Colony

   Major Lawrence Hall bent over the binocular microscope, correcting the fine adjustment.
   “Interesting,” he murmured.
   “Isn’t it? Three weeks on this planet and we’ve yet to find a harmful life form.” Lieutenant Friendly sat down on the edge of the lab table, avoiding the culture bowls. “What kind of place is this? No disease germs, no lice, no flies, no rats, no—”
   “No whiskey or red-light districts.” Hall straightened up. “Quite a place. I was sure this brew would show something along the lines of Terra’s eberthella typhi. Or the Martian sand rot corkscrew.”
   “But the whole planet’s harmless. You know, I’m wondering whether this is the Garden of Eden our ancestors fell out of.”
   “Were pushed out of.”
   Hall wandered over to the window of the lab and contemplated the scene beyond. He had to admit it was an attractive sight. Rolling forests and hills, green slopes alive with flowers and endless vines; waterfalls and hanging moss; fruit trees, acres of flowers, lakes. Every effort had been made to preserve intact the surface of Planet Blue—as it had been designated by the original scout ship, six months earlier.
   Hall sighed. “Quite a place. I wouldn’t mind coming back here again some time.”
   “Makes Terra seem a little bare.” Friendly took out his cigarettes, then put them away again. “You know, the place has a funny effect on me. I don’t smoke any more. Guess that’s because of the way it looks. It’s so—so damn pure. Unsullied. I can’t smoke or throw papers around. I can’t bring myself to be a picnicker.”
   “The picnickers’ll be along soon enough,” Hall said. He went back to the microscope. “I’ll try a few more cultures. Maybe I’ll find a lethal germ yet.”
   “Keep trying.” Lieutenant Friendly hopped off the table. “I’ll see you later and find out if you’ve had any luck. There’s a big conference going on in Room One. They’re almost ready to give the go-ahead to the E.A. for the first load of colonists to be sent out.”
   “Picnickers!”
   Friendly grinned. “Afraid so.”
   The door closed after him. His bootsteps echoed down the corridor. Hall was alone in the lab.
   He sat for a time in thought. Presently he bent down and removed the slide from the stage of the microscope, selected a new one and held it up to the light to read the marking. The lab was warm and quiet. Sunlight streamed through the windows and across the floor. The trees outside moved a little in the wind. He began to feel sleepy.
   “Yes, the picnickers,” he grumbled. He adjusted the new slide into position. “And all of them ready to come in and cut down the trees, tear up the flowers, spit in the lakes, burn up the grass. With not even the common-cold virus around to—”
   He stopped, his voice choked off—
   Choked off because the two eyepieces of the microscope had twisted suddenly around his windpipe and were trying to strangle him. Hall tore at them, but they dug relentlessly into his throat, steel prongs closing like the claws of a trap.
   Throwing the microscope onto the floor, he leaped up. The microscope crawled quickly toward him, hooking around his leg. He kicked it loose with his other foot, and drew his blast pistol.
   The microscope scuttled away, rolling on its coarse adjustments. Hall fired. It disappeared in a cloud of metallic particles.
   “Good God!” Hall sat down weakly, mopping his face. “What the—?” He massaged his throat. “What the hell!”

   The council room was packed solid. Every officer of the Planet Blue unit was there. Commander Stella Morrison tapped on the big control map with the end of a slim plastic pointer.
   “This long flat area is ideal for the actual city. It’s close to water, and weather conditions vary sufficiently to give the settlers something to talk about. There are large deposits of various minerals. The colonists can set up their own factories. They won’t have to do any importing. Over here is the biggest forest on the planet. If they have any sense, they’ll leave it. But if they want to make newspapers out of it, that’s not our concern.”
   She looked around the room at the silent men.
   “Let’s be realistic. Some of you have been thinking we shouldn’t send the okay to the Emigration Authority, but keep the planet our own selves, to come back to. I’d like that as much as any of the rest of you, but we’d just get into a lot of trouble. It’s not our planet. We’re here to do a certain job. When the job is done, we move along. And it is almost done. So let’s forget it. The only thing left to do is flash the go-ahead signal and then begin packing our things.”
   “Has the lab report come in on bacteria?” Vice-Commander Wood asked.
   “We’re taking special care to look out for them, of course. But the last I heard nothing had been found. I think we can go ahead and contact the E.A. Have them send a ship to take us off and bring in the first load of settlers. There’s no reason why—” She stopped.
   A murmur was swelling through the room. Heads turned toward the door.
   Commander Morrison frowned. “Major Hall, may I remind you that when the council is in session no one is permitted to interrupt!”
   Hall swayed back and forth, supporting himself by holding on to the door knob. He gazed vacantly around the council room. Finally his glassy eyes picked out Lieutenant Friendly, sitting halfway across the room.
   “Come here,” he said hoarsely.
   “Me?” Friendly sank farther down in his chair.
   “Major, what is the meaning of this?” Vice-Commander Wood cut in angrily. “Are you drunk or are—?” He saw the blast gun in Hall’s hand. “Is something wrong, Major?”
   Alarmed, Lieutenant Friendly got up and grabbed Hall’s shoulder. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
   “Come to the lab.”
   “Did you find something?” The Lieutenant studied his friend’s rigid face. “What is it?”
   “Come on.” Hall started down the corridor, Friendly following. Hall pushed the laboratory door open and stepped inside slowly.
   “What it is?” Friendly repeated.
   “My microscope.”
   “Your microscope? What about it?” Friendly squeezed past him into the lab. “I don’t see it.”
   “It’s gone.”
   “Gone? Gone where?”
   “I blasted it.”
   “You blasted it?” Friendly looked at the other man. “I don’t get it. Why?”
   Hall’s mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out.
   “Are you all right?” Friendly asked in concern. Then he bent down and lifted a black plastic box from a shelf under the table. “Say, is this a gag?”
   He removed Hall’s microscope from the box. “What do you mean, you blasted it? Here it is, in its regular place. Now, tell me what’s going on? You saw something on a slide? Some kind of bacteria? Lethal? Toxic?”
   Hall approached the microscope slowly. It was his all right. There was the nick just above the fine adjustment. And one of the stage clips was slightly bent. He touched it with his finger.
   Five minutes ago this microscope had tried to kill him. And he knew he had blasted it out of existence.
   “You sure you don’t need a psych test?” Friendly asked anxiously. “You look post-trauma to me, or worse.”
   “Maybe you’re right,” Hall muttered.

   The robot psyche tester whirred, integrating and gestalting. At last its color-code lights changed from red to green.
   “Well?” Hall demanded.
   “Severe disturbance. Instability ratio up above ten.”
   “That’s over danger?”
   “Yes. Eight is danger. Ten is unusual, especially for a person of your index. You usually show about a four.”
   Hall nodded wearily. “I know.”
   “If you could give me more data—”
   Hall set his jaw. “I can’t tell you any more.”
   “It’s illegal to hold back information during a psyche test,” the machine said peevishly. “If you do that you deliberately distort my findings.”
   Hall rose. “I can’t tell you any more. But you do record a high degree of unbalance for me?”
   “There’s a high degree of psychic disorganization. But what it means, or why it exists, I can’t say.”
   “Thanks.” Hall clicked the tester off. He went back to his own quarters. His head whirled. Was he out of his mind? But he had fired the blast gun at something. Afterward, he had tasted the atmosphere in the lab, and there were metallic particles in suspension, especially near the place he had fired his blast gun at the microscope.
   But how could a thing like that be? A microscope coming to life, trying to kill him!
   Anyhow, Friendly had pulled it out of its box, whole and sound. But how had it got back in the box?
   He stripped off his uniform and entered the shower. While he ran warm water over his body he meditated. The robot psyche tester had showed his mind was severely disturbed, but that could have been the result, rather than the cause, of the experience. He had started to tell Friendly about it but he had stopped. How could he expect anyone to believe a story like that?
   He shut off the water and reached out for one of the towels on the rack.
   The towel wrapped around his wrist, yanking him against the wall. Rough cloth pressed over his mouth and nose. He fought wildly, pulling away. All at once the towel let go. He fell, sliding to the floor, his head striking the wall. Stars shot around him; then violent pain.
   Sitting in a pool of warm water, Hall looked up at the towel rack. The towel was motionless now, like the others with it. Three towels in a row, all exactly alike, all unmoving. Had he dreamed it?
   He got shakily to his feet, rubbing his head. Carefully avoiding the towel rack, he edged out of the shower and into his room. He pulled a new towel from the dispenser in a gingerly manner. It seemed normal. He dried himself and began to put his clothes on.
   His belt got him around the waist and tried to crush him. It was strong—it had reinforced metal links to hold his leggings and his gun. He and the belt rolled silently on the floor, struggling for control. The belt was like a furious metal snake, whipping and lashing at him. At last he managed to get his hand around his blaster.
   At once the belt let go. He blasted it out of existence and then threw himself down in a chair, gasping for breath.
   The arms of the chair closed around him. But this time the blaster was ready. He had to fire six times before the chair fell limp and he was able to get up again.
   He stood half dressed in the middle of the room, his chest rising and falling.
   “It isn’t possible,” he whispered. “I must be out of my mind.”
   Finally he got his leggings and boots on. He went outside into the empty corridor. Entering the lift, he ascended to the top floor.
   Commander Morrison looked up from her desk as Hall stepped through the robot clearing screen. It pinged.
   “You’re armed,” the Commander said accusingly.
   Hall looked down at the blaster in his hand. He put it down on the desk. “Sorry.”
   “What do you want? What’s the matter with you? I have a report from the testing machine. It says you’ve hit a ratio often within the last twenty-four hour period.” She studied him intently. “We’ve known each other for a long time, Lawrence. What’s happening to you?”
   Hall took a deep breath. “Stella, earlier today, my microscope tried to strangle me.”
   Her blue eyes widened. “What!”
   “Then, when I was getting out of the shower, a bath towel tried to smother me. I got by it, but while I was dressing, my belt—” He stopped. The Commander had got to her feet.
   “Guards!” she called.
   “Wait, Stella.” Hall moved toward her. “Listen to me. This is serious. There’s nothing wrong. Four times things have tried to kill me. Ordinary objects suddenly turned lethal. Maybe it’s what we’ve been looking for. Maybe this is—”
   “Your microscope tried to killed you?”
   “It came alive. Its stem got me around the windpipe.”
   There was a long silence. “Did anyone see this happen besides you?”
   “No.”
   “What did you do?”
   “I blasted it.”
   “Are there any remains?”
   “No,” Hall admitted reluctantly. “As a matter of fact, the microscope seems to be all right, again. The way it was before. Back in its box.”
   “I see.” The Commander nodded to the two guards who had answered her call. “Take Major Hall down to Captain Taylor and have him confined until he can be sent back to Terra for examination.”
   She watched calmly as the two guards took hold of Hall’s arms with magnetic grapples.
   “Sorry, Major,” she said. “Unless you can prove any of your story, we’ve got to assume it’s a psychotic projection on your part. And the planet isn’t well enough policed for us to allow a psychotic to run loose. You could do a lot of damage.”
   The guards moved him toward the door. Hall went unprotestingly. His head rang, rang and echoed. Maybe she was right. Maybe he was out of his mind.
   They came to Captain Taylor’s offices. One of the guards rang the buzzer.
   “Who is it?” the robot door demanded shrilly.
   “Commander Morrison orders this man put under the Captain’s care.”
   There was a hesitant pause, then: “The Captain is busy.”
   “This is an emergency.”
   The robot’s relays clicked while it made up its mind. “The Commander sent you?”
   “Yes. Open up.”
   “You may enter,” the robot conceded finally. It drew its locks back, releasing the door.
   The guard pushed the door open. And stopped.
   On the floor lay Captain Taylor, his face blue, his eyes gaping. Only his head and feet was visible. A red-and-white scatter rug was wrapped around him, squeezing, straining tighter and tighter.
   Hall dropped to the floor and pulled at the rug. “Hurry!” he barked. “Grab it!”
   The three of them pulled together. The rug resisted.
   “Help,” Taylor cried weakly.
   “We’re trying!” They tugged frantically. At last the rug came away in their hands. It flopped off rapidly toward the open door. One of the guards blasted it.
   Hall ran to the vidscreen and shakily dialed the Commander’s emergency number.
   Her face appeared on the screen.
   “See!” he gasped.
   She stared past him to Taylor lying on the floor, the two guards kneeling beside him, their blasters still out.
   “What—what happened?”
   “A rug attacked him.” Hall grinned without amusement. “Now who’s crazy?”
   “We’ll send a guard unit down.” She blinked. “Right away. But how—”
   “Tell them to have their blasters ready. And better make that a general alarm to everyone.”

   Hall placed four items on Commander Morrison’s desk: a microscope, a towel, a metal belt, and a small red-and-white rug.
   She edged away nervously. “Major, are you sure—?”
   “They’re all right, now. That’s the strangest part. This towel. A few hours ago it tried to kill me. I got away by blasting it to particles. But here it is, back again. The way it always was. Harmless.
   Captain Taylor fingered the red-and-white rug warily. “That’s my rug. I brought it from Terra. My wife gave it to me. I—I trusted it completely.”
   They all looked at each other.
   “We blasted the rug, too,” Hall pointed out.
   There was silence.
   “Then what was it that attacked me?” Captain Taylor asked. “If it wasn’t this rug?”
   “It looked like this rug,” Hall said slowly. “And what attacked me looked like this towel.”
   Commander Morrison held up the towel to the light. “It’s just an ordinary towel! It couldn’t have attacked you.”
   “Of course not,” Hall agreed. “We’ve put these objects through all the tests we can think of. They’re just what they’re supposed to be, all elements unchanged. Perfectly stable non-organic objects. It’s impossible that any of these could have come to life and attacked us.”
   “But something did.” Taylor said. “Something attacked me. And it if wasn’t this rug, what was it?”

   Lieutenant Dodds felt around on the dresser for his gloves. He was in a hurry. The whole unit had been called to emergency assembly.
   “Where did I—?” he murmured. “What the hell!”
   For on the bed were two pair of identical gloves, side by side.
   Dodds frowned, scratching his head. How could it be? He owned only one pair. The others must be somebody else’s. Bob Wesley had been in the night before, playing cards. Maybe he had left them.
   The vidscreen flashed again. “All personnel, report at once. All personnel, report at once. Emergency assembly of all personnel.”
   “All right!” Dodds said impatiently. He grabbed up one of the pairs of gloves, sliding them onto his hands.
   As soon as they were in place, the gloves carried his hands down to his waist. They clamped his fingers over the butt of his gun, lifting it from the holster.
   “I’ll be damned,” Dodds said. The gloves brought the blast gun up, pointing it at his chest.
   The fingers squeezed. There was a roar. Half of Dodd’s chest dissolved. What was left of him fell slowly to the floor, the mouth still open in amazement.

   Corporal Tenner hurried across the ground toward the main building as soon as he heard the wail of the emergency alarm.
   At the entrance to the building he stopped to take off his metal-cleated boots. Then he frowned. By the door were two safety mats instead of one.
   Well, it didn’t matter. They were both the same. He stepped onto one of the mats and waited. The surface of the mat sent a flow of high-frequency current through his feet and legs, killing any spores or seeds that might have clung to him while he was outside.
   He passed on into the building.
   A moment later Lieutenant Fulton hurried up to the door. He yanked off his hiking boots and stepped onto the first mat he saw.
   The mat folded over his feet.
   “Hey,” Fulton cried. “Let go!”
   He tried to pull his feet loose, but the mat refused to let go. Fulton became scared. He drew his gun, but he didn’t care to fire at his own feet.
   “Help!” he shouted.
   Two soldiers came running up. “What’s the matter, Lieutenant?”
   “Get this damn thing off me.”
   The soldiers began to laugh.
   “It’s no joke,” Fulton said, his face suddenly white. “It’s breaking my feet! It’s—”
   He began to scream. The soldiers grabbed frantically at the mat. Fulton fell, rolling and twisting, still screaming. At last the soldiers managed to get a corner of the mat loose from his feet.
   Fulton’s feet were gone. Nothing but limp bone remained, already half dissolved.

   “Now we know,” Hall said grimly. “It’s a form of organic life.” Commander Morrison turned to Corporal Tenner. “You saw two mats when you came into the building?”
   “Yes, Commander. Two. I stepped on—on one of them. And came in.”
   “You were lucky. You stepped on the right one.”
   “We’ve got to be careful,” Hall said. “We’ve got to watch for duplicates. Apparantly it, whatever it is, imitates objects it finds. Like a chameleon. Camouflage.”
   “Two,” Stella Morrison murmured, looking at the two vases of flowers, one at each end of her desk. “It’s going to be hard to tell. Two towels, two vases, two chairs. There may be whole rows of things that are all right. All multiples legitimate except one.”
   “That’s the trouble. I didn’t notice anything unusual in the lab. There’s nothing odd about another microscope. It blended right in.”
   The Commander drew away from the identical vases of flowers. “How about those? Maybe one is—whatever they are.”
   “There’s two of a lot of things. Natural pairs. Two boots. Clothing. Furniture. I didn’t notice that extra chair in my room. Equipment. It’ll be impossible to be sure. And sometimes—”
   The vidscreen lit. Vice-Commander Wood’s features formed. “Stella, another casualty.”
   “Who is it this time?”
   “An officer dissolved. All but a few buttons and his blast pistol—Lieutenant Dodds.”
   “That makes three,” Commander Morrison said.
   “If it’s organic, there ought to be some way we can destroy it,” Hall muttered. “We’ve already blasted a few, apparently killed them. They can be hurt! But we don’t know how many more there are. We’ve destroyed five or six. Maybe it’s an infinitely divisible substance. Some kind of protoplasm.”
   “And meanwhile—?”
   “Meanwhile we’re all at its mercy. Or their mercy. It’s our lethal life form, all right. That explains why we found everything else harmless. Nothing could compete with a form like this. We have mimic forms of our own, of course. Insects, plants. And there’s the twisty slug on Venus. But nothing that goes this far.”
   “It can be killed, though. You said so yourself. That means we have a chance.”
   “If it can be found.” Hall looked around the room. Two walking capes hung by the door. Had there been two a moment before?
   He rubbed his forehead wearily. “We’ve got to try to find some sort of poison or corrosive agent, something that’ll destroy them wholesale. We can’t just sit and wait for them to attack us. We need something we can spray. That’s the way we got the twisty slugs.”
   The Commander gazed past him, rigid.
   He turned to follow her gaze. “What is it?”
   “I never noticed two briefcases in the corner over there. There was only one before—I think.” She shook her head in bewilderment. “How are we going to know? This business is getting me down.”
   “You need a good stiff drink.”
   She brightened. “That’s an idea. But—”
   “But what?”
   “I don’t want to touch anything. There’s no way to tell.” She fingered the blast gun at her waist. “I keep wanting to use it, on everything.”
   “Panic reaction. Still, we are being picked off, one by one.”

