Worlds of IF (January 1960)

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w (y \j Oi), CJ O o O o o Odoo •ionooo ooool s in your neighborhood won't run off with your books if you put inside the front cover of each book... a gummed bookplate with your name printed on it! YOUR NAME HERE YOUR NAME HERE FINAGLE SAYS — The umpteenth corollary of Finagle's General Law of Dynamic Negatives says: "No books are ever lost by loaning except ones you particularly want to keep." 100 for $4; 200, $6; 300, $8 with owner's name imprinted All Postpaid. Add state sales lax, if any. ^'amr ACTUAL SIZE, all d. No. CM-12 by Cullen Rapp No. GX-57 by Lynd Ward The desiji^ns shown above are the only ones we Order from MAGAZINE 421 Hudson Street, New York 14, N. Y.

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THERE are some things that cannot be generally told — things you ought to know. Great truths are dangerous to some — but factors for personal power and accomplishment in the hands of those who understand them. Behind the tales of the miracles and mysteries of the ancients, lie centuries of their secret probing into nature’s laws — their amazing discoveries of the hid- den processes of man*s mind, and the mastery of life’s problems. Once shroud- ed in mystery to avoid their destruc- tion by mass fear and ignorance, these facts remain a useful heritage for the thousands of men and women who pri- vately use them in their homes today. THIS FREE BOOK The Rosicrucians (not a religious SBe Rosicrucians < organization) an age-old brotherhood of learning, have preserved this secret wisdom in their archives for centu- ries. They now invite you to share the practical helpfulness of their teachings. Write today for a free copy of the book, ’’The Mastery of Life.” Within its pages may lie a new life of oppor- tunity for you. Address: Scribe M.J.B. j- SEND THIS COUPON ! Scribe M.J.B. I 1 The ROSICRUCIANS (AMORC) } I San Jose, California i } Please send me the free book,The Mastery • I of Life, which explains how I may learn to | t use my faculties and powers of mind. i ' I ! Name I ' I J Address J !_ Cipjr j SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA. U.S.A.

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WORLDS OF SCIENCE FICTION JANUARY 1960 All Stories New and Complete Editor: H. L. GOLD Feature Editor: EREDERIK POHL 1 NOVELETTES 1 M THE DIVERS by Jomes Stamers 18' = = THE LAST LEAP by Daniel F. Golouye 64 1 CULTURAL EXCHANGE by J. F. Bone 110 1 1 SHORT STORIES 1 1 THE GOOD SEED by Mark Mallory 5 1 DISSOLUTE DIPLOMAT by Bob Show and Walt Willis 45 1 M THE LITTLE RED BAG by Jerry Sohl 51 TO EACH HIS OWN by Jack Sharkey 89 1 1 THE AUTUMN AFTER NEXT by Margaret St. Cloir 101 FEATURE B WORLDS OF IF by Frederik Pohl 82 COVER by Emsh; “Take Them to Oor leadersi" B 1 Illustrations by Wood, AAorrow and Froncis M 1 IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIflIllllllllllllllllllillllllllllllllllllllllilllilllllllllllllllllllilllllll'IIIIIIIIIIH IF is published bi-monthly by Digest Productions Corporation, Vol. 9, No. 6. Main offices: 421 Hudson Street, New York 14, New York. 85^ per copy. Subscriptions 12 issues $3.00 in the United States, Canada, Mexico, South and Central America and U. S. possessions, elsewhere $4.00. Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office, New York, New York. Copyright New York 1959 by Digest Productions Corporation. All rights including trans- lations reserved. All material submitted must be accompanied by self-addressed, stamped envelopes. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited material. All stories printed in this magazine are fiction, and any amilarity between characters and actual persons is coincidental. Pidnted in the U. S. A. by the Guinn Company, Inc., New York. Title registered in the United States Patent Office. Next Issue (Marehl on Sale January Sth.

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By MARK MALLORY The island was drowning — if they failed to find some common ground, both of them were doomed. They said — as they have said of so many frontiers- men just like him — that there must have been a woman in his past, to make him what he was. And indeed there had, but she was no flesh-and-blood female. The name of his lady was Victoria, whom the Greeks called Nike and early confounded with the Pallas Athena, that sterile maiden. And at the age of thirty-four she had Calvin Mulloy most firmly in her grasp, for he

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had neither wife nor child, nor any close friend worth mentioning — only his hungry dream for some great accom- plishment. It had harried him to the stars, that dream of his. It had driven him to the position of top survey engineer on the new, raw planet of Mersey, still largely unexplored and unmapp^. And it had pushed him, too, into foolishnesses like this latest one, building a sailplane out of scrap odds and ends around the Mersey Ad- vance Base — a sailplane which had just this moment been caught in a storm and cracked up on an island the size of a city backyard, between the banks of one of the mouths of the Adze River. The sailplane was gone the moment it hit. Actually it had come down just short of the island and floated quickly off, what was left of it, while Cal- vin was thrashing for the is- land with that inept stroke of his. He pulled himself up, gaping, onto the rocks, and, with the coolness of a logical man who has faced crises be- fore, set himself immediately to taking stock of his situa- tion. He was wet and winded, but since he was undrowned and on solid land in the semi- tropics, he dismissed that part of it from his mind. It had been full noon when he had been caught in the storm, and it could not be much more than minutes past that now, so swiftly had everything hap- pened ; but the black, low clouds, racing across the sky, and the gusts of intermittent rain, cut visibility down around him. He stood up on his small island and leaned against the wind that blew in and up the river from the open gulf. On three sides he saw nothing but the fast-riding waves. On the fourth, though, shading his eyes against the occasional bursts of rain, he discerned a long, low, curving blackness that would be one of the river shores. There lay safety. He esti- mated its distance from him at less than a hundred and fifty yards. It was merely, he told himself, a matter of reaching it. UNDER ordinary condi- tions, he would have set- tled down where he was and waited for rescue. He was not more than fifteen or twenty miles from the Advance Base, and in this storm they would waste no time waiting for him to come in, before starting out to search for him. No sail- plane could survive in such a blow. Standing now, with the wind pushing at him and the rain stinging against his face and hands, he found time for a moment’s wry humor at his own bad luck. On any civilized world, such a storm would have been charted and pre- 7 THE GOOD SEED

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dieted, if not controlled entire- ly. Well, the more fool he, for venturing this far from Base. It was in his favor that this world of Mersey happened to be so Earthlike that the dif- ferences between the two plan- ets were mostly unimportant. Unfortunately, it was the one unimportant difference that made his present position on the island a death trap. The gulf into which his river emp- tied was merely a twentieth the area of the Gulf of Mexico — but in this section it was extremely shallow, having an overall average depth of around seventy-five feet. When one of these fiash storms formed suddenly out over its waters, the wind could either drain huge tidal areas around the mouths of the Adze, or else raise the river level within hours a matter of thirty feet. With the onshore wind whistling about his ears right now, it was only too obvious to Calvin that the river was rising. This rocky little bit sticking some twelve or fifteen feet above the waves could expect to be overwhelmed in the next few hours. He looked about him. The island was bare except for a few straggly bushes. He reached out for a shoot from a bush beside him. It came up easily from the thin layer of soil that overlaid the rocks, and the wind snatched it out of his hand. He saw it go skip- 8 ping over the tops of the waves in the direction of the shore, until a wave-slope caught it and carried it into the next trough and out of sight. It at least, he thought, would reach the safety of the river bank. But it would take a thousand such slender stems, plaited into a raft, to do him any good; and there were not that many stems, and not that much time. Calvin turned and climbed in toward the center high point of the island. It was only a few steps over the damp soil and rocks, but when he stood upright on a little crown of rock and looked about him, it seemed that the island was smaller than ever, and might be drowned at any second by the wind-lashed waves. More- over, there was nothing to be seen which offered him any more help or hope of escape. Even then, he was not moved to despair. He saw no way out, but this simply rein- forced his conviction that the way out was hiding about him somewhere, and he must look that much harder for it. He was going to step down out of the full force of the wind, when he happened to notice a rounded object nest- ling in a little hollow of the rock below him, about a dozen or so feet away. He went and stood over it, seeing that his first guess as to its nature had MARK MALLORY

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been correct. It was one of the intelligent traveling plants that wandered around the oceans of this world. It should have been at home in this situ- ation. Evidently, however, it had made the mistake of com- ing ashore here to seed. It was now rooted in the soil of the island, facing death as surely as he^ if the wind or the weaves tore it from its own helplessly anchored roots. “Can you understand me?” he asked it. There was an odd sort of croaking from it, which seem- ed to shape itself into words, though the how of it remained baffling to the ear. It was a sort of supplemental telepathy at work, over and above the rough attempts to imitate hu- man speech. Some of these in- telligent plants they had got to know in this area could com- municate with them in this fashion, though most could not. “I know you, man,” said the plant. “I have seen your gath- ering.” It was referring to the Advance Base, which had at- tracted a steady stream of the plant visitors at first. “Know any way to get ashore?” Calvin asked. “There is none,” said the plant. “I can’t see any, either.” “There is none,” repeated the plant. “Eveiyone to his own opin- ion,” said Calvin. Almost he sneered a little. He turned his gaze once more about the is- land. “In my book, them that won’t be beat can’t be beat. That’s maybe where we’re dif- ferent, plant.” He left the plant and went for a walk about the island. It had been in his mind that pos- sibly a drifting log or some such could have been caught by the island and he could use this to get ashore. He found nothing. For a few' minutes, at one end of the island, he stood fascinated, watching a long sloping black rock with a crack in it, reaching down in- to the water. There was a small tuft of moss growing in the crack about five inches above where the waves were slapping. As he watched, the waves slapped higher and higher, until he turned away abruptly, shivering, before he could see the water actually reach and cover the little clump of green. For the first time a realiza- tion that he might not get off the island touched him. It was not yet fear, this realization, but it reached deep into him and he felt it, suddenly, like a pressure against his heart. As the moss was being covered, so could he be covered, by the far-reaching inexorable ad- vance of the water. And then this was wiped away by an abrupt outburst of anger and self-ridicule that he — who had been through so many dangers — should find himself pinned by so common- THE GOOD SEED 9

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place a threat. A man, he told himself, could die of drown- ing anywhere. There was no need to go light-years from his place of birth to find such a death. It made all dying — and all living — seem small and futile and insignificant, and he did not like that feeling. CALVIN went back to the plant in its little hollow', tight-hugging to the ground and half-sheltered from the wind, and looked down on its dusky basketball-sized shape, the tough hide swollen and ready to burst with seeds. “So you think there’s no way out,” he said roughly. “There is none,” said the plant. “Why don’t you just let yourself go, if you think like that?” Calvin said. “Why try to keep down out of the wind, if the waves’ll get you any- w'ay, later?” The plant did not answer for a while. “I do not want to die,” it said then. “As long as I am alive, there is the possibility of some great improbable chance saving me.” “Oh,” said Calvin, and he himself was silent in turn. “I thought you’d given up.” “I cannot give up,” said the plant. “I am still alive. But I know /there is no way to safety.” “You make a lot of sense.” Calvin straightened up to squint through the rain at the dai'k and distant line of the shore. “How much more time would you say we had before the water covers this rock?” “The eighth part of a day- light period, perhaps more, perhaps less. The water can rise either faster or more slowly.” “Any chance of it cresting and going down?” “That would be a great im- probable chance such as that of which I spoke,” said the plant. Calvin rotated slowly, sur- veying the water around them. Bits and pieces of flot- sam were streaming by them on their way before the wind, now angling toward the near bank. But none were close enough or large enough to do Calvin any good. “Look,” said Calvin abrupt- ly, “there’s a fisheries survey station upriver here, not too far. Now, I could dig up the soil holding your roots. If I did that, would you get to the survey station as fast as you could and tell them I’m stranded here?” “I would be glad to,” said the plant. “But you cannot dig me up. My roots have pene- trated into the roclc. If you tried to dig me up, they would break off — and I would die that much sooner.” “You would, would you?” grunted Calvin. But the ques- tion was rhetorical. Already his mind was busy searching for some other way out. For 10 MARK MALLORY

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the first time in his life, he felt the touch of cold about his heart. Could this be fear, he wondered. But he had never been afraid of death. Crouching down again to be out of the wind and rain, he told himself that knowledge still remained a tool he could use. The plant must know something that was, perhaps, useless to it, but that could be twisted to a human’s advan- tage. “What made you come to a place like this to seed?” he asked. “Twenty nights and days ago, when I first took root here,” said the plant, “this land was safe. The signs were good for fair weather. And this place was easy of access from the water. I am not built to travel far on land.” “How would you manage in a storm like this, if you were not rooted down?” “I would go with the wind until I found shelter,” said the plant. “The wind and waves would not harm me then. They hurt only whatever stands firm and opposes them.” “You can’t communicate with others of your people from here, can you?” asked Calvin. “There are none close,” said the plant. “Anyway, what could they do?” ‘“They could get a message to the fisheries station, to get help out here for us.” “What help could help me?” said the plant. “And in any case they could not go against the wind. They would have to be upwind of the station, even to help you.” “We could tiy it.” “We could try it,” agreed the plant. “But first one of my kind must come into speaking range. We still hunt our great improbable chance.” There was a moment’s si- lence between them in the wind and rain. The river was noisy, working against the rock of the island. “There must be something that would give us a better chance than just sitting here,” said Calvin. The plant did not answer. “What are you thinking about?” demanded Calvin. “I am thinking of the irony of our situation,” said the plant. “You are free to wan- der the water, but cannot. I can wander the water, but I am not free to do so. This is death, and it is a strange thing.” “I don’t get you.” “I only mean that it makes no difference — that I am what I am, or that you are what you are. We could be any things that would die when the waves finally cover the is- land.” “Right enough,” said Calvin impatiently. “What about it?” “Nothing about it, man,” said the plant. “I was only thinking.” THE GOOD SEED 11

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“Don’t waste your time on philosophy,” said Calvin harshly. “Use some of that brain power on a way to get loose and get off.” “Perhaps that and philoso- phy are one and the same.” “You’re not going to con- vince me of that,” said Calvin, getting up. “I’m going to take another look around the is- land.” The island, as he walked around its short margin, showed itself to be definitely smaller. He paused again by the black rock. The moss was lost now, under the water, and the crack was all but un- der as well. He stood shielding his eyes against the wind- driven rain, peering across at the still visible shore. The waves, he noted, were not ex- treme-some four or five feet in height — ^which meant that the storm pi'oper was proba- bly paralleling the land some distance out in the gulf. He clenched his fists in sud- den frustration. If only he had hung on to the sailplane — or any decent-sized chunk of it! At least going into the water then would have been a gam- ble with some faint chance of success. He had nowhere else to go, after rounding the island. He went back to the plant. “Man,” said the plant, “one of my people has been blown to shelter a little down- stream.” Calvin straightened up ea- gerly, turning to stare into the wind. “You cannot see him,” said the plant. “He is caught be- low the river bend and cannot break loose against the force of the wind. But he is close enough to talk. And he sends you good news.” “Me?” Calvin hunkered down beside the plant. “Good news?” “There is a large tree torn loose from the bank and float- ing this way. It should strike the little bit of land where we are here.” “Strike it? Are you posi- tive ?” “There are the wind and the water and the tree. They can move only to one destination — this island. Go quickly to the windward point of the is- land. The tree will be coming shortly.” Calvin jerked erect and turned, wild triumph bursting in him. “Good-by, man,” said the plant. But he was already plung- ing toward the downstream end of the island. He reached it and, shielding his eyes with a hand, peer^ desperately out over the water. The waves hammered upon his boots as he stood there, and then he saw it, a mass of branches upon which the wind was blowing as on a sail, green against black, coming toward him. 12 MARK MALLORY

