing him: how to move the ship within less than an hour to some point in the warp where his emergence into normal space would result in neither instant nor days-away death and where he would have the time to try to carry out the responsibility, so suddenly placed in his hands, of delivering the space warp shuttle to the _thunderbolt_. the long-range task depended upon his immediate survival. he had to move the ship, and how did a man move a driveless ship? it might not require a very large propulsive force--perhaps even an oxygen tank would serve as a jet. except that he had none. he could use part of the air in the ship. its sudden release should move the ship. there was a sun very near: alpha centauri. if he had the proper tools, and the time, he could cut a hole in the hull opposite centauri ... but he had neither the tools nor the time. and what good would it do him if he could emerge into normal space at the desired distance from centauri? he would be provided with power for the air regenerators by the solar power units but not power sufficient to operate the shuttle. he would breathe, and eat, for a week. then the small amount of food on the ship would be gone and he would breathe for another four or five weeks. and then he would die of starvation and his driveless ship would continue its slow drift into the sun, taking his bones and the shuttle with it. he would have to go to sirius and he would have to reach it the first try or never. if he could emerge into normal space at the proper distance from sirius he would have power from it to operate the communicator. the _thunderbolt_ would come at once when it received his message and swallow the little _argosy_ in its enormous hold. the return to earth would be the swift one through the warp and the slug cruisers, so bold in pursuit of unarmed interplanetary ships, would quickly cease to exist. at : sirius would be somewhere in or near the bow of the ship. the ship would not have to be moved more than two thirds of its length--twenty meters. he could do that by releasing part of the air in the shuttle room through the sternward airlock. how much air? he tried to remember long-forgotten formulas. so many cubic feet of air at such and such a pressure when released through an opening of such and such a diameter would exert a propulsive force of.... hell, he didn't know. and not even the computer would be able to tell him because there were so many unknown factors, such as the proportion of the ship's mass lost to the slug blasters, the irregular shape of the airlock opening, the degree of smoothness of its metal.... he made calculations with pencil and paper. he would have to move the ship with extreme precision. a light-hour short of the proper distance put him too far from the sun for it to power the communicator, a light-hour beyond put him in the sun's flaming white heart. one light-hour out of eight point six light-years was approximately one part out of seventy-five thousand. he would have to move the ship with an accuracy of point aught three centimeters--one hundredth of an inch. _one hundredth of an inch!_ he laid the pencil back down, almost numbly. he could never open and close an airlock and move a mass of thousands of tons with an accuracy of a hundredth of an inch. the very thought was wildly fantastic. he was already far closer to sirius than he would be if he tried to get any closer. and that was over eight light-years from it. he looked at the chronometer and saw the hands had already reached : . thirty-three minutes left to him. sirius was near--soon it would be in the bow of the ship--and sirius was eight point six light-years away. how could he move the ship a certain distance accurate to one hundredth of an inch? he couldn't. the answer was blunt and ugly and irrefutable: he couldn't. he got up and walked across the room, feeling like a man who had in quick succession been condemned, reprieved, recondemned. he had been projected into a situation for which he had had no preliminary training whatever; had been made sole custodian and operator of a computer and a space warp shuttle that he had never before been permitted to touch. he had used the sound but not at all brilliant mind nature had given him to solve the riddle of the paradoxes and learn where he was and where he wanted to go. he had done quite well--he had solved every problem of his survival and the shuttle's delivery except the last one! he passed by the shuttle and stopped to rest his hand on the bright, silvery focal ball. the solar system would be deep inside the ball; the atoms of the ball larger than earth, perhaps, and far more impalpable than the thinnest air. the slug cruisers would be in there, infinitesimally tiny, waiting for him to return.... no--faulty reasoning. the solar system was as it had always been, not diminished in size and not really in the ball. it was only that two different points in two different dimensions coincided in the ball.... he saw the answer. he did not have to move the ship to sirius--he had only to move the ball! * * * * * there would be little time, very little time. first, to see if the warp shuttle was portable-- it was. when he unfastened the clamp that held it to the stand it lifted up freely, trailing a heavy cable behind it. he saw it was only a power supply cable, with a plug that would fit one of the sockets in the bow of the ship. he left the shuttle floating in the air, leashed by the cable, and went to the computer. next, he would have to know if sirius would be fully in the ship-- he switched the computer on and typed: determine the distance from the center of the warp shuttle's focal ball to the space warp position of sirius at : , basing your computations on the expanding-ship theory. it gave him the answer a moment later: . meters. he visualized the distance, from his knowledge of the ship's interior, and saw the position would be within the forward spare-parts room. next, to learn exactly where in that room he should place the shuttle. he could not do so by measuring from the present position of the shuttle. the most precise steel tape would have to be at exactly the right temperature for such a measurement to be neither too short nor too long. he had no such tape, and the distance from the focal ball was only part of the necessary measuring: he would have to measure off a certain distance and a precisely certain angle from the purely imaginary central line of the ship's axis to intersect the original line. such a measurement would be impossible in the time he had. he considered what would be his last question to the computer. the hand was touching the zero and his question would have to be worded very clearly and subject to no misinterpretations. there would be no follow-up questions permitted. he began typing: it is desired that this ship emerge into normal space one light-hour this side of sirius at : . this will be accomplished by moving the warp shuttle to such a position that its focal center will be in a space warp position coinciding with a normal space position one light-hour this side of sirius at : . consider all factors that might have affected the dimensions of this ship, such as temperature changes produced by our normal space acceleration and deceleration, when computing the position of sirius. then define that location in relation to the structural features of the room's interior. do this in such a manner that placing the shuttle in the proper position will require the least possible amount of measuring distances and angles. it seemed to take it an unduly long time to answer the question and he waited restlessly, unpleasantly aware of the hand touching zero and wondering if the computer's mind was baffled by the question; the mind that thought best in terms of orderly mathematics and could not know or care that measurement by protractor and tape would result in a position fatally far from that described by the neat, rigid figures. then the answer appeared, beautifully concise: position will be in corner of room, . centimeters above floor plate, centimeters perpendicular to panel aa, . centimeters perpendicular to panel ab. the computer died with an oddly human sigh. its last act had been to give him the location of sirius in such a manner that he could accurately position the shuttle's focal ball with the aid of the precision measuring devices in the ship's repair room. he went to the shuttle and picked it up in his arms. it was entirely weightless, and each magnet-clicking step he took toward the bow of the ship brought sirius almost half a light-year nearer. * * * * * he squinted against the white glare of sirius in the viewscreen as he continued his terse report to the _thunderbolt's_ commander: "i have about a week's supply of food. how long will it be until you reach me?" the commander's reply came after the pause caused by the distance involved: "we'll be there within three days. go ahead and eat hearty. but how did you travel from earth to sirius in only two hours? my god, man--what kind of a drive did that ship have?" "why, it didn't have any drive from the start," he said. "to get here i"--he frowned thoughtfully--"you might say i walked and carried the ship." the five hells of orion by frederick pohl out in the great gas cloud of the orion nebula mccray found an ally--and a foe! [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from worlds of if science fiction, january . extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] his name was herrell mccray and he was scared. as best he could tell, he was in a sort of room no bigger than a prison cell. perhaps it was a prison cell. whatever it was, he had no business in it; for five minutes before he had been spaceborne, on the long jump from earth to the thriving colonies circling betelgeuse nine. mccray was ship's navigator, plotting course corrections--not that there were any, ever; but the reason there were none was that the check-sightings were made every hour of the long flight. he had read off the azimuth angles from the computer sights, automatically locked on their beacon stars, and found them correct; then out of long habit confirmed the locking mechanism visually. it was only a personal quaintness; he had done it a thousand times. and while he was looking at betelgeuse, rigel and saiph ... it happened. the room was totally dark, and it seemed to be furnished with a collection of hard, sharp, sticky and knobby objects of various shapes and a number of inconvenient sizes. mccray tripped over something that rocked under his feet and fell against something that clattered hollowly. he picked himself up, braced against something that smelled dangerously of halogen compounds, and scratched his shoulder, right through his space-tunic, against something that vibrated as he touched it. mccray had no idea where he was, and no way to find out. not only was he in darkness, but in utter silence as well. no. not quite utter silence. somewhere, just at the threshold of his senses, there was something like a voice. he could not quite hear it, but it was there. he sat as still as he could, listening; it remained elusive. probably it was only an illusion. but the room itself was hard fact. mccray swore violently and out loud. it was crazy and impossible. there simply was no way for him to get from a warm, bright navigator's cubicle on _starship jodrell bank_ to this damned, dark, dismal hole of a place where everything was out to hurt him and nothing explained what was going on. he cried aloud in exasperation: "if i could only _see_!" he tripped and fell against something that was soft, slimy and, like baker's dough, not at all resilient. a flickering halo of pinkish light appeared. he sat up, startled. he was looking at something that resembled a suit of medieval armor. * * * * * it was, he saw in a moment, not armor but a spacesuit. but what was the light? and what were these other things in the room? wherever he looked, the light danced along with his eyes. it was like having tunnel vision or wearing blinders. he could see what he was looking at, but he could see nothing else. and the things he could see made no sense. a spacesuit, yes; he knew that he could construct a logical explanation for that with no trouble--maybe a subspace meteorite striking the _jodrell bank_, an explosion, himself knocked out, brought here in a suit ... well, it was an explanation with more holes than fabric, like a fisherman's net, but at least it was rational. how to explain a set of gibbon's _decline and fall of the roman empire?_ a space-ax? or the old-fashioned child's rocking-chair, the chemistry set--or, most of all, the scrap of gaily printed fabric that, when he picked it up, turned out to be a girl's scanty bathing suit? it was slightly reassuring, mccray thought, to find that most of the objects were more or less familiar. even the child's chair--why, he'd had one more or less like that himself, long before he was old enough to go to school. but what were they doing here? not everything he saw was familiar. the walls of the room itself were strange. they were not metal or plaster or knotty pine; they were not papered, painted or overlaid with stucco. they seemed to be made of some sort of hard organic compound, perhaps a sort of plastic or processed cellulose. it was hard to tell colors in the pinkish light. but they seemed to have none. they were "neutral"--the color of aged driftwood or unbleached cloth. three of the walls were that way, and the floor and ceiling. the fourth wall was something else. areas in it had the appearance of gratings; from them issued the pungent, distasteful halogen odor. they might be ventilators, he thought; but if so the air they brought in was worse than what he already had. mccray was beginning to feel more confident. it was astonishing how a little light made an impossible situation bearable, how quickly his courage flowed back when he could see again. he stood still, thinking. item, a short time ago--subjectively it seemed to be minutes--he had been aboard the _jodrell bank_ with nothing more on his mind than completing his check-sighting and meeting one of the female passengers for coffee. item, apart from being shaken up and--he admitted it--scared damn near witless, he did not seem to be hurt. item, wherever he was now, it became, not so much what had happened to him, but what had happened to the ship? he allowed that thought to seep into his mind. suppose there had been an accident to the _jodrell bank_. he could, of course, be dead. all this could be the fantasies of a cooling brain. mccray grinned into the pink-lit darkness. the thought had somehow refreshed him, like icewater between rounds, and with a clearing head he remembered what a spacesuit was good for. it held a radio. he pressed the unsealing tabs, slipped his hand into the vacant chest of the suit and pulled out the hand mike. "this is herrell mccray," he said, "calling the _jodrell bank_." no response. he frowned. "this is herrell mccray, calling _jodrell bank_. "herrell mccray, calling anybody, come in, please." but there was no answer. thoughtfully he replaced the microphone. this was ultrawave radio, something more than a million times faster than light, with a range measured, at least, in hundreds of light-years. if there was no answer, he was a good long way from anywhere. of course, the thing might not be operating. he reached for the microphone again-- he cried aloud. the pinkish lights went out. he was in the dark again, worse dark than before. for before the light had gone, mccray had seen what had escaped his eyes before. the suit and the microphone were clear enough in the pinkish glimmer; but the hand--his own hand, cupped to hold the microphone--he had not seen at all. nor his arm. nor, in one fleeting moment of study, his chest. mccray could not see any part of his own body at all. ii someone else could. someone was watching herrell mccray, with the clinical fascination of a biochemist observing the wigglings of paramecia in a new antibiotic--and with the prayerful emotions of a starving, shipwrecked, sailor, watching the inward bobbing drift of a wave-born cask that _may_ contain food. suppose you call him "hatcher" (and suppose you call it a "him.") hatcher was not exactly male, because his race had no true males; but it did have females and he was certainly not that. hatcher did not in any way look like a human being, but they had features in common. if hatcher and mccray had somehow managed to strike up an acquaintance, they might have got along very well. hatcher, like mccray, was an adventurous soul, young, able, well-learned in the technical sciences of his culture. both enjoyed games--mccray baseball, poker and three-dimensional chess; hatcher a number of sports which defy human description. both held positions of some importance--considering their ages--in the affairs of their respective worlds. physically they were nothing alike. hatcher was a three-foot, hard-shelled sphere of jelly. he had "arms" and "legs," but they were not organically attached to "himself." they were snakelike things which obeyed the orders of his brain as well as your mind can make your toes curl; but they did not touch him directly. indeed, they worked as well a yard or a quarter-mile away as they did when, rarely, they rested in the crevices they had been formed from in his "skin." at greater distances they worked less well, for reasons irrelevant to the law of inverse squares. hatcher's principal task at this moment was to run the "probe team" which had mccray under observation, and he was more than a little excited. his members, disposed about the room where he had sent them on various errands, quivered and shook a little; yet they were the calmest limbs in the room; the members of the other team workers were in a state of violent commotion. the probe team had had a shock. "paranormal powers," muttered hatcher's second in command, and the others mumbled agreement. hatcher ordered silence, studying the specimen from earth. after a long moment he turned his senses from the earthman. "incredible--but it's true enough," he said. "i'd better report. watch him," he added, but that was surely unnecessary. their job was to watch mccray, and they would do their job; and even more, not one of them could have looked away to save his life from the spectacle of a creature as odd and, from their point of view, hideously alien as herrell mccray. * * * * * hatcher hurried through the halls of the great buried structure in which he worked, toward the place where the supervising council of all probes would be in permanent session. they admitted him at once. hatcher identified himself and gave a quick, concise report: "the subject recovered consciousness a short time ago and began to inspect his enclosure. his method of doing so was to put his own members in physical contact with the various objects in the enclosure. after observing him do this for a time we concluded he might be unable to see and so we illuminated his field of vision for him. "this appeared to work well for a time. he seemed relatively undisturbed. however, he then reverted to physical-contact, manipulating certain appurtenances of an artificial skin we had provided for him. "he then began to vibrate the atmosphere by means of resonating organs in his breathing passage. "simultaneously, the object he was holding, attached to the artificial skin, was discovered to be generating paranormal forces." the supervising council rocked with excitement. "you're sure?" demanded one of the councilmen. "yes, sir. the staff is preparing a technical description of the forces now, but i can say that they are electromagnetic vibrations modulating a carrier wave of very high speed, and in turn modulated by the vibrations of the atmosphere caused by the subject's own breathing." "fantastic," breathed the councillor, in a tone of dawning hope. "how about communicating with him, hatcher? any progress?" "well ... not much, sir. he suddenly panicked. we don't know why; but we thought we'd better pull back and let him recover for a while." the council conferred among itself for a moment, hatcher waiting. it was not really a waste of time for him; with the organs he had left in the probe-team room, he was in fairly close touch with what was going on--knew that mccray was once again fumbling among the objects in the dark, knew that the team-members had tried illuminating the room for him briefly and again produced the rising panic. still, hatcher fretted. he wanted to get back. "stop fidgeting," commanded the council leader abruptly. "hatcher, you are to establish communication at once." "but, sir...." hatcher swung closer, his thick skin quivering slightly; he would have gestured if he had brought members with him to gesture with. "we've done everything we dare. we've made the place homey for him--" actually, what he said was more like, _we've warmed the biophysical nuances of his enclosure_--"and tried to guess his needs; and we're frightening him half to death. we _can't_ go faster. this creature is in no way similar to us, you know. he relies on paranormal forces--heat, light, kinetic energy--for his life. his chemistry is not ours, his processes of thought are not ours, his entire organism is closer to the inanimate rocks of a sea-bottom than to ourselves." "understood, hatcher. in your first report you stated these creatures were intelligent." "yes, sir. but not in our way." "but in _a_ way, and you must learn that way. i know." one lobster-claw shaped member drifted close to the councillor's body and raised itself in an admonitory gesture. "you want time. but we don't have time, hatcher. yours is not the only probe team working. the central masses team has just turned in a most alarming report." "have they secured a subject?" hatcher demanded jealously. the councillor paused. "worse than that, hatcher. i am afraid their subjects have secured one of them. one of them is missing." there was a moment's silence. frozen, hatcher could only wait. the council room was like a tableau in a museum until the councillor spoke again, each council member poised over his locus-point, his members drifting about him. finally the councillor said, "i speak for all of us, i think. if the old ones have seized one of our probers our time margin is considerably narrowed. indeed, we may not have any time at all. you must do everything you can to establish communication with your subject." "but the danger to the specimen--" hatcher protested automatically. "--is no greater," said the councillor, "than the danger to every one of us if we do not find allies _now_." * * * * * hatcher returned to his laboratory gloomily. it was just like the council to put the screws on; they had a reputation for demanding results at any cost--even at the cost of destroying the only thing you had that would make results possible. hatcher did not like the idea of endangering the earthman. it cannot be said that he was emotionally involved; it was not pity or sympathy that caused him to regret the dangers in moving too fast toward communication. not even hatcher had quite got over the revolting physical differences between the earthman and his own people. but hatcher did not want him destroyed. it had been difficult enough getting him here. hatcher checked through the members that he had left with the rest of his team and discovered that there were no immediate emergencies, so he took time to eat. in hatcher's race this was accomplished in ways not entirely pleasant to earthmen. a slit in the lower hemisphere of his body opened, like a purse, emitting a thin, pussy, fetid fluid which hatcher caught and poured into a disposal trough at the side of the eating room. he then stuffed the slit with pulpy vegetation the texture of kelp; it closed, and his body was supplied with nourishment for another day. he returned quickly to the room. his second in command was busy, but one of the other team workers reported--nothing new--and asked about hatcher's appearance before the council. hatcher passed the question off. he considered telling his staff about the disappearance of the central masses team member, but decided against it. he had not been told it was secret. on the other hand, he had not been told it was not. something of this importance was not lightly to be gossiped about. for endless generations the threat of the old ones had hung over his race, those queer, almost mythical beings from the central masses of the galaxy. one brush with them, in ages past, had almost destroyed hatcher's people. only by running and hiding, bearing one of their planets with them and abandoning it--with its population--as a decoy, had they arrived at all. now they had detected mapping parties of the old ones dangerously near the spiral arm of the galaxy in which their planet was located, they had begun the probe teams to find some way of combating them, or of fleeing again. but it seemed that the probe teams themselves might be betraying their existence to their enemies-- "hatcher!" the call was urgent; he hurried to see what it was about. it was his second in command, very excited. "what is it?" hatcher demanded. "wait...." hatcher was patient; he knew his assistant well. obviously something was about to happen. he took the moment to call his members back to him for feeding; they dodged back to their niches on his skin, fitted themselves into their vestigial slots, poured back their wastes into his own circulation and ingested what they needed from the meal he had just taken.... "now!" cried the assistant. "look!" at what passed among hatcher's people for a viewing console an image was forming. actually it was the assistant himself who formed it, not a cathode trace or projected shadow; but it showed what it was meant to show. hatcher was startled. "another one! and--is it a different species? or merely a different sex?" "study the probe for yourself," the assistant invited. hatcher studied him frostily; his patience was not, after all, endless. "no matter," he said at last. "bring the other one in." and then, in a completely different mood, "we may need him badly. we may be in the process of killing our first one now." "killing him, hatcher?" hatcher rose and shook himself, his mindless members floating away like puppies dislodged from suck. "council's orders," he said. "we've got to go into stage two of the project at once." iii before stage two began, or before herrell mccray realized it had begun, he had an inspiration. the dark was absolute, but he remembered where the spacesuit had been and groped his way to it and, yes, it had what all spacesuits had to have. it had a light. he found the toggle that turned it on and pressed it. light. white, flaring, earthly light, that showed everything--even himself. "god bless," he said, almost beside himself with joy. whatever that pinkish, dancing halo had been, it had thrown him into a panic; now that he could see his own hand again, he could blame the weird effects on some strange property of the light. at the moment he heard the click that was the beginning of stage two. he switched off the light and stood for a moment, listening. for a second he thought he heard the far-off voice, quiet, calm and almost hopeless, that he had sensed hours before; but then that was gone. something else was gone. some faint mechanical sound that had hardly registered at the time, but was not missing. and there was, perhaps, a nice new sound that had not been there before; a very faint, an almost inaudible elfin hiss. mccray switched the light on and looked around. there seemed to be no change. and yet, surely, it was warmer in here. he could see no difference; but perhaps, he thought, he could smell one. the unpleasant halogen odor from the grating was surely stronger now. he stood there, perplexed. a tinny little voice from the helmet of the space suit said sharply, amazement in its tone, "mccray, is that you? where the devil are you calling from?" he forgot smell, sound and temperature and leaped for the suit. "this is herrell mccray," he cried. "i'm in a room of some sort, apparently on a planet of approximate earth mass. i don't know--" "mccray!" cried the tiny voice in his ear. "where are you? this is _jodrell bank_ calling. answer, please!" "i _am_ answering, damn it," he roared. "what took you so long?" "herrell mccray," droned the tiny voice in his ear, "herrell mccray, herrell mccray, this is _jodrell bank_ responding to your message, acknowledge please. herrell mccray, herrell mccray...." it kept on, and on. mccray took a deep breath and thought. something was wrong. either they didn't hear him, which meant the radio wasn't transmitting, or--no. that was not it; they _had_ heard him, because they were responding. but it seemed to take them so long.... abruptly his face went white. took them so long! he cast back in his mind, questing for a fact, unable to face its implications. when was it he called them? two hours ago? three? did that mean--did it _possibly_ mean--that there was a lag of an hour or two each way? did it, for example, mean that at the speed of his suit's pararadio, millions of times faster than light, it took _hours_ to get a message to the ship and back? and if so ... where in the name of heaven was he? * * * * * herrell mccray was a navigator, which is to say, a man who has learned to trust the evidence of mathematics and instrument readings beyond the guesses of his "common sense." when _jodrell bank_, hurtling faster than light in its voyage between stars, made its regular position check, common sense was a liar. light bore false witness. the line of sight was trustworthy directly forward and directly after--sometimes not even then--and it took computers, sensing their data through instruments, to comprehend a star bearing and convert three fixes into a position. if the evidence of his radio contradicted common sense, common sense was wrong. perhaps it was impossible to believe what the radio's message implied; but it was not necessary to "believe," only to act. mccray thumbed down the transmitter button and gave a concise report of his situation and his guesses. "i don't know how i got here. i don't know how long i've been gone, since i was unconscious for a time. however, if the transmission lag is a reliable indication--" he swallowed and went on--"i'd estimate i am something more than five hundred light-years away from you at this moment. that's all i have to say, except for one more word: help." he grinned sourly and released the button. the message was on its way, and it would be hours before he could have a reply. therefore he had to consider what to do next. he mopped his brow. with the droning, repetitious call from the ship finally quiet, the room was quiet again. and warm. very warm, he thought tardily; and more than that. the halogen stench was strong in his nostrils again. hurriedly mccray scrambled into the suit. by the time he was sealed down he was coughing from the bottom of his lungs, deep, tearing rasps that pained him, uncontrollable. chlorine or fluorine, one of them was in the air he had been breathing. he could not guess where it had come from; but it was ripping his lungs out. he flushed the interior of the suit out with a reckless disregard for the wastage of his air reserve, holding his breath as much as he could, daring only shallow gasps that made him retch and gag. after a long time he could breathe, though his eyes were spilling tears. he could see the fumes in the room now. the heat was building up. automatically--now that he had put it on and so started its servo-circuits operating--the suit was cooling him. this was a deep-space suit, regulation garb when going outside the pressure hull of an ftl ship. it was good up to at least five hundred degrees in thin air, perhaps three or four hundred in dense. in thin air or in space it was the elastic joints and couplings that depolymerized when the heat grew too great; in dense air, with conduction pouring energy in faster than the cooling coils could suck it out and hurl it away, it was the refrigerating equipment that broke down. mccray had no way of knowing just how hot it was going to get. nor, for that matter, had the suit been designed to operate in a corrosive medium. all in all it was time for him to do something. * * * * * among the debris on the floor, he remembered, was a five-foot space-ax, tungsten-steel blade and springy aluminum shaft. mccray caught it up and headed for the door. it felt good in his gauntlets, a rewarding weight; any weapon straightens the back of the man who holds it, and mccray was grateful for this one. with something concrete to do he could postpone questioning. never mind why he had been brought here; never mind how. never mind what he would, or could, do next; all those questions could recede into the background of his mind while he swung the ax and battered his way out of this poisoned oven. _crash-clang!_ the double jolt ran up the shaft of the ax, through his gauntlets and into his arm; but he was making progress, he could see the plastic--or whatever it was--of the door. it was chipping out. not easily, very reluctantly; but flaking out in chips that left a white powdery residue. at this rate, he thought grimly, he would be an hour getting through it. did he have an hour? but it did not take an hour. one blow was luckier than the rest; it must have snapped the lock mechanism. the door shook and slid ajar. mccray got the thin of the blade into the crack and pried it wide. he was in another room, maybe a hall, large and bare. mccray put the broad of his back against the broken door and pressed it as nearly closed as he could; it might not keep the gas and heat out, but it would retard them. the room was again unlighted--at least to mccray's eyes. there was not even that pink pseudo-light that had baffled him; here was nothing but the beam of his suit lamp. what it showed was cryptic. there were evidences of use: shelves, boxy contraptions that might have been cupboards, crude level surfaces attached to the walls that might have been workbenches. yet they were queerly contrived, for it was not possible to guess from them much about the creatures who used them. some were near the floor, some at waist height, some even suspended from the ceiling itself. a man would need a ladder to work at these benches and mccray, staring, thought briefly of many-armed blind giants or shapeless huge intelligent amoebae, and felt the skin prickle at the back of his neck. he tapped half-heartedly at one of the closed cupboards, and was not surprised when it proved as refractory as the door. undoubtedly he could batter it open, but it was not likely that much would be left of its contents when he was through; and there was the question of time. but his attention was diverted by a gleam from one of the benches. metallic parts lay heaped in a pile. he poked at them with a stiff-fingered gauntlet; they were oddly familiar. they were, he thought, very much like the parts of a bullet-gun. in fact, they were. he could recognize barrel, chamber, trigger, even a couple of cartridges, neatly opened and the grains of powder stacked beside them. it was an older, clumsier model than the kind he had seen in survival locker, on the _jodrell bank_--and abruptly wished he were carrying now--but it was a pistol. another trophy, like the strange assortment in the other room? he could not guess. but the others had been more familiar; they all have come from his own ship. he was prepared to swear that nothing like this antique had been aboard. the drone began again in his ear, as it had at five-minute intervals all along: "herrell mccray, herrell mccray, herrell mccray, this is _jodrell bank_ calling herrell mccray...." and louder, blaring, then fading to normal volume as the avc circuits toned the signal down, another voice. a woman's voice, crying out in panic and fear: "_jodrell bank!_ where are you? help!" iv hatcher's second in command said: "he has got through the first survival test. in fact, he broke his way out! what next?" "wait!" hatcher ordered sharply. he was watching the new specimen and a troublesome thought had occurred to him. the new one was female and seemed to be in pain; but it was not the pain that disturbed hatcher, it was something far more immediate to his interests. "i think," he said slowly, "that they are in contact." his assistant vibrated startlement. "i know," hatcher said, "but watch. do you see? he is going straight toward her." hatcher, who was not human, did not possess truly human emotions; but he did feel amazement when he was amazed, and fear when there was cause to be afraid. these specimens, obtained with so much difficulty, needed so badly, were his responsibility. he knew the issues involved much better than any of his helpers. they could only be surprised at the queer antics of the aliens with attached limbs and strange powers. hatcher knew that this was not a freak show, but a matter of life and death. he said, musing: "this new one, i cannot communicate with her, but i get--almost--a whisper, now and then. the first one, the male, nothing. but this female is perhaps not quite mute." "then shall we abandon him and work with her, forgetting the first one?" hatcher hesitated. "no," he said at last. "the male is responding well. remember that when last this experiment was done every subject died; he is alive at least. but i am wondering. we can't quite communicate with the female--" "but?" "but i'm not sure that others can't." * * * * * the woman's voice was at such close range that mccray's suit radio made a useful rdf set. he located her direction easily enough, shielding the tiny built-in antenna with the tungsten-steel blade of the ax, while she begged him to hurry. her voice was heavily accented, with some words in a language he did not recognize. she seemed to be in shock. mccray was hardly surprised at that; he had been close enough to shock himself. he tried to reassure her as he searched for a way out of the hall, but in the middle of a word her voice stopped. he hesitated, hefting the ax, glancing back at the way he had come. there had to be a way out, even if it meant chopping through a wall. when he turned around again there was a door. it was oddly shaped and unlike the door he had hewn through, but clearly a door all the same, and it was open. mccray regarded it grimly. he went back in his memory with meticulous care. had he not looked at, this very spot a matter of moments before? he had. and had there been an open door then? there had not. there hadn't been even a shadowy outline of the three-sided, uneven opening that stood there now. still, it led in the proper direction. mccray added one more inexplicable fact to his file and walked through. he was in another hall--or tunnel--rising quite steeply to the right. by his reckoning it was the proper direction. he labored up it, sweating under the weight of the suit, and found another open door, this one round, and behind it-- yes, there was the woman whose voice he had heard. it was a woman, all right. the voice had been so strained that he hadn't been positive. even now, short black hair might not have proved it, and she was lying face down but the waist and hips were a woman's, even though she wore a bulky, quilted suit of coveralls. he knelt beside her and gently turned her face. she was unconscious. broad, dark face, with no make-up; she was apparently in her late thirties. she appeared to be chinese. she breathed, a little raggedly but without visible discomfort; her face was relaxed as though she were sleeping. she did not rouse as he moved her. he realized she was breathing the air of the room they were in. his instant first thought was that she was in danger of asphyxiation; he started to leap up to get, and put her into, the small, flimsy space suit he saw slumped in a corner. at second thought he realized that she would not be breathing so comfortably if the air were full of the poisonous reek that had driven him out of the first room. there was an obvious conclusion to be drawn from that; perhaps he could economize on his own air reserve. tentatively he cracked the seal of his faceplate and took a cautious breath. the faint reek of halogens was still there, but it was not enough even to make his eyes water, and the temperature of the air was merely pleasantly warm. he shook her, but she did not wake. he stood up and regarded her thoughtfully. it was a disappointment. her voice had given him hope of a companion, someone to talk things over with, to compare notes--someone who, if not possessing any more answers than himself, could at least serve as a sounding-board in the give-and-take of discussion that might make some sort of sense out of the queerness that permeated this place. what he had instead was another burden to carry, for she was unable to care for herself and surely he could not leave her in this condition. * * * * * he slipped off the helmet absently and pressed the buttons that turned off the suit's cooling units, looking around the chamber. it was bare except for a litter of irrelevant human articles--much like the one in which he himself had first appeared, except that the articles were not _jodrell bank's_. a woven cane screen, some cooking utensils, a machine like a desk calculator, some books--he picked up one of the books and glanced at it. it was printed on coarse paper, and the text was in ideographs, chinese, perhaps; he did not know oriental languages. mccray knew that the _jodrell bank_ was not the only ftl vessel in this volume of space. the betelgeuse run was a busy one, as ftl shipping lanes went. almost daily departures from some point on earth to one of the colonies, with equal traffic in the other direction. of course, if the time-lag in communication did not lie, he was no longer anywhere within that part of the sky; betelgeuse was only a few hundred light-years from sol, and subspace radio covered that distance in something like fifty minutes. but suppose the woman came from another ship; perhaps a singapore or tokyo vessel, on the same run. she might easily have been trapped as he was trapped. and if she were awake, he could find out from her what had happened, and thus learn something that might be of use. although it was hard to see what might be of use in these most unprecedented and unpleasant circumstances. the drone from _jodrell bank_ began again: "herrell mccray, herrell mccray, herrell mccray, this is _jodrell bank_ responding--" he turned the volume down but did not dare turn it off. he had lost track of time and couldn't guess when they would respond to his last message. he needed to hear that response when it came. meanwhile, what about his fellow-captive? her suit was only a flimsy work-about model, as airtight as his but without the bracing required for building jet propulsors into it. it contained air reserves enough, and limited water; but neither food nor emergency medical supplies. mccray had both of these, of course. it was merely one more reason why he could not abandon her and go on ... if, that is, he could find some reason for going in one direction preferably to another, and if a wall would conveniently open again to let him go there. he could give her an injection of a stimulant, he mused. would that improve the situation? not basically, he decided, with some regret. sleep was a need, not a luxury; it would not help her to be awakened chemically, when body was demonstrating its need for rest by refusing to wake to a call. anyway, if she were not seriously injured she would undoubtedly wake of her own accord before long. he checked pulse and eye-pupils; everything normal, no evidence of bleeding or somatic shock. so much for that. at least he had made one simple decision on his own, he thought with grim humor. to that extent he had reestablished his mastery of his own fate, and it made him feel a touch better. perhaps he could make some more. what about trying to find a way out of this place, for instance? * * * * * it was highly probable that they would not be able to stay here indefinitely, that was the first fact to take into account. either his imagination was jumpy, or the reek of halogens was a bit stronger. in any case there was no guarantee that this place would remain habitable any longer than the last, and he had to reckon with the knowledge that a spacesuit's air reserve was not infinite. these warrens might prove a death trap. mccray paused, leaning on the haft of his ax, wondering how much of that was reason and how much panic. he knew that he wanted, more than anything to get out of this place, to see sky and stars, to be where no skulking creatures behind false panels in the walls, or peering through televiewers concealed in the furnishings, could trick and trap him. but did he have any