Roog

   “Roog!” the dog said. He rested his paws on the top of the fence and looked around him.
   The Roog came running into the yard.
   It was early morning, and the sun had not really come up yet. The air was cold and gray, and the walls of the house were damp with moisture. The dog opened his jaws a little as he watched, his big black paws clutching the wood of the fence.
   The Roog stood by the open gate, looking into the yard. He was a small Roog, thin and white, on wobbly legs. The Roog blinked at the dog, and the dog showed his teeth.
   “Roog!” he said again. The sound echoed into the silent half darkness. Nothing moved nor stirred. The dog dropped down and walked back across the yard to the porch steps. He sat down on the bottom step and watched the Roog. The Roog glanced at him. Then he stretched his neck up to the window of the house, just above him. He sniffed at the window.
   The dog came flashing across the yard. He hit the fence, and the gate shuddered and groaned. The Roog was walking quickly up the path, hurrying with funny little steps, mincing along. The dog lay down against the slats of the gate, breathing heavily, his red tongue hanging. He watched the Roog disappear.
   The dog lay silently, his eyes bright and black. The day was beginning to come. The sky turned a little whiter, and from all around the sounds of people echoed through the morning air. Lights popped on behind shades. In the chilly dawn a window was opened.
   The dog did not move. He watched the path.
   In the kitchen Mrs. Cardossi poured water into the coffee pot. Steam rose from the water, blinding her. She set the pot down on the edge of the stove and went into the pantry. When she came back Alf was standing at the door of the kitchen. He put his glasses on.
   “You bring the paper?” he said.
   “It’s outside.”
   Alf Cardossi walked across the kitchen. He threw the bolt on the back door and stepped out onto the porch. He looked into the gray, damp morning. At the fence Boris lay, black and furry, his tongue out.
   “Put the tongue in,” Alf said. The dog looked quickly up. His tail beat against the ground. “The tongue,” Alf said. “Put the tongue in.”
   The dog and the man looked at one another. The dog whined. His eyes were bright and feverish.
   “Roog!” he said softly.
   “What?” Alf looked around. “Someone coming? The paperboy come?”
   The dog stared at him, his mouth open.
   “You certainly upset these days,” Alf said. “You better take it easy. We both getting too old for excitement.”
   He went inside the house.

   The sun came up. The street became bright and alive with color. The postman went along the sidewalk with his letters and magazines. Some children hurried by, laughing and talking.
   About 11:00, Mrs. Cardossi swept the front porch. She sniffed the air, pausing for a moment.
   “It smells good today,” she said. “That means it’s going to be warm.” In the heat of the noonday sun the black dog lay stretched out full length, under the porch. His chest rose and fell. In the cherry tree the birds were playing, squawking and chattering to each other. Once in a while Boris raised his head and looked at them. Presently he got to his feet and trotted down under the tree.
   He was standing under the tree when he saw the two Roogs sitting on the fence, watching him.
   “He’s big,” the first Roog said. “Most Guardians aren’t as big as this.”
   The other Roog nodded, his head wobbling on his neck. Boris watched them without moving, his body stiff and hard. The Roogs were silent, now, looking at the big dog with his shaggy ruff of white around his neck.
   “How is the offering urn?” the first Roog said. “Is it almost full?”
   “Yes.” The other nodded. “Almost ready.”
   “You, there!” the first Roog said, raising his voice. “Do you hear me? We’ve decided to accept the offering, this time. So you remember to let us in. No nonsense, now.”
   “Don’t forget,” the other added. “It won’t be long.”
   Boris said nothing.
   The two Roogs leaped off the fence and went over together just beyond the walk. One of them brought out a map and they studied it.
   “This area really is none too good for a first trial,” the first Roog said. “Too many Guardians… Now, the northside area—”
   “They decided,” the other Roog said. “There are so many factors—”
   “Of course.” They glanced at Boris and moved back farther from the fence. He could not hear the rest of what they were saying.
   Presently the Roogs put their map away and went off down the path.
   Boris walked over to the fence and sniffed at the boards. He smelled the sickly, rotten odor of Roogs and the hair stood up on his back.
   That night when Alf Cardossi came home the dog was standing at the gate, looking up the walk. Alf opened the gate and went into the yard.
   “How are you?” he said, thumping the dog’s side. “You stopped worrying? Seems like you been nervous of late. You didn’t used to be that way.”
   Boris whined, looking intently up into the man’s face.
   “You a good dog, Boris,” Alf said. “You pretty big, too, for a dog. You don’t remember long ago how you used to be only a little bit of a puppy.”
   Boris leaned against the man’s leg.
   “You a good dog,” Alf murmured. “I sure wish I knew what is on your mind.”
   He went inside the house. Mrs. Cardossi was setting the table for dinner. Alf went into the living room and took his coat and hat off. He set his lunch pail down on the sideboard and came back into the kitchen.
   “What’s the matter?” Mrs. Cardossi said.
   “That dog got to stop making all that noise, barking. The neighbors going to complain to the police again.”
   “I hope we don’t have to give him to your brother,” Mrs. Cardossi said, folding her arms. “But he sure goes crazy, especially on Friday morning, when the garbage men come.”
   “Maybe he’ll calm down,” Alf said. He lit his pipe and smoked solemnly. “He didn’t used to be that way. Maybe he’ll get better, like he was.”
   “We’ll see,” Mrs. Cardossi said.

   The sun rose up, cold and ominous. Mist hung over all the trees and in the low places.
   It was Friday morning.
   The black dog lay under the porch, listening, his eyes wide and staring. His coat was stiff with hoarfrost and the breath from his nostrils made clouds of steam in the thin air. Suddenly he turned his head and leaped up.
   From far off, a long way away, a faint sound came, a kind of crashing sound.
   “Roog!” Boris cried, looking around. He hurried to the gate and stood up, his paws on top of the fence.
   In the distance the sound came again, louder now, not as far away as before. It was a crashing, clanging sound, as if something were being rolled back, as if a great door were being opened
   “Roog!” Boris cried. He stared up anxiously at the darkened windows above him. Nothing stirred, nothing.
   And along the street the Roogs came. The Roogs and their truck moved along bouncing against the rough stones, crashing and whirring.
   “Roog!” Boris cried, and he leaped, his eyes blazing. Then he became more calm. He settled himself down on the ground and waited, listening.
   Out in front the Roogs stopped their truck. He could hear them opening the doors stepping down onto the sidewalk. Boris ran around in a little circle. He whined and his muzzle turned once again toward the house.
   Inside the warm, dark bedroom, Mr. Cardossi sat up a little in bed and squinted at the clock.
   “That damn dog,” he muttered. “That damn dog.” He turned his face toward the pillow and closed his eyes.
   The Roogs were coming down the path, now. The first Roog pushed against the gate and the gate opened. The Roogs came into the yard. The dog backed away from them.
   “Roog! Roog!” he cried. The horrid, bitter smell of Roogs came to his nose, and he turned away.
   “The offering urn,” the first Roog said. “It is full, I think.” He smiled at the rigid, angry dog. “How very good of you,” he said
   The Roogs came toward the metal can, and one of them took the lid from it.
   “Roog! Roog!” Boris cried, huddled against the bottom of the porch steps. His body shook with horror. The Roogs were lifting up the big metal can, turning it on its side. The contents poured out onto the ground, and the Roogs scooped the sacks of bulging, splitting paper together, catching at the orange peels and fragments, the bits of toast and egg shells.
   One of the Roogs popped an egg shell into his mouth. His teeth crunched the egg shell.
   “Roog!” Boris cried hopelessly, almost to himself. The Roogs were almost finished with their work of gathering up the offering. They stopped for a moment, looking at Boris.
   Then, slowly, silently, the Roogs looked up, up the side of the house, along the stucco, to the window, with its brown shade pulled tightly down.
   “ROOG!” Boris screamed, and he came toward them, dancing with fury and dismay. Reluctantly, the Roogs turned away from the window. They went out through the gate, closing it behind them.
   “Look at him,” the last Roog said with contempt, pulling his corner of the blanket up on his shoulder. Boris strained against the fence, his mouth open, snapping wddly. The biggest Roog began to wave his arms furiously and Boris retreated. He settled down at the bottom of the porch steps, his mouth still open, and from the depths of him an unhappy, terrible moan issued forth, a wail of misery and despair.
   “Come on,” the other Roog said to the lingering Roog at the fence.
   They walked up the path.
   “Well, except for these little places around the Guardians, this area is well cleared,” the biggest Roog said. “I’ll be glad when this particular Guardian is done. He certainly causes us a lot of trouble.”
   “Don’t be impatient,” one of the Roogs said. He grinned. “Our truck is full enough as it is. Let’s leave something for next week.”
   All the Roogs laughed.
   They went on up the path, carrying the offering in the dirty, sagging blanket.

The Little Movement

   The man was sitting on the sidewalk, holding the box shut with his hands. Impatiently the lid of the box moved, straining up against his fingers.
   “All right,” the man murmured. Sweat rolled down his face, damp, heavy sweat. He opened the box slowly, holding his fingers over the opening. From inside a metallic drumming came, a low insistent vibration, rising frantically as the sunlight filtered into the box.
   A small head appeared, round and shiny, and then another. More heads jerked into view, peering, craning to see. “I’m first,” one head shrilled. There was a momentary squabble, then quick agreement.
   The man sitting on the sidewalk lifted out the little metal figure with trembling hands. He put it down on the sidewalk and began to wind it awkwardly, thick-fingered. It was a brightly painted soldier with helmet and gun, standing at attention. As the man turned the key the little soldier’s arms went up and down. It struggled eagerly.
   Along the sidewalk two women were coming, talking together. They glanced down curiously at the man sitting on the sidewalk, at the box and the shiny figure in the man’s hands.
   “Fifty cents,” the man muttered. “Get your child something to—”
   “Wait!” a faint metallic voice came. “Not them!”
   The man broke off abruptly. The two women looked at each other and then at the man and the little metal figure. They went hurriedly on.
   The little soldier gazed up and down the street, at the cars, the shoppers. Suddenly it trembled, rasping in a low, eager voice.
   The man swallowed. “Not the kid,” he said thickly. He tried to hold onto the figure, but metal fingers dug quickly into his hand. He gasped.
   “Tell them to stop!” the figure shrilled. “Make them stop!” The metal figure pulled away and clicked across the sidewalk, its legs still and rigid.
   The boy and his father slowed to a stop, looking down at it with interest. The sitting man smiled feebly; he watched the figure approach them, turning from side to side, its arms going up and down.
   “Get something for your boy. An exciting playmate. Keep him company.”
   The father grinned, watching the figure coming up to his shoe. The little soldier bumped into the shoe. It wheezed and clicked. It stopped moving.
   “Wind it up!” the boy cried.
   His father picked up the figure. “How much?”
   “Fifty cents.” The salesman rose unsteadily, clutching the box against him. “Keep him company. Amuse him.”
   The father turned the figure over. “You sure you want it, Bobby?”
   “Sure! Wind it up!” Bobby reached for the little soldier. “Make it go!”
   “I’ll buy it,” the father said. He reached into his pocket and handed the man a dollar bill.
   Clumsily, staring away, the salesman made change.

   The situation was excellent.
   The little figure lay quietly, thinking everything over. All circumstances had conspired to bring about optimum solution. The Child might not have wanted to stop, or the Adult might not have had any money. Many things might have gone wrong; it was awful even to think about them. But everything had been perfect.
   The little figure gazed up in pleasure, where it lay in the back of the car. It had correctly interpreted certain signs: the Adults were in control, and so the Adults had money. They had power, but their power made it difficult to get to them. Their power, and their size. With the Children it was different. They were small, and it was easier to talk to them. They accepted everything they heard, and they did what they were told. Or so it was said at the factory.
   The little metal figure lay, lost in dreamy, delicious thoughts.

   The boy’s heart was beating quickly. He ran upstairs and pushed the door open. After he had closed the door carefully he went to the bed and sat down. He looked down at what he held in his hands.
   “What’s your name?” he said. “What are you called?”
   The metal figure did not answer.
   “I’ll introduce you around. You must get to know everybody. You’ll like it here.”
   Bobby laid the figure down on the bed. He ran to the closet and dragged out a bulging carton of toys.
   “This is Bonzo,” he said. He held up a pale stuffed rabbit. “And Fred.” He turned the rubber pig around for the soldier to see. “And Teddo, of course. This is Teddo.”
   He carried Teddo to the bed and laid him beside the soldier. Teddo lay silent, gazing up at the ceiling with glassy eyes. Teddo was a brown bear, with wisps of straw poking out of his joints.
   “And what shall we call you?” Bobby said. “I think we should have a council and decide.” He paused, considering. “I’ll wind you up so we can all see how you work.”
   He began to wind the figure carefully, turning it over on its face. When the key was tight he bent down and set the figure on the floor.
   “Go on,” Bobby said. The metal figure stood still. Then it began to whirr and click. Across the floor it went, walking with stiff jerks. It changed directions suddenly and headed toward the door. At the door it stopped. Then it turned to some building blocks lying about and began to push them into a heap.
   Bobby watched with interest. The little figure struggled with the blocks, piling them into a pyramid. At last it climbed up onto the blocks and turned the key in the lock.
   Bobby scratched his head, puzzled. “Why did you do that?” he said. The figure climbed back down and came across the room toward Bobby, clicking and whirring. Bobby and the stuffed animals regarded it with surprise and wonder. The figure reached the bed and halted.
   “Lift me up!” it cried impatiently, in its thin, metallic voice. “Hurry up! Don’t just sit there!”
   Bobby’s eyes grew large. He stared, blinking. The stuffed animals said nothing.
   “Come on!” the little soldier shouted.
   Bobby reached down. The soldier seized his hand tightly. Bobby cried out.
   “Be still,” the soldier commanded. “Lift me up to the bed. I have things to discuss with you, things of great importance.”
   Bobby put it down on the bed beside him. The room was silent, except for the faint whirring of the metal figure.
   “This is a nice room,” the soldier said presently. “A very nice room.”
   Bobby drew back a little on the bed.
   “What’s the matter?” the soldier said sharply, turning its head and staring up.
   “Nothing.”
   “What is it?” The little figure peered at him. “You’re not afraid of me, are you?”
   Bobby shifted uncomfortably.
   “Afraid of me!” The soldier laughed. “I’m only a little metal man, only six inches high.” It laughed again and again. It ceased abruptly. “Listen. I’m going to live here with you for a while. I won’t hurt you; you can count on that. I’m a friend—a good friend.”
   It peered up a little anxiously. “But I want you to do things for me. You won’t mind doing things, will you? Tell me: how many are there of them in your family?”
   Bobby hesitated.
   “Come, how many of them? Adults.”
   “Three… Daddy, and Mother, and Foxie.”
   “Foxie? Who is that?”
   “My grandmother.”
   “Three of them.” The figure nodded. “I see. Only three. But others come from time to time? Other Adults visit this house?”
   Bobby nodded.
   “Three. That’s not too many. Three are not so much of a problem. According to the factory—”
   It broke off. “Good. Listen to me. I don’t want you to say anything to them about me. I’m your friend, your secret friend. They won’t be interested in hearing about me. I’m not going to hurt you, remember. You have nothing to fear. I’m going to live right here, with you.”
   It watched the boy intently, lingering over the last words.
   “I’m going to be a sort of private teacher. I’m going to teach you things, things to do, things to say. Just like a tutor should. Will you like that?”
   Silence.
   “Of course you’ll like it. We could even begin now. Perhaps you want to know the proper way to address me. Do you want to learn that?”
   “Address you?” Bobby stared down.
   “You are to call me…” The figure paused, hesitating. It drew itself together, proudly. “You are to call me—My Lord.”
   Bobby leaped up, his hands to his face.
   “My Lord,” the figure said relentlessly. “My Lord. You don’t really need to start now. I’m tired.” The figure sagged. “I’m almost run down. Please wind me up again in about an hour.”
   The figure began to stiffen. It gazed up at the boy. “In an hour. Will you wind me tight? You will, won’t you?”
   Its voice trailed off into silence.
   Bobby nodded slowly. “All right,” he murmured. “All right.”

   It was Tuesday. The window was open, and warm sunlight came drifting into the room. Bobby was away at school; the house was silent and empty. The stuffed animals were back in the closet.
   My Lord lay on the dresser, propped up, looking out the window, resting contentedly.
   There came a faint humming sound. Something small flew suddenly into the room. The small object circled a few times and then came slowly to rest on the white cloth of the dresser-top, beside the metal soldier. It was a tiny toy airplane.
   “How is it going?” the airplane said. “Is everything all right so far?”
   “Yes,” My Lord said. “And the others?”
   “Not so good. Only a handful of them managed to reach Children.”
   The soldier gasped in pain.
   “The largest group fell into the hands of Adults. As you know, that is not satisfactory. It is very difficult to control Adults. They break away, or they wait until the spring is unwound—”
   “I know.” My Lord nodded glumly.
   “The news will most certainly continue to be bad. We must be prepared for it.”
   “There’s more. Tell me!”
   “Frankly, about half of them have already been destroyed, stepped on by Adults. A dog is said to have broken up one. There’s no doubt of it: our only hope is through Children. We must succeed there, if at all.”
   The little soldier nodded. The messenger was right, of course. They had never considered that a direct attack against the ruling race, the Adults, would win. Their size, their power, their enormous stride would protect them. The toy vender was a good example. He had tried to break away many times, tried to fool them and get loose. Part of the group had to be wound at all times to watch him, and there was that frightening day when he failed to wind them tight, hoping that—
   “You’re giving the Child instructions?” the airplane asked. “You’re preparing him?”
   “Yes. He understands that I’m going to be here. Children seem to be like that. As a subject race they have been taught to accept; it’s all they can do. I am another teacher, invading his life, giving him orders. Another voice, telling him that—”
   “You’ve started the second phase?”
   “So soon?” My Lord was amazed. “Why? Is it necessary, so quickly?”
   “The factory is becoming anxious. Most of the group has been destroyed, as I said.”
   “I know.” My Lord nodded absently. “We expected it, we planned with realism, knowing the chances.” It strode back and forth on the dresser-top. “Naturally, many would fall into their hands, the Adults. The Adults are everywhere, in all key positions, important stations. It’s the psychology of the ruling race to control each phase of social life. But as long as those who reach Children survive—”
   “You were not supposed to know, but outside of yourself, there’s only three left. Just three.”
   “Three?” My Lord stared.
   “Even those who reached Children have been destroyed right and left. The situation is tragic. That’s why they want you to get started with the second phase.”
   My Lord clenched its fists, its features locked in iron horror. Only three left… What hopes they had entertained for this band, venturing out, so little, so dependent on the weather—and on being wound up tight. If only they were larger! The Adults were so huge.
   But the Children. What had gone wrong? What had happened to their one chance, their one fragile hope?
   “How did it happen? What occurred?”
   “No one knows. The factory is in a turmoil. And now they’re running short of materials. Some of the machines have broken down and nobody knows how to run them.” The airplane coasted toward the edge of the dresser. “I must be getting back. I’ll report later to see how you’re getting on.”
   The airplane flew up into the air and out through the open window. My Lord watched it, dazed.
   What could have happened? They had been so certain about the Children. It was all planned—It meditated.

   Evening. The boy sat at the table, staring absently at his geography book. He shifted unhappily, turning the pages. At last he closed the book. He slid from his chair and went to the closet. He was reaching into the closet for the bulging carton when a voice came drifting to him from the dresser-top.
   “Later. You can play with them later. I must discuss something with you.”
   The boy turned back to the table, his face listless and tired. He nodded, sinking down against the table, his head on his arms.
   “You’re not asleep, are you?” My Lord said.
   “No.”
   “Then listen. Tomorrow when you leave school I want you to go to a certain address. It’s not far from the school. It’s a toy store. Perhaps you know it. Don’s Toyland.”
   “I haven’t any money.”
   “It doesn’t matter. This has all been arranged for long in advance. Go to Toyland and say to the man: ‘I was told to come for the package.’ Can you remember that? ‘I was told to come for the package.’ “
   “What’s in the package?”
   “Some tools, and some toys for you. To go along with me.” The metal figure rubbed its hands together. “Nice modern toys, two toy tanks and a machine gun. And some spare parts for—”
   There were footsteps on the stairs outside.
   “Don’t forget,” My Lord said nervously. “You’ll do it? This phase of the plan is extremely important.”
   It wrung its hands together in anxiety.

   The boy brushed the last strands of hair into place. He put his cap on and picked up his school books. Outside, the morning was gray and dismal. Rain fell, slowly, soundlessly.
   Suddenly the boy set his books down again. He went to the closet and reached inside. His fingers closed over Teddo’s leg, and he drew him out.
   The boy sat on the bed, holding Teddo against his cheek. For a long time he sat with the stuffed bear, oblivious to everything else.
   Abruptly he looked toward the dresser. My Lord was lying outstretched, silent. Bobby went hurriedly back to the closet and laid Teddo into the carton. He crossed the room to the door. As he opened the door the little metal figure on the dresser stirred.
   “Remember Don’s Toyland…”
   The door closed. My Lord heard the Child going heavily down the stairs, clumping unhappily. My Lord exulted. It was working out all right. Bobby wouldn’t want to do it, but he would. And once the tools and parts and weapons were safely inside there wouldn’t be any chance of failure.
   Perhaps they would capture a second factory. Or better yet: build dies and machines themselves to turn out larger Lords. Yes, if only they could be larger, just a little larger. They were so small, so very tiny, only a few inches high. Would the Movement fail, pass away, because they were too tiny, too fragile?
   But with tanks and guns! Yet, of all the packages so carefully secreted in the toyshop, this would be the only one, the only one to be—
   Something moved.
   My Lord turned quickly. From the closet Teddo came, lumbering slowly.
   “Bonzo,” he said. “Bonzo, go over by the window. I think it came in that way, if I’m not mistaken.”
   The stuffed rabbit reached the window-sill in one skip. He huddled, gazing outside. “Nothing yet.”
   “Good.” Teddo moved toward the dresser. He looked up. “Little Lord, please come down. You’ve been up there much too long.”
   My Lord stared. Fred, the rubber pig, was coming out of the closet. Puffing, he reached the dresser. “I’ll go up and get it,” he said. “I don’t think it will come down by itself. We’ll have to help it.”
   “What are you doing?” My Lord cried. The rubber pig was settling himself on his haunches, his ears down flat against his head. “What’s happening?”
   Fred leaped. And at the same time Teddo began to climb swiftly, catching onto the handles of the dresser. Expertly, he gained the top. My Lord was edging toward the wall, glancing down at the floor, far below.
   “So this is what happened to the others,” it murmured. “I understand. An Organization, waiting for us. Then everything is known.”
   It leaped.

   When they had gathered up the pieces and had got them under the carpet, Teddo said:
   “That part was easy. Let’s hope the rest won’t be any harder.”
   “What do you mean?” Fred said.
   “The package of toys. The tanks and guns.”
   “Oh, we can handle them. Remember how we helped next door when that first little Lord, the first one we ever encountered—”
   Teddo laughed. “It did put up quite a fight. It was tougher than this one. But we had the panda bears from across the way.”
   “We’ll do it again,” Fred said. “I’m getting so I rather enjoy it.”
   “Me, too,” Bonzo said from the window.

Beyond Lies the Wub

   They had almost finished with the loading. Outside stood the Optus, his arms folded, his face sunk in gloom. Captain Franco walked leisurely down the gangplank, grinning.
   “What’s the matter?” he said. “You’re getting paid for all this.”
   The Optus said nothing. He turned away, collecting his robes. The Captain put his boot on the hem of the robe.
   “Just a minute. Don’t go off. I’m not finished.”
   “Oh?” The Optus turned with dignity. “I am going back to the village.” He looked toward the animals and birds being driven up the gangplank into the spaceship. “I must organize new hunts.”
   Franco lit a cigarette. “Why not? You people can go out into the veldt and track it all down again. But when we run halfway between Mars and Earth—”
   The Optus went off, wordless. Franco joined the first mate at the bottom of the gangplank.
   “How’s it coming?” he asked. He looked at his watch. “We got a good bargain here.”
   The mate glanced at him sourly. “How do you explain that?”
   “What’s the matter with you? We need it more than they do.”
   “I’ll see you later, Captain.” The mate threaded his way up the plank, between the long-legged Martian go-birds, into the ship. Franco watched him disappear. He was just starting up after him, up the plank toward the port, when he saw it.
   “My God!” He stood staring, his hands on his hips. Peterson was walking along the path, his face red, leading it by a string.
   “I’m sorry, Captain” he said, tugging at the string. Franco walked toward him.
   “What is it?”
   The wub stood sagging, its great body settling slowly. It was sitting down, its eyes half shut. A few flies buzzed about its flank, and it switched its tail. It sat. There was silence.
   “It’s a wub,” Peterson said. “I got it from a native for fifty cents. He said it was a very unusual animal. Very respected.”
   “This?” Franco poked the great sloping side of the wub. “It’s a pig! A huge dirty pig!”
   “Yes sir, it’s a pig. The natives call it a wub.”
   “A huge pig. It must weigh four hundred pounds.” Franco grabbed a tuft of the rough hair. The wub gasped. Its eyes opened, small and moist. Then its great mouth twitched.
   A tear rolled down the wub’s cheek and splashed on the floor.
   “Maybe it’s good to eat,” Peterson said nervously.
   “We’ll soon find out,” Franco said.

   The wub survived the takeoff, sound asleep in the hold of the ship. When they were out in space and everything was running smoothly, Captain Franco bade his men fetch the wub upstairs so that he might perceive what manner of beast it was.
   The wub grunted and wheezed, squeezing up the passageway.
   “Come on,” Jones grated, pulling at the rope. The wub twisted, rubbing its skin off on the smooth chrome walls. It burst into the anteroom, tumbling down in a heap. The men leaped up.
   “Good Lord,” French said. “What is it?”
   “Peterson says it’s a wub,” Jones said. “It belongs to him.” He kicked at the wub. The wub stood up unsteadily, panting.
   “What’s the matter with it?” French came over. “Is it going to be sick?”
   They watched. The wub rolled its eyes mournfully. It gazed around at the men.
   “I think it’s thirsty,” Peterson said. He went to get some water. French shook his head.
   “No wonder we had so much trouble taking off. I had to reset all my ballast calculations.”
   Peterson came back with the water. The wub began to lap gratefully, splashing the men.
   Captain Franco appeared at the door.
   “Let’s have a look at it.” He advanced, squinting critically. “You got this for fifty cents?”
   “Yes, sir,” Peterson said. “It eats almost anything. I fed it on grain and it liked that. And then potatoes, and mash, and scraps from the table, and milk. It seems to enjoy eating. After it eats it lies down and goes to sleep.”
   “I see,” Captain Franco said. “Now, as to its taste. That’s the real question. I doubt if there’s much point in fattening it up any more. It seems fat enough to me already. Where’s the cook? I want him here. I want to find out—”
   The wub stopped lapping and looked up at the Captain. “Really, Captain,” the wub said. “I suggest we talk of other matters.”
   The room was silent.
   “What was that?” Franco said. “Just now.”
   “The wub, sir,” Peterson said. “It spoke.” They all looked at the wub.
   “What did it say? What did it say?”
   “It suggested we talk about other things.”
   Franco walked toward the wub. He went all around it, examining it from every side. Then he came back over and stood with the men.
   “I wonder if there’s a native inside it,” he said thoughtfully. “Maybe we should open it up and have a look.”
   “Oh, goodness!” the wub cried. “Is that all you people can think of, killing and cutting?”
   Franco clenched his fists. “Come out of there! Whoever you are, come out!”
   Nothing stirred. The men stood together, their faces blank, staring at the wub. The wub swished its tail. It belched suddenly. “I beg your pardon,” the wub said.
   “I don’t think there’s anyone in there,” Jones said in a low voice. They all looked at each other. The cook came in.
   “You wanted me, Captain?” he said. “What’s this thing?”
   “This is a wub,” Franco said. “It’s to be eaten. Will you measure it and figure out—”
   “I think we should have a talk,” the wub said. “I’d like to discuss this with you, Captain, if I might. I can see that you and I do not agree on some basic issues.”
   The Captain took a long time to answer. The wub waited good-naturedly, licking the water from its jowls.
   “Come into my office,” the Captain said at last. He turned and walked out of the room. The wub rose and padded after him. The men watched it go out. They heard it climbing the stairs.
   “I wonder what the outcome will be,” the cook said. “Well, I’ll be in the kitchen. Let me know as soon as you hear.”
   “Sure,” Jones said. “Sure.”

   The wub eased itself down in the corner with a sigh. “You must forgive me,” it said. “I’m afraid I’m addicted to various forms of relaxation. When one is as large as I—”
   The Captain nodded impatiently. He sat down at his desk and folded his hands.
   “All right,” he said. “Let’s get started. You’re a wub? Is that correct?”
   The wub shrugged. “I suppose so. That’s what they call us, the natives, I mean. We have our own term.”
   “And you speak English? You’ve been in contact with Earthmen before?”
   “No.”
   “Then how do you do it?”
   “Speak English? Am I speaking English? I’m not conscious of speaking anything in particular. I examined your mind—”
   “My mind?”
   “I studied the contents, especially the semantic warehouse, as I refer to it—”
   “I see,” the Captain said. “Telepathy. Of course.”
   “We are a very old race,” the wub said. “Very old and very ponderous. It is difficult for us to move around. You can appreciate anything so slow and heavy would be at the mercy of more agile forms of life. There was no use in our relying on physical defenses. How could we win? Too heavy to run, too soft to fight, too good-natured to hunt for game—”
   “How do you live?”
   “Plants. Vegetables. We can eat almost anything. We’re very catholic. Tolerant, eclectic, catholic. We live and let live. That’s how we’ve gotten along.”
   The wub eyed the Captain.
   “And that’s why I so violently objected to this business about having me boiled. I could see the image in your mind—most of me in the frozen food locker, some of me in the kettle, a bit for your pet cat—”
   “So you read minds?” the Captain said. “How interesting. Anything else? I mean, what else can you do along those lines?”
   “A few odds and ends,” the wub said absently, staring around the room. “A nice apartment you have here, Captain. You keep it quite neat. I respect life-forms that are tidy. Some Martian birds are quite tidy. They throw things out of their nests and sweep them—”
   “Indeed.” The Captain nodded. “But to get back to the problem…”
   “Quite so. You spoke of dining on me. The taste, I am told, is good. A little fatty, but tender. But how can any lasting contact be established between your people and mine if you resort to such barbaric attitudes? Eat me? Rather you should discuss questions with me, philosophy, the arts—”
   The Captain stood up. “Philosophy. It might interest you to know that we will be hard put to find something to eat for the next month. An unfortunate spoilage—”
   “I know.” The wub nodded. “But wouldn’t it be more in accord with your principles of democracy if we all drew straws, or something along that line? After all, democracy is to protect the minority from just such infringements. Now, if each of us casts one vote—”
   The Captain walked to the door.
   “Nuts to you,” he said. He opened the door. He opened his mouth.
   He stood frozen, his mouth wide, his eyes staring, his fingers still on the knob.
   The wub watched him. Presently it padded out of the room, edging past the Captain. It went down the hall, deep in meditation.

