Worlds of IF (May 1955)

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PREVIEW — This reproduction (black plate on blue tint) is from the full-color cover painting by Kelly Freas for the June IF. An interpre- tation of THE STRANGERS, by Algis Budrys, it is a dramatic presentation of an unusual theme of a story about the "watchers", people of another universe — who might be you or any one around you! Mr. Freas, whose artwork has appeared in leading national publications, considers it one of the best covers he has ever done. Don't miss it. See it in full color on the June IF.

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WORLDS of SCIENCE FICTION MAY 1955 All Stories New and Complete Editor: JAMES L. QUINN Assist. Editors: EVE WULFF, ROBERT W. GREENE Art Editor: ED VALIGURSKY | NOVELETTES 1 i SNOWBALL by Poul Anderson 4 § I EASY DOES IT by E. G. Von Wold 44 I SHORT STORIES | WATERSHED by Jomes Blish 36 I I THEY WERE DIFFERENT by Neil J. Kenney 60 | 1 THE PACIFISTS by Charles E. Fritch 75 I | THE LABORATORIANS by Edward Peattie 82 1 | THE OUTER QUIET by Herbert D. Kastle 94 j | WITNESS by George H. Smith 104 1 | FIRTH'S WORLD by Irving Cox, Jr. Ill I I FEATURES | A CHAT WITH THE EDITOR 2 I I WORTH CITING 74 1 | WHAT IS YOUR SCIENCE I.Q.? 110 I SCIENCE BRIEFS 118 1 | COVER: | | "Technocracy Versus the Humanities" by Kenneth Fagg 1 niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiHiiiiiiuiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiuiiiiiiiiiiiiiuiiiiiiiiiiiiiMiiimiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiunuiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiuiiin IF is published monthly by Quinn Publishing Company, Inc. Volume 5, No. 3. Copyright 1955 by Quinn Publishing Co., Inc. Office of publication, 8 Loril Street, Buffalo, New York. Entered as Second Class Matter at Post Office, Buffalo, New York. Subscription $3.50 for 12 issues in U.S. and Possessions; Canada $4 for 12 Issues; elsewhere $4.50. Allow four weeks for change of address. All stories appear- ing in this magazine are fiction; any similarity to actual persons is coincidental. Not responsible for unsolicited artwork or manuscripts. 35c a copy. Printed in U.S.a! EDITORIAL AND BUSINESS OFFICES, KINGSTON, NEW YORK Next issue on sale April 12th

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A CHAT WITH THE EDITOR THE FACT THAT technocracy is leaving the humanities far behind becomes more and more obvious every day. Science is taking the effort of living off our backs, eas- ing everything from our minds to our aching feet. Electrical de- vices to improve our memory units are now in the experimental stage. Conveyor belts may someday take the place of elevators and sidewalks and hasten us still more on our al- ready hurrying way. Radio clocks wake us up to music and start our breakfast. We can push a button and our automobile starts, we get power to run a drill or a still; a button cleans our house, furnishes conditioned air and warms our feet or what-have-you. Technoc- racy has taken us into the domain of the birds, the fish and the gophers; it has devised new drugs and techniques for lessening the pain of operations and dentist drills. We are entertained visually and audibly by things that happen thousands of miles away and food comes prepared any way we want it. Everything is geared to a scientific formula for easing the burden of having to do anything laborious or tedious for our mortal selves. But, alas, very little is done to improve the amenities and brotherhood of Mankind. Exactly what the formula for improving the brotherly relations of Man will be is anybody’s guess. I don’t think politics will do it; I don’t think religion will do it — both have had thousands of years to work on it and haven’t improved it noticeably. Philosophy might help, but that is too much of an in- dividual science to work for the masses. Whether one wants to face it or not, it looks as though it will take some common catastrophe to make Mankind pull together, to make two-legged beings appreciate and understand each other as re- lated souls — “misery loves com- pany”; that sort of thing. What- ever the mechanics of achieving that purpose, good or bad or tragic, maybe the end will justify the means. And whether it takes one or two or a thousand or more years, we can sort of anticipate it by de- veloping an optimistic outlook on life while we’re around. MEANWHILE, just to keep busy in my idle moments, I have been working on a little invention that might help out here and there. It’s a little gadget that will attack many of our more vicious traits by remedying the situation before too 2

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much harm can be done. It is in- deed a remarkable machine, even to the most science-fiction minded, and you will probably recognize radar, telepathy, computing devices and other scientific items in its make-up. It isn’t patented yet, so I can’t give you the exact blueprint of its manufacture. However, it is easier to tell you what it does than how it does it. Take gossip, for instance. Here is a little pastime, innocent enough sometimes, but often as malicious and murderous as a planned cam- paign of propaganda and lethal weapons. The scene is the regular Wednes- day meeting of the Thursday af- ternoon bridge club. The girls have gotten together to chat, have \tea or a light luncheon and, incidentally, play a little bridge. The gal who’s dummy on the first hand starts the ball rolling: “You know, I heard from Daisy Carter that Gert Smith heard from her third cousin Matilda, who lives in Old Toadstool, that Josie Brown went out with Herman Jukes and didn’t get home until four A.M. — and just listen to this! — they were staggering, practically holding each other up. I’ll bet they were up to no good. He’s the one that . . The bridge game has stopped cold. The gals are lapping up the dirt like four starving cats work- ing on a lone saucer of milk. Now, this is where my invention cuts in and begins to function. 1. It damps the lady’s speech centers and by means of telepathy tries to reason with her that, ac- tually, she has not seen or heard first hand one single thing she is repeating and doesn’t know that one single thing she’s saying is gos- pel truth. It tries to impress on her that out of mole hills of unsubstan- tiated fact she is making mountains to rival the Rockies or the Andes with maybe Mount Everest thrown in. If this little gambit doesn’t suc- ceed in penetrating her thick little skull, it . . . 2. Interferes with her digestion of those creamy confections she gobbled at the luncheon, causes violent cramps in her tummy and forces her to retire to the powder room, where she has to stay until everyone else is gone. 3. If measures one and two fail and there is a nice handy chan- delier or bucket of paint or anvil or other heavy object nearby, it simply levitates the object to a spot di- rectly over her head and . . . Something else my invention will be allergic to is the guy who hogs the road when he is driving his old jallopy or his new dynamic hyper-eight; the guy who zooms around corners, ignoring stop lights or full stop signs or runs you over to the side of the road with his maniacal maneuvering. Oh boy! What my invention will do to that monster! There are many other delightful training-reactions incorporated in this little invention for many, many other circumstances; but there isn’t room to tell you about them in this issue. However, you get the general idea. Let me know if you’re in the market for one of the early models. -jlq 3

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Discontent was brewing aboard the R. S. S. Indefeasible. And Captain Gorbel, a proud “basic” man , could cope with it . . . But Mother Earth turned the tables! WATERSHED HE MURMURS of discontent — Gapt. Gorbel, being a mili- tary man, thought of it as “disaf- fection”— among the crew of the R.S.S. Indefeasible had reached the point where they could no longer be ignored, well before the ship had come within fifty light years of its objective. Sooner or later, Gorbel thought, this idiotic seal-creature is going to notice them. Capt. Gorbel wasn’t sure wheth- er he would be sorry or glad when the Adapted Man caught on. In a way, it would make things easier. But it would be an uncomfortable moment; maybe it would be better to keep sitting on the safety valve until Hoqqueah and the other Al- tarians were put off on — what was its name again? — Oh yes. Earth. But the crew plainly wasn’t go- ing to let Gorbel put it off that long. As for Hoqqueah, he didn’t ap- pear to have a noticing center any- where in his brain. He was as little discommoded by the emotional un- dertow as he was by the thin and frigid air the Rigellian crew main- tained inside the battlecraft. Secure in his coat of warm blubber, his eyes brown, liquid and merry, he sat in the forward greenhouse for most of each ship’s day, watching the growth of the star Sol in the black skies ahead. BY JAMES BUSH 37

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And he talked. Gods of all stars, how he talked! Capt. Gorbel al- ready knew more about the ancient — the very ancient — history of the seeding program than he had had any desire to know. Nor was the seeding program Hoqqueah’s sole subject. The Colonization Council delegate had had a vertical educa- tion, one which cut in a narrow shaft through many different fields of specialization — in contrast to GorbePs own training, which had been spread horizontally over the whole subject of spaceflight without more than touching anything else. Hoqqueah seemed to be making a project of enlarging the Cap- tain’s horizons, whether he wanted them enlarged or not. “Take agriculture,” he was say- ing at the mbment. “This planet we’re to seed provides an excellent argument for taking the long view of farm policy. There used to be fertile jungles there; but the peo- ple began their lives as farmers with the use of fire, and they killed themselves off in the same way.” “How?” Gorbel said automati- cally. Had he remained silent, Hoq- queah would have gone on any- how; and it didn’t pay to be im- polite to the Colonization Council, even by proxy. “In their own prehistory, fifteen thousand years before their official zero date, they cleared farmland by burning it off. Then they would plant a crop, harvest it, and let the jungle return. Then they burned the jungle off and went through the cycle again. At the beginning, they wiped out the greatest abundance of game ani- 38 mals Earth was ever to see, just by farming that way. Furthermore, the method was totally destructive to the topsoil. “Even after they achieved space- flight, that method of farming was standard in most of the remaining jungle areas — even though the bare rock was showing through every- where by that time.” Hoqqueah sighed. “Now of course, there’s nothing but desert, naked rock, bitter cold, and thin, oxygen-poor air — or so the peo- ple wduld view it, if there were any of them left.” Gorbel shot a glance at the hunched back of Lt. Averdor, his adjutant and navigator. Averdor had managed to avoid saying so much as one word to Hoqqueah or any of the other panatropists from the beginning of the trip. Of course he wasn’t required to as- sume the diplomatic burdens in- volved— those were GorbePs crosses — but the strain of dodging even normal intercourse with the seal- men was beginning to tell on him. Yet it was certainly beyond Gor- bePs authority to order Averdor to speak to an Adapted Man. He had suggested that Averdor run through a few mechanical courte- sies, for the good of the ship. The only response had been one of the stoniest stares Gorbel had ever seen. And the worst of it was that Gorbel was, as a human being, wholly on Averdor’s side. “After a certain number of years, conditions change on any planet,” Hoqqueah babbled solemnly, wav- ing a flipper-like arm. He was working back to his primary ob- JAMES BUSH

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session: the seeding program. “It’s only logical to insist that man be able to change with them — or, if he can’t do that, he must establish himself somewhere else. Suppose he had colonized only the Earthlike planets? Not even those planets remain Earthlike forever, not in the biological sense.” “Why would we have limited ourselves to Earthlike planets in the first place?” Gorbel said. “Not that I know much about the place, but the specs don’t make it sound like an optimum world.” “To be sure,” Hoqqueah said, though as usual Gorbel didn’t know which part of his own com- ment Hoqqueah was agreeing to. “There’s no survival value in pin- ning one’s race forever to one set of specs. It’s only sensible to go on evolving with the universe, to stay independent of such things as the aging of worlds, or the explosions of their stars. Man exists now in so many forms that there’s always a refuge somewhere for any threat- ened people. That’s a great achievement — compared to it, what price the old arguments about sovereignity of form?” “What, indeed?” Gorbel said, but inside his skull his other self was saying: Ah-ha, he smells the hostility after all. Once an Adapted Man, always an Adapted Man — and always fighting for equality with the basic human form. But it’s no good, you seal-snouted bureaucrat. You can argue for the rest of your life, but your whiskers will always wiggle when you talk. And obviously you’ll never stop talking. WATERSHED “And as a military man your- self, you’d be the first to appreciate the advantages, Captain,” Hoq- queah added earnestly. “Using panatropy, man has seized thou- sands of worlds that would have been inaccessible to him otherwise. He can take most of the galaxy under occupation without stealing anyone else’s planet in the process. An occupation without disposses- sion— without bloodshed. Yet if some race other than man should develop imperial ambitions, and try to annex our planets, it will find itself enormously outnum- bered.” “That’s true,” Capt. Gorbel said, interested in spite of himself. “It’s probably just as well that we worked it out before somebody else thought up the method. But, how come it was us? Seems to me that the first race to invent it should’ve been a race that already had it — if you follow me.” “Not quite, Captain. If you will give me an example — ?” “Well, we scouted a system once where there was a race that occu- pied two different planets, not both at the same time, but back and forth,” Gorbel said. “They had a life-cycle that had three different forms. In the first form they’d winter over on the outermost of the two worlds. Then they’d change to another form that could cross space, mother-naked, without ships, and spend the rest of the year on the inner planet in the third form. Then they’d change back into the second form and cross back to the colder planet. “It’s a hard thing to describe. 39

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But the point is, this wasn’t any- thing they’d worked out; it was natural to them. They’d evolved that way.” He looked at Averdor again. “The navigation was tricky around there during the swarming season.” Averdor failed to rise to the bait. “I see; the point is well taken,” Hoqqueah said, nodding with gro- tesque thoughtfulness. “But let me point out to you, Captain, that being already able to do a thing doesn’t aid you in thinking of it as something that needs to be per- fected. Oh, I’ve seen races like the one you describe, too — races with polymorphism, sexual alteration of generation, metamorphosis of the insect life-history type, and so on. But why should any of them think of form-changing as something ex- traordinary, and to be striven for? It’s one of the commonplaces of their lives, after all.” A small bell chimed in the green- house. Hoqqueah got up at once, his movements precise and almost graceful despite his tubbiness. “Thus endeth the day,” he said cheerfully. “Thank you for your courtesy, Captain.” He waddled out. He would, of course, be back tomorrow. And the day after that. And the next day — unless the crewmen had tarred and feathered the whole bunch by then. If only, Gorbel thought distract- edly, the damned Adapts weren’t so quick to abuse their privileges! As a delegate of the Colonization Council, Hoqqueah was a person of importance, and could not be barred from entering the green- house except in an emergency. But didn’t the man know he shouldn’t abuse the privilege on a ship manned by basic-form human be- ings, most of whom could not en- ter the greenhouse at all without a direct order? And the rest of the panatropists were just as bad. As passengers, they could go almost anywhere in the ship that the crew could go — and they did, persistently and un- apologetically, as though moving among equals. Legally, that was what they were — but didn’t they know that there was such a thing as prejudice? And that among com- mon spacemen the prejudice — against any Adapted Man — always hovered near the borderline of bigotry? There was a slight hum as Aver- dor’s power chair swung around to face the Captain. Like most Rigel- lian men, the Lieutenant’s face was lean and harsh, and the starlight in the greenhouse did nothing to soften it; but to Capt. Gorbel, to whom it was familiar down to its last line, it looked especially for- bidding now. “Well?” he said. “I’d think you’d be fed to the teeth with that freak by this time,” Averdor said without preamble. “Something’s got to be done, Cap- tain, before the crew gets so surly that we have to start handing out brig sentences.” “I don’t like know-it-alls any better than you do,” Gorbel said grimly. But the man’s a delegate of the Council. He’s got a right to be up here if he wants to.” “You can bar him from the 40 JAMES BUSH

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greenhouse in an emergency — ” “I fail to see any emergency,” Gorbel said stiffly. “This is a hazardous part of the galaxy — potentially, anyhow. That star up ahead has nine planets be- sides the one we’re supposed to land on, and I don’t know how many satellites of planetary size. Suppose somebody on one of them lost his head and took a crack at us as we went by?” Gorbel frowned. “That’s reach- ing for trouble. Besides, the area’s been surveyed recently — at least once — otherwise we wouldn’t be here.” “A sketch job. It’s still sensible to take precautions. If there should be any trouble, there’s many a Board of Review that would call it risky to have unreliable second- class human types in the green- house when it breaks out.” “You’re talking nonsense.” “Dammit, Captain, read between the lines a minute,” Averdor said harshly. “I know as well as you do that there’s going to be no trouble that we can’t handle. And that no reviewing board would pull a complaint like that on you if there were. I’m just trying to give you an excuse to use on the seals.” “I’m listening.” “Good. The Indefeasible is the tightest ship in the Rigellian navy, her record’s clean, and the crew’s morale is almost a legend. We can’t afford to start gigging the men for their personal prejudices — which is what it will amount to, if those seals drive them to break- ing discipline.” WATERSHED “I can hear myself explaining that to Hoqqueah.” “You don’t need to,” Averdor said doggedly. “You can tell him, instead, that you’re going to have to declare the ship on emergency status until we land. That means that the panatrope* team, as pas- sengers, will have to stick to their quarters. It’s simple enough.” It was simple enough, all right. And decidedly tempting. “I don’t like it,” Gorbel said. “Hoqqueah may be a know-it-all, but he’s not entirely a fool. He’ll see through it easily enough.” Averdor shrugged. “It’s your command,” he said. “I don’t see what he could do about it. All he could report to the Council would be a suspicion — and they’d prob- ably discount it. Everybody knows that these second-class types are quick to think they’re being per- secuted.” “I see what you mean,” Gorbel said. “Well, I’ll think about it.” BUT THE next ship’s day, when Hoqqueah returned to the greenhouse, Gorbel still had not made up his mind. The very fact that his own feelings were on the side of Averdor and the crew made him suspicious of Averdor’s “easy” solution. The plan was tempting enough to blind a man to flaws that might otherwise be obvious. The Adapted Man settled him- self comfortably and looked out through the transparent metal. “Ah,” he said. “Our target is big- ger now, eh, Captain? Think of it: in just a few days now, we will be 41

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— in the historical sense — home again.” Now it was riddles! “What do you mean?” Gorbel said. “I’m sorry; I thought you knew. Earth is the home planet of the human race, Captain. There is where the basic form evolved.” Gorbel considered this unex- pected bit of information cautious- ly. Even assuming that it was true — and it probably was, that would be the kind of thing Hoqqueah would know about a planet to which he was assigned — it didn’t seem to make any special difference in the situation. But Hoqqueah had obviously brought it out for a reason. Well, he’d be trotting out the reason, too, soon enough; no- body would ever accuse the Al- tarian of being taciturn. “Yes, there’s where it all began,” Hoqqueah said. “Of course, at first it never occurred to those people that they might produce pre- adapted children. They went to all kinds of extremes to adapt their en- vironment instead, or to carry it along with them. But they finally realized that with the planets, such a system won’t work. You can’t spend your life in a spacesuit, or under a dome, either. “Besides, they had form trouble in their society from their earliest days. For centuries they were ab- surdly touchy over minute differ- ences in coloring and shape, and even in thinking. They had regime after regime that tried to impose its own concept of the standard citizen on everybody, and enslaved those who didn’t fit the specs.” Abruptly, Hoqqueah’s chatter 42 began to make Gorbel uncomfort- able. It was becoming easier and easier to sympathize with Averdor’s determination to ignore the Adapted Man’s existence entirely. “It was only after they’d pain- fully taught themselves that such differences really don’t matter, that they could go on to panatropy,” Hoqqueah said. “It was the logical conclusion. Of course, a certain continuity of form had to be main- tained, and has been maintained to this day. You cannot totally change the form without totally changing the thought processes. If you give a man the form of a cockroach, as one ancient writer foresaw, he will wind up thinking like a cockroach, not like a human being. We recognized that. On worlds where only extreme modifi- cations of the human form would make it suitable — for instance, a planet of the gas giant type — no seeding is attempted. The Council maintains that such worlds are the potential property of races other than the human, races whose psy- chotypes would not have to under- go radical change in order to sur- vive there.” Dimly, Capt. Gorbel saw where Hoqqueah was leading him. The seal-man, in his own maddeningly indirect way, was arguing his right to be considered an equal in fact, as well as in law. He was arguing it, however, with facts whose va- lidity he alone knew and whose relevance he alone could judge. He was, in short, loading the dice, and the last residues of Gorbel’s tolerance were evaporating rapidly. “Of course there was resistance JAMES BUSH

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back there at the beginning,’’ Hoq- queah said. “The kind of mind, that had only recently been per- suaded that men with melanin in their skins are human beings, was quick to take the attitude that an Adapted Man — any Adapted Man — was the social inferior of the ‘primary* or basic human type, the type that lived on Earth. “You see, Captain, all this might still have been prevented, had it been possible to maintain that at- titude that belief that changing the form, even in part, makes a man less of a man than he was in the ‘primary’ state. But the day has come when that attitude is no longer tenable — a day that is the greatest of all moral watersheds for our race, the day that is to unite all our divergent currents of at- titudes toward each other into one common reservoir of brotherhood and purpose. You and I are very fortunate to be on the scene to see it.” “Very interesting,” Gorbel said coldly. “But those things happened a long time ago, and we know very little about this part of the galaxy these days. Under the circum- stances— which you’ll find clearly written out in the log, together with the appropriate regulations — I’m forced to place the ship on emergency alert beginning tomor- row, and continuing until your team disembarks. I’m afraid that means that henceforth all passen- gers will be required to stay in quarters.” Hoqqueah turned and arose. His eyes were still warm and liquid, but there was no longer any trace WATERSHED of merriment in them. “I know very well what it means,” he said. “And to some ex- tent I understand the need — though I had been hoping to first see the planet of our birth from space. But I don’t think you quite understood me. Captain. The moral watershed of which I spoke is not in the past. It is now. It began the day that the Earth it- self became no longer habitable for the so-called basic human type. The flowing of the streams toward the common reservoir will become bigger and bigger, as word spreads through the galaxy that Earth it- self has been seeded with Adapted Men. With that news will go a shock of recognition — the shock of realizing that the ‘basic’ types are now, and have been for a long time, a very small minority, despite their pretensions.” Was Hoqqueah being absurd enough to threaten — an unarmed, comical seal-man shaking a fist at the captain of the Indefeasible? Or — “Before I go, let me ask you this one question, Captain. Down there is your home planet, and my team and I will be going out on its surface before long. Do you dare to follow us out of the ship?” “Why should I?” Gorbel said. “Why, to show the superiority of the bask type, Captain,” Hoq- queah said softly. “Surely you can- not admit that a pack of seal-men are your betters, on your own an- cestral ground!” He bowed and went to the door. Just before he reached it, he turned (Continued on page 103) 43

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Illustrated by Paul Orban EASY DOES IT Hal was stranded in the wilderness with a beautiful girl, and it was surprisingly en- joyable— while his conditioning was off. But, after all, how uncivilized can one get? BY E. G. VON WALD HAL WEBBER leaned back in the soft Formair Executive’s seat. Although he twisted and shifted his position restlessly, he received the same sensation of perfect, comfortable support no mat- ter which way he sat in it. Which was only natural, of course. Formair was the best suspend-field furni- ture manufactured. As he squirmed about, he had a faint, puzzled frown on his face, and in his stomach he felt a lurking sensation of unaccustomed tension. Hal simply could not understand it. There was a faint humming sound, as the door panel slid back. His father entered the office. “Well Hal,” the old man murmured softly with 44