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He crouched, wrung with impatience, as the tree drifted swiftly through the water toward him, too ponderous to rise and fall more than a little with the waves and presenting a gal- leonlike appearance of mass and invincibility. As it came closer, a fear that it would, in spite of the plant’s assurances, miss the island, crept into his heart and chilled it. It seemed to Calvin that it was veering — that it would pass to windwaz’d of the is- land, between him and the dimly seen shore. The thought of losing it was more than he could bear to consider; and with a sudden burst of panic, he threw himself into the waves, beating clumsily and frantically for it. The river took him into its massive fury. He had forgot- ten the strength of it. His first dive took him under an incom- ing wave, and he emerged, gasping, into the trough be- hind, with water exploding in his face. He kicked and threw his arms about, but the slow and futile-seeming beatings of his limbs appeared helpless as the fluttering of a butterfly in a collector’s net. He choked for air, and, rising on the crest of one wave, found him- self turned backward to face the island, and being swept past it. Fear came home to him then. He lashed out, fighting only for the solid ground of the island and his life. His world became a place of foam and fury. He strained for air. He dug for the island. And then, suddenly, he felt him- self flung upon hard rock and gasping, crawling, he emerged onto safety. He hung there on hands and knees, battered and panting. Then the i*emembrance of the tree cut like a knife to the core of his fear-soaked being. He staggered up, and, looking about, saw that he was almost to the far end of the island. He turned. Above him, at the windward point, the tree it- self was just now grounding, branches first, and swinging about as the long trunk, caught by the waves, pulled it around and onward. With an inarticulate cry, he ran toward it. But the mass of water against the heavy tree trunk was already pulling the branches from their tanglings with the rock. It floated free. Taking the wind once more in its sail of leaves, it moved slowly — and then more swiftly on past the far side of the island. He sci'ambled up his side of the island’s crest. But when he reached its top and could see the tree again, it was already moving past and out from the island, too swiftly for him to catch it, even if he had been the swimmer he had just proved himself not to be. He dropped on his knees, there on the island’s rocky THE GOOD SEED 13

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spine, and watched it fade in the grayness of the rain, un- til the green of its branches was lost in a grayish blob, and this in the general welter of storm and waves. And sudden- ly a dark horror of death closed over him, blotting out all the scene. A VOICE roused him. “That is too bad,’' said the plant. He turned his head numbly. He was kneeling less than half a dozen feet from the little hollow where the plant still sheltered. He looked at it now, dazed, as if he could not re- member what it was, nor how it came to talk to him. Then his eyes cleared a little of their shock and he crept over to it on hands and knees and crouched in the shelter of the hollow. “The water is rising more swiftly,” said the plant. “It will be not long now.” “No!” said Calvin. The word was lost in the sound of the waves and wind, as though it had never been. Nor, the minute it was spoken, could he remember what he had meant to deny by it. It had been only a response without thought, an instinctive negation. “You make me wonder,” said the plant, after a little, “why it hurts you so — this thought of dying. Since you first became alive, you have faced ultimate death. And you have not faced it alone. All things die. This storm must die. This rock on which we lie will not exist forever. Even worlds and suns come at last to their ends, and galaxies, perhaps even the Universe.” Calvin shook his head. He did not answer. “You are a fighting people,” said the plant, almost as if to itself. “Well and good. Per- haps a life like mine, yielding, giving to the forces of nature, traveling before the wind, sees less than you see, of a reason for clawing hold on existence. But still it seems to me that even a fighter would be glad at last to quit the struggle, when there is no other choice.” “Not here,” said Calvin thickly. “Not now.” “Why not here, why not now,” said the plant, “when it has to be somewhere and sometime?” Calvin did not answer. “I feel sorry for you,” said the plant. “I do not like to see things suffer.” Raising his head a little and looking around him, Calvin could see the water, risen high around them, so that waves were splashing on all sides, less than the length of his own body away. “It wouldn’t make sense to you,” said Calvin then, rais- ing his rain^wet face toward the plant. “You’re old by your standards. I’m young. I’ve got things to do. You don’t under- stand.” 14 MARK MALLORY

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“No,” the plant agreed. “I do not understand.” CALVIN crawled a little closer to the plant, into the hollow, until he could see the vibrating air-sac that pro- duced the voice of the plant. “Don’t you see? I’ve got to do something — I’ve got to feel I’ve accomplished something — before I quit.” “What something?” asked the plant. “I don’t know]” cried Cal- vin. “I just know I haven’t I I feel thrown away!” “What is living? It is feel- ing and thinking. It is seeding and ti'ying to understand. It is companionship of your own people. What more is there?” “You have to do some- thing.” . “Do what?” “Something important. Something to feel satisfied about.” A wave, higher than the rest, slapped the rock a bare couple of feet below them and sent spray stinging in against them. “You have to say, ‘Look, maybe it wasn’t much, but I did this.’ ” “What kind of this?” “How do I know?” shouted Calvin. “Something — maybe something nobody else did — maybe something that hasn’t been done before!” “For yourself?” said the plant. A higher wave slapped at the veiy rim of their hol- low, and a little water ran over and down to pool around them. Calvin felt it cold around his knees and wrists. “Or for the doing?” “For the doing! For the doing!” “If it is for the doing, can you take no comfort from the fact there are others of your own kind to do it?” Another wave came in on them. Calvin moved spasmodi- cally right up against the plant and put his arms around it, holding on. “I have seeded ten times and done much thinking,” said the plant — rather muffledly, for Calvin’s body was pressing against its air-sac. “I have not thought of anything really new, or startling, or great, but 1 am satisfied.” It paused a moment as a new wave drenched them and receded. They were half awash in the hollow now, and the waves came regularly. “I do not see how this is so different from what you have done. But I am content.” Another and strong- er wave rocked them. The plant made a sound that might have been of pain at its roots tearing. “Have you seeded?” “No,” said Calvin, and all at once, like light breaking at last into the dark cave of his being, in this twelfth hour, it came to him — all of what he had robbed himself in his search for a victory. Choking on a wave, he clung to the plant with frenzied strength. “Nothing!” The word came tom from him as if by some THE GOOD SEED 15

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ruthless hand. "‘Fve got noth- ing!” 'Then I understand at last,” said the plant. “For of all things, the most terrible is to die unfruitful. It is no good to say we will not be beaten, be- cause there is always waiting, somewhere, that which can t)eat us. And then a life that is seedless goes down to de- feat finally and forever. But when one has seeded, there is no ending of the battle^ and life mounts on life until the light is reached by those far generations in which we have had our own small but neces- sary part. Then our personal defeat has been nothing, for though we died, we are still living, and though we fell, we conquered.” But Calvin, clinging to the plant with both arms, saw on- ly the water closing over him. “Too late — ” he choked. “Too late— too late—” “No,” bubbled the plant. “Not too late yet. This changes things. For I have seeded ten times and passed on my life. But you — I did not understand. I did not realize your need.” The flood, cresting, ran clear and strong, the waves breaking heavily on the drowned shore by the river mouth. The rescue spinner, two hours out of Base and de- scending once again through the fleeting murk, checked at the sight of a begrimed human 16 figure, staggering along the slick margin of the shore, car- rying something large and limp under one arm, and with the other arm poking at the ground with a stick. The spinner came down al- most on top of him, and the two men in it reached to catch Calvin. He could hardly stand, let alone stumble forward, but stumble he did. “Cal!” said the pilot. “Hold up! IFs us.” “Let go,” said Calvin thick- ly. He pulled loose, dug with his stick, dropped something from the limp thing into the hole he had made, and moved on. “You out of your head. Cal?” cried the co-pilot. “Come on, weVe got to get you back to the hospital.” “No,” said Calvin, pulling away again. “What’re you doing?” de- manded the pilot. “WhaFve you got there?” “Think-plant. Dead,” said Calvin, continuing his work. ''Let go!” He fought weakl>% but so fiercely that they did turn him loose again. “You don’t understand. Saved my life.” “Saved your life?” The pilot followed him. “How?” “1 was on an island. In the river. Flood coming up.” Cal- vin dug a fresh hole in the ground. “It could have lived a little longer. It let me pull it ahead of time — so Fd have something to float to shore MARK MALLORY

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on.” He turned exhaustion- bleared eyes on them. Saved my life.” The pilot and the co-pilot looked at each other as two men look at each other over the head of a child, or a mad- man. '‘All right, Cal,” said the pilot. "So it saved your life. But how come you’ve got to do this? And what are you doing, anyhow?” "What am I doing?” Calvin paused entirely and turned to face them. "What am I do- ing?” he repeated on a rising note of wonder. "Why, you damn fools, Tm doing the first real thing I ever did in my life! I’m saving the lives of these seeds!” END Charting Our Genes In a combined assault on ‘^linkage studies” for *^the location of genes for such things as eye color, blood groups and specific hereditary diseases,” Johns Hopkins University researchers and computer men are engaged in what may be the final probe into the mystery of heredity. Using inherited disease as a marker, it can be determined which genes travel together; the computers are set to work figuring out the odds of two hereditary traits being contained in the same chromosome, and then the genetic makeup of all members of the family in regard to the hereditary disease. The same method can be used with eye color, blood groups, and even such odd inherited traits as the ability to taste certain chemicals. Prof. S. A. Talbot, spokesman for the research group, cited ellip- tocytosis, a rare dominant characteristic in which the red blood cell has an elliptical shape, as an aid in computing the location of genes. There are about a dozen marker traits known to exist in Man of that clearly determinable a nature, and with the use of computers, scientists should be able to assign a linkage group to one in five of these traits. The major difficulty is collecting five-generation families. This is no problem with test animals and insects, but it is with hum.an beings. Prof. Talbot suggests an international linkage-analysis center where docu- mented data can be assembled and studied. The genetic prevention of certain hereditary diseases is one obvious benefit, and it is readily within grasp. Farther off is the complete charting of the chromosome for the preven- tion of all inherited disease — but not as far off as one vrould imagine, for progress is being made at a truly fantastic rate compared with the rela- tively slow development in other branches of medicine until now. Ulti- mately? Mating for desired traits has long been done in animal hus- bandry, and is an overworke<l theme in science fiction, where govern- mental decree is taken for granted — but need theie be force? There isn^t for marriage. 17

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the Divers By JAMES STAMERS *Xhe key to Fred’s success was simple he may not have had much of a mind, hut it was all his, nobody else’sl He had forgotten the beer again. He remembered that he had forgotten only as he opened the apaiianent door. A wave of smoke and onions and hamburger flowed past him into the dingy corridor and he stumbled on the gar- bage pail, plunked right in the doorway for him to lug along the passage to the chute. The bed was not made in one of their two rooms and newspa- pers littered the other. Elsie was in the kitchen. “Fred! Fred, did you re- member my beer?” 18

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He closed the door so that the neighbors would not hear the row to come, except through the walls. ‘‘Didja, Fred?” She stood akimbo in the kitchen doorway, a cigarette hanging from her lips, her dressing gown loose and spot- ted, her feet in old scuffs. ‘‘I forgot,” he mumbled, ‘‘ril go now.” Oh, no, he wouldn't. Not until he had heard a full re- sume of his lack of character, lack of enterprise, ambition, decency, thoughtfulness, man- hood, semblance of virtue. “I said I was going, Elsie. 1 said I was going, didn't I?” “Well, my day ! You remem- bered my name !” It was true he rarely used her name or called her any husbandly term such as dear or darling instead, and rarely looked at her at all if he could avoid it inconspicuously. Ten years of marriage — ten years of legal proximity, rather, for nothing in him was married to anything in her any more. “I don't know why you mar- ried me,” he said. “Makes you wonder, doesn't it? Go on, get out.” He almost knocked the man over as he left the apartment. The man was standing there, about to ring the bell. Well dressed, clean, expensive overcoat, polished shoes, black hat and a mild friendly face. 20 “Mr. Frederick Williams?^ the man asked. “Yes,” said Fred. “You entered the Sunday News competition for a free space ride?” “Yes. Did I win it?” “Unfortunately, no,” said the man. “Oh. Well, excuse me, Tve got to go and get something.” “I'll come with you. My name is Howard Sprinnell, Mr. Williams, and Tve been examining the entries to that competition. Frankly, we think you have considerable talent.” “Mister,” said Fred over his shoulder as they went down the stairs, “if you're trying to sell me something — ” “I don't want a penny from you, Mr. Williams.” “Then what — ” “We would merely appreci- ate a few hours of your time, at your convenience.” “A few hours?” Fred said, distressed. By working double shift in the automation-parts supply house, he could just keep going, financially and physically. The question of mental fatigue was exclusive- ly Elsie's province and there he had a rough working technique for responding without really listening. His job called for no mental effort greater than reading a ship- ping list, and his home life certainly didn't. Most of the time he had nothing in his mind at all; the days passed JAMES STAMERS

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faster that way. But Elsie and the job kept him tired. Odd how just not listening wrung you out and drained you off. “We are, of course, very glad to offer you compensation for your time, Mr. Williams,” said the man. Elsie would just drink it away. He'd have to haul crates of bourbon instead of cans of beer, that's all. “Not interested,” he said. That was it. That was the way to keep a salesman stall- ed. Just “not interested.” Keep saying it and nothing else. They all said they were not salesmen and weren't sell- ing anything. Every salesman he had ever met at the door said that. Galactic Encyclope- dia, Nuclear Brush, Your Venus Vacation, video sub- scriptions, even the Federal numbei's game, they all start- ed out by offering you a spe- cial opportunity and were not selling you anything. The man was still talking. “Not interested,'’ Fred said. “Fred,” said the man as they reached the bottom of the stairs, “I'm doing you a favor. I'm not supposed to tell you this, but either you come vol- untarily or you'll come any- way. Why not get paid for it?” “Not interested. And if any- one wants me, they can come and get me. I don't care. I just don't care.” He slouched off into the rain toward the supermarket. As Dr. Howard Sprinnell watched him go he took a small silver case from his top- coat pocket. He raised the case to his lips and said quiet- ly: “Sprinnell here. No. A clear case, but no. Pick him up.” The squad car arrived si- lently on its jets as Fred Williams reached the door of the apartment house. He was carrying a pack of beer in each hand and was glad to see the man had gone. That's all you had to do — just keep say- ing “not interested” until they went away. “O.K., bud.” The troopers took him on both sides, grasped his arms, and levered him round. “Hey!” Fred protested. “The beer's for my wife. She's waiting for it. Please, fellers, I'll never hear the end of it if she doesn't get her beer.” “Joe,” said the trooper on Fred's right, jerking his head in the direction of the door be- hind them. A third trooper climbed out of the squad car, took the packs from Fred's hands and walked into the apartment house. He climbed the stairs swiftly, wrinkling his nose at the stale thickness of the air, knocked on the apartment door and waited for Elsie to open it. “Here's your beer,” he said shortly. “Where's Fred?” “Your husband is being de- 21 THE DIVERS

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tained in connection with a robbery at his office/' "‘Fred! Are you kidding? Fred hasn't the sense or the guts ! How long will he be gone?" “Two or three weeks." “Oh," said Elsie, scratching herself disinterestedly. “Well, thanks for the beer." She shut the door and the trooper returned to the squad car. He looked at Fred sym- pathetically but said nothing. The squad car took off, then turned on its sirens. ‘‘What's this all about?" asked Fred Williams from the back seat. “Just excitement, bud. We live a dull life." You think you do, you should live mine. I don't care anyway. If I ask them what I'm doing in this squad car. I'll get a silly answer. “A guy called Spinner or something send for you?" “We don't get sent for, bud. Where have you been, the Middle Ages?" He had a point there. Se- curity troopers were un- der direct control of the President and came and went as they pleased. The satellite stations gave them general di- rectives and the President directed the stations. Fred Williams grinned at the thought of Spinner, or what- ever his name was, calling the President to call a satellite station to call these cops to come and get him. He would have been shocked and fright- ened if anyone had told him this was almost exactly what had happened. They shot into the garage of an ordinary Federal police station, a large tiled vault smelling of hoses, soap and water. The troopers took him upstairs, along wax-polished corridors, through swinging doors and out of the muttered voices, footsteps, paper rat- tling and telephone tinkle of the station, into the smooth silence of a surgery. That fel- low Spinner was waiting in a white doctor's coat. “They pick you up too?" Fred Williams said. The Security troopers hoist- ed him into a dentist's chair, saluted the other man and went away. “You can leave any time you wish, Fred. If you do, though. I'll have you brought back. I'm Dr. Howard Sprin- nell." “Funny, I thought your name was Cloud Spinner or something," Fred confessed. “That's veiy interesting." The doctor leaned forward across his desk. “What made you think that?" “I just remembered it that way, that's all." “Ah. You have an unusual mind, Fred. No, I mean it. And just to show you this is not fooling, I have a call here for you from the President." “From Jake?" 22 JAMES STAMERS

