QuasarDragon2

QuasarDragon Presents "Dragon Lady" By Evelyn E. Smith

2011-07-06T05:21:00.000-07:00

"What's a poor princess to do when she's dragooned into becoming a . . . "

Dragon Lady

By EVELYN E. SMITH

Illustrated by Docktor.

BACK in the Eleventh Century, I was the only daughter of a rich and powerful king in the North, as well as being the most beautiful woman in the known world, though I say it as shouldn't. Naturally a combination of such talents as my looks and my dowry would make princes come from far and near to seek my hand in marriage.

Of course they had to be princes; anyone else would be shown the drawbridge, if not the moat, immediately. After all, I did have a position to maintain.

I was pretty choosy — nobody was good enough for me. This one was this and that one was that, and Father was getting pretty exasperated. He wanted to marry me off so that he could form an alliance with an old dame who reigned in the South—and he knew how I felt about stepmothers.

Princes came from hither and princes came from yon. I turned all of them down, and not politely, either. Then Prince Suleiman came out of the East. He was young, handsome and talented. He was a very powerful magician and, in an age when printing and television had not yet been invented, a man who could do card tricks of a long winter evening was nothing to sneeze at. Besides, even a princess can turn into an old maid.

S0 I cast a favorable eye on his suit. The bargain was about to be clinched when I found out that his great-grandmother on his father's side had been a goose girl. Naturally I could not form a mes-alliance with anyone who had such a Rorshach on his escutcheon, 'even though I was crowding eighteen and well on my way to spinsterhood.

I tactfully told Suleiman we were through. "How durst thou aspire to the hand of one such as I, base-born varlet?" I demanded.

Having a had temper, he waxed mighty wroth. "Sayest thou so, jade! Well, if thou'lt not wed me, thoult wed no other."

I thought he meant he was my last chance, but it seemed that he had a more dynamic idea. He turned me into a dragon. "Thou shalt live forever in this loathly form," he told me, "thy own fair semblance vanished forever, lest thou canst persuade a prince to give thee a kiss. And thou shalt dwell in the remote fastnesses of this isle and be visible to mankind only once in a decade until and if thy prince come."

I tossed my head and snorted fire at him. "Thou mayst be noted for thy necromancy, Suleiman," I said with hauteur, "but, certes, not for thy originality. At any rate, it appears I'll outlive thee, scurvy knave, since thy curse seems to carry immortality along with it."

"I shall expend the entire resources of my magical art to make myself immortal as well," he sneered, "in order to have the pleasure of gloating over thee through the centuries." And, stepping upon his magic carpet, he was off.

Seeing that I was no longer a marriageable commodity, my father packed me off to Loch Ness and married the dame in the South. Later, I heard, she poisoned him and usurped his domains.

I LIVED in the bottom of the lake for some nine hundred years, emerging at ten-year intervals to see if there were any princes in the vicinity. But there was never anybody but a peasant or two, so I sneered at them and retired to my boudoir, where I slept between appearances. There is nothing that can ruin a girl's looks more than not getting enough sleep.

Of course, when I say there were no princes in the vicinity, I am not being strictly accurate. Suleiman was there, gloating—if you count him, that is. The first time I pretended neither to see him nor to hear his taunts, but paddled around, humming to myself with a dégagé air, and creating a mighty splash every time I came near his side of the lake. He was a nimble-footed youth, though, so I didn't succeed in dampening either his enthusiasm or his robes.

The second time I even deigned to speak to him, for twenty years without talking had been rather trying to a female of my temperament. And the local peasantry could not speak Dragon language, which was reserved for the nobility and gentry and, of course, dragons.

"Ho, varlet!" I said, trying to deluge him.

"Ha, hussy!" he retorted, springing aside.

The next time I appeared, he didn't show up at all. I began to think something had gone wrong with his plans for immortality, and I was glad. Only . . . he was the last remaining person of my acquaintance who could speak Dragon; in fact, he was the last remaining person of my acquaintance.

Apparently his spells were still working, however, for he did turn up a decade later. "Oh, good morrow, Suleiman," I said, throwing water at him. "Prithee, what is new?"

He leaped away, but was it my imagination or did a spot of moisture dabble the purple velvet of his robe? "Good morrow, cotquean," he replied. "Nothing of import. I believe some bastard from Normandy conquered the Saxons last year."

I snorted contemptuously. "Oh, those Southerners — anybody can conquer them!"

Suleiman didn't show for forty years. When he came, I was almost—not quite, mind you, but almost—glad to see him.

"I have come to gloat," he announced.

"Gloat away!" I splashed enthusiastically. He was absolutely drenched. "How now!" I exclaimed. "What hath befallen your erstwhile agility, Suleiman?"

"I've been sick," he explained.

But he didn't come again. So I was all by myself in the lake for eight hundred and fifty years. However, I always say if one has inner spiritual resources one is never really alone.

WHICH brings us up to date. One morning in 1957 came der tag. I smoothed down my scales, got my flame-thrower in working order and sallied forth to the surface ready to dazzle the world. By now I had virtually given up all hope of finding a prince and was interested primarily in frightening tourists. That always entertained me.

It was spring. The heather was in bloom. And there on the bank stood a prince.

To anybody else he would have been Fred Halbfranzband, Assistant Director of the New York Zoological Gardens, but I instantly recognized him as Manfred Agidius Rudiger Wolfgang Bonifaz Humfried von Halbfranzband und zu Saffian, rightful heir by lineal descent to the throne of Schwundia, which, even though that country had been absorbed into Luxembourg in 1867, still made him a prince in my book.

He was old, he was fat, he was nearsighted. I didn't care. All I wanted was for him to take me in his arms and kiss me—tenderly, passionately, paternally. I didn't care which type of osculation he used as long as the kiss itself was a fait accompli.

"Darling!" I trumpeted, leaping gracefully out of the lake. Water inundated him. In my girlish enthusiasm, I'd forgotten how much tonnage I drew. But he didn't mind. "Aha," he exclaimed, his pale blue eyes gleaming behind his spectacles, "just as I thought! The so-called Loch Ness Monster is nothing but a surviving specimen of Diplodocus Britannicus."

I drew myself up haughtily. "Diplodoca Britannica, if you please." But, to my astonishment, he couldn't understand Dragon. In my day, it had been a required course in all royal curricula—which just went to show how times had changed for the worse!

"Watch out, sir!" one of Manfred's assistants warned. "It looks dangerous."

Me dangerous? The idea was absurd! I was tempted to eat him just for daring to suggest such a thing, but I restrained myself. After all, he belonged to Manfred ... and so did I. Besides, I preferred herring, proving I was a dragon and not a diplodocus, because, I found out later, diplodoci are herbivorous!

"Kiss me, darling," I roared, nuzzling Manfred — which was quite a trick, as I had to keep my interior furnaces under control. A French-fried prince would be of absolutely no use to me.

"Nonsense," the prince said to his assistant, "the creature seems quite friendly. Probably the legend of its ferocity arose because tourists teased it." He extended a slightly shaky hand—apparently he hadn't quite convinced himself that I was the innocent, playful creature I appeared to be. "Come here, nice boy," he said.

Nice boy! A fine chance I had of getting him to kiss me!

But I kept my temper. I remembered that if I stuck with Manfred I could be visible all the time. And, as I was an exceptionally handsome dragon—if I do say so myself—I felt that more people should have the privilege of looking at me.

MANFRED took me down to London, where I was exhibited to vast, cheering throngs. Getting an exit visa presented no difficulty, but my entrance visa to the United States was harder. Somebody had written an anonymous letter to the State Department saying I was a subversive, and the prince had the damnedest time disproving it.

The ocean voyage was—to put it mildly—ghastly. It was ghastly for Manfred too, as never before in his long zoological career had it been necessary to take care of a seasick dragon. He was a pretty nice fellow; he came every day to my modest apartment in the hold to smooth my fevered brow and whisper words of encouragement, but he wouldn't kiss me. To tell the truth. I don't think it ever occurred to him.

I'd never before had any difficulty in getting a man to kiss me —quite the reverse, in fact—but I guess it's different when you're five-foot-seven, blonde and curved in the right places, from when you're eighty-five feet long, green and who cares where your curves are?

They gave me a ticker-tape parade down Broadway and did everything to make me feel at home; hung garlands around my neck and served up magnificent nut steaks (Manfred still was under the delusion that I was herbivorous) and chocolate creams. But nobody kissed me.

They put my picture in the papers (wrong profile) and wrote reams of copy about me; I appeared on television and was a smash hit. But nobody kissed me.

I was installed in the largest, handsomest, fanciest cage at the zoo (though I would have preferred a more exclusive one farther away from the refreshment stand), complete with private swimming pool. But nobody kissed me . . .

And then Manfred, my prince, left me, left me to go back to his wife—a middle-aged hausfrau whose bloodlines were absolutely anemic. Bourgeois, that's what he was. Bourgeois!

"Well, goodby, Dipsy," he said to me, not without regret, for he was, like all Mittel-European princes, a man of strong sentiment. "I'll drop by now and again to see how you're getting on."

I clung to him, crying so hard I almost put out my fires. My last hope was going. If he didn't kiss me, I would have to remain a dragon for the rest of my life and, since dragons are immortal unless killed by knights sans peur et sans reproche — a category which has been extinct for ages—that was a longish time.

"Look how fond she's grown of me," Manfred said, and there were tears behind his thick lenses. "Sometimes I almost think she understands. Honestly, Dipsy, I do hate to leave you, but you're going to have a very superior keeper taking care of you; he just came from the reptile house at Babylon with the finest credentials."

A little old man dressed in the blue uniform of the zoo attendants shuffled creakily into my cage, his eyes on the ground. "You'll take good care Of Dipsy, won't you, Sol?"

"Yessiree, Mr. Halbfranzband," Sol said in a cracked voice, "I sure will. You just leave her to me; I'll treat her right."

I snorted, but there was something . . . something . . .

EVEN after Manfred had left my cage, I still had the peculiar sensation that came to me whenever a prince was in the immediate vicinity.

I looked at Sol. Sol looked at me. There was something terribly familiar in those bloodshot gray eyes. "Prince Suleiman!" I exclaimed. "C'est toi!"

"See, I told „you," he cackled. "Made myself immortal so I could stay and gloat over you."

"You've certainly come down in the world," I observed. "Whatever happened to your Oriental riches?"

"Spent a lot on those two spells; they were both expensive ones," he explained. "Finally had to trade in my carpet. And then prices went up so during the last nine centuries I couldn't afford other transportation to go to Scotland for the gloating season."

"How did you get here?" I asked.

"Oh, I've been working at various zoos off and on for over a hundred years, ever since I lost my last shred of magic power. Knew you'd turn up at one some day so's I could resume gloating."

"By the way," I said, "I may have been misinformed, but I had understood that Babylon was kaputt."

"That's Babylon, Babylonia," he told me. "I worked for the zoo in Babylon, Suffolk County, Long Island,"

I looked him over critically. "You haven't kept yourself in very good condition. You look more like a thousand than only nine hundred and fifty-two years."

"Forgot to sign up for perpetual youth along with immortality. Ah, if only, when I was a student, I had paid more attention to the classics and less to Hermes Trismegistus," he sighed, "this would never have happened."

I had a smashing idea. "Listen, Suleiman," I burbled, "you'll always be a prince, come what may. And in 1957 I can afford to be broad-minded; after all, what is a goose girl in the family tree compared to what current royalty is allying itself with? Why don't you kiss me?"

"I? Kiss you?" He chewed his ragged white mustache thoughtfully. "That's right—I could break the spell, couldn't I?"

"Sure," I replied excitedly. "And if you kiss me I'll turn back into a princess again. And I'll marry you. Nine hundred and thirty years ago, you vowed eternal devotion. Don't tell me that the mere passage of time has made you fickle?"

He smiled, showing long yellow teeth. "Oh, I'm still true to you, Dipsy. And, to prove that I love you for yourself and not for your beauty, I'm going to leave you in your present form so I can demonstrate my faithfulness."

"You mean you won't kiss me?" I breathed fire.

"That's right. Then you were eighteen and I was twenty-two, we were just right for each other. But, if I kiss you, you'll become an eighteen-year-old princess again, while I'll still be a nine hundred and fifty-two-year-old zoo attendant. You wouldn't stay with me, for I'll have neither spells nor money to hold you. Anyway, at my age I'm too old for the pleasures of the flesh. I can enjoy a beautiful spiritual communion with you in your dragon shape."

"I could eat you," I threatened. "Let's see what chance immortality has against the gastric juices."

"Sure you could. But remember you'd be eating the only person remaining in the world who can understand Dragon. Immortality is a long and lonely thing, Dipsy."

SO it looked as if I were stuck. I tried to rationalize the situation. After all, I told myself, the zoo was better than the bottom of the lake. Certainly I had much more chance of running into a prince there. Moreover, I led an active social life—people thronged like mad from all over to see me, quite like in the old days at dear Papa's court—and Suleiman read me all the latest books and periodicals so that I was au courant.

He also managed to convince Manfred that I wasn't entirely herbivorous, and so occasionally I did get to have a nice kipper with my tea. And sometimes, when he was in a good mood, Suleiman would get me a box of popcorn from the refreshment and souvenir stand—I do so love popcorn. For a very special treat he would get me the raw kernels, and I would pop them myself inside my own personal furnace.

But, although physically comfortable, I was not happy. What annoyed me most were Saturdays. Saturday was Suleiman's day off, when I would be put in the charge of an absolute clod who not only couldn't speak Dragon, but had difficulties with all other languages. And Suleiman always rolled in early Sunday morning looking so happy! Not as if he'd missed me at all!

Of course he had spent some nine odd centuries without me, but I'd been under the impression that he'd spent them thinking of me. I began to suspect not only that he didn't love me any more but, what was worse, that he didn't even hate me very much.

Finally curiosity overcame pride. "Where do you go on Saturdays, Suleiman?" I asked with an idle yawn.

He shrugged. "Oh, just to a little club where we fellows get together on our days off and play a little poker or Russian roulette . .."

" 'We fellows,' " I repeated. I would have raised an eyebrow if I'd had any. "Surely you don't mean you hobnob with the other zoo attendants in your leisure time?"

Suleiman had eyebrows and he used them. "Certainly not. We weren't drawn together by a common occupation but by uncommon bloodlines. All of us are princes."

"Princes!" I repeated. I couldn't help it—I drooled . . . great, unladylike gouts of flame.

"Why, Manhattan Island is filthy with deposed royalty," he taunted me. "Just in our club alone there's Ignace, he's doorman at the Waldorf, and Rodolphe, headwaiter at the Stork, and Vsevolod has the knife-checking concession at a Forty-second Street penny arcade—"

"Say, why don't you bring some of them around to see me, Suleiman?" I interrupted. "Sort of a treat for them .. . and, of course," I added graciously, "for me, too." Princes . . . one of them must understand Dragon.

He grinned evilly. "Why not? I'm sure they'd like to meet you. After all, you are by way of being a celebrity."

S0 the next Saturday he brought a whole gaggle of princes over, emanating royalty so hard I nearly burned myself up in my excitement. "Kiss me," I kept trumpeting. "The third bar in the cage is loose; I'm too big to get out but you can get in. Come on, kiss me —you don't know what you're missing."

But they didn't understand. Like Manfred, they were illiterate. The modern prince is educated for coping with revolving doors rather than dragons. And Suleiman had known. He wanted me to be miserable.

"She has such sympathetic eyes," Vsevolod sighed. "Somehow I feel she must have suffered." And he sighed, being a Russian prince, and whispered dramatically, "I, too, have suffered."

Oh, he was so understanding and he had such sympathetic eyes himself—besides being the youngest and handsomest and best-blooded of the lot. If only he had just been able to understand a little more.

"Which side of Forty-second Street did you say Vsevolod's penny arcade was on?" I asked Suleiman after they'd left.

He laughed nastily. "The south. But you'll never see it, Dipsy. Even if you could get out of your cage, how would you persuade Vsevolod to kiss you? He wouldn't think your eyes were so sympathetic if he got really close."

Oh, is that so? I thought. That determined me. Before, I had just been hoping to get back my original shape; now I was going to do something about it. Somehow, some way I was going to get kissed. And by a prince—a genuine, authentic prince—or, wait a minute, the spell hadn't specified authenticity. All it had said was that a prince had to give me a kiss. And spells usually tended to be literal in their application . . .

It was a couple of days after I had met Vsevolod that I heard a loud commotion at the gates to the zoo. A small yipping dog flashed beneath the outstretched arms of the guards and bounded down the path, followed at a short distance by a small yipping child. This sort of thing happened from time to time at the zoo and normally I kept myself aloof from such vulgar disturbances. But this time it was different, for the child was shrieking, "Here, Prince! Nice Princey! Come here!"

My ears rose and so did Suleiman's. "Come here, Prince," I cooed thunderously. "Nice doggie."

The mutt swerved toward my cage. Most dogs instinctively understand Dragon.

"Oh, no you don't!" Suleiman snarled, grabbing the animal as it tried to slip between the bars.

"Please, Suleiman," I begged. "He reminds me of my swift-footed greyhound, Alisoun, back in the days when I was a happy princess."

"I'm not going to have the creature slobber all over you and turn you back into a happy princess again," he told me nastily. "Here —" he handed the dog to the child —"and don't let it get inside the zoo again. There's some mighty ferocious beasts around here as would gollup him in one mouthful."

"O000, thank you, sir," the child said, bestowing a sickening look of gratitude on Suleiman. "Bad Princey! Nasty old dinosaur might've swallered you up."

I wasn't as upset by this booule-versement as I let on, because I'd actually achieved my purpose and found out what I wanted to know. The spell worked literally or Suleiman wouldn't have been so apprehensive. But I carried on furiously, howling and trumpeting and crying until I was sure Suleiman would be convinced that I felt my last hope was gone.

AFTER a few hours of my loud agonies, Manfred himself appeared. "What have you been doing to Dipsy, Sol?" he demanded. "Complaints have been pouring in from visitors. They say you're beating her."

I gave a heart-rending moan.

"Oh, no, Mr. Halbfranzband," Suleiman denied. "It wasn't like that at all. This here little dog runs into her cage, see, and Dipsy makes for it—like as if to gollup it, see? And—"

"Nonsense," Manfred interrupted coldly. "Diplodoci are herbiverous, as you might have read for yourself in my book Dinosaurs I Have Known. One more disturbance like this, Sol, and we'll have to get Dipsy another keeper. In my position I simply cannot afford to antagonize the ASPCA." He turned and walked away.

"How about that, Dipsy?" Suleiman asked. "You wouldn't like that, would you? Another keeper probably wouldn't understand Dragon."

"Yeah, but it would be worse for you," I returned. "I'm your whole raison d'être. How'd you like not being able to taunt me except from outside my cage, like an ordinary visitor? And I'll bet if I screamed hard enough you'd be barred from the zoo. I throw a little weight around here myself, you know."

"Look, Dipsy," he promised desperately, "I'll do anything you like, except put you in the way of getting kissed. After all, you couldn't expect me to do that."

"All right," I conceded, with an amiability that would have aroused the suspicions of a more intelligent man. "Read to me from the paper."

So he read to me. Visitors gathered around to watch the pretty sight. There was one small child munching on an interesting and colorful assortment of sweets in a cellophane bag which obscured none of their beauties. I was fascinated, but I tore my eyes away.

"News, news, news!" I suddenly interrupted Suleiman's reading. "Who wants your old news? What do I care what happens to all those peasants? Find me a paper with something interesting in it. Read to me of romance, adventure, excitement among the upper classes."

"But—"

"What do I care for your squalid little wars, your sordid little senators? What are the dukes and kings doing, I want to know? Who won the third at Epsom?"

"Look here, Dipsy—" He was getting angry; I'd counted on that terribly bad temper of his.

"I bet you're making up everything you read," I persisted. "It's too stupid to have been put down in black and white. Only a moron like you could possibly imagine such things."

He crumpled up the paper and flung it straight in my face. "All right, then, read it yourself!"

"Shame!" cried the crowd.
IT wasn't the indignity that bothered me. I eagerly looked down at myself, but I was still green, still eighty-five feet long, still a dragon. What had gone wrong? I had been smacked in the face by the public prints! I should have turned into a princess.

Suddenly , Suleiman caught on. He began to laugh. "Won't work, Dipsy," he cackled. "Prints might've passed, but smack is a colloquial term, and a literal spell doesn't comprehend colloquialisms."

I burst into hot, angry tears, accompanied with vociferous ululation. Several people detached themselves from the crowd and started walking purposefully toward the Administration Building, obviously to inform Manfred that Suleiman wasn't doing right by me.

"Oh, for God's sake, Dipsy, look happy!" Suleiman urged. "Why must you cut off your nose to spite your face?"

"I look unhappy because I am unhappy!" I howled. "And what's more I shall rage and scream and trumpet and stamp all my feet!"

"Isn't there anything . . . how about a nice bag of popcorn?"

I affected to consider his proposition. "Candy," I said. "I'll be quiet for candy."

He breathed a sigh of relief. "All right, I'll get you some from the refreshment stand."

"No, the refreshment stand always has the same old candy bars. I want a salmagundi like that one." I pointed toward the child with the cellophane bag.

"Oh, all right. I'll see if I can get it for you."

There was no difficulty, for the child proved more than willing to part with its candy for the munificent sum of fifty cents. I calmed down as Suleiman began to feed me the sweets. "Isn't that cute?" the child's mother cooed.

Suleiman gave me a handful of jelly beans and chocolate lentils and then a handful of gum drops and hard candies.

I could see Manfred approaching in the distance, breathing fire almost as well as I could. "Now do try to look happy, Dipsy," Suleiman urged, glancing nervously over his shoulder as he unwrapped the silver foil from a small piece of chocolate.

Smiling broadly, I opened my mouth. Suleiman popped the candy kiss inside.

I closed my mouth. There was a strange shrinking sensation all over me. I had won. After nine hundred and thirty years I was a princess again.

The crowd stared, open-mouthed. "All done with mirrors, folks," I told them cheerfully as I pushed aside the third bar and stepped out.

"Really, Sol," Manfred said indignantly as he met me leaving, "you should know better than to entertain friends in the animal cages. I think you had better turn in your . . . Where is Dipsy? What have you done with her?"

I smiled ravishingly at the refreshment-stand attendant. He just stared at me. "You'll let me have this to remember you by, won't you?" I asked, picking up a street guide to Manhattan. "Let me see — Forty-second Street is due south of here, isn't it?"

He nodded dumbly. I started walking in that direction. After all, bloodlines may not be particularly important when it's a question of breaking a spell, but when it comes to forming a permanent alliance they cannot be overlooked.

End.

From Beyond Fiction #10 (1955). Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

Return to QuasarDragon main site here.

QuasarDragon Presents "Double Dome"

2011-06-22T19:31:00.000-07:00

double dome

By RAYMOND E. BANKS

Planning to have an adaptokid? Check into it thoroughly first —no home is complete with one!

Illustrated by FINLAY

ONE morning, I walked into the factory and he was there, our newest employee — James Warwick, the two-brained, four-armed adaptoman.

There was an ominous silence in the factory control room. Usually there's plenty of noise— banter, horseplay, gossip, sometimes even a little work — but today the boys were silent, heads hunched defiantly over control panels. Miss Berkland, the office sweetheart, was the only one who seemed undisturbed as she fed her bank of automatic dictation-to-typing machines. Even Dr. Kirby, the plant physician, was glaring at the adaptoman through the glass wall of his partitioned office.

The atmosphere bothered me.

That's my job. You have to understand that the people who run an automated factory are a small, select group, more like a family than a business. Even the yardmen are much closer than in the older factories. There are only fifteen of us upstairs in the office and a mere eighty-two in the yard. With this group of less than a hundred workers, we turn out an amazing number of assemblies that go into spaceships. SRA, Space Rocket Assembly. That's our name, and we're the principal industry of this small town of Worthington, California.

I studied the adaptoman and his setup. He had an odd desk, what they call an adaptodesk, with an additional working surface built out and around the conventional desk.

He looked quite human as he worked — because he was human, of course. Only, while his upper arms shuffled through orders on the outer desk, his lower arms calmly typed a report on a typewriter in front of him. His head was normal in appearance, except that it was large, almost — I hesitate to use the word — magnificent. It had to be. He had two brains.

And the third eye. I could see his shirt open at the collar and the third eye nested between his clavicles.

I shuddered.

The rest of him was normal. In fact, the half-hidden third eye and the second brain, really a sub-brain, were fairly well concealed. It was only the extra pair of arms that made him obviously different.

He worked with poise and concentration, paying no attention to the strained atmosphere in the room.

I slipped into my office — All hell broke loose.

CORTLAND, head of the Automated Engineers, and Simms, head of the Office Technicians, stormed in.

"All right, Bob," said Cortland. "You're Employment. You do the hiring and firing. Get him out of here!"

"It's all a surprise to me," I leveled with them. "I didn't even know he was coming."

"A monster that does the work of two men," said the stoop-shouldered Simms. "The boys want to know what next!"

"An adaptoman may go in San Francisco or Los Angeles," added Cortland. "But this is Worthington, Bob. A small town. We don't want any adaptomen around here."

"Thanks for the lecture," I said drily. "As spokesmen for your unions, you're making this an official protest?"

"It damn well is," said Cort. Simms nodded.

"On what grounds?" I asked. "He, uh, he's doing an extra man out of a job."

"Now hold on! As far as I can see, he's only doing one job — Production Scheduler, no more, no less. We lost a man yesterday. We hired one today."

"Sure — today," said Simms. "And what has Management got up its sleeve for the future?"

"Like I told you—"

Cortland leaned over my desk, his face red. "No, let me tell you something, Mr. Hunter. Adaptoman goes out of here in twenty-four hours or else they'll carry him out. Remember that!"

Simms nodded energetic approval and the two of them strode out. My buzzer rang. The Chief wanted to see me. I wanted to see him, too, because I knew he was leaving town that morning for an extended trip. But before I could hit the button, Perch, the Yard Master, lumbered in,

"Look, Bob," he said. "Somebody told the yard crew that there was an adaptoman up here. Now the people in skilled labor have taken a lot of pushing around since automation and they don't like the idea. They see adaptomen used in spaceships. Now they see them coming into the office. Next it'll be the yard. Can't you get that laboratory nightmare out of here before trouble starts?"

"I didn't even know he was on the premises until ten min —"

"This is a small town, Bob. It ain't in the cards. Get the word up front fast. I won't be responsible beyond today."

Perch laboriously waddled out of the office. I knew he had only told me informally what his yard-men would be telling me at boring length in a very short while.

I sighed and turned to the now dead buzzer for the Chief. Then Dr. Kirby came in.

Kirby is a special figure in Worthington. He's the Plant Doctor. In the afternoon, he has a private practice. He's also on the Board of Education, the Red Cross and the City Council. He almost never speaks for himself. He speaks for the town.

"Something new has been added," he said wryly.

"Yes," I said.

"Won't get a medical clearance. Man can't work for SRA without a medical clearance. And I won't give it."

"Why?"

HE SAID glibly: "Adaptomen might carry contagious dis-eases. A bug they never worked out when they invented the conception gun. Can't have him on the premises. Half the staff will be sick all the time. Might even start an epidemic to spread over Worthington."

That's a myth, of course. And Kirby, a good doctor, knew it. He also knew that he couldn't drive the adaptoman out as easily with his political and social influence as with his medical influence. Kirby heads the Medical Association. If he said our adaptoman was a health menace, the Association said it.

I sighed. "I'll take it up with the Chief. But look, Frank, I've always been curious about adaptomen. In fact, Marion and I were even thinking .. . maybe . . . our next child —"

Kirby is red-headed and has a flat face with a big, wide grin. Not too humorous. He grinned and shook his head. "It isn't practical, Bob. Adaptomen are just a fad. They were needed to get space travel going. Ships had to be small, pilots and crewmen highly efficient. A man with two sets of arms, an extra eye and an extra brain can manipulate more dials, fix more wiring, think faster, stay awake longer. But that was pioneer stuff, like the early spaceships. Adaptomen are just as useless today. Within five years, they'll be extinct. As far as Worthington goes, we don't even want to bother with 'em."

He peered out of the glass at the adaptoman, whose desk-sign gave his name as James Warwick.

"Can you imagine your daughter in the arms of that four-armed monster?"

"I don't have a daughter," I said. I was getting a little peeved. I hated to see our small town act like a small town.

He tapped me on the shoulder. "You always were too forward-thinking, Bob, You don't belong in Worthington. You belong in a big city."

"I wanted to belong to space," I snapped. "I wanted to go out there. I've often wished I were adapto myself."

"Well, you're not. Don't go out on a limb for them. It's going to be no sale."

And Kirby left me. I climbed the stairs to the Inner Sanctum, but found only old Miss Peabody, the Chief's secretary.

"Mr. Eakins had to leave, Mr. Hunter. He had hoped to talk to you for a few minutes, but he is going east for his meeting. He left this message."

She handed me a piece of paper. The chief had scribbled a hasty note on it:

"Have hired an adaptoman, James Warwick, for Decker's job. He's your baby. See that all goes well."

Then: "P.S. In the interests of progress, Space Rocket Assembly Board of Directors has decided to place adaptomen in all factories as a test. Our quota is one. I think he'd better work out. As our Industrial-Public Relations Exec, you've got to carry the ball. Don't drop it. Eakins."

That was like old Eakins. He hated small towns; he hated Worthington. He spent as much time away as possible. He had made political enemies at the Detroit home plant of SRA and was merely passing his exile time at our small branch plant until things grew easier. It was typical for him to sidestep.

I WENT back down the stairs slowly. I'd done a lot of thinking about adaptomen. I had wanted to go out in space — the space travel that adaptomen pioneered. I hadn't been able to. Now Marion and I had seriously discussed whether our next child shouldn't be adapto. This was going to be a good way to collect information.

"Jimmy," I said to the adaptoman, "we've got problems."

"I know it, Mr. Hunter."

He was blond with green eyes flecked with brown. When I learned that he was only seventeen years old, I doubly cursed old Eakins. A kid! And you could tell from his small build and his fair complexion that he was no rough-and-tumbler. The least they could have done —

"First, the Engineers' Group," I said.

"Could I — could I talk to them, Mr, Hunter?"

"Sure," I said gloomily. "We'll both talk to them. I'm not afraid of their threats of personal violence —"

He squirmed in his chair.

"— but the yardmen are something else again," I finished.

"It seems to me the yardmen don't count in this. I'm an office worker, not a yard worker."

"Let's face it," I said. "The more sophisticated people, like Cortland and his engineers and Simms and his office technicians, are not so afraid of the unknown, which you represent. But the yardmen aren't that sophisticated. They wouldn't mind punching you on the nose."

"Do me a personal favor, Mr. Hunter. Let me handle them in my own way,"

"Furthermore, there's Dr. Kirby."

"He's already spoken to me," said Jimmy, dropping his eyes as if the interview had been painful.

"Well, those are the hurdles," I said. "Not to mention the townspeople. So far, adaptomen are something you find only in outer space and the Sunday supplements. Where are you staying?"

The poor lad scratched his head. "Well, nowhere yet. Mr. Eakins didn't have any ideas. I've got my suitcase in my car out on the lot. I just arrived this morning and Mr. Eakins brought me right here with my adaptodesk and told me you'd take over."

"Ye gods! Well, you can stay at my house for a few days until we see —"

I didn't complete the sentence.

CORTLAND and Simms protested loudly and at length. It was all words. Jimmy turned pale at Cortland's vehemence, but pointed out in a small, determined voice that ( 1 ) he was human, born of human parents, (2) a citizen entitled to work for his living, and (3) didn't Cortland and the rest believe in free enterprise and the four freedoms?

At that point, I thought Cort was coming over the desk at Jimmy. I made a signal for Jimmy to duck out and let me handle the situation, but he walked straight into the lion's mouth.

"Besides," he said, "you've wired the scheduling control panel all wrong. Your pre-amplifiers are underrated for the job they're doing and some of your servo-motors have too much backlash. The least I can do is straighten your system out for you."

That was a beautiful non sequitur. It left Cortland with his mouth hanging open. He was always fiddling with the circuits of the massive controller and was very proud of his work.

He drew himself up with precisely the look of a woman whose honor has been questioned, demanding to know where the hell Jimmy got his information on ratings and circuits for controllers.

After that, the conference was over for me. It degenerated into a hot theoretical argument about gating and damping and time constants. Simms, whose people are almost as engineering-minded as the engineers, stayed with it and they called in a couple of boys and presently the argument moved over to the main office and the controller itself.

That shot the afternoon.

I'm afraid there wasn't much work done, but at the end of the day, Cortland came in grinning. "Well, so much for your lousy superman," he jeered. "We backed him to the wall. He was wrong all the way. That stupid kid has a lot to learn."

I was about to point out that he couldn't learn if he was run out of the office, when Simms peered in and asked Cortland: "Which of the circuit textbooks did you want me to requisition for jimmy tomorrow?"

Cortland reeled off a long list of books. His eyes were shining. He was the missionary out to con-vert the heathen.

"That crazy Adaptoman Insti-tute," he told me. "Like any college— long on theory, short on practice. The kid needs background."

I clamped my mouth shut. I didn't bring up the original objections to Jimmy from Cortland and Simms, and neither did they.

"NOW look, sir," said Jimmy. "I have your address. I'll find my way to your house. Would you mind going off and leaving me?"

I pointed out the window. A dozen yardmen stood near Jimmy's beat-up old car, waiting.

"And leave you with that reception committee? Not on your life, Jimmy."

"You'll only make it worse," he said. "It's got to be faced."

I looked at the eager young face. It was pale, but I thought I detected an urgency that couldn't be ignored.

I said: "Okay. I'll gamble."

I called the head of Plant Protection, told him that if Jimmy was seriously hurt, it was the penitentiary for him, breathed a prayer and went home.

Jimmy was a long time in coming. Marion had supper on the table and had heard all about my day three times over before the old car pulled up outside and the adaptoman got out.