   Captain Unger got the emergency call over his headphones. He stopped work at once, gathered the specimens he had collected in his arms, and hurried back toward the bucket.
   It was parked closer than he remembered. He stopped, puzzled. There it was, the bright little cone-shaped car with its treads firmly planted in the soft soil, its door open.
   Unger hurried up to it, carrying his specimens carefully. He opened the storage hatch in the back and lowered his armload. Then he went around to the front and slid in behind the controls.
   He turned the switch. But the motor did not come on. That was strange. While he was trying to figure it out, he noticed something that gave him a start.
   A few hundred feet away, among the trees, was a second bucket, just like the one he was in. And that was where he remembered having parked his car. Of course, he was in the bucket. Somebody else had come looking for specimens, and this bucket belonged to them.
   Unger started to get out again.
   The door closed around him. The seat folded up over his head. The dashboard became plastic and oozed. He gasped—he was suffocating. He struggled to get out, flailing and twisting. There was a wetness all around him, a bubbling, flowing wetness, warm like flesh.
   “Glub.” His head was covered. His body was covered. The bucket was turning to liquid. He tried to pull his hands free but they would not come.
   And then the pain began. He was being dissolved. All at once he realized what the liquid was.
   Acid. Digestive acid. He was in a stomach.

   “Don’t look!” Gail Thomas cried.
   “Why not?” Corporal Hendricks swam toward her, grinning. “Why can’t I look?’
   “Because I’m going to get out.”
   The sun shone down on the lake. It glittered and danced on the water. All around huge moss-covered trees rose up, great silent columns among the flowering vines and bushes.
   Gail climbed up on the bank, shaking water from her, throwing her hair back out of her eyes. The woods were silent. There was no sound except the lapping of the waves. They were a long way from the unit camp.
   “When can I look?” Hendricks demanded, swimming around in a circle, his eyes shut.
   “Soon.” Gail made her way into the trees, until she came to the place where she had left her uniform. She could feel the warm sun glowing against her bare shoulders and arms. Sitting down in the grass, she picked up her tunic and leggings.
   She brushed the leaves and bits of tree bark from her tunic and began to pull it over her head.
   In the water, Corporal Hendricks waited patiently, continuing in his circle. Time passed. There was no sound. He opened his eyes. Gail was nowhere in sight.
   “Gail?” he called.
   It was very quiet.
   “Gail!”
   No answer.
   Corporal Hendricks swam rapidly to the bank. He pulled himself out of the water. One leap carried him to his own uniform, neatly piled at the edge of the lake. He grabbed up his blaster.
   “Gail!”
   The woods were silent. There was no sound. He stood, looking around him, frowning. Gradually, a cold fear began to numb him, in spite of the warm sun.
   “GAIL!”
   And still there was only silence.

   Commander Morrison was worried. “We’ve got to act,” she said. “We can’t wait. Ten lives lost already from thirty encounters. One-third is too high a percentage.”
   Hall looked up from his work. “Anyhow, now we know what we’re up against. It’s a form of protoplasm, with infinite versatility.” He lifted the spray tank. “I think this will give us an idea of how many exist.”
   “What’s that?”
   “A compound of arsenic and hydrogen in gas form. Arsine.”
   “What are you going to do with it?”
   Hall locked his helmet into place. His voice came through the Commander’s earphones. “I’m going to release this throughout the lab. I think there are a lot of them in here, more than anywhere else.”
   “Why here?”
   “This is where all samples and specimens were originally brought, where the first one of them was encountered. I think they came in with the samples, or as the samples, and then infiltrated through the rest of the buildings.”
   The Commander locked her own helmet into place. Her four guards did the same. “Arsine is fatal to human beings, isn’t it?”
   Hall nodded. “We’ll have to be careful. We can use it in here for a limited test, but that’s about all.”
   He adjusted the flow of his oxygen inside his helmet.
   “What’s your test supposed to prove?” she wanted to know.
   “If it shows anything at all, it should give us an idea of how extensively they’ve infiltrated. We’ll know better what we’re up against. This may be more serious than we realize.”
   “How do you mean?” she asked, fixing her own oxygen flow.
   “There are a hundred people in this unit on Planet Blue. As it stands now, the worst that can happen is that they’ll get all of us, one by one. But that’s nothing. Units of a hundred are lost every day of the week. It’s a risk whoever is first to land on a planet must take. In the final analysis, it’s relatively unimportant.”
   “Compared to what?”
   “If they are infinitely divisible, then we’re going to have to think twice about leaving here. It would be better to stay and get picked off one by one than to run the risk of carrying any of them back to the system.”
   She looked at him. “Is that what you’re trying to find out—whether they’re infinitely divisible?”
   “I’m trying to find out what we’re up against. Maybe there are only a few of them. Or maybe they’re everywhere.” He waved a hand around the laboratory. “Maybe half the things in this room are not what we think they are… It’s bad when they attack us. It would be worse if they didn’t.”
   “Worse?” The Commander was puzzled.
   “Their mimicry is perfect. Of inorganic objects, at least. I looked through one of them, Stella, when it was imitating my microscope. It enlarged, adjusted, reflected, just like a regular microscope. It’s a form of mimicry that surpasses anything we’ve ever imagined. It carries down below the surface, into the actual elements of the object imitated.”
   “You mean one of them could slip back to Terra along with us? In the form of clothing or a piece of lab equipment?” She shuddered.
   “We assume they’re some sort of protoplasm. Such malleability suggests a simple original form—and that suggests binary fission. If that’s so, then there may be no limits to their ability to reproduce. The dissolving properties make me think of the simple unicellular protozoa.”
   “Do you think they’re intelligent?”
   “I don’t know. I hope not.” Hall lifted the spray. “In any case, this should tell us their extent. And, to some degree, corroborate my notion that they’re basic enough to reproduce by simple division—the worse thing possible, from our standpoint.
   “Here goes,” Hall said.
   He held the spray tightly against him, depressed the trigger, aimed the nozzle slowly around the lab. The commander and the four guards stood silently behind him. Nothing moved. The sun shone in through the windows, reflecting from the culture dishes and equipment.
   After a moment he let the trigger up again.
   “I didn’t see anything,” Commander Morrison said. “Are you sure you did anything?”
   “Arsine is colorless. But don’t loosen your helmet. It’s fatal. And don’t move.”
   They stood waiting.
   For a time nothing happened. Then—
   “Good God!” Commander Morrison exclaimed.
   At the far end of the lab a slide cabinet wavered suddenly. It oozed, buckling and pitching. It lost its shape completely—a homogeneous jellylike mass perched on top of the table. Abruptly, it flowed down the side of the table on to the floor, wobbling as it went.
   “Over there!”
   A bunsen burner melted and flowed along beside it. All around the room objects were in motion. A great glass retort folded up into itself and settled down into a blob. A rack of test tubes, a shelf of chemicals…
   “Look out!” Hall cried, stepping back.
   A huge bell jar dropped with a soggy splash in front of him. It was a single large cell, all right. He could dimly make out the nucleus, the cell wall, the hard vacuoles suspended in the cytoplasm.
   Pipettes, tongs, a mortar, all were flowing now. Half the equipment in the room was in motion. They had imitated almost everything there was to imitate. For every microscope there was a mimic. For every tube and jar and bottle and flask…
   One of the guards had his blaster out. Hall knocked it down. “Don’t fire! Arsine is inflammable. Let’s get out of here. We know what we wanted to know.”
   They pushed the laboratory door open quickly and made their way out into the corridor. Hall slammed the door behind them, bolting it tightly.
   “Is it bad, then?” Commander Morrison asked.
   “We haven’t got a chance. The arsine disturbed them; enough of it might even kill them. But we haven’t got that much arsine. And, if we could flood the planet, we wouldn’t be able to use our blasters.”
   “Suppose we left the planet.”
   “We can’t take the chance of carrying them back to the system.”
   “If we stay here we’ll be absorbed, dissolved, one by one,” the Commander protested.
   “We could have arsine brought in. Or some other poison that might destroy them. But it would destroy most of the life on the planet along with them. There wouldn’t be much left.”
   “Then we’ll have to destroy all life forms! If there’s no other way of doing it we’ve got to burn the planet clean. Even if there wouldn’t be a thing left but a dead world.”
   They looked at each other.
   “I’m going to call the System Monitor,” Commander Morrison said. “I’m going to get the unit off here, out of danger—all that are left, at least. That poor girl by the lake…” She shuddered. “After everyone’s out of here, we can work out the best way of cleaning up this planet.”
   “You’ll run the risk of carrying one of them back to Terra?”
   “Can they imitate us? Can they imitate living creatures? Higher life forms?”
   Hall considered. “Apparently not. They seem to be limited to inorganic objects.”
   The Commander smiled grimly. “Then we’ll go back without any inorganic material.”
   “But our clothes! They can imitate belts, gloves, boots—”
   “We’re not taking our clothes. We’re going back without anything. And I mean without anything at all.”
   Hall’s lips twitched. “I see.” He pondered. “It might work. Can you persuade the personnel to—to leave all their things behind? Everything they own?”
   “If it means their lives, I can order them to do it.”
   “Then it might be our one chance of getting away.”

   The nearest cruiser large enough to remove the remaining members of the unit was two hours’ distance away. It was moving Terraside again.
   Commander Morrison looked up from the vidscreen. “They want to know what’s wrong here.”
   “Let me talk.” Hall seated himself before the screen. The heavy features and gold braid of a Terran cruiser captain regarded him. “This is Major Lawrence Hall, from the Research Division of this unit.”
   “Captain Daniel Davis.” Captain Davis studied him without expression. “You’re having some kind of trouble, Major?”
   Hall licked his lips. “I’d rather not explain until we’re aboard, if you don’t mind.”
   “Why not?”
   “Captain, you’re going to think we’re crazy enough as it is. We’ll discuss everything fully once we’re aboard.” He hesitated. “We’re going to board your ship naked.”
   The Captain raised an eyebrow. “Naked?”
   “That’s right.”
   “I see.” Obviously he didn’t.
   “When will you get here?”
   “In about two hours, I’d say.”
   “It’s now 13:00 by our schedule. You’ll be here by 15:00?”
   “At approximately that time,” the Captain agreed.
   “We’ll be waiting for you. Don’t let any of your men out. Open one lock for us. We’ll board without any equipment. Just ourselves, nothing else. As soon as we’re aboard, remove the ship at once.”
   Stella Morrison leaned toward the screen. “Captain, would it be possible—for your men to—?”
   “We’ll land by robot control,” he assured her. “None of my men will be on deck. No one will see you.”
   “Thank you,” she murmured.
   “Not at all.” Captain Davis saluted. “We’ll see you in about two hours then, Commander.”

   “Let’s get everyone out onto the field,” Commander Morrison said. “They should remove their clothes here, I think, so there won’t be any objects on the field to come in contact with the ship.”
   Hall looked at her face. “Isn’t it worth it to save our lives?”
   Lieutenant Friendly bit his lips. “I won’t do it. I’ll stay here.”
   “You have to come.”
   “But, Major—”
   Hall looked at his watch. “It’s 14:50. The ship will be here any minute. Get your clothes off and get out on the landing field.”
   “Can’t I take anything at all?”
   “Nothing. Not even your blaster… They’ll give us clothes inside the ship. Come on! Your life depends on this. Everyone else is doing it.”
   Friendly tugged at his shirt reluctantly. “Well, I guess I’m acting silly.”
   The vidscreen clicked. A robot voice announced shrilly: “Everyone out of the buildings at once! Everyone out of the buildings and on the field without delay! Everyone out of the buildings at once! Everyone—”
   “So soon?” Hall ran to the window and lifted the metal blind. “I didn’t hear it land.”
   Parked in the center of the landing field was a long gray cruiser, its hull pitted and dented from meteoric strikes. It lay motionless. There was no sign of life about it.
   A crowd of naked people was already moving hesitantly across the field toward it, blinking in the bright sunlight.
   “It’s here!” Hall started tearing off his shirt. “Let’s go!”
   “Wait for me!”
   “Then hurry.” Hall finished undressing. Both men hurried out into the corridor. Unclothed guards raced past them. They padded down the corridors through the long unit building, to the door. They ran downstairs, out onto the field. Warm sunlight beat down on them from the sky overhead. From all the unit buildings, naked men and women were pouring silently toward the ship.
   “What a sight!” an officer said. “We’ll never be able to live it down.”
   “But you’ll live, at least,” another said.
   “Lawrence!”
   Hall half turned.
   “Please don’t look around. Keep on going. I’ll walk behind you.”
   “How does it feel, Stella?” Hall asked.
   “Unusual.”
   “Is it worth it?”
   “I suppose so.”
   “Do you think anyone will believe us?”
   “I doubt it,” she said. “I’m beginning to wonder myself.”
   “Anyhow, we’ll get back alive.”
   “I guess so.”
   Hall looked up at the ramp being lowered from the ship in front of them. The first people were already beginning to scamper up the metal incline, into the ship, through the circular lock.
   “Lawrence—”
   There was a peculiar tremor in the Commander’s voice. “Lawrence, I’m—”
   “You’re what?”
   “I’m scared.”
   “Scared!” He stopped. “Why?”
   “I don’t know,” she quavered.
   People pushed against them from all sides. “Forget it. Carry-over from your early childhood.” He put his foot on the bottom of the ramp. “Up we go.”
   “I want to go back!” There was panic in her voice. “I—”
   Hall laughed. “It’s too late now, Stella.” He mounted the ramp, holding on to the rail. Around him, on all sides, men and women were pushing forward, carrying them up. They came to the lock. “Here we are.”
   The man ahead of him disappeared.
   Hall went inside after him, into the dark interior of the ship, into the silent blackness before him. The Commander followed.

   At exactly 15:00 Captain Daniel Davis landed his ship in the center of the field. Relays slid the entrance lock open with a bang. Davis and the other
   officers of the ship sat waiting in the control cabin, around the big control table.
   “Well,” Captain Davis said, after a while. “Where are they?”
   The officers became uneasy. “Maybe something’s wrong.”
   “Maybe the whole damn thing’s a joke?”
   They waited and waited.
   But no one came.

Prize Ship

   General Thomas Groves gazed glumly up at the battle maps on the wall. The thin black line, the iron ring around Ganymede, was still there. He waited a moment, vaguely hoping, but the line did not go away. At last he turned and made his way out of the chart wing, past the rows of desks.
   At the door Major Siller stopped him. “What’s wrong, sir? No change in the war?”
   “No change.”
   “What’ll we do?”
   “Come to terms. Their terms. We can’t let it drag on another month. Everybody knows that. They know that.”
   “Licked by a little outfit like Ganymede.”
   “If only we had more time. But we don’t. The ships must be out in deep-space again, right away. If we have to capitulate to get them out, then let’s do it. Ganymede!” He spat. “If we could only break them. But by that time—”
   “By that time the colonies won’t exist.”
   “We have to get our cradles back in our own hands,” Groves said grimly. “Even if it takes capitulation to do it.”
   “No other way will do?”
   “You find another way.” Groves pushed past Siller, out into corridor. “And if you find it, let me know.”

   The war had been going on for two Terran months, with no sign of a break. The System Senate’s difficult position came from the fact that Ganymede was the jump-off point between the System and its precarious network of colonies at Proxima Centauri. All ships leaving the System for deep-space were launched from the immense space cradles on Ganymede. There were no other cradles. Ganymede had been agreed on as the jump-off point, and the cradles had been constructed there.
   The Ganymedeans became rich, hauling freight and supplies in their tubby little ships. Over a period of time more and more Gany ships took to the sky, freighters and cruisers and patrol ships.
   One day this odd fleet landed among the space cradles, killed and imprisoned the Terran and Martian guards, and proclaimed that Ganymede and the cradles were their property. If the Senate wanted to use the cradles they paid, and paid plenty. Twenty per cent of all freighted goods turned over to the Gany Emperor, left on the moon. And full Senate representation.
   If the Senate fleet tried to take back the cradles by force the cradles would be destroyed. The Ganymedeans had already mined them with H-bombs. The Gany fleet surrounded the moon, a little ring of hard steel. If the Senate fleet tried to break through, seize the moon, it would be the end of the cradles. What could the System do?
   And at Proxima, the colonies were starving.
   “You’re certain we can’t launch ships into deep-space from regular fields,” a Martian Senator asked.
   “Only Class-One ships have any chance to reach the colonies,” Commander James Carmichel said wearily. “A Class-One ship is ten times the size of a regular intra-system ship. A Class-One ship needs a cradle miles deep. Miles wide. You can’t launch a ship that size from a meadow.”
   There was silence. The great Senate chambers were full, crowded to capacity with representatives from all the nine planets.
   “The Proxima colonies won’t last another twenty days,” Doctor Basset testified. “That means we must get a ship on the way sometime next week. Otherwise, when we do get there we won’t find anyone alive.”
   “When will the new Luna cradles be ready?”
   “A month,” Carmichel answered.
   “No sooner?”
   “No.”
   “Then apparently we’ll have to accept Ganymede’s terms.” The Senate Leader snorted with disgust. “Nine planets and one wretched little moon! How dare they want equal voice with the System members!”
   “We could break their ring,” Carmichel said, “but they’ll destroy the cradles without hesitation if we do.”
   “If only we could get supplies to the colonies without using space cradles,” a Plutonian Senator said.
   “That would mean without using Class-One ships.”
   “And nothing else will reach Proxima?”
   “Nothing that we know of.”
   A Saturnian Senator arose. “Commander, what kind of ships does Ganymede use? They’re different from your own?”
   “Yes. But no one knows anything about them.”
   “How are they launched?”
   Carmichel shrugged. “The usual way. From fields.”
   “Do you think—”
   “I don’t think they’re deep-space ships. We’re beginning to grasp at straws. There simply is no ship large enough to cross deep-space that doesn’t require a space cradle. That’s the fact we must accept.”
   The Senate Leader stirred. “A motion is already before the Senate that we accept the proposal of the Ganymedeans and conclude the war. Shall we take the vote, or are there any more questions?”
   No one blinked his light.
   “Then we’ll begin. Mercury. What is the vote of the First Planet?”
   “Mercury votes to accept the enemy’s terms.”
   “Venus. What does Venus vote?”
   “Venus votes—”
   “Wait!” Commander Carmichel stood up suddenly. The Senate Leader raised his hand.
   “What is it? The Senate is voting.”
   Carmichel gazed down intently at a foil strip that had been shot to him across the chamber, from the chart wing. “I don’t know how important this is, but I think perhaps the Senate should know about it before it votes.”
   “What is it?”
   “I have a message from the first line. A Martian raider has surprised and captured a Gany Research Station, on an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter. A large quantity of Gany equipment has been taken intact.” Carmichel looked around the hall. “Including a Gany ship, a new ship, undergoing tests at the Station. The Gany staff was destroyed, but the prize ship is undamaged. The raider is bringing it here so it can be examined by our experts.”
   A murmur broke through the chamber.
   “I put forth a motion that we withhold our decision until the Ganymedean ship has been examined,” a Uranian Senator shouted. “Something might come of this!”
   “The Ganymedeans have put a lot of energy into designing ships,” Carmichel murmured to the Senate Leader. “Their ships are strange. Quite different from ours. Maybe…”
   “What is the vote on this motion?” the Senate Leader asked. “Shall we wait until this ship can be examined?”
   “Let’s wait!” voices cried. “Wait! Let’s see.”
   Carmichel rubbed his paw thoughtfully. “It’s worth a try. But if nothing comes of this we’ll have to go ahead and capitulate.” He folded up the foil strip. “Anyhow, it’s worth looking into. A Gany ship. I wonder…”