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“From President Jackson, yes.” Dr. SPRINNELL pressed a a green button on the video control on his desk. The wall panel lit and Presi- dent Jackson’s familiar face looked at Fred Williams. “Mr. Williams,” said the President. “The nation has called you to an unusual task. On your complete cooperation and absolute discretion in not mentioning to anyone — to any- one at all — what you may now learn depend matters of the utmost consequence to us all. I wish you good luck and God- speed.” The panel went dark and the doctor switched off. “That was Jake himself,” Fred Williams said. “Talking to me.” Like the many thousand million in the System, Fred referred to the President fa- miliarly as Jake, but he never thought he would get to talk to him, or be talked to person- ally. “What did he want to talk to me for?” Fred asked, dazed. “That’s what I want to show you,” said Dr. Sprinnell. “You understood what the President said about keeping this entirely confidential?” “Hell, no one would believe it if I said I’d been talking to the President, anyway.” “That’s what we figure,” said the doctor, smiling slight- ly. He picked up a pack of cards and flipped five of them onto the desk, a circle, a cross, two wavy lines, a rectangle and a star. “These are Zener cards, Fred. Ever see them before?” No, but they didn’t look like much. This was cockeyed, the whole situation — having the President call him so that he and a quack could play cards. “It will be clearer in a little while,” Dr. Howard Sprinnell said. “But first we must run this little check. Please point to one of these cards every minute when I say ‘now.’ ” Fred shifted himself in the high chair and pointed to one of the five cards obediently every minute. After twenty minutes, the doctor increased the rate. He noted every selec- tion. “Last lap now, Fred.” He was sick of this, but it was better than sitting in the apartment with Elsie. Fred pointed to a card for the last time. “And now,” the doctor said, standing up and feeding his notations into a machine in the corner of the room, “we have here the results.” He pulled a tape from the machine as it purred out, and showed it to Fred. It was a score of some sort. “In another room,” Dr. Howard Sprinnell explained, “we have a synchronized tele- path trying to influence your selections of these cards. If you have psi qualities, Fred, 23 THE DIVERS

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these results will show how high they are. If you have none, then your chances of picking the right card are one in five. That goes for picking the card ahead of the right one, or behind it, or two ahead and so on. In other words, if the cards had been selected here by a machine instead of you, we would expect twenty per cent of the answers to be right, by sheer chance — or statistical probability, to put it more accurately.” “So how did I do? Am I a mind-reader? That would make me laugh.” The doctor glanced at the result tape he was hold- ing. “You have the results we want,” he said. “Otherwise I would not tell you this. You would be thanked, given a re- ward, made a fuss of by some civil servant of prominence and sent home in style.” He looked up at Fred in the dentist’s chair. “Do you remember that contest in the Sunday NeivsV’ Fred Williams remembered it. Every week there had been a puzzle picture to identify. The contest had lasted nearly a year. He remembered par- ticularly that each week there had been a cut of the room in which entries were to be judged, a large editorial office, just above the puzzle picture. Just a room. He had wondered why they bothered to put it in. 24 “There was a picture of a room in the paper,” said the doctor, “where each week, without any possibility of fraud or anyone seeing it ex- cept the judges, the solution to the puzzle was hung up on the wall in the middle of the picture shovm in the paper. The puzzles themselves were meaningless. We w'anted to see how many people wrote in the right solution just from seeing the picture of the emp- ty room. The right solution, of course, was the one hanging in that room at that time, which no one could see, and which was selected an hour before publication of the pa- per each week by random se- lection in a dictionaiy.” “So what did I get, a con- solation prize?” asked Fred. “In a way,” the doctor smiled. “But not for coming near winning. The top twenty winners were highly gifted people we recruited into the Psi faculties of Duke, Har- vard, Oxford, Paris and else- where. They scored consistent- ly throughout the year with a better than probability devia- tion.” “Huh?” “They got a lot more right than they could by chance alone. But your results Avere even more interesting to us. You got the same result here, just now, on the Zener cards.” “I’m still in the running?” “Fred, quite seriously, you are the best candidate we’ve JAMES STAMERS

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ever met. Hence the special treatment. In the history of the System Government, there have only been ten other peo- ple with results similar to yours.” “Is that so? Well, I suppose you know what you're doing, Doc. But I never had a pre- monition in my life.” Doctor Howard Sprinnell frowned. “I should hope not. Almost everyone has some psi capacities, but w'e're not inter- ested in minor phenomena. This is a government depart- ment, Fred. Here a thing has to work all the time, whenever it's needed, wherever it’s need- ed. A faculty professor has. off-days when he couldn't roll a die against chance. But you can't.” “Look, doc. I think you’ve got the wrong man. I'm Fred Williams. Frederick L. Wil- liams. Are you sure — ” “Look yourself,” interrupt- ed the doctor, leaning over to wave the tape under Fred’s nose. Chance would give you twenty per cent right — one out of five. Look at your re- sult.” Fred took the tape and studied it. “You’ve read it wrong. This says several mil- lion per cent.” “It says z67'o per cent. NiL Not one answer right, Fred. The millions are the probabil- ities of that deviation ... oh, never mind. See the big black zero?” “Yes, Doc.” “That is your result. It’s statistically almost impossi- ble, but you've done it. You did it with the puzste in the competition. You did not get one single, solitary answer right. Not one! Even a ma- chine gets one out of five right, Fred. Don't you see?” No, he didn’t, and it seemed to be just what Elsie was al- ways complaining about. He lacked this and lacked that. And now he couldn’t even do what a machine did. “Okay, Doc,” Fred said tiredly. “So I'm dumber than a machine. That figures.” “If you talk like that, you are,” snapped Doctor Howard Sprinell. “You have the high- est negative Psi rating in the Solar System. No clairvoy- ance, no telepathy, no induced hallucinations, no precogni- tions, no telekinesis, no psi- screens, no interference of any kind. When we send you out into — well, never mind, Fred. The main point at present is that you are a very, very rare observer.” “That’s fine,” Fred said. “Look, Doc, I feel beat.” “You’re meant to. Hell, man. I’ve been tiring you for two hours now. And what’s more. I'll give you a little warning in advance. We aren’t going to let you eat for three days either. You’re going to be so tired that your body is going to loosen its grip. Don’t worry, you won’t die. Ten peo- ple have done this before you 25 THE DIVERS

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and they’re all right. You’ll meet them all soon. Now just hold still.” Dr. Howard Sprinnell slip- ped a hypo needle swiftly into Fred’s neck, withdrew it and dabbed with a piece of surgi- cal wool. “Off you go, Fred.” He was breaking into pieces, but he didn’t care. He slept and woke and slept and woke in the chair in old Cloud Spinner’s office and now he was coming apart and he just did not care. Fred Wil- liams had had several years of simple apathy. It came nat- urally to him. His body rested, tired and inert, lacking in vigor from lack of food, and his mind separated slowly from it, like a man standing up in a pool of pygmies. His heart, hands, liver, stomach, viscera had their pygmy minds all bundled in with his, and now falling away in sepa- ration as he rose from them. His mind rose away from his body in the chair alto- gether. He viewed his body with unconcern, and the chair in which it sat, and the room, and through the walls the sur- rounding offices, and the rooms of the Federal police station, where the Security trooper named Joe who had taken the beer sat picking his teeth and gabbing with a pair of young Federal cops, and the roof of the block in which the station stood. His mind went up like a balloon, rising swiftly into the atmosphere, and the city shrank away under him like a toy plan, a kid’s aid to Bet- ter Civics, Home Town box VI, no Solar Credits neces- sary. He shifted automatically away from the main airport, but a moment later he went clean through an airliner cockpit, cabins with passen- gers, exhaust, and out exactly where he was before. His mind followed the airliner in- voluntarily, until he asked himself why, and immediately continued rising into the sky, looking down at the ground and the great spherical hori- zon. His mind rose into cloud and examined minutely a wa- ter molecule floating from a piece of dust as big as a rock. His sense of proportion sent him shooting out of the top of the cloud suddenly, like a star- tled fish. The ground became a globe gradually, and as the clouds below became little wisps over the light blue haze of the Earth, his feeling of liberation increased and he rose faster. He went through layer after layer of radiation sparking fitfully around him, and fiercer belts. And then the dust thinned out like scattered transparent ball bearings, and his mind approached the sat- ellite stations riding over the Earth. He was tempted to go through one, but it seemed un- important and he rose out. 26 JAMES STAMERS

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The Moon was swinging down away from him, a vast pitted ball bigger to his mind than the Earth now. He put on more speed, so that his mind flashed away from the Sun. Then as he paused an odd thing happened. One moment he was up there, alone above the small Earth and its small- er Moon, and the next instant his mind had flashed right into the center of the Sun, deep in the inferno of its core, where violence and variegated light surrounded him. And then he was out again, and his mind zoomed off as if he were sit- ting in the front seat of a low- slung car with the landmarks coming at a rush toward him and away to the side. The Galaxy fell away behind his mind in this fashion and the Great Nebula of Andromeda passed by. His mind roamed for a while among the other galactic clusters and the spiral gal- axies. He found his mind could appear at any point he wished, without the long rush through space. He could trans- fer instantaneously from place to place, and he hopped in this way at random from Crab to Lagoon and in to Polaris and out to the Great Spiral of Ursa Major, and onward to the open centers of the uni- verse. In deeper space, where end- less banks of galaxies roller- coasted away from each other, he felt a change of quality THE DIVERS come over his mind. It turned within itself where all the vivid stars became mere float- ing lights on the surface of a bubble outside. Here, within his mind, was deeper space and yet another liberation. His mind hung like a grape about to empty into a vat, which in this larger sense was truly himself. Insofar as he, Fi-ed Williams, was a mind, it was only a skin around the greater liquid, in which indeed he perceived all things held in common. He was about to throw off the skin and mingle in this condition where he and the Magellanic Clouds and Joe the Security trooper’s toothpick had a single existence, when he was back in the chair in the office. His body settled over him again. He felt compressed and imprisoned and robbed. His head turned as if it were o*n antiquated pulleys and his arms and shoulders were strung together awkwardly. “It’s bad to be back, isn’t it? You’ll never get used to that. But that was one hell of a Dive.” Fred williams looked at the other people in the of- fice. There were ten of them and Dr. Howard Sprinnell. Three were women, and all except the doctor had large eyes. That was what you noticed about them, their enormous 27

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gentle eyes and their slightly thin faces. The doctor held a mirror up for him to see his own face, and it was much the same. “They thought we had lost you there for a while,” said the doctor. “All Divers do that on their first trip out — but you. I’m told, almost joined the Lord.” “Is that what This is?” “It’s a matter outside our field,” said Dr. Howard Sprin- nell carefully, “and a matter of choice as to name. But mys- tical evidence seems to point that way.” One of the girls laughed. “You’re embarrassing the So- lar Government, Fred. They are not supposed to have any sectarian views. But that’s what we Divers think the This is. My name’s Milly. 'This is Pat, and Joan, Bill, Ed, Al, John, Anthony, Ricardo and Mitch. Welcome to the Divers, Fred.” Fred Williams smiled around. The women were at- tractive, all brown-haired and nicely shaped. The seven men were just regular guys you might meet anywhere. But then, he wasn’t anything to win a prize himself. “So far as we are concern- ed, Fred,” Dr. Howard Sprin- nell said, “and this is official, there is the normal conscious mind, the subliminal mind of which we are not usually con- scious but which is apparently a parcel of regional physical 28 minds and the mind you roam in, and there is the uncon- scious mind, which does not seem to belong to any one pez’- son, although everyone has it, and which you people embar- rass me by referring to as the This. “All we know, officially, is that the This is the natural or original home of the universe, and the only reason we know that is because we don’t want Divers to disappear into it and not come out. You’re all too rare. I gather it is almost un- bearable to come out of. But you’ll just have to avoid the temptation to go home, as it were. After all, it has taken several million years to get man out here where he is and what he is. And the second reason is that the entire Solar Government depends on the people in this room for infor- mation.” Fred Williams looked at the others. They were serious. The smallest of the girls, Pat, caught him looking and smiled. She turned to the doctor. “Can I tell Fred?” “You followed him, so you may as well. 7 don’t know what you Divers feel. But the Defense Council is waiting for the rest of you and we must hurry along.” Dr. Howard Sprinnell pat- ted Fred on the shoulder as he passed. He stood aside for the other Divers to leave the room, nodded to Pat and Fred, JAMES STAMERS

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and shut the door behind him. Fred Williams levered his body off the dentist’s chair and stood unsteadily. The girl took his arm. She was smaller than he, the top of her head reaching to his mouth, small, delicate and scented with heather. “There’s a lounge next door — you may not have noticed it on the way out — and there’s always a bowl of fruit and some cheese and biscuits there. Let’s go in.” He followed her. Even the short walk helped accustom himself to his body again. And the room was large and airy, overlooking the cen- tral park of the city and the clouds beyond the tall build- ings in the distance. He stood looking out at the view and eating an apple while she sliced cheese and laid the pieces on a plate with some biscuits for him. Then she sat down, folded her hands in her lap and looked at him. She was wearing a white-and- blue-check dress. She looked young and fresh and alive. The room was clean and fresh. He could not think of Elsie and that apartment as being in the same world. “Did the doc say you fol- lowed me?” Fred asked even- tually. “One of us always goes with a new Diver on the first trip.” “What did I look like? I mean was there anything to see?” “Oh, yes.” Pat laughed. "As a matter of fact, our minds look like the inside of eggs out there.” “But a plane went through me. And I shot for some rea- son into the Sun.” He turned and looked disbelievingly up into the sky. The Sun made him blink and his eyes watered. “Now I can’t even look at it,” he said, “any more than I could before.” “Show me your mind,” she said simply. “Where is it?” “Well . . .” “That’s the whole point of the Divers. A mind is not in space-time. It is connected with a body which is — or, to be exact, it is associated with — a physical brain, which in turn can work a mouth and hands to communicate what the mind has seen. The Solar Government has the problem in reverse. They can send ships through hyper-space ; other- wise, as you know, we could never have populated the Gal- axy. Why, Polaris, which you visited, is over a thousand light-years from Earth! They can make matter shift in and out of hyper-space. But they can’t communicate that far away. Radiation won’t take the shift. So the government can either send radio waves out and wait a couple of thou- sand years for the answer, or it has to shuttle whole ships THE DIVERS 29

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to and fro just to get a simple message. “Worse, from a defense viewpoint, there are times when they must have informa- tion fast and when the nature of the news means that no ship will be either available or allowed to become available to carry the news. Suppose you are an intelligent life- form off Canopus and you think up a magnificent way of taking over the Solar System. You’re six hundred and fifty light-years away, but time is no problem because either you live longer than that or you have a tribe-culture. Even if the system had a billion police ships, which it hasn't, it could never be sure of catching Canopus preparing, or inter- cepting whatever horror they sent oft. And even if it were lucky, the ship would have to come back itself to get the news to the Solar Govern- ment. “A Diver can send his mind instantaneously from one end of the universe to the other, he can examine atomic parti- cles or survey galaxies, he can see through matter as if it were full of holes — which it is — he can patrol sectors and report exactly what he found there. He can dive into deep space and be free.” “Yes,” Fred Williams said. “That’s it. Free. That’s exact- ly how we feel, isn’t it?” “Never mind. You’ll be go- ing out again. Regularly. With 30 me at first until you get pa- troling under control. And then on your own.” “Are we always hungry?” asked Fred Williams, taking another apple. “It helps. The government would like us to be permanent- ly at the point of death, but that is fortunately impracti- cal. The less hold our bodies have, the easier it is to go out. There’s one other point, though. And since you’re com- ing with me on your training. I’d prefer you to know — no matter what the rules say. Whenever you go near another living being in a Dive, your mind can see the other mind, and you can read it from the pictures in it. It’s difficult to describe, but you’ll see for yourself. And if the mind you are looking at is connected up to a body, as we are now, and if the pictures don’t seem to fit the situation, you can take it that they refer to events still in the future as far as that body is concerned. The mind has a different space- time existence from the body, obviously, and quite often it is ahead in time. That’s why we have to be negative Psi. Anyone can Dive, but only a negative Psi can remain ob- jective about other beings’ minds. A Psi would collect other minds’ contents and get them confused with his own — future and present all messed up, full of symbols — take a look at a Psi’s mind sometime JAMES STAMERS