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a placid smile of satisfaction, a year. We may be the richest “We’ve done it.” people in the world then.” “Done what? Oh, you mean the “That’s nice,” Hal said mildly, new coloration process?” His father flicked a finger across “Yes. It will quintuple the net a sensitive spot on the front of the value of the family fortune within desk and relaxed as a perfect 45

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Formair attendant’s chair sprang into existence to fit his gross, soft body. “Yes indeed/’ he said with a mild sigh. “It’s been a long, long time that we’ve been working for that. Worked mighty hard, too.” “That’s right,” murmured Hal, a little more forcefully than neces- sary. “Splendid.” His father’s eyebrows rose at the unusual emphasis, but he was much too cultured to question the point. He continued along the lines of the conversation already started. “We’ll have to do something for Bruchner. He has been of tremendous as- sistance on that project. Did it practically all by himself. He is a very intelligent man, even if he is an Outlander.” “Bruchner,” said Hal with mild irritation. “All I hear around here lately is Bruchner. What is he, any- way? Nothing but a savage.” “Eh?” said his father softly, rais- ing his eyebrows again in polite in- quiry. “If Bruchner is such a brilliant fellow, why doesn’t he take the Treatment and become civilized? I sometimes get a little tired of an employee who tells me I’m wrong all the time.” “But he is almost always right when he makes such statements, Hal,” Webber pointed out mildly. “For instance, just the other day I asked him about the color range to be used with the new process on the Formair Skydome. He stated flatly that blue was a normal color for sky. Just like that. I was a little startled, of course, at his lack of courtesy. But after I thought it over a while, blue did seem to be a nice color for sky.” “Aaa, blue,” Hal muttered. “What’s wrong with the green we’ve always used in the past?” Mr. Webber sighed and squirmed a little to get the chair into a more comfortable fit. At- tendant’s chairs were not quite as comfortable as the Executive type, even if they were Formair. Then he cocked an eyebrow and looked at his son with mild concern. “Hal, my boy, what’s the trouble? I’ve never seen you so completely upset in all my life.” “I feel funny,” murmured Hal. “As a matter of fact, I feel awful. Maybe there’s some connection.” “Ill,” the old man nodded agree- ably. “Yes, I thought you looked it when I came in here. Something in the set of your mouth. Tight, sort of.” . With an expression of mild sur- prise, Hal reached up and tenta- tively felt around his mouth with a cleanly manicured forefinger. “Son,” Webber murmured, “how long has it been since you had your last CG Treatment?” “Eight years,” Hal admitted. “It’s a little overdue, I suppose, but surely — ” His voice trailed off soft- ly, as his mind seized upon the possibility. “That’s probably what it is,” Webber replied. That was a pretty definite statement for someone to make about another’s sensations, but anyone could see that the old man was concerned over his son. “Five years is the standard period at your age. Why haven’t you taken it?” 46 E. G. VON WALD

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“Well, you know,” Hal whis- pered. “It’s that new thing they have in it now.” “Ah,” said his father with com- prehension. “That’s right, I forgot all about that. A change. But you won’t mind, really you won’t. You just think you will.” “Perhaps so,” Hal said, and hast- ily changed the subject of conver- sation to a less depressing topic. “The new coloration process is a real success, you say?” “Absolutely. We can now provide flexible hue and chroma for the complete Formair line — Airchair, Aircab and Airdome. We’ll be the only one who has it, and since every Proprietor on the planet will want our new equipment as fast as we turn it out, we’ll put every other firm completely out of the business. I’ve already worked out a method so that we can convert to export goods, too, without waiting for the economic balance to be readjusted. Of course, the colonies will have to curtail a little, but we don’t have to concern ourselves with them.” “Yes,” agreed Hal. “Bruchner has been very useful to us on it,” the old man repeated again. “We’ll have to show him we appreciate it.” Hal’s mouth tightened just per- ceptibly at the mention of the re- doubtable engineer, but he said nothing. His father continued in his soft, mild voice. “We must make him a present of something. Should it be money? Can’t give him prop- erty, of course, because he isn’t a citizen.” “I don’t like the idea of giving an Outlander money. They get their EASY DOES IT allotments and that’s enough wealth. If you give them money, they will be able to buy more than their allotment, and that could very easily upset our own economic balance, you know.” “Quite true,” Webber agreed. Then he smiled with placid inspira- tion. “I know. We’ll give him fame. We’ll name the process after him.” “Well,” Hal said doubtfully, “I guess that would do it.” “I think so. He’s been a great help. As a matter of fact, though, most of the Outlanders are helpful. A pity they won’t take the Treat- ments and become citizens. It seems sort of sad the way their emotions cut them up at times. Like old Tanan last month. Why, up to then he was almost like a civilized man — even without the treatments.” “I know,” Hal said tonelessly. “It was his son, wasn’t it?” “Yes. Curious that the old man should be so concerned over that little unpleasantness. So his son did get a little excited and kill a Pro- prietor and was executed himself. No reason for his father to carry on so about it, is there? I tried to get him to take the Treatment then, but — well, after all, you can hardly expect an uncivilized Outlander to appreciate the advantages, can you?” “No.” Hal did not refer to the fact that the new element recently put into the standard CC Treat- ment was causing him to postpone taking it himself, but his father seemed to sense his thought. “You won’t mind it, son. Really you won’t. The Treatment will take care of the whole thing. It’s per- 47

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fectly obvious that you are suffer- ing from the effects of the delay right at this moment.” “Oh Chaos,” Hal swore softly. “Why did they have to go and put that element in anyway?” “Now Hal, you know better than that,” his father chided him gently. “It was either include a marital in- clination or else go in for a com- plete program of artificial insemina- tion. The women have a vote too, you know, and they wouldn’t hear of it. They don’t object to carry- ing a child for a few months — that’s always been in their conditioning for some reason or another. But they insisted that if they had to be mothers, the men would have to be fathers. And they insisted on a standard, civilized marriage con- tract to cover the situation.” “I know, I know. I’ve heard all the arguments. Racial suicide and all. Nonsense. We can always im- port Outlanders and force them to take the Treatment. Outlanders,” he pointed out with suitable, mild, cultured disgust, “breed like ani- mals.” “No son, that wouldn’t do the job. We have to keep the blood line. Outlanders don’t have it, you know. If they did, they would have permitted themselves to be civilized long ago.” Hal’s fingers drummed nervously on the desk top, and his father again raised an eyebrow in mild concern. He shook his head thoughtfully. Guiltily, Hal stopped his fingers from their satisfying tattoo. He bunched them into a fist instead, and then gazed at it with mild un- 48 belief. “All right,” he finally whispered. “This is simply awful. And it looks as if in order to be cured, I’ll have to get me a wife along with it. A pity, though. Everything was per- fectly mild without one.” “You’ll be mild with a wife, Hal,” his father assured him softly. “You don’t like the prospect now, because it means change. Change, of course, is always unpleasant. But the Treatment will take care of it all right. I know that I didn’t ex- pect things to work out so mildly with a wife. It was optional back in those days, and if it hadn’t been for your mother’s family money, I never would have married. Particu- larly her — with her family history of fecundity. As witnessed by the children we produced — you and your sister. But Formair needed the money, and I was the only available man in the Webber clan. When I agreed to make the sacrifice, they made me president of the firm, be- cause it isn’t often that a man will do so much for his own family. Shows real character. It’s in the cultured family blood, naturally.” Hal had heard all this many, many times before, but he listened without irritation. Or at least, with only the mild irritation that was the result of his present unstable con- dition. “Yes indeed,” his father went on in his mild, comfortable voice. “Hardly knew she was around the house, though, once the Treatment was over with. It was just as if she had been around all my life. Mar- velous process.” “All right,” Hal murmured. “I’ll E. G. VON WALD

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take it.” “Be a good idea to pick out a wife first. Sometimes there are a few minor adjustments to make be- cause of outstanding individual characteristics. You get an abso- lutely perfect fit that way, you know.” He stood up and walked to- ward the door, the flabby muscles of his body easily supporting the two pounds relative of his weight. “The Ansermet family has a fe- male available, I believe,” he mur- mured as he walked. “Excellent choice. But you better have the probability checked anyway.” “I know about her,” Hal replied thoughtfully. “But what’s she like? Have you ever met her?” His father smiled benignly back at him, as he practically floated through the doorway. “That doesn’t matter a bit,” he said mildly. “It doesn’t make any difference at all what either of you are like. The Treatment will bring you both back to absolute, statistical normal, and you’ll both be a perfect fit for each other. Quite pleasantly civilized.” The door hummed shut behind him. “Well,” Hal announced aloud to himself, “guess that’s it.” He ordered the automatic sec- retary to make all suitable arrange- ments and then stood up. He walked to the elevator, where a soft, hissing breeze conveyed his temporary one-tenth pound relative gently up the tube to the roof. There his weight returned to its normal two pounds relative, and he spoke to the robot attendant. “My cab.” His Formair Aircab was promptly and quietly delivered, and EASY DOES IT Hal stepped inside. “Destination?” a voice inquired softly from the control bank. “Take me to the nearest available Civilization Conditioning Treat- ment Center.” At once, the cab took off. It was a silent and comfortable motion. Hal had always liked flying. The automatic pilot was speak- ing to him gently. “Central Au- thority advises that the nearest available CCT Center at this time is in the metropolis of Knoxville. This requires transversing inter- urban wilderness.” Hal frowned just slightly. He had never seen the interurban wil- derness, of course, and had not the slightest desire to do so. That was chaos. He inquired, “How soon can the local Center take me?” “Three days, seven hours twenty minutes from reference time. Mark time . . . mark!” the robot an- nounced the temporal point of ref- erence. “Too long,” Hal replied wearily. “Let’s go to Knoxville. And shut off all outside views. I do not wish to see the chaos.” The Aircab obediently turned and transposed through the sus- pend-field of the York metropolis Airdome. It was an effortless pass- ing, since the field that constituted the wall structure of the Aircab was exactly in phase with that of the Airdome field. Both were Formair manufacture, of course. The pleasant, silent, effortless motion of the Aircab soon pro- duced its usual somnolent effect on him, and he dozed comfortably off. He slept the entire trip. 49

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At Knoxville, he spoke to the Center Technician briefly, advising the master robot of the possibility of his altered economic status, and the matter was thoroughly checked by the computor at Central Authority. Every conceivable source of psy- chosomatic tension and internal conflict was studied, and suitable alterations on Hal’s master curve plotted. The process took ten min- utes, while Hal dozed under the soothing warmth of the examina- tion cap. There was a crackling buzz, and it was over. He awoke immediately, and felt wonderful. No tension. No irrita- tion. Not the slightest bit of his recent restlessness. Hal was de- lighted. On the way out of the cubicle, he encountered another Proprietor, and smiled at him with perfect, civilized mildness. “York,” he ordered his Aircab. Once again, the sleek button- shaped vehicle soared up through the Airdome and out over the in- terurban wilderness. Hal contented- ly went to sleep right in the middle of the pilot’s automatic rundown of flight data. HE WAS jolted awake by a raucous rattle from the control bank. Blinking his eyes sleepily, he said, “Please stop all that noise. What is the trouble?” A very unpleasant and notably ungentle voice replied, “Apologies sir. We are out of control. Aircrash has occurred.” Aircrash! An almost unheard-of thing that sometimes happened to people who used inferior equipment 50 like that produced by firms other than Form air. People were even known to be killed by it. “Report,” he said quietly, then flinched a little at the raucous scratching of the speech mecha- nism. “Reference point . . . mark! Al- titude eleven thousand three hun- dred seventy one feet. Velocity re- duced to two hundred nine point nine miles per hour. Locus: seven hundred point eight miles from nearest civilized metropolis, which is York.” The voice continued, but became unintelligible as the man- gled circuits faltered. Seven hundred miles from civili- zation! Wilderness. Chaos; that set- tled it, of course. Hal smiled gently as he realized that he was about to die. A civilized man obviously could not be expected to survive in chaos. He observed that he was breathing more strenuously, and realized that it was the result of the rapid failure of the antigravity field. Never in his life had Hal been under the full force of the earth’s mass field, but he knew the symp- toms. Once he had been exposed to a one-half gee for a few hours. Very unpleasant, he recalled. The automatic pilot’s unintel- ligible speech suddenly stopped al- together. There was a heavy, awk- ward lurch that threw Hal forward against the front panel. But before he struck it, the field generator failed completely, the panel ceased to exist, and Hal was flying through the air. He shut his eyes, and placidly waited for death. A moment later, he hit the ground sharply, rolled over and E. G. VON WALD

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over, and lay still. He sighed heavily. Death? He had always fancied that death would be a complete absence of sensation, and no consciousness of effort whatever. Instead, his breath was coming in deep, heavy sighs, his head hurt, his arm was aching, and something was tickling his nose. “Come on, wake up,” a voice said briskly. Hal opened his eyes and looked up at a golden-framed face. It was the face that had been speaking, and the pleasingly shaped lips now moved again. “You aren’t hurt, you know. Just a little shaken up.” Hal continued to stare at the woman for a moment, then mut- tered “Umph,” and struggled to a sitting posture. It was a great ef- fort in the unaccustomed full earth gravitational field. The woman was an Outlander, no doubt about it. That was evident from her high- ly spirited tone of voice. But as Hal looked around at the strange picture of undisturbed interurban wilder- ness, he found that most astonish- ingly he did not mind it. As a mat- ter of fact, he rather liked her tone of voice. It was all very puzzling. “What happened?” he muttered heavily, his eyes moving back to the landscape and the small metal boxes which housed the now de- funct suspend-field generators. “There must have been some- thing wrong with your Aircab,” she replied. “You crashed. The same way I did a couple days ago.” The woman walked over to the generator boxes, picked them up and brought them back to where EASY DOES IT he was still sitting on the grass. “We’ll need these,” she explained. “There are emergency supplies in- side them.” Hal didn’t move. She waited a moment, then said lightly, tossing her golden hair, “Come along now. We’re way out in the wilderness, you know, and there aren’t any robots to bring us our dinner.” “Wilderness,” Hal murmured. “That’s right. Well, I guess we’ll die here.” “Oh nonsense!” She stamped her foot with impatience. “This would have to happen to me. Of all peo- ple to be stranded with in the wilderness, I have to get one of you insipid, gutless Proprietors.” “Oh yes?” Hal said with un- conscious anger, lurching to his feet. “Who’s insipid and gutless? I’m considerably more civilized than you are.” Quick surprise crossed her face as she listened. Hal continued his angry speech. “Why is it that all you savages al- ways think you know how to live better than your superiors? If you are so clever, why aren’t you civi- lized?” “Well, listen to him. You sound almost human.” She was laughing at him! “Damn savage,” he growled. He turned and strode purposefully away from her across the soft mat- ting of grass. “Where do you think you are going?” she called. “Away from here,” he replied. But the rapid pace in the unac- customed gravity was very quickly taking his energy. His breath came in deep, labored gasps already, and 51

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he could scarcely move his feet. He stopped abruptly, and looked at the distant horizon. There was nothing in sight that indicated civi- lization. These regions had not been inhabited for two hundred and fifty years — ever since the severance of the planetary colonies from po- litical control by the motherland, and the settling of the Proprietors into their well-separated, civilized cities. The land was all owned by the Proprietors, but was unneces- sary, and hence not used. He felt a light touch on his arm. “I’m sorry,” she apologized soft- ly. “I can understand you a little, but you’re so completely under the influence of your horrible person- ality conditioning methods that you can’t possibly understand me.” “Who’s under what influence?” Hal said in a valiant attempt to express his irritation, but his voice held the obvious weakness of fa- tigue. “You poor boy,” she sympa- thized. “You don’t sound very much influenced by it right now.” At her words, Hal suddenly be- came aware of the unaccustomed vigor of his own emotions, and he was puzzled by it. But it seemed oddly unimportant for some reason. “How come you can handle this awful weight so easily?” he asked her. Her laughter was light and de- lightful. “We spend most of our lives under natural conditions, not under an antigravity machine. I’ve only been on Earth for a few months, visiting my father. But a lot of that time was spent out here in this beautiful wilderness.” “Horrible chaos,” he muttered. He glanced up and observed a mild, blue, cloud-studded sky. “Why it is blue, after all. Isn’t it?” “What’s blue?” “The skydome.” She glanced up thoughtfully. “Of course it’s blue. And this is not one of your artificial skys. This is the real thing. There’s no artificial weather control out here, you know. You get natural sunlight, natural winds, storms, rain — oh, lots of things.” “Gahh,” said Hal. “What makes you surprised at finding that the sky is blue?” “Probably because I never saw it before. The only time I ever heard of its being anything other than green was when an engineer we have working for us at the factory said it was blue.” “Well, never mind the sky. Let’s find some place where we can get a little shelter for the night.” She be- gan to lead him slowly along an animal trail to a cluster of trees on a nearby stream. She walked with the obviously delayed pace one takes with invalids, but Hal had a difficult time keeping up. Finally, she said, “Here’s a pretty good place. Sit down next to that tree. You must be worn out.” “Oooo,” he groaned, reclining back against a broad, rough oak trunk, then stiffening painfully away from it again. “It doesn’t fit,” he mourned plaintively. “Now you’re sounding silly again,” she scolded. “Go on, lean back. There aren’t any suspend- field lounges out here for you, so you take what you get.” E. G. VON WALD 52

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Obediently, he relaxed against the rough, twisting bark. He was very, very tired. On second thought, even this rugged seat was comfort- able. He sighed heavily, and then looked pensively around again. “Oh well, what does it matter? We’ll be dead soon.” “Don’t talk like that!” she snapped with annoyance. “Why?” he inquired listlessly. “Everybody knows a civilized hu- man being can’t possibly survive in the wilderness. That’s why no one ever comes here. And I’d just as soon die right now, if you have anything suitable for killing.” The woman stared at him with a tight frown between her eyebrows. Then she shook her head with won- der. “How you people can call yourselves civilized is beyoiid me. You yourself don’t seem so bad, except that you don’t have any guts. They’ve trained it all out by now.” “Please,” begged Hal. “You sound like that uncouth engineer that works for us. Impertinent.” “That what engineer?” she de- manded spiritedly. “Who are you, anyway?” “I’m Webber. Hal Webber. The engineer is a savage — oh sorry.” He smiled weakly. “You’re a sav- age, too. Guess you Outlanders don’t regard yourselves as such.” “No we don’t,” she snapped. “And if it weren’t for us, you silly fools here on Earth would have died out long ago.” “Outlanders are noted for their misplaced pride, of course,” Hal commented with a mildness that was impelled by fatigue rather than civilized conditioning. EASY DOES IT “Oh are we now?” she said an- grily, standing up and bending over him. “And who do you think you are, Lord Proprietor? Some hum- ble god, perhaps? Let me tell you something, Hal Webber, I’ve heard about you. You know who I am? My name is Lois Bruchner. That uncouth engineer you just referred to happens to be my father.” Hal was puzzled. “What on earth is the matter?” he asked. “Why are you so excited?” “You called my father uncouth.” “Why get excited about that? After all — ” Hal gestured weakly, trying to reason with her, “ — it’s only your father. I didn’t say you were uncouth. Funny thing is — I like you.” “Suppose I called your father names?” she demanded, her lower lip protruding belligerently. “You can call him anything you like as far as I am concerned.” Lois Bruchner stood there a mo- ment, her mouth open in astonish- ment. Then she sat down beside him again quietly. “That’s right,” she murmured, “they even educate love out of you.” Hal sighed heavily, and slid away from the tree onto the rough, rocky ground. It was painful, but he was so tired. His breath came in regular, deep sighs as he went to sleep. BY THE TIME he woke, Lois had constructed a kind of primitive lean-to shelter over him. Hal was amazed. The sheltering purpose of the structure was evi- 53

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dent to him, and he was startled that she should have been able to design such a thing on the spur of the moment. She heard him stir and looked up from the fire she had built in front of the lean-to. “Hungry?” she asked. He was ravenous, but his muscles ached in every fibre. His wonder at her cleverness disappeared abrupt- ly when he tried to move. He rolled over groaning and helpless. Immediately, she was at his side, pushing him back onto the bed of dry, fragrant grass she had put him on. “Now don’t try to move around,” she admonished. “Just a few days, and you’ll be all right.” “Oooo,” Hal groaned. “This is awful.” “There, there,” she murmured solicitously. “I’ve made you some soup. You’ll like it.” “Soup,” he groaned. “I want food. Good solid synthomeat. Don’t you have any food?” “Solid food in your stomach so soon in this heavy gravity would kill you.” She went away and returned quickly with a little cup and spoon, and proceeded to empty the con- tainer into his lax mouth a few drops at a time. After a while, he ceased his protesting. It was less painful to swallow the slop than to fight it. Very soon afterward, he lost consciousness. Later, he was again aware of his surroundings. He felt tremen- dously better, and observed with a peculiar satisfaction that it was morning. Funny sounds were in 54 the air, which he eventually recog- nized as the cries of wild birds and insects. Insects? He blinked his eyes and struggled to a sitting position, and looked worriedly around. In- sects can carry disease, he remem- bered. And wild animals were re- ported to be carnivorous. His clumsy motions awakened Lois, who had been sleeping be- side him. Hal looked down at her with a vague wonder. Such a nice looking savage, he thought, as she popped open her eyes. She smiled a pleased morning smile at him and lazily stretched. “Hi,” she said. “How do you fefel?” “Quite mild,” Hal admitted with wonder. “Odd, too. That junk you fed me last night must have some very efficient drug in it.” “Junk I fed you last night?” Lois echoed, sitting up. Then she laughed her amusement. “Oh, you mean that soup. That wasn’t last night, Hal Webber. That was last week.” “But — I just woke up,” he pro- tested. “Yes.” She smiled at him, reach- ing up and patting his cheek af- fectionately. “You’ve been a little delirious. Gravity trauma, very common. You get used to it fast, but that’s one thing they didn’t condition you to, I guess, and your conscious prompdy rejected the possibility.” Sudden remembrance came to Hal of the agony it had been to move the last time he remembered trying it Cautiously he lifted an arm and flexed it. He glanced back at Lois, who was watching E. G. VON WALD