   Doctor Earl Basset’s face was red with exitement. “Let me by.” He pushed through the row of uniformed officers. “Please let me by.” Two shiny Lieutenants stepped out of his way and he saw, for the first time, the great globe of steel and rexenoid that was the captured Ganymedean ship.
   “Look at it,” Major Siller whispered. “Nothing at all like our own ships. What makes it run?”
   “No drive jets,” Commander Carmichel said. “Only landing jets to set her down. What makes her go?”
   The Ganymedean globe rested quietly in the center of the Terran Experimental laboratory, rising up from the circle of men like a great bubble. It was a beautiful ship, glimmering with an even metallic fire, shimmering and radiating a cold light.
   “It gives you a strange feeling,” General Groves said. Suddenly he caught his breath. “You don’t suppose this—this could be a gravity drive ship? The Ganys were supposed to be experimenting with gravity.”
   “What’s that?” Basset said.
   “A gravity drive ship would reach its destination without time lapse. The velocity of gravity is infinite. Can’t be measured. If this globe is—”
   “Nonsense,” Carmichel said. “Einstein showed gravity isn’t a force but a warpage, a space warpage.”
   “But couldn’t a ship be built using—”
   “Gentlemen!” The Senate Leader came quickly into the laboratory, surrounded by his guards. “Is this the ship? This globe?” The officers pulled back and the Senate Leader went gingerly up to the great gleaming side. He touched it.
   “It’s undamaged,” Siller said. “They’re translating the control markings so we can use it.”
   “So this is the Ganymedean ship. Will it help us?”
   “We don’t know yet,” Carmichel said.
   “Here come the think-men,” Groves said. The hatch of the globe had opened, and two men in white lab uniforms were stepping carefully down, carrying a semantibox.
   “What are the results?” the Senate Leader asked.
   “We’ve made the translations. A Terran crew could operate the ship now. All the controls are marked.”
   “We should make a study of the engines before we try the ship out,” Doctor Basset said. “What do we know about it? We don’t know what makes it run, or what fuel it uses.”
   “How long will such a study take?” the Leader asked.
   “Several days, at least,” Carmichel said.
   “That long?”
   “There’s no telling what we’ll run into. We may find a radically new type of drive and fuel. It might even take several weeks to finish the analysis.”
   The Senate Leader pondered.
   “Sir,” Carmichel said, “I think we should go ahead and have a test run. We can easily raise a volunteer crew.”
   “A trial run could begin at once,” Groves said. “But we might have to wait weeks for the drive analysis.”
   “You believe a complete crew would volunteer?”
   Carmichel rubbed his hands together. “Don’t worry about that. Four men would do it. Three, outside of me.”
   “Two,” General Groves said. “Count me in.”
   “How about me, sir?” Major Siller asked hopefully.
   Doctor Basset pushed up nervously. “Is it all right for a civilian to volunteer? I’m curious as hell about this.”
   The Senate Leader smiled. “Why not? If you can be of use, go along. So the crew is already here.”
   The four men grinned at each other.
   “Well?” Groves said. “What are we waiting for? Let’s get her started!”

   The linguist traced a meter reading with his finger. “You can see the Gany markings. Next to each we’ve put the Terran equivalent. There’s one hitch, though. We know the Gany word for, say, five. Zahf. So where we find zahf wemark a five for you. See this dial? Where the arrow’s at nesi? At zero. See how it’s marked?”

   100 = liw
   50 = ka
   5 = zahf
   0 = nesi
   5 = zahf
   50 = ka
   100 = liw

   Carmichel nodded. “So?”
   “This is the problem. We don’t know what the units refer to. Five, but five what? Fifty, but fifty what? Presumably velocity. Or is it distance? Since no study has been made of the workings of this ship—”
   “You can’t interpret?”
   “How?” The linguist tapped a switch. “Obviously, this throws the drive on. Mel—start. You close the switch and it indicates io—stop. But how you guide the ship is a different matter. We can’t tell you what the meter is for.”
   Groves touched a wheel. “Doesn’t this guide her?”
   “It governs the brake rockets, the landing jets. As for the central drive we don’t know what it is or how you control it, once you’re started. Semantics won’t help you. Only experience. We can translate numbers only into numbers.”
   Groves and Carmichel looked at each other.
   “Well?” Groves said. “We may find ourselves lost in space. Or falling into the sun. I saw a ship spiral into the sun, once. Faster and faster, down and down—”
   “We’re a long way from the sun. And we’ll point her out, toward Pluto. We’ll get control eventually. You don’t want to unvolunteer, do you?”
   “Of course not.”
   “How about the rest of you?” Carmichel said, to Basset and Siller. “You’re still coming along?”
   “Certainly.” Basset was stepping cautiously into his spacesuit. “We’re coming.”
   “Make sure you seal your helmet completely.” Carmichel helped him fasten his leggings. “Your shoes, next.”
   “Commander,” Groves said, “they’re finishing on the vidscreen. I wanted it installed so we could establish contact. We might need some help getting back.”
   “Good idea.” Carmichel went over, examining the leads from the screen. “Self-contained power unit?”
   “For safety’s sake. Independent from the ship.”
   Carmichel sat down before the vidscreen, clicking it on. The local monitor appeared. “Get me the Garrison Station on Mars. Commander Vecchi.”
   The call locked through. Carmichel began to lace his boots and leggings while he waited. He was lowering his helmet into place when the screen I glowed into life. Vecchi’s dark features formed, lean-jawed above his scarlet uniform.
   “Greetings, Commander Carmichel,” he murmured. He glanced curiously at Carmichel’s suit. “You are going on a trip, Commander?”
   “We may visit you. We’re about to take the captured Gany ship up. If everything goes right I hope to set her down at your field, sometime later today.”
   “We’ll have the field cleared and ready for you.”
   “Better have emergency equipment on hand. We’re still unsure of the controls.”
   “I wish you luck.” Vecchi’s eyes flickered. “I can see the interior of your ship. What drive is it?”
   “We don’t know yet. That’s the problem.”
   “I hope you will be able to land, Commander.”
   “Thanks. So do we.” Carmichel broke the connection. Groves and Siller were already dressed. They were helping Basset tighten the screw locks of his earphones.
   “We’re ready,” Groves said. He looked through the port. Outside a circle of officers watched silently.
   “Say good-bye,” Siller said to Basset. “This may be our last minute on Terra.”
   “Is there really much danger?”
   Groves sat down beside Carmichel at the control board. “Ready?” His voice came to Carmichel through his phones.
   “Ready.” Carmichel reached out his gloved hand, toward the switch marked mel. “Here we go. Hold on tight!”
   He grasped the switch firmly and pulled.

   They were falling through space.
   “Help!” Doctor Basset shouted. He slid across the up-ended floor, crashing against a table. Carmichel and Groves hung on grimly, trying to keep their places at the board.
   The globe was spinning and dropping, settling lower and lower through a heavy sheet of rain. Below them, visible through the port, was a vast rolling ocean, an endless expanse of blue water, as far as the eye could see. Siller stared down at it, on his hands and knees, sliding with the globe.
   “Commander, where—where should we be?”
   “Someplace off Mars. But this can’t be Mars!”
   Groves flipped the brake rocket switches, one after another. The globe shuddered as the rockets came on, bursting into life around them.
   “Easy does it,” Carmichel said, craning his neck to see through the port. “Ocean? What the hell—”
   The globe leveled off, shooting rapidly above the water, parallel to the surface. Siller got slowly to his feet, hanging onto the railing. He helped Basset up. “Okay, Doc?”
   “Thanks.” Basset wobbled. His glasses had come off inside his helmet. “Where are we? On Mars already?’
   “We’re there,” Groves said, “but it isn’t Mars.”
   “But I thought we were going to Mars.”
   “So did the rest of us.” Groves decreased the speed of the globe cautiously. “You can see this isn’t Mars.”
   “Then what is it?”
   “I don’t know. We’ll find out, though. Commander, watch the starboard jet. It’s overbalancing. Your switch.”
   Carmichel adjusted. “Where do you think we are? I don’t understand it. Are we still on Terra? Or Venus?”
   Groves flicked the vidscreen on. “I’ll soon find out if we’re on Terra.” He raised the all-wave control. The screen remained blank. Nothing formed.
   “We’re not on Terra.”
   “We’re not anywhere in the System.” Groves spun the dial. “No response.”
   “Try the frequency of the big Mars Sender.”
   Groves adjusted the dial. At the spot where the Mars Sender should have come in there was—nothing. The four men gaped foolishly at the screen. All their lives they had received the familiar sanguine faces of Martian announcers on that wave. Twenty-four hours a day. The most powerful sender in the System. Mars Sender reached all the nine planets, and even out into deep-space. And it was always on the air.
   “Lord,” Basset said. “We’re out of the System.”
   “We’re not in the System,” Groves said. “Notice the horizontal curve—This is a small planet we’re on. Maybe a moon. But it’s no planet or moon I’ve ever seen before. Not in the System, and not the Proxima area either.”
   Carmichel stood up. “The units must be big multiples, all right. We’re out of the System, perhaps all the way around the galaxy.” He peered out the port at the rolling water.
   “I don’t see any stars,” Basset said.
   “Later on we can get a star reading. When we’re on the other side, away from the sun.”
   “Ocean,” Siller murmured. “Miles of it. And a good temperature.” He removed his helmet cautiously. “Maybe we won’t need these after all.”
   “Better leave them on until we can make an atmosphere check,” Groves said. “Isn’t there a check tube on this bubble?”
   “I don’t see any,” Carmichel said.
   “Well, it doesn’t matter. If we—”
   “Sir!” Siller exclaimed. “Land.”
   They ran to the port. Land was rising into view, on the horizon of the planet. A long low strip of land, a coastline. They could see green; the land was fertile.
   “I’ll turn her a little right,” Groves said, sitting down at the board. He adjusted the controls. “How’s that?”
   “Heading right toward it,” Carmichel sat down beside him. “Well, at least we won’t drown. I wonder where we are. How will we know? What if the star map can’t be equated? We can take a spectroscopic analysis, try to find a known star—”
   “We’re almost there,” Basset said nervously. “You better slow us down, General. We’ll crash.”
   “I’m doing the best I can. Any mountains or peaks?”
   “No. It seems quite flat. Like a plain.”
   The globe dropped lower and lower, slowing down. Green scenery whipped past below them. Far off a row of meager hills came finally into view. The globe was barely skimming, now, as the two pilots fought to bring it to a stop.
   “Easy, easy,” Groves murmured. “Too fast.”
   All the brakes were firing. The globe was a bedlam of noise, knocked back and forth as the jets fired. Gradually it lost velocity, until it was almost hanging in the sky. Then it sank, like a toy balloon, settling slowly down to the green plain below.
   “Cut the rockets!”
   The pilots snapped their switches. Abruptly all sound ceased. They looked at each other.
   “Any moment…” Carmichel murmured.
   Plop!
   “We’re down,” Basset said. “We’re down.”
   They unscrewed the hatch cautiously, their helmets tightly in place. Siller held a Boris gun ready, as Groves and Carmichel swung the heavy rexenoid disc back. A blast of warm air rolled into the globe, swelling around them.
   “See anything?” Basset said.
   “Nothing. Level fields. Some kind of planet.” The General stepped down onto the ground. “Tiny plants! Thousands of them. I don’t know what kind.”
   The other men stepped out, their boots sinking into the moist soil. They looked around them.
   “Which way?” Siller said. “Toward those hills?”
   “Might as well. What a flat planet!” Carmichel strode off, leaving deep tracks behind him. The others followed.
   “Harmless looking place,” Basset said. He picked a handful of the little plants. “What are they? Some kind of weed.” He stuffed them into the pocket of his spacesuit.
   “Stop” Siller froze, rigid, his gun raised.
   “What is it?”
   “Something moved. Through that patch of shrubbery over there.”
   They waited. Everything was quiet around them. A faint breeze eddied through the surface of green. The sky overhead was a clear, warm blue, with a few faint clouds.
   “What did it look like?” Basset said.
   “Some insect. Wait.” Siller crossed to the patch of plants. He kicked at them. All at once a tiny creature rushed out, scuttling away. Siller fired. The bolt from the Boris gun ignited the ground, a roar of white fire. When the cloud dissipated there was nothing but a seared pit.
   “Sorry.” Siller lowered the gun shakily.
   “It’s all right. Better to shoot first, on a strange planet.” Groves and Carmichel went on ahead, up a low rise.
   “Wait for me,” Basset called. He fell behind the others. “I have something in my boot.”
   “You can catch up.” The three went on, leaving the Doctor alone. He sat down on the moist ground, grumbling. He began to unlace his boot slowly, carefully.
   Around him the air was warm. He sighed, relaxing. After a moment he removed his helmet and adjusted his glasses. Smells of plants and flowers were heavy in the air. He took a deep breath, letting it out again slowly. Then he put his helmet back on and finished lacing up his boot.
   A tiny man, not six inches high, appeared from a clump of weeds and shot an arrow at him.
   Basset stared down. The arrow, a minute splinter of wood, was sticking in the sleeve of his spacesuit. He opened and closed his mouth but no sounds came.
   A second arrow glanced off the transparent shield of his helmet. Then a third and a fourth. The tiny man had been joined by companions, one of them on a tiny horse.
   “Mother of Heaven!” Basset said.
   “What’s the matter?” General Groves’ voice came in his earphones. “Are you all right, Doctor?”
   “Sir, a tiny man just fired an arrow at me.”
   “Really?”
   “There’s—there’s a whole bunch of them, now.”
   “Are you out of your mind?”
   “No!” Basset scrambled to his feet. A volley of arrows rose up, sticking into his suit, glancing off his helmet. The shrill voices of the tiny men came to his ears, an excited, penetrating sound. “General, please come back here!”
   Groves and Siller appeared at the top of the ridge. “Basset, you must be out of—”
   They stopped, transfixed. Siller raised the Boris gun, but Groves pushed the muzzle down. “Impossible.” He advanced, staring down at the ground. An arrow pinged against his helmet. “Little men. With bows and arrows.”
   Suddenly the little men turned and fled. They raced off, some on foot, some on horseback, back through the weeds and out the other side.
   “There they go,” Siller said. “Should we follow them? See where they live?”
   “It isn’t possible.” Groves shook his head. “No planet has yielded tiny human beings like this. So small!”
   Commander Carmichel strode down the ridge to them. “Did I really see it? You men saw it, too? Tiny figures, racing away?”
   Groves pulled an arrow from his suit. “We saw. And felt.” He held the arrow close to the plate of his helmet, examining it. “Look—the tip glitters. Metal tipped.”
   “Did you notice their costumes?” Basset said. “In a storybook I once read. Robin Hood. Little caps, boots.”
   “A story…” Groves rubbed his jaw, a strange look suddenly glinting in his eyes. “A book.”
   “What, sir?” Siller said.
   “Nothing.” Groves came suddenly to life, moving away. “Let’s follow them. I want to see their city.”
   He increased his pace, walking with great strides after the tiny men, who had not got very far off, yet.
   “Come on,” Siller said. “Before they get away.” He and Carmichel and Basset followed behind Groves, catching up with him. The four of them kept pace with the tiny men, who were hurrying away as fast as they could. After a time one of the tiny men stopped, throwing himself down on the ground. The others hesitated, looking back.
   “He’s tired out,” Siller said. “He can’t make it.”
   Shrill squeaks rose. He was being urged on.
   “Give him a hand,” Basset said. He bent down, picking the tiny figure up. He held him carefully between his gloved fingers, turning him around and around.
   “Ouch!” He set him down quickly.
   “What is it?” Groves came over.
   “He stung me.” Basset massaged his thumb.
   “Stung you?”
   “Stabbed, I mean. With his sword.”
   “You’ll be all right.” Groves went on, after the tiny figures.
   “Sir,” Siller said to Carmichel, “this certainly makes the Ganymede problem seem remote.”
   “It’s a long way off.”
   “I wonder what their city will be like,” Groves said.
   “I think I know,” Basset said.
   “You know? How?”
   Basset did not answer. He seemed to be deep in thought, watching the figures on the ground intently.
   “Come on,” he said. “Let’s not lose them.”