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on the way back. There are a lot of accidental roamers around on Earth.'' ‘‘If we can read other minds," Fred Williams said thoughtfully, “then we Divers could have a hell of a lot of power." He was surprised when Pat laughed. “We all think of that," she said, “but so did the Solar Government. We have a bunch of Psis and Security troops tracing us all the time when we're in the body. But the real hold on us is not that. How would you feel if you were told you could never Dive again?" “I — I wouldn't like that." “You see? And you've only been on the first experimental Dive. Imagine when it is your whole life." Fred Williams nodded slow- ly. Then he asked: “Where do you live?" “Oh, no. Divers never mix. Our existence is a top-secret. And the risk of losing two Divers in a single accident would keep the Defense Coun- cil awake at night." “But everyone was here to- day." “To welcome you. That's a big occasion to us." “It's the biggest thing that ever happened to me," Fred Williams said. “I know," Pat answered quietly. “I saw your mind. But ril change that, Fred." She stood up and brushed her hands over her dress. “Where will I see you again?" he asked. “You never will." He stood up to protest. “Not in the body," she amended. He looked so mournful that she walked over and kissed him. “There's a good-by present. Diver. But we will meet reg- ularly." Finding him sitting with a pile of apple cores beside him, the doctor clicked his tongue reprovingly. “Tell me. Doc, how could you stop me Diving?" asked Fred worriedly. “Fill you full of vitamins and carbohydrates and alcohol and send you on a pleasure- cruise with a lot of accom- plished women," said Dr. Howard Sprinnell promptly. “Or allow you to stuff yourself with apples, for a start. Now come along or I'll bar you from the exercise room." Fred Williams followed him thoughtfully. “By the way," the doctor said over his shoulder, “your wife thinks you're under ar- rest. You’ve been here four days so far and we can keep you another ten or so. After that you’ll have to go back. You're on our payroll now, but you'd better keep your job. Or we can find you a heavier one, if you're not tired enough. 31 THE DIVERS

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We’ll seal a miniature trans- mitter into your larynx under the skin before you leave, so that you can report audibly from wherever you are. Div- ing has the same effect on the body as sleep, you’ll find, so you can do both at once. I’ll grade off the injections before you leave here. Now^ this is the political field as we know it . . They stood in a large lecture hall, filled with spaced models of the Solar System, set in the Milky Way and surround- ed by the related galaxies. ‘‘Here’s the spiral in Andro- meda,” said the doctor, using a long pointer. “I understand you went there ...” He took Fred Williams on a general tour of the hall. “Of course there are others not shown here,” he concluded. “The Coma- Virgo system of galaxies, for one example. But these are the ones politically important at this time. In Sag- ittarius, we have a problem. There’s a human colony there — a very early one, as a matter of fact — which we’re sending an envoy to. But we don’t know what sort of an envoy they are expecting, whether he should be a technical agrono- mist, a sociologist, a radiation expert, or a plain folksy re- minder of Earth, or what. A simple problem really, but a mistake will cost us several billion credits to correct. So your first assignment, under Pat’s tuition, will be to find out and report. When you get back, you’ll rank officially as a Diver. Rendezvous is over the Peninsula, above San Fran- cisco ; you can’t miss it. Take your mind there before you leave and come back there on the way in. Around fifteen thousand feet is the recom- mended height, but that, like your mind, is immaterial, if you’ll pardon the pun. And now I suggest you go down to the police gym and take some good strong exercise so that you feel properly tired for the journey.” Dr. Howard Sprinnell put his hands in his pockets and gazed at his polished shoes. “I don’t quite know how to say this, Fred,” he continued, “but I’m responsible for you Divers. You’re entitled to your own forms of amusement, of course, but please remember you are being watched by Psis. No dropping in on the Presi- dent’s bedroom. Other people’s bedrooms, all right, though I trust you’ll keep out of mine. But do nothing that could make you be considered a secu- rity risk. That is the only thing that would worry us.” Fred Williams assured him and left the hall to go down to the police gym. He did not un- derstand why the warning should be necessary. On the other hand, you could take it as a delicate permission to do anything that was not a secu- rity risk. He passed the police canteen and restrained himself 32 JAMES STAMERS

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from going in to order a doughnut with Martian syrup. It would keep him from Div- ing. He rose into the atmos- phere above the city and headed across America to the rendezvous above the West Coast. The Earth spun away from beneath him. He had time to be surprised that in the few hours back on Earth he had forgotten the unbur- dened clarity of mind in a Dive. He knew who he was. He was unquestionably Fred Wil- liams up here, as much as he was Fred Williams down there. But here he felt differ- ent, free, while down there he was embedded and obscured in a shell of a body. Here, this time, his vision was not limited to a forward cone but extended in a complete sphere around him. He saw the large nick in the coast ahead and came down to meet his tutor Diver. Pat had said he looked like the inside of an egg, but he was not prepared for the great ovoid poised there below him. He came up to her with a rush and found he was even bigger by comparison. When they touched, he heard her voice. There was a slight resistance as his mind met hers and then she slipped inside his, so that he enclosed her mind within his ovoid mind. ‘‘One of the disadvantages of a Diver,'’ she said quietly within him, •‘is that we can only talk to each other by con- tact. A Psi could see our thoughts radiating out like an aurora, but we can't. We trav- el this way when two Divers are together, which isn't often, so that we both think of going to the same place. If we do get separated, come back here im- mediately and we'll start again." “Fine." ''Please, The very gentlest suggestion of vocalizing will do. That was like a cannon." “Sorry." “Much better. Now, gently, out. Think of rising slowly . . , That's right." They rose away from the Earth. “Over there," she prompted, “is the galactic spiral arm we are in. See, running from Orion? The Solar System is out here on a limb. Over here is where we're going, deep into the Galaxy, our own galaxy. You'll soon pick up the main roads. See that fan-shaped arch? That's a T-Tauri varia- ble, signposts to us. Think of being just off that one now." He did — and there they were, in a dark lane of the Milky Way. “Now you can imagine what would happen if we were mov- ing separately and turned our minds to different points. You have to go back and start again then. Now, we're going down this dark lane." They moved through the 33 THE DIVERS

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splendor of the Milky Way, through vast lanes of fine dark nebulae, across a giant rift, past glowing clouds of hydro- gen and oxygen and bright ex- panding shells, rings within rings, flowing out from intense stars in their center as if the star were a pebble dropped in a pond of burning space, the planetary nebulae. The Sagittarian region was well known to Pat and she commented on the Lagoon, and Omega and Trifid Nebula sus- pended around them. The local system they sought lay off a loose globular star cluster, one of a crowd here deep in toward the center of the Galaxy, the bright core around which the spiral arms of the entire Milky Way ponderously swung. He was part engrossed in the technique of moving his mind, part awed by the variety and beauty of the Galaxy, and part lost in the beauty of the mind within him. She moved with deft, clear thought like the chime of crystals. The sen- sory images of Earth were gross and distorted projections of the way he saw her, but she was at once the beating rhythm beneath rock-and-roll and the abstracted clarity of Chopin, the summer wind and the warmth of a wine. He held her mind within his in a new union so complete that any- thing else was mere fumbling. “Thank you,” he heard her voice say gently, and they sank down toward the rings of 34 small planets they had come to visit. A COLONY from Earth im- plied an atmosphere, and several planets in the group indeed looked fuzzy. The two Divers skimmed rapidly from one to another in a general survey, selected the largest of those which might support man, and sank down through its belts of radiation. The central mass of land lay beneath thin clouds, through which the local sun shone in drifting spotlights over the cultivated areas and irregular groups of cities. “When we get closer,” her voice said, “you’ll see them walking about inside their minds, which to us will be cloudy colored eggs around them. They cannot see this, of course, any more than a non- Psi or we ourselves on Earth. If it isn’t obvious what they are thinking, we’ll have to go close enough to touch their minds with ours. But be very careful before you do that. If they are very empty-minded, there is a risk that their body magnetism will polarize your mind in temporarily. You can get out again, but it’s messy and unpleasant while it lasts. And it’s almost impossible to avoid being sucked into a me- dium’s mind, so I hope they haven’t got any.” They were now over the main city and headed toward a large domed building, appar- JAMES STAMERS

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ently modeled on the Capitol. “How did they get here ?” he ^skcd “We don’t really know. The contacts so far have been by radio to a very early investi- gating fleet. Obviously they must have come out after the hyper-space drive was invent- ed— we’re over twenty thou- sand light-years from Earth, here, I’m told — but they don’t seem to realize the difficulties of sending them the envoy they asked for. Assuming these are the people that wanted one.” “Look, an old landcar — down there on the street!” he exclaimed. The colony apparently still used ground vehicles. As they came closer, they could see peo- ple walking in the streets and moving in and out of door- ways. There were no moving sidewalks, personal vertijets, anti-gravs. It was cleaner but otherwise as old-fashioned as the quarter in which Fred Williams lived on Earth. “Imagine coming so far — to find this,” he said, disappoint- ed. “You’ll find colonies are usually several generations be- hind, but let’s not be too hasty,” she said. “We can have a look around later. First, let’s see if we have the right planet and get this envoy matter out of the way. Down through the dome, here.” They passed through the weather sheathing and curved girders of the dome into an THE DIVERS assembly hall full of human beings, seated around a central dais. The colonists had appar- ently been inspired by Con- gress. A quick glance at their minds showed they were poli- ticians, no better and no worse than the Earth variety, intent on compromise and the ex- change of benefits between the groups of interests they seem- ed to represent. Several car- ried visibly in their minds one fixed interest and a quick count showed that agriculture was, in one form or another, the main business of the col- ony. “I think that answers it,” she said. “We’ll have to check on the other planets, but farm problems seem to be what they’re most concerned about.” He felt dissatisfied. “Should- n’t we touch one of their minds to see if this is really the polit- ical center? It may only be a village meeting.” It seemed incongruous to use the wonderful reach of Diving to gather little facts like this and to depart know- ing nothing else. Then again, he recalled the doctor describ- ing it as a simple problem. He felt her mind move un- derstandingly within his. “All right, let’s touch the Speaker and see how far his authority goes. He’d be very conscious of a superior Congress if there is one.” They moved together to the dais and brushed against the Speaker’s mind. The short, 35

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bald man sitting impressively in the center* of the bubble im- mediately leaned forward and banged his gavel. The entire assembly rose to their feet and stood still. The Speaker slouch- ed in his chair. His mind shook off the influences of his body and rose up to touch the two of them. “Welcome, at last,” he said. “You have been expecting us?” “Of course. Though why do you say ‘us’?” They moved partly from each other, overlapping only at the extreme limit of their own minds, so that he could see there were two of them to- gether. A gasp sounded in the Speaker’s mind like an echo and there was a movement throughout the assembly. “Can they hear us?” Pat asked. “Naturally. Psi capacity is a minimum requirement for the Senate. Can’t you hear us?” “Only by mental contact.” “How odd,” the Speaker re- plied. “Still, we ourselves can- not merge in each other, only into housings.” “Housings?” “But surely ... You must know. Of course you must.” “Pm afraid we don’t.” “For heaven’s sake, what part of the Solar System do you come from that you don’t know a housing when you see one? Ganymede, Mer- 36 cury, Jove, Venus, Bacchus? Although I was under the im- pression that the entire system used the same terms.” “One moment,” Fred said. “What system are you talking about?” “This system here, natural- ly.” “We come from a different part of the Galaxy, a part that is called the Solar System by those who live there.” There was a multiple rus- tling of thoughts which dis- turbed the Speaker momen- tarily. “Please, gentlemen, please! Will every Senator please quit his housing so that we have less of these physical interrup- tions ?” Every member of the as- sembly sat down, relaxed his body and rose gently above it with a clear and uncluttered mind. “Thank you. Senators,” the Speaker said. “Now. Do we understand that you come from some other part of our galaxy ?” “Yes,” Pat said. “We call it the Milky Way.” “So do we.” “You probably brought the name with you.” “You are suggesting that we came from you and brought the name of the Galaxy with us?” “Why, yes.” “I see. Would you identify this solar system of yours?” JAMES STAMERS

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Pat held in her mind a pic- ture of the Solar System and the Sun, embedded in the long spiral arm of the Galaxy. She made the image of the Earth expand and contract in empha- sis. “Thank you. So you come from that little system, do you ? How interesting. And yet you have never heard of hous- ings.” “We call them bodies." “Well, so they are. I recall a primitive energy transmis- sion we had here long ago. We extended an invitation to the operators, but they have not so far arrived. They came from your system, or so they said.” “They did. They contacted you by what we call radio. We were sent, frankly, to see what sort of envoy should be sent here to you.” “Ah ! There has been a nat- ural confusion. We thought you were here from one of our outer systems where we are having some difficulty raising the right housing. In fact, we were just debating the correct form of grain to transmit to feed the housings on. They are in the awkward stage of hav- ing sufficient minds to exist, but insufficient nerve cortex to enable us to enter them. Our local represenatives — whom we mistook you for — have been having a very difficult time for several hundred years, but we will soon find the answer. Now, we will be glad to receive an envoy from THE DIVERS ybur system. We are always glad to receive representatives from our successful colonies. As to the type of envoy, any- one with a broad galactic view- point will do. We will, of course, be glad to offer housing and the usual facilities.” “When you say housing, you mean bodies?” “Naturally. Bodies such as these Senators’ or my own are the most adaptable for this climate. If you go in to our Ganymede or out to Jove you would have to use a local — er — body, because these hu- man types would melt or suffo- cate respectively. But the local housings in silica and in am- monia crystal have proved quite adequate for normal loco- motion and physical work there. The normal facilities of the sport planets would be available, to be sure. We are quite proud of our slither bodies, I suppose you would call them, in the snow worlds — quite a recent development. I fear we are not too luxurious here, but galactic opinion forces us to make our housings do almost everything they are capable of doing — ^walk, drive, cook and other such menial tasks. But then at least every- one knows we are not spending the revenue on our own hous- ing— er — our own bodies. Only last century we barely averted a political threat to make all Senators’ bodies sleep out in the open weather. But obvious- ly it is much moi’e expensive 37

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to keep breeding new bodies than build a shelter such as this one. Even taxpayers can see that.” The Speaker’s mind echoed general agreement from the Senators. “It will come as a surprise,” Pat said clearly, “but our sys- tem believes we colonized yours.” This met polite and general laughter in which the Speaker joined. “Perhaps,” he said, “you would care to communicate di- rect with the Senators who were in charge of your system during the developmental stages. Will the Senators please come forward for con- tact?” Seven of the minds above the floor of the Senate drifted over to touch peripherally against each other and against Pat and Ered. “When we first undertook that project,” one or all of them said, “your system was entirely unpopulated. On the third planet, we found, how- ever, roughly humanoid apes in isolated caves and by selec- tive breeding we succeeded in making that species into a housing identical with those we use on this planet. Unfor- tunately, only the less stable minds of the Galaxy were prepared to live quite so far out and we eventually lost touch. Is the same housing still used?” “So much so,” Pat told 38 them, “that we cannot nor- mally detach ourselves.” “You mean you send bodies from place to place?” “Yes. The radio signals you received were from a space- ship containg men in their own bodies.” “Remarkable. Naturally, we accept your statement. But this implies considerable technical skill — and a prodig- ious disregard for the taxpay- ers’ money. You mean there were actually men out there in bodies sending energy transmissions, instead of vis- iting us in the mind from Earth?” “Yes.” “Remarkable. Very remark- able. Can you spare the time to tell us more about this? We can accommodate you with a double housing or sep- arate housing, whichever you prefer.” “May I withdraw to consult with my colleague?” Pat ask- ed. “Of course. We will continue our debate.” The Senators returned to their forms and the Speaker, sinking back into his body, recalled the assembly to their discussion of agricultural problems. OVER the dome, Pat slipped inside Fred Williams’ mind again. They thought of the enormous space-ships de- veloped over many centuries and at uncounted cost to give JAMES STAMERS