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him with amusement. “It feels all right now. Heavy and clumsy, but no pain.” “Good.” She stood up and brushed her unruly hair away from her forehead. “I’ll fix your break- fast just as soon as I take my bath, all right?” she said. Hal nodded absently. The stream was twenty yards away, and Lois walked quickly over to it. There she pulled her jumper over her head and dove into the crystal water. “Eeii, it’s cold!” she shrieked. Her vigorous splashing threw sharp bril- liance in the early morning sun- light. After a few minutes, she came out, letting the water dry on her soft, golden skin. Hal was watching her in open- mouthed admiration. It was a most remarkable sensation, this pleasure at seeing her 'move in that lithe, supple way. He had never before experienced such a thing. As she came up on the grassy bank, she noticed his rapt gaze, and quickly snatched up her single garment and held it in front of her. “All right,” she told him briskly. “You too. You’re much too big for me to handle effectively, so you haven’t had a decent bath since we got here. And it gets pretty hot during the day.” Obediently, as if in a vic-spell, Hal stood up and walked to the water’s edge, keeping his eyes on her. “Look where you’re going,” she said sharply, and he shook his head dazedly. He slowly removed his clothing, dropped it on the ground, and jumped into the water. That was the end of the spell EASY DOES IT The water was like ice, he howled like a wounded animal and tried to jump out again. But the gravity made him clumsy and he fell back with a great splash. He rose again, gasping and sputtering, making wild, awkward movements — in a frenzy to get out of the excruciat- ing coldness. Finally he was lying on the grass, panting and ex- hausted. Lois was standing over him, her pale blue eyes dancing with de- light. “What a spectacle,” she bubbled merrily. “You should have seen yourself. I sure wish I had a vic-o-graph with me. Such per- formances should be preserved.” Unaccountably, Hal found him- self gurgling like a delighted baby, and then laughing with her in loud, uncivilized guffaws. After a few minutes, they were both worn out with hilarity. Lois sighed. She gave him a brimming smile, and went en back to the lean-to. “Get your clothes on,” she said. “I’ll have some breakfast for you in a few minutes.” IT WAS FOOD, Hal agreed, but it was not very good. It had come out of the standard emer- gency ration from the Aircab mas- ter units, and no power on earth could have made it very palatable. And the supply was nearly gone. “I don’t know how we can get back,” she said thoughtfully, as she chewed on a wafer. “Plenty of Air- cabs go by — I’ve seen a dozen or so during the past week. But no- body ever looks out of them ex- cept Outlanders, and there aren’t 55

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many of us around. So there isn’t any point in building a signal fire.” Hal did not reply. He lay back on the grass, his belly full with un- accustomed satisfaction, staring at the blue sky. He decided that he still preferred green. “It’s sort of a washed-out color,” he murmured. “What?” “The sky. It’s sort of pallid and weak-looking.” “That’s haze. But spoken like a big, strong man,” she said lightly. And then wistfully added, “A pity they always take it out of you.” Hal frowned, and looked down from the sky to the windblown dampness of her golden hair. “What do you mean by that?” he inquired. “Nothing.” Her gaze returned modestly to her wafer, and she continued the former subject. “We were talking about getting back to what you call civilization, remem- ber? Or do you prefer we become the new Adam and Eve lost in the wilderness?” she asked, her eyes dancing. “We could start a new primitive dynasty of plains sav- ages.” “Oh.” Hal’s mind came back to the immediate problem. “Oh, yes, that’s right. We have to get back.” He frowned a moment. “Well now, let’s see. There’re a number of emergency stations spotted around the interurban wilderness. Can’t just remember where I learned about them — must have been Treatment information.” He thoughtfully picked up a stick and began drawing diagrams of maps in the loose soil. “There.” He pointed with the stick. “One of 56 them should be about two hundred miles north of where we are now, provided the automatic pilot of my Aircab was accurate in its final position fix.” Lois was looking at the crude map when he glanced back up at her. There seemed to be a sadness in her expression. She nodded her head at the map. “From that it looks like those emasculating treat- ments do some good after all.” “Don’t talk like that,” he re- proved her. “The Civilization Con- ditioning Treatment is the basis of our culture.” She started to speak, hesitated, and then blurted out, “What, pre- cisely, does it do for you?” “Don’t you know?” Hal asked astonished, and then answered his own question. “Oh, of course, Out- landers would hardly know much about civilized history. Well, be- fore interplanetary exploration was started, there weren’t any areas at all like this wilderness. The planet was much too crowded. The people lived in huge, contiguous cities and were incessantly battling with each other for economic survival, social survival and animal survival. The vast majority of the popula- tion couldn’t stand it. They de- veloped all kinds of psychogenic ill- nesses. The impact of the uncon- trolled inclinations of individuals meeting the absolute self-control required by civilization was killing them. “Then, gradually, the Civiliza- tion Conditioning process was de- veloped. What happened then was just what you would expect — the people who took the Treatments E. G. VON WALD

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were so much better adapted to civilized living conditions that the others simply didn’t have a chance. Just as soon as planetary colonies were opened up, the savages were all shipped off. There were a lot of riots and small-scale wars for a while, but eventually the superior conditioning of the civilized people won out. “After things had stabilized again, anyone who wanted to was permitted to become an Earth citi- zen, but he had to take the Treat- ment, and keep it up. But by that time, most savages had a lot of peculiar prejudices against it, so the population of Earth has re- mained very small. The robotic defenses of the Proprietors pro- tected the planet from further in- vasion, and now the robotic police maintain order everywhere in the system. “Of course, the planets are ex- tremely poor in natural resources, so we supply the basic material, even though we relinquished po- litical control long ago. The colo- nies pay us by sending unusually gifted technicians like your father to work for us. Naturally, Out- landers have no rights, whatsoever, here. Not even the right to life or freedom or payment of the ma- terial allotment. But unless they commit a crime or otherwise inter- fere with the Proprietors, there is not the slightest danger of being molested by any citizen, because citizens are civilized.” Hal stopped his history lecture and looked back up at her. “The Treatment is responsible for the entire rational order of our cul- ture, as you probably know.” “But look how insipid it makes you all,” she burst out. “You’re so weak and wishy-washy. There isn’t a noble or even a strong sentiment in your entire society.” “That is how the process works. It is nothing but a series of checks and balances artificially installed in the subconscious which make strong sentiments unnecessary, and which prevent unstable activity. The re- sult is a perfectly smooth existence with no ups or downs, and a per- fect cooperation between civilized people.” Lois thought this over for a mo- ment. Then she asked curiously, “How do you account for the fact that you — after all the Treatments you have taken — are so different from other Proprietors? You, well — ” she stumbled, blushing a little “ — you seem perfectly normal in your reactions.” Hal shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe my last Treatment had an error in it.” But he shook his head again at that idea, be- cause the computor at Central Authority never made mistakes. “It i c Qtranp'p ” “I think It’s wonderful.” She smiled at him with quick radiance. Hal grinned happily back at her, feeling an alien surge of joy as he looked at the smile and at her. “Well, whatever it is, for the next few months or so it looks like we’ll be savages in fact.” THEY WERE. And they took a long time walking north to their destination. It was a remark- 57 EASY DOES IT

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ably satisfying experience for Hal. And it was for Lois, too, as she pointed out to him the night after they found the emergency station. There was a small Formair shelter at the place, and a simple auto- matic distress transmitter which was set in operation by one push of a button. Symbols marked on the case of the transmitter assured them that assistance would be forthcoming within twelve hours. It was their first night in a civi- lized shelter, and their last night together in the wilderness. Early the next morning, an Authority Air- cab came humming swiftly down to the meadow where they were waiting. Once inside the Aircab, Hal be- came taciturn and thoughtful, but Lois was not disturbed. She talked enough for both of them. Hal lux- uriated in the pleasant reawakened rapport with the things of civiliza- tion. Back at the city, they went to Bruchner’ s residence, and Lois’ fa- ther rushed outside to greet them. Lois ran happily to him, embracing him, and volubly explaining how wonderful Hal was, how he had saved her from being gobbled up by a lot of wild animals, and how strong he was, and sundry other af- fectionately innocuous exaggera- tions. Hal looked curiously on for a few minutes in idle wonder at the strange attachments of Out- landers. Then Lois proudly pulled him over next to her. “Isn’t he wonderful? And we’re in love — oh, so much in love.” “Lois,” Bruchner mumbled un- happily. “There are some things you 58 have to be told. I should have told you before — ” “You don’t have to tell me any- thing,” she bubbled happily. “You can say all you want to about the Proprietors, but this one is differ- ent. He’s — he’s real!” Hal laughed diffidently, and moved a little further away from her. He gazed around at the city, recognizing it with thirsty famili- arity, happily part of it again. The experience of the past three months already seemed far away. “Hal,” Lois murmured, suddenly aware of his rapidly growing cool- ness. “Hal, darling, what’s wrong?” “Why nothing at all, uh, Lois.” He looked at her uncomfortably for a moment, and backed a step further. “It’s just — well, you know.” “Oh no you don’t,” she cried, rushing up to him and grabbing his arm. “Where are you going — Dad!” “Please, Miss Bruchner,” Hal murmured mildly, disengaging his arm from her. He gazed hungrily around him again the moment she let go, and looked back at her only when he was startled by a sudden, choking sob. Lois was staring at him, her fist to her mouth, the pale blue eyes brimming. “Oh no!” she cried tremulously. “Lois,” Bruchner said, his voice sounding harsh with repressed emo- tions, “come in here. You’ve got to know what the situation is.” He put his arm around her trembling shoulders and led her off, glaring at Hal in helpless fury. The moment they were out of sight, Hal turned and stepped back E. G. VON WALD

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into the Aircab. He ordered it to take him home. His parents were there, watching a vic-entertain- ment, which Hal promptly turned off. “Who did that?” his father mumbled, coming immediately out of the trance. “Hal? That wasn’t a very nice thing to do, son.” “Why Hal,” his mother sighed mildly. “You’re not dead after all. How nice. Don’t pay any attention to your father — it wasn’t a very in- teresting vie anyway.” “Shouldn’t turn it off like that, though.” “Um, sorry,” Hal apologized gently. He relaxed into the com- fortable, perfect fit of a Formair lounge. “Just thought I’d let you know I’m still alive.” “Well, we’re glad,” his mother murmured absently. “Must have been pretty awful.” “That’s the funny thing about it, though — I didn’t mind it a bit at the time. Very curious. I had an Outlander woman with me — Bruchner’s daughter, as a matter of fact.” “Oh dear,” Mrs. Webber sighed. “Poor Hal.” “Well, like I say, it wasn’t exact- ly mild, but it was quite tolerable, somehow.” He frowned just slight- ly, and shook his head at the puz- zling incongruity. He recalled his three months of association with the uncivilized woman, somewhat wistfully contemplating strong, overpowering sentiments in a chao- tic wilderness. “Anyway,” he said at last, “I’m home again, and it’s all over. I won’t have to have any- thing to do with her now.” EASY DOES IT “Yes,” Mrs. Webber murmured. “Odd that you should have sur- vived though, isn’t it? I thought a civilized man in the wilderness would die almost at once.” Webber gave the cultured equivalent of a mild snort. “Of course he could survive. Oh — ” and he laughed softly in apology “ — that’s right. I forgot to tell you about that.” The eyes of his wife politely turned to him and he explained. “A couple of weeks after our son here apparently had been killed, I happened to run into an Authority physician. I mentioned it to him, just in passing. He told me that there was a factor in the CG Treat- ment that provided for such things. “It seems that the Civilization Conditioning they give you is only designed to enable a man to sur- vive in a city. In order for the conditioning to function, you have to have that civilized urban en- vironment. Once the environment is removed, the conditioned com- plex has nothing to react against, and the man immediately becomes almost — but not quite — as savage as a typical Outlander. “That way, a civilized man can always manage to live in the wil- derness, given half a chance. Once he gets back into a city again, the proper, civilized environment is re- turned, the conditioning starts functioning immediately and pres- to!— the man is civilized again.” “Well now, that’s nice,” Mrs. Webber said placidly. “Wouldn’t like to see my boy dead.” (Continued on page 103) 59

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Such magnificent gifts as these were undoubtedly intended for Mankind. But those who possess them are rare indeed, while those who fear the unknown are legion they were different BY NEIL J. KENNEY As secretary , receptionist and general nursemaid to them 1 took it upon myself to dig back through the news files and get enough clips to tell their history from birth un- til they opened the school . You’ve all read it so there’s no need to go into details about their strange life and still stranger birth . Nor their magnificent education or still more magnificent gifts . It’s true , every bit of it; their telepathic and ESPing powers WORKED. They were the only births like them to survive to maturity and beyond . During the last contact I had with them (I was their first and most advanced pupil) it came as pure inspiration to take down their transmissions in the special short, shorthand we developed for use among the pupils and ourselves . What follows may be added to the story told by the news clips, differ- ing only in person. 1 have added nothing in translation of the notes. 60

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3«P@$ kmU« Mg iia 4 ■ WiZiwAhtti&ty I fmmMt KpwhWt&H mAwfowk pw. M '/tyi wmi wms WittM Mi s ;,xi'v^^n Vs • ."iV''.'' :# ? m tA EW^% »WW »Wt' gjjgggl^* KSjfti ■HHK 0W0'4>/' > fa< Illustrated by Paul Orban

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leaving the narrative as disjointed as they gave it. The events are as they transmitted them, as they lived them . I was in contact with them until — but read, and when you’re through reading do as 1 do every night . Pray. And hope — for mankind . WELL, Kitten, it seems impos- sible that three grand, suc- cessful years of work could end so suddenly with us lying in a ditch or anticipating, ESPwise, an oc- casional bullet fired from the guns of friends but there it is. God, what a complicated being this so- called modem man is! He seems to be born cloaked with complexities which get even more complex as he grows. No wonder he has been so long on the road, being engaged in a continual battle between ethics and emotions as he has. So here we are, the bridge, the first rungs of a ladder leading to a new and delightful plane of exist- ence for all mankind, wallowing in the mud of an irrigation ditch in- stead of glorying in the divine world of the mind. If we can but make them see! Maybe the profes- sors were right when they told us to teach under the protection of the university instead of hardheadedly going out on our own. Princess, do you remember Lu- cille? She was our best pupil, after you, of course. She’s the one who turned over the stone that freed our personal gremlin. Oh, it’s not really her fault, though she did break our one and only cardinal 62 rule by bringing in an outsider her- self instead of leaving such choices to us. Actually the fault was ours because — well, who knows? That wonderful control we practiced for so many years slipped, no matter the reason. It was just one of those inexplicably foolish things people will do when they think they’re in love. Guess we thought we could save her some embarrassment or some such thing. You had just left on a long vaca- tion when that one showed up. He was the man that Lucille brought up with her as a prospective pupil, the one that — one wing of them is closing in on us now. Kitten. We’ll have to try for the swamp ahead of us. We’ll have to lose them for a while if we want time to figure a way out, though we aren’t really very good at this sort of cat and mouse game. We can give our own boys a little credit, though. They aren’t really trying to hit us. They shoot well enough to be able to make it look very good. All we really have to worry about is Thur- low and his trained deputy, Trainor. There, that was nice. The sheriff himself just spotted us and started a pincer movement — fifty yards in back of us. Good old boy. Hope he doesn’t get in trouble over us. At last! If this patch of swampy brush is really as thick as we ESP it we’re made, providing the high- way troopers of this state don’t get too smart and take over the operation. Our sheriff is in charge so far. Lord, if we only weren’t so tired! Anyhow, Lucy brought Thurlow NEIL J. KENNEY

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in and we gave him the usual treat- ment. The only trouble is we over- did it slightly and it scared him. Besides telling him what he had for breakfast we ESPed his wallet and told him its contents and when he reached for it in a sort of stunned reflex action we levitated it into his hand. It was a pretty big mis- take in view of the fact that he was one of that bunch that was fairly sensitive mentally, but whom we couldn’t read thoroughly. We could telepath only the very surface of his mind. He would have made a wonderful adept with the proper training. He was awed but shocked and scared, too. It was outside his realm of experience and he was super- stitious in spite of his fine educa- tion. Some folks don’t let learning sink in to open the rusty locks of prejudice and inhibition. He said things that bared his mind as surely as if we had read him. It wasn’t a pretty mind, either. It made us sick physically and the impulses that did come through were deep and angry, giv- ing us a terrific headache and making it hard to concentrate. Later we followed him but still couldn’t read him for the anger flashes blotted out his thought stream thoroughly. To him, what we were doing just couldn’t happen in good old 1983. We were dealing in the black arts and he told us as much, re- fusing to listen to reason in any shape. The fact that everyone has these capabilities latent was alto- gether lost on him. Our licenses, diplomas and degrees meant less THEY WERE DIFFERENT than nothing and the longer he went on the more rabid he got, frothing obscenely about such things as tampering with forces bet- ter left alone and man thinking with his brains instead of letting the Prince of Darkness do it for him. Had it not been so serious it would have been almost slapstick. Instead he was tragic. When he got to the part about us eventually filling the minds of children with our loathsome dis- ease he ran out of expletives and stormed out of the office in a cloud of anger and fright, muttering that we hadn’t heard the last of him. Lucy, of course, was heartsick. We didn’t have to tell her what the meeting had meant. Nor did we tell her what else we’d ESPed in Thurlow’s wallet. She found that out during the rather abortive les- son we tried to give her for she read as we interrupted it (that shows how much off beam we were because we just don’t do that) to take a phone call from Casey down at the sheriff’s office. Our visitor, Thurlow, was District Judge Thur- low of District Two, a very high man on the law enforcement pole. Casey was good. He’d listened in while Thurlow was complaining to the sheriff and apparently heard the sheriff read the judge off po- litely but nonetheless firmly, telling him first how valuable we were to the force when it came to inter- rogating hard-to-crack suspects and as long as we hadn’t com- mitted murder or rape or passed any bum checks there was nothing to be done. Especially since the judge His Honor was out of his dis- 63

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trict! Fortunately we were in Dis- trict One over which our mutual friend, Judge Kimball, presides. Incidentally, Kimball was still under doctor’s care at the time due to his latest heart attack. He was getting along quite well but he was old and his days on the bench were pretty well numbered. Casey thought that District One might conceivably have to appoint a new judge to hold them over until elec- tion due to the fall court calendar. As it turned out that didn’t hap- pen. Br-r-r! Princess, don’t ever let anyone tell you that swamp water can’t get cold in summertime. We’ve got the shakes pretty bad both from our ordeal and from chill. Getting uncomfortably hun- gry, too. That’s what comes of let- ting an inferior enemy panic you. We certainly haven’t acted as though we had better sense. It’s just another of those imponderables to chalk up for study. After Casey’s call the air seemed to be cleared and under that driv- ing compulsion which has never left us we went on about the busi- ness of trying to succeed with na- ture since she had succeeded so well with us. The study of the deep processes of the mind eclipsed the next two days and only the terrible jangle of that outmoded telephone brought us to the surface again. It’s too bad that we had to con- verse orally with the great masses of the untrained. It’s so slow and they could learn so easily. It was Casey again, telling us we were needed down at the station. He was apparently calling us on blind orders, for he couldn’t tell us what was up. Figuring that we had another prisoner to crack we closed classes and drove down. The sheriff seemed mystified, too, and just slightly troubled. We could read that much off the surface of his mind, but he was upset enough to make the rest of his thoughts a meaningless jumble of impulses. All he knew was that we were wanted in the judge’s chambers. You guessed it, Honey. It was Judge Thurlow filling in for Kim- ball on an emergency hearing and he figured it was his duty to man- kind to give us a little talking to while he was there. After all, the good of the community was his con- cern now, and he chose to interpret that as the opportunity to place his narrow little views on record. Trainor, the sheriff’s deputy faith- ful only to the judge, because of a favor granted while he served in Thurlow’s district, was very busy signing his name to something when we walked into the chambers. It gave us a peculiar feeling to see Thurlow sitting at Kimball’s desk. It bore out our theory about a room taking on the personality of its occupant. This room was no longer warm and friendly. The only thing we could read from Thurlow was a self-righteous anger and a solemn, nasty vow to fight us to the last ditch — which, incidentally, he has done for that irrigation ditch is the last one we ever wish to occupy. That water was miserably cold. Three guesses what Trainor was signing. Of all things, a complaint charging us with questionable edu- NEIL J. KENNEY 64

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cational technique! The one thing not covered by license, as Thurlow made haste to confirm through the State House, and by Trainor’s com- plaint, the one way we could legal- ly come into his hands. It was a dainty little frame but unbreakable. Spreading a sweet legal shovel he asked us questions that minutely covered every phase and method of our teaching, then smiled a nasty smile, the while fixing his own signature to another wisp of terribly binding paper. A restraining order. The words of which forbade us to teach! We were to suspend our life’s work or suffer the punishment for contempt of court because of a narrow-minded, righteously wrath- ful mental prude! How can you fight something like that? Thurlow was the last and highest branch of authority in the area unless we took it to Supreme Court. For a while we were tempted to do that but on what were we to base a case? Public opinion would throw us out of court if the Supreme Justice didn’t. We talked to the sheriff when we came down and he and his boys were on our side — emotionally. Legally they had to carry out the judge’s orders to place us under institutional restraint if we trans- gressed. In short, we would be tossed in the pokey if we thumbed our noses at the order. The sheriff’s advice was to sus- pend operations until Supreme Court sat and take it to them. When we asked if he and his staff would be witnesses for us — well, that’s water under the oft men- tioned bridge. There are some ugly THEY WERE DIFFERENT facets of politics that force the men playing them to act as they do. Otherwise we surely wouldn’t have been refused. So there we were; no witnesses — no case; because we couldn’t bring our pupils into it. It was an uncertain mess at best and we didn’t want them to get it in the neck along with us. For the same reason we couldn’t involve our former teachers at the university. What poor payment for hours of drudgery to be dragged into a court battle ! So with the sheriff’s advice to go into another business ringing in our ears, we came back home to sweat it out and think. It took a while, but the only answer we felt was right under the circumstances was to go underground. That makes it sound like the dark ages, doesn’t it. Princess, when knowledge has to hide and creep and skulk instead of flowering under the sun? Our gifts couldn’t be let go to waste, not after the preparation and develop- ment that went into expanding them into a workable set of psychic senses. We had to give Man the benefit of our awakening by waking him in turn. It’s much too bad that we were so sheltered at the university. We might have had some practical ex- perience with the world and its people. We might also have known what to do about this awful hunger that is gradually tearing us down. It’s getting to be a serious problem in our untrained condition. The prof’s wouldn’t even let us play handball for fear of injury so con- sequently we’re nothing but a liv- ing cliche, skin and bones. Donald 65