   They stood together, none of them speaking. Ahead, down a long slope, lay a miniature city. The tiny figures had fled into it, across a drawbridge. Now the bridge was rising, lifted by almost invisible threads. Even as they watched, the bridge snapped shut.
   “Well, Doc?” Siller said. “This what you expected?”
   Basset nodded. “Exactly.”
   The city was walled, built of gray stone. It was surrounded by a little moat. Countless spires rose up, a conglomeration of peaks and gables, tops of buildings. There was furious activity going on inside the city. A cacophony of shrill sounds from countless throats drifted across the moat to the four men, growing louder each moment. At the walls of the city figures appeared, soldiers in armor, peering across the moat at them.
   Suddenly the drawbridge quivered. It began to slide down, descending into position. There was a pause. Then—
   “Look!” Groves exclaimed. “Here they come.”
   Siller raised his gun. “My Lord! Look at them!”
   A horde of armed men on horseback clattered across the drawbridge, spilling out onto the ground beyond. They came straight toward the four spacesuited men, the sun sparkling against their shields and spears. There were hundreds of them, decked with streamers and banners and pennants of all colors and sizes. An impressive sight, on a small scale.
   “Get ready,” Carmichel said. “They mean business. Watch your legs.” He tightened the bolts of his helmet.
   The first wave of horsemen reached Groves, who was standing a little ahead of the others. A ring of warriors surrounded him, little glittering armored and plumed figures, hacking furiously at his ankles with miniature swords.
   “Cut it out!” Groves howled, leaping back. “Stop!”
   “They’re going to give us trouble,” Carmichel said.
   Siller began to giggle nervously, as arrows flew around him. “Shall I give it to them, sir? One blast from the Boris gun and—”
   “No! Don’t fire—that’s an order.” Groves moved back as a phalanx of horses rushed toward him, spears lowered. He swung his leg, spilling them over with his heavy boot. A frantic mass of men and horses struggled to right themselves.
   “Back,” Basset said. “Those damn archers.”
   Countless men on foot were rushing from the city with long bows and quivers strapped to their backs. A chaos of shrill sound filled the air.
   “He’s right,” Carmichel said. His leggings had been hacked clean through by determined knights who had dismounted and were swinging again and again, trying to chop him down. “If we’re not going to fire we better retreat. They’re tough.”
   Clouds of arrows rained down on them.
   “They know how to shoot,” Groves admitted. “These men are trained soldiers.”
   “Watch out,” Siller said “They’re trying to get between us. Pick us off one by one.” He moved toward Carmichel nervously. “Let’s get out of here.”
   “Hear them?” Carmichel said. “They’re mad. They don’t like us.”
   The four men retreated, backing away. Gradually the tiny figures stopped following, pausing to reorganize their lines.
   “It’s lucky for us we have our suits on,” Groves said. “This isn’t funny anymore.”
   Siller bent down and pulled up a clump of weeds. He tossed the clump at the line of knights. They scattered.
   “Let’s go,” Basset said. “Let’s leave.”
   “Leave?”
   “Let’s get out of here.” Basset was pale. “I can’t believe it. Must be some kind of hypnosis. Some kind of control of our minds. It can’t be real.”
   Siller caught his arm. “Are you all right? What’s the matter?”
   Basset’s face was contorted strangely. “I can’t accept it,” he muttered thickly. “Shakes the whole fabric of the universe. All basic beliefs.”
   “Why? What do you mean?”
   Groves put his hand on Basset’s shoulder. “Take it easy, Doctor.”
   “But General—”
   “I know what you’re thinking. But it can’t be. There must be some rational explanation. There has to be.”
   “A fairy tale,” Basset muttered. “A story.”
   “Coincidence. The story was a social satire, nothing more. A social satire, a work of fiction. It just seems like this place. The resemblance is only—”
   “What are you two talking about?” Carmichel said.
   “This place.” Bassett pulled away. “We’ve got to get out of here. We’re caught in a mind web of some sort.”
   “What’s he talking about?” Carmichel looked from Basset to Groves. “Do you know where we are?”
   “We can’t be there,” Basset said.
   ‘Where?”
   “He made it up. A fairy tale. A child’s tale.”
   “No, a social satire, to be exact,” Groves said.
   “What are they talking about, sir?” Siller said to Commander Carmichel. “Do you know?”
   Carmichel grunted. A slow light dawned in his face. “What?”
   “Do you know where we are, sir?”
   “Let’s get back to the globe,” Carmichel said.

   Groves paced nervously. He stopped by the port, looking out intently, peering into the distance.
   “More coming?” Basset said.
   “Lots more.”
   “What are they doing out there now?”
   “Still working on their tower.”
   The little people were erecting a tower, a scaffolding up the side of the globe. Hundreds of them were working together, knights, archers, even women and boys. Horses and oxen pulling tiny carts were drawing supplies from the city. A shrill hubbub penetrated the rexenoid hull of the globe, filtering to the four men inside.
   “Well?” Carmichel said. “What’ll we do? Go back?”
   “I’ve had enough,” Groves said. “All I want now is to go back to Terra.”
   “Where are we?” Siller demanded, for the tenth time. “Doc, you know. Tell me, damn it! All three of you know. Why won’t you say?”
   “Because we want to keep our sanity,” Basset said, his teeth clenched. “That’s why.”
   “I’d sure like to know,” Siller murmured. “If we went over in the corner would you tell me?”
   Basset shook his head. “Don’t bother me, Major.”
   “It just can’t be,” Groves said. “How could it be?”
   “And if we leave, we’ll never know. We’ll never be sure. It’ll haunt us all our lives. Were we really—here? Does this place really exist? And is this place really—”
   “There was a second place,” Carmichel said abruptly.
   “A second place?”
   “In the story. A place where the people were big.”
   Basset nodded. “Yes. It was called—What?”
   “Brobdingnag.”
   “Brobdingnag. Maybe it exists, too.”
   “Then you really think this is—”
   “Doesn’t it fit his description?” Basset waved toward the port. “Isn’t that what he described? Everything small, tiny soldiers, little walled cities, oxen, horses, knights, kings, pennants. Drawbridge. Moat. And their damn towers. Always building towers—and shooting arrows.”
   “Doc,” Siller said. “Whose description?”
   No answer.
   “Could—could you whisper it to me?”
   “I don’t see how it can be,” Carmichel said flatly. “I remember the book, of course. I read it when I was a child, as we all did. Later on I realized it was a satire of the manners of the times. But good Lord, it’s either one or the other! Not a real place!”
   “Maybe he had a sixth sense. Maybe he really was there. Here. In a vision. Maybe he had a vision. They say that he was supposed to have been psychotic, toward the end.”
   “Brobdingnag. The other place.” Carmichel pondered. “If this exists, maybe that exists. It might tell us… We might know, for sure. Some sort of verification.”
   “Yes, our theory. Hypothesis. We predict that it should exist, too. Its existence would be a kind of proof.”
   “The L theory, which predicts the existence of B.”
   “We’ve got to be sure,” Basset said. “If we go back without being sure, we’ll always wonder. When we’re fighting the Ganymedeans we’ll stop suddenly and wonder—was I really there? Does it really exist? All these years we thought it was just a story. But now—”
   Groves walked over to the control board and sat down. He studied the dials intently. Carmichel sat down beside him.
   “See this,” Groves said, touching the big central meter with his finger. “The reading is up to liw, 100. Remember where it was when we started?”
   “Of course. At nesi. At zero. Why?”
   “Nesi is neutral position. Our starting position, back on Terra. We’ve gone the limit one way. Carmichel, Basset is right. We’ve got to find out. We can’t go back to Terra without knowing if this really is… You know.”
   “You want to throw it back all the way? Not stop at zero? Go on to the other end? To the other liw?”
   Groves nodded.
   “All right.” The Commander let his breath out slowly. “I agree with you. I want to know, too. I have to know.”
   “Doctor Basset.” Groves brought the Doctor over to the board. “We’re not going back to Terra, not yet. The two of us want to go on.”
   “On?” Basset’s face twitched. “You mean on beyond? To the other side?”
   They nodded. There was silence. Outside the globe the pounding and ringing had ceased. The tower had almost reached the level of the port.
   “We must know,” Groves said.
   “I’m for it,” Basset said.
   “Good,” Carmichel said.
   “I wish one of you would tell me what it is you’re talking about,” Siller said plaintively. “Can’t you tell me?”
   “Then here goes.” Groves took hold of the switch. He held it for a moment, sitting silently. “Are we ready?”
   “Ready,” Basset said.
   Groves threw the switch, all the way down.

   Shapes, enormous and confused.
   The globe floundered, trying to right itself. Again they were falling, sliding about. The globe was lost in a sea of vague misty forms, immense dim figures that moved on all sides of them, beyond the port.
   Basset stared out, his jaws slack. “What—”
   Faster and faster the globe fell. Everything was diffused, unformed. Shapes like shadows drifted and flowed outside, shapes so huge that their outlines were lost.
   “Sir!” Siller muttered. “Commander! Hurry! Look!”
   Carmichel made his way to the port.
   They were in a world of giants. A towering figure walked past them, a torso so large that they could see only a portion of it. There were other shapes, but so vast and dim they could not be identified. All around the globe was a roaring, a deep undercurrent of sound like the waves of a monstrous ocean. An echoing sound, a booming that tossed and bounced the globe around and around.
   Groves looked up at Basset and Carmichel.
   “Then it’s true,” Basset said.
   “This confirms it.”
   “I can’t believe it,” Carmichel said. “But this is the proof we asked for. Here it is—out there.”
   Outside the globe something was coming closer, coming ponderously toward them. Siller gave a sudden shout, moving back from the port. He grabbed up the Boris gun, his face ashen.
   “Groves!” Basset cried. “Throw it to neutral! Quick! We’ve got to get away.”
   Carmichel pushed Siller’s gun down. He grinned fixedly at him. “Sorry. This time it’s too small.”
   A hand was reached toward them, a hand so large that it blotted out the light. Fingers, skin with gaping pores, nails, great tufts of hair. The globe shuddered as the hand closed around them from all sides.
   “General! Quick!”
   Then it was gone. The pressure ceased, winking out. Beyond the port was—nothing. The dials were in motion again, the pointer rising up toward nesi. Toward neutral. Toward Terra.
   Basset breathed a sigh of relief. He removed his helmet and mopped his forehead.
   “We got away,” Groves said. “Just in time.”
   “A hand,” Siller said. “Reaching for us. A big hand. Where were we? Tell me!”
   Carmichel sat down beside Groves. They looked silently at each other.
   Carmichel grunted. “We mustn’t tell anyone. No one. They wouldn’t believe us, and anyhow, it would be very damaging if they did. A society can’t learn something like this. Too much would totter.”
   “He must have seen it in a vision. Then he wrote it up as a children’s story. He knew he could never put it down as fact.”
   “Something like that. So it really exists. Both exist. And perhaps others. Wonderland, Oz, Pellucidar, Erewhon, all the fantasies, dreams—”
   Groves put his hand on the Commander’s arm. “Take it easy. We’ll simply tell them the ship didn’t work. As far as they’re concerned we didn’t go anywhere. Right?”
   “Right.” Already, the vidscreen was sputtering, coming to life. An image was forming. “Right. We won’t say anything. Just the four of us will know.” He glanced at Siller. “Just the three of us, I mean.”
   On the vidscreen the image of the Senate Leader was fully formed. “Commander Carmichel! Are you safe? Were you able to land? Mars sent us no report. Is your crew all right?”
   Basset peered out the port. “We’re hanging about a mile up from the city. Terra City. Dropping slowly down. The sky is full of ships. We don’t need help, do we?”
   “No,” Carmichel said. He began to fire the brake rocket slowly, easing the ship down.
   “Someday, when the war is over,” Basset said, “I want to ask the Ganymedeans about this. I’d like to find out the whole story.”
   “Maybe you’ll get your chance,” Groves said, suddenly sobered. “That’s right. Ganymede! Our chance to win the war certainly fizzled.”
   “The Senate Leader is going to be disappointed,” Carmichel said grimly. “You may get your wish very soon, Doctor. The war will probably be over shortly, now that we’re back—empty handed.”

   The slender yellow Ganymedean moved slowly into the room, his robes slithering across the floor after him. He stopped, bowing.
   Commander Carmichel nodded stiffly.
   “I was told to come here,” the Ganymedean lisped softly. “They tell me that some of our property is in this laboratory.”
   “That’s right.”
   “If there are no objections, we would like to—”
   “Go ahead and take it.”
   “Good. I am glad to see there is no animosity on your part. Now that we are all friends again, I hope that we can work together in harmony, on an equal basis of—”
   Carmichel turned abruptly away, walking toward the door. “Your property is this way. Come along.”
   The Ganymedean followed him into the central lab building. There, resting silently in the center of the vast room, was the globe.
   Groves came over. “I see they’ve come for it.”
   “Here it is,” Carmichel said to the Ganymedean. “Your spaceship. Take it.”
   “Our time ship, you mean.”
   Groves and Carmichel jerked. “Your what?”
   The Ganymedean smiled quietly. “Our time ship.” He indicated the globe. “There it is. May I begin moving it onto our transport?”
   “Get Basset,” Carmichel said. “Quick!”
   Groves hurried from the room. A moment later he returned with Doctor Basset.
   “Doctor, this Gany is after his property.” Carmichel took a deep breath. “His—his time machine.”
   Basset leaped. “His what? His time machine?” His face twitched. Suddenly he backed away. “This? A time machine? Not what we—Not—”
   Groves calmed himself with an effort. He addressed the Ganymedean as casually as he could, standing to one side, a little dismayed. “May we ask you a couple of questions before you take your—your time ship?”
   “Of course. I will answer as best I can.”
   “This globe. It—it goes through time? Not space? It’s a time machine? Goes into the past? Into the future?”
   “That is correct.”
   “I see. And nesi on the dial, that’s the present.”
   “Yes.”
   “The upward reading is the past?”
   “Yes.”
   “The downward reading is the future, then. One more thing. Just one more. A person going back into the past would find that because of the expansion of the universe—”
   The Ganymedean reacted. A smile crossed his face, a subtle, knowing smile. “Then you have tried out the ship?”
   Groves nodded.
   “You went into the past and found everything much smaller? Reduced in size?”
   “That’s right—because the universe is expanding! And the future. Everything increased in size. Expanded.”
   “Yes.” The Ganymedean’s smile broadened. “It is a shock, is it not? You are astonished to find your world reduced in size, populated by minute beings. But size, of course, is relative. As you discover when you go into the future.”
   “So that’s it.” Groves let out his breath. “Well, that’s all. You can have your ship.”
   “Time travel,” the Ganymedean said regretfully, “is not a successful undertaking. The past is too small, the future too expanded. We considered this ship a failure.”
   The Gany touched the globe with his feeler.
   “We could not imagine why you wanted it. It was even suggested that you stole the ship to use—” the Gany smiled—”to use to reach your colonies in deep-space. But that would have been too amusing. We could not really believe that.”
   No one said anything.
   The Gany made a whistling signal. A work crew came filing in and began to load the globe onto an enormous flat truck.
   “So that’s it,” Groves muttered. “It was Terra all the time. And those people, they were our ancestors.”
   “About fifteenth century,” Basset said. “Or so I’d say by their costumes. Middle Ages.”
   They looked at each other.
   Suddenly Carmichel laughed. “And we thought it was—We thought we were at—”
   “I knew it was only a child’s story,” Basset said.
   “A social satire,” Groves corrected him.
   Silently they watched the Ganymedeans trundle their globe out of the building, onto the waiting cargo ship.

Nanny

   “When I look back,” Mary Fields said, “I marvel that we ever could have grown up without a Nanny to take care of us.”
   There was no doubt that Nanny had changed the whole life of the Fields’s house since she had come. From the time the children opened their eyes in the morning to their last sleepy nod at night, Nanny was in there with them, watching them, hovering about them, seeing that all their wants were taken care of.
   Mr. Fields knew, when he went to the office, that his kids were safe, perfectly safe. And Mary was relieved of a countless procession of chores and worries. She did not have to wake the children up, dress them, see that they were washed, ate their meals, or anything else. She did not even have to take them to school. And after school, if they did not come right home, she did not have to pace back and forth in anxiety, worried that something had happened to them.
   Not that Nanny spoiled them, of course. When they demanded something absurd or harmful (a whole storeful of candy, or a policeman’s motorcycle) Nanny’s will was like iron. Like a good shepherd she knew when to refuse the flock its wishes.
   Both children loved her. Once, when Nanny had to be sent to the repair shop, they cried and cried without stopping. Neither their mother nor their father could console them. But at last Nanny was back again, and everything was all right. And just in time! Mrs. Fields was exhausted.
   “Lord,” she said, throwing herself down. “What would we do without her?”
   Mr. Fields looked up. “Without who?”
   “Without Nanny.”
   “Heaven only knows,” Mr. Fields said. After Nanny had aroused the children from sleep—by emitting a soft, musical whirr a few feet from their heads—she made certain that they were dressed and down at the breakfast table promptly, with faces clean and dispositions unclouded. If they were cross Nanny allowed them the pleasure of riding downstairs on her back.
   Coveted pleasure! Almost like a roller coaster, with Bobby and Jean hanging on for dear life and Nanny flowing down step by step in the funny rolling way she had.
   Nanny did not prepare breakfast, of course. That was all done by the kitchen. But she remained to see that the children ate properly and then, when breakfast was over, she supervised their preparations for school. And after they had got their books together and were all brushed and neat, her most important job: seeing that they were safe on the busy streets.
   There were many hazards in the city, quite enough to keep Nanny watchful. The swift rocket cruisers that swept along, carrying businessmen to work. The time a bully had tried to hurt Bobby. One quick push from Nanny’s starboard grapple and away he went, howling for all he was worth. And the time a drunk started talking to Jean, with heaven knows what in mind. Nanny tipped him into the gutter with one nudge of her powerful metal side.
   Sometimes the children would linger in front of a store. Nanny would have to prod them gently, urging them on. Or if (as sometimes happened) the children were late to school, Nanny would put them on her back and fairly speed along the sidewalk, her treads buzzing and flapping at a great rate.
   After school Nanny was with them constantly, supervising their play, watching over them, protecting them, and at last, when it began to get dark and late, dragging them away from their games and turned in the direction of home.
   Sure enough, just as dinner was being set on the table, there was Nanny, herding Bobby and Jean in through the front door, clicking and whirring admonishingly at them. Just in time for dinner! A quick run to the bathroom to wash their faces and hands.
   And at night—
   Mrs. Fields was silent, frowning just a little. At night … “Tom?” she said.
   Her husband looked up from his paper. “What?”
   “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something. It’s very odd, something I don’t understand. Of course, I don’t know anything about mechanical things. But Tom, at night when we’re all asleep and the house is quiet, Nanny—”
   There was a sound.
   “Mommy!” Jean and Bobby came scampering into the living room, their faces flushed with pleasure. “Mommy, we raced Nanny all the way home, and we won!”
   “We won,” Bobby said. “We beat her.”
   “We ran a lot faster than she did,” Jean said.
   “Where is Nanny, children?” Mrs. Fields asked.
   “She’s coming. Hello, Daddy.”
   “Hello, kids,” Tom Fields said. He cocked his head to one side, listening. From the front porch came an odd scraping sound, an unusual whirr and scrape. He smiled.
   “That’s Nanny,” Bobby said.
   And into the room came Nanny.
   Mr. Fields watched her. She had always intrigued him. The only sound in the room was her metal treads, scraping against the hardwood floor, a peculiar rhythmic sound. Nanny came to a halt in front of him, stopping a few feet away. Two unwinking photocell eyes appraised him, eyes on flexible wire stalks. The stalks moved speculatively, weaving slightly. Then they withdrew.
   Nanny was built in the shape of a sphere, a large metal sphere, flattened on the bottom. Her surface had been sprayed with a dull green enamel, which had become chipped and gouged through wear. There was not much visible in addition to the eye stalks. The treads could not be seen. On each side of the hull was the outline of a door. From these the magnetic grapples came, when they were needed. The front of the hull came to a point, and there the metal was reinforced. The extra plates welded both fore and aft made her look almost like a weapon of war. A tank of some land. Or a ship, a rounded metal ship that had come up on land. Or like an insect. A sowbug, as they are called.
   “Come on!” Bobby shouted.
   Abruptly Nanny moved, spinning slightly as her treads gripped the floor and turned her around. One of her side doors opened. A long metal rod shot out. Playfully, Nanny caught Bobby’s arm with her grapple and drew him to her. She perched him on her back. Bobby’s legs straddled the metal hull. He kicked with his heels excitedly, jumping up and down.
   “Race you around the block!” Jean shouted. “Giddup!” Bobby cried. Nanny moved away, out of the room with him. A great round bug of whirring metal and relays, clicking photocells and tubes. Jean ran beside her. There was silence. The parents were alone again. “Isn’t she amazing?” Mrs. Fields said. “Of course, robots are a common sight these days. Certainly more so than a few years ago. You see them everywhere you go, behind counters in stores, driving buses, digging ditches—”
   “But Nanny is different,” Tom Fields murmured.
   “She’s—she’s not like a machine. She’s like a person. A living person. But after all, she’s much more complex than any other kind. She has to be. They say she’s even more intricate than the kitchen.”
   “We certainly paid enough for her,” Tom said.
   “Yes,” Mary Fields murmured. “She’s very much like a living creature.” There was a strange note in her voice. “Very much so.”
   “She sure takes care of the kids,” Tom said, returning to his newspaper.
   “But I’m worried.” Mary put her coffee cup down, frowning. They were eating dinner. It was late. The two children had been sent up to bed. Mary touched her mouth with her napkin. “Tom, I’m worried. I wish you’d listen to me.”
   Tom Fields blinked. “Worried? What about?”
   “About her. About Nanny.”
   “Why?”
   “I—I don’t know.”
   “You mean we’re going to have to repair her again? We just got through fixing her. What is it this time? If those kids didn’t get her to—”
   “It’s not that.”
   “What, then?”
   For a long time his wife did not answer. Abruptly she got up from the table and walked across the room to the stairs. She peered up, staring into the darkness. Tom watched her, puzzled.
   “What’s the matter?”
   “I want to be sure she can’t hear us.”
   “She? Nanny?”
   Mary came toward him. “Tom, I woke up last night again. Because of the sounds. I heard them again, the same sounds, the sounds I heard before. And you told me it didn’t mean anything!”
   Tom gestured. “It doesn’t. What does it mean?”
   “I don’t know. That’s what worries me. But after we’re all asleep she comes downstairs. She leaves their room. She slips down the stairs as quietly as she can, as soon as she’s sure we’re all asleep.”
   “But why?”
   “I don’t know! Last night I heard her going down, slithering down the stairs, as quiet as a mouse. I heard her moving around down here. And then—”
   “Then what?”
   “Tom, then I heard her go out the back door. Out, outside the house. She went into the back yard. That was all I heard for awhile.”
   Tom rubbed his jaw. “Go on.”
   “I listened. I sat up in bed. You were asleep, of course. Sound asleep. No use trying to wake you. I got up and went to the window. I lifted the shade and looked out. She was out there, out in the back yard.”
   “What was she doing?”
   “I don’t know.” Mary Fields’s face was lined with worry. “I don’t know! What in the world would a Nanny be doing outside at night, in the back yard?”