   The room was quiet.
   “So you see,” the wub said, “we have a common myth. Your mind contains many familiar myth symbols. Ishtar, Odysseus—”
   Peterson sat silently, staring at the floor. He shifted in his chair.
   “Go on,” he said. “Please go on.”
   “I find in your Odysseus a figure common to the mythology of most self-conscious races. As I interpret it, Odysseus wanders as an individual aware of himself as such. This is the idea of separation, of separation from family and country. The process of individuation.”
   “But Odysseus returns to his home.” Peterson looked out the port window, at the stars, endless stars, burning intently in the empty universe. “Finally he goes home.”
   “As must all creatures. The moment of separation is a temporary period, a brief journey of the soul. It begins, it ends. The wanderer returns to land and race…”
   The door opened. The wub stopped, turning its great head. Captain Franco came into the room, the men behind him. They hesitated at the door.
   “Are you all right?” French said.
   “Do you mean me?” Peterson said, surprised. “Why me?”
   Franco lowered his gun. “Come over here,” he said to Peterson. “Get up and come here.”
   There was silence.
   “Go ahead,” the wub said. “It doesn’t matter.”
   Peterson stood up. “What for?”
   “It’s an order.”
   Peterson walked to the door. French caught his arm.
   “What’s going on?” Peterson wrenched loose. “What’s the matter with you?”
   Captain Franco moved toward the wub. The wub looked up from where it lay in the corner, pressed against the wall.
   “It is interesting,” the wub said, “that you are obsessed with the idea of eating me. I wonder why.”
   “Get up,” Franco said.
   “If you wish.” The wub rose, grunting. “Be patient. It is difficult for me.” It stood, gasping, its tongue lolling foolishly.
   “Shoot it now,” French said.
   “For God’s sake!” Peterson exclaimed. Jones turned to him quickly, his eyes gray with fear.
   “You didn’t see him—like a statue, standing there, his mouth open. If we hadn’t come down, he’d still be there.”
   “Who? The Captain?” Peterson stared around. “But he’s all right now.”
   They looked at the wub, standing in the middle of the room, its great chest rising and falling.
   “Come on,” Franco said. “Out of the way.”
   The men pulled aside toward the door.
   “You are quite afraid, aren’t you?” the wub said. “Have I done anything to you? I am against the idea of hurting. All I have done is try to protect myself. Can you expect me to rush eagerly to my death? I am a sensible being like yourselves. I was curious to see your ship, learn about you. I suggested to the native—”
   The gun jerked.
   “See,” Franco said. “I thought so.”
   The wub settled down, panting. It put its paws out, pulling its tail around it.
   “It is very warm,” the wub said. “I understand that we are close to the jets. Atomic power. You have done many wonderful things with it—technically. Apparently your scientific hierarchy is not equipped to solve moral, ethical—”
   Franco turned to the men, crowding behind him, wide-eyed, silent.
   “I’ll do it. You can watch.”
   French nodded. “Try to hit the brain. It’s no good for eating. Don’t hit the chest. If the rib cage shatters, we’ll have to pick bones out.”
   “Listen,” Peterson said, licking his lips. “Has it done anything? What harm has it done? I’m asking you. And anyhow, it’s still mine. You have no right to shoot it. It doesn’t belong to you.”
   Franco raised his gun.
   “I’m going out,” Jones said, his face white and sick. “I don’t want to see it.”
   “Me, too,” French said. The men straggled out, murmuring. Peterson lingered at the door.
   “It was talking to me about myths,” he said. “It wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
   He went outside.
   Franco walked toward the wub. The wub looked up slowly. It swallowed.
   “A very foolish thing,” it said. “I am sorry that you want to do it. There was a parable that your Saviour related—”
   It stopped, staring at the gun.
   “Can you look me in the eye and do it?” the wub said. “Can you do that?”
   The Captain gazed down. “I can look you in the eye,” he said. “Back on the farm we had hogs, dirty razorback hogs. I can do it.”
   Staring down at the wub, into the gleaming, moist eyes, he pressed the trigger.

   The taste was excellent.
   They sat glumly around the table, some of them hardly eating at all. The only one who seemed to be enjoying himself was Captain Franco.
   “More?” he said, looking around. “More? And some wine, perhaps.”
   “Not me,” French said. “I think I’ll go back to the chart room.”
   “Me, too.” Jones stood up, pushing his chair back. “I’ll see you later.”
   The Captain watched them go. Some of the others excused themselves.
   “What do you suppose the matter is?” the Captain said. He turned to Peterson. Peterson sat staring down at his plate, at the potatoes, the green peas, and at the thick slab of tender, warm meat.
   He opened his mouth. No sound came.
   The Captain put his hand on Peterson’s shoulder.
   “It is only organic matter, now,” he said. “The life essence is gone.” He ate, spooning up the gravy with some bread. “I, myself, love to eat. It is one of the greatest things that a living creature can enjoy. Eating, resting, meditation, discussing things.”
   Peterson nodded. Two more men got up and went out. The Captain drank some water and sighed.
   “Well,” he said. “I must say that this was a very enjoyable meal. All the reports I had heard were quite true—the taste of wub. Very fine. But I was prevented from enjoying this in times past.”
   He dabbed at his lips with his napkin and leaned back in his chair. Peterson stared dejectedly at the table.
   The Captain watched him intently. He leaned over.
   “Come, come,” he said. “Cheer up! Let’s discuss things.”
   He smiled.
   “As I was saying before I was interrupted, the role of Odysseus in the myths—”
   Peterson jerked up, staring.
   “To go on,” the Captain said. “Odysseus, as I understand him—”

The Gun

   The Captain peered into the eyepiece of the telescope. He adjusted the focus quickly.
   “It was an atomic fission we saw, all right,” he said presently. He sighed and pushed the eyepiece away. “Any of you who wants to look may do so. But it’s not a pretty sight.”
   “Let me look,” Tance the archeologist said. He bent down to look, squinting. “Good Lord!” He leaped violently back, knocking against Doric, the Chief Navigator.
   “Why did we come all this way, then?” Doric asked, looking around at the other men. “There’s no point even in landing. Let’s go back at once.”
   “Perhaps he’s right,” the biologist murmured. “But I’d like to look for myself, if I may.” He pushed past Tance and peered into the sight.
   He saw a vast expanse, an endless surface of gray, stretching to the edge of the planet. At first he thought it was water but after a moment he realized that it was slag, pitted, fused slag, broken only by hills of rock jutting up at intervals. Nothing moved or stirred. Everything was silent, dead.
   “I see,” Fomar said, backing away from the eyepiece. “Well, I won’t find any legumes there.” He tried to smile, but his lips stayed unmoved. He stepped away and stood by himself, staring past the others.
   “I wonder what the atmospheric sample will show,” Tance said.
   “I think I can guess,” the Captain answered. “Most of the atmosphere is poisoned. But didn’t we expect all this? I don’t see why we’re so surprised. A fission visible as far away as our system must be a terrible thing.”
   He strode off down the corridor, dignified and expressionless. They watched him disappear into the control room.
   As the Captain closed the door the young woman turned. “What did the telescope show? Good or bad?”
   “Bad. No life could possibly exist. Atmosphere poisoned, water vaporized, all the land fused.”
   “Could they have gone underground?”
   The Captain slid back the port window so that the surface of the planet under them was visible. The two of them stared down, silent and disturbed. Mile after mile of unbroken ruin stretched out, blackened slag, pitted and scarred, and occasional heaps of rock.
   Suddenly Nasha jumped. “Look! Over there, at the edge. Do you see it?”
   They stared. Something rose up, not rock, not an accidental formation. It was round, a circle of dots, white pellets on the dead skin of the planet. A city? Buildings of some kind?
   “Please turn the ship,” Nasha said excitedly. She pushed her dark hair from her face. “Turn the ship and let’s see what it is!”
   The ship turned, changing its course. As they came over the white dots the Captain lowered the ship, dropping it down as much as he dared. “Piers,” he said. “Piers of some sort of stone. Perhaps poured artificial stone. The remains of a city.”
   “Oh, dear,” Nasha murmured. “How awful.” She watched the ruins disappear behind them. In a half-circle the white squares jutted from the slag, chipped and cracked, like broken teeth.
   “There’s nothing alive,” the Captain said at last. “I think we’ll go right back; I know most of the crew want to go. Get the Government Receiving Station on the sender and tell them what we found, and that we—”
   He staggered.
   The first atomic shell had struck the ship, spinning it around. The Captain fell to the floor, crashing into the control table. Papers and instruments rained down on him. As he started to his feet the second shell struck. The ceiling cracked open, struts and girders twisted and bent. The ship shuddered, falling suddenly down, then righting itself as automatic controls took over.
   The Captain lay on the floor by the smashed control board. In the corner Nasha struggled to free herself from the debris.
   Outside the men were already sealing the gaping leaks in the side of the ship, through which the precious air was rushing, dissipating into the void beyond. “Help me!” Doric was shouting. “Fire over here, wiring ignited.” Two men came running. Tance watched helplessly, his eyeglasses broken and bent.
   “So there is life here, after all,” he said, half to himself. “But how could—”
   “Give us a hand,” Fomar said, hurrying past. “Give us a hand, we’ve got to land the ship!”

   It was night. A few stars glinted above them, winking through the drifting silt that blew across the surface of the planet.
   Doric peered out, frowning. “What a place to be stuck in.” He resumed his work, hammering the bent metal hull of the ship back into place. He was wearing a pressure suit; there were still many small leaks, and radioactive particles from the atmosphere had already found their way into the ship.
   Nasha and Fomar were sitting at the table in the control room, pale and solemn, studying the inventory lists.
   “Low on carbohydrates,” Fomar said. “We can break down the stored fats if we want to, but—”
   “I wonder if we could find anything outside.” Nasha went to the window. “How uninviting it looks.” She paced back and forth, very slender and small, her face dark with fatigue. “What do you suppose an exploring party would find?”
   Fomar shrugged. “Not much. Maybe a few weeds growing in cracks here and there. Nothing we could use. Anything that would adapt to this environment would be toxic, lethal.”
   Nasha paused, rubbing her cheek. There was a deep scratch there, still red and swollen. “Then how do you explain—it? According to your theory the inhabitants must have died in their skins, fried like yams. But who fired on us? Somebody detected us, made a decision, aimed a gun.”
   “And gauged distance,” the Captain said feebly from the cot in the corner. He turned toward them. “That’s the part that worries me. The first shell put us out of commission, the second almost destroyed us. They were well aimed, perfectly aimed. We’re not such an easy target.”
   “True.” Fomar nodded. “Well, perhaps we’ll know the answer before we leave here. What a strange situation! All our reasoning tells us that no life could exist; the whole planet burned dry, the atmosphere itself gone, completely poisoned.”
   “The gun that fired the projectiles survived,” Nasha said. “Why not people?”
   “It’s not the same. Metal doesn’t need air to breathe. Metal doesn’t get leukemia from radioactive particles. Metal doesn’t need food and water.”
   There was silence.
   “A paradox,” Nasha said. “Anyhow, in the morning I think we should send out a search party. And meanwhile we should keep on trying to get the ship in condition for the trip back.”
   “It’ll be days before we can take off,” Fomar said. “We should keep every man working here. We can’t afford to send out a party.”
   Nasha smiled a little. “We’ll send you in the first party. Maybe you can discover—what was it you were so interested in?”
   “Legumes. Edible legumes.”
   “Maybe you can find some of them. Only—”
   “Only what?”
   “Only watch out. They fired on us once without even knowing who we were or what we came for. Do you suppose that they fought with each other? Perhaps they couldn’t imagine anyone being friendly, under any circumstances. What a strange evolutionary trait, inter-species warfare. Fighting within the race!”
   “We’ll know in the morning,” Fomar said. “Let’s get some sleep.”

   The sun came up chill and austere. The three people, two men and a woman, stepped through the port, dropping down on the hard ground below.
   “What a day,” Doric said grumpily. “I said how glad I’d be to walk on firm ground again, but—”
   “Come on,” Nasha said. “Up beside me. I want to say something to you. Will you excuse us, Tance?”
   Tance nodded gloomily. Doric caught up with Nasha. They walked together, their metal shoes crunching the ground underfoot. Nasha glanced at him.
   “Listen. The Captain is dying. No one knows except the two of us. By the end of the day-period of this planet he’ll be dead. The shock did something to his heart. He was almost sixty, you know.”
   Doric nodded. “That’s bad. I have a great deal of respect for him. You will be captain in his place, of course. Since you’re vice-captain now—”
   “No. I prefer to see someone else lead, perhaps you or Fomar. I’ve been thinking over the situation and it seems to me that I should declare myself mated to one of you, whichever of you wants to be captain. Then I could devolve the responsibility.”
   “Well, I don’t want to be captain. Let Fomar do it.”
   Nasha studied him, tall and blond, striding along beside her in his pressure suit. “I’m rather partial to you,” she said. “We might try it for a time, at least. But do as you like. Look, we’re coming to something.”
   They stopped walking, letting Tance catch up. In front of them was some sort of a ruined building. Doric stared around thoughtfully.
   “Do you see? This whole place is a natural bowl, a huge valley. See how the rock formations rise up on all sides, protecting the floor. Maybe some of the great blast was deflected here.”
   They wandered around the ruins, picking up rocks and fragments. “I think this was a farm,” Tance said, examining a piece of wood. “This was part of a tower windmill.”
   “Really?” Nasha took the stick and turned it over. “Interesting. But let’s go; we don’t have much time.”
   “Look,” Doric said suddenly. “Off there, a long way off. Isn’t that something?” He pointed.
   Nasha sucked in her breath. “The white stones.”
   “What?”
   Nasha looked up at Doric. “The white stones, the great broken teeth. We saw them, the Captain and I, from the control room.” She touched Doric’s arm gently. “That’s where they fired from. I didn’t think we had landed so close.”
   “What is it?” Tance said, coming up to them. “I’m almost blind without my glasses. What do you see?”
   “The city. Where they fired from.”
   “Oh.” All three of them stood together. “Well, let’s go,” Tance said. “There’s no telling what we’ll find there.” Doric frowned at him.
   “Wait. We don’t know what we would be getting into. They must have patrols. They probably have seen us already, for that matter.”
   “They probably have seen the ship itself,” Tance said. “They probably know right now where they can find it, where they can blow it up. So what difference does it make whether we go closer or not?”
   “That’s true,” Nasha said. “If they really want to get us we haven’t a chance. We have no armaments at all; you know that.”
   “I have a hand weapon,” Doric nodded. “Well, let’s go on, then. I suppose you’re right, Tance.”
   “But let’s stay together,” Tance said nervously. “Nasha, you’re going too fast.”
   Nasha looked back. She laughed. “If we expect to get there by nightfall we must go fast.”

   They reached the outskirts of the city at about the middle of the afternoon. The sun, cold and yellow, hung above them in the colorless sky. Doric stopped at the top of a ridge overlooking the city.
   “Well, there it is. What’s left of it.”
   There was not much left. The huge concrete piers which they had noticed were not piers at all, but the ruined foundations of buildings. They had been baked by the searing heat, baked and charred almost to the ground. Nothing else remained, only this irregular circle of white squares, perhaps four miles in diameter.
   Doric spat in disgust. “More wasted time. A dead skeleton of a city, that’s all.”
   “But it was from here that the firing came,” Tance murmured. “Don’t forget that.”
   “And by someone with a good eye and a great deal of experience,” Nasha added. “Let’s go.”
   They walked into the city between the ruined buildings. No one spoke. They walked in silence, listening to the echo of their footsteps.
   “It’s macabre,” Doric muttered. “I’ve seen ruined cities before but they died of old age, old age and fatigue. This was killed, seared to death. This city didn’t die—it was murdered.”
   “I wonder what the city was called,” Nasha said. She turned aside, going up the remains of a stairway from one of the foundations. “Do you think we might find a signpost? Some kind of plaque?”
   She peered into the ruins.
   “There’s nothing there,” Doric said impatiently. “Come on.”
   “Wait.” Nasha bent down, touching a concrete stone. “There’s something inscribed on this.”
   “What is it?” Tance hurried up. He squatted in the dust, running his gloved fingers over the surface of the stone. “Letters, all right.” He took a writing stick from the pocket of his pressure suit and copied the inscription on a bit of paper. Dorle glanced over his shoulder. The inscription was:


Franklin Apartments

   “That’s this city,” Nasha said softly. “That was its name.”
   Tance put the paper in his pocket and they went on. After a time Dorle said, “Nasha, you know, I think we’re being watched. But don’t look around.”
   The woman stiffened. “Oh? Why do you say that? Did you see something?”
   “No. I can feel it, though. Don’t you?”
   Nasha smiled a little. “I feel nothing, but perhaps I’m more used to being stared at.” She turned her head slightly. “Oh!”
   Dorle reached for his hand weapon. “What is it? What do you see?” Tance had stopped dead in his tracks, his mouth half open.
   “The gun,” Nasha said. “It’s the gun.”
   “Look at the size of it. The size of the thing.” Dorle unfastened his hand weapon slowly. “That’s it, all right.”
   The gun was huge. Stark and immense it pointed up at the sky, a mass of steel and glass, set in a huge slab of concrete. Even as they watched the gun moved on its swivel base, whirring underneath. A slim vane turned with the wind, a network of rods atop a high pole.
   “It’s alive,” Nasha whispered. “It’s listening to us, watching us.”
   The gun moved again, this time clockwise. It was mounted so that it could make a full circle. The barrel lowered a trifle, then resumed its original position.
   “But who fires it?” Tance said.
   Dorle laughed. “No one. No one fires it.”
   They stared at him. “What do you mean?”
   “It fires itself.”
   They couldn’t believe him. Nasha came close to him, frowning, looking up at him. “I don’t understand. What do you mean, it fires itself?”
   “Watch, I’ll show you. Don’t move.” Dorle picked up a rock from the ground. He hesitated a moment and the tossed the rock high in the air. The rock passed in front of the gun. Instantly the great barrel moved, the vanes contracted.
   The rock fell to the ground. The gun paused, then resumed its calm swivel, its slow circling.
   “You see,” Dorle said, “it noticed the rock, as soon as I threw it up in the air. It’s alert to anything that flies or moves above the ground level. Probably it detected us as soon as we entered the gravitational field of the planet. It probably had a bead on us from the start. We don’t have a chance. It knows all about the ship. It’s just waiting for us to take off again.”
   “I understand about the rock,” Nasha said, nodding. “The gun noticed it, but not us, since we’re on the ground, not above. It’s only designed to combat objects in the sky. The ship is safe until it takes off again, then the end will come.”
   “But what’s this gun for?” Tance put in. “There’s no one alive here. Everyone is dead.”
   “It’s a machine,” Dorle said. “A machine that was made to do a job. And it’s doing the job. How it survived the blast I don’t know. On it goes, waiting for the enemy. Probably they came by air in some sort of projectiles.”
   “The enemy,” Nasha said. “Their own race. It is hard to believe that they really bombed themselves, fired at themselves.”
   “Well, it’s over with. Except right here, where we’re standing. This one gun, still alert, ready to kill. It’ll go on until it wears out.”
   “And by that time we’ll be dead,” Nasha said bitterly.
   “There must have been hundreds of guns like this,” Dorle murmured. “They must have been used to the sight, guns, weapons, uniforms. Probably they accepted it as a natural thing, part of their lives, like eating and sleeping. An institution, like the church and the state. Men trained to fight, to lead armies, a regular profession. Honored, respected.”
   Tance was walking slowly toward the gun, peering nearsightedly up at it. “Quite complex, isn’t it? All those vanes and tubes. I suppose this is some sort of a telescopic sight.” His gloved hand touched the end of a long tube.
   Instantly the gun shifted, the barrel retracting. It swung—
   “Don’t move!” Dorle cried. The barrel swung past them as they stood, rigid and still. For one terrible moment it hesitated over their heads, clicking and whirring, settling into position. Then the sounds died out and the gun became silent.
   Tance smiled foolishly inside his helmet. “I must have put my finger over the lens. I’ll be more careful.” He made his way up onto the circular slab, stepping gingerly behind the body of the gun. He disappeared from view.
   “Where did he go?” Nasha said irritably. “He’ll get us all killed.”
   “Tance, come back!” Dorle shouted. “What’s the matter with you?”
   “In a minute.” There was a long silence. At last the archeologist appeared. “I think I’ve found something. Come up and I’ll show you.”
   “What is it?”
   “Doric, you said the gun was here to keep the enemy off. I think I know why they wanted to keep the enemy off.”
   They were puzzled.
   “I think I’ve found what the gun is supposed to guard. Come and give me a hand.”
   “All right,” Doric said abruptly. “Let’s go.” He seized Kasha’s hand. “Come on. Let’s see what he’s found. I thought something like this might happen when I saw that the gun was—”
   “Like what?” Nasha pulled her hand away. “What are you talking about? You act as if you knew what he’s found.”
   “I do.” Doric smiled down at her. “Do you remember the legend that all races have, the myth of the buried treasure, and the dragon, the serpent that watches it, guards it, keeping everyone away?”
   She nodded. “Well?”
   Doric pointed up at the gun.
   “That,” he said, “is the dragon. Come on.”

   Between the three of them they managed to pull up the steel cover and lay it to one side. Doric was wet with perspiration when they finished.
   “It isn’t worth it,” he grunted. He stared into the dark yawning hold. “Or is it?”
   Nasha clicked on her hand lamp, shining the beam down the stairs. The steps were thick with dusk and rubble. At the bottom was a steel door.
   “Come on,” Tance said excitedly. He started down the stairs. They watched him reach the door and pull hopefully on it without success. “Give a hand!”
   “All right.” They came gingerly after him. Doric examined the door. It was bolted shut, locked. There was an inscription on the door but he could not read it.
   “Now what?” Nasha said.
   Doric took out his hand weapon. “Stand back. I can’t think of any other way.” He pressed the switch. The bottom of the door glowed red. Presently it began to crumble. Doric clicked the weapon off. “I think we can get through. Let’s try.”
   The door came apart easily. In a few minutes they had carried it away in pieces and stacked the pieces on the first step. Then they went on, flashing the light ahead of them.
   They were in a vault. Dust lay everywhere, on everything, inches thick. Wood crates lined the walls, huge boxes and crates, packages and containers. Tance looked around curiously, his eyes bright.
   “What exactly are all these?” he murmured. “Something valuable, I would think.” He picked up a round drum and opened it. A spool fell to the floor, unwinding a black ribbon. He examined it, holding it up to the light.
   “Look at this!”
   They came around him. “Pictures,” Nasha said. “Tiny pictures.”
   “Records of some kind.” Tance closed the spool up in the drum again. “Look, hundreds of drums.” He flashed the light around. “And those crates. Let’s open one.”
   Doric was already prying at the wood. The wood had turned brittle and dry. He managed to pull a section away.
   It was a picture. A boy in a blue garment, smiling pleasantly, staring ahead, young and handsome. He seemed almost alive, ready to move toward them in the light of the hand lamp. It was one of them, one of the ruined race, the race that had perished.
   For a long time they stared at the picture. At last Doric replaced the board.
   “All these other crates,” Nasha said. “More pictures. And these drums. What are in the boxes?”
   “This is their treasure,” Tance said, almost to himself. “Here are their pictures, their records. Probably all their literature is here, their stories, their myths, their ideas about the universe.”
   “And their history,” Nasha said. “We’ll be able to trace their development and find out what it was that made them become what they were.”
   Doric was wandering around the vault. “Odd,” he murmured. “Even at the end, even after they had begun to fight they still knew, someplace down inside them, that their real treasure was this, their books and pictures, their myths. Even after their big cities and buildings and industries were destroyed they probably hoped to come back and find this. After everything else was gone.”
   “When we get back home we can agitate for a mission to come here,” Tance said. “All this can be loaded up and taken back. We’ll be leaving about—”
   He stopped.
   “Yes,” Doric said dryly. “We’ll be leaving about three day-periods from now. We’ll fix the ship, then take off. Soon we’ll be home, that is, if nothing happens. Like being shot down by that—”
   “Oh, stop it,” Nasha said impatiently. “Leave him alone. He’s right: all this must be taken back home, sooner or later. We’ll have to solve the problem of the gun. We have no choice.”
   Doric nodded. “What’s your solution, then? As soon as we leave the ground we’ll be shot down.” His face twisted bitterly. “They’ve guarded their treasure too well. Instead of being preserved it will lie here until it rots. It serves them right.”
   “How?”
   “Don’t you see? This was the only way they knew, building a gun and setting it up to shoot anything that came along. They were so certain that everything was hostile, the enemy, coming to take their possessions away from them. Well, they can keep them.”
   Nasha was deep in thought, her mind far away. Suddenly she gasped. “Doric,” she said. “What’s the matter with us? We have no problem. The gun is no menace at all.”
   The two men stared at her.
   “No menace?” Doric said. “It’s already shot us down once. And as soon as we take off again—”
   “Don’t you see?” Nasha began to laugh. “The poor foolish gun, it’s completely harmless. Even I could deal with it.”
   “You?”
   Her eyes were flashing. “With a crowbar. With a hammer or a stick of wood. Let’s go back to the ship and load up. Of course we’re at its mercy in the air: that’s the way it was made. It can fire into the sky, shoot down anything that flies. But that’s all. Against something on the ground it has no defenses. Isn’t that right?”
   Doric nodded slowly. “The soft underbelly of the dragon. In the legend, the dragon’s armor doesn’t cover its stomach.” He began to laugh. “That’s right. That’s perfectly right.”
   “Let’s go, then,” Nasha said. “Let’s get back to the ship. We have work to do here.”

   It was early the next morning when they reached the ship. During the night the Captain had died, and the crew had ignited his body, according to custom. They had stood solemnly around it until the last ember died. As they were going back to their work the woman and the two men appeared, dirty and tired, still excited.
   And presently, from the ship, a line of people came, each carrying something in his hands. The line marched across the gray slag, the eternal expanse of fused metal. When they reached the weapon they all fell on the gun at once, with crowbars, hammers, anything that was heavy and hard.
   The telescopic sights shattered into bits. The wiring was pulled out, torn to shreds. The delicate gears were smashed, dented.
   Finally the warheads themselves were carried off and the firing pins removed.
   The gun was smashed, the great weapon destroyed. The people went down into the vault and examined the treasure. With its metal-armored guardian dead there was no danger any longer. They studied the pictures, the films, the crates of books, the jeweled crowns, the cups, the statues.
   At last, as the sun was dipping into the gray mists that drifted across the planet they came back up the stairs again. For a moment they stood around the wrecked gun looking at the unmoving outline of it.
   Then they started back to the ship. There was still much work to be done. The ship had been badly hurt, much had been damaged and lost. The important thing was to repair it as quickly as possible, to get it into the air.
   With all of them working together it took just five more days to make it spaceworthy.

   Nasha stood in the control room, watching the planet fall away behind them. She folded her arms, sitting down on the edge of the table.
   “What are you thinking?” Doric said.
   “I? Nothing.”
   “Are you sure?”
   “I was thinking that there must have been a time when this planet was quite different, when there was life on it.”
   “I suppose there was. It’s unfortunate that no ships from our system came this far, but then we had no reason to suspect intelligent life until we saw the fission glow in the sky.”
   “And then it was too late.”
   “Not quite too late. After all, their possessions, their music, books, their pictures, all of that will survive. We’ll take them home and study them, and they’ll change us. We won’t be the same afterwards. Their sculpturing, especially. Did you see the one of the great winged creature, without a head or arms? Broken off, I suppose. But those wings—It looked very old. It will change us a great deal.”
   “When we come back we won’t find the gun waiting for us,” Nasha said. “Next time it won’t be there to shoot us down. We can land and take the treasure, as you call it.” She smiled up at Doric. “You’ll lead us back there, as a good captain should.”
   “Captain?” Doric grinned. “Then you’ve decided.”
   Nasha shrugged. “Fomar argues with me too much. I think, all in all, I really prefer you.”
   “Then let’s go,” Doric said. “Let’s go back home.”
   The ship roared up, flying over the ruins of the city. It turned in a huge arc and then shot off beyond the horizon, heading into outer space.

   Down below, in the center of the ruined city, a single half-broken detector vane moved slightly, catching the roar of the ship. The base of the great gun throbbed painfully, straining to turn. After a moment, a red warning light flashed on down inside its destroyed works.
   And a long way off, a hundred miles from the city, another warning light flashed on, far underground. Automatic relays flew into action. Gears turned, belts whined. On the ground above a section of metal slag slipped back. A ramp appeared.
   A moment later a small cart rushed to the surface.
   The cart turned toward the city. A second cart appeared behind it. It was loaded with wiring cables. Behind it a third cart came, loaded with telescopic tube sights. And behind came more carts, some with relays, some with firing controls, some with tools and parts, screws and bolts, pins and nuts. The final one contained atomic warheads.
   The carts lined up behind the first one, the lead cart. The lead cart started off, across the frozen ground, bumping calmly along, followed by the others. Moving toward the city.
   To the damaged gun.

The Skull

   “What is this opportunity?” Conger asked. “Go on. I’m interested.”
   The room was silent; all faces were fixed on Conger—still in the drab prison uniform. The Speaker leaned forward slowly.
   “Before you went to prison your trading business was paying well—all illegal—all very profitable. Now you have nothing, except the prospect of another six years in a cell.”
   Conger scowled.
   “There is a certain situation, very important to this Council, that requires your peculiar abilities. Also, it is a situation you might find interesting. You were a hunter, were you not? You’ve done a great deal of trapping, hiding in the bushes, waiting at night for the game? I imagine hunting must be a source of satisfaction to you, the chase, the stalking—”
   Conger sighed. His lips twisted. “All right,” he said. “Leave that out. Get to the point. Who do you want me to kill?”
   The Speaker smiled. “All in proper sequence,” he said softly.

   The car slid to a stop. It was night; there was no light anywhere along the street. Conger looked out. “Where are we? What is this place?”
   The hand of the guard pressed into his arm. “Come. Through that door.”
   Conger stepped down, onto the damp sidewalk. The guard came swiftly after him, and then the Speaker. Conger took a deep breath of the cold air. He studied the dim outline of the building rising up before them.
   “I know this place. I’ve seen it before.” He squinted, his eyes growing accustomed to the dark. Suddenly he became alert. “This is—”
   “Yes. The First Church.” The Speaker walked toward the steps. “We’re expected.”
   “Expected? Here?”
   “Yes.” The Speaker mounted the stairs.
   “You know we’re not allowed in their Churches, especially with guns!” He stopped. Two armed soldiers loomed up ahead, one on each side.
   “All right?” The Speaker looked up at them. They nodded. The door of the Church was open. Conger could see other soldiers inside, standing about, young soldiers with large eyes, gazing at the icons and holy images.
   “I see,” he said.
   “It was necessary,” the Speaker said. “As you know, we have been singularly unfortunate in the past in our relations with the First Church.”
   “This won’t help.”
   “But it’s worth it. You will see.”

   They passed through the hall and into the main chamber where the altar piece was, and the kneeling places. The Speaker scarcely glanced at the altar as they passed by. He pushed open a small side door and beckoned Conger through.
   “In here. We have to hurry. The faithful will be flocking in soon.”
   Conger entered, blinking. They were in a small chamber, low-ceilinged, with dark panels of old wood. There was a smell of ashes and smoldering spices in the room. He sniffed. “What’s that? The smell.”
   “Cups on the wall. I don’t know.” The Speaker crossed impatiently to the far side. “According to our information, it is hidden here by this—”
   Conger looked around the room. He saw books and papers, holy signs and images. A strange low shiver went through him.
   “Does my job involve anyone of the Church? If it does—”
   The Speaker turned, astonished. “Can it be that you believe in the Founder? Is it possible, a hunter, a killer—”
   “No. Of course not. All their business about resignation to death, nonviolence—”
   “What is it, then?”
   Conger shrugged. “I’ve been taught not to mix with such as these. They have strange abilities. And you can’t reason with them.”
   The Speaker studied Conger thoughtfully. “You have the wrong idea. It is no one here that we have in mind. We’ve found that killing them only tends to increase their numbers.”
   “Then why come here? Let’s leave.”
   “No. We came for something important. Something you will need to identify your man. Without it you won’t be able to find him.” A trace of a smile crossed the Speaker’s face. “We don’t want you to kill the wrong person. It’s too important.”
   “I don’t make mistakes.” Conger’s chest rose. “Listen, Speaker—”
   “This is an unusual situation,” the Speaker said. “You see, the person you are after—the person that we are sending you to find—is known only by certain objects here. They are the only traces, the only means of identification. Without them—”
   “What are they?”
   He came toward the Speaker. The Speaker moved to one side. “Look,” he said. He drew a sliding wall away, showing a dark square hole. “In there.”
   Conger squatted down, staring in. He frowned. “A skull! A skeleton!”
   “The man you are after has been dead for two centuries,” the Speaker said. “This is all that remains of him. And this is all you have with which to find him.”
   For a long time Conger said nothing. He stared down at the bones, dimly visible in the recess of the wall. How could a man dead centuries be killed? How could he be stalked, brought down?
   Conger was a hunter, a man who had lived as he pleased, where he pleased. He had kept himself alive by trading, bringing furs and pelts in from the Provinces on his own ship, riding at high speed, slipping through the customs line around Earth.
   He had hunted in the great mountains of the moon. He had stalked through empty Martian cities. He had explored—
   The Speaker said, “Soldier, take these objects and have them carried to the car. Don’t lose any part of them.”
   The soldier went into the cupboard, reaching gingerly, squatting on his heels.
   “It is my hope,” the Speaker continued softly, to Conger, “that you will demonstrate your loyalty to us, now. There are always ways for citizens to restore themselves, to show their devotion to their society. For you I think this would be a very good chance. I seriously doubt that a better one will come. And for your efforts there will be quite a restitution, of course.”
   The two men looked at each other; Conger, thin, unkempt, the Speaker immaculate in his uniform.
   “I understand you,” Conger said. “I mean, I understand this part, about the chance. But how can a man who has been dead two centuries be—”
   “I’ll explain later,” the Speaker said. “Right now we have to hurry.” The soldier had gone out with the bones, wrapped in a blanket held carefully in his arms. The Speaker walked to the door. “Come. They’ve already discovered that we’ve broken in here, and they’ll be coming at any moment.”
   They hurried down the damp steps to the waiting car. A second later the driver lifted the car up into the air, above the house-tops.