Marion gave a cry and almost fainted. They had beaten the kid horribly. He dragged himself into the house. His head was a mass of blood and cuts, his nose was obviously broken, and he was holding what I figured had to be a broken rib.

"It took three of them," he said, and passed out.

I called the Plant Protection chief. He cursed me hotly. "The young jerk asked for it. He wanted to jump the whole lot of 'em. After that, what could I do? Besides," he added thoughtfully, "it was a damn good fight."

Jimmy came to while Marion washed his cuts.

"Don't look so white, Hunt," he said. "I've been through it a million times at school." Then he turned his face to the wall and went to sleep.

I called Kirby and he came right over. I suspect he'd been waiting by the phone. Kirby may be an egotist and a nuisance, but he does have a healthy scientific curiosity — and he'd never laid a stethoscope on an adaptoman.

He allowed himself only one small "I told you so." Then he hustled into the bedroom with the biggest suitcase of junk I'd ever seen and began to examine the patient. It took him an hour and a half, which seemed overlong to me, even for the beating Jimmy had taken.

Afterward, he rushed out, muttered, "Keep him home for three days," threw some prescriptions at me and took off with an inward, absorbed look on his face.

I went in to see Jimmy. He was all bandaged up, but sitting up in bed and smoking a cigarette — grinning.

"What's got into Old Kirby?" I growled.

"There's the possibility of a bone-chip on my second brain," he said. "Maybe this fight, maybe some old fight — I've had lots of them. It looks like I'll have to have an exploratory operation."

"You're going to let Dr. Kirby operate on your second brain?"

He nodded, blowing smoke up-ward. "That's the way we left it. Only it'll be about a month before I'll be built up enough for it."

"But Kirby is only a general practitioner."

"Oh, he's done a little brain work. Not as many as he'd like —"

I sat down weakly. "All right, Adoptoman, I spot your methods. You're doing great. Already got the town licked. Cortland and Simms because they think you're all wet and they can have the fun of retraining you. The yardmen because they admire a guy who can use his fists — never mind the extra pair. Now Kirby. He knows if he kicks you out, he loses the chance of a lifetime to tamper on the operating table with an adaptoman sub-brain. So the struggle for acceptance is over."

"Hardly that, Hunt. An adaptoman is the result of a few radioactive jolts with the conception gun shortly after pregnancy is established. And pregnancy is a woman's job. We won't win the battle until we win the women. That's going to be hard."

"I know already you're going to win that one, kid."

There was something almost sad in his look. "Let's wait and see.

JIMMY was acepted by Worthington. Have you ever lived in a small town? Every one of them has its town "character," usually a moron or cripple that sells newspapers on the main corner, or works around the barbershop. He is accepted — as a freak.

That was the acceptance Jimmy had in the next few weeks.

Life seemed to settle back into a normal routine and I was lulled into thinking that Jimmy would slowly work his way up in esteem over the months and years. I couldn't have been more wrong. The next situation was — special.

It began innocently enough when the Reverend Dolson preached a pointed sermon in church one Sunday on adaptomen and what they boded in the way of destruction for the human race. Tampering with men's genes and chromosomes!

But Jimmy had a pretty fair voice and the choir was a little short on tenors. Later, in church with the Sunday sun soft through the leaded glass window, shining on his young, innocent face as he lifted his head in praise of God —

Dolson gave him a Sunday school class to teach.

And Aggie Burkes from our office also had a class, so it was only natural that she should break him in as to his duties . . .

One night, Marion came home and said: "Jimmy seems to be doing all right. I went to see Aggie Burkes — she had gone out on a date with him."

I chuckled. "That won't last. Cortland will stop it in a hurry, and if he doesn't, plenty of other fellows will."

I was wrong. Jimmy began to date Aggie and the other fellows didn't stop him.

I couldn't understand it. Aggie was the best deal in town. Her father was vice-president of the bank. She worked only because she preferred it that way. She had the clean-washed blonde looks that you associate with magazine ads, and a warm personality with a twist of daring to it . . .

"And that's the point," said Marion. "She doesn't care about Jimmy. It's a bid for attention."

I guess it was, at first. But Jimmy-boy was pretty good on the ski slopes and swimming in the ocean — those extra arms — and when he slid behind the wheel of her convertible and drove her up into the Worthington Hills . . .

I don't know what went on up in the hills, but I doubt if it was what some people said. After all, Jimmy was only seventeen and she was at least nineteen, and they were both very mild and well controlled.

It was Cortland's letting him get away with it that I didn't understand.

"A bachelor," explained Marion to me patiently, "is really two men — an eager one, but also a frightened one. He would really rather see somebody else take the cold plunge."

"Oh, brother!" I said. "TV psychoanalysis!"

Marion grinned and rubbed her wedding ring on her blouse. The expert!

AND then it happened. A small white envelope in the mail. "Mr. and Mrs. Burkes invite you to —"

I remember quietly laying down the card and going into the kitchen where Marion was cooking fish.

"If Jimmy makes it," I said, "it proves one thing — adaptomen can live entirely normal lives. Even marry the richest, prettiest girl in town."

Marion frowned. "Maybe. But — please, Hunt, I want to think some more about our next child."

I had been pushing her. Seeing Jimmy's success had made me all the more anxious to have our next child adapto. I mean it made sense to me, the way Jimmy explained it after his operation.

Dr. Kirby had had very little to operate on. Jimmy had worked the bone chip to the surface of his brain. He told me that the Adaptoman Institute taught a course in psychodynamics -- there weren't many doctors in space.

"We're quite a lot different, Hunt," he said, "but so is all of Man's world. Look how Man has changed it from the time he left the trees. Cities, clothes, food — you name it. He's changed everything except himself."

Now Man was ready to change himself, Jimmy explained. Man had built his instruments so well that they had to wait for him to catch up. To grow extra arms to handle the dials of his automated world. An extra brain to coordinate the mass of data his machines accumulated. An extra eye, even, to be able to watch and read and study and supply his extra brain.

I had watched Jimmy work and there was no doubt about it. His second hand-eye-brain loop could operate as a totally separate unit — or he could read a book while doing a normal job, or paint a picture or rest his normal vision and normal arms. He was more than twice as flexible.

"It's got to come, Hunt," he would say. "After all, adaptomen have been out of the laboratory for over fifty years now. We're proving to be the only kind of supermen that mankind will accept — the kind of superman that is his own flesh and blood — that anyone can parent.

"The operation on the mother is routine. Atomic controlled radiation shortly after conception. By that time, the embryo is set and you can still tamper with its unspecialized parts. There've been no mistakes.

"And think of this. If an Arab considers a fat woman beautiful — or an African tribesman cherishes a bride with plate-sized lips —"

He smiled his modest smile and gave me a double shrug.

But there was a lot of sober thinking done in Worthington that night, when those wedding invitations were delivered.

Before, Jimmy was only a temporary fixture. Rootless. Now he was going to become a part of us. A father, a home-owner, a full-fledged citizen.

And his children . . .

I think I hated Jimmy myself for the next week. Of course, adaptomen seldom bred true. But the idea of one of our girls lying in those double arms, and the third eye sharing marriage-bed secrets . . .

The strain mounted. I felt myself being sharp with the lad, even though he'd become one of us. Marion seemed to turn cold, as if he'd committed some crime. The men who'd been conned into accepting him were frustrated, the women openly hostile. The backyard buzz must have been terrific.

Aggie herself seemed restrained, defiant. I think she really cared for Jimmy, but this was the same girl who once took her father's car through the Old Jantzen river bed on a dare.

Nor could Cortland help. He'd waited too long.

I REMEMBER the night before the wedding. Jimmy got drunk that night, a callow kid, barely eighteen and old enough to be married, yet, with his extra arms and brain, the equivalent of a mature man of thirty.

"Look," I said to him. "This is no go. Aggie isn't right for you. Even I feel that and I'm usually on your side. But you're making too much of an issue of it. A — thrill thing."

I felt like a character in a confession story.

Jimmy picked up his glass and weaved across the living room. His face was pale and sweaty and he kept passing his glass between his upper and lower hands in an unearthly and horrible fashion.

"Listen, Marion, old bird," he told my wife. "Go 'head, have your little adaptokid. 'Sgreat! Look at me. Self-s'porting at seventeen. Cump'ney president at thirty. Marry the prettiest girl in town. Super, thass what we are — supermen!"

"You're drunk!" said Marion, standing up, her face strained.

"She don't love me and I don' give a damn!" shouted Jimmy. "Proved it anyway. Proved can marry best this bushy town has to offer!"

Marion's hand shot out and she slapped his face. "Monster!"

He grabbed her with his extra arm. Maybe it was only to steady himself, but my flesh crawled and I jumped across the room. I hit him straight on the mouth.

"Get your goddam hands —"

He went down on the floor and cut his hand on his broken glass. He began to weep softly. "m no monshter. 'm no monshter." He lifted his young, earnest face. "No monshter," he whispered, and blanked out.

A WEDDING is like a stage play; once the curtain goes up, there's no way to stop it short of a fire.

There we sat, practically the whole of Worthington in Dolson's church. The flowers were banked high. The Sun shone through the leaded windows. The altar looked very solemn and important. The organist did her duty and the soloist sang the old, true songs. But an air of horror prevailed. Men and women looked at one another, amazed at being there.

I had to stand up for Jimmy, which I did, feeling miserable, like an accomplice in a crime. Jimmy came in, trying to de-emphasize his extra arms by keeping them unnaturally still. This only made them more prominent. His extra eye was safely out of sight under his white shirt and tie. It would have been better if he'd peered with it, for it was a merry, soft eye, proud of its uniqueness, in the protected hollow of his throat.

A last-minute delegation of the women to Aggie's the night before had failed

And now the wedding march began. Jimmy turned to welcome his bride. She looked very white, almost unreal in her lacy gown. The men in the church looked drawn. But the women were staring with almost open horror.

I saw Aggie's eyes flick over at Cortland as she came to the altar.

Then she and Jimmy joined hands and it began.

It will never be easy to forget the moment when Jimmy turned for the ring. I gave it to him. He fumbled it. Maybe it was my fault.

He dropped the ring.

Then he was down on all fours, his hands darting desperately in all directions.

Aggie stared down and her eyes seemed to glaze. "No — not you — spider!" she cried. She picked up her train and ran, crying, out the side exit.

Then, in the pin-dropping silence, we all stared at Jimmy and he stared back at us.

I can still hear that high tenor voice: "But I'm not a monster!"

Then he covered his face with his hands—four hands—and went quietly weeping down the aisle and out of the church.

We never saw him again.

Bless the Reverend Dolson, he stood there like a captain on a sinking ship and said calmly: "Since the attendance today is better than I usually get on Sunday, I will now preach the sermon I was saving for that day." And he slid into a sermon on tolerance with a great deal of spark and fervor.

It felt warm and cosy there, all closer together, at one with each other, as if we had come to the brink of a tragedy and had been saved.

PICTURE my astonishment when, a few days later, Marion made an appointment to visit the San Francisco Adaptoman Institute.

"Poor Jimmy," she said. "He wasn't really a monster, you know. That horrible Aggie simply led him on."

"But — but —"

"The way he said it," she breathed. "'But I'm not a monster!'"

"But our child — an adaptoman — he'll be run out of town."

"Betty Guard is going to have an adapto," said Marion firmly. "So's Nelly Price, maybe. Don't but me any buts."

That's about all to tell. Except for one thing. Jimmy had rushed back to our house and cleared out of town by the time we returned. He had packed hurriedly and left.

But there was one piece of paper on my desk, left careless like, and yet — Well, here it is. You judge:

ADAPTOMAN INSTITUTE

Subject: Worthington Assignment To: Agent James Warwick

(1) You will win acceptance with the men of Worthington by the usual procedures. (2) You will win acceptance of the women of Worthington by the usual procedures. (3) In no case is an agent permitted to marry the girl, as this raises hostility in a new territory. (4) As a last resort, the ring-drop has been found effective. (5) Upon completion of your assignment, you will depart Worthington for your next assignment in Oregon. Do not linger after the ring-drop, since the church routine as you go weeping down the aisle is the best final impression that an agent can possibly leave. It cannot be improved upon. Good luck.

I wonder if Jimmy really forgot that piece of paper.

Or if he figured a poor, confused Employment Manager could be saved one bit of torture as to the devious motives and methods of the human and adapto races.

—RAYMOND E. BANKS

From Galaxy Science Fiction (May 1957). Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

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QuasarDragon Presents "Around Infinity" by Oliver E. Saari

2011-06-10T12:25:00.000-07:00

"Around Infinity" by Oliver E. Saari, from Wonder Story Annual 1952 Edition, originally published in Captain Future (Winter 1940). Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

AROUND INFINITY

By OLIVER E. SAARI

THROUGH the three quartz windows showed darkness, far deeper than the black of interstellar space. It made one feel totally alone, forever removed from the familiar things of Earth.

The ship's single room was small and the three men made it crowded. The insistent hum of the engine gave some feeling of reality but one had to keep his eyes away from those windows. For utter emptiness was a thing no man could stand.

Dr. Leslie Chapman was hunched over the controls, guiding the ship on its strange flight. Over his stooped shoulder peered tall dark-haired Ivar Augustus.

And Ivar was watching with something more than interest. Ever since the ship had left familiar space and plunged into this mysterious inter-dimensional continuum Ivar had kept his eyes on the controls.

Behind his saturnine countenance Ivar was thinking dark thoughts which the white-haired doctor and his assistant could not guess. He masked his feelings well.

He knew why the white-haired . man had invited him on this trial flight—to gloat over him, to bask in the success of his supreme invention. It would make Dr. Leslie Chapman the greatest scientist in the world.

Ivar knew he could never surpass this machine. The knowledge of his failing prowess in science had been thrust upon him too often. There was something that made the thought of his failing almost unbearable. It was a boast made long ago, when he and Chapman had been vying for top honors in the same college. He knew he could not fulfill it.

Besides, Dr. Chapman's invention would net him well over a half million dollars in the numerous scientific awards it was sure to bring. Ivar knew of some very good uses for that much money.

He fondled the little smooth-handled object in his pocket—a little invention of his own that might have brought him much. Perhaps it would yet help bring him more. Anything could happen in another universe!

Suddenly Dr. Chapman cried out. "We've done it! Supraluna pulls—"

A SUBTLE force wrenched the ship, twisting the very atoms. It was like a long fall coming to a sudden stop—against nothing. And it had brought them to a new universe.

Ivar had seen the last of Dr. Chapman's manipulations. Now he closed his eyes for a moment, then turned his attention to the view in the ports. A green light appeared in one of the windows.

It was a colossal disc of pale luminescence in a background of starless space—a huge bloated world of purest jade. It must have measured all of ten degrees from edge to edge. Its light was soft and soothing but curiously mottled, an interplay of dark and glowing areas.

"A planet," Dr. Chapman whispered. "A great sunless planet!"

But Dave Manning, the doctor's young assistant, pointed to the control board. "The indicator shows that it has no mass, no gravity. Look! The needle's pointing in the other direction!"

They all turned and saw a disc of light exactly like the other but smaller. "That is a planet." said Dr. Chapman. "A little smaller, than the Earth to judge from our indicators."

"Let us approach this world," said Ivar. "That is, if your machine can propel itself through space."

Dr. Chapman smiled, moved a lever. A slight acceleration tugged at them. The ship was moving through the alien void.

"Rockets." he explained. "I had an inkling we might materialize here in the middle of space so I installed them."

Their objective soon grew into a world of appreciable proportions. It was like a huge ball splotched with radium paint. This strange sunless world furnished its own light.. Dr. Chapman remained at the controls and the dark-haired man still watched. Ivar wanted to learn every operation of this ship. He might have to fly it soon.

Finally a grinding of metal on rock told them the ship had landed. Dr. Chapman's machine had brought them to a planet more remote from Earth than the farthest galaxies!

The ship rested on a level plain that curved away on all sides to a nearby horizon. In the heavens were no stars, no sun. The great disc of green light they had first seen was still visible but a strange thing had happened to it. The ship had gone in a direction away from it but its apparent size hadn't grown smaller with distance. Instead it now seemed many times its former size, covering nearly all the sky with its pale light.

Ivar was the first to notice the phenomenon. "Look," he said, gesturing. "What kind of a universe is this your machine has brought us to?" Dr. Chapman and his assistant were gazing upward, puzzlement showing on their faces.

Like a mammoth lid the light hung over the world, spreading to within a few degrees of the horizon. There it faded away, leaving a narrow band of space to meet the eye.

"I think I'm beginning to understand," said Dr. Chapman. "I've told you the theory on which I based my ship—the idea that there are many three-dimensional universes, having movements and orbits of their own in a four-dimensional space—just like a planetary system.

"They are simply 'planets' or spheres of curved space. Our own universe is a huge three-dimensional space-world. It has its satellites, smaller universes, circling it.

"What we have done is to travel to one of these satellites—this one. I call it Supraluna. But that light in the sky is explained by the fact that this is a smaller universe. Its curve is finite, here, is near at hand. That patch of light in the sky is this same planet on which we stand and which we see around the universe.

"When we neared the planet we decreased the number of possible lines of vision that did not intersect with this world. Therefore the image grew in apparent size. Probably this is the only world in the entire cosmos, for there is room for no other!"

Ivar, who had been listening to the theories with apparent lack of enthusiasm, interrupted the doctor. "These are all very well in the way of abstract explanations. But what are we to do now?"

The gray-haired scientist smiled. "Dave, unpack the space-suits," he said to his assistant, who had just tested a sample of atmosphere.

Dave Manning obediently pulled open a trap door at one side of the floor and took out three bundles.

"Oxygen suits," he explained. "The air here is not very breathable!"

The suits, when unrolled, turned out to be one-piece affairs, made of thick fabric and topped by rigid helmets. Goggles of reenforced glass permitted vision.

In a few minutes the men were attired, ready to emerge. Manning went out first, through a cramped airlock. Soon afterward his bulging figure appeared in one of the ports. Ivar bowed to Dr. Chapman. "After you, Doctor," he said.

WHEN the doctor had climbed through, Ivar picked up the object he had lifted from his pocket. It was a small hollow tube with a metal handle and an enclosed mechanism at one end. He was glad he had brought it along—that athletic looking assistant might prove troublesome.

The terrain was hard beneath their feet and full of little prismatic glitters, as though it were composed of pulverized diamond. But here and there were softer places, where the ground was porous.

All around them were the luminous areas, where the mineral glowed with a vivid green radiance. At close range these could be seen to consist of tiny threads of light pulsing with alien living energy.

"Life!" whispered Dr. Chapman.

The others heard him through ether-wave units in their helmets.

"What do you mean?" asked Ivar.

"Life," repeated the scientist. "The simplicity of this universe forbids more complex forms. Life here is simply a radiation, feeding on pure matter."

"This is a strange planet," said Ivar slowly. "Unbelievably removed, inhospitable. What a place to die!"

He felt the tide of resolution rising within him. Now was his chance. No one on earth knew of this trip. He, Ivar, could go back alone and eventually announce the dimension-rotor as his own discovery.

Dave Manning had caught his cryptic mention of death. "What do you mean—die?" he asked, rising.

Ivar was edging toward the ship. He turned, the tube in his hand.

"This is an act of self-preservation on my part," he said coolly. "I have no other alternative."

Dr. Chapman looked up at him, his bewildered face shining through his goggles. "Why—" he began but Ivar broke in with a laugh.

"My meaning is simple enough," he said. "This dimension-rotor of yours is a wonderful machine—one whieh might add credit to my genius as well as yours." He waved the tube.

"Besides," Ivar went on, "I have long felt that I could follow my scientific pursuits better if Dr. Leslie Chapman were not around to anticipate my discoveries. Do you see? This Supraluna is a wonderful place in which to disappear."

"You wouldn't—"

Ivar's icy laugh came through the earphones.

"I'd advise you both not to try to follow me to the ship. This little device in my hand projects a beam of high-frequency radiations, enough to kill any living creature. A little invention of my own, almost as wonderful as yours, Dr. Chapman."

Slowly Ivar stepped backward toward the ship, watching the others.

Dr. Chapman was pale. He seemed overcome.

It was only the assistant, Manning, Ivar had to fear. He could see they were afraid of the tube in his hand and well they might be. Ivar could almost read the thoughts of his victims. He could see Manning preparing for a leap and brought his weapon to bear.

And when Manning; suddenly lurched aside Ivar grimly pulled the trigger. A thin beam of ionization leapt from the weapon's muzzle. It sliced through the space Manning had occupied a split second before. A continuous beam—so much more efficient than a bullet, Ivar reflected with cool pride. He started to flick the ray across the moving man. And that was the last thing he knew.

Ivar Augustus was standing there outlined against the rim of black space. From this blackness, from an infinite distance, a bright beam of light lanced down. Only for a moment did it touch Ivar's broad back.

The weapon went dark. The tall figure swayed, toppled loosely to the ground. Manning rushed ahead and bent over the still form.

"Dead," he said softly.

Later, as the single world of Supraluna diminished beneath their spheroid, the white-haired man said to his assistant, "I am still wondering if we did right to leave the body of Dr. Augustus back there."

"It might have been hard to account for," Manning pointed out.

"You know, of course, how he died?" Dr. Chapman asked.

"Of course. Ivar's weapon projected parallel rays. He forgot, when he fired it, that the rays would follow the curvature of this space, all the way around infinity, and back to the point from which they issued. "When it missed me the ray curved, followed its course around this universe! Only Ivar happened to be in the way of the returning beam. Ivar Augustus died by his own hand!"

End

Back to QuasarDragon

QuasarDragon Presents "Potential Zero"

2011-06-04T06:08:00.000-07:00

"Potential Zero" by John Bloodstone, from Science Stories Vol. 1, No. 2. December 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

"The Vanyans came from outer space bringing Earthmen invaluable gifts, and Earth received them—and their gifts —with open arms. But what was behind it all? What would the Vanyans ask in payment? With these questions came fear . . . and distrust . . . and hatred."

By John Bloodstone
POTENTIAL ZERO
Illustrated by Virgil Finlay

You rise up to accuse me of being traitor to my kind— I, who merely sought to save the life of one immortal creature. I, who lived in the Vanyan city and knew those golden, benevolent god people, knew the untranslatable intricacies and stimulating ideation patterns of their language and understood the inimitable design of their architecture, the purpose of their way of life and the vital magnitude and scope of their philosophy. It is I who stand before the world accused of treason, to be judged by you who used the gift of gods to turn upon your benefactors and destroy them without warning, like so many superstitious savages, like raving witch-burners and blood-thirsty assassins —murderers of Angels, destroyers of Utopia, desecrators of Justice, enemies of Mercy, traitors to Gratitude!

The court-martial that will decide my guilt or innocence in this matter is insignificant here in the light of eternal values—a dried leaf that must fall from the tree of Time and be lost in the dust under the feet of those myriad generations which must recover from the far greater crime which YOU have committed against them and the tarnished name of Man.

You ask me for my story. You condescend to give me the privilege of speaking my piece. And I say it is your guilt complex that bends you to this decision, an awareness of a basic meanness in the nature of Man with which you will have to live. Nor do I pity you for it. It is the law of retribution. . . .

"Ye gods!" ejaculated the President, looking up from the manuscript. "This fellow should have written my campaign speeches!" "You can see why it would be inadvisable to release his story to the Press," commented his secretary. "But what am I to do?

The people want his story before he is court-martialed. And there's the big problem. One man—the only man who really learned the Vanyan's language and understood them—could turn the tables on us and the United Nations. If we allow his story to come out before the trial—and if he managed to throw world sympathy toward himself and the Vanyans—we could not convict him of treason and carry out the execution without becoming guilty of the crime he's screaming about . . ."

"And yet on the other hand, sir, if you court-martial him without letting him tell his story publicly you know what that will mean. . . ."

The President supported his forehead in his hand, shook his head. "Sir, do you think you have committed an historical blunder?"

The Chief Executive looked up, startled, suddenly on the defensive. "You mean—in having destroyed the Vanyans? Not a bit of it!" He looked beyond the secretary to make sure the door was closed. Then he smiled a secret and confidential smile. "Come on, Henry—where's your political think-cap? They arrived in an election year. What they pretended to stand for would have ruined the whole Party platform. Why—if we had played along with them the people would have been ready for World Federation in another year!"

The secretary sighed. "I suppose you're right. But you're getting a terrific reaction to this Ray Sanders situation." He indicated a mountain of telegrams and urgent memos from congressmen and senators. "Something has to be done."

One of the President's phones rang and the secretary picked up the receiver. He said, "Yes, that's right." Then he listened, and suddenly his haggard face lighted with enthusiasm. "That's marvelous!" he exclaimed into the phone. "Keep this under a lid till it's okayed for release. . . ."

"What is it, Henry?" asked the President, hopefully curious.

"It's about Ray Sanders' lady love—you know who. . . ." "Oh, you mean the Vanyan woman. I wonder if Sanders is bitter about what we did to the Vanyans or what we did to her—what is that beauty's name?"

"Kria, sir."

"Kria—that's it. She's the only Vanyan left alive. What's the news? Is she finally going to die?"

"Not even the doctors are sure of that. Her blood looks like blood, but it isn't. Her pulse is not a pulse, merely a pressure. With all those bullets in her—"

"Well good God! Haven't they taken an X-ray yet! Ever since the Vanyans arrived it has been the major objective of our Secret Service to obtain an X-ray of a Vanyan. Now here we have this woman at our disposal—"

"That's just it, sir. They have taken a complete set of X-rays. . . ."

The President tensed, impaling his secretary with a glare. "And?"

"She is strictly not human!"

"Not human! A gorgeous woman like that? But—if she's not human, what is she?"

The secretary smiled, shaking his head. "You might not believe me if I told you. Don't take my word for it. Call Rear Admiral Herndon in Navy Medicine and Surgery. But here's the point, sir—" The secretary interrupted the President as he was about to reach for the phone. "I think I've found my political think-cap, after all. This is the break you've been looking for. Don't tell Ray Sanders the truth about his extra-terrestrial wife. Release his story. Then bring the real truth up at the court-martial. She's inhuman. Let the Press take up the monster angle from there—and then see where world sympathy goes. It's basic human nature to distrust and fear the Unknown. . . ."

The President compressed his lips in an expression of sudden decision. "Henry," he said, picking up the phone, "if what you say is true—"

The secretary shrugged, indicating the phone, and the President put in a personal call to the Navy hospital. His conversation with the rear admiral in charge of the Department of Medicine and Surgery consisted mostly of exclamations punctuating long periods of wide-eyed listening.

"But—" he almost spluttered, "that's more incredible than the Vanyan visitation, itself!" He stared, aghast, as he listened to the admiral. "If you told me she was a robot, it couldn't be more—What? Well of course that's a form of life, in a way. I danced with her at the first reception ball. I've shaken hands with many a Vanyan. I'd say they're vibrantly alive—or were—but I didn't think of that kind of being alive. . . . How could a species like that ever evolve? In fact, how does that Vanyan woman— She doesn't! But I mean, how would she— She wouldn't! Well then how the hell—"

When he finally put down the receiver, he looked up at his secretary in open-mouthed amazement. "Where in ten thousand hells did such a race come from?" he asked. "And they looked exactly like humans—even more so!"

"Is that important now, sir? They've been destroyed." "Do you suppose that Ray Sanders knows the truth—about his Vanyan wife—what she really is?"

Despite himself, the secretary colored slightly about his ears. "Well— I understand she was a flawless facsimile—or still is. And she's no robot. She's a form of sentient life, with more personality than human women. How could any man tell? I know Sanders doesn't realize what she is. Would he have married her if he knew the truth? This is going to be news for him. . . ."

"I wonder what purpose she had in deceiving him. After all, there could be no procreation—"

"Again, sir, what does that matter? This is an ace up your sleeve."

The Chief Executive's sleepless eyes and tired mouth crinkled into a brittle smile of triumph. He pointed at the thin manuscript be-fore him. "This is just Ray Sanders' preamble," he said. "You tell the Secretary of Defense I am authorizing a full release of Sanders' story—and confidentially, tell him why. We want Sanders to blab his heart out!"

The two men looked at each other and laughed. It was another political triumph for their side. . . .

RAY SANDERS heard the distant clamor in the streets outside his prison before he knew what had happened. He thought he heard newsboys shouting. Then he heard streetcars jangling their bells, and a persistent bedlam of automobile horns. He could not know at that moment that there were traffic jams all over the country caused by people stopping to buy extras and to read the papers right in the middle of the street. Or that business had come to a standstill to discuss him.

He merely sat on the edge of his bunk and looked through some of the letters that people had sent him. He had bundles of such letters beside him, unopened—and he
did not intend to open them. The warden had mailsacks full of correspondence for him that he would never see.

Most of the letters started out like the one he had just read:

Dear Mr. Sanders:
Our organization represents a world-wide affiliation of civic groups who are vitally interested in the Vanyan form of government. We must apologize for approaching you at this time, but we feel that now is the only time to hope to hear from you regarding your personal views and opinions on the subject. . . .

Then there were the letters and telegrams from publishers and news syndicates:

UNIVERSAL PRESS WILL PAY YOU TWENTY-FIVE THOU-SAND DOLLARS FOR EXCLUSIVE SYNDICATE RIGHTS—

Or from the people who really considered him to be a traitor:

Sir:
The Patriotic League of Delbrook, Arkansas, wishes to go on record as being in full accord with the Government of the United States and the United Nations in relation to your indictment for treason against humanity—

And then there was that other kind he was reading now, which disgusted him the most:

Derest lover boy
Plese dont worry ul get out and wen you do I hope ul come and see me—

Sanders got up and began to pace the floor of his cell. He noticed that he had an unlighted cigarette in his mouth and he threw it violently into a corner. Then he paused, listening to a sudden commotion in the corridor.

"Hey Sanders!" yelled a scrub-by-bearded prisoner across from him. "Here comes your public!"

Sanders went to the bars, grasped the cold steel in his big hands, and glared at the crowd of people bearing down on him. There was Warden Baker, trying to keep ahead of them, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. Next to him was some sort of government official, and on the other side two men in Army brass. Behind came eager men and women waving notebooks and cameras. This, ostensibly, was the Press.

He tensed, angered. Now they were all so friendly and interested. He was a shining new martyr, the only ghost to represent those thousands of benevolent Vanyans who lay dead and dismembered in the rubble of their wonder city. These were the gibbering idiots who had permitted the United Nations to destroy the benefactors of Mankind. These people were behind the cold-blooded shooting of Kria.

They could all go straight to Hell!

"Sanders!" cried one reporter. "You can tell your story now! —not just to the authorities. You can tell it to the world!"

"You people will have to be quiet," interrupted Warden Baker. "Sanders, this is Mister George Hackman. He represents the President of the United States. This gentleman is the Provost Marshal, and this is Colonel Bigsby, representing the Secretary of Defense—Public Relations. They want to talk to you."

"I guess I'll have to listen," retorted Sanders. "I haven't any other place to go."

The President's special agent looked the prisoner over. He saw a tall, gaunt man with reddish brown hair and bushy, forward-jutting brows, underneath which were a pair of dark brown eyes that had become shadowed, somehow, by the things they had seen far beyond the skies of Earth. He also discerned a curious admixture of opposing types—a compromise between the rugged adventurer and the sensitive dreamer and scholar. Beneath a not too aquiline nose was a wide mouth that had tightened into an expression of contempt, bitterness, disillusionment, torment and hate.

"Sanders," he said, "the President of the United States has authorized you to tell your story to the Press, as you see fit, before you are court-martialed. Do you. wish to take advantage of this privilege?"

Sanders sneered. "It's a great privilege, to be able to talk after the damage has been done! You can take your privilege and—"

"Just a minute!" interrupted another reporter. "If you tell your story they'll let you see Kria again.

"Warden Baker roared. "I said you folks would have to be quiet and wait your turn!"

They were quiet then, because they were watching their victim's face. They had him, emotionally, where they wanted him. Two flash-bulbs popped. And they all waited.

"This is quite officially authorized," said Colonel Bigsby.

Sanders glared at him and saw an elderly warhorse with Lord Cal-vert gray at the temples and a highball tan.

"We are here to corroborate the statement made by the President's agent."

Sanders clutched at the bars and glared out at all of them. He looked the colonel up and down, his lips tightening. The crowd could see the tension mounting in him like an earthquake.

"What would be the use!" he finally blurted out. More flash-bulbs went off. "Even if my story got me acquitted? What would be the use! Do you think I give a damn about living in a world inhabited by idiots? You had Utopia handed to you on a golden platter and you sliced the throats of your benefactors! Why? Did they threaten you with invasion?"

"Look!" said the colonel. "We can understand, in part, how you feel about what happened. But what you do not seem to be able to grasp is that we could take no chances. And living next door to a superman civilization like that was taking too big a chance. . . ."

"So you used the very technology they gave you and massacred them!" yelled Sanders. More flashbulbs.

"Another thing you seem to forget," put in the Provost Marshal, who looked more like a shore-bound admiral, "is that you were a citizen of the United States of America when you warned the Vanyans about our attack. You endangered your own world. That makes you a traitor, Sanders. I'd get down off that martyr's pedestal if I were you."

"May I speak a moment, Warden?"

A distinguished looking, elderly reporter from the New York Times stepped forward wearing a powder blue suit, a pink boutonniere and a pocketful of slim, expensive cigars. When the warden looked at the government men and received a triple nod of approval he passed the nod along and the Times representative continued, addressing Sanders. "Whether you become acquitted or not," he said, "your story will be important to the world, especially in times to come. We cannot say here whether you are really right or wrong. The court-martial will have to decide that for the present. But let future generations judge you—and let them judge us. That is what will really count.

"Sanders left the bars and paced his cell, brushing a hand through his hair. He thought of Kria, struggling against death in a hospital. And he thought of the times they had spent together on her own world. He had to see her again. . . .

"All right!" he said. suddenly. "I'll give you the story, but I'll write it myself. I'll give it all to you, in every detail. But don't come back and say I opened your eyes. Just remember one thing." He came back to the bars and glared at them. "When you realize the cataclysmic mistake you have made, you will have to live with the knowledge that now there is no remedy. You have obliterated the Vanyans. One golden chance in eternity, one ray of light out of space and time, never to return."

No flashbulbs now. Only silence, while they stared at him and he glared at them, his forehead beaded with cold perspiration. Prisoners along the cell block stood behind their bars and waited, watching and listening.

"It's too late for conscience," he continued. "You can't take back a barrage of atomic bombs and magnetic disintegration. I've seen the Vanyan city. I lived in it. I learned the language of the people you killed. I know what they stood for! There is only one conclusion you will be able to draw from my story. It is that you are the traitors, not against your country alone, but against humanity!"

Three days later, the world read Raymond Sanders' story.

YOU all know when they landed—August 17, 1956 — on the lawn of the Capitol Building, in Washington, D. C., shortly after eleven P.M., Eastern Standard Time. Three traditional flying saucers, complete with peripheral observation panels and the shallow dome on top.

They came smiling before the tanks and artillery and machine guns lined up to greet them, and they offered gifts. Their greatest gift was one of vital knowledge. Within one month, by means of sign language and mathematics, they proved that we were poisoning ourselves with mere practice blasts of atomic energy. Even the Russians agreed to universal control of atomic energy after that.

The Vanyan mission was one of peace. How could the world ever come to fear such a people when they offered Utopia and asked for nothing but good neighbors?

But you did come to fear and suspect, didn't you? And I know why now. It was instinctive egotism. Since we had all become accustomed to benevolence in the form of a false front behind which somebody was always paid off, it was perhaps a natural reaction in the beginning. Nobody could be that benevolent, you told yourselves. They wanted something. The whole thing was a trap.

But when time went on and the deception never revealed itself, you still could not accept pure benevolence at face value. You had to reduce the Vanyans to the level of your own understanding. The only way you could understand them was as a threat to your own existence. And so you destroyed them! But perhaps this was to be expected. Christ was crucified. . . .

By the end of that first day, many more discs had arrived, all over the world, and by the second day you all knew in general what the situation was. They had come from Mars but they were not Martians. Mars was the poor little oxygen-depleted world that astronomers always said it was. But the Vanyans had come to the solar system from interstellar space, searching for a new home, because their scientists had predicted that their own sun would soon become a nova. They had searched for centuries to find a suitable world, and at last they had found Earth—and Mars. Venus was still too hot and stormy. Earth was green and fair, but heavily populated. Mars possessed oxygen locked in a chemical state with its soil. Being benevolent and believing in fair play, the Vanyans did not come to Earth and tell us to make room for them, which they certainly could have done. Instead, they had set up machinery on Mars, developing a heavier gravitational field, building plants to release the oxygen again into the atmosphere and placing artificial sun satellites in orbits around the planet to give them the proper temperatures to support life as we and they knew it.

They had worked with Mars for fifteen years and established their own form of civilization there before they decided to establish contact with us. At first they investigated us without contact, in order to learn more about us, so the flying saucer reports of previous years turned out to have an actual basis in fact. When they became aware of our advances in the field of nuclear energy and finally saw us teetering on the brink of atomic war they knew they could wait no longer. So they landed and started negotiations.

After they had succeeded in freeing us from the fear of atomic warfare, tensions began to be relieved among the nations of the world regarding themselves—but a new tension was arising—a fear of the Vanyans. What was their real purpose and intent? What did they really want? You watched them and discussed them daily, and as time passed without their giving any basis for your fears this fact only served to heighten your suspicions more. The Vanyans were fiendishly clever!

They were small in number and great in science. They offered us technological knowledge in exchange for various useful materials and products we could give them. They readily instructed us how to overcome gravitation and build spaceships exactly equivalent to theirs. They even gave us their own weapons.

At first this latter move on their part was considered to be incredibly naive, but then the doubters came forth again and said that such naivete was wholly incompatible with such advanced mentalities. The Vanyans were accused of allowing us to build our own booby trap.

Yet they opened Mars to us and allowed us to come and go at will. They hid nothing from us and answered every question. Except one thing. They would not permit themselves to be X-rayed or carefully examined, physiologically. Since they were obviously flesh and blood humans, we wondered what they were hiding.

Just that one mystery fanned universal doubt and fear to overwhelming proportions. The Vanyans came to us offering a new era, but they reserved one little right to privacy—and for that they were sinister monsters masquerading in human form. Imagination ran riot. Superstitious dread mounted to the point of insanity. If a Vanyan smiled and held out a precious gift of knowledge to us, we would tremble inwardly, instinctively fearing to accept and thus contribute another choking strand to the imaginary web they were supposed to be weaving about us, inexorably, day by day and month by month.

In regard to my own reactions during those first weeks of wonder, I was more or less neutral, willing to give them the benefit of a doubt, searching through their deeds and their way of life for some wisdom lying beyond our comprehension which would in the final analysis explain the things they did that seemed irreconcilable with our own realities.

Then, in early September of that year just prior to the opening of the public schools, a group of Vanyans visited Los Angeles. . . .

THEY came in one of their saucers, as they had come to Washington and New York and Chicago, or to London, Paris and Moscow. They came happily, cheerfully, trustingly and without subterfuge—simply to learn what they could about us and enable us to get acquainted with them. At first it was impossible to get a close look at them except on television, because it was worse than the Rose Parade or the Rose Bowl by far. I wanted to see them in the flesh, but milling crowds were anathema to me. I waited—and finally my opportunity came.

It came because of one outstanding difficulty, which was, of course, the vital matter of communication. In that one respect their arrival on Earth differed from wishful thinking. They were not telepathic, nor did they have any of those convenient machines that you fit on your head in order to get your languages translated automatically. Their language was extremely difficult and involved. Up to this time they had been indulging in a very rapidly developed and publicized system of sign language, in addition to mathematical symbology for expressing scientific concepts. But communication was slow, and they were vitally interested in solving this problem, as were we.

So it was that by the natural process of groping their way and making their wants understood they gravitated toward the institutes of learning and especially toward the teachers. For some reason which we were to understand at a later date, they treated teachers with an unusual amount of respect — even deference. Second only in popularity with them were the linguists, the first being of course the teachers of the physical sciences. And in a way this still had a lot to do with language. They could understand the language of science most readily, although art and music were also highly favored media for expression. But they recognized the fact that if they were to expand their concepts and understanding of us they would have to get down to the business of actual word ideation. And so, at last, the Vanyans and the local linguists got together—and I was included, as a fairly well recognized comparative philologist.

It was at the banquet given by the Alpha Phi Gamma, a national teachers' honorary society for philologists, that I first met Kria. Not all the visiting Vanyans were present, but we had three of them, which was enough to put us in the television spotlights during the whole evening—or at least up to that point when the evening was violently interrupted.

There was a bright young male Vanyan named Drganu who turned out to be Kria's brother, and there was an apparently young man of much graver bearing, named Sanal. We were not quite sure at the time what the Vanyan lifespan was, but I later found out that Sanal was over fifty Earth years old. He was the father of Kria and Drganu.

I wish that I were telling this story to someone who had not experienced the visitation of the Vanyans, because a description of their well know peculiarities would be of particular interest. I mean such things as, of course, their clothing, or lack of it, those hundred and one little differences in the sense of value, or etiquette, or morality, which were the result of a much different social system, and which more often than not resulted in considerable embarrassment on our part before we could make an adjustment to their ways.

For example an uninformed reader might be shocked to know that our three guests sat almost in the nude at our banquet, nor did any amount of sign language appear to influence them. They were not stubborn about it. They merely laughed the whole thing off and continued brightly with the intellectual pursuits at hand.

Not that their semi-nudity was repulsive to any of us. On the contrary. Like all Vanyans, our three guests were almost breathtakingly beautiful. Indeed, if we learned academicians had possessed one-half the physical attributes of our guests we might have considered relieving the tension by at least removing our shirts. These were a golden people, both inside and out. It was a tonic to associate with them. On their faces and in their eyes one could detect a great intelligence coupled with the enviable insouciance of a child.

To me a most satisfactory arrangement was the fact that I was seated at the table within only two places of where Kria was sitting. Before I became involved directly in the sign language and other meager forms of communication, I was perfectly content to study her, wearing an expression of purely academic interest but not feeling it in the least.

I do not wish to appear facetious, but I must say that I stopped thinking like a bachelor the moment I laid eyes on her. To say she was beautiful would be as vacuous ant expression as to say that the sun shines. Her bluish hair was parted in back and done up in those thick braids that they slip under the double ringlets on their arms—a very practical method of getting it out of the way and yet very decorative. She wore a tiara of precious metal and sparkling jewels which had been fashioned into the likeness of living flowers. Her eyes were slightly more lavender than blue. Her brows were black and perfectly formed, and her lashes were thick and long, without mascara. I've seen women play with men with their eyes in an effort to express their sophistication and feminine prowess in general, but Kria played a breathtaking game with her eyes that was just exactly that. A happy, innocent game. But deep behind the game you could see what seemed to be mirrored vistas of interstellar space—something vast, terrifying and unutterably beauti-ful, like a fleeting sense of Nirvana, grasped only for a moment and leaving you dedicated thenceforth to the single purpose of finding out the meaning of it.

Her lips were full, above and below, like those of the Grecian gods, and there was a mystically pagan tilt to them and her smiles were as comprehensive as a Thesaurus. Those lips were enviable, too, to Earthwomen, because they possessed a natural hue of deep rose, and an apparently velvety texture that would have been spoiled by lipstick.

I could go on and on. You have seen her. You know of the golden texture of her skin, her supple grace, the single, veil-like garment all Vanyan women wear that is only half a sarong and much more transparent. To complete the picture, there were her perfect breasts, only partially covered by the veil. In fact, one was and one wasn't. Her bearing and her sparkling personality made you somehow accept her as she was, but you could never take those beautiful young breasts for granted.

You all know why I am dwelling upon the fact of her near nudity here. It has an important bearing on what I was to discover later in relation to their whole attitude on the subject of sex—which is one of the greatest differences between Vanyans and Earthmen. Then on the other hand their concept of love was another story. In that regard we could meet on a common ground. More or less. . . .

I HAVE mentioned that a wave of superstitious dread was developing throughout the world in regard to the Vanyans. Whether or not certain economic or political factions helped to augment that wave of fear and distrust and resentment is a subject which need not be elaborated on at present, but the fact remains that the adherents to this ideology of alienation were already taking matters into their own hands—a fact which actually brought Kria and myself together. In fact, our banquet that night at the Town House turned out to be one of the focal points of attack for the now historical anti-Vanyan uprising.

I believe we had just finished the shrimp cocktails and the bouillon was just being served when I made my first direct communication with Kria. By means of sign language I was indicating a curiosity in her reaction to our kind of food and trying to get her to describe to some extent what they ate on Mars. My two colleagues on my right were doing their best to help me out.

Kria beamed at me in a way that positively embarrassed me, Furthermore, she seemed to be oblivious of my would-be assistants. In a few moments, so was I. I was wallowing in her eyes and gamboling with her through pristine glades of thought engendered by her smile, her facial expressions, her manual gesticulations, and her whole personality. We did not seem to require a language of word symbology. Nothing crude enough to create sound waves and tickle our eardrums would have served to convey the consciously indefinable yet subconsciously delectable impressions she passed on to me. It was not telepathy, I insist, but rather a form of communication achieved through sheer personal magnetism.

I was thinking: My God but you're beautiful! Who cares what you eat?

And with her eyes and lips and her radiant personality she laughed soundlessly. Yet I heard that laughter echoing through the thought-glades of the extra-dimensional sort of little world that was a-building between us. I saw myself running with her, hand in hand, through dreams more vivid than reality.

I came to, with a start, to find Anderson, my colleague who sat next to me, pulling at my arm. He was on his feet. Others were on their feet, too, and there was shouting. On Kria's face I saw a look of alarm as she stared at the main entrance to the banquet room.

"What is the meaning of this?" I heard our master of ceremonies shout.

"There they are!" shouted someone else.

"Down with the Vanyans!"

A mob of men moved into the banquet room, brandishing guns. Drganu and Sanal rose slowly to face their attackers. They were unarmed. I heard them say something in their own tongue to Kria and she, too, got up.

It appeared immediately that there was going to be no opportunity of arguing with the intruders. They were after the Vanyans. The television camera next to the master of ceremonies turned just in time to give the outside world a glimpse of violence as one of the invaders struck the master of ceremonies over the head with the butt end of his pistol. This precipitated swift action on the part of the other members of Alpha Phi Gamma, but just as the free-for-all started someone conveniently turned out the lights.

In that exact instant I ran around the end of the table and grasped Kria's arm. It was the first time I had touched a female of the species, so I was unprepared for the delightful shock of vibrant warmth and personal electricity that shot to my brain. I knew a few words of the Vanyan tongue, so I was able to say, "Kria—friend —follow . . ."

She must have recognized my voice, because she followed me instantly.

I had officiated at several functions held previously at the Town House and happened to know where the doors were which led both to the kitchen and to the service sections of the building. We were knocking over chairs and banging into tables in the kitchen before anyone knew she had left the banquet room.

Fortunately, I made a mistake and opened a door which I thought would lead out the back way. Instead, I found myself groping about in a service closet. But the first thing I laid my hands on was someone's raincoat, which turned out to be equipped with a plastic hood. I immediately threw this around Kria and tucked her hair well in under the hood. Then I actually found the exit I sought and we went out. Behind us we could hear shouts, fighting, and the sound of furniture being thrown about.

Inasmuch as bold, swift action had accomplished this much so far, I reasoned that it was our only recourse until we reached ultimate safety. So I led her out onto the side street where I had parked my car.

We were just emerging from the narrow passage between buildings when three news reporters sprang out of a car and dashed toward us. They were about to pass us in an attempt to reach the scene of the turmoil through the rear entrance, but in the same moment one of them caught a good view of Kria's bare leg, then her Vanyan style sandals.

He gave a shout to his companions, and in the next instant the three of them blocked us as efficiently as an All American team.

"Here's a Vanyan dame!" yelled the first one.

"Luck!" responded one of his companions.

But they made the mistake of laying hands on her and myself to detain us. I took hold of two of them and shoved them off violently. I think I must have struck the third one in the chest, because he staggered back and came at me belligerently.

"All right, wise guy!" he shouted. "You're in the way. We want stories and pics and we're going to get 'em. Don't let's get rough!"

Already one of them had his camera ready and a flashbulb went off. People who had been running toward the entrance to the Town House now began to converge on us.

"See what you've done?" I argued. "This girl's life is in danger! Now we've got to make a run for it!"

As the reporter still blocked my way, I called upon an old reserve of strength and muscular coordination left over from my athletic days and threw my two hundred pounds at them. I made a path for Kria and took her hand. Silently, she followed me on the run.

But it was exactly like a fox hunt. The hounds had scouted out their prey and the howling and the chase began.

"Hey! There's a Vanyan trying to get away!" I heard someone shout.

"Who's the guy with her?"

"Probably a copper. Get her, quick!"

Flashbulbs popped behind us. The sound of many running feet grew loud in our ears. Some men tried to intercept us and I straight-armed them rather neatly. Hands reached out and tore at Kria's raincoat, which soon came off.

Suddenly, we were piling into my Ford convertible and I was starting the engine. Bodies crowded around us, hands reached in. There was a bedlam of shouting.

Get out of the way!" I yelled, as the engine started.

The Ford pulled away sluggishly as the crowd actually tried to hold it back. In the next instant, I was racing toward Sixth Street, intent upon reaching Virgil Avenue so that I could head for the Hollywoodland hills, Cahuenga Pass—and the San Fernando Valley. I crossed Sixth and went on up to Third. Just as I turned into Virgil I discerned three sets of headlights in my rear vision mirror. When you are traveling as fast as the road will allow, you know when you're being followed.

At Beverly the lights were against me. I couldn't wait, so I went through. As luck would have it, there were no police cars or motor cycles on hand to intercept me—as yet. But I knew I couldn't race across town at this pace and keep ahead of my pursuers without attracting the police, and then the whole thing would be at an end. I reasoned that even the police might not be able to do anything against the mob, and before order could be restored Kria might actually get hurt.

For the moment, the situation all seemed to boil down to one thing. Outracing my pursuers was a bad choice. Outsmarting them would be better. It all depended on who knew the city best. I needed a temporary hiding place.

I darted into a side street and began a laborious threading of residential mazes in the general direction of Vermont Avenue. The Los Angeles City College was not far away, and I had keys to some of the buildings. Several times I still discerned headlights in the rear vision mirror, but now there were only two sets.

All this time I was only vaguely aware of Kria sitting next to me. She had been fumbling in the glove compartment for something, and finally I knew she was looking at a city map.

Suddenly, just as we hit the bright lights of Vermont Avenue, I did a double take at her and almost wrecked the car. She was completely naked. Even the veil had been torn from her in the mad rush.

"Kria!" I shouted, inanely, as I barely missed colliding with a streetcar.

She looked up at me sweetly, just as though nothing were wrong. She murmured something at me in the Vanyan tongue, and I caught the word, "Where?"

She was indicating the map. I signaled to her to get down out of sight. As she failed to comprehend, I put my hand on her back and gently pressed her down beside me. Suddenly, she understood, and in the next moment she was curled up on the seat beside me like a contented kitten. It was all I could do to concentrate on my driving, and there was no time to remove my coat to cover her with it.

But why should she want to know where I was going? Furthermore, she did not seem to be overly concerned about her father and her brother, back there at the Town House. Then the thought struck me that the Vanyans, after all, might have taken certain precautions prior to coming to the city. Did they have an emergency plan of action in case of danger? Why should Kria be so interested in a city map?

Vague apprehensions assailed me. Were the witch-baiters right, then? Were these beings from the stars truly supermen who merely presented a gentle face to conceal their real proportions and abilities? Would this attack upon them cause them to reveal their true natures, their hidden weapons and powers, making us seem suddenly like so much captured livestock?

"That's for the comic books!" I muttered, angrily, and pressed the accelerator to the floorboards.

And now, at last, I discerned a red light in my rear vision mirror and heard the blood-chilling sound of a police siren. Sooner or later, it had to happen.

But Melrose was close, which meant that the City College was within reach. I took a chance, intending to explain later to the authorities. There were racing headlights following that police car, and I knew what that meant, Reporters, mobs, violence.

I swung around behind the college and skidded to a stop. In an instant, I was out of the car, leading Kria toward the darkened buildings. There was a trap door under the bushes nearby. It led into the tunnels that carried the steam and water pipes. I doubted that they'd think of looking there.

I found what I was looking for, and we climbed down into the dark passage. I lit a match and we duck-walked along next to the insulated steam pipes, putting a good distance between us and the trap door. When I came to three branch tunnels I relaxed, momentarily, and we caught our breaths. And I stopped lighting matches. Retinal fatigue came in handy to keep reminding me of Kria and how she looked, crouching there beside me like some idealized version of the primordial she.

Through it all she had remained as calm and unworried as a clam. I even began to wonder if her species were possessed of an instinct of self-preservation. It was at such times that I sensed the alienness of her, for all her obvious and natural attractions.

She put her hand on my arm, trustingly, waiting. I had a distinct feeling it was she who was waiting for certain foreseeable developments of her own imagining—not I. And I wondered who was leading whom. All I could do was wait for the dust to settle and then take her to a more suitable hiding place.

Suddenly, the small lights went on in the tunnel, and I knew what that meant. The police had found the watchman, and he had led them to the boiler room, which gave access to the tunnels. We could hear the pipes clanking. They were coming for us.

For one fleeting moment I considered what might happen to my reputation as a college professor, caught in a tunnel with a stark naked Vanyan woman—and just at the beginning of the school year. But then I thought of graver things. The primordial reasoning that was behind all of this confusion and turmoil. Apes chasing lost angels. A rotten egg splattered across an original Michelangelo. A bowling alley terminating at an altar.

It all made as much sense, this terrestrial reaction to the Vanyan visitation. There was an aspect to finality to my situation—like bridges burned behind one. Irretrievably.

Kria grasped my arm and spoke one of the few English words she had mastered. "Up!" she exclaimed, urgently.

I looked into her eyes, or tried to. In the illumination offered by the lights of the tunnel I observed her more plainly than I had before. There was something of finality in that, too. Possessiveness. The threads of our years had come together, somehow. From here on out I had the feeling that those two threads would be woven together.

"Up!" exclaimed Kria, tugging at me. "Out!" Something in her eyes told me that she had reasons for getting out of the tunnel which might surprise me.

I moved, leading her back toward the trap door we had entered. When we came out under the bushes we could see about fifty men running about the campus. Kria tugged at my arm, trying to lead me out into the open, right into the center of the campus, where everyone would see us.

"Follow!" she commanded, in her own tongue.

"Are you crazy!" I blurted out, in English, and I held back.

But suddenly she pointed to the sky.

Even before I saw it, I knew what to look for. I might have known it. The Vanyans were prepared for an emergency, and their powers were beyond us. Kria had been en rapport, somehow, with her people. They knew exactly where she was.

The disc settled slowly, almost majestically, toward the campus. It showed no lights. It was merely a lesser darkness in the night sky, dully reflecting the city lights. If Kria had not pointed it out to me, I'd not have seen it until it landed. The men running about the college buildings looking for us did not see it.

We began to run, then, out into the open. Even before we reached the general area in which the disc was going to land, our pursuers spotted us. Somehow, a white, naked body shows up well in the night when it is running across green grass, with or without a bewildered college professor in tow.

"There she is!" came an exultant shout.

"There they both are!"

"Get 'em, men!"

The mob began to close in. But suddenly they all came to a standstill as the disc lowered abruptly into view and then quietly landed. Its great port lights glared into sudden brilliance and a door opened. A Vanyan guard appeared with the familiar little bird-cage and glowing bulb which had been described as a paralysis weapon. I guess it was, because the crowd did not move or cry out.

Kria and I went up the ramp and into the Vanyan ship without molestation. The ramp folded inward, the door closed, and the floor almost buckled my knees as we rose into the sky.

MY FIRST impressions of the flying disc were necessarily blurred because of the rapid maneuverings which were forced upon the pilot in this tense situation. I had an impression that they were trying to rescue Drganu and Sanal, which they did, because I saw them later. Long afterward, I gathered the story that the two had simply surrendered to the crowd. The police had interfered and managed to place them in protective custody. Then the Vanyans had come with their paralysis weapons and rescued them.

But this was only the beginning of trouble. The anti-Vanyan revolt was world wide. I soon perceived that we were being followed as we raced outward into space. And the only thing that could follow a flying disc was another flying disc. Ergo, my own kind had either succeeded in building facsimiles of them by now, or they had captured a few Vanyan vessels.

Their one weak point, I gathered, was a human limitation in regard to acceleration. As I struggled to keep my consciousness, I caught a blurred view of Drganu and Sanal bending over me. Beyond them I saw a weird, three-dimensional miniature of space behind us. There was the vast globe of Earth, pale lavender in the moonlight, and silhouetted against it were half a dozen pursuing discs. I knew what the problem was. To outdistance the pursuers would be to kill me with the pressure of acceleration which only they seemed to be able to stand. The Vanyans were different, after all. They were superhuman.

I stared back at Drganu and Sanal, like an animal caught in a trap. The terrible pressure of acceleration was causing their facial contours to sag into grotesque caricatures of men, thus accentuating the impression in my wavering mind that they were monsters in human form. I think I screamed at them and told them to go away.

Then later I thought: They could destroy the others, but they *** don't wish to. They are benevolent. It was not they who started the trouble. They intelligently recognized this momentary uprising as something that would soon be quelled by established governmental agencies.

But delirium twisted my thoughts again, and I told myself that they were very, very clever —not wishing to spoil their camouflage of benevolence. It was not yet time for the blow they were preparing. With phlegmatic calm they were sidestepping the insult and fiendishly biding their time.

After that, I passed out. But I dreamed of Kria. I saw her smiling face. I saw her naked body, afar, running toward me across an infinite plain of black ebony, arms stretched out in yearning. She wanted me. I think the thought sustained my life's forces under the brutal pressure of acceleration that finally caused the pursuers to give up the chase. Or it might have been the injections they gave me. Or both.

But I was in love with Kria. It was a fact which I accepted without questioning why.

The Vanyans brought me to Mars at her request, because she thought I would be in danger back on Earth. As it developed, the danger to myself was not great. I might have been arrested for questioning and then released.

But that is how I came to Mars and took up residence there—until certain governmental forces from Earth caught up with me. . . .

THE rest of you came there later. I was the first to behold the new planet. And then I knew, with a certainty, that the Vanyans were truly benevolent. They were a god race which could have destroyed us as a mere whim, if it chose to do so. They were great enough in their science and intelligence to handle us without subterfuge. They was no necessity of laying groundwork for conquest. That could have been accomplished at any time.

They came to that starved out world and filled it with titanic stresses, awakening within its core the ancient fires and the sustaining forces of nature. Long before they landed, earthquakes were caused to rage through the ancient crust, raising whole new mountain chains which were designed to catch the moisture which they intended to provide for the Martian skies, to catch it and pour it through rejuvenated soil into fresh new rivers, which led into lakes, which poured into embryonic seas, thus establishing the cycle of evaporation and return.

They bored swiftly into the planet's depths and installed their gravitation equipment, capturing the globe in a restrengthened spherical vortex of sub-electronic fields of force which comprised mass attraction—and thus a stabilized atmosphere was assured. Their great engines of power operated electro-chemical plants designed to release oxygen from the soil. They established miniature suns in orbits between Deimos and Phobos, providing additional light and warmth.

All their stupendous technology was not dedicated to necessity alone, but to the aesthetic sense, as well. A harsh, soulless race might have been content to eke out an existence in barren deserts under skies that were unrelieved by the changing phenomena of nature, but not the Vanyans. Their eyes were not blind to the beauty of the rainbow and the splendor of cloud-framed sunsets. Their ears were not deaf to the patter of rain and the crash of thunder. They required the aesthetic setting of broken horizons, of verdure clad hills and the misted plumes of distant waterfalls, the cool presence of placid lakes, the crashing spray of an ocean's surf—and the song of birds. That was one of the first things they wanted of us. A shipment of live songbirds.

Those scare-mongers who were behind the anti-Vanyan uprising should have thought of that. Their bogeyman from space asks not for unconditional surrender. He requests a shipment of songbirds. And later, sheep, cattle— and honeybees. A very sinister race, indeed!

There are only about fifty thousand Vanyans, or rather, there were about that many; yet their city covered almost one hundred square miles. It was a city that offered the ultimate in technological efficiency and yet succeeded in not being a city at all. The only stationary buildings were the Palace of the Council, the Central Research Laboratory, a few specialized factories and the oxygen plants. There were no shopping centers, no restaurants or amusement centers—not even colleges in the architectural sense. Each Vanyan household was a self-contained unit which could fly, when desired. According to individual tastes, each household "sky island" could land where its owners pleased—beside a lake, at the ocean's shore, on a mountain top, or in some secluded valley. If it became necessary for one member of the household to travel to another location, he could do so by means of teleportation, which to the Vanyans was as simple a matter as dialing the desired call frequency of one's destination. A Vanyan citizen could visit a spot a hundred miles distant and return home all within one minute, if he chose to do so. To attend concerts or attend to business it was not necessary to come to "town." As we see events via television they indulged in the cultural life by means of tri-dimensional visi-sonic apparatus. By means of remote controlled robot extensions they could even sign papers at a distance.

Education was another matter. Every mature Vanyan was a third order teacher. A third order teacher conveyed knowledge. Leisure was such that every younger Vanyan could find a teacher of the third order and acquire knowledge at will. Motivation was such that the students learned on the basis of personal volition. There was no institute of third order learning, but knowledge was dispensed with an underlying pattern of prescribed order—on the unit system. Certain broad units of knowledge were delineated for mastery. When the student could demonstrate a satisfactory accumulation of knowledge, he sought out those second order teachers who actually made it a life's work to guide the minds of others. A second order teacher was on the social level of our most prominent medical specialists. He taught intelligence, or developed it. The application of knowledge, and the evaluation of it.

It was only the first order teacher who lived in a structure designed for mental instruction. There were many such "sky islands" dedicated to first order education. A first order Master dedicated his life to the awakening of wisdom in his advanced pupils. He could take them to a secluded spot on the planet and spend weeks there, if he chose, without interruption. Sometimes there were no lectures at all, nor any discussions. There was only an exemplary way of life—a grasping of concepts for which there was no word ideation possible. Wisdom could not be taught, actually. It was acquired through the method of exposure to higher wisdom.

Thus—new Mars, a Shangri La surpassing all others. . . .

MY FIRST instruction was in language. And my charming third order teacher was none other than Kria, herself. Thanks to an extensive academic background in philology and a highly sensitive "Sprachgefühl," or language feeling, I was able to find my way gradually through the intricacies of a language that had no limitation on the number of its grammatical cases or its types of declensions. Once one mastered the key to the underlying basic language of inflections, original composition of the whole morphology was possible, and in each case the listener would be able to under-stand and appreciate the method of expression. Here was a place where the true poet was envied, indeed! As a philologist I could digress at great length on this subject, but that would lie beyond the scope of my objectives here.

The most eloquent commentary I can make in regard to the Vanyan language is that its poetry could never be translated. An attempt at translation would be like the crash of a tree in a forest where there were no ears to hear. I have read poems or heard songs written in three different ways, all with the same words, the same rhyme and meter, but with subtle changes in inflections or declensions which brought about increasing intensities of meaning, or sometimes a different meaning entirely, often conveying a concept not attainable through words alone. Thus far can description go, but no farther.

Weeks passed, and months passed, while I lived and moved about in a world of dreams more poignantly vivid than any reality which my own world could have offered. News trickled through, from time to time, regarding events on Earth. I was even aware that Earthmen had come to Mars, that some of them were even residents there, on a temporary basis, for technical reasons. But I never saw them during the first few months of my sojourn. I succumbed to the overwhelming charm of this synthetic little world, to the point of irresponsibility. There was something there waiting for me to absorb—wordless, indescribable. I felt its slow development in me without being able to describe it other than to say that, perhaps, I was becoming, in fact, a Vanyan.

At the end of the fifth month, I was ready to really have a talk with Kria. My basic vocabulary and mastery of the inflection key enabled me to compose new meanings and thus get my point across. There were many things I wanted to know. There was much that I had to say—to her alone. By this time I was an established member of Sanal's household, and many mysteries had presented themselves to me which demanded an explanation. For example, so far I had not seen one Vanyan child . . . Nor a very old man or woman.

At my request, they had moved their "sky island" into a picturesque valley which was just over the hill from the plain of Tharsis, on which stood the permanent center of the Vanyan civilization. From the hilltops you could see the marble-hued towers of the Palace of the Council and the simpler lines of the Central Research Laboratory, in addition to dozens of the flying discs which were always on hand. Beyond lay the shimmering expanse of the new Sea of Tharsis, and along its shores were atmosphere plants, re-leasing oxygen from the soil and augmenting the processes of evaporation from the sea.

We had taken a walk to see the sunset, and naturally we turned our steps toward my favorite spot, at the foot of a waterfall, by a beautiful pool, from which point of vantage we could look out upon the plain and the sea. There were young trees about us, but the chief item of vegetation was a vine that grew everywhere, rapidly sheltering the soil and conserving it against erosion from the frequent and sudden showers. One other type of vine bore large, white blossoms at this time of the Martian year. It grew up the cliffside on either side of the waterfall, making of the whole place an area of pristine beauty, a place for meditation and, I knew, love-making.

Kria wore the traditional Vanyan veil sarong, which hardly concealed her beautiful form, and a gentle wind from the sea pressed it enhancingly against her. As for my own apparel, I had adopted the dress of Vanyan men, which consisted of little more than a short, split skirt and the equivalent of a G-string, plus sandals. Drganu had presented me with a jeweled medallion which I wore around my neck. It distinguished me as a guest of honor living under the protection of the house of Sanal. A simple series of exercises had helped me to put muscle tone back into my physique so that now I was not ashamed to match contours with any of the Vanyans. Even in outward appearance I was getting to be like them.

A description of this setting would not be complete without mention of the sleth, a three foot, silvery globe that accompanied us, floating through the air and guided by a small box of controls and electronic gear attached to my waist. The Vanyans were addicted to moods as many Earthmen are to a graceful indulgence in alcoholics. They could not be happy for very long without music. The sleth was a floating portable radio, of sorts, but which filled the surrounding area with three-dimensional music. The symphonic notes seemed to emanate from everywhere, until you felt you were a part of them. After due adjustment to the effects of a sleth, you ceased hearing the music, and there was only the mood—like a subtle addition to one's personality. It was like feeling "high," but infinitely refined in its subtleties.

I did not know, as yet, that the sleth had other functions. . . . At which time, I suppose, it might be called a sleeth, or a slith, depending on the shades of meaning which were applicable in relation to its activities. . . .

"Kria," I said, abruptly, after a considerable period of silence during which we had watched the distant natural sun sink out of sight and observed the rise of a synthetic, nearer sun, "why are there no children or old people here?"

She answered me with silence. I looked at her and found her eyes surveying me with an expression which could only be interpreted as sorrow—or perhaps wistfulness.

Finally, she said—and some-what hesitantly, I thought—"Perhaps it is time to tell you more about my race. Sooner or later, you would have to know. . . ."

Which remark left me waiting for her to continue, I waited.

"We are immortals." "You—what!" "There is no death unless it is willed. Of course—violent destruction—"

"But—to live forever—how is that possible! No, skip that. Tell me this. How old are you—really?"

"By Earth years, I am as young as you."

"Then—not long ago you were a child. . . ."

Again, the wistfulness. "I was—" She hesitated, groping for words. "Yes. Yes, I was a child."

"Then why don't I see any children of a newer generation?" "We are immortals. New—that is, an increase in the population is a serious thing. There is a very strict control on that."

"You mean birth control."

"Well, yes. . . . You see, when someone chooses to die, another Vanyan can come into being. During this important period of our transference to a new world, there is no time for such considerations. Later, when things have become quite well established, the oldest philosophers will go and make way for the youngsters again."

"Oh. But you know, the same relationship does not seem to exist here between man and woman as it does on Earth. You're all quite indifferent to each others' attractions, just like so many brothers and sisters. Don't any of you ever fall in love?"

The sleth, as though responding to our moods, rose to a crescendo with its music, then faded to a whispering lament that was barely audible above the roar of the waterfall.

Kria grasped my hand, tightly. "There is love," she said, quickly.

"So? In that case, what do lovers do?" I was being deliberately pointed in my remarks. I held on to her hand, not willing to let it go.

We were playing breathtaking games with our eyes. It was a sort of duel, and I must have broken through her guard.

"Oh Ray!" she suddenly cried out. And she was in my arms. I crushed her to me and kissed her, and she responded with all the feverish thirst for love that had been pent up within myself.

"Kria," I whispered to her, when I could catch my breath, "didn't you know this was happening?"

"Yes, yes! I did!" she exclaimed. And with that, she pushed away from me. There were no tears in her eyes, but there should have been, from the looks of her.

I have mentioned before that there was much to be seen in Kria's eyes that was a fascinating mystery —something vast, terrifying and unutterably beautiful, like an awareness of a pitiful cry that wants to reach you but can't, as though the gods were trapped in a bottle at the bottom of some lost ocean and were crying out, unheard. This is what I saw in her eyes now. It was a distant pleading that was forbidden expression.

"Kria, darling!" I blurted out, taking her into my arms again. "What is it?"

She only sought my lips and clung to me in unutterable desperation. Then at last she said, "There are things I should tell you—yet I can't. But I love you!"

Love was a sword that had cut many a Gordian knot cleanly through. The immortal opening lines of Oscar Wilde's Panthea came to me, accompanied by indescribable music from the sleth:

Nay, let us walk from fire unto fire,
From passionate pain to deadlier delight,-
I am too young to live without desire,
Too young art thou to waste this summer night
Asking those idle questions which of old
Man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told.

I picked her up in my arms and carried her over to a large, flat rock next to the pool. She lay there silently until I lay her down on the rock and kneeled there looking down at her.

Then she said, "Something I should tell you cannot be told, but someday—"

I kissed her. "Someday you mean everything will be straightened out?"

"Yes! Oh Ray, I swear it!" She reached out for me. . . .

For sweet, to feel is better than to know, And wisdom is a childless heritage, One pulse of passion-youth's first fiery glow,- Are worth the hoarded proverbs of the sage: Vex not thy soul with dead philosophy, Have we not lips to kiss with, hearts to love, and eyes to see!*

*Panthea, second verse—Ed.

These lines were but a mild reflection of what the ingenious sleth was singing to us on high, as pale Deimos rose to face the diminutive Vanyan sun across the Sea of Tharsis and I lay beside my love.

SUDDENLY, the sleth became silent, and Kria suddenly tensed, staring up at it. She sat up quickly, pushing herself away from me, straightening her hair.

"Kria!" came the voice of Sanal, her father.

When I looked up at the sleth I saw there his face looking down upon us. He was not angered, nor was he smiling his blessing upon us. He was sad.

"Come home, you two. . . ."

Before we could argue about it, his face disappeared. And the sleth was silent It hovered, waiting for us to leave.

I looked at Kria, embarrassed and a trifle piqued. "Do you mean to say that the sleth is also a visiscope?"

She nodded. "It's all right," she answered, taking my hand and getting up. "It was all coming to this. It will be interesting to hear what Sanal has to say."

When we came "home," just over the hill, both Sanal and Drganu were waiting for us. They had a way of studying us both that angered me. It was like prying into a private world that belonged to only the two of us.

"So you have seen us," I said, hotly. "It's just as well. I'm going to marry Kria. . . ."

An inane sort of puppy defense, but it was all I could think of at the moment.

"Come in," said Sanal. "I want to talk to you." Which was obvious.

We all went inside.

Sanal sat down and studied us a long time again before he spoke. "You realize, of course," he said, "that this is the first case of personal attraction between Earthman and Vanyan. Have you considered the possible consequences?"

Since the question was directed at me, I answered, "There are always consequences. We are in love. The consequence is—we want to get married."

"I know. I know. But you are not aware of the facts in regard to our race. . . ."

I stood up, impatient, fists suddenly clenched. "Then let me in on it!" I blurted out. "What's the big secret? Do you go into chrysalis at fifty and turn into bug-eyed monsters!"

"Raymond!" admonished Kria. She sounded like my wife already, but I liked it.

"On the contrary," replied Sanal, gravely, "you might say that our hidden secret contains the reverse of an unhappy ending. I only wish to warn you that we do possess a racial secret, and that you must never ask us whence we really came, for if we told you the truth it might spoil your marriage with Kria—yet if you waited long enough there would be no need for telling you anything, because the whole thing will right itself, in time."

This was the reverse of the Lohengrin theme. I looked into Kria's eyes, wondering if there were a swan song stored within her that I might have to listen to at a later date.

"Kria," I asked her, "for our sake I'd like to have you answer just one question. Would you call your marriage to me a deception?"

Drganu and Sanal exchanged serious glances, then looked at Kria.

"Sanal has warned you," she answered. "The end result of our marriage will be perhaps even more than you have wished for. Therefore, I see no deception."

"You know," I said to the three of them, "I think we're going around in circles. Kria and I want to be married."

Drganu and Sanal smiled and got to their feet. Kria gave a little cry and ran to me. My arm went around her, and Sanal placed his hand on my shoulder.

"Congratulations!" he said, forgetting for the moment the Earthly custom of shaking hands.

I grasped his hand and shook it, and Drganu offered me his. I gladly accepted them as my new "in-laws."

"Regarding a home for you," said Sanal, "we will have to apply to the Council for that. Or did you have in mind taking up residence hack on Earth again?"

"Well, I guess I can't stay on Mars too long without renouncing my citizenship, so perhaps Kiln and I had better plan on going to Earth—after we are married."

The three Vanyans stared at each other.

"But—" said Kria, "darling, we are married!"

I think I gaped at her. "You see," said Drganu, "in our civilization the graver the decision one makes, such as this one you two have made, the closer it is attached to honor. If the decision is sacred, so is the honor that seals the bargain. Ceremony would merely be a mockery of that which words should not attempt to express."

"Of course I will see to it that this is registered with the Council," said Sanal.

"Wait a minute!" I interrupted them. "If I ever want to take Kria back to my own world and present her as my wife, I'll have to satisfy the requirements of our own laws. There has to be a legal ceremony and a proper registration of this."

"That might be arranged," said Sanal. "Already certain government officials from various countries of Earth have set up what you call 'consular' offices here, for the purpose of legalizing Vanyan visits to Earth and keeping track of Earth citizens on Mars. You might—"

"Come to think of it, I really have been out of touch with my own world. If such procedures have been established here already, I'm staying here illegally. I'd better make contact with the United States consul, if there is one here, and reinstate myself as a citizen. Then at the same time I can look into the matter of a wedding."

DRGANU accompanied Kria and me to the U. S. Consul's office in the Palace of the Council. The three of us entered the office laughing over some little joke of Kria's, all of us conversing rapidly in the Vanyan tongue. The consul looked up at us and seemed to suppress a frown. He was a middle-aged man, somewhat overweight, of a reddish complexion that reminded me of high blood-pressure —and he was obviously not fond of this job which removed him to such a great distance from baseball, bars and Bromos. Seated next to him, however, was another type of Earthman. I saw plainclothesman or F.B.I. written all over him. Tall, gaunt, pale of complexion, with a prominent if aquiline jaw and with a legal file cached away behind each of his pale, penetrating blue eyes. Both men had been conversing but as we entered they fell silent and surveyed us as though we were Indians coming off the Reservation with a water rights complaint.

They sat there waiting for us to speak, so I began. "I am a United States citizen," I said. "My name is—"

"Since when?" interrupted the Consul.

That stopped me, but I saw a light began to glimmer in the narrowing eyes of his companion.

"We have no record of a Vanyan becoming a citizen—"

It was then I realized that I should have renovated my Earthman clothes. I was dressed as a Vanyan, or undressed like one, and I had come into the office speaking the Vanyan tongue with what to them must have been perfect fluency.

"Wait a minute," said the plainclothesman. "That English is too good. Who are you?"

"I am Raymond Sanders, of Los Angeles, California."

The Consul tore his eyes from Kria long enough to raise his brows at me. The plainclothesman snapped to attention.

"Ye gods!" he exclaimed. "I just got here and my job's done! I came here to trace you."

"Why?" I said.

"You're a U. S. citizen. You disappeared. The story was that the Vanyans kidnapped you."

I laughed. "On the contrary, they sort of rescued me during the anti-Vanyan uprising. I have been living in a Vanyan household ever since, and now I want to get married. This is Kria, my fiancee. And this is her brother, Drganu."

The Consul half rose to his feet. "You what!"

"I said we want to get married. I want to know how to legalize it according to Stateside laws—or Earthside laws, to coin a new term."

"But—!" The Consul was apparently at a loss for words.

"Hold it!" exclaimed the plainclothesman. He looked us over carefully, and I almost saw cogs whirling swiftly in his brain. "Could you excuse us for a few moments?"

Drganu and I and Kria stepped outside into the great halls of the Palace, proper.

"Your world is very complicated," remarked Kria, holding onto my arm.

"It seems to tie itself up and get strangled in its own complexities," put in Drganu.

I could have given them a lecture on the subject, but I was busy wondering what was going on in the Consul's office. Something bothered me, vaguely, like a dark premonition, but I soon threw the feeling off, embracing the simpler and cleaner philosophy of the Vanyan. Honor and idealism were impregnable fortresses. I had only to stick to my guns, without subterfuge, and the battle would be won.

Within three minutes, the Consul, himself, appeared at the door of his office. His attitude had changed remarkably. He seemed to be vitally interested in our case. With a pleasant smile, he ushered us back in. The plainclothesman merely sat where he had been before. There was a somewhat baleful expression on his face which I did not like.

"I think," said the Consul, "that everything can be straightened out. First we'll legalize your residence here and then we'll get down to the business of the marriage. . . ."

We were married by the Consul next day, after I had received a provisional passport, a Vanyan resident's visa and a Vanyan alien's carnet of identification. Drganu was best man, Sanal gave the bride away, and Mr. Motter, who turned out to be a special U. S. agent attached to the United Nations in some way, was a witness. The legalization of our marriage was almost overwhelming.

Then they told me about the string that was attached to the whole business. Or rather, Mr. Motter did. And it wasn't so much a string as a ship's hawser.

He asked to see me privately and the Consul gave us his office. When we were alone he came up to me and shook my hand gravely.

"Congratulations," he said.

"Thanks," I answered, "but you don't seem to be referring to the obvious."

"I'm not. I'm referring to your unique position to be of great service to your country and to your native world."

"Oh, oh."

"Sit down. I want to talk to you about that."

I needed to sit down, all right. And I was also trying to contain my temper. If what I was thinking was true—

"You have resided on Mars longer than any other Earthman," he began, with enviable smoothness. "You are also a trained linguist and have evidently mastered the Vanyan tongue as well as come to understand their way of life. By the medallion you were wearing yesterday I see that you have been accepted as a member of a Vanyan household. And now this marriage between you and a Vanyan woman completes the picture."

"What picture?"

He saw my belligerence but he was prepared to take that in stride, too. These special agents didn't acquire their posts for nothing. That was often the difference between them and the usual type of character we have representing us abroad. That's what special agents were for, I reasoned. They were fill-ins for places where the chips were down and the going was rough.

"Why did you voluntarily seek a U. S. Consul here on Mars and attempt to reestablish yourself as a citizen of the United States of America?" he asked me.

I shrugged. "Habit. Gregarious instinct. The need for a sense of identity, I guess. I have to be some kind of a citizen. I don't prefer to be a man without a country."

He impaled me with a stare. "Is that all your U. S. citizenship means to you?"

"Look! I don't duck draft boards. I'm just as good a citizen as anybody else."

"I know. And you've been a taxpayer, too. But, as a professor attached to the American educational system don't you think you should adhere to a more clearly delineated patriotic policy?"

"I'll put it this way. Patriotism is like religion. It's kind of personal. When Pearl Harbor happened—"

"I know. I know. You volunteered. Well that wasn't nearly as important as what you can do now. Then a people were in danger, as well as cherished ideologies. But now the entire Earth is in danger, and it hasn't much to do with ideologies, unless you could tack an &&-ism&& onto the word, Freedom."

"If I picked a label for your speech I'd call it 'razzamataz.'"

"Please don't be facetious, Sanders. If you don't believe what I tell you, take it on authority. While you've been dreaming around the hill country with your fiancee, things have been happening."

"Such as?"

"So damn much benevolence from the Vanyans that we can already see the pattern behind it all. It's a gigantic booby trap."

"I'm still listening." I really was. I had only gotten married. I hadn't gone deaf. If the Vanyans really were up to something, which I still doubted, well—again there was instinct. Preservation of my own kind. I wanted to know what the Government claimed to know, and here was my chance.

"Consider all the weapons and technological gadgets they've given us. Suppose I told you that they all have a common denominator in the form of a remote control unit? True, those controls are supposed to be for our own use—" He leaned forward to drive his point home. "But there's nothing we can see to prevent them from controlling everything we've got on Earth—from up here, on Mars."

I sat there and studied him, trying to be calm and collected in the middle of incipient apoplexy.

"You have no proof of that possibility," I stated, finally.

"Would you like to prove that we're all wrong?"

That was a clever way of putting it. I couldn't turn my country down—or the whole Earth, my own native planet. On the other hand, I liked the Vanyans tremendously. Here was a chance to prove them villains or friends, and I could hope to prove the latter.

"In other words, you'd like to deputize me as an agent."

"Exactly. You would be representing the Government of the United States—the O.S.S., to be exact—as well as the United Nations."

"What is it, specifically, that you want me to do?"

"Remain here in residence on the pretext of taking your honeymoon here. But get around and see if you can find us a clue to their real intentions. Actually, the ideal discovery would be the master switch for those remote controls."

"Ideal? It would mean interplanetary war."

"If that's in the cards, we naturally want to be in a position to strike the first blow."

"Uh huh. Well, I think you're wrong, but if you're right—I'll tell you."

Motter got to his feet with a wan smile on his face. Again he extended his hand. "I guess you're all right, Sanders," he said. "And that's why I say—congratulations."

"Yeah."

I did not feel too happy. I was a spy against my wife's people. Nice. . . .

SO IT was that Kria and I started taking our honeymoon on Mars. I had double reasons for traveling, so by the authority of the Council we were issued a small version of the interstellar type disc, and we managed to get around. Kria was still my third order teacher, and as I had expressed a sudden interest in Vanyan technology she personally escorted me to various strategic spots.

There were no security regulations covering atmospheric plants, or their atomic power stations. I even went through Research Center and Communications—interplanetary communications. I studied their methods of production, learned the intricacies of their weapons.

But there was no master switch—so far. I made weekly reports to Motter, and he was disappointed at my lack of concrete progress. I was not. But I kept my eyes open, as directed.

One day in Sanal's house I was introduced to an important Vanyan—a first order Master teacher by the name of Ralsyan. He was supposed to be centuries old but he looked about sixty—a healthy sixty.

He was very much impressed with my mastery of the Vanyan language and invited me to witness a tour of first order students under his guidance. Kria and I went along in his "sky island" school, in the company of about twenty Vanyans who were almost of Sanal's age. And one night in a lonely region of Mars I was permitted to stroll with Ralsyan alone in the desert and converse with him.

"Perhaps you can tell me something that I have long hesitated to ask anyone else—even Kria, my own wife," I said to him. "You are a wiseman and can consider certain vital questions in the absolute sense."

"I should be glad to help you if I can," he answered.

"All right. Then tell me this. Why are you Vanyans so willing to give us Earthmen all your technological secrets—your method of space flight, your weapons—everything? You don't even seem to be much concerned about defense against the possibility of attack. After all, your total number is infinitesimal compared with the population of my own planet. Our industrial capacity is tremendous in comparison with yours. In another couple of years—"

He laid his hand on my arm and smiled. "Now that you have acquired a knowledge of our tongue, perhaps I can explain it to you. I know exactly what you mean, of course, and as a Vanyan I appreciate your concern."

We walked on across the sands in the light of Phobos and one artificial sun satellite. Earth stood out in the sky like the biblical Star of the East.

"You see, as immortals we abhor the thought of death by killing more than anything else. To lose one Vanyan life would be cataclysmic to us. In cases where wisdom has been obtained—which lies beyond knowledge and mere intelligence—the loss would be very great, indeed. So we have only one form of protection against violence from our neighbors. It is the firm knowledge that they will not attack us."

He held up his hand as I was about to interrupt, and went on. "The cause of war is a difference in potentials, which causes discontentment and suspicion. We have attempted to reduce the difference in potential to zero, by making our neighbors as strong as us. We could not tolerate the idea of maintaining constant defenses against possible attack. We can only know that our neighbor has good intentions when he is able to attack and does not. Then we can be assured we are at peace."

"But—that's leaving yourselves wide open!"

"Perhaps—"

"It doesn't make sense. You tell me you abhor the idea of death by violence, yet you take a mad gamble by giving us all your weapons, and we can out-produce you a million to one!"

He shrugged. "There is the parting line between mere rationality and wisdom. You must wait until you acquire wisdom."

"I don't know about that. The way I see it, you people have no instinct of self-preservation at all.

"Ralsyan laughed. "If you only knew!" he exclaimed, cryptically.

There was the first dangerous remark I had heard. Here was the first hint of a hidden weapon. My ears felt like rabbit's ears. But how could I get him to let me know what he was hiding?

"I'd like to know," I said.

He patted my arm. "Some things cannot be told," he replied. "You will have to wait. Someday it may be revealed to you."

This harkened back to the cryptic remarks made by Sanal on the day I declared my intentions of marrying Kria. To say that I was assailed by a sense of frustration would be putting it mildly.

Now I was discontented and troubled. Could my Government be right, after all? Were the Vanyans wolves masquerading in sheep's clothing? —to use a cliche. But no. There was such a thing as sensing the intentions of another The Vanyans were intrinsically benevolent. I could judge them by my own, gentle Kria. I would have staked my life and gambled a world on the conviction that there was nothing deceitful or malignant in the Vanyan nature.

But how was I to prove this now?

"I have another question. You people are able to redesign any world to suit your own physiological needs—anywhere. If you value your lives so much, how come you haven't established yourselves on a more isolated planet? Why set up your civilization here so close to Earth and give us the means of reaching you through space?"

"That is related to the basic nature of our purpose in life," he answered. "Of what use is wisdom or knowledge if it cannot be applied? Happiness is derived from striving toward higher goals, and Man's goal is always knowledge and wisdom. But not wisdom in a vacuum. We have deliberately sought contact with a race that could use our help and guidance. It's the way we prefer to live, evaluating our accomplishments in relation to expanding achievement. Therefore you might say that Earth is a sort of catalytic agent to our endeavors. To live for ourselves alone would be anathema."

Here was almost an incomprehensible vista of benevolence, I gave up, for the time being. But I present this conversation as further evidence that the Vanyans were as close to being gods as it is possible to be in mortal life. Study it well, and remember—Earth stabbed them in the back. YOU destroyed them!

A FEW days later, Kria and I had the intention of going "over the hill" again to watch the sunset, by the waterfall. She was still in the sun-ray mist bath, or Vanyan version of "shower," when I called her, so I walked on ahead with her promise to meet me there soon. I did not bring along the sleth as on previous occasions because my mind was troubled. I was even wondering how I might question Kria about her people without arousing her suspicions, yet I was angered by the thought that this cloak and dagger intrigue had entered the picture in the first place.

I had no sooner arrived at my favorite spot near the pool below the waterfall than I discerned the lone figure of a man ascending the slope of the hills from the direction of the Palace of the Council Long before he arrived at the pool I knew it was Motter, Earth's special agent, who had actually been masquerading as the U. S Vice-Consul on Mars.

When he came within earshot he said, "I thought I'd come up here to take a look at the sunset and the sunrise. It's the only place I know of where you can watch both simultaneously."

"And you came to get another report," I told him.

"A double sun phenomenon and a strategic report affecting the fate of a world, all in one spot," he grinned. "Can you blame me?"

He offered me a cigarette, but I refused it just as though I were a native Vanyan. He smoked and we both watched the true sun sink and the first artificial sun rise. Deimos and Phobos were both near the zenith, and Earth was a gleaming diamond in the darkening sky. After the real sun sank, the combined light of the two moons and the synthetic sun produced a brilliance comparable to full moonlight on Earth.

"Well?" he said, finally. "Anything new? You went on a little trip, I hear, with a first order Master—name of Ralsyan. He's big timber among the Vanyans and second only in the Council."

"You really get around, don't you?" I retorted.

He shrugged, waiting. His pale blue eyes watched me.

"Okay," I said, "I did pick up one thing." I told him in detail my entire conversation with Ralsyan that night on the desert. When I came to the cryptic part of it where Ralsyan said, "If you only knew!"—Motter raised his brows.

"So that's the way it stands," he remarked. "Well, maybe we were right, after all, Sanders. When I first gave you your assignment, you might have been chagrined to know that we are well prepared to meet the Vanyans in combat. Now, however, perhaps that fact will be of some consolation to you."

I remained silent, and finally I did ask him for a cigarette. I puffed on it rather furiously, more troubled than before.

"Look!" he added. "I'm going back to Earth for a few days. I think the home office would be interested in Master Ralsyan's remarks. In the meantime, you'd better concentrate a little harder on getting vital information. Don't forget that the Vanyans might be able to snuff us out with a flick of the wrist, and our only protection may be to strike without open provocation—unless you can show us that we're wrong."

Just then, he staggered and put a hand to his forehead. "What's the matter?" I asked him, "Damn headache," he said. "It's the planet. Some of us get saroche, you know. Altitude sickness. The atmosphere isn't quite built up to normal yet."

As I made no comment, he finally added, "Guess I'll go back now. This is getting me down."

I watched him in troubled silence as he staggered away in pain down the hill. But I did not watch him for long. Suddenly, I, too, staggered. But I did not hold my head. I was merely astounded by the sight of the sleth as it appeared abruptly out of thin air within ten feet of me.

On its surface I saw the angry face of Sanal, and I knew that he had been listening to our conversation. I also knew that the sleth could be rendered invisible.

"I made him go away," said Sanal. "Will you please return here at once?"

There was something in his tone and facial expression that intimated that I really had no choice in the matter.

"I'm coming," I told him. "I'd like to explain something to you."

"I think that is in order," he answered, coldly. "Come quickly."

As I walked back over the hill, trailed by a very silent sleth, I wondered if I should regret having taught Kria English in exchange for lessons in her own tongue. And at the same time I realized that she must know about all this, because for Sanal to know she would have had to serve as interpreter!

She was there with Drganu and Sanal when I arrived at the semitransparent "sky island" that was Sanas home. Again I thought from the looks of her she should have been crying. But then the dark thought assailed me that Vanyans had no tears. And superstition asked the question: Is the race human that cannot cry?

She lowered her eyes, refusing to look at me, and it irritated me. "Well?" I said to Sanal. "I'm here." It did not look like this was going to be an old fashioned evening at home with the forks. It had more of an air of the Inquisition.

"You are a spy against your wife's people," accused Sanal, in even tones. "Why?"

I told him. And I added, "I'm glad it's come up, Sanal. Let's get down to brass tacks. You know I want to help establish permanent peace between our worlds as much as you do. That's why I agreed to play it their way. I wanted proof that you were friends, not enemies. Now what's all this secret business? What are you hiding? For example, many scientific institutions on Earth have politely requested an exchange of biological information relative to comparative physiology between our races. In short, they would like to study an X-ray of a Vanyan. This you flatly refuse. If your structure is slightly different, why should that matter?"

Drganu appeared to tense, as though with anger, but he said nothing. Kria looked at me then and I saw the old mystery in her eyes. It was lost gods crying in a bottle at the bottom of the sea. A message from afar—untranslatable.

Sanal got up from his chair and paced the floor. "That is our business," he retorted, bluntly. "But it has nothing to do with the safety of your world. Nothing!"

"Then why won't you tell me!"

I almost yelled.

All three of them stared at me. There was a prolonged silence.

"Listen to me," said Sanal, at last. "If your world destroys us, it will lose more than we. You had better do something to prevent them from attacking."

"There's another point," I argued. "You have no instinct of self-preservation. During the anti-Vanyan uprising on Earth you were calm as clams. Now you face the prospect of total annihilation with the bland statement that we will lose more than you. Why!"

"Don't ask me that, because I won't tell you. But I want to tell you this. I shall be forced to bring all this to the attention of the Council immediately. However, to bring this out into the open would definitely increase interplanetary tension. We will handle the situation secretly, from our side, if you'll do a little counter-espionage for our side."

"What?"

"You became a spy for Earth merely to prove to your own people that we were friends. Now I want you to be a spy for us for a reason that is equally constructive. Please realize that our weapons are not the kind that cause death. We cannot tolerate killing. We could not harm you. But if you tell us Earth is ready to attack us, we might be able to prevent such an event—without bloodshed."

"But—what about your magnetic disintegration? That could snuff out a world!"

"Its end use is related to physical obstacles. We dig great shafts with it and level mountains or clear our path of meteors and other debris during space flight. The disintegrater is not intended for killing."

"But it could be used as such."

"We could not use it for that purpose, but you could."

All this time I was doing private thinking of my own. I actually wanted to see what Earth was up to. I wanted to talk to the authorities and see how bad the situation was getting. If I could pretend to spy for the Vanyans, it would keep their knowledge of my activities under cover. I could play the game both ways and with my own deck of cards.

"Suppose I go to Earth," I said, "and look things over for you. I'd have to have a logical excuse—some vital secret to bring back. Can you think of something that would appear to be a vital secret yet which wouldn't harm you if you revealed it to me?"

"Yes," said Drganu.

Kria and Sanal looked at hint wonderingly,

"One thing you did not examine very closely in your tour of our world was the sleth. I believe it would be valuable for Earthmen to be able to duplicate it, and you could offer the secret information —of which you only became aware tonight—that they can be made invisible."

"That's it!" exclaimed Sanal "I think we can give you plans for the sleth, but I'll have to take it up with Council. The sleth, you know, emits various types of rays which could be considered as weapons. Your own people would look upon it as a rare acquisition, indeed, which, in fact, it is."

So it was decided, I knew I was playing both ends against the middle, and I didn't like it. To have denied my espionage against them in the face of concrete evidence which they had picked up by means of the sleth would have really created an obstacle for our side. Actually, playing their game was subterfuge on my part, but my objectives were sincere both ways. And that was what made it so difficult.

I tried to make up with Kria, but she resisted me.

"There are things here more important than individuals," she said. "I love you, Raymond, but I am bound to things beyond myself."

She walked toward our room. I began to follow, but both Sanal and Drganu laid a hand on my arm. I might have shaken them off, but there was a strange expression in their eyes which detained me. "Among ourselves," said Sanal, "we are telepathic—and more. We feel the other's suffering. Your only recourse now is to prove to her that your marriage—can continue."

That did it. I flared up. "Where I come from. a man's wife is his property! It's a mutual situation, actually, but even one's own relatives have no right to interfere. I have certain prerogatives as her husband. If I want her to come to Earth with me, I can take her when the times comes—or she can stay for good!"

"You wish—to take her to Earth with you?"

"Not now. But I'm just saying, she's my wife, which is a very personal business."

"That is understandable, but among our kind one's world, one's society, the entire welfare of the race, is a personal business, too."

I went to "town" that night, via the teletransportation system, and stayed with the U.S. Consul. Motter had already left for Earth. . . .

I availed myself of the Consul's private liquor stock and asked him if he could fix me up with an Earthside suit of clothes. . . .
IN THREE days I was on my way to Earth with a set of Vanyan plans for the sleth. Inasmuch as I had a chance to go in a ship piloted by Vanyans rather than Earthmen, I was supplied with a little case containing shots of the serum they had given me before for the purpose of enabling me to withstand more than ordinary maximums of acceleration and deceleration. Which was to come in handy later.

In Washington Motter traced me down immediately and I told him about the sleth. To make it look good I added that although the sleth was strategic stuff I had used it as an excuse to come home and get a better briefing as to what was going on. Again—both sides against the middle. But it worked. He took me in or the inside.

The situation was worse than I had thought. Public opinion was in favor of action against the Vanyans. Aside from the United Nations, the U. S. Congress was in a dither. U. N. decisions were slow in coming, and the President was faced with the necessity of thinking in terms of U. S. safety, regardless of U. N. decisions. Moreover, there was a sort of tacit agreement that Mars fell outside the scope of U. N. machinery as far as aggression or war was concerned. In other words, the Vanyan Government was not a U. N. member and therefore Mars was a sitting duck for anyone who wanted to take a pot shot at it. In fact it seemed the U. N. was hoping somebody would make a move so as to take the hot potato out of their hands.

I was present in Washington at a secret hearing on the Vanyan situation—strictly from the point of view of our own government. As an authority on Vanyan affairs and in the Vanyan way of thinking and the Vanyan language, I was questioned from time to time, but in all cases I perceived that I was regarded as a minor cog in the machinery. At the last minute it was decided to bring in a U. N. representative and go over the situation.

Before my eyes I suddenly saw the definite plans for an attack taking shape, and I demanded the floor. Grudgingly, they yielded it.

"I have it on authority," I said, "that the Vanyans are incapable of killing. I suggest an alternative. Call them in and explain the grounds for your fears and tell them the only way the situation can be relieved is for them to move somewhere else."

This proposal was met with a general ripple of laughter. The U. N. representative, an English-man named Spaulding, answered me.

"As a citizen of a nation possessing a long history in colonization," he said, "I can appreciate the possibility of a man's going native and wishing to speak for the aliens among whom he has long resided. But there is something in legend pertaining to the dangers of eating the lotus too long. Pearl Harbor was a pointed example. I am afraid we shall have to reject your opinions as being distorted by your personal attachment to the Vanyans through your marriage with one of the heathens."

"An uncalled for insult," I retorted. "Rather than reverting to stereotyped form, I'll overlook the insult in consideration of its source."

The chairman of the committee rapped his gavel smartly and glared at me.

"But don't destroy the Vanyans," I warned. "You will be the losers—not they.'

"Is he nuts?" queried one committee member.

To make a long story short, it looked like an attack was imminent, and I could do nothing about it. I walked out, stamping my heels. Motter came out after me and took hold of my shoulder.

"Sanders. Watch yourself!"

I jerked loose and walked away from him. Which was all the provocation he needed to put a spy on my trail from there on out. I expected that and acted accordingly.

The fellow who was tailing me must have been confused when I went to the Lincoln Memorial and stood around like a tourist reading the Gettysburg Address and gaping at the moonlit Potomac. I was really having a mental wrestling match with two sets of emotions. There was my country and my world, which I felt was not in danger, in spite of official opinions on the subject. Yet as an assigned agent employed by the Government it was not for me to question. but to do, I suppose. Then on the other hand, there was my wife and her people, whom I loved and trusted. Moreover, idealism came into the picture in regard to Earth's human society. I felt that the Vanyans could benefit us beyond measure and that we were on the verge of killing the golden goose.

Question: Should I warn the Vanyans? And if the Government was right, after all? Well, take it from there and you'll know what was going through my head.

I read the Gettysburg Address about a dozen times, but that didn't help. Far out in the sky beyond the Potomac was a little red light that was Mars. It was gradually losing some of its red as the mighty machines of the Vanyans gradually released the oxygen from the soil and veiled the planet over with a thickening atmosphere. Science, knowledge, wisdom—benevolence. About to be destroyed.

Question: If Earth destroyed Mars and was actually wrong in doing so—then what? A terrible loss to Mankind. I was convinced that historical blunder was being made. Moreover, fifty thousand wonderful people were involved.

I spoke their language. I thought in their language. I lived in their thoughts. This was an extra soul, which fought with my own.

Decision was mercifully taken out of my hands when a Vanyan disc suddenly swooped down in front of the memorial building. I caught the sound of scurrying footsteps as the agent tailing me ducked for cover. I think they paralyzed him.

Two Vanyans walked up the steps of the memorial building and addressed me in their own tongue. I was wanted back on Mars immediately. One of them carried a paralysis generator. Since it was more graceful to enter their disc on my own feet, I went with them.

How did they find me? Now that it looked like the chips were going down they were showing more of their cards. Personal direction finders. Mine had been set up shortly after my arrival on Mars. The Vanyans were benevolent and wise, but they were also smart. At least they weren't lotus eaters, themselves, even if I might have been accused of being one by the U. N. representative.

We were not long under way when the fireworks started. A communication was received by my "escorts" to the effect that I was to be returned to Earth at once. But inasmuch as the directive issued from the Government of the United States, they did not obey it. They were under orders from their own government to bring me in.

The ship's commander came to me and asked me if I had any acceleration serum for myself. When I asked him why, he turned on his three dimensional visiscope and I pretty nearly fainted.

Following us was not a ship, or a squadron, but every flying disc we had—an unsuspected fleet of them. They were far astern but coming fast. I felt very sick as I realized what had happened. My capture alerted the attack. They could wait no longer. This was it.

"It wouldn't make much difference if I didn't have any serum, would it?" I said to the Vanyan officer. "You wouldn't wait around here for my sake, would you?"

He smiled. "We feel that you are partially a Vanyan now. You deserved that much consideration." Without further comment, he turned and walked toward the control room.

I knew what was coming, so I brought out my little case and gave myself a shot of serum. And just in time. As I flung myself onto a couch, the lights went out.

Inside my head. . . .

I drifted between unconsciousness and fitful dreaming—awful delirium, in which I saw atom bombs crashing into Mars and making tall mushrooms over the wreckage of my wonder world.

"The fools!" I remember shouting once, referring to the Vanyans. "They wouldn't put up defenses! They'll be obliterated!"

And of course I know I must have called out Kria's name many times. Destruction or no destruction, she was my wife. I loved her and I didn't want her to die. Now the veneer of civilization was peeling off down to primordial instinct

"To hell with everything!" I shouted. "They won't kill her!"

We maintained a good lead all the way, and in fact got ahead of the Earth fleet. When we swept in alongside the Palace of the Council at Tharsis, I knew I only had about an hour in which to act if anything was to be salvaged.

I went with the guards directly into a Vanyan Council. I saw the U. S. Consul and other Earth dignitaries scuttling out of the building in haste, entirely unmolested. Evidently the warning had come through. They were on their way to the Earth-built ships—ships that had been built on Earth by Earthmen, thanks to a Vanyan supply of a peculiar element that went into the makeup of the relay units controlling them. The Vanyans' own gift was being turned against them.

When I came into the Council Chamber I looked around for Sanal and Drganu and Kria. None of them was present. I dashed to the speakers' podium and yelled at all of them in Vanyan.

"Tell me the truth! Will you defend yourselves?"

A grave body of Masters looked back at me. They shook their heads negatively. Ralsyan, my one acquaintance among them, spoke.

"And it is your loss," he said. "Not ours."

"But you're not just going to sit here!" I shouted.

"It is too late to do aught else. We know what we sought now. The answer is: Earth is not ready for the higher way of life."

I shook my head, trying to clear it of dizziness. "All right! Then why was I recalled to Mars?"

"That you will discover in due time." "The time is due right now. Listen, I can't understand your attitude and I'm not waiting. . . ."

I ran to the nearest guard and took his paralysis generator from him. Before they could recover from their surprise, I paralyzed the entire assemblage. I did not have to leave the room in order to escape. There was a first rate teletransporter there and I knew Sanal's call number.

So it was that in less than half a minute I stood in Sanal's private "sky island" once more, paralyzer in hand. Sanal and Drganu and Kria were there. They had been watching me in the three-dimensional viewer, and now they were on their feet, forewarned. Kria hung her head and ran to her room—our room.

"I want all three of you to come with me," I said. "This idea of sitting idly by and waiting for the destruction is insane. Now you'll do it my way or I'll force you to do it!"

"We appreciate your concern for us," said Sanal, "but it's too late. However, in regard to your own safety—"

"To hell with that!" I blurted out in English. "Kria!" I ran to her room and took hold of her. In fact, I took her into my arms and hugged her. "Kria!" I exclaimed. "You know I love you. Why do you run from me? Come on! There is still time to go. I can't leave you here to die!"

Again there was that lost, far away look in her eyes and the longing in her to be able to cry. She suddenly gave in and her arms went around me, desperately. "Oh my love, I don't matter! It is you who must save yourself!" she gasped.

"Are you all crazy!" I exclaimed. "Come on! You're my wife and you're going with me!" I pulled her and she came, as though struggling against her own will, wanting to and wanting not to.

Sanal and Drganu blocked my path with a neutralizer of the paralysis weapon, making it ineffective. However, my two hundred pounds were not neutralized. I plunged through them. They were resilient, but they couldn't stand against me. I found their teletransporter and fought them while I dialed another frequency—the one that would put me at the Research Laboratory. Kria and I stumbled through.

"Raymond! Raymond!" she complained. "This was not meant! You don't know what you are doing!"

"The hell I don't!" I yelled, and we raced for a Vanyan disc outside the lab.

Then I stopped, suddenly, to ask her, "Tell me once and for all, Kria—is there a master switch, a master control of some kind which could make Earth's copy of Vanyan gear ineffective? You people wanted me to find out if Earth was going to attack. Now you know they are. Are your people going to sit here and die?"

"Raymond, the attack strikes too swiftly, and the speed of light—" She shook her head, refusing even then to reveal secrets to me. "It is too late—but not for you. You were brought here to—"

"Come on!" I interrupted her. "I guess it's my way, after all."

Earth's representatives had left. There were only a few Vanyan discs available, totally unguarded. I pulled Kria into one and made her guide me at the controls. . . .

Racing Earthward into the teeth of the armada, I sent out a call to the attackers, identifying myself so as not to get blown out of space before I started. In our three-dimensional scope we could see the approaching ships. Ahead of them, and near to us, was a cloud of ponderous projectiles already launched and coming fast. We began to maneuver out of the way.

"We saw flashes were tracing a pattern across that area where the Vanyan "city" was located."

"Flagship to Sanders!" came an officer's voice. "If that's you, keep clear and hold course for Earth at half speed. We will pick you up. You are under arrest on suspicion of treason."

"Treason!" I yelped into the mike. "Somebody is—"

"You were a counter-spy for the Vanyans. You may blame yourself for triggering this attack."

"But I had nothing to do with it!"

"Ha! You made a brazen rendezvous with a Vanyan ship right in Washington—how stupid can you get! But there's no time now for argument Follow instructions!"

"Damn Motter and his spy!" I muttered, as I turned off the transmitter switch. That I had planned no rendezvous with the Vanyans I knew, but it would be hard to prove otherwise.

Kria came into my arms. She did not want to talk. She merely wanted to be held close to me. We remained that way for some time, watching the fleet approach Kria's adopted world. Watching the projectiles approach, carrying their atomic warheads.

"Kria!" I exclaimed. "Now is the best time to analyze you and your emotions. Under normal circumstances, this would be monstrous of me—but I've got to know about you! What are you thinking? What are you feeling?" I shook her gently. "Tell me—now!"

We both looked at the three-dimensional picture of Mars and saw filtered flashes of light trace a pattern across that area where the Vanyan "city" was located. There were flashes farther removed, also, where power plants were located Then the surface darkened slowly under the shadows of man made, mushrooming clouds. And all of a sudden we saw bright, jagged lines appear across the planet's surface as huge earthquakes were summoned into being and great gashes were cut into the staggering little world.

"The disintegrators!" I exclaimed. "For the love of God! The bombs were enough!"

Kria shuddered, tried to hide her face. "You are children, giant children," she said, "flailing about in darkness!"

I tried to lift up her chin, and when she looked into my eyes and saw me crying, it was too much. She ran from me and threw herself onto an acceleration couch. She actually suffered because she could not cry. I left her alone.

I was too overcome, myself, to give her comfort. I stood there looking at the destruction and I yelled at the three-dimensional color image of it I can't repeat what I said because most of it would seem like gibberish. But I am not ashamed to say that I bawled, openly and uncontrollably.

It was about a day later that the Flagship overtook us and I was commanded to draw alongside the other much larger disc. As the capturing crew secured our airlocks for boarding, Kria rushed to me, alarmed.

"What is the meaning of 'treason?'" she asked me, having heard the commanding officer use the word over the receiver.

When I explained it to her, she asked, "But how can they accuse you of that? You are not guilty!"

"Thanks, sweet. But can I prove it!"

Her eyes were wide with concern, and there again I saw her looking at me from afar off, as though out of other worlds of her own. The old mystery, which would never be solved. I had given it up.

"What—is the penalty—for treason?" she asked.

I shrugged, saying nothing.

"You mean—they will kill you?"

"If I can't prove myself innocent. But take it easy—"

She clenched her fists and stamped her foot in anger. "Kill! Kill! Kill!" she cried. "Is that all your barbaric race can think of!"

"Honey," I said, trying to calm her. "Now there's no need to—"

"They shan't kill you! You cannot die!"

"Why?" For reasons which I could not have explained to myself, I wanted a specific answer to that question. There was more than personal emotion behind her insistent statement.

"Because—because—there is reason! I can't tell you!"

Before I could argue about that, the inner door of our airlock opened, and armed M.P.s attached to the U. S. Navy Airforce stepped into the control room. They were armed with business-like, understandable, old-fashioned automatics.

"Stop!" cried Kria, holding up her hand. "This man is innocent! You will not take him prisoner!"

The M.P.s struggled to overcome their surprise at finding one Vanyan alive. Also, they must have been surprised at her English. But then their leader grinned.

"Okay, beautiful," he said. "Keep out of trouble. You're under arrest, too."

Kria did not budge. She stood there facing them, and all of a sudden I saw the M.P.s change their expressions. Their mouths dropped agape and in their eyes was both wonderment and fear. They became rigid and their guns dropped from their fingers.

I shouted at her, asking her what she was trying to do, knowing all the while that now she was really showing her cards. With sheer mental power she seemed to be capable of paralyzing them.

It was in that moment that a new detachment of guards entered the room and shot her down. I screamed, throwing myself at them, but they pumped bullets into her and she slumped to the floor. I punched hard, but something descended on my skull and I went out cold. . . .

I HAVE not seen Kria since I then, but I am told I may see her after writing this story. I am told she still lives, and I thank God.

You all know what happened from that point onward. The Vanyans not only allowed us to destroy them rather than lift a finger to harm us. They made sure that we would not harm ourselves, because they knew in that last terrible hour that we were not yet ready for interplanetary civilization.

Even in their posthumous revenge, however, they were benevolent. They had set up the hidden master switch on one of the Martian moons, it is presumed. Those robot controls were set to go off after the last Earthman had arrived safely home. Mind you, they could have destroyed us at any time. They could have taken revenge while the fleet was still out in space. But they did not.

After we were all on the ground, the propelling apparatus on the discs quietly dissolved, as did all our supplies of the Vanyan element that made such ships possible, and their weapons. Those were incapacitated also, never to be used again. The Vanyan answer, gentlemen. After you killed them, their voice spoke out of the tomb of space and said, in effect, "You are not ready."

And I agree. I shout to their noble spirits and proclaim them godlings — a golden, benevolent benefactor whom we have slain.

My fate matters little. It is yours with which we should be most concerned!

THEY told Ray Sanders he would not be able to see his wife until after the court-martial, but they assured him she was rallying slowly and had a good chance to live through her injuries. This pacified him to some extent, and it also motivated his desire to prove his innocence.

They let him testify, but as he continued referring the court to his story, which had been published all over the world, there was nothing new that he could offer in his defense. In regard to the Vanyan rendezvous in front of the Lincoln Memorial, it was only his word against theirs.

The Press was worried, but the Administration was not. Public opinion was largely on Sanders' side. Washington was being besieged with messages from all over the world. Some countries even threatened diplomatic reprisals if Ray Sanders received the death penalty.

But then the prosecution took over and X-rays of Kria's bullet-ridden body were presented as proof that the Vanyans were inhuman. They were a synthetic race. In a word—androids. . . .

Swiftly, the judgment followed.

"Therefore, Raymond Sanders, it is the decision of this court-martial that you have been found guilty of treasonable negotiation with an inhuman enemy who stood ready to conquer and perhaps destroy not only your own native country —but this entire world."

The Press was released with the news, and Congress and the President watched the reactions.

The headlines fulfilled their fondest expectations: SANDERS WIFE INHUMAN! — SANDERS CONVICTED! — FEDERAL EVIDENCE BREAKS SANDERS — VANYANS PROVED MONSTERS! — X-RAYS PROVE KRIA FAKE HUMAN — U. S. SWINGS AXE!

The sympathetic world turned antagonistic overnight. The Government gained new prestige. They had been right, after all! Congress convened briefly, and the President signed the death penalty.

Then he authorized Sanders to see Kria. . . .

The Press was excluded from that meeting. Sanders, a visibly broken man, went alone into her hospital room. He was with his Vanyan "wife" a full hour before he was called out by his custodians.

He came out a different man. He was straight and tall again, and there was a new light of defiance and triumph and even joy in his eyes.

"I want to talk to the Press!" he exclaimed.

"Too late for that now, Sanders," the police officers told him.

"But I've got to talk to the Press!"

"Come on!" They pulled him along with them.

"The President!" he yelled. "At least let me talk to the President!"

In his jail cell he raved and swore and even appealed to fellow prisoners for aid, but his totally incredible story branded him as an insane man. There was a sympathetic shaking of heads.

"The poor guy. He's off his rockers!"

"I guess I'd be, too. He gets shot tomorrow morning."

The next morning, Sanders even argued with the officer in charge of the firing squad. "You don't know what you're doing!" he pleaded. "Give me one more hour! This is vital. I demand to speak to the President!"

The officer tried to be patient, but finally he lost his temper and called the guards. They took Sanders and stood him against the wall.

"No! I don't want a blindfold!" he told them. "I want to watch the sky!"

He stood there looking up into the brightening sky, and several times he called his wife's name,

"Ready . . . !" barked the officer to the firing squad.

"Kria!" yelled Sanders.

"Aim . . . !"

That was as far as they got A few guards testified later that they observed a gold-emblazoned disc in the sky. It paralyzed the firing squad and the officer in charge. It lowered itself swiftly into the prison yard and Sanders ran to it. It took off with him, and he was never seen again. . . .

IT WAS then that the President of the United States decided he would have to have a talk with Kria. He, too, went into her room alone, while his bodyguards waited outside.

She lay there like any other rapidly convalescing patient, but she was far more beautiful than the normal run of women. Synthetic or not, she was an object of the Chief Executive's pity—belatedly.

"I want you to tell me what happened," he said to her. "Who rescued your husband? I thought we destroyed your race." "You did," she replied, sadly. "But my race did not matter."

"Then—to whom did that mystery saucer belong—the one that rescued Ray Sanders?"

Kria smiled wanly. She indicated a chair. "Sit down, won't you? I think I can tell the story now."

She talked for a long time. She described for the President a truly human race of immortals who faced the necessity of making contact with us, of finding a world within a solar system such as ours on which they could continue their existence in accordance with their basic philosophies, as explained by Ralsyan to Sanders when he was on Mars.

"But immortals come to treasure their lives, not so much for themselves as for the knowledge and wisdom they have acquired. They could not risk contacting you directly, so they created us—their android extensions--to contact you first."

"Do you mean to say--that all the while your race was renovating the planet, Mars, your human counterparts waited somewhere out in space to determine what our reaction would be?" asked the President.

Kria nodded. "That is well expressed," she answered. "They are our counterparts. For each of us there is a human duplicate, in form and mind and personality, with whom we were in mental contact at all times. Through us they could sense everything we sensed here."

"Wait a minute! You mean—somewhere, there is a human copy of you? One who knows as much about Sanders as you do—who perhaps loves him, actually—humanly?"

Again, Kria nodded. "Yes, she loves him, and she is with him now—for all time. It is she who rescued him. In fact, she ordered him brought to Mars just before the attack, in order to pick him up there, so as not to appear in her ship in Earthly skies and thus reveal her secret. But your attack was too sudden. Limited by the ****velocity of light, she could not get here in time from the mother ship. Ray Sanders, alone, of all Earthmen, will join the true Vanyan race in search of a new home and a new race of people who, perhaps, will deserve their guidance more than you."

The President shook his head. He fell silent. After all, he had made a historical blunder. The truth might even cause his im-peachment.

"You—ah—say the true Van-yans preferred to keep this a secret. Why have you told me?"

"I had to tell someone. It's all past now. They are gone."

"Well, we might as well keep this secret, just between you and me. The world would suffer greatly to know it was guilty of a great crime, after all."

"I don't care what you do."

"We'll say that some fanatic rescued him in a ship that looked like a disc; that we shot it down over the ocean. It will be simple enough to bury this whole story."

"Do what you wish."

The President, greatly relieved, looked at her kindly. "Why so sad?" he asked. "You are immortal, human or not. Think of the many years ahead of you—the things you'll see transpire here on Earth. Why, you might even land a movie contract, with your looks—"

Kria shook her head. "You don't understand," she replied.

"What don't I understand?" She looked into his eyes and said, "You see— I love him, too."

THE END.

Back to QuasarDragon

"The Planet of Death" by William T. Libby

2011-05-25T12:25:00.000-07:00

A quick (barely longer than flash fiction) QuasarDragon presents, "The Planet of Death" by William T. Libby, from Fantastic Comics (Dec. 1939). Best described as cheesy, corny, and abrupt.

"Death Guarded the Secret of the Tiny Silent Planet Far Out in Space —That Is, Until a Red Headed Adventurer from Earth Wrested Its Treasure from the Claws of Its Weird Guardian."

THE PLANET OF DEATH

By WILLIAM T. LIBBY

The Pilot's face went magenta. He slammed down a large red lever on the complicated control board before him. The humming sound ceased, and the huge space ship slowed down to a halt, suspended like a huge bullet, in the silent black void of outer space. He turned to the tall smiling young officer at his side.

"Red Rockett . . . you? What, in the cockeyed universe, are you doing aboard this ship? I thought you were in Chicago, working on that new sub-gravitational balloon," he complained.

The officer smiled, and pushed his Strato cap to the back of his head, revealing a shock of brilliant red hair.

"That's what everybody thinks," he said, with mock confidence. "Seriously though," the smile faded from Red's eyes, leaving them cold steel blue, "I had to keep my 'whereabouts a secret, even from you, Stocky. You see, I'm on a secret mission."

"Yeah, and every time you go on one of your Secret Missions, I get the assignment to nurse you in the same way. The last time I was nearly atomized by those Martian Red Men—and on the moon, you would have frozen to death, had I not followed you halfway across the planet to get you—I'm a peaceful, commercial, inter-planetary transport pilot. Why do they always pick on me to---"

"All right," replied Red, hiding an involuntary smile under a hurt expression, "I'll telephoto Washington right away, and ask H. Q. to cancel the assignment, till I can get another ship and pilot."

Stocky shifted his square frame, and glanced sidelong at Red. The anger that flushed his face was gone, but he strove to maintain a stern face. His shining eyes, however, betrayed keen interest.

"Oh, well, since I'm stuck with you, I might as well string along —er—What's the new assignment, Red?"

Laughter burst from Red—he slapped the older man on his shoulder. "You old satellite, I knew I could count on you. That's why I had you appointed again. Come down to the Captain's quarters, and I'll tell you all about it."

Stocky turned, and spoke into a transmitter, "First mate, take control on Deck 'B.' Keep ship headed 15 points stellar latitude orbit 10-X, and keep an eye out for stray meteor clusters. That's all." A moment later, they walked down the narrow corridor, their heels clacking loudly on the polished floor.

"I'll come right to the business at hand," Red said, when they reached the cabin. "You've heard of the degravitational element called centrifixo. Well, I've been given the job of getting it for the U. S. Stratospheric Research Department at Chicago." Stocky staggered backward into a duraluminum chair, as the ship lurched to avoid a comet far out in space—Words suddenly poured out of Stocky—"Why, that stuff is found only on Asteranius —No oxygen on that planet—Worst spot in the Universe—No one, except Dekeer ever returned from there alive—and Dekeer returned completely daffy. And you're screwy for taking such an assignment."

Red turned to the Plastikoid window. Outside, the speeding ship was tearing through the vacuum of space. In the distance, millions of miles away, tiny worlds winked and twinkled. An occasional comet left an irradiant arc across the absolute blackness. All was still, but for the hum of the ship's atomic motors. Suddenly, a rasping voice over the ship's photophone broke the silence with, "Planet Asteranius dead ahead, Sir."

"Come, Red, let's turn back now, while the going's good," said Stocky. "No, I've never shirked an assignment, and I'm not starting now. If you'd rather—" "Okay," replied Stocky, "but when trouble comes, I'll know whom to blame." So saying, he turned to the transmitter, and in a stern voice, as though he were angry with himself for being persuaded, said, "See if you can find a spot to land."

After a moment's flying on the planet, they landed with a lurch. "If you wait here, I'll get my space suit, and be back in a jiffy with the stuff," said Red. "Oh, no, you don't. You brought me on this expedition, and I'm goin' along for the fun—if any," Stocky replied, good-naturedly. Ten minutes later, dressed in space suits, the two men were exploring the Planet of Death. Red, who, following the calculations given him by the mad Dekeer, knew where to look for the element, and led the way. About five feet from the centrifixo formation, they spotted a band of weird creatures, with wasp-like bodies. They walked on spindly legs, and in place of hands, each had four antennae, which were electrically charged and could reach out and burn through asbestos. They were horrible, bloodthirsty creatures, who despised Earth men because they were so far advanced scientifically. Red flattened against the boulder—Stocky followed suit, and the two awaited their fate, breathless. The wasps slunk along the ground as though they knew where the Earth men were hiding. But they passed without apparently noticing the shadows cast by the hidden men.

After some minutes, they relaxed, and Red said, "After that, Stocky, I think it'd be best if you got back to the ship and prepared for a quick take-off. The stuff's not far away, and easy to mine. "Okay, fella," agreed Stocky. "Make it snappy." After that first narrow escape, Red was a little more careful. He crept along the ground, until he reached the designated spot, and filled his indestructible bag with the centrifixo. He started back to the plane. Suddenly, a band of the wasp-men appeared. He attempted to dart behind a boulder, but he was seen. He used his disintegrator, and after the first few blasts which surprised them, Red turned, and in a short sprint, gained the ship, with the men at his heels. Barely had he grasped the ladder dropped by Stocky, when, with a powerful leap, one of the creatures jumped up and tried to knock the disintegrator out of his hand. Red blasted him down, but one of his electric charged antennae caught hold of Red's leg, and pulled him down. Red thought fast! He aimed his disintegrator ray at the men, and blasted. With a horrified look of surprise, the enemy dropped. Angry, barely audible sounds came from the band. Seeing this from the ship, Stocky dropped a hooked steel bar into their midst, and picked Red up by the back of his collar, leaving the blood. thirsty villains without their prey.

Later, when quiet was once again restored to the ship and its. crew. Stock turned to Red, and said, "Well, I guess this one beats our expedition to the moon. "Ha, Ha," laughed Red, "It seems that each one of our expeditions is more exciting than the last, hut we always get what we go after, and that's what counts. I wonder what our next one will be?"

End.

From Fantastic Comics #1 available free at the Digital Comics Museum. Scanned by Freddyfly. Artwork de-colorized here to look like the pulps of that era.

Children of Zeus

2011-05-22T08:50:00.000-07:00

This week’s QuasarDragon presents is another story from the “golden age” of science fiction, “Children of Zeus” by E. A. Grosser, from Astonishing Stories Vol. 1 No. 3 (June 1940).

Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publications was renewed.

The story of the madness of an invisible Student, the watchfulness of his invisible Scribe, and the twin wives of Kels Norton.

CHILDREN OF ZEUS
By E. A. Grosser

LANKY, hard-bitten Kels Norton was afraid. It showed in the tenseness around his mouth and his quick effort to sit up. Then he lay back with a groan. The grating pain from his right arm told him that it was broken.

The pitiless Antarctic cold congealed little icicles from his breath and they hung from the fur of his parka like tiny fingers. Dimly he remembered the sudden lurch as the snow cruiser broke the frozen crust over a giant crevasse then the long drop downward. He lifted his head and looked around. It seemed to him that it was becoming lighter . . . and there was a curious sense of floating.

He saw four motionless bodies in the dim twilight of the control cabin of the snow cruiser. Short, fat Lacy Hoff lay in a corner with his body curiously shrunken. Jack Kelly, red-headed and Irish-tempered, and somber-eyed Niels Lachmann, both of whom should have been aft with the engines, lay on the floor. And beyond them lay Louis Fusari, the dignified but explosively tempered doctor of medicine who had from the first objected to this sneak prospect.

But Fusari's objections had been smothered by the enthusiasm of the others when Kelly had come back from checking the weather station on Mt. Maddux with his pockets full of quartz that was threaded thickly with wire-gold. They had taken the snow cruiser and sped to Mt. Maddux, found the quartz vein Kelly had discovered on a bare, wind-swept flank of the mountain. In three days they had blown down all the picture rock they could carry. They had even jettisoned food to provide more space for the precious quartz. Then, on the return trip to the base, they had found the crevasse.

With his left hand, he hooked the fingers of his right in his clothing, then painfully dragged himself from one to the other of his companions. It was no use. All four were stiff and cold with death.

The cruiser heeled over with a jolt, then was still. Even the sensation of floating was gone. Norton looked around nervously.

"Please continue," said a strange voice. "I became tired of waiting, so I assisted you out of the crevasse." Norton stared around. There was no one that could have spoken.

"Scribe! Please note—Mentally inflexible!"

"Yes. 'Mentally inflexible !'"

"—and unadaptable," added the strange voice.

"And unadaptable," echoed the other.

Norton sat perfectly still, staring into nothingness. He had gone mad! The word echoed and re-echoed in his mind like the tolling of a bell. Again he felt that he was under observation.

"No. You are not mad," assured the voice. "In fact, I don't think that is possible. It would be—Well, in words that you might use—It would be like trying to short circuit a dead battery. As for my being able to speak your language, both my Scribe and I found your mind easy to pick. Please continue !"

Norton leaned back against the wall, but otherwise was motionless.

"Just as a matter of record, will you tell me how you intended to extricate yourself from that crevasse. It appears to be quite impossible with that crude machine."

"What the hell!" Norton exploded. "Do you think we did that on purpose?"

"Didn't you ?"

"Awww," The sound faded into silence and Norton's face showed his disgust of himself. Talking to himself already! It was too bad he couldn't have died peacefully and sane as had his companions. He regarded their unmoving bodies with something akin to envy.

"Scribe ! Note !" The strange voice sounded excited. "Accidents still happen . . . positive proof of a low order of intelligence !"

THE other voice repeated the words and to Norton they were positive proof of his own madness. He wondered if everybody felt as alone and as mad just before dying as he did now. He wished that he could hurry the process of dying. There was absolutely no hope for life, and these last minutes were becoming unpleasant. The end, and oblivion, would be a welcome relief.

"Do you mean to think," asked the strange voice, "that death is extinction for you?"

"Certainly," Norton chuckled. "How about you?"

"Certainly not!" was the reply. "That is, unless I wish it to be. Death is merely a momentary indisposition. My friends re-assemble and re-animate me. It has happened twice already, and I am as yet only a student.

"Scribe! Note: Death to them is a matter of the utmost finality and, therefore, never having lived after they have died, they can not be said to have lived at all.

"Can you imagine that, Scribe? Living, or calling it that, and having no memories of the supreme thrills of dissolution and resolution."

"I am positive that they are as far below us as inanimate stones are below them," was the reply of the Scribe.

"Exactly!" agreed the first. "My thoughts on the matter exactly—and very nicely put, too. Record that, please."

"Yes, sir. Shall I credit you with having said it?"

"Of course."

"You are both wrong," Norton objected, laughing. "I said it. I imagined both of you, so anything you say is to be credited to me. I insist that I be credited."

"Hmmm. Delusions," cogitated one voice. "I wonder if he can be dying, as he so crudely put it a few minutes ago."

"Quite unlikely," offered the Scribe. "He has only a broken arm, and that doesn't look as though it could be fatal."

"Hmmm. Scribe, you have accompanied students before, haven't you?"

"Often," was the dry answer. "Ambition is not rare, though realization and acceptance into the Minority, is."

"Then, with your experience, what would you do if you were in my position?"

"Transport them back to their base," was the prompt reply. "Heal this man—he is an unsatisfactory subject as he is—and revivify the others. They are even more unsatisfactory."

"True! Very true! Assist me, please."

The snow cruiser lurched upward, then rocked gently, though Norton had the impression that it was traveling at a great speed. He dragged himself up to his feet and peered out the windshield, then crumpled to the floor and lay still. The cruiser was traveling at a great speed, but a thousand feet in the air above the frozen surface of the Antarctic continent.

WHEN he awoke, he was in his own bunk. Somewhere in the darkness another person was snoring lustily. He remembered the trip to Mt. Maddux, the gold, the return—and the crevasse. His stomach ached at the memory of the fall. He remembered four dead bodies. Then, for God's sake, who was snoring?

He threw his blankets back and sat up. As he swung his feet to the floor, the door opened. Lacy Hoff came in. He looked at Norton and a grin bisected his moon-face.

"Better get some more sleep." he suggested. "You look terrible."

Norton watched, open-mouthed. while Hoff went to the oil heater and checked the fuel intake valve. Then the chubby man looked at Norton again. Norton's mouth opened and closed as though he were speaking, but all that came forth was a choking, gasping sound.

The fat man's eyes grew serious with concern.

"I'll send Doc," he said, and dashed out of the room.

"Gh-ghosts !" Norton's lips coordinated with his thoughts for a brief moment. Then he hastily pulled on his clothes and stumbled into the passageway with but a single thought in his mind. He jerked open the door of the hospital room, selected a bottle from one of the cases, pulled the cork and applied the neck of the bottle to his lips.

The choking burn of the fiery liquid brought tears to his eyes, but it also brought warmth to his stomach. He regarded the bottle fondly. He knew now that either one of two things had happened: Either they had fallen into the crevasse and everybody but himself had died, and he had in someway made his way back to base—in which case Hoff and that snorer were ghosts ; or he had dreamed the whole damned thing. In either case those voices he remembered were not real. That's what happened to a man when he spent two years in Antarctica. He shrugged philosophically and up-ended the bottle again.

The gurgling of the bottle was beginning to sound hollow when a voice interrupted.

"Quit chiseling !" it snapped.

He looked around and saw red-headed Jack Kelly standing in the doorway, rubbing his knuckles raspingly over a red stubbly beard and watching him with reproachful eyes.

"G'way," Norton waved, and returned his attention to the bottle. That, at least, was satisfyingly real.

Kelly snatched the bottle away. Norton watched him pound the cork back into its neck. The red-head was real, also—dissatisfyingly so.

"It was a dream," Norton mumbled. "All a dream."

Kelly looked at him sharply. "Come on, Kels ! Snap out of it! We all owe you a hell of a lot for pulling us out of that crevasse. Do your damnedest to hang onto yourself for another twenty-four hours, and we'll be in Magallanes. Lachmann has decided we can take our ore to the States. The plane is already loaded."

Norton stared at the red-head. "Then we did find a bunch of gold "ore?"

Kelly nodded, but his eyes showed a new doubt.

"Then it wasn't a dream!" Norton exploded.

Slim, dark-haired, olive-skinned Louis Fusari stalked into the small room and took the bottle from Kelly's hand.

"Hoff said you were sick," he said to Norton, accusingly, as he replaced the bottle in the case, "But you look drunk. Did you get all that whiskey, or did Kelly have time to swipe some?"

"He got it all," Kelly announced a trifle mournfully.

Fusari looked Norton over carefully. Norton flushed under the penetrating eyes, then straightened his shoulders with the realization that they must both be ghosts.

"Yes," Fusari agreed. "He looks it." Norton chuckled, then stopped with a hiccup. A moment later he began to laugh. "Quite obshervant," he approved heartily. "Very good. Very good—for a ghost. Now vanish, please!"

He waited for them to comply with his request, but they weren't so inclined. They stared at him. He was getting a wallop from the whiskey and suddenly their expressions seemed very funny. He laughed.

That made things seem even funnier, so he continued to laugh.

Kelly and Fusari looked at one another, then leaped at him and grasped his arms. Norton struggled angrily. But he couldn't quit laughing.

He was still laughing, but rather shrilly, when they took him to Lachmann.

Lachmann gave him one searching glance, sniffed the air, and said, "Confine him in the bunkroom until we are ready to leave."

Kelly and Fusari shoved him into the dimly-lighted bunkroom, then locked the door on him. The heater took care of the temperature so they were sure he wouldn't freeze to death as long as he stayed there. Norton reeled across the room, then leaned against his bunk and looked around the room. At last he concluded that the snorer must have been Kelly, and he dropped onto his bunk and shut his eyes to see if that would make the room stop spinning.

"I wish you would co-operate," complained the strange voice. "Your perversity is really ingratitude when you consider that I mended your arm and restored your friends."

Norton's eyes snapped open. He had forgotten that broken arm. He moved it experimentally. Nothing wrong with it now, anyway. He closed his eyes contentedly. That proved the whole thing was a dream. But there was a tinge of regret to his content. It was too bad that the gold wasn't real.

"I only wish to study you," continued the voice persuasively.

"Why?" Norton asked unthinkingly.

"Every student must submit some contribution to the totality of our knowledge of the universe before he can be admitted to the Minority. This planet has been investigated before, but as this, the most attractive portion, was uninhabited, it was assumed that the rest was a heat-withered waste. I can be sure of acceptance to the Minority if I merely can submit a full report."

Norton decided he was drunk, tucked the blankets around himself with an exaggerated care. And closed his eyes with a determination to go to sleep.

"If kindliness won't secure your assistance I can use force," the voice offered threateningly. "I can—"

"It's all a lie," Norton stated carefully, "but if you're still hanging around when I wake up, I'll be glad to . . . only too glad . . . to . . . help . . . you." Hardly had the last word passed his lips when he was sound asleep.

HE WOKE with an aching, throbbing head and sat on the edge of the bunk to cradle it tenderly in his hands. The ache was like a round ball of fire in the base of his skull, but with every heartbeat the ball of fire burst like a rocket and spread all through his head.

He groaned. The last time he had gone off the deep end like this had been the night before leaving New York. That was the night Joan had promised to wait for him, and the next morning she had helped by giving him some concoction of wine and egg. Boy! What he could do to one of those now!

Someone knocked on the door and he lifted his head groggily with surprise. Then came the strange voice: "I hold you to your promise. You have assisted me immeasurably already by thinking of the female. I had concluded that you reproduced asexually.

"Scribe ! Have you finished the energy-matter conversion?"

"If you would trouble to look, you would see that the result of the energy-matter conversion is at the present moment beating her knuckles on the portal."

"Please refrain from sarcasm," requested the first voice. "I shall of course, include that remark in my report."

"Please do," the Scribe countered. "It will corroborate my report of your lapse from infallibility. You have been taught that direct observation is more reliable than hearsay evidence. Why do you disregard that teaching ?"

"You presume to question my conduct ?"

"And why not? I am one of the Minority, and the one appointed to judge your fitness, if any."

"Attaboy !" Norton approved. "Give him hell ! I don't like the way he talks, either."

"Give who hell?" asked a cool voice from the doorway.

Joan Witmer stood in the doorway, her dark blue eyes snapping angrily in spite of the coolness of her voice. Beside her stood grinning, moon-faced Lacy Hoff. Joan extended her arm, offering him a glass of thick, dark yellow liquid. He took it numbly and stared at her stupidly.

"Well, drink it !" she scolded. "You asked for something to straighten you out and that'll make you feel better in the end, though you don't deserve to. Why must you make such a fool of yourself?"

Norton had been holding the glass, quite undecided whether to treat her as a new acquaintance or an old friend. Now lie gulped the drink down hastily. The bitter brown taste of the vile fluid spread through his mouth and throat, making him shudder as he passed the glass blindly back to Joan. When he could see again he found that they were watching him expectantly.

He wondered why. Then ceased to wonder a moment later and brushed them aside to dash for the lavatory. When he returned he was weak and pale, but the headache had receded to a dull throbbing.

"That was a dirty trick," he reproached. "Joan would never have done a thing like that."

"Well, I did," stated the false Joan sturdily, "and it served you right."

Round-faced Lacy Hoff's fat cheeks showed two angelic dimples from his broad smile. "A punishment to fit the crime," he rumbled with evident satisfaction. "How do you feel now?"

"Hungry," Norton snapped. "Well, maybe Joan will cook you something."

Joan prepared a breakfast for Norton, then sat down across the table. She watched, chin in hands, while he ate. After a few minutes, with the edge of his hunger dulled, her steady gaze made him nervous.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"Kels. Do you still feel the same about me as you did when we were in New York?"

He looked at the stillness of her oval face, framed by her small hands and brown hair, as she waited for an answer. He replied huskily:

"Joan, if anything, being away from you has made me love you more." Her eyes glowed with pleasure, then became puzzled. "What do you mean? 'Away from me.'"

"Well—ah—" Dammit ! How did a person go about telling a ghost she wasn't real?

Joan's eyes widened with fright. Jack Kelly stepped quietly into the room. His arm went around her protectively as she covered her face with her hands in an attempt to hold back the tears that were close. Norton started up angrily, then sat down again, grumbling.

After all, it wasn't really Joan. He was sure of that. Joan wouldn't have given him an emetic. The real Joan was fun-loving and had a well-developed sense of humor, while this facsimile was pretty much of a prude.

He remembered that they were soon to start back to civilization. He would soon see the real Joan—be able to hold her in his arms. The thought did wonders for his appetite and he finished his breakfast with silent satisfaction.

"THE experiment is proceeding splendidly," the bodiless voice began again exultantly. "But don't do anything which will cause them to imprison you again."

Norton conquered his momentary, instinctive fright. "Are you real?" he asked. "Or am I mad?"

Norton was aware of the presence of the disapproving Scribe as the voice replied : "We are inhabitants of a world far out in interstellar space, a dark, sunless world which broke away from its primary ages ago, and of which your astronomers have not the slightest knowledge. Life is one of the stubbornest, mot adaptable elements in the galaxy. As the changes to my world were gradual, life accustomed itself to them. As our sun cooled we were forced to become less dependent on the natural production of foods, and with the gradual darkening we developed new senses. To a person with all your corporeal restrictions we are invisible. We are living energy, instead of energized matter."

"But, my friends ?" Norton pressed. "And Joan ? How did they get here. My friends died. I was injured. And I left Joan in New York."

"You say your friends died, but do you know when is death—the dividing line past which restoration is impossible? I healed their injuries, as I did yours, and restarted the life processes. So they live.

"She whom you call Joan was more difficult. The intense heat of your world hampered me severely."

Kelly stepped into the doorway and looked at Norton. Norton watched him while the strange entity continued speaking.

"But I succeeded in securing a pattern and was able to convert energy into the required matter."

"Correction: I did," interrupted the Scribe.

"Please!" the first voice begged of its companion, then continued, "And in the minds of all of them I impressed memories that would make their presence logical to themselves. And in the case of Joan, it was necessary to erase the memories of the time between your departure and the present."

Norton was sure from Kelly's expression that the redhead couldn't hear the stranger. Then the stranger answered his thought.

"And to them I am non-existent. It is necessary to my report that they act naturally, which they wouldn't do other-wise. Theirs is the normal reaction to comparative normality ; yours, the comparatively normal reaction to abnormality."

Kelly was watching suspiciously, then he spoke : "Come on. Lachmann asked me to get you. We are ready to leave." His tone said that he would have liked to leave Norton to someone else; that he didn't relish escorting a man he considered mad. And there was something else in his manner, an evident dislike that hadn't been there before, that caused Norton to wonder if the stranger had further experiments in human behavior in mind.

A trifle more than a little uneasy he followed Kelly to the plane. The others were already aboard. Hoff was at the controls with Lachmann at his side. Fusari and Joan were seated in the cabin. Joan looked up when they entered and seemed to expect Norton to take possession of the unoccupied seat at her side. He did.

"Are you feeling better?" she asked.

"Fine," Norton lied.

The motors roared to a louder song of power and the plane nudged forward. Then Lachmann turned her loose and they darted over the laboriously smoothed snow. There was a sudden smoothness of motion and Norton knew that they were in the air. Hoff pulled the plane into a rapid climb and they headed into the north.

Norton looked down at the vast snow-bound continent below. Of one thing he was sure—he would never return. He had found enough trouble this time. He was forced to the conclusion that wine and song were essential to his mental well-being. He looked at Joan's primly held head and knew that women were not.

THE STRANGER had said it had pressed logical memories in the minds of the created and recreated beings. The statement persisted in recurring to his mind until it had acquired a troubling note of threat.

"How did you get the Antarctic?" he asked at last.

"Why, I stowed away," she said as though reminding him. "Jack found me the first day out. You see, after we were married, I couldn't bear the thought of having you leave me for years."

"Married !" Norton echoed. Oh, God! And another Joan awaiting him in New York!

"You haven't forgotten that too, have you?" she asked.

He saw Kelly and Fusari look at one another. Kelly nodded and Fusari got to his feet and went to speak with Lachmann.

"Have you?" Joan repeated.

"Oh, no—no," he assured her. Damn that stranger, anyway. He was too logical. "I just forgot—uh—I mean so many things have been happening that I don't know what is true and what isn't."

She still regarded him with suspicious eyes, but he hardly noticed. There was another question that bothered him.

"Have you — we any children?" he asked bluntly. She shook her head negatively, but didn't speak. She was staring at him with frightened eyes. She paled and looked appealingly to Kelly.

Norton felt sorry for her. He put out his hand to comfort her, but she leaped to her feet with a shriek.

"Don't touch me! You're mad!"

She hurried to Kelly who took her in his arms.

"Oh, Jack!" she moaned. "You were right. He is mad. Don't let him touch me."

"I won't," Kelly promised. Norton stood up slowly, eyes blazing angrily. So Kelly had been shooting off his mouth ! And to Joan, or rather the false Joan. But it was just as bad. Kelly thought she was his wife.

Kelly shoved Joan behind him and crouched to meet Norton's advance.

Norton lashed out and felt his knuckles become satisfyingly numb as they contacted Kelly's chin. Kelly staggered backward and fell to the floor.

Joan knelt at his side, crying. But he pushed her away and climbed back to his feet. Norton stepped closer, drove a fist toward the other's head, but Kelly caught it on his forearm and countered with a left that drilled through Norton's guard and exploded in his midriff.

Norton folded over and went to his knees. While he struggled to get a little air into his deflated lungs, he heard the Scribe say angrily to the strange student, "Stop it ! This is your third mistake."

"Third mistake?" repeated the stranger questioningly.

"Third," the Scribe said again. "First, you interfered with the natural course of events on a planet not your own; second, you assumed credit for what you had not done; third, you have incited violence. You have failed!"

Norton saw Fusari coming with a hypodermic. He scrambled to his feet. Kelly thought he was returning to the attack and pushed a heavy fist at him. Norton took it because he had to, and offered one of his own. Kelly accepted ungraciously with a grunt, then clinched.

Fusari was right beside them and Norton felt the prick of a hypodermic needle in his arm. He struggled to free himself, but Kelly clung tightly to his arms.

"No! No! I cannot have failed!" he heard the strange voice object. "It is impossible."

"But true," insisted the Scribe. "Your report alone probably would have been satisfactory, but your conduct is execrable."

Norton agreed silently, but heartily.

"But you say I have interfered. I can efface the results of that interference." "And now you would destroy. No!"

Norton was unresisting as Fusari and Kelley forced him toward a seat, made him sit down.

"Then," said the strange voice, "if my report alone would have been satisfactory —it shall be. You and they shall be destroyed!"

THE plane lurched, then shot downward like a leaden weight. He caught one glimpse of the sky and saw it blaze with color. Red and green sheets of color intermixed with all the other colors of the spectrum and some hues Norton could not identify, gathered at the zenith, then extended in pulsing waves to the horizon.

The gray water of the ocean below was coming closer with every passing second. The cabin of the plane was a shambles. Hoff and Lachmann fought the controls, but though the motors roared throatily with power, they couldn't pull the plane out of the terrifying dive.

A cyclopean laugh reverberated throughout the plane . . . a laugh of madness. Then the fall ended with a wrenching jerk and the mad laugh became a shriek of hate.

"They must be destroyed! And you must be destroyed. All must be destroyed. No one shall live to thwart me!"

But the plane was lifted as rapidly upward as a moment before it had fallen. The voice of the unseen stranger became a mad gibber of hate. Norton felt the clash of titanic forces. The colors in the sky became more vivid and writhed as though with pain.

Then at the zenith a red globe formed. The mad gibbering died immediately and the plane settled to an even flight toward the north. The redness of the globe high above shaded to a violent crimson. The globe floated slowly downward.

The colors flickered out of the sky as the red sphere settled to the ocean. As the vast ball of color touched the water it disappeared abruptly. Seconds later the plane rocked to a gigantic explosion.

"I am sorry," said the voice of the Scribe. "My companion was entirely unfit. I was forced to destroy him."

The danger had held off the effects of the drug Fusari had administered, but now it was taking effect with paralyzing speed. Norton's eyes drooped, but he forced them open again.

"You may proceed in perfect safety," assured the Scribe. "There are so many worlds in the galaxy that it is extremely unlikely that I, or any like myself, shall ever visit you again."

Norton mumbled a thankful prayer, then saw Joan at Kelly's side. "But what about me ?" he asked. "This Joan thinks she is married to me and another one waits for me in New York."

The Scribe chuckled. "My companion created a love between these two which is real unless I remove it. Choose the one you wish and I will arrange matters. Norton took one look at the prim, humorless face of the woman at Kelly's side, and said, "I want the real Joan."

"This creation of my companion lacks something which appeals to you?" it laughed. "He lacked the same thing. Well, sobeit! I erase all memory of her having been married to you. It was only a memory of something that never happened. Goodbye."

Norton tried to answer, but before he could force his sleepy mind to form the farewell, he had an abrupt sense of loss and knew that the Scribe was gone. His eyelids closed and he sank into a drugged slumber.

WHEN he awoke he was lying in a bed—the first he had seen in over two years. It was much more comfortable than a bunk. And someone stood at the bedside. He turned to see who it was.

It was Joan. But which one?

"Are you real?" he asked, then knew that was no good. They both would naturally think they were real. "Where's everybody?" he asked quickly. "And where am I?"

"Hmmmm," the young woman hummed speculatively. "I guess they were right. You are mad. Worse than usual."

"Say! What is real, and what isn't ?" he demanded.

"Well, I'm real." She stooped to kiss his lips and prove it. He caught and held her. When she had released herself she announced a little breathlessly, but certainly, "And you are real."

"How about that gold? Or was that a dream?"

"The customs men seemed to think it was real—and the treasury," she said.

He stared at her. A mocking smile curved her lips. She sat on the edge of the bed.

"How's Kelly ?" he asked anxiously. "Fine—but he's married. Good-looking girl though, even if she can't see a joke."

"Conceited," Norton taunted, forgetting himself.

She looked at him innocently.

"I just can't believe it. Are you really real."

She straightened suddenly, and the glow in her eyes was not good humor. "Kels! Stop that!" she said angrily. "I'll slap your face if you pinch me again."

THE END

Audrey's Moon and Code of the Fang

2011-05-06T17:37:00.000-07:00

QuasarDragon Presents a pair of stories from 1955. "Audrey's Moon," an SF story about a pair of telepaths in need of some serious anger management and "Code of the Fang" an animal adventure/fantasy along the lines of Watership Down. Neither is the story planned for last week, that one if forever abandoned due to the unenlightened attitude and racist language within the story. I don't believe in censorship at all, but I won't be the one to post anything quite that offensive.

And a note on the editing of the second story. The bracketed passage in the story is word for word the same as the original. The editor or typesetter at Adam clearly messed up.

She Loved Him Until She Read His Mind

Audrey's Moon

By THOMAS KERSH

Illustration by HUNTER BARKER

SHE WAS crying and breaking things again. A door slammed, and I heard glass crash in our sleeping quarters. I had stopped trying to understand Audrey three weeks ago. In fact, I also stopped talking to her. We couldn't pass the time of day without breaking into a fight, and if I beat her again, I might kill her. Then when the guard ship came to relieve us, I'd be courtmartialed and kicked out of the Service. I had to keep my temper under control.

However, this wasn't easy—especially every time I touched the gap in my front teeth with my tongue. The gum was still sore, and the first-aid kit had no tooth seeds. Audrey had seen to that.

When she saw she'd knocked out my two front teeth with the oxygen bottle, she ran straight to the first-aid kit, rifled it, and ground the tooth seeds underfoot. I wouldn't be able to grow new teeth until the guard ship came, and chewing was uncomfortable as hell. I blacked both her eyes for that one.

I kept hoping she would commit suicide. But I knew that if she killed herself, she'd make it look as if I'd killed her, and I would be punished for her murder without the pleasure of committing it. Sometimes I suspected that she was even trying to goad me into murdering her, just out of spite. Probably the only thing that kept her from it was that she wouldn't be on hand to see me get a dishonorable discharge.

I didn't see how we could stand three more months of it before the guard ship came. I'm a mild tempered guy, and I never had trouble with a space mate until I was assigned to duty with Audrey. Perhaps because the others agreed to a sensible sleeping arrangement without expecting to fall in love.

POOR little Audrey. She came into space service full of poetry, with stars in her eyes, and a heart so soft that I couldn't help pitying her. She had dreams of living glory, of the vast and infinite beauty of the universe. It was almost a religion with her, and it's a wonder that they didn't catch her tendency at the Service Academy. Still, the Academy makes mistakes.

Audrey wasn't a bad kid, but we should never have been put together under a plastic dome on a black rock in the middle of an ocean as large as Earth, fifty light years from the nearest occupied planet.

Samm, she was thinking, you utter bum.

I started to block my mind to keep her thoughts out, but I had to reply first. I shot back an image of myself holding her upside down by the ankles and banging her lovely blond head on the floor. She started a telepathic shriek, but I blanked it out and enjoyed the silence.

I glanced at the universal time clock in the center of the dome, hanging just underneath our small artificial sun. It was time to check the psi-scopes that guarded the station out to a depth of one light year. I had to trace the circuits mentally and make sure that everything was in working order.

The worst thing of all was not Audrey's disillusionment, but the fact that we were both telepaths. That's where the Service really slipped up. However, the disillusionment was real. Audrey hadn't seen a single star or a square inch of deep space since she got here, but she might have survived her disappointment. She'd be serving at better stations in her future tours of duty, stations where the isolation was not so complete.

Here, the planet was blanketed with a layer of clouds 40 miles thick. Unbreathable chlorine clouds, at that.

It wasn't actually a planet, but a moon, known officially as K-6347-4-1: the largest satellite of the fourth planet of a sun listed as K-6347. It was a medium-sized red sun, and I had seen it only once—on the guard ship, when we approached the system. The planet was the real reason we were there, and it made the red sun look dull by comparison.

It glowed in the sky like a huge ball of pure phosphorescence, which it practically was. Pitchblende Planet, they called it in the Service, and it was one of the most valuable prizes in the galaxy. A survey team spotted it over a century ago, and the Academy engineers still hadn't figured a way of mining it on an economical basis.

It was like having a closet full of money that you couldn't reach because the doorknob was too hot to touch. Nobody had ever been within 5,000 miles of the surface, and the spy rockets that were sent down hadn't shown too much before the radiation knocked out their electronics and drove them haywire. Consequently, no one yet knew exactly why the whole planet didn't go up in smoke, instead of merely glowing a pale luminescent green.

This was our baby, our job. The first month Audrey and I slept together, we called the planet her Moon. We couldn't see it, of course, but we knew it was there, filling a quarter of the Sky above our station on the planet's main satellite. We didn't want to kill each other then, but that was over three years ago. She was so young and so full of happiness that her dreams made me forget myself, and I was making love to her like a mad poet, promising to bring her the biggest moon in the universe, to strew her path with stars, to travel to the end of time for her, and to do other things which would have astonished the high command in the Service. Come to think of it, she seemed to like it, no matter how ridiculous it sounded. Anyhow, that was when we renamed Pitchblende Planet Audrey's Moon.

But there's a limit to such flights of imagination, and nothing could hide the fact—finally—that we were stuck together on a drab little station for four years.

WHEN the Service was founded and crews had to spend long periods alone in space, one of the first rules was that crew members should be man and wife. It seemed the only practical answer to the problem of isolation for years at a stretch, living at close quarters and never seeing anyone else.

It seemed the logical answer, but it didn't work. Man-wife teams had little more luck than all-male or all-female space crews. The final solution was to use a man and woman together but to forbid marriage between them.

The way it worked in the guard section—which Audrey and I and 5,000,000 others belonged to—was a four-year tour of duty starting at the age of fifteen, with a member of the opposite sex. This was followed by a year's leave, and another four-year tour of duty with another space mate. Since you were reasonably sure you'd never see each other after your four years together, it wasn't hard to make allowances and live together in peace. Usually it was a pleasant relationship, and when a man retired at the age of thirty-five after four tours, he'd have some fine memories.

In spite of Audrey's emotional childishness, which I shared for a while, we might have had a smooth four years if we weren't telepaths. The Service's strictest rule, aside from the ban on marriage, was that telepaths couldn't serve together. The danger, of course, is that two telepaths will not be able to stand the intimacy that their ability forces on them.

You can shield your mind at any time, but it's an effort, a strain. It's like holding your arms over your head all day long. A person just can't take it.
I just can't take it, Samm, you bum. Audrey's thought probed through to me. It was getting harder to keep her out.

"Samm!" She had opened the door behind me. I pushed three buttons on the psi-scope panel to keep it automatic, then turned around to face her.

The two black eyes I had given her were no longer puffy, but the discoloration was satisfying to see.

"What can't you take, honey?" I said, sending a couple of obscene images.

Audrey turned pale, and a sick look came over her face. I was almost sorry for her, but I raised a blank in my mind to keep her from knowing.

She covered her face with her hands, and her shoulders shivered as if she had a chill. The thin fabric of her blouse shimmered in the dome's light, and her arms were tan. I could see where the tan was fading under her blouse, now that we weren't taking all-over sunbaths any more.
I'm sorry, I thought to her. I might as well try to make it easier, and she seemed defenseless. It's not our fault that we're telepaths.

Tears ran between her fingers, but she suddenly drew her hands away from her face and glared at me. "It's your fault you won't marry me," she cried.

"Who wants to marry?" I said. "Or have a baby ? I like the Service. I want to stay in it." Anyhow, why marry? You hate me already. What would it be like after a few more years? I was using telepathy because I wanted to edge back into her mind and find out what was really going on.

I could never probe to the bottom of her motives, but I caught glimpses of a secret pleasure at the thought of breaking the Service regulations. Marriage with a baby wasn't an end in itself for Audrey, but a means of defeating the system around us. She wanted to tell the Service to go jump off the edge of the galaxy.

I caught only little pieces of this feeling, and I'm not sure she recognized it herself, but Audrey was a rebel who wanted her own little civilization. She even wanted to make everybody telepathic. I'd rather jump into a pit full of monsters than live among telepaths. Can you imagine knowing everybody's innermost secrets? Or, even worse, hearing the million drab, everyday thoughts that occupy most minds most of the time? It would be like having to listen to a mediocre radio program twenty-four hours a day.

Non-telepaths are convenient. They're like radios with the power shut off, and it's almost impossible to get into their thoughts. That's why it's always safe to have a telepath and a non-telepath as spacemates : they can have a normal relationship, without the friction that arises when two people are thrust too close together. The telepath can take care of the psi-scope, and the other partner can look after the remaining duties of the dome. There's always enough to do to keep a healthy-minded couple from each other's throats.

I could never forget my first tour of duty with Evie. I was fifteen and she was twenty-five, and I learned everything she had to teach me—which was a lot. So gentle, so understanding that she was practically a psychoanalyst.

Evie. You want to marry her. The thought was so strong inside my head that I jumped. Audrey had overheard me again. I shielded my mind at once.

Now she was angry. The tears were gone, as well as her appearance of helplessness. "So that's why you won't marry me She picked up the first-aid kit, which happened to be on the wall near her hand, and started advancing toward me. I edged back.

She raised her arm to throw, and as I tried to dodge, I stumbled on the one-step dais below the psi-scope. The metal-cased kit sailed over my head and crashed into the glass screen of the psi-scope. It punched a ragged hole in the screen, and I ducked to avoid the flying shards, falling heavily on the dais.

Oh no, Audrey thought, looking past my shoulder. Then, after a moment, Well, I'm glad you did. Now we'll be apart.

What did she mean?

I started to brush off the pieces of glass and get up when I suddenly realized that my shoulder was pressing against the warning release under the psi-scope. I eased away with a feeling of horror. The warning would bring a guard cruiser to the station within twenty-four hours, and if we didn't have a good reason for the warning, we'd be courtmartialed.

Economy was a deadly serious matter to the Service. It worked on a strict budget, and a cruiser call might cost as much as 100,000 credits. Cruisers couldn't come running any time a person on one of the 2,500,000 guard stations happened to be lonely. The cost of the Service was so huge already that transportation was kept to a minimum. One call every four years was all a station could expect.

The Service couldn't justify itself by pointing to a clear and present danger, and therefore had trouble every time its budget came up for passage in the Federal Assembly. There were occasional rumors about an alien civilization in another region of the galaxy, but so far nobody had ever seen an "alien" above the pollywog level. There were also stories about whole guard stations vanishing, but I took these tales with a grain of salt.

One thing I knew for sure : the smashed psi-scope and the warning button meant the end of the line in the Service. Halfway to my retirement—no, over halfway—and she had to try bouncing a first-aid kit off my head. With a single motion I rose and lunged for her. "Audrey !" Audrey! I went after her with both hands, visualizing death tortures. I opened my mind to let her see the murder in it.

She whimpered and ran for the sleeping quarters and locked the door.

AUDREY didn't come out again until the ship arrived. The cruiser couldn't land, but a two-man launch came down through the chlorinated mist. I had given up trying to think of a good reason for the warning and was resigned to being merely dignified in defeat.

I was surprised by the quick arrival of the ship, which took only twelve hours instead of twenty-four to answer our call. When I heard the dome's pressure lock click into operation, I let Audrey know.

You might as well come out now. They're here. Straighten the sleeping quarters. And try to look human for a change.

The guards came in, their space suits still wet from the automatic spray that washed off the chlorine. I helped them take off their helmets. The older man, heavy set and bristle-headed, introduced himself.

"I'm Captain Jayten." He motioned to his companion. "Lieutenant Gorman." Both had a friendly, impartial look, and I took a deep breath.

"What's the trouble ?" Jayten asked.

I told it to him straight, including the fact that Audrey and I were both telepaths, stationed together by mistake because some idiot in Assignments had dropped a digit. As I talked, Jayten's slab jaws tightened, and his eyes grew cold and distant. The smile on his face was unpleasant to see. When I was through, he had only a few words to say. He didn't mention courtmartial, but it was written all over his face. He ordered Gorman to take charge of the dome until replacements were sent, and I broke out the space suits Audrey and I would have to wear while walking from the dome to the launch.

I tried to get into Jayten's mind but could catch no more than the usual glimmerings of thought that escape from the consciousness of a non-telepath.

Audrey still hadn't appeared. Audrey, I thought, don't bother powdering your nose. Let's go get courtmartialed.
It's not my nose, she said. It's my eyes. The ones you gave me.

She did a remarkable job on them, all right. At a distance, her skin Was fair and undiscolored, and she smiled shyly at the craggy Captain Jayten. For some reason it made me want to slug her again and restore my original handiwork.

THE launch took less than half an hour to bring us up to the cruiser's orbit. The moon's surface underneath us was a roiling blue-green mass, like a vast, puffy cushion. The planet, much larger, glowed above us like a pale sun, and at first I didn't see the cruiser because of the bright light behind it.

It swung in an orbit a thousand miles above the satellite, and when we got nearer I could make out its number, N-2. It was an old-model six-man ship, but in perfect condition. Space ships always looked bright and new if they never came into contact with a planet's atmosphere.

Audrey sat on my lap in the two-man launch, the seat strap around us both. When the acceleration pressed her against me it was like meeting her all over again. I had forgotten how warm and soft she could be, and I remembered the first days when we were together.

The captain's unfriendliness made me feel a little closer to Audrey, and we opened our minds to each other more than we had for six weeks. The captain said nothing more than was necessary to make contact with the cruiser, and his silence worried Audrey as much as anything. She seemed more troubled by the situation than I'd thought she would be, but it was hard for me to pin her down. Her telepathic powers are different from and better than mine.

I could never get into her mind when she was asleep, for instance, but she could head my dreams any time. That's how our biggest fight started. She caught me in the middle of fine dream about Evie and promptly tried to stuff an oxygen bottle down my throat.

What do you suppose they'll do to us? she asked as we came on board the cruiser and saw the other four guards looking as grim as robots with run-down batteries.

They won't do anything, I said as they showed us to a room the size of a coffin, except take us back to headquarters. There we'll be disciplined. Kicked out of the service probably. Maybe we can get into communications. We won't starve, but we won't skim the cream.
Is that all? she said.

The door had shut behind us and we were alone. The room was six by three by six, barely big enough for a double bunk with food and relief tubes. We wouldn't need to undress.

"No, that's not all," I said. "They'll suspend marriage and procreation privileges for five or ten years. Not that I'm in a hurry to marry anybody, but it might make a difference to you."

It did. She went pale and I thought she was going to cry.

"But they can't," she whispered, her eyes filling up with tears. "I didn't think they'd do that."

In the Academy she probably memorized poetry when she should have been reading the 'Articles of War. Sometimes I think she passed her exams by clairvoyance.

Samm, she said. I've got to do something. I can't go back. We didn't call the cruiser on purpose.

It might be better if we had, I said.

She closed her eyes and her face turned up as if she were trying to hear something a light year away. What—I started to say.

She waved her hand and said, "Shhh. I'm trying to get the electronic system." I went into her mind and tried to follow her, but it was too complex. She was trying the other crew members, digging below the conscious level, which was practically silent, to the mass of informational data underneath. She didn't get much, but it was enough.

She came to life and opened her eyes, yanked a hairpin out of her hair, and slid back the door into the narrow corridor.

"Get a pair of space suits," she said, and disappeared. What was she doing? I followed to see.

The corridor was too narrow for running, but I sidled after her as fast as I could. I saw her squeeze around a corner that I estimated was in the middle of the ship, and when I got to the corner I saw her reaching for the ceiling. She had jabbed the hairpin in a crack and was pounding it with the heel of her slipper.

I grabbed her collar and jerked her back just as a muffled "Poof !" came from the ceiling. A three-inch circle of metal melted away, and a dazzling blue-white ball of flame swelled out of the ceiling panel.

By this time the N-2 was gaining acceleration for the dimensional jump that would last almost a whole day and bring us out near the Service headquarters planet. A sudden surge brought Audrey down upon me, and we both tumbled in the corridor. I got my feet under me and scrambled away from the slowly swelling fire.
The ship's on fire, she thought happily. Now we won't have to go back.

I pulled her along the corridor to our quarters. Where could I give the alarm? I didn't want to be roasted in space, and I gave her a couple of images of What it would be like to fry and freeze at the same time.
Don't worry, she said. The fire set off the alarm, too. They know about it. They'll have to stop, then we can take over.

Take over what? I said. A cruiser blazing like a sky rocket?
BUT she was right. Acceleration suddenly stopped, and we were coasting in free fall. Someone clattered down the corridor, and Jayten appeared in the doorway, his hair burned off and his eyebrows singed.

He was wearing a space suit with the helmet back and dragging two other suits.

"Here," he said, "put these on and follow me. We're going outside."

I started to slug him and run for the two-man launch, but his free hand was too close to his gun. We had to play along for a while. Perhaps if we helped —and if they never found that Audrey started the fire—the courtmartial would give us an easier time of it.

I followed him, pushing the suits ahead of me in the corridor. Just by the escape hatch we had enough room to put them on, and Audrey and I struggled into the suits while Jayten went outside. Another crew member was breaking out fire extinguishers, and he strapped one on each of us.

"Is the fire outside ?" I yelled.

"Started inside," he said, "under one of the vanes. But it caught the emergency fuel line and burned out through the hull." He gave the strap on my extinguisher another jerk and said, "We've stopped it in the fuel lines but one corner of the uranium pile is exposed."

The extinguisher on my back would spray a metal skin over the hull and the uranium pile so that they could patch up the ship and get their power plant shielded again.

I went first out of the escape hatch. I jumped off into the blackness of space but misjudged the push I needed and spun away from the ship. For a moment I lost my bearings. The radiant planet was directly ahead of me, and I twisted back toward the N-2, which hung motionless against the stars. Fire had broken through the hull at the base of a vane, and a large section of the metal skin was red. Two figures in space suits were already spraying the fire.

I could see the satellite much further below now, and its misty softness had changed in the distance to a blue opaque shell. The two space-suited figures were being driven back from the fire by the extinguishers' reaction, and they had to keep jockeying into position again.

I grabbed the oxygen nozzle and pointed it behind me. One squirt was enough to send me scooting back toward the N-2. Three others were tumbling out of the hatch, and I knew Audrey was one of them. I heard he voice in my head.
Save some of the metal in your extinguisher, she said. I have a plan.

Fine. I didn't, so I could tag along—and stop her before she did something drastic.

I maneuvered into place beside the others fighting the fire, and it didn't take long to skin over the hull and get the power pile under wraps again. I didn't empty my extinguisher, and Audrey didn't explain.

But when we were through, Audrey drifted to my side. She raised the nozzle of her extinguisher and pointed it toward the four men in space suits, now examining the repaired hull.

Spray them! she said.

I pointed my extinguisher and let them have it. They were standing in a group, and one of them started to turn in surprise, but he never had a chance. We froze them in place like metal statues. The' liquid metal solidified the joints in their suits and welded them to the cruiser's hull.

Now what? I said to Audrey.

There's one more, she said. Inside.

We started for the hatch, and I wished I had a gun. The extinguisher felt useless now. As I grabbed the edge of the hatch, the voice came.

Not inside. I stopped, because, the voice didn't come from Audrey. Behind you.

I turned and saw the fifth man, pointing a gun at us. It was Jayten, and I'd lost track of him. He could slice us in two with a single shot.

That was a neat trick, he said. But don't make me kill you. I couldn't get over the fact that he was a telepath, but I was thinking more about the fact that the courtmartial would throw the book at us now. A mutiny charge perhaps. Maybe I could put Jayten out of action long enough for Audrey to get away . .
It's time we told them, another voice said, and I knew it must be one of the other crewmen. Another telepath! I didn't have time to think, because I was already diving at Jayten. He leveled the gun at me and a white-hot wave washed over my brain. I heard a gabble of telepathic voices and then blacked out, dropping slowly down into a deep well of unconsciousness.

SOFT hands were stroking my hair, and my head was pressed against something warm and soft. Audrey's voice came in.
You're awake! I tried to move, but my arms and legs were heavy and full of sleep, and my head swam dizzily.

"Where are we?" My voice was rusty, and I had to clear my throat. From the artificial gravity, I could tell the ship was in motion again. I opened my eyes to the narrow cabin.

For answer, Audrey touched a button on the wall, and a viewscreen at the foot of the bunk lit up. It showed the vast radiant surface of the planet, and we were plunging downward. Pitchblende Planet—Audrey's Moon—where the radiation stopped all the scout rockets that were ever sent down.

"It's simple," Audrey said. "They explained it to me while you were asleep."

"While I was asleep." That reminded me. "Why didn't I die ?" I said.

"Jayten didn't shoot you. They're all. telepaths, and they can hook up in a cir-cuit to paralyze anybody they like."

That figured. "But why couldn't we tell they were telepaths before ? We couldn't get more than a whisper from them."

Audrey patted me on the cheek like she owned me and said, "They've got something we could've used. Automatic mind shields. You don't have to be on guard all the time." She held up a small plastic object the size of a bean.

"Just slip it in your ear."

This I would have paid a year's salary for when we were fighting and getting on each other's nerves. But I still didn't understand why we were heading for Audrey's Moon. "Why—" I started to say, when Jayten appeared in the doorway.

Because we're not Service guards, he said. You might call us a new civilization. He looked friendlier now, and the harshness had gone away from his face. He sat down on the edge of the bunk. "There are fifty thousand of us," he said.

HE EXPLAINED that a group of telepaths, mostly persons tired of the restrictions and discipline of the Service, had been building up for the last hundred years. They lived on Pitchblende Planet, which glowed as if it were dangerously radioactive, but this was only an atmospheric effect. Other telepaths in the Service had been careful to doctor the spectroanalysis reports to make sure that nobody discovered there wasn't an ounce of pitchblende per square mile.

They took care of all scout rockets themselves.

Audrey broke in. "They were watching us for years. They heard everything we said or thought."

I sat bolt upright in the bunk and bumped my head sharply.

"You mean to say they heard me every time I . . ." She blushed, and I looked toward Jayten. He was trying not to grin.