   It was dark. Terribly dark. But the infrared filter clicked into place, and the darkness vanished. The metal shape moved forward, easing through the kitchen, its treads half-retracted for greatest quiet. It came to the back door and halted, listening.
   There was no sound. The house was still. They were all asleep upstairs. Sound asleep.
   The Nanny pushed, and the back door opened. It moved out onto the porch, letting the door close gently behind it. The night air was thin and cold. And full of smells, all the strange, tingling smells of the night, when spring has begun to change into summer, when the ground is still moist and the hot July sun has not had a chance to kill all the little growing things.
   The Nanny went down the steps, onto the cement path. Then it moved cautiously onto the lawn, the wet blades of grass slapping its sides. After a time it stopped, rising up on its back treads. Its front part jutted up into the air. Its eye stalks stretched, rigid and taut, waving very slightly. Then it settled back down and continued its motion forward.
   It was just going around the peach tree, coming back toward the house, when the noise came.
   It stopped instantly, alert. Its side doors fell away and its grapples ran out their full lengths, lithe and wary. On the other side of the board fence, beyond the row of shasta daisies, something had stirred. The Nanny peered, clicking filters rapidly. Only a few faint stars winked in the sky overhead. But it saw, and that was enough.
   On the other side of the fence a second Nanny was moving, making its way softly through the flowers, coming toward the fence. It was trying to make as little noise as possible. Both Nannies stopped, suddenly unmoving, regarding each other-the green Nanny waiting in its own yard, the blue prowler that had been coming toward the fence.
   The blue prowler was a larger Nanny, built to manage two young boys. Its sides were dented and warped from use, but its grapples were still strong and powerful. In addition to the usual reinforced plates across its nose there was a gouge of tough steel, a jutting jaw that was already sliding into position, ready and able.
   Mecho-Products, its manufacturer, had lavished attention on this jaw-construction. It was their trademark, their unique feature. Their ads, their brochures, stressed the massive frontal scoop mounted on all their models. And there was an optional assist: a cutting edge, power-driven, that at extra cost could easily be installed in their “Luxury-line” models.
   This blue Nanny was so equipped.
   Moving cautiously ahead, the blue Nanny reached the fence. It stopped and carefully inspected the boards. They were thin and rotted, put up a long time ago. It pushed its hard head against the wood. The fence gave, splintering and ripping. At once the green Nanny rose on its back treads, its grapples leaping out. A fierce joy filled it, a bursting excitement. The wild frenzy of battle.
   The two closed, rolling silently on the ground, their grapples locked. Neither made any noise, the blue Mecho-Products Nanny nor the smaller, lighter, pale-green Service Industries, Inc., Nanny. On and on they fought, hugged tightly together, the great jaw trying to push underneath, into the soft treads. And the green Nanny trying to hook its metal point into the eyes that gleamed fitfully against its side. The green Nanny had the disadvantage of being a medium-priced model; it was outclassed and outweighed. But it fought grimly, furiously.
   On and on they struggled, rolling in the wet soil. Without sound of any kind. Performing the wrathful, ultimate task for which each had been designed.

   “I can’t imagine,” Mary Fields murmured, shaking her head. “I just don’t know.”
   “Do you suppose some animal did it?” Tom conjectured. “Are there any big dogs in the neighborhood?”
   “No. There was a big red Irish setter, but they moved away, to the country. That was Mr. Petty’s dog.”
   The two of them watched, troubled and disturbed. Nanny lay at rest by the bathroom door, watching Bobby to make sure he brushed his teeth. The green hull was twisted and bent. One eye had been shattered, the glass knocked out, splintered. One grapple no longer retracted completely; it hung forlornly out of its little door, dragging uselessly.
   “I just don’t understand,” Mary repeated. “I’ll call the repair place and see what they say. Tom, it must have happened sometime during the night. While we were asleep. The noises I heard—”
   “Shhh,” Tom muttered warningly. Nanny was coming toward them, away from the bathroom. Clicking and whirring raggedly, she passed them, a limping green tub of metal that emitted an unrhythmic, grating sound. Tom and Mary Fields unhappily watched her as she lumbered slowly into the living room. “I wonder,” Mary murmured.
   “Wonder what?”
   “I wonder if this will happen again.” She glanced up suddenly at her husband, eyes full of worry. “You know how the children love her … and they need her so. They just wouldn’t be safe without her. Would they?”
   “Maybe it won’t happen again,” Tom said soothingly. “Maybe it was an accident.” But he didn’t believe it; he knew better. What had happened was no accident.
   From the garage he backed his surface cruiser, maneuvered it until its loading entrance was locked against the rear door of the house. It took only a moment to load the sagging, dented Nanny inside; within ten minutes he was on his way across town to the repair and maintenance department of Service Industries, Inc.
   The serviceman, in grease-stained white overalls, met him at the entrance. “Troubles?” he asked wearily; behind him, in the depths of the block-long building, stood rows of battered Nannies, in various stages of disassembly. “What seems to be the matter this time?”
   Tom said nothing. He ordered the Nanny out of the cruiser and waited while the serviceman examined it for himself.
   Shaking his head, the serviceman crawled to his feet and wiped grease from his hands. “That’s going to run into money,” he said. “The whole neural transmission’s out.”
   His throat dry, Tom demanded: “Ever seen anything like this before? It didn’t break; you know that. It was demolished.”
   “Sure,” the serviceman agreed tonelessly. “It pretty much got taken down a peg. On the basis of those missing chunks—” He indicated the dented anterior hull-sections. “I’d guess it was one of Mecho’s new jaw-models.”
   Tom Fields’s blood stopped moving in his veins. “Then this isn’t new to you,” he said softly, his chest constricting. “This goes on all the time.”
   “Well, Mecho just put out that jaw-model. It’s not half bad … costs about twice what this model ran. Of course,” the serviceman added thoughtfully, “we have an equivalent. We can match their best, and for less money.”
   Keeping his voice as calm as possible, Tom said: “I want this one fixed. I’m not getting another.”
   “I’ll do what I can. But it won’t be the same as it was. The damage goes pretty deep. I’d advise you to trade it in-you can get damn near what you paid. With the new models coming out in a month or so, the salesmen are eager as hell to—”
   “Let me get this straight.” Shakily, Tom Fields lit up a cigarette. “You people really don’t want to fix these, do you? You want to sell brand-new ones, when these break down.” He eyed the repairman intently. “Break down, or are knocked down.”
   The repairman shrugged. “It seems like a waste of time to fix it up. It’s going to get finished off, anyhow, soon.” He kicked the misshapen green hull with his boot. “This model is around three years old. Mister, it’s obsolete.”
   “Fix it up,” Tom grated. He was beginning to see the whole picture; his self-control was about to snap. “I’m not getting a new one! I want this one fixed!”
   “Sure,” the serviceman said, resigned. He began making out a work-order sheet. “We’ll do our best. But don’t expect miracles.”
   While Tom Fields was jerkily signing his name to the sheet, two more damaged Nannies were brought into the repair building.
   “When can I get it back?” he demanded.
   “It’ll take a couple of days,” the mechanic said, nodding toward the rows of semi-repaired Nannies behind him. “As you can see,” he added leisurely, “we’re pretty well full-up.”
   “I’ll wait,” Tom said tautly. “Even if it takes a month.”

   “Let’s go to the park!” Jean cried.
   So they went to the park.
   It was a lovely day, with the sun shining down hotly and the grass and flowers blowing in the wind. The two children strolled along the gravel path, breathing the warm-scented air, taking deep breaths and holding the presence of roses and hydrangeas and orange blossoms inside them as long as possible. They passed through a swaying grove of dark, rich cedars. The ground was soft with mold underfoot, the velvet, moist fur of a living world beneath their feet. Beyond the cedars, where the sun returned and the blue sky flashed back into being, a great green lawn stretched out.
   Behind them Nanny came, trudging slowly, her treads clicking noisily. The dragging grapple had been repaired, and a new optic unit had been installed in place of the damaged one. But the smooth coordination of the old days was lacking; and the clean-cut lines of her hull had not been restored. Occasionally she halted, and the two children halted, too, waiting impatiently for her to catch up with them.
   “What’s the matter, Nanny?” Bobby asked her.
   “Something’s wrong with her,” Jean complained. “She’s been all funny since last Wednesday. Real slow and funny. And she was gone, for awhile.”
   “She was in the repair shop,” Bobby announced. “I guess she got sort of tired. She’s old, Daddy says. I heard him and Mommy talking.”
   A little sadly they continued on, with Nanny painfully following. Now they had come to benches placed here and there on the lawn, with people languidly dozing in the sun. On the grass lay a young man, a newspaper over his face, his coat rolled up under his head. They crossed carefully around him, so as not to step on him.
   “There’s the lake!” Jean shouted, her spirits returning.
   The great field of grass sloped gradually down, lower and lower. At the far end, the lowest end, lay a path, a gravel trail, and beyond that, a blue lake. The two children scampered excitedly, filled with ancitipation. They hurried faster and faster down the carefully-graded slope, Nanny struggling miserably to keep up with them.
   “The lake!”
   “Last one there’s a dead Martian stinko-bug!”
   Breathlessly, they rushed across the path, onto the tiny strip of green bank against which the water lapped. Bobby threw himself down on his hands and knees, laughing and panting and peering down into the water. Jean settled down beside him, smoothing her dress tidily into place. Deep in the cloudy-blue water some tadpoles and minnows moved, minute artificial fish too small to catch.
   At one end of the lake some children were floating boats with flapping white sails. At a bench a fat man sat laboriously reading a book, a pipe jammed in his mouth. A young man and woman strolled along the edge of the lake together, arm in arm, intent on each other, oblivious of the world around them.
   “I wish we had a boat,” Bobby said wistfully.
   Grinding and clashing, Nanny managed to make her way across the path and up to them. She stopped, settling down, retracting her treads. She did not stir. One eye, the good eye, reflected the sunlight. The other had not been synchronized; it gaped with futile emptiness. She had managed to shift most of her weight on her less-damaged side, but her motion was bad and uneven, and slow. There was a smell about her, an odor of burning oil and friction.
   Jean studied her. Finally she patted the bent green side sympathetically. “Poor Nanny! What did you do, Nanny? What happened to you? Were you in a wreck?”
   “Let’s push Nanny in,” Bobby said lazily. “And see if she can swim. Can a Nanny swim?”
   Jean said no, because she was too heavy. She would sink to the bottom and they would never see her again.
   “Then we won’t push her in,” Bobby agreed.
   For a time there was silence. Overhead a few birds fluttered past, plump specks streaking swiftly across the sky. A small boy on a bicycle came riding hesitantly along the gravel path, his front wheel wobbling.
   “I wish I had a bicycle,” Bobby murmured.
   The boy careened on past. Across the lake the fat man stood up and knocked his pipe against the bench. He closed his book and sauntered off along the path, wiping his perspiring forehead with a vast red handkerchief.
   “What happens to Nannies when they get old?” Bobby asked wonderingly. “What do they do? Where do they go?”
   “They go to heaven.” Jean lovingly thumped the green dented hull with her hand. “Just like everybody else.”
   “Are Nannies born? Were there always Nannies?” Bobby had begun to conjecture on ultimate cosmic mysteries. “Maybe there was a time before there were Nannies. I wonder what the world was like in the days before Nannies lived.”
   “Of course there were always Nannies,” Jean said impatiently. “If there weren’t, where did they come from?”
   Bobby couldn’t answer that. He meditated for a time, but presently he became sleepy … he was really too young to solve such problems. His eyelids became heavy and he yawned. Both he and Jean lay on the warm grass by the edge of the lake, watching the sky and the clouds, listening to the wind moving through the grove of cedar trees. Beside them the battered green Nanny rested and recuperated her meager strength.
   A little girl came slowly across the field of grass, a pretty child in a blue dress with a bright ribbon in her long dark hair. She was coming toward the lake.
   “Look,” Jean said. “There’s Phyllis Casworthy. She has an orange Nanny.”
   They watched, interested. “Who ever heard of an orange Nanny?” Bobby said, disgusted. The girl and her Nanny crossed the path a short distance down, and reached the edge of the lake. She and her orange Nanny halted, gazing around at the water and the white sails of toy boats, the mechanical fish.
   “Her Nanny is bigger than ours,” Jean observed.
   “That’s true,” Bobby admitted. He thumped the green side loyally. “But ours is nicer. Isn’t she?”
   Their Nanny did not move. Surprised, he turned to look. The green Nanny stood rigid, taut. Its better eye stalk was far out, staring at the orange Nanny fixedly, unwinkingly.
   “What’s the matter?” Bobby asked uncomfortably.
   “Nanny, what’s the matter?” Jean echoed.
   The green Nanny whirred, as its gears meshed. Its treads dropped and locked into place with a sharp metallic snap. Slowly its doors retracted and its grapples slithered out.
   “Nanny, what are you doing?” Jean scrambled nervously to her feet. Bobby leaped up, too. “Nanny! What’s going on?”
   “Let’s go.” Jean said, frightened. “Let’s go home.”
   “Come on, Nanny,” Bobby ordered. “We’re going home, now.”
   The green Nanny moved away from them; it was totally unaware of their existence. Down the lakeside the other Nanny, the great orange Nanny, detached itself from the little girl and began to flow.
   “Nanny, you come back!” the little girl’s voice came, shrill and apprehensive.
   Jean and Bobby rushed up the sloping lawn, away from the lake. “She’ll come!” Bobby said. “Nanny! Please come!”
   But the Nanny did not come.
   The orange Nanny neared. It was huge, much more immense than the blue Mecho jaw-model that had come into the back yard that night. That one now lay scattered in pieces on the far side of the fence, hull ripped open, its parts strewn everywhere.
   This Nanny was the largest the green Nanny had ever seen. The green Nanny moved awkwardly to meet it, raising its grapples and preparing its internal shields. But the orange Nanny was unbending a square arm of metal, mounted on a long cable. The metal arm whipped out, rising high in the air. It began to whirl in a circle, gathering ominous velocity, faster and faster.
   The green Nanny hesitated. It retreated, moving uncertainly away from the swinging mace of metal. And as it rested warily, unhappily, trying to make up its mind, the other leaped.
   “Nanny!” Jean screamed.
   “Nanny! Nanny!”
   The two metal bodies rolled furiously in the grass, fighting and struggling desperately. Again and again the metal mace came, bashing wildly into the green side. The warm sun shone benignly down on them. The surface of the lake eddied gently in the wind.
   “Nanny!” Bobby screamed, helplessly jumping up and down.
   But there was no response from the frenzied, twisting mass of crashing orange and green.