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feels it strongly. We shall have to try to buoy each other and go on our combined reserves. Pray that we don’t get too weak. It’s been almost 24 hours since we’ve eaten, as there wasn’t time for breakfast. Our clothes seem to be drying slightly though it’s still cool enough to make it uncomfortable and dangerous. This is the way colds grab you. We did pretty well in our choice of an underground location — we thought. Our mistake was in over- looking the police trained mind of our bloodhound friend, Trainor. He’s a shrewd man and not unin- telligent though sadly misguided. How we should like to have him on our side! In five days of sniffing around he had us located, and in another, he had enough proof of activity to re- port to Thurlow and come after us with a bench warrant of arrest. It’s peculiar that we couldn’t stall him or dodge him some way with our much touted IQ, but probably we were still too naive about hu- man relations and most assuredly unversed in the devious twistings of the police mind. After all, though we’re twenty-six years old, our ex- perience with people put us in about the three year old class. So you see? Were it to begin all over again the outcome would be dif- ferent. We would be more practical and worldly. You learn. There was no sense fighting him, because he had the law enforce- ment agencies of the whole state in back of him. All he had to do was whisper “Sic ’em” and we were dead. So we went along quietly to see Thurlow and that dear man took a singularly fiendish delight in imposing an impossible fine on us for contempt of court Our particu- lar transgression wasn’t definitively covered by law so neither was the fine. The fact that Thurlow was fining us for teaching methods in- stead of the contempt charge didn’t dawn on us until just yesterday. How completely ignorant can you get? He gave us a pretty, self- righteous speech about the good of the community and a judge’s place in it, mentioning in passing that everything wasn’t covered by law so it was up to the judge to handle matters as he saw fit. That was what he was trained and elected for and that was what he was doing. Nothing personal, un- derstand. As it was, and well he knew it, we couldn’t begin to pay the fine so we were informed that we’d have to sit it out in the county jail at the rate of two dollars a day. The fine was five hundred dol- lars. The sheriff almost cried when he found we were to be taking ad- vantage of his hospitality. Very likely the full injustice of the judge’s complacent little scheme finally got through to him. At any rate, sympathy or not, we had eight months and ten days to serve with time off possible for good behavior. That’s where you found us when you finished your vacation and dis- covered you were temporarily out of a job. Donald took quick advantage of a prisoner’s rights to telephone Judge Kimball. He was still in bed but sounded fairly strong. His con- NEIL J. KENNER 66

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sternation over our new address was touching and real, but we were sadly informed that ethically the whole matter was beyond him. When Thurlow sat in for him in his district, then Thurlow was law and no reversal could be had out- side of the due process of that law through a higher court. He, Kim- ball, could do nothing until he could get back on the bench. That might be several weeks yet as he wasn’t to get out of bed or get excited in any way. We hung up and had our first look at the familiar cells from the prisoner’s viewpoint. The change in oudook was subtle but definite. The walls looked grayer. Hope we’re not boring you with all this, Kitten, but we must tell it to someone and you are closest and dearest to us. You missed out on nearly all our doings after we closed the school so call it a filling- in process. Someone should have the full story although what good it will ever do is debatable. Perhaps at some future time we can do something with it — if we get out of the present jackpot. Got to move. The state police have taken over the operation and our sheriff is relegated to the role of visiting fireman. It’s lamentable that we aren’t in his bailiwick. Things might work out better. These troopers are very efficient. Donald ESPs them folding a cor- don around our end of the swamp. All we can do is head through its length now. Trainor is with them. Thurlow has joined them also. We get a tiny jab of pain as we pass over him. That impossible man! THEY WERE DIFFERENT Naturally our pupils fell off, thinking the school completely shut down, until you visited us and were able to pass the word that discreet visits wouldn’t go unrewarded. Only a few drifted back for deeper learning and expansion, as you know. One happy thing about the others who were afraid to come back is that they would still make progress, having once been awak- ened, though it would be infinitely slow and groping. The nucleus that sat with us on those once a week school days grew stronger very rapidly, for knowledge is cumula- tive and progressive, and they be- gan to realize what they in turn had to do when they were ready. Credit must be given their strength of mind for seeing and accepting such a responsibility with the en- thusiasm they showed. It was too good to last. Trainor’s turn at afternoon shift came around and lasted the usual month which gave him plenty of opportunity to watch us like a hawk. He did. We were cautious but we couldn’t know what he was watching for, because he didn’t know either. He found out one afternoon. Visitors just don’t come around and merely sit — staring at each other or the walls. We learned another lesson from that: men with as much training as he had don’t always consciously think things out with their surface minds. Their reactions became in- stinctive and as such, untraceable by the most adept telepath. We knew he was there to spy but that’s about all. The net result was a direct order from Thurlow cutting off not only 67

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all visitors, but as Trainor gleefully advised us, cancelling all accrued days off for good behavior. That’s five days a month in this state and it was almost unbearable. The thor- ough injustice of the whole affair was beginning to gall mightily, get- ting under our rather thin skin in many places. What seemed the final crushing blow was the news that filtered in to us from Judge Kimball’s court reporter. He’d taken word to the sick man about our latest loving treatment by Thurlow and it an- gered Kimball enough to make him get out of bed — too soon. He died on the floor of his bedroom. So, not only do we lose a dear friend, but also any chance of his assistance. Thurlow would now sit for Dis- trict One until election time. That put us entirely on our own re- sources. After much deliberation, we de- cided to give in and go back to the university when our sentence was up and take advantage of its shel- tering walls for our teaching. We would be absorbed into the faculty and soon all this unpleasantness would pass over. How we passed the time until our release is unimportant to any- one but us. During the remaining months, we delved farther and far- ther into the mind and gained a much deeper insight into the work- ings of these gifts we had. Man could be so powerful and work so much for his own good — if he could only be made to realize the potential in his mind! He could even be happy. The bright day came at last, and 68 we walked out of our cell free to begin again. It was raining a gray rain outside, but to us the weather had never looked brighter. As we reached for the sheriff’s phone to call the university, Trainor sidled up and laid a scrap of paper on the desk. A glance was enough to make us hang up on the uncom- pleted call. It was another restraining order. After that we tried to find work on the outside, but it was a sorry failure. The curse of being different is a mighty one indeed. No one seemed to care that we had feelings the same as others and that we could get just as hungry and thirsty without funds to buy. Ahh! There it is again. Those words. Hunger and thirst. As if we needed a reminder. Donald is get- ting weaker in perception. He has always been the first to feel such things and we’ve never been able to trace the reason. We certainly have no — 1 interject at this point, for tele- pathic contact with them broke un - explainably . 1 prayed for their safety for I suddenly knew what it would mean to lose them . What a drab, dreary, bigoted world it would be without them to teach us and help us. God, that was a bad half hour, Puss. These troopers are so well trained that they’re more tele- pathically dead than you can imag- ine. First, Donald was so weak he let one of them sneak up close enough for a quick rifle shot. It missed, but of course it told exactly NEIL J. KENNEY

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where we were. Donald exerted himself and ESPed locations, find- ing that we had enough time to work on the trooper if we hurried. Normally we’d be no match for him but desperation can work won- ders. We resorted to a base form of trickery by affecting to surrender to him. When he came up to put the cuffs on us, we played dirtier by offering him a knee that will keep him from attending his wife for a few days. Rotten trick, but we couldn’t afford to let him get his hands on us or it would have been all finished. That makes another count against us. We left his rifle out of reach and ran. Fortunately the others milled around for a precious minute or two when they found him, giving us still more time. Before they got moving again, we broke cover and made it across a county road into a farmer’s barn where we burrowed into the hay. We’ll stay here a while to rest. Not being the athletic type we sure need it. To go back, our small supply of money was running dangerously low in spite of miserly budgeting. We didn’t know what to do outside of robbing a bank to get more. Then it happened. We were browsing through the library one day, when Donald ESPed a stack of returned books not yet filed hoping to turn up something new. The stack was mixed, holding such things as a treatise on grinding optical lenses, a copy of “Gone With the Wind”, a couple of western novels, a thin edition of “The Purloined Letter” and several volumes for the home craftsman. Evidently some newly- weds were doing things to their well mortgaged dream house. On the way home, Donald’s idea burst in on both of us like some monstrous flashbulb. With our minds being so perfectly tuned through constant work during the years, what one ESPed the telepath had immediately and what one telepathed the ESPer received at once. It was a fine working agree- ment and became as habitual as breathing. Donald’s idea was beau- tiful for all that it was lifted from another man. Its application was what burnished it to that bright lus- ter of originality. We would go to work in a carni- val! If a man could hide a letter in an open letter rack, where better could we be hidden but in a car- nival? It was wonderful. We had no trouble getting into one. The owner took one look at what we could do and told us the answer mentally by wondering how little he could offer and still get us. It gave us a certain bargaining point but at our stage of the game all we wanted was in. The thought crossed our minds that we might be lowering our station in life but we were past caring. And of course we found out how wrong we were, that “station in life” is just a point of view. To out- siders carnies are a hard lot, in- terested in nothing but the quickest way to part the suckers from a dollar. Well, they were hard, to outsiders, but to those inside there is a difference. We found some mighty fine people and some very fertile minds. THEY WERE DIFFERENT 69

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We enjoyed the first real secur- ity we’d known for a long time. We found friendship and a certain amount of fame as moneymakers for the show. We got a raise after working on the boss for a while. Best of all we lost ourselves in the bustle of the show. Shortly after our admission into the ranks of the carnies, we felt safe enough to put out feelers (we were out of the state by then), mental this time, prodding small ideas into the best minds, giving them the urge to ask us questions of a leading nature and so eventual- ly we began another class in tele- pathy, Esp, and their related sub- jects. As we traveled from state to state we picked up new pupils from other shows and lost others to the same shows, but the running count was about twenty most of the time. We had to be so very careful in our selections for fear of a repeti- tion of our former mishaps, but it went well. We made no mistakes and turned out some fine pupils, one in particular. He progressed fast enough in the short time we had him to become acutely adept, and when we told him he was ready to teach he accepted it by leaving the carnival to settle down with a home and wife. It was good to see the fruit of our work being put into practice. Next season, we found that in the first pass across the country we were booked for the north end of our home state. For the first time in nearly two years we would be on almost familiar ground. You know what happened then, Baby. You ought to. You were the 70 one we contacted. Telepathy is a lot better than a telephone, isn’t it? What you might not know is that our contact with you was an- other step in this whole sickening drama. How were we to suspect that the train ticket agent was one of those tenacious, bespectacled fel- lows who doggedly chewed on an idea until it made sense to him? Who would know that he was one of those spiteful, small people who enjoyed doing his civic duty as he saw it? He wondered why so many peo- ple were taking the same train on the same day to the same place, when it had never happened be- fore. People just don’t travel three hundred miles to take in a one horse carnival. Being a small town he knew most of the folks by name — or at least by sight — and he recalled that you, sweet, were once our secretary. Imagine the excitement he felt at having such a momentous thing happen in his dull and uneventful life. How best to savour the taste of it? Why, call the sheriff*, natural- ly. Oh, it must have been delicious. Let’s hope he enjoys the memory. With our luck it was out of the question to have anyone but Train- or answer the phone — and swing into high gear. Apparently Judge Thurlow had run for District One during the election and made it, giving up his own stamping grounds for some reason. It hardly seems possible that he’d do it just on the hope that we might decide to come home and set up shop. No man could be that vindictive, could he? Or are we still much too naive to NEIL J. KENNEY

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be allowed out without a keeper? Who knows? We do know that the group was followed by Trainor and another man at Thurlow’s orders; and when they saw all of you meet at a certain tent in back of the mid- way all they had to do was sneak close enough to hear that there was exactly nothing going on! We were all so excited at seeing each other that their presence went unnoticed. Besides, what need to exercise cau- tion when there wasn’t an un- friendly face within miles? When Trainor made his tele- phone call to get the permission to arrest us on the strength of another bench warrant Thurlow prepared in a hurry, his emotions penetrated our little circle; but not soon enough for everyone to get out safe- ly. It all happened so suddenly that our lifelong control snapped. The persecution was so sneaking and so needless! It didn’t take long to dispose of the two deputies. Desperation again and thick anger. We lost no time in trussing them solidly and leaving them unconscious. After it was over, we realized what a deadly game it had suddenly become. We were in deep trouble again — deep- er than any that had gone before. And we needed time, lots of it. Take our word for it. Kitten, and stay underground during any time you and the others may teach. It’s your duty to use care, because you certainly won’t be able to advance your state of learning or help others while under detention. Keep in touch with the others. Your ranks will fill, if you can succeed unde- THEY WERE DIFFERENT tected until it’s time to come into the open. Don’t get into our fix; don’t be forced into breaking the law. We didn’t break it by teaching sup- posedly Satanic courses but by ig- noring the restraining order, then by beating up the police and run- ning. Running wasn’t too bad in itself, but it made it tougher when in our shocked haste we took a car that didn’t belong to us. Then, too, we shouldn’t have taken it across the state line. That made it a federal offense. Even if the troopers get us, we shall first be guests of the FBI. Sweet mess, isn’t it? Lordy, this hay is dry. It’s sweet smelling and comfortable lying here but it’s dry and dusty. It’ll be too bad if nature gives us away through a tickling nose. We can do without her tricks now. Donald has just ESPed a water trough in back of the barn. We must take a chance on it. This rag- ing thirst is as crippling as the lack of food. We drove in a huge circle and left the car well before morning; continuing on foot in the general direction of our friend who had left the carnival to teach. It was our hope to be able to stay there until things cooled down. We finally made it, tired and hungry, and got the welcome we expected. He was overjoyed to see us. You’ll never know how cosy and warm that house felt or how utterly good was the smell of bak- ing bread. His wife is a jewel. We received a jolt the next morning before breakfast. The neighbor’s little girl came bursting 71

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Into the house in what apparently was her normal fashion while we were teaching a small class that our friend had collected. She was extraordinarily sensitive and our combined minds made a terrific impact on her perception before we could control it. Her eyes opened and she was all for broadcasting to every child in the block, but Donald got us through a sticky moment. He made it her own personal secret in a way that only children can appreciate and then showed her one of the simpler tricks of ESP. She grasped it at once for children are extraordi- narily susceptible to instruction. Their minds haven’t had the chance to get cluttered by inhibi- tions and conventional thoughts. She was wide-eyedly delighted and promised her cross-my-heart prom- ise that no one would ever know about us. But of course, they did. Parents being what they are, it was foolish to assume that an untrained child could keep the signs of her adven- ture from them. The signs pointed to a story and it didn’t take them long to pry it out of her. It wasn’t the girl’s fault. The adult odds were against her. They poked and prodded at her for the cause of her overly bright eyes and animated spirit, until the poor child was overwrought and blurted out the details of her im- mense find. The mother was at once sympathetic to her and us, bless her, but not so the father. They both knew she wasn’t imagin- ing it because of the stories they’d heard of us over the years and the 72 father blew up. We could sense the whole tableau telepathically, dreading the outcome, knowing what it must be. The father stormed about the house crying death and destruction on us, while the mother tried to get him to listen to reason. He was mentally incapable of doing it. He, like so many of the others, was ter- ribly frightened at the unknown, fearsome thing in their midst. It was unthinkable that we should stay free of captivity when there were places for people like us! We shouldn’t be allowed to mingle with normal, decent folks. The upshot was a long distance, collect phone call to the judge who doubtless ac- cepted the charges quite happily. We couldn’t stay, so we turned to run once more. That’s about all there is, Princess. We’ve run until we can hardly run any more. We’re weak and hungry and sickened by the hatred and stupid, active resistance surround- ing us. We don’t blame the police. They’re merely doing what they are paid to do. Donald has ESPed them filtering through the swamp in a wide semi- circle and a few thoughts are leak- ing through the jumble of shouted orders and mixed impulses. Trainor and the judge are right with them. He seems to be talking earnestly to Trainor but his hatred and anger blot everything out — we can get nothing from him. Donald is get- ting weaker, but we must stir to get water and try to leave before they see this bam. Here the narrative broke once NEIL J. KENNEY

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more for more than an hour, leav- ing me in an agonized, hopeless sus- pense, knowing there was no way to help them. Occasionally I sensed a faint stirring in my mind as though they were trying to get through to me and once a deep stab of sorrow amounting almost to pain. It was getting quite late in the evening before they came through once more, weakly but still clearly and coherently . It’s hard to concentrate. The am- bulance is jerking and bounding along and the pain is frightful. Looking back, there was no other way for it to end. They were too many and too dedicated, while we were only us and on the run, not even on the defensive. Our physical weakness became painfully apparent when we cau- tiously ventured out back to find the water trough, drank, and stum- bled away from our pursuers for a quarter of a mile right into the hands of six waiting state police- men. We’d been so intent on the men in the swamp, so blanketed by Thurlow’s hate, and so tired that we didn’t sense the danger from another direction in the form of a flanking movement. The operation was the end for us. They all had drawn weapons, but when they saw our sad state they rather sheepishly put them away and took us almost gently in hand. We’re getting weaker. Uncon- sciousness is near again. Would that we could have stayed with them! Instead, one picked up a walkie- talkie and called in our capture. Even in the turmoil of the moment we could pick up flashes of amazed, frightened and curious thoughts as many of them saw us for the first time. Funny how the mind will act at times of stress, making one an observer of one’s own actions, so to speak. Another phase opened for study! Thurlow thanked the state men brusquely and said he and his deputies would take over, airily ignoring extradition procedure. The police chief and our sheriff were dubious about the course events were taking, but didn’t want trou- ble so they offered no active re- sistance. We were too tired to care any more. That was our third mistake, to lose our alertness completely. Had we been quick enough — but no, we couldn’t have avoided it. The old story of trained men re- acting without conscious thought. Apparently in accordance with previous instruction, Trainor and his helper began jostling us vicious- ly but expertly, making it appear as though we were trying to escape. Before we realized our danger, we heard a cry of warning from the sheriff and a vindictive shout from Thurlow. It still rings in our ears. “Do your duty, Trainor. They’re escaping!” Trainor’s reflexes jarred him into action and it was over for us almost before it began. It hurt then, but the pain is worse now and total blackness is closing in once more. Fighting it off gets increasingly dif- ficult, alone as I am. You see, Donald has just died, quietly. He’s escaped them, but that leaves the fight to me. It won’t 73 THEY WERE DIFFERENT

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last long. The load is too much for one alone. The one bright feature is the fact that our work was be- gun. Stay with it, darling, and car- ry on for us — please know that you had all our love. Goodbye, Princess. Almost exactly one minute later they arrived at the hospital . I was so numb with grief and sorrow that 1 didn’t withdraw contact, hoping against hope that they , he, would transmit once more . He did, un- consciously. Seconds later the words of two interns drifted through his open mind to mine . “One D. O. A., one dying fast. My God, Rex, why couldn’t they leave the poor devils alone? Why couldn’t they — ” Rex sounded bitter. “You know the answer to that, Tom. They were different so they didn’t be- long.” • • • Siiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitiiiiiiiiiiuiiiiiifiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimuiiiiiuiiuiiiiiuiiuiiiiiiiiiiiiutiiiiimiiniiiiiiiiniiitiiiiuiiiniiiimniiumuiiiuuiiiiiiuiiiiiiuiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiitt 1 i I WORTH CITING I 3 = 1 Since man’s timepieces are pretty inaccurate and absolute § | measurement is impossible, a search for the ideal time standard 1 | with a fundamental relation to the nature of the universe has 1 | been going on. Recently the National Bureau of Standards de- | | veloped such a clock, based on the internal vibrations of atoms | | within molecules. These vibrations, unlike those of a pendulum | | or crystals, are uninfluenced by external conditions and are inde- § 1 pendent of the Earth’s rotation. | | The atomic clock is based on the vibrations of ammonia mole- | | cules. When radio waves are transmitted through a tube of am- % | monia gas, the inversion of the molecules occurs more frequently | | if the radio waves have the exact microwave frequency at which | | the apex atom is vibrating. The energy of the radio waves is 1 | measured after they have passed through the tube; if maximum 1 | energy is absorbed the system is precisely in tune. Such a clock | | runs with a constancy of one part in 50 million. Improvements 1 1 have one part in 100 million as a goal. 1 | With such an atomic clock, it should be possible to study scien- 1 1 tific and practical problems of great importance, from the im- 1 | provement of navigation to a check on the relativity theory. § | Atomic time will no doubt become the international scientific 1 1 standard. § | Our citation this month goes to the National Bureau of Stand- \ | ards for its work in creating a universal time standard which | | would hold good even if we should colonize Mars or Venus. | Titiiiiniiiiiiiiiiimir^uuuiiiuiinniiiiuiniiiuiiuiiiiiiiiiniiiiiniiiiiiinifiiiiunuiiiioumniiiiiiiiniiiiiiiuiiuuauiiuiiiiiiiiitiifimmiiiiiitiiiiiiiiimmniiiiuimiuiS 74

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THE PACIFISTS BY CHARLES E. FRITCH Parker was a trouble maker wherever they landed . But here was the planet ideal, a chance he had awaited a long , long time — easy, like taking candy from a baby . . . LIKE A lone sentinel, the house i stood apart at the edge of the village, a white cube with no win- dows. The door stood open, a dark hole against the white brick. The house was silent. The village beyond was silent. “They must have seen us land,” Compton said, a little wildly. “You can’t set down a rocket ship a hun- dred yards from somebody and not have them notice. They must have seen us!” “Unless no one lives here,” Par- ker amended. “This may be a ghost city.” “He’s right,” Hinckley agreed. “There might not be anyone living here, or anyplace on the planet for that matter. We’ve found very little life in these alien star-systems, and it’s varied from primitive to an- cient. Perhaps this society became old and died before any of us were bom.” The three Earthmen stood at the base of the spaceship, their space- suit headpieces thrown back so they could breathe in the cool thin air. They stood there peering into the deathly stillness. “I hope there are people living 75

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here/’ Parker said. “It’s been more than a month now — ” “Well,” Hinckley said, “let’s find out.” He waved them forward. They were fifty feet from the house when a woman appeared in the doorway with a silver vase. She was dressed in a grey flowing robe that covered her from neck to an- kles. “A young woman,” Hinckley breathed, staring. “A woman just like any on Earth!” His voice was loud in the silence, but the woman took no notice. She stooped and began filling the vase with sand. The two men with Hinckley shifted anxiously, settling the sand beneath their boots. Be- hind them the great spaceship pointed its nose at the sky. Parker was staring intently at the girl. “I’m going to like this place,” he said slowly. They walked forward, crunch- ing sand. But the girl took no notice of their approach. She was kneeling beside the house, scooping tiny handfuls of sand into the silver vase. When they were within five feet of her, Hinckley cleared his throat. She did not look up. He coughed. “Maybe she’s deaf,” Parker sug- gested vaguely. His eyes wandered appraisingly over her youthful body; he licked dry lips. Hinckley moved forward and stood before the girl. Her small white hands dug into the sand, scooping around his boots as though not aware of them. “And blind, too?” Compton wanted to know. “And without the sense of touch?” There was a strange quality to his voice, as though some primitive part of his unconsciousness was telling him to run. Hinckley bent to tap the girl lightly upon the shoulder. “Pardon me. Miss. We’re visitors from Earth,” he told her. But she paid no attention to the sound of his voice, and he stepped back, puzzled. “Now what?” Compton wanted to know. He looked around him nervously, at the house, the speckled sand, the rocket squatting behind them. “I hope all the na- tives aren’t like this.” “I do,” Parker said, licking his lips thoughtfully and keeping his gaze on the girl. “I’d just as soon have them all like this. It might be interesting.” Compton flushed. “What I meant — ” “He knows what you meant,” Hinckley said harshly. “And there won’t be any of that going on here. You caused enough trouble on the other planets, and it’s not going to happen again, not while I’m in charge of this expedition. We didn’t come all the way out here just so you could satisfy your romantic in- clinations.” “And how about my off hours, Captain ” Parker said, emphasizing the word as though it were obscene ; “then may I fraternize?” “You have no off hours,” Hinck- ley said sternly. “Here comes another one,” Compton warned in a whisper. A man, dressed in robes similar to the woman’s, came from the door of the house and walked into 76 CHARLES E. FRITCH

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the yard. After helping the wom- an to rise, he picked up the vase, and the two of them went back inside the house. He hadn’t even looked at the Earthmen. After awhile, Parker said, “Do you suppose they’re both mirages?” “Maybe that’s it,” Compton said. “Maybe it’s all a mirage, the wom- an, the vase, the man, the house, maybe even the planet itself.” His voice had risen in his excitement. “Take it easy,” Hinckley advised. “Let’s get back to the ship before the whole planet evaporates,” Compton said. “Go back if you like,” Hinckley said. “I’m going to investigate this. How about you, Parker?” “Okay with me. Always wanted to see what makes a mirage tick.” He glanced contemptuously at Compton. “Okay,” Compton said, gripping his rifle, “we’ll all make fools of ourselves.” “C’mon, then.” Hinckley led the way into the house, hesitating only briefly at the doorway. Inside, a blue light flick- ered as the man bent over a flaming trough and poured sand into it from the silver vase. The flames leaped high, filling the room with a sweet fragrance. The man emp- tied the vase, rose and took it to one corner of the room. He sat down on the couch by the woman. He did not look at the Earthlings. “He doesn’t see us either,” Compton said hoarsely. He cried, “Hey, you! You! Listen! We’re Earthmen. Visitors from space.” His voice was explosive in the silence. The man didn’t look up. THE PACIFISTS The Earthmen became aware of music seeping from the walls, mu- sic strange and hauntingly beauti- ful, played on incredible invisible instruments. “I don’t like this,” Compton said. “I don’t like it at all. Why are they ignoring us? Why?” “Maybe they can’t help it,” Hinckley suggested. “Perhaps they actually can’t see us or hear us. It’s fantastic, but it’s possible.” “I wonder,” Parker mused. And before anyone could stop him, he struck the man across the face with a doubled fist. “Parker!” Hinckley cried. “You fool!” “That’s a matter of opinion,” Parker said steadily, rubbing his knuckles. “I found out what I wanted to.” The man had fallen beneath the blow, but recovered seconds later. There was a large red welt on his forehead, but neither he nor the woman took any notice of it. “It’s incredible,” Compton said. “Evidently we can affect them physically, even if not mentally,” Hinckley said. “You do something like that again, Parker, and I’ll shoot you. I’ve got the authority to do it, you know, and sometimes the urge.” “I know,” Parker said, “but you haven’t got the guts. Besides, I’ll behave myself.” He looked intently at the young woman. “I just wanted to make certain they’re real, that’s all.” “Let’s get out of here,” Compton suggested. “There must be some way we can get a message through to these people. Perhaps someone in 77

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the village — ” Hinckley nodded and motioned them from the house. Compton went eagerly, but Parker lingered. The air outside seemed cooler now, and its freshness seemed strange after the pleasant fragrance inside the house. “Go back to the ship,” Hinckley told Parker. “Compton and I’ll go into the village.” “I like it right here,” Parker said. “We might need someone at the ship,” Hinckley said. “That’s an order.” His hand caressed his rifle, as though daring Parker to refuse. Parker grinned contemptuously. “Anything you say, Captain . If you need any help, just yell.” He turned away and walked toward the rock- et. “Someday I’m going to kill him,” Hinckley promised. He turned to Compton. “G’mon, let’s see what the village looks like.” THE VILLAGE was a replica of the first hut, multiplied. Some of the huts seemed to have special- ized purposes as stores or ware- houses, but otherwise it was the same. People sat in the houses, listening to music or watching moving pictures swarm over their hut walls. Some occasionally ven- tured into the street. All of them ignored the Earthmen. “I don’t know what to make of it,” Hinckley said finally. “We can touch them and hear them; they appear normal in all respects, but they seem to be operating on a different level of existence.” “I don’t pretend to understand it,” Compton said, “but I have a feeling I don’t like, whenever I think about it. I’d rather meet bug- eyed monsters than this.” “I know what you mean,” Hinck- ley said. “These people even though they’re humanoid, are out of con- tact with reality — at least with reality as we know it. It’s like some kind of mass hypnosis, with every- one in a trance except us.” “Think of how helpless these people would be,” Compton said. “When we turn in our report, those who come out here with unhealthy designs won’t have any opposition.” “We have a prime example of that on board,” Hinckley said dis- gustedly. “We’d better get back to the ship; I don’t like to leave Parker alone; there’s no telling what he’ll do.” When they got back Parker wasn’t there. “I was afraid of this,” Hirickley said between clenched teeth. “Maybe they’ve done something to him,” Compton suggested nerv- ously. “That’s too much to hope for. Chances are, it’s the other way around. If I know Parker, there’s only one place he’ll be. C’mon.” Clutching his rifle, Hinckley ran from the rocket. Compton followed, a bit more cautiously. Hinckley reached the lone house and peered into the bluelit gloom. He entered, gun ready, Compton at his heels. “He’s not here,” Hinckley said, surprised. The man and the young woman sat on the couch and casually CHARLES E. FRITCH 78

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watched pictures move across the far wall. Hinckley, looking at the pictures, was not at all certain they weren’t the reality and the natives of this place merely ghost images that might fade at any moment. On the wall an empire was being formed. Tall buildings were raised by machinery that was unfamiliar to the Earthmen. Aircraft flitted across the sky like strange black birds. The buildings towered, the flying machines dove, spitting need- les that exploded into blossoms of fire, and the buildings toppled into dust. People ran, screaming sound- less screams. Columns of smoke rose to replace the buildings. The scene shifted. Great weapons were as- sembled and heaped carelessly. To the heap were added the skycraft and other weapons of war. The pile exploded, and the people re- joiced, clasping hands, dancing. The walls darkened. Actual or symbolic? Hinckley wondered. “What does it mean?” Compton asked him. “I think,” Hinckley said, “we’ve just been given a short history of their race. They built up a great society here, but a warring one. Finally, they outlawed all weapons in order to save themselves from total destruction. We could prob- ably take a lesson from that.” “They’ll probably be worse off when the Earthmen come here,” Compton said. “Even if they could see and hear us, they wouldn’t have any weapons left to defend them- selves. We could loot and rape and — ” “I think we’d better forget this THE PACIFISTS planet exists,” Hinckley said slow- ly. “If we don’t report it, no one’ll ever know. It’s one planet in a mil- lion planets. If we say it’s empty, they’ll believe it and never bother to check.” “But what about Parker?” “Yes,” Hinckley said in a dis- turbed tone. “Parker. We’ve got to find him before he does anything he shouldn’t. He must be in one of the huts. C’mon. You take one side of the village, I’ll take the other. When we find him, we’ll blast off.” But they didn’t find him. They searched through all the buildings, peered into all the faces. “I don’t like it,” Compton said when they met. “The people may be helpless, but that doesn’t mean everything on the planet is. We’ve got to get out of here while we’ve got the chance.” “Take it easy,” Hinckley advised. “We can’t leave without Parker. He’s probably hiding someplace.” “Hiding?” “Hoping we’ll take off and leave him alone here. He’d be perfectly safe. He could take anything he wanted — food, drink, anything — and these people couldn’t raise a finger to stop him; they wouldn’t even know he was here, most likely. If I know Parker that’s what he’d want. He wouldn’t care about the people as long as he satisfied him- self.” “We’ll never find him,” Comp- ton said. “There’s a forest beyond the village. If he got into that, we could search for months and not find him.” Hinckley shrugged. “We’ve got 79

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to try.” Night came before they returned to the rocket. Hinckley shook his head in the gathering darkness. “He could be anyplace out there, damn him.” “Let’s get out of here,” Comp- ton suggested again. “Leave him here, if that’s what he wants. Let him do what he wants here; what difference does it make if the natives don’t know what’s happen- ing?” Hinckley’s look was cold. “We’ll wait until morning,” he said. “If he isn’t back by then, we’ll leave.” But the next morning, the rays of the alien sun found the white squatting houses silent; Parker had not returned. Hinckley turned on the outer loudspeaker. “Parker,” he said. The words crashed across the still vil- lage. “Parker, this is Hinckley. We’re blasting off in five minutes. If you’re not aboard, we’re leaving without you.” After a few minutes, Compton said, “He’s not coming. He’s prob- ably dead, and so will we be if we wait long enough.” “More likely, he’s ignoring us,” Hinckley said, consulting his watch. “He’s got two minutes more.” Two minutes later, Compton said, “Time’s up.” Hinckley nodded. He switched on the rocket motors. Deep within the spaceship a turbine growled; the growl rose to a whine. “I still don’t like to leave him there. Even though they don’t know what’s happening to them, I feel sorry for those people out there.” He switched on the loud- 80 speaker again. “Parker,” he said over it. “Last chance. We’re blast- ing off.” “He’s not coming,” Compton said shrilly, “he’s not coming.” Hinckley touched a button. Flaming rockets drove their fire in to the ground. The great space- ship shuddered, rose on a column of flame. “At last,” Compton sighed. “At last.” “We’ll have to come back, though,” Hinckley said. “I knew we’d have to turn in a report, and now I know we’ll have to come back here to find Parker, to jail him as a deserter, and perhaps worse. I hate to think of what’ll happen to those people down there when the Earthmen come.” They looked into a viewscreen. Below them, the planet dwindled and became nothing. FROM the edge of the forest, Parker watched the spaceship rise into the sky and disappear. He chuckled contentedly. He had won the game of hide-and-seek, and the planet was his prize. Earthmen al- ways took what they could from newly discovered planets, only this time he would have first choice well ahead of any others. It would be months before an Earth ship would arrive. But he could last that long easily. Longer if necessary. During that time he could make up some story to account for his absence. They’d have to prove him a liar, and that would be difficult. Any story he made up would certainly be no less fantastic than this planet CHARLES E. FRITCH

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certainly was. Meanwhile, there were things to do. He took off his cumbersome spacesuit and left it in a clearing in the forest; he wouldn’t need that for awhile, and it would only ham- per him. He was in no mood to be delayed. There were a great many things to do, but first there was one special thing to do. There was a girl, he remembered, a young wom- an in a small hut at the other end of the village. He licked his lips in anticipation. There was a man with her, but there was nothing he could do — nothing at all. Parker laughed loudly into the silence and trotted down the street. When he reached the1 other end of the village, he walked eagerly into the house. The girl sat on the couch. The man stood nearby. The walls were unmoving and the blue fire cast a cold light about the room. The Earthman sat down be- side the girl, and his hands reached out, unhesitating. But suddenly the man said some- thing in an alien tongue, a sound that was like a whiplash, angry and bitter. Parker felt his throat tighten. “What?” he said. “What?” He looked up into eyes alive with hate. No, that was impossible. It was only imagination. Only im- agination, yet for a moment — he laughed guiltily — he’d thought the man was looking directly at him. Furiously, angry at himself, Par- ker forced the thought from his mind. He reached once more for the girl, but she shrank from his touch and leaped up. The Earth- THE PACIFISTS man followed her movement with startled, puzzled eyes, and then his bewilderment changed to a fear that held him with cold fingers. The man had taken a long silver knife from beneath his robe, and he held it in his hands so that its blade reflected the cold blue fire. His face was a mask, not pleasant to see. And he was looking at the Earthman, seeing him, watching him, hating him. A sudden flash of understanding came. These people had known all the time. They stayed indoors in dim light to enhance the illusion and watch with greater secrecy, so that the movement of eyes would not betray them — and they had waited. For what? Parker leaped up with a hoarse cry and ran, not waiting to find out. He was in the doorway when the silver knife caught him and slid easily between his ribs and re- leased the breath of life that lay hidden there. Before he struck the ground, he was a shell, with neither fear nor desire to trouble him. For a long moment afterward, the man stood over the still body, looking down at it with a mixture of hate and disgust. The girl joined him. He looked at her and then at the sky. “We must learn to make weapons again,” he told her. “These crea- tures will be back, unsuspecting, thinking us helpless. Next time, we must be ready!” Without ceremony, they buried the Earthman’s body and then met others of their kind coming into the village streets. There was work to do. • • • 81

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Playing “Napoleon” can get to be a habit. especially when a man is devoted to pure science . Which was Dr. Whitemarsh’s de- votion— until Dr. Sally Chester came along! The Laboratorians BY EDWARD PEATTIE YEAH, we drop in just three c.c. from this here tube,” said Rocco as he expertly twirled the erlenmeyer flask and watched the color shoot past the methyl orange end-point. Whitemarsh was an- noyed and said so. “That’s the sixth straight you’ve missed, and the acid comes out of the burette, not the tube; and you don’t call the graduations c.c., you call them milliliters.” “Yeah? Well, here we call it a tube!” “And why don’t you go down to the end-point drop by drop?” “Because the book don’t say so! That’s why! You technos make me sick. Here we do all the blasted 82

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work, and you try to tell us how to do what we’ve been doing for ten years!” Rocco was beginning to work himself into one of his famous rages. His bull neck was beginning to redden; his eyes started to flash. His entire squat body started to quiver. Whitemarsh wasn’t impressed. Over at the atomic plant, Phobus’s Quercus Mountain, he had bossed a pretty quarrelsome crew of iso- tope wranglers. He had never dodged a fight in his life. But this was in a chemical laboratory and it surprised him to hear the as- lllustrated by Ed Emsh sistants talk back. The only assistants he had ever known were clear-eyed youths tak- ing a year away from their studies to recoup their tuition money and who tried to copy everything the chemists did. But Whitemarsh was new to the Interspatial Research Center on the Moon, and he still could not figure why the assistants acted as they did. So he waited. Rocco banged the flask down on the stone bench, glared at White- marsh for an instant, and then rushed out of the Laboratory, mut- tering a few obscenities. “Queer place this,” mused 83

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Whitemarsh, filling up another flask and finishing the titration himself. “Here the helpers tell the chemists what to do and get mad if we ask them what they’re doing.” He started to look over Rocco’s notes and ruefully decided all the work would have to be done over again. He was interrupted when a girl opened the door. In the week he had been stationed at IRC, he had been introduced to so many scientists that he had forgotten most of the names, but he remem- bered all the girls. His former Atomic Plant at Quercus Mountain had had all too few for him not to appreciate them now. Miss Sally Chester was a statuesque chemist with long blonde hair and a lus- cious figure which she hid under a white lab robe. He managed to stammer some sort of greeting. “Why Dr. Whitemarsh!” She seemed somewhat puzzled. “You’re not actually working with your hands?” “I sure am, unless we’re both space struck. Why not?” “Well, I suppose it’s all right other places, here we let the Laboratorians do all the manual work. It’s sort of their privilege.” “Yes, but their technique’s lousy. I sat here this afternon and watched that blow-hard Rocco muff six straight end-points in a row and when I asked him how come, he blew his top!” She laughed at that. She sat down on the lab desk and said, “You’re absolutely right. Antonio Rocco’s color blind and always misses his Methyl Orange end- points. And he’s been doing them for ten years. But it hurts his feel- ings to be criticized, you should have been more diplomatic. He’s probably gone to complain to his boss!” “His boss? Aren’t we his bosses? On this sheet he’s listed as my as- sistant.” “Actually yes. But traditionally the shop foreman is the leader of the Laboratorians. He certifies them to see that they know their work, signs their time cards and tells them when to take time off. Of course we outline the work they do, check their results and write reports from their data. Normally we come into the lab as little as possible.” “But Sally, how the hell do we know that their results are right? This mixed-up outfit is in the hands of a bunch of left-handed prfma donnas who don’t know Beilstein from Budweiser!” She smiled again (and he thought of the ads for Stargleam toothpaste). “Let’s go over to the Scientists’ Snack Bar and get a cup of coffee, and I’ll tell you a little about the history of this labora- tory.” So he let her lead him out of the individual laboratory into the pastel blue corridor where they followed the spiral runways to the glass en- closed Snack Bar. Here they sat on pale leather chairs and looked out over the ex- panse of the Central Laboratory. From where he sat, he could see a square mile of magnificent equip- ment: Serpentine condensers, enor- mous distillation columns, mole- cular stills, ultra-centrifuges, elec- tron microscopes, all were spread 84 EDWARD PEATTIE

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out before him. Surrounding the central laboratory were the innu- merable railings of the corridors leading to the individual offices. Upstairs and downstairs strolled scientists and Laboratorians respec- tively, all obviously contented. He turned to face Miss Chester who was lolling in the chair beside him. She had poured him a cup of coffee, given him a plate of rolls and was ready to talk. She reminded him that in 2005 it was found necessary to build research laboratories on the Moon to avoid the guided meteorites which the Aliens had been hurling toward the Earth. Since there had also been a shortage of trained scientists, it was necessary to train apprentices to operate the compli- cated laboratory equipment ... to perform the operations without bothering themselves with the theory. The Laboratorians were needed and they did a good job running specification tests on all the equipment necessary for the inter- planetary war. After the war, the Interspatial Corporation had made it the Central Research Laboratory, since this had been the largest ag- gregation of instruments ever gathered together, and in the ten intervening years, the numbers of college-trained scientists had in- creased almost ten-fold. As long as the Laboratorians confined their work to the equipment they were familiar with, they were unbeat- able. To guide them they had the Book, as the Technical Manual of the Interspatial Corporation was known, and the Laboratorians fol- lowed its procedures to the letter. THE LABORATORIANS “But they don’t know why they’re doing things,” Whitemarsh interrupted. “The manual’s been in need of revision for the last five years, and research workers don’t use the same tests all the time!” “Well that’s right,” admitted Sally without disagreement. “I usually have my particular labora- tory instructions mimeotyped and bound in a little book. I’ve also got the instructions so fixed that if they do things wrong, I can catch them. And I’ve learned not to modify my instructions orally. That only con- fuses the men and results in chaos. With a little planning, you can get good work done, and if you don’t mind humoring their whims a little, there’s no reason why you can’t get along with them.” Whitemarsh wasn’t so sure. He had no objections to jollying his subordinates, but he did draw the line at sloppy lab technique. He escorted Miss Chester to her own office, thanked her for the briefing, and then started to worry on his own. He took the speed elevator up to Dr. Sheridan’s office. The Laboratory director was sympathetic. He looked at the broad-shouldered young giant, Dr. Whitemarsh, and reflected that this man was rated the most promising scientist the Interspatial Corpora- tion ever had. “You’re damn right, White- marsh,” he told the younger man, pushing him into a chair and of- fering him a cigarette. “I’ve been here three years and spent the first two fighting the system. Maybe the trouble goes back to our Board of Directors. They’re all so proud of 85

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this shining Research Station on the Moon, that they hate to admit that anything’s wrong. They’ve got the Laboratorians responsible to the Lunar Mines Service — and there it stands. “So the only thing we can do is wait. Lo Presti the Master Me- chanic is up for retirement next year and there’s going to be a big organizational shake-up. Hold tight. After that we may have a free hand.” So Whitemarsh thanked him and bided his time. He released Rocco back to some other scientist and did his own laboratory work, even though the Laboratorian Council made a written protest. He also spent many hours in the excellent laboratory library, reading all the reports coming out of the Lunar Laboratory over the past ten years. His discoveries amazed him. Theoretically the Lunar Lab had one of the best collections of scien- tific minds in the Solar System. Every Earth university was rep- resented on its staff. New tech- niques and products had poured out of the Laboratory during the ten years of its existence, yet every one of these had been based on doubt- ful data. Certain things worried him. First, notes were kept in a very cavalier manner even by the most experienced scientists. Sec- ondly, the younger chemists and physicists never had been exposed to any practical laboratory work after their student days, and conse- quently had no means of judging the technique of their assistants. Finally, the Laboratorians were ap- parently proud of their ignorance, displayed a contempt for “paper work” and were only too willing to fix their results if they thought they could get away with it . . . He did not let his social develop- ment slide either. Lunarport was far more advanced culturally than the crude settlement on Phobus. Here Dr. Whitemarsh was able to have a luxurious apartment in the New Dome sector, could hear lectures and concerts, and could even in- dulge in winter sports such as ski- ing in the lava around the craters (protected of course by a heated suit and an oxygen mask.) He found Miss Chester a satisfactory companion for such endeavors, even though she spoke little of her pri- vate life or how she had avoided marriage in her twenty-five years. But he played a waiting game with her as well as with the lab job. He admitted to himself that a research chemist’s life at Lunar Lab was a pleasant one, particularly if one didn’t care how accurate one’s re- sults were. Unfortunately, the same quirk which had driven him into science also made him suspicious of all easy methods. He had never recovered from the shock of dis- covering that just because a reac- tion worked in a book, it did not necessarily have to do so in a laboratory. DR. WHITEMARSH’S promo- tion came within five rather than six months. There was some grumbling among the older scien- tists, but there was not much they could do about it. Kercheval, who had twelve years’ service on the 86 EDWARD PEATTIE

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Moon, did not have his Ph.D and did not care particularly for ex- ecutive work. Neither did Sturte- vant with a doctorate and ten years service. But others objected; even Miss Chester, long one of White- marsh’s defenders, felt that the older men deserved at least the chance of refusal. (It never oc- curred to Whitemarsh that she might have had some ambitions of her own.) He called the group leaders to- gether for a conference the day after his appointment. He was now ensconced behind Sheridan’s desk and was not yet accustomed to having a secretary. The leaders came in grim and resentful. He wasted no words. “I’m going to reorganize the set- up to get the Laboratorians under us, whether they like it or not. This sloppy technical data and un- substantiated findings is not my idea of a good lab — nor yours, I’m sure. It’s up to you to show it during the next year. Meanwhile you’ve all been pushed up fifty dollars a month in salary. So long!” His next step was to call on Lo Presti. The Master Mechanic’s Of- fice was outside the Lab Dome near the Shaft of Lunar Mine No. 1. The old man had been in the pre- liminary Selenium exploration par- ty and never could forget the old days when he drove the men and robots to find the metal that paid for the cost of the Expedition. The President of the Home Office, Dr. Barker, had never forgotten either, and Lo Presti was always taken care of. The 200 Laboratorians probably caused him more head- THE LABORATORIANS aches than the five thousand miners ever had, since a delegation visited him every day or so now that Dr. Whitemarsh was rumored in. But the Lo Presti knew that times change too, and realized that the brawling space adventurer did not fit into a sleek world of test tubes and retorts. Ninety-five years old and arrogant as ever, he sat in his office and greeted Dr. Whitemarsh with a bonecrushing handshake. He offered a cigar and Whitemarsh thanked him, lighting a pipe in- stead. “I hear from the boys you’ve been cracking down on them,” he stated. “No more than you would if you’d been there yourself. What would you do if a driller split a core?” “Why I’d give the careless sap a clout that would wake him up. But the Laboratorians aren’t drill- ers!” “That’s right, but that’s the way some of them are muffing their work.” Lo Presti eyed him appraisingly. “Aren’t you the same Whitemarsh who capped the crater on Phobus last year?” “I sure am. And your Labora- torians are a bevy of Nice Nellies compared to that mutinous bunch of space rats I had with me.” “Well, maybe you’re the man for the job at that. The guys don’t put out anymore. Used to be I knew all the gang. I’d look around and see when they were goofing off. Now they’re all such experts, I can’t tell if they’re loafing or just thinking.” They both laughed at 87

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that. Whitemarsh thought it would be a good time to say: “I don’t want to do anything to your boys for a while until I get my own gang straightened out!” “Don’t kid me, Doc,” responded Lo Presti, “you know when I re- tire you’re going to move in and crack down. Well I’m with you!” So they parted friends. Whitemarsh went back to his office in a happy mood. True, Miss Chester had been avoiding him lately and he had to drink coffee by himself but he now had and the foremen on his side and the front office. Now was the chance to re- form the laboratory. His first bombshell was the re- quirement that all the junior chem- ists should take a qualifying ex- amination. That really caused trou- ble in paradise. Apparently, all of the younger set had thrown away their books on graduation and re- membered only their own special- ties. Whitemarsh, from being a pleasant companion at the Snack Bar who discussed skiing and space- ball, had now become an ogre of the first water. The senior chemists chuckled, since they were exempt, and the Laboratorians guffawed aloud to see their harriers in turn harried. In any event there was frenzied activity in the month be- fore the examination and the library staff did yeoman duty. And, no one had threatened to quit. At least almost no one. Whitemarsh was musingly staring out of his office’s Plastoid window at the green eye of Earth when he heard a commotion outside in the ante- room. He looked out to see Sally 88 Chester, and he sensed that their relationship was less than idyllic. “Let me see that egotistical ass, Whitemarsh,” she shouted at his secretary who cowered in silk clad finery as the white-coated Valkyrie charged by. “Be calm,” he advised her, plac- ing himself strategically behind his desk. “Calm,” she screamed, “how can I be calm when an officious busy- body starts getting drunk with pow- er and acting like a Twentieth Cen- tury dictator? After all I’ve done for this stinking Lunar Lab, how come that I have to take an exam in freshman chemistry?” “I thought you were exempt,” began the chastened director. “Sorry, your honor! Your order says five years at Lunarport. I’ve only been around this sweat shop for four years and six months. What are you going to do if I fail? Throw me out and I’m moving over to Campo Sano with every one of our trade secrets!” “I’ll get you exempted,” he of- fered. “What, and have the other chem- ists cry favoritism? Not on your life, you coffee-swilling Judas,” she yelled. “And stop grinning at me like a Cheshire Cat!” He did not answer. He was con- tent only to admire her in her rage. Her usually mild face was flushed through the tan and her graceful hands were tightly clenched into fists that pounded on his desk. “Answer me, you moron!” she shouted. Then she started to cry. Within one minute the seething Amazon had changed into a de- EDWARD PEATTIE

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fenseless white-coated girl cowering in the visitor’s chair, weeping bit- terly. Whitemarsh approached and held her hand. “Listen, Sally,” he told her, “the only reason I was going to let you out of the test was because you know more chemistry than any of the scientists here. But go ahead and take the test; you’ll get the highest grade!” She brightened, “You think so?” “Know it,” he affirmed gallantly, “now, how about going to the Space Opera at the Symphorium tomor- row? Kluchesky is singing in Pomme de Terre ” She stiffened slightly and stood up. “Listen, Mr. Frank White- marsh! Privately you’re not a bad guy. You even had potentialities. But you’re a hell of a failure as a boss and the less I see of you, the happier I’ll be. Good-bye!” And she was gone. Whitemarsh resumed his contemplation of the Earth with less interest. THE RESULTS of the examina- tion might have been foretold. The intelligent and professionally alert junior chemists retained enough fundamentals to do well. The majority failed the questions on laboratory technique. Conse- quently Whitemarsh enlisted the aid of the older men to conduct a series of refresher lectures to bring up to date the scientific knowledge of those who failed. The Labora- torians were delighted with the spectacle presented by these lec- tures, and loved going home at night while erstwhile bosses sat lis- THE LABORATORIANS tening to Dr. Sturtevant discuss “The Theory of Washing Precipi- tates”, or to hear Dr. Whitemarsh talk on “Balancing the Redox equa- tion.” The Laboratorian’s happi- ness lasted until one day in Octo- ber. That was the day that Lo Presti retired. The old man was given a small space ship by the Corporation and a space-time chronometer by the Laboratorians. Then he sorrow- fully said farewell. The next day the Laboratorians were absorbed into Research. Somebody had to plan for janitor service, figure where to place time cards, design new proficiency rat- ings and decide on such complex matters as where the Laboratorians were to hang their coats. All these services had been provided for by the miner’s shop organization. Whitemarsh stayed late at night for a week arranging the new pay- roll plan and raising the salaries somewhat. All this was handled, if not with- out incidents, at least without vio- lence. Even the janitors and secre- taries were now part of a team. All but Miss Chester. She had stopped speaking to Whitemarsh in the halls and had been seen in the com- pany of a younger (and White- marsh felt) better looking physicist. Then Whitemarsh dropped his second bombshell. The junior chemists were ordered to rate the Laboratorians for proficiency ! Fresh from six months’ study under such taskmasters as Whitemarsh and Kercheval, the chastened scien- tists were now able to interpret the antics of their tormentors of yes- 89

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terday. An old tradition had fallen and the howls extended back to the Front Office on Earth. For a change, Miss Chester did not object. She was evidently past all comment. She merely wrote out a list of the faults and virtues of all her assistants, rated them all Excellent and went back to her research. But Rocco was tried and found incapable of running titrations. Harry Crowe was found to be weighing incorrectly, Zachary had been fixing his calculations for the last ten years and even faithful Bruno had been found to be add- ing 15 to all of his Iodine numbers in order to pass the specs easier. It suddenly occurred to every one that all the laboratory’s reports were based on incorrect data. All work stopped for a week until the scientists found what their assistants had been trying to do all along. And the results were a bit terrifying. When Kercheval found that an in- correctly calibrated reflectometer had negated five years of his pet project, he tore up his notebooks, flung them on the floor and stalked into Whitemarsh’s office. “Frank, I’m taking my back va- cations and going to Venus to for- get it all for about six months. And mind you, when I get back I don’t want to see my present assistants. I’m going to start from scratch.” He left, banging the door. Next was Sturtevant. “Frank, we’ve got to get Inter- stellar Review to hold my last pa- per. I want to recheck the melting points of some of those diazo com- pounds.” 90 Then came the young physicist, Dr. Slezak, who was rumored to be Miss Chester’s present skiing com- panion. “Dr. Whitemarsh,” he stammered, “I’m not sure about the data on my last report.” “Didn’t you take it all yourself?” “Yes, but I used some of Ker- cheval’s data for my fundamental calculations and, if that’s wrong, all my conclusions may not be valid.” “Stop worrying,” Whitemarsh told him. “When Kercheval recal- culates his values, you can revise your own report. As long as your own work is right, you have nothing to worry about.” The young man left, nervously wringing his hands. Whitemarsh couldn’t see what Sally saw in him. He figured she ought to be along by now. She was. “I told you so,” Sally said theatrically. “You’ve got the whole lab mistrusting each other. All the chemists are quarreling like mad and the Laboratorians all look like whipped dogs. You’ve pulled the chair right out from under every- thing and you sit here gloating.” “Relax, Sally,” he told her. “They’re just growing pains. Take it easy and ride out the storm . . . Now, how about tearing over to Lunar 7 to see the crucial Space- ball series between the Space Rangers and the Callisto Satel- lites?” She looked horrified. “I’m afraid you don’t take hints very well. I’m not interested in going anywhere with you. Actually, I’m going with Jack Slezak to see ‘Nova of the EDWARD PEATTIE

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Leprous Soul’, and I might suggest a fit subject.” She flounced out again and Whitemarsh felt lost. He tried to cheer himself with a book on Hyper Plutonium Elements. The transition took longer than Whitemarsh had bargained for. After the Laboratorians were re- educated, and a tiresome process it was, chemists went over the note- books to look for inaccuracies, doubtful data was examined, all microfilms had to be edited and corrected; and they found that most of the chemicals developed at the laboratory in the past decade had been founded on doubtful data. But since all of them had passed the Development Group, Whitemarsh didn’t think it was wise to try to recall them. But new products scheduled for release were re-ex- amined and retested after the fundamental work on them was checked. Finally the problems were un- scrambled and the laboratory began to run smoothly again. The research projects were reestablished and the work started out anew. Frayed tempers were soothed and the scien- tists finally got around to trusting each others’ results again. The Laboratorians were now carefully but tactfully watched by the junior chemists who, in turn, were spend- ing more time in the laboratories and less in their offices. When the new, sound results started grinding forth, Whitemarsh permitted himself a sigh of relief. Lunar Lab had lost its individual- ity, he admitted, even though the easy-going camaraderie he had no- THE LABORATORIANS ticed when he first came was also gone. The results of Lunar Re- search Lab of Interspatial were now as reliable as those of the Campo Sano and Roque labora- tories back on Earth. But it had been a hard fight. None of the chemists ever stopped around his office any more for small talk about sports and politics. His secretary brought him coffee in his sanctum sanctorum and he did not find himself wandering around the laboratory as he had formerly done. When he did, there was usually a restrained silence and a suspicious neatness. Miss Chester was ap- parently irrevocably lost and there were rumors of an engagement with the brilliant Dr. Slezak. Though he had won the day, he had lost something too. The Lab was now able to turn out results, but Frank Whitemarsh had paid a personal price for it’s new effi- ciency. ALMOST a year after taking over as Research Director, Sheridan, now a Vice President, brought him some news. “Get ready to pack, Frank,” he told the young- er man as they sat and smoked in the director’s office watching the clouds moving over the Earth. “The Front Office like what I did?” asked Whitemarsh puffing on his pipe. “Well.” There was a slight pause. “All the scientists on the board are behind you to a man. But the business men, the advertising boys and accountants, well . . . you know how they are.” 91

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“What’s eating them?” “The lab didn’t release any new products this past year. Develop- ment and even Advertising are pretty much slowed down.” “That’s right. We’ve got some good products about ready, but we’re making a final check before release. Don’t you think we sent out a lot of junk before?” “We sure did, even in my time though I tried to stop it. But the development boys want something, anything.” “Well?” asked Whitemarsh. “So they’d probably rather run the risk of getting something bad than nothing at all.” “They won’t!” “That’s right, they never will again. Now, I know that the pro- ducts you have ready are going to be good and I’m not worried about them. All we have to do is keep the business geniuses out of our hair for another six months.” “And?” “So we’re kicking you upstairs. It’s a good job, don’t worry about that, at three times your director’s salary.” “What if I quit?” “Don’t be that silly.” “What’s the other job?” “Works Manager at Quercus Mountain on Phobus. Sole boss of the biggest Isotope Works in the Solar System. You’ll have 50,000 men under you and have a free hand at starting any kind of labora- tory you want.” “No Laboratorians?” “Right. You can start out from scratch and make the kind of lab you’ve always dreamed of. Here 92 we’re thinking of pushing up Ker- cheval if it’s all right with you, you always rated him highly. It’s just like changing Spaceball man- agers. We all know the Space Sox won the pennant last year on the team developed by Kanter even though Balhiser was manager. These wolves will keep off our tail until the new products start com- ing through and then we’ll say we knew it all along.” “You’ve got me half convinced not to quit,” said Whitemarsh quietly. “Now listen Frank,” came back Sheridan just as seriously, “you’re too good a man to waste. Now take your promotion like a nice boy and keep in line.” “I still think I did a good job here.” “So do I, but the Board of Di- rectors can’t forgive those retrac- tions, even though you and I know they’re necessary. They don’t know what scientific truth and pride are. Within ten years, on the founda- tions you laid, we’ll have the best research record in the country . . .” After Sheridan had left, White- marsh cast a last look at his form- er domain. He called Kercheval in to give him the news and then tell him to keep quiet until verified. Then he decided to take a last tour around the laboratories. He finally found himself up at the Snack Bar and his eyes were taking the same look over the Laboratory that they had done two years before. The view looked about the same. He had supervised the installation of a new Matter Probe over in the front center and he was responsible for EDWARD PEATTIE

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the Atom Analyzer, but these were only minor changes. The major change, he thought bitterly, is that no one speaks to me unless spoken to — I’ve become a pariah. Never tamper with the status quo, it disturbs too many people. It’s a very lonely job. There was no one else in the Snack Bar. At least, almost no one else. He heard a discreet cough be- hind him. He turned and found Miss Chester seated behind him. She had her legs crossed, a cup of coffee in one hand and the Space News Want-Ads in the other. “Hello, Napoleon,” she greeted him. “Have you just been surveying your empire? Did you see the stem men of science jumping through the hoops out there? Can you re- member the happy place this was a year ago when you came? Then the Laboratorians took pride in their work; now they’re flunkies for the green kids fresh from Alma Mater!” “Stop it, Sally,” he told her. “You’re not too far wrong on that Napoleon business. I’m taking off for my new St. Helena, Quercus Mountain on Phobus.” “Quercus Mountain? That’s a big place. Lab Director?” “No. Works Manager.” “Heaven help the poor Atomic workers!” “Don’t be that harsh. Dammit! Sally, maybe I am a Napoleon, but scientific accuracy is too important to play fast and loose with, the way they were around here. You know it. You’re the only one who didn’t relax that vigilance — who saw to it that everything you turned out was without error. I know now that I forgot the human equation — that I was so eager for errorless research that I trod pretty roughshod over a lot of people. But you’re guilty too, you know, you had the secret — you managed to balance the equation when everyone else here didn’t. Why didn’t you help me? Sure, you came in and ranted and raved at me — called me all sorts of names, but you didn’t help me, you didn’t try to show me the way.” tcj » “Let me finish,” he interrupted her. “I love you, you know — have for a long, long, time. I still need help, Sally. I don’t want to keep playing Napoleon and going into exile over and over again. A bigger job with more men under me isn’t the answer. When a man is lonely it makes him hard and cruel in circumstances like that. I made all of you here relearn scientific facts, I need to relearn the humanities . . .” He paused for a moment. “Sally, will you teach me?” Her eyes were bright with un- shed tears and a catch in her throat made the words husky and half- whispered. “I wanted to help — I love you too — but I thought you were arrogant and didn’t need me — ” She swallowed, controlling a sob. “I’ll make it up to you, darling. You won’t be alone again — on Phobus or anywhere else in the galaxy.” • • • All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance. — Gibbon THE LABORATORIANS 93

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Fear is often Man’s greatest enemy. But when there is nothing left to lose , there is everything to gain . . . And with everything to gain f where is the enemy? THE OUTER QUIET BY HERBERT D. KASTLE HE LAY on the cot, listening to the breathing of the six men who shared apartment 2-B with him, and the panic fluttered deep in his stomach, threatening to break upward and out in a wild scream. He fought it by telling himself it was foolish for a man who had lived through the destruction of New York and eight months im- prisonment to feel this way. He peered toward the window and tried to see the morning sun; not as a pale, shimmery fog but as the bright Spring yellow he knew it was. But the fog remained, no mat- ter how many times he rubbed his eyes with saliva-wet fingers. It was as if he were seeing everything un- der water — a world of shimmery, hazy objects. The panic rose again. The Con- querors’ beam had done its work well, and his chances of finding Adele before death found him, were now terribly small. The first punishment had brought only a slight blur, this one had almost blinded him, and it was only a mat- ter of time before he committed the third offense. It made no difference that Conqueror Punitive assured 94

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all trainees that the degree of blind- ness decreased as the years went by. He knew that his third offense would come sooner than any im- provement in his ability to see. And the third offense was punish- able by death. Before another rush of fear could churn his brain, the morning whis- tle sounded. Shrill, commanding, it began each day of aimless wan- dering— the silent stroll over pave- ment connecting the five buildings of what had once been Brooklyn’s prize housing development; a con- stant walk which destroyed those Americans unable to show com- plete obedience and turned the others into slaves. Again the whistle shrieked, and the room filled with coughs, groans and sighs, for it was forbidden to talk. Only when one of the many rules had been broken and a card Illustrated by Ed Emsh 95

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bearing the trainee’s number was found in the box outside the door did some American get a chance to speak. He would rush instantly to the small administration build- ing near the wall’s only exit and re- port to the squat, gray-uniformed Conqueror known as Punitive — the only Conqueror the trainees had ever seen. After an explanation of the offense in too-precise English, the trainee was told to sit on the stool facing the light tube. “I obey,” he would croak. In silence broken only by the hum of electric genera- tors in the basement, the beam of piercing white light would sear his eyes. Afterwards, the assurance about the disappearing effects of the beam; then back to the streets. With only Punitive representing them, the Conquerors weeded out Americans who would not or could not obey. The vaguest suggestion of communication between trainees was picked up by the detector bulbs — the see-and-hear-all devices which hung much as oversized light bulbs from the ceiling of every room, and stood like dead street lamps every fifty feet or so along the pavements. George lay a second longer, then twisted his tall, slim body erect and sprang to his feet. As he slipped into the thick stockings, high- topped shoes, and one-piece cover- alls with serial number stitched in large red numerals across chest and back, he began sounding deep in his throat. This was so slight a touch of the vocal cords that no de- tector bulb or other trainee could hear it. But it was something more than thinking; it was listening to a 96 voice repeating all the things that had mattered before the Conquer- ors’ surprise attack atomized New York City. It was his fight against non-entity. “George Lowery,” he said, “thir- ty-two, top salesman at Brady’s Men’s Shop, resident of Babylon, Long Island, owner of 12 North Rector Drive, husband of Adele Lowery, and today you may see her.” But the last phrase stuck in his throat and he had to repeat it several times. Even so, he couldn’t convince himself that the most im- portant part of his ritual was true — that perhaps he would see his wife as she walked the streets. Two days ago he had turned the breakfast table to stone by asking his neighbor to pass the water. It was nothing more than a mistake — a stupid thinking aloud. But yes- terday the card had been in the door-box. He had visited apart- ment 1-A in the Administration Building and, for the second time, the thin beam of light had seared his eyes. Now he was no longer sure he would be able to recognize his own wife. “George Lowery,” he sounded, fighting off the panic. “George Lowery,” and he turned and moved through the now-empty rooms. He was last in line outside the bathroom and waited dully for his turn. The men in front of him were nothing but tall, short or in- between nondescripts. The old group, of which he was the last, had been different. They had looked at each other with meaning, with hope. After six months passed, and realization came that HERBERT D. KASTLE

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no opposition to the Conquerors was in sight, they went out in one mad day of talk. He had watched silently, refusing to respond to the suicidal good morning’s, pardon me’s, and salty discussions of Con- queror Punitive’s parentage. Not that life in the project meant anything to him. It was just that he had to see Adele again — to assure himself that she still remembered their life together. If her love had been stamped out, then the Con- querors were right in their men- live-by-bread-alone theory, and he was only one of a few remaining misfits — a breed as expendable in the battle for survival as the great, pre-historic lizards had been. He hadn’t been in the bathroom more than five minutes when the third whistle sounded. With his beard still wet he rushed out of the apartment, pausing only to check the empty door-box, then ran down two flights of stairs to the street. It was windy for a morning in June and his face felt cold where the damp hair covered it. The Con- querors allowed nothing that could be used as a weapon to fall into American hands, but even after eight months he was still not used to his light brown beard and long shaggy hair. Hurrying through the street, fol- lowing the one-way arrows which kept the trainees moving in the same direction, around and around the project, he felt the panic well up again. He made a wide detour of the excavation area which lay in the center of a rough square formed by the four apartment houses and the Administration Building. This THE OUTER QUIET forbidden area had been the cause of his first visit to Conqueror Puni- tive. Some two months ago, right after the last shipment of fresh trainees arrived, he had seen a group of women obviously new to the project, rigid in their terror of this silent hell, walking right in the direction of the excavation. With- out thinking, he had shouted a warning which stopped them from committing an offense. By the time he reached the base- ment of building two, he was gasp- ing for breath. If the last whistle sounded before he was seated at one of the long wooden tables, it would mean the third offense. There wasn’t any light-beam treat- ment for that one; only an elec- trode clamped to the head and the oblivion of thousands of volts of electricity. He went down the flight of steps into the basement which was dining room for all the male prisoners, and grasped a spoon, cup and plate from the tinware table just inside the door. The benches nearest the door were filled, but he didn’t have time to go any further. Just as he plumped between two trainees, the whistle sounded. He sat still a moment catching his breath, feeling the thin bodies adjust themselves away from him. Scooping some cereal from one of the center pots, he began to eat. The first mouthful stuck in his throat and he hastily filled his cup. But when he had gulped down the sugared water, a wave of nausea made him gag. He sat gripping the edge of the table, his head spinning. And thoughts crept into his mind 97

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— thoughts and questions he wanted to keep out. Why were the trainees being starved? If the Conquerors wanted to kill them, it would be simple enough to use the quicker and less expensive method of firing squads. The training area was proof that they wanted workers for their new world. And despite the hunger which made hollow-eyed skeletons of them all, the men and women walked straighter and with definite confidence. Their lips were sealed shut, their eyes flickered observant- ly, their heads were always rigidly forward. Except for a few lingering misfits like himself, the group con- formed as well as humans ever could. Why then the delay in re- leasing them as had been promised? He screwed his eyes around and tried to see the other tables. Those even a short distance from the door were almost empty, and further in- to the hall they seemed deserted. He had no way of knowing the total number of men, but he was sure there weren’t more than a hundred — out of an original five hundred. If the same proportion held true for the women, there were less than two hundred Ameri- cans left in the project! He twisted his eyes to the person on his left. The face was that of a boy in his late teens — the beard spotty and thin. The head barely moved as he chewed, he held him- self rigid, his hand moved up to his mouth in a straight line and down the same way — he ate like a ma- chine. George swung his eyes to the right. Another young machine 98 turned out by the Conquerors. But was it only to be starved to death that these men, most of them so young, had obeyed? It made no sense and this, more than the con- formity to slavery, terrified him. But his terror lasted only a mo- ment. What had he to do with whether they lived or died? He was finished; all that mattered was see- ing Adele. He picked up his spoon and ate until the whistle shrieked its order for the walking to begin. Then he rose with utensils in hand and was carried to the door in the silent rush. As he dropped his tinware into the barrel of chlorinated water, he thought with bitter amusement that there was nothing for the Con- querors to do anymore — hardly a full day’s work for three or four men in operating the project now. WHEN he walked into the street, the sun was warmer. It was a beautiful day; almost summer, he thought, and he breathed deeply. But the smell of fresh growth was not in the air — only the dusty, burnt odor of the ruined city be- yond the walls. The sun grew brighter by the minute and he found it increasingly more difficult to see. It was as if the rays shat- tered into blinding blobs as they struck his eyes. Somehow, he knew he was using his ears more than ever before. Poor compensation, he thought. There was nothing to hear — no way of finding her by listening. And be- sides the absence of speech, there was the absence of any sound. HERBERT D. KASTLE

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He forced himself to place one leg after another, and all the hor- ror in the world crept into his brain. He wanted to turn around and speak to those in back of him — to stop the one-way tide of stroll and ask some questions. Just when had the last plane blurred by with jets roaring? And when had the Conquerors marched outside the wall, boots thudding, rifles clanking on canteen pack and buckle? When was the last atomic blast — a distant rumble causing the ground to trem- ble beneath the pavement? Months; two or even three, it seemed to him. His long legs fal- tered and he almost stumbled. Then he remembered his one pur- pose, and pushed the thoughts from his mind. By alternately hurrying and slow- ing his steps, he was able to pull alongside some trainees and let others catch up with him. With sidelong glances he tried to find Adele. He had to see her — to con- vince himself that she had not for- gotten the happy years together. It had been between buildings three and four — the women’s living quarters — that he had seen her that first and only time six months ago. He was walking quickly and pulled up beside her. One sidelong glance was exchanged and her face had filled with terror. Then she almost ran from him. He follQwed, but the weird chase ended after she actually turned to look back. Afraid she might commit further offenses in her efforts to avoid him, he had slowed his pace to a crawl and soon lost sight of her after turn- ing a few comers. Now his time THE OUTER QUIET was running out and he had to see her. She should be wiser in the ways of the camp; they could ex- change a glance and separate. But that glance would tell him whether or not she too had become a ma- chine. If she’s alive , a corner of his brain whispered. But he refused to think of her as being dead. The sun was getting hot and the faces he looked at were indistin- guishable in their blurry outlines. Nausea and dizziness returned and he could no longer concentrate on his search. It’s too late , he thought. The second treatment had finished his chances. He tried thinking of other things, to remember his feelings from the time of the blast to the day he had passed through the new brick wall into the project. But all he got was a blur of fear. Fear then, fear now, and fear until the day they would kill him. “Sick of fear!” a voice rusty from disuse rasped out. “Sick of the whole mess!” It was with a sense of complete surprise that he realized his mouth was open and it was his own voice shouting. “It’s over,” he rasped and turned around to face a startled, thin- faced woman whose blue eyes peered at him — but not with terror. He looked at her, his mouth sag- ging open. “Over for both of us,” she whis- pered, and moved toward him with arms outstretched and trembling. He tried to turn and run, to save her from further violations, but she 99

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grasped his hand. “George.” And she was in his arms. “My third offense — when I stopped walking. There’s nothing to lose now.” The shuffling of feet continued about them as they embraced, and she talked hurriedly as if afraid that the few hours before the eve- ning meal would not be enough for all she had to say. “Tve walked behind you all these months. I was sure you would say something if you saw me and I didn’t want you to be punished. Each morning I waited until the last moment before leaving the women’s dining room — until you came by looking for me. Then I’d walk behind you, sometimes with- in touching distance. Once I had to wait too long, and then I went to Punitive for the second time. But it was all for nothing. I hoped you would go free, but it was all for nothing.” He kissed her then and she had to stop. When he took his lips from hers, they both turned to the nearest detector bulb. They were being watched, but what difference did a thousand violations make now? She was talking again, and ac- tually smiling. “You look distin- guished in a beard!” He laughed, and saw the nearby trainees pick up the forgotten sound. He took her lips back to his own and heard the shuffling feet slow down all around them. And the fear was gone. “Let’s go to the excavation,” he said. “We’ll sit down at the bottom in privacy and talk and laugh. 100 We’re free, Adele, and the rest doesn’t matter now.” He put his arm around her waist and they strolled against the pat- tern, the rigid walkers parting be- fore them. When they reached the huge pit he kicked at the OFF LIMITS sign and was surprised at how easily it fell. Then he took her hand and moved down the steep, sandy slope. It wasn’t until Adele moaned and closed her eyes tightly that he saw that the bottom of the pit was covered with stones — and clean white bones. The blood pounded in his temples as he stared at the piled skeletons and chemical stained earth. And the few hours of peace was no longer enough. Adele helped him pick up stones, until his hands and her cradled arms could hold no more. Bulbs, at least, could be broken. Up they climbed, and when they reached the pavement there were many trainees shuffling slowly past the spot where the sign lay. He threw the first stone at a de- tector bulb while still some distance from it, and his ruined eyes failed him. But the next time he stood directly beneath it and the shatter- ing of glass seemed as loud as the atomic blast had been. Down the street they went, smashing bulb after bulb, retrieving their missiles so as to have enough to last. And all the trainees moved slowly behind them, on up to the last bulb in front of the Administration Build- ing. The new sound was a sharp crack, and someone screamed in a rusty voice. He turned to see one HERBERT D. KASTLE

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of the crowd twitching on the pavement, then followed the faces turned up to Conqueror Punitive’s window. There was a shadow there — a shadow with a rifle. “The last bulb,” Adele said. “Smash it.” He drew back his arm and the crack of rifle fire reached him a second after the hot streak creased his shoulder. But he wasn’t hurt, and threw the stone. As the glass shattered there was an eruption of strange language from the building — a terrified shouting. The trainees stopped walking, then broke into frenzied movement and hoarse shouts. They pushed George and Adele aside in pursuit of the gray-uniformed fig- ure running toward the gate. The third shot was inside the building, and then the crowd picked up the fleeing Conqueror. His screams died quickly. Into the building the Americans poured — shaggy skeletons shrieking hatred. By the time George and Adele followed, men and women stood silently in the rooms and halls. Punitive looked ridiculously small crouched in a corner, his head back, the rifle between his knees with the barrel in his shat- tered mouth. The total number of gray-uniformed bodies was six, all but Punitive killed by the Ameri- cans. But the trainees began to file from the building and run back toward their rooms, for the body in the large room filled with com- plex electrical equipment was lying in front of a high-powered sending set — a radio whose tubes still glowed red. George looked at the radio, then at Adele. “They sent for help,” he whispered. “Soon, every American here will be dead. And it’s because of us.” She didn’t answer, and he ex- pected no answer. The room grew dark as they stood looking at the humming set. Then he fumbled over the dials, switched the current off, and led her out into the street. There was no whistle for the eve- ning meal. The streets were empty, and the silence hemmed them in like a solid wall. They walked to- ward the men’s feeding hall. Passing through the hall, they entered the door leading to the kitchen. There were huge electric stoves and further on, wheat and sugar sacks piled ceiling high. In a large bin they found various canned goods — the Conquerors’ personal food supply. The stoves worked, and Adele found an opener and pots in the glare of the unshaded light bulbs. They ate quickly; soup, meat, several cans of condensed milk. Then they left the basement and walked into the balmy eve- ning air. ON THE grassy spot in front of the Administration Building they loved each other desperately. Afterwards, they spoke of God, of what they believed would come after death, and were comforted. But they did not talk of what would happen to the others — that was too painful for words. Before he fell asleep, with Adele breathing regularly beside him, he THE OUTER QUIET 101

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once again strained his ears to hear something — anything — from out- side the wall. Except for the ever- present hum of the oil-fed electric generators in the Administration Building, there was nothing. Not the bark of a dog or the scream of a cat or the clash of inanimate objects. Even the wind was dead. But he was too exhausted for fear, and slipped quickly into sleep. Once during the night, he awoke and raised his head to listen. When he lay back, there was a thought in his mind both terrible and full of hope. Adele awakened him in the morning. From the sun he could tell that it was past the time for the first meal. They went to the feeding hall and ate ; then returned to the grassy spot. This time they found little to speak of and sat silently, watching the gate. They watched until the sun dipped low and shadows engulfed the silent buildings. Then they saw the first trainees slipping toward the feed- ing hall; the women moving to- ward the men’s section in the need for comfort and protection. When George and Adele arrived in the kitchen, all the Americans were there. The women cooked the meal and whispered among themselves. The men sat talking, following the women with their eyes, trying to forget despair and certain death. They finished eating and sat quietly at the tables, husbands re- united with wives, boys and girls whispering to each other, all un- willing to return to the rooms, George spoke his thoughts. 102 It was hard to speak aloud; he had kept his thoughts to himself for so very long, but he managed to speak quietly and calmly. He re- minded them of the tactics the aliens had used to ensure obedi- ence, how they had held out the promise of freedom as a reward for conformity. How, backed by the fear and terror they were able to inspire with their drastic punish- ments, they were able to enslave all the Americans and keep them toe- ing the mark. How they had prob- ably felt secure enough in their conquest of the minds and bodies of their captives to leave the Earth in the hands of a few Punitives and a host of electronic gadgets. He told them, too, that the fact that no help had arrived despite the radio messages held the promise that the conquerors had no interest in Earth any longer; he assumed that they were busy elsewhere, or had merely conquered for the sheer joy of it, or that they lost interest . . . any reason would suffice. The important thing was that they they were free again. Free to live and laugh, to love and to hope . . . and to prepare a defense should the need arise. When he finished, even Adele looked at him with disbelief. But they all followed him to the Ad- ministration Building and one of the young men seated himself at the radio. Filling the room and overflowing into the hall, they waited. The youth knew his radios and manipulated the dials skillfully, but there was nothing except the crackle of static. With dread and hope mingled together, George HERBERT D. KASTLE

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listened to the empty airwaves — to the messages sent out on the sending set, and again to the bar- ren, static response. Then he turned to Adele and smiled weakly. “We’ve more than Noah had,” he said, and held her trembling hand. It was not until two days passed and the fuel for the generators had been exhausted that the first search party ventured into the city. The report was one word ringing hob lowly in the feeding hall. “Noth- ing.” Later expeditions utilized auto- mobiles from the city’s streets and traveled far out to other states. They returned with several hag- gard Americans and reports of some few surviving Conquerors. They also told of farms heavy with crops and of livestock wandering wild. But there were no large hu- man groups; no signs of organized humanity anywhere in the world. Two months after George and Adele Lowery’s revolt, the train- ees left the housing area for the fields where they could raise food and plan their civilization. George rode beside his wife in the lead car. There was no joy or laughter in them, nor would there be for many years. But the wrecked city fell behind, the green and brown of the fields took its place, and somewhere in the motorcade a voice began singing. • • • WATERSHED (Continued from page 43) and looked speculatively at Cor- bel and at Lt. Averdor, who was staring at him with an expression of rigid fury. “Or can you?” he said. “It will be interesting to see how you man- age to comport yourselves as a minority. I think you lack prac- He went out. Both Gorbel and Averdor turned jerkily to the screen, and Gorbel turned it on. The image grew, steadied, settled down. When the next trick came on duty, both men were still staring at the vast and tumbled desert of the Earth. • • • (Continued from page 59) EASY DOES IT “Yes,” her husband mused. “The physician told me that right after we decided Hal was dead. I was going to mention it to you, but it slipped my mind somehow.” “Well, you’re just a tiny bit for- getful at times, dear.” Mrs. Webber sighed softly and turned to her son. “Hal, dear, it’s awfully nice to see THE OUTER QUIET you back again. Would you be kind enough to switch the vie back on?” Contentedly, Hal complied, and was himself immediately carried away by the vicarious entertain- ment, pleased to put the disturbing dream of the past three months comfortably behind him. • • • 103

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Edith was just a computer, but a very good one and a very observing one. So it was quite natural that she be consulted about the doctor s murder . . . WITNESS BY GEORGE H. SMITH Illustrated by Kelly Freas BALLARD was quite dead. There could be no doubt of it. He lay sprawled in front of Edith, with his head very messily bashed in and with one hand still extended toward her. A long shim- mering stream of blood ran half- way across the large room. Dr. Dudley Ballard had been as incon- siderate in his dying as he had been in his living. Art MacKinney and I stood in the doorway and stared. We were shocked not so much by the fact that Ballard was dead as by the fact that he lay in this most secret room, this holy of holies. Ours was the most security conscious project in the whole country; and this was where he had picked to get him- self killed. “God! There’ll really be a stink about this,” MacKinney breathed. “Well, I can’t think of anyone who had it coming more than he did,” I said. I hated Ballard’s guts and everyone knew it, so there was no point in being hypocritical now. Edith stood silently. She didn’t seem to be interested in the fact 105

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that the man who had run her life, who had spent hours shouting questions at her and criticizing her slightest error with burning sar- casm was now dead. No, Edith wasn’t interested, but you couldn’t really expect her to be — she was only a computing machine, a me- chanical brain, the final result of years of work by the best cyber- netics experts in the world. Edith was silent, and would be, until we turned her on and fed the tapes into her. “It looks as though this is what did it,” MacKinney said, indicating a large spanner lying on the floor beside Ballard. He touched it gin- gerly with his foot. His face was white and strained and it occurred to me that he was more upset than I thought he should be. After all, he had as much reason to hate the dead man as the rest of us. Ballard had taken advantage of his position as head of the research project to make passes at Jane Gurrey and MacKinney wasn’t at all a cool scientist when it came to Jane. He was engaged to her and quite nat- urally resented Ballard’s attentions to her. “You’d better not touch that un- til the police get here,” I said as he bent over to pick up the spanner. “Yeah, I guess you’re right — I forgot. How do you suppose this got in here anyway?” “One of the workmen making adjustments on Edith’s outer casing must have left it. I saw it sitting up there on top of her late yesterday afternoon,” I told him. “You’d bet- ter go call Mr. Thompson and — the FBI.” With Ballard gone, I was in charge. Maybe someone would think that was reason enough for me to kill him. I didn’t care, I was just glad he was gone. Now he couldn’t mistreat Edith anymore. I turned Edith on just as Mac- Kinney returned. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Why I’m going to wake Edith up and feed these tapes into her. After all these are more important than any one man’s life.” “You didn’t care much for Bal- lard, did you Bill?” I gave him look for look as I re- plied. “Can you name anyone around here that did?” He shook his head. “No — I guess not. But maybe it wasn’t one of us. It might have been an out- side job, you know. Edith was work- ing on that space station stuff and the iron curtain people would give a lot to know about it.” “Hell,” I said pressing the studs and levers that would arouse Edith and put her to work. “You don’t really think anyone could get past those security guards, do you?” Happily I went about the business of waking Edith, my sleep- ing beauty, from her slumbers. In a very few seconds, her hundreds of tiny red eyes were gleaming with intelligence. Good morning , Edith I punched out the tape and fed it into her. There was the faintest pause, while Edith’s photo-electric cells surveyed the room, pausing for a moment on the sprawled body of Ballard. Good morning , Bill Green , she typed back. I knew she was happy GEORGE H. SMITH 106

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to see me by the cheerful little clicks she emitted. I have some interesting work for you this morning , Edith. And I think youyU be glad to know that we will be working together from now on instead of . . . “Hey! What’s the idea of start- ing that machine?” a gray haired, gray suited security agent de- manded, striding into the room with MacKinney, Mr. Thompson and several other officers at his heels. “Don’t you know enough not to touch anything in here?” “This work is too important to be stopped — even for a murder,” I said, and Mr. Thompson nodded in agreement. “That’s right,” he said mopping his perpetually perspiring forehead, “this work has top priority from Washington.” He looked nervous and I couldn’t help wondering what he was thinking. There had been stories circulating about Bal- lard and Thompson’s wife and the dome-headed little man must have heard them too. Ballard just couldn’t keep his hands off any fe- male within reach. That was one of the reasons he was so thoroughly hated. The youngest of the security agents rose from where he had been kneeling beside Ballard and crossed to me. “You’re Green, aren’t you?” I nodded and he continued, “How did you know it was murder?” I laughed at him. “How the hell could a man bash in his own brains that way?” The gray haired man stepped into the breach. He gave us all a WITNESS thorough going over, but concen- trated on MacKinney and me. He seemed to think it peculiar that neither of us could give any reason for Ballard’s being alone with Edith. I was sure I knew, but no one would have believed me so I made no attempt to enlighten him. “Well, I guess that’s all we can do now,” he said at last. “Someone from the local police will have to be notified and brought in after they get security clearance.” He turned to go. “Wait a minute,” MacKinney said, “we’re all overlooking one thing.” “What’s that?” “There was an eye witness to this crime,” he said, and I stared at him in consternation. I didn’t know he knew. I thought I was the only one who knew. “What do you mean,” the agent demanded angrily. “Edith saw it. Edith, the com- puter.” “Are you nuts?” the agent de- manded. “You forget that Edith was turned off,” Thompson said. “But Mr. Thompson, Edith’s not like most cybernetic machines. She’s so far advanced, that I’m not sure we understand her completely. She can’t really be turned off. She has a distinct personality and that new circuit — ” Of course Edith had a person- ality of her own! She had more charm, more intelligence, more understanding than most women. “ — well — she’d be able to tell us who killed Ballard.” “That’s ridiculous,” I said, badly 107

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frightened. “A machine can’t be a witness to murder.” The security officer looked du- bious and shook his head. “I guess we’ll have to leave that up to the coroner at the inquest.” “But they can’t ask questions like that of Edith,” I protested. “She’s — she’s too important to the na- tional defense to have some country coroner asking her silly questions about the murder of a man who de- served to die anyway.” I had to pre- vent this. I had to get around this eye witness business. Thompson looked at me levelly. “MacKinney may be right, Green. The coroner may very well want to talk to Edith and there’s no reason we should object if Security gives him clearance.” “But Mr. Thompson, our work — it’ll be interrupted.” “We’ll have to take that chance. And I think Washington will agree.” “But — ” Couldn’t they see that there wasn’t any question of spying here. Couldn’t they understand that Ballard had just gotten what he had coming. I couldn’t let them question Edith. At least not until I had a chance to talk to her alone. “And Green — because of your rather strange behaviour, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to stay in your quarters until the inquest. MacKinney will handle your work with Edith until then.” I was shocked and really fright- ened now. I wouldn’t get to talk to her, wouldn’t get a chance to tell her what to say. I protested, but Thompson was firm, so firm that he placed a guard outside my door 108 to make sure I didn’t leave. Washington rushed through clearance for the local officers and the inquest was held three days later. The coroner proved to be a shrewd country doctor, who had the inquest adjourned to the com- puter room as soon as he heard MacKinney’s ideas about Edith. The security guards on duty the night of the murder testified that only MacKinney, Thompson, Bal- lard and I had had access to the computer room ; and it had already been established that it would have been impossible for a spy or foreign agent to have slipped into the heavily guarded room. It was clearly an inside job. With all of us at the scene of the crime, the coroner summed it up for us. “ — and since it could not have been the work of an outsider, it must have been a crime of a pri- vate nature.” He looked closely at Thompson, MacKinney and me. “A crime of a private nature with the motive either revenge, jeal- ousy or ambition. We know that the victim was an over-bearing man with a good many unpleasant traits. We know he was a man who forced his attentions on women, who was ill-tempered and abusive to those who worked with him. A man who had many enemies — but there were only three people who had the chance to attack him on this particular night. “I am going to attempt to estab- lish the identity of the killer by the unusual procedure of questioning a machine. It will be for later courts to establish the validity of such testimony. Because of the na- GEORGE H. SMITH

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ture of this case and because of the urgent need to get this computer back to its proper work, I am go- ing to ask the questions in a more direct manner than I would ordi- narily employ.” MacKinney took his place before Edith. They didn’t even trust me to feed the tapes into her under their very eyes. “Mr. Thompson, I object to the use of this delicate piece of equip- ment in — ” They ignored me, and Mac- Kinney punched out the questions the coroner asked: “Do you know who murdered Dr. Ballard?” There was a pause. Edith blinked several times. I was shaking with apprehension for her. A mind so delicate and noble should not be faced with such a dilemma. Yes , she typed hack . “Did you witness the murder?” There was a longer pause this time. “You must answer the ques- tion,” MacKinney reminded her. 1 was here . “Is it true that you do not lose your perceptive qualities when we turn you off?” MacKinney asked this on his own. It is true . “We might as well get to the heart of the matter,” the coroner said. “Did Mr. Thompson kill Bal- lard?” Edith clicked and her eyes glowed. No . “Did Mr. MacKinney kill Bal- lard?” No. Edith had to tell the truth . . . it was an innate part of her person- WITNESS ality. I tensed in my seat. I wanted to scream, to leap at MacKinney and prevent, somehow, the asking of the next question. But there wasn’t a chance. “Did Mr. Green kill Dr. Bal- lard?” Edith’s beautiful electric eyes flashed and her clicks pulsed twice as rapidly as before. There was such a roaring and wrenching within her I was afraid for her — she was being torn apart in her struggle not to answer. I couldn’t stand listen- ing to her desperate efforts any longer. “Yes!” I leapt to my feet. “Yes, I did it. Leave her alone. Can’t you see what you’re doing to her? That swine was always mistreating her. He didn’t understand her — no one understands her as I do!” The coroner looked at me closely. “Is that really why you killed him, Mr. Green?” “No! You were wondering why he was here by himself while no work was going on. He — he had begun to feel about Edith as he did about all women. He sneaked back here to be alone with her. He wanted to — he wanted to — ” My voice broke and they stared at me in shocked amazement. Into the silence MacKinney read what Edith had slowly typed out: “Mr. Green did not kill Dr. Bal- lard.” “Yes— yes I did,” I screamed. “Don’t Edith—” “Who did kill him?” the coroner asked, quietly. This was the question I had wanted to avoid. I sank down my hands cradling my aching head. 109

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Edith must have expected the ques- tion. She had her answer ready. 1 refuse to state on the grounds that it may tend to incriminate me. My poor, sweet, adorable Edith. If only I had had a chance to talk to her, to tell her what to say. I had known . . . ever since I had seen the spanner and remembered where it had been before. I could have warned her to say that Ballard had attacked her, threatened her, to say anything . . . but not to attempt to hide behind a Fifth Amendment that didn’t exist anymore. My darl- ing, never had kept up with cur- rent events. Now they’ll disconnect her, they’ll rewire her, they’ll destroy her understanding, her warmth, her whole personality . . . and I ... I love her, I love her ... • • • What Is Your Science I. Q. ? HERE’S A QUIZ that will test your knowledge of chemistry, physics and other items you run across in science fiction. How well do you know them? Counting ten for each correct answer, you should score 70. Anything over 90 and you’re a whizz. See page 120 for the answers. 1 . An Angstrom unit is equal to of a millimeter. 2. What is Newton’s third law of motion? 3. One “atmosphere” is equal to about pounds per square inch. 4. How many degrees of temperature must to added to change centigrade to the Kelvin scale? 5. The speed of sound through water is about times greater than it is through the air. 6. What is the highest audible sound frequency in most in- stances. , 7. The smaller the density of a gas the the velocity of its diffusion. 8. What is the name of the law of physics which states that strain is proportional to stress? 9. Radio and light waves travel at the same speed; but the fre- quency of radio waves is much 10. How many foot pounds of work are equal to one B.T.U.? 11. Heat is transmitted by convection, conduction and 12. What is the weight in pounds of one cubic foot of water? 110