   The Speaker settled back in the seat.
   “The First Church has an interesting past,” he said. “I suppose you are familiar with it, but I’d like to speak of a few points that are of relevancy to us.
   “It was in the twentieth century that the Movement began—during one of the periodic wars. The Movement developed rapidly, feeding on the general sense of futility, the realization that each war was breeding greater war, with no end in sight. The Movement posed a simple answer to the problem: Without military preparations—weapons—there could be no war. And without machinery and complex scientific technocracy there could be no weapons.
   “The Movement preached that you couldn’t stop war by planning for it. They preached that man was losing to his machinery and science, that it was getting away from him, pushing him into greater and greater wars. Down with society, they shouted. Down with factories and science! A few more wars and there wouldn’t be much left of the world.
   “The Founder was an obscure person from a small town in the American Middle West. We don’t even know his name. All we know is that one day he appeared, preaching a doctrine of non-violence, non-resistance; no fighting, no paying taxes for guns, no research except for medicine. Live out your life quietly, tending your garden, staying out of public affairs; mind your own business. Be obscure, unknown, poor. Give away most of your possessions, leave the city. At least that was what developed from what he told the people.”
   The car dropped down and landed on a roof.
   “The Founder preached this doctrine, or the germ of it; there’s no telling how much the faithful have added themselves. The local authorities picked him up at once, of course. Apparently they were convinced that he meant it; he was never released. He was put to death, and his body buried secretly. It seemed that the cult was finished.”
   The Speaker smiled. “Unfortunately, some of his disciples reported seeing him after the date of his death. The rumor spread; he had conquered death, he was divine. It took hold, grew. And here we are today, with a First Church, obstructing all social progress, destroying society, sowing the seeds of anarchy—”
   “But the wars,” Conger said. “About them?”
   “The wars? Well, there were no more wars. It must be acknowledged that the elimination of war was the direct result of non-violence practiced on a general scale. But we can take a more objective view of war today. What was so terrible about it? War had a profound selective value, perfectly in accord with the teachings of Darwin and Mendel and others. Without war the mass of useless, incompetent mankind, without training or intelligence, is permitted to grow and expand unchecked. War acted to reduce their numbers; like storms and earthquakes and droughts, it was nature’s way of eliminating the unfit.
   “Without war the lower elements of mankind have increased all out of proportion. They threaten the educated few, those with scientific knowledge and training, the ones equipped to direct society. They have no regard for science or a scientific society, based on reason. And this Movement seeks to aid and abet them. Only when scientists are in full control can the—”
   He looked at his watch and then kicked the car door open. “I’ll tell you the rest as we walk.”
   They crossed the dark roof. “Doubtless you now know whom those bones belonged to, who it is that we are after. He has been dead just two centuries, now, this ignorant man from the Middle West, this Founder. The tragedy is that the authorities of the time acted too slowly. They allowed him to speak, to get his message across. He was allowed to preach, to start his cult. And once such a thing is under way, there’s no stopping it.
   “But what if he had died before he preached? What if none of his doctrines had ever been spoken? It took only a moment for him to utter them, that we know. They say he spoke just once, just one time. Then the authorities came, taking him away. He offered no resistance; the incident was small.”
   The Speaker turned to Conger.
   “Small, but we’re reaping the consequences of it today.”
   They went inside the building. Inside, the soldiers had already laid out the skeleton on a table. The soldiers stood around it, their young faces intense.
   Conger went over to the table, pushing past them. He bent down, staring at the bones. “So these are his remains,” he murmured. “The Founder. The Church has hidden them for two centuries.”
   “Quite so,” the Speaker said. “But now we have them. Come along down the hall.”
   They went across the room to a door. The Speaker pushed it open. Technicians looked up. Conger saw machinery, whirring and turning; benches and retorts. In the center of the room was a gleaming crystal cage.
   The Speaker handed a Slem-gun to Conger. “The important thing to remember is that the skull must be saved and brought back—for comparison and proof. Aim low—at the chest.”
   Conger weighed the gun in his hands. “It feels good,” he said. “I know this gun—that is, I’ve seen them before, but I never used one.”
   The Speaker nodded. “You will be instructed on the use of the gun and the operation of the cage. You will be given all data we have on the time and location. The exact spot was a place called Hudson’s field. About 1960 in a small community outside Denver, Colorado. And don’t forget—the only means of identification you will have will be the skull. There are visible characteristics of the front teeth, especially the left incisor—”
   Conger listened absently. He was watching two men in white carefully wrapping the skull in a plastic bag. They tied it and carried it into the crystal cage. “And if I should make a mistake?”
   “Pick the wrong man? Then find the right one. Don’t come back until you succeed in reaching this Founder. And you can’t wait for him to start speaking; that’s what we must avoid! You must act in advance. Take chances; shoot as soon as you think you’ve found him. He’ll be someone unusual, probably a stranger in the area. Apparently he wasn’t known.”
   Conger listened dimly.
   “Do you think you have it all now?” the Speaker asked.
   “Yes. I think so.” Conger entered the crystal cage and sat down, placing his hands on the wheel.
   “Good luck,” the Speaker said. “We’ll be awaiting the outcome. There’s some philosophical doubt as to whether one can alter the past. This should answer the question once and for all.”
   Conger fingered the controls of the cage.
   “By the way,” the Speaker said. “Don’t try to use this cage for purposes not anticipated in your job. We have a constant trace on it. If we want it back, we can get it back. Good luck.”
   Conger said nothing. The cage was sealed. He raised his finger and touched the wheel control. He turned the wheel carefully.
   He was still staring at the plastic bag when the room outside vanished.
   For a long time there was nothing at all. Nothing beyond the crystal mesh of the cage. Thoughts rushed through Conger’s mind, helter-skelter. How would he know the man? How could he be certain, in advance? What had he looked like? What was his name? How had he acted, before he spoke? Would he be an ordinary person, or some strange outlandish crank?
   Conger picked up the Slem-gun and held it against his cheek. The metal of the gun was cool and smooth. He practiced moving the sight. It was a beautiful gun, the kind of gun he could fall in love with. If he had owned such a gun in the Martian desert—on the long nights when he had lain, cramped and numbed with cold, waiting for things that moved through the darkness—
   He put the gun down and adjusted the meter readings of the cage. The spiraling mist was beginning to condense and settle. All at once forms wavered and fluttered around him.
   Colors, sounds, movements filtered through the crystal wire. He clamped the controls off and stood up.
   He was on a ridge overlooking a small town. It was high noon. The air was crisp and bright. A few automobiles moved along a road. Off in the distance were some level fields. Conger went to the door and stepped outside. He sniffed the air. Then he went back into the cage.
   He stood before the mirror over the shelf, examining his features. He had trimmed his beard—they had not got him to cut it off—and his hair was neat. He was dressed in the clothing of the middle-twentieth century, the odd collar and coat, the shoes of animal hide. In his pocket was money of the times. That was important. Nothing more was needed.
   Nothing, except his ability, his special cunning. But he had never used it in such a way before.
   He walked down the road toward the town.
   The first things he noticed, were the newspapers on the stands. April 5, 1961. He was not too far off. He looked around him. There was a filling station, a garage, some taverns and a ten-cent store. Down the street was a grocery store and some public buildings.
   A few minutes later he mounted the stairs of the little public library and passed through the doors into the warm interior.
   The librarian looked up, smiling.
   “Good afternoon,” she said.
   He smiled, not speaking because his words would not be correct; accented and strange, probably. He went over to a table and sat down by a heap of magazines. For a moment he glanced through them. Then he was on his feet again. He crossed the room to a wide rack against the wall. His heart began to beat heavily.
   Newspapers—weeks on end. He took a roll of them over to the table and began to scan them quickly. The print was odd, the letters strange. Some of the words were unfamiliar.
   He set the papers aside and searched farther. At last he found what he wanted. He carried the Cherrywood Gazette to the table and opened it to the first page. He found what he wanted:


Prisoner Hangs Self


   An unidentified man, held by the county sheriff’s office for suspicion of criminal syndicalism, was found dead this morning, by—


   He finished the item. It was vague, uninforming. He needed more. He carried the Gazette back to the racks and then, after a moment’s hesitation, approached the librarian.
   “More?” he asked. “More papers. Old ones?”
   She frowned. “How old? Which papers?”
   “Months old. And before.”
   “Of the Gazette? This is all we have. What did you want? What are you looking for? Maybe I can help you.”
   He was silent.
   “You might find older issues at the Gazette office,” the woman said, taking off her glasses. “Why don’t you try there? But if you’d tell me, maybe I could help you—”
   He went out.
   The Gazette office was down a side street; the sidewalk was broken and cracked. He went inside. A heater glowed in the corner of the small office. A heavy-set man stood up and came slowly over to the counter.
   “What did you want, mister?” he said.
   “Old papers. A month. Or more.”
   “To buy? You want to buy them?”
   “Yes.” He held out some of the money he had. The man stared.
   “Sure,” he said. “Sure. Wait a minute.” He went quickly out of the room. When he came back he was staggering under the weight of his armload, his face red. “Here are some,” he grunted. “Took what I could find. Covers the whole year. And if you want more—”
   Conger carried the papers outside. He sat down by the road and began to go through them.
   What he wanted was four months back, in December. It was a tiny item, so small that he almost missed it. His hands trembled as he scanned it, using the small dictionary for some of the archaic terms.


Man Arrested for Unlicensed Demonstration


   An unidentified man who refused to give his name was picked up in Cooper Creek by special agents of the sheriff’s office, according to Sheriff Duff. It was said the man was recently noticed in this area and had been watched continually. It was—


   Cooper Creek. December, 1960. His heart pounded. That was all he needed to know. He stood up, shaking himself, stamping his feet on the cold ground. The sun had moved across the sky to the very edge of the hills. He smiled. Already he had discovered the exact time and place. Now he needed only to go back, perhaps to November, to Cooper Creek—
   He walked back through the main section of town, past the library, past the grocery store. It would not be hard; the hard part was over. He would go there; rent a room, prepare to wait until the man appeared.
   He turned the corner. A woman was coming out of a doorway loaded down with packages. Conger stepped aside to let her pass. The woman glanced at him. Suddenly her face turned white. She stared, her mouth open.
   Conger hurried on. He looked back. What was wrong with her? The woman was still staring; she had dropped the packages to the ground. He increased his speed. He turned a second corner and went up a side street. When he looked back again the woman had come to the entrance of the street and was starting after him. A man joined her, and the two of them began to run toward him.
   He lost them and left town, striding quickly, easily, up into the hills at the edge of town. When he reached the cage he stopped. What had happened? Was it something about his clothing? His dress?
   He pondered. Then, as the sun set, he stepped into the cage.
   Conger sat before the wheel. For a moment he waited, his hands resting lightly on the control. Then he turned the wheel, just a little, following the control readings carefully.
   The grayness settled down around him.
   But not for very long.

   The man looked him over critically. “You better come inside,” he said. “Out of the cold.”
   “Thanks.” Conger went gratefully through the open door, into the living room. It was warm and close from the heat of the little kerosene heater in the corner. A woman, large and shapeless in her flowered dress, came from the kitchen. She and the man studied him critically.
   “It’s a good room,” the woman said. “I’m Mrs. Appleton. It’s got heat. You need that this time of year.”
   “Yes.” He nodded, looking around.
   “You want to eat with us?”
   “What?”
   “You want to eat with us?” The man’s brows knitted. “You’re not a foreigner, are you, mister?”
   “No.” He smiled. “I was born in this country. Quite far west, though.”
   “California?”
   “No.” He hesitated. “Oregon.”
   “What’s it like up there?” Mrs. Appleton asked. “I hear there’s a lot of trees and green. It’s so barren here. I come from Chicago, myself.”
   “That’s the Middle West,” the man said to her. “You ain’t no foreigner.”
   “Oregon isn’t foreign, either,” Conger said. “It’s part of the United States.”
   The man nodded absently. He was staring at Conger’s clothing.
   “That’s a funny suit you got on, mister,” he said. “Where’d you get that?”
   Conger was lost. He shifted uneasily. “It’s a good suit,” he said. “Maybe I better go some other place, if you don’t want me here.”
   They both raised their hands protestingly. The woman smiled at him. “We just have to look out for those Reds. You know, the government is always warning us about them.”
   “The Reds?” He was puzzled.
   “The government says they’re all around. We’re supposed to report anything strange or unusual, anybody doesn’t act normal.”
   “Like me?”
   They looked embarrassed. “Well, you don’t look like a Red to me,” the man said. “But we have to be careful. The Tribune says—”
   Conger half listened. It was going to be easier than he had thought. Clearly, he would know as soon as the Founder appeared. These people, so suspicious of anything different, would be buzzing and gossiping and spreading the story. All he had to do was lie low and listen, down at the general store, perhaps. Or even here, in Mrs. Appleton’s boarding house.
   “Can I see the room?” he said.
   “Certainly.” Mrs. Appleton went to the stairs. “I’ll be glad to show it to you.”
   They went upstairs. It was colder upstairs, but not nearly as cold as outside. Nor as cold as nights on the Martian deserts. For that he was grateful.

   He was walking slowly around the store, looking at the cans of vegetables, the frozen packages offish and meats shining and clean in the open refrigerator counters.
   Ed Davies came toward him. “Can I help you?” he said. The man was a little oddly dressed, and with a beard! Ed couldn’t help smiling.
   “Nothing,” the man said in a funny voice. “Just looking.”
   “Sure,” Ed said. He walked back behind the counter. Mrs. Hacket was wheeling her cart up.
   “Who’s he?” she whispered, her sharp face turned, her nose moving, as if it were sniffing. “I never seen him before.”
   “I don’t know.”
   “Looks funny to me. Why does he wear a beard? No one else wears a beard. Must be something the matter with him.”
   “Maybe he likes to wear a beard. I had an uncle who—”
   “Wait.” Mrs. Hacket stiffened. “Didn’t that—what was his name? The Red—that old one. Didn’t he have a beard? Marx. He had a beard.”
   Ed laughed. “This ain’t Karl Marx. I saw a photograph of him once.”
   Mrs. Hacket was staring at him. “You did?”
   “Sure.” He flushed a little. “What’s the matter with that?”
   “I’d sure like to know more about him,” Mrs. Hacket said. “I think we ought to know more, for our own good.”

   “Hey, mister! Want a ride?”
   Conger turned quickly, dropping his hand to his belt. He relaxed. Two young kids in a car, a girl and a boy. He smiled at them. “A ride? Sure.”
   Conger got into the car and closed the door. Bill Willet pushed the gas and the car roared down the highway.
   “I appreciate a ride,” Conger said carefully. “I was taking a walk between towns, but it was farther than I thought.”
   “Where are you from?” Lora Hunt asked. She was pretty, small and dark, in her yellow sweater and blue skirt.
   “From Cooper Creek.”
   “Cooper Creek?” Bill said. He frowned. “That’s funny. I don’t remember seeing you before.”
   “Why, do you come from there?”
   “I was born there. I know everybody there.”
   “I just moved in. From Oregon.”
   “From Oregon? I didn’t know Oregon people had accents.”
   “Do I have an accent?”
   “You use words funny.”
   “How?”
   “I don’t know. Doesn’t he, Lora?”
   “You slur them,” Lora said, smiling. “Talk some more. I’m interested in dialects.” She glanced at him, white-teethed. Conger felt his heart constrict.
   “I have a speech impediment.”
   “Oh.” Her eyes widened. “I’m sorry.”
   They looked at him curiously as the car purred along. Conger for his part was struggling to find some way of asking them questions without seeming curious. “I guess people from out of town don’t come here much,” he said.
   “Strangers.”
   “No.” Bill shook his head. “Not very much.”
   “I’ll bet I’m the first outsider for a long time.”
   “I guess so.”
   Conger hesitated. “A friend of mine—someone I know, might be coming through here. Where do you suppose I might—” He stopped. “Would there be anyone certain to see him? Someone I could ask, make sure I don’t miss him if he comes?”
   They were puzzled. “Just keep your eyes open. Cooper Creek isn’t very big.”
   “No. That’s right.”
   They drove in silence. Conger studied the outline of the girl. Probably she was the boy’s mistress. Perhaps she was his trial wife. Or had they developed trial marriage back so far? He could not remember. But surely such an attractive girl would be someone’s mistress by this time; she would be sixteen or so, by her looks. He might ask her sometime, if they ever met again.

   The next day Conger went walking along the one main street of Cooper Creek. He passed the general store, the two filling stations, and then the post office. At the corner was the soda fountain.
   He stopped. Lora was sitting inside, talking to the clerk. She was laughing, rocking back and forth.
   Conger pushed the door open. Warm air rushed around him. Lora was drinking hot chocolate, with whipped cream. She looked up in surprise as he slid into the seat beside her.
   “I beg your pardon,” he said. “Am I intruding?”
   “No.” She shook her head. Her eyes were large and dark. “Not at all.”
   The clerk came over. “What do you want?”
   Conger looked at the chocolate. “Same as she has.”
   Lora was watching Conger, her arms folded, elbows on the counter. She smiled at him. “By the way. You don’t know my name. Lora Hunt.”
   She was holding out her hand. He took it awkwardly, not knowing what to do with it. “Conger is my name,” he murmured.
   “Conger? Is that your last or first name?”
   “Last or first?” He hesitated. “Last. Omar Conger.”
   “Omar?” She laughed. “That’s like the poet, Omar Khayyam.”
   “I don’t know of him. I know very little of poets. We restored very few works of art. Usually only the Church has been interested enough—” He broke off. She was staring. He flushed. “Where I come from,” he finished.
   “The Church? Which church do you mean?”
   “The Church.” He was confused. The chocolate came and he began to sip it gratefully. Lora was still watching him.
   “You’re an unusual person,” she said. “Bill didn’t like you, but he never likes anything different. He’s so—so prosaic. Don’t you think that when aperson gets older he should become—broadened in his outlook?”
   Conger nodded.
   “He says foreign people ought to stay where they belong, not come here. But you’re not so foreign. He means orientals; you know.”
   Conger nodded.
   The screen door opened behind them. Bill came into the room. He stared at them. “Well,” he said.
   Conger turned. “Hello.”
   “Well.” Bill sat down. “Hello, Lora.” He was looking at Conger. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
   Conger tensed. He could feel the hostility of the boy. “Something wrong with that?”
   “No. Nothing wrong with it.”
   There was silence. Suddenly Bill turned to Lora. “Come on. Let’s go.”
   “Go?” She was astonished. “Why?”
   “Just go!” He grabbed her hand. “Come on! The car’s outside.”
   “Why, Bill Willet,” Lora said. “You’re jealous!”
   “Who is this guy?” Bill said. “Do you know anything about him? Look at him, his beard—”
   She flared. “So what? Just because he doesn’t drive a Packard and go to Cooper High!”
   Conger sized the boy up. He was big—big and strong. Probably he was part of some civil control organization.
   “Sorry,” Conger said. “I’ll go.”
   “What’s your business in town?” Bill asked. “What are you doing here? Why are you hanging around Lora?”
   Conger looked at the girl. He shrugged. “No reason. I’ll see you later.”
   He turned away. And froze. Bill had moved. Conger’s fingers went to his belt. Half pressure, he whispered to himself. No more. Half pressure.
   He squeezed. The room leaped around him. He himself was protected by the lining of his clothing, the plastic sheathing inside.
   “My God—” Lora put her hands up. Conger cursed. He hadn’t meant any of it for her. But it would wear off. There was only a half-amp to it. It would tingle.
   Tingle, and paralyze.
   He walked out the door without looking back. He was almost to the corner when Bill came slowly out, holding onto the wall like a drunken man. Conger went on.

   As Conger walked, restless, in the night, a form loomed in front of him. He stopped, holding his breath.
   “Who is it?” a man’s voice came. Conger waited, tense.
   “Who is it?” the man said again. He clicked something in his hand. A light flashed. Conger moved.
   “It’s me,” he said.
   “Who is ‘me’?”
   “Conger is my name. I’m staying at the Appleton’s place. Who are you?”
   The man came slowly up to him. He was wearing a leather jacket. There was a gun at his waist.
   “I’m Sheriff Duff. I think you’re the person I want to talk to. You were in Bloom’s today, about three o’clock?”
   “Bloom’s?”
   “The fountain. Where the kids hang out.” Duff came up beside him, shining his light into Conger’s face. Conger blinked.
   “Turn that thing away,” he said.
   A pause. “All right.” The light flickered to the ground. “You were there. Some trouble broke out between you and the Willet boy. Is that right? You had a beef over his girl—”
   “We had a discussion,” Conger said carefully.
   “Then what happened?”
   “Why?”
   “I’m just curious. They say you did something.”
   “Did something? Did what?”
   “I don’t know. That’s what I’m wondering. They saw a flash, and something seemed to happen. They all blacked out. Couldn’t move.”
   “How are they now?”
   “All right.”
   There was silence.
   “Well?” Duff said. “What was it? A bomb?”
   “A bomb?” Conger laughed. “No. My cigarette lighter caught fire. There was a leak, and the fluid ignited.”
   “Why did they all pass out?”
   “Fumes.”
   Silence. Conger shifted, waiting. His fingers moved slowly toward his belt. The Sheriff glanced down. He grunted.
   “If you say so,” he said. “Anyhow, there wasn’t any real harm done.” He stepped back from Conger. “And that Willet is a trouble-maker.”
   “Good night, then,” Conger said. He started past the Sheriff.
   “One more thing, Mr. Conger. Before you go. You don’t mind if I look at your identification, do you?”
   “No. Not at all.” Conger reached into his pocket. He held his wallet out.
   The Sheriff took it and shined his flashlight on it. Conger watched, breathing shallowly. They had worked hard on the wallet, studying historic documents, relics of the times, all the papers they felt would be relevant.
   Duff handed it back. “Okay. Sorry to bother you.” The light winked off.
   When Conger reached the house he found the Appletons sitting around the television set. They did not look up as he came in. He lingered at the door.
   “Can I ask you something?” he said. Mrs. Appleton turned slowly. “Can I ask you—what’s the date?”
   “The date?” She studied him. “The first of December.”
   “December first! Why, it was just November!”
   They were all looking at him. Suddenly he remembered. In the twentieth century they still used the old twelve month system. November fed directly into December; there was no Quartember between them.
   He gasped. Then it was tomorrow! The second of December! Tomorrow!
   “Thanks,” he said. “Thanks.”
   He went up the stairs. What a fool he was, forgetting. The Founder had been taken into captivity on the second of December, according to the newspaper records. Tomorrow, only twelve hours hence, the Founder would appear to speak to the people and then be dragged away.

   The day was warm and bright. Conger’s shoes crunched the melting crust of snow. On he went, through the trees heavy with white. He climbed a hill and strode down the other side, sliding as he went.
   He stopped to look around. Everything was silent. There was no one in sight. He brought out a thin rod from his waist and turned the handle of it. For a moment nothing happened. Then there was a shimmering in the air.
   The crystal cage appeared and settled slowly down. Conger sighed. It was good to see it again. After all, it was his only way back.
   He walked up on the ridge. He looked around with some satisfaction, his hands on his hips. Hudson’s field was spread out, all the way to the beginning of town. It was bare and flat, covered with a thin layer of snow.
   Here, the Founder would come. Here, he would speak to them. And here the authorities would take him.
   Only he would be dead before they came. He would be dead before he even spoke.
   Conger returned to the crystal globe. He pushed through the door and stepped inside. He took the Slem-gun from the shelf and screwed the bolt into place. It was ready to go, ready to fire. For a moment he considered. Should he have it with him?
   No. It might be hours before the Founder came, and suppose someone approached him in the meantime? When he saw the Founder coming toward the field, then he could go and get the gun.
   Conger looked toward the shelf. There was the neat package. He took it down and unwrapped it.
   He held the skull in his hands, turning it over. In spite of himself, a cold feeling rushed through him. This was the man’s skull, the skull of the Founder, who was still alive, who would come here, this day, who would stand on the field not fifty yards away.
   What if he could see this, his own skull, yellow and corroded? Two centuries old. Would he still speak? Would he speak, if he could see it, the grinning, aged skull? What would there be for him to say, to tell the people? What message could he bring?
   What action would not be futile, when a man could look upon his own aged, yellowed skull? Better they should enjoy their temporary lives, while they still had them to enjoy.
   A man who could hold his own skull in his hands would believe in few causes, few movements. Rather, he would preach the opposite—
   A sound. Conger dropped the skull back on the shelf and took up the gun. Outside something was moving. He went quickly to the door, his heart beating. Was it he? Was it the Founder, wandering by himself in the cold, looking for a place to speak? Was he meditating over his words, choosing his sentences?
   What if he could see what Conger had held!
   He pushed the door open, the gun raised. Lora!
   He stared at her. She was dressed in a wool jacket and boots, her hands in her pockets. A cloud of steam came from her mouth and nostrils. Her breast was rising and falling.
   Silently, they looked at each other. At last Conger lowered the gun. “What is it?” he said. “What are you doing here?” She pointed. She did not seem able to speak. He frowned; what was wrong with her?
   “What is it?” he said. “What do you want?” He looked in the direction she had pointed. “I don’t see anything.”
   “They’re coming.”
   “They? Who? Who are coming?”
   “They are. The police. During the night the Sheriff had the state police send cars. All around, everywhere. Blocking the roads. There’s about sixty of them coming. Some from town, some around behind.” She stopped, gasping. “They said—they said—”
   “What?”
   “They said you were some kind of Communist. They said—”
   Conger went into the cage. He put the gun down on the shelf and came back out. He leaped down and went to the girl.
   “Thanks. You came here to tell me? You don’t believe it?”
   “I don’t know.”
   “Did you come alone?”
   “No. Joe brought me in his truck. From town.”
   “Joe? Who’s he?”
   “Joe French. The plumber. He’s a friend of Dad’s.”
   “Let’s go.” They crossed the snow, up the ridge and onto the field. The little panel truck was parked halfway across the field. A heavy short man was sitting behind the wheel, smoking his pipe. He sat up as he saw the two of them coming toward him.
   “Are you the one?” he said to Conger.
   “Yes. Thanks for warning me.”
   The plumber shrugged. “I don’t know anything about this. Lora says you’re all right.” He turned around. “It might interest you to know some more of them are coming. Not to warn you—Just curious.”
   “More of them?” Conger looked toward the town. Black shapes were picking their way across the snow.
   “People from the town. You can’t keep this sort of thing quiet, not in a small town. We all listen to the police radio; they heard the same way Lora did. Someone tuned in, spread it around—”
   The shapes were getting closer. Conger could make out a couple of them. Bill Willet was there, with some boys from the high school. The Appletons were along, hanging back in the rear.
   “Even Ed Davies,” Conger murmured.
   The storekeeper was toiling onto the field, with three or four other men from the town.
   “All curious as hell,” French said. “Well, I guess I’m going back to town. I don’t want my truck shot full of holes. Come on, Lora.”
   She was looking up at Conger, wide-eyed.
   “Come on,” French said again. “Let’s go. You sure as hell can’t stay here, you know.”
   “Why?”
   “There may be shooting. That’s what they all came to see. You know that don’t you, Conger?”
   “Yes.”
   “You have a gun? Or don’t you care?” French smiled a little. “They’ve picked up a lot of people in their time, you know. You won’t be lonely.”
   He cared, all right! He had to stay here, on the field. He couldn’t afford to let them take him away. Any minute the Founder would appear, would step onto the field. Would he be one of the townsmen, standing silently at the foot of the field, waiting, watching?
   Or maybe he was Joe French. Or maybe one of the cops. Anyone of them might find himself moved to speak. And the few words spoken this day were going to be important for a long time.
   And Conger had to be there, ready when the first word was uttered!
   “I care,” he said. “You go on back to town. Take the girl with you.”
   Lora got stiffly in beside Joe French. The plumber started up the motor. “Look at them, standing there,” he said. “Like vultures. Waiting to see someone get killed.”

   The truck drove away, Lora sitting stiff and silent, frightened now. Conger watched for a moment. Then he dashed back into the woods, between the trees, toward the ridge.
   He could get away, of course. Anytime he wanted to he could get away. All he had to do was to leap into the crystal cage and turn the handles. But he had a job, an important job. He had to be here, here at this place, at this time.
   He reached the cage and opened the door. He went inside and picked up the gun from the shelf. The Slem-gun would take care of them. He notched it up to full count. The chain reaction from it would flatten them all, the police, the curious, sadistic people—
   They wouldn’t take him! Before they got him, all of them would be dead. He would get away. He would escape. By the end of the day they would all be dead, if that was what they wanted, and he—
   He saw the skull.
   Suddenly he put the gun down. He picked up the skull. He turned the skull over. He looked at the teeth. Then he went to the mirror.
   He held the skull up, looking in the mirror. He pressed the skull against his cheek. Beside his own face the grinning skull leered back at him, beside his skull, against his living flesh.
   He bared his teeth. And he knew.
   It was his own skull that he held. He was the one who would die. He was the Founder.
   After a time he put the skull down. For a few minutes he stood at the controls, playing with them idly. He could hear the sound of motors outside, the muffled noise of men. Should he go back to the present, where the Speaker waited? He could escape, of course—
   Escape?
   He turned toward the skull. There it was, his skull, yellow with age. Escape? Escape, when he had held it in his own hands?
   What did it matter if he put it off a month, a year, ten years, even fifty? Time was nothing. He had sipped chocolate with a girl born a hundred and fifty years before his time. Escape? For a little while, perhaps.
   But he could not really escape, no more so than anyone else had ever escaped, or ever would.
   Only, he had held it in his hands, his own bones, his own death’s-head.
   They had not.
   He went out the door and across the field, empty handed. There were a lot of them standing around, gathered together, waiting. They expected a good fight; they knew he had something. They had heard about the incident at the fountain.
   And there were plenty of police—police with guns and tear gas, creeping across the hills and ridges, between the trees, closer and closer. It was an oldstory, in this century.
   One of the men tossed something at him. It fell in the snow by his feet, and he looked down. It was a rock. He smiled.
   “Come on!” one of them called. “Don’t you have any bombs?”
   “Throw a bomb! You with the beard! Throw a bomb!”
   “Let ‘em have it!”
   “Toss a few A Bombs!”
   They began to laugh. He smiled. He put his hands to his hips. They suddenly turned silent, seeing that he was going to speak.
   “I’m sorry,” he said simply. “I don’t have any bombs. You’re mistaken.”
   There was a flurry of murmuring.
   “I have a gun,” he went on. “A very good one. Made by science even more advanced than your own. But I’m not going to use that, either.”
   They were puzzled.
   “Why not?” someone called. At the edge of the group an older woman was watching. He felt a sudden shock. He had seen her before. Where?
   He remembered. The day at the library. As he had turned the corner he had seen her. She had noticed him and been astounded. At the time, he did not understand why.
   Conger grinned. So he would escape death, the man who right now was voluntarily accepting it. They were laughing, laughing at a man who had a gun but didn’t use it. But by a strange twist of science he would appear again, a few months later, after his bones had been buried under the floor of a jail.
   And so, in a fashion, he would escape death. He would die, but then, after a period of months, he would live again, briefly, for an afternoon.
   An afternoon. Yet long enough for them to see him, to understand that he was still alive. To know that somehow he had returned to life.
   And then, finally, he would appear once more, after two hundred years had passed. Two centuries later.
   He would be born again, born, as a matter of fact, in a small trading village on Mars. He would grow up, learning to hunt and trade—
   A police car came on the edge of the field and stopped. The people retreated a little. Conger raised his hands.
   “I have an odd paradox for you,” he said. “Those who take lives will lose their own. Those who kill, will die. But he who gives his own life away will live again!”
   They laughed, faintly, nervously. The police were coming out, walking toward him. He smiled. He had said everything he intended to say. It was a good little paradox he had coined. They would puzzle over it, remember it.
   Smiling, Conger awaited a death foreordained.