   “What are you going to do?” Mary Fields asked, tight-lipped and pale.
   “You stay here.” Tom grabbed up his coat and threw it on; he yanked his hat down from the closet shelf and strode toward the front door.
   “Where are you going?”
   “Is the cruiser out front?” Tom pulled open the front door and made his way out onto the porch. The two children, miserable and trembling, watched him fearfully.
   “Yes,” Mary murmured, “it’s out front. But where—”
   Tom turned abruptly to the children. “You’re sure she’s—dead?”
   Bobby nodded. His face was streaked with grimy tears. “Pieces… all over the lawn.”
   Tom nodded grimly. “I’ll be right back. And don’t worry at all. You three stay here.”
   He strode down the front steps, down the walk, to the parked cruiser. A moment later they heard him drive furiously away.
   He had to go to several agencies before he found what he wanted. Service Industries had nothing he could use; he was through with them. It was at Allied Domestic that he saw exactly what he was looking for, displayed in their luxurious, well-lighted window. They were just closing, but the clerk let him inside when he saw the expression on his face.
   “I’ll take it,” Tom said, reaching into his coat for his checkbook.
   “Which one, sir?” the clerk faltered.
   “The big one. The big black one in the window. With the four arms and the ram in front.”
   The clerk beamed, his face aglow with pleasure. “Yes sir!” he cried, whipping out his order pad. “The Imperator Delux, with power-beam focus. Did you want the optional high-velocity grapple-lock and the remote-control feedback? At moderate cost, we can equip her with a visual report screen; you can follow the situation from the comfort of your own living room.”
   “The situation?” Tom said thickly.
   “As she goes into action.” The clerk began writing rapidly. “And I mean action—this model warms up and closes in on its adversary within fifteen seconds of the time its activated. You can’t find faster reaction in any single-unit models, ours or anybody else’s. Six months ago, they said fifteen second closing was a pipe dream. The clerk laughed excitedly. “But science strides on.”
   A strange cold numbness settled over Tom Fields. “Listen,” he said hoarsely. Grabbing the clerk by the lapel he yanked him closer. The order pad fluttered away; the clerk gulped with surprise and fright. “Listen to me,” Tom grated, “you’re building these things bigger all the time—aren’t you? Every year, new models, new weapons. You and all the other companies-building them with improved equipment to destroy each other.”
   “Oh,” the clerk squeaked indignantly, “Allied Domestic’s models are never destroyed. Banged up a little now and then, perhaps, but you show me one of our models that’s been put out of commission.” With dignity, he retrieved his order pad and smoothed down his coat. “No, sir,” he said emphatically, “our models survive. Why, I saw a seven-year-old Allied running around, an old Model 3-S. Dented a bit, perhaps, but plenty of fire left. I’d like to see one of those cheap Protecto-Corp. models try to tangle with that.”
   Controlling himself with an effort, Tom asked: “But why? What’s it all for? What’s the purpose in this—competition between them?”
   The clerk hesitated. Uncertainly, he began again with his order pad. “Yes sir,” he said. “Competition; you put your finger right on it. Successful competition, to be exact. Allied Domestic doesn’t meet competition—it demolishes it.”
   It took a second for Tom Fields to react. Then understanding came. “I see,” he said. “In other words, every year these things are obsolete. No good, not large enough. Not powerful enough. And if they’re not replaced, if I don’t get a new one, a more advanced model—”
   “Your present Nanny was, ah, the loser?” The clerk smiled knowingly. “Your present model was, perhaps, slightly anachronistic? It failed to meet present-day standards of competition? It, ah, failed to come out at the end of the day?”
   “It never came home,” Tom said thickly.
   “Yes, it was demolished … I fully understand. Very common. You see, sir, you don’t have a choice. It’s nobody’s fault, sir. Don’t blame us; don’t blame Allied Domestic.”
   “But,” Tom said harshly, “when one is destroyed, that means you sell another one. That means a sale for you. Money in the cash register.”
   “True. But we all have to meet contemporary standards of excellence. We can’t let ourselves fall behind … as you saw, sir, if you don’t mind my saying so, you saw the unfortunate consequences of falling behind.”
   “Yes,” Tom agreed, in an almost inaudible voice. “They told me not to have her repaired. They said I should replace her.”
   The clerk’s confident, smugly-beaming face seemed to expand. Like a miniature sun, it glowed happily, exaltedly. “But now you’re all set up, sir. With this model you’re right up there in the front. Your worries are over, Mr…” He halted expectantly. “Your name, sir? To whom shall I make out this purchase order?”

   Bobby and Jean watched with fascination as the delivery men lugged the enormous crate into the living room. Grunting and sweating, they set it down and straightened gratefully up.
   “All right,” Tom said crisply. “Thanks.”
   “Not at all, mister.” The delivery men stalked out, noisily closing the door after them.
   “Daddy, what is it?” Jean whispered. The two children came cautiously around the crate, wide-eyed and awed.
   “You’ll see in a minute.”
   “Tom, it’s past their bedtime,” Mary protested. “Can’t they look at it tomorrow?”
   “I want them to look at it now.” Tom disappeared downstairs into the basement and returned with a screwdriver. Kneeling on the floor beside the crate he began rapidly unscrewing the bolts that held it together. “They can go to bed a little late, for once.”
   He removed the boards, one by one, working expertly and calmly. At last the final board was gone, propped up against the wall with the others. He unclipped the book of instructions and the 90-day warranty and handed them to Mary. “Hold onto these.”
   “It’s a Nanny!” Bobby cried.
   “It’s a huge, huge Nanny!”
   In the crate the great black shape lay quietly, like an enormous metal tortoise, encased in a coating of grease. Carefully checked, oiled, and fully guaranteed. Tom nodded. “That’s right. It’s a Nanny, a new Nanny. To take the place of the old one.”
   “For us?”
   “Yes.” Tom sat down in a nearby chair and lit a cigarette. “Tomorrow morning we’ll turn her on and warm her up. See how she runs.”
   The children’s eyes were like saucers. Neither of them could breathe or speak.
   “But this time,” Mary said, “you must stay away from the park. Don’t take her near the park. You hear?”
   “No,” Tom contradicted. “They can go in the park.”
   Mary glanced uncertainly at him. “But that orange thing might—”
   Tom smiled grimly. “It’s fine with me if they go into the park.” He leaned toward Bobby and Jean. “You kids go into the park any time you want. And don’t be afraid of anything. Of anything or anyone. Remember that.”
   He kicked the end of the massive crate with his toe.
   “There isn’t anything in the world you have to be afraid of. Not anymore.”
   Bobby and Jean nodded, still gazing fixedly into the crate.
   “All right, Daddy,” Jean breathed.
   “Boy, look at her!” Bobby whispered. “Just look at her! I can hardly wait till tomorrow!”

   Mrs. Andrew Casworthy greeted her husband on the front steps of their attractive three-story house, wringing her hands anxiously.
   “What’s the matter?” Casworthy grunted, taking off his hat. With his pocket handkerchief he wiped sweat from his florid face. “Lord, it was hot today. What’s wrong? What is it?”
   “Andrew, I’m afraid—”
   “What the hell happened?”
   “Phyllis came home from the park today without her Nanny. She was bent and scratched yesterday when Phyllis brought her home, and Phyllis is so upset I can’t make out—”
   “Without her Nanny?”
   “She came home alone. By herself. All alone.”
   Slow rage suffused the man’s heavy features. “What happened?”
   “Something in the park, like yesterday. Something attacked her Nanny. Destroyed her! I can’t get the story exactly straight, but something black, something huge and black … it must have been another Nanny.”
   Casworthy’s jaw slowly jutted out. His thickset face turned ugly dark red, a deep unwholesome flush that rose ominously and settled in place. Abruptly, he turned on his heel.
   “Where are you going?” his wife fluttered nervously.
   The paunchy, red-faced man stalked rapidly down the walk toward his sleek surface cruiser, already reaching for the door handle.
   “I’m going to shop for another Nanny,” he muttered. “The best damn Nanny I can get. Even if I have to go to a hundred stores. I want the best—and the biggest.”
   “But, dear,” his wife began, hurrying apprehensively after him, “can we really afford it?” Wringing her hands together anxiously, she raced on: “I mean, wouldn’t it be better to wait? Until you’ve had time to think it over, perhaps. Maybe later on, when you’re a little more—calm.”
   But Andrew Casworthy wasn’t listening. Already the surface cruiser boiled with quick, eager life, ready to leap forward. “Nobody’s going to get ahead of me,” he said grimly, his heavy lips twitching. “I’ll show them, all of them. Even if I have to get a new size designed. Even if I have to get one of those manufacturers to turn out a new model for me!”
   And, oddly, he knew one of them would.

Notes

   All notes in italics are by Philip K. Dick. The year when the note was written appears in parentheses following the note. Most of these notes were written as story notes for the collections THE BEST OF PHILIP K. DICK (published 1977) and THE GOLDEN MAN (published 1980). A few were written at the request of editors publishing or reprinting a PKD story in a book or magazine. The first entry below is from an introduction written for the collection THE PRESERVING MACHINE.
   When there is a date following the name of a story, it is the date the manuscript of that story was first received by Dick’s agent, per the records of the Scott Meredith Literary Agency. Absence of a date means no record is available. (Dick began working with the agency in mid-1952.) The name of a magazine followed by a month and year indicates the first published appearance of a story. An alternate name following a story indicates Dick’s original name for the story, as shown in the agency records.
   These five volumes include all of Philip K. Dick’s short fiction, with the exception of short novels later published as or included in novels, childhood writings, and unpublished writings for which manuscripts have not been found. The stories are arranged as closely as possible in chronological order of composition; research for this chronology was done by Gregg Rickman and Paul Williams.
 
   The difference between a short story and a novel comes to this: a short story may deal with murder; a novel deals with the murderer, and his actions stem from a psyche which, if the writer knows his craft, he has previously presented. The difference, therefore, between a novel and a short story is not length; for example, William Styron’s The Long March is now published as a “short novel” whereas originally in Discovery it was published as a “long story.” This means that if you read it in Discovery you are reading a story, but if you pick up the paperback version you are reading a novel. So much for that.
   There is one restriction in a novel not found in short stories: the requirement that the protagonist be liked enough or familiar enough to the reader so that, whatever the protagonist does, the readers would also do, under the same circumstances… or, in the case of escapist fiction, would like to do. In a story it is not necessary to create such a reader identification character because (one) there is not enough room for such background material in a short story and (two) since the emphasis is on the deed, not the doer, it really does not matter—within reasonable limits, of course—who in a story commits the murder. In a story, you learn about the characters from what they do; in a novel it is the other way around: you have your characters and then they do something idiosyncratic, emanating from their unique natures. So it can be said that events in a novel are unique—not found in other writings; but the same events occur over and over again in stories, until, at last, a sort of code language is built up between the reader and the author. I am not sure that this is bad by any means.
   Further, a novel—in particular the sf novel—creates an entire world, with countless petty details—petty, perhaps, to the characters in the novel, but vital for the reader to know, since out of these manifold details his comprehension of the entire fictional world is obtained. In a story, on the other hand, you are in a future world when soap operas come at you from every wall in the room… as Ray Bradbury once described. That one fact alone catapults the story out of mainstream fiction and into sf.
   What an sf story really requires is the initial premise which cuts it off entirely from our present world. This break must be made in the reading of, and the writing of, all good fiction… a made-up world must be presented. But there is much more pressure on an sf writer, for the break is far greater than in, say, Paul’s Case or Big Blonde—two varieties of mainstream fiction which will always be with us.
   It is in sf stories that sf action occurs; it is in sf novels that worlds occur. The stories in this collection are a series of events. Crisis is the key to story-writing, a sort of brinkmanship in which the author mires his characters in happenings so sticky as to seem impossible of solution. And then he gets them out… usually. He can get them out; that’s what matters. But in a novel the actions are so deeply rooted in the personality of the main character that to extricate him the author would have to go back and rewrite his character. This need not happen in a story, especially a short one (such long, long stories as Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice are, like the Styron piece, really short novels). The implication of all this makes clear why some sf writers can write stories but not novels, or novels but not stories. It is because anything can happen in a story; the author merely tailors his character to the event. So, in terms of actions and events, the story is far less restrictive to the author than is a novel. As a writer builds up a novel-length piece it slowly begins to imprison him, to take away his freedom; his own characters are taking over and doing what they want to do—not what he would like them to do. This is on one hand the strength of the novel and on the other, its weakness. (1968)
 
   STABILITY written 1947 or earlier [previously unpublished].
 
   ROOG written 11/51. Fantasy & Science Fiction, Feb 1953. [First sale.]
   The first thing you do when you sell your first story is phone up your best friend and tell him. Whereupon he hangs up on you, which puzzles you until you realize that he is trying to sell stories, too, and hasn ‘t managed to do it. That sobers you, that reaction. But then when your wife comes home you tell her, and she doesn ‘t hang up on you; she is very pleased andexcited. At the time I sold Roog to Anthony Boucher at Fantasy and Science Fiction I was managing a record store part time and writing part time. If anyone asked me what I did I always said “I’m a writer.” This was in Berkeley, in 1951. Everybody was a writer. No one had ever sold anything. In fact most of the people I knew believed it to be crass and undignified to submit a story to a magazine; you wrote it, read it aloud to your friends, and finally it was forgotten. That was Berkeley in those days.
   Another problem for me in getting everyone to be awed was that my story was not a literary story in a little magazine, but an sf story. Sf was not read by people in Berkeley in those days (except for a small group of fans who were very strange; they looked like animated vegetables). “But what about your serious writing?” people said to me. I was under the impression that Roog was quite a serious story. It tells of fear; it tells of loyalty; it tells of obscure menace and a good creature who cannot convey knowledge of that menace to those he loves. What could be more serious a theme than this? What people really meant by “serious” was “important.” Sf was, by definition, not important. I cringed over the weeks following my sale of Roog as I realized the serious Codes of Behavior I had broken by selling my story, and an sf story at that.
   To make matters worse, I now had begun to nurse the delusion that I might be able to make a living as a writer. The fantasy in my head was that I could quit my job at the record store, buy a better typewriter, and write all the time, and still make the payments on my house. As soon as you start thinking that they come for you and haul you away. It’s for your own good. When you are discharged later on as cured you no longer have that fantasy. You go back to work at the record store (or the supermarket or polishing shoes). See, the thing is, being a writer is—well, it’s like the time I asked a friend of mine what field he was going into when he got out of college and he said, “I’m going to be a pirate.” He was dead serious.
   The fact that Roog sold was due to Tony Boucher outlining to me how the original version should be changed. Without his help I’d still be in the record business. I mean that very seriously. At that time Tony ran a little writing class, working out of the living room of his home in Berkeley. He’d read our stories aloud and we’d see—not just that they were awful—but how they could be cured. Tony saw no point in simply making it clear that what you had written was no good; he assisted you in transmuting the thing into art. Tony knew what made up good writing. He charged you (get this) one dollar a week for this. One dollar! If ever there was a good man in this world it was Anthony Boucher. We really loved him. We used to get together once a week and play poker. Poker, opera and writing were all equally important to Tony. I miss him very much. Back in 19741 dreamed one night that I had passed across into the next world, and it was Tony who was waiting for me to show up there. Tears fill my eyes when I think of that dream. There he was, but transformed into Tony the Tiger, like in that breakfast cereal ad. In the dream he was filled with delight and so was I. But it was a dream; Tony Boucher is gone. But I am still a writer, because of him. Whenever I sit down to start a novel or a story a bit of the memory of that man returns to me. I guess he taught me to write out of love, not out of ambition. It’s a good lesson for all activities in this world.
   This little story, Roog, is about an actual dog—like Tony, gone now. The dog’s actual name was Snooper and he believed as much in his work as I did in mine. His work (apparently) was to see that no one stole the food from the owner’s garbage can. Snooper was laboring under the delusion that his owners considered the garbage valuable. Every day they’d carry out paper sacks of delicious food and carefully deposit them in a strong metalcontainer, placing the lid down firmly. At the end of the week the garbage can was full—whereupon the worst assortment of evil entities in the Sol System drove up in a huge truck and stole the food. Snooper knew which day of the week this happened on; it was always on Friday. So about five A.M. on Friday, Snooper would emit his first bark. My wife and I figured that was about the time the garbagemen’s alarm clocks were going off. Snooper knew when they left their houses. He could hear them. He was the only one who knew; everybody else ignored what was afoot. Snooper must have thought he inhabited a planet of lunatics. His owners, and everyone else in Berkeley, could hear the garbagemen coming, but no one did anything. His barking drove me out of my mind every week, but I was more fascinated by Snooper’s logic than I was annoyed by his frantic efforts to rouse us. I asked myself, What must the world look like to that dog? Obviously he doesn ‘t see as we see. He has developed a complete system of beliefs, a worldview totally different from ours, but logical given the evidence he is basing it on.
   So here, in a primitive form, is the basis of much of my twenty-seven years of professional writing: the attempt to get into another person’s head, or another creature’s head, and see out from his eyes or its eyes, and the more different that person is from the rest of us the better. You start with the sentient entity and work outward, inferring its world. Obviously, you can’t ever really know what its world is like, but, I think, you can make some pretty good guesses. I began to develop the idea that each creature lives in a world somewhat different from all the other creatures and their worlds. I still think this is true. To Snooper, garbagemen were sinister and horrible. I think he literally saw them differently than we humans did.
   This notion about each creature viewing the world differently from all other creatures—not everyone would agree with me. Tony Boucher was very anxious to have a particular major anthologizer (whom we will call J.M.) read Roog to see if she might use it. Her reaction astounded me. “Garbagemen do not look like that,”she wrote me. “They do not have pencil-thin necks and heads that wobble. They do not eat people.” I think she listed something like twelve errors in the story all having to do with how I represented the garbage-men. I wrote back, explaining that, yes, she was right, but to a dog—well, all right, the dog was wrong. Admittedly. The dog was a little crazy on the subject. We’re not just dealing with a dog and a dog’s view of garbagemen, but a crazy dog—who has been driven crazy by these weekly raids on the garbage can. The dog has reached a point of desperation. I wanted to convey that. In fact that was the whole point of the story; the dog had run out of options and was demented by this weekly event. And the Roogs knew it. They enjoyed it. They taunted the dog. They pandered to his lunacy.
   Ms. J.M. rejected the story from her anthology, but Tony printed it, and it’s still in print; in fact it’s in a high school text book, now. I spoke to a high school class who had been assigned the story, and all of the kids understood it. Interestingly, it was a blind student who seemed to grasp the story best. He knew from the beginning what the word Roog meant. He felt the dog’s despair, the dog’s frustrated fury and the bitter sense of defeat over and over again. Maybe somewhere between 1951 and 1971 we all grew up to dangers and transformations of the ordinary which we had never recognized before. I don’t know. But anyhow, Roog, my first sale, is biographical; I watched the dog suffer, and I understood a little (not much, maybe, but a little) of what was destroying him, and I wanted to speak for him. That’s the whole of it right there. Snooper couldn’t talk. I could. In fact I could write it down, and someone could publish it and many people could read it. Writing fiction has to dowith this: becoming the voice for those without voices, if you see what I mean. It’s not your own voice, you the author; it is all those other voices which normally go unheard.
   The dog Snooper is dead, but the dog in the story, Boris, is alive. Tony Boucher is dead, as some day I will be, and, alas, so will you. But when I was with that high school class and we were discussing Roog, in 1971, exactly twenty years after I sold the story originally—Snooper’s barking and his anguish, his noble efforts, were still alive, which he deserved. My story is my gift to an animal, to a creature who neither sees nor hears, now, who no longer barks. But goddam it, he was doing the right thing. Even if Ms. J.M. didn’t understand. (written 1978)
   I love this story, and I doubt if I write any better today than I did in 1951, when I wrote it; I just write longer. (1976)
 
   THE LITTLE MOVEMENT Fantasy & Science Fiction, Nov 1952.
 
   BEYOND LIES THE WUB Planet Stories, July 1952.
   My first published story, in the most lurid of all pulp magazines on the stands at the time, Planet Stories. As I carried four copies into the record store where I worked, a customer gazed at me and them, with dismay, and said, “Phil, you read that kind of stuff?” I had to admit I not only read it, I wrote it.
 
   THE GUN Planet Stories, Sept 1952.
 
   THE SKULL If, Sept 1952.
 
   THE DEFENDERS Galaxy, Jan 1953. [Parts of this story were adapted for the novel THE PENULTIMATE TRUTH.]
 
   MR. SPACESHIP Imagination, Jan 1953.
 