He nodded and said, "Right. Not me, of course, because I don't go in for that kind of thing. Mostly it was the women. They even started calling the planet Audrey's Moon."

"Darling, they thought you were wonderful," Audrey said. "You were pretty good at first, you know."

Jayten stopped trying not to grin, and I felt myself getting hot in the face. "Matter of fact," Jayten said, "all the women were in love with you. The men didn't like it and almost voted to keep you off the planet."

This would bear looking into, I decided. I faced Jayten again. "But why didn't you come out in the open before? Why the Service guard act?"

"You'd never have left the Service if you weren't in trouble," Jayten said. "Most people are like that. We wanted you to feel completely alienated to the Service, and then we would have rescued you, pulled you out of a jam. Anybody's glad to escape a courtmartial sentence."

I nodded, and he went on to explain that the station back on the satellite would be destroyed and submerged, as if an oceanquake had broken up the basalt island. The warning hadn't gone through to the Service, and it would be several months before the regular guard ship came to relieve us. It all added up, and when Jayten left us alone, Audrey's face was serene and smiling. I even under-stood now why the cruiser arrived twelve hours early, and why there had been rumors about "aliens." But I was puzzled still about how things stood between me and Audrey. "No more fights ?" I said, looking up at her face. She smiled and kissed me.

"No. We're getting married." I kept my mind a careful blank and took the bean-like thought shield from her hand and put it in my ear. Now I safe. "Why are we getting married?" I asked.

For the same reason I couldn't go back to be courtmartialed." She laughed: "For the same reason I started the fire. For the same reason I got angry when you dreamed about Evie. I've got a secret."

She glowed at me happily and picked the shield out of my left ear. "Listen," she said, and pulled my head against her abdomen. "Two months already."

At first I could hear nothing, but then I caught the faint sounds of an unborn mind drifting lazily in a kind of sleepy warmth.

I don't remember what I said, but it was something like "Darling-why-didn't-you-tell-me-this-before?"

Audrey wept happily and said she had tried, but I was such a beast. I agreed, and we hugged each other.

Then I happened to glance at my watch and saw it was bedtime. Audrey had a faraway look in her eyes and said, "We won't land on the planet for an-other hour . . ."

The bunk was narrow, but we didn't even know the difference.

WE'VE been here four months now, and it's not bad at all. With the mind shields we can have privacy whenever we need it, and when we want to be together as intimately as possible, we take off the shields and enjoy ourselves.

We're very happy that we're going to have a boy. How do I know it's a boy? I've talked to him, of course. He doesn't have a good vocabulary yet, but he's learning. In fact, only last night I argued with him for an hour to convince him that it's not so bad in the outside world and that he ought to be born. He's as stubborn as his mother.

The End.
[From Startling Stories (Winter 1955)]

Olak, the white wolf, could not know that these superstitious man-creatures regarded him with awe, and were his protectors in a sense.

Code of the Fang

By HAROLD CRUCCKSHANK

OLAK, the White Phantom wolf king, whirled to the aid of his black wolf mate, Mayek. His fangs dripping red blood on to the snow, Olak savagely attacked a member of an intruder pack which had come down to raid on his range. They were members of the pack of Usam, the big black timber-wolf, a bitter rival of Olak.

Mayek was down, two of Usam's fanged hellions at her throat; but she fought with valiance and with strength and speed that were amazing, considering her condition. Before long, she would retire to the den to bring forth the season's litter of younglings.

Four of Usam's pack-members had beset the black mate of Olak, while the White Phantom was absent hunting. He had heard his mate's faint cry of distress and lost no time getting to her aid; now, with all the savagery in his great fighting heart, he launched himself into attack.

A lean, barren she-wolf coiled and slashed at his beautiful white throat. Her fangs cut through his fur and skin, and now his handsome breast was stained a dirty brown.

Olak sneezed sharply, as if to rid his nostrils of the distasteful tang of his enemies. He bounded to one side as the she-wolf reached again for him but overshot. As swift as chain lightning, Olak coiled inside and struck. . .

It was the end for this gaunt-bellied old member of Usam's pack. Olak's blood had been fired by an instinctive sense of the wide code, when the creatures of his kind must respect the condition of such as Mayek.

As the intruder she-wolf lay kicking, Olak chopped stiffly about her, his bloodied fangs bared, his hackles up. Truly, he assumed proportions that were worthy of his kingship. Two of the raiders crept, wounded, off into the scrub . . . Two, including the slain she-wolf, would never again go bounding down the hunt-trails like wraiths in the starlit winter nights.

Shortly Olak minced to his favorite slab of rock, his look-out position. He raised his head, thrusting his muzzle high, to give out a long and powerful wail of victory and of warning. It was a cry which penetrated the frost-fog, to reach the ears of the man-creatures at the cabin by the springs . . .

Tuk Cramer, his wife Netan, and her strapling Indian brother, Tan, cocked their heads sharply. Tuk and Tan were dressing down the pelts of handsome foxes—foxes which young Tan raised in a compound between the cabin and the springs.

"Olak!" Tuk gasped. "It is like I tol' you, Tan; those four wolves of Usam's pack must have come close to the den of the great white one . . ."

Tan nodded, and resumed the flensing of a hide.

Netan stared wide-eyed at her husband. Her full bosom rose and fell sharply. The Cramers and Tan had been "neighbors" of the White Phantom and his mate and kindred for many reasons here in this grim and desolate Nahanni country.

When the White Phantom called, it was either for tangible good or bad. To these man-creatures, Olak was an unusual creature whom they respected and, in a sense, feared, because of his white coat. Despite their mission-school training, they could not rid their minds of the superstitions of their ancestors. To them—secretly, if not openly—Olak, the White Phantom, was favored of the gods of the wilderness; they had long since learned to identify his calls, and they heeded them.

"Had you better not go and see, brave one?" Netan asked her husband in her soft Cree Indian tongue.

Tuk slowly shook his head. "No. When Olak calls as he did, all is well," he answered. "Tomorrow, out on my traplines, I shall call in close to the den, and check. Ayaie! But it will be bad if Usam brings all his pack down. They will rob our traps, and—ayah! Mayek's young. . . . She and the white one will have to be careful."

A DOG FOX barked huskily from the compound. This started a wild cacophony of sounds. Tan was instantly alert. This was a delicate time of the year for his she-foxes; the vixens could not stand too much excitement.

Pulling on a parka, Tan moved out of doors and walked quickly in the sharp night to the compound.

He whistled softly, and a beautiful silver fox whipped about to point his sharp muzzle at Tan. Shortly there was quiet at the pens. Tan talked softly to his charges; there were some very valuable creatures here—types he had developed by long seasons of careful breeding and attention.

Tan was proud of his foxes; he knew that Corporal Dan Martin of the Mounted—his friend—would be very proud when next he called, on patrol. It was Martin who had helped young Tan get his first start in this business of fox-raising, for the corporal had brought in literature to study.

Suddenly Tan whirled. The silver dog-fox bounded to the roof of his pen and thrust his muzzle high, to bark in his rasping voice-tones. Out of the west there came a long and powerful wolf-call. "Usam!" Tan gasped. His eyes blazed in the starlight.

Game was in short supply. It was the low ebb of the cycle in the rabbit ranks. Deer and moose had gone to yards, forced there by extra heavy snows; a famine was on the range of Olak. . . Usam was a bold adventurer, a ruthless big-fanged black. Small wonder that Tan quivered with misgiving. More than once such creatures as Usam had invaded the compounds, to destroy valuable foxes, in famine-time.

Tan strode back to the cabin, where he gave out the information that Usam was close in. Tuk's almost-black eyes glinted as he tightened his mouth. "It might be bad for our traplines, brave one," he said. "Bad, too, for the foxes. You will have to watch closely. . . ."

Tan stayed up late, almost until the dawn light began to filter through the pall of the dense frost-fog. He shuddered at the compound as he heard the skeleton tamaracks in nearby swamps crack their frost-tortured "bones." But reassurance came when again he heard the long, high-pitched wail of Olak, the White Phantom; the great white wolf king was alert and Tan knew that, if hard pressed, Olak would call in his powerful son, San, and the pack.

With this comforting thought in mind, Tan moved back to the shack, and straightway to his bunk . . . while the thin light of dawn slowly struggled to nudge aside the gloom of lingering night. . . .

MAYEK brought seven younglings to the world. Olak scouted the entire home-range area diligently. He was hard pressed to find and kill enough food for his own needs and for Mayek's sustenance. His flanks leaned off and his belly grew hollow. Many times he cut the sign of his hated rival Usarn and the black's pack members; but alone, Olak wisely gave the tracks a wide berth.

He pushed swiftly into the heavily brushed draws, where he was successful, now and then, in snatching a ruffed grouse or fool hen-grouse. Faithful, he brought a whole, untouched bird back to Mayek, laying the warm, feathered one just inside the entrance to her den. Now and then he cocked his head at the den entrance and listened to the mumblings and mewlings of his and Mayek's new litter. His hackles rose and fell, rose and fell, and he gasped soft, muted sounds as he stretched himself close by to rest, before whisking away to resume his hunting and find some small titbit of game life for the appeasement of his own ravishing hunger.. . .

Olak was out at his hunting when the tang of fox struck his nostrils sharply. Ordinarily he would have curled his lip and moved on, but his empty belly was grumbling. He slid down into a draw, and followed on along the brush-studded depression. Suddenly he came to a sharp halt and his hackles rose, for now. blended with the fox-scent, was the tang of a stranger wolf.

Usam!

Olak peeled his lips back and rippled his strong muscles. He commenced to inch forward, the chill breeze favoring him, stabbing at his moist nose. Now he peered through a port in a dogwood bush and his eyes widened into a flaming glare as he glimpsed the huge black form of Usam. The big black wolf was down chewing on a fox.

Dawn had only been awakened an hour when all at once Olak froze. His ears pricked backward as faintly there came the crunch, crunch of snow caused by the treading snowshoes of a man-creature. Olak sensed that the man was closer to him than the sounds of his approach indicated, for the wind was against him.

The White Phantom was between Usam, his enemy, and the man at his backtrail. He poised uncertainly for a moment or two, then suddenly galvanized to action. He whipped to the right flat bank of the draw and leaped prodigiously to the topland.

Turning his head, he glimpsed the man-creature; then quickly he cut for the brush, in a run paralleling the draw, to point almost at right angles to Usam, still down at the fox.

As Olak turned he was forced to expose himself. Tuk Cramer, the trapper, gasped. He knew the wolf was in close to one of the fox sets, but never before had he known Olak to make a raid on a set. Tuk was swinging his Winchester around when he heard a stir ahead. He gasped as he saw the great form of Usam rise, half turn his head, and leap on along the draw.

Cramer threw down and pulled, but he swore bitterly as he saw his bullet kick up snow a rod behind the fleeing black wolf. Now Usam was gone, swallowed by covering bush.

Tuk hurried forward, his eyes wide as he glared at the mangled remains of what had been a handsome black dog-fox.

THE MAN now turned to the point at which he had glimpsed Olak. A slow smile toyed with Tuk's mouth-corners. There was a moment, formerly, when he might have charged the White Phantom with the raid on the trap-set. He was glad he had seen Usam, the black one.

"Ayaie!" he gasped. "But it is bad! My catch will be light for the rest of the winter. . . ."

He freed the fox-paw from the trap, hurled the remains of the carcass out into the brush, then reset the trap; but he shrugged as he straightened. Once the wolves began their plundering, there was little man could do to stop them, save by the use of strychnine poison baits; and Tuk had promised his friend Corporal Dan Martin never to use poison.

For the rest of his run along the line, he found only one small cross fox, and the remains of another, whose fine fur was torn.

On his return to his home again, he moved in close to the den of Mayek. He stood long moments watching the almost-screened mouth of the den. but he heard no sounds, saw no sign. Yet he smiled, for he knew that Mayek had her younglings down deep beneath the scrub and rock-reinforced clay.

Back at his cabin. Tuk found Tan, and told him of his experience. "Usam has started to take my foxes, brave one," Tuk said mournfully. "Soon he comes down to the compound here. We must watch closely, or—"

"O-o-o-u-u-u-u-u-u-"

Both men spun at the high-pitched wail of Olak, the White Phantom.

"He is warning his kindred, Tan; it is bad!"

Tuk shrugged and moved on to the cabin to thaw out his lone catch and later pelt it. Many times famine had lanced the grim wild wastes of the Nahanni country. Tuk and Tan and Netan had come through many such a crisis, yet they shuddered now. In such a state, the isolated wilderness was indeed haunted by the grim specter of doubt, and threat and uncertainty. . . .

IT WAS such creatures as Olak and his kind which suffered most in famine-times. And the lynx, which depended almost wholly on the rabbits and grouse.

As the winter waned, Olak came across more than one wasted, starved, frozen form of a lynx, a creature which could provide him with no food-supply. In many cases the great horned and snowy owls had already torn what flesh remained on the lynx bodies, for the big owls, too, had been hard pressed to find adequate food. . . .

With the coming of the spring break-up, Olak hunted wider range. When the ice was gone from the creek, close to his home range, he stood in the cold water of the riffles, his head cocked. He had already tanged the first of the running pike, but it was some time before at last he was able to snap his jaws on a big fish.

He carried this back to Mayek, but she curled her nose, snarling; fish-bones were dangerous. Fish did not form part of the wolves' diet . . . only in extremity did they eat them.

Today, as a warm sun flooded the stirring wilderness, Olak loped on to a farther creek, where beavers had recently begun new activities.

He wrinkled his nose to catch the various scents Wafting on the warm breeze. He was searching for danger sign, for every now and then he had come across Usam's scent—scent planted, as was the habit of the wolf-kind, on hummocks and rocks, or against stumps. . . . But there was no fresh sign here at the beaver flat, no scent that overlay that tantalising musky scent of beaver.

Olak cocked his head. A creature was stirring off his right front. He slowly turned his head, and his lips drew back to expose his fangs in a sharp grimace as he glimpsed a big beaver at work on a fallen poplar near the big lodge.

Bark was being stripped by the strong incisors of the fat beaver. Head down, belly down, Olak began to steal forward. He licked his chops from time to time as he swung wide, left. Now he lay flat behind a clump of poplar saplings which grew right through the domed roof of the big lodge, which was connected to the stream proper by a skilfully cut channel.

With infinite patience, the 'White Phantom watched Ahrnisk, the beaver, at his feeding. Now the big male beaver turned and blinked his small black eyes as he stretched himself and, seated, his flat tail bracing him, began to paw his whiskers and, with his claws, comb out his coat.

Still Olak made no move. He quivered within himself as he waited, waited.

Now old Ahmisk dropped to all fours. There was a sudden resounding clap from the creek, where another adult beaver had been swimming. The warning slap of a broad tail on the water startled both Olak and Ahmisk.

Ahmisk at once coiled and started to scurry on toward the protective stream, but had to pass within half a rod of the crouched White Phantom. .. . Olak stretched and struck.

He was rocked on to his haunches as, like lightning, old Ahmisk slashed his nose with those terrible beaver incisors. Gasping, Olak again rushed, and this time Ahmisk had no time to turn and strike. Olak's fangs had struck him sharply, powerfully, in the nape of the neck.

It was a sharp and terrible killing; but, in his desperation, Olak could not pass up this opportunity. Ahmisk was big and fat; Mayek, at her den, was wasting for food, as her younglings exacted their heavy toll. Olak flattened and began to rip the heavy furry hide from the beaver-flesh. He belched repeatedly as he gulped the well-flavored, fatty meat. Nor did he cease until his gnawing, grumbling belly had ceased to complain. . . .

Olak was instinctively aware of his responsibility for the welfare of his mate at this early spring season. He licked his chops, fastened a strong fang-hold in the heavy remains of the beaver carcass, and turned to move along his home trail. He had gone no farther than half a mile when all at once he dropped the kill, and spun, to bristle his hackles as he saw the two members of Usam's pack trailing him.

THE DARK gray wolves were young dog-wolves with no responsibilities—hungry creatures at large. They had not the wisdom nor the fighting experience of the great White Phantom wolf king; yet they represented a great threat, because they outnumbered Olak two to one. He was crossed by two desires: there was his instinctive sense of faithfulness to his mate; there was his fighting desire to join battle for the retention of his kill.

He bared his fangs and minced a pace or two toward the intruders. His tail was high at the base, and kinked like a dog-fox's. His hackles raised and his breast coat fluffed out, Olak assumed proportions far greater than his natural size.

One of the dark greys suddenly swung, to go tearing in around Olak. He had the beaver carcass in his jaws when the White Phantom whirled and charged.

The fight was on!

Olak wasted no time feinting or bobbing; he sensed that this must be a short, speedy encounter. As the wolf with the beaver remains in his jaws whirled, to make a break, Olak spun and struck. His fangs cut through hide and flesh and ripped sidewise with a powerful jerk of the white one's neck muscles.

Blood spouted. The heavy beaver carcass dropped to the snow. Again Olak drove. There were fangs sinking into one of his rear thigh muscles before he finally severed the first wolf's jugular.

Now he whirled, spinning the second marauder from him. His off-side rear limb buckled under him. Its muscle was cut. Before he could recover and thrust, the dark grey had whipped away to the cover of the brush.... He sat there, at a discreet distance, watching Olak, the white one, coil in an endeavour to lick his wound.

Now Olak shuffled his wounded limb deep into a small patch of cold snow, until he was satisfied that the bleeding had ceased.

He minced about the dead wolf a time or two before moving to a knoll, an old beaver-dam, there to cock his muzzle high and pour out a long, high-pitched wail. It was a call that reached the ears of Mayek at her den. . . . It was a call heard by other wilderness creatures. . . .

Nearby, in the brush, his tongue lolling and his chops drooling, the grey wolf watched with baleful stare. He would have food, but not the succulent beaver. His feast would be cannibalistic, for he would rip and tear at his brother's carcass as the White Phantom moved on, carrying the beaver on to the den of his mate. . . .

As he neared the den, Olak whipped to the cover of scrub brush. He had glimpsed the man-creature. . . .

[Tuk Cramer shuffled on to the Beaver were in close season to all he reached the beaver-dam and the lodge, and saw the sign of a big beaver kill, he shook his head. Beaver were in close season to all trappers.]

"Ayaie!" Tuk gasped. He had protected Ahmisk and his kind for many seasons, watching them multiply. Tuk looked forward to taking a few pelts again when the season opened, but sadly he stared down at the torn fur and hide of old Ahmisk.

"Usam! Mucha Satan!" he swore in the Cree tongue.

It was well he charged Usam with the kill, for it would have been doubly saddening had he known that Olak, the White Phantom, had been responsible. . . .

BACK AT his mate's den, Olak dropped the beaver and thrust his nose deep into the den entrance. Shortly, her hackles up, her fangs bared, Mayek snarled as she approached the feast. Olak grunted and limped away, to settle himself to rest. His nose quivered as from time to time the fragrant, musky odor of the beaver touched his nostrils as Mayek savagely tore the flesh from the bones.

Now Olak's eyes began to blink. Ears cocked, he settled to rest, to nap, while the sun strengthened and the soft sou'-westerly breeze honeycombed remaining snow-patches.

High overhead, the whirr of wings faintly sounded. The first of migratory birds were in full flight north. Soon would come the honking of the wild geese and the cries of the whistler swans, with now and then the more resounding calls of the few remaining trumpeter swans.

Olak shuffled his body into a position of greater comfort, yawned prodigiously, and lay over, to rest while, seated on her haunches at the den entrance, her belly now well filled, Mayek, the beautiful big black, sat on guard.. . .

THE TRUE spring burst on the wilds with amazing suddenness. Songbirds had returned; sap-filled trees were blowing up their buds, and the first green grass-shoots were pushing aside the dead, dry grass of last year.

Hot sun flooded the desolate wastes, laying salve upon the hurts wrought by the grim winter. But as time went on, Olak, the White Phantom, became more restless. He started every time a gust of night wind caused a sinister, sibilant hissing of the dry grasses.

This evening, following many hot days, thunder grumbled. A flash of lightning to westward dazzled him. Throughout the night he sat and watched the play of sheet and fork lightning along the crest of the westerly hills.

There was no dew with daybreak—an ominous sign.

Came a close-in crash of thunder! Mayek had pushed her younglings to the outside. She joined them, her muzzle high. There was no sign of rain.

Another dazzling flash of lightning cut through a single mass of low cloud stratum to the north-west. The flash was attended by a smashing volley of thunder which sent the whelplings scurrying to their mother's sides.

Suddenly Olak sprang to all fours, and raced to a rise of land. He flung his head high, and his nose quivered. Mayek swung on her stern, to watch her mate; and then, over all the wild range, rang the long-drawn wail of the White Phantom. It was a warning. Smoke had touched his nostrils with its dread, acrid tang.

A freak, rainless electric storm had rolled around the hills all night. Its lightning had ripped into the tinder-dry punk of deadfalls at the edge of a tamarack swamp, and now, almost before Mayek could join her mate, smoke was visible. . . .

Several times Olak and his mate had experienced the mad ravages of spring or autumn bush fires, their most deadly enemy, the most deadly enemy of all creatures of the wilderness. The White Phantom did not panic. He turned his head, with muzzle cocked, to sniff sharply as if determining the true wind-direction. Now he spun, ran his muzzle along Mayek's flank; then, wheeling, he raced on toward the north-west.

Does had not yet dropped their fawns. A mule deer doe flashed by Olak, her nostrils flared red. She was in no condition for this sharp run; she had lots of time to make her way to the safety of the lake, to eastward, but, in her condition, she was panicked.

Olak stood a moment or so and watched her until the brush closed behind her. Now he glimpsed an old bull moose standing at full height, head turned toward the scene of the lightning's damage. Soon Moosewa might be gaitin, at full stride toward the lake, but for the time being he was glaring at the coiling smoke.

Now Olak watched a tongue of flame break from the smoke. A wind gusted, whipping the tongue out flat, stirring up the red embers of the punk, scattering them over the dry grass of a ridge. . . .

Then, quickly, the fire flamed out and the fickle wind steadied. . . . Olak sat on his haunches, his lips working sharply in strange grimaces.

A buck deer came bounding up out of a shallow draw, snorting as he pounded along in full flight Suddenly there was a terrific roar as the heated air caused a local eddy of powerful wind, whirled the fire a point to westward. It was then Olak spun and drove back to his den zone.

The seven younglings were without understanding. As Olak and their mother began to muzzle them forward, they tumbled and coiled, to paw and play. Olak seized a husky little dog whelp in his jaws and trotted off with him, setting him down a couple of hundred yards nearer the two-miles-distant lake. He returned for another. Progress was slow, but the progress of the fire was swift now. The sun was blotted out and the wilderness, so recently adorned in the first sign of spring glory, reverted to a sere place of desolation and despair.

Animals of every species moved by. A black bear and tumbling twin cubs came into sight. The old she halted, to turn her head and snarl gutturally at the wolf family. Olak paid her no heed.

All at once he froze in his tracks, a whelp in his jaws, as he heard the sound of footbeats to his right rear. Now he spun, to glimpse man-creatures. He quivered in every nerve-fibre, but no harm came to him. . . .

TUK CRAMER and Tan were out, scouting. They were looking for a suitable area at which to commence back-firing.

Tuk halted, catching at Tan's arm. "Ayah! But look, brave one! Him, the white one, an his family. . . . Cre nom d'un chien! It is sad We cannot help them with those young ones. . . ."

Olak moved on, watched by the men. He flashed past them again, on his way back for another whelp. Then suddenly Tan called to Tub. "Lookl To the right, north. Usam, the black, an'--ayaie!"

Tan pointed to five wolves of the stranger pack.

Tuk straightened his shoulders. In spite of the gravity of the situation, he would have shot Usam and his followers, but Tub was armed only with an axe.

"He is the evil one, Tan!" Tuk whispered huskily. "I am afraid for the white one an'—"

A terrific roar from the gathering forces of the fire cut Tub short. "We begin the backfire, great one?" Tan asked.

Tuk hesitated. "We begin, but, Tan, Olak, Hayek an' the rest of the young . . . We must find out where they are, or—tonnerre! we could encircle them. I go. Be ready!"

Tuk found Mayek nudging along three whelps. She whirled and bared her fangs as he came within a few rods of her. The tang of the smoke in her nostrils had made it impossible for her to catch his scent.

Tuk backed away. Now as he turned to rejoin Tan he gasped as a wall of flame rose like a high tide of red death. Powered by a sudden blast of wind, it rose, surging, to smash against a belt of mixed evergreen and deciduous timber. . . .

Tuk shuddered and spun, to hurry back to Tan. "We move quickly toward the west, Tan. There is no more time. Come!"

Shortly they were touching off dry matted grass, healing out flame, forcing the backfire to creep against the wind, in a widening circle, as they struggled against the smoke fumes to save their home area. . . They must get a backfire line around to join the creek to the south of their home yard; but they realized that their struggles could, in a single puff of wind, be all in vain. . . .

AT THE threat of encirclement by the backfire, Mayek was forced to seize a whelp and rush to find OIak. She was obliged to leave two of the whelps behind. Now she and Olak whipped back together. . . . But as they neared the young ones a dark form flashed to the brush. It was the great form of Usam . . . Usain, the code-breaker. A small whelpling lay stretched out in death.

Together, Mayek and Olak raised hackles and bared their terrible fangs.

Mayek now darted in, snuffling smoke-tang from her nostrils, and seized the last of the whelps, to start nosing them along as fast as their immature legs would carry them. There was no chance now of her gaining the safety of the lake. She was turning her brood on toward the creek, to the south. . . .

Olak had not rejoined her. He was swinging around a belt of brush, and now he poised himself at his' full height, to glare at a slinking black wolf-shape. This was Usam. As the fire demons roared and crackled at his back, Olak raised his muzzle and gave out a husky wail. The black wolf-chieftain spun.

Usam whipped agilely to one side at the White Phantom's thrust. He spun and slashed with his terrible fangs, which caught Olak in the throat.

Smeared with blood, the white one rushed again. He snapped and whipped back. Usam rocked back.

Gutturing deep throat-sounds, the White Phantom hurled himself in. His gaping jaws drove, and his fangs buried themselves in Usam's throat.

The big black wolf was strong. He put all his muscular strength to service now as he wrenched his neck from side to side. He suddenly fell, taking Olak with him. The throat-hold was lost, and for a few seconds Olak was hard pressed.

He caught the black by a forepaw and exerted all his strength in a sharp twist of his head. A bone snapped like the crack of a fire-tortured tamarac.

Usam buckled. He was stumbling forward when Olak whirled and cut his hamstrings. . . .

Olak seized a youngling straggler and whirled, to skirt a flaming patch of scrub brush, then on to the creek flat, where he laid the cub. . . .

As the grim red tide bore ruthlessly down, to reach its climax in the heavy matted dry grasses of the creek flat, Mayek and her brood cowered in the shallows of the creek, as wind roared flame over their backs.

Olak swam back and forth in a pool upstream. Now he returned to his family, and muzzled first one whelpling after another. Above the roar of the fire there came sudden, sharp crashes. The entrapped storm to westward had broken free.

Olak whimpered softly as he raised his head to catch the beat of raindrops. . . . Now he carried the whelps to the far bank, to soft haven in cover of heavy willows, where Mayek joined them.

Olak took himself off to a knoll, where he stood and listened to the hiss of rain into the fire, and watched the clouds of steam replace the black smoke.

Now he thrust up his head and poured out a long wail which declared his victory—victory not only over the fire gods, but over his hated enemy Usam, the code-breaker, whose scorched body lay in the smoke-obscured brush to northward.

The End.
[From Adam (Aug. 1955)]

Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyrights on these publications were renewed.

Delirium on Deneb By Rolf Martell

2011-04-23T06:01:00.000-07:00

From Thrilling Wonder Stories Vol. XLII No. 1. (April 1953). Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

He almost reached the hatch opening when there was a gust of wind.

Delirium on Deneb

By Rolf Martell

"Horga learned the secret of the deadly dust—but he had no knowledge of how it would hit him"

JON HORGA, big, bulky and space-tanned, sat alone in the spaceport bar, nursing the last drink he could buy. He savagely ground out his blue Venusian cigar and felt the single orange credit note in his jacket pocket. Tomorrow, he knew, a space patrol blacklist would be thrown at him for suspected wrecking, and he'd be grounded for good. Horga, though he burned with anger, was not badly worried. Flush with credits or broke, he'd always landed on his feet, because he'd always been a little harder and more ruthless than his enemies. And everyone —man or humanoid—he considered his potential enemy.

He gave little attention to the bargirls in their short, provocative skirts, the crew members or the rocket mechanics who wandered past his table. But his cold blue eyes narrowed as he saw the old spaceman stagger towards him. Horga judged he was a prospector just back from a long star trip. He had the look of money—a stake that Horga needed badly right now.

Horga shoved out the chair on the opposite side of his table and gestured toward it. The old man, his eyes a little vacant, smiled and dropped into the chair .

"Just blasted in?" Horga asked.

"Yeah—burned it in at 1800—and as glad as I've ever been to get back to a world with a drink. Three months out and back to Deneb ain't a picnic, ever, but this time if it wasn't for luck it would've been my last run, just like it was for my partner." In answer to the old man's gesture, the waitress appeared with drinks—Alkursch. His hand trembled a bit as he downed his drink in a gulp.

Horga extended his big, radiation-burned hand across the table. "I'm Jon Horga," he said, "just off the Arcturan Queen. Blaster's Mate First. Sounds to me like you got quite a yarn."

The old man's bleary eyes focused slowly. There was a hint of suspicion in them, but the desire for companionship after lonely weeks in space was stronger. He shoved out his hand. "Mine's Barnabus," he said. "Whatever the rest of it was, guess I left it behind, a few million light-years back."

The old man gestured for more drinks, paying off with a bill pealed from a fat roll. "It's a yarn, all right—one of the kind, son, that they say you gotta give out to the space patrol boys if you want to keep your star papers. And I figure that's where I'd better be headed now, while I still got half a synapse working." The old man started to get up, but Horga laid a friendly hand on his arm.

"Barnabus, old boy, I know the patrol has listened to a lot of wild tales—some of them true—but they have a way of discounting about ninety percent what starboys like us say when we wander in with a jetload of Alkursch—and they're just as likely as not to slap a detain on you with an h.t.s. ticket—hold till sober."

Barnabus slumped back in his chair. For a moment he stared at Horga, the Alkursch showing in his eyes. Finally, he shook himself and muttered, "Son, I guess you got a point. Very same thing happened to me once out on Vega IV—very same thing you just said. Guess what I need is some coffee."

Barnabus twisted in his chair and familiarly patted the hip of a passing waitress. "Coffee for me and my friend," he said in fluent, ungrammatical Aldeberan, "and a double order of toasted pultischtoz."

AS THE waitress flashed her standard smile and left to fill the order, Horga leaned forward and began to talk rapidly to Barnabus, telling him of the day-long battle he once had with aliens—pirates in the Magellenics. While he talked, his hands were busy under the table. His right hand slipped along the links of his life-bracelet, past the life-radio, past the sustenance link, with food and water substitute for a month; past the antibody link, the location that automatically gave star coordinates—past these and three similar links to his own special link. He worked the three tiny buttons and the knob in proper sequence and rhythm and the cover of the link sprang open. Carefully, the index finger of his right hand slipped into the cavity and he caught a tiny capsule under his fingernail.

All this time, he continued with his. story. ". . . and, then, when we were disabled, they began to board us. As a last resort, we'd let them think we were all dead. But when they burned their way in, at the stern quarter, we were waiting. I had the trigger-box of the Easton, and I'll always remember the first one that came in through the smoking hole they'd made. He looked—well—if you take a look at that picture behind you, over the bar, you'll get some idea . . ."

As old Barnabus glanced behind him at the picture, Horga's right hand shot out over the coffee, and the tension in his finger relaxed just enough to let the capsule drop into the cup. . .

Barnabus wondered vaguely why the coffee and the pultischtoz didn't help. He kept talking and talking, feeling drunker all the time . . . he hadn't planned to go on this way, but he told how he and his partner had landed out on Deneb IV, hit a rich vein of Thoralite and loaded up. Then, almost by accident, they had stumbled across the meteorite caves with their lichens that no one, through all of space, had ever seen before. How his partner had attempted to analyze the lichens and the strange blue powder they exuded. And how, when his partner fused the powder in the spectroscope . . . .

"It was a nightmare," Barnabus went on. "After it hit him, he was convinced he was surrounded by girls—dozens of them, Earth girls, Venusians, Aldebarans—doing anything he wanted. He knew they were there. And I guess they were, to him. And money, liquor, food —anything and everything. The hallucinations went on for hours. Suddenly, they stopped. Then he just sat, eyes wide open, blank, staring.

I kept watching him for quite awhile and finally I said, 'Bill, why don't you come off it?' His face doesn't change expression at all. He'd been sitting on the hunk but then, more like a servo than a man, he stands up and . . . and . . . just waits! I still don't know.what's happening, y'understand—I think Bill's trying to give me the business. So I'm disgusted—remember, I ain't a space medic. So I said, disgusted-like, 'Look, Bill, it's time we blasted off. It's time you quit this routine. Fun's fun, and all that, but we got to leave.' So he just stands there, with the same fishy eyes, no expression at all. So finally—I'm getting mad now you see—I say, 'Bill, snap out of it or go take a flying leap for yourself.' "

OLD BARNABUS took a long drink of coffee and went on. "We had a K-72-Y—you know the kind of ship—there's a sixty foot drop from the main hatch to the ground. So, when I pulled that 'flying leap' line, Bill happened to be standing nearer to the open hatch than I was. Before I figured what was going on, he'd taken four big steps over to the hatch. Then he looked over at me, as if he wanted my approval. Before I had a chance to say a word, he faced back to the open hatch. I saw his knees bend, then suddenly straighten, and his body shot out. He was gone. There was nothing but sky showing in the hatch."

Barnabus shuddered and poured the rest of the coffee down his throat. "I dashed over to the hatch and looked down. Yeah—there was what was left of Bill—sixty feet. below. 'Smashed to a pulp on the rocks."

Barnabus wiped a thin hand across his mouth. "As I climbed down the ladder, I figured out, more or less, what had happened. Stupid of me not to have caught on sooner. The stuff he'd been testing—must have been a narcotic that we never heard of—set him off in dreams first, and then put him in a state so that he'd do anything I said. The flame in the spectroscope set it off—guess the stuff has to be in vapor form to take effect. But, to make sure, before I buried Bill, I took some blood samples. After I ran the Anderson test on them, I was sure. Turned out to be Anderson Rd-7: permanent addiction with no known counteragents. Rough stuff. Makes a man just about one hundred per cent suggestible to anybody, permanently."

Jon Horga's eyes glittered as he offered a cigar to the old man. Here was a stake—a stake bigger than he'd ever dreamed of having. With this drug—what was the old fool saying—the natives called it locada—he would have anything—anything—he wanted. First, he'd enslave a rich man, to give him the capital he would need at the beginning. Next, technicians and rocket men. Then, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands more for every purpose, every whim. With locada he could be the absolute master of a planet, a whole system, finally, perhaps, the galaxy! His eyes were watchful as he regarded the old man. Already he could see that the little white capsule was taking effect. The old man was still babbling on, but his eyes were drooping. His head refused to stay erect. His speech was thicker. Horga watched and waited. Seconds later, in the middle of a sentence, the old man's head suddenly fell to the permacloth tabletop.

IT HAD been easy, Horga thought. A little pill, but a big dose. Then, with old Barnabus out on his feet, a matter of paying off the port fees with Barnabus' own credits, a small bribe to the driver of the port jeep who took them out to the ship, then the blast-off. Of course, he'd had to throw a paralyzer beam on the old fool, to keep him happy in hyperspace. And now, he thought, with Deneb bright in front of him, it was time to nick old Barney with a touch of Scop 7-0-8 to get the truth out of him on the position of the locada caverns.

He switched in the planet radar and picked up Deneb IV. Ignoring the rules of the space manual, he threw the ship into an FTL "shummer" and immediately slapped it back out. Zero time had passed and he was on the orbit of IV, tailing it a few thousand, Flicks of the rear jets, scherzo manipulations of the auxiliaries. Cancel out the anti-grav, pull the tape from the evaluator, feed masses and velocities into the Compumaster, sling the ship into an orbit, and that's that. Compumaster would take care of the next hour of spiraling in.

Jon Horga stepped out of the pilot seat, filled the Scop needle, and walked back to Barnabus, paralyzed on his couch. Barnabus glared up at him in helpless, frustrated anger as Horga shot the needle home. It was the most powerful truth drug known, though its average effect lasted for only four minutes twenty seconds. But time enough. In three minutes, Horga knew the landing area, azimuth and distance to the locada deposits. Plus: characteristics of the humanoid natives, flora, topography, atmosphere, this-and-that for survival.

Horga smiled with satisfaction and pushed his big bulk back into the pilot's compartment. He thought over the characteristics of the Tzenn, the humanoid natives old Barnabus had mentioned. Physically, he had said, they looked human, more or less, but their metabolism was silicon-based, rather than carbon-based, and among their organs was a special silicon-lined ductless gland, containing almost pure phosphorous, which their systems required in relatively large quantities in order to handle the very complex vitamin molecules found in their food supply.

These Tzenn should be easy to deal with, Horga decided. The old man had described them as docile, primitive folk, blue skinned, living almost naked in the tropical heat of their planet. They subsisted on the few simple crops they grew. Horga frowned as he recalled that old Barnabus had also said they had a religious taboo strictly prohibiting anyone from entering the locada caves. Then he smiled grimly. His needle gun had solved the problem of more than one religious taboo before, among savages.

As the ship spiraled in, Jon Horga set the co-ordinates that Barnabus had been forced to give him into the lat-lon dial. He watched as they passed over a turgid, algae-choked sea, countless miles of dense tropical jungle, and finally the foothills of enormous, rugged mountains. Horga took over from the Compumaster and brought the ship down on the same rock-strewn clearing where Barnabus had landed before. It was a good landing, with the nose of the ship pointed straight up, the three tail fins resting on rock in the center of the clearing.

After checking his needle gun, Horga started for the hatch. He grinned at Barnabus as he passed him. "Soon as I'm back with the locada dust, you'll have the honor of becoming the first slave in the empire of Horga I."

Old Barnabus glared in helpless rage as Horga opened the hatch and began to climb down the sixty feet to the surface.

Horga tramped through the hot, steaming jungle, watching for the landmarks he had forced Barnabus to give him. Flying reptiles whirred past overhead, and noises around him indicated that the jungle was full of other forms of life—and death. As the path turned abruptly, Horga suddenly stopped short and drew back.

At his feet, hungrily reaching for him with enormous claws, was a creature with a slug-like body, fully six feet long. It lay across a blue, rotten log in the path and sunlight sparkled, reflected from the compound eyes in its iridescent head. The claws shot out at Horga and snapped viciously again, this time rip-ping his coveralls and just missing his leg. For all its torpid aspect, the thing was amazingly fast and agile. Horga threw himself back, his needle gun flashing up out of its holster and into action. Instantly, the thing on the log was black, charred ash. Horga stepped over it and continued, a smile of satisfaction on his face.

He crossed a narrow, rapid stream, leaping from one stone to another, care-ful to avoid the orange, poisonous lance-fish flashing through the water beneath him. Then the jungle began to thin out as the path climbed into the foothills, and the ground became more rocky. Under the glaring rays of the young hot sun, Horga sweated as he doggedly pushed on, up the rugged path.

As he rounded an enormous boulder, he saw his first natives on the hillside ahead. There were two of the Tzenn, roughly humanoid, but taller and thinner than men, with glistening blue skins. Each carried a long, crudely fashioned hunting spear. As they saw him, they began chattering excitedly to each other in high, squeaking voices. Horga had his needle gun ready as he advanced toward them, but they retreated off the path into the brush at his approach. As he strode on across the rugged hillside, he heard the Tzenn scampering along behind him, squeaking in their strange, high-pitched language. Over his shoulder he could catch an occasional glimpse of them, loping through the brush or across the rocks, with sunlight glistening on their bare blue skins. Horga felt a vague annoyance and irritation at the Tzenn. Stupid creatures, he thought contemptuously, and apparently harmless, Of course, they might not be so harmless when he broke their taboo—he'd seen native races turned into murderous frenzy when their religion was offended—but the needle gun would take care of them, as it had before with others who had ben stupid enough to get in his way.

He came at last to the canyon opening that Barnabus had spoken of, with sheer cliffs rising at each side—almost the end of his journey. As he walked into the canyon, past the rock walls on either side, the thin squeaking of the Tzenn behind him seemed to grow more excited. Horga guessed that this must be the beginning of the forbidden country. He held his needle gun ready and turned it up to full intensity. If the stupid fools asked for trouble, he was ready to give it to them. He strode on. The canyon widened into a barren, rock-strewn floor, hundreds of feet in width, surrounded by sheer walls. At his approach a flying reptile stretched its leathery, green scaled wings and clumsily began to circle into the air.

The needle gun in Horga's hand crackled and the stricken creature seemed to hesitate in mid-air. Then, head downward, its useless wing broken and fluttering, it plunged back to the rocky canyon floor. It thudded among the razor-sharp rocks, trailing a thin plume of smoke. As Horga passed the dying bird, he kicked it with loathing and continued on.

NOW his steps quickened and he hurried forward eagerly, Ahead of him, at the-base of the canyon wall, he saw the locada caverns—the source of limitless power and wealth, the source of slaves to do his bidding, to supply all the things he would ever need or want. An empire of trapped minds! He scrambled over the sharp rocks, ignoring cuts and scratches. At last he clambered over the final tumbled heap of boulders and reached the mouth of the first cavern.

Bending his head, he stepped into the cavern mouth and switched on his light. The cavern at first was narrow, sloping gently downward, lined with wet bare rock. Abruptly, the path curved sharply and then suddenly ended. There was nothing under his feet.—a black pit!

Horga barely managed to avoid falling by catching a handhold on an outcropping of rock. He stepped back and pointed his light into the black pit. Twenty feet below him was the floor of a natural oval room. Drops of lime-soaked water glistened in the light of the torch along the walls of the chamber. Horga shivered in the damp canyon after the burning heat of the day outside. He shivered with cold, but he shivered with excitement too, because on every ledge, on every surface, blue, delicate lichens were growing. And on each of the growing surfaces, on the surrounding rock, on the floor of the cavern itself, there were heaps of blue dust — enough locada for hundreds of addicts, in this one cavern alone!

Eyes glinting with anticipation, Jon Horga began to lower himself carefully to the floor of the cavern, finding footholds and handholds in water-seamed crevices. Reaching the solid footing of the canyon floor, he was careful to avoid disturbing any of the heaps of dust. Taking flexible containers from his pack, he began to gather the fine, talc-like dust.

He worked steadily, packing pound after pound into his expansible plasti-bag, oblivious to his surroundings and the passage of time. He had almost filled it when the sense of danger which had enabled him to survive in battles against desperate men and aliens in a hundred systems, brought him back to the immediate scene, all senses alert.

Horga whirled, causing little eddies of dust in the dank air. As his eyes went up, he first saw a pair of blue Tzenn legs, arms akimbo, at the mouth of the black passageway. Horga raised his eyes, looking at the Tzenn, who had a spear poised in his muscular right hand.

The Tzenn's head was encased in a grotesque reptilian mask, topped with bright plumage. Priest . . . medicine man . . . someone who can enter the for-bidden place . . . the ideas flashed automatically through Horga's mind as he raised the needle gun.

In the light of the torch, he saw the muscles tensing in the arm of the Tzenn. Horga squeezed the trigger and dropped flat on the canyon floor. Bright orange flashed through black space at the same instant that the Tzenn's spear flashed through the air. inches above Horga's head. Horga looked up. The Tzenn still stood, swaying in agony, his right arm burned to the bone. Grimly, with a slight smile, Horga aimed the needle gun at the sternum. Pressing the trigger, he methodically burned the Tzenn, cutting a deadly line of fire from his thorax to his groin. Still the masked Tzenn stood erect, as life left him. Then, with the tremble of a dead, dried-out leaf, he fell.

And as he fell, he flamed.

Jon Horga backed away in terror, scattering great clouds of dust as he stumbled through the lichen-heaps. The body continued to burn, great clouds of thick white smoke rising from it, filling the cavern. Suddenly Horga knew what must have happened—he had hit the Tzenn's phosphorous gland with his needle ray—and Horga knew that phosphorous would continue to burn fiercely until it was completely consumed. He had to get out—fast!

Horga stumbled through the thick smoke, coughing and almost blinded. He fell twice before he was able to reach the cavern wall and begin climbing. In his wild haste, he ignored the blood streaming from cuts on his face and hands. A fingernail ripped on a. sharp projection on the wall, but Horga did not stop for an instant as he clawed his way up the passageway. Anything, anything to get out!

At last, Horga's bleeding fingers felt the passageway opening over his head. Exerting all his remaining strength, he pulled himself up to the level passageway surface. Gasping for breath in the phosphorous poisoned atmosphere, he switched on his light. The light was worse than useless as a guide —it showed only the clouds of smoke that filled the cavern. Horga was about to throw it aside when he noticed that the smoke had changed. It had been the pure white of burning phosphorous—now it was definitely blue. The locada dust was vaporizing in the fierce flame of the burning phosphorous!

LOST completely to panic, Horga ran headlong up the dark, smoke-filled passage. His foot hit a projecting rock and he fell heavily. He scrambled to his feet, and half crouching, his eyes full of burning tears from the phosphorous, he dashed on toward the cavern mouth. Seconds later, he saw a bright shaft of sunlight pierce the smoke. He forced himself to a last mad burst of speed and then he was outside. He collapsed across the rocks near the cavern mouth, feeling the welcome heat of Deneb on his lacerated shoulders and hack, breathing in fresh air at last, instead of deadly smoke.

Minutes later, he forced himself to his feet. Painfully, he picked his way among the rocks and boulders, down to the canyon floor. As he walked across the canyon he wondered desperately if he had got out in time. Had the drug had time to take effect? At least, there were no addict's dreams, no hallucinations—yet.

He went on doggedly, across the hillside, back down toward the jungle and the ship. Off in the brush to the side of the path, he caught fleeting glimpses of the Tzenn—just a flash of movement, a hint of blue skin, and it would be gone. And, as the wind shifted, it brought to him the squeaking chatter of their high thin voices. Did they seem to be laughing at him? There seemed to be a different, mocking tone in their incessant talk. Or was it just the distortion of the wind—or his own imagination?

Angrily, he dismissed the idea and gripped his needle gun more tightly. This was only a temporary defeat. When he returned to the caves, he would know how to deal with the Tzenn. Kill them. Kill them in the open air, if they got in his way. And set a neutronic trap in the cavern mouths, to kill them before they could get inside. No, he wasn't defeated yet.

He smiled grimly and continued on toward the clearing. Already, through the tangled vines and matted jungle growths, he could begin to make out the straight clean lines of the ship ahead.

He broke into the clearing and ran to the ship. Painfully, lie began the sixty foot climb to the hatch, gingerly grasping the rungs with his torn fingers. He had almost reached the hatch opening when there was a sudden gust of wind. He froze to the rungs, swaying slightly. As the wind dropped, he started to reach for the next rung. But then it dissolved, before his eyes!

In sudden panic, he locked his fingers in a death grip on the rung he could no longer see. But there was an odd numbness in his lingers, his whole body. Only in a vague, unreal way could he feel the ship, next to his body. And as he looked, the ship's solid form melted, ran in liquid metal around him, swirled in clouds of gleaming vapor, boiled in a thick grey fevered chaos around him, and then . . .

Nothing.

Nothing at all. No space and no time. No extension or dimension. No form. No place and no sense. No tactile-auditory-visual-olfactory-gustatory. No repulsion or attraction. No desire.

Except:

In the dead emptiness that had been the ego, a perception of a loss. Whose perception? Don't know. And where? There is no where. No when, no what.

And then, from the void that had been his mind, the thin fabric of hallucination began to form. At first—only the hint of a vibration—a motion—a wave through nothing. And then, high and clear, a bell-like note that echoed across and through the synapses of his brain, and became color . . . an alien spectrum of a hundred brilliant hues that shifted, melted, mixed and blended before his eyes . . . and then burst into the light of a thousand suns! And it all came. Form and distance, personality, space, desire and time. A world for him to live in ... all false? Gasping with relief, he reached out for it . . .

A tall, golden skinned girl was at his side. With a serene quiet smile she handed him a tall glass, filled with something amber. He drank, and as he did a wave of desire for life overwhelmed him. Wonderingly, he ran his hands along the body of the girl, feeling the pulse of life beneath her firm skin . . . this false? Angrily rejecting the half-formed doubt, he rudely grasped the girl and pulled her to him, lusting for her, lusting for reality . . .

TIME lost all existence, blending into infinity. There were other girls—Earth girls, Centaurans, princesses from Arcturus, girls from planets he did not know, from worlds that had no name, There. were short, sharp nightmares, succeeded by the almost unbearable sensation of infinite power—omnipotence. Whole suns, whole galaxies were his, to bend and turn, stop and start, at any whim, and worlds that man would never see. But, as he tramped across his star-strewn universe, the hint of something off-key, something false, returned, stronger than before. Not real? False? He tried to reject the idea, to twist and turn away from it, but it returned and it was with him . .. false . . . false . . . FALSE!

With a tremendous Mental effort, he forced his twisted brain back to reality. The first thing he saw was his hand, caked with blood, numb from gripping the rail above his head. And then the smooth metal of the ship, inches from his eyes.

He looked down and felt a stomach-turning vertigo that almost made him lose his grip. How long had he hung there, lost in the narcotic dream? It must have been hours, for the long black shadows extending across the clearing indicated•that the long Deneb day was ending.

A wave of loathing overcame him. This could not be his world . . . this was the dream . . . the other world, the real world, his own world . . . he would return to it. With a feeling of infinite relief, he began to drift back. But some tenuous shred of sanity forced him to stop. I must climb, he thought dimly. Why did he have to climb? He did not know, could not remember. But a last spark of determination flamed momentarily into life and he raised one foot, leadenly. He almost lost his hold as his cramped arm reached for the next rung and missed. Then he was up, his head level with the open hatch. One more effort. Just one more. Gathering all his strength, he pushed himself upward and collapsed across the floor of the hatchway.

ACROSS the compartment, Barnabus waited and watched, his old body still held in the paralyzer beam. Through the interminable hours of the long Deneb day he had waited, at first patiently, then with growing anxiety, as he considered three factors. First, in the weeks of prospecting here before, he had come across a dying Tzenn, had watched the body burst into flame as the membrane of the phosphorous gland broke down. Next, he had been impressed by the psychological hold their taboos had for them. And finally, he knew Horga was the type to shoot, at the first hint of danger. Horga, a twisted man who basically hated all other men, all other living creatures. But, if it happened as Barnabus thought it might, would Horga be able to get back to the ship before the drug took effect? If not, Barnabus would remain locked in the unbreakable grip of the paralyzer, until hunger and thirst had killed him.

It was with great relief that Barnabus heard the ring of Horga's boots outside the ship, mounting toward the hatch. But then, almost at the top, they had stopped, and for hours there was no sound. What had happened? Had Horga fallen? Was he lost forever in locada fantasies? Barnabus had resigned himself to slow, lingering death when at last Horga's head appeared at the hatch.

His first feeling was enormous relief. Then other thoughts went through his mind as he regarded the unconscious figure of Horga. Jon Horga, now a mind with no control, a willing slave to any suggestion.

If he returned to the spaceports, was there any limit to the evil he would do? Suggest a murder, Horga would commit it, Without a single independent thought, without a trace of conscience. A robbery, a pirate attack—anything. And Barnabus knew that there were many, many men in the raw life of the space-towns, who would take advantage of just such an opportunity. And—a peril to the entire galaxy—one of them would be sure to pry from Horga the source of the deadly dust. A cure was now impossible. But if, some time in some way, a cure might be found? No, the risk was too great. And even if Horga might be cured, he was still, even when "normal," a dangerous man, the enemy of all other men, a killer many times over. Barnabus knew what he had to do.

"Get up!" he commanded. Horga painfully raised his head. His eyes were blank—empty of volition or individuality. The drug was master now.

"Turn off the paralyzer beam!"

Without expression, Horga got to his feet and hobbled to the banked controls. Autmatically, he flipped the switches off. Then he waited, motionless.

Freed. Barnabus stood up, rubbing circulation back into his numbed legs and arms.

"This is the last," he said, "that man-kind will ever see of locada." He looked up at the addict. "To make sure of that, Horga, I've got to say the same thing to you I said to my partner. It wasn't very funny then, and it sure isn't now. I didn't know what I was doing then—but I do now." He said softly, "Horga, go take a flying leap!"

[This story was transcribed form raw scans found in the bit torrent universe. The original scanner is unknown. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

"Lost Comet" and "Sheena and the Crawling Death"

2011-04-20T05:27:00.000-07:00

A short SF story from Fantastic Comics #11. (Jan-Feb. 1955). Previously only available online in scanned JPGs as part of the whole comic book. A two-page near future SF story that, while abrupt, is surprisingly restrained. "Lost Comet" by anonymous, originally scanned and uploaded by "Tigger"

And a short Sheena story from Jumbo Comics #87 (May 1946). Previously only available online in scanned JPGs as part of the whole comic book. "Sheena and The Crawling Death" by Morgan W. Thomas, originally scanned and uploaded by "builderboy"

JUNE 21, 1963—SOMEWHERE IN SPACE — This is my first, and I am very much afraid, my last dispatch from the rocket ship METEOR. There is small chance of this message ever reaching Earth, much less the copy desk of my paper, but I am writing it with an eye cocked for a miracle. Besides it is my job as the only newspaper man on this space craft. If this piece is ever read on Earth I hope my readers will forgive the errors and the bad writing. I am working in cramped quarters, and already the air is going bad. None of us aboard have much longer to live.

At long last, since I am about to die, I can defy my bosses and write this story as I darn well please. So I will reverse the usual journalistic procedure of cramming all the facts in the lead, and write the story in ascending fashion, and according to chronology.

You will have read in all the papers, of course, about Operation Satellite. The painstaking construction, after many failures, of a practical space ship powered by atomic energy. You know of the deadly intensity of the race between the great powers to be the first to establish bases on the moon. One other country, which I shall not mention by name here, was very close on our heels. It had, in fact, already sent two rocket ships into space without success. There was no time to make all the minute preparations which are really necessary for such a venture as this. And it was the omission of some of these preparations that has brought about our failure and doomed everyone of us.

Two days ago our ship stood in the great launching ramp at Kelly Field. We were ready at last. Our leader, Certain Hugh Brace. spoke in a hushed voice.

"Stand by the jets! Open energizers! Man the pressure pumps and all members of the crew secure cushion belts and don blackout masks! Command ..."

When the Captain snapped out the word "command" we were off. A pillar of fire built beneath the ship, shoving us into the sky at a terrific rate. We were slammed back into Our specially built seats, powerless to move, powerless to breathe. Through the eye pieces of my blackout mask, constructed to keep us from fainting at the terrible initial speed, I peered outward and down. Already, as soon as I could bring my eyes to focus, Earth was receding at an incredible rate. I could plainly see how the Earth curved. It was like standing on a step ladder and looking down at one of the globes used in schools. Soon I could plainly discern the gray bulk of the American continent, and to either side of it the lighter tones of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Suddenly the terrible weight seemed to be lifted from our bodies and Captain Brace came along the narrow cat walk and spoke to me.

"How do you feel. Talcott?" He chuckled. "We're doing over six thousand miles an hour, you know. And we're out of Earth's gravity now. Right out in space. No air. Nothing!"

"Mind if I walk around Captain?" I was familiar with the ship, of course, as familiar as the carefully selected crew, since I had been writing articles about it for so long, but I wanted to see every detail as it was in actual operation.

The Captain grinned. "Sure thing. But don't fall out an escape hatch into space. You would just be stuck in space for the rest of your life. There is no pull of gravity here, as you know. You'd just have to stay there and float around Earth in an orbit for the rest of your life, like the moon itself."

He passed on and left me with a rather sickly smile at the grim joke. Outside the ship there was no air. I wouldn't live long out there.

I was about to leave my seat, and was unfastening my belt which kept me from floating around in midair, when I saw the package of cigarettes. I had laid it on the seat beside me at the takeoff, forgetting to put it securely in my pocket. Naturally. as soon as we passed beyond Earth's gravity there was nothing to hold it down, it had no ‘weight, and now it was floating over my head, close to the ceiling of the ship. As I reached for it I felt like a conjurer doing a trick.

Carefully fitting my feet into the open "shoes," or cleats, which led along the cat walk, and kept me from flying into the air like the pack of cigarettes, I went back to the operations cubicle. Susan Cain, the only woman on board, was busily working over a chart as I entered.

"Hi," she smiled. "How do you like it, news hawk? Put anything on the 'wires for your paper yet?"

"That's what I came. to see you about." I said. "How soon can I send a dispatch back to the States, or, I mean to Earth?" After all, it takes some time to get used to being an inter-planetary reporter.

It was then I noticed her frown. "I didn't want to tell you," she said, "but something has gone wrong with our space radar. We tried to contact Earth a little time ago, to report our progress, but it was no soap. Of course there's always the rocket carriers."

These gadgets, the rocket carriers, had been designed to carry emergency messages back to Earth. None of us thought much of them, but they were better than nothing at all. Actually they were akin to the pneumatic tubes used to carry change and bills in department stores, except that they were bigger and had a small rocket motor attached. The theory was that the motor would carry them back into Earth's gravity and then they would fall and, we hoped, be found. Of course there was always the possibility they would fall into the ocean, or some other spot where no one would ever spot them.

Susan was still frowning. Her skin was grayish, and around her eyes- were the taut little lines that we had all developed over the past few days. The strain had been terrific. But now she seemed especially Upset.

"Something's gone wrong," I said. It wasn't a question. I knew.

She put a finger on the chart. For the first time I saw what I thought was. fear come into her brown eyes. "Not really Wrong," she said. "At least I hope not. It's just that ..."

I moved beside her and stared down at the chart. "It's just what? Come on, give. I'm the press, remember."

Her finger tapped the paper. "Our charting wasn't as accurate as it might have been, you know. There was no time for everything. Oh, we chose the best time of year, when the Earth and Moon are in the most favorable relative positions, and we tried to chart our course to avoid obstacles of any kind, but after all we had no real way of knowing what is out here. And I've been reading Matson's report, issued about six months ago, in which he prognosticates a field of asteroids moving across our course at just about this. time, I'm worried, Deke!"

"Shucks," I told her. "Asteroids can't hurt us much. Besides ..."

Right then it happened. A shocking, careening blow! The spaceship seemed to turn on its side and dive. The impact knocked both the girl and myself out of our floor cleats and the next moment we were floating wildly in midair, grabbing frantically at each other. By the time we managed to claw our way back to the floor, and stability, Captain Brace came into the cubicle. His face was pale and little sweat beads grew on his upper lip.

"Meteor!" he said. "Struck us a glancing blow. Wouldn't have been so bad, but it hit aft, just where the jet tubes lead into the superstructure. The worst possible place. We've lost headway already, and pretty soon we'll come to a dead stop."

The girl stared at him. "And we're drifting! The blow would give us impetus enough to throw us off our course and start us into an orbit. Can they fix the jets, Captain?"

"We'll try our best, of course." He glanced at me. "Better prepare yourself for a nice long stay in outer space, Talcott. No use trying to kid you about it. If we can't fix things up we're here to stay—until our air runs out. That will be a matter of some weeks, of course, but it might as well be tomorrow. If we can't help ourselves there isn't a chance on Earth—or of anyone on Earth—helping us."

After he left Susan and I stared at each other. "Fine thing," I said. "Me with the biggest story off of Earth and no way to send it to the paper."

"Write it," she told me. "And put it in a rocket carrier. It just might make it back."

So I wrote it. I am finishing it now as I listen to the clank of tools and the subdued voices of desperate men. They are working, I think hopelessly, against time. The look on Captain Brace's face tells the story. We're here to stay—until,. our air goes.

This story may never be read. I'm going to put it in a rocket carrier and start it back toward Earth. I hope it makes connections. But whether it does or not, I know that we are only the first. Other men, brave men, will come after us, will secure the bases on the moon we need so desperately For the nation that first builds those bases will dominate the Earth with atomic rocket weapons. I know that nation will be America, who will do it for the sake of peace and not for war. I think this is farewell from the crew of the METEOR.

Goodbye, Earth!

SHEENA AND THE CRAWLING DEATH

by MORGAN W. THOMAS

GESA had long been acclaimed as the swiftest runner in all the Murombu tribe. Now he ran as he had never ran before, though his chest was torn by pain fangs and his legs seemed made of dead wood. And try as he would, he could not keep from casting fearful backward glances at the jungle trail. After many years they had come back! They were not far behind Him now, approaching the village of his people. His tribe, and himself, were doomed—unless Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, would help them.

"Wah!" Gesa feared that even Sheena, mighty as she was, would not be able to do anything against them!

An hour later Gesa gasped out his story to Sheena. As she listened her eyes narrowed and her brow wrinkled in thought. Then she gave Gesa food and drink and left him, swinging lithely up to the tree hut where Bob was busy tending the wound of little Chim. A few days before Chim had been shot by a vicious white hunter and could not yet walk.

Bob's eyes Widened in horror as Sheena told him what she had heard. "But the village," he gasped. "The village of the Murombu—it's directly in their path!"

"Yes," said Sheena. "We go to see if we can save the village and my people. Hurry! Little Chim must remain here, since he cannot travel speedily."

She patted the chattering little chimpanzee on his fuzzy head and a few moments later she and Bob were swinging off toward the not too distant danger. Bob walked on the jungle trail below, while Sheena swung through the trees overhead. In an hour they came to the end of the jungle, and saw a great lush plain stretching out before them. Not far away, by a quiet stream, was the village of the Murornbu.

Sheena swung through the trees overhead.

It was a strange sight they saw—and heard! The village gates were open and through them poured the people who for so long had dwelt in peace in that placid spot. There was nothing peaceful about the scene, however, as the men, women, and children pushed and jostled one another, each carrying his meager possessions as best he could. Even as Sheena and Bob watched a girl, carrying an infant, stumbled and fell and the crowd pushed on unheeding, trampling her into the dust.

Sheena looked at Bob. "They are senseless with fear. But I must speak with them—they must work and stand together if they would live!"

Sheena leaped lightly down from her tree perch and advanced toward the frightened throng. She held aloft one hand and, gradually, the sound of the people diminished. Then Sheena spoke.

"Put down your burdens," commanded Sheena. "You must obey my orders. Now, men and women all, gather the dry wood which you will find in the jungle and carry it to beyond your village. Hasten—for there is not much time. I will show you-how to defeat them!"

One old crone ran forward and kissed Sheena's hand. "We obey," she said "We knew you would not fail us, Sheena."

Immediately the people set about executing Sheena's orders. Meantime, Sheena and Bob went on to the village and there, from a point of vantage on the wall, they saw for the first time the dreaded thing that had come to the jungle.

Ants! Millions of black ants, each an inch in length, marching together in a writhing black column across the land. Even Sheena drew her breath in a quick gasp of horror. Not often did the ants come, but when they did nothing could stand before them. As they watched they saw a water buffalo, trying to flee before the murderous horde, stagger and fall. Bob averted his eyes for a moment and when he looked back there was nothing—nothing but bare white bones!

Working like slaves, with Sheena's calm voice serving as a whip lash, the people gathered and piled the brush before their village. Then they sought out every available bit of coconut oil and poured it over the brush. Sheena bid them wait, then, until the first of the ants reached the wall of brush. Then she seized a flaming brand and tossed it far out into the center of the tinder-like brush. The stuff caught with a roar and in a moment the area before the village was an inferno. Sheena and Bob, with the people of the village huddling about them, fell back away from the flames and waited.

Soon an exultant shout went up. The column of ants had turned and was marching off at right angles to the village! The crowd of joyous people thronged about Sheena, pressing her hands, trying to kiss the hem of the short garment she wore, anything to express their gratitude and joy.

But Bob and Sheena stared at one another, a sudden painful knowledge leaping into the eyes of both.

"Chim!" cried Bob "The ants are heading toward the jungle . . . our tree hut . . . Chim can't walk!"

"Hurry!" Sheena went off, running gracefully, without a single backward glance.

The next hour was sheer torture for Bob. Run as he would he could not keep up with Sheena, flashing through the trees overhead. And to add to his discomfort and peril were the wild animals which now crossed the trail, snarling and bellowing their rage and fear of the ants. And always just behind him was that writhing black column. The ants moved incredibly fast, almost as fast as Sheena and Bob themselves, There would be little time when they finally arrived at the tree hut.

It happened suddenly. Bob, running hard, rounded a bend in the jungle trail and came face to face with a tiger! The beast, frightened beyond caring what happened to it, snarled and lunged at the startled Bob.

"Sheena!" Bob had time for only one outcry, then the tiger was upon him, fierce claws and fangs seeking his life. He had not even time to draw his revolver.

Like some tawny goddess of revenge Sheena came down out of the trees. Her knife rose and fell and the tiger writhed in its death throes. But Sheena paid it no heed. She was bending over Bob.

"Bob! Are you badly hurt?"

Bob tried to grin back at her "I—I don't think so. But my ankle . . . can't' walk. . . ."

Sheena bent and lifted him to her back. As best he could he helped by clinging with both arms about her neck, but he knew that the burden was too much for even Sheena. Before a minute had passed she was breathing heavily. "Put me down," Bob begged her. "Save yourself, Sheena. The ants are very close now."

It was true. Close by they could hear the screams of animals as the ants devoured them, and once they heard a scream which sounded human. Bob shuddered and again asked Sheena to put him down.

"No," gasped Sheena. "Look—the tree hut. And little Chim . . he approaches!"

Dragging himself painfully, Chim reached them and began to chatter. Soon Sheena understood. The ants had already reached the tree hut! Bob, from where he was resting on the ground, saw an expression of dismay, almost of fear, cross Sheena's face.

Then she turned to him. "Take Chim in your arms," she commanded. "There is one chance! If we can reach the Gorge Of Skulls before the ants devour the giant vines we cart swing across the safety. They will not be able to cross the Gorge!"

Once more Sheena lifted Bob, to her back, but this time he cradled little Chim in his arms. Sheena staggered now and her breathing was a tortured, rasping sound. They were approaching the Gorge as the first ants reached them. Bob, looking down, saw that Sheena's legs were black with them. As best he could, he slapped at them, crushing them, but always another swarmed. upward. Pain bit at Bob's eyes as one of the ants fastened cruel pincers into his flesh.

Then Sheena had one of the thick, gnarled vines in her hands. She gave a mighty push with her feet and they went sailing dizzily out into space. A thousand feet below them glistened the skulls from which the Gorge took its name.

Cr-a-c-kkk . . . Bob looked up. Just over his head the vine was parting. The ants had eaten even that through. As it parted he tried to scream a warning but no sound would come. Then they were falling . . . falling . . .

Minutes later Sheena, Bob and Chim stood and watched the baffled ant column wind away down the edge of the Gorge. They had fallen but a few feet, having been already across when the vine snapped.

Bob was silent, patting little Chirn on the head. Sheena must have read his thoughts, for she said, "Do not grieve, Bob. We will build another tree hut. And the jungle will be as before in a short time. The jingle law says that the strong and the crafty survive." Sheena smiled, "And who can say that we are not strong—and crafty."

[Editing Note on "Sheena and the Crawling Death"] The original printing had some instances of obvious editing/typesetting errors. These have been corrected as unobtrusively as possible. The Sheena illustration was not originally with this story, but was in the same issue. I make no claims of copyright on these stories from the public domain.]