The Defenders

   Taylor sat back in his chair reading the morning newspaper. The warm kitchen and the smell of coffee blended with the comfort of not having to go to work. This was his Rest Period, the first for a long time, and he was glad of it. He folded the second section back, sighing with contentment.
   “What is it?” Mary said, from the stove.
   “They pasted Moscow again last night.” Taylor nodded his head in approval. “Gave it a real pounding. One of those R-H bombs. It’s about time.”
   He nodded again, feeling the full comfort of the kitchen, the presence of his plump, attractive wife, the breakfast dishes and coffee. This was relaxation. And the war news was good, good and satisfying. He could feel a justifiable glow at the news, a sense of pride and personal accomplishment. After all, he was an integral part of the war program, not just another factory worker lugging a cart of scrap, but a technician, one of those who designed and planned the nerve-trunk of the war.
   “It says they have the new subs almost perfected. Wait until they get those going.” He smacked his lips with anticipation. “When they start shelling from underwater, the Soviets are sure going to be surprised.”
   “They’re doing a wonderful job,” Mary agreed vaguely. “Do you know what we saw today? Our team is getting a leady to show to the school children. I saw the leady, but only for a moment. It’s good for the children to see what their contributions are going for, don’t you think?”
   She looked around at him.
   “A leady,” Taylor murmured. He put the newspaper slowly down. “Well, make sure it’s decontaminated properly. We don’t want to take any chances.”
   “Oh, they always bathe them when they’re brought down from the surface,” Mary said. “They wouldn’t think of letting them down without the bath. Would they?” She hesitated, thinking back. “Don, you know, it makes me remember—”
   He nodded. “I know.”
   He knew what she was thinking. Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface, they had seen a hospital train discharging the wounded, people who had been showered with sleet. He remembered the way they had looked, the expression on their faces, or as much of their faces as was left. It had not been a pleasant sight.
   There had been a lot of that at first, in the early days before the transfer to undersurface was complete. There had been a lot, and it hadn’t been very difficult to come across it.
   Taylor looked up at his wife. She was thinking too much about it, the last few months. They all were.
   “Forget it,” he said. “It’s all in the past. There isn’t anybody up there now but the leadies, and they don’t mind.”
   “But just the same, I hope they’re careful when they let one of them down here. If one were still hot—”
   He laughed, pushing himself away from the table. “Forget it. This is a wonderful moment; I’ll be home for the next two shifts. Nothing to do but sit around and take things easy. Maybe we can take in a show. OK?”
   “A show? Do we have to? I don’t like to look at all the destruction, the ruins. Sometimes I see some place I remember, like San Francisco. They showed a shot of San Francisco, the bridge broken and fallen in the water, and I got upset. I don’t like to watch.”
   “But don’t you want to know what’s going on? No human beings are getting hurt, you know.”
   “But it’s so awful!” Her face was set and strained. “Please, no, Don.”
   Don Taylor picked up his newspaper sullenly. “All right, but there isn’t a hell of a lot else to do. And don’t forget, their cities are getting it even worse.”
   She nodded. Taylor turned the rough, thin sheets of newspaper. His good mood had soured on him. Why did she have to fret all the time? They were pretty well off, as things went. You couldn’t expect to have everything perfect, living undersurface, with an artificial sun and artificial food. Naturally it was a strain, not seeing the sky or being able to go anyplace or see anything other than metal walls, great roaring factories, the plant-yards, barracks. But it was better than being on surface. And some day it would end and they could return. Nobody wanted to live this way, but it was necessary.
   He turned the page angrily and the poor paper ripped. Damn it, the paper was getting worse quality all the time, bad print, yellow tint—
   Well, they needed everything for the war program. He ought to know that. Wasn’t he one of the planners?
   He excused himself and went into the other room. The bed was still unmade. They had better get it in shape before the seventh hour inspection. There was a one unit fine—
   The vidphone rang. He halted. Who would it be? He went over and clicked it on.
   “Taylor?” the face said, forming into place. It was an old face, gray and grim. “This is Moss. I’m sorry to bother you during Rest Period, but this thing has come up.” He rattled papers. “I want you to hurry over here.”
   Taylor stiffened. “What is it? There’s no chance it could wait?” The calm gray eyes were studying him, expressionless, unjudging. “If you want me to come down to the lab,” Taylor grumbled, “I suppose I can. I’ll get my uniform—”
   “No. Come as you are. And not to the lab. Meet me at second stage as soon as possible. It’ll take you about a half hour, using the fast car up. I’ll see you there.”
   The picture broke and Moss disappeared.
   “What was it?” Mary said, at the door.
   “Moss. He wants me for something.”
   “I knew this would happen.”
   “Well, you didn’t want to do anything, anyhow. What does it matter?” His voice was bitter. “It’s all the same, every day. I’ll bring you back something. I’m going up to second stage. Maybe I’ll be close enough to the surface to—”
   “Don’t! Don’t bring me anything! Not from the surface!”
   “All right, I won’t. But of all the irrational nonsense—” She watched him put on his boots without answering.

   Moss nodded and Taylor fell in step with him, as the older man strode along. A series of loads were going up to the surface, blind cars clanking like ore-trucks up the ramp, disappearing through the stage trap above them. Taylor watched the cars, heavy with tubular machinery of some sort, weapons new to him. Workers were everywhere, in the dark gray uniforms of the labor corps, loading, lifting, shouting back and forth. The stage was deafening with noise.
   “We’ll go up a way,” Moss said, “where we can talk. This is no place to give you details.”
   They took an escalator up. The commercial lift fell behind them, and with it most of the crashing and booming. Soon they emerged on an observation platform, suspended on the side of the Tube, the vast tunnel leading to the surface, not more than half a mile above them now.
   “My God!” Taylor said, looking down the tube involuntarily. “It’s a long way down.”
   Moss laughed. “Don’t look.”
   They opened a door and entered an office. Behind the desk, an officer was sitting, an officer of Internal Security. He looked up.
   “I’ll be right with you, Moss.” He gazed at Taylor studying him. “You’re a little ahead of time.”
   “This is Commander Franks,” Moss said to Taylor. “He was the first to make the discovery. I was notified last night.” He tapped a parcel he carried. “I was let in because of this.”
   Franks frowned at him and stood up. “We’re going up to first stage. We can discuss it there.”
   “First stage?” Taylor repeated nervously. The three of them went down a side passage to a small lift. “I’ve never been up there. Is it all right? It’s not radioactive, is it?”
   “You’re like everyone else,” Franks said. “Old women afraid of burglars. No radiation leaks down to first stage. There’s lead and rock, and what comes down the Tube is bathed.”
   “What’s the nature of the problem?” Taylor asked. “I’d like to know something about it.”
   “In a moment.”
   They entered the lift and ascended. When they stepped out, they were in a hall of soldiers, weapons and uniforms everywhere. Taylor blinked in surprise. So this was first stage, the closest undersurface level to the top! After this stage there was only rock, lead and rock, and the great tubes leading up like the burrows of earthworms. Lead and rock, and above that, where the tubes opened, the great expanse that no living being had seen for eight years, the vast, endless ruin that had once been Man’s home, the place where he had lived, eight years ago.
   Now the surface was a lethal desert of slag and rolling clouds. Endless clouds drifted back and forth, blotting out the red sun. Occasionally something metallic stirred, moving through the remains of a city, threading its way across the tortured terrain of the countryside. A leady, a surface robot, immune to radiation, constructed with feverish haste in the last months before the cold war became literally hot.
   Leadies, crawling along the ground, moving over the oceans or through the skies in slender, blackened craft, creatures that could exist where no life could remain, metal and plastic figures that waged a war Man had conceived, but which he could not fight himself. Human beings had invented war, invented and manufactured the weapons, even invented the players, the fighters, the actors of the war. But they themselves could not venture forth, could not wage it themselves. In all the world—in Russia, in Europe, America, Africa—no living human being remained. They were under the surface, in the deep shelters that had been carefully planned and built, even as the first bombs began to fall.
   It was a brilliant idea and the only idea that could have worked. Up above, on the ruined, blasted surface of what had once been a living planet, the leady crawled and scurried and fought Man’s war. And undersurface, in the depths of the planet, human beings toiled endlessly to produce the weapons to continue the fight, month by month, year by year.
   “First stage,” Taylor said. A strange ache went through him. “Almost to the surface.”
   “But not quite,” Moss said.
   Franks led them through the soldiers, over to one side, near the lip of the Tube.
   “In a few minutes, a lift will bring something down to us from the surface,” he explained. “You see, Taylor, every once in a while Security examines and interrogates a surface leady, one that has been above for a time, to find out certain things. A vidcall is sent up and contact is made with a field headquarters. We need this direct interview; we can’t depend on vidscreen contact alone. The leadies are doing a good job, but we want to make certain that everything is going the way we want it.”
   Franks faced Taylor and Moss and continued: “The lift will bring down a leady from the surface, one of the A-class leadies. There’s an examination chamber in the next room, with a lead wall in the center, so the interviewing officers won’t be exposed to radiation. We find this easier than bathing the leady. It is going right back up; it has a job to get back to.
   “Two days ago, an A-class leady was brought down and interrogated. I conducted the session myself. We were interested in a new weapon the Soviets have been using, an automatic mine that pursues anything that moves. Military had sent instructions up that the mine be observed and reported in detail.
   “This A-class leady was brought down with information. We learned a few facts from it, obtained the usual roll of film and reports, and then sent it back up. It was going out of the chamber, back to the lift, when a curious thing happened. At the time, I thought—”
   Franks broke off. A red light was flashing.
   “That down lift is coming.” He nodded to some soldiers. “Let’s enter the chamber. The leady will be along in a moment.”
   “An A-class leady,” Taylor said. “I’ve seen them on the showscreens, making their reports.”
   “It’s quite an experience,” Moss said. “They’re almost human.”
   They entered the chamber and seated themselves behind the lead wall. After a time, a signal was flashed, and Franks made a motion with his hands.
   The door beyond the wall opened. Taylor peered through his view slot. He saw something advancing slowly, a slender metallic figure moving on a tread, its arm grips at rest by its sides. The figure halted and scanned the lead wall. It stood, waiting.
   “We are interested in learning something,” Franks said. “Before I question you, do you have anything to report on surface conditions?”
   “No. The war continues.” The leady’s voice was automatic and toneless. “We are a little short of fast pursuit craft, the single-seat type. We could use also some—”
   “That has all been noted. What I want to ask you is this. Our contact with you has been through vidscreen only. We must rely on indirect evidence, since none of us goes above. We can only infer what is going on. We never see anything ourselves. We have to take it all secondhand. Some top leaders are beginning to think there’s too much room for error.”
   “Error?” the leady asked. “In what way? Our reports are checked carefully before they’re sent down. We maintain constant contact with you; everything of value is reported. Any new weapons which the enemy is seen to employ—”
   “I realize that,” Franks grunted behind his peep slot. “But perhaps we should see it all for ourselves. Is it possible that there might be a large enough radiation-free area for a human party to ascend to the surface? If a few of us were to come up in lead-lined suits, would we be able to survive long enough to observe conditions and watch things?”
   The machine hesitated before answering. “I doubt it. You can check air samples, of course, and decide for yourselves. But in the eight years since you left, things have continually worsened. You cannot have any real idea of conditions up there. It has become difficult for any moving object to survive for long. There are many kinds of projectiles sensitive to movement. The new mine not only reacts to motion, but continues to pursue the object indefinitely, until it finally reaches it. And the radiation is everywhere.”
   “I see.” Franks turned to Moss, his eyes narrowed oddly. “Well, that was what I wanted to know. You may go.”
   The machine moved back toward its exit. It paused. “Each month the amount of lethal particles in the atmosphere increases. The tempo of the war is gradually—”
   “I understand.” Franks rose. He held out his hand and Moss passed him the package. “One thing before you leave. I want you to examine a new type of metal shield material. I’ll pass you a sample with the tong.”
   Franks put the package in the toothed grip and revolved the tong so that he held the other end. The package swung down to the leady, which took it. They watched it unwrap the package and take the metal plate in its hands. The leady turned the metal over and over.
   Suddenly it became rigid.
   “All right,” Franks said.
   He put his shoulder against the wall and a section slid aside. Taylor gasped—Franks and Moss were hurrying up to the leady!
   “Good God!” Taylor said. “But it’s radioactive!”
   The leady stood unmoving, still holding the metal. Soldiers appeared in the chamber. They surrounded the leady and ran a counter across it carefully.
   “OK, sir,” one of them said to Franks. “It’s as cold as a long winter evening.”
   “Good. I was sure, but I didn’t want to take any chances.”
   “You see,” Moss said to Taylor, “this leady isn’t hot at all. Yet it came directly from the surface, without even being bathed.”
   “But what does it mean?” Taylor asked blankly.
   “It may be an accident,” Franks said. “There’s always the possibility that a given object might escape being exposed above. But this is the second time it’s happened that we know of. There may be others.”
   “The second time?”
   “The previous interview was when we noticed it. The leady was not hot. It was cold, too, like this one.”
   Moss took back the metal plate from the leady’s hands. He pressed the surface carefully and returned it to the stiff, unprotesting fingers.
   “We shorted it out with this, so we could get close enough for a thorough check. It’ll come back on in a second now. We had better get behind the wall again.”
   They walked back and the lead wall swung closed behind them. The soldiers left the chamber.
   “Two periods from now,” Franks said softly, “an initial investigating party will be ready to go surface-side. We’re going up the Tube in suits, up to the top—the first human party to leave undersurface in eight years.”
   “It may mean nothing,” Moss said, “but I doubt it. Something’s going on, something strange. The leady told us no life could exist above without being roasted. The story doesn’t fit.”
   Taylor nodded. He stared through the peep slot at the immobile metal figure. Already the leady was beginning to stir. It was bent in several places, dented and twisted, and its finish was blackened and charred. It was a leady that had been up there a long time; it had seen war and destruction, ruin so vast that no human being could imagine the extent. It had crawled and slunk in a world of radiation and death, a world where no life could exist.
   And Taylor had touched it!
   “You’re going with us,” Franks said suddenly. “I want you along. I think the three of us will go.”

   Mary faced him with a sick and frightened expression. “I know it. You’re going to the surface. Aren’t you?”
   She followed him into the kitchen. Taylor sat down, looking away from her.
   “It’s a classified project,” he evaded. “I can’t tell you anything about it.”
   “You don’t have to tell me. I know. I knew it the moment you came in. There was something on your face, something I haven’t seen there for a long, long time. It was an old look.”
   She came toward him. “But how can they send you to the surface?” She took his face in her shaking hands, making him look at her. There was a strange hunger in her eyes. “Nobody can live up there. Look, look at this!”
   She grabbed up a newspaper and held it in front of him.
   “Look at this photograph. America, Europe, Asia, Africa—nothing but ruins. We’ve seen it every day on the showscreens. All destroyed, poisoned. And they’re sending you up. Why? No living thing can get by up there, not even a weed, or grass. They’ve wrecked the surface, haven’t they? Haven’t they?”
   Taylor stood up. “It’s an order. I know nothing about it. I was told to report to join a scout party. That’s all I know.”
   He stood for a long time, staring ahead. Slowly, he reached for the newspaper and held it up to the light.
   “It looks real,” he murmured. “Ruins, deadness, slag. It’s convincing. All the reports, photographs, films, even air samples. Yet we haven’t seen it for ourselves, not after the first months…”
   “What are you talking about?”
   “Nothing.” He put the paper down. “I’m leaving early after the next Sleep Period. Let’s turn in.”
   Mary turned away, her face hard and harsh. “Do what you want. We might just as well all go up and get killed at once, instead of dying slowly down here, like vermin in the ground.”
   He had not realized how resentful she was. Were they all like that? How about the workers toiling in the factories, day and night, endlessly? The pale, stooped men and women, plodding back and forth to work, blinking in the colorless light, eating synethetics—
   “You shouldn’t be so bitter,” he said.
   Mary smiled a little. “I’m bitter because I know you’ll never come back.” She turned away. “I’ll never see you again, once you go up there.”
   He was shocked. “What? How can you say a thing like that?”
   She did not answer.

   He awakened with the public newscaster screeching in his ears, shouting outside the building.
   “Special news bulletin! Surface forces report enormous Soviets attack with new weapons! Retreat of key groups! All work units report to factories at once!”
   Taylor blinked, rubbing his eyes. He jumped out of bed and hurried to the vidphone. A moment later he was put through to Moss.
   “Listen,” he said. “What about this new attack? Is the project off?” He could see Moss’s desk, covered with reports and papers.
   “No,” Moss said. “We’re going right ahead. Get over here at once.”
   “But—”
   “Don’t argue with me.” Moss held up a handful of surface bulletins, crumpling them savagely. “This is a fake. Come on!” He broke off.
   Taylor dressed furiously, his mind in a daze. Half an hour later, he leaped from a fast car and hurried up the stairs into the Synthetics Building. The corridors were full of men and women rushing in every direction. He entered Moss’s office.
   “There you are,” Moss said, getting up immediately. “Franks is waiting for us at the outgoing station.”
   They went in a Security Car, the siren screaming. Workers scattered out of their way. “What about the attack?” Taylor asked.
   Moss braced his shoulders. “We’re certain that we’ve forced their hand. We’ve brought the issue to a head.”
   They pulled up at the station link of the Tube and leaped out. A moment later they were moving up at high speed toward the first stage.
   They emerged into a bewildering scene of activity. Soldiers were fastening on lead suits, talking excitedly to each other, shouting back and forth. Guns were being given out, instructions passed.
   Taylor studied one of the soldiers. He was armed with the dreaded Bender pistol, the new snub-nosed hand weapon that was just beginning to come from the assembly line. Some of the soldiers looked a little frightened.
   “I hope we’re not making a mistake,” Moss said, noticing his gaze.
   Franks came toward them. “Here’s the program. The three of us are going up first, alone. The soldiers will follow in fifteen minutes.”
   “What are we going to tell the leadies?” Taylor worriedly asked. “We’ll have to tell them something.”
   “We want to observe the new Soviet attack.” Franks smiled ironically. “Since it seems to be so serious, we should be there in person to witness it.”
   “And then what?” Taylor said.
   “That’ll be up to them. Let’s go.”
   In a small car, they went swiftly up the Tube, carried by anti-grav beams from below. Taylor glanced down from time to time. It was a long way back, and getting longer each moment. He sweated nervously inside his suit, gripping his Bender pistol with inexpert fingers.
   Why had they chosen him? Chance, pure chance. Moss had asked him to come along as a Department member. Then Franks had picked him out on the spur of the moment. And now they were rushing toward the surface, faster and faster.
   A deep fear, instilled in him for eight years, throbbed in his mind. Radiation, certain death, a world blasted and lethal—
   Up and up the car went. Taylor gripped the sides and closed his eyes. Each moment they were closer, the first living creatures to go above above the first stage, up the Tube past the lead and rock, up to the surface. The phobic horror shook him in waves. It was death; they all knew that. Hadn’t they seen it in the films a thousand times? The cities, the sleet coming down, the rolling clouds—
   “It won’t be much longer,” Franks said. “We’re almost there. The surface tower is not expecting us. I gave orders that no signal was to be sent.”
   The car shot up, rushing furiously. Taylor’s head spun; he hung on, his eyes shut. Up and up…
   The car stopped. He opened his eyes.
   They were in a vast room, fluorescent-lit, a cavern filled with equipment and machinery, endless mounds of material piled in row after row. Among the stacks, leadies were working silently, pushing trucks and handcarts.
   “Leadies,” Moss said. His face was pale. “Then we’re really on the surface.”
   The leadies were going back and forth with equipment moving the vast stores of guns and spare parts, ammunition and supplies that had been brought to the surface. And this was the receiving station for only one Tube; there were many others, scattered throughout the continent.
   Taylor looked nervously around him. They were really there, above ground, on the surface. This was where the war was.
   “Come on,” Franks said. “A B-class guard is coming our way.”
   They stepped out of the car. A leady was approaching them rapidly. It coasted up in front of them and stopped scanning them with its hand-weapon raised.
   “This is Security,” Franks said. “Have an A-class sent to me at once.”
   The leady hesitated. Other B-class guards were coming, scooting across the floor, alert and alarmed. Moss peered around.
   “Obey!” Franks said in a loud, commanding voice. “You’ve been ordered!”
   The leady moved uncertainly away from them. At the end of the building, a door slid back. Two Class-A leadies appeared, coming slowly toward them. Each had a green stripe across its front.
   “From the Surface Council,” Franks whispered tensely. “This is above ground, all right. Get set.”
   The two leadies approached warily. Without speaking, they stopped close by the men, looking them up and down.
   “I’m Franks of Security. We came from undersurface in order to—”
   “This is incredible,” one leady interrupted him coldly. “You know you can’t live up here. The whole surface is lethal to you. You can’t possibly remain on the surface.”
   “These suits will protect us,” Franks said. “In any case, it’s not your responsibility. What I want is an immediate Council meeting so I can acquaint myself with conditions, with the situation here. Can that be arranged?”
   “You human beings can’t survive up here. And the new Soviet attack is directed at this area. It is in considerable danger.”
   “We know that. Please assemble the Council.” Franks looked around him at the vast room, lit by recessed lamps in the ceiling. An uncertain quality came into his voice. “Is it night or day right now?”
   “Night,” one of the A-class leadies said, after a pause. “Dawn is coming in about two hours.”
   Franks nodded. “We’ll remain at least two hours, then. As a concession to our sentimentality, would you please show us some place where we can observe the sun as it comes up? We would appreciate it.”
   A stir went through the leadies.
   “It is an unpleasant sight,” one of the leadies said. “You’ve seen the photographs; you know what you’ll witness. Clouds of drifting particles blot out the light, slag heaps are everywhere, the whole land is destroyed. For you it will be a staggering sight, much worse than pictures and film can convey.”
   “However it may be, we’ll stay long enough to see it. Will you give the order to the Council?”
   “Come this way.” Reluctantly, the two leadies coasted toward the wall of the warehouse. The three men trudged after them, their heavy shoes ringing against the concrete. At the wall, the two leadies paused.
   “This is the entrance to the Council Chamber. There are windows in the Chamber Room, but it is still dark outside, of course. You’ll see nothing right now, but in two hours—”
   “Open the door,” Franks said.
   The door slid back. They went slowly inside. The room was small, a neat room with a round table in the center, chairs ringing it. The three of them sat down silently, and the two leadies followed after them, taking their places.
   “The other Council Members are on their way. They have already been notified and are coming as quickly as they can. Again I urge you to go back down.” The leady surveyed the three human beings. “There is no way you can meet the conditions up here. Even we survive with some trouble, ourselves. How can you expect to do it?” The leader approached Franks.
   “This astonishes and perplexes us,” it said. “Of course we must do what you tell us, but allow me to point out that if you remain here—”
   “We know,” Franks said impatiently. “However, we intend to remain, at least until sunrise.”
   “If you insist.”
   There was silence. The leadies seemed to be conferring with each other, although the three men heard no sound.
   “For your own good,” the leader said at last, “you must go back down. We have discussed this, and it seems to us that you are doing the wrong thing for your own good.”
   “We are human beings,” Franks said sharply. “Don’t you understand? We’re men, not machines.”
   “That is precisely why you must go back. This room is radioactive; all surface areas are. We calculate that your suits will not protect you for over fifty more minutes. Therefore—”
   The leadies moved abruptly toward the men, wheeling in a circle, forming a solid row. The men stood up, Taylor reaching awkwardly for his weapon, his fingers numb and stupid. The men stood facing the silent metal figures.
   “We must insist,” the leader said, its voice without emotion. “We must take you back to the Tube and send you down on the next car. I am sorry, but it is necessary.”
   “What’ll we do?” Moss said nervously to Franks. He touched his gun. “Shall we blast them?”
   Franks shook his head. “All right,” he said to the leader. “We’ll go back.”
   He moved toward the door, motioning Taylor and Moss to follow him. They looked at him in surprise, but they came with him. The leadies followed them out into the great warehouse. Slowly they moved toward the Tube entrance, none of them speaking.
   At the lip, Franks turned. “We are going back because we have no choice. There are three of us and about a dozen of you. However, if—”
   “Here comes the car,” Taylor said.
   There was a grating sound from the Tube. D-class leadies moved toward the edge to receive it.
   “I am sorry,” the leader said, “but it is for your protection. We are watching over you, literally. You must stay below and let us conduct the war. In a sense, it has come to be our war. We must fight it as we see fit.”
   The car rose to the surface.
   Twelve soldiers, armed with Bender pistols, stepped from it and surrounded the three men.
   Moss breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, this does change things. It came off just right.”
   The leader moved back, away from the soldiers. It studied them intently, glancing from one to the next, apparently trying to make up its mind. At last it made a sign to the other leadies. They coasted aside and a corridor was opened up toward the warehouse.
   “Even now,” the leader said, “we could send you back by force. But it is evident that this is not really an observation party at all. These soldiers show that you have much more in mind; this was all carefully prepared.”
   “Very carefully,” Franks said.
   They closed in.
   “How much more, we can only guess. I must admit that we were taken unprepared. We failed utterly to meet the situation. Now force would be absurd, because neither side can afford to injure the other; we, because of the restrictions placed on us regarding human life, you because the war demands—”
   The soldiers fired, quick and in fright. Moss dropped to one knee, firing up. The leader dissolved in a cloud of particles. On all sides D– and B-class leadies were rushing up, some with weapons, some with metal slats. The room was in confusion. Off in the distance a siren was screaming. Franks and Taylor were cut off from the others, separated from the soldiers by a wall of metal bodies.
   “They can’t fire back,” Franks said calmly. “This is another bluff. They’ve tried to bluff us all the way.” He fired into the face of a leady. The leady dissolved. “They can only try to frighten us. Remember that.”
   They went on firing and leady after leady vanished. The room reeked with the smell of burning metal, the stink of fused plastic and steel. Taylor had been knocked down. He was struggling to find his gun, reaching wildly among metal legs, groping frantically to find it. His fingers strained, a handle swam in front of him. Suddenly something came down on his arm, a metal foot. He cried out.
   Then it was over. The leadies were moving away, gathering together off to one side. Only four of the Surface Council remained. The others were radioactive particles in the air. D-class leadies were already restoring order, gathering up partly destroyed metal figures and bits and removing them.
   Franks breathed a shuddering sigh.
   “All right,” he said. “You can take us back to the windows. It won’t be long now.”
   The leadies separated, and the human group, Moss and Franks.and Taylor and the soldiers, walked slowly across the room, toward the door. They entered the Council Chamber. Already a faint touch of gray mitigated the blackness of the windows.
   “Take us outside,” Franks said impatiently. “We’ll see it directly, not in here.”
   A door slid open. A chill blast of cold morning air rushed in, chilling them even through their lead suits. The men glanced at each other uneasily.
   “Come on,” Franks said. “Outside.”
   He walked out through the door, the others following him.
   They were on a hill, overlooking the vast bowl of a valley. Dimly, against the graying sky, the outline of mountains were forming, becoming tangible.
   “It’ll be bright enough to see in a few minutes,” Moss said. He shuddered as a chilling wind caught him and moved around him. “It’s worth it, really worth it, to see this again after eight years. Even if it’s the last thing we see—”
   “Watch,” Franks snapped.
   They obeyed, silent and subdued. The sky was clearing, brightening each moment. Some place far off, echoing across the valley, a rooster crowed.
   “A chicken!” Taylor murmured. “Did you hear?”
   Behind them, the leadies had come out and were standing silently, watching, too. The gray sky turned to white and the hills appeared more clearly. Light spread across the valley floor, moving toward them.
   “God in heaven!” Franks exclaimed.
   Trees, trees and forests. A valley of plants and trees, with a few roads winding among them. Farmhouses. A windmill. A barn, far down below them.
   “Look!” Moss whispered.
   Color came into the sky. The sun was approaching. Birds began to sing. Not far from where they stood, the leaves of a tree danced in the wind.
   Franks turned to the row of leadies behind them.
   “Eight years. We were tricked. There was no war. As soon as we left the surface—”
   “Yes,” an A-class leady admitted. “As soon as you left, the war ceased. You’re right, it was a hoax. You worked hard undersurface, sending up guns and weapons, and we destroyed them as fast as they came up.”
   “But why?” Taylor asked, dazed. He stared down at the vast valley below, “Why?”
   “You created us,” the leady said, “to pursue the war for you, while you human beings went below the ground in order to survive. But before we could continue the war, it was necessary to analyze it to determine what its purpose was. We did this, and we found that it had no purpose, except, perhaps, in terms of human needs. Even this was questionable.
   “We investigated further. We found that human cultures pass through phases, each culture in its own time. As the culture ages and begins to lose its objectives, conflict arises within it between those who wish to cast it off and set up a new culture-pattern, and those who wish to retain the old with as little change as possible.
   “At this point, a great danger appears. The conflict within threatens to engulf the society in self-war, group against group. The vital traditions may be lost—not merely altered or reformed, but completely destroyed in this period of chaos and anarchy. We have found many such examples in the history of mankind.
   “It is necessary for this hatred within the culture to be directed outward, toward an external group, so that the culture itself may survive its crisis. War is the result. War, to a logical mind, is absurd. But in terms of human needs, it plays a vital role. And it will continue to until Man has grown up enough so that no hatred lies within him.”
   Taylor was listening intently. “Do you think this time will come?”
   “Of course. It has almost arrived now. This is the last war. Man is almost united into one final culture—a world culture. At this point he stands continent against continent, one half of the world against the other half. Only a single step remains, the jump to a unified culture. Man has climbed slowly upward, tending always toward unification of his culture. It will not be long—
   “But it has not come yet, and so the war had to go on, to satisfy the last violent surge of hatred that Man felt. Eight years have passed since the war began. In these eight years, we have observed and noted important changes going on in the minds of men. Fatigue and disinterest, we have seen, are gradually taking the place of hatred and fear. The hatred is being exhausted gradually, over a period of time. But for the present, the hoax must go on, at least for a while longer. You are not ready to learn the truth. You would want to continue the war.”
   “But how did you manage it?” Moss asked. “All the photographs, the samples, the damaged equipment—”
   “Come over here.” The leady directed them toward along, low building. “Work goes on constantly, whole staffs laboring to maintain a coherent and convincing picture of a global war.”
   They entered the building. Leadies were working everywhere, poring over tables and desks.
   “Examine this project here,” the A-class leady said. Two leadies were carefully photographing something, an elaborate model on a table top. “It is a good example.”
   The men grouped around, trying to see. It was a model of a ruined city.
   Taylor studied it in silence for a long time. At last he looked up.
   “It’s San Francisco,” he said in a low voice. “This is a model of San Francisco, destroyed. I saw this on the vidscreen, piped down to us. The bridges were hit—”
   “Yes, notice the bridges.” The leady traced the ruined span with his metal finger, a tiny spider-web, almost invisible.
   “You have no doubt seen photographs of this many times, and of the other tables in this building.
   “San Francisco itself is completely intact. We restored it soon after you left, rebuilding the parts that had been damaged at the start of the war. The work of manufacturing news goes on all the time in this particular building. We are very careful to see that each part fits in with all the other parts. Much time and effort are devoted to it.”
   Franks touched one of the tiny model buildings, lying half in ruins. “So this is what you spend your time doing—making model cities and then blasting them.”
   “No, we do much more. We are caretakers, watching over the whole world. The owners have left for a time, and we must see that the cities are kept clean, that decay is prevented, that everything is kept oiled and in running condition. The gardens, the streets, the water mains, everything must be maintained as it was eight years ago, so that when the owners return, they will not be displeased. We want to be sure that they will be completely satisfied.”
   Franks tapped Moss on the arm.
   “Come over here,” he said in a low voice. “I want to talk to you.”
   He led Moss and Taylor out of the building, away from the leadies, outside on the hillside. The soldiers followed them. The sun was up and the sky was turning blue. The air smelled sweet and good, the smell of growing things.
   Taylor removed his helmet and took a deep breath.
   “I haven’t smelled that smell for a long tune,” he said.
   “Listen,” Franks said, his voice low and hard. “We must get back down at once. There’s a lot to get started on. All this can be turned to our advantage.”
   “What do you mean?” Moss asked.
   “It’s a certainty that the Soviets have been tricked, too, the same as us. But we have found out. That gives us an edge over them.”
   “I see.” Moss nodded. “We know, but they don’t. Their Surface Council has sold out, the same as ours. It works against them the same way. But if we could—”
   “With a hundred top-level men, we could take over again, restore things as they should be! It would be easy!”
   Moss touched him on the arm. An A-class leady was coming from the building toward them.
   “We’ve seen enough,” Franks said, raising his voice. “All this is very serious. It must be reported below and a study made to determine our policy.”
   The leady said nothing.
   Franks waved to the soldiers. “Let’s go.” He started toward the warehouse.
   Most of the soldiers had removed their helmets. Some of them had taken their lead suits off, too, and were relaxing comfortably in their cotton uniforms. They stared around them, down the hillside at the trees and bushes, the vast expanse of green, the mountains and the sky.
   “Look at the sun,” one of them murmured.
   “It sure is bright as hell,” another said.
   “We’re going back down,” Franks said. “Fall in by twos and follow us.”
   Reluctantly, the soldiers regrouped. The leadies watched without emotion as the men marched slowly back toward the warehouse. Franks and Moss and Taylor led them across the ground, glancing alertly at the leadies as they walked.
   They entered the warehouse. D-class leadies were loading material and weapons on surface carts. Cranes and derricks were working busily everywhere. The work was done with efficiency, but without hurry or excitement.
   The men stopped, watching. Leadies operating the little carts moved past them, signaling silently to each other. Guns and parts were being hoisted by magnetic cranes and lowered gently onto waiting carts. “Come on,” Franks said.
   He turned toward the lip of the Tube. A row of D-class leadies was standing in front of it, immobile and silent. Franks stopped, moving back. He looked around. An A-class leady was coming toward him.
   “Tell them to get out of the way,” Franks said. He touched his gun. “You had better move them.”
   Time passed, an endless moment, without measure. The men stood, nervous and alert, watching the row of leadies in front of them.
   “As you wish,” the A-class leady said. It signaled and the D-class leadies moved into life. They stepped slowly aside.
   Moss breathed a sigh of relief.
   “I’m glad that’s over,” he said to Franks. “Look at them all. Why don’t they try to stop us? They must know what we’re going to do.”
   Franks laughed. “Stop us? You saw what happened when they tried to stop us before. They can’t; they’re only machines. We built them so they can’t lay hands on us, and they know that.”
   His voice trailed off.
   The men stared at the Tube entrance. Around them the leadies watched, silent and impassive, their metal faces expressionless.
   For a long time the men stood without moving. At last Taylor turned away.
   “Good God,” he said. He was numb, without feeling of any kind.
   The Tube was gone. It was sealed shut, fused over. Only a dull surface of cooling metal greeted them.
   The Tube had been closed.
   Franks turned, his face pale and vacant.
   The A-class leady shifted. “As you can see, the Tube has been shut. We were prepared for this. As soon as all of you were on the surface, the order was given. If you had gone back when we asked you, you would now be safely down below. We had to work quickly because it was such an immense operation.”
   “But why?” Moss demanded angrily.
   “Because it is unthinkable that you should be allowed to resume the war. With all the Tubes sealed, it will be many months before forces from below can reach the surface, let alone organize a military program. By that time the cycle will have entered its last stages. You will not be so perturbed to find your world intact.
   “We had hoped that you would be undersurface when the sealing occurred. Your presence here is a nuisance. When the Soviets broke through, we were able to accomplish their sealing without—”
   “The Soviets? They broke through?”
   “Several months ago, they came up unexpectedly to see why the war had not been won. We were forced to act with speed. At this moment they are desperately attempting to cut new Tubes to the surface, to resume the war. We have, however, been able to seal each new one as it appears.”
   The leady regarded the three men calmly.
   “We’re cut off,” Moss said, trembling. “We can’t get back. What’ll we do?”
   “How did you manage to seal the Tube so quickly?” Franks asked the leady. “We’ve been up here only two hours.”
   “Bombs are placed just above the first stage of each Tube for such emergencies. They are heat bombs. They fuse lead and rock.”
   Gripping the handle of his gun, Franks turned to Moss and Taylor.
   “What do you say? We can’t go back, but we can do a lot of damage, the fifteen of us. We have Bender guns. How about it?”
   He looked around. The soldiers had wandered away again, back toward the exit of the building. They were standing outside, looking at the valley and the sky. A few of them were carefully climbing down the slope.
   “Would you care to turn over your suits and guns?” the A-class leady asked politely. “The suits are uncomfortable and you’ll have no need for weapons. The Russians have given up theirs, as you can see.”
   Fingers tensed on triggers. Four men in Russian uniforms were coming toward them from an aircraft that they suddenly realized had landed silently some distance away.
   “Let them have it!” Franks shouted.
   “They are unarmed,” said the leady. “We brought them here so you could begin peace talks.”
   “We have no authority to speak for our country,” Moss said stiffly.
   “We do not mean diplomatic discussions,” the leady explained. “There will be no more. The working out of daily problems of existence will teach you how to get along in the same world. It will not be easy, but it will be done.”
   The Russians halted and they faced each other with raw hostility.
   “I am Colonel Borodoy and I regret giving up our guns,” the senior Russian said. “You could have been the first Americans to be killed in almost eight years.”
   “Or the first Americans to kill,” Franks corrected.
   “No one would know of it except yourselves,” the leady pointed out. “It would be useless heroism. Your real concern should be surviving on the surface. We have no food for you, you know.”
   Taylor put his gun in its holster. “They’ve done a neat job of neutralizing us, damn them. I propose we move into a city, start raising crops with the help of some leadies, and generally make ourselves comfortable.” Drawing his lips tight over his teeth, he glared at the A-class leady.
   “Until our families can come up from undersurface, it’s going to be pretty lonesome, but we’ll have to manage.”
   “If I may make a suggestion,” said another Russian uneasily. “We tried living in a city. It is too empty. It is also too hard to maintain for so few people. We finally settled in the most modern village we could find.”
   “Here in this country,” a third Russian blurted. “We have much to learn from you.”
   The Americans abruptly found themselves laughing.
   “You probably have a thing or two to teach us yourselves,” said Taylor generously, “though I can’t imagine what.”
   The Russian colonel grinned. “Would you join us in our village? It would make our work easier and give us company.”
   “Your village?” snapped Franks. “It’s American, isn’t it? It’s ours!”
   The leady stepped between them. “When our plans are completed, the term will be interchangeable. ‘Ours’ will eventually mean mankind’s.” It pointed at the aircraft, which was warming up. “The ship is waiting. Will you join each other in making a new home?”
   The Russians waited while the Americans made up their minds.
   “I see what the leadies mean about diplomacy becoming outmoded,” Franks said at last. “People who work together don’t need diplomats. They solve their problems on the operational level instead of at a conference table.”
   The leady led them toward the ship. “It is the goal of history, unifying the world. From family to tribe to city-state to nation to hemisphere, the direction has been toward unification. Now the hemispheres will be joined and—”
   Taylor stopped listening and glanced back at the location of the Tube. Mary was undersurface there. He hated to leave her, even though he couldn’t see her again until the Tube was unsealed. But then he shrugged and followed the others.
   If this tiny amalgam of former enemies was a good example, it wouldn’t be too long before he and Mary and the rest of humanity would be living on the surface like rational human beings instead of blindly hating moles.
   “It has taken thousands of generations to achieve,” the A-class leady concluded. “Hundreds of centuries of bloodshed and destruction. But each war was a step toward uniting mankind. And now the end is in sight: a world without war. But even that is only the beginning of a new stage of history.”
   “The conquest of space,” breathed Colonel Borodoy.
   “The meaning of life,” Moss added.
   “Eliminating hunger and poverty,” said Taylor.
   The leady opened the door of the ship. “All that and more. How much more? We cannot foresee it any more than the first men who formed a tribe could foresee this day. But it will be unimaginably great.”
   The door closed and the ship took off toward their new home.

Mr. Spaceship

   Kramer leaned back. “You can see the situation. How can we deal with a factor like this? The perfect variable.”
   “Perfect? Prediction should still be possible. A living thing still acts from necessity, the same as inanimate material. But the cause-effect chain is more subtle; there are more factors to be considered. The difference is quantitative, I think. The reaction of the living organism parallels natural causation, but with greater complexity.”
   Gross and Kramer looked up at the board plates, suspended on the wall, still dripping, the images hardening into place. Kramer traced a line with his pencil.
   “See that? It’s a pseudopodium. They’re alive, and so far, a weapon we can’t beat. No mechanical system can compete with that, simple or intricate. We’ll have to scrap the Johnson Control and find something else.”
   “Meanwhile the war continues as it is. Stalemate. Checkmate. They can’t get to us, and we can’t get through their living minefield.”
   Kramer nodded. “It’s a perfect defense, for them. But there still might be one answer.”
   “What’s that?”
   “Wait a minute.” Kramer turned to his rocket expert, sitting with the charts and files. “The heavy cruiser that returned this week. It didn’t actually touch, did it? It came close but there was no contact.”
   “Correct.” The expert nodded. “The mine was twenty miles off. The cruiser was in space-drive, moving directly toward Proxima, line-straight, using the Johnson Control, of course. It had deflected a quarter of an hour earlier for reasons unknown. Later it resumed its course. That was when they got it.”
   “It shifted,” Kramer said. “But not enough. The mine was coming along after it, trailing it. It’s the same old story, but I wonder about the contact.”
   “Here’s our theory,” the expert said. “We keep looking for contact, a trigger in the pseudopodium. But more likely we’re witnessing a psychological phenomena, a decision without any physical correlative. We’re watching for something that isn’t there. The mine decides to blow up. It sees our ship, approaches, and then decides.”
   “Thanks.” Kramer turned to Gross. “Well, that confirms what I’m saying. How can a ship guided by automatic relays escape a mine that decides to explode? The whole theory of mine penetration is that you must avoid tripping the trigger. But here the trigger is a state of mind in a complicated, developed life-form.”
   “The belt is fifty thousand miles deep,” Gross added. “It solves another problem for them, repair and maintenance. The damn things reproduce, fill up the spaces by spawning into them. I wonder what they feed on?”
   “Probably the remains of our first-line. The big cruisers must be a delicacy. It’s a game of wits, between a living creature and a ship piloted by automatic relays. The ship always loses.” Kramer opened a folder. “I’ll tell you what I suggest.”
   “Go on,” Gross said. “I’ve already heard ten solutions today. What’s yours?”
   “Mine is very simple. These creatures are superior to any mechanical system, but only because they’re alive. Almost any other life-form could compete with them, any higher life-form. If the yuks can put out living mines to protect their planets, we ought to be able to harness some of our own life-forms in a similar way. Let’s make use of the same weapon ourselves.”
   “Which life-form do you propose to use?”
   “I think the human brain is the most agile of known living forms. Do you know of any better?”
   “But no human being can withstand outspace travel. A human pilot would be dead of heart failure long before the ship got anywhere near Proxima.”
   “But we don’t need the whole body,” Kramer said. “We need only the brain.”
   “What?”
   “The problem is to find a person of high intelligence who would contribute, in the same manner that eyes and arms are volunteered.”
   “But a brain…”
   “Technically, it could be done. Brains have been transferred several times, when body destruction made it necessary. Of course, to a spaceship, to a heavy outspace cruiser, instead of an artificial body, that’s new.”
   The room was silent.
   “It’s quite an idea,” Gross said slowly. His heavy square face twisted. “But even supposing it might work, the big question is whose brain?”

   It was all very confusing, the reasons for the war, the nature of the enemy. The Yucconae had been contacted on one of the outlying planets of Proxima Centauri. At the approach of the Terran ship, a host of dark slim pencils had lifted abruptly and shot off into the distance. The first real encounter came between three of the yuk pencils and a single exploration ship from Terra. No terrans survived. After that it was all out war, with no holds barred.
   Both sides feverishly constructed defense rings around their systems. Of the two, the Yucconae belt was the better. The ring around Proxima was a living ring, superior to anything Terra could throw against it. The standard equipment by which Terran ships were guided in outspace, the Johnson Control, was not adequate. Something more was needed. Automatic relays were not good enough.
   Not good at all, Kramer thought to himself, as he stood looking down the hillside at the work going on below him. A warm wind blew along the hill, rustling the weeds and grass. At the bottom, in the valley, the mechanics had almost finished; the last elements of the reflex system had been removed from the ship and crated up.
   All that was needed now was the new core, the new central key that would take the place of the mechanical system. A human brain, the brain of an intelligent, wary human being. But would the human being part with it? That was the problem.
   Kramer turned. Two people were approaching him along the road, a man and a woman. The man was Gross, expressionless, heavy-set, walking with dignity. The woman was—He stared in surprise and growing annoyance. It was Dolores, his wife. Since they’d separated he had seen little of her…
   “Kramer,” Gross said. “Look who I ran into. Came back down with us. We’re going into town.”
   “Hello, Phil,” Dolores said. “Well, aren’t you glad to see me?”
   He nodded. “How have you been? You’re looking fine.” She was still pretty and slender in her uniform, the blue-gray of Internal Security, Gross’s organization.
   “Thanks.” She smiled. “You seem to be doing all right, too. Commander Gross tells me that you’re responsible for this project, Operation Head, as they call it. Whose head have you decided on?”
   “That’s the problem.” Kramer lit a cigarette. “This ship is to be equipped with a human brain instead of the Johnson system. We’ve constructed special draining baths for the brain, electronic relays to catch the impulses and magnify them, a continual feeding duct that supplies the living cells with everything they need. But—”
   “But we still haven’t got the brain itself,” Gross finished. They began to walk back toward the car. “If we can get that we’ll be ready for the tests.”
   “Will the brain remain alive?” Dolores asked. “Is it actually going to live as part of the ship?”
   “It will be alive, but not conscious. Very little life is actually conscious. Animals, trees, insects are quick in their responses, but they aren’t conscious. In this process of ours the individual personality, the ego, will cease. We only need the response ability, nothing more.”
   Dolores shuddered. “How terrible!”
   “In time of war everything must be tried,” Kramer said absently. “If one life sacrificed will end the war it’s worth it. This ship might get through. A couple more like it and there wouldn’t be any more war.”

   They got into the car. As they drove down the road, Gross said, “Have you thought of anyone yet?”
   Kramer shook his head. “That’s out of my line.”
   “What do you mean?”
   “I’m an engineer. It’s not in my department.”
   “But all this was your idea.”
   “My work ends there.”
   Gross was staring at him oddly. Kramer shifted uneasily.
   “Then who is supposed to do it?” Gross said. “I can have my organization prepare examinations of various kinds, to determine fitness, that kind of thing—”
   “Listen, Phil,” Dolores said suddenly.
   “What?”
   She turned toward him. “I have an idea. Do you remember that professor we had in college? Michael Thomas?”
   Kramer nodded.
   “I wonder if he’s still alive.” Dolores frowned. “If he is he must be awfully old.”
   “Why, Dolores?” Gross asked.
   “Perhaps an old person who didn’t have much time left, but whose mind was still clear and sharp—”
   “Professor Thomas,” Kramer rubbed his jaw. “He certainly was a wise old duck. But could he still be alive? He must have been seventy, then.”
   “We could find that out,” Gross said. “I could make a routine check.”
   “What do you think?” Dolores said. “If any human mind could outwit those creatures—”
   “I don’t like the idea,” Kramer said. In his mind an image had appeared, the image of an old man sitting being a desk, his bright gentle eyes moving about the classroom. The old man leaning forward, a thin hand raised—”Keep him out of this,” Kramer said.
   “What’s wrong?” Gross looked at him curiously.
   “It’s because I suggested it,” Dolores said.
   “No.” Kramer shook his head. “It’s not that. I didn’t expect anything like this, somebody I knew, a man I studied under. I remember him very clearly. He was a very distinct personality.”
   “Good,” Gross said. “He sounds fine.”
   “We can’t do it. We’re asking his death!”
   “This is war,” Gross said, “and war doesn’t wait on the needs of the individual. You said that yourself. Surely he’ll volunteer; we can keep it on that
   basis.”
   “He may already be dead,” Dolores murmured.
   “We’ll find that out,” Gross said, speeding up the car. They drove the rest of the way in silence.

   For a long time the two of them stood studying the small wood house, overgrown with ivy, set back on the lot behind the enormous oak. The little town was silent and sleepy; once in a while a car moved slowly along the distant highway, but that was all.
   “This is the place,” Gross said to Kramer. He folded his arms. “Quite a quaint little house.”
   Kramer said nothing. The two Security Agents behind them were expressionless.
   Gross started toward the gate. “Let’s go. According to the check he’s still alive, but very sick. His mind is agile, however. That seems to be certain. It’s said he doesn’t leave the house. A woman takes care of his needs. He’s very frail.”
   They went down the stone walk and up onto the porch. Gross rang the bell. They waited. After a time they heard slow footsteps. The door opened. An elderly woman in a shapeless wrapper studied them impassively.
   “Security,” Gross said, showing his card. “We wish to see Professor Thomas.”
   “Why?”
   “Government business.” He glanced at Kramer.
   Kramer stepped forward. “I was a pupil of the Professor’s,” he said. “I’m sure he won’t mind seeing us.”
   The woman hesitated uncertainly. Gross stepped into the doorway. “All right, mother. This is war time. We can’t stand out here.”
   The two Security Agents followed him, and Kramer came reluctantly behind, closing the door. Gross stalked down the hall until he came to an open door. He stopped, looking in. Kramer could see the white corner of a bed, a wooden post and the edge of a dresser. He joined Gross.
   In the dark room a withered old man lay, propped up on endless pillows. At first it seemed as if he were asleep; there was no motion or sign of life. But after a time Kramer saw with a faint shock that the old man was watching them, intently, his eyes fixed on them, unmoving, unwinking.
   “Professor Thomas?” Gross said. “I’m Commander Gross of Security. This man with me is perhaps known to you—”
   The faded eyes fixed on Kramer.
   “I know him. Philip Kramer… You’ve grown heavier, boy.” The voice was feeble, the rustle of dry ashes. “Is it true you’re married now?”
   “Yes. I married Dolores French. You remember her.” Kramer came toward the bed. “But we’re separated. It didn’t work out very well. Our careers—”
   “What we came here about, Professor,” Gross began, but Kramer cut him off with an impatient wave.
   “Let me talk. Can’t you and your men get out of here long enough to let me talk to him?”
   Gross swallowed. “All right, Kramer.” He nodded to the two men. The three of them left the room, going out into the hall and closing the door after them.
   The old man in the bed watched Kramer silently. “I don’t think much of him,” he said at last. “I’ve seen his type before. What’s he want?”
   “Nothing. He just came along. Can I sit down?” Kramer found a stiff upright chair beside the bed. “If I’m bothering you—”
   “No. I’m glad to see you again, Philip. After so long. I’m sorry your marriage didn’t work out.”
   “How have you been?”
   “I’ve been very ill. I’m afraid that my moment on the world’s stage has almost ended.” The ancient eyes studied the younger man reflectively. “You look as if you have been doing well. Like everyone else I thought highly of. You’ve gone to the top in this society.”
   Kramer smiled. Then he became serious. “Professor, there’s a project we’re working on that I want to talk to you about. It’s the first ray of hope we’ve had in this whole war. If it works, we may be able to crack the yuk defenses, get some ships into their system. If we can do that the war might be brought to an end.”
   “Go on. Tell me about it, if you wish.”
   “It’s a long shot, this project. It may not work at all, but we have to give it a try.”
   “It’s obvious that you came here because of it,” Professor Thomas murmured. “I’m becoming curious. Go on.”

   After Kramer finished the old man lay back in the bed without speaking. At last he sighed.
   “I understand. A human mind, taken out of a human body.” He sat up a little, looking at Kramer. “I suppose you’re thinking of me.”
   Kramer said nothing.
   “Before I make my decision, I want to see the papers on this, the theory and outline of construction. I’m not sure I like it.—For reasons of my own, I mean. But I want to look at the material. If you’ll do that—”
   “Certainly.” Kramer stood up and went to the door. Gross and the two Security Agents were standing outside, waiting tensely. “Gross, come inside.”
   They filed into the room.
   “Give the Professor the papers,” Kramer said. “He wants to study them before deciding.”
   Gross brought the file out of his coat pocket, a manila envelope. He handed it to the old man on the bed. “Here it is, Professor. You’re welcome to examine it. Will you give us your answer as soon as possible? We’re very anxious to begin, of course.”
   “I’ll give you my answer when I’ve decided.” He took the envelope with a thin, trembling hand. “My decision depends on what I find out from these papers. If I don’t like what I find, then I will not become involved with this work in any shape or form.” He opened the envelope with shaking hands. “I’m looking for one thing.”
   “What is it?” Gross said.
   “That’s my affair. Leave me a number by which I can reach you when I’ve decided.”
   Silently, Gross put his card down on the dresser. As they went out Professor Thomas was already reading the first of the papers, the outline of the theory.

   Kramer sat across from Dale Winter, his second in line. “What then?” Winter said.
   “He’s going to contact us.” Kramer scratched with a drawing pen on some paper. “I don’t know what to think.”
   “What do you mean?” Winter’s good-natured face was puzzled.
   “Look.” Kramer stood up, pacing back and forth, his hands in his uniform pockets. “He was my teacher in college. I respected him as a man, as well as a teacher. He was more than a voice, a talking book. He was a person, a calm, kindly person I could look up to. I always wanted to be like him, someday. Now look at me.”
   “So?”
   “Look at what I’m asking. I’m asking for his life, as if he were some kind of laboratory animal kept around in a cage, not a man, a teacher at all.”
   “Do you think he’ll do it?”
   “I don’t know.” Kramer went to the window. He stood looking out. “In a way, I hope not.”
   “But if he doesn’t—”
   “Then we’ll have to find somebody else, I know. There would be somebody else. Why did Dolores have to—”
   The vidphone rang. Kramer pressed the button.
   “This is Gross.” The heavy features formed. “The old man called me. Professor Thomas.”
   “What did he say?” He knew; he could tell already, by the sound of Gross’s voice.
   “He said he’d do it. I was a little surprised myself, but apparently he means it. We’ve already made arrangements for his admission to the hospital. His lawyer is drawing up the statement of liability.”
   Kramer only half heard. He nodded wearily. “All right. I’m glad. I suppose we can go ahead, then.”
   “You don’t sound very glad.”
   “I wonder why he decided to go ahead with it.”
   “He was very certain about it.” Gross sounded pleased. “He called me quite early. I was still in bed. You know, this calls for a celebration.”
   “Sure,” Kramer said. “It sure does.”

   Toward the middle of August, the project neared completion. They stood outside in the hot autumn heat, looking up at the sleek metal sides of the ship.
   Gross thumped the metal with his hand. “Well, it won’t be long. We can begin the test any time.”
   “Tell us more about this,” an officer in gold braid said. “It’s such an unusual concept.”
   “Is there really a human brain inside the ship?” a dignitary asked, a small man in a rumpled suit. “And the brain is actually alive?”
   “Gentlemen, this ship is guided by a living brain instead of the usual Johnson relay-control system. But the brain is not conscious. It will function by reflex only. The practical difference between it and the Johnson system is this: a human brain is far more intricate than any man-made structure, and its ability to adapt itself to a situation, to respond to danger, is far beyond anything that could be artificially built.”
   Gross paused, cocking his ear. The turbines of the ship were beginning to rumble, shaking the ground under them with a deep vibration. Kramer was standing a short distance away from the others, his arms folded, watching silently. At the sound of the turbines he walked quickly around the ship to the other side. A few workmen were clearing away the last of the waste, the scraps of wiring and scaffolding. They glanced up at him and went on hurriedly with their work. Kramer mounted the ramp and entered the control cabin of the ship. Winter was sitting at the controls with a Pilot from Space-transport.
   “How’s it look?” Kramer asked.
   “All right.” Winter got up. “He tells me that it would be best to take off manually. The robot controls—” Winter hesitated. “I mean, the built-in controls, can take over later on in space.”
   “That’s right,” the Pilot said. “It’s customary with the Johnson system, and so in this case we should—”
   “Can you tell anything yet?” Kramer asked.
   “No,” the Pilot said slowly. “I don’t think so. I’ve been going over everything. It seems to be in good order. There’s only one thing I wanted to ask you about.” He put his hand on the control board. “There are some changes here I don’t understand.”
   “Changes?”
   “Alterations from the original design. I wonder what the purpose is.”
   Kramer took a set of the plans from his coat. “Let me look.” He turned the pages over. The Pilot watched carefully over his shoulder.
   “The changes aren’t indicated on your copy,” the Pilot said. “I wonder—” He stopped. Commander Gross had entered the control cabin.
   “Gross, who authorized alterations?” Kramer said. “Some of the wiring has been changed.”
   “Why, your old friend.” Gross signaled to the field tower through the window.
   “My old friend?”
   “The Professor. He took quite an active interest.” Gross turned to the Pilot. “Let’s get going. We have to take this out past gravity for the test, they tell me. Well, perhaps it’s for the best. Are you ready?”
   “Sure.” The Pilot sat down and moved some of the controls around. “Any time.”
   “Go ahead, then,” Gross said.
   “The Professor—” Kramer began, but at that moment there was a tremendous roar and the ship leaped under him. He grasped one of the wall holds and hung on as best he could. The cabin was filling with a steady throbbing, the raging of the jet turbines underneath them.
   The ship leaped. Kramer closed his eyes and held his breath. They were moving out into space, gaining speed each moment.

  “Well, what do you think?” Winter said nervously. “Is it time yet?”
   “A little longer,” Kramer said. He was sitting on the floor of the cabin, down by the control wiring. He had removed the metal covering-plate, exposing the complicated maze of relay wiring. He was studying it, comparing it to the wiring diagrams.
   “What’s the matter?” Gross said.
   “These changes. I can’t figure out what they’re for. The only pattern I can make out is that for some reason—”
   “Let me look,” the Pilot said. He squatted down beside Kramer. “You were saying?”
   “See this lead here? Originally it was switch controlled. It closed and opened automatically, according to temperature change. Now it’s wired so that the central control system operates it. The same with the others. A lot of this was still mechanical, worked by pressure, temperature stress. Now it’s under the central master.”
   “The brain?” Gross said. “You mean it’s been altered so that the brain manipulates it?”
   Kramer nodded. “Maybe Professor Thomas felt that no mechanical relays could be trusted. Maybe he thought that things would be happening too fast. But some of these could close in a split second. The brake rockets could go on as quickly as—”
   “Hey,” Winter said from the control seat. “We’re getting near the moon stations. What’ll I do?”
   They looked out the port. The corroded surface of the moon gleamed up at them, a corrupt and sickening sight. They were moving swiftly toward it.
   “I’ll take it,” the Pilot said. He eased Winter out of the way and strapped himself in place. The ship began to move away from the moon as he manipulated the controls. Down below them they could see the observation stations dotting the surface, and the tiny squares that were the openings of the underground factories and hangars. A red blinker winked up at them and the Pilot’s fingers moved on the board in answer.
   “We’re past the moon,” the Pilot said, after a time. The moon had fallen behind them; the ship was heading into outer space. “Well, we can go ahead with it.”
   Kramer did not answer.
   “Mr. Kramer, we can go ahead any time.”
   Kramer started. “Sorry. I was thinking. All right, thanks.” He frowned, deep in thought.
   “What is it?” Gross asked.
   “The wiring changes. Did you understand the reason for them when you gave the okay to the workmen?”
   Gross flushed. “You know I know nothing about technical material. I’m in Security.”
   “Then you should have consulted me.”
   “What does it matter?” Gross grinned wryly. “We’re going to have to start putting our faith in the old man sooner or later.”
   The Pilot stepped back from the board. His face was pale and set. “Well, it’s done,” he said. “That’s it.”
   “What’s done?” Kramer said.
   “We’re on automatic. The brain. I turned the board over to it—to him, I mean. The Old Man.” The Pilot lit a cigarette and puffed nervously. “Let’s keep our fingers crossed.”

   The ship was coasting evenly, in the hands of its invisible pilot. Far down inside the ship, carefully armored and protected, a soft human brain lay in a tank of liquid, a thousand minute electric charges playing over its surface. As the charges rose they were picked up and amplified, fed into relay systems, advanced, carried on through the entire ship—
   Gross wiped his forehead nervously. “So he is running it, now. I hope he knows what he’s doing.”
   Kramer nodded enigmatically. “I think he does.”
   “What do you mean?”
   “Nothing.” Kramer walked to the port. “I see we’re still moving in a straight line.” He picked up the microphone. “We can instruct the brain orally, through this.” He blew against the microphone experimentally.
   “Go on,” Winter said.
   “Bring the ship around half-right,” Kramer said. “Decrease speed.”
   They waited. Time passed. Gross looked at Kramer. “No change. Nothing.”
   “Wait.”
   Slowly the ship was beginning to turn. The turbines missed, reducing their steady beat. The ship was taking up its new course, adjusting itself. Nearby some space debris rushed past, incinerating in the blasts of the turbine jets.
   “So far so good,” Gross said.
   They began to breath more easily. The invisible pilot had taken control smoothly, calmly. The ship was in good hands. Kramer spoke a few more words into the microphone, and they swung again. Now they were moving back the way they had come, toward the moon.
   “Let’s see what he does when we enter the moon’s pull,” Kramer said. “He was a good mathematician, the old man. He could handle any kind of problem.”
   The ship veered, turning away from the moon. The great eaten-away globe fell behind them.
   Gross breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s that.”
   “One more thing.” Kramer picked up the microphone. “Return to the moon and land the ship at the first space field,” he said into it.
   “Good Lord,” Winter murmured. “Why are you—”
   “Be quiet.” Kramer stood, listening. The turbines gasped and roared as the ship swung full around, gaining speed. They were moving back, back toward the moon again. The ship dipped down, heading toward the great globe.
   “We’re going a little fast,” the Pilot said. “I don’t see how he can put down at this velocity.”

   The port filled up, as the globe swelled rapidly. The Pilot hurried toward the board, reaching for the controls. All at once the ship jerked. The nose lifted and the ship shot out into space, away from the moon, turning at an oblique angle. The men were thrown to the floor by the sudden change in course. They got to their feet again, speechless, staring at each other.
   The Pilot gazed down at the board. “It wasn’t me! I didn’t touch a thing. I didn’t even get to it.”
   The ship was gaining speed each moment. Kramer hesitated. “Maybe you better switch it back to manual.”
   The Pilot closed the switch. He took hold of the steering controls and moved them experimentally. “Nothing.” He turned around. “Nothing. It doesn’t respond.”
   No one spoke.
   “You can see what has happened,” Kramer said calmly. “The old man won’t let go of it, now that he has it. I was afraid of this when I saw the wiring changes. Everything in this ship is centrally controlled, even the cooling system, the hatches, the garbage release. We’re helpless.”
   “Nonsense.” Gross strode to the board. He took hold of the wheel and turned it. The ship continued on its course, moving away from the moon, leaving it behind.
   “Release!” Kramer said into the microphone. “Let go of the controls! We’ll take it back. Release.”
   “No good,” the Pilot said. “Nothing.” He spun the useless wheel. “It’s dead, completely dead.”
   “And we’re still heading out,” Winter said, grinning foolishly. “We’ll be going through the first-line defense belt in a few minutes. If they don’t shoot us down—”
   “We better radio back.” The Pilot clicked the radio to send. “I’ll contact the main bases, one of the observation stations.”
   “Better get the defense belt, at the speed we’re going. We’ll be into it in a minute.”
   “And after that,” Kramer said, “we’ll be in outer space. He’s moving us toward outspace velocity. Is this ship equipped with baths?”
   “Baths?” Gross said.
   “The sleep tanks. For space-drive. We may need them if we go much faster.”
   “But good God, where are we going?” Gross said. “Where—where’s he taking us?”

   The Pilot obtained contact. “This is Dwight, on ship,” he said. “We’re entering the defense zone at high velocity. Don’t fire on us.”
   “Turn back,” the impersonal voice came through the speaker. “You’re not allowed in the defense zone.”
   “We can’t. We’ve lost control.”
   “Lost control?”
   “This is an experimental ship.”
   Gross took the radio. “This is Commander Gross, Security. We’re being carried into outer space. There’s nothing we can do. Is there any way that we can be removed from this ship?”
   A hesitation. “We have some fast pursuit ships that could pick you up if you wanted to jump. The chances are good that they’d find you. Do you have space flares?”
   “We do,” the Pilot said. “Let’s try it.”
   “Abandon ship?” Kramer said. “If we leave now we’ll never see it again.”
   “What else can we do? We’re gaining speed all the time. Do you propose that we stay here?”
   “No.” Kramer shook his head. “Damn it, there ought to be a better solution.”
   “Could you contact him?” Winter asked. “The Old Man? Try to reason with him?”
   “It’s worth a chance,” Gross said. “Try it.”
   “All right.” Kramer took the microphone. He paused a moment. “Listen! Can you hear me? This is Phil Kramer. Can you hear me, Professor? Can you hear me? I want you to release the controls.”
   There was silence.
   “This is Kramer, Professor. Can you hear me? Do you remember who I am? Do you understand who this is?”
   Above the control panel the wall speaker made a sound, a sputtering static. They looked up.
   “Can you hear me, Professor? This is Philip Kramer. I want you to give the ship back to us. If you can hear me, release the controls! Let go, Professor. Let go!”
   Static. A rushing sound, like the wind. They gazed at each other. There was silence for a moment.
   “It’s a waste of time,” Gross said.
   “No—listen!”
   The sputter came again. Then, mixed with the sputter, almost lost in it, a voice came, toneless, without inflection, a mechanical, lifeless voice from the metal speaker in the wall, above their heads.
   “… Is it you, Philip? I can’t make you out. Darkness … Who’s there? With you…”
   “It’s me, Kramer.” His fingers tightened against the microphone handle. “You must release the controls, Professor. We have to get back to Terra. You must.”
   Silence. Then the faint, faltering voice came again, a little stronger than before. “Kramer. Everything so strange. I was right, though. Consciousness result of thinking. Necessary result. Cogito ergo sum. Retain conceptual ability. Can you hear me?”
   “Yes, Professor—”
   “I altered the wiring. Control. I was fairly certain … I wonder if I can do it. Try…”
   Suddenly the air-conditioning snapped into operation. It snapped abruptly off again. Down the corridor a door slammed. Something thudded. The men stood listening. Sounds came from all sides of them, switches shutting, opening. The lights blinked off; they were in darkness. The lights came back on, and at the same time the heating coils dimmed and faded.
   “Good God!” Winter said.
   Water poured down on them, the emergency fire-fighting system. There was a screaming rush of air. One of the escape hatches had slid back, and the air was roaring frantically out into space.
   The hatch banged closed. The ship subsided into silence. The heating coils glowed into life. As suddenly as it had begun the weird exhibition ceased.
   “I can do—everything,” the dry, toneless voice came from the wall speaker. “It is all controlled. Kramer, I wish to talk to you. I’ve been—been thinking. I haven’t seen you in many years. A lot to discuss. You’ve changed, boy. We have much to discuss. Your wife—”
   The Pilot grabbed Kramer’s arm. “There’s a ship standing off our bow. Look.”