   PIPER IN THE WOODS Imagination, Feb 1953.
 
   THE INFINITES Planet Stones, May 1953.
 
   THE PRESERVING MACHINE Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 1953.
 
   EXPENDABLE (“He Who Waits”) Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 1953.
   I loved to write short fantasy stories in my early days—for Anthony Boucher—of which this is my favorite. I got the idea when a fly buzzed by my head one day and I imagined (paranoia indeed!) that it was laughing at me. (1976)
 
   THE VARIABLE MAN Space Science Fiction (British), July 1953.
 
   THE INDEFATIGABLE FROG Fantastic Story Magazine, July 1953.
 
   THE CRYSTAL CRYPT Planet Stories, Jan 1954.
 
   THE SHORT HAPPY LIFE OF THE BROWN OXFORD Fantasy & Science Fiction, Jan 1954.
 
   THE BUILDER 7/23/52. Amazing, Dec 1953-Jan 1954.
 
   MEDDLER 7/24/52. Future, Oct 1954.
   Within the beautiful lurks the ugly; you can see in this rather crude story the germ of my whole theme that nothing is what it seems. This story should be read as a trial run on my part; I was just beginning to grasp that obvious form and latent form are not the same thing. As Heraclitus said in fragment 54: “Latent structure is master of obvious structure,” and out of this comes the later more sophisticated Platonic dualism between the phenomenal world and the real but invisible realm of forms lying behind it. I may be reading too much into this simple-minded early story, but at least I was beginning to see in a dim way what I later saw so clearly; in fragment 123, Heraclitus said, “The nature of things is in the habit of concealing itself,” and therein lies it all. (1978)
 
   PAYCHECK 7/31/52. Imagination, June 1953.
   How much is a key to a bus locker worth? One day it’s worth 25 cents, the next day thousands of dollars. In this story, I got to thinking that there are times in our lives when having a dime to make a phone call spells the difference between life and death. Keys, small change, maybe a theater ticket—how about a parking receipt for a Jaguar? All I had to do was link this idea up with time travel to see how the small and useless, under the wise eyes of a time traveler, might signify a great deal more. He would know when that dime might save your life. And, back in the past again, he might prefer that dime to any amount of money, no matter how large. (1976)
 
   THE GREAT C 7/31/52. Cosmos Science Fiction and Fantasy, Sept 1953. [Parts of this story were adapted for the novel DEUS IRAE.]
 
   OUT IN THE GARDEN 7/31/52. Fantasy Fiction, Aug 1953.
 
   THE KING OF THE ELVES (“Shadrach Jones and the Elves”) 8/4/52. Beyond Fantasy Fiction, Sept 1953.
   This story, of course, is fantasy, not sf. Originally it had a downbeat ending on it, but Horace Gold, the editor who bought it, carefully explained to me that prophecy always came true; if it didn’t ipso facto it wasn’t prophecy. I guess, then, there can be no such thing as a false prophet; “false prophet” is an oxymoron. (1978)
 
   COLONY 8/11/52. Galaxy, June 1953.
   The ultimate in paranoia is not when everyone is against you but when everything is against you. Instead of “My boss is plotting against me,” it would be “My boss’s phone is plotting against me.” Objects sometimes seem to possess a will of their own anyhow, to the normal mind; they don’t do what they’re supposed to do, they get in the way, they show an unnatural resistance to change. In this story I tried to figure out a situation which would rationally explain the dire plotting of objects against humans, without reference to any deranged state on the part of the humans. I guess you’d have to go to another planet. The ending on this story is the ultimate victory of a plotting object over innocent people. (1976)
 
   PRIZE SHIP (“Globe From Ganymede”) 8/14/52. Thrilling Wonder Stories, Winter 1954.
 
   NANNY 8/26/52. Startling Stories, Spring 1955.

The Minority Report and Other Classic Stories

Philip Kindred Dick


The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick

Introduction
Autofac
I
II
III
IV
Service Call
Captive Market
The Mold of Yancy
The Minority Report
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
Recall Mechanism
The Unreconstructed M
I
II
III
Explorers We
War Game
If There Were No Benny Cemoli
Novelty Act
Waterspider
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
What the Dead Men Say
I
II
III
IV
V
Orpheus With Clay Feet
The Days of Perky Pat
Stand-by
What’ll We Do with Ragland Park?
Oh, To Be A Blobel!
Notes

The Minority Report
and Other Classic Stories
by Philip K. Dick

Introduction
by James Tiptree, Jr.

   How do you know you’re reading Philip K. Dick?
   I think, first and pervasively, it was the strangeness. Strange, Dick was and is. I think it was that which kept me combing the SF catalogs for more by him, waiting for each new book to come out. One hears it said, “X just doesn’t think like other people.” About Dick, it was true. In the stories, you can’t tell what’s going to happen next.
   And yet his characters are seemingly designed to be ordinary people—except for the occasional screaming psychotic female who is one of Dick’s specialties, and is always treated with love. They are ordinary people caught up in wildly bizarre situations, running a police force with the help of the mumblings of precognitive idiots, facing a self-replicating factory that has taken over the earth. Indeed, one of the factors in the strangeness is the care Dick takes to set his characters in the world of reality, an aspect most other writers ignore.
   In how many other science fiction stories do you know what the hero does for a living when he isn’t caught up in the particular plot? Oh, he may be a member of a space crew, or, vaguely, a scientist. Or Young Werther. In Dick, you are introduced to the hero’s business concerns on page one. That’s not literally true of the short stories in this volume (I went back and checked), but the impression of the pervasiveness of “grubby” business concerns is everywhere, especially in the novels. The hero is in the antique business, say; as each new marvel turns up, he ruminates as to whether it is saleable. When the dead talk, they offer business advice. Dick never sheds his concern that we know how his characters earn their bread and butter. It is a part of the peculiar “grittiness” of Dick’s style.
   Another part of the grittiness is the jerkiness of the dialog. I can never decide whether Dick’s dialog is purely unreal, or more real than most. His people do not interact as much as they deliver monologs to carry on the plot, or increase the reader’s awareness of a situation.
   And the situations are purely Dick. His “plots” are like nothing else in SF. If Dick writes a time-travel story, say, it will have a twist on it that makes it sui generis. Quite typically, the central gee-whiz marvel will not be centered, but will come at you obliquely, in the course, for instance, of a political election.
   And any relation between Dick and a nuts-and-bolts SF writer is a pure coincidence. In my more sanguine moments, I concede that he probably knows what happens when you plug in a lamp and turn it on, but beyond that there is little evidence of either technology or science. His science, such as it is, is all engaged in the technology of the soul, with a smattering of abnormal psychology.
   So far I have perhaps emphasized his oddities at the expense of his merits. What keeps you reading Dick? Well, for one thing, the strangeness, as I said, but within it there is always the atmosphere of striving, of men desperately trying to get some necessary job done, or striving at least to understand what is striking at them. A large percentage of Dick’s heroes are tortured men; Dick is expert at the machinery of despair.
   And another beauty is the desolations. When Dick gives you a desolation, say after the bomb, it is a desolation unique of its kind. There is one such in this book. But amid the desolation you often find another of Dick’s characteristic touches, the little animals.
   The little animals are frequently mutants, or small robots who have taken on life. They are unexplained, simply noted by another character in passing. And what are they doing? They are striving, too. A freezing sparrow hugs a rag around itself, a mutant rat plans a construction, “peering and planning.” This sense of the ongoing busy-ness of life, however doomed, of a landscape in which every element has its own life, is trying to live, is typically and profoundly Dick. It carries the quality of compassion amid the hard edges and the grit, the compassion one suspects in Dick, but that never appears frontally. It is this quality of love, always quickly suppressed, that gleams across Dick’s rubbled plains and makes them unique and memorable.
   James Tiptree, Jr.
   December, 1986


   I used to believe the universe was basically hostile. And that I was misplaced in it, I was different from it… fashioned in some other universe and placed here, you see. So that it zigged while I zagged. And that it had singled me out only because there was something weird about me. I didn’t really groove with the universe.
   I had a lot of fears that the universe would discover just how different I was from it. My only suspicion about it was that it would find out the truth about me, and its reaction would be perfectly normal: it would get me. I didn’t feel that it was malevolent, just perceptive. And there’s nothing worse that a perceptive universe if there’s something weird about you.
   But this year I realized that that’s not true. That the universe is perceptive, but it’s friendly… I just don’t feel that I’m different from the universe anymore.
   Philip K. Dick in an interview, 1974.
   (from ONLY APPARENTLY REAL)

Autofac

I

   Tension hung over the three waiting men. They smoked, paced back and forth, kicked aimlessly at weeds growing by the side of the road. A hot noonday sun glared down on brown fields, rows of neat plastic houses, the distant line of mountains to the west.
   “Almost time,” Earl Ferine said, knotting his skinny hands together. “It varies according to the load, a half second for every additional pound.”
   Bitterly, Morrison answered, “You’ve got it plotted? You’re as bad as it is. Let’s pretend it just happens to be late.”
   The third man said nothing. O’Neill was visiting from another settlement; he didn’t know Ferine and Morrison well enough to argue with them. Instead, he crouched down and arranged the papers clipped to his aluminum check-board. In the blazing sun, O’Neill’s arms were tanned, furry, glistening with sweat. Wiry, with tangled gray hair, horn-rimmed glasses, he was older than the other two. He wore slacks, a sports shirt and crepe-soled shoes. Between his fingers, his fountain pen glittered, metallic and efficient.
   “What’re you writing?” Ferine grumbled.
   “I’m laying out the procedure we’re going to employ,” O’Neill said mildly. “Better to systemize it now, instead of trying at random. We want to know what we tried and what didn’t work. Otherwise we’ll go around in a circle. The problem we have here is one of communication; that’s how I see it.”
   “Communication,” Morrison agreed in his deep, chesty voice. “Yes, we can’t get in touch with the damn thing. It comes, leaves off its load and goes on—there’s no contact between us and it.”
   “It’s a machine,” Ferine said excitedly. “It’s dead—blind and deaf.”
   “But it’s in contact with the outside world,” O’Neill pointed out. “There has to be some way to get to it. Specific semantic signals are meaningful to it; all we have to do is find those signals. Rediscover, actually. Maybe half a dozen out of a billion possibilities.”
   A low rumble interrupted the three men. They glanced up, wary and alert. The time had come.
   “Here it is,” Ferine said. “Okay, wise guy, let’s see you make one single change in its routine.”
   The truck was massive, rumbling under its tightly packed load. In many ways, it resembled conventional human-operated transportation vehicles, but with one exception—there was no driver’s cabin. The horizontal surface was a loading stage, and the part that would normally be the headlights and radiator grill was a fibrous spongelike mass of receptors, the limited sensory apparatus of this mobile utility extension.
   Aware of the three men, the truck slowed to a halt, shifted gears and pulled on its emergency brake. A moment passed as relays moved into action; then a portion of the loading surface tilted and a cascade of heavy cartons spilled down onto the roadway. With the objects fluttered a detailed inventory sheet.
   “You know what to do,” O’Neill said rapidly. “Hurry up, before it gets out of here.”
   Expertly, grimly, the three men grabbed up the deposited cartons and ripped the protective wrappers from them. Objects gleamed: a binocular microscope, a portable radio, heaps of plastic dishes, medical supplies, razor blades, clothing, food. Most of the shipment, as usual, was food. The three men systematically began smashing objects. In a few minutes, there was nothing but a chaos of debris littered around them.
   “That’s that,” O’Neill panted, stepping back. He fumbled for his check-sheet. “Now let’s see what it does.”
   The truck had begun to move away; abruptly it stopped and backed toward them. Its receptors had taken in the fact that the three men had demolished the dropped-off portion of the load. It spun in a grinding half circle and came around to face its receptor bank in their direction. Up went its antenna; it had begun communicating with the factory. Instructions were on the way.
   A second, identical load was tilted and shoved off the truck.
   “We failed,” Ferine groaned as a duplicate inventory sheet fluttered after the new load. “We destroyed all that stuff for nothing.”
   “What now?” Morrison asked O’Neill. “What’s the next strategem on our board?”
   “Give me a hand.” O’Neill grabbed up a carton and lugged it back to the truck. Sliding the carton onto the platform, he turned for another. The other two men followed clumsily after him. They put the load back onto the truck. As the truck started forward, the last square box was again in place.
   The truck hesitated. Its receptors registered the return of its load. From within its works came a low sustained buzzing.
   “This may drive it crazy,” O’Neill commented, sweating. “It went through its operation and accomplished nothing.”
   The truck made a short, abortive move toward going on. Then it swung purposefully around and, in a blur of speed, again dumped the load onto the road.
   “Get them!” O’Neill yelled. The three men grabbed up the cartons and feverishly reloaded them. But as fast as the cartons were shoved back on the horizontal stage, the truck’s grapples tilted them down its far-side ramps and onto the road.
   “No use,” Morrison said, breathing hard. “Water through a sieve.”
   “We’re licked,” Ferine gasped in wretched agreement, “like always. We humans lose every time.”
   The truck regarded them calmly, its receptors blank and impassive. It was doing its job. The planetwide network of automatic factories was smoothly performing the task imposed on it five years before, in the early days of the Total Global Conflict.
   “There it goes,” Morrison observed dismally. The truck’s antenna had come down; it shifted into low gear and released its parking brake.
   “One last try,” O’Neill said. He swept up one off the cartons and ripped it open. From it he dragged a ten-gallon milk tank and unscrewed the lid. “Silly as it seems.”
   “This is absurd,” Ferine protested. Reluctantly, he found a cup among the littered debris and dipped it into the milk. “A kid’s game!”
   The truck has paused to observe them.
   “Do it,” O’Neill ordered sharply. “Exactly the way we practiced it.”
   The three of them drank quickly from the milk tank, visibly allowing the milk to spill down their chins; there had to be no mistaking what they were doing.
   As planned, O’Neill was the first. His face twisting in revulsion, he hurled the cup away and violently spat the milk into the road.
   “God’s sake!” he choked.
   The other two did the same; stamping and loudly cursing, they kicked over the milk tank and glared accusingly at the truck.
   “It’s no good!” Morrison roared.
   Curious, the truck came slowly back. Electronic synapses clicked and whirred, responding to the situation; its antenna shot up like a flagpole.
   “I think this is it,” O’Neill said, trembling. As the truck watched, he dragged out a second milk tank, unscrewed its lid and tasted the contents. “The same!” he shouted at the truck. “It’s just as bad!”
   From the truck popped a metal cylinder. The cylinder dropped at Morrison’s feet; he quickly snatched it up and tore it open.


State Nature of Defect

   The instruction sheets listed rows of possible defects, with neat boxes by each; a punch-stick was included to indicate the particular deficiency of the product.
   “What’ll I check?” Morrison asked. “Contaminated? Bacterial? Sour? Rancid? Incorrectly labeled? Broken? Crushed? Cracked? Bent? Soiled?”
   Thinking rapidly, O’Neill said, “Don’t check any of them. The factory’s undoubtedly ready to test and resample. It’ll make its own analysis and then ignore us.” His face glowed as frantic inspiration came. “Write in that blank at the bottom. It’s an open space for further data.”
   “Write what?”
   O’Neill said, “Write: the product is thoroughly pizzled.”
   “What’s that?” Ferine demanded, baffled.
   “Write it! It’s a semantic garble—the factory won’t be able to understand it. Maybe we can jam the works.”
   With O’Neill’s pen, Morrison carefully wrote that the milk was pizzled. Shaking his head, he resealed the cylinder and returned it to the truck. The truck swept up the milk tanks and slammed its railing tidily into place. With a shriek of tires, it hurtled off. From its slot, a final cylinder bounced; the truck hurriedly departed, leaving the cylinder lying in the dust.
   O’Neill got it open and held up the paper for the others to see.


A Factory Representative
Will Be Sent out.
Be Prepared to Supply Complete Data
on Product Deficiency.

   For a moment, the three men were silent. Then Ferine began to giggle. “We did it. We contacted it. We got across.”
   “We sure did,” O’Neill agreed. “It never heard of a product being pizzled.”
   Cut into the base of the mountains lay the vast metallic cube of the Kansas City factory. Its surface was corroded, pitted with radiation pox, cracked and scarred from the five years of war that had swept over it. Most of the factory was buried subsurface, only its entrance stages visible. The truck was a speck rumbling at high speed toward the expanse of black metal. Presently an opening formed in the uniform surface; the truck plunged into it and disappeared inside. The entrance snapped shut.
   “Now the big job remains,” O’Neill said. “Now we have to persuade it to close down operations—to shut itself off.”