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men favorable odds in an un- favorable environment. And of the hazardous shifting of power based on bomb-satel- lites, and the fence upon fence of security precautions on which Earth and the Solar System depended. Or rather, when they considered it, on which their local population depended. It was not a prob- lem for two Divers but for a team of specialists. They returned to the Speaker. “We would like to consult with the original Earth Sen- ators again and perhaps bor- row two — housings — for a a short while.” “With the greatest pleas- ure.” The Senators concerned quitted their housings and floated across the assembly to join them. They all rose to- gether to the outside of the dome, where they would not disturb the debate below. “One of the questions,” Fred said, “is what happens if we died — ^by accident, for example — ^while in a borrow- ed housing.” “You imply a question as to what happens to any of your people, since they have lost the power to detach them- selves, or do not make use of it.” “Yes.” “Unfortunately,” one or all of the Senators replied, “we do not know. It is said there is a continual production of new minds in the universe, which appear here and there, where- ever there are suitable hous- ings. Others disagree but have no real answer. If we lend you housing — a panther-style body for personal racing on the grass steppes, say, or a vast whale-style body for en- joying some of our oceans, and so on, there is some risk. Among certain cultures, we find a return of the mind to a similar vacant housing. In other places, we have found an obscuration of the mind. We think there are parallel universes differing from this as mind-form differs from substance. And we believe each mind continues in these further dimensions. This would be practical if you were unable to leave a dying hous- ing. Our advice is not to get caught in any accidents. “Should it be advantageous to you, we will keep housings ready for you here. One male and one female, of course. Ah — on one question which you did not ask — you will find our guest housings are a uniform breed which became popular on your Planet among the Greeks and Romans as ideal godlike forms, shortly before we returned here. “And as to the other ques- tion you have not asked — ^we never interfere with local cul- tures, for the greater the va- riety of each, the greater the enrichment of all. Your sys- tem is entirely safe; we pro- 39 THE DIVERS

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pose to observe it more closely from now on. It is our im- pression, however, that you would be wise not to mention the galactic system we rep- resent, when you return to your Earth. It would be too upsetting to the established pattern. We are all human beings, but we have solved the same problems in very dif- ferent ways.” “We have not solved ours,” Fred said. “Oh, neither have we. But at least the few of us here, including yourselves, at any time as our guests, have achieved what you would probably call immortality.” “We are free to accept your invitation at any time?” “Certainly.” “Then we will report that no other envoy is needed,” Pat said clearly. “That would be beneficial indeed.” “And may we send you a very limited number of friends?” “Your guests shall be our guests. Again, we suggest you limit knowledge of us so far as possible.” “We are called Divers be- cause we can leave our bodies. Only Divers could visit you in this way, and we will not send any others.” “Thank you. It is largely our fault. We have come across traces here and there of other colonies which we as- sumed were the successful re- 40 suit of past experiments. It occurs to us now that several of these may be in fact body- bound expeditions from your solar system. We will investi- gate and correct our cata- logues.” “We can be of assistance there,” Pat answered. “Excellent. We wish you Godspeed and a pleasant re- turn.” The nine minds released contact and moved apart. Fred felt Pat’s mind slip into his. They rose off the dome and increased speed, soaring into the sky and out, above the ring of planets. “Why didn’t we borrow a couple of bodies?” Fred asked. He could picture himself strutting elegantly in the body of a Greek god, with Pat to match beside him. “Please stop that — we’re zigzagging about. You’re new, Fred. Every Diver goes through the same routine — a pep-talk from the President, Doctor Sprinnell’s little tricks, your first Dive all over the universe, and then routine patrols. What you don’t know is that whenever we Divers come into contact with anoth- er race or another form of life, we are invariably offered gifts of some sort. Primitives sense the presence of a Diver and put on a show, lay out food and their treasures. The more advanced, using trained telepaths, try to bribe us. JAMES STAMERS

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And so on, without exception.” “Okay, so I’m new, Pat. So I don’t know the pattern. A few days ago I was a slob in an automation-parts supply house and now I’m here with you at the back end of the Milky Way, or the center, whichever way you look at it. But Doc Spinner made some pretty odd cracks to me about security and I don’t like the idea of being spied on all the time back on Earth.” “No Diver does. The De- fense Council put us in bus- iness, but now they are afraid of us, in a way. We can go anywhere and see anything. We might have a look at their secret installations or their private files. Then we would be in trouble.” “Well, I didn’t ask to come into this. But now that I’m in and a Diver, just one fancy move by Security and I’m off to get another body. That sounds odd, doesn’t it? But I mean it.” “I’m glad.” “Eh?” “I’m very glad, Fred. I wanted to see how you’d take it. I feel the same way. It’s true we’re always offered presents, but immortality is something larger than a pres- ent. And to get out from under the thumb of the Psis and their spying is something all of us have been longing for.” “And I’ll tell you something else, Pat. From now on, if the THE DIVERS other Divers agree, we’ll do what we want. Oh, the Solar System can have its patrol- ling. I’ll have to learn how that’s done from you. We’ll tell them what they want to know. But one sign of inter- ference and we’re off, and they can keep the bodies. We won’t tell them they are a backward colony that has for- gotten how to Dive. But we know it. We won’t tell them the rest of the Galaxy is run from the center back in Sag- ittarius by humans who can Dive. But we know that too. If I thought at all about it, I thought we were freaks, use- ful nuisances. And I didn’t mind being ordered about. But we’re not freaks, Pat. We’re the normal human beings that the Senate back there meant to create. It’s the Solar Sys- tem that is lop-sided, not us.” “I’m not — overinfluencing you, Fred?” “Hell, of course you are. I can hardly think of you with- out looping around a star. But the facts are the same. And from today, we’re not Divers. We’re the Free Di- vers, housing where we wish to, seeing what we want . . .” “And protecting the Solar System, Fred.” “Well — they’re entitled to that. And we’ll keep to their security regulations for our bodies on Earth, if it makes them happy. We can afford to give a little here and there.” 41

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They shot together through the nearest T-Tauri variable arch and zoomed happily. After a while, they returned to the rendezvous off the American coast on Earth. The other Divei’s were waiting for them. “It’s a custom,’’ Pat told him as they approached the nine Divers, hovering in space, “to greet you as a new Diver.” They closed together as they met, within Fred’s larger shell. He told them. There were no doubts among their minds. “Sooner or later,” Fred finished, “one of us was bound to meet the true Galac- tics we’ve just met. It hap- pened to be Pat and myself. I’m new and don’t know much about Diving, but I’ve seen enough to know that from now on I’m a Free Diver.” “So are we all,” they an- swered. Returning across Amer- ica in the one shell, they scattered confusion and head- ache throughout the psi- watching stations in their path by the scramble of elev- en sets of thoughts. Then they separated and left Fred to go down to his body while they returned to theirs in the dif- ferent places Security had put them. Pat followed him down as a precaution. This time, Fred Williams’ body fitted his mind with a 42 greater feeling of strangeness but less muddling. The smal- ler consciousnesses of his body did not obscure his per- ceptions; he was aware of it as a housing for his mind. He looked at Dr. Howard Sprinnell, who had listened to him so far in silence, uncom- menting and unmoved, a mild, friendly face in the small medical room. “So, Fred. I warned you, Pat warned you. You go out on two Dives, a few days after discovering that such things exist, and you come back to give me an ultimatum for the Solar Government. A lifetime here in the drabbest, almost medieval surroundings of the city and, after a few days, you come back announcing you’re a Free Diver, owing nothing to anyone. Is that right? Do you still stick to that?” Fred nodded. “You realize what we can do to you, Fred? Dammit, on your first Dive you almost went out of space-time alto- gether, only you didn’t know what you were doing. Do you know what you’re doing now ? Do you think I’ve spent twen- ty years searching for nega- tive Psis for government ser- vice so that you can turn them against the Solar System?” “Hold on. Doc. No one said anything about being against the Solar System. If there’s work to be done, we’ll do it. But in our own way and with- out being spied on.” JAMES STAMERS

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“Just give me one reason why the government should trust you, with the entire Se- curity system.” “Because,” Fred said care- fully, “you may have my body, but in my mind I am a Free Diver.” “And nothing anyone can say will change that, eh?” “No.” “You know,” Dr. Howard Sprinnell said reflectively, “you’re talking as if you had another body cached away somewhere.” “Whoever heard of that?” “Lots of people, Fred. Voo- doo zombies, certain Mahay- ana religious leaders, prehis- toric Egyptians — there’s quite a well documented tradition. But the great problem has al- ways been to find a leader with the courage to do it sci- entifically and in the inter- ests of all the people, not just the members of some sect. Give a man the universe to play in and he doesn’t mind a few rules as long as he’s allowed to play. Finding neg- ative Psis and creating th^e Divers as an organized official body was easy compared with the task of completing the ex- periment— by making one of them revolt! Nine of the ten before you were too easily sat- isfied. Diving according to the rules and regulations was enough for them.” “Who was the tenth?” “Pat, She was the prettiest and most discontented. I thought I could stir up some fire.” “You did.” “Ah, good. I am high-Psi, by the way. I seem to feel she’s somewhere around here. However ... I can never be a Diver myself, but years ago I formed the theory that a lot of phenomena could be ex- plained by minds reaching out beyond their bodies. Now be careful, Fred. I don’t want to know. The Security Psis are very real and there are a lot of things I cannot afford to know. I’m a Solar Govern- ment servant, remember. But it seemed to me there might conceivably be a life-form somewhere in the universe which used the body as a ve- hicle for its convenience. I hoped one day the Divers would find such a life-form, and if I made the regulations stiff enough and supplied one or two other irritations, one Diver might decide to make the jump, to revolt and stand on his own feet. Free Divers, you called yourselves, eh? A good name. I don’t want to know \^here your base — your other base — is, Fred. I only want to know there is a group of people willing to serve the Solar Government regardless of time, theoretically for eter- nity— that’s what it amounts to when you work it out. As I say. I’m just a government servant. And thanks. Free Diver.” He held out his hand and 43 THE DIVERS

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shook Fred's. “From now on, Fred, you can all come and go as you wish. If you feel like keeping to the security regu- lations, fine. But I’ll make it clear to the Defense Council that there’s nothing they can do about it if you don’t. Men who don’t mind losing their bodies have always been some- what beyond the power of a government.’’ “On that basis, Doc, I don’t mind continuing the way you planned.’’ “Laryngeal transmitter, continue your cover-job and the rest?” “Don’t see why not.” “Come along then. You’re due to be released from jail.” Fred followed the doctor in- to the operating room. He remembered the beer this time. Elsie lay back on her bed, drinking from the can, one of her scuffs dangling from a bare toe. “The trouble with you, Fred, is you can’t even rob an office.” “I didn’t.” “That’s what I mean. See? You just can’t do anything.” He lay back on his own ted and looked at her. There were a lot of things you didn’t mind putting up with, voluntarily. You married her, so you’d look after her, trudge to the shipping room to work and trudge back. The tireder you got, the better. For evening came every day, and with the evening came sleep for his housing and eight hours for patrolling the Galaxy. And beyond the system, out beyond the dark lanes, there were endless fonns of life . . . and the two great developments of men, one stemming from the other in different ways, but each ex- panding, colonizing, growing . . . all with problems for the Free Divers he led. “Wouldja get me another beer, Fred?” “Sure.” He remembered to slouch into the kitchen, as if he did not care. And when you con- sidered it, he didn’t care at all. This was one path of hu- man developments the Sen- ators never thought of. “Trouble with you, Fred, is you’re just a negative char- acter. You weren’t when I married you, but you are now.” Well, she was certainly en- titled to a beer for that. END There is a way to do this better . . . find it. Thomas A. Edison

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Dissolute Diplomat By BOB SHAW & WALT WILLIS After you finish this story try doing a blurb that does not give away the point. It can’t be done! GRINGLEDOONK lay in a comfortable floor dish, ex- perimenting with himself out of sheer boredom. From three points along his perimeter he projected slim pseudopods, in- tertwined them for a short distance in the center, then split the end of each in two and looped them out to form six little hooks. Listlessly he solidified the 45

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edifice and extruded an eye to examine it. It did not look like much. There were several races in the Federation who covered their bodies with fabrics, and this thing he had made might have been useful to one of them, but not to anybody civi- lized. More bored than ever, he commenced the slow process of dissolving the hardened pseudopods. A low whistle came from the entrance of the tubeway in the palace wall. The little circular door opened and Mugg, his Minister of Home Affairs, shot out onto the floor. He lay for a moment in the bullet shape that Gyoinks used for traveling the tubeway ; then he re-formed and flowed into the floor dish beside Grin- gledoonk. When he had stopped rip- pling, Mugg extruded an eye and, on seeing the peculiar shape his ruler had assumed, kept popping out more and bigger eyes to get a better view. Gringledoonk watched the process with disgust. No matter how often he was told about it, Mugg never seemed to realize how ill-mannered such displays of curiosity were. “What,” Mugg finally en- quired, “have you done to yourself. Your Softness?” “Never mind that,” Grin- gledoonk said irritably. “Why did you come here ? You know this is my rest period.” 46 “It's important,” Mugg re- plied. “A spaceship on normal drive has entered the system and is heading for this plan- et.” For an instant Gringle- doonk lost the cool green color- ing that befitted his position and allowed his natural mot- tled orange to show through. “What? What sort of a space- ship?” “It appears to be a Terran ship. Your Fluidity.” ‘“The Treaty does not allow Terran ships to land here,” Gringledoonk said. “This is most unexpected. We’ll have to check the libraries on how to receive the officers of a Ter- ran ship.” He moved out of his dish, balancing the still rigid tripod with difficulty, and into the entrance port of the tubeway. The soft, warm radiance there helped him dissolve and reab- sorb the cumbersome exten- sion, and he vanished into the narrow aperture of the tube- way. After years of inactivity, Gringledoonk, Lord and Rep- resentative of the Gyoinks, was back in business. Hal PORTMAN was hold- ing a moderate 800C when his warp-drive genera- tors gave a low sigh and van- ished into some unknown di- mension. The ancient Morris Starcruiser emerged into nor- mal space with a sickening jiggle. BOB SHAW & WALT WILLIS

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On checking his position, Portman found that there was a planet called Yoink so close, astronomically speaking, that he could have spat on it. He tapped out Yoink's coordi- nates on his destination selec- tor and began drinking beer in preparation. Two days and thirty-two cans of beer later, the Star- cruiser bulleted down for a landing. Wiping white froth from his bristly upper lip, Portman opened the lock and went down onto springy yellow turf. He found himself sur- rounded by a varicolored crowd of beings of indetermi- nate shape who chittered at him excitedly. He could not decide whether their agitation was due to the sudden appear- ance of his ship or the fact that it seemed to have crush- ed a number of their plastic buildings on arrival. He drew his sidearm and shouted, “Silence, friends. I am a citizen of — uh — Imperi- al Earth and I command your obedience. I want — ” One of the waist-high cones of jelly interrupted him by sprouting an enormous mouth and bellowing something about violations of the Treaty. Port- man gave the little alien a short burst from his Colt .045 which reduced it to a pile of crackling cinders. “You’re only saying that be- cause you’re jellos,” he joked hastily, feeling that it might DISSOLUTE DIPLOMAT be better to pass the incident off. The directory had stated that the Gyoinks were non- aggressive, but there was no point in not acting in a friend- ly manner. He knew about the Treaty, but the cargo of con- traband luminous furs that he had tucked away would have caused unwelcome comment if he had waited for an AA repair ship. “Now listen, friends,” he repeated, brandishing the weapon. “We’ll get along as long as nobody argues or tries to get funny. My ship has broken down. Replace the warp generators and I’ll be on my way.’’ “Imperial Earth will be grateful,” he added as an afterthought. This diplomacy stuff was a cinch for a guy who knew how to handle peo- ple and things. SEVERAL of the Gyoinks immediately extruded stumpy legs and waddled up the ramp into the ship. Others went off toward a larger dome- shaped building, muttering something about going for tools. Portman went into the ship and obtained a further supply of beer, booting aside any of the Gyoinks who got in his way, then lay down on the bright turf and contentedly watched the work progress. In spite of the fact that the Gyoinks were just animated trifles, he had to admit that 47