reason to believe that he would be better off somewhere else? might it not be even that this place was a sort of vivarium maintained for his survival--that the leak of poison gases and heat in the first room was not a deliberate thrust at his safety, but a failure of the shielding that alone could keep him alive? he didn't know, and in the nature of things could not. but paradoxically the thought that escape might increase his danger made him all the more anxious to escape. he wanted to know. if death was waiting for him outside his chamber, mccray wanted to face it--now--while he was still in good physical shape. while he was still sane. for there was a limit to how many phenomena he could store away in the back of his mind; sooner or later the contradictions, the puzzles, the fears would have to be faced. yet what could he do with the woman? conceivably he could carry her; but could he also carry her suit? he did not dare take her without it. it would be no kindness to plunge her into another atmosphere of poison, and watch her die because he had taken her from her only hope of safety. yet the suit weighed at least fifty pounds. his own was slightly more; the girl, say, a hundred and thirty. it added up to more mass than he could handle, at least for more than a few dozen yards. the speaker in his helmet said suddenly: "herrell mccray, this is _jodrell bank_. your transmission received. we are vectoring and ranging your signal. stand by. we will call again in ten minutes." and, in a different tone: "god help you, mac. what the devil happened to you?" it was a good question. mccray swore uselessly because he didn't know the answer. he took wry pleasure in imagining what was going on aboard _jodrell bank_ at that moment. at least not all the bewilderment was his own. they would be utterly baffled. as far as they were concerned, their navigator had been on the bridge at one moment and the next moment gone, tracelessly. that in itself was a major puzzle; the only way off an ftl ship in flight was in the direction called "suicide." that would have been their assumption, all right, as soon as they realized he was gone and checked the ship to make sure he was not for some reason wandering about in a cargo hold or unconscious in a closet after some hard-to-imagine attack from another crewman. they would have thought that somehow, crazily, he had got into a suit--there was the suit--and jumped out of a lock. but there would have been no question of going back to look for him. true, they could have tracked his subspace radio if he had used it. but what would have been the good of that? the first question, an all but unanswerable one, would be how long ago he had jumped. even if they knew that, _jodrell bank_, making more than five hundred times light-speed, could not be stopped in fewer than a dozen light-years. they could hardly hope to return to even approximately the location in space where he might have jumped; and there was no hope of reaching a position, stopping, casting about, starting again--the accelerations were too enormous, a man too tiny a dust-mote. and, of course, he would have been dead in the first place, anyway. the transition from ftl drive to normal space was instantly fatal except within the protecting shield of a ship's engines. so they would have given him up and, hours later--or days, for he had lost track of time--they would have received his message. what would they make of that? he didn't know. after all, he hardly knew what he made of it himself. the woman still slept. the way back was still open. he could tell by sniffing the air that the poisons in the atmosphere were still gaining. ahead there was nothing but blank walls, and the clutter of useless equipment littering the floor. stolidly mccray closed his mind and waited. the signal came at last. "mac, we have verified your position." the voice was that of captain tillinger, strained and shaking. "i don't know how you got there, but unless the readings lie you're the hell of a long way off. the bearing is identical with messier object m- and the distance--" raggedly--"is compatible. about a thousand light-years from us, mac. one way or another, you've been kidnaped. i--i--" the voice hesitated, unable to say what it could not accept as fact but could not deny. "i think," it managed at last, "that we've finally come across those super-beings in space that we've wondered about." * * * * * hatcher's detached limbs were quivering with excitement--and with more than excitement, because he was afraid. he was trying to conceal from the others just how afraid he was. his second in command reported: "we have the second subject out of consciousness. how long do you want us to keep her that way?" "until i tell you otherwise! how about the prime subject?" "we can't tell, hatcher. but you were right. he is in communication with others, it seems, and by paranormal means." hatcher noted the dismay in what his assistant said. he understood the dismay well enough. it was one thing to work on a project involving paranormal forces as an exercise in theory. it was something else entirely to see them in operation. but there was more cause for dismay than that, and hatcher alone knew just how bad the situation was. he summoned one of his own members to him and impressed on it a progress report for the council. he sent it floating through the long warrens of his people's world, ordered his assistants back to their work and closed in his thoughts to consider what had happened. these two creatures, with their command of forces in the paranormal--i.e., the electromagnetic--spectrum, seemed able to survive in the environments prepared for them. that was step one. no previous team had done as well. this was not the first time a probe team of his race had snatched a warmblooded biped from a spaceship for study--because their operation forces, psionic in nature, operated in non-euclidean ways, it was easiest for them to make contact with the crew of a ship in the non-euclidean space of ftl drive. but it was the first time that the specimens had survived. he reviewed the work they had already done with the male specimen. he had shown himself unable to live in the normal atmospheric conditions of hatcher's world; but that was to be expected, after all, and the creature had been commendably quick about getting out of a bad environment. probably they had blundered in illuminating the scene for him, hatcher conceded. he didn't know how badly he had blundered, for the concept of "light" from a general source, illuminating not only what the mind wished to see but irrelevant matter as well, had never occurred to hatcher or any of his race; all of their senses operated through the mind itself, and what to them was "light" was a sort of focusing of attention. but although something about that episode which hatcher failed to understand had gone wrong, the specimen had not been seriously harmed by it. the specimen was doing well. probably they could now go to the hardest test of all, the one which would mean success or failure. probably they could so modify the creature as to make direct communication possible. and the other specimen? hatcher would have frowned, if he had had brow muscles to shape such an expression--or a brow to be shaped. the female specimen was the danger. his own people knew how to shield their thoughts. this one evidently did not. it was astonishing that the old ones had not already encountered these bipeds, so loosely guarded was their radiation--when they radiated at all, of course, for only a few of them seemed to possess any psionic power worth mentioning. hatcher hastily drove that thought from his mind, for what he proposed to do with the male specimen was to give him that power. and yet there was no choice for hatcher's people, because they were faced with disaster. hatcher, through his communications from the council, knew how close the disaster was. when one of the probers from the central masses team disappeared, the only conclusion that could be drawn was the old ones had discovered them. they needed allies; more, they needed allies who had control of the electromagnetic forces that made the old ones so potent and so feared. in the male and female they had snatched out of space they might have found those allies. but another thought was in hatcher's mind: suppose the old ones found them too? hatcher made up his mind. he could not delay any longer. "open the way to the surface," he ordered. "as soon as possible, take both of them to where we can work." * * * * * the object captain tillinger had called "m- " was no stranger to herrell mccray. it was the great nebula in orion, in earth's telescopes a fuzzy patch of light, in cold fact a great and glowing cloud of gas. m- was not an external galaxy, like most of the "nebulae" in messier's catalogue, but it was nothing so tiny as a single sun either. its hydrogen mass spanned dozens of light-years. imbedded in it--growing in it, as they fed on the gas that surrounded them--were scores of hot, bright new suns. _new_ suns. in all the incongruities that swarmed around him mccray took time to consider that one particular incongruity. the suns of the orion gas cloud were of the spectral class called "b"--young suns, less than a thousandth as old as a sol. they simply had not been in existence long enough to own stable planetary systems--much less planets which themselves were old enough to have cooled, brewed chemical complexes and thus in time produced life. but surely he was on a planet.... wasn't he? mccray breathed a deep sigh and for one more time turned his mind away from unprofitable speculations. the woman stirred slightly. mccray knelt to look at her; then, on quick impulse, opened his medical kit, took out a single-shot capsule of a stimulant and slipped it neatly into the exposed vein of her arm. in about two minutes she would be awake. good enough, thought mccray; at least he would have someone to talk to. now if only they could find a way out of this place. if a door would open, as the other door had, and-- he paused, staring. there was another door. open. he felt himself swaying, threw out an arm and realized that he was ... falling? floating? moving toward the door, somehow, not as though he were being dragged, not as though he were walking, but surely and rather briskly moving along. his feet were not touching the ground. it wasn't a volitional matter. his intentions had nothing to do with it. he flailed out, and touched nothing; nor did he slow his motion at all. he fought against it, instinctively; and then reason took over and he stopped. the woman's form lifted from the floor ahead of him. she was still unconscious. from the clutter on the floor, her lightweight space suit rose, too; suit and girl, they floated ahead of him, toward the door and out. mccray cried out and tried to run after them. his legs flailed and, of course, touched nothing; but it did seem that he was moving faster. the woman and her suit were disappearing around a bend, but he was right behind them. he became conscious of the returning reek of gases. he flipped up the plate of his helmet and lunged at the girl, miraculously caught her in one hand and, straining, caught the suit with the other. stuffing her into the suit was hard, awkward work, like dressing a doll that is too large for its garments; but he managed it, closed her helmet, saw the flexible parts of her suit bulge out slightly as its automatic pressure regulators filled it with air. they drove along, faster and faster, until they came to a great portal, and out into the blinding radiance of a molten copper sky. * * * * * gathered in a circle were a score or more of hatcher's people. mccray didn't know they were hatcher's people, of course. he did not know even that they were animate beings, for they lacked all the features of animals that he had been used to. no eyes. no faces. their detached members, bobbing about seemingly at random, did not appear to have any relation to the irregular spheres that were their owners. the woman got unevenly to her feet, her faceplate staring toward the creatures. mccray heard a smothered exclamation in his suit-phones. "are you all right?" he demanded sharply. the great crystal eye turned round to look at him. "oh, the man who spoke to me." her voice was taut but controlled. the accent was gone; her control was complete. "i am ann mei-ling, of the _woomara_. what are--those?" mccray said, "our kidnappers, i guess. they don't look like much, do they?" she laughed shakily, without answering. the creatures seemed to be waiting for something, mccray thought; if indeed they were creatures and not machines or--or whatever one might expect to find, in the impossible event of being cast away on an improbable planet of an unexplored sun. he touched the woman's helmet reassuringly and walked toward the aliens, raising his arms. "hello," he said. "i am herrell mccray." he waited. he half turned; the woman watching him. "i don't know what to do next," he confessed. "sit down," she said suddenly. he stared. "no, you must! they want you to sit down." "i didn't hear--" he began, then shrugged. he sat down. "now lie stretched out and open your face mask." "_here?_ listen--ann--miss mei-ling, whatever you said your name was! don't you feel the heat? if i crack my mask--" "but you must." she spoke very confidently. "it is _s'in fo_---what do you call it--telepathy, i think. but i can hear them. they want you to open your mask. no, it won't kill you. they understand what they are doing." she hesitated, then said, with less assurance, "they need us, mccray. there is something ... i am not sure, but something bad. they need help, and think you can give it to them. so open your helmet as they wish, please." mccray closed his eyes and grimaced; but there was no help for it, he had no better ideas. and anyway, he thought, he could close it again quickly enough if these things had guessed wrong. the creatures moved purposefully toward mccray, and he found himself the prisoner of a dozen unattached arms. surprised, he struggled, but helplessly; no, he would not be able to close the plate again!... but the heat was no worse. somehow they were shielding him. a tiny member, like one of the unattached arms but much smaller, writhed through the air toward him, hesitated over his eyes and released something tinier still, something so small and so close that mccray could not focus his eyes upon it. it moved deliberately toward his face. the woman was saying, as if to herself, "the thing they fear is--far away, but--oh, no! my god!" there was a terrible loud scream, but mccray was not quite sure he heard it. it might have been his own, he thought crazily; for that tiny floating thing had found his face and was burrowing deep inside; and the pain was beyond belief. * * * * * the pain was incredible. it was worse than anything he had ever felt, and it grew ... and then it was gone. what it was that the spheroidal aliens had done to his mind mccray had no way of learning. he could only know that a door had been open. an opaque screen was removed. he was free of his body. he was more than free, he was extended--increased--enlarged. he was inside the body of an alien, and the alien was in him. he was also outside both, looking at them. mccray had never felt anything like it in his life. it was a situation without even a close analogue. he had had a woman in his arms, he had been part of a family, he had shared the youthful sense of exploration that comes in small, eager groups: these were the comparisons that came to his mind. this was so much more than any of these things. he and the alien--he and, he began to perceive, a number of aliens--were almost inextricably mingled. yet they were separate, as one strand of colored thread in a ball of yarn is looped and knotted and intertwined with every other strand, although it retains its own integrity. he was in and among many minds, and outside them all. mccray thought: this is how a god must feel. * * * * * hatcher would have laughed--if he had lips, larynx or mouth to laugh with. he would have laughed in pure exultation, and, indeed, his second in command recognized the marionette quivering of his detached limbs as a shout of glee. "we've done it," cried the assistant, catching his delight. "we've made the project work!" "we've done a great deal more than that," exulted hatcher. "go to the supervisors, report to them. pass on the word to the central masses probe. maintain for the alien the pressure and temperature value he needs--" "and you, hatcher?" "i'm going with him--out in the open! i'm going to show him what _we_ need!" * * * * * hatcher. mccray recognized that this was a name--the name of the entity closest to himself, the one that had somehow manipulated his forebrain and released the mind from the prison of the skull. "hatcher" was not a word but an image, and in the image he saw a creature whose physical shape was unpleasant, but whose instincts and hopes were enough like his own to provide common ground. he saw more than that. this hatcher was trying to persuade him to move. to venture farther. to come with him.... mccray allowed himself to be lead and at once he was outside not only of his own body but of all bodies. he was free in space. the entity that had been born of herrell mccray was now larger than a sun. he could see, all around him, the wonder and beauty of the great gas cloud in which his body rested, on one tiny planet of one trivial star. his sense of time was not changed from what it had been--he could count the pulses of his own body, still thudding in what, however remote, was his ear--but he could see things that were terribly slow and vast. he could see the friction of the streamers of gas in the cloud as light-pressure drove them outward. he could hear the subtle emanations of ion clashing with hurtling ion. he could see the great blue new suns tunneling through the cloud, building their strength out of the diffuse contaminated hydrogen that made the orion nebula, leaving relatively clear "holes" behind them. he could see into the gas and through it. he could perceive each star and gassy comet; and he could behold the ordered magnificence of the galaxy of stars, and the universe of galaxies, beyond. the presence beside him was urging him to look beyond, into a denser, richer region of suns. mccray, unsure of his powers, stretched toward it--and recoiled. there was something there which was terrifying, something cold and restless that watched him come toward it with the eyes of a crouched panther awaiting a deer. the presence beside him felt the same terror, mccray knew. he was grateful when hatcher allowed him to look away from the central clusters and return to the immediate neighborhood of his body. like a child's toy in a diminishing glass, mccray could see the planet he had left. but it was no planet. it was not a planet, but a great irregular sphere of metal, honeycombed and warrened. he would have thought it a ship, though huge, if it had had engines or instruments.... no. it _was_ a ship. hatcher beside him was proof that these creatures needed neither, not in any earthly sense, at least. they themselves were engines, with their power to move matter apart from the intervention of other matter. they themselves were instruments, through the sensing of force, that was now within his own power. a moment's hesitant practice, and mccray had the "planet" in the palm of his hand--not a real palm, not a real hand; but it was there for his inspection. he looked at it and within it and saw the interior nests of hatcher's folk, found the room where he had been brought, traced his course to the surface, saw his own body in its spacesuit, saw beside it the flaccid suit that had held the strange woman's body.... the suit was empty. the suit was empty, and in the moment of that discovery mccray heard a terrible wailing cry--not in his ears, in his mind--from the aliens around him. the suit was empty. they discovered it the same moment as he. it was wrong and it was dangerous; they were terrified. the companion presence beside him receded into emptiness. in a moment mccray was back in his own body, and the gathering members let him free. vi some hundreds of light-years away, the _jodrell bank_ was making up lost time on its betelgeuse run. herrell mccray swept the long line from sol to betelgeuse, with his perceptions that were not his eyes and his touch that was not of matter, until he found it. the giant ship, fastest and hugest of mankind's star vessels, was to him a lumbering tiny beetle. it held friends and something else--something his body needed--air and water and food. mccray did not know what would happen to him if, while his mind was out in the stars, his body died. but he was not anxious to find out. mccray had not tried moving his physical body, but with what had been done to his brain he could now do anything within the powers of hatcher's people. as they had swept him from ship to planet, so he could now hurl his body back from planet to ship. he flexed muscles of his mind that had never been used before, and in a moment his body was slumped on the floor of the _jodrell bank's_ observation bubble. in another moment he was in his body, opening his eyes and looking out into the astonished face of chris stoerer, his junior navigator. "god in heaven," whispered stoerer. "it's you!" "it is," said mccray hoarsely, through lips that were parched and cracked, sitting up and trying the muscles of the body. it ached. he was bone-weary. "give me a hand getting out of this suit, will you?" it was not easy to be a mind in a body again, mccray discovered. time had stopped for him. he had been soaring the star-lanes in his released mind for hours; but while his mind had been liberated, his body, back on hatcher's "planet," had continued its slow metabolism, its steady devouring of its tissues, its inevitable progress toward death. when he had returned to it he found its pulse erratic and its breathing ragged. a grinding knot of hunger seethed in its stomach. its muscles ached. whatever might become of his mind, it was clear that his body would die if it were left unfed and uncared-for much longer. so he had brought it back to the _jodrell bank_. he stood up and avoided chris's questions. "let me get something to eat, and then get cleaned up a little." (he had discovered that his body stank.) "then i'll tell you everything you want to know--you and the captain, and anybody else who wants to listen. and we'll have to send a dispatch to earth, too, because this is important.... but, please, i only want to tell it once." because--he did not say--i may not have time to tell it again. for those cold and murderous presences in the clustered inner suns had reached out as casually as a bear flicking a salmon out of a run and snatched the unknown woman from hatcher's planet. they could reach anywhere in the galaxy their thoughts roamed. they might easily follow him here. * * * * * it was good to be human again, and mccray howled with pain and joy as the icy needle-spray of the showers cleansed his body. he devoured the enormous plates of steak and potatoes the ship's galley shoved before him, and drank chilled milk and steaming black coffee in alternate pint mugs. mccray let the ship's surgeon look him over, and laughed at the expression in the man's eyes. "i know i'm a little wobbly," he said. "it doesn't matter, doc. you can put me in the sickbay as long as you like, as soon as i've talked to the captain. i won't mind a bit. you see, i won't be there--" and he laughed louder, and would not explain. an hour later, with food in his belly and something from the surgeon's hypospray in his bloodstream to clear his brain, he was in the captain's cabin, trying to spell out in words that made sense the incredible story of (he discovered) eight days since he had been abducted from the ship. looking at the ship's officers, good friends, companions on a dozen planetside leaves, mccray started to speak, stumbled and was for a moment without words. it was too incredible to tell. how could he make them understand? they would have to understand. insane or not, the insane facts had to be explained to them. however queerly they might stare, they were intelligent men. they would resist but ultimately they would see. he settled his problem by telling them baldly and plainly, without looking at their faces and without waiting for their questions, everything that had happened. he told them about hatcher and about the room in which he had come to. he told them about the pinkish light that showed only what he concentrated on--and explained it to them, as he had not understood it at first; about hatcher's people, and how their entire sense-world was built up of what humans called e.s.p., the "light" being only the focusing of thought, which sees no material objects that it is not fixed on. he told them of the woman from the other ship and the cruel, surgical touch on his brain that had opened a universe to him. he promised that that universe would open for them as well. he told them of the deadly, unknowable danger to hatcher's people--and to themselves--that lay at the galaxy's core. he told them how the woman had disappeared, and told them she was dead--at the hands of the old ones from the central masses--a blessing to her, mccray explained, and a blessing to all of them; for although her mind would yield some of its secrets even in death, if she were alive it would be their guide, and the old ones would be upon them. he did not wait for them to react. he turned to the ship's surgeon. "doc, i'm all yours now, body and soul ... cancel that. just body!" and he left them, to swim once more in space. * * * * * in so short a time mccray had come to think of this as life, and a sort of interregnum. he swept up and out, glancing back only to see the ship's surgeon leaping forward to catch his unconscious body as it fell and then he was in space between the stars once more. here, 'twixt sol and betelgeuse, space was clear, hard and cold, no diffuse gas cloud, no new, growing suns. he "looked" toward hatcher's world, but hesitated and considered. first or last, he would have to look once more upon the inimical presences that had peered out at him from the central masses. it might as well be now. his perceptions alert, he plunged toward the heart of the galaxy. thought speeds where light plods. the mind of herrell mccray covered light-millenia in a moment. it skipped the drifty void between spiral arms, threaded dust clouds, entered the compact central galactic sphere to which our earth's sector of the galaxy is only a remote and unimportant appendage. here a great globular cluster of suns massed around a common center of gravity. mccray shrank himself to the perspective of a human body and stared in wonder. mankind's sol lies in a tenuous, stretched-out arm, thinly populated by stellar standards: if earth had circled one of these dense-clustered suns, what a different picture of the sky would have greeted the early shepherds! where man's earthbound eyes are fortunate to count a thousand stars in a winter sky, here were tens of thousands, bright enough to be a sirius or a capella at the bottom of a sink of atmosphere like earth's--tens of billions of stars in all, whirling close to each other, so that star greets star over distances that are hardly more than planetary. sol's nearest neighbor star is four light-years away. no single sun in this dense, gyrating central mass was as much as one light-year from its fellows. here were suns that had been blazing with mature, steady light when sol was a mere contracting mass of hydrogen--whose planets had cooled and spawned life before earth's hollows cupped the first scalding droplets that were the beginnings of seas. on these ancient worlds life existed. mccray had not understood all of what hatcher had tried to communicate to him, but he had caught the terror in hatcher's thoughts. hatcher's people had fled from these ancients many millenia before--fled and hidden in the heart of the orion gas cloud, their world and all. yet even there they were not safe. they knew that in time the old ones would find them. and it was this fear that had led them to kidnap humans, seeking allies in the war that could not forever be deferred. hatcher's people were creatures of thought. man was the wielder of physical forces--"paranormal" to hatcher, as teleportation and mind-seeing were "paranormal" to mccray. the old ones had mastered both. mccray paused at the fringe of the cluster, waiting for the touch of contemptuous hate. it came and he recoiled a thousand light-years before he could stop. to battle the old ones would be no easy match--yet time might work for the human race. already they controlled the electromagnetic spectrum, and hydrogen fusion could exert the force of suns. with hatcher's help--and his own--man would free his mind as well; and perhaps the old ones would find themselves against an opponent as mighty as themselves. he drew back from the central masses, no longer afraid, and swept out to see hatcher's planet. it was gone. * * * * * in the great gas cloud the tunneling blue suns swept up their graze of hydrogen, untroubled by planets. themselves too young to have solid satellites, hatcher's adopted world removed again, they were alone. gone! it was for a moment, a panicky thought. mccray realized what they had done. hatcher's greatest hope had been to find another race to stand between his people and the old ones. and they had found it! now hatcher's world could hide again and wait until the battle had been fought for them. with a face light-years across, with a brain made up of patterns in the ether, mccray grinned wryly. "maybe they made the right choice," he thought, considering. "maybe they'd only be in the way when the showdown comes." and he sought out _jodrell bank_ and his body once more, preparing to return to being human ... and to teach his fellow-humans to be gods. [transcriber's note: no secton v heading in original] the god next door by bill doede illustrated by ivie [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy magazine august . extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] the sand-thing was powerful, lonely and strange. no doubt it was a god--but who wasn't? stinson lay still in the sand where he fell, gloating over the success of his arrival. he touched the pencil-line scar behind his ear where the cylinder was buried, marveling at the power stored there, power to fling him from earth to this fourth planet of the centaurian system in an instant. it had happened so fast that he could almost feel the warm, humid missouri air, though he was light years from missouri. he got up. a gray, funnel-shaped cloud of dust stood off to his left. this became disturbing, since there was scarcely enough wind to move his hair. he watched it, trying to recall what he might know about cyclones. but he knew little. weather control made cyclones and other climatic phenomena on earth practically non-existent. the cloud did not move, though, except to spin on its axis rapidly, emitting a high-pitched, scarcely audible whine, like a high speed motor. he judged it harmless. he stood on a wide valley floor between two mountain ranges. dark clouds capped one peak of the mountains on his left. the sky was deep blue. he tested the gravity by jumping up and down. same as earth gravity. the sun--no, not _the_ sun. not sol. what should he call it, alpha or centaurus? well, perhaps neither. he was here and earth was somewhere up there. this was _the_ sun of this particular solar system. he was right the first time. the sun burned fiercely, although he would have said it was about four o'clock in the afternoon, if this had been earth. not a tree, nor a bush, nor even a wisp of dry grass was in sight. everywhere was desert. the funnel of sand had moved closer and while he watched it, it seemed to drift in the wind--although there was no wind. stinson backed away. it stopped. it was about ten feet tall by three feet in diameter at the base. then stinson backed away again. it was changing. now it became a blue rectangle, then a red cube, a violet sphere. he wanted to run. he wished benjamin were here. ben might have an explanation. "what am i afraid of?" he said aloud, "a few grains of sand blowing in the wind? a wind devil?" he turned his back and walked away. when he looked up the wind devil was there before him. he looked back. only one. it had moved. the sun shone obliquely, throwing stinson's shadow upon the sand. the wind devil also had a shadow, although the sun shone through it and the shadow was faint. but it moved when the funnel moved. this was no illusion. again stinson felt the urge to run, or to use the cylinder to project himself somewhere else, but he said, "no!" very firmly to himself. he was here to investigate, to determine if this planet was capable of supporting life. life? intelligence? he examined the wind devil as closely as he dared, but it was composed only of grains of sand. there was no core, no central place you could point to and say, here is the brain, or the nervous system. but then, how could a group of loosely spaced grains of sand possibly have a nervous system? it was again going through its paces. triangle, cube, rectangle, sphere. he watched, and when it became a triangle again, he smoothed a place in the sand and drew a triangle with his forefinger. when it changed to a cube he drew a square, a circle for a sphere, and so on. when the symbols were repeated he pointed to each in turn, excitement mounting. he became so absorbed in doing this that he failed to notice how the wind devil drew closer and closer, but when he inhaled the first grains of sand, the realization of what was happening dawned with a flash of fear. instantly he projected himself a thousand miles away. * * * * * now he was in an area of profuse vegetation. it was twilight. as he stood beside a small creek, a chill wind blew from the northwest. he wanted to cover himself with the long leaves he found, but they were dry and brittle, for here autumn had turned the leaves. night would be cold. he was not a woodsman. he doubted if he could build a fire without matches. so he followed the creek to where it flowed between two great hills. steam vapors rose from a crevice. a cave was nearby and warm air flowed from its mouth. he went inside. at first he thought the cave was small, but found instead that he was in a long narrow passageway. the current of warm air flowed toward him and he followed it, cautiously, stepping carefully and slowly. then it was not quite so dark. soon he stepped out of the narrow passageway into a great cavern with a high-vaulted ceiling. the light source was a mystery. he left no shadow on the floor. a great crystal sphere hung from the ceiling, and he was curious about its purpose, but a great pool of steaming water in the center of the cavern drew his attention. he went close, to warm himself. a stone wall surrounding the pool was inscribed with intricate art work and indecipherable symbols. life. intelligence. the planet was inhabited. should he give up and return to earth? or was there room here for his people? warming his hands there over the great steaming pool he thought of benjamin, and straus, and jamieson--all those to whom he had given cylinders, and who were now struggling for life against those who desired them. he decided it would not be just, to give up so easily. the wide plaza between the pool and cavern wall was smooth as polished glass. statues lined the wall. he examined them. the unknown artist had been clever. from one angle they were animals, from another birds, from a third they were vaguely humanoid creatures, glowering at him with primitive ferocity. the fourth view was so shocking he had to turn away quickly. no definable form or sculptured line was visible, yet he felt, or saw--he did not know which senses told him--the immeasurable gulf of a million years of painful evolution. then nothing. it was not a curtain drawn to prevent him from seeing more. there was no more. * * * * * he stumbled toward the pool's wall and clutched for support, but his knees buckled. his hand slid down the wall, over the ancient inscriptions. he sank to the floor. before he lost consciousness he wondered, fleetingly, if a lethal instrument was in the statue. he woke with a ringing in his ears, feeling drugged and sluggish. sounds came to him. he opened his eyes. the cavern was crowded. these creatures were not only humanoid, but definitely human, although more slight of build than earth people. the only difference he could see at first sight was that they had webbed feet. all were dressed from the waist down only, in a shimmering skirt that sparkled as they moved. they walked with the grace of ballet dancers, moving about the plaza, conversing in a musical language with no meaning for stinson. the men were dark-skinned, the women somewhat lighter, with long flowing hair, wide lips and a beauty that was utterly sensual. he was in chains! they were small chains, light weight, of a metal that looked like aluminum. but all his strength could not break them. they saw him struggling. two of the men came over and spoke to him in the musical language. "my name is stinson," he said, pointing to himself. "i'm from the planet earth." they looked at each other and jabbered some more. "look," he said, "earth. e-a-r-t-h, earth." he pointed upward, described a large circle, then another smaller, and showed how earth revolved around the sun. one of the men poked him with a stick, or tube of some kind. it did not hurt, but angered him. he left the chains by his own method of travel, and reappeared behind the two men. they stared at the place where he had been. the chains tinkled musically. he grasped the shoulder of the offender, spun him around and slapped his face. a cry of consternation rose from the group, echoing in the high ceilinged cavern. "sbtl!" it said, "zbtl ... xbtl ... zbtl." the men instantly prostrated themselves before him. the one who had poked stinson with the stick rose, and handed it to him. still angered, stinson grasped it firmly, with half a notion to break it over his head. as he did so, a flash of blue fire sprang from it. the man disappeared. a small cloud of dust settled slowly to the floor. disintegrated! stinson's face drained pale, and suddenly, unaccountably, he was ashamed because he had no clothes. "i didn't mean to kill him!" he cried. "i was angry, and...." useless. they could not understand. for all he knew, they might think he was threatening them. the object he had thought of as a stick was in reality a long metal tube, precisely machined, with a small button near one end. this weapon was completely out of place in a culture such as this. or was it? what did he know of these people? very little. they were humanoid. they had exhibited human emotions of anger, fear and, that most human of all characteristics, curiosity. but up to now the tube and the chain was the only evidence of an advanced technology, unless the ancient inscriptions in the stone wall of the pool, and the statues lining the wall were evidences. * * * * * there was a stirring among the crowd. an object like a pallet was brought, carried by four of the women. they laid it at his feet, and gestured for him to sit. he touched it cautiously, then sat. instantly he sprang to his feet. there, at the cavern entrance, the wind devil writhed and undulated in a brilliant harmony of colors. it remained in one spot, though, and he relaxed somewhat. one of the women came toward him, long golden hair flowing, firm breasts dipping slightly at each step. her eyes held a language all their own, universal. she pressed her body against him and bore him to the pallet, her kisses fire on his face. incongruously, he thought of benjamin back on earth, and all the others with cylinders, who might be fighting for their lives at this moment. he pushed her roughly aside. she spoke, and he understood! her words were still the same gibberish, but now he knew their meaning. somehow he knew also that the wind devil was responsible for his understanding. "you do not want me?" she said sadly. "then kill me." "why should i kill you?" she shrugged her beautiful shoulders. "it is the way of the gods," she said. "if you do not, then the others will." he took the tube-weapon in his hands, careful not to touch the button. "don't be afraid. i didn't mean to kill the man. it was an accident. i will protect you." she shook her head. "one day they will find me alone, and they'll kill me." "why?" she shrugged. "i have not pleased you." "on the contrary, you have. there is a time and place for everything, though." suddenly a great voice sounded in the cavern, a voice with no direction. it came from the ceiling, the floor, the walls, the steaming pool. it was in the language of the web-footed people; it was in his own tongue. "no harm must come to this woman. the god with fingers on his feet has decreed this." those in the cavern looked at the woman with fear and respect. she kissed stinson's feet. two of the men came and gave her a brilliant new skirt. she smiled at him, and he thought he had never seen a more beautiful face. * * * * * the great, bodiless voice sounded again, but those in the cavern went about their activities. they did not hear. "who are you?" stinson looked at the wind devil, since it could be no one else speaking, and pointed to himself. "me?" "yes." "i am stinson, of the planet earth." "yes, i see it in your mind, now. you want to live here, on this planet." "then you must know where i came from, and how." "i do not understand how. you have a body, a physical body composed of atoms. it is impossible to move a physical body from one place to another by a mere thought and a tiny instrument, yet you have done so. you deserted me out in the desert." "i deserted you?" stinson cried angrily, "you tried to kill me!" "i was attempting communication. why should i kill you?" he was silent a moment, looking at the people in the cavern. "perhaps because you feared i would become the god of these people in your place." stinson felt a mental shrug. "it is of no importance. when they arrived on this planet i attempted to explain that i was not a god, but the primitive is not deeply buried in them. they soon resorted to emotion rather than reason. it is of no importance." "i'd hardly call them primitive, with such weapons." "the tube is not of their technology. that is, they did not make it directly. these are the undesirables, the incorrigibles, the nonconformists from the sixth planet. i permit them here because it occupies my time, to watch them evolve." "you should live so long." "live?" the wind devil said. "oh, i see your meaning. i'd almost forgotten. you are a strange entity. you travel by a means even i cannot fully understand, yet you speak of time as if some event were about to take place. i believe you think of death. i see your physical body has deteriorated since yesterday. your body will cease to exist, almost as soon as those of the sixth planet peoples. i am most interested in you. you will bring your people, and live here." "i haven't decided. there are these web-footed people, who were hostile until they thought i was a god. they have destructive weapons. also, i don't understand you. i see you as a cone of sand which keeps changing color and configuration. is it your body? where do you come from? is this planet populated with your kind?" the wind devil hesitated. "where do i originate? it seems i have always been. you see this cavern, the heated pool, the statues, the inscriptions. half a million years ago my people were as you. that is, they lived in physical bodies. our technology surpassed any you have seen. the tube these webfoots use is a toy by comparison. our scientists found the ultimate nature of physical law. they learned to separate the mind from the body. then my people set a date. our entire race was determined to free itself from the confines of the body. the date came." "what happened?" "i do not know. i alone exist. i have searched all the levels of time and matter from the very beginning. my people are gone. sometimes it almost comes to me, why they are gone. and this is contrary to the greatest law of all--that an entity, once in existence, can never cease to exist." * * * * * stinson was silent, thinking of the endless years of searching through the great gulf of time. his eyes caught sight of the woman, reclining now on the pallet. the men had left her and stood in groups, talking, glancing at him, apparently free of their awe and fear already. the woman looked at him, and she was not smiling. "please ask the sand god," she said, "to speak to my people again. their fear of him does not last. when he is gone they will probably kill us." "as for the webfoots," the wind devil, or sand god, said, "i will destroy them. you and your people will have the entire planet." "destroy them?" stinson asked, incredulously, "all these people? they have a right to live like any one else." "right? what is it--'right?' they are entities. they exist, therefore they always will. my people are the only entities who ever died. to kill the body is unimportant." "no. you misunderstand. listen, you spoke of the greatest law. your law is a scientific hypothesis. it has to do with what comes after physical existence, not with existence itself. the greatest law is this, that an entity, once existing, must not be harmed in any way. to do so changes the most basic structure of nature." the sand god did not reply. the great bodiless, directionless voice was silent, and stinson felt as if he had been taken from some high place and set down in a dark canyon. the cone of sand was the color of wood ashes. it pulsed erratically, like a great heart missing a beat now and then. the web-footed people milled about restlessly. the woman's eyes pleaded. when he looked back, the sand god was gone. instantly a new note rose in the cavern. the murmur of unmistakable mob fury ran over the webfoots. several of the men approached the woman with hatred in their voices. he could not understand the words now. but he understood her. "they'll kill me!" she cried. stinson pointed the disintegrating weapon at them and yelled. they dropped back. "we'll have to get outside," he told her. "this mob will soon get out of hand. then the tube won't stop them. they will rush in. i can't kill them all at once, even if i wanted to. and i don't." together they edged toward the cavern entrance, ran quickly up the inclined passageway, and came out into crisp, cold air. the morning sun was reflected from a million tiny mirrors on the rocks, the trees and grass. a silver thaw during the night had covered the whole area with a coating of ice. stinson shivered. the woman handed him a skirt she had thoughtfully brought along from the cavern. he took it, and they ran down the slippery path leading away from the entrance. from the hiding place behind a large rock they watched, as several web-footed men emerged into the sunlight. they blinked, covered their eyes, and jabbered musically among themselves. one slipped and fell on the ice. they re-entered the cave. * * * * * stinson donned the shimmering skirt, smiling as he did so. the others should see him now. benjamin and straus and jamieson. they would laugh. and ben's wife, lisa, she would give her little-girl laugh, and probably help him fasten the skirt. it had a string, like a tobacco pouch, which was tied around the waist. it helped keep him warm. he turned to the woman. "i don't know what i'll do with you, but now that we're in trouble together, we may as well introduce ourselves. my name is stinson." "i am sybtl," she said. "syb-tl." he tried to imitate her musical pronunciation. "a very nice name." she smiled, then pointed to the cavern. "when the ice is gone, they will come out and follow us." "we'd better make tracks." "no," she said, "we must run, and make no tracks." "okay, sis," he said. "sis?" "that means, sister." "i am not your sister. i am your wife." "_what?_" "yes. when a man protects a woman from harm, it is a sign to all that she is his chosen. otherwise, why not let her die? you are a strange god." "listen, sybtl," he said desperately, "i am not a god and you are not my wife. let's get that straight." "but...." "no buts. right now we'd better get out of here." he took her hand and they ran, slid, fell, picked themselves up again, and ran. he doubted the wisdom of keeping her with him. alone, the webfoots were no match for him. he could travel instantly to any spot he chose. but with sybtl it was another matter; he was no better than any other man, perhaps not so good as some because he was forty, and never had been an athlete. how was he to decide if this planet was suitable for his people, hampered by a woman, slinking through a frozen wilderness like an indian? but the woman's hand was soft. he felt strong knowing she depended on him. anyway, he decided, pursuit was impossible. they left no tracks on the ice. they were safe, unless the webfoots possessed talents unknown to him. so they followed the path leading down from the rocks, along the creek with its tumbling water. frozen, leafless willows clawed at their bodies. the sun shone fiercely in a cloudless sky. already water ran in tiny rivulets over the ice. the woman steered him to the right, away from the creek. * * * * * stinson's bare feet were numb from walking on ice. christ, he thought, what am i doing here, anyway? he glanced down at sybtl and remembered the webfoots. he stopped, tempted to use his cylinder and move to a warmer, less dangerous spot. the woman pulled on his arm. "we must hurry!" he clutched the tube-weapon. "how many shots in this thing?" "shots?" "how often can i use it?" "as often as you like. it is good for fifty years. kaatr--he is the one you destroyed--brought it from the ship when we came. many times he has used it unwisely." "when did you come?" "ten years ago. i was a child." "i thought only criminals were brought here." she nodded. "criminals, and their children." "when will your people come again?" she shook her head. "never. they are no longer my people. they have disowned us." "and because of me even those in the cavern have disowned you." suddenly she stiffened beside him. there, directly in their path, stood the sand god. it was blood red now. it pulsed violently. the great voice burst forth. "leave the woman!" it demanded angrily. "the webfoots are nearing your position." "i cannot leave her. she is helpless against them." "what form of primitive stupidity are you practicing now? leave, or they will kill you." stinson shook his head. the sand god pulsed more violently than before. ice melted in a wide area around it. brown, frozen grass burned to ashes. "you will allow them to kill you, just to defend her life? what business is it of yours if she lives or dies? my race discarded such primitive logic long before it reached your level of development." "yes," stinson said, "and your race no longer exists." the sand god became a sphere of blue flame. a wave of intense heat drove them backward. "earthman," the great voice said, "go back to your earth. take your inconsistencies with you. do not come here again to infect my planet with your primitive ideas. the webfoots are not as intelligent as you, but they are sane. if you bring your people here, i shall destroy you all." the sphere of blue fire screamed away across the frozen wilderness, and the thunder of its passing shook the ground and echoed among the lonely hills. * * * * * sybtl shivered against his arm. "the sand god is angry," she said. "my people tell how he was angry once before, when we first came here. he killed half of us and burned the ship that brought us. that is how kaatr got the tube-weapon. it was the only thing the sand god didn't burn, that and the skirts. then, when he had burned the ship, the sand god went to the sixth planet and burned two of the largest cities, as a warning that no more of us must come here." well, stinson said to himself, that does it. we are better off on earth. we can't fight a monster like him. sybtl touched his arm. "why did the sand god come? he did not speak." "he spoke to me." "i did not hear." "yes, i know now. his voice sounds like thunder in the sky, but it is a voice that speaks only in the mind. he said i must leave this planet." she glanced at him with suddenly awakened eyes, as if thinking of it for the first time. "where is your ship?" "i have no ship." "then he will kill you." she touched her fingers on his face. "i am sorry. it was all for me." "don't worry. the sand god travels without a ship, why shouldn't i?" "now?" "as soon as you are safe. come." steam rose from the burned area, charred like a rocket launching pit. they stepped around it carefully. stinson felt warm air, but there was no time, now, to warm cold feet or dwell on the vagaries of sand gods. together they crossed the narrow valley. sybtl led him toward a tall mound of rock. here they came to the creek again, which flowed into a small canyon. they climbed the canyon wall. far away, small figures moved. the webfoots were on their trail. she drew him into a small cave. it was heated, like the great cavern, but held no walled pool nor mysterious lighting. but it was warm, and the small entrance made an excellent vantage point for warding off attack. "they will not find us...." a high-pitched keening burst suddenly around them. stinson knew they had heard, or felt the sound for some time, that now its frequency was in an audible range. "the sand god," sybtl said. "sometimes he plays among the clouds. he makes it rain in a dry summer, or sometimes warms the whole world for days at a time in winter, so the snow melts and the grass begins to green. then he tires and lets winter come back again. he is the loneliest god in the universe." "what makes you think he's lonely?" she shrugged her shoulders. "i just know. but he's an angry god now. see those clouds piling in the east? soon they will hide the sun. then he will make them churn and boil, like river whirlpools in spring. at least he does this when he plays. who knows what he will do when he's angry?" "the sand god isn't doing this," stinson said. "it's only a storm." she covered his lips with her fingers. "don't say that. he may hear you and be more angry." "but it is, don't you see? you give him powers he does not possess." sybtl shook her head and stroked his face with her long, slim fingers. "poor little god-with-fingers-on-his-feet," she said. "you do not understand. the sand god is terrible, even when he plays. see the lightning? it is blue. the lightning of a storm that comes by itself is not blue. he is running around the world on feet like the rockets of space ships, and when he strikes the clouds, blue fire shoots away." * * * * * the clouds continued to build on one another. soon the blue flashes of lightning extended across the sky from horizon to horizon. the earth trembled. sybtl moved closer, trembling also. "he never did this before," she said. "he never made the earth shake before." great boulders crashed down the canyon walls and dropped into the creek. they dared not move from the cave, although death seemed certain if they stayed. "i'll leave for a moment," he said. "i'll be back soon." "you're leaving?" there was panic in her voice. "only for a moment." "and you won't come back. you will go to your world." "no. i'll be back." "promise? no, don't promise. the promises of gods often are forgotten before the sounds die away." "i'll be back." he disappeared at once, giving her no chance to object again, and went to the desert of sand, where he had first arrived on the planet. he wanted to see if the storm were world-wide. stinson had never been in a sand storm before, even on earth. he could not breathe. he could not see. bullets of sand stung his skin. bullets of sand shot into his eyes. clouds of sand howled around him. he fell, and the wind rolled him over and over in the sand like a tumbleweed. the skirt flew up around his face. he could not get up again. he returned to the cave. soon after, while they sat huddled together, watching the chaos of tumbling rocks, lightning, and driving rain, the high-pitched keening came again. a sphere of blue fire appeared in the east. its brilliance put the lightning to shame. it bore down on the cave swiftly, purposefully. stinson prepared himself to leave. in spite of his desire to protect sybtl, it was useless to get himself killed when he was powerless to help her. but at the last moment it veered off. "fiend!" stinson screamed the word, vaguely marvelling at his own fury. the blue sphere turned and came back. "monster!" again. "murderer!" "adolescent!" this time it kept going. the rain and wind ceased. lightning stopped. thunder rumbled distantly. clouds disappeared. stinson and sybtl emerged from the cave. there was no longer a question of attack from the webfoots, the storm had taken care of that. the fierce sun began its work of drying rocks and throwing shadows and coaxing life out into the open again. down in the canyon a bird sang, a lonely, cheerful twitter. "the sand god is tired," sybtl said. "he is not angry now. i'm glad. perhaps he will let you stay." "no. even if he allowed it, i couldn't stay. my people could never live here with a god who is half devil." * * * * * the cone of sand suddenly appeared. it stood in the canyon, its base on a level with the cave. it was quiet. it was dull gray in color. it exuded impressions of death, of hopeful words solemnly spoken over lowered coffins, of cold earth and cold space, of dank, wet catacombs, of creeping, crawling nether things. the bird's twitter stopped abruptly. "earthman," the sand god said, as if he were about to make a statement. stinson ignored him. he glanced down at sybtl, who sensed that this was a time for good-bys. he thought, perhaps i can stay here alone with her. the webfoots might find us, or the sand god might destroy us in one of his fits, but it might be worth it. "don't go," she said. "not yet." "earthman, hear me." "i hear you." "why does your mind shrink backward?" "i've decided not to bring my people here." "_you_ decided?" "certainly," stinson said boldly. "call it rationalization, if you wish. you ordered us away; and i have several good reasons for not coming here if the door was open." "i've changed my mind. you will be welcomed." "listen to that, will you?" stinson said angrily. "just listen! you set yourself up as a god for the webfoots. you get them eating out of your hand. then what do you do? you throw a fit. yes, a fit! like an adolescent. worse." "earthman, wait...." "no!" stinson shot back. "you've owned this planet for a million years. you have brooded here alone since before my people discovered fire, and in all those ages you never learned self-control. i can't subject my people to the whims of an entity who throws a planetary fit when it pleases him." stinson relaxed. he'd had his say. sybtl trembled beside him. a small mammal, round, furry, hopped by, sniffing inquisitively. sybtl said, "is the sand god happy?" she shook her head. "no, he is not happy. he is old, old, old. i can feel it. my people say that when one gets too old it is well to die. but gods never die, do they? i would not like to be a god." "stinson," the sand god said. "you said i was adolescent. you are correct. do you remember i told you how my people, the entire race, left their bodies at the same time? do you imagine all of us were adults?" "i suppose not. sounds reasonable. how old were you?" "chronologically, by our standards, i was nine years old." "but you continued to develop after...." "no." * * * * * stinson tried to imagine it. at first there must have been a single voice crying into a monstrous emptiness, "mother, where are you? _mother!_ where is _everyone_?" a frenzied searching of the planet, the solar system, the galaxy. then a returning to the planet. empty.... change. buildings, roads, bridges weathering slowly. such a race would have built of durable metal. durable? centuries, eons passed. buildings crumbled to dust, dust blew away. bridges eroded, fell, decomposed into basic elements. the shape of constellations changed. all trace of civilization passed except in the cavern of the heated pool. constellations disappeared, new patterns formed in the night sky. the unutterably total void of time--five hundred thousand years! and a nine-year-old child brooding over an empty world. "i don't understand why your development stopped," stinson said. "nor do i. but perhaps ... well, i sense that i would continue, if you brought your people here. you have already taught me the value of life. there is a oneness, a bond that ties each living thing to every other living thing. it is a lesson my people never knew. select any portion of this planet that suits you. take the web-footed woman for your wife. have children. i promise never to harm you in any way." "the webfoots?" "you and they shall share the planet." the sand god disappeared. sybtl said; "is the sand god angry again?" "no, he is not angry." "i'm glad. you will leave now?" "no. this is my home." she laughed softly. "you are a strange god." "listen," he said, "i am not a god. get that through your head." she drew him into the cave. her lips were cool and sweet. the cave was pleasantly warm. the sense of wonder by milton lesser illustrated by harry rosenbaum [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from galaxy science fiction september . extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] when nobody aboard ship remembers where it's going, how can they tell when it has arrived? every day for a week now, rikud had come to the viewport to watch the great changeless sweep of space. he could not quite explain the feelings within him; they were so alien, so unnatural. but ever since the engines somewhere in the rear of the world had changed their tone, from the steady whining rikud had heard all twenty-five years of his life, to the sullen roar that came to his ears now, the feelings had grown. if anyone else had noticed the change, he failed to mention it. this disturbed rikud, although he could not tell why. and, because he had realized this odd difference in himself, he kept it locked up inside him. today, space looked somehow different. the stars--it was a meaningless concept to rikud, but that was what everyone called the bright pinpoints of light on the black backdrop in the viewport--were not apparent in the speckled profusion rikud had always known. instead, there was more of the blackness, and one very bright star set apart by itself in the middle of the viewport. if he had understood the term, rikud would have told himself this was odd. his head ached with the half-born thought. it was--it was--what was it? someone was clomping up the companionway behind rikud. he turned and greeted gray-haired old chuls. "in five more years," the older man chided, "you'll be ready to sire children. and all you can do in the meantime is gaze out at the stars." rikud knew he should be exercising now, or bathing in the rays of the health-lamps. it had never occurred to him that he didn't feel like it; he just didn't, without comprehending. chuls' reminder fostered uneasiness. often rikud had dreamed of the time he would be thirty and a father. whom would the calculator select as his mate? the first time this idea had occurred to him, rikud ignored it. but it came again, and each time it left him with a feeling he could not explain. why should he think thoughts that no other man had? why should he think he was thinking such thoughts, when it always embroiled him in a hopeless, infinite confusion that left him with a headache? chuls said, "it is time for my bath in the health-rays. i saw you here and knew it was your time, too...." his voice trailed off. rikud knew that something which he could not explain had entered the elder man's head for a moment, but it had departed almost before chuls knew of its existence. "i'll go with you," rikud told him. * * * * * a hardly perceptible purple glow pervaded the air in the room of the health-rays. perhaps two score men lay about, naked, under the ray tubes. chuls stripped himself and selected the space under a vacant tube. rikud, for his part, wanted to get back to the viewport and watch the one new bright star. he had the distinct notion it was growing larger every moment. he turned to go, but the door clicked shut and a metallic voice said. "fifteen minutes under the tubes, please." rikud muttered to himself and undressed. the world had begun to annoy him. now why shouldn't a man be permitted to do what he wanted, when he wanted to do it? _there_ was a strange thought, and rikud's brain whirled once more down the tortuous course of half-formed questions and unsatisfactory answers. he had even wondered what it was like to get hurt. no one ever got hurt. once, here in this same ray room, he had had the impulse to hurl himself head-first against the wall, just to see what would happen. but something soft had cushioned the impact--something which had come into being just for the moment and then abruptly passed into non-being again, something which was as impalpable as air. rikud had been stopped in this action, although there was no real authority to stop him. this puzzled him, because somehow he felt that there should have been authority. a long time ago the reading machine in the library had told him of the elders--a meaningless term--who had governed the world. they told you to do something and you did it, but that was silly, because now no one told you to do anything. you only listened to the buzzer. and rikud could remember the rest of what the reading machine had said. there had been a revolt--again a term without any real meaning, a term that could have no reality outside of the reading machine--and the elders were overthrown. here rikud had been lost utterly. the people had decided that they did not know where they were going, or why, and that it was unfair that the elders alone had this authority. they were born and they lived and they died as the elders directed, like little cogs in a great machine. much of this rikud could not understand, but he knew enough to realize that the reading machine had sided with the people against the elders, and it said the people had won. now in the health room, rikud felt a warmth in the rays. grudgingly, he had to admit to himself that it was not unpleasant. he could see the look of easy contentment on chuls' face as the rays fanned down upon him, bathing his old body in a forgotten magic which, many generations before rikud's time, had negated the necessity for a knowledge of medicine. but when, in another ten years, chuls would perish of old age, the rays would no longer suffice. nothing would, for chuls. rikud often thought of his own death, still seventy-five years in the future, not without a sense of alarm. yet old chuls seemed heedless, with only a decade to go. under the tube at rikud's left lay crifer. the man was short and heavy through the shoulders and chest, and he had a lame foot. every time rikud looked at that foot, it was with a sense of satisfaction. true, this was the only case of its kind, the exception to the rule, but it proved the world was not perfect. rikud was guiltily glad when he saw crifer limp. but, if anyone else saw it, he never said a word. not even crifer. * * * * * now crifer said, "i've been reading again, rikud." "yes?" almost no one read any more, and the library was heavy with the smell of dust. reading represented initiative on the part of crifer; it meant that, in the two unoccupied hours before sleep, he went to the library and listened to the reading machine. everyone else simply sat about and talked. that was the custom. everyone did it. but if he wasn't reading himself, rikud usually went to sleep. all the people ever talked about was what they had done during the day, and it was always the same. "yes," said crifer. "i found a book about the stars. they're also called astronomy, i think." this was a new thought to rikud, and he propped his head up on one elbow. "what did you find out?" "that's about all. they're just called astronomy, i think." "well, where's the book?" rikud would read it tomorrow. "i left it in the library. you can find several of them under 'astronomy,' with a cross-reference under 'stars.' they're synonymous terms." "you know," rikud said, sitting up now, "the stars in the viewport are changing." "changing?" crifer questioned the fuzzy concept as much as he questioned what it might mean in this particular case. "yes, there are less of them, and one is bigger and brighter than the others." "astronomy says some stars are variable," crifer offered, but rikud knew his lame-footed companion understood the word no better than he did. over on rikud's right, chuls began to dress. "variability," he told them, "is a contradictory term. nothing is variable. it can't be." "i'm only saying what i read in the book," crifer protested mildly. "well, it's wrong. variability and change are two words without meaning." "people grow old," rikud suggested. a buzzer signified that his fifteen minutes under the rays were up, and chuls said, "it's almost time for me to eat." rikud frowned. chuls hadn't even seen the connection between the two concepts, yet it was so clear. or was it? he had had it a moment ago, but now it faded, and change and old were just two words. his own buzzer sounded a moment later, and it was with a strange feeling of elation that he dressed and made his way back to the viewport. when he passed the door which led to the women's half of the world, however, he paused. he wanted to open that door and see a woman. he had been told about them and he had seen pictures, and he dimly remembered his childhood among women. but his feelings had changed; this was different. again there were inexplicable feelings--strange channelings of rikud's energy in new and confusing directions. he shrugged and reserved the thought for later. he wanted to see the stars again. * * * * * the view had changed, and the strangeness of it made rikud's pulses leap with excitement. all the stars were paler now than before, and where rikud had seen the one bright central star, he now saw a globe of light, white with a tinge of blue in it, and so bright that it hurt his eyes to look. yes, hurt! rikud looked and looked until his eyes teared and he had to turn away. here was an unknown factor which the perfect world failed to control. but how could a star change into a blinking blue-white globe--if, indeed, that was the star rikud had seen earlier? there was that word change again. didn't it have something to do with age? rikud couldn't remember, and he suddenly wished he could read crifer's book on astronomy, which meant the same as stars. except that it was variable, which was like change, being tied up somehow with age. presently rikud became aware that his eyes were not tearing any longer, and he turned to look at the viewport. what he saw now was so new that he couldn't at first accept it. instead, he blinked and rubbed his eyes, sure that the ball of blue-white fire somehow had damaged them. but the new view persisted. of stars there were few, and of the blackness, almost nothing. gone, too, was the burning globe. something loomed there in the port, so huge that it spread out over almost the entire surface. something big and round, all grays and greens and browns, and something for which rikud had no name. a few moments more, and rikud no longer could see the sphere. a section of it had expanded outward and assumed the rectangular shape of the viewport, and its size as well. it seemed neatly sheered down the middle, so that on one side rikud saw an expanse of brown and green, and on the other, blue. startled, rikud leaped back. the sullen roar in the rear of the world had ceased abruptly. instead an ominous silence, broken at regular intervals by a sharp booming. change-- "won't you eat, rikud?" chuls called from somewhere down below. "damn the man," rikud thought. then aloud: "yes, i'll eat. later." "it's time...." chuls' voice trailed off again, impotently. but rikud forgot the old man completely. a new idea occurred to him, and for a while he struggled with it. what he saw--what he had always seen, except that now there was the added factor of change--perhaps did not exist _in_ the viewport. maybe it existed _through_ the viewport. that was maddening. rikud turned again to the port, where he could see nothing but an obscuring cloud of white vapor, murky, swirling, more confusing than ever. "chuls," he called, remembering, "come here." "i am here," said a voice at his elbow. rikud whirled on the little figure and pointed to the swirling cloud of vapor. "what do you see?" chuls looked. "the viewport, of course." "what else?" "else? nothing." anger welled up inside rikud. "all right," he said, "listen. what do you hear?" "broom, brroom, brrroom!" chuls imitated the intermittent blasting of the engines. "i'm hungry, rikud." the old man turned and strode off down the corridor toward the dining room, and rikud was glad to be alone once more. * * * * * now the vapor had departed, except for a few tenuous whisps. for a moment rikud thought he could see the gardens rearward in the world. but that was silly. what were the gardens doing in the viewport? and besides, rikud had the distinct feeling that here was something far vaster than the gardens, although all of it existed in the viewport which was no wider than the length of his body. the gardens, moreover, did not jump and dance before his eyes the way the viewport gardens did. nor did they spin. nor did the trees grow larger with every jolt. rikud sat down hard. he blinked. the world had come to rest on the garden of the viewport. * * * * * for a whole week that view did not change, and rikud had come to accept it as fact. there--through the viewport and in it--was a garden. a garden larger than the entire world, a garden of plants which rikud had never seen before, although he had always liked to stroll through the world's garden and he had come to know every plant well. nevertheless, it was a garden. he told chuls, but chuls had responded, "it is the viewport." crifer, on the other hand, wasn't so sure. "it looks like the garden," he admitted to rikud. "but why should the garden be in the viewport?" somehow, rikud knew this question for a healthy sign. but he could not tell them of his most amazing thought of all. the change in the viewport could mean only one thing. the world had been walking--the word seemed all wrong to rikud, but he could think of no other, unless it were running. the world had been walking somewhere. that somewhere was the garden and the world had arrived. "it is an old picture of the garden," chuls suggested, "and the plants are different." "then they've changed?" "no, merely different." "well, what about the viewport? _it_ changed. where are the stars? where are they, chuls, if it did not change?" "the stars come out at night." "so there is a change from day to night!" "i didn't say that. the stars simply shine at night. why should they shine during the day when the world wants them to shine only at night?" "once they shone all the time." "naturally," said crifer, becoming interested. "they are variable." * * * * * rikud regretted that he never had had the chance to read that book on astronomy. he hadn't been reading too much lately. the voice of the reading machine had begun to bore him. he said, "well, variable or not, our whole perspective has changed." and when chuls looked away in disinterest, rikud became angry. if only the man would realize! if only anyone would realize! it all seemed so obvious. if he, rikud, walked from one part of the world to another, it was with a purpose--to eat, or to sleep, or perhaps to bathe in the health-rays. now if the world had walked from--somewhere, through the vast star-speckled darkness and to the great garden outside, this also was purposeful. the world had arrived at the garden for a reason. but if everyone lived as if the world still stood in blackness, how could they find the nature of that purpose? "i will eat," chuls said, breaking rikud's revery. damn the man, all he did was eat! yet he did have initiative after a sort. he knew when to eat. because he was hungry. and rikud, too, was hungry. differently. * * * * * he had long wondered about the door in the back of the library, and now, as crifer sat cross-legged on one of the dusty tables, reading machine and book on astronomy or stars in his lap, rikud approached the door. "what's in here?" he demanded. "it's a door, i think," said crifer. "i know, but what's beyond it?" "beyond it? oh, you mean _through_ the door." "yes." "well," crifer scratched his head, "i don't think anyone ever opened it. it's only a door." "i will," said rikud. "you will what?" "open it. open the door and look inside." a long pause. then, "can you do it?" "i think so." "you can't, probably. how can anyone go where no one has been before? there's nothing. it just isn't. it's only a door, rikud." "no--" rikud began, but the words faded off into a sharp intake of breath. rikud had turned the knob and pushed. the door opened silently, and crifer said, "doors are variable, too, i think." rikud saw a small room, perhaps half a dozen paces across, at the other end of which was another door, just like the first. halfway across, rikud heard a voice not unlike that of the reading machine. he missed the beginning, but then: --therefore, permit no unauthorized persons to go through this door. the machinery in the next room is your protection against the rigors of space. a thousand years from now, journey's end, you may have discarded it for something better--who knows? but if you have not, then here is your protection. as nearly as possible, this ship is a perfect, self-sustaining world. it is more than that: it is human-sustaining as well. try to hurt yourself and the ship will not permit it--within limits, of course. but you can damage the ship, and to avoid any possibility of that, no unauthorized persons are to be permitted through this door-- rikud gave the voice up as hopeless. there were too many confusing words. what in the world was an unauthorized person? more interesting than that, however, was the second door. would it lead to another voice? rikud hoped that it wouldn't. when he opened the door a strange new noise filled his ears, a gentle humming, punctuated by a _throb-throb-throb_ which sounded not unlike the booming of the engines last week, except that this new sound didn't blast nearly so loudly against his eardrums. and what met rikud's eyes--he blinked and looked again, but it was still there--cogs and gears and wheels and nameless things all strange and beautiful because they shone with a luster unfamiliar to him. "odd," rikud said aloud. then he thought, "now there's a good word, but no one quite seems to know its meaning." odder still was the third door. rikud suddenly thought there might exist an endless succession of them, especially when the third one opened on a bare tunnel which led to yet another door. only this one was different. in it rikud saw the viewport. but how? the viewport stood on the other end of the world. it did seem smaller, and, although it looked out on the garden, rikud sensed that the topography was different. then the garden extended even farther than he had thought. it was endless, extending all the way to a ridge of mounds way off in the distance. and this door one could walk through, into the garden. rikud put his hand on the door, all the while watching the garden through the new viewport. he began to turn the handle. then he trembled. what would he do out in the garden? he couldn't go alone. he'd die of the strangeness. it was a silly thought; no one ever died of anything until he was a hundred. rikud couldn't fathom the rapid thumping of his heart. and rikud's mouth felt dry; he wanted to swallow, but couldn't. slowly, he took his hand off the door lever. he made his way back through the tunnel and then through the room of machinery and finally through the little room with the confusing voice to crifer. by the time he reached the lame-footed man, rikud was running. he did not dare once to look back. he stood shaking at crifer's side, and sweat covered him in a clammy film. he never wanted to look at the garden again. not when he knew there was a door through which he could walk and then might find himself in the garden. it was so big. * * * * * three or four days passed before rikud calmed himself enough to talk about his experience. when he did, only crifer seemed at all interested, yet the lame-footed man's mind was inadequate to cope with the situation. he suggested that the viewport might also be variable and rikud found himself wishing that his friend had never read that book on astronomy. chuls did not believe rikud at all. "there are not that many doors in the world," he said. "the library has a door and there is a door to the women's quarters; in five years, the calculator will send you through that. but there are no others." chuls smiled an indulgent smile and rikud came nearer to him. "now, by the world, there are two other doors!" rikud began to shout, and everyone looked at him queerly. "what are you doing that for?" demanded wilm, who was shorter even than crifer, but had no lame foot. "doing what?" "speaking so loudly when chuls, who is close, obviously has no trouble hearing you." "maybe yelling will make him understand." crifer hobbled about on his good foot, doing a meaningless little jig. "why don't we go see?" he suggested. then, confused, he frowned. "well, i won't go," chuls replied. "there's no reason to go. if rikud has been imagining things, why should i?" "i imagined nothing. i'll show you--" "you'll show me nothing because i won't go." rikud grabbed chuls' blouse with his big fist. then, startled by what he did, his hands began to tremble. but he held on, and he tugged at the blouse. "stop that," said the older man, mildly. * * * * * crifer hopped up and down. "look what rikud's doing! i don't know what he's doing, but look. he's holding chuls' blouse." "stop that," repeated chuls, his face reddening. "only if you'll go with me." rikud was panting. chuls tugged at his wrist. by this time a crowd had gathered. some of them watched crifer jump up and down, but most of them watched rikud holding chuls' blouse. "i think i can do that," declared wilm, clutching a fistful of crifer's shirt. presently, the members of the crowd had pretty well paired off, each partner grabbing for his companion's blouse. they giggled and laughed and some began to hop up and down as crifer had done. a buzzer sounded and automatically rikud found himself releasing chuls. chuls said, forgetting the incident completely, "time to retire." in a moment, the room was cleared. rikud stood alone. he cleared his throat and listened to the sound, all by itself in the stillness. what would have happened if they hadn't retired? but they always did things punctually like that, whenever the buzzer sounded. they ate with the buzzer, bathed in the health-rays with it, slept with it. what would they do if the buzzer stopped buzzing? this frightened rikud, although he didn't know why. he'd like it, though. maybe then he could take them outside with him to the big garden of the two viewports. and then he wouldn't be afraid because he could huddle close to them and he wouldn't be alone. * * * * * rikud heard the throbbing again as he stood in the room of the machinery. for a long time he watched the wheels and cogs and gears spinning and humming. he watched for he knew not how long. and then he began to wonder. if he destroyed the wheels and the cogs and the gears, would the buzzer stop? it probably would, because, as rikud saw it, he was clearly an "unauthorized person." he had heard the voice again upon entering the room. he found a metal rod, bright and shiny, three feet long and half as wide as his arm. he tugged at it and it came loose from the wires that held it in place. he hefted it carefully for a moment, and then he swung the bar into the mass of metal. each time he heard a grinding, crashing sound. he looked as the gears and cogs and wheels crumbled under his blows, shattered by the strength of his arm. almost casually he strode about the room, but his blows were not casual. soon his easy strides had given way to frenzied running. rikud smashed everything in sight. when the lights winked out, he stopped. anyway, by that time the room was a shambles of twisted, broken metal. he laughed, softly at first, but presently he was roaring, and the sound doubled and redoubled in his ears because now the throbbing had stopped. he opened the door and ran through the little corridor to the smaller viewport. outside he could see the stars, and, dimly, the terrain beneath them. but everything was so dark that only the stars shone clearly. all else was bathed in a shadow of unreality. rikud never wanted to do anything more than he wanted to open that door. but his hands trembled too much when he touched it, and once, when he pressed his face close against the viewport, there in the darkness, something bright flashed briefly through the sky and was gone. whimpering, he fled. * * * * * all around rikud were darkness and hunger and thirst. the buzzer did not sound because rikud had silenced it forever. and no one went to eat or drink. rikud himself had fumbled through the blackness and the whimpering to the dining room, his tongue dry and swollen, but the smooth belt that flowed with water and with savory dishes did not run any more. the machinery, rikud realized, also was responsible for food. chuls said, over and over, "i'm hungry." "we will eat and we will drink when the buzzer tells us," wilm replied confidently. "it won't any more," rikud said. "what won't?" "the buzzer will never sound again. i broke it." crifer growled. "i know. you shouldn't have done it. that was a bad thing you did, rikud." "it was not bad. the world has moved through the blackness and the stars and now we should go outside to live in the big garden there beyond the viewport." "that's ridiculous," chuls said. even crifer now was angry at rikud. "he broke the buzzer and no one can eat. i hate rikud, i think." there was a lot of noise in the darkness, and someone else said, "i hate rikud." then everyone was saying it. rikud was sad. soon he would die, because no one would go outside with him and he could not go outside alone. in five more years he would have had a woman, too. he wondered if it was dark and hungry in the women's quarters. did women eat? perhaps they ate plants. once, in the garden, rikud had broken off a frond and tasted it. it had been bitter, but not unpleasant. maybe the plants in the viewport would even be better. "we will not be hungry if we go outside," he said. "we can eat there." "we can eat if the buzzer sounds, but it is broken," chuls said dully. crifer shrilled, "maybe it is only variable and will buzz again." "no," rikud assured him. "it won't." "then you broke it and i hate you," said crifer. "we should break you, too, to show you how it is to be broken." "we must go outside--through the viewport." rikud listened to the odd gurgling sound his stomach made. a hand reached out in the darkness and grabbed at his head. he heard crifer's voice. "i have rikud's head." the voice was nasty, hostile. crifer, more than anyone, had been his friend. but now that he had broken the machinery, crifer was his enemy, because crifer came nearer to understanding the situation than anyone except rikud. the hand reached out again, and it struck rikud hard across the face. "i hit him! i hit him!" other hands reached out, and rikud stumbled. he fell and then someone was on top of him, and he struggled. he rolled and was up again, and he did not like the sound of the angry voices. someone said, "let us do to rikud what he said he did to the machinery." rikud ran. in the darkness, his feet prodded many bodies. there were those who were too weak to rise. rikud, too, felt a strange light-headedness and a gnawing hurt in his stomach. but it didn't matter. he heard the angry voices and the feet pounding behind him, and he wanted only to get away. it was dark and he was hungry and everyone who was strong enough to run was chasing him, but every time he thought of the garden outside, and how big it was, the darkness and the hunger and the people chasing him were unimportant. it was so big that it would swallow him up completely and positively. he became sickly giddy thinking about it. but if he didn't open the door and go into the garden outside, he would die because he had no food and no water and his stomach gurgled and grumbled and hurt. and everyone was chasing him. he stumbled through the darkness and felt his way back to the library, through the inner door and into the room with the voice--but the voice didn't speak this time--through its door and into the place of machinery. behind him, he could hear the voices at the first door, and he thought for a moment that no one would come after him. but he heard crifer yell something, and then feet pounding in the passage. rikud tripped over something and sprawled awkwardly across the floor. he felt a sharp hurt in his head, and when he reached up to touch it with his hands there in the darkness, his fingers came away wet. he got up slowly and opened the next door. the voices behind him were closer now. light streamed in through the viewport. after the darkness, it frightened rikud and it made his eyes smart, and he could hear those behind him retreating to a safe distance. but their voices were not far away, and he knew they would come after him because they wanted to break him. rikud looked out upon the garden and he trembled. out there was life. the garden stretched off in unthinkable immensity to the cluster of low mounds against the bright blue which roofed the many plants. if plants could live out there as they did within the world, then so could people. rikud and his people _should_. this was why the world had moved across the darkness and the stars for all rikud's lifetime and more. but he was afraid. he reached up and grasped the handle of the door and he saw that his fingers were red with the wetness which had come from his hurt head. slowly he slipped to the cool floor--how his head was burning!--and for a long time he lay there, thinking he would never rise again. inside he heard the voices again, and soon a foot and then another pounded on the metal of the passage. he heard crifer's voice louder than the rest: "there is rikud on the floor!" tugging at the handle of the door, rikud pulled himself upright. something small and brown scurried across the other side of the viewport and rikud imagined it turned to look at him with two hideous red eyes. rikud screamed and hurtled back through the corridor, and his face was so terrible in the light streaming in through the viewport that everyone fled before him. he stumbled again in the place of the machinery, and down on his hands and knees he fondled the bits of metal which he could see in the dim light through the open door. "where's the buzzer?" he sobbed. "i must find the buzzer." crifer's voice, from the darkness inside, said, "you broke it. you broke it. and now we will break you--" rikud got up and ran. he reached the door again and then he slipped down against it, exhausted. behind him, the voices and the footsteps came, and soon he saw crifer's head peer in through the passageway. then there were others, and then they were walking toward him. his head whirled and the viewport seemed to swim in a haze. could it be variable, as crifer had suggested? he wondered if the scurrying brown thing waited somewhere, and nausea struck at the pit of his stomach. but if the plants could live out there and the scurrying thing could live and that was why the world had moved through the blackness, then so could he live out there, and crifer and all the others.... so tightly did he grip the handle that his fingers began to hurt. and his heart pounded hard and he felt the pulses leaping on either side of his neck. he stared out into the garden, and off into the distance, where the blue-white globe which might have been a star stood just above the row of mounds. * * * * * crifer was tugging at him, trying to pull him away from the door, and someone was grabbing at his legs, trying to make him fall. he kicked out and the hands let go, and then he turned the handle and shoved the weight of his body with all his strength against the door. it opened and he stepped outside into the warmth. the air was fresh, fresher than any air rikud had ever breathed. he walked around aimlessly, touching the plants and bending down to feel the floor, and sometimes he looked at the blue-white globe on the horizon. it was all very beautiful. near the ship, water that did not come from a machine gurgled across the land, and rikud lay down and drank. it was cool and good, and when he got up, crifer and wilm were outside the world, and some of the others followed. they stood around for a long time before going to the water to drink. rikud sat down and tore off a piece of a plant, munching on it. it was good. crifer picked his head up, from the water, his chin wet. "even feelings are variable. i don't hate you now, rikud." rikud smiled, staring at the ship. "people are variable, too, crifer. that is, if those creatures coming from the ship are people." "they're women," said crifer. they were strangely shaped in some ways, and yet in others completely human, and their voices were high, like singing. rikud found them oddly exciting. he liked them. he liked the garden, for all its hugeness. with so many people, and especially now with women, he was not afraid. it was much better than the small world of machinery, buzzer, frightening doors and women by appointment only. rikud felt at home. the last victory by tom godwin _he had only two aims in life: first, to get what he wanted; and after that to enjoy it. but to achieve the one he'd have to give up the other ... or would he?_ [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from worlds of if science fiction, august . extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] _the transport ship, bound for capella with outlander colonists from earth and frontier guards from arcturus, struck the hyperspace vortex without warning. it seized her, wrenching and twisting her, and flung her across its gigantic rim at thousands of times the speed of light. she emerged into normal space in an unknown region of the galaxy, broken and driveless, but near enough a planet that she could descend by means of her antigravity plates before the last of her air was gone._ _it was sunset when she settled heavily to earth on a grassy slope beside a forest, leaning at a dangerous angle with only her failing antigravity plates to hold her from falling. the dead had been disposed of in space and the living filed out of her: fifty outlander men, women and children, eighteen ship's crewmen, and ten frontier guards._ _the guard officer and ship's captain came last, of equal rank and already appraising each other with cold speculation._ the howling things in the dark forest were coming closer. thane listened as he watched curry, the ship's captain, approach across the strip of land that separated the two camps; standing back from his fire as he waited, where he would make an uncertain target for an assassin's blaster. no one could be seen near any of the fires in the two camps on the hill. only the unarmed outlanders, at their fires in the swale below, moved about without wariness. and it was not yet three hours from the landing of the ship. curry stopped before him, restrained anger on his arrogantly handsome face. "you failed to report to me and turn your frontier guards over to my command as you were ordered," he said. "since your rank is no higher than mine i saw no reason to do so," thane answered. curry smiled, very thinly. "perhaps i can show you a reason." "perhaps. let's have it." "first, i want to remind you of our circumstances," curry said. "the ship will never lift again and we're marooned here for centuries to come. you know what the reaction of the outlanders will be." the outlanders were the outcasts of a society that could not tolerate individuality. two hundred years before the complexities of civilization had combined technocracy with integration and produced technogration. technogration had abolished race, creed and color, nations and borders, had welded all into a common mass and prohibited all individual pursuits that did not contribute to the common good. the outlanders, refusing to come under technograte domination, lived as best they could in the deserts, plateaus and jungles that technogration could not use. the ones on the ship had been bound for capella five where men accustomed to wrestling a living from hostile environments were needed. under such circumstances outlanders were given certain rights and freedoms. until they were no longer needed. then, again, they became a people without a world.... "for two hundred years the outlanders have hated technogration and wanted a world where they could set up their own archaic form of society," curry said. "now, those down there will think their millenium has arrived and they can refuse to recognize technograte authority." "i see," thane said. "and you want my cooperation so that technogration won't fall by the wayside?" "your willingness to accept a subordinate position would give me an intact force of both crewmen and guardsmen." curry's lips thinned. "but there will be technogration, with or without your support. there will be no retrogression back into the outlanders' hallowed dark ages." "there is no argument--we both want technogration," thane said. "we only disagree over who should be in command." "there is a slight difference in our qualifications. your present rank was gained by your ability to kill and not by loyalty to technogration." "yes, of course," thane agreed. "we'll say that i'm a materialistic opportunist while you're a noble idealist. but it's still the same identical whip that we're both going to reach for." "as i said, i would prefer a peaceful transfer of your guardsmen to my command. but my crewmen outnumber them almost two to one and they are expendable if necessary." the thin smile came back, almost mocking in its confidence. "you haven't much choice but to cooperate and accept a subordinate role, have you?" the subordinate role would be very brief; it would end with a blaster beam in the back as soon as the guardsmen were transferred to curry's command.... "try again, curry. i can't bite on that one." the smile faded from curry's face, leaving it icily cold. "that was the only opportunity you'll ever get." the howling sounded again in the forest and thane said: "we understand each other, now. but the outlanders are unarmed and it may require our full forces to hold off whatever is out there. i suggest a truce until morning." the iciness remained on curry's face and he did not reply at once. "perhaps you are right. you will order your men to observe a truce for the rest of the night." he turned back to his camp. thane made the rounds where his guards patrolled with their searchlights probing out into the darkness. all of curry's men but two had been added to reinforce the guard ring around the outlander camp; most of the crewmen along the east and south lines, leaving the more experienced guardsmen to patrol the two lines facing the forest. guardsmen and crewmen patrolled in silence, watching one another with the calculating regard of men who knew they might soon be ordered to kill one another. apparently it was obvious to all of them that two officers of equal rank was a situation that could not for long exist. his return to his camp took him through the scattered camp fires of the outlanders. there were not many men to be seen; most of the survivors were women and children whom the outlander leader had ordered into the safer inner compartments when the ship began breaking up. thane met him at the second fire; a gaunt old man with a jutting gray beard and sharp blue eyes under bristling gray brows. he stepped out from the fire and spoke: "captain thane--i'd like to ask a question." thane stopped. "what is it?" "my name is paul kennedy and i speak for all of us," the old man said. "captain curry has locked up all arms from us--he's already starting the regimentation for a permanent technograte colony here and making sure we can't object. for two hundred years technogration has failed on earth except to turn men into robots. here we could have a new chance and live like humans again." "the question," thane reminded him. "you were in the frontier guards, where men still have to think for themselves to survive, and we were hoping you would understand why we don't want to start another ant hill here." he could understand--but now, after thirty years of planning and fighting, he was only one step from the top. "there will be technogration," he said. "we thought you would say that." kennedy's expression did not change. "we hoped we would be wrong." an ecstatic yelping sounded suddenly from nearby and something brown and white raced across the firelit ground with a laughing boy in pursuit. thane stared. it was a dog. he had not seen one for thirty years. technogration prohibited the owning of pets as an unnecessary drain upon the planned economy and as non-contributive to the common good. "we knew about the regulations," kennedy said, "but children need pets to love and be loved by. she's going to have pups--only she and lornie's kitten were left." the old man's eyes watched him closely, questioningly. "surely, no one will object to them?" the dog circled back and a dark haired young woman beyond another fire called to it: "binkie--come here!" the dog obeyed, its tail drooping a little, and the woman looked uncertainly in thane's direction before she disappeared back in the shadows, the dog close behind her. the boy followed, asking, "why did you stop us, blanche?" thane watched them go, the sight of the boy and dog bringing back with unwanted vividness the memory of another outlander boy who had played with his dog, long ago; bringing back the past that necessity had forced him to forget.... he put the dangerous weakness from his mind and spoke to kennedy: "you outlanders were bound for a technograte world when you left earth. you now stand on a technograte world. you will do as you are ordered to do. as for your pets--you may have as many as you want so far as i'm concerned." he stepped past kennedy and continued on through the camp. the conversation of the outlanders froze as he drew near, letting him walk in a little sea of silence that moved along with him. it was the usual reaction to the presence of a technograte officer. a little girl was out beyond the last fire; her back turned to him as she knelt in the grass and worked at something. he came closer and saw she was trying to tie a white cord around the neck of a half grown kitten. it sat with resigned patience as she struggled with earnest, inexperienced fingers to tie a knot that would not fall apart. she was talking to it as she worked: "--and maybe the things in the forest kill cats. so you'll have to stay tied up, tommy, and close to me because you're the only kitten on this whole world--" his shadow fell across her and she looked up. black curls framed a startled little face and gray eyes went wide at the sight of his uniform. she seized the surprised kitten and held it protectively in her arms, the knot falling apart again on the ground. "please--tommy won't ever hurt anything--" two women and a man were watching him from beyond the fire with frozen-faced hatred. technograte regulations required the immediate killing of any animals found smuggled aboard a ship.... "i won't harm your kitten," he said. he smiled sardonically at the outlanders beyond the fire. "my horns aren't quite that long yet." * * * * * he met curry when he was almost back to his camp. curry had two bodyguards with him and passed without speaking. the hours went by and the night was like a cold october night on earth but for the strange constellations that crept across the sky. the outlander fires burned lower and the things in the forest became silent, as though massing for a surprise attack. twice the wind shifted, to bring the scents from the forest, and each time he heard the dog growl uneasily while the woman tried to quiet her. he was going down the south guard line, the western horizon touched with the light of coming moonrise, when the monsters attacked the north line. they broke suddenly from the forest with a demoniac howl of command from their leader, a boiling wave of them. they were green, hard to see against the green grass, racing low to the ground like giant tigers, their long, serpentine necks thrust forward and eyes blazing yellow in hyena faces. the blaster fire of the guardsmen met them, pale blue beams that blossomed into brief incandescence when they struck. curry's guards added their fire, their reactions slower than those of the guardsmen. the guards along the other three lines turned to help halt the attack, the south line guards firing across the outlander camp. the front rank of monsters went down, with them the leader. for an instant the onslaught slowed, leaderless and uncertain, then the monster that had been behind the leader gave the commanding howl and the others surged ahead again. at that moment, when the attention of every guard in every guard line was on the north perimeter attack, the outlander dog broke loose from whoever had been holding her. she ignored the attack from the north and was a blur as she went through the south guard line, screaming a snarl of warning and her leash whipping in the air behind her. she vanished behind the guard line and thane swung his searchlight. five monsters were almost upon the backs of the unsuspecting guards, charging without sound. his blaster beam raked at them and two went down. the others struck three guards with their bodies, knocking them to the ground before they could fire. then the monsters passed on, to lurch a dozen steps and fall limply to the ground. they did not even twitch after they fell. he saw, when he reached the first one, that it was dead. so were the other two. yet there was not a blaster mark on them. then he saw another thing. one of the monsters had fallen with its jaws slackly open and its teeth were visible. they were blunt and even. despite their ferocious appearance, the monsters were only herbivores. the three fallen guards were getting to their feet, apparently unharmed. along the north perimeter the attack was over as suddenly as it had begun; the leader of the monsters lying dead against the guard line and all the others still alive fleeing wildly back into the forest. quiet came, broken only by the growling of the dog out near the two monsters thane had killed. he turned his light on her, then went closer to make sure he had seen rightly. she was fighting something on the ground, green-eyed with fury as she ripped and tore at it. but there was nothing there. nothing. "binkie!" the dark haired woman was coming toward them, wraithlike in a white sleeping garment. the dog turned away, with a last rip at the nothing it fought, and saw the three guards the monsters had knocked down. she froze, like as though she saw something she could not believe. then, deadly with menace, a growl vibrated in her throat and she crouched to attack them. "binkie--_don't_!" the voice of the girl was shrill with urgency. "come here--come here!" the dog hesitated, then obeyed; going past the guards in a swift lope, her head turned to watch them and her teeth bared in a snarl. the girl seized the leash and girl and dog disappeared back into the outlander camp, both of them running. curry loomed out of the darkness, his two bodyguards with him, and flashed his light over the fallen monsters. "so you let three get through?" he said. he glanced to the north guard line where the searchlights of the guards showed only the dark, lifeless edge of the forest. "but no one was harmed and there's no indication that they are going to attack again." he regarded thane with cold thoughtfulness. "apparently the camp is in no danger, after all." to thane the implication of his words was obvious: if the monsters were not a menace his cooperation was no longer needed by curry. the three guards were curry men and curry had two with him. he was outnumbered six to one.... "sir--" it was one of the three guards; bellam, the ship's pharmacist. he hurried up to curry, the other two close behind him. curry swung on him, impatiently. "what is it?" "we must combine our forces to fight a new danger. this camp is infected with rabies." "rabies?" "yes, sir," bellam answered. "the outlander's dog had a convulsion beyond the guard line and then almost attacked the three of us. that dog is mad." "how do you know it was a convulsion?" thane asked. "you saw it, yourself," bellam answered. he turned his head to face thane as he spoke and thane saw his eyes for the first time. they were the lifeless, staring eyes of a dead man. he flicked his light over the faces of the other two guards. they were the same; all three were like walking dead. "did the monsters harm you?" he asked bellam. bellam hesitated, seeming to tense with suspicion. "no." the dead eyes stared into his. "what makes you ask?" he saw that curry had noticed nothing different about the three guards. it was typical of curry; to him subordinates were only automatons to carry out his orders. "we were discussing a mad dog, thane," curry said. "not the health of my men." he spoke to bellam. "as i recall, rabies was a pre-technogration plague, often fatal." "the bite of a rabid animal is invariably fatal, the death prolonged and painful," bellam said. "there is no preventative or cure among the medical supplies on the ship. the dog must be killed at once, together with all other animals in the outlander camp." "if the dog was mad, why hasn't it bitten any of the outlanders," thane asked curry. "i suggest we keep it on a leash until we know for sure." "the dog was smuggled aboard the ship in defiance of regulations," curry said. "it would have been destroyed before had i known about it." he turned to bellam, ignoring thane. "the three of you will search the outlander camp from end to end. kill all animals and report to me the names of the owners." the three departed, to begin the search at the nearer end of the camp. thane made no further objection. he knew the outlanders well enough to know that they would have overheard the discussion on the hill and slipped the dog out through the guard lines before that discussion ended. outlanders could be very clever in such matters--the searchers would find no dog. there was satisfaction on curry's face as he turned and with his two bodyguards started back up the hill to his camp. thane watched him go, smiling a little. curry was making the mistake that had been fatal for so many before him; he was taking it for granted too soon that he had won. a man came hurrying from the north guard line before curry had gone far. he called to curry: "sir, there is something you ought to know--" thane saw, with almost disbelief, that it was one of his own men: gorman. curry waited and when gorman reached him he said: "when i was helping inspect the outlander section of the ship for hidden weapons this evening i saw some small animals in storage compartment thirteen. i think they were very young kittens. i would like to volunteer to go and kill them." curry said something that a vagrant breeze made inaudible then his words came clear: "--i'll send a detail to the ship as soon as the camp is searched. you will report to my guards now for orders and help them hunt for the dog." gorman started back to meet the guards and curry stood for a little while before he went on his way. thane could imagine his feeling of pleased surprise and triumph. thane called to gorman as he passed some distance in front of him. "were you injured in the attack?" he asked. "no," gorman said. then, with the same tense suspicion that bellam had had he asked the same question: "why do you ask?" "why did you report to curry instead of me?" the answer came quickly, mechanically, "the animals are in his ship and they must be killed. they may be mad." "go help curry's men," he said and watched gorman go, trying to fit together the incidents that did not make sense. herbivores had attacked without reason. there had fallen dead, without a blaster mark on them. the outlander dog had fought nothing and almost attacked the guards. one of his own men had gone over to the other side. and there was a sudden strange urgency to kill all animals in camp. there was nothing he could do for the time being but wait for further developments so he waited. the moon came up, so swift in its retrograde orbit that its speed was visible and so near that it had the brilliance of a dozen earth moons. when it had lifted clear of the horizon it flooded the land with a cold silver light that made the searchlights of the guards unnecessary and revealed the camp with metallic light-and-shadow clarity. the search party was halfway through the camp, gorman with them and bellam in command. they were ransacking the possessions and temporary shelters of the outlanders with swift efficiency, ignoring the protests of the women and their blasters leveled warningly on the men. they found the little girl. she was carrying her kitten ahead of them, a small, silent shadow in the moonlight, when gorman saw her. he spoke to bellam and bellam's head jerked up. then the two of them advanced on her. she tried to run when she realized they had seen the kitten, hugging it in her arms with the white cord trailing behind her. bellam overtook her and caught her by the shoulder, jerking her to a halt. he tore the kitten from her arms and flung it hard to the ground. it made a thin little scream of pain and the girl fought to reach it, her cry sobbing and frantic: "_don't hurt him_--" gorman's blaster hissed and blue flame leaped from it. incandescence enveloped the kitten and then there was nothing where it had been but a small black hole in the ground. bellam and gorman wheeled back, like mechanical men, to resume the search. the girl stood a moment, staring before her, saying something very low that sounded like, "_tommy ... tommy...._" then she stumbled to the little black hole and dropped to her knees beside it as though she hoped that somehow she might still find her kitten there. he looked away, strangely disturbed. he drummed his fingers restlessly on the butt of his holstered blaster then he turned again to go down into the outlander camp. the moon was up and it was time he found the dog. something had come out of the night with the monsters and perhaps she could tell him what it was. he could not yet believe she was mad. * * * * * the dark haired woman stood by the fire, watching the little girl and the searchers with bitter, smouldering hatred. she faced him, her breath coming fast in her anger. "her parents and her brother--when the ship broke up--she lost them all. only her kitten was left to her." "where is the dog?" he asked. "find her!" "the dog--where is she?" "find her," she challenged again. "find her and kill her--if you can!" he stepped past her and went on his way. she had told him what he wanted to know: despite her attempts not to do so she had been unable to keep from glancing toward the ship. * * * * * his route took him by the little girl. she was standing by the hole, small and bare-footed in the grass, her hands holding the white cord that was black and charred on one end. she was crying, silently, as though too proud to let him see her break. after he had passed her the vision went with him for a little way; the terrible, helpless hatred and hurt in her eyes and the moonlight gleaming coldly on her tears. he looked back when he reached the ship. gorman was coming, running, and the other three were turning back from the far end of the camp to hurry after gorman. he looked toward curry's camp and saw curry watching him. curry and his men moved toward him and there were six to make a rendezvous with him. the truce was over. he found the dog behind the farthest tail fin, leashed to a thorny bush and almost invisible in the shadows. she watched him as he stopped before her, her ears forward questioningly and her tail moving a little with tentative friendliness. he spoke to her and her reply was a low bark, her tail whipping with delight. she thought he had come to release her.... he had known dogs well as a boy and he knew the one before him was not mad. he heard gorman's feet plodding fast through the grass and he waited with his blaster in his hand. gorman came around the tail fin, panting, his own blaster in his hand. the dog went rigid at the sight of him, the growl in her throat, and gorman's blaster swung toward her. "_hold it!_" he ordered. gorman paused, and the dead eyes looked into his. "there the mad dog is--we must kill it." "we can kill it later if it's mad. we'll watch it a while, first." the suspicion became like something almost tangible about gorman and his blaster started the first movement toward thane. "_why?_" "i think it can see something--" gorman fired, so swiftly that he felt the heat of the beam even though he had been expecting it. he shot for the heart and gorman collapsed before he could fire again. he lay still on the ground, the eyes that stared up into the sky no deader than when he had been alive. the dog was lunging against her leash, trying to get to him. thane stepped closer and watched the grass beside gorman's head. a patch of it the size of his hand suddenly bent down, as from an unseen weight, and then something struck his knee. he slapped at it as it darted up his leg and knocked it off; something that felt like a mass of cold, rubbery tentacles. he knew, then. he stepped back, his blaster swinging aimlessly. the thing would leap again, to reach his head as it had done with gorman, and it was invisible. there was nothing but the moonlit grass to be seen. perhaps it was behind him, already preparing to spring.... the dog's snarling was a frenzied scream as she fought against her leash. he swung his blaster and its blue beam cut the leash in two. she flashed toward him, then up, her ears laid back, her eyes blazing slits and her teeth slashing at his throat. his blaster was in line with her chest and for a brief instant he had only to press the firing stud. he did something he had not done for thirty years; he trusted his life to another being and did not fire. cold tentacles whipped against his face and her teeth closed together beside his cheek with a vicious snap and gust of hot breath. she rebounded and held the thing on the ground between her paws as she tore at it; gagging a little, whining and snarling in fury and triumph. he squatted beside her and laid his hand on her, speaking to her soothingly. she calmed a little, though her chest still pounded with the beating of her heart, and he saw the thing she had killed. it was dead and slowly becoming visible as it changed to a color like pale milk. it resembled a huge, hairless spider. it was a parasite; a highly intelligent parasite that could take over the mind of its host as well as the body. the parasites had had only the forest monsters as hosts, before, but with the coming of the humans they had the opportunity for hosts of a far higher order. they possessed a means of locomotion but apparently it was limited in its duration or else they would not have needed to control the leaders of the monster bands and stage the attack that would carry them to the guard lines. the dog, with the acute sixth sense of some animals, could sense the hostile alienness of the things. she could see them--apparently the vision range of dogs went a little farther beyond that of humans. so also would that of cats but the kitten had had no chance to show by its actions what it had seen. the dog had hated the changed men because they were alien things, no longer human. the thing that had been bellam had used the knowledge stored in bellam's mind to claim there was rabies in the camp and thereby enlist the support of the humans in killing their only means of detecting the parasites. * * * * * there was a pounding of feet beyond the ship as the zombies came. on the slope above him curry was striding toward him, his bodyguards flanking him and the moonlight bright on his face. he stood with the dog beside him and watched them come to kill him. only he and the dog knew of the parasites; if they were killed the way would be open for the parasites to infiltrate the camp. in the end the new world would hold only the walking dead, down to the last outlander child. "curry," he called. he did not have to speak loudly in the still night air for curry to hear him but curry came on, his face hard, arrogant metal in the moonlight. "give me one minute, curry, to tell you what i found." curry's reply was the order to his men. "the dog is with him. kill them both." his blaster swung up as he spoke. thane dropped, firing as he went down. curry's arrogant face dissolved into nothing and his blaster flamed aimlessly into the ground at his feet. the blaster of the swiftest guard sent its beam hissing like a snake over thane's head, then he went down as curry had done, the other guard falling beside him with his first and only shot licking off into the moonlight. then the zombies came around the tail fin, in a quick rush with their dead eyes staring and their blasters making a curtain of blue fire before them. the dog lunged at them and a blaster beam dipped down to meet her. bellam--his headless body was falling forward as thane killed the zombie beside him. the blaster of the third one ripped its beam like a white-hot iron along thane's ribs as he died. then, within two heartbeats, it was over and the night was quiet again. he returned his blaster to its holster. the dog was limping from one zombie to the other, searching for parasites, her shoulder red with blood and staining the grass. she found none and he called her to him to look at her shoulder. it was not a serious wound but it was painful and bleeding fast and should be cared for. he took her around the ship, where the outlander camp lay in view below. he looked again at the wound and she whimpered a little from the pain, gentle though his touch had been, then licked his hand in quick apology. "your job is over for now," he said. he motioned toward the camp below, where the dark haired woman was waiting. "home, girl--go home." she left him and went running and limping down the hill where her hurts would be cared for. * * * * * his side was burning and blood was like a warm, wet sheet down it. he made a temporary bandage of his shirt and then leaned wearily against the tail fin. it was all over. the nature of the parasites was known and everyone could be fitted with a thin metal helmet until they were completely eliminated. they did not seem to be numerous--apparently there had been no more than ten or twelve among the scores of monsters. the dog would watch, and warn them if any more were in the vicinity. it was all over, with curry a motionless spot on the hillside above him and no one left to challenge him. he had come a long way from the outlander boy on the high, cold prairie who had hated technogration. he had been nineteen before he finally realized the futility of hating the unassailable power of technogration and realized he must accept it and adapt to it. and then carve out a niche for himself with a ruthlessness greater than any of those around him. so he had fought his way up, trampling those who would have trampled him had they been a little stronger, each step another victory in his conquest of the system that had condemned him. and now--the last victory. there was no one to challenge him; there could be no one under the rigid discipline of technogration. the last victory. the security of power to the end of his life. that was technogration. * * * * * dawn touched the sky, softening the moon's hard light. as though the coming of day was a signal, the ship trembled and there was the whisper of dislodged soil as the tail fin lifted a fraction of an inch. the antigravity plates were almost exhausted--the ship would fall within minutes. down in the outlander camp the children were gathering around the dog as the dark haired woman bandaged her shoulder. a voice came to him, treble and joyous, "binkie is back--binkie is back...." the little girl sat to one side, so small and alone that he almost failed to see her. she watched the children crowd up to pet their dog but she did not move to join them. only her hands moved, caressing the white cord that was charred on one end. he felt the triumph and satisfaction become like something turned bitter around the edges and draining away. technogration was planning and fighting and killing until at last a man reached the top and no one dared oppose him; technogration was control of a world and the seeds of an empire. and technogration was a child crying in the cold moonlight, was a little black hole where a kitten had screamed out with pain, with a little girl's heart that had nothing left to hold but harsh and poignant memories and a piece of burnt cord. he ran to the boarding ramp, feeling the fiery lash of pain and hot flow of blood as the wound reopened, telling himself he was a fool who would probably die in the falling ship and would deserve it. * * * * * he stood by the gray ashes of his fire, the guardsman's combat helmet under his arm, and watched the little girl come alone up the hill. someone had washed the tear-stains from her face and she stopped before him with her head held high and defiant, trying not to let him see she was afraid of him and almost succeeding. "i sent for you, lornie, to tell you i'm sorry about last night." he saw she did not believe him. her face was like a little carving of cold, unforgiving stone and she did not answer him. he set the helmet down in the grass before her. six tiny kittens lay inside it, red and white and gray fluffs of fur, their pink mouths questing hungrily. her eyes widened with incredulous wonder. "_oh!_" then the suspicion came back and she stopped the quick forward step she had taken. "they haven't any mother and they're hungry," he said. she did not move. "they're yours, lornie. to keep." "they're--mine?" then the doubt fled from her and she ran forward to gather them in her arms. he left her with her head bent down over the kittens in her lap, making soft little sounds of endearment to them, her face so radiant that there was no room left for hurt or hatred on it. kennedy was coming, not yet knowing why he had been summoned nor that technogration had died at dawn. he would not relinquish all his authority, of course. and he would have to remember to tell kennedy that they were going to give him one of binkie's pups. the companionship of an understanding dog might be comforting in the years to come, whenever he recalled the morning he had owned a world and a bare-footed girl had taken it away from him. recruit for andromeda by milton lesser ace books, inc. west th street, new york , n. y. recruit for andromeda copyright , by ace books, inc. all rights reserved printed in u.s.a. [transcriber's note: extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] tournament under nightmare skies when kit temple was drafted for the nowhere journey, he figured that he'd left his home, his girl, and the earth for good. for though those called were always promised "rotation," not a man had ever returned from that mysterious flight into the unknown. kit's fellow-draftee arkalion, the young man with the strange, old-man eyes, seemed to know more than he should. so when kit twisted the tail of fate and followed arkalion to the ends of space and time, he found the secret behind "nowhere" and a personal challenge upon which the entire future of earth depended. chapter i when the first strong sunlight of may covered the tree-arched avenues of center city with green, the riots started. the people gathered in angry knots outside the city hall, met in the park and littered its walks with newspapers and magazines as they gobbled up editorial comment at a furious rate, slipped with dark of night through back alleys and planned things with furious futility. center city's finest knew when to make themselves scarce: their uniforms stood for everything objectionable at this time and they might be subjected to clubs, stones, taunts, threats, leers--and knives. but center city, like most communities in united north america, had survived the riots before and would survive them again. on past performances, the damage could be estimated, too. two-hundred fifty-seven plate glass windows would be broken, three-hundred twelve limbs fractured. several thousand people would be treated for minor bruises and abrasions, center city would receive half that many damage suits. the list had been drawn clearly and accurately; it hardly ever deviated. and center city would meet its quota. with a demonstration of reluctance, of course. the healthy approved way to get over social trauma once every seven-hundred eighty days. * * * * * "shut it off, kit. kit, please." the telio blared in a cheaply feminine voice, "oh, it's a long way to nowhere, forever. and your honey's not coming back, never, never, never...." a wailing trumpet represented flight. "they'll exploit anything, kit." "it's just a song." "turn it off, please." christopher temple turned off the telio, smiling. "they'll announce the names in ten minutes," he said, and felt the corners of his mouth draw taut. "tell me again, kit," stephanie pleaded. "how old are you?" "you know i'm twenty-six." "twenty-six. yes, twenty-six, so if they don't call you this time, you'll be safe. safe, i can hardly believe it." "nine minutes," said temple in the darkness. stephanie had drawn the blinds earlier, had dialed for sound-proofing. the screaming in the streets came to them as not the faintest whisper. but the song which became briefly, masochistically popular every two years and two months had spoiled their feeling of seclusion. "tell me again, kit." "what." "you know what." he let her come to him, let her hug him fiercely and whimper against his chest. he remained passive although it hurt, occasionally stroking her hair. he could not assert himself for another--he looked at his strap chrono--for another eight minutes. he might regret it, if he did, for a lifetime. "tell me, kit." "i'll marry you, steffy. in eight minutes, less than eight minutes, i'll go down and get the license. we'll marry as soon as it's legal." "this is the last time they have a chance for you. i mean, they won't change the law?" temple shook his head. "they don't have to. they meet their quota this way." "i'm scared." "you and everyone else in north america, steffy." she was trembling against him. "it's cold for june." "it's warm in here." he kissed her moist eyes, her nose, her lips. "oh god, kit. five minutes." "five minutes to freedom," he said jauntily. he did not feel that way at all. apprehension clutched at his chest with tight, painful fingers, almost making it difficult for him to breathe. "turn it on, kit." he dialed the telio in time to see the announcer's insincere smile. smile seventeen, kit thought wryly. patriotic sacrifice. "every seven-hundred eighty days," said the announcer, "two-hundred of center city's young men are selected to serve their country for an indeterminate period regulated rigidly by a rotation system." "liar!" stephanie cried. "no one ever comes back. it's been thirty years since the first group and not one of them...." "shh," temple raised a finger to his lips. "this is the thirteenth call since the inception of what is popularly referred to as the nowhere journey," said the announcer. "obviously, the two hundred young men from center city and the thousands from all over this hemisphere do not in reality embark on a journey to nowhere. that is quite meaningless." "hooray for him," temple laughed. "i wish he'd get on with it." "no, ladies and gentlemen, we use the word nowhere merely because we are not aware of the ultimate destination. security reasons make it impossible to...." "yes, yes," said stephanie impatiently. "go on." "... therefore, the nowhere journey. with a maximum security lid on the whole project, we don't even know why our men are sent, or by what means. we know only that they go somewhere and not nowhere, bravely and not fearfully, for a purpose vital to the security of this nation and not to slake the thirst of a chessman of regiments and divisions. "if center city's contribution helps keep our country strong, center city is naturally obligated...." "no one ever said it isn't our duty," stephanie argued, as if the announcer could indeed hear her. "we only wish we knew something about it--and we wish it weren't forever." "it isn't forever," temple reminded her. "not officially." "officially, my foot. if they never return, they never return. if there's a rotation system on paper, but it's never used, that's not a rotation system at all. kit, it's forever." "... to thank the following sponsors for relinquishing their time...." "no one would want to sponsor _that_," temple whispered cheerfully. "kit," said stephanie, "i--i suddenly have a hunch we have nothing to worry about. they missed you all along and they'll miss you this time, too. the last time, and then you'll be too old. that's funny, too old at twenty-six. but we'll be free, kit. free." "he's starting," temple told her. a large drum filled the entire telio screen. it rotated slowly from bottom to top. in twenty seconds, the letter a appeared, followed by about a dozen names. abercrombie, harold. abner, eugene. adams, gerald. sorrow in the abercrombie household. despair for the abners. black horror for adams. the drum rotated. "they're up to f, kit." fabian, gregory g.... names circled the drum slowly, live viscous alphabet soup. meaningless, unless you happened to know them. "kit, i knew thomas mulvany." n, o, p.... "it's hot in here." "i thought you were cold." "i'm suffocating now." r, s.... "t!" stephanie shrieked as the names began to float slowly up from the bottom of the drum. tabor, tebbets, teddley.... temple's mouth felt dry as a ball of cotton. stephanie laughed nervously. now--or never. never? now. stephanie whimpered despairingly. temple, christopher. * * * * * "sorry i'm late, mr. jones." "hardly, mr. smith. hardly. three minutes late." "i've come in response to your ad." "i know. you look old." "i am over twenty-six. do you mind?" "not if you don't, mr. smith. let me look at you. umm, you seem the right height, the right build." "i meet the specifications exactly." "good, mr. smith. and your price." "no haggling," said smith. "i have a price which must be met." "your price, mr. smith?" "ten million dollars." the man called jones coughed nervously. "that's high." "very. take it or leave it." "in cash?" "definitely. small unmarked bills." "you'd need a moving van!" "then i'll get one." "ten million dollars," said jones, "is quite a price. admittedly, i haven't dealt in this sort of traffic before, but--" "but nothing. were your name jones, really and truly jones, i might ask less." "sir?" "you are jones exactly as much as i am smith." "sir?" jones gasped again. smith coughed discreetly. "but i have one advantage. i know you. you don't know me, mr. arkalion." "eh? eh?" "arkalion. the north american carpet king. right?" "how did you know?" the man whose name was not jones but arkalion asked the man whose name was not smith but might as well have been. "when i saw your ad," said not-smith, "i said to myself, 'now here must be a very rich, influential man.' it only remained for me to study a series of photographs readily obtainable--i have a fine memory for that, mr. arkalion--and here you are; here is arkalion the carpet king." "what will you do with the ten million dollars?" demanded arkalion, not minding the loss nearly so much as the ultimate disposition of his fortune. "why, what does anyone do with ten million dollars? treasure it. invest it. spend it." "i mean, what will you do with it if you are going in place of my--" arkalion bit his tongue. "your son, were you saying, mr. arkalion? alaric arkalion the third. did you know that i was able to boil my list of men down to thirty when i studied their family ties?" "brilliant, mr. smith. alaric is so young--" "aren't they all? twenty-one to twenty-six. who was it who once said something about the flower of our young manhood?" "shakespeare?" said mr. arkalion realizing that most quotes of lasting importance came from the bard. "sophocles," said smith. "but no matter. i will take young alaric's place for ten million dollars." motives always troubled mr. arkalion, and thus he pursued what might have been a dangerous conversation. "you'll never get a chance to spend it on the nowhere journey." "let me worry about that." "no one ever returns." "my worry, not yours." "it is forever--as if you dropped out of existence. alaric is so young." "i have always gambled, mr. arkalion. if i do not return in five years, you are to put the money in a trust fund for certain designated individuals, said fund to be terminated the moment i return. if i come back within the five years, you are merely to give the money over to me. is that clear?" "yes." "i'll want it in writing, of course." "of course. a plastic surgeon is due here in about ten minutes, mr. smith, and we can get on with.... but if i don't know your name, how can i put it in writing?" smith smiled. "i changed my name to smith for the occasion. perfectly legal. my name is john x. smith--now!" "that's where you're wrong," said mr. arkalion as the plastic surgeon entered. "your name is alaric arkalion iii--_now_." the plastic surgeon skittered around smith, examining him minutely with the casual expertness that comes with experience. "have to shorten the cheek bones." "for ten million dollars," said smith, "you can take the damned things out altogether and hang them on your wall." * * * * * sophia androvna petrovitch made her way downtown through the bustle of tired workers and the occasional sprinkling of comrades. she crushed her _ersatz_ cigarette underfoot at number stalin avenue, paused for the space of five heartbeats at the door, went inside. "what do you want?" the man at the desk was myopic but bull-necked. sophia showed her party card. "oh, comrade. still, you are a woman." "you're terribly observant, comrade," said sophia coldly. "i am here to volunteer." "but a woman." "there is nothing in the law which says a woman cannot volunteer." "we don't make women volunteer." "i mean really volunteer, of her own free will." "her--own--free will?" the bull-necked man removed his spectacles, scratched his balding head with the ear-pieces. "you mean volunteer without--" "without coercion. i want to volunteer. i am here to volunteer. i want to sign on for the next stalintrek." "stalintrek, a woman?" "that is what i said." "we don't force women to volunteer." the man scratched some more. "oh, really," said sophia. "this is , not mid-century, comrade. did not stalin say, 'woman was created to share the glorious destiny of mother russia with her mate?'" sophia created the quote randomly. "yes, if stalin said--" "he did." "still, i do not recall--" "what?" sophia cried. "stalin dead these thirty-nine years and you don't recall his speeches? what is your name, comrade?" "please, comrade. now that you remind me, i remember." "what is your name." "here, i will give you the volunteer papers to sign. if you pass the exams, you will embark on the next stalintrek, though why a beautiful young woman like you--" "shut your mouth and hand me those papers." there, sitting behind that desk, was precisely why. why should she, sophia androvna petrovitch, wish to volunteer for the stalintrek? better to ask why a bird flies south in the winter, one day ahead of the first icy gale. or why a lemming plunges recklessly into the sea with his multitudes of fellows, if, indeed, the venture were to turn out grimly. but there, behind that desk, was part of the reason. the comrade. the bright sharp comrade, with his depth of reasoning, his fountain of gushing emotions, his worldliness. _pfooey!_ it was as if she had been in a cocoon all her life, stifled, starved, the cottony inner lining choking her whenever she opened her mouth, the leathery outer covering restricting her when she tried to move. no one had ever returned from the stalintrek. she then had to assume no one would. including sophia androvna petrovitch. but then, there was nothing she would miss, nothing to which she particularly wanted to return. not the stark, foul streets of stalingrad, not the workers with their vapid faces or the comrades with their cautious, sweating, trembling, fearful non-decisions, not the higher echelon of comrades, more frightened but showing it less, who would love the beauty of her breasts and loins but not herself for you never love anything but the stalinimage and mother russia herself, not those terrified martinet-marionettes who would love the parts of her if she permitted but not her or any other person for that matter. wrong with the stalintrek was its name alone, a name one associated with everything else in russia for an obvious, post-stalin reason. but everything else about the stalintrek shrieked mystery and adventure. where did you go? how did you get there? what did you do? why? a million questions which had kept her awake at night and, if she thought about them hard enough, satisfied her deep longing for something different. and then one day when stolid mrs. ivanovna-rasnikov had said, "it is a joke, a terrible, terrible joke they are taking my husband fyodor on the stalintrek when he lacks sufficient imagination to go from here to leningrad or even tula. can you picture fyodor on the stalintrek? better they should have taken me. better they should have taken his wife." that day sophia could hardly contain herself. as a party member she had access to the law and she read it three times from start to finish (in her dingy flat by the light of a smoking, foul-smelling, soft-wax candle) but could find nothing barring women from the stalintrek. had fyodor rasnikov volunteered? naturally. everyone volunteered, although when your name was called you had no choice. there had been no draft in russia since the days of the second war of the people's liberation. volunteer? what, precisely, did the word mean? she, sophia androvna petrovitch would volunteer, without being told. thus it was she found herself at stalin avenue, and thus the balding, myopic, bull-necked comrade thrust the papers across his desk at her. she signed her name with such vehemence and ferocity that she almost tore through the paper. chapter ii _three-score men sit in the crowded, smoke-filled room. some drink beer, some squat in moody silence, some talk in an animated fashion about nothing very urgent. at the one small door, two guards pace back and forth slowly, creating a gentle swaying of smoke-patterns in the hazy room. the guards, in simple military uniform, carry small, deadly looking weapons._ first man: fight city hall? are you kidding? they took you, bud. don't try to fight it, i know. i know. second man: i'm telling you, there was a mistake in the records. i'm over twenty-six. two weeks and two days. already i wrote to my congressman. hell, that's why i voted for him, he better go to bat for me. third man: you think that's something? i wouldn't be here only those doctors are crazy. i mean, crazy. me, with a cyst big as a golf ball on the base of my spine. first man: you too. don't try to fight it. fourth man: (newly named alaric arkalion iii) i look forward to this as a stimulating adventure. does the fact that they select men for the nowhere journey once every seven hundred and eighty days strike anyone as significant? second man: i got my own problems. alaric arkalion: this is not a thalamic problem, young man. not thalamic at all. third man: young man? who are you kidding? alaric arkalion: (who realizes, thanks to the plastic surgeon, he is the youngest looking of all, with red cheeks and peachfuzz whiskers) it is a problem of the intellect. why seven hundred and eighty days? first man: i read the magazine, too, chief. you think we're all going to the planet mars. how original. alaric arkalion: as a matter of fact, that is exactly what i think. second man: mars? first man: (laughing) it's a long way from mars to city hall, doc. second man: you mean, through space to mars? alaric arkalion: exactly, exactly. quite a coincidence, otherwise. first man: you're telling me. alaric arkalion: (coldly) would you care to explain it? first man: why, sure. you see, mars is--uh, i don't want to steal your thunder, chief. go ahead. alaric arkalion: once every seven hundred and eighty days mars and the earth find themselves in the same orbital position with respect to the sun. in other words, mars and earth are closest then. were there such a thing as space travel, new, costly, not thoroughly tested, they would want to make each journey as brief as possible. hence the seven hundred and eighty days. first man: not bad, chief. you got most of it. third man: no one ever said anything about space travel. first man: you think we'd broadcast it or something, stupid? it's part of a big, important scientific experiment, only we're the hamsters. alaric arkalion: ridiculous. you're forgetting all about the cold war. first man: he thinks we're fighting a war with the martians. (laughs) orson wells stuff, huh? alaric arkalion: with the russians. the russians. we developed a bombs. they developed a bombs. we came up with the h bomb. so did they. we placed a station up in space, a fifth of the way to the moon. so did they. then--nothing more about scientific developments. for over twenty years. i ask you, doesn't it seem peculiar? first man: peculiar, he says. alaric arkalion: peculiar. second man: i wish my congressman.... first man: you and your congressman. the way you talk, it was your vote got him in office. second man: if only i could get out and talk to him. alaric arkalion: no one is permitted to leave. first man: punishable by a prison term, the law says. second man: oh yeah? prison, shmision. or else go on the nowhere journey. well, i don't see the difference. first man: so, go ahead. try to escape. second man: (looking at the guards) they got them all over. all over. i think our mail is censored. alaric arkalion: it is. second man: they better watch out. i'm losing my temper. i get violent when i lose my temper. first man: see? see how the guards are trembling. second man: very funny. maybe you didn't have a good job or something? maybe you don't care. i care. i had a job with a future. didn't pay much, but a real blue chip future. so they send me to nowhere. first man: you're not there yet. second man: yeah, but i'm going. third man: if only they let you know when. my back is killing me. i'm waiting to pull a sick act. just waiting, that's all. first man: go ahead and wait, a lot of good it will do you. third man: you mind your own business. first man: i am, doc. you brought the whole thing up. second man: he's looking for trouble. third man: he'll get it. alaric arkalion: we're going to be together a long time. a long time. why don't you all relax? second man: you mind your own business. first man: nuts, aren't they. they're nuts. a sick act, yet. second man: look how it doesn't bother him. a failure, he was. i can just see it. what does he care if he goes away forever and doesn't come back? one bread line is as good as another. first man: ha-ha. second man: yeah, well i mean it. forever. we're going away, someplace--forever. we're not coming back, ever. no one comes back. it's for good, for keeps. first man: tell it to your congressman. or maybe you want to pull a sick act, too? third man: (hits first man, who, surprised, crashes back against a table and falls down) it isn't an act, damn you! guard: all right, break it up. come on, break it up.... alaric arkalion: (to himself) i wish i saw that ten million dollars already--_if_ i ever get to see it. * * * * * they drove for hours through the fresh country air, feeling the wind against their faces, listening to the roar their ground-jet made, all alone on the rimrock highway. "where are we going, kit?" "search me. just driving." "i'm glad they let you come out this once. i don't know what they would have done to me if they didn't. i had to see you this once. i--" temple smiled. he had absented himself without leave. it had been difficult enough and he might yet be in a lot of hot water, but it would be senseless to worry stephanie. "it's just for a few hours," he said. "hours. when we want a whole lifetime. kit. oh, kit--why don't we run away? just the two of us, someplace where they'll never find you. i could be packed and ready and--" "don't talk like that. we can't." "you want to go where they're sending you. you want to go." "for god's sake, how can you talk like that? i don't want to go anyplace, except with you. but we can't run away, steffy. i've got to face it, whatever it is." "no you don't. it's noble to be patriotic, sure. it always was. but this is different, kit. they don't ask for part of your life. not for two years, or three, or a gamble because maybe you won't ever come back. they ask for all of you, for the rest of your life, forever, and they don't even tell you why. kit, don't go! we'll hide someplace and get married and--" "and nothing." temple stopped the ground-jet, climbed out, opened the door for stephanie. "don't you see? there's no place to hide. wherever you go, they'd look. you wouldn't want to spend the rest of your life running, steffy. not with me or anyone else." "i would. i would!" "know what would happen after a few years? we'd hate each other. you'd look at me and say 'i wouldn't be hiding like this, except for you. i'm young and--'" "kit, that's cruel! i would not." "yes, you would. steffy, i--" a lump rose in his throat. he'd tell her goodbye, permanently. he had to do it that way, did not want her to wait endlessly and hopelessly for a return that would not materialize. "i didn't get permission to leave, steffy." he hadn't meant to tell her that, but suddenly it seemed an easy way to break into goodbye. "what do you mean? no--you didn't...." "i had to see you. what can they do, send me for longer than forever?" "then you do want to run away with me!" "steffy, no. when i leave you tonight, steffy, it's for good. that's it. the last of kit temple. stop thinking about me. i don't exist. i--never was." it sounded ridiculous, even to him. "kit, i love you. i love you. how can i forget you?" "it's happened before. it will happen again." that hurt, too. he was talking about a couple of statistics, not about himself and stephanie. "we're different, kit. i'll love you forever. and--kit ... i know you'll come back to me. i'll wait, kit. we're different. you'll come back." "how many people do you think said _that_ before?" "you don't want to come back, even if you could. you're not thinking of us at all. you're thinking of your brother." "you know that isn't true. sometimes i wonder about jase, sure. but if i thought there was a chance to return--i'm a selfish cuss, steffy. if i thought there was a chance, you know i'd want you all for myself. i'd brand you, and that's the truth." "you do love me!" "i loved you, steffy. kit temple loved you." "loved?" "loved. past tense. when i leave tonight, it's as if i don't exist anymore. as if i never existed. it's got to be that way, steffy. in thirty years, no one ever returned." "including your brother, jase. so now you want to find him. what do i count for? what...." "this going wasn't my idea. i wanted to stay with you. i wanted to marry you. i can't now. none of it. forget me, steffy. forget you ever knew me. jase said that to our folks before he was taken." almost five years before jason temple had been selected for the nowhere journey. he'd been young, though older than his brother kit. young, unattached, almost cheerful he was. naturally, they never saw him again. "hold me, kit. i'm sorry ... carrying on like this." they had walked some distance from the ground-jet, through scrub oak and bramble bushes. they found a clearing, fragrant-scented, soft-floored still from last autumn, melodic with the chirping of nameless birds. they sat, not talking. stephanie wore a gay summer dress, full-skirted, cut deep beneath the throat. she swayed toward him from the waist, nestled her head on his shoulder. he could smell the soft, sweet fragrance of her hair, of the skin at the nape of her neck. "if you want to say goodbye ..." she said. "stop it," he told her. "if you want to say goodbye...." her head rolled against his chest. she turned, cradled herself in his arms, smiled up at him, squirmed some more and had her head pillowed on his lap. she smiled tremulously, misty-eyed. her lips parted. he bent and kissed her, knowing it was all wrong. this was not goodbye, not the way he wanted it. quickly, definitely, for once and all. with a tear, perhaps, a lot of tears. but permanent goodbye. this was all wrong. the whole idea was to be business-like, objective. it had to be done that way, or no way at all. briefly, he regretted leaving the encampment. this wasn't goodbye the way he wanted it. the way it had to be. this was _auf weidersen_. and then he forgot everything but stephanie.... * * * * * "i am alaric arkalion iii," said the extremely young-looking man with the old, wise eyes. how incongruous, temple thought. the eyes look almost middle-aged. the rest of him--a boy. "something tells me we'll be seeing a lot of each other," arkalion went on. the voice was that of an older man, too, belying the youthful complexion, the almost childish features, the soft fuzz of a beard. "i'm kit temple," said temple, extending his hand. "arkalion, a strange name. i know it from somewhere.... say! aren't you--don't you have something to do with carpets or something?" "here and now, no. i am a number. a- - . but my father is--perhaps i had better say was--my father is alaric arkalion ii. yes, that is right, the carpet king." "i'll be darned," said temple. "why?" "well," temple laughed. "i never met a billionaire before." "here i am not a billionaire, nor will i ever be one again. a- - , a number. on his way to mars with a bunch of other numbers." "mars? you sound sure of yourself." "reasonably. ah, it is a pleasure to talk with a gentleman. i am reasonably certain it will be mars." temple nodded in agreement. "that's what the sunday supplements say, all right." "and doubtless you have observed no one denies it." "but what on earth do we want on mars?" "that in itself is a contradiction," laughed arkalion. "we'll find out, though, temple." they had reached the head of the line, found themselves entering a huge, double-decker jet-transport. they found two seats together, followed the instructions printed at the head of the aisle by strapping themselves in and not smoking. talking all around them was subdued. "contrariness has given way to fear," arkalion observed. "you should have seen them the last few days, waiting around the induction center, a two-ton chip on each shoulder. say, where _were_ you?" "i--what do you mean?" "i didn't see you until last evening. suddenly, you were here." "did anyone else miss me?" "but i remember you the first day." "did anyone else miss me? any of the officials?" "no. not that i know of." "then i was here," temple said, very seriously. arkalion smiled. "by george, of course. then you were here. temple, we'll get along fine." temple said that was swell. "anyway, we'd better. forever is a long time." three minutes later, the jet took off and soared on eager wings toward the setting sun. * * * * * "men, since we are leaving here in a few hours and since there is no way to get out of the encampment and no place to go over the desert even if you could," the microphone in the great, empty hall boomed as the two files of men marched in, "there is no harm in telling you where you are. from this point, in a limited sense, you shall be kept abreast of your progress. "we are in white sands, new mexico." "the garden spot of the universe!" someone shouted derisively, remembering the bleak hot desert and jagged mountain peaks as they came down. "white sands," muttered arkalion. "it looks like space travel now, doesn't it, kit." temple shrugged. "why?" "white sands was the center of experiments in rocketry decades ago, when people still talked about those things. then, for a long time, no one heard anything about white sands. the rockets grew here, kit." "i can readily see why. you could look all your life without finding a barren spot like this." "precisely. someone once called this place--or was it some other place like it?--someone once called it a good place to throw old razor blades. if people still used razor blades." the microphone blared again, after the several hundred men had entered the great hall and milled about among the echoes. temple could picture other halls like this, other briefings. "men, whenever you are given instructions, in here or elsewhere, obey them instantly. our job is a big one, complicated and exacting. attention to detail will save us trouble." someone said, "my old man served a hitch in the army, back in the sixties. that's what he always said, attention to details. the army is crazy about things like that. are we in the army or something?" "this is not the army, but the function is similar," barked the microphone. "do as you are told and you will get along." stirrings in the crowd. mutterings. temple gaped. microphone, yes--but receivers also, placed strategically, all around the hall, to pick up sound. telio receivers too, perhaps? it made him feel something like a goldfish. apparently someone liked the idea of the two-way microphones. "i got a question. when are we coming back?" laughter. hooting. catcalls. blared the microphone: "there is a rotation system in operation, men. when it is feasible, men will be rotated." "yeah, in thirty years it ain't been whatsiz--feasible--once!" "that, unfortunately, is correct. when the situation permits, we will rotate you home." "from where? where are we going?" "at least tell us that." "where?" "how about that?" there was a pause, then the microphone barked: "i don't know the answer to that question. you won't believe me, but it is the truth. no one knows where you are going. no one. except the people who are already there." more catcalls. "that doesn't make sense," arkalion whispered. "if it's space travel, the pilots would know, wouldn't they?" "automatic?" temple suggested. "i doubt it. space travel must still be new, even if it has thirty years under its belt. if that man speaks the truth--if no one knows ... just where in the universe _are_ we going?" chapter iii "hey, looka me. i'm flying!" "will you get your big fat feet out of my face?" "sure. show me how to swim away through air, i'll be glad to." "leggo that spoon!" "i ain't got your spoon." "will you look at it float away. hey spoon, hey!" "watch this, charlie. this will get you. i mean, get you." "what are you gonna do?" "relax, chum." "leggo my leg. help! i'm up in the air. stop that." "i said relax. there. ha-ha, lookit him spin, just like a top. all you got to do is get him started and he spins like a top with arms and legs. top of the morning to you, charlie. ha-ha. i said, top of the...." "someone stop me, i'm getting dizzy." they floated, tumbled, spun around the spaceship's lounge room in simple, childish glee. they cavorted in festive weightlessness. "they're happy now," arkalion observed. "the novelty of free fall, of weighing exactly nothing, strikes them as amusing." "i think i'm getting the hang of it," said temple. clumsily, he made a few tentative swimming motions in the air, propelling himself forward a few yards before he lost his balance and tumbled head over heels against the wall. arkalion came to him quickly, in a combination of swimming and pushing with hands and feet against the wall. arkalion righted him expertly, sat down gingerly beside him. "if you keep sudden motions to a minimum, you'll get along fine. more than anything else, that's the secret of it." temple nodded. "it's sort of like the first time you're on ice skates. say, how come you're so good at it?" "i used to read the old, theoretical books on space-travel." the words poured out effortlessly, smoothly. "i'm merely applying the theories put forward as early as the 's." "oh." but it left temple with some food for thought. alaric arkalion was a queer duck, anyway, and of all the men gathered in the spaceship's lounge, he alone had mastered weightlessness with hardly any trouble. "take your ice skates," arkalion went on. "some people put them on and use them like natural extensions of their feet the first time. others fall all over themselves. i suppose i am lucky." "sure," said temple. actually, the only thing odd about arkalion was his old-young face and--perhaps--his propensity for coming up with the right answers at the right times. arkalion had seemed so certain of space-travel. he'd hardly batted an eyelash when they boarded a long, tapering bullet-shaped ship at white sands and thundered off into the sky. he took for granted the change-over to a huge round ship at the wheel-shaped station in space. moments after leaving the space station--with a minimum of stress and strain, thanks to the almost-nil gravity--it was arkalion who first swam through air to the viewport and pointed out the huge crescent earth, green and gray and brown, sparkling with patches of dazzling silver-white. "you will observe it is a crescent," arkalion had said. "it is closer to the sun than we are, and off at an angle. as i suspected, our destination is mars." * * * * * then everyone was saying goodbye to earth. fantastic, it seemed. there were tears, there was laughter, cursing, promises of return, awkward verbal comparisons with the crescent moon, vows of faithfulness to lovers and sweethearts. and there was arkalion, with an avid expression in the old eyes, arkalion with his boyish face, not saying goodbye so much as he was calling hello to something temple could not fathom. now, as he struggled awkwardly with weightlessness, temple called it his imagination. his thought-patterns shifted vaguely, without motivation, from the gleaming, polished interior of the ship with its smell of antiseptic and metal polish to the clear spring air of earth, blue of sky and bright of sun. the unique blue sky of earth which he somehow knew could not be duplicated elsewhere. elsewhere--the word itself bordered on the meaningless. and stephanie. the brief warm ecstasy of her--once, forever. he wondered with surprising objectivity if a hundred other names, a hundred other women were not in a hundred other minds while everyone stared at the crescent earth hanging serenely in space--with each name and each woman as dear as stephanie, with the same combination of fire and gentle femininity stirring the blood but saddening the heart. would stephanie really forget him? did he want her to? that part of him burned by the fire of her said no--no, she must not forget him. she was his, his alone, roped and branded though a universe separated them. but someplace in his heart was the thought, the understanding, the realization that although stephanie might keep a small place for him tucked someplace deep in her emotions, she must forget. he was gone--permanently. for stephanie, he was dead. it was as he had told her that last stolen day. it was ... _stephanie, stephanie, how much i love you_.... struggling with weightlessness, he made his way back to the small room he shared with arkalion. hardly more than a cubicle, it was, with sufficient room for two beds, a sink, a small chest. he lay down and slept, murmuring stephanie's name in his sleep. * * * * * he awoke to the faint hum of the air-pumps, got up feeling rested, forgot his weightlessness and floated to the ceiling where only an outthrust arm prevented a nasty bump on his head. he used hand grips on the wall to let himself down. he washed, aware of no way to prevent the water he splashed on his face from forming fine droplets and spraying the entire room. when he crossed back to the foot of his bed to get his towel he thrust one foot out too rapidly, lost his balance, half-rose, stumbled and fell against the other bed which, like all other items of furniture, was fastened to the floor. but his elbow struck sleeping arkalion's jaw sharply, hard enough to jar the man's teeth. "i'm sorry," said temple. "didn't mean to do that," he apologized again, feeling embarrassed. arkalion merely lay there. "i said i'm sorry." arkalion still slept. it seemed inconceivable, for temple's elbow pained him considerably. he bent down, examined his inert companion. arkalion stirred not a muscle. vaguely alarmed, temple thrust a hand to arkalion's chest, felt nothing. he crouched, rested the side of his head over arkalion's heart. he listened, heard--nothing. what was going on here? "hey, arkalion!" temple shook him, gently at first, then with savage force. weightless, arkalion's body floated up off the bed, taking the covers with it. his own heart pounding furiously, temple got it down again, fingered the left wrist and swallowed nervously. temple had never seen a dead man before. arkalion's heart did not beat. arkalion had no pulse. arkalion was dead. yelling hoarsely, temple plunged from the room, soaring off the floor in his haste and striking his head against the ceiling hard enough to make him see stars. "this guy is dead!" he cried. "arkalion is dead." men stirred in the companionway. someone called for one of the armed guards who were constantly on patrol. "if he's dead, you're yelling loud enough to get him out of his grave." the voice was quiet, amused. arkalion. "what?" temple blurted, whirling around and striking his head again. a little wild-eyed, he re-entered the room. "now, who is dead, kit?" demanded arkalion, sitting up and stretching comfortably. "who--is dead? who--?" open-mouthed, temple stared. a guard, completely at home with weightlessness, entered the cubicle briskly. "what's the trouble in here? something about a dead man, they said." "a dead man?" demanded arkalion. "indeed." "dead?" muttered temple, lamely and foolishly. "dead...." arkalion smiled deprecatingly. "my friend must have been talking in his sleep. the only thing dead in here is my appetite. weightlessness doesn't let you become very hungry." "you'll grow used to it," the guard promised. he patted his paunch happily. "i am. well, don't raise the alarm unless there's some trouble. remember about the boy who cried wolf." "of course," said temple. "sure. sorry." he watched the guard depart. "bad dream?" arkalion wanted to know. "bad dream, my foot. i accidentally hit you. hard enough to hurt. you didn't move." "i'm a sound sleeper." "i felt for your heart. it wasn't beating. it wasn't!" "oh, come, come." "your heart was not beating, i said." "and i suppose i was cold as a slab of ice?" "umm, no. i don't remember. maybe you were. you had no pulse, either." arkalion laughed easily. "and am i still dead?" "well--" "clearly a case of overwrought nerves and a highly keyed imagination. what you need is some more sleep." "i'm not sleepy, thanks." "well, i think i'll get up and go down for breakfast." arkalion climbed out of bed gingerly, made his way to the sink and was soon gargling with a bottle of prepared mouthwash, occasionally spraying weightless droplets of the pink liquid up at the ceiling. temple lit a cigarette with shaking fingers, made his way to arkalion's bed while the man hummed tunelessly at the sink. temple let his hands fall on the sheet. it was not cold, but comfortably cool. hardly as warm as it should have been, with a man sleeping on it all night. was he still imagining things? "i'm glad you didn't call for a burial detail and have me expelled into space with yesterday's garbage," arkalion called over his shoulder jauntily as he went outside for some breakfast. temple cursed softly and lit another cigarette, dropping the first one into a disposal chute on the wall. * * * * * every night thereafter, temple made it a point to remain awake after arkalion apparently had fallen asleep. but if he were seeking repetition of the peculiar occurrence, he was disappointed. not only did arkalion sleep soundly and through the night, but he snored. loudly and clearly, a wheezing snore. arkalion's strange feat--or his own overwrought imagination, temple thought wryly--was good for one thing: it took his mind off stephanie. the days wore on in endless, monotonous routine. he took some books from the ship's library and browsed through them, even managing to find one concerned with traumatic catalepsy, which stated that a severe emotional shock might render one into a deep enough trance to have a layman mistakenly pronounce him dead. but what had been the severe emotional disturbance for arkalion? could the effects of weightlessness manifest themselves in that way in rare instances? temple naturally did not know, but he resolved to find out if he could after reaching their destination. one day--it was three weeks after they left the space station, temple realized--they were all called to assembly in the ship's large main lounge. as the men drifted in, temple was amazed to see the progress they had made with weightlessness. he himself had advanced to handy facility in locomotion, but it struck him all the more pointedly when he saw two hundred men swim and float through air, pushing themselves along by means of the hand-holds strategically placed along the walls. the ever-present microphone greeted them all. "good afternoon, men." "good afternoon, mac!" "hey, is this the way to ebbetts' field?" "get on with it!" "sounds like the same man who addressed us in white sands," temple told arkalion. "he sure does get around." "a recording, probably. listen." "our destination, as you've probably read in newspapers and magazines, is the planet mars." mutterings in the assembly, not many of surprise. "their suppositions, based both on the seven hundred eighty day lapse between nowhere journeys and the romantic position in which the planet mars has always been held, are correct. we are going to mars. "for most of you, mars will be a permanent home for many years to come--" "most of us?" temple wondered out loud. arkalion raised a finger to his lips for silence. "--until such time as you are rotated according to the policy of rotation set up by the government." temple had grown accustomed to the familiar hoots and catcalls. he almost had an urge to join in himself. "interesting," arkalion pointed out. "back at white sands they claimed not to know our destination. they knew it all right--up to a point. the planet mars. but now they say that all of us will not remain on mars. most interesting." "--further indoctrination in our mission soon after our arrival on the red planet. landing will be performed under somewhat less strain than the initial takeoff in the earth-to-station ferry, since mars exerts less of a gravity pull than earth. on the other hand, you have been weightless for three weeks and the change-over is liable to make some of you sick. it will pass harmlessly enough. "we realize it is difficult, being taken from your homes without knowing the nature of your urgent mission. all i can tell you now--and, as a matter of fact, all i know--" "here we go again," said temple. "more riddles." "--is that everything _is_ of the utmost urgency. our entire way of life is at stake. our job will be to safeguard it. in the months which follow, few of you will have any big, significant role to play, but all of you, working together, will provide the strength we need. when the _cadre_--" "so they call their guards teachers," arkalion commented dryly. "--come around, they will see that each man is strapped properly into his bunk for deceleration. deceleration begins in twenty-seven minutes." _mars_, thought temple, back in his room with arkalion. _mars._ he did not think of stephanie, except as a man who knows he must spend the rest of his life in prison might think of a lush green field, or the cool swish of skis over fresh, powdery snow, or the sound of yardarms creaking against the wind on a small sailing schooner, or the tang of wieners roasting over an open fire with the crisp air of fall against your back, or the scent of good french brandy, or a woman. deceleration began promptly. before his face was distorted and his eyes forced shut by a pressure of four gravities, temple had time to see the look of complete unconcern on arkalion's face. arkalion, in fact, was sleeping. he seemed as completely relaxed as he did that morning temple thought he was dead. chapter iv "petrovitch, s. a.!" called the comrade standing abreast of the head of the line, a thin, nervous man half a head shorter than the girl herself. sophia androvna petrovitch strode forward, took a pair of trim white shorts from the neat stack at his left. "is that all?" she said, looking at him. "yes, comrade. well, a woman. well." without embarrassment, sophia had seen the men ahead of her in line strip and climb into the white shorts before they disappeared through a portal ahead of the line, depositing their clothing in a growing pile on the floor. but now it was sophia's turn, after almost a two hour wait. not that it was chilly, but.... "is that all?" she repeated. "certainly. strip and move along, comrade." the nervous little man appraised her lecherously, she thought. "then i must keep some of my own clothing," she told him. "impossible. i have my orders." "i am a woman." "you are a volunteer for the stalintrek. you will take no personal property--no clothing--with you. strip and advance, please." sophia flushed slightly, while the men behind her began to call and taunt. "i like this stalintrek." "oh, yes." "we are waiting, comrade." quickly and with an objective detachment which surprised her, sophia unbuttoned her shirt, removed it. her one wish--and an odd one, she thought, smiling--was for wax for her ears. she loosened the three snaps of her skirt, watched it fall to the floor. she stood there briefly, lithe-limbed, a tall, slim girl, then had the white shorts over her nakedness in one quick motion. she still wore a coarse halter. "all personal effects, comrade," said the nervous little man. "no," sophia told him. "but yes. definitely, yes. you hold up the line, and we have a schedule to maintain. the stalintrek demands quick, prompt obedience." "then you will give me one additional item of clothing." the man looked at sophia's halter, at the fine way she filled it. he shrugged. "we don't have it," he said, clearly enjoying himself. in volunteering for the stalintrek, sophia had invaded man's domain. she had watched not with embarrassment but with scorn while the men in front of her got out of their clothing. she had invaded man's domain, and as she watched them, the short flabby ones, the bony ones with protruding ribs and collar-bones, those of milky white skin and soft hands, she knew most of them would bite off more than they could chew if ever they tried what was the most natural thing for men to try with a lone woman in an isolated environment. but she _was_ in a man's world now, and if that was the way they wanted it, she would ask no quarter. she reached up quickly with one hand and unfastened the halter, catching it with her free hand and holding it in front of her breasts while the nervous little man licked his lips and gaped. sophia grabbed another pair of the white shorts, tore it quickly with her strong fingers, fashioning a crude covering for herself. this she pulled around her, fastening it securely with a knot in back. "you'll have to give that back to me," declared the nervous little comrade. "i'll bet you a samovar on that," sophia said quietly, so only the man heard her. he reached out, as if to rip the crude halter from her body, but sophia met him halfway with her strong, slim fingers, wrapping them around his biceps and squeezing. the man's face turned quickly to white as he tried unsuccessfully to free his arm. "please, that hurts." "i keep what i am wearing." she tightened her grip, but gazed serenely into space as the man stifled a whimper. "well--" the man whispered indecisively as he gritted his teeth. "fool!" said sophia. "your arm will be black and blue for a week. while you men grow soft and lazy, many of the women take their gymnastics seriously, especially if they want to keep their figures with the work they must do and the food they must eat. i am stronger than you and i will hurt you unless--" and her hand tightened around his scrawny arm until her knuckles showed white. "wear what you have and go," the man pleaded, and moaned softly when sophia released his numb arm and strode through the portal, still drawing whistles and leers from the other men, who missed the by-play completely. * * * * * "so we're on mars!" "it ain't nowhere after all, it's mars." "wait and see, buster. wait and see." "kind of cold, isn't it? well, if this was venus and some of them beautiful one-armed dames was waiting for us--" "that's just a statue, stupid." "lookit all them people down there, will you?" "you think they're martians?" "stupid! we ain't the first ones went on the nowhere journey." "what are we waiting for? it sure will feel good to stretch your legs." "let's go!" "look out, mars, here i come!" it would have been just right for a hollywood epic, temple thought. the rusty ochre emptiness spreading out toward the horizon in all directions, spotted occasionally with pale green and frosty white, the sky gray with but a shade of blue in it, distant gusts of martian wind swirling ochre clouds across the desert, the spaceship poised on its ungainly bottom, a great silver bowling ball with rocket tubes for finger holes, and the martians from earth who had been here on this alien world for seven-hundred-eighty days or twice seven-eighty or three times, and who fought in frenzied eagerness, like savages, to reach the descending gangplank first. earth chorus: hey, martians, any of you guys speak english? hah-ha, i said, any of you guys.... where are all them canals i heard so much about? you think maybe they're dangerous? (laughter) no dames. hey, no dames.... who were you expecting, donna daunley? what kind of place is mars with no women? what do they do here, anyway, just sit around and wait for the next rocket? i'm cold. get used to it, brother, get used to it. look out, mars, here i come! martian chorus: who won the series last year, detroit? hey, bud, tell me, are dames still wearing those one piece things, all colors, so you see their legs up to about here and their chests down to about here? (gestures lewdly) which one of you guys can tell me what it's like to take a bath? i mean a real bath in a real bath tub. hey, we licked russia yet? we heard they were gonna send some dames! dames--ha-ha, you're breaking my heart. tell me what a steak tastes like. so thick. me? gimme a bowl of steamed oysters. and a dame. dames. girls. women. females. chicks. tomatoes. frails. dames. dames. dames.... they did not seem to mind the cold, these earth-martians. temple guessed they never spent much time out of doors (above ground, for there were no buildings?) because all seemed pale and white. while the sun was weaker, so was the protection offered by a thinner atmosphere. the sun's actinic rays could burn, and so could the sand-driving wind. but pale skins could not be the result of staying indoors, for temple noted the lack of man-made structures at once. underground, then. the earth-martians lived underground like moles. doing what? and for what reason? with what ultimate goal, if any? and where did those men who did not remain on mars go? temple's head whirled with countless questions--and no answers. shoulder to shoulder with arkalion, he made his way down the gangplank, turning up the collar of his jumper against the stinging wind. "you got any newspapers, pal?" "magazines?" "phonograph records?" "gossip?" "newsfilm?" "who's the heavyweight champ?" "we lick those commies in burma yet?" "step back! watch that man. maybe he's your replacement." "replacement. ha-ha. that's good." all types of men. all ages. in torn, tattered clothing, mostly. in rags. even if a man seemed more well-groomed than the rest, on closer examination temple could see the careful stitching, the patches, the fades and stains. no one seemed to mind. "hey, bud. what do you hear about rotation? they passed any laws yet?" "i been here ten years. when do _i_ get rotated?" "ain't that something? dad jenks came here with the first ship. don't you talk about rotation. ask dad." "better not mention that word to dad jenks. he sees red." "this whole damn planet is red." "want a guided tour of nowhere, men? step right up." arkalion grinned. "they seem so well-adjusted," he said, then shuddered against the cold and followed temple, with the others, through the crowd. they were inoculated against nameless diseases. (watch for the needle with the hook) they were told again they had arrived on the planet mars. (no kidding?) led to a drab underground city, dimly lit, dank, noisome with mold and mildew. (quick, the chlorophyll) assigned bunks in a dormitory, with four men to a room. (be it ever so humble--bah!) told to keep things clean and assigned temporarily to a garbage pickup detail. (for this i left sheboygan?) read to from the declaration of independence, the constitution and public law (concerned with the nowhere journey, it told them nothing they did not already know). given as complete a battery of tests, mental, emotional and physical, as temple ever knew existed. (cripes, man! how the hell should i know what the cube root of - is? i never finished high school!) subjected to an exhaustive, overlong, and at times meaningless personal interview. (no doc, honest. i never knew i had a--uh--anxiety neurosis. is it dangerous?) "how do you do, temple? sit down." "thank you." "thought you'd like to know that while your overall test score is not uncanny, it's decidedly high." "so what?" "so nothing--not necessarily. except that with it you have a very well balanced personality. we can use you, temple." "that's why i'm here." "i mean--elsewhere. mars is only a way station, a training center for a select few. it takes an awful lot of administrative work to keep this place going, which explains the need for all the station personnel." "listen. the last few weeks i had everything thrown at me. everything, the works. mind answering one question?" "shoot." "what's this all about?" "temple, i don't know!" "you what?" "i know you find it hard to believe, but i don't. there isn't a man here on mars who knows the whole story, either--and certainly not on earth. we know enough to keep everything in operation. and we know it's important, all of it, everything we do." "you mentioned a need for some men elsewhere. where?" the psychiatrist shrugged. "i don't know. somewhere. anywhere." he spread his hands out eloquently. "that's where the nowhere journey comes in." "surely you can tell me something more than--" "absolutely not. it isn't that i don't want to. i can't. i don't know." "well, one more question i'd like you to answer." the psychiatrist lit a cigarette, grinned. "say, who is interviewing whom?" "this one i think you can tackle. i have a brother, jason temple. embarked on the nowhere journey five years ago. i wonder--" "so that's the one factor in your psychograph we couldn't figure out--anxiety over your brother." "i doubt it," shrugged temple. "more likely my fiancee." "umm, common enough. you were to be married?" "yes." _stephanie, what are you doing now? right now?_ "that's what hurts the most.... well, yes, i can find out about your brother." the psychiatrist flicked a toggle on his desk. "jamison, find what you can on temple, jason, year of--" " ," temple supplied. " . we'll wait." after a moment or two, the voice came through, faintly metallic: "temple, jason. arrival: . psychograph, -bl . mental aggregate, . physcom, good to excellent. training: two years, space perception concentrate, others. shipped out: ." so jase had shipped out for--nowhere. "someday you'll follow in your brother's footsteps, temple. now, though, i have a few hundred questions i'd like you to answer." the psychiatrist hadn't exaggerated. several hours of questioning followed. once reminded of her, temple found it hard to keep his thought off stephanie. he left the psychiatrist's office more confused than ever. * * * * * "good morning, child. you are stephanie andrews?" stephanie hadn't felt up to working that first morning after kit's final goodbye. she answered the door in her bathrobe, saw a small, middle-aged woman with graying hair and a kind face. "that's right. won't you come in?" "thank you. i represent the complete emancipation league, miss andrews." "complete emancipation league? oh, something to do with politics. really, i'm not much interested in--" "that's entirely the trouble," declared the older woman. "too many of us are not interested in politics. i'd like to discuss the c.e.l. with you, my dear, if you will bear with me a few minutes." "all right," said stephanie. "would you like a glass of sherry?" "in the morning?" the older woman smiled. "i'm sorry. don't mind me. my fiance left yesterday, took his final goodbye. he--he embarked on the nowhere journey." "i realize that. it is precisely why i am here. my dear, the c.e.l. does not want to fight the government. if the government decides that the nowhere journey is vital for the welfare of the country--even if the government won't or can't explain what the nowhere journey is--that's all right with us. but if the government says there is a rotation system but does absolutely nothing about it, we're interested in that. do you follow me?" "yes!" cried stephanie. "oh, yes. go on." "the c.e.l. has sixty-eight people in congress for the current term. we hope to raise that number to seventy-five for next election. it's a long fight, a slow uphill fight, and frankly, my dear, we need all the help we can get. people--young women like yourself, my dear--are entirely too lethargic, if you'll forgive me." "you ought to forgive _me_," said stephanie, "if you will. you know, it's funny. i had vague ideas about helping kit, about finding some way to get him back. only to tackle something like that alone.... i'm only twenty-one, just a girl, and i don't know anyone important. no one ever comes back, that's what you hear. but there's a rotation system, you also hear that. if i can be of any help...." "you certainly can, my dear. we'd be delighted to have you." "then, eventually, maybe, just maybe, we'll start getting them rotated home?" "we can't promise a thing. we can only try. and i never did say we'd try to get the boys rotated, my dear. there is a rotation system in the law, right there in public law . but if no men have ever been rotated, there must be a reason for it." "yes, but--" "but we'll see. if for some reason rotation simply is not practicable, we'll find another way. which is why we call ourselves the c.e.l.--complete emancipation league--for women. if men must embark on the nowhere journey--the least they can do is let their women volunteer to go along with them if they want to--since it may be forever. let a bunch of women get to this nowhere place and you'll never know what might happen, that's what i say." something about the gray haired woman's earthly confidence imbued stephanie with an optimism she never expected. "well," she said, smiling, "if we can't bring ourselves to mohammed.... no, that's all wrong!... to the mountain...?" "yes, there's an old saying. but it isn't important. you get the idea. my dear, how would you like to go to nowhere?" "i--to kit, anywhere, anywhere!" _i'll never forget yesterday, kit darling. never!_ "i make no promises, stephanie, but it may be sooner than you think. morning be hanged, perhaps i will have some sherry after all. umm, you wouldn't by any chance have some canadian instead?" humming, stephanie dashed into the kitchen for some glasses. * * * * * there were times when the real alaric arkalion iii wished his father would mind his own business. like that thing about the nowhere journey, for instance. maybe alaric sr. didn't realize it, but being the spoiled son of a billionaire wasn't all fun. "i'm a dilettante," alaric would tell himself often, gazing in the mirror, "a bored dilettante at the age of twenty-one." which in itself, he had to admit, wasn't too bad. but having reneged on the nowhere journey in favor of a stranger twice his age who now carried his, alaric's face, had engendered some annoying complications. "you'll either have to hide or change your own appearance and identity, alaric." "hide? for how long, father?" "i can't be sure. years, probably." "that's crazy. i'm not going to hide for years." "then change your appearance. your way of life. your occupation." "i have no occupation." "get one. change your face, too. your fingerprints. it can be done. become a new man, live a new life." in hiding there was boredom, impossible boredom. in the other alternative there was adventure, intrigue--but uncertainty. one part of young alaric craved that uncertainty, the rest of him shunned it. in a way it was like the nowhere journey all over again. "maybe nowhere wouldn't have been so bad," said alaric to his father, choosing as a temporary alternative and retreat what he knew couldn't possibly happen. couldn't it? "if i choose another identity, i'd be eligible again for the nowhere journey." "by george, i hadn't considered that. no, wait. you could be older than twenty-six." "i like it the way i am," alaric said, pouting. "then you'll have to hide. i spent ten million dollars to secure your future, alaric. i don't want you to throw it away." alaric pouted some more. "let me think about it." "fair enough, but i'll want your answer tomorrow. meanwhile, you are not to leave the house." alaric agreed verbally, but took the first opportunity which presented itself--that very night--to sneak out the servants' door, go downtown, and get stewed to the gills. at two in the morning he was picked up by the police for disorderly conduct (it had happened before) after losing a fistfight to a much poorer, much meaner drunk in a downtown bar. they questioned alaric at the police station, examined his belongings, went through his wallet, notified his home. fuming, alaric sr. rushed to the police station to get his son. he was met by the desk sergeant, a fat, balding man who wore his uniform in a slovenly fashion. "mr. arkalion?" demanded the sergeant, picking at his teeth with a toothpick. "yes. i have come for alaric, my son." "sure. sure. but your son's in trouble, mr. arkalion. serious trouble." "what are you talking about? if there are any damages, i'll pay. he didn't--hurt, anyone, did he?" the sergeant broke the toothpick between his teeth, laughed. "him? naw. he got the hell beat out of him by a drunk half his size. it ain't that kind of trouble, mr. arkalion. you know what an card is, mister?" arkalion's face drained white. "why--yes." "alaric's got one." "naturally." "according to the card, he should have shipped out on the nowhere journey, mister. he didn't. he's in serious trouble." "i'll see the district attorney." "more'n likely, you'll see the attorney general. serious trouble." chapter v the trouble with the stalintrek, sophia thought, was that it took months to get absolutely nowhere. there had been the painful pressure, the loss of consciousness, the confinement in this tight little world of dormitories and gleaming metal walls, the uncanny feeling of no weight, the ability--boring after a while, but interesting at first--to float about in air almost at will. then, how many months of sameness? sophia had lost all track of time through _ennui_. but for the first brief period of adjustment on the part of her fellows to the fact that although she was a woman and shared their man's life she was still to be inviolate, the routine had been anything but exciting. the period of adjustment had had its adventures, its uncertainties, its challenge, and to sophia it had been stimulating. why was it, she wondered, that the men who carried their sex with strength and dignity, the hard-muscled men who could have their way with her if they resorted to force were the men who did not violate her privacy, while the weaklings, the softer, smaller men, or the average men whom sophia considered her physical equals were the ones who gave her trouble? she had always accepted her beauty, the obvious attraction men found in her, with an objective unconcern. she had been endowed with sex appeal; there was not much room in her life to exploit it, even had she wanted to. now, now when she wanted anything but that, it gave her trouble. her room was shared, of necessity, with three men. tall, gangling boris gave her no trouble, turned his back when she undressed for the evening, even though she was careful to slip under the covers first. ivan, the second man, was short, thin, stooped. often she found him looking at her with what might have been more than a healthy interest, but aside from that he kept his peace. besides, ivan had spent two years in secondary school (as much as sophia) and she enjoyed conversing with him. the third man, georgi, was the troublemaker. georgi was one of those plump young men with red cheeks, big, eager eyes, a voice somewhat too high. he was an avid talker, a boaster and a bore. in the beginning he showered attentions on sophia. he insisted on drawing her wash-basin at night, escorted her to breakfast every morning, told her in confidence of the conquests he had made over beautiful women (but not as beautiful as you, sophia). he soon began to take liberties. he would sit--timorously at first, but with growing boldness--on the corner of her bed, talking with her at night after the others had retired, ivan with his snores, boris with his strong, deep breathing. and night after night, plump georgi grew bolder. he would reach out and touch sophia, he would insist on tucking her in at night (let me be your big brother), he would awaken her in the morning with his hand heavy on her shoulder. finally, one night at bedtime, she heard him conversing in low whispers with ivan and boris. she could not hear the words, but boris looked at her with what she thought was surprise, ivan nodded in an understanding way, and both of them left the room. sophia frowned. "what did you tell them, georgi?" "that we wanted to be alone one evening, of course." "i never gave you any indication--" "i could see it in your eyes, in the way you looked at me." "well, you had better call them back inside and go to bed." georgi shook his head, approached her. "georgi! call them back or i will." "no, you won't." georgi followed her as she retreated into a corner of the room. when she reached the wall and could retreat no further, he placed his thick hands on her shoulders, drew her to him slowly. "you will call no one," he rasped. she ducked under his arms, eluded him, was on the point of running to the door, throwing it open and shouting, when she considered. if she did, she would be asking for quarter, gaining a temporary reprieve, inviting the same sort of thing all over again. she crossed to the bed and sat down. "come here, georgi." "ah." he came to her. she watched him warily, a soft flabby man not quite so tall as she was, but who nevertheless outweighed her by thirty or forty pounds. in his eagerness, he walked too fast, lost his footing and floated gently to the ceiling. smiling as demurely as she could, sophia reached up, circled his ankle with her hand. "i never could get used to this weightlessness," georgi admitted. "be nice and pull me down." "i will be nice. i will teach you a lesson." he weighed exactly nothing. it was as simple as stretching. sophia merely extended her arm upwards and georgi's head hit the ceiling with a loud _thunk_. georgi groaned. sophia repeated the procedure, lowering her arm a foot--and georgi with it--then raising it and bouncing his head off the ceiling. "i don't understand," georgi whined, trying to break free but only succeeding in thrashing his chubby arms foolishly. "you haven't mastered weightlessness," sophia smiled up at him. "i have. i said i would teach you a lesson. first make sure you have the strength of a man if you would play a man's game." still smiling, sophia commenced spinning the hand which held georgi's ankle. arms and free leg flailing air helplessly, georgi began to spin. "put me down!" he whined, a boy now, not even pretending to be a man. when sophia shoved out gently and let his ankle go he did a neat flip in air and hung suspended, upside down, his feet near the ceiling, his head on a level with sophia's shoulders. he cried. she slapped his upside down face, carefully and without excitement, reddening the cheeks. "i was--only joking," he slobbered. "call back our friends." sophia found one of the hard, air-tight metal flasks they used for drinking in weightlessness. with one hand she opened the lid, with the other she grasped georgi's shoulder and spun him in air, still upside down. she squirted the water in his face, and because he was upside down and yelling it made him choke and cough. when the container was empty she lowered georgi gently to the floor. minutes later, she opened the door, summoned boris and ivan, who came into the room self-consciously. what they found was a thoroughly beaten georgi sobbing on the floor. after that, sophia had no trouble. week after week of boredom followed and she almost wished georgi or someone else would _look_ for trouble ... even if it were something she could not handle, for although she was stronger than average and more beautiful, she was still a woman first, and she knew if the right man.... * * * * * "did you know that radio communication is maintained between earth and mars?" the alaric arkalion on mars asked temple. "why, no. i never thought about it." "it is, and i am in some difficulty." "what's the matter?" temple had grown to like arkalion, despite the man's peculiarities. he had given up trying to figure him out, feeling that the only way he'd get anywhere was with arkalion's cooperation. "it's a long story which i'm afraid you would not altogether understand. the authorities on earth don't think i belong here on the nowhere journey." "is that so? a mistake, huh? i sure am glad for you, alaric." "that's not the difficulty. it seems that there is the matter of impersonation, of violating some of the clauses in public law . you're glad for me. i'm likely to go to prison." "if it's that serious, how come they told you?" "they didn't. but i--managed to find out. i won't go into details, kit, but obviously, if i managed to embark for nowhere when i didn't have to, then i wanted to go. right?" "i--uh, guess so. but why--?" "that isn't the point. i _still_ want to go. not to mars, but to nowhere. i still can, despite what has happened, but i need help." temple said, "anything i can do, i'll be glad to," and meant it. for one thing, he liked arkalion. for another, arkalion seemed to know more, much more than he would ever say--unless temple could win his confidence. for a third, temple was growing sick and tired of mars with its drab ochre sameness (when he got to the surface, which was rarely), with its dank underground city, with its meaningless attention to meaningless detail. either way, he figured there was no returning to earth. if nowhere meant adventure, as he suspected it might, it would be preferable. mars might have been the other end of the galaxy for all its nearness to earth, anyway. "there is a great deal you can do. but you'll have to come with me." "where?" temple demanded. "where you will go eventually. to nowhere." "fine." and temple smiled. "why not now as well as later?" "i'll be frank with you. if you go now, you go untrained. you may need your training. undoubtedly, you will." "you know a lot more than you want to talk about, don't you?" "frankly, yes.... i am sorry, kit." "that's all right. you have your reasons. i guess if i go with you i'll find out soon enough, anyway." arkalion grinned. "you have guessed correctly. i am going to nowhere, before they return me to earth for prosecution under public law . i cannot go alone, for it takes at least two to operate ... well, you'll see." "count me in," said temple. "remember, you may one day wish you had remained on mars for your training." "i'll take my chances. mars is driving me crazy. all i do is think of earth and stephanie." "then come." "where are we going?" "a long, long way off. it is unthinkably remote, this place called nowhere." temple felt suddenly like a kid playing hookey from school. "lead on," he said, almost jauntily. he knew he was leaving stephanie still further behind, but had he been in prison on the next street to hers, he might as well have been a million miles away. as for arkalion--the thought suddenly struck temple--arkalion wasn't necessarily leaving his world further behind. perhaps arkalion was going home.... * * * * * stephanie picked up the phone eagerly. in the weeks since her first meeting with mrs. draper of the c.e.l., the older woman had been a fountain of information and of hope for her. stephanie for her part had taken over mrs. draper's job in her own section of center city: she was busy contacting the two hundred mothers and fifty sweethearts of the nowhere journey which had taken kit from her. and now mrs. draper had called with information. "we've successfully combined forces with some of the less militant elements in both houses of congress," mrs. draper told her over the phone. "do you realize, my dear, this marks the first time the c.e.l. has managed to put something constructive through congress? until now we've been content merely to block legislation, such as an increase in the nowhere contingent from...." "yes, mrs. draper. i know all that. but what about this constructive thing you've done." "well, my dear, don't count your chickens. but we _have_ passed the bill, and we expect the president won't veto it. you see, the president has two nephews who...." "i know. i know. what bill did you pass?" "unfortunately, it's somewhat vague. ultimately, the nowhere commission must do the deciding, but it does pave the way." "for what, mrs. draper?" "hold onto your hat, my dear. the bill authorizes the nowhere commission to make as much of a study as it can of conditions--wherever our boys are sent." "oh." stephanie was disappointed. "that won't get them back to us." "no. you're right, it won't get them back to us. that isn't the idea at all, for there is more than one way to skin a cat, my dear. the nowhere commission will be studying conditions--" "how can they? i thought everything was so hush-hush, not even congress knew anything about it." "that was the first big hurdle we have apparently overcome. anyway, they will be studying conditions with a view of determining if one girl--just one, mind you--can embark on the nowhere journey as a pilot study and--" "but i thought they could make the journey only once every seven-hundred-eighty days." "get congress aroused and you can move mountains. it seems the expense entailed in a trip at any but those times is generally prohibitive, but when something special comes up--" "it can be done! mrs. draper, how i love to talk with you!" "see? there you go, my dear, counting your chickens. one girl will be sent, if the study indicates she can take it. one girl, stephanie, and only after a study. she'd merely be a pilot case. but afterwards.... ah, afterwards.... perhaps someday soon qualified women will be able to join their men in nowhere." "mrs. draper, i love you." "naturally, you will tell all this to prospective c.e.l. members. now we have something concrete to work with." "i know. and i will, i will, mrs. draper. by the way, how are they going to pick the girl, the one girl?" "don't count your chickens, for heaven's sake! they haven't even studied the situation yet. well, i'll call you, my dear." stephanie hung up, dressed, went about her canvassing. she thought happy thoughts all week. * * * * * "shh! quiet," cautioned arkalion, leading the way down a flight of heavy-duty plastic stairs. "how do you know your way around here so well?" "i said quiet." it was not so much, temple realized, that arkalion was really afraid of making noise. rather, he did not want to answer questions. temple smiled in the semi-darkness, heard the steady drip-drip-drip of water off somewhere to his left. eons before the coming of man on this stopover point to nowhere, the martian waters had retreated from the planet's ancient surface and seeped underground to carve, slow drop by drop, the caverns which honey-combed the planet. "you know your way around so well, i'd swear you were a martian." arkalion's soft laugh carried far. "i said there was to be no noise. please! as for the martians, the only martians are here all around you, the men of earth. ahh, here we are." at the bottom of the flight of stairs temple could see a door, metallic, giving the impression of strength without great weight. arkalion paused a moment, did something with a series of levers, shook his head impatiently, started all over again. "what's that for?" temple wanted to know. "what do you think? it is a combination lock, with five million possible combinations. do you want to be here for all of eternity?" "no." "then quiet." vaguely, temple wondered why the door wasn't guarded. "with a lock like this," arkalion explained, as if he had read temple's thought, "they need no other precaution. it is assumed that only authorized personnel know the combination." then had arkalion come this way before? it seemed the only possible assumption. but when? and how? "here we are," said arkalion. the door swung in toward them. temple strode forward, found himself in a great bare hall, surprisingly well-lighted. after the dimness of the caverns, he hardly could see. "don't stand there scowling and fussing with your eyes. there is one additional precaution--an alarm at central headquarters. we have about five minutes, no more." at one end of the bare hall stood what to temple looked for all the world like an old-fashioned telephone booth, except that its walls were completely opaque. on the wall adjacent to it was a single lever with two positions marked "hold" and "transport". the lever stood firmly in the "hold" position. "you sure you want to come?" arkalion demanded. "yes, i told you that." "good. i have no time to explain. i will enter the conveyor." "conveyor?" "this booth. you will wait until the door is shut, then pull the lever down. that is all there is to it, but, as you can see, it is a two-man operation." "but how do i--" "haste, haste! there are similar controls at the other end. you pull the lever, wait two minutes, enter the conveyor yourself. i will fetch you--if you are sure." "i'm sure, dammit!" "remember, you go without training, without the opportunity everyone else has." "you already told me that. mars is halfway to eternity. mars is limbo. if i can't go back to earth i want to go--well, to nowhere. there are too many ghosts here, too many memories with nothing to do." arkalion shrugged, entered the booth. "pull the lever," he said, and shut the door. temple reached up, grasped the lever firmly in his hand, yanked it. it slid smoothly to the position marked "transport." temple heard nothing, saw nothing, began to think the device, whatever it was, did not work. did arkalion somehow get _moved_ inside the booth? temple thought he heard footfalls on the stairs outside. soon, faintly, he could hear voices. someone banged on the door to the hall. licking dry lips, temple opened the booth, peered inside. empty. the voices clamored, fists pounded on the door. something clicked. tumblers fell. the door to the great, bright hall sprung outward. someone rushed in at temple, who met him savagely with a short, chopping blow to his jaw. the man, temporarily blinded by the dazzling light, stumbled back in the path of his fellows. temple darted into the booth, the conveyor, and slammed it shut. fingers clawed on the outside. a sound almost too intense to be heard rang in temple's ears. he lost consciousness instantly. chapter vi "what a cockeyed world," said alaric arkalion sr. to his son. "you certainly can't plan on anything, even if you do have more money than you'll ever possibly need in a lifetime." "don't feel like that," said young alaric. "i'm not in prison any longer, am i?" "no. but you're not free of the nowhere journey, either. there is an unheralded special trip to nowhere, two weeks from today, i have been informed." "oh?" "yes, oh. i have also been informed that you will be on it. you didn't escape after all, alaric." "oh. oh!" "what bothers me most is that scoundrel smith somehow managed to escape. they haven't found him yet, i have also been informed. and since my contract with him calls for ten million dollars 'for services rendered,' i'll have to pay." "but he didn't prevent me from--" "i can't air this thing, alaric! but listen, son: when you go where you are going, you're liable to find another alaric arkalion, your double. of course, that would be smith. if you can get him to cut his price in half because of what has happened, i would be delighted. if you could somehow manage to wring his neck, i would be even more delighted. ten million dollars--for nothing." "i'm so excited," murmured mrs. draper. stephanie watched her on one of the new televiewers, recently installed in place of the telephone. "what is it?" "our bill has been passed by a landslide majority in both houses of congress!" "ooo!" cried stephanie. "not very coherent, my dear, but those are my sentiments exactly. in two weeks there will be a journey to nowhere, a special one which will include, among its passengers, a woman." "but the study which had to be made--?" "it's already been made. from what i gather, they can't take it very far. most of their conclusions had to be based on supposition. the important thing, though, is this: a woman _will_ be sent. the way the c.e.l. figures it, my dear, is that a woman falling in the twenty-one to twenty-six age group should be chosen, a woman who meets all the requirements placed upon the young men." "yes," said stephanie. "of course. and i was just thinking that i would be--" "remember those chickens!" cautioned mrs. draper. "we already have one hundred seventy-seven volunteers who'd claw each other to pieces for a chance to go." "wrong," stephanie said, smiling. "you now have one hundred seventy-eight." "room for only one, my dear. only one, you know." "then cross the others off your list. i'm already packing my bag." * * * * * when temple regained consciousness, it was with the feeling that no more than a split second of time had elapsed. so much had happened so rapidly that, until now, he hadn't had time to consider it. arkalion had vanished. vanished--he could use no other word. he was there, standing in the booth--and then he wasn't. simple as that. now you see it, now you don't. and goodbye, arkalion. but goodbye temple, too. for hadn't temple entered the same booth, waiting but a second until arkalion activated the mechanism at the other end? and certainly temple wasn't in the booth now. he smiled at the ridiculously simple logic of his thoughts. he stood in an open field, the blades of grass rising to his knees, as much brilliant purple as they were green. waves of the grass, stirred like tide by the gentle wind, and hills rolling off toward the horizon in whichever direction he turned. far away, the undulating hills lifted to a half soft mauve sky. a somber red sun with twice sol's apparent disc but half its brightness hung mid-way between zenith and horizon completing the picture of peaceful other-worldliness. wherever this was, it wasn't earth--or mars. nowhere? temple shrugged, started walking. he chose his direction at random, crushing an easily discernible path behind him in the surprisingly brittle grass. the warm sun baked his back comfortably, the soft-stirring wind caressed his cheeks. of arkalion he found not a trace. two hours later temple reached the hills and started climbing their gentle slopes. it was then that he saw the figure approaching on the run. it took him fully half a minute to realize that the runner was not human. * * * * * after months of weightless inactivity, things started to happen for sophia. the feeling of weight returned, but weight as she never had felt it before. it was as if someone was sitting on every inch of her body, crushing her down. it made her gasp, forced her eyes shut and, although she could not see it, contorted her face horribly. she lost consciousness, coming to some time later with a dreadful feeling of loginess. someone swam into her vision dimly, stung her arm briefly with a needle. she slept. she was on a table, stretched out, with lights glaring down at her. she heard voices. "the new system is far better than testing, comrade." "far more efficient, far more objective. yes." "the brain emits electromagnetic vibration. strange, is it not, that no one before ever imagined it could tell a story. a completely accurate story two years of testing could not give us." "in russia we have gone far with the biological, psychological sciences. the west flies high with physics. give them mars; bah, they can have mars." "true, comrade. the journey to jupiter is greater, the time consumed is longer, the cost, more expensive. but here on jupiter we can do something they cannot do on mars." "i know." "we can make supermen. supermen, comrade. a wedding of nietzsche and marx." "careful. those are dangerous thoughts." "merely an allusion, comrade. merely a harmless allusion. but you take an ordinary human being and train him on jupiter, speeding his time-sense and metabolic rate tremendously with certain endocrine secretions so that one day is as a month to him. you take him and subject him to big jupiter's pull of gravity, more than twice earth's--and in three weeks you have, yes--you have a superman." "the woman wakes." "shh. do not frighten her." sophia stretched, every muscle in her body aching. slowly, as in a dream, she sat up. it required strength, the mere act of pulling her torso upright! "what have you done to me?" she cried, focusing her still-dim vision on the two men. "nothing, comrade. relax." sophia turned slowly on the table, got one long shapely leg draped over its edge. "careful, comrade." what were they warning her about? she merely wanted to get up and stretch; perhaps then she would feel better. her toe touched the floor, she swung her other leg over, aware of but ignoring her nakedness. "a good specimen." "oh, yes, comrade. so this time they send a woman among the others. well, we shall do our work. look--see the way she is formed, so lithe, loose-limbed, agile. see the toning of the muscles? her beauty will remain, comrade, but jupiter shall make an amazon of her." sophia had both feet on the floor now. she was breathing hard, felt suddenly sick to her stomach. placing both her hands on the table edge, she pushed off and staggered for two or three paces. she crumpled, buckling first at the knees then the waist and fell in a writhing heap. "pick her up." hands under her arms, tugging. she came off the floor easily, dimly aware that someone carried her hundred and thirty pounds effortlessly. "put me down!" she cried. "i want to try again. i am crippled, crippled! you have crippled me...." "nothing of the sort, comrade. you are tired, weak, and jupiter's gravity field is still too strong for you. little by little, though, your muscles will strengthen to jupiter's demands. gravity will keep them from bulging, expanding; but every muscle fibre in you will have twice, three times its original strength. are you excited?" "i am tired and sick. i want to sleep. what is jupiter?" "jupiter is a planet circling the sun at--never mind, comrade. you have much to learn, but you can assimilate it with much less trouble in your sleep. go ahead, sleep." sophia retched, was sick. it had been years since she cried. but naked, afraid, bewildered, she cried herself to sleep. things happened while she slept, many things. certain endocrine extracts accelerated her metabolism astonishingly. within half an hour her heart was pumping blood through her body two hundred beats per minute. an hour later it reached its full rate, almost one thousand contractions every sixty seconds. all her other metabolic functions increased accordingly, and sophia slept deeply for a week of subjective time--in hours. the same machine which had gleaned everything from her mind far more accurately than a battery of tests, a refinement of the electro-encephalogram, was now played in reverse, giving back to sophia everything it had taken plus electrospool after electrospool of science, mathematics, logic, economics, history (marxian, these last two), languages (including english), semantics and certain specialized knowledge she would need later on the stalintrek. still sleeping, sophia was bathed in a warm whirlpool of soothing liquid; rubbed, massaged, her muscle-toning begun while she rested and regained her strength. three hours later, objective time, she awoke with a headache and with more thoughts spinning around madly inside her brain than she ever knew existed. gingerly, she tried standing again, lifting herself nude and dripping wet from a tub of steaming amber stuff. she stood, stretched, permitted her fright to vanish with a quick wave of vertigo which engulfed her. she had been fed intravenously, but a tremendous hunger possessed her. before eating, however, she was to find herself in a gymnasium, the air close and stifling. she was massaged again, told to do certain exercises which seemed simple but which she found extremely difficult, forced to run until she thought she would collapse, with her legs, dragging like lead. she understood, now. somehow she knew she was on jupiter, the fifth and largest planet, where the force of gravity is so much greater than on earth that it is an effort even to walk. she also knew that her metabolic rate had been accelerated beyond all comprehension and that in a comparatively short time--objective time--she would have thrice her original strength. all this she knew without knowing how she knew, and that was the most staggering fact of all. she did what her curt instructors bid, then dragged her aching muscles and her headache into a dining room where tired, forlorn-looking men sat around eating. well the food at least was good. sophia attacked it ravenously. * * * * * it did not take temple long to realize that the creature running downhill at him, leaving a crushed and broken wake in the purple and green grass, was not human. at first temple toyed with the idea of a man on horseback, for the creature ran on four limbs and had two left over as arms. temple gaped. the whole thing was one piece! centaur? hardly. too small, for one thing. no bigger than a man, despite the three pairs of limbs. and then temple had time to gape no longer, for the creature, whatever it was, flashed past him at what he now had to consider a gallop. more followed. different. temple stared and stared. one could have been a great, sentient hoop, rolling downhill and gathering momentum. if he carried the wheel analogy further, a huge eye stared at him from where the hub would have been. something else followed with kangaroo leaps. one thick-thewed leg propelled it in tremendous, fifteen-foot strides while its small, flapper-like arms beat the air prodigiously. legions of creatures. all fantastically different. _i'm going crazy_, temple thought, then said it aloud. "i'm going crazy." theorizing thus, he heard a whir overhead, whirled, looked up. something was poised a dozen feet off the ground, a large, box-like object seven or eight feet across, rotors spinning above it. that, at least, he could understand. a helicopter. "i'm lowering a ladder, kit. swing aboard." arkalion's voice. stunned enough to accept anything he saw, temple waited for the rope ladder to drop, grasped its end, climbed. he swung his legs over a sill, found himself in a neat little cabin with arkalion, who hauled the ladder in and did something to the controls. they sped away. temple had one quick moment of lucid thought before everything which had happened in the last few moments shoved logic aside. what he had observed looked for all the world like a foot-race. "where the hell _are_ we?" temple demanded breathlessly. arkalion smiled. "where do you think? journey's end. welcome to nowhere, kit. welcome to the place where all your questions can be answered because there's no going back. sorry i set you down in that field by mistake, incidentally. those things sometimes happen." "can i just throw the questions at you?" "if you wish. it isn't really necessary, for you will be indoctrinated when we get you over to earth city where you belong." "what do you mean, there's no going back? i thought they had a rotation system which for one reason or another wasn't practical at the moment. that doesn't sound like no going back, ever." arkalion grunted, shrugged. "have it your way. i _know_." "sorry. shoot." "just how far do you think you have come?" "search me. some other star system, maybe?" "maybe. clean across the galaxy, kit." temple whistled softly. "it isn't something you can grasp just by hearing it. across the galaxy...." "that isn't too important just now. how long did you think the journey took?" temple nodded eagerly. "that's what gets me. it was amazing, alaric. really amazing. the whole trip couldn't have taken more than a moment or two. i don't get it. did we slip out of normal space into some other--uh, continuum, and speed across the length of the galaxy like that?" "the answer to your questions is yes. but your statement is way off. the journey did not take seconds, kit." "no? instantaneous?" "far more than seconds. to reach here from earth you traveled five thousand years." "what?" "more correctly, it was five thousand years ago that you left mars. you would need a time machine to return, and there is no such thing. the earth you know is the length of the galaxy and five thousand years behind you." chapter vii it could have been a city in new england, or maybe wisconsin. main street stretched for half a mile from town hall to the small department store. neon tubing brightened every store front, busy proprietors could be seen at work through the large plate glass windows. there was the bustle you might expect on any main street in new england or wisconsin, but you could not draw the parallel indefinitely. there were only men. no women. the hills in which the town nestled were too purple--not purple with distance but the natural color of the grass. a somber red sun hung in the pale mauve sky. this was earth city, nowhere. arkalion had deposited temple in the nearby hills, promised they would see one another again. "it may not be so soon," arkalion had said, "but what's the difference? you'll spend the rest of your life here. you realize you are lucky, kit. if you hadn't come, you would have been dead these five thousand years. well, good luck." dead--five thousand years. the earth as he knew it, dust. stephanie, a fifty generation corpse. nowhere was right. end of the universe. temple shuffled his feet, trudged on into town. a man passed him on the street, stooped, gray-haired. the man nodded, did a mild double-take. _i'm an unfamiliar face_, temple thought. "howdy," he said. "i'm new here." "that's what i thought, stranger. know just about everyone in these here parts, i do, and i said to myself, now there's a newcomer. funny you didn't come in the regular way." "i'm here," said temple. "yeah. funny thing, you get to know everyone. eh, what you say your name was?" "christopher temple." "make it my business to know everyone. the neighborly way, i always say. temple, eh? we have one here." "one what?" "another fellow name of temple. jase temple, son." "i'll be damned!" temple cried, smiling suddenly. "i will be damned. tell me, old timer, where can i find him?" "might be anyplace. town's bigger'n it looks. i tell you, though, jase temple's our co-ordinator. you'll find him there, the co-ordinator's office. town hall, down the end of the street." "i already passed it," temple told the man. "and thanks." temple's legs carried him at a brisk pace, past the row of store fronts and down to the town hall. he read a directory, climbed a flight of stairs, found a door marked: jason temple earth city co-ordinator. heart pounding, temple knocked, heard someone call, "come in." he pushed the door in and stared at his brother, just rising to face him. "kit! kit! what are you doing ... so you took the journey too!" jason ran to him, clasped his shoulders, pounded them. "you sure are looking fit. kit, you could have knocked me over with half a feather, coming in like that." "you're looking great too, jase," temple lied. he hadn't seen his brother in five years, had never expected to see him again. but he remembered a full-faced, smiling man somewhat taller than himself, somewhat broader across the shoulders. the jason he saw looked forty-five or fifty but was hardly out of his twenties. he had fierce, smouldering eyes, gaunt cheeks, graying hair. he seemed a bundle of restless, nervous energy. "sit down, kit. start talking, kid brother. start talking and don't stop till next week. tell me everything. everything! tell me about the blue sky and the moon at night and the way the ocean looks on a windy day and...." "five years," said temple. "five years." "five thousand, you mean," jason reminded him. "it hardly seems possible. how are the folks, kit?" "mom's fine. pop too. he's sporting a new chambers converto. you should see him, jase. sharp." "and ann?" jason looked at him hopefully. ann had been jason's stephanie--but for the nowhere journey they would have married. "ann's married," temple said. "oh. oh. that's swell, kit. really swell. i mean, what the hell, a girl shouldn't wait forever. i told her not to, anyway." "she waited four years, then met a guy and--" "a nice guy?" "the best," said temple. "you'd like him." temple saw the vague hurt come to jason's smouldering eyes. then it was the same. one part of jason wanted her to remain his over an unthinkable gap, another part wanted her to live a good, full life. "i'm glad," said jason. "can't expect a girl to wait without hope...." "then there's no hope we'll ever get back?" jason laughed harshly. "you tell me. earth isn't merely sixty thousand light years away. kit, do you know what a light year is?" temple said he thought he did. "sixty thousand of them. a dozen eternities. but the earth we know is also dead. dead five thousand years. the folks, center city, ann, her husband--all dust. five thousand years old.... don't mind me, kit." "sure. sure, i understand." but temple didn't, not really. you couldn't take five thousand years and chuck them out the window in what seemed the space of a heart beat and then realize they were gone permanently, forever. not a period of time as long as all of recorded civilization--you couldn't take it, tack it on after and accept it. somehow, temple realized, the five thousand years were harder to swallow than the sixty thousand light years. "well," with a visible effort, jason snapped out of his reverie. temple accepted a cigarette gratefully, his first in a long time. _in fifty centuries_, he thought bitterly, burrowing deeper into a funk. "well," said jason, "i'm acting like a prize boob. how selfish can i get? there must be an awful lot you'd like to know, kit." "that's all right. i was told i'd be indoctrinated." "ordinarily, you would. but there's no shipment now, none for another three months. say, how the devil _did_ you get here?" "that's a long story. nowhere journey, same as you, with a little assist to speed things up on mars. jase, tell me this: what are we doing here? what is everyone doing here? what's the nowhere journey all about? what kind of a glorified foot-race did i see a while ago, with a bunch of creatures out of the telio science-fiction shows?" jason put his own cigarette out, changed his mind, lit another one. "sort of like the old joke, where does an alien go to register?" "sort of." "it's a big universe," said jason, evidently starting at the beginning of something. "i'm just beginning to learn _how_ big!" "it would be pretty unimaginative of mankind to consider itself the only sentient form of life, earth the only home of intelligence, both from a scientific and a religious point of view. we kind of expected to find--neighbors out in space. kit, the sky is full of stars, most stars have planets. the universe crawls with life, all sorts of life, all sorts of intelligent life. in short, we are not alone. it would be sort of like taking the jet-shuttle from washington to new york during the evening rush and expecting to be the only one aboard. in reality, you're lucky to get breathing space. "there are biped intelligences, like humans. there are radial intelligences, one-legged species, tall, gangling creatures, squat ones, pancake ones, giants, dwarfs. there are green skins and pink skins and coal black--and yes, no skins. there are ... but you get the idea." "uh-huh." "strangely enough, most of these intelligences are on about the same developmental level. it's as if the creator turned everything on at once, like a race, and said 'okay, guys get started.' maybe it's because, as scientists figure, the whole universe got wound up and started working as a unit. i don't know. anyway, that's the way it is. all the intelligences worth talking about are on about the same cultural level. atomics, crude spaceflight, wars they can't handle. "and this is interesting, kit. most of 'em are bipedal. not really human, not fully human. you can see the difference. but seventy-five percent of the races i've encountered have had basic similarities. a case of the creator trying to figure out the best of all possible life-patterns and coming up with this one. offers a wide range for action, for adaptation, stuff like that. anyway, i'm losing track of things." "take it easy. from what you tell me i have all the time in the world." "well, i said all the races are developmentally parallel. that's almost true. one of them is not. one of them is so far ahead that the rest of us have hardly reached the crawling stage by comparison. one of them is the super race, kit. "their culture is old, incredibly old. so old, in fact, that some of us figure it's been hanging around since before the universe took shape. maybe that's why all the others are on one level, a few thousand million years behind the super race. "so, take this super race. for some reason we can't understand, it seems to be on the skids. that's just figurative. maybe it's dying out, maybe it wants to pack up and leave the galaxy altogether, maybe it's got other undreamed of business other undreamed of places. anyway, it wants out. but it's got an eon-old storehouse of culture and maybe it figures someone ought to have access to that and keep the galaxy in running order. but who? that's the problem. who gets all this information, a million million generations of scientific problems, all carefully worked out? who, among all the parallel races on all the worlds of the universe? that's quite a problem, even for our super race boys. "you'd think they'd have ways to solve it, though. with calculating machines or whatever will follow calculating machines after earthmen and all the others find the next faltering step after a few thousand years. or with plain horse sense and logic, developed to a point--after millions of years at it--where it never fails. or solve the problem with something we've never heard of, but solve it anyway." "what's all this got to do with--? i mean, it's an interesting story and when i get a chance to digest it i'll probably start gasping, but what about nowhere and...." "i'm coming to that. kit, what would you say if i told you that the most intelligent race the universe has ever produced solves the biggest problem ever handed anyone--by playing games?" "i'd say you better continue." "that's the purpose of nowhere, kit. every planet, every race has its nowhere. we all come here and we play games. planet with the highest score at the end of god knows how long wins the universe, with all the science and the wisdom needed to fashion that universe into a dozen different kinds of heaven. and to decide all this, we play games. "don't get the wrong idea. i'm not complaining. if the superboys say we play, then we play. i'd take their word for it if they told me i had fifteen heads. but it's the sort of thing which doesn't let you get much sleep. oh, earth has a right to be proud of its record. united north america is in second place on a competition that's as wide as the universe. but we're not first. second. and i have a hunch from what's been going on around here that the games are drawing to a close. "fantastic, isn't it? out of thousands of entrants, we're good enough to place second. but some planet out near the star deneb has us hopelessly outclassed. we might as well get the booby prize. they'll win and own the universe--us included." jason had leaned forward as he spoke, and was sitting on the edge of his chair now. the room was comfortably cool, but sweat beaded his forehead, dripped from his chin. temple lit another cigarette, inhaling deeply. "you said the united states--north america--was second. i thought this was a planet-wide competition, planet against planet." "earth is the one exception i've been able to find. the deneb planet heads the list, then comes north america. after that, the planet of a star i never heard of. in fourth place is the soviet union." "i'll be damned," said temple. "well, okay. mind if i store that away for future reference? i've got another question. what kind of--uh, games do we play?" "you name it. mental contests. scientific problems to be worked out with laboratories built to our specifications. emotional problems with scores of men driven neurotic or worse every year. problems of adaptability. responses to environmental challenge. stamina contests. tests of strength, of endurance. tests to determine depths of emotion. tests to determine objectivity in what should be an objective situation. but the way everything is organized it's almost like a giant-sized, never ending olympic games, complete with some cockeyed sports events too, by the way." "with all the pageantry, too?" "no. but that's another story." "anyway, what i saw _was_ a foot-race! and sorry, jase, but i have another question." jason shrugged, spread his hands wide. "how come all this talk about rotation? it isn't possible, not with a fifty century gap." "i know. they just let us in on that little deal a couple of years ago. till then, we didn't know. we thought it was distance only. in time, after all this was over, we could go home. that's what we thought," jason said bitterly. "actually, it's twice five thousand years. five to come here, five to return. ten thousand years separate us from the earth we know, and even if we could go home, that wouldn't be going home at all--to earth ten thousand years in the future. "oh, they had us hoodwinked. afraid we might say no or something. they never mentioned the length or duration of the trip. i don't understand it, none of us do and we have some top scientists here. something to do with suspended animation, with contra-terrene matter, with teleportation, something about latent extra-sensory powers in everyone, about the ability to break down an object--or a creature or a man--to its component atoms, to reverse--that's the word, reverse--those atoms and send them spinning off into space as contra-terrene matter. "it all boils down to putting a man in a machine on mars, pulling a lever, materializing him here five thousand years later." jason smiled with only a trace of humor. "any questions?" "about a thousand," said temple. "i--" something buzzed on jason's desk and temple watched him pick up a microphone, say: "co-ordinator speaking. what's up?" the voice which answered, clear enough to be in the room with them and without the faintest trace of mechanical or electrical transfer, spoke in a strange, liquid-syllabled language temple had never heard. jason responded in the same language, with an apparent ease which surprised temple--until he remembered that his brother had always had a knack of picking up foreign languages. maybe that was why he held the co-ordinator's job--whatever it was he co-ordinated. there was fluency in the way jason spoke, and alarm. the trouble-lines etched deeply on his face stood out sharply, his eyes, if possible, grew more intense. "well," he said, putting the mike down and staring at temple without seeing him, "i'm afraid that does it." "what's the trouble?" "everything." "anything i can do?" "item. the superboys have discovered that earth has two contingents here--us and the soviets. they're mad. item. something will be done about it. item. soviet russia has made a suggestion, or that is, its people here. they will put forth a champion to match one of our own choosing in the toughest grind of all, something to do with responding to environmental challenge, which doesn't mean a hell of a lot unless you happen to know something about it. shall i go on?" and, when temple nodded avidly. "we automatically lose by default. one of the rules of that particular game is that the contestant must be a newcomer. it's the sort of game you have to know nothing about, and incidentally, it's also the sort of game a man can get killed at. well, the soviets have a whole contingent of newcomers to pick from. we don't have any. as the superboys see it, that's our own tough luck. we lose by default." "it seems to me--" "how can anything 'seem to you?' you're new here.... i'm sorry kit. what were you saying?" "no. go ahead." "that's only the half of it. right after russia takes our place and we're scratched off the list, the games go into their final phase. that was the rumor all along, and it's just been confirmed. interesting to see what they do with all the contestants _after_ the games are over, after there's no more nowhere journey." "we could go back where we came from." "ten thousand years in the future?" "i'm not afraid." "well, anyway, the soviets put up a man, we can't match him. so it looks like the u.s.s.r. represents earth officially. not that it matters. we hardly have the chance of a very slushy snowball in a very hot hell. but still--" "our contestant, this guy who meets the russians' challenge, has to be a newcomer?" "that's what i said. well, we can close up shop, i guess." "you made a mistake. you said no newcomers have arrived. i'm here, jase. i'm your man. bring on your russian bear." temple smiled grimly. chapter viii "you got to hand it to temple's kid brother." "yeah. cool as ice cubes." "are you guys kidding? he doesn't know what's in store for him, that's all." "do _you_?" "now that you mention it, no. isn't a man here who can say for sure what kind of environmental challenges he'll have to respond to. hypno-surgery sees to it the guys who went through the thing won't talk about it. as if that isn't security enough, the subject's got to be a brand new arrival!" "shh! here he comes." the brothers temple entered earth city's one tavern quietly, but on their arrival all the speculative talk subsided. the long bar, built to accommodate half a hundred pairs of elbows comfortably, gleamed with a luster unfamiliar to temple. it might have been marble, but marble translucent rather than opaque, giving a beautiful three-dimensional effect to the surface patterns. "what will it be?" jason demanded. "whatever you're drinking is fine." jason ordered two scotches, neat, and the brothers drank. when jason got a refill he started talking. "does t.a.t. mean anything to you, kit?" "tat? umm--no. wait a minute! t.a.t. isn't that some kind of protective psychological test?" "that's it. you're shown a couple of dozen pictures, more or less ambiguous, never cut and dry. each one comes from a different stratum of the social environment, and you're told to create a dramatic situation, a story, for each picture. from your stories, for which you draw on your whole background as a human being, the psychometrician should be able to build a picture of your personality and maybe find out what, if anything, is bothering you." "what's that to do with this response to environmental challenge thing?" "well," said jason, drinking a third scotch, "the super boys have evolved t.a.t. to its ultimate. t.a.t.--that stands for thematic apperception test. but in e.c.r.--environmental challenge and response, you don't see a picture and create a dramatic story around it. instead, you get thrust into the picture, the situation, and you have to work out the solution--or suffer whatever consequences the particular environmental challenge has in store for you." "i think i get you. but it's all make believe, huh?" "that's the hell of it," jason told him. "no, it's not. it is and it isn't. i don't know." "you make it perfectly clear," temple smiled. "the red-headed boy combed his brown hair, wishing it weren't blond." jason shrugged. "i'm sorry. for reasons you already know, the e.c.r. isn't very clear to me--or to anyone. you're not actually in the situation in a physical sense, but it can affect you physically. you _feel_ you're there, you actually live everything that happens to you, getting injured if an injury occurs ... and dying if you get killed. it's permanent, although you might actually be sleeping at the time. so whether it's real or not is a question for philosophy. from your point of view, from the point of view of someone going through it, it's real." "so i become part of this--uh, game in about an hour." "right. you and whoever the russians offer as your competition. no one will blame you if you want to back out, kit; from what you tell me, you haven't even been adequately trained on mars." "if you draw on the entire background of your life for this e.c.r., then you don't need training. shut up and stop worrying. i'm not backing out of anything." "i didn't think you would, not if you're still as much like your old man as you used to be. kit ... good luck." * * * * * the fact that the technicians working around him were earthmen permitted temple to relax a little. probably, it was planned that way, for entering the huge white cube of a building and ascending to the twelfth level on a moving ramp temple had spotted many figures, not all of them human. if he had been strapped to the table by unfamiliar aliens, if the scent of alien flesh--or non-flesh--had been strong in the room, if the fingers--or appendages--which greased his temples and clamped an electrode to each one had not felt like human fingers, if the men talking to him had spoken in voices too harsh or too sibilant for human vocal chords--if all that had been the case whatever composure still remained his would have vanished. "i'm dr. olson," said one white-gowned figure. "if any injuries occur while you lie here, i'm permitted to render first aid." "the same for limited psychotherapy," said a shorter, heavier man. "though a fat lot of good it does when we never know what's bothering you, and don't have the time to work on it even if we did know." "in short," said a third man who failed to identify himself, "you may consider yourself as the driver of one of those midget rocket racers. do they still have them on earth? good. you are the driver, and we here in this room are the mechanics waiting in your pit. if anything goes wrong, you can pull out of the race temporarily and have it repaired. but in this particular race there is no pulling out: all repairs are strictly of a first-aid nature and must be done while you continue whatever you are doing. if you break your finger and find a splint appearing on it miraculously, don't say you weren't warned." "best of luck to you, young man," said the psychotherapist. "here we go," said the doctor, finding the large vein on the inside of temple's forearm and plunging a needle into it. temple's senses whirled instantly, but as his vision clouded he thought he saw a large, complex device swing down from the ceiling and bathe his head in warming radiation. he blinked, squinted, could see nothing but a swirling, cloudy opacity. * * * * * approximately two seconds later, sophia androvna petrovitch watched as the white-gowned comrade tied a rubber strap around her arm, waited for the vein to swell with blood, then forced a needle in through its thick outer layer. was that a nozzle overhead? no, rather a lens, for from it came amber warmth ... which soon faded, with everything else, into thick, churning fog.... temple was abruptly aware of running, plunging headlong and blindly through the fiercest storm he had ever seen. gusts of wind whipped at him furiously. rain cascaded down in drenching torrents. foliage, brambles, branches struck against his face; mud sucked at his feet. big animal shapes lumbered by in the green gloom, as frightened by the storm as was temple. his head darted this way and that, his eyes could see the gnarled tree trunks, the dense greenery, the lianas, creepers and vines of a tropical rain forest--but dimly. green murk swirled in like thick smoke with every gust of wind, with the rain obscuring vision almost completely. temple ran until his lungs burned and he thought he must exhale fire. his leaden feet fought the mud with growing difficulty for every stride he took. he ran wildly and in no set direction, convinced only that he must find shelter or perish. twice he crashed bodily into trees, twice stumbled to his knees only to pull himself upright again, sucking air painfully into his lungs and cutting out in a fresh direction. he ran until his legs balked. he fell, collapsing first at the knees, then the waist, then flopping face down in the mud. something prodded his back as he fell and reaching behind him weakly temple was aware for the first time that a bow and a quiver of arrows hung suspended from his shoulders by a strong leather thong. he wore nothing but a loin cloth of some nameless animal skin and he wondered idly if he had slain the animal with the weapon he carried. yet when he tried to recollect he found he could not. he remembered nothing but his frantic flight through the rain forest, as if all his life he had run in a futile attempt to leave the rain behind him. now as he lay there, the mud sucking at his legs, his chest, his armpits, he could not even remember his name. did he have one? did he have a life before the rain forest? then why did he forget? a sense not fully developed in man and called intuition by those who fail to understand it made him prop his head up on his hands and squint through the downpour. there was something off there in the foliage ... someone.... a woman. temple's breath caught in his throat sharply. the woman stood half a dozen paces off, observing him coolly with hands on flanks. she stood tall and straight despite the storm and from trim ankles to long, lithe legs to flaring loin-clothed hips, to supple waist and tawny skin of fine bare breasts and shoulders, to proud, haughty face and long dark hair loose in the storm and glistening with rain, she was magnificent. her long, bronzed body gleamed with wetness and temple realized she was tall as he, a wild beautiful goddess of the jungle. she was part of the storm and he accepted her--but strangely, with the same fear the storm evoked. she would make a lover the whole world might relish (what world, temple thought in confusion?) but she would make a terrible foe. and foe she was.... "i want your bow and arrows," she told him. temple wanted to suggest they share the weapon, but somehow he knew in this world which was like a dream and could tell him things the way a dream would and yet was vividly real, that the woman would share nothing with anybody. "they are mine," temple said, climbing to his knees. he remembered the animal-shapes lumbering by in the storm and he knew that he and the animals would both stalk prey when the storm subsided and he would need the bow and arrows. the woman moved toward him with a liquid motion beautiful to behold, and for the space of a heartbeat temple watched her come. "i will take them," she said. temple wasn't sure if she could or not, and although she was a woman he feared her strangely. again, it was as if something in this dream-world real-world could tell him more than he should know. making up his mind, temple sprang to his feet, whirled about and ran. he was plunging through the wild storm once more, blinded by the occasional flashes of jagged green lightning, deafened by the peals of thunder which followed. and he was being pursued. minutes, hours, more than hours--for an eternity temple ran. a reservoir of strength he never knew he possessed provided the energy for each painful step and running through the storm seemed the most natural thing in the world to him. but there came a time when his strength failed, not slowly, but with shocking suddenness. temple fell, crawled a ways, was still. it took him minutes to realize the storm no longer buffeted him, more minutes to learn he had managed to crawl into a cave. he had no time to congratulate himself on his good fortune, for something stirred outside. "i am coming in," the woman called to him from the green murk. temple strung an arrow to his bow, pulled the string back and faced the cave's entrance squatting on his heels. "then your first step shall be your last. i'll shoot to kill." and he meant it. silence from outside. deafening. temple felt sweat streaming under his armpits; his hands were clammy, his hands trembled. "you haven't seen the last of me," the woman promised. after that, temple knew she was gone. he slept as one dead. when temple awoke, bright sunlight filtered in through the foliage outside his cave. although the ground was a muddy ruin, the storm had stopped. edging to the mouth of the cave, temple spread the foliage with his hands, peered cautiously outside. satisfied, he took his bow and arrows and left the cave, pangs of hunger knotting his stomach painfully. the cave had been weathered in the side of a short, steep abutment a dozen paces from a gushing, swollen stream. temple followed the course of the stream as it twisted through the jungle, ranging half a mile from his cave until the water course widened to form a water-hole. all morning temple waited there, crouching in the grass, until one by one, the forest animals came to drink. he selected a small hare-like thing, notched an arrow to his bow, let it fly. the animal jumped, collapsed, began to slink away into the undergrowth, dragging the arrow from its hindquarters. temple darted after it, caught it in his hands and bashed its life out against the bole of a tree. returning to his cave he found two flinty stones, shredded a fallen branch and nursed the shards dry in the strong sunlight. soon he made a fire and ate. * * * * * in the days which followed, temple returned to the water-hole and bagged a new catch every time he ventured forth. things went so well that he began to range further and further from his cave exploring. once however, he returned early to the water-hole and found footprints in the soft mud of its banks. the woman. that she had been observing him while he had hunted had never occurred to temple, but now that the proof lay clearly before his eyes, the old feeling of uncertainty came back. and the next day, when he crept stealthily to the water-hole and saw the woman squatting there in the brush, waiting for him, he fled back to his cave. the thought hit him suddenly. if she were stalking him, why must he flee as from his own shadow? there would be no security for either of them until either one or the other were gone--and gone meant dead. then temple would do his own stalking. for several nights temple hardly slept. he could have found the water-hole blindfolded merely by following the stream. each night he would reach the hole and work, digging with a sharp stone, until he had fashioned a pit fully ten feet deep and six feet across. this he covered with branches, twigs, leaves and finally dirt. when he returned in the morning he was satisfied with his work. unless the woman made a careful study of the area, she would never see the pit. all that day temple waited with his back to the water-hole, facing the camouflaged pit, the trap he had set, but the woman failed to appear. when she also did not come on the second day, he began to think his plan would not work. the third day, temple arrived with the sun, sat as before in the tall grass between the pit and the water-hole and waited. several paces beyond his hidden trap he could see the tall trees of the jungle with vines and creepers hanging from their branches. at his back, a man's length behind him was the water-hole, its deepest waters no more than waist-high. temple waited until the sun stood high in the sky, then was fascinated as a small antelope minced down to the water-hole for a drink. _you'll make a fine breakfast tomorrow, he thought, smiling._ something, that strange sixth sense again, made temple turn around and stand up. he had time for a brief look, a hoarse cry. the woman had been the cleverer. she had set the final trap. she stood high up on a branch of one of the trees beyond the hidden pit and for an instant temple saw her fine figure clearly, naked but for the loincloth. then the soft curves became spring-steel. the woman arched her body there on the high branch, grasping a stout vine and rocking back with it. temple raised his bow, set an arrow to let it fly. but by then, the woman was in motion. long and lithe and graceful, she swung down on her vine, gathering momentum as she came. her feet almost brushed the lip of temple's pit at the lowest arc of her flight, but she clung to the vine and it began to swing up again like a pendulum--toward temple. at the last moment he hunched his shoulder and tried to raise his arms for protection. the woman was quicker. she gathered her legs up under her, still clutching the vine with her slim, strong hands. the vine's arc carried her up at him; her knees were at a level with his head and she brought them up savagely, close together striking temple brutally at the base of his jaw. temple screamed as his head was jerked back with terrible force. the bow flew from his fingers and he fell into the water-hole, flat on his back. sophia let the vine carry her out over the water, then dropped from it. waist deep, she waded to where the man lay, unconscious on his back, half in, half out of the shallowest part of the water. she reached him, prodded his chest with her foot. when he did not stir, she rocked her weight down gracefully on her long leg, forcing his head under water. with a haughty smile, she watched the bubbles rise.... * * * * * in the small room where temple's body lay in repose on a table the white-smocked doctor looked at the psychotherapist questioningly. "what's happening?" "can't tell, doctor. but--" suddenly temple's still body rocked convulsively, his neck stretched, his head shot up and back. blood trickled from his mouth. the doctor thrust out expert hands, examined temple's jaw dexterously. "broken?" the psychotherapist demanded in a worried voice. "no. dislocated. he looks like he's been hit by a sledge hammer, wherever he is now, whatever's happening. this e.c.r. is the damndest thing." temple's still form shuddered convulsively. he began to gasp and cough, obviously fighting for breath. an ugly blue swelling had by now lumped the base of his jaw. "what's happening?" demanded the psychotherapist. "i can't be sure," said the doctor, shaking his head. "he seems to have difficulty in breathing ... it's as if he were--drowning." "bad. anything we can do?" "no. we wait until this particular sequence ends." the doctor examined temple again. "if it doesn't end soon, this man will die of asphyxiation." "call it off," the psychotherapist pleaded. "if he dies now earth will be represented by russia. call it off!" someone entered the room. "_i_ have the authority," he said, selecting a hypodermic from the doctor's rack and piercing the skin of temple's forearm with it. "this first test has gone far enough. the russian entry is clearly the winner, but temple must live if he is to compete in another." the racking convulsions which shook temple's body subsided. he ceased his choking, began to breathe regularly. with grim swiftness, the doctor went to work on temple's dislocated jaw while the man who had stopped the contest rendered artificial respiration. the man was alaric arkalion. * * * * * the comrade doctor was exultant. "jupiter training, comrade, has given us a victory." "how can you be sure?" "our entrant is unharmed, the contest has been called. wait ... she is coming to." sophia stretched, rubbed her bruised knees, sat up. "what happened, comrade?" the doctor demanded. "my knees ache," said sophia, rubbing them some more. "i--i killed him, i think. strange, i never dreamed it would be that real." "in a sense, it _was_ real. if you killed the american, he will stay dead." "nothing mattered but that world we were in, a fantastic place. now i remember everything, all the things i couldn't remember then." "but your--ah, dream--what happened?" sophia rubbed her bruised knees a third time, ruefully. "i knocked him unconscious with these. i forced his head under water and drowned him. but--before i could be sure i finished the job--i came back.... funny that i should want to kill him without compunction, without reason." sophia frowned, sat up. "i don't think i want anymore of this." the doctor surveyed her coldly. "this is your task on the stalintrek. this you will do." "i killed him without a thought." "enough. you will rest and get ready for the second contest." "but if he's dead--" "apparently he's not, or we would have been informed, comrade petrovitch." "that is true," agreed the second man, who had remained silent until now. "prepare for another test, comrade." sophia was on the point of arguing again. after all it wasn't fair. if in the dream-worlds which were not dream worlds she was motivated by but one factor and that to destroy the american and if she faced him with the strength of her jupiter training it would hardly be a contest. and now that she could think of the american without the all-consuming hatred the dream world had fostered in her, she realized he had been a pleasant-looking young man, quite personable, in fact. _i could like him_, sophia thought and hoped fervently she had not drowned him. still, if she had volunteered for the stalintrek and this was the job they assigned her.... "i need no rest," she told the doctor, hardly trusting herself, for she realized she might change her mind. "i am ready any time you are." chapter ix his name was temple and it was the year . christopher temple had problems. he had his own life, too, which had nothing to do with the life of the real christopher temple, departed thirty-odd years later on the nowhere journey. or rather, this _was_ christopher temple, living his second e.c.r.... temple who had lost once, and who, if he lost again, would take the dreams and hopes of the western world down into the dust of defeat with him. but as the fictional (although in a certain sense, real) christopher temple of , he knew nothing of this. the world could go to pot. the world was going to pot, anyway. temple shuddered as he poured a fourth canadian, downing it in a tasteless, burning gulp. temple was a thermo-nuclear engineer with government subsidized degrees from three universities including the fine new one at desert rock. temple was a thermo-nuclear engineer with top-secret government clearance. temple was a thermo-nuclear engineer with more military secrets buzzing around inside his head than in a warehouse of burned pentagon files. temple was also a thermo-nuclear engineer whose wife spied for the russians. he'd found out quite by accident, not meaning to eavesdrop at all. returning home early one afternoon because the production engineer called a halt while further research was done on certain unstable isotopes, temple was surprised to find his wife had a gentleman caller. he heard their voices clearly from where he stood out in the sun-parlor, and for a ridiculous instant he was torn between slinking upstairs and ignoring them altogether or barging into the living room like a high school boy flushed with jealousy. the mature thing to do, of course, was neither, and temple was on the point of walking politely into the living room, saying hello and waiting for an introduction, when snatches of the conversation stopped him cold. "silly charles! kit doesn't suspect a thing. i would _know_." "how can you be sure?" "intuition." "on a framework of intuition you would place the fate of red empire?" "empire, charles?" temple could picture lucy's raised eyebrow. he listened now, hardly breathing. for one wild moment he thought he would retreat upstairs and forget the whole thing. life would be much simpler that way. a meaningless surrender to unreality, however, and it couldn't be done. "yes, empire. oh, not the land-grabbing, slave-dominating sort of things the imperialists used to attempt, but a more subtle and hence more enduring empire. let the world call us liberator, we shall have empire." lucy laughed, a sound which temple loved. "you may keep your ideology, charles. play with it, bathe in it, get drunk on it or drown yourself in it. i want my money." "you are frank." temple could picture lucy's shrug. "i am a paid, professional spy. by now you have most of the information you need. i shall have the rest tonight." "i'll see you in hell first!" temple cried in rage, stalking into the room and almost smiling in spite of the situation when he realized how melodramatic his words must sound. "kit! kit...." lucy raised hand to mouth, then backed away flinching as if she had been struck. "yeah, kit. a political cuckold, or does charles get other services from you as well?" "kit, you don't...." the man named charles motioned for silence. dapper, clean-cut, good-looking except for a surly, pouting mouth, he was a head shorter than either temple or lucy. "don't waste your words, sophia. temple overheard us." _sophia?_ thought temple. "sophia?" he said. charles nodded coolly. "the real mrs. temple was observed, studied, her every habit and whim catalogued by experts. a plastic surgeon, a psychologist, a sociologist, a linguist, a whole battery of experts molded sophia here into a new mrs. temple. i must congratulate them, for you never suspected." "lucy?" temple demanded dully. reason stood suspended in a limbo of objective acceptance and subjective disbelief. "mrs. temple was eliminated. regrettable because we don't deal in senseless mayhem, but necessary." temple was not aware of leaving limbo until he felt the bruising contact of his knuckles with charles' jaw. the short man toppled, fell at his feet. "get up!" temple cried, then changed his mind and tensed himself to leap upon the prone figure. "hold it," charles told him quietly, wiping blood from his lips with one hand, drawing an automatic from his pocket with the other. "you'd better freeze, temple. you die if you don't." temple froze, watched charles slither away across the high-piled green carpet until, safely away across the room, he came upright groggily. he turned to the dead lucy's double. "what do you think, sophia?" "i don't know. we could get out of here, probably get along without the final information." "that isn't what i mean. naturally, we'll never receive the final facts. i mean, what do you think about temple?" sophia said she didn't know. "left alone, he would go to the police. kidnapped, he would be worse than useless. harmful, actually, for the authorities would suspect something. even worse if we killed him. the point is, we don't want the authorities to think temple gave information to anybody." "gave is hardly the word," said sophia. "i was a good wife, but also a good gleaner. one hundred thousand dollars, charles." "you bitch," temple said. "later," charles told the woman. "the solution is this, sophia: we must kill temple, but it must look like suicide." sophia frowned in pretty concern. "do we have to ... kill him?" "what's the matter, my dear? have you been playing the wifely role too long? if temple stands in the way of red empire, temple must die." temple edged forward. "uh-uh," said charles, "mustn't." he waved the automatic and temple subsided. "is that right?" sophia demanded. "well, you listen to me. i have nothing to do with your red empire. i fled the iron curtain, came here to live voluntarily--" "do you really think it was on a voluntary basis that you went? we allowed you to go, sophia. we encouraged it. that way, the job of our technicians was all the simpler. whether you like it or not, you have been a cog in the machine of red empire." "i still don't see why he has to die." "leave thinking to those who can. you have a smile, a body, a certain way with men. i will think. i think that temple should die." "i don't," sophia said. "we're delaying needlessly. the man dies." and charles raised his automatic, sufficiently irked to forget his suicide plan. a gap of eight or nine feet separated the two men. it might as well have been infinity--and it would be soon, for temple. he saw charles' small hand tighten about the automatic, saw the trigger finger grow white. the weapon pointed at a spot just above his navel and briefly he found himself wondering what it would feel like for a slug to rip into his stomach, burning a path back to his spine. he decided to make the gesture at least, if he could do no more. he would jump for charles. sophia beat him to it--and because lucy was dead and sophia looked exactly like her and temple could not quite accept the fact, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. cat-quick, sophia leaped upon charles' back and they went down together in a twisting, thrashing tangle of arms and legs. temple did not wait for an invitation. he launched himself down after them, and then things began to happen ... fast. sophia rolled clear, rose to her hands and knees, panting. charles sat up cursing, nursing a badly scratched face. temple hurtled at him, stretched him on his back again, began to pound hard fists into his face. charles did not have the automatic. neither did temple. something exploded against the back of temple's head violently, throwing him off charles and tumbling him over. dimly he saw sophia following through, the automatic in her hand, butt foremost. temple's senses reeled. he tried to rise, succeeded only in a kind of shuddering slither before he subsided. he wavered between consciousness and unconsciousness, heard as in a dream snatches of conversation. "shoot him ... shoot him!" "shut up ... i have ... gun ... go to hell." "... kill ... only way." "my way is different ... out of here ... discuss later." "... feel ..." "i said ... out of here...." the voices became a meaningless liquid torrent cascading into a black pit. * * * * * now temple sat with a water-glass a third full of canadian in his hand, every once in a while reaching up gingerly to explore the bruised swelling on his head, the blood-matted hair which covered it. to be a cuckold was one thing, but to be the naive, political pawn sort of cuckold who is not a cuckold at all, he told himself, is far worse. to live with his woman, eat the meals she cooked for him, talk to her, think she understood him, sympathize with him, to make love to her with passion while she responds with play-acting for a hundred thousand dollar salary was suddenly the most emasculating thing in the world for temple. he had not thought to ask how long it had been going on. better, perhaps, if he never knew. and somewhere lost in the maze of his thoughts was the grimmest, bleakest reality of them all: lucy was dead. lucy--dead. but where did lucy leave off, where did sophia begin? was lucy dead that night they returned more than a little drunk from the chamber's party, that night they danced in the living room until dawn obscured the stars and he carried lucy upstairs. lucy or sophia? and the day they motored to the lake, their secret lake, hardly more than a dammed, widened stream and dreamed of the things they could do when the cold war ended? lucy--or sophia? had he ever noticed a difference in the way lucy-sophia cooked, in the way she spoke, the way she let him make love to her? he thought himself into a man-sized headache and found no answers. this way at least the loss of his wife was not as traumatic as it might have been. he knew not when she died or how and, in fact, lucy-sophia seemed so much like the real thing that he did not know where he could stop loving and start hating. and the girl, the russian girl, had saved his life. why? he couldn't answer that one either, unless if it were as charles suggested: sophia had studied lucy so carefully, had learned her likes and dislikes, her wants and desires, had memorized and practised every quirk of her character to such an extent that sophia was lucy in essence. which, temple thought, would make it all the harder to seek out sophia and kill her. that was the answer, the only answer. temple felt a dull ache where his heart should have been, a pressure, a pounding, an unpleasant, unfamiliar lack of feeling. if he took his story to the f.b.i. he had no doubt that charles, sophia and whoever else worked this thing with them would be caught, but he, temple, would find himself with a lifelong, unslakable emotional thirst. he had to quench it now and then feel sorry so that he might heal. he had to quench it with sophia's blood ... alone. * * * * * he found her a week later at their lake. he had looked everywhere and had about given up, almost, in fact, ready to turn his story over to the police. but he had to think and their lake was the place for that. apparently sophia had the same idea. temple parked on the highway half a mile from their lake, made his way slowly through the woods, golden dappled with sunlight. he heard the waters gushing merrily, heard the sounds of some small animal rushing off through the woods. he saw sophia. she lay on their sunning rock in shorts and halter, completely relaxed, an opened magazine face down on the rock beside her, a pair of sunglasses next to it. she had one knee up, one leg stretched out, one forearm shielding her eyes from the sun, one arm down at her side. seeing her thus, temple felt the pressure of his automatic in its holster under his arm. he could draw it out, kill her before she was aware of his presence. would that make him feel better? five minutes ago, he would have said yes. now he hesitated. kill her, who seemed as completely lucy as he was temple? send a bullet ripping through the body which he had known and loved, or the body that had seemed so much like it he had failed to tell the difference? murder--lucy? "no," he said aloud. "her name is sophia." the girl sat up, startled. "kit," she said. "lucy." "you can't make up your mind, either." she smiled just like lucy. dumbly, he sat down next to her on the rock. strong sunlight had brought a fine dew of perspiration to the bronzed skin of her face. she got a pack of cigarettes out from under the magazine, lit one, offered it to temple, lit another and smoked it. "where do we go from here?" she wanted to know. "i--" "you came to kill me, didn't you? is that the only way you can ever feel better, kit?" "i--" he was going to deny it, then think. "don't deny it. please." she reached in under his jacket, withdrawing her hand with the snub-nosed automatic in it. "here," she said, giving it to him. he took the gun, hefted it, let it fall, clattering, on the rock. "listen," she said. "i could have told you i was lucy. if i said now that i am lucy and if i kept on saying it, you'd believe me. you'd believe me because you'd want to." "well," said temple. "i am not lucy. lucy is dead. but ... but i was lucy in everything but being lucy. i thought her thoughts, dreamed her dreams, loved her loves." "you killed her." "no. i had nothing to do with that. she was killed, yes. not by me. kit, if i asked you when lucy stopped, and ... when i began, could you tell me?" he had often thought about that. "no," he said truthfully. "you're as much my wife as--she was." she clutched at his hand impulsively. then, when he failed to respond, she withdrew her own hand. "then--then i _am_ lucy. if i am lucy in every way, lucy never died." "you betrayed me. you stood by while murder was committed. you are guilty of espionage." "lucy loved you. i am lucy...." "... betrayed me...." "for a hundred thousand dollars. for the chance to live a normal life, for the chance to forget leningrad in the wintertime, watery potato soup, rags for clothing, swaggering commissars, poverty, disease. do you think i realized i could fall in love with you so completely? if i did, don't you think that would have changed things? i am not sophia, kit. i was, but i am not. they made me lucy. lucy can't be dead, not if i am she in every way." "what can we do?" "i don't know. i only want to be your wife...." "well, then tell me," he said bitterly. "shall i go back to the plant and continue working, knowing all the time that our most closely guarded secret is in russian hands and that my wife is responsible?" he laughed. "shall i do that?" "your secrets never went anywhere." "shall i ... _what?