II

   Judith O’Neill served hot black coffee to the people sitting around the living room. Her husband talked while the others listened. O’Neill was as close to being an authority on the autofac system as could still be found.
   In his own area, the Chicago region, he had shorted out the protective fence of the local factory long enough to get away with data tapes stored in its posterior brain. The factory, of course, had immediately reconstructed a better type offence. But he had shown that the factories were not infallible.
   “The Institute of Applied Cybernetics,” O’Neill explained, “had complete control over the network. Blame the war. Blame the big noise along the lines of communication that wiped out the knowledge we need. In any case, the Institute failed to transmit its information to us, so we can’t transmit our information to the factories—the news that the war is over and we’re ready to resume control of industrial operations.”
   “And meanwhile,” Morrison added sourly, “the damn network expands and consumes more of our natural resources all the time.”
   “I get the feeling,” Judith said, “that if I stamped hard enough, I’d fall right down into a factory tunnel. They must have mines everywhere by now.”
   “Isn’t there some limiting injunction?” Ferine asked nervously. “Were they set up to expand indefinitely?”
   “Each factory is limited to its own operational area,” O’Neill said, “but the network itself is unbounded. It can go on scooping up our resources forever. The Institute decided it gets top priority; we mere people come second.”
   “Will there be anything left for us?” Morrison wanted to know.
   “Not unless we can stop the network’s operations. It’s already used up half a dozen basic minerals. Its search teams are out all the time, from every factory, looking everywhere for some last scrap to drag home.”
   “What would happen if tunnels from two factories crossed each other?”
   O’Neill shrugged. “Normally, that won’t happen. Each factory has its own special section of our planet, its own private cut of the pie for its exclusive use.”
   “But it could happen.”
   “Well, they’re raw material-tropic; as long as there’s anything left, they’ll hunt it down.” O’Neill pondered the idea with growing interest. “It’s something to consider. I suppose as things get scarcer—”
   He stopped talking. A figure had come into the room; it stood silently by the door, surveying them all.
   In the dull shadows, the figure looked almost human. For a brief moment, O’Neill thought it was a settlement latecomer. Then, as it moved forward, he realized that it was only quasi-human: a functional upright biped chassis, with data-receptors mounted at the top, effectors and proprioceptors mounted in a downward worm that ended in floor-grippers. Its resemblance to a human being was testimony to nature’s efficiency; no sentimental imitation was intended.
   The factory representative had arrived.
   It began without preamble. “This is a data-collecting machine capable of communicating on an oral basis. It contains both broadcasting and receiving apparatus and can integrate facts relevant to its line of inquiry.”
   The voice was pleasant, confident. Obviously it was a tape, recorded by some Institute technician before the war. Coming from the quasi-human shape, it sounded grotesque; O’Neill could vividly imagine the dead young man whose cheerful voice now issued from the mechanical mouth of this upright construction of steel and wiring.
   “One word of caution,” the pleasant voice continued. “It is fruitless to consider this receptor human and to engage it in discussions for which it is not equipped. Although purposeful, it is not capable of conceptual thought; it can only reassemble material already available to it.”
   The optimistic voice clicked out and a second voice came on. It resembled the first, but now there were no intonations or personal mannerisms. The machine was utilizing the dead man’s phonetic speech-pattern for its own communication.
   “Analysis of the rejected product,” it stated, “shows no foreign elements or noticeable deterioration. The product meets the continual testing-standards employed throughout the network. Rejection is therefore on a basis outside the test area; standards not available to the network are being employed.”
   “That’s right,” O’Neill agreed. Weighing his words with care, he continued, “We found the milk substandard. We want nothing to do with it. We insist on more careful output.”
   The machine responded presently. “The semantic content of the term ‘pizzled’ is unfamiliar to the network. It does not exist in the taped vocabulary. Can you present a factual analysis of the milk in terms of specific elements present or absent?”
   “No,” O’Neill said warily; the game he was playing was intricate and dangerous. “ ‘Fizzled’ is an overall term. It can’t be reduced to chemical constituents.”
   “What does ‘pizzled’ signify?” the machine asked. “Can you define it in terms of alternate semantic symbols?”
   O’Neill hesitated. The representative had to be steered from its special inquiry to more general regions, to the ultimate problem of closing down the network. If he could pry it open at any point, get the theoretical discussion started…
   “ ‘Pizzled,’ ” he stated, “means the condition of a product that is manufactured when no need exists. It indicates the rejection of objects on the grounds that they are no longer wanted.”
   The representative said, “Network analysis shows a need of high-grade pasteurized milk-substitute in this area. There is no alternate source; the network controls all the synthetic mammary-type equipment in existence.” It added, “Original taped instructions describe milk as an essential to human diet.”
   O’Neill was being outwitted; the machine was returning the discussion to the specific. “We’ve decided,” he said desperately, “that we don’t want any more milk. We’d prefer to go without it, at least until we can locate cows.”
   “That is contrary to the network tapes,” the representative objected. “There are no cows. All milk is produced synthetically.”
   “Then we’ll produce it synthetically ourselves,” Morrison broke in impatiently. “Why can’t we take over the machines? My God, we’re not children! We can run our own lives!”
   The factory representative moved toward the door. “Until such time as your community finds other sources of milk supply, the network will continue to supply you. Analytical and evaluating apparatus will remain in this area, conducting the customary random sampling.”
   Ferine shouted futilely, “How can we find other sources? You have the whole setup! You’re running the whole show!” Following after it, he bellowed, “You say we’re not ready to run things—you claim we’re not capable. How do you know? You don’t give us a chance! We’ll never have a chance!”
   O’Neill was petrified. The machine was leaving; its one-track mind had completely triumphed.
   “Look,” he said hoarsely, blocking its way. “We want you to shut down, understand. We want to take over your equipment and run it ourselves. The war’s over with. Damn it, you’re not needed anymore!”
   The factory representative paused briefly at the door. “The inoperative cycle,” it said, “is not geared to begin until network production merely duplicates outside production. There is at this time, according to our continual sampling, no outside production. Therefore network production continues.” Without warning, Morrison swung the steel pipe in his hand. It slashed against the machine’s shoulder and burst through the elaborate network of sensory apparatus that made up its chest. The tank of receptors shattered; bits of glass, wiring and minute parts showered everywhere.
   “It’s a paradox!” Morrison yelled. “A word game—a semantic game they’re pulling on us. The Cyberneticists have it rigged.” He raised the pipe and again brought it down savagely on the unprotesting machine. “They’ve got us hamstrung. We’re completely helpless.”
   The room was in uproar. “It’s the only way,” Ferine gasped as he pushed past O’Neill. “We’ll have to destroy them—it’s the network or us.” Grabbing down a lamp, he hurled it in the “face” of the factory representative. The lamp and the intricate surface of plastic burst; Ferine waded in, groping blindly for the machine. Now all the people in the room were closing furiously around the upright cylinder, their impotent resentment boiling over. The machine sank down and disappeared as they dragged it to the floor.
   Trembling, O’Neill turned away. His wife caught hold of his arm and led him to the side of the room.
   “The idiots,” he said dejectedly. “They can’t destroy it; they’ll only teach it to build more defenses. They’re making the whole problem worse.”
   Into the living room rolled a network repair team. Expertly, the mechanical units detached themselves from the half-track mother-bug and scurried toward the mound of struggling humans. They slid between people and rapidly burrowed. A moment later, the inert carcass of the factory representative was dragged into the hopper of the mother-bug. Parts were collected, torn remnants gathered up and carried off. The plastic strut and gear was located. Then the units restationed themselves on the bug and the team departed.
   Through the open door came a second factory representative, an exact duplicate of the first. And outside in the hall stood two more upright machines. The settlement had been combed at random by a corps of representatives. Like a horde of ants, the mobile data-collecting machines had filtered through the town until, by chance, one of them had come across O’Neill.
   “Destruction of network mobile data-gathering equipment is detrimental to best human interests,” the factory representative informed the roomful of people. “Raw material intake is at a dangerously low ebb; what basic materials still exist should be utilized in the manufacture of consumer commodities.”
   O’Neill and the machine stood facing each other.
   “Oh?” O’Neill said softly. “That’s interesting. I wonder what you’re lowest on—and what you’d really be willing to fight for.”

   Helicopter rotors whined tinnily above O’Neill’s head; he ignored them and peered through the cabin window at the ground not far below.
   Slag and ruins stretched everywhere. Weeds poked their way up, sickly stalks among which insects scuttled. Here and there, rat colonies were visible: matted hovels constructed of bone and rubble. Radiation had mutated the rats, along with most insects and animals. A little farther, O’Neill identified a squadron of birds pursuing a ground squirrel. The squirrel dived into a carefully prepared crack in the surface of slag and the birds turned, thwarted.
   “You think we’ll ever have it rebuilt?” Morrison asked. “It makes me sick to look at it.”
   “In time,” O’Neill answered. “Assuming, of course, that we get industrial control back. And assuming that anything remains to work with. At best, it’ll be slow. We’ll have to inch out from the settlements.”
   To the right was a human colony, tattered scarecrows, gaunt and emaciated, living among the ruins of what had once been a town. A few acres of barren soil had been cleared; drooping vegetables wilted in the sun, chickens wandered listlessly here and there, and a fly-bothered horse lay panting in the shade of a crude shed.
   “Ruins-squatters,” O’Neill said gloomily. “Too far from the network—not tangent to any of the factories.”
   “It’s their own fault,” Morrison told him angrily. “They could come into one of the settlements.”
   “That was their town. They’re trying to do what we ‘re trying to do—build up things again on their own. But they’re starting now, without tools or machines, with their bare hands, nailing together bits of rubble. And it won’t work. We need machines. We can’t repair ruins; we’ve got to start industrial production.”
   Ahead lay a series of broken hills, chipped remains that had once been a ridge. Beyond stretched out the titanic ugly sore of an H-bomb crater, half filled with stagnant water and slime, a disease-ridden inland sea.
   And beyond that—a glitter of busy motion.
   “There,” O’Neill said tensely. He lowered the helicopter rapidly. “Can you tell which factory they’re from?”
   “They all look alike to me,” Morrison muttered, leaning over to see. “We’ll have to wait and follow them back, when they get a load.”
   “If they get a load,” O’Neill corrected.
   The autofac exploring crew ignored the helicopter buzzing overhead and concentrated on its job. Ahead of the main truck scuttled two tractors; they made their way up mounds of rubble, probes burgeoning like quills, shot down the far slope and disappeared into a blanket of ash that lay spread over the slag. The two scouts burrowed until only their antennas were visible. They burst up to the surface and scuttled on, their treads whirring and clanking.
   “What are they after?” Morrison asked.
   “God knows.” O’Neill leafed intently through the papers on his clipboard. “We’ll have to analyze all our back-order slips.”
   Below them, the autofac exploring crew disappeared behind. The helicopter passed over a deserted stretch of sand and slag on which nothing moved. A grove of scrub-brush appeared and then, far to the right, a series of tiny moving dots.
   A procession of automatic ore carts was racing over the bleak slag, a string of rapidly moving metal trucks that followed one another nose to tail. O’Neill turned the helicopter toward them and a few minutes later it hovered above the mine itself.
   Masses of squat mining equipment had made their way to the operations. Shafts had been sunk; empty carts waited in patient rows. A steady stream of loaded carts hurled toward the horizon, dribbling ore after them. Activity and the noise of machines hung over the area, an abrupt center of industry in the bleak wastes of slag.
   “Here comes that exploring crew,” Morrison observed, peering back the way they had come. “You think maybe they’ll tangle?” He grinned. “No, I guess it’s too much to hope for.”
   “It is this time,” O’Neill answered. “They’re looking for different substances, probably. And they’re normally conditioned to ignore each other.”
   The first of the exploring bugs reached the line of ore carts. It veered slightly and continued its search; the carts traveled in their inexorable line as if nothing had happened.
   Disappointed, Morrison turned away from the window and swore. “No use. It’s like each doesn’t exist for the other.”
   Gradually the exploring crew moved away from the line of carts, past the mining operations and over a ridge beyond. There was no special hurry; they departed without having reacted to the ore-gathering syndrome.
   “Maybe they’re from the same factory,” Morrison said hopefully.
   O’Neill pointed to the antennas visible on the major mining equipment. “Their vanes are turned at a different vector, so these represent two factories. It’s going to be hard; we’ll have to get it exactly right or there won’t be any reaction.” He clicked on the radio and got hold of the monitor at the settlement. “Any results on the consolidated back-order sheets?”
   The operator put him through to the settlement governing offices.
   “They’re starting to come in,” Ferine told him. “As soon as we get sufficient samplings, we’ll try to determine which raw materials which factories lack. It’s going to be risky, trying to extrapolate from complex products. There may be a number of basic elements common to the various sublets.”
   “What happens when we’ve identified the missing element?” Morrison asked O’Neill. “What happens when we’ve got two tangent factories short on the same material?”
   “Then,” O’Neill said grimly, “we start collecting the material ourselves—even if we have to melt down every object in the settlements.”

III

   In the moth-ridden darkness of night, a dim wind stirred, chill and faint. Dense underbrush rattled metallically. Here and there a nocturnal rodent prowled, its senses hyper-alert, peering, planning, seeking food.
   The area was wild. No human settlements existed for miles; the entire region had been seared flat, cauterized by repeated H-bomb blasts. Somewhere in the murky darkness, a sluggish trickle of water made its way among autofac slag and weeds, dripping thickly into what had once been an elaborate labyrinth of sewer mains. The pipes lay cracked and broken, jutting up into the night darkness, overgrown with creeping vegetation. The wind raised clouds of black ash that swirled and danced among the weeds. Once an enormous mutant wren stirred sleepily, pulled its crude protective night coat of rags around it and dozed off.
   For a time, there was no movement. A streak of stars showed in the sky overhead, glowing starkly, remotely. Earl Ferine shivered, peered up and huddled closer to the pulsing heat-element placed on the ground between the three men.
   “Well?” Morrison challenged, teeth chattering.
   O’Neill didn’t answer. He finished his cigarette, crushed it against a mound of decaying slag and, getting out his lighter, lit another. The mass of tungsten—the bait—lay a hundred yards directly ahead of them.
   During the last few days, both the Detroit and Pittsburgh factories had run short of tungsten. And in at least one sector, their apparatus overlapped. This sluggish heap represented precision cutting tools, parts ripped from electrical switches, high-quality surgical equipment, sections of permanent magnets, measuring devices—tungsten from every possible source, gathered feverishly from all the settlements.
   Dark mist lay spread over the tungsten mound. Occasionally, a night moth fluttered down, attracted by the glow of reflected starlight. The moth hung momentarily, beat its elongated wings futilely against the interwoven tangle of metal and then drifted off, into the shadows of the thick-packed vines that rose up from the stumps of sewer pipes.
   “Not a very damn pretty spot,” Ferine said wryly.
   “Don’t kid yourself,” O’Neill retorted. “This is the prettiest spot on Earth. This is the spot that marks the grave of the autofac network. People are going to come around here looking for it someday. There’s going to be a plaque here a mile high.”
   “You’re trying to keep your morale up,” Morrison snorted. “You don’t believe they’re going to slaughter themselves over a heap of surgical tools and light-bulb filaments. They’ve probably got a machine down in the bottom level that sucks tungsten out of rock.”
   “Maybe,” O’Neill said, slapping at a mosquito. The insect dodged cannily and then buzzed over to annoy Ferine. Ferine swung viciously at it and squatted sullenly down against the damp vegetation.
   And there was what they had come to see.
   O’Neill realized with a start that he had been looking at it for several minutes without recognizing it. The search-bug lay absolutely still. It rested at the crest of a small rise of slag, its anterior end slightly raised, receptors fully extended. It might have been an abandoned hulk; there was no activity of any kind, no sign of life or consciousness. The search-bug fitted perfectly into the wasted, fire-drenched landscape. A vague tub of metal sheets and gears and flat treads, it rested and waited. And watched.
   It was examining the heap of tungsten. The bait had drawn its first bite.
   “Fish,” Ferine said thickly. “The line moved. I think the sinker dropped.”
   “What the hell are you mumbling about?” Morrison grunted. And then he, too, saw the search-bug. “Jesus,” he whispered. He half rose to his feet, massive body arched forward. “Well, there’s one of them. Now all we need is a unit from the other factory. Which do you suppose it is?”
   O’Neill located the communication vane and traced its angle. “Pittsburgh, so pray for Detroit… pray like mad.”
   Satisfied, the search-bug detached itself and rolled forward. Cautiously approaching the mound, it began a series of intricate maneuvers, rolling first one way and then another. The three watching men were mystified—until they glimpsed the first probing stalks of other search-bugs.
   “Communication,” O’Neill said softly. “Like bees.”
   Now five Pittsburgh search-bugs were approaching the mound of tungsten products. Receptors waving excitedly, they increased their pace, scurrying in a sudden burst of discovery up the side of the mound to the top. A bug burrowed and rapidly disappeared; The whole mound shuddered; the bug was down inside, exploring the extent of the find.
   Ten minutes later, the first Pittsburgh ore carts appeared and began industriously hurrying off with their haul.
   “Damn it!” O’Neill said, agonized. “They’ll have it all before Detroit shows up.”
   “Can’t we do anything to slow them down?” Ferine demanded helplessly. Leaping to his feet, he grabbed up a rock and heaved it at the nearest cart. The rock bounced off and the cart continued its work, unperturbed.
   O’Neill got to his feet and prowled around, body rigid with impotent fury. Where were they? The autofacs were equal in all respects and the spot was the exact same linear distance from each center. Theoretically, the parties should have arrived simultaneously. Yet there was no sign of Detroit—and the final pieces of tungsten were being loaded before his eyes.
   But then something streaked past him.
   He didn’t recognize it, for the object moved too quickly. It shot like a bullet among the tangled vines, raced up the side of the hill-crest, poised for an instant to aim itself and hurtled down the far side. It smashed directly into the lead cart. Projectile and victim shattered in an abrupt burst of sound.
   Morrison leaped up. “What the hell?”
   “That’s it!” Ferine screamed, dancing around and waving his skinny arms. “It’s Detroit!”
   A second Detroit search-bug appeared, hesitated as it took in the situation, and then flung itself furiously at the retreating Pittsburgh carts. Fragments of tungsten scattered everywhere—parts, wiring, broken plates, gears and springs and bolts of the two antagonists flew in all directions. The remaining carts wheeled screechingly; one of them dumped its load and rattled off at top speed. A second followed, still weighed down with tungsten. A Detroit search-bug caught up with it, spun directly in its path and neatly overturned it. Bug and cart rolled down a shallow trench, into a stagnant pool of water. Dripping and glistening, the two of them struggled, half submerged.
   “Well,” O’Neill said unsteadily, “we did it. We can start back home.” His legs felt weak. “Where’s our vehicle?”
   As he gunned the truck motor, something flashed a long way off, something large and metallic, moving over the dead slag and ash. It was a dense clot of carts, a solid expanse of heavy-duty ore carriers racing to the scene. Which factory were they from?
   It didn’t matter, for out of the thick tangle of black dripping vines, a web of counter-extensions was creeping to meet them. Both factories were assembling their mobile units. From all directions, bugs slithered and crept, closing in around the remaining heap of tungsten. Neither factory was going to let needed raw material get away; neither was going to give up its find. Blindly, mechanically, in the grip of inflexible directives, the two opponents labored to assemble superior forces.
   “Come on,” Morrison said urgently. “Let’s get out of here. All hell is bursting loose.”
   O’Neill hastily turned the truck in the direction of the settlement. They began rumbling through the darkness on their way back. Every now and then, a metallic shape shot by them, going in the opposite direction.
   “Did you see the load in that last cart?” Ferine asked, worried. “It wasn’t empty.”
   Neither were the carts that followed it, a whole procession of bulging supply carriers directed by an elaborate high-level surveying unit.
   “Guns,” Morrison said, eyes wide with apprehension. “They’re taking in weapons. But who’s going to use them?”
   “They are,” O’Neill answered. He indicated a movement to their right. “Look over there. This is something we hadn’t expected.”
   They were seeing the first factory representative move into action.

   As the truck pulled into the Kansas City settlement, Judith hurried breathlessly toward them. Fluttering in her hand was a strip of metal-foil paper.
   “What is it?” O’Neill demanded, grabbing it from her.
   “Just come.” His wife struggled to catch her breath. “A mobile car raced up, dropped it off and left. Big excitement. Golly, the factory’s a blaze of lights. You can see it for miles.”
   O’Neill scanned the paper. It was a factory certification for the last group of settlement-placed orders, a total tabulation of requested and factory-analyzed needs. Stamped across the list in heavy black type were six foreboding words:


All Shipments Suspended until Further Notice

   Letting out his breath harshly, O’Neill handed the paper over to Ferine. “No more consumer goods,” he said ironically, a nervous grin twitching across his face. “The network’s going on a wartime footing.”
   “Then we did it?” Morrison asked haltingly.
   “That’s right,” O’Neill said. Now that the conflict had been sparked, he felt a growing, frigid terror. “Pittsburgh and Detroit are in it to the finish. It’s too late for us to change our minds, now—they’re lining up allies.”