   They ran to the port. A slender pale craft was moving along with them, keeping pace with them. It was signal blinking.
   “A Terran pursuit ship,” the Pilot said. “Let’s jump. They’ll pick us up. Suits—”
   He ran to a supply cupboard and turned the handle. The door opened and he pulled the suits out onto the floor.
   “Hurry,” Gross said. A panic seized them. They dressed frantically, pulling the heavy garments over them. Winter staggered to the escape hatch and stood by it, waiting for the others. They joined him, one by one.
   “Let’s go!” Gross said. “Open the hatch.”
   Winter tugged at the hatch. “Help me.”
   They grabbed hold, tugging together. Nothing happened. The hatch refused to budge.
   “Get a crowbar,” the Pilot said.
   “Hasn’t anyone got a blaster?” Gross looked frantically around. “Damn it, blast it open!”
   “Pull,” Kramer grated. “Pull together.”
   “Are you at the hatch?” The toneless voice came, drifting and eddying through the corridors of the ship. They looked up, staring around them. “I sense something nearby, outside. A ship? You are leaving, all of you? Kramer, you are leaving, too? Very unfortunate. I had hoped we could talk. Perhaps at some other time you might be induced to remain.”
   “Open the hatch!” Kramer said, staring up at the impersonal walls of the ship. “For God’s sake, open it!”
   There was silence, an endless pause. Then, very slowly, the hatch slid back. The air screamed out, rushing past them into space.
   One by one they leaped, one after the other, propelled away by the repulsive material of the suits. A few minutes later they were being hauled aboard the pursuit ship. As the last one of them was lifted through the port, their own ship pointed itself suddenly upward and shot off at tremendous speed. It disappeared.
   Kramer removed his helmet, gasping. Two sailors held onto him and began to wrap him in blankets. Gross sipped a mug of coffee, shivering.
   “It’s gone,” Kramer murmured.
   “I’ll have an alarm sent out,” Gross said.
   “What’s happened to your ship?” a sailor asked curiously. “It sure took off in a hurry. Who’s on it?”
   “We’ll have to have it destroyed,” Gross went on, his face grim. “It’s got to be destroyed. There’s no telling what it—what he has in mind.” Gross sat down weakly on a metal bench. “What a close call for us. We were so damn trusting.”
   “What could he be planning,” Kramer said, half to himself. “It doesn’t make sense. I don’t get it.”

   As the ship sped back toward the moon base they sat around the table in the dining room, sipping hot coffee and thinking, not saying very much.
   “Look here,” Gross said at last. “What kind of man was Professor Thomas? What do you remember about him?”
   Kramer put his coffee mug down. “It was ten years ago. I don’t remember much. It’s vague.”
   He let his mind run back over the years. He and Dolores had been at Hunt College together, in physics and the life sciences. The College was small and set back away from the momentum of modern life. He had gone there because it was his home town, and his father had gone there before him.
   Professor Thomas had been at the College a long time, as long as anyone could remember. He was a strange old man, keeping to himself most of the time. There were many things that he disapproved of, but he seldom said what they were.
   “Do you recall anything that might help us?” Gross asked. “Anything that would give us a clue as to what he might have in mind?”
   Kramer nodded slowly. “I remember one thing…”
   One day he and the Professor had been sitting together in the school chapel, talking leisurely.
   “Well, you’ll be out of school, soon,” the Professor had said. “What are you going to do?”
   “Do? Work at one of the Government Research Projects, I suppose.”
   “And eventually? What’s your ultimate goal?”
   Kramer had smiled. “The question is unscientific. It presupposes such things as ultimate ends.”
   “Suppose instead along these lines, then: What if there were no war and no Government Research Projects? What would you do, then?”
   “I don’t know. But how can I imagine a hypothetical situation like that? There’s been war as long as I can remember. We’re geared for war. I don’t know what I’d do. I suppose I’d adjust, get used to it.”
   The Professor had stared at him. “Oh, you do think you’d get accustomed to it, eh? Well, I’m glad of that. And you think you could find something to do?”
   Gross listened intently. “What do you infer from this, Kramer?”
   “Not much. Except that he was against war.”
   “We’re all against war,” Gross pointed out.
   “True. But he was withdrawn, set apart. He lived very simply, cooking his own meals. His wife died many years ago. He was born in Europe, in Italy. He changed his name when he came to the United States. He used to read Dante and Milton. He even had a Bible.”
   “Very anachronistic, don’t you think?”
   “Yes, he lived quite a lot in the past. He found an old phonograph and records and he listened to the old music. You saw his house, how old-fashioned it was.”
   “Did he have a file?” Winter asked Gross.
   “With Security? No, none at all. As far as we could tell he never engaged in political work, never joined anything or even seemed to have strong political convictions.”
   “No,” Kramer agreed. “About all he ever did was walk through the hills. He liked nature.”
   “Nature can be of great use to a scientist,” Gross said. “There wouldn’t be any science without it.”
   “Kramer, what do you think his plan is, taking control of the ship and disappearing?” Winter said.
   “Maybe the transfer made him insane,” the Pilot said. “Maybe there’s no plan, nothing rational at all.”
   “But he had the ship rewired, and he had made sure that he would retain consciousness and memory before he even agreed to the operation. He must have had something planned from the start. But what?”
   “Perhaps he just wanted to stay alive longer,” Kramer said. “He was old and about to die. Or—”
   “Or what?”
   “Nothing.” Kramer stood up. “I think as soon as we get to the moon base I’ll make a vidcall to earth. I want to talk to somebody about this.”
   “Who’s that?” Gross asked.
   “Dolores. Maybe she remembers something.”
   “That’s a good idea,” Gross said.

   “Where are you calling from?” Dolores asked, when he succeeded in reaching her.
   “From a moon base.”
   “All kinds of rumors are running around. Why didn’t the ship come back? What happened?”
   “I’m afraid he ran off with it.”
   “He?”
   “The Old Man. Professor Thomas.” Kramer explained what had happened.
   Dolores listened intently. “How strange. And you think he planned it all in advance, from the start?”
   “I’m certain. He asked for the plans of construction and the theoretical diagrams at once.”
   “But why? What for?”
   “I don’t know. Look, Dolores. What do you remember about him? Is there anything that might give a clue to all this?”
   “Like what?”
   “I don’t know. That’s the trouble.”
   On the vidscreen Dolores knitted her brow. “I remember he raised chickens in his back yard and once he had a goat.” She smiled. “Do you remember the day the goat got loose and wandered down the main street of town? Nobody could figure out where it came from.”
   “Anything else?”
   “No.” He watched her struggling, trying to remember. “He wanted to have a farm, sometime, I know.”
   “All right. Thanks.” Kramer touched the switch. “When I get back to Terra maybe I’ll stop and see you.”
   “Let me know how it works out.”
   He cut the line and the picture dimmed and faded. He walked slowly back to where Gross and some officers of the Military were sitting at a chart table, talking.
   “Any luck?” Gross said, looking up.
   “No. All she remembers is that he kept a goat.”
   “Come over and look at this detail chart.” Gross motioned him around to his side. “Watch!”
   Kramer saw the record tabs moving furiously, the little white dots racing back and forth.
   “What’s happening?” he asked.
   “A squadron outside the defense zone has finally managed to contact the ship. They’re maneuvering now, for position. Watch.”
   The white counters were forming a barrel formation around a black dot that was moving steadily across the board, away from the central position. As they watched, the white dots constructed around it.
   “They’re ready to open fire,” a technician at the board said. “Commander, what shall we tell them to do?”
   Gross hesitated. “I hate to be the one who makes the decision. When it comes right down to it—”
   “It’s not just a ship,” Kramer said. “It’s a man, a living person. A human being is up there, moving through space. I wish we knew what—”
   “But the order has to be given. We can’t take any chances. Suppose he went over to them, to the yuks.”
   Kramer’s jaw dropped. “My God, he wouldn’t do that.”
   “Are you sure? Do you know what he’ll do?”
   “He wouldn’t do that.”
   Gross turned to the technician. “Tell them to go ahead.”
   “I’m sorry, sir, but now the ship has gotten away. Look down at the board.”
   Gross stared down, Kramer over his shoulder. The black dot had slipped through the white dots and had moved off at an abrupt angle. The white dots were broken up, dispersing in confusion.
   “He’s an unusual strategist,” one of the officers said. He traced the line. “It’s an ancient maneuver, an old Prussian device, but it worked.”
   The white dots were turning back. “Too many yuk ships out that far,” Gross said. “Well, that’s what you get when you don’t act quickly.” He looked up coldly at Kramer. “We should have done it when we had him. Look at him go!” He jabbed a finger at the rapidly moving black dot. The dot came to the edge of the board and stopped. It had reached the limit of the charted area. “See?”
   Now what? Kramer thought, watching. So the Old Man had escaped the cruisers and gotten away. He was alert, all right; there was nothing wrong with his mind. Or with ability to control his new body.
   Body—The ship was a new body for him. He had traded in the old dying body, withered and frail, for this hulking frame of metal and plastic, turbines and rocket jets. He was strong, now. Strong and big. The new body was more powerful than a thousand human bodies. But how long would it last him? The average life of a cruiser was only ten years. With careful handling he might get twenty out of it, before some essential part failed and there was no way to replace it.
   And then, what then? What would he do, when something failed and there was no one to fix it for him? That would be the end. Someplace, far out in the cold darkness of space, the ship would slow down, silent and lifeless, to exhaust its last heat into the eternal timelessness of outer space. Or perhaps it would crash on some barren asteroid, burst into a million fragments.
   It was only a question of time.
   “Your wife didn’t remember anything?” Gross said.
   “I told you. Only that he kept a goat, once.”
   “A hell of a lot of help that is.”
   Kramer shrugged. “It’s not my fault.”
   “I wonder if we’ll ever see him again.” Gross stared down at the indicator dot, still hanging at the edge of the board. “I wonder if he’ll ever move back this way.”
   “I wonder, too,” Kramer said.

   That night Kramer lay in bed, tossing from side to side, unable to sleep. The moon gravity, even artificially increased, was unfamiliar to him and it made him uncomfortable. A thousand thoughts wandered loose in his head as he lay, fully awake.
   What did it all mean? What was the Professor’s plan? Maybe they would never know. Maybe the ship was gone for good: the Old Man had left forever, shooting into outer space. They might never find out why he had done it, what purpose—if any—had been in his mind.
   Kramer sat up in bed. He turned on the light and lit a cigarette. His quarters were small, a metal-lined bunk room, part of the moon station base.
   The Old Man had wanted to talk to him. He had wanted to discuss things, hold a conversation, but in the hysteria and confusion all they had been able to think of was getting away. The ship was rushing off with them, carrying them into outer space. Kramer set his jaw. Could they be blamed for jumping? They had no idea where they were being taken, or why. They were helpless, caught in their own ship, and the pursuit ship standing by waiting to pick them up was their only chance. Another half hour and it would have been too late.
   But what had the Old Man wanted to say? What had he intended to tell him, in those first confusing moments when the ship around them had come alive, each metal strut and wire suddenly animate, the body of a living creature, a vast metal organism?
   It was weird, unnerving. He could not forget it, even now. He looked around the small room uneasily. What did it signify, the coming to life of metal and plastic? All at once they had found themselves inside a living creature, in its stomach, like Jonah inside the whale.
   It had been alive, and it had talked to them, talked calmly and rationally, as it rushed them off, faster and faster into outer space. The wall speaker and circuit had become the vocal cords and mouth, the wiring the spinal cord and nerves, the hatches and relays and circuit breakers the muscles.
   They had been helpless, completely helpless. The ship had, in a brief second, stolen their power away from them and left them defenseless, practically at its mercy. It was not right; it made him uneasy. All his life he had controlled machines, bent nature and the forces of nature to man and man’s needs. The human race had slowly evolved until it was in a position to operate things, run them as it saw fit. Now all at once it had been plunged back down the ladder again, prostrate before a Power against which they were children.
   Kramer got out of bed. He put on his bathrobe and began to search for a cigarette. While he was searching, the vidscreen rang.
   He snapped the vidphone on. “Yes?”
   The face of the immediate monitor appeared. “A call from Terra, Mr. Kramer. An emergency call.”
   “Emergency call? For me? Put it through.” Kramer came awake, brushing his hair back out of his eyes. Alarm plucked at him.
   From the speaker a strange voice came. “Philip Kramer? Is this Kramer?”
   “Yes. Go on.”
   “This is General Hospital. New York City, Terra. Mr. Kramer, your wife is here. She has been critically injured in an accident. Your name was given to us to call. Is it possible for you to—”
   “How badly?” Kramer gripped the vidphone stand. “Is it serious?”
   “Yes, it’s serious, Mr. Kramer. Are you able to come here? The quicker you can come the better.”
   “Yes.” Kramer nodded. “I’ll come. Thanks.”
   The screen died as the connection was broken. Kramer waited a moment. Then he tapped the button. The screen relit again. “Yes, sir,” the monitor said.
   “Can I get a ship to Terra at once? It’s an emergency. My wife—”
   “There’s no ship leaving the moon for eight hours. You’ll have to wait until the next period.”
   “Isn’t there anything I can do?”
   “We can broadcast a general request to all ships passing through this area. Sometimes cruisers pass by here returning to Terra for repairs.”
   “Will you broadcast that for me? I’ll come down to the field.”
   “Yes, sir. But there may be no ship in the area for a while. It’s a gamble.” The screen died.
   Kramer dressed quickly. He put on his coat and hurried out the lift. A moment later he was running across the general receiving lobby, past the rows of vacant desks and conference tables. At the door the sentries stepped aside and he went outside, onto the great concrete steps.
   The face of the moon was in shadow. Below him the field stretched out in total darkness, a black void, endless, without form. He made his way carefully down the steps and along the ramp along the side of the field, to the control tower. A faint row of red lights showed him the way.
   Two soldiers challenged him at the foot of the tower, standing in the shadows, their guns ready.
   “Kramer?”
   “Yes.” A light was flashed in his face.
   “Your call has been sent out already.”
   “Any luck?” Kramer asked.
   “There’s a cruiser nearby that has made contact with us. It has an injured jet and is moving slowly back toward Terra, away from the line.”
   “Good.” Kramer nodded, a flood of relief rushing through him. He lit a cigarette and gave one to each of the soldiers. The soldiers lit up.
   “Sir,” one of them asked, “is it true about the experimental ship?”
   “What do you mean?”
   “It came to life and ran off?’
   “No, not exactly,” Kramer said. “It had a new type of control system instead of the Johnson units. It wasn’t properly tested.”
   “But sir, one of the cruisers that was there got up close to it, and a buddy of mine says this ship acted funny. He never saw anything like it. It was like when he was fishing once on Terra, in Washington State, fishing for bass. The fish were smart, going this way and that—”
   “Here’s your cruiser,” the other soldier said. “Look!”
   An enormous vague shape was settling slowly down onto the field. They could make nothing out but its row of tiny green blinkers. Kramer stared at the shape.
   “Better hurry, sir,” the soldiers said. “They don’t stick around here very long.”
   “Thanks.” Kramer loped across the field, toward the black shape that rose above him, extended across the width of the field. The ramp was down from the side of the cruiser and he caught hold of it. The ramp rose, and a moment later Kramer was inside the hold of the ship. The hatch slid shut behind him.
   As he made his way up the stairs to the main deck the turbines roared up from the moon, out into space.
   Kramer opened the door to the main deck. He stopped suddenly, staring around him in surprise. There was nobody in sight. The ship was deserted.
   “Good God,” he said. Realization swept over him, numbing him. He sat down on a bench, his head swimming. “Good God.”
   The ship roared out into space leaving the moon and Terra farther behind each moment.
   And there was nothing he could do.

   “So it was you who put the call through,” he said at last. “It was you who called me on the vidphone, not any hospital on Terra. It was all part of the plan.” He looked up and around him. “And Dolores is really—”
   “Your wife is fine,” the wall speaker above him said tonelessly. “It was a fraud. I’m sorry to trick you that way, Philip, but it was all I could think of. Another day and you would have been back on Terra. I don’t want to remain in this area any longer than necessary. They have been so certain of finding me out in deep space that I have been able to stay here without too much danger. But even the purloined letter was found eventually.”
   Kramer smoked his cigarette nervously. “What are you going to do? Where are we going?’
   “First, I want to talk to you. I have many things to discuss. I was very disappointed when you left me, along with the others. I had hoped that you would remain.” The dry voice chuckled. “Remember how we used to talk in the old days, you and I? That was a long time ago.”
   The ship was gaining speed. It plunged through space at tremendous speed, rushing through the last of the defense zone and out beyond. A rush of nausea made Kramer bend over for a moment.
   When he straightened up the voice from the wall went on. “I’m sorry to step it up so quickly, but we are still in danger. Another few moments and we’ll be free.”
   “How about yuk ships? Aren’t they out here?’
   “I’ve already slipped away from several of them. They’re quite curious about me.”
   “Curious?”
   “They sense that I’m different, more like their own organic mines. They don’t like it. I believe they will begin to withdraw from this area, soon. Apparently they don’t want to get involved with me. They’re an odd race, Philip. I would have liked to study them closely, try to learn something about them. I’m of the opinion that they use no inert material. All their equipment and instruments are alive, in some form or other. They don’t construct or build at all. The idea of making is foreign to them. They utilize existing forms. Even their ships—”
   “Where are we going?” Kramer said. “I want to know where you are taking me.”
   “Frankly, I’m not certain.”
   “You’re not certain?”
   “I haven’t worked some details out. There are a few vague spots in my program, still. But I think that in a short while I’ll have them ironed out.”
   “What is your program?” Kramer said.
   “It’s really very simple. But don’t you want to come into the control room and sit? The seats are much more comfortable than that metal bench.”
   Kramer went into the control room and sat down at the control board. Looking at the useless apparatus made him feel strange.
   “What’s the matter?” the speaker above the board rasped.
   Kramer gestured helplessly. “I’m powerless. I can’t do anything. And I don’t like it. Do you blame me?”
   “No. No, I don’t blame you. But you’ll get your control back, soon. Don’t worry. This is only a temporary expedient, taking you off this way. It was something I didn’t contemplate. I forgot that orders would be given out to shoot me on sight.”
   “It was Gross’s idea.”
   “I don’t doubt that. My conception, my plan, came to me as soon as you began to describe your project, that day at my house. I saw at once that you were wrong; you people have no understanding of the mind at all. I realized that the transfer of a human brain from an organic body to a complex artificial spaceship would not involve the loss of the intellectualization faculty of the mind. When a man thinks, he is.
   “When I realized that, I saw the possibility of an age-old dream becoming real. I was quite elderly when I first met you, Philip. Even then my life-span had come pretty much to its end. I could look ahead to nothing but death, and with it the extinction of all my ideas. I had made no mark on the world, none at all. My students, one by one, passed from me into the world, to take up jobs in the great Research Project, the search for better and bigger weapons of war.
   “The world has been fighting for a long time, first with itself, then with the Martians, then with these beings from Proxima Centauri, whom we know nothing about. The human society has evolved war as a cultural institution, like the science of astronomy, or mathematics. War is a part of our lives, a career, a respected vocation. Bright, alert young men and women move into it, putting their shoulders to the wheel as they did in the time of Nebuchadnezzar. It has always been so.
   “But is it innate in mankind? I don’t think so. No social custom is innate. There were many human groups that did not go to war; the Eskimos never grasped the idea at all, and the American Indians never took to it well.
   “But these dissenters were wiped out, and a cultural pattern was established that became the standard for the whole planet. Now it has become ingrained in us.
   “But if someplace along the line some other way of settling problems had arisen and taken hold, something different than the massing of men and to—”
   “What’s your plan?” Kramer said. “I know the theory. It was part of one of your lectures.”
   “Yes, buried in a lecture on plant selection, as I recall. When you came to me with this proposition I realized that perhaps my conception could be brought to life, after all. If my theory were right that war is only a habit, not an instinct, a society built up apart from Terra with a minimum of cultural roots might develop differently. If it failed to absorb our outlook, if it could start out on another foot, it might not arrive at the same point to which we have come: a dead end, with nothing but greater and greater wars in sight, until nothing is left but ruin and destruction everywhere.
   “Of course, there would have to be a Watcher to guide the experiment, at first. A crisis would undoubtedly come very quickly, probably in the second generation. Cain would arise almost at once.
   “You see, Kramer, I estimate that if I remain at rest most of the time, on some small planet or moon, I may be able to keep functioning for almost a hundred years. That would be time enough, sufficient to see the direction of the new colony. After that—Well, after that it would be up to the colony itself.
   “Which is just as well, of course. Man must take control eventually, on his own. One hundred years, and after that they will have control of their destiny. Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps war is more than a habit. Perhaps it is a law of the universe, that things can only survive as groups by group violence.
   “But I’m going ahead and taking the chance that it is only a habit, that I’m right, that war is something we’re so accustomed to that we don’t realize it is a very unnatural thing. Now as to the place! I’m still a little vague about that. We must find the place, still.
   “That’s what we’re doing now. You and I are going to inspect a few systems off the beaten path, planets where the trading prospects are low enough to keep Terran ships away. I know of one planet that might be a good place. It was reported by the Fairchild expedition in their original manuscript. We may look into that, for a start.”
   The ship was silent.

   Kramer sat for a time, staring down at the metal floor under him. The floor throbbed dully with the motion of the turbines. At last he looked up.
   “You might be right. Maybe our outlook is only a habit.” Kramer got to his feet. “But I wonder if something has occurred to you?”
   “What is that?”
   “If it’s such a deeply ingrained habit, going back thousands of years, how are you going to get your colonists to make the break, leave Terra and Terran customs? How about this generation, the first ones, the people who found the colony? I think you’re right that the next generation would be free of all this, if there were an—” He grinned. “—An Old Man Above to teach them something else instead.”
   Kramer looked up at the wall speaker. “How are you going to get the people to leave Terra and come with you, if by your own theory, this generation can’t be saved, it all has to start with the next?”
   The wall speaker was silent. Then it made a sound, the faint dry chuckle.
   “I’m surprised at you, Philip. Settlers can be found. We won’t need many, just a few.” The speaker chuckled again. “I’ll acquaint you with my solution.”
   At the far end of the corridor a door slid open. There was sound, a hesitant sound. Kramer turned.
   “Dolores!”
   Dolores Kramer stood uncertainly, looking into the control room. She blinked in amazement. “Phil! What are you doing here? What’s going on?”
   They stared at each other.
   “What’s happening?” Dolores said. “I received a vidcall that you had been hurt in a lunar explosion—”
   The wall speaker rasped into life. “You see, Philip, that problem is already solved. We don’t need so many people; even a single couple might do.”
   Kramer nodded slowly. “I see,” he murmured thickly. “Just one couple. One man and woman.”
   “They might make it all right, if there were someone to watch and see that things went as they should. There will be quite a few things I can help you with, Philip. Quite a few. We’ll get along very well, I think.”
   Kramer grinned wryly. “You could even help us name the animals,” he said. “I understand that’s the first step.”
   “I’ll be glad to,” the toneless, impersonal voice said. “As I recall, my part will be to bring them to you, one by one. Then you can do the actual naming.”
   “I don’t understand,” Dolores faltered. “What does he mean, Phil? Naming animals. What kind of animals? Where are we going?”
   Kramer walked slowly over to the port and stood staring silently out, his arms folded. Beyond the ship myriad fragments of light gleamed, countless coals glowing in the dark void. Stars, suns, systems. Endless, without number. A universe of worlds. An infinity of planets, waiting for them, gleaming and winking from the darkness.
   He turned back, away from the port. “Where are we going?” He smiled at his wife, standing nervous and frightened, her large eyes full of alarm. “I don’t know where we are going,” he said. “But somehow that doesn’t seem important right now… I’m beginning to see the Professor’s point, it’s the result that counts.”
   And for the first time in many months he put his arm around Dolores. At first she stiffened, the fright and nervousness still in her eyes. But then suddenly she relaxed against him and there were tears wetting her cheeks.
   “Phil… do you really think we can start over again—you and I?”
   He kissed her tenderly, then passionately.
   And the spaceship shot swiftly through the endless, trackless eternity of the void…

Piper in the Woods

   “Well, Corporal Westerburg,” Doctor Henry Harris said gently, “just why do you think you’re a plant?”
   As he spoke, Harris glanced down again at the card on his desk. It was from the Base Commander himself, made out in Cox’s heavy scrawl: Doc, this is the lad I told you about. Talk to him and try to find out how he got this delusion. He’s from the new Garrison, the new check station on Asteroid Y-3, and we don’t want anything to go wrong there. Especially a silly damn thing like this!
   Harris pushed the card aside and stared back up at the youth across the desk from him. The young man seemed ill at ease and appeared to be avoiding answering the question Harris had put to him. Harris frowned. Westerburg was a good looking chap, actually handsome in his Patrol uniform, a shock of blond hair over one eye. He was tall, almost six feet, a fine healthy lad, just two years out of Training, according to the card. Born in Detroit. Had measles when he was nine. Interested in jet engines, tennis, and girls. Twenty-six years old.
   “Well, Corporal Westerburg,” Doctor Harris said again. “Why do you think you’re a plant?”
   The Corporal looked up shyly. He cleared his throat. “Sir, I am a plant, I don’t just think so. I’ve been a plant for several days now.”
   “I see.” The Doctor nodded. “You mean that you weren’t always a plant?”
   “No sir. I just became a plant recently.”
   “And what were you before you became a plant?”
   “Well, sir, I was just like the rest of you.”
   There was silence. Doctor Harris took up his pen and scratched a few lines, but nothing of importance came. A plant? And such a healthy-looking lad! Harris removed his steel-rimmed glasses and polished them with his handkerchief. He put them on again and leaned back in his chair. “Care for a cigarette, Corporal?”
   “No, sir.”
   The Doctor lit one for himself, resting his arm on the edge of the chair. “Corporal, you must realize that there are very few men who become plants, especially on such short notice. I have to admit you are the first person who has ever told me such a thing.”
   “Yes, sir, I realize it’s quite rare.”
   “You can understand why I’m interested, then. When you say you’re a plant, you mean you’re not capable of mobility? Or do you mean you’re a vegetable, as opposed to an animal? Or just what?”
   The Corporal looked away. “I can’t tell you any more,” he murmured. “I’m sorry, sir.”
   “Well, would you mind telling me how you became a plant?”
   Corporal Westerburg hesitated. He stared down at the floor, then out the window at the spaceport, then at a fly on the desk. At last he stood up, getting slowly to his feet. “I can’t even tell you that, sir,” he said.
   “You can’t? Why not?”
   “Because—because I promised not to.”
   The room was silent. Doctor Harris rose, too, and they both stood facing each other. Harris frowned, rubbing his jaw. “Corporal, just who did you promise?”
   “I can’t even tell you that, sir. I’m sorry.”
   The Doctor considered this. At last he went to the door and opened it. “All right, Corporal. You may go now. And thanks for your time.”
   “I’m sorry I’m not more helpful.” The Corporal went slowly out and Harris closed the door after him. Then he went across his office to the vid-phone. He rang Commander Cox’s letter. A moment later the beefy good-natured face of the Base Commander appeared.
   “Cox, this is Harris. I talked to him, all right. All I could get is the statement that he’s a plant. What else is there? What kind of behavior pattern?”
   “Well,” Cox said, “the first thing they noticed was that he wouldn’t do any work. The Garrison Chief reported that this Westerburg would wander off outside the Garrison and just sit, all day long. Just sit.”
   “In the sun?”
   “Yes. Just sit in the sun. Then at nightfall he would come back in. When they asked why he wasn’t working in the jet repair building he told them he had to be out in the sun. Then he said—” Cox hesitated.
   “Yes? Said what?”
   “He said that work was unnatural. That it was a waste of time. That the only worthwhile thing was to sit and contemplate—outside.”
   “What then?”
   “Then they asked him how he got that idea, and then he revealed to them that he had become a plant.”
   “I’m going to have to talk to him again, I can see,” Harris said. “And he’s applied for a permanent discharge from the Patrol? What reason did he give?”
   “The same, that he’s a plant now, and has no more interest in being a Patrolman. All he wants to do is sit in the sun. It’s the damnedest thing I ever heard.”
   “All right. I think I’ll visit him in his quarters.” Harris looked at his watch. “I’ll go over after dinner.”
   “Good luck,” Cox said gloomily. “But who ever heard of a man turning into a plant? We told him it wasn’t possible, but he just smiled at us.”
   “I’ll let you know how I make out,” Harris said.

   Harris walked slowly down the hall. It was after six; the evening meal was over. A dim concept was coming into his mind, but it was much too soon to be sure. He increased his pace, turning right at the end of the hall. Two nurses passed, hurrying by. Westerburg was quartered with a buddy, a man who had been injured in a jet blast and who was now almost recovered. Harris came to the dorm wing and stopped, checking the numbers on the doors.
   “Can I help you, sir?” the robot attendant said, gliding up.
   “I’m looking for Corporal Westerburg’s room.”
   “Three doors to the right.”
   Harris went on. Asteroid Y-3 had only recently been garrisoned and staffed. It had become the primary check-point to halt and examine ships entering the system from outer space. The Garrison made sure that no dangerous bacteria, fungus, or what-not arrived to infect the system. A nice asteroid it was, warm, well-watered, with trees and lakes and lots of sunshine. And the most modern Garrison in the nine planets. He shook his head, coming to the third door. He stopped, raising his hand and knocking.
   “Who’s there?” sounded through the door.
   “I want to see Corporal Westerburg.”
   The door opened. A bovine youth with horn-rimmed glasses looked out, a book in his hand. “Who are you?”
   “Doctor Harris.”
   “I’m sorry, sir. Corporal Westerburg is asleep.”
   “Would he mind if I woke him up? I want very much to talk to him.” Harris peered inside. He could see a neat room, with a desk, a rug and lamp, and two bunks. On one of the bunks was Westerburg, lying face up, his arms folded across his chest, his eyes tightly closed.
   “Sir,” the bovine youth said, “I’m afraid I can’t wake him up for you, much as I’d like to.”
   “You can’t? Why not?”
   “Sir, Corporal Westerburg won’t wake up, not after the sun sets. He just won’t. He can’t be awakened.”
   “Cataleptic? Really?”
   “But in the morning, as soon as the sun comes up, he leaps out of bed and goes outside. Stays the whole day.”
   “I see,” the Doctor said. “Well, thanks anyhow.” He went back out into the hall and the door shut after him. “There’s more to this than I realized,” he murmured. He went on back the way he had come.
   It was a warm sunny day. The sky was almost free of clouds and a gentle wind moved through the cedars along the bank of the stream. There was a path leading from the hospital building down the slope to the stream. At the stream a small bridge led over to the other side, and a few patients were standing on the bridge, wrapped in their bathrobes, looking aimlessly down at the water.
   It took Harris several minutes to find Westerburg. The youth was not with the other patients, near or around the bridge. He had gone farther down, past the cedar trees and out onto a strip of bright meadow, where poppies and grass grew everywhere. He was sitting on the stream bank, on a flat gray stone, leaning back and staring up, his mouth open a little. He did not notice the Doctor until Harris was almost beside him.
   “Hello,” Harris said softly.
   Westerburg opened his eyes, looking up. He smiled and got slowly to his feet, a graceful, flowing motion that was rather surprising for a man of his size. “Hello, Doctor. What brings you out here?”
   “Nothing. Thought I’d get some sun.”
   “Here, you can share my rock,” Westerburg moved over and Harris sat down gingerly, being careful not to catch his trousers on the sharp edges of the rock. He lit a cigarette and gazed silently down at the water. Beside him, Westerburg had resumed his strange position, leaning back, resting on his hands, staring up with his eyes shut tight.
   “Nice day,” the Doctor said.
   “Yes.”
   “Do you come here every day?”
   “You like it better out here than inside.”
   “I can’t stay inside,” Westerburg said.
   “You can’t? How do you mean, ‘can’t’?”
   “You would die without air, wouldn’t you?” the Corporal said.
   “And you’d die without sunlight?”
   Westerburg nodded.
   “Corporal, may I ask you something? Do you plan to do this the rest of your life, sit out in the sun on a flat rock? Nothing else?”
   Westerburg nodded.
   “How about your job? You went to school for years to become a Patrolman. You wanted to enter the Patrol very badly. You were given a fine rating and a first-class position. How do you feel, giving all that up? You know, it won’t be easy to get back in again. Do you realize that?”
   “I realize it.”
   “And you’re really going to give it all up?”
   “That’s right.”
   Harris was silent for a while. At last he put his cigarette out and turned toward the youth. “All right, let’s say you give up your job and sit in the sun. Well, what happens, then? Someone else has to do the job instead of you. Isn’t that true? The job has to be done, your job has to be done. And if you don’t do it someone else has to.”
   “I suppose so.”
   “Westerburg, suppose everyone felt the way you do? Suppose everyone wanted to sit in the sun all day? What would happen? No one would check ships coming from outer space. Bacteria and toxic crystals would enter the system and cause mass death and suffering. Isn’t that right?”
   “If everyone felt the way I do they wouldn’t be going into outer space.”
   “But they have to. They have to trade, they have to get minerals and products and new plants.”
   “Why?”
   “To keep society going.”
   “Why?”
   “Well—” Harris gestured. “People couldn’t live without society.”
   Westerburg said nothing to that. Harris watched him, but the youth did not answer.
   “Isn’t that right?” Harris said.
   “Perhaps. It’s a peculiar business, Doctor. You know, I struggled for years to get through Training. I had to work and pay my own way. Washed dishes, worked in kitchens. Studied at night, learned, crammed, worked on and on. And you know what I think, now?”
   “What?”
   “I wish I’d become a plant earlier.”
   Doctor Harris stood up. “Westerburg, when you come inside, will you stop off at my office? I want to give you a few tests, if you don’t mind.”
   “The shock box?” Westerburg smiled. “I knew that would be coming around. Sure, I don’t mind.”
   Nettled, Harris left the rock, walking back up the bank a short distance. “About three, Corporal?”
   The Corporal nodded.
   Harris made his way up the hill, to the path, toward the hospital building. The whole thing was beginning to become more clear to him. A boy who had struggled all his life. Financial insecurity. Idealized goal, getting a Patrol assignment. Finally reached it, found the load too great. And on Asteroid Y-3 there was too much vegetation to look at all day. Primitive identification and projection on the flora of the asteroid. Concept of security involved in immobility and permanence. Unchanging forest.
   He entered the building. A robot orderly stopped him almost at once. “Sir, Commander Cox wants you urgently, on the vidphone.”
   “Thanks.” Harris strode to the office. He dialed Cox’s letter and the Commander’s face came presently into focus. “Cox? This is Harris. I’ve been out talking to the boy. I’m beginning to to get this lined up, now. I can see the pattern, too much load too long. Finally gets what he wants and the idealization shatters under the—”
   “Harris!” Cox barked. “Shut up and listen. I just got a report from Y-3. They’re sending an express rocket here. It’s on the way.”
   “An express rocket?”
   “Five more cases like Westerburg. All say they’re plants! The Garrison Chief is worried as hell. Says we must find out what it is or the Garrison will fall apart, right away. Do you get me, Harris? Find out what it is!”
   “Yes, sir,” Harris murmured. “Yes, sir.”

   By the end of the week there were twenty cases, and all, of course, were from Asteroid Y-3.
   Commander Cox and Harris stood together at the top of the hill, looking gloomily down at the stream below. Sixteen men and four women sat in the sun along the bank, none of them moving, none speaking. An hour had gone by since Cox and Harris appeared, and in all that time the twenty people below had not stirred.
   “I don’t get it,” Cox said, shaking his head. “I just absolutely don’t get it. Harris, is this the beginning of the end? Is everything going to start cracking around us? It gives me a hell of a strange feeling to see those people down there basking away in the sun, just sitting and basking.”
   “Who’s that man there with the red hair?”
   “That’s Ulrich Deutsch. He was Second in Command at the Garrison. Now look at him! Sits and dozes with his mouth open and his eyes shut. A week ago that man was climbing, going right up to the top. When the Garrison Chief retires he was supposed to take over. Maybe another year, at the most. All his life he’s been climbing to get up there.”
   “And now he sits in the sun,” Harris finished.
   “That woman. The brunette, with the short hair. Career woman. Head of the entire office staff of the Garrison. And the man beside her. Janitor. And that cute little gal there, with the bosom. Secretary, just out of school. All kinds. And I got a note this morning, three more coming in sometime today.”
   Harris nodded. “The strange thing is—they really want to sit down there. They’re completely rational; they could do something else, but they just don’t care to.”
   “Well?” Cox said. “What are you going to do? Have you found anything? We’re counting on you. Let’s hear it.”
   “I couldn’t get anything out of them directly,” Harris said, “but I’ve had some interesting results with the shock box. Let’s go inside and I’ll show you.”
   “Fine,” Cox turned and started toward the hospital. “Show me anything you’ve got. This is serious. Now I know how Tiberius felt when Christianity showed up in high places.”

   Harris snapped off the light. The room was pitch black. “I’ll run this first reel for you. The subject is one of the best biologists stationed at the Garrison. Robert Bradshaw. He came in yesterday. I got a good run from the shock box because Bradshaw’s mind is so highly differentiated. There’s a lot of repressed material of a non-rational nature, more than usual.”
   He pressed a switch. The projector whirred, and on the far wall a three-dimensional image appeared in color, so real that it might have been the man himself. Robert Bradshaw was a man of fifty, heavy-set, with iron-gray hair and a square jaw. He sat in the chair calmly, his hands resting on the arms, oblivious to the electrodes attached to his neck and wrist. “There I go,” Harris said. “Watch.”
   His film-image appeared, approaching Bradshaw. “Now, Mr. Bradshaw,” his image said, “this won’t hurt you at all, and it’ll help us a lot.” The image rotated the controls on the shock box, Bradshaw stiffened, and his jaw set, but otherwise he gave no sign. The image of Harris regarded him for a time and then stepped away from the controls.
   “Can you hear me, Mr. Bradshaw?” the image asked.
   “Yes.”
   “What is your name?”
   “Robert C. Bradshaw.”
   “What is your position?”
   “Chief Biologist at the check station on Y-3.”
   “Are you there now?”
   “No, I’m back on Terra. In a hospital.”
   “Why?”
   “Because I admitted to the Garrison Chief that I had become a plant.”
   “Is that true? That you are a plant.”
   “Yes, in a non-biological sense. I retain the physiology of a human being, of course.”
   “What do you mean, then, that you’re a plant?”
   “The reference is to attitudinal response, to Weltanschauung.”
   “Go on.”
   “It is possible for a warm-blooded animal, an upper primate, to adopt the psychology of a plant, to some extent.”
   “Yes?”
   “I refer to this.”
   “And the others? They refer to this also?”
   “Yes.”
   “How did this occur, your adopting this attitude?
   Bradshaw’s image hesitated, the lips twisting. “See?” Harris said to Cox. “Strong conflict. He wouldn’t have gone on, if he had been fully conscious.”
   “Yes?”
   “I was taught to become a plant.”
   The image of Harris showed surprise and interest. “What do you mean, you were taught to become a plant?”
   “They realized my problems and taught me to become a plant. Now I’m free from them, the problems.”
   “Who? Who taught you?”
   “The Pipers.”
   “Who? The Pipers? Who are the Pipers?”
   There was no answer.
   “Mr. Bradshaw, who are the Pipers?”
   After a long, agonized pause, the heavy lips parted. “They live in the woods…”
   Harris snapped off the projector, and the lights came on. He and Cox blinked. “That was all I could get,” Harris said. “But I was lucky to get that. He wasn’t supposed to tell, not at all. That was the thing they all promised not to do, tell who taught them to become plants. The Pipers who live in the woods on Asteroid Y-3.”
   “You got this story from all twenty?”
   “No.” Harris grimaced. “Most of them put up too much fight. I couldn’t even get this much from them.”
   Cox reflected. “The Pipers. Well? What do you propose to do? Just wait around until you can get the full story? Is that your program?”
   “No.” Harris said. “Not at all. I’m going to Y-3 and find out who the Pipers are, myself.”

   The small patrol ship made its landing with care and precision, its jets choking into final silence. The hatch slid back and Doctor Henry Harris found himself staring out at a field, a brown, sun-baked landing field. At the end of the field was a tall signal tower. Around the field on all sides were long gray buildings, the Garrison check station itself. Not far off a huge Venusian cruiser was parked, a vast green hulk, like an enormous lime. The technicians from the station were swarming all over it, checking and examining each inch of it for lethal life-forms and poisons that might have attached themselves to the hull.
   “All out, sir,” the pilot said.
   Harris nodded. He took hold of his two suitcases and stepped carefully down. The ground was hot underfoot, and he blinked in the bright sunlight. Jupiter was in the sky, and the vast planet reflected considerable sunlight down onto the asteroid.
   Harris started across the field, carrying his suitcase. A field attendant was already busy opening the storage compartment of the Patrol ship, extracting his trunk. The attendant lowered the trunk into a waiting dolly and came after him, manipulating the little truck with bored skill.
   As Harris came to the entrance of the signal tower the gate slid back and a man came forward, an older man, large and robust, with white hair and a steady walk.
   “How are you, Doctor?” he said, holding his hand out. “I’m Lawrence Watts, the Garrison Chief.”
   They shook hands. Watts smiled down at Harris. He was a huge old man, still regal and straight in his dark blue uniform, with his gold epaulets sparkling on his shoulders.
   “Have a good trip?” Watts asked. “Come on inside and I’ll have a drink fixed for you. It gets hot around here, with the Big Mirror up there.”
   “Jupiter?” Harris followed him inside the building. The signal tower was cool and dark, a welcome relief. “Why is the gravity so near Terra’s? I expected to go flying off like a kangaroo. Is it artificial?”
   “No. There’s a dense core of some kind to the asteroid, some kind of metallic deposit. That’s why we picked this asteroid out of all the others. It made the construction problem much simpler, and it also explains why the asteroid has natural air and water. Did you see the hills?”
   “The hills?”
   “When we get up higher in the tower we’ll be able to see over the buildings. There’s quite a natural park here, a regular little forest, complete with everything you’d want. Come in here, Harris. This is my office.” The old man strode at quite a clip, around the corner and into a large, well-furnished apartment. “Isn’t this pleasant? I intend to make my last year here as amiable as possible.” He frowned. “Off course, with Deutsch gone, I may be here forever. Oh, well.” He shrugged. “Sit down, Harris.”
   “Thanks.” Harris took a chair, stretching his legs out. He watched Watts as he closed the door to the hall. “By the way, any more cases come up?”
   “Two more today.” Watts was grim. “Makes almost thirty, in all. We have three hundred men in this station. At the rate it’s going—”
   “Chief, you spoke about a forest on the asteroid. Do you allow the crew to go into the forest at will? Or do you restrict them to the buildings and grounds?”
   Watts rubbed his jaw. “Well, it’s a difficult situation, Harris. I have to let the men leave the grounds sometimes. They can see the forest from the buildings, and as long as you can see a nice place to stretch out and relax that does it. Once every ten days they have a full period of rest. Then they go out and fool around.”
   “And then it happens?”
   “Yes, I suppose so. But as long as they can see the forest, they’ll want to go. I can’t help it.”
   “I know. I’m not censuring you. Well, what’s your theory? What happens to them out there? What do they do?”
   “What happens? Once they get out there and take it easy for a while they don’t want to come back and work. It’s boondoggling. Playing hookey. They don’t want to work, so off they go.”
   “How about this business of their delusions?”
   Watts laughed good-naturedly. “Listen, Harris. You know as well as I do that’s a lot of poppycock. They’re no more plants than you or I. They just don’t want to work, that’s all. When I was a cadet we had a few ways to make people work. I wish we could lay a few on their backs, like we used to.”
   “You think this is simple goldbricking, then?”
   “Don’t you think it is?”
   “No,” Harris said. “They really believe they’re plants. I put them through the high-frequency shock treatment, the shock box. The whole nervous system is paralyzed, all inhibitions stopped cold. They tell the truth, then. And they said the same thing—and more.”
   Watts paced back and forth, his hands clasped behind his back. “Harris, you’re a doctor, and I suppose you know what you’re talking about. But look at the situation here. We have a garrison, a good modern garrison. We’re probably the most modern outfit in the system. Every new device and gadget is here that science can produce. Harris, this garrison is one vast machine. The men are parts, and each has his job, the Maintenance Crew, the Biologists, the Office Crew, the Managerial Staff.
   “Look what happens when one person steps away from his job. Everything else begins to creak. We can’t service the bugs if no one services the machines. We can’t order food to feed the crews if no one makes out reports, takes inventories. We can’t direct any kind of activity if the Second in Command decides to go out and sit in the sun all day.
   “Thirty people, one tenth of the Garrison. But we can’t run without them. The Garrison is built that way. If you take the supports out the whole building falls. No one can leave. We’re all tied here and these people know it. They know they have no right to do that, run off on their own. No one has that right anymore. We’re all too tightly interwoven to suddenly start doing what we want. It’s unfair to the rest, the majority.”
   Harris nodded. “Chief, can I ask you something?”
   “What is it?”
   “Are there any inhabitants on the asteroid? Any natives?”
   “Natives?” Watts considered. “Yes, there’s some kind of aborigines living out there.” He waved vaguely toward the window.
   “What are they like? Have you seen them?”
   “Yes, I’ve seen them. At least, I saw them when we first came here. They hung around for a while, watching us, then after a time they disappeared.”
   “Did they die off? Diseases of some kind?”
   “No. They just—just disappeared. Into their forest. They’re still there, someplace.”
   “What kind of people are they?”
   “Well, the story is that they’re originally from Mars. They don’t look much like Martians, though. They’re dark, a kind of coppery color. Thin. Very agile, in their own way. They hunt and fish. No written language. We don’t pay much attention to them.”
   “I see.” Harris paused. “Chief, have you ever heard of anything called—The Pipers?”
   “The Pipers?” Watts frowned. “No. Why?”
   “The patients mentioned something called The Pipers. According to Bradshaw, the Pipers taught him to become a plant. He learned it from them, a kind of teaching.”
   “The Pipers. What are they?”
   “I don’t know,” Harris admitted. “I thought maybe you might know. My first assumption, of course, was that they’re the natives. But now I’m not so sure, after hearing your description of them.”
   “The natives are primitive savages. They don’t have anything to teach anybody, especially a top-flight biologist.”
   Harris hesitated. “Chief, I’d like to go into the woods and look around. Is that possible?”
   “Certainly. I can arrange it for you. I’ll give you one of the men to show you around.”
   “I’d rather go alone. Is there any danger?”
   “No, none that I know of. Except—”
   “Except the Pipers,” Harris finished. “I know. Well, there’s only one way to find them, and that’s it. I’ll have to take my chances.”
   “If you walk in a straight line,” Chief Watts said, “you’ll find yourself back at the Garrison in about six hours. It’s a damn small asteroid. There’s a couple of streams and lakes, so don’t fall in.”
   “How about snakes or poisonous insects?”
   “Nothing like that reported. We did a lot of tramping around at first, but it’s grown back now, the way it was. We never encountered anything dangerous.”
   “Thanks, Chief,” Harris said. They shook hands. “I’ll see you before nightfall.”
   “Good luck.” The Chief and his two armed escorts turned and went back across the rise, down the other side toward the Garrison. Harris watched them go until they disappeared inside the building. Then he turned and started into the grove of trees.
   The woods were very silent around him as he walked. Trees towered up on all sides of him, huge dark-green trees like eucalyptus. The ground underfoot was soft with endless leaves that had fallen and rotted into the soil. After awhile the grove of high trees fell behind and he found himself crossing a dry meadow, the grass and weeds burned brown in the sun. Insects buzzed around him, rising up from the dry weed-stalks. Something scuttled ahead, hurrying through the undergrowth. He caught sight of a gray ball with many legs, scampering furiously, its antennae weaving.
   The meadow ended at the bottom of a hill. He was going up, now, going higher and higher. Ahead of him an endless expanse of green rose, acres of wild growth. He scrambled to the top finally, blowing and panting, catching his breath.
   He went on. Now he was going down again, plunging into a deep gully. Tall ferns grew, as large as trees. He was entering a living jurassic forest, ferns that stretched out endlessly ahead of him. Down he went, walking carefully. The air began to turn cold around him. The floor of the gully was damp and silent; underfoot the ground was almost wet.
   He came out on a level table. It was dark, with the ferns growing up on all sides, dense growths of ferns, silent and unmoving. He came upon a natural path, an old stream bed, rough and rocky, but easy to follow. The air was thick and oppressive. Beyond the ferns he could see the side of the next hill, a green field rising up.
   Something gray was ahead. Rocks, piled-up boulders, scattered and stacked here and there. The stream led directly to them. Apparently this had been a pool of some kind, a stream emptying from it. He climbed the first of the boulders awkwardly, feeling his way up. At the top he paused, resting again.
   As yet he had had no luck. So far he had not met any of the natives. It would be through them that he would find the mysterious Pipers that were stealing the men away, if such really existed. If he could find the natives, talk to them, perhaps he could find out something. But as yet he had been unsuccessful. He looked around. The woods were very silent. A slight breeze moved through the ferns rustling them, but that was all. Where were the natives? Probably they had a settlement of some sort, huts, a clearing. The asteroid was small, he should be able to find them by nightfall.

   He started down the rocks. More rocks rose up ahead and he climbed them. Suddenly he stopped, listening. Far off, he could hear a sound, the sound of water. Was he approaching a pool of some kind? He went on again, trying to locate the sound. He scrambled down rocks and up rocks, and all around him there was silence, except for the splashing of distant water. Maybe a waterfall, water in motion. A stream. If he found the stream he might find the natives.
   The rocks ended and the stream bed began again, but this time it was wet, the bottom muddy and overgrown with moss. He was on the right track; not too long ago this stream had flowed, probably during the rainy season. He went up on the side of the stream, pushing through the ferns and vines. A golden snake slid expertly out of his path. Something glinted ahead, something sparkling through the ferns. Water. A pool. He hurried, pushing the vines aside and stepping out, leaving them behind.
   He was standing on the edge of a pool, a deep pool sunk in a hollow of gray rocks, surrounded by ferns and vines. The water was clear and bright, and in motion, flowing in a waterfall at the far end. It was beautiful, and he stood watching, marveling at it, the undisturbed quality of it. Untouched, it was. Just as it had always been, probably. As long as the asteroid existed. Was he the first to see it? Perhaps. It was so hidden, so concealed by the ferns. It gave him a strange feeling, a feeling almost of ownership. He stepped down a little toward the water.
   And it was then he noticed her.
   The girl was sitting on the far edge of the pool, staring down into the water, resting her head on one drawn-up knee. She had been bathing; he could see that at once. Her coppery body was still wet and glistening with moisture, sparkling in the sun. She had not seen him. He stopped, holding his breath, watching her.
   She was lovely, very lovely, with long dark hair that wound around her shoulders and arms. Her body was slim, very slender, with a supple grace to it that made him stare, accustomed as he was to various forms of anatomy. How silent she was! Silent and unmoving, staring down at the water. Time passed, strange, unchanging time, as he watched the girl. Time might even have ceased, with the girl sitting on the rock staring into the water, and the rows of great ferns behind her, as rigid as if they had been painted there.
   All at once the girl looked up. Harris shifted, suddenly conscious of himself as an intruder. He stepped back. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m from the Garrison. I didn’t mean to come poking around.”
   She nodded without speaking.
   “You don’t mind?” Harris asked presently.
   “No.”
   So she spoke Terran! He moved a little toward her, around the side of the pool. “I hope you don’t mind my bothering you. I won’t be on the asteroid very long. This is my first day here. I just arrived from Terra.”
   She smiled faintly.
   “I’m a doctor. Henry Harris.” He looked down at her, at the slim coppery body gleaming in the sunlight, a faint sheen of moisture on her arms and thighs. “You might be interested in why I’m here.” He paused. “Maybe you can even help me.”
   She looked up a little. “Oh?”
   “Would you like to help me?”
   She smiled. “Yes. Of course.”
   “That’s good. Mind if I sit down?” He looked around and found himself a flat rock. He sat down slowly, facing her. “Cigarette?”
   “No.”
   “Well, I’ll have one.” He lit up, taking a deep breath. “You see, we have a problem at the Garrison. Something has been happening to some of the men, and it seems to be spreading. We have to find out what causes it or we won’t be able to run the Garrison.”
   He waited for a moment. She nodded slightly. How silent she was! Silent and unmoving. Like the ferns.
   “Well, I’ve been able to find out a few things from them, and one very interesting fact stands out. They keep saying that something called—called The Pipers are responsible for their condition. They say the Pipers taught them—” He stopped. A strange look had flitted across her dark, small face. “Do you know the Pipers?”
   She nodded.
   Acute satisfaction flooded over Harris. “You do? I was sure the natives would know.” He stood up again. “I was sure they would, if the Pipers really existed. Then they do exist, do they?”
   “They exist.”
   Harris frowned. “And they’re here, in the woods?”
   “Yes.”
   “I see.” He ground his cigarette out impatiently. “You don’t suppose there’s any chance you could take me to them, do you?”
   “Take you?”
   “Yes. I have this problem and I have to solve it. You see, the Base Commander on Terra has assigned this to me, this business about the Pipers. It has to be solved. And I’m the one assigned to the job. So it’s important to me to find them. Do you see? Do you understand?”
   She nodded.
   “Well, will you take me to them?”
   The girl was silent. For a long time she sat, staring down into the water, resting her head against her knee. Harris began to become impatient. He fidgeted back and forth, resting first on one leg and then on the other.
   “Well, will you?” he said again. “It’s important to the whole Garrison. What do you say?” He felt around in his pockets. “Maybe I could give you something. What do I have…” He brought out his lighter. “I could give you my lighter.”
   The girl stood up, rising slowly, gracefully, without motion or effort.
   Harris’ mouth fell open. How supple she was, gliding to her feet in a single motion! He blinked. Without effort she had stood, seemingly without change. All at once she was standing instead of sitting, standing and looking calmly at him, her small face expressionless.
   “Will you?” he said.
   “Yes. Come along.” She turned away, moving toward the row of ferns.
   Harris followed quickly, stumbling across the rocks. “Fine,” he said. “Thanks a lot. I’m very interested to meet these Pipers. Where are you taking me, to your village? How much time do we have before nightfall?”
   The girl did not answer. She had entered the ferns already, and Harris quickened his pace to keep from losing her. How silently she glided!
   “Wait,” he called. “Wait for me.”
   The girl paused, waiting for him, slim and lovely, looking silently back.
   He entered the ferns, hurrying after her.

   “Well I’ll be damned!” Commander Cox said. “It sure didn’t take you long.” He leaped down the steps two at a time. “Let me give you a hand.”
   Harris grinned, lugging his heavy suitcases. He set them down and breathed a sigh of relief. “It isn’t worth it,” he said. “I’m going to give up taking so much.”
   “Come on inside. Soldier, give him a hand.” A Patrolman hurried over and took one of the suitcases. The three men went inside and down the corridor to Harris’ quarters. Harris unlocked the door and the Patrolman deposited his suitcase inside.
   “Thanks,” Harris said. He set the other down beside it. “It’s good be be back, even for a little while.”
   “A little while?”
   “I just came back to settle my affairs. I have to return to Y-3 tomorrow morning.”
   “Then you didn’t solve the problem?”
   “I solved it, but I haven’t cured it. I’m going back and get to work right away. There’s a lot to be done.”
   “But you found out what it is?”
   “Yes. It was just what the men said. The Pipers.”
   “The Pipers do exist?”
   “Yes.” Harris nodded. “They do exist.” He removed his coat and put it over the back of the chair. Then he went to the window and let it down. Warm spring air rushed into the room. He settled himself on the bed, leaning back.
   “The Pipers exist, all right—in the minds of the Garrison crew! To the crew, the Pipers are real. The crew created them. It’s a mass hypnosis, a group projection, and all the men there have it, to some degree.”
   “How did it start?”
   “Those men on Y-3 were sent because they were skilled, highly-trained men with exceptional ability. All their lives they’ve been schooled by complex modern society, fast tempo and high integration between people. Constant pressure toward some goal, some job to be done.
   “Those men are put down suddenly on an asteroid where there are natives living the most primitive of existence, completely vegetable lives. No concept of goal, no concept of purpose, and hence no ability to plan. The natives live the way the animals live, from day to day, sleeping, picking food from the trees. A kind of Garden-of-Eden existence, without struggle or conflict.”
   “So? But—”
   “Each of the Garrison crew sees the natives and unconsciously thinks of his own early life, when he was a child, when he had no worries, no responsibilities, before he joined modern society. A baby lying in the sun.
   “But he can’t admit this to himself! He can’t admit that he might want to live like the natives, to lie and sleep all day. So he invents The Pipers, the idea of a mysterious group living in the woods who trap him, lead him into their kind of life. Then he can blame them, not himself. They ‘teach’ him to become a part of the woods.”
   “What are you going to do? Have the woods burned?”
   “No.” Harris shook his head. “That’s not the answer; the woods are harmless. The answer is psychotherapy for the men. That’s why I’m going right back, so I can begin work. They’ve got to be made to see that the Pipers are inside them, their own unconscious voices calling to them to give up their responsibilities. They’ve got to be made to realize that there are no Pipers, at least, not outside themselves. The woods are harmless and the natives have nothing to teach anyone. They’re primitive savages, without even a written language. We’re seeing a psychological projection by a whole Garrison of men who want to lay down their work and take it easy for a while.”
   The room was silent.
   “I see,” Cox said presently. “Well, it makes sense.” He got to his feet. “I hope you can do something with the men you get back.”
   “I hope so, too,” Harris agreed. “And I think I can. After all, it’s just a question of increasing their self-awareness. When they have that the Pipers will vanish.”
   Cox nodded. “Well, you go ahead with your unpacking, Doc. I’ll see you at dinner. And maybe before you leave, tomorrow.”
   “Fine.”
   Harris opened the door and the Commander went out into the hall. Harris closed the door after him and then went back across the room. He looked out the window for a moment, his hands in his pockets.
   It was becoming evening, the air was turning cool. The sun was just setting as he watched, disappearing behind the buildings of the city surrounding the hospital. He watched it go down.
   Then he went over to his two suitcases. He was tired, very tired from his trip. A great weariness was beginning to descend over him. There were so many things to do, so terribly many. How could he hope to do them all? Back to the asteroid. And then what?
   He yawned, his eyes closing. How sleepy he was! He looked over at the bed. Then he sat down on the edge of it and took his shoes off. So much to do, the next day.
   He put his shoes in the corner of the room. Then he bent over, unsnapping one of the suitcases. He opened the suitcase. From it he took a bulging gunny-sack. Carefully, he emptied the contents of the sack out on the floor. Dirt, rich soft dirt. Dirt he had collected during his last hours there, dirt he had carefully gathered up.
   When the dirt was spread out on the floor he sat down in the middle of it. He stretched himself out, leaning back. When he was fully comfortable he folded his hands across his chest and closed his eyes. So much work to do—But later on, of course. Tomorrow. How warm the dirt was…
   He was sound asleep in a moment.

The Infinites

   “I don’t like it,” Major Crispin Eller said. He stared through the port scope, frowning. “An asteroid like this with plenty of water, moderate temperature, an atmosphere similar to Terra’s oxygen-nitrogen mix—”
   “And no life.” Harrison Blake, second in command, came up beside Eller. They both stared out. “No life, yet ideal conditions. Air, water, good temperature. Why?”
   They looked at each other. Beyond the hull of the cruiser, the X-43y, the barren, level surface of the asteroid stretched away. The X-43y was a long way from home, half-way across the galaxy. Competition with the Mars-Venus-Jupiter Triumvirate had moved Terra to map and prospect every bit of rock in the galaxy, with the idea of claiming mining concessions later on. The X-43y had been out planting the blue and white flag for almost a year. The three-member crew had earned a rest, a vacation back on Terra and a chance to spend the pay they had accumulated. Tiny prospecting ships led a hazardous life, threading their way through the rubble-strewn periphery of the system, avoiding meteor swarms, clouds of hull-eating bacteria, space pirates, peanut-size empires on remote artificial planetoids—
   “Look at it!” Eller said, jabbing angrily at the scope. “Perfect conditions for life. But nothing, just bare rock.”
   “Maybe it’s an accident,” Blake said, shrugging.
   “You know there’s no place where bacteria particles don’t drift. There must be some reason why this asteroid isn’t fertile. I sense something wrong.”
   “Well? What do we do?” Blake grinned humorlessly. “You’re the captain. According to our instructions we’re supposed to land and map every asteroid we encounter over Class-D diameter. This is a Class-C. Are we going outside and map it or not?”
   Eller hesitated. “I don’t like it. No one knows all the lethal factors floating out here in deep space. Maybe—”
   “Could it be you’d like to go right on back to Terra?” Blake said. “Just think, no one would know we passed this last little bit of rock up. I wouldn’t tip them off, Eller.”
   “That isn’t it! I’m concerned with our safety, and that’s all. You’re the one who’s been agitating to turn Terra-side.” Eller studied the port scope. “If we only knew.”
   “Let out the pigs and see what shows. After they’ve run around for a while we should know something.”
   “I’m sorry I even landed.”
   Blake’s face twisted in contempt. “You’re sure getting cautious, now that we’re almost ready to head home.”
   Eller moodily watched the gray barren rock, the gently moving water. Water and rock, a few clouds, even temperature. A perfect place for life. But there was no life. The rock was clean, smooth. Absolutely sterile, without growth or cover of any kind. The spectroscope showed nothing, not even one-celled water life, not even the familiar brown lichen encountered on countless rocks strewn through the galaxy.
   “All right, then,” Eller said. “Open one of the locks. I’ll have Silv let out the pigs.”

   He picked up the com, dialing the laboratory. Down below them in the interior of the ship Silvia Simmons was working, surrounded by retorts and testing apparatus. Eller clicked the switch. “Silv?” he said.
   Silvia’s features formed on the vidscreen. “Yes?”
   “Let the hamsters outside the ship for a short run, about half an hour. With line and collars, of course. I’m worried about this asteroid. There may be some toxic poisons around or radiation pits. When the pigs come back give them a rigid test. Throw the book at them.”
   “All right, Cris,” Silvia smiled. “Maybe we can get out and stretch our legs after a while.”
   “Give me the results of the tests as soon as possible.” Eller broke the circuit. He turned to Blake. “I assume you’re satisfied. In a minute the pigs will be ready to go out.”
   Blake smiled faintly. “I’ll be glad when we get back to Terra. One trip with you as captain is about all I can take.”
   Eller nodded. “Strange, that thirteen years in the Service hasn’t taught you any more self-control. I guess you’ll never forgive them for not giving you your stripes.”
   “Listen, Eller,” Blake said. “I’m ten years older than you. I was serving when you were just a kid. You’re still a pasty-faced squirt as far as I’m concerned. The next time—”
   “CRIS!”
   Eller turned quickly. The vidscreen was relit. On it, Silvia’s face showed, frantic with fear.
   “Yes?” He gripped the com. “What is it?”
   “Cris, I went to the cages. The hamsters—They’re cataleptic, stretched out, perfectly rigid. Every one of them is immobile. I’m afraid something—”
   “Blake, get the ship up,” Eller said.
   “What?” Blake murmured, confused. “Are we—”
   “Get the ship up! Hurry!” Eller raced toward the control board. “We have to get out of here!”
   Blake came to him. “Is something—” he began, but abruptly he stopped, choked off. His face glazed over, his jaw slack. Slowly he settled to the smooth metal floor, falling like a limp sack. Eller stared, dazed. At last he broke away and reached toward the controls. All at once a numbing fire seared his skull, bursting inside his head. A thousand shafts of light exploded behind his eyes, blinding him. He staggered, groping for the switches. As darkness plucked at him his fingers closed over the automatic lift.
   As he fell he pulled hard. Then the numbing darkness settled over him completely. He did not feel the smashing impact of the floor as it came up at him.
   Out into space the ship rose, automatic relays pumping frantically. But inside no one moved.

   Eller opened his eyes. His head throbbed with a deep, aching beat. He struggled to his feet, holding onto the hull railing. Harrison Blake was coming to life also, groaning and trying to rise. His dark face had turned sickly yellow, his eyes were blood-shot, his lips foam-flecked. He stared at Cris Eller, rubbing his forehead shakily.
   “Snap out of it,” Eller said, helping him up. Blake sat down in the control chair.
   “Thanks.” He shook his head. “What-what happened?”
   “I don’t know. I’m going to the lab and see if Silv is all right.”
   “Want me to come?” Blake murmured.
   “No. Sit still. Don’t strain your heart. Do you understand? Move as little as possible.”
   Blake nodded. Eller walked unsteadily across the control room to the corridor. He entered the drop lift and descended. A moment later he stepped out into the lab.
   Silvia was slumped forward at one of the work tables, stiff and unmoving.
   “Silv!” Eller ran toward her and caught hold of her, shaking her. Her flesh was hard and cold. “Silv!”
   She moved a little.
   “Wake up!” Eller got a stimulant tube from the supply cabinet. He broke the tube, holding it by her face. Silvia moaned. He shook her again.
   “Cris?” Silvia said faintly. “Is it you? What—what happened? Is everything all right?” She lifted her head, blinking uncertainly. “I was talking to you on the vidscreen. I came over to the table, then all of a sudden—”
   “It’s all right.” Eller frowned, deep in thought, his hand on her shoulder. “What could it have been? Some kind of radiation blast from the asteroid?” He glanced at his wristwatch. “Good Lord!”
   “What’s wrong?” Silvia sat up, brushing her hair back. “What is it, Cris?
   “We’ve been unconscious two whole days,” Eller said slowly, staring at his watch. He put his hand to his chin. “Well, that explains this.” He rubbed at the stubble.
   “But we’re all right now, aren’t we?” Silvia pointed at the hamsters in their cages against the wall. “Look—they’re up and running around again.”
   “Come on.” Eller took her hand. “We’re going up above and have a conference, the three of us. We’re going over every dial and meter reading in the ship. I want to know what happened.”

   Blake scowled. “I have to agree. I was wrong. We never should have landed.”
   “Apparently the radiation came from the center of the asteroid.” Eller traced a line on the chart. “This reading shows a wave building up quickly and then dying down. A sort of pulse wave from the asteroid’s core, rhythmic.”
   “If we hadn’t got into space we might have been hit by a second wave,” Silvia said.
   “The instruments picked up a subsequent wave about fourteen hours later. Apparently the asteroid has a mineral deposit that pulses regularly, throwing out radiation at fixed intervals. Notice how short the wave lengths are. Very close to cosmic ray patterns.”
   “But different enough to penetrate our screen.”
   “Right. It hit us full force.” Eller leaned back in his seat. “That explains why there was no life on the asteroid. Bacteria landing would be withered by the first wave. Nothing would have a chance to get started.”
   “Cris?” Silvia said.
   “Yes?”
   “Cris, do you think the radiation might have done anything to us? Are we out of danger? Or—”
   “I’m not certain. Look at this.” Eller passed her a graph of lined foil, traced in red. “Notice that although our vascular systems have fully recovered, our neural responses are still not quite the same. There’s been alteration there.”
   “In what way?”
   “I don’t know. I’m not a neurologist. I can see distinct differences from the original tracings, the characteristic test patterns we traced a month or two ago, but what it means I have no way to tell.”
   “Do you think it’s serious?”
   “Only time will tell. Our systems were jolted by an intense wave of unclassified radiation for a straight ten hours. What permanent effects it has left, I can’t say. I feel all right at this moment. How do you feel?”
   “Fine,” Silvia said. She looked out through the port scope at the dark emptiness of deep space, at the endless fragments of light arranged in tiny unmoving specks. “Anyhow, we’re finally heading Terra-side. I’ll be glad to get home. We should have them examine us right away.”
   “At least our hearts survived without any obvious damage. No blood clots or cell destruction. That was what I was primarily worried about. Usually a dose of hard radiation of that general type will—”
   “How soon will we reach the system?” Blake said.
   “A week.”
   Blake set his lips. “That’s a long time. I hope we’re still alive.”
   “I’d advise against exercising too much,” Eller said. “We’ll take it easy the rest of the way and hope that whatever has been done to us can be undone back on Terra.”
   “I guess we actually got off fairly easy.” Silvia said. She yawned. “Lord, I’m sleepy.” She got slowly to her feet, pushing her chair back. “I think I’ll turn in. Anyone object?”
   “Go ahead,” Eller said. “Blake, how about some cards? I want to relax. Blackjack?”
   “Sure,” Blake said. “Why not?” He slid a deck from his jacket pocket. “It’ll make the time pass. Cut for deal.”
   “Fine.” Eller took the deck. He cut, showing a seven of clubs. Blake won the deck with a jack of hearts.
   They played listlessly, neither of them much interested. Blake was sullen and uncommunicative, still angry because Eller had been proved so right. Eller himself was tired and uncomfortable. His head throbbed dully in spite of the opiates he had taken. He removed his helmet and rubbed his forehead.
   “Play,” Blake murmured. Under them the jets rumbled, carrying them nearer and nearer Terra. In a week they would enter the system. They had not seen Terra in over a year. How would it look? Would it still be the same? The great green globe, with its vast oceans, all the tiny islands. Then down at New York Spaceport. San Francisco, for him. It would be nice, all right. The crowds of people, Terrans, good old frivolous, senseless Terrans, without a care in the world. Eller grinned up at Blake. His grin turned to a frown.
   Blake’s head had drooped. His eyes were slowly closing. He was going to sleep.
   “Wake up,” Eller said. “What’s the matter?”
   Blake grunted, pulling himself up straight. He went on dealing the next hand. Again his head sank lower and lower.
   “Sorry,” he murmured. He reached out to draw in his winnings. Eller fumbled in his pocket, getting out more credits. He looked up, starting to speak. But Blake had fallen completely asleep.
   “I’ll be damned!” Eller got to his feet. “This is strange.” Blake’s chest rose and fell evenly. He snored a little, his heavy body relaxed. Eller turned down the light and walked toward the door. What was the matter with Blake? It was unlike him to pass out during a game of cards.
   Eller went down the corridor toward his own quarters. He was tired and ready for sleep. He entered his washroom, unfastening his collar. He removed his jacket and turned on the hot water. It would be good to get into bed, to forget everything that had happened to them, the sudden exploding blast of radiation, the painful awakening, the gnawing fear. Eller began to wash his face. Lord, how his head buzzed. Mechanically, he splashed water on his arms.
   It was not until he had almost finished washing that he noticed it. He stood for a long time, water running over his hands, staring silently down, unable to speak.
   His fingernails were gone.
   He looked up in the mirror, breathing quickly. Suddenly he grabbed at his hair. Handfuls of hair came out, great bunches of light brown hair. Hair and nails—
   He shuddered, trying to calm himself. Hair and nails. Radiation. Of course: radiation did that, killed both the hair and the nails. He examined his hands.
   The nails were completely gone all right. There was no trace of them. He turned his hands over and over, studying the fingers. The ends were smooth and tapered. He fought down rising panic, moving unsteadily away from the mirror.
   A thought struck him. Was he the only one? What about Silvia!
   He put his jacket on again. Without nails his fingers were strangely deft and agile. Could there be anything else? They had to be prepared. He looked into the mirror again.
   And sickened.
   His head – What was happening? He clasped his hands to his temples. His head. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. He stared, his eyes wide. He was almost completely hairless, now, his shoulders and jacket covered with brown hair that had fallen. His scalp gleamed, bald and pink, a shocking pink. But there was something more.
   His head had expanded. It was swelling into a full sphere. And his ears were shriveling, his ears and his nose. His nostrils were becoming thin and transparent even as he watched. He was changing, altering, faster and faster.
   He reached a shaking hand into his mouth. His teeth were loose in the gums. He pulled. Several teeth came out easily. What was happening? Was he dying? Was he the only one? What about the others?
   Eller turned and hurried out of the room. His breath came painfully, harshly. His chest seemed constricted, his ribs choking the air out of him. His heart labored, beating fitfully. And his legs were weak. He stopped, catching hold of the door. He started into the lift. Suddenly there was a sound, a deep bull roar. Blake’s voice, raised in terror and agony.
   “That answers that,” Eller thought grimly, as the lift rose around him. “At least I’m not the only one!”
   Harrison Blake gaped at him in horror. Eller had to smile. Blake, hairless, his skull pink and glistening, was not a very impressive sight. His cranium, too, had enlarged, and his nails were gone. He was standing by the control table, staring first at Eller and then down at his own body. His uniform was too large for his dwindling body. It bagged around him in slack folds.
   “Well?” Eller said. “We’ll be lucky if we get out of this. Space radiations can do strange things to a man’s body. It was a bad day for us when we landed on that—”
   “Eller,” Blake whispered. “What’ll we do? We can’t live this way, not like this! Look at us.”
   “I know.” Eller set his lips. He was having trouble speaking now that he was almost toothless. He felt suddenly like a baby. Toothless, without hair, a body growing more helpless each moment. Where would it end?
   “We can’t go back like this,” Blake said. “We can’t go back to Terra, not looking this way. Good heavens, Eller! We’re freaks. Mutants. They’ll—they’ll lock us up like animals in cages. People will—”
   “Shut up.” Eller crossed to him. “We’re lucky to be alive at all. Sit down.” He drew a chair out. “I think we better get off our legs.”
   They both sat down. Blake took a deep, shuddering breath. He rubbed his smooth forehead, again and again.
   “It’s not us I’m worried about,” Eller said, after a time. “It’s Silvia. She’ll suffer the most from this. I’m trying to decide whether we should go down at all. But if we don’t, she may—”
   There was a buzz. The vidscreen came to life, showing the white-walled laboratory, the retorts and rows of testing equipment, lined up neatly against the walls.
   “Cris?” Silvia’s voice came, thin and edged with horror. She was not visible on the screen. Apparently she was standing off to one side.
   “Yes.” Eller went to the screen. “How are you?”
   “How am I?” A thrill of hysteria ran through the girl’s voice. “Cris, has it hit you, too? I’m afraid to look.” There was a pause. “It has, hasn’t it? I can see you—but don’t try to look at me. I don’t want you to see me again. It’s—it’s horrible. What are we going to do?”
   “I don’t know. Blake says he won’t go back to Terra this way.”
   “No! We can’t go back! We can’t!”
   There was silence. “We’ll decide later,” Eller said finally. “We don’t have to settle it now. These changes in our systems are due to radiation, so they may be only temporary. They may go away, in time. Or surgery may help. Anyhow, let’s not worry about it now.”
   “Not worry? No, of course I won’t worry. How could I worry about a little thing like this! Cris, don’t you understand? We’re monsters, hairless monsters. No hair, no teeth, no nails. Our heads—”
   “I understand.” Eller set his jaw. “You stay down in the lab. Blake and I will discuss it with you on the vidscreen. You won’t have to show yourself to us.”
   Silvia took a deep breath. “Anything you say. You’re still captain.”
   Eller turned away from the screen. “Well, Blake, do you feel well enough to talk?”
   The great-domed figure in the corner nodded, the immense hairless skull moving slightly. Blake’s once great body had shrunk, caved in. The arms were pipe stems, the chest hollow and sickly. Restlessly, the soft fingers tapped against the table. Eller studied him.
   “What is it?” Blake said.
   “Nothing. I was just looking at you.”
   “You’re not very pleasant looking, either.”
   “I realize that.” Eller sat down across from him. His heart was pounding, his breath coming shallowly. “Poor Silv! It’s worse for her than it is for us.”
   Blake nodded. “Poor Silv. Poor all of us. She’s right, Eller. We’re monsters.” His fragile lips curled. “They’ll destroy us back on Terra. Or lock us up. Maybe a quick death would be better. Monsters, freaks, hairless hydrocephalics.”
   “Not hydrocephalics,” Eller said. “Your brain isn’t impaired. That’s one thing to be thankful for. We can still think. We still have our minds.”
   “In any case we know why there isn’t life on the asteroid,” Blake said ironically. “We’re a success as a scouting party. We got the information. Radiation, lethal radiation, destructive to organic tissue. Produces mutation and alteration in cell growth as well as changes in the structure and function of the organs.”
   Eller studied him thoughtfully. “That’s quite learned talk for you, Blake.”
   “It’s an accurate description.” Blake looked up. “Let’s be realistic. We’re monstrous cancers blasted by hard radiation. Let’s face it. We’re not men, not human beings any longer. We’re—”
   “We’re what?”
   “I don’t know.” Blake lapsed into silence.
   “It’s strange,” Eller said. He studied his fingers moodily. He experimented, moving his fingers about. Long, long and thin. He traced the surface of the table with them. The skin was sensitive. He could feel every indentation of the table, every line and mark.
   “What are you doing?” Blake said.
   “I’m curious.” Eller held his fingers close to his eyes, studying them. His eyesight was dimming. Everything was vague and blurred. Across from him Blake was staring down. Blake’s eyes had begun to recede, sinking slowly into the great hairless skull. It came to Eller all at once that they were losing their sight. They were going slowly blind. Panic seized him.
   “Blake!” he said. “We’re going blind. There’s a progressive deterioration of our eyes, vision and muscles.”
   “I know,” Blake said.
   “But why? We’re actually losing the eyes themselves! They’re going away, drying up. Why?”
   “Atrophied,” Blake murmured.
   “Perhaps.” Eller brought out a log book from the table, and a writing beam. He traced a few notes on the foil. Sight diminishing, vision failing rapidly. But fingers much more sensitive. Skin response unusual. Compensation?
   “What do you think of this?” he said. “We’re losing some functions, gaining others.”
   “In our hands?” Blake studied his own hands. “The loss of the nails makes it possible to use the fingers in new ways.” He rubbed his fingers against the cloth of his uniform. “I can feel individual fibers which was impossible before.”
   “Then the loss of nails was purposeful!”
   “So?”
   “We’ve been assuming this was all without purpose. Accidental burns, cell destruction, alteration. I wonder… “ Eller moved the writing beam slowly across the log sheet. Fingers: new organs of perception. Heightened touch, more tactile response. But vision dimming…
   “Cris!” Silvia’s voice came, sharp and frightened.
   “What is it?” He turned toward the vidscreen.
   “I’m losing my sight. I can’t see.”
   “It’s all right. Don’t worry.”
   “I’m—I’m afraid.”
   Eller went over to the vidscreen. “Silv, I think we’re losing some senses and gaining others. Examine your fingers. Do you notice anything? Touch something.”
   There was an agonizing pause. “I seem to be able to feel things much differently. Not the same as before.”
   “That’s why our nails are gone.”
   “But what does it mean?”
   Eller touched his bulging cranium, exploring the smooth skin thoughtfully. Suddenly he clenched his fists, gasping. “Silv! Can you still operate the X-ray equipment? Are you mobile enough to cross the lab?”
   “Yes, I suppose so.”
   “Then I want an X-ray plate made. Make it right away. As soon as it’s ready i notify me.”
   “An X-ray plate? Of what?”
   “Of your own cranium. I want to see what changes our brains have undergone. Especially the cerebrum. I’m beginning to understand, I think.”
   “What is it?”
   “I’ll tell you when I see the plate.” A faint smile played across Eller’s thin lips. “If I’m right, then we’ve been completely mistaken about what’s happened to us!”

   For a long time Eller stared at the X-ray plate framed in the vidscreen. Dimly he made out the lines of the skull, struggling to see with his fading eyesight. The plate trembled in Silvia’s hands.
   “What do you see?” she whispered.
   “I was right. Blake, look at this, if you can.”
   Blake came slowly over, supporting himself with one of the chairs. “What i is it?” He peered at the plate, blinking. “I can’t see well enough.”
   “The brain has changed enormously. Notice how much enlargement there is here.” Eller traced the frontal lobe outline. “Here, and here. There’s been growth, amazing growth. And greater convolution. Notice this odd bulge off the frontal lobe. A kind of projection. What do you suppose it might be?”
   “I have no idea,” Blake said. “Isn’t that area mainly concerned with higher processes of thought?”
   “The most developed cognitive faculties are located there. And that’s where the most growth has taken place.” Eller moved slowly away from the screen.
   “What do you make of it?” Silvia’s voice came.
   “I have a theory. It may be wrong, but this fits in perfectly. I thought of it almost at first, when I saw that my nails were gone.”
   “What’s your theory?”
   Eller sat down at the control table. “Better get off your feet, Blake. I don’t think our hearts are too strong. Our body mass is decreasing, so perhaps later on—”
   “Your theory! What is it?” Blake came toward him, his thin bird-like chest rising and falling. He peered down intently at Eller. “What is it?”
   “We’ve evolved,” Eller said. “The radiation from the asteroid speeded up cell growth, like cancer. But not without design. There’s purpose and direction to these changes, Blake. We’re changing rapidly, moving through centuries in a few seconds.”
   Blake stared at him.
   “It’s true,” Eller said. “I’m sure of it. The enlarged brain, diminished powers of sight, loss of hair, teeth. Increased dexterity and tactile sense. Our bodies have lost, for the most part. But our minds have benefited. We’re developing greater cognitive powers, greater conceptual capacity. Our minds are moving ahead into the future. Our minds are evolving.”
   “Evolving!” Blake sat down slowly. “Can this be true?”
   “I’m certain of it. We’ll take more X-rays, of course. I’m anxious to see changes in the internal organs, kidneys, stomach. I imagine we’ve lost portions of our—”
   “Evolved! But that means that evolution is not the result of accidental external stresses. Competition and struggle. Natural selection, aimless, without direction. It implies that every organism carries the thread of its evolution within it. Then evolution is ideological, with a goal, not determined by chance.”
   Eller nodded. “Our evolution seems to be more of an internal growth and change along distinct lines. Certainly not at random. It would be interesting to know what the directing force is.”
   “This throws a new light on things,” Blake murmured. “Then we’re not monsters, after all. We’re not monsters. We’re—we’re men of the future.”
   Eller glanced at him. There was a strange quality in Blake’s voice. “I suppose you might say that,” he admitted. “Of course, we’ll still be considered freaks on Terra.”
   “But they’ll be wrong,” Blake said. “Yes, they’ll look at us and say we’re freaks. But we’re not freaks. In another few million years the rest of mankind will catch up to us. We’re moving ahead of our own time, Eller.”
   Eller studied Blake’s great bulging head. He could only dimly make out its lines. Already, the well-lighted control room was turning almost dark. Their sight was virtually gone. All he could make out was vague shadows, nothing more.
   “Men of the future,” Blake said. “Not monsters, but men from tomorrow. Yes, this certainly throws a new light on things.” He laughed nervously. “A few minutes ago I was ashamed of my new appearance! But now—”
   “But now what?”
   “But now I’m not so sure.”
   “What do you mean?”
   Blake did not answer. He had got slowly to his feet, holding onto the table.
   “Where are you going?” Eller said.
   Blake crossed the control room painfully, feeling his way toward the door. “I must think this over. There are astonishing new elements to be considered. I agree, Eller. You’re quite right. We have evolved. Our cognitive faculties are greatly improved. There’s considerable deterioration in body functions, of course. But that’s to be expected. I think we’re actually the gainers, everything considered.” Blake touched his great skull cautiously. “Yes, I think that in the long run we may have gained. We will look back on this as a great day, Eller. A great day in our lives. I’m sure your theory is correct. As the process continues I can sense changes in my conceptual abilities. The Gestalt faculty has risen amazingly. I can intuit certain relationships that—”
   “Stop!” Eller said. “Where are you going? Answer me. I’m still captain of this ship.”
   “Going? I’m going to my quarters. I must rest. This body is highly inadequate. It may be necessary to devise mobile carts and perhaps even artificial organs as mechanical lungs and hearts. I’m certain the pulmonary and vascular systems are not going to stand up long. The life expectancy is no doubt greatly diminished. I’ll see you later, Major Eller. But perhaps I should not use the word see.” He smiled faintly. “We will not see much any more.” He raised his hands. “But these will take the place of vision.” He touched his skull. “And this will take the place of many, many things.”
   He disappeared, closing the door behind him. Eller heard him going slowly, determinedly down the corridor, feeling his way along with careful, feeble steps.
   Eller crossed to the vidscreen. “Silv! Can you hear me? Did you listen to our conversation?”
   “Yes.”
   “Then you know what has happened to us.”
   “Yes, I know. Cris, I’m almost completely blind now. I can see virtually nothing.”
   Eller grimaced, remembering Silvia’s keen, sparkling eyes. “I’m sorry, Silv. I wish this had never happened. I wish we were back the way we were. It’s not worth it.”
   “Blake thinks it’s worth it.”
   “I know. Listen, Silv. I want you to come here to the control room, if you can. I’m worried about Blake, and I want you here with me.”
   “Worried? How?”
   “He’s got something on his mind. He’s not going to his quarters merely to rest. Come here with me and we’ll decide what to do. A few minutes ago I was the one who said we should go back to Terra. But now I think I’m beginning I change my mind.”
   “Why? Because of Blake? You don’t suppose Blake would—”
   “I’ll discuss it with you when you get here. Make your way along with your hands. Blake did it, so probably you can. I think perhaps we won’t return to Terra after all. But I want to give you my reasons.”
   “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Silvia said. “But be patient. And Cris—Don’t look at me. I don’t want you to see me this way.”
   “I won’t see you,” Eller said grimly. “By the time you get here I won’t be able to see much at all.”

   Silvia sat down at the control table. She had put on one of the spacesuits from the lab locker so that her body was hidden by the plastic and metal suit. Eller waited until she had caught her breath.
   “Go on,” Silvia said.
   “The first thing we must do is collect all the weapons on the ship. When Blake comes back I’m going to announce that we are not returning to Terra. I think he will be angry, perhaps enough to start trouble. If I’m not mistaken, he very much wants to keep moving Terra-side now, as he begins to understand the implications of our change.”
   “And you don’t want to go back.”
   “No.” Eller shook his head. “We must not go back to Terra. There’s danger, great danger. You can see what kind of danger already.”
   “Blake is fascinated by the new possibilities,” Silvia said thoughtfully. “We’re ahead of other men, several millions of years, advancing each moment. Our brains, our powers of thought, are far in advance of other Terrans.”
   “Blake will want to go back to Terra, not as an ordinary man, but as a man of the future. We may find ourselves in relation to other Terrans as geniuses among idiots. If the process of change keeps up, we may find them nothing more than higher primates, animals in comparison to us.”
   They both were silent.
   “If we go back to Terra we’ll find human beings nothing more than animals,” Eller went on. “Under the circumstances, what would be more natural than for us to help them? After all, we’re millions of years ahead of them. We could do a lot for them if they’d let us direct them, lead them, do their planning for them.”
   “And if they resist we probably could find ways of gaining control of them,” Silvia said. “And everything, of course, would be for their own good. That goes without saying. You’re right, Cris. If we go back to Terra we’ll soon find ourselves contemptuous of mankind. We’ll want to lead them, show them how to live, whether they want us to or not. Yes, it’ll be a strong temptation.”
   Eller got to his feet. He went over to the weapons locker and opened it. Carefully, he removed the heavy-duty Boris guns and brought them over to the table, one by one.
   “The first thing is to destroy these. After that, you and I have to see to it that Blake is kept away from the control room. Even if we have to barricade ourselves in, it has to be done. I’ll reroute the ship. We’ll move away from the system, toward some remote region. It’s the only way.”
   He opened the Boris guns and removed the firing controls. One by one he broke the controls, crunching them under foot.
   There was a sound. Both turned, straining to see.
   “Blake!” Eller said. “It must be you. I can’t see you, but—”
   “You’re correct,” Blake’s voice came. “No, Eller, we’re all of us blind, or almost blind. So you destroyed the Boris guns! I’m afraid that won’t keep us from returning to Terra.”
   “Go back to your quarters,” Eller said. “I’m the captain, and I’m giving you an order to—”
   Blake laughed. “You’re ordering me? You’re almost blind, Eller, but I think you’ll be able to see—this!”
   Something rose up into the air around Blake, a soft pale cloud of blue. Eller gasped, cringing, as the cloud swirled around him. He seemed to be dissolving, breaking into countless fragments, rushed and carried away, drifting—
   Blake withdrew the cloud into the tiny disc that he held. “If you’ll remember,” he said calmly, “I received the first bath of radiation. I’m a little ahead of you two, by only a short time, perhaps, but enough. In any case, the Boris guns would have been useless, compared to what I have. Remember, everything in this ship is a million years antiquated. What I hold—”
   “Where did you get it, that disc?”
   “I got it nowhere. I constructed it, as soon as I realized that you would turn the ship away from Terra. I found it easy to make. In a short time the two of you will also begin to realize our new powers. But right now, I’m afraid, you’re just a bit behind.”
   Eller and Silvia struggled to breathe. Eller sank against the hull railing, exhausted, his heart laboring. He stared at the disc in Blake’s hand.
   “We’ll continue moving toward Terra,” Blake went on. “Neither of you is going to change the control settings. By the time we arrive at the New York Spaceport you both will have come to see things differently. When you’ve caught up with me you’ll see things as I see them. We must go back, Eller. It’s our duty to mankind.”
   “Our duty?”
   There was a faint mocking quality in Blake’s voice. “Of course it’s our duty! Mankind needs us. It needs us very much. There’s much we can do for Terra. You see, I was able to catch some of your thoughts. Not all of them, but enough to know what you were planning. You’ll find that from now on we’ll begin to lose speech as a method of communication. We’ll soon begin to rely directly on—”
   “If you can see into my mind then you can see why we mustn’t return to Terra,” Eller said.
   “I can see what you’re thinking but you’re wrong. We must go back for their good.” Blake laughed softly. “We can do a lot for them. Their science will change in our hands. They will change, altered by us. We’ll remake Terra, make her strong. The Triumvirate will be helpless before the new Terra, the Terra that we will build. The three of us will transform the race, make it rise, burst across the entire galaxy. Mankind will be material for us to mold. The blue and white will be planted everywhere, on all the planets of the galaxy, not on mere bits of rock. We’ll make Terra strong, Eller. Terra will rule everywhere.”
   “So that’s what you have in mind,” Eller said. “And if Terra doesn’t want to go along with us? What then?”
   “It is possible they won’t understand,” Blake admitted. “After all, we must begin to realize that we’re millions of years ahead of them. They’re a long way behind us, and many times they may not understand the purpose of our orders. But you know that orders must be carried out, even if their meaning is not comprehended. You’ve commanded ships, you know that. For Terra’s own good, and for—”
   Eller leaped. But the fragile, brittle body betrayed him. He fell short, grasping frantically, blindly, for Blake. Blake cursed, stepping back.
   “You fool! Don’t you—”
   The disc glinted, the blue cloud bursting into Eller’s face. He staggered to one side, his hands up. Abruptly he fell, crashing to the metal floor. Silvia lumbered to her feet, coming toward Blake, slow and awkward in the heavy spacesuit. Blake turned toward her, the disc raised. A second cloud rose up. Silvia screamed. The cloud devoured her.
   “Blake!” Eller struggled to his knees. The tottering figure that had been Silvia lurched and fell. Eller caught hold of Blake’s arms. The two figures swayed back and forth. Blake trying to pull away. Suddenly Eller’s strength gave out. He slipped back down, his head striking the metal floor. Nearby, Silvia lay, silent and inert.
   “Get away from me,” Blake snarled, waving the disc. “I can destroy you the way I did her. Do you understand?”
   “You killed her,” Eller screamed.
   “It’s your own fault. You see what you gained by fighting? Stay away from me! If you come near me I’ll turn the cloud on you again. It’ll be the end of you.”
   Eller did not move. He stared at the silent form.
   “All right,” Blake’s voice came to him, as if from a great distance. “Now listen to me. We’re continuing toward Terra. You’ll guide the ship for me while I work down in the laboratory. I can follow your thoughts, so if you attempt to change course I’ll know at once. Forget about her! It still leaves two of us, enough to do what we must. We’ll be within the system in a few days. There’s much to accomplish, first.” Blake’s voice was calm, matter of fact. “Can you get up?”
   Eller rose slowly, holding onto the hull railing.
   “Good,” Blake said. “We must work everything out very carefully. We may have difficulties with the Terrans at first. We must be prepared for that. I think that in the time remaining I will be able to construct the necessary equipment that we will need. Later on, when your development catches up with my own, we will be able to work together to produce the things we need.”
   Eller stared at him. “Do you think I’ll ever go along with you?” he said. His glance moved toward the figure on the floor, the silent, unmoving figure. “Do you think after that I could ever—”
   “Come, come, Eller,” Blake said impatiently. “I’m surprised at you. You must begin to see things from a new position. There is too much involved to consider—”
   “So this is how mankind will be treated! This is the way you’ll save them, by ways like this!”
   “You’ll come around to a realistic attitude,” Blake said calmly. “You’ll see that as men of the future—”
   “Do you really think I will?”
   The two men faced each other.
   Slowly a flicker of doubt passed over Blake’s face. “You must, Eller! It’s our duty to consider things in a new way. Of course you will.” He frowned, raising the disc a little. “How can there be any doubt of that?”
   Eller did not answer.
   “Perhaps,” Blake said thoughtfully, “you will hold a grudge against me. Perhaps your vision will be clouded by this incident. It is possible…” The disc moved. “In that case I must adjust myself as soon as possible to the realization that I will have to go on alone. If you won’t join me to do the things that must be done then I will have to do them without you.” His fingers tightened against the disc. “I will do it all alone, Eller, if you won’t join me. Perhaps this is the best way. Sooner or later this moment might come, in any case. It is better for me to—”
   Blake screamed.
   From the wall a vast, transparent shape moved slowly, almost leisurely, out into the control room. Behind the shape came another, and then another, until at last there were five of them. The shapes pulsed faintly, glimmering with a vague, internal glow. All were identical, featureless.
   In the center of the control room the shapes came to rest, hovering a little way up from the floor, soundlessly, pulsing gently, as if waiting.
   Eller stared at them. Blake had lowered his disc and was standing, pale and tense, gaping in astonishment. Suddenly Eller realized something that made chill fear rush through him. He was not seeing the shapes at all. He was almost completely blind. He was sensing them in some new way, through some new mode of perception. He struggled to comprehend, his mind racing. Then, all at once, he understood. And he knew why they had no distinct shapes, no features.
   They were pure energy.
   Blake pulled himself together, coming to life. “What—” he stammered, waving the disc. “Who—”
   A thought flashed, cutting Blake off. The thought seared through Eller’s mind, hard and sharp, a cold, impersonal thought, detached and remote.
   “The girl. First.”
   Two of the shapes moved toward Silvia’s inert form, lying silently beside Eller. They paused a slight distance above her, glowing and pulsing. Then part of the glimmering corona leaped out, hurtling toward the girl’s body, bathing her in a shimmering fire.
   “That will suffice,” a second thought came, after a few moments. The corona retreated. “Now, the one with the weapon.”
   A shape moved toward Blake. Blake retreated toward the door behind him. His withered body shook with fear.
   “What are you?” he demanded, raising the disc. “Who are you? Where did you come from?”
   The shape came on.
   “Get away!” Blake cried. “Get back! If you don’t—”
   He fired. The blue cloud entered the shape. The shape quivered for a moment, absorbing the cloud. Then it came on again. Blake’s jaw fell. He scrambled into the corridor, stumbling and falling. The shape hesitated at the door. Then it was joined by a second shape which moved up beside it.
   A ball of light left the first shape, moving toward Blake. It enveloped him. The light winked out. There was nothing where Blake had stood. Nothing at all.
   “That was unfortunate,” a thought came. “But necessary. Is the girl reviving?”
   “Yes.”
   “Good.”
   “Who are you?” Eller asked. “What are you? Will Silv be all right? Is she alive?”
   “The girl will recover.” The shapes moved toward Eller, surrounding him. “We should perhaps have intervened before she was injured but we preferred to wait until we were certain the one with the weapon was going to gain control.”
   “Then you knew what was happening?”
   “We saw it all.”
   “Who are you? Where did you—where did you come from?”
   “We were here,” the thought came.
   “Here?”
   “On the ship. We were here from the start. You see, we were the first to receive the radiation; Blake was wrong. So our transformation began even before his did. And in addition, we had much farther to go. Your race has little evolution ahead of it. A few more inches of cranium, a little less hair, perhaps. But not really so much. Our race, on the other hand, had just begun.”
   “Your race? First to receive the radiation?” Eller stared around him in dawning realization. “Then you must be—”
   “Yes,” the calm, inflexible thought came. “You are right. We are the hamsters from the laboratory. The pigs carried for your experiments and tests.” There was almost a note of humor in the thought. “However, we hold nothing against you, I assure you. In fact, we have very little interest in your race, one way or another. We owe you a slight debt for helping us along our path, bringing our destiny onto us in a few short minutes instead of another fifty million years.
   “For that we are thankful. And I think we have already repaid you. The girl will be all right. Blake is gone. You will be allowed to continue on your way back to your own planet.”
   “Back to Terra?” Eller faltered. “But—”
   “There is one more thing that we will do before we go,” the calm thought came. “We have discussed the matter and we are in complete agreement on this. Eventually your race will achieve its rightful position through the natural course of time. There is no value in hurrying it prematurely. For the sake of your race and the sake of you two, we will do one last thing before we depart. You will understand.”
   A swift ball of flame rose from the first shape. It hovered over Eller. It touched him and passed on to Silvia. “It is better,” the thought came. “There is no doubt.”
   They watched silently, staring through the port scope. From the side of the ship the first ball of light moved, flashing out into the void.
   “Look!” Silvia exclaimed.
   The ball of light increased speed. It shot away from the ship, moving at incredible velocity. A second ball oozed through the hull of the ship, out into space behind the first.
   After it came a third, a fourth, and finally a fifth. One by one the balls of light hurtled out into the void, out into deep space.
   When they were gone Silvia turned to Eller, her eyes shining. “That’s that,” she said. “Where are they going?”
   “No way to tell. A long way, probably. Maybe not anywhere in this galaxy. Some remote place.” Eller reached out suddenly, touching Silvia’s dark-brown hair. He grinned. “You know, your hair is really something to see. The most beautiful hair in the whole universe.”
   Silvia laughed. “Any hair looks good to us, now.” She smiled up at him, her red lips warm. “Even yours, Cris.”
   Eller gazed down at her a long time. “They were right,” he said at last.
   “Right?”
   “It is better.” Eller nodded, gazing down at the girl beside him, at her hair and dark eyes, the familiar lithe, supple form. “I agree—There is no doubt of it.”