_" "your secrets never went anywhere. charles is dead. i have destroyed all that we took. i am not russian any longer. american. they made me american. they made me lucy. i want to go right on being lucy, your wife." temple said nothing for a long time. he realized now he could not kill her. but everything else she suggested.... "tell me," he said. "tell me, how long have you been lucy? you've got to tell me that." "how long have we been married?" "you know how long. three years." sophia crushed her cigarette out on the rock, wiped perspiration (tears?) from her cheek with the back of her hand. "you have never known anyone but me in your marriage bed, kit." "you--you're lying." "no. they did what they did on the eve of your marriage. i have been your wife for as long as you have had one." temple's head whirled. it had been a quick courtship. he had known lucy only two weeks in those hectic post-graduate days of . but for fourteen brief days, it was sophia he had known all along. "sophia, i--" "there is no sophia, not any more." he had hardly known lucy, the real lucy. this girl here was his wife, always had been. had the first fourteen days with lucy been anything but a dream? he was sorry lucy had died--but the lucy he had thought dead was sophia, very much alive. he took her in his arms, almost crushing her. he held her that way, kissed her savagely, letting passion of a different sort take the place of murder. _this is my woman_, he thought, and awoke on his white pallet in nowhere. * * * * * "i am awake," said temple. "we see that. you shouldn't be." "no?" "no. there is one more dream." temple dozed restfully but was soon aware of a commotion. strangely, he did not care. he was too tired to open his eyes, anyway. let whatever was going to happen, happen. he wanted his sleep. but the voice persisted. "this is highly irregular. you came in here once and--" "i did you a favor, didn't i?" (that voice is familiar, temple thought.) "well, yes. but what now?" "temple's record is now one and one. in the second sequence he was the victor. the soviet entry had to extract certain information from him and turn it over to her people. she extracted the information well enough but somehow temple made her change her mind. the information never went anyplace. how temple managed to play counterspy i don't know, but he played it and won." "that's fine. but what do you want?" "the final e.c.r. is critical." (the voice was arkalion's!) "how critical, i can't tell you. sufficient though, if you know that you lose no matter how temple fares. if the russian woman defeats temple, you lose." "naturally." "let me finish. if temple defeats the russian woman, you also lose. either way, earth is the loser. i haven't time to explain what you wouldn't understand anyway. will you cooperate?" "umm-mm. you did save temple's life. umm-mm, yes. all right." "the third dream sequence is the wrong dream, the wrong contest with the wrong antagonist at the wrong time, when a far more important contest is brewing ... with the fate of earth as a reward for the victor." "what do you propose?" "i will arrange temple's final dream. but if he disappears from this room, don't be alarmed. it's a dream of a different sort. temple won't know it until the dream progresses, you won't know it until everything is concluded, but temple will fight for a slave or a free earth." "can't you tell us more?" "there is no time, except to say that along with the rest of the galaxy, you've been duped. the nowhere journey is a grim, tragic farce. "awaken, kit!" temple awoke into what he thought was the third and final dream. strange, because this time he knew where he was and why, knew also that he was dreaming, even remembered vividly the other two dreams. * * * * * "stealth," said arkalion, and led temple through long, white-walled corridors. they finally came to a partially open door and paused there. peering within, temple saw a room much like the one he had left, with two white-gowned figures standing anxiously over a table. and prone on the table was sophia, whom temple had loved short moments before, in his second dream. moments? years. (never, except in a dream.) "she's lovely," arkalion whispered. "i know." like himself, sophia was garbed in a loose jumper and slacks. "stealth," said arkalion again. "haste." arkalion disappeared. "well," temple told himself. "what now? at least in the other dreams i was thrust so completely into things, i knew what to do." he rubbed his jaw grimly. "not that it did much good the first time." temple poked the partially-ajar door with his foot, pushing it open. the two white-smocked figures had their backs to him, leaned intently over the table and sophia. without knowing what motivated him, temple leaped into the room, grasped the nearer figure's arm, whirled him around. startled confusion began to alter the man's coarse features, but his face went slack when temple's fist struck his jaw with terrible strength. the man collapsed. the second man turned, mouthing a stream of what must have been russian invective. he parried temple's quick blow with his left hand, crossing his own right fist to temple's face and almost ending the fight as quickly as it had started. temple went down in a heap and was vaguely aware of the russian's booted foot hovering over his face. he reached out, grabbed the boot with both hands, twisted. the man screamed and fell and then they were rolling over and over, striking each other with fists, knees, elbows, gouging, butting, cursing. temple found the russian's throat, closed his hands around it, applied pressure. fists pounded his face, nails raked him, but slowly he succeeded in throttling the russian. when temple got to his feet, trembling, the russian stared blankly at the ceiling. he would go on staring that way until someone shut his eyes. not questioning the incomprehensible, temple knew he had done what he must. hardly seeking for the motive he could not find he lifted the unconscious sophia off the table, slung her long form across his shoulder, plodded with her from the room. arkalion had said haste. he would hurry. he next was aware of a spaceship. remembering no time lag, he simply stood in the ship with arkalion. and sophia. he knew it was a spaceship because he had been in one before and although the sensation of weightlessness was not present, they were in deep space. stars you never see through an obscuring atmosphere hung suspended in the viewports. cold-bright, not flickering against the plush blackness of deep space, phalanxes and legions of stars without numbers, in such wild profusion that space actually seemed three dimensional. "this is a different sort of dream," said sophia in english. "i remember. i remember everything. kit--" "hello." he felt strangely shy, became mildly angry when arkalion hardly tried to suppress a slight snicker. "well, that second dream wasn't our idea," temple protested. "once there, we acted ... and--" "and...." said sophia. "and nothing," arkalion told them. "you haven't time. this is a spaceship, not like the slow, bumbling craft your people use to reach mars or jupiter." "our people?" temple demanded. "not yours?" "will you let me finish? light is a laggard crawler by comparison with the drive propelling this ship. temple, sophia, we are leaving your galaxy altogether." "is that a fact," said sophia, her jupiter-found knowledge telling her they were traveling an unthinkable distance. "for some final contest between us, no doubt, to decide whether the u.s.s.r. or the u.s. represents earth? kit, i l--love you, but...." "but russia is more important, huh?" "no. i didn't say that. all my training has been along those lines, though, and even if i'm aware it is indoctrination, the fact still remains. if your country is truly better, but if i have seen your country only through the eyes of pravda, how can i ... i don't know, kit. let me think." "you needn't," said arkalion, smiling. "if the two of you would let me get on with it you'd see this particular train of thought is meaningless, quite meaningless." arkalion cleared his throat. "strange, but i have much the same problem as sophia has. my indoctrination was far more subtle though. far more convincing, based upon eons of propaganda methods. temple, sophia, those who initiated the nowhere journey for hundreds of worlds of your galaxy did so with a purpose." "i know. to decide who gets their vast knowledge." "wrong. to find suitable hosts in a one-way relationship which is hardly symbiosis, really out and out parasitism." "what?" and sophia: "what are you talking about?" "the sick, decadent, tired old creatures you consider your superiors. parasites. they need hosts in order to survive. their old hosts have been milked dry, have become too highly specialized, are now incapable physically or emotionally of meeting a wide variety of environmental challenges. the nowhere journey is to find a suitable new host. they have found one. you of earth." "i don't understand," temple said, remembering the glowing accounts of the 'superboys' he had been given by his brother jason. "i just don't get it. how can we be duped like that? wouldn't someone have figured it out? and if they have all the power everyone says, there isn't much we can do about it, anyway." arkalion scowled darkly. "then write earth's obituary. you'll need one." "go ahead," sophia told arkalion. "there's more you want to say." "all right. temple's thought is correct. they have tremendous power. that is why you could be duped so readily. but their power is not concentrated here. these much-faster-than-light ships are an extreme rarity, for the power-drive no longer exists. five ships in all, i believe. hardly enough to invade a planet, even for them. it takes them thousands of years to get here otherwise. thousands. just as it took me, when i came to mars and earth in the first place." "what?" cried temple. "you...." "i am one of them. correct. i suppose you would call me a subversive, but i have made up my mind. parasitism is unsatisfactory, when the maker got us started on symbiosis. somewhere along the line, evolution took a wrong turn. we are--monsters." "what do you look like?" sophia demanded while temple stood there shaking his head and muttering to himself. "you couldn't see me, i am afraid. i was the representative here to see how things were going, and when my people found you of the earth divided yourselves into two camps they realized they had been considering your abilities in halves. put together, you are probably the top culture of your galaxy." "so, we win," said temple. "right and wrong. you lose. earthmen will become hosts. know what a back-seat driver is, temple? you would be a back seat driver in your own body. thinking, feeling, wanting to make decisions, but unable to. eating when the parasite wants to, sleeping at his command, fighting, loving, living as he wills it. and perishing when he wants a new garment. oh, they offer something in return. their culture, their way of life, their scientific, economic, social system. it's good, too. but not worth it. did you know that their economic struggle between democratic capitalism and totalitarian communism ended almost half a million years ago? what they have now is a system you couldn't even understand." "well," temple mused, "even if everything you said were true--" "don't tell me you don't believe me?" "if it were true and we wanted to do something about it, what could we do?" "now, nothing. nothing but delay things by striking swiftly and letting fifty centuries of time perform your rearguard action. destroy the one means your enemy has of reaching earth within foreseeable time and you have destroyed his power to invade for a hundred centuries. he can still reach earth, but the same way you journeyed to nowhere. ten thousand years of space travel in suspended animation. you saw me that way once, temple, and wondered. you thought i was dead, but that is another story. "anyway, let my people invade your planet, ten thousand years hence. if earth takes the right direction, if democracy and free thought and individual enterprise win over totalitarian standardization as i think they will, your people will be more than a match for the decadent parasites who may or may not have sufficient initiative to cross space the slow way and attempt invasion in ten thousand years." "ten thousand?" said temple. "five from earth to nowhere. the distance to my home is far greater, but the rate of travel can be increased. ten thousand years." "tell me," temple demanded abruptly, "is this a dream?" arkalion smiled. "yes and no. it is not a dream like the others because i assure you your bodies are not now resting on a pair of identical white tables. still in the other dreams physical things could happen to you, while now you'll find you can do things as in a dream. for example, neither one of you knows the intricacies of a spaceship, yet if you are to save your planet, you must know the operation of the most intricate of all space ships, a giant space station." "then we're not dreaming?" asked temple. "i never said that. consider this sequence of events about half way between the dream stage you have already seen and reality itself. remember this: you'll have to work together; you'll have to function like machines. you will be handling totally alien equipment with only the sort of knowledge which can be played into your brains to guide you." sophia sighed. "being an american, kit is too much of an individual to help in such a situation." temple snorted. "being a cog in a simple, state-wide machine is one thing--orienting yourself in a totally new situation is another." "yes, well--" "see?" arkalion cautioned. "see? already you are arguing, but you must work together completely, with not the slightest conflict between you. as it is, you hardly have a chance." "what about you?" said sophia practically. "can't you help?" arkalion shook his head. "no. while i'd like to see you come out of this thing on top, i would not like to sacrifice my life for it--which is exactly what i'd do if i remained with you and you lost. "so, let's get down to detail. imagine space being folded, imagine your time sense slowing, imagine a new dimension which negates the need for extensive linear travel, imagine anything you want--but we are in the process of moving nine hundred thousand light years through deep space. there is a great galaxy at that distance, almost a twin of your milky way: you call it the andromeda nebula. closer to your own system are the two magellanic clouds, so called, something else which you table ngc , and finally the triangulum galaxy. all have billions of stars, but none of the stars have life. to find life outside your galaxy you must seek it across almost a million light years. my people live in andromeda. "guarding the flank of their galaxy and speeding through inter-galactic space at many light years per minute is what you might call a space station--but on a scale you've never dreamed of. five of your miles in diameter, it is a fortress of terrible strength, a storehouse of half a million years of weapon development. it has been arranged that the one man running this station--" "just one?" temple asked. "yes. you will see why when you get there. it has been arranged that he will leave, ostensibly on a scouting expedition. you see, i am not alone in this venture. at any rate, he will report that the space station has been taken--as, indeed, it will be, by the two of you. the only ships capable of overtaking your station in its flight will be the only ships capable of reaching your galaxy before cultural development gives you a chance to survive. they will attack you. you will destroy them--or be destroyed yourselves. any questions?" the whole thing sounded fantastic to temple. could the fate of all earth rest on their shoulders in a totally alien environment? could they be expected to win? temple had no reason to doubt the former, as wild as it sounded. as for the latter, all he could do was hope. "tell me," he said, "how will we learn the use of all the weapons you claim are at our disposal?" "can you answer that for him, sophia?" arkalion wanted to know. "umm, i think so. the same way i had all sorts of culture crammed into me on jupiter." "precisely. only take it from me our refinement is far better, and the amount you have to learn actually is less." "what i'd like to know--" sophia began. "forget it. i want some sleep and you'll learn everything that's necessary at the space station." and after that, ply arkalion as they would with questions, he slumped down in his chair and rested. temple could suddenly understand and appreciate. he felt like curling up into a tight little ball himself and sleeping until everything was over, one way or the other. chapter x "it's all so big! so incredible! we'll never understand it! never...." "relax, sophia. arkalion said--" "i know what arkalion said, but we haven't learned anything yet." hours before, arkalion had landed them on the space station, a gleaming, five-mile in diameter globe, and had quickly departed. soon after that they had found themselves in a veritable labyrinth of tunnels, passageways, vaults. occasionally they passed a great glowing screen, and always the view of space was the same. like a magnificent, elongated shield, sparkling with a million million points of light, pale gold, burnished copper, blue of glacial ice and silver white, the andromeda galaxy spanned space from upper right to lower left. off at the lower right hand corner they could see their space station; apparently the viewer itself stood far removed in space, projecting its images here at the globe. awed the first time they had seen one of the screens, temple said, "all the poets who ever wrote a line would have given half their lives to see this as we see it now." "and all the writers, musicians, artists...." "anyone who ever thought creatively, sophia. how can you say it's breathtaking or anything like that when words weren't ever spoken which can...." "let's not go poetic just yet," sophia admonished him with a smile. "we'd better get squared away here, as the expression goes, before it's too late." "yes.... hello, what's this?" a door irised open for them in a solid wall of metal. irised was the only word temple could think of, for a tiny round hole appeared in the wall spreading evenly in all directions with a slow, uniform, almost liquid motion. when it was large enough to walk through, they entered a completely bare room and temple whirled in time to see the entrance irising shut. "something smells," said sophia, sniffing at the air. sweet and cloying, the odor grew stronger. temple may have heard a faint hissing sound. "i'm getting sleepy," he said. nodding, sophia ran, banged on the wall where the door had opened so suddenly, then closed. no response. "is it a trap?" "by whom? for what?" temple found it difficult to keep his eyes from closing. "fight it if you want, sophia. i'm going to sleep." and he squatted in the center of the floor, staring vacantly at the bare wall. just as temple was drifting off into a dream about complex machinery he did not yet understand but realized he soon would, sophia joined him the hard way, collapsing alongside of him, unconscious and sprawling gracelessly on the floor. temple slept. * * * * * "sleepy-head, get up." sophia stirred as he spoke and shook her. she yawned, stretched, smiled up at him lazily. "how do you feel now?" "hungry, kit." "that's a point. it's all right now, though. i know exactly where the food concentrates are kept. three levels below us, second segment of the wall. you can make those queer doors iris by pressing the wall twice, with about a one second interval." they found the food compartment, discovered row on row of cans, boxes, jars. temple opened one of the cans, gazed in disappointment on a sorry looking thing the size of his thumb. brown, shriveled, dry and almost flaky, it might have been a bird. sophia turned up her nose. "if that's the best this place has to offer, i'm not so hungry anymore." suddenly, she gaped. so did temple. a savory odor attracted their attention, steam rising from the small can added to their interest. amazing things happened to the withered scrap of food on exposure to the air. temple barely had time to extract it from the can, burning his fingers in the process, when it became twice the can's size. it grew and by the time it finished, it was as savory looking a five pound fowl as temple had ever seen. roasted, steaming hot, ready to eat. they tore into it with savage gusto. "stephanie should see me now," temple found himself saying and regretted it. "stephanie? who's that?" "a girl." "your girl?" "what's the difference. she's a million light years and fifty centuries away." "answer me." "yes," said temple, wishing he could change the subject. "my girl." he hadn't thought of stephanie in a long time, perhaps because it was meaningless to think of someone dead fifty centuries. now that the thoughts had been stirred within him, though, he found them poignantly pleasant. "your girl ... and you would marry her if you could?" he had grown attached to sophia, not in reality, but in the second of their dream worlds. he wished the memory of the dream had not lingered for it disturbed him. in it he had loved sophia as much as he now loved stephanie although the one was obtainable and the other was a five-thousand year pinch of dust. and how much of the dream lingered with him, in his head and his heart? "let's forget about it," temple suggested. "no. if she were here today and if everything were normal, would you marry her?" "why talk about what can't be?" "i want to know, that's why." "all right. yes, i would. i would marry stephanie." "oh," said sophia. "then what happened in the dream meant ... nothing." "we were two different people," temple said coolly, then wished he hadn't for it was only half-true. he remembered everything about the dream-which-was-more-than-a-dream vividly. he had been far more intimate with sophia, and over a longer period of time, than he had ever been with stephanie. and even if stephanie appeared impossibly on the spot and he spent the rest of his life as her husband, still he would never forget his dream-life with sophia. in time he could let himself tell her that. but not now; now the best thing he could do would be to change the subject. "i see," sophia answered him coldly. "no, you don't. maybe some day you will." "there's nothing but what you told me. i see." "no ... forget it," he told her wearily. "of course. it was only a dream anyway. the dream before that i almost killed you out of hatred anyway. love and hate, i guess they neutralize. we're just a couple of people who have to do a job together, that's all." "for gosh sakes, sophia! that isn't true. i loved stephanie. i still would, were stephanie alive. but she's--she's about as accessible as the queen of sheba." "so? there's an american expression--you're carrying a torch." probably, temple realized, it was true. but what did all of that have to do with sophia? if he and sophia ... if they ... would it be fair to sophia? it would be exactly as if a widower remarried, with the memory of his first wife set aside in his heart ... no, different, for he had never wed stephanie, and always in him would be the desire for what had never been. "let's talk about it some other time," temple almost pleaded, wanting the respite for himself as much as for sophia. "no. we don't have to talk about it ever. i won't be second best, kit. let's forget all about it and do our job. i--i'm sorry i brought the whole thing up." temple felt like an unspeakable heel. and, anyway, the whole thing wasn't resolved in his mind. but they couldn't just let it go at that, not in case something happened when the ships came and one or both of them perished. awkwardly, for now he felt self-conscious about everything, he got his arms about sophia, drew her to him, placed his lips to hers. that was as far as he got. she wrenched free, shoved clear of him. "if you try that again, you will have another dislocated jaw." temple shrugged wearily. if anything were to be resolved between them, it would be later. when the ships came moments afterwards--seven, not the five arkalion predicted--they were completely unprepared. temple spotted them first on one of the viewing screens, half way between the receiver and the space station itself, silhouetted against the elongated shield of andromeda. they soared out of the picture, appeared again minutes later, zooming in from the other direction in two flights of four ships and three. "come on!" sophia cried over her shoulder, irising the door and plunging from the room. temple followed at her heels but her jupiter trained muscles pushed her lithe legs in long, powerful strides and soon she outdistanced him. by the time he reached the armaments vault, breathless, she was seated at the single gun-emplacement, her fingers on the controls. "watch the viewing screen and tell me how we're doing," sophia told him, not taking her eyes from the dials and levers. temple watched, fascinated, saw a thin pencil of radiant energy leap out into space, missing one of the ships by what looked like a scant few miles. he called the corrective azimuth to her, hardly surprised by the way his mind had absorbed and now could use its new-found knowledge. temple understood and yet did not understand. for example, he knew the station had but one gun and sophia sat at it now, yet in certain ways it didn't make sense. could it cover all sectors of space? his mind supplied the answer although he had not been aware of the knowledge an instant before: yes. the space station did not merely rotate. its surface was a spherical projection of a moving moebius strip and although he tried to envision the concept, he failed. the weapon could be fired at any given point in space at twenty second intervals, covering every other conceivable point in the ensuing time. sophia was firing again and temple watched the thin beam leap across space. "hit!" he roared. "hit!" something flashed at the front end of the lead ship. the light blinded him, but when he could see again only six ships remained in space--casting perfect shadows on the andromeda galaxy! the source of light, temple realized triumphantly, was out of range, but he could picture it--a glowing derelict of a ship, spewing heat, light and radioactivity into the void. "one down," sophia called. "six to go. i like your american expressions. like sitting ducks--" she did not finish. abruptly, light flared all around them. something shrieked in temple's ears. the vault shuddered, shook. girders clattered to the floor, stove it in, revealing black rock. sophia was thrown back from the single gun, crashing against the wall, flipping in air and landing on her stomach. temple ran to her, turned her over. blood smeared her face, trickled from her lips. although she did not move, she wasn't dead. temple half dragged, half carried her from the vault into an adjoining room. he stretched her out comfortably as he could on the floor, ran back into the vault. molten metal had collected in one corner of the room, crept sluggishly toward him across the floor, heating it white-hot. he skirted it, climbed over a twisted girder, pushed his way past other debris, found himself at the gun emplacement. "how dumb can i get?" temple said aloud. "sophia ran to the gun, must have assumed i set up the shields." again, it was an item of information stored in his mind by the wisdom of the space station. protective shields made it impossible for anything but a direct hit on the emplacement to do them any harm, only temple had never set the shields in place. he did so now, merely by tripping a series of levers, but glancing at a dial to his left he realized with alarm that the damage possibly had already been done. the needle, which measured lethal radiation, hovered half way between negative and the critical area marked in red and, even as temple watched it, crept closer to the red. * * * * * how much time did he have? temple could not be sure, bent grimly over the weapon. it was completely unfamiliar to his mind, completely unfamiliar to his fingers. he toyed with it, released a blast of radiant energy, whirled to face the viewing screen. the beam streaked out into the void, clearly hundreds of miles from its objective. cursing, temple tried again, scoring a near miss. the ships were trading a steady stream of fire with him now, but with the shielding up it was harmless, striking and then bouncing back into space. temple scored his first hit five minutes after sitting down at the gun, whooped triumphantly and fired again. five ships left. but the dial indicated an increase in radioactivity as newly created neutrons spread their poison like a cancer. behind temple, the vault was a shambles. the pool of molten metal had increased in size, almost cutting off any possibility of escape. he could jump it now, temple realized, but it might grow larger. consolidating its gains now, it had sheared a pit in the floor, had commenced vaporizing the rock below it, hissing and lapping with white-hot insistence. something boomed, grated, boomed again and temple watched another girder bounce off the floor, dip one end into the molten pool and clatter out a stub. apparently the damage was extensive; a structural weakness threatened to make the entire ceiling go. temple fired again, got another ship. he could almost feel death breathing on his shoulder, in no great hurry but sure of its prize. he fired the weapon. if one ship remained when they could no longer use the gun, they would have failed. one ship might make the difference for earth. one.... three left. two. they raked the space station with blast after blast--futilely. they spun and twisted and streaked by, offering poor targets. temple waited his chance ... and glanced at the dial which measured radioactivity. he yelped, stood up. the needle had encroached upon the red area. death to remain where he was more than a moment or two. not quick death, but rather slow and lingering. he could do what he had to, then perish hours later. his life--for earth? if arkalion had known all the answers, and if he could get both ships and if there weren't another alternative for the aliens, the parasites.... temple stabbed out with his pencil beam, caught the sixth ship, then saw the needle dip completely into the red. he got up trembling, stepped back, half tripped on the stump of a girder as his eyes strayed in fascination to the viewing screen. the seventh ship was out of range, hovering off in the void somewhere, awaiting its chance. if temple left the gun the ship would come in close enough to hit the emplacement despite its protective shielding. well, it was suicide to remain there--especially when the ship wasn't even in view. temple leaped over the molten pool and left the vault. * * * * * he found sophia stirring, sitting up. "what hit me?" she said, and laughed. "something seems to have gone wrong, kit ... what...?" "it's all right now," he told her, lying. "you look pale." "you got one. i got five. one ship to go." "what are you waiting for?" and sophia sprang to her feet, heading for the vault. "hold it!" temple snapped. "don't go in there." "why not. i'll get the last ship and--" "_don't go in there!_" temple tugged at her arm, pulled her away from the vault and its broken door which would not iris closed any more. "what's the matter, kit?" "i--i want to finish the last one myself, that's all." sophia got herself loose, reached the circular doorway, peered inside. "like dante's inferno," she said. "you told me nothing was the matter. well, we can get through to the emplacement, kit." "no." and again he stopped her. at least he had lived in freedom all his life and although he was still young and did not want to die, sophia had never known freedom until now and it wouldn't be right if she perished without savoring its fruits. he had a love, dust fifty centuries, he had his past and his memories. sophia had only the future. clearly, if someone had to yield life, temple would do it. "it's worse than it looks," he told her quietly, drawing her back from the door again. he explained what had happened, told her the radioactivity had not quite reached critical point--which was a lie. "so," he concluded, "we're wasting time. if i rush in there, fire, and rush right out everything will be fine." "then let me. i'm quicker than you." "no. i--i'm more familiar with the gun." dying would not be too bad, if he went with reasonable certainty he had saved the earth. no man ever died so importantly, temple thought briefly, then felt cold fear when he realized it would be dying just the same. he fought it down, said: "i'll be right back." sophia looked at him, smiling vaguely. "then you insist on doing it?" when he nodded she told him, "then,--kiss me. kiss me now, kit--in case something...." fiercely, he swept her to him, bruising her lips with his. "sophia, sophia...." at last, she drew back. "kit," she said, smiling demurely. she took his right hand in her left, held it, squeezed it. her own right hand she suddenly brought up from her waist, fist clenched, driving it against his jaw. temple fell, half stunned by the blow, at her feet. for the space of a single heartbeat he watched her move slowly toward the round doorway, then he had clambered to his feet, running after her. he got his arms on her shoulders, yanked at her. when she turned he saw she was crying. "i--i'm sorry, kit. you couldn't fool me about ... stephanie. you can't fool me about this." she had more leverage this time. she stepped back, bringing her small, hard fist up from her knees. it struck temple squarely at the point of the jaw, with the strength of jovian-trained muscle behind it. temple's feet left the floor and he landed with a thud on his back. his last thought of sophia--or of anything, for a while--made him smile faintly as he lost consciousness. for a kiss she had promised him another dislocated jaw, and she had kept her promise.... * * * * * later, how much later he did not know, something soft cushioned his head. he opened his eyes, stared through swirling, spinning murk. he focused, saw arkalion. no--two arkalions standing off at a distance, watching him. he squirmed, knew his head was cushioned in a woman's lap. he sighed, tried to sit up and failed. soft hands caressed his forehead, his cheeks. a face swam into vision, but mistily. "sophia," he murmured. his vision cleared. it was stephanie. * * * * * "it's over," said arkalion. "we're on our way back to earth, kit." "but the ships--" "all destroyed. if my people want to come here in ten thousand years, let them try. i have a hunch you of earth will be ready for them." "it took us five thousand to reach nowhere," temple mused. "it will take us five thousand to return. we'll come barely in time to warn earth--" "wrong," said arkalion. "i still have my ship. we're in it now, so you'll reach earth with almost fifty centuries to spare. why don't you forget about it, though? if human progress for the next five thousand years matches what has been happening for the last five, the parasites won't stand a chance." "earth--five thousand years in the future," stephanie said dreamily. "i wonder what it will be like.... don't be so startled, kit. i was a pilot study on the nowhere journey. if i made it successfully, other women would have been sent. but now there won't be any need." "i wouldn't be too sure of that," said the real alaric arkalion iii. "i suspect a lot of people are going to feel just like me. why not go out and colonize space. we can do it. wonderful to have a frontier again.... why, a dozen billionaires will appear for every one like my father. good for the economy." "so, if we don't like earth," said stephanie, "we can always go out." "i have a strong suspicion you will like it," said arkalion's double. alaric iii grinned. "what about you, bud? i don't want a twin brother hanging around all the time." arkalion grinned back at him. "what do you want me to do, young man? i've forsaken my people. this is now my body. tell you what, i promise to be always on a different continent. earth isn't so small that i'll get in your hair." temple sat up, felt the bandages on his jaw. he smiled at stephanie, told her he loved her and meant it. it was exactly as if she had returned from the grave and in his first exultation he hadn't even thought of sophia, who had perished all alone in the depths of space that a world might live.... he turned to arkalion. "sophia?" "we found her dead, kit. but smiling, as if everything was worth it." "it should have been me." "whoever sophia was," said stephanie, "she must have been a wonderful woman, because when you got up, when you came to, her name was...." "forget it," said temple. "sophia and i have a very strange relationship and...." "all right, you said forget it. forget it." stephanie smiled down at him. "i love you so much there isn't even room for jealousy.... ummm ... kit...." "break up that clinch," ordered arkalion. "we're making one more stop at nowhere to pick up anyone who wants to return to earth. some of 'em probably won't but those who do are welcome...." "jason will stay," temple predicted. "he'll be a leader out among the stars." "then he'll have to climb over my back," alaric iii predicted happily, his eyes on the viewport hungrily. temple's jaw throbbed. he was tired and sleepy. but satisfied. sophia had died and for that he was sad, but there would always be a place deep in his heart for the memory of her: delicious, somehow exotic, not a love the way stephanie was, not as tender, not as sure ... but a feeling for sophia that was completely unique. and whenever the strangeness of the far-future earth frightened temple, whenever he felt a situation might get the better of him, whenever doubt clouded judgment, he would remember the tall lithe girl who had walked to her death that a world might have the freedom she barely had tasted. and together with stephanie he would be able to do anything. unless, he thought dreamily as he drifted off to sleep, his head pillowed again on stephanie's lap, he'd wind up with a bum jaw the rest of his life. * * * * * milton lesser started reading science-fiction in , and began writing it in . since then he has had a myriad stories and novels published under many pen-names. of this novel, he writes: "along with a lot of other people, i like to write about the first interstellar voyage. the reason is simple. once mankind gets out to the stars and begins to spread out across the galaxy, he'll be immortal despite his best--make that _worst_--efforts to destroy himself. you can destroy a world, maybe a dozen worlds, but spread humanity out thin among the stars, colonies here, there, and all over, and he's immortal. he'll live as long as there's a universe to hold him. "i know interstellar travel is a long way off, but science has a way of leaping ahead in geometric, not arithmetic progression. a hundred years? perhaps we'll have our first starship then. let's hope so. for if man can survive the next hundred years--the hardest hundred, i believe--he'll reach the stars and go on forever."