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they were pretty good space- drive mechanics. Later in the afternoon as Portman sat on the ramp, smoking under the brilliantly pink sky, a Gyoink approached from the direction of the town on the horizon. This was a large, pale green Gyoink who looked unfamiliar to Portman. ^ “What do you want? You’re disturbing a representative of Imperial Earth.” “I know, I know,” the Gyoink replied humbly. “My name is Gringledoonk.” “Anything to the Boston Gringledoonks?” Portman queried genially. “No,” Gringledoonk said, wincing slightly. “I come to apologize for the conduct of my people earlier. When I heard that you were here, I came from the Capital to make sure you would receive the proper attention due to a rep- resentative of — ” “Yeah, yeah, I should think so,” Portman cut in. “One of those jellos argued with me to- day. Argued ! How do you like that ?” He took the cigar from between his thick lips and pursed them in disapproval. “Most regrettable,” the Gyoink agreed. “I can assure you there will be no more such incidents. My people are igno- rant of the formalities in- volved in the reception of the captain of a Terran ship. For- tunately, our libraries contain something about the traditions 48 of the great Earth space fleets and, from now on, we will ob- serve those traditions to the best of our limited ability.” “That’s more like it,” Port- man said. IT HAD been necessary to dismantle the ship’s power plant and, as the Yoink nights were chilly and the installa- tion of the new generatora would not be completed until the morning, Portman was moved into one of the little plastic huts about a mile from the ship. He found that the Gyoinks had rigged up a ham- mock, of all things, but it took him only a short while to find the knack of sleeping in it. In the morning he was wakened by the sound of bells and the insistent prodding of a Gyoink who was proffering a glass of brown liquid on a small tray. The Gyoink’s shiny surface had become bright blue. Portman demanded to know what was going on. “Eight bells, sir,” the Gy- oink replied. “Your breakfast is ready.” There w^as a note of eager sincerity in the Gyoink’s voice. Portman stretched luxuri- ously in the hammock, took the glass and found that the Gyoinks had contrived to pro- duce a pretty fair rum. Grin- ning with satisfaction, he got up and lumbered out of the hut, stooping to get through the low door. Outside, a flat open convey- BOB SHAW & WALT WILLIS

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ance on four wheels, manned by two more blue Gyoinks, was waiting. It looked brand new and had lifebelts slung along the sides. “The Chief Engineer re- ports that your ship is ready, sir,” one of the Gyoinks said. “Step aboard and we will take you to it, sir. Aye, aye, sir.” Portman got into the car and sat down. As he was being driven the short distance to his ship, he found himself al- most wishing that he was not leaving so soon. Once the jellos had come to understand that he was the boss, they had been all right, in spite of being such ugly brutes. When they arrived at the battered old Starcruiser, Port- man hardly recognized it. Its hull was shining with a rich brassy brilliance in the morn- ing sunlight. Gringledoonk was waiting for him on a little platform at the foot of the ramp up to the airlock. Other bright blue Gyoinks stood in quivering rows nearby. “Good morning, sir,” Grin- gledoonk said, his voice charged with friendliness. “I hope that the launch we con- structed for you was comfort- able.” “The launch? Oh, yeah — very smooth. One of the jellos said the ship was ready. Is it?” Portman stepped out onto the platform. “Everything is shipshape, sir,” the Gyoink said. “We are doing our humble best to do DISSOLUTE DIPLOMAT everything in accordance with — ” “Yeah, I know. Skip all that stuff. As long as the new gen- erators are in. I’ll be satis- fied.” “There’s just one more thing, sir,” Gringledoonk said. The ranks of Gyoinks moved aside, revealing a shallow de- pression in the platform, in the center of which was a cir- cular hole about six inches in diameter. From under the de- pression a plastic tube led up the ramp and into the ship. “What, what ?” Portman snarled. “We only use this for long distances, but our library — ” “Skip it,” Portman said. He pushed Gringledoonk aside and headed for the bottom of the ramp across the dish-shaped hollow. Too late he noticed that there was a peculiar radiance hovering above the depression, coming from little translucent panels around its perimeter. He tried to retreat. But his bones had softened too rapidly and indeed his feet were already flowing out of his shoes onto the floor, to be joined by what had been his legs and the remainder of his unwashed body. He stopped screaming as his head com- pleted its ^acious descent, and his staring eyes remained visible only for a moment, si- lently surveying the surface of the great blob which he had 49

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so unaccountably become. It liquified still further and the mortal remains of Harold Portman ran out through the hole in the basin with a regret- tably undignified noise. The plastic pipe became dark and murky as he passed up it into his ship. “Just a matter of tradi- tion,” Gringledoonk explained proudly to the onlookers. “Our records are incomplete about Terran space fleet tradition, but they all agree on one thing — the Captain is always piped on board.” END The Plastics Revolution Within the memory of most people now alive, plastics have bounded into a leading place in all sorts of things from hosiery to construction mate- rials, yet their potentialities have scarcely been explored. Work now being done in Germany and Italy may replace or surpass polyethylene, the head of the polymer or long-chain-molecule family, that the majority of famil- iar plastics are descended from, along with straight chain alcohols and cyclic compounds with up to sixteen carbon atoms. The key now being explored is catalysts of organo-metals, such as combinations of aluminum, carbon and hydrogen, and titanium and chlorine. Dibasic acids with twelve carbon atoms and lactame with thirteen are produced by the cyclic process, promising new plastics that may outdo anything currently on the market. The organo-metallic catalysts make possible an “almost unbelievable” variety of chemical reactions. Ethylene, for example, is polymerized into substances of as much as several million molecular weight with atmos- pheric pressure, whereas less dense substances required high pressure. Among other qualities, the new plastics, used in tires, may increase mileage up to 120,000 miles I The new tetraethyl lead process, if proved practical, should reduce costs. This new method, when added to gasoline to prevent auto engine knock, has also been made possible by using catalysts. The United States alone produces 300,000 tons a year. It was invented in 1920 in America, and the new process using Ziegler catalysts reduces the need of so much sodium and chlorine as in the old process. It uses the temperature of boiling water instead of six to seven times as much heat and about half as much electrical energy is used.

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Nuts to mid talents! Mine was no satisfaction, never earned me a penny — and now it had me fighting for my life in... THE LITTLE RED BAG

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but finding only a sea of clouds instead. So I returned my at- tention to the inside of the plane, to the overstuffed gray- haired woman asleep beside me, to the basks of heads in seats before me, across the aisle to other heads, and down to the blonde. I had seen her in the con- course and at the gate, a shapely thing. Now she had crossed her legs and I was privileged to view a trim an- kle and calf, and her profile as she stared moodily across the aisle and out a window where there was nothing to see. I slid my eyes past her to others. A crossword-puzzle worker, a togetherness-type- magazine reader. Inventory completed, I went back to looking at the clouds, knowing I should be thinking about the printing order I was going to Los Angeles for, and not wanting to. So I started going through the purse of the woman next to me. Perhaps that sounds bad. It wasn’t. I’d been doing it for years and nobody ever complained. It started when I was a kid, this business of being able to explore the insides of things like purses and sealed boxes and locked drawers and — well, human beings. But human be- ings aren’t worth the trouble. It’s like swimming through spaghetti. And I’ve got to stay away from electric wires. They hurt. Now don’t ask me how they hurt. Maybe you think it’s fun. For the most part, it really isn’t. I always knew what was in Christmas presents before I unwrapped them, and there- fore Christmas was always spoiled for me as a kid. I can’t feel the color of anything, just its consistency. An apple senses about the same as a po- tato, except for the core and the stem. I can’t even tell if there’s writing on a piece of paper. So you see it isn’t much. Just the feel of shapes, the hardnesses and softnesses. But I’ve learned to become pretty good at guessing. Like this woman next to me. She had a short, cylindrical metal object in her purse with waxlike stuff inside it — a lip- stick. A round, hard object with dust inside — a compact. Handkerchief, chewing gum, a small book, probably an ad- dress book, money in a change purse — a few bills and coins. Not much else. I was a little disappointed. I’ve run across a gun or two in my time. But I never say any- thing. 1 LEARNED the wisdom of keeping my mouth shut in the fourth grade when Miss Winters, a stern, white-haired disciplinarian, ordered me to eat my sack lunch in the class- room with her instead of out- side with some of the other kids. This was the punishment 52 JERRY SOHL

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for some minor infraction. Lunchtime was nearly over and we’d both finished eating ; she said she’d be gone for a few moments and that I was to erase the blackboard during her absence, which I dutifully did. Class had hardly resumed when she started looking around the desk for her favo- rite mechanical pencil, asking if any of us had seen it, and looking straight at me. I didn’t want her to think I had taken it while she was out of the room, so I probed the contents of her purse, which she always kept in the upper right draw- er of her desk. “It’s in your purse,” I blurt- ed out. I was sent home with a stinging note. Since then I’ve kept quiet. At one time I assumed every- body was able to sense. I’ve known better for years. Still, I wonder how many other peo- ple are as close-mouthed about their special gift as I am about mine. I used to think that some day I’d make a lot of money out of it, but how? I can’t read thoughts. I can’t even be sure what some of the things 1 sense in probing really are. But I’ve learned to move things. Ever so little. A piece of paper. A feather. Once I stopped one of' those little glass-enclosed light or heat- powered devices with vanes you see now and then in a jew- eler’s window. And I can stop clocks. Take this morning, for ex- ample. I had set my alarm for five-thirty because I had to catch the seven o’clock plane at San Francisco International Airport. This being earlier than I usually get up, it seems all I did during the night was feel my way past the escape- ment and balance wheel to see where the notch for the alarm was. The last time I did it there was just the merest fraction of an inch between the pawl and the notch. So I sighed and moved to the bal- ance wheel and its delicate ribbon of spiraling steel. I hung onto the wheel, exerting influence to decrease the re- storing torque. The wheel slowed down un- til there was no more ticking. It took quite a bit of effort, as it always does, but I did it, as I usually do. I can’t stand the alarm. When I first learned to do this, I thought I had it made. I even went to Las Vegas to try my hand, so to speak, with the ratchets and pawls and cams and springs on the slot ma- chines. But there’s nothing delicate about a slot machine, and the spring tensions are too strong. I dropped quite a lot of nickels before I finally gave up. So I’m stuck with a talent I’ve found little real use for. Except that it amuses me. THE LITTLE RED BAG 53

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Sometimes. Not like this time on the plane. The woman beside me stir- red, sat up suddenly and look- ed across me out the window. “Where are we ?’’ she asked in a surprised voice. I told her we were probably a little north of Bakersfield. She said, “Oh,” glanced at her wrist- watch and sank back again. Soon the stewardesses would bring coffee and doughnuts around, so I contented myself with looking at the clouds and trying to think about Amos Magaffey, who was purchas- ing agent for a Los Angeles amusement chain, and how I was going to convince him our printing prices were maybe a little higher but the quality and service were better. My mind wandered below where I was sitting, idly moving from one piece of luggage to an- other, looking for my beat-up suitcase. I went through slips and slippers, lingerie and laundry, a jig saw puzzle and a ukulele. I never did find my suitcase because I found the bomb first. The bomb was in a small bag — a woman’s bag judg- ing by the soft, flimsy things you’d never find in a man’s — and I didn’t know it was a bomb right away. I thought it was just a clock, one of those small, quiet alarms. I was go- ing to pass it by and go on, but what held me was that some- thing was taped to it. By the 54 feel, I knew it must be electri- cian’s tape. Interested and curious, I explored the clock more closely, found two wires. One went to a battery and the other to hard round cylinders taped together. The hairs stood up at the base of my neck when I suddenly realized what it was. The clock’s balance wheel was rocking merrily. Quickly I went up past the train of gears to the alarm wheel. If this was anything like my own alarm clock, this one had something like ten minutes to go. It was forty minutes to Burbank and Lockheed Air Terminal. My mind was churning when I turned from the win- dow to look around at the un- concerned passengers, the woman at my side asleep again. I thought: Which one of these . . . No, none of them would know it was there. I glanced out the window again ; clouds were still in the way. We’d be leaving the valley for the mountain range north of Los Angeles soon, if we hadn’t left it already. No place to land the plane there. But of course that had been the plan ! My heart was beating in jackhammer rhythm ; my mouth was dry and my mind was numb. Tell somebody about the bomb before it’s too late ! No, they’d think I put it there. Besides, what good JERRY SOHL

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would it do? There would be panic and they’d never get the plane down in time — if they believed me. “Sir.” My head jerked around. The stewardess stood in the aisle, smiling, extending a tray to me, a brown plastic tray bearing a small paper cup of tomato juice, a cup of cof- fee, a cellophane-wrapped doughnut, paper spoon, sugar and dehydrated cream enve- lopes, and a napkin. I goggled at her, managed to croak, “No, thanks.” She gave me an odd look and moved along. My seatmate had accepted hers and was tearing at the cellophane. I couldn’t bear to watch her. I closed my eyes, forced my mind back to the luggage com- partment, spent a frantic mo- ment before I found the bag again. I had to stop that bal- ance wheel, just as I stopped my alarm clock every morn- ing. I tried to close everything off — the throb of engines, the rush of air, the woman sip- ping coffee noisily beside me — and I went into the clock and surrounded the seesawing wheel. When it went forward, I pulled it back ; when it went back, I pulled it forward. I struggled with it, and it was like trying to work with greasy hands, and I was afraid I wasn’t going to be able to stop it. Then, little by little, it start- ed to slow its beat. But I could not afford to relax. I pushed and pulled and didn’t dare re- lease my hold until it came to a dead stop. “Anything the matter?” My eyelids flew open and I looked into the eyes of the woman next to me. There was sugar from the doughnut around her mouth and she was still chewing. “No,” I said, letting out my breath. “I’m all right.” “You were moaning, it sounded like. And you kept moving your head back and forth.” “Must have been dream- ing,” I said as I rang for the stewardess. When she came I told her I’d take some of that coffee now. No, nothing else, just coffee. I didn’t tell her how much I needed it. I sat there clammy with sweat until she returned. Coffee never tasted so good. All right, so I had stopped the bomb’s timer. My mind raced ahead to the land- ing. When they unloaded the luggage, the balance wheel would start again. I wouldn’t be able to stay with it, keeping it still. I considered telling the authorities as soon as we land- ed, or maybe calling in ahead, but wouldn’t that just bring suspicion, questions. Maybe I could convince them I could stop a clock — ^but not before the bomb exploded. And then what? My secret would be out and my life would be changed. I’d be a man not to be trusted. THE LimE RED BAG 55