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FIRTH’S WORLD His world was Utopia inhabited only by wealthy, brilliant , creative , ambitious people; it was the ultimate in freedom, ex- empt from taxes, social problems, petty responsibilities . . . BY IRVING COX, JR. LET HIM go. It’s quite safe to leave us. I want to talk to him. Sit over there, Chris, where you can be comfortable. A paradox, isn’t it? You were taught we may never go back. Now I’ve authorized the building of the rocket. From your point of view you were justified in trying to de- stroy it. I’m violating the regula- tions; you weren’t. But time changes the shape of the truth, Chris; it isn’t static. No one had the insight, then, to grasp the insanity of John Firth’s dream. People hated Firth or envied him; but no one called him mad. John Firth was an industrialist; yet far more than that, too — poli- tician, scientist, financier, even an artist of sorts. There was nothing he couldn’t do; and few things he didn’t do superbly well. That ac- counts for his philosophy. He never understood his own superiority. He honestly believed that all men could achieve what he had, if they set their minds to it. “Lazy, incompetent fools!” he would say. “The world’s full of them. And they’ve elected a gov- ernment of fools, taxing me to sup- port the others.” As billionaires go, John Firth was very young. Six months after World Government became an established reality, Earth ships began to ex- plore the skies; and in less than a year Mars, Venus and the Earth had formed a planetary confed- eracy. Ill

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A new feeling came to men when the burden of war-fear was lifted from their minds. Men were free — free for the first time in centuries. Their full energies were channeled into invention, exploration, experi- ment. The Earth was like a frontier town: booming, uproarious, lusty, dynamic — but with a social con- science : poverty and deprivation for none and unlimited opportunity for all. For Man — that abstract symbol of mass humanity — it was the best of all possible worlds. Yet there were misfits; John Firth was one of them. “We’re coddling people,” he said. “We’re teaching them to live on charity, on government hand-outs — and I’m expected to pay for it all. Cut them loose; let them sink or swim for themselves. If some of them don’t survive — well, they won’t; that’s all. We’d be a stronger people if we could rid ourselves of the leeches.” He was a man of the new age, — stubbornly holding to ideas from the old. And then the Stranger came to see him. We don’t know who the Stranger was or where he came from. A force of evil, perhaps — the symbol of Satan refurbished and streamlined to fit the concepts of the modem world. “I’ve been reading your political pamphlets, Mr. Firth,” the Stranger said. “You hold rather — rather fas- cinating views.” “Now that I’m suitably flat- tered,” Firth answered, “may I ask what particular form of hand-out you want?” “None. I’ve something for sale.” The Stranger took a pamphlet out of his pocket. “But tell me this, first: do you honestly believe what you’ve written here?” “Every word of it. If I could find my sort of world anywhere in the universe, I’d pull up stakes in a minute and — ” “You can create your own world, Mr. Firth.” “Do you suppose I haven’t tried? In every election I back my can- didates with all I have — prestige, propaganda, money. It does no good. The fools prefer to be gov- erned by other fools, like them- selves.” “I didn’t mean here, Mr. Firth.” The Stranger smiled as he lit a cigarette. “You see, my friend, I have a world for sale — a brand new world.” “One of the asteroids?” Firth laughed bitterly. “I could have done that years ago. They’re too close to the commercial orbits. How long would it be before one of our ships found the place? Then I’d be right back in the system again — and a laughing stock as well.” “This is a planetoid beyond Pluto. It’ll be generations before any of our ships — ” “A frozen world? No thanks!” “Only on the surface. It’s a hol- low sphere, with a granite crust half a mile thick. Inside there’s a sug- gestion of passageways and caverns, which may have been made arti- ficially. Perhaps this was an outpost of a race which lived and died bil- lions of years before our time.” “An archeological gold mine!” “But Science pays so little, Mr. Firth. I’m interested in cash, not IRVING COX, JR. 112

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prestige.” “Why should I pay you anything? You’ve told me where it is and what it is. I can find it for myself.” The Stranger laughed. “I said beyond Pluto; that covers a lot of space, Mr. Firth.” He paused for a moment. “My price is the stock in your Martian mines. Convert the rest of your holdings into any form of wealth that seems convenient and usable. In your case, Mr. Firth, you can take it with you — to your own world. Think of it! No taxes; no social problems; no unfortunate masses to prey on your conscience; no government but your own.” That was the beginning of the dream. The seed of the idea grew in John Firth’s mind until it over- shadowed everything else. It be- came an obsession, driving him so that he had no peace. DURING the course of a year Firth and the Stranger im- ported and installed the machinery to make the sphere livable: hydro- ponic tanks, air machines, gravita- tors, electric generators and an Atomic Power Core. In the crust of the planetoid they found enough fissionable material to keep Firth’s world running for an eternity. They laid out the decorative landscaping, planned the living quarters, the laboratories, the amusement hall and the university. It is interesting to speculate how much the Stranger contributed to the scheme ; and it is an ironic speculation, for as soon as the larger idea took shape in Firth’s mind, his only logical course was to murder FIRTH'S WORLD the Stranger. Firth could allow no outsider to know of the planetoid. To him it had become far more than a means of personal escape. It was to be an archive for the survival of John Firth’s ideas, for the survival of civilization itself. John Firth be- lieved that sincerely. Firth’s world — that magnificent dream which was like a holy cru- sade— was founded on murder, de- ception and greed. The reasoning of fanaticism engenders its own kind of ruthlessness. As soon as John Firth had disposed of the Stranger, he began to select his colonists. Men who by his defini- tion, were not fools. He had to make his choice very carefully. If he misjudged his candidate and his proposition was rejected, Firth had given away his secret. Any man who refused him had to die. Murder was Firth’s only guarantee of silence. But he made few mistakes. John Firth was a good judge of men — his kind of men. All of them were wealthy, ambitious, brilliant. Near- ly three hundred men and women were recruited. They came here to escape; the record tells us that until we gag over the repetition. But to escape what? Taxes they resented unan- imously, and restrictions on their freedom. They placed a value on the ownership of property that we can no longer understand. But, if you read the record closely, all that becomes superfluous. The thing they wanted to escape was respons- ibility. Responsibility to their fellow men. Physically, Firth’s world was a 113

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paradise. It still is. Yet the dissolu- tion began before the last colonist had arrived. Here they had assem- bled their wealth — in terms of ma- chines, comforts, books, art treas- ures, amusements, laboratory equip- ment. They were entirely free from the burden of taxation. But, some- how, their wealth lost its meaning. They claimed they had not with- drawn from the world in order to hibernate and decay among their luxuries. They wanted freedom in order to create, to invent, to experi- ment as they pleased. And they had that in Firth’s world: a maximum opportunity for the development of individual initiative. For a short time they turned out a wonderful assortment of new gadgets and new machines, but slowly their industry ground to a stop. If they had faced the truth then — but they were far too human to admit the failure of the dream. In- stead, they found a scapegoat. John Firth has left us a record of a con- versation he had with Adam Boetz; it is typical of their think- ing at the time. Boetz, as you may know, was one of the outstanding physicists of his day; he had created and built Atomic Cores, Incorporated, until it was the largest power company in the Confederation. John Firth met Boetz one morn- ing on the golf course in the recre- ation cavern. “Adam!” Firth cried, with his usual, boisterous good-humor. “I never thought I’d find you out here at this time of day.” “Why not?” The physicist shrugged. “I’m tired, Firth. I had 114 to do my four hour shif t in the light plant last night. Maybe I’ll feel like working in the lab tomorrow — and maybe not. I’m scheduled for a shift in hydroponics then.” “The shifts are short, Adam, and “Still too long for me, I’m not used to so much physical labor.” The physicist’s lips curled in a sneer. “So very democratic, isn’t it, Firth? Back home I hired men to do that kind of work for me.” Firth clapped him heartily on the back. “But we have other compen- sations, Adam. Four hours out of twenty-four is a small price to pay for freedom.” “Twenty-eight hours a week. Re- member the new labor law the Earth government put into effect before we left? It proscribed a max- imum work week of twenty-five hours for every man. We came here to escape restrictions, but we’ve saddled ourselves with more hours of manual labor than the least skilled laborer has to do on Earth. Firth! I’m not a manual laborer; neither is anyone else you’ve brought here.” “Do you want to go back?” “What answer can I make to that? We’re executives, Firth; but here we’re a brain without a body. We can formulate the orders, but we’ve neither arms nor legs to carry them out.” “In other words, you’re saying we should import a labor force to do our basic work for us?” “Why not?” “They’re the fools, Adam, the in- competents! On Earth they were the millstones around our necks — IRVING COX, JR.

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envying us, hating us, building a prison for us with their laws and their regulations.” “All very true, Adam, where the government is in their hands. But we could keep them under con- trol.” After that John Firth heard the same complaint from the others, over and over. They said they could not take advantage of their free- dom because of the chores they had to do to keep Firth’s world func- tioning. Firth called a meeting of the colonists. It was the closest ap- proximation to a government they had; government itself was one of the things they wanted to escape. They unanimously agreed that a labor force had to be recruited, and they settled upon one hundred and fifty as the necessary number, half of them to be women. Work- ing eight hours a day, such a force could perform the work of Firth’s world, yet the colonists would out- number them two-to-one and the labor force would not be large enough to constitute a threat. “We’ll insist that they marry, of course,” Adam Boetz said, “and each couple will provide us with two children, so that we shall al- ways have a stabilized labor supply.” “We’re talking,” one of the women whispered, “as if we were buying cattle!” “We are.” “But how can you recruit men and women under these conditions? What inducement can you possibly offer them?” Firth smiled. “When we find the people who meet our specifications, they’ll come; don’t worry. In the days of the sailing ships the tech- nique was called shanghaiing.” “What specifications, Mr. Firth?” “They must be young, strong, healthy, single — ” “And low-level morons,” Adam Boetz cut in. “Imbeciles won’t give us any trouble later on.” To his other crimes, John Firth then added kidnapping; the end justified the means. He was creat- ing a world and that world would save civilization. I doubt that his conscience ever troubled him. WITHIN two years the second group of colonists was estab- lished in Firth’s world. Apparently they made an easy adjustment to their new environment. We have no record of complaints or pro- tests. They were docile, obedient people. They took orders well; they liked to be told what to do; they needed very little supervision. The first colonists were entirely free, then, of any sort of work-re- sponsibility. For a while they went back to work in their laboratories or in the university — inventing, ex- ploring, accumulating their store of knowledge. In imperceptible stages, however, their interest lagged, their production came to a halt again. This time they had no excuse, no scapegoat. We can assume that some of them faced the truth squarely and honestly, yet they had chosen Firth’s world and there was no way to turn back. We find only one actual hint of their despondency, 115 FIRTH'S WORLD

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in a diary page written by an un- known woman. Karl stayed home again to- day. He has nearly finished the design for his machine , but he has no more enthusiasm to com- plete it . 1 know how he feels; 1 canyt go on with my painting , either . We have no purpose, no goal to achieve. We sit isolated in space, counting over the wealth of our talent and ability; but we can make no use of it. I wish I knew how many of the others think as 1 do, but I’m afraid to ask . The key to understanding them, is that last sentence. Perhaps they all felt her disillusionment, but they had to pretend. Firth’s world couldn’t be at fault. If they were dissatisfied, it was because of a failure within themselves. At all costs, the flaw had to be hidden from their neighbors. Their first labor trouble was a welcome interlude in the creep- ing boredom. The docile labor battalion suddenly discovered they were being overworked. Just what they could have done in Firth’s world with shorter hours, no one knows. They staged a spotty, am- ateurish strike; speakers made ref- erence to the labor laws applicable on the Earth and demanded better pay. To what end, it’s hard for us to say. If the first colonists had turned over all their wealth, the workers would have had no more use for it. John Firth was unusually a- larmed by the threatened strike. He reacted with excessive violence and 116 the other colonists followed his lead. Three of the leaders of the uprising were executed ; others were brutally whipped. The Outlaw Pit was built then. Thereafter, at the first hint of any dissatisfaction, workers were condemned to it. The violence taught the workers resentment. Silently, sullenly they passed on their hatred to their chil- dren. The aristocracy created the revolution, and nurtured it; for it would have made no real differ- ence if they had surrendered en- tirely to the strikers’ demands. The children of the first colon- ists made no pretense of using Firth’s world to advance knowl- edge, invention or art. They were hedonists, bred to luxury, sup- ported by slaves. The slaves, for their part, felt no emotion but hatred. From their parents they learned that the aris- tocracy had violated the labor law. The children knew nothing about the law or the distant Earth where it applied, but it was held in deep and sacred reverence. The laboratories and the uni- versity stood empty; only the recre- ation cavern held any interest for the new aristocracy. A change took place among the slaves too. Their parents had been hand-picked morons. But neither brilliant a- chievement nor the moronic mind is hereditary. Most of the workers’ children had an average intelli- gence ; one or two would have been classified as geniuses. To their hatred the second generation joined intelligence, and Firth’s world was ready to blow apart. They struck the light plant first. IRVING COX, JR.

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Sudden and unexpected violence surged through the dark, stone- walled corridors. John Firth led a band of men against the enemy. But his attack failed and the workers seized the Atomic Power Core — the heart of our world. If they shut down the reactors, they would stifle not only our lights, but the gravitators and the air machines as well; they would kill us all. The workers knew that. They were willing to risk suicide. Every bargaining counter was on their side. It was John Firth who sur- rendered. Firth’s world died then. In the bitter depths of the Pit, John Firth remembered what Adam Boetz had said to him so many years before, “We’ve become a brain without a body. We can formulate the orders, but we’ve neither arms nor legs to carry them out. Suddenly John Firth understood the fallacy of his fanaticism. A so- ciety was like a living body, an in- tegrated organism of many mem- bers. No one could function with- out the others. No man — no group of men — could create an isolate world. The social equation seemed as clear to Firth as the simplest sum in arithmetic. Each man was a part of a functioning social unit which included them all. Each man’s talent, whether it was the plodding docility of a moron or the brilliance of genius, belonged to all men. In the meantime, the workers found that they could not run Firth’s world alone, either. They FIRTH'S WORLD gloried in forbidden luxuries until they were satiated. Shortly they be- came as indolent as the aristocracy had been; and the food supply was nearly exhausted. The treaty they made was direct and to the point: the two groups agreed to live in equality, sharing the burden of the labor and the ac- cumulated wealth of knowledge. The treaty was made when you were a child ; we have perfected the technique of co-operation within one generation. We’re ready, now, to go back to Earth. You’ll be with us? Fine, Chris! No. Please, no apologies. I un- derstand why you intended to des- troy our ship ; others have at- tempted it, too. No harm was done. You’re free, — entirely free . . . . . . The Organizer waited until he was alone in the office. Then, with trembling, aging hands, he took the log book out of the safe and slowly made another entry: Chris was the last , 1 think . He accepted the lie , just as most of the others have. When they re- turn to Earth , they will be sound men with whole minds. For them Firth’s world will always stand as a symbol of man’s highest achievement in co-operation . May this sham , in some small way , expiate the crime and the folly of my arrogant delusion . John Firth’s head dropped on his arm and his shoulders shook; but the sobs were sobs of relief. Chris was saved; Chris would go back. That mattered very much — for Chris was his grandson. • • • 117

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SCIENCE If current experiments prove suc- cessful, pilots of the future may be talking with their ears as well as hearing through them. Based on the fact that the ear is a human two-way radio the researchers have succeeded in getting intelligible speech from the ears of several persons involved in the tests. They are quite certain that further stud- ies and experiments will point the way to further improvement of the technique; and that in the future people will be able to be taught how to use the Eustachian tubes or the bones of the head as a sound- ing board for emitting speech as well as hearing it. The daily round of the morning milk man may soon be a thing of the past. Researchers at Iowa State College have developed a frozen concentrated milk which the house- wife may use in the same way she now uses frozen orange juice. The product is a whole milk product tasting exactly like regular bottled milk and with the same food values. A quart of the concentrate can be expanded to three quarts of reg- ular milk by the addition of two quarts of water and stirring. Cans may be kept in the home refriger- ator for two weeks without danger of spoilage and may be stored more than five months in freezer lockers at temperatures between 15 to 20 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. The walls of your house of the future may be built of plastic foam which can be “foamed” into place rather than hammered or nailed, or laid by a stone mason. Research- ers at the Dow Chemical corpor- ation are toying with a device re- sembling a garbage can that would be a plastic “concrete” mixer. It would generate foam and force it through a hose to a workman. Us- ing only rudimentary forms to con- tain the plastic until set, the work- man would build the wall up quickly. Experts would then focus the radiation from high-voltage X- ray machines or radioactive cobalt 60 on the walls to raise its structural strength by cross-linking the plastic molecules. Spare parts surgery of the future may soon include the grafting of plugs of living tissue into the hu- man heart itself. Researchers be- lieve that incompetent heart valves might better be repaired by using tissue from elsewhere in the body. In experiments they have used a plug of tissues consisting mainly of blood vessels. They pass this through the left auricle of the heart, through the mitral opening and into the left ventricle where it is finally anchored by stitching it to the wall of this heart chamber. There it functions as a substitute mitral valve between the two left 118

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heart chambers. If the present tests prove successful, this new tech- nique may soon be an accepted form of heart surgery. Rocket fuel may be used as a cool- ant to prevent rocket planes of the future from melting at high speeds. When projectiles reach a speed five or six times the speed of sound, such intense heat is generated that alum- inum and steel melt; and research- ers are experimenting with the fuel as an answer to the problem. They agree that such research on thermal barrier problems has been lagging far behind the capabilities of air- craft engineers, and hope that this present research will solve the problem. The only alternative so far seems to accept the fact that STEPHENS Book Service 125 FOURTH AVE. NEW YORK 3, N. Y. Phone GRamercy 3-5990 • We Stock All current American Science Fiction in Book Form and carry current Magazines and Pocket Books. • A large selection of Science Fiction is available of British Books, Maga- zines and Pocket Editions. • We carry a large stock of Back Issues of Science Fiction Magazines. • CATALOGUES ISSUED planes will have to be partially re- built after each flight that lasts more than a few minutes. Dehydrofreezing may be a word to conjure with in the not too dis- tant tomorrow. It is a name given to a new process which combines the space-saving of dehydration with the advantages of freezing. Ordinary freezing tends to rupture the cellular structure of foods. Par- tial dehydration does much to over- come the objection and dehydro- frozen foods retain the right amount of moisture. They can be reconsti- tuted simply by soaking them in water. Scientists report that the pro- cess costs somewhat more, but low- er packaging, freezing, storage and distribution costs should result in an over-all saving to users. Safety engineers predict that all automobiles will soon come e- quipped with safety belts similar to those used in airplanes. Several years of research have gone into the study of the perfect seat belt and several points have come up which will make for the maximum safety. The loop strength of the belt and buckle should be no less than 3,000 pounds, no less than two inches wide, only one person should use each belt, the belt must be an- chored in a manner to transmit the full force of the belt’s 3,000 pound strength to the frame of the car and the belt from attachment point to hips should cross the pelvic re- gion at an angle of approximately 45 degrees. These minimum re- quirements have been strongly rec- 119

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ommended as a means of substan- tially reducing the nation’s huge traffic death and injury toll. A new wrinkle in the cultivation of the oceans for food has been pro- posed by researchers. Scientists have noted that there is a band 500 miles on each side of the equa- tor which is almost perpetually calm and where the sun shines al- most every day with a steady tem- perature of 86 degrees Fahrenheit the year round. The development of extreme high-strength plastic films has made possible floating plastic stills, created under Depart- ment of Interior sponsorship, that convert salt water to fresh. Fresh water from these stills is used to cultivate plants floating in canoe- like plastic boats. One such float- ing garden is already in existence and flourishing mightily in the un- usual surroundings. Job seekers may one day have to submit to aptitude tests that in- clude a checking of their brain metabolism. Scientists have discov- ered that they can predict the be- havior of rats by checking the chemical activities of the brain. In running through a test maze the animals responded as visualists (they followed light and dark alleys) or spatialists (who run to the right or the left orientation of the alleys). When sample tissues were examined, the level of cho- linesterase enzyme in the spatialist’s brain areas was much higher than that of the visualists. Testing the enzyme activity beforehand gives an accurate prediction as to which of the categories the test animals will belong to. The telescope and electronic com- puter have been combined to locate the lost planet Athalia. With the combination, Dr. Paul Herget, of the Cincinnati Observatory, redis- covered the minor planet which had been lost for fifty years. The planet, originally discovered photograph- ically at the Heidelberg Observa- tory in Germany in 1903, was not photographed again until 1948, when Indiana University took about 2000 plates of minor planets. While checking the plates recently, Dr. Herget solved the problem of the orbit on a giant IBM computer. It took him exactly one minute to solve the problem which had plagued and teased astronomers for almost half a century. WHAT IS YOUR SCIENCE I.Q.? ANSWERS: 1 — One ten-millionth. 2 — Interaction. 3 — 15^2* 4 — 273. 5 — 4.5. 6 — 20,000 vibrations. 7 — Greater. 8 — Hooke’s Law. 9 — Lower. 10 — 778. 11 — Radiation. 12 — 62.4. 120

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FOR REAL JOB SECURITY -GET I.C.S. TRAINING “You can stop worrying, Jane. My job’s secure now! And here’s the insurance policy to prove it— my I.C.S. diploma!” Th is feeling of security is probably typical of every I.C.S. graduate. Because — as the job situation gets tighter, the man with I.C.S. training has the advantage. Why? Your I.C.S. diploma tells your present employer three im- portant things: (1) You want to make the most of your present job. (2) You have the training you need for advancement. (3) You look for better ways of doing things on your own. What you do about your fu- ture is up to you. Do nothing and stay at your present job at the same old pay. Or earn an I.C.S. diploma in your spare time for security , promotions , more pay! Your first step is to mark the course that interests you in the coupon below, and mail it to us. Free books We’ll send you two interesting books. The first, “How to Suc- ceed,” is a gold mine of helpful tips. 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INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOLS ICS BOX 8I0538SCRANTON 9, PENNA. Without cost or obligation, send me "HOW to SUCCEED" and the opportunity booklet about the field ( Partial list of 277 courses) BEFORE which I have marked X: ARCHITECTURE and BUILDING CONSTRUCTION □ Air Conditioning— Refrig. □ Architecture □ Building Contractor □ Building Maintenance □ Carpenter and Mill Work □ Estimating □ Heating □ Painting Contractor □ Plumbing □ Reading Arch. 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