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a prying man, a man literally with gimlet eyes. Mountain crags jutted through the clouds. We Were in the range north of the city. Here and there were clear spots and I could see roads be- low, but there were also clouds far above us. It was very beau- tiful, but it was also very bumpy, and we started to slip and slide. To my horror I found that the balance wheel was rocking again. Closing my eyes and gritting my teeth, I forced my senses to the wheel, tugging and pulling and shoving and pushing until it finally stop- ped. A jab in the shoulder. I jumped, startled. “Your cup,” my seat part- ner said, pointing. I looked down at the coffee cup I had crushed in my hands. Then I looked up into the eyes of the stewardess. I handed it to her. She took it without a word and went away. “Were you really asleep that time ?” “Not really,” I said. I was tempted to tell the woman I was subject to fits, but I didn’t. It was only a few minutes to landing, but they became the longest minutes of my life as time after time I stopped the rocking wheel when the plane dipped and bumped to a land- ing. Leaving the apron with the 56 other passengers, I tried to walk as unconcernedly as they through the exit gate. I would have liked walking through the terminal and out the en- trance and away, but I could not. I had my suitcase to get, for one thing. The damned bomb was the other. So I strolled out into the concourse again to look at the plane and watch the baggagemen at work, transferring the lug- gage to two airfield carts. They weren’t as careful as I would have been. It was impossible to tell from this distance just which bag contained the bomb; I could hardly identify my own scarred suitcase. The assort- ment of bags — a strange con- glomeration of sizes and colors — was packed in some places six deep, and it rolled toward the gate where I was standing. I didn’t know whether to stay or run, imagining the balance wheel now happily rocking again. The load went past me down a ramp to the front of the air terminal where the luggage was unloaded and placed in a long rack. I went with it. There was a flurry of ticket matching, hands grabbing for suitcases, and a general ex- odus on the part of my fellow passengers, too fast to deter- mine who had got the one with the bomb. Now all that was left was the attendant and I had two bags — my own batter- ed veteran of years, and a fine JERRY SOHL

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new red overnight case, small enough to be the one. I lit a cigarette, reached out. Inside were a woman’s things and — a clock. The escapement was clicking vigorously. I didn’t moan this time. I just closed my eyes, stretched toward and grabbed the bal- ance wheel I was getting to know like my own. I entered into a union with it so strong that after I had reduced it to immobility, it was like waking when I opened my eyes. The baggage claim attend- ant was staring at me. For only a moment I stared back. Then I quickly reached for my baggage check and presented it to him. His hand hovered over the handle of the little red bag and I was ready to yell at him. But then, match- ing numbers on the tags with his eyes, his hand grasped the handle of my own suitcase and pushed it toward me. “Thanks,” I said, taking it. I glanced ever so casually to- ward the remaining bag. “One left over, eh?” “Yeah.” He was so bored I was tempted to tell him what was in it. But he was eying me with a “well-why-don’t- you-get-along?” look. I said, “What happens if nobody claims it?” “Take it inside. Why?” He was getting too curious. “Oh, I just wondered, that’s all.” I stepped on my cigarette THE LIHLE RED BAG and walked toward the air ter- minal entrance and put my suitcase on the stone steps there. A redcap came hurrying over. “Cab?” I shook my head. “Just wait- ing.” Just waiting for somebody to pick up a bomb. I lit another cigarette and glanced now and then toward the baggage claim area. The red bag was still there. All sorts of theories ran through my head as to why it should still be there, and none satis- fied me. I should not have been there, that much I knew; I should be with a man named Amos Magaffey on Sixth Street at ten o’clock, discuss- ing something very mundane, the matter of a printing order. But what could I do? If I left the airport, the attendant would eventually take the bag inside and there would be an explosion, and I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. No. I had to stay to keep the balance wheel stationary until — until what? A man in tan gabardine, wearing a police cap and badge, walked out of the en- trance to stand on the stone steps beside me while he put on a pair of dark glasses. A member of the airport police detail. I could tell him. I could take him down to the little red bag and explain the whole thing. Then it would be his 57

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baby and I would be off on my own business. But he moved on down the steps, nodded at the redcap, and started across the street to the parking area. I could have called to him, “Hey, offi- cer, let me tell you about a bomb in a little red bag.” But I didn’t. I didn’t because I caught a movement at the bag- gage claim counter out of the side of my eye. The attendant had picked up the bag and was walking with it up the ramp to the rear of the air terminal. Picking up my own suitcase, I went inside in time to see him enter through a side door and de- posit the bag on the scales at the airline desk and say some- thing to the clerk. The clerk nodded and moved the bag to the rear room. I could visualize the balance wheel once again rocking like crazy. How many minutes — or seconds — were left? I was sweating when I moved to the counter, and it wasn’t because of the sunshine I’d been soak- ing in. I had to get as close to the bag as I could if I was go- ing to stop the clock again. “Can I help you?” the clerk asked. “No. I’m waiting for some- one.” I turned my back to him, put down my suitcase, leaned against the counter and reach- ed out for the wheel. I found I could reach the device, but it was far away. When I tried to ^8 dampen it, the wheel escaped my grasp. “Do you have my suitcase?” I blinked my eyes open and looked around. The blonde in the plane stood there looking very fresh and bright and un- concerned. In her right hand she had a green baggage claim check. The clerk took it, nodded, and in a moment brought out the overnight case and set it on the scales. The girl thanked him, picked it up, glanced at me indiffei’ently, and then started for the entrance with it. “Just a moment,” I found myself saying, grabbing my bag and hurrying after her. At her side and a little ahead of her, I said, “Lis- ten to me.” She looked annoyed and in- creased her stride toward the door. “It’s a matter of life or death,” I said. I wanted to wrest the bag from her and hurl it out through the door- way into the street, but I re- strained myself. She stopped and stared. I noticed a short, fat man in a rumpled suitcoat and unpress- ed pants staring, too. Ignoring him, I said, “Please put the bag down. Over there.” I indi- cated a spot beside a telephone booth where it would be out of the way. She didn’t move. She just said, “Why?” JERRY SOHL

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“For God’s sake !’’ I took the case. She offered no resistance. I put her bag and mine next to the booth. When I turned around she was standing there looking at me as if I had gone out of my mind. Her eyes were blue and brown-flecked, very pretty eyes, and my thought at the moment was. I’m glad the bomb didn’t go off ; these eyes wouldn’t be looking at me or anything else right now if it had. “I’ve got to talk to you. It’s very important.” The girl said, “Why?” I was beginning to think it was the only word she knew. At the same time I was wondering why anyone would want to kill someone so lovely. “I’ll explain in a moment. Please stand right here while I make a telephone call.” I moved toward the phone booth, paused and said, “And don’t ask me why.” She gave me a speculative look. I must not have seemed a complete idiot because she said, “All right, but — ” I didn’t listen for the rest. I went into the booth, closed the door, pretended to drop a coin and dial a number. But all the time I was in there, I was reaching out through the glass for the clock. At this range it wasn’t difficult to stop the bal- ance wheel. Just the same, when I came out I was wringing wet. “Now will you please tell me what this is all about?” she said stiffly. “Gladly. Let me buy you a cup of coffee and I’ll explain.” She glanced at the bags. I told her they’d be all right. We followed the short, fat man into the coffee shop. Over coffee I explained it all to her, how I had this extra- sensory ability, how she was the first person I had ever re- vealed it to, and how I had dis- covered what was in her over- night bag. During the telling, her un- touched coffee grew a skin, her face grew pale, her eyes grew less curious and more troubled. There were tears there when I finished. I asked her who put the bomb in her bag. “Joe did,” she said in a tone- less voice, not looking at me any more but staring vacantly across the room. “Joe put it there.” Behind her eyes she was reliving some recent scene. “Who is Joe?” “My husband.” I thought she was going to really bawl, but she got control again. “This trip was his idea, my coming down here to visit my sister.” Her smile was bleak. “I see now why he wanted to put in those books. I’d finished packing and was in the bath- room. He said he’d put in some books we’d both finished read- ing— for my sister. That’s when he must have put the — put it in there.” THE LintE RED BAG 59

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I said gently, “Why would he want to do a thing like that?” “I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I just don’t know.” And she was close to bawling again. Then she recovered and said, “I’m not sure I want to know.” I admired her for say- ing it. Joe must have been crazy. “It’s all right now?” she asked. I nodded. “A long as we don’t move it.” I told her I didn’t know how much more time there was, that I’d been thinking it over and that the only way out seemed to be to tell the airport policeman. After I explained it to her, the girl — she said her name was Julia Claremont — ^agreed to tell him she thought there was a bomb in her bag, that she had noticed a ticking and had become wor- ried because she knew she hadn’t packed a clock. It wasn’t good, but it would have to do. “We’ve got to get it deac- tivated,” I said, watching the fat man pay for his coffee and leave. “The sooner the better.” I FINISHED my coffee in one gulp and went to pay the bill with her. I asked her why she didn’t claim the bag at the same time the other people had. She said she had called her sister and the phone was busy for a long while. “She was supposed to meet me, and when she wasn’t here, I got worried. She said she isn’t feeling well and asked me to take a cab.” She smiled a little. It was a bright, cheery thing. I had the feeling it was all for me. “That’s where I was going when you caught up with me.” It had become a very nice day. But the bottom dropped out of it again when we reach- ed the lobby. The two bags weren’t there. I ran to the entrance and nearly collided with the red- cap. “See anybody go out of here with a little red bag and an old battered suitcase?” “Bag? Suitcase?” he mum- bled. Then he became excited. “Why, a man just stepped out of here — ” He turned to look down the street. “That’s him.” The dumpy man I’d seen was walking off; Julia’s bag in his right hand, mine in his left. He seemed in no hurry. “Hey!” I shouted, starting toward him. The man turned, took one look at me, and started to run. He came abreast an old gray, mud-spattered coupe, ran around, opened the door and threw both bags into the rear seat as he got in. The car was a hundred feet away and gathering speed by the time I reached where it had been parked, I watched it for a moment, then walked back to the entranceway where Julia was standing with JERRY SOHL 60

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the redcap, who said, “That the driver. That was all right, man steal them suitcases?” I didn’t want to see him. I “That he did,” I said, didn’t know what Julia was Just then the airport police- thinking, man started across the street She said, “About those from the parking lot. Redcap bags,” and looked at me. said, “Better tell him about The officer said, “Yes, it,” miss?” The policeman was sympa- “I — I don’t care about mine, thetic and concerned. He said, I didn’t have much of any- “We’d better get over to the thing in it.” office.” “I feel the same way,” I But we never left the spot said. “Would it be all right if because an explosion some we didn’t bother to report it?” blocks distant shattered the “Well,” the policeman said, air. Julia’s hand grasped my “I can’t make you report it.” arm. Hard. “I’d rather not then,” Julia “Jets,” the redcap said, ey- said. She turned to me. “I’d ing the sky. like some air. Can’t we walk a “I don’t know,” the police- little?” man said. “Didn’t sound much “Sure,” I said, like a jet to me.” We started down the street, We stood there, I could visu- her arm in mine, as the air alize the wreckage of an old began to fill with the distant gray coupe in the middle of a sounds of sirens, sti’eet, but I couldn’t visualize END STATEMENT REQUIRED BY THE ACT OF AUGUST 24, 1912, AS AMENDED BY THE ACTS OF MARCH 3, 1933, AND JULY 2. 1946 (Title 39, United States Code, Section 233) SHOWING THE OWNERSHIP. MANAGEMENT, AND CIRCULATION of IF WORLDS OF SCIENCE FIC'nON, published bi-monthly at New York, N. Y. for October 1, 1969. 1. The names and addresses of the publisher, editor, managing editor, and business naan- agers are: Publisher, Robert M, Guinn, 421 Hudson Street, New York 14, N. Y. ; Editor, H. L. (Sold, 421 Hudson Street, New York 14, N. Y. ; Managing Editor, none ; Business Manager, none. 2. The owner is: (If owned by a corporation, its name and address must be stated and also immediately thereunder the names and addresses of stockholders owning or holding 1 percent or more of total amount of stock. If not owned by a corporation, the names and addresses of the individual owners must be given. If owned by a partnership or other unin- corporated firm, its name and address, as well as that of each individual member, must be given.) Digest Productions Corporation, 421 Hudson Street, New York 14, N. Y. Robert M. Guinn (sole stockholder) . 3. The known bondholders, mortgagees, and other security holders owning or holding 1 percent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other securities are: (If there are none, so state.) None, 4. Paragraphs 2 and 3 include, in cases where the stockholder or security holder appears upon the books of the company as trustee or in any other fiduciary relation, the name of the person or cot poration for whom such trustee is acting ; also the statements in the two para- graphs .show the affiant’s full knowledge and belief as to the circumstanct*s and conditions under which stockholders and security holders who do not appear upon the books of the com- pany as trustees, hold stock and securities in a capacity other than that of a bona fide owner. 5. The average number of copies of each issue of this publication sold or distributed, through the mails or otherwise, to paid subscribers during the 12 months preceding the date shown above was: (This information is required from daily, weekly, semiweekly, and tri- weekly newspapers only.) ^ ROBERT M. GUINN, Publisher. Sworn to and subscribed before me this 30th day of September, 1959. JOAN J. DeMARIO, Notary Public. State of New York, No, 24-5978800. Qualified in Kings County. Term expires March 30, I960, [Seal]

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You take the give year IF has become more and more a factor in the science fiction field. The line-up for 1960 already includes such authors as —Clifford Simak, Robert Bloch, Fred Pohl, Philip Jose Farmer, Ray Russell and many more of your favorites, that are cer- tainly favorites of the person you plan to give this most welcome gift. A special card will announce your gift to the lucky recipient and each issue will remind him of your thoughtfulness. RUSH YOUR GIFT SUBSCRIPTS TO US. (These special low prices are good until December 1 5th, 1 959.) 1 YEAR dAA Eoch additional (6 issues) Year or 1st Subscription ^ Subscription IF Science Fiction • 421 Hudson Street, New York 14, N.Y. Pltase enter Special Gift Subscriptions to tbo following and sand gift card announcements. I enclose Name ... _ Name Address... Address Clty....^ state City .. state . 1 year .2 years.. Price 1 year 2 years .. Price Sign Card Sign Card.. Name Name Address City 1 year Sign Card .2 years . State Price Address City 1 year 2 years .. State .. Price Sign Card.. Name Address Name City State Address 1 year 2 yearr Price City Sign Card - State.

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They went somewhere and something happened to Hunched tensely over the foot of the bed, Bradford Sanderson stared down at the unconscious sergeant. There was a heavy stillness in the hospital room. Outside, beyond was to go there the window, the sun-splashed expanse of the Army medical base stretched away toward the glaring beach and the shimmering Gulf waters be- yond. 64

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Last Leap By DANIEL F. GALOUYE them — and the one way to find out where and what and let it happen! The door opened and closed softly, admitting a lean and erect Medical Corps colonel. “Has he come around yet, Doctor?” he asked in an un- easy whisper. Dr. Sanderson shook his head. “No, but he’s sleeping lightly. He’ll be awake in a minute.” “Think you’ll do any better with this one?” The colonel’s 65

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voice sharpened to an appre- hensive edge. “I intend to take all precau- tions, Dr. Vickers. I don’t think we’ll lose McNaught.” “God, I hope not,” Vickers said, relieved only a little. “We’ve already got the Bu- reau breathing down our necks over the first two — ah — accidents.” “I’m sure we have nothing to fear this time,” said San- derson. For his forty-eight years and despite the flecks of gray in his hair, there was a pre- served air of youthfulness about the physicist. Stocky and in obvious good trim, ho presented an appearance that belied his professional status. The door opened and closed again, as softly as before, and a woman whose dense black hair contrasted her Army nurse’s uniform came and stood between the two men. Slightly built and attractive, she fixed the slumbering ser- geant with an anxious stare. Vickers glanced at the hypo- dermic syringe in her hand. “Sodium pentothal. Miss Con- ner ly?” She nodded without looking at him. “Two hundred cc.” Drawing in a deep breath, the sergeant rolled over and buried his head luxuriously in the pillow. The movement, however, did little to dishevel his bristly blond hair. His eyes flicked open and he stared ab- stractedly at the others. Then he smiled and his lips parted to form a word. “Easy now!” Sanderson cautioned. “Don’t think about anything! Just keep your mind blank!” All expression drained from the sergeant’s face. His naturally ruddy features blanched imperceptibly, as though he had remembered something of appalling con- sequences. Colonel Vickers and Miss Connerly moved precautiously away from the bed. “Did it take?” McNaught asked, sitting up. “That’s what we’re going to find out now,” Sanderson re- plied. “And that’s all we’re going to find out.” Exploring the floor, Mc- Naught’s feet found and squirmed into his slippers. Then he rose, straightened his pajama blouse and reached for his robe. He was a tall, well- proportioned man and his ex- cessive size was evident in the skimpy fit of the hospital gar- ments. “Take it slow,” Sanderson soothed again, backing off be- fore the sergeant. “Just do as we say — nothing else.” McNaught tightened the robe sash and offered a smile that was intended to be reas- suring. “If you’re thinking about Watterman and Fish- er,” he said lightly, “they’ll be back. They just took French leave and — ” 66 DANIEL F. GALOUYE

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“Blank, Sergeant !” San- derson cut in. “We don’t want you thinking of anything that might make you pop away im- pulsively. Now — are you all set?” Miss Connerly strained for- ward, her intense gray eyes vigilant with restrained ap- prehension. Vickers glanced uncertainly behind him and eased back. Sanderson stepped to one side, as though it might be necessary to get out of the ser- geant’s way. “The opposite comer of the room — and that’s all,” he directed. “Ready Go!” Instantly there was a double thunderclap of minor inten- sity— like two distant jets slipping through the sound barrier — as McNaught disap- peared from where he was standing and reappeared sim- ultaneously in the designated corner. The sergeant turned and faced Sanderson triumphant- ly. “It works!” But the physicist sprang across the room, signaling for Miss Connerly at the same time. “Let him have the injec- tion!” he told the nurse. “Easy, son. Everything’s go- ing to be all right. Just don’t think! Dr. Vickers, help me bring him back across the room.” The injection took effect al- most immediately and it re- quired the efforts of both men to get McNaught comfortably positioned in bed. Sanderson shook his head briskly, trying to clear the ringing in his ears. And he wondered whether he would ever get used to the unexpect- ed explosions that resulted as air rushed into the suddenly vacated space and was abrupt- ly expelled from the newly occupied one. Later that evening, Vick- ' ers paced nervously in Sanderson’s office while San- derson chronicled the day’s incidents in his official record book. Unsettled by the colonel’s restlessness, he paused and looked up irately. “I wouldn’t worry too much about Mc- Naught. He’s going to do all right.” “That’s what you said about Watterman and Fisher.” “But the sergeant has good control. He knows the mean- ing of the word restraint.” Vickers cast him an uncon- vinced glance and continued pacing. “That’s the way it was with Watterman and Fisher — at first. They went slow. They had a lot of respect for tele- portation— until they started throwing caution to the wind and went popping all over the place.” Sanderson rose, packing his pipe bowl with a crooked thumb. “McNaught’s fore- warned by the disappearances of the first two subjects. You 67 THE LAST LEAP

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can be sure he’s going to be damned careful.” Vickers leaned backward against the desk and folded his arms, while the physicist lit his pipe and raised a thick white cloud of fragrant smoke between them. “What do you suppose hap- pened to Watterman and Fish- er?” the colonel asked grimly. “That’s what McNaught is going to help us find out.” “Collision with something solid?” Sanderson shook his head. “You don’t pass through any- thing en route from one place to another.” “I mean in the remateriali- zation. Maybe Watterman and Fisher popped up in a space that was already occupied.” “Impossible. Watterman cleared that for us months ago. He proved rematerializa- tion can take place only in gaseous spaces or attenuated liquids. He even tried to reap- pear within a brick wall. The best he could do was to pop out next to it.” Still, Vickers was not molli- fied. His thin, rough hands ri- gidly gripped the edge of the desk behind him as he stood there with one leg crossed over the other. He shook his bowed head regretfully and the light from the cortical ex- citation laboratory in the next room sent glistening high- lights dancing across his slick scalp. ' “Maybe they popped off to a polar region and froze to death,” he speculated sourly. “That; too, is highly unlike- ly. There’s a lot of reflex action involved. Waterman, after his second excitation, did go to the Arctic, you’ll remem- ber. He was only there about three seconds — long enough for the cold to begin s^ping in — before he found himself back in his room. Fisher even tried a surge into space, with- out any injury at all. His re- action to a vacuum was so spontaneous that I don’t im- agine he spent more than a hundredth of a second out there.” Nodding absently, Vickers lighted a cigarette with un- steady hands while Sanderson returned to his record book. But the physicist only sat there staring thoughtfully through the surface of the desk, pen poised over the lined paper. WATTERMAN had gone first. There had been his initial reaction to cortical ex- citation — uncertainty, per- haps even a tinge of fear. His leaps during the first day were executed with a gingerly reluctance. By the second day, however, he had overcome all his qualms. And before the stimulated frontal region of his brain had returned to nor- mal at the end of the third day, he had materialized in four different sections of the country. 68 DANIEL F. GALOUYE

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It was after his second ex- posure to the multiple-fre- quency stimulus a month later, however, that he had lost him- self in an orgy of teleportive experiences, cropping up in so many places throughout the country and abroad that the story had to be released. Only then did the public be- come aware that, under direct subsidy of the Bureau of Re- search, Bradford Sanderson's previous experiments in ex- citing telepathy had been in- geniously expanded to include teleportive ability. It was Watterman's materialization at the United States Moon Base, the physicist recalled, that had forced the Bureau to release the findings of the ex- periment in order to avert panic. The next day — that was five months ago, Sanderson recall- ed as he pulled pensively on his pipe — Watterman had dis- appeared, literally, complete- ly, permanently. He had left behind only a vacuous tran- quility in the hospital room, ruffled solely by rustling cur- tains that quietly altered the pattern of sunlight on the floor as they swayed with the Gulf breeze. With Fisher, it had been different. Sanderson had ques- tioned his selection as a volun- teer. Thin and fidgety, he had definitely turned out to be the excitable type. And exposure to the catalytic frequencies had only heightened his ner- vousness to the extent that before he disappeared he had even shown psychotic ten- dencies. His teleportive leaps had been few indeed and were exe- cuted only after inordinate coaxing. Only once during his entire phase had he shown any initiative. That was on his jump into empty space. But even afterward — until he had vanished permanently from under a shade umbrella on the beach several hours later — ^he had disclaimed any intent in the feat. Rather, he had in- sisted that it was the result of an “auto-suggestive impulse.” With McNaught, though, it would be different, Sanderson promised himself. The ser- geant was as perfectly balanc- ed, mentally, as any person he had ever known. 'T wonder,” Vickers said, stubbing out his cigarette in the ash tray, “whether Wat- terman and Fisher will ever be heard from again.” “I like to think they will.” Sanderson cupped his hands around the warmth of his pipe bowl. “I tell myself that in both cases, and perhaps coin- cidentally, they were stranded in remote areas just as the ef- fects of the stimulative fre- quencies wore off.” “That could have been the case with Watterman,” the colonel admitted. “He disap- peared toward the end of his second three-day period. But Fisher was in phase less than 69 THE LAST LEAP

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a day and a half when it hap- pened to him.” “Maybe the stimulation wasn’t as strong in Fisher’s case.” “Maybe,” said Sanderson. Vickers turned to leave, but paused near the door. “By the way, the Under Secretary of Research is due in tomorrow morning.” “Peabody? What does he want?” “Mainly to keep abreast of what’s going on. If we lose McNaught, he probably has orders to put his foot down on your work.” “That’s bad. I didn’t want any interference during the sergeant’s three-day phase. As a matter of fact, I’d planned to have him spend most of to- morrow on the beach. That’ll help keep his mind occupied.” Vickers shrugged. “You’ll have to see Peabody first.” UNDER SECRETARY of Research Sylvester A. Peabody was impressive both in size and proclivity to impo- sition. The adjectives “Wash- ington” and “bureaucratic” were stamped all over him — in the intolerant set of his jaw, the disdainful sharpness of his eyes, his mannerism of wield- ing an otherwise nonfunc- tional pair of glasses to stress a point. He had taken possession of Sanderson’s desk by the next morning and, for the better part of an hour, had thumbed 70 through the day-by-day chro- nology on all the experimental work. He looked up abruptly. “So now it’s Number Three?” Annoyed over the loss of time, Sanderson said nothing. “And what makes you think we’ll fare any better with this new subject?” Peabody asked. “For one thing, I altered three of the basic frequen- cies,” the physicist explained wearily. “There may be a cor- relation between some of the ultra-wave forms and the feel- ing of a compulsion to tele- port.” The undersecretary rose and thumped his knuckles with the spectacles. “As I un- derstand it, both Fisher and Watterman said that at times they felt this almost uncon- trollable impulse to — as you say — ^make a leap.” Sanderson nodded. “Watter- man found himself jumping on several occasions when he merely thought about another location.” “And you believe you’ve corrected this rashness in McNaught?” “Sergeant McNaught went through extensive ti*aining and thorough conditioning for two months before exposure. I consider him well insulated against any whimsical use of his ability.” Peabody struck a pose of thoughtfulness as he stared out the window. Impatiently, Sanderson DANIEL F. GALOUYE

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checked his watch. It was al- most noon and he had thus far managed to spend only two hours with the new subject. But it had been a most re- warding two hours. Mc- Naught had executed over a dozen controlled leaps, two of them covering distances of better than a mile. And if the sergeant had felt any inner elation over the experiences, he had not shown it. Exhibit- ing only a purely impersonal approach to the manifestation, he hadn’t taken a single impul- sive leap. But if Sanderson was going to continue with his planned program of sensible indoctri- nation for McNaught, he re- alized, he would have to break away from Peabody soon. For nearly a third of the ser- geant’s three-day phase had already been used up and as yet he had been subjected to nothing but a false, laboratory environment. The undersecretary turned and spoke with a precise, meaningful inflection. “If you lose this third subject, San- derson, your project is going to be indefinitely abandoned.’’ “McNaught’s secure.” “As I understood it, so were the first two.” “You’ll have to admit that it’s possible they may have simply taken French leave — Watterman because he was naturally frivolous and Fisher because he was afi’aid.” “That’s just the point!” Peabody banged the desk. “Do you realize that for months now security has been sweat- ing? Don’t you see what it would mean if the details of your work fell into hostile hands?” “It can’t happen. Wherever they go, the subjects take no knowledge of the process with them.” Sanderson didn’t man- age to get away with Ser- geant McNaught and Miss Connerly until almost three that afternoon. But that was just as well, he conceded as he helped unpack the chairs, um- brella, lunch basket and bra- zier at the beach. The hottest part of the day was behind them now and cool offshore breezes were beginning to moderate the tepid glare of white sand and glistening water. Eventually, the physicist settled down in one of the chairs, fished in his pockets for his pipe, and began plan- ning a series of more ambi- tious leaps for the sergeant to perform later that after- noon. McNaught shed his polo shirt and helped the nurse off with her beach robe. “Come on, Kate,” he chal- lenged. “I’ll race you to the water.” Sanderson watched the cou- ple sprint away while the sun played softly against their lithe forms. But several yards 71 THE LAST LEAP

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from the water McNaught swerved to spare the architec- tural integrity of a deserted sand castle, lost his balance and toppled. Miss Connerly, unmindful of the sergeant’s mishap, raced on, splashing through the shallow water and plunging headlong into a fi'othy breaker. At once there was a muf- fled double explosion as Mc- Naught vanished from where he had sprawled on the sand and rematerialized in the wa- ter beside the girl. And, ac- commodating his impetuous entry, the water shot outward and upward in a geyserlike spray. Sanderson bolted from his chair and raced across the beach. Scarcely aware that he was in water above his shoes, he cupped his hands and shouted, “I didn’t tell you to leap!” “I didn’t either.” McNaught displayed a confused frown. ‘‘It just sort of — happened.” Sanderson stiffened. Was this a first indication of capri- cious reaction? Was Mc- Naught losing his detached calmness? Was he headed the same way as Watterman and Fisher ? ‘‘You’d better come on in,” Sanderson said. “I’m sure he’ll be all right. Dr. Sanderson,” the nurse in- terceded. “It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t encour- aged that spurt of exertion.” Perhaps she was right, the physicist granted hopefully. After all, reaction could only be expected to become reflex- ive to a certain degree during physical activity. Still, he went back to the station wagon, opened the glove compartment, took out the hypodermic syringe case and put it in his hip pocket. Early that evening, while Sanderson was fanning the coals in the brazier, Mc- Naught and Miss Connerly returned from a twilight walk along the beach. They stood on the other side of the fire for a long while, letting the lambent glow cast a mantle of ruddi- ness across their features. “I think we’re making ex- cellent headway,” the physi- cist enthused, spearing three wieners with a fork and sub- jecting them to the heat of the coals. “I particularly like the way you’re showing restraint. By this time Watterman was hopping all over the country.” With satisfaction, he thought back over the experi- ments he had put McNaught through late that afternoon. He had negotiated leaps to the island, to a point several miles down the beach and to Colonel Vickers’ office and back. And, unlike the first two subjects, the sergeant had still shown no further tendency toward impulsive teleportation. Sanderson looked hastily over at the couple, realizing 72 DANIEL F. GALOUYE

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only then that there was a tense' silence between them. And now he saw that their faces were strained with un- certain expressions. “It — ^happened again,” the girl said awkwardly. Sanderson let the wieners drop to the sand. “Another involuntary hop? Where to this time?” “I just couldn’t help it,” McNaught apologized. “I was thinking about home — on the West Coast. We’ve got a beach just like this. And suddenly I was standing on it. I would not even have known the dif- ference if it hadn’t been for the fact that the sun was still shining over there.” “That settles it!” the physi- cist exclaimed. “Let’s get him back to the base, Kate. He’s going to sit out the I'est of his phase with a few hundred cc of pentothal!” McNaught gripped Sander- son’s sleeve. “I’ll be all right. Let me stick it out — for a few more hours, at least.” “I think Dr. Sanderson is right,” the girl said. “It’s best to play it safe.” She went over to retrieve her robe. McNaught, however, only stood staring down at the glowing coals. A large moth buzzed against his face, but even that failed to snap him from his thoughts. Sanderson reached out and took him ur- gently by the arm. But the sergeant pulled free, brushing the insect away THE UST LEAP at the same time. “No, waitl I think—” He paused and his eyes were vivid with sudden apprehen- sion. “I think I know what happened to Watterman and Fisher!” The physicist laced him with a questioning stare. McNaught lurched back. “No!” he shouted. “Don’t ask me! I can’t talk about it!” Sanderson lunged for him. But he vanished, reappeared a few feet away, moonlight glistening on his trembling shoulders. Kate raced toward him and he disappeared again, materi- alizing this time close to the physicist. And Sanderson was ready with the hypodermic. The next morning the phys- icist’s dra'wn face showed the effects of a sleepless night as he called down for coffee and shaved in the lavatory ad- joining his office. When he went back to his desk, Vickers was in the room, looking haggard and nervous. The colonel’s tie was askew, and around his bald crown, his peripheral fringe of hair was ragged, like the leaves of a Roman chaplet. He dropped into a chair op- posite the desk. “At least I got rid of Peabody. He’s gone back to Washington.” Sanderson tensed. “You tell him what happened ?” “Of course not. I simply ex- plained that we cut the experi- 73

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ment short to evaluate what we’ve observed thus far.” The physicist thrust his hands in his pockets and went to the window, looked out blindly, turned and came back, “I don’t understand it. I can’t imagine what unnerved Mc- Naught so completely last night.” “You should have pressed him for an explanation.” “No,” Sanderson disagreed. “I think that might have been disastrous. When he material- ized next to me — Klon’t you see? — he must have wanted that injection.” Vickers spread his hands. “What do we do now?” “Keep him under sedation until the effects of the fre- quency exposure wear off. We only have a little more than a day to sit it out. Then I’m going to re-examine every inch of theory.” He went over to his desk, opened the record book and wrote four or five lines. Then he looked up as Miss Connerly entered with the coffee he had requested. “I’m glad you’re here, Kate,” he said, relieved. “When did you give Mc- Naught that last injection? It was three o’clock, wasn’t it?” Pen poised over the next blank line, he waited for her answer. When he looked up finally, he saw only dismay on her face. “I thought — ” she began. “Didn’t you say — I mean, you 74 told me just after midnight that the other nurse would take care of it, didn’t you?” Sanderson sprang up. “I said she would prepare it ! She went off duty at two-thirty!” Lunging for the door, he brush^ against her, jolted the tray and sent coffee sloshing over the brims of the two cups. Vickers stayed close at his heels all the way down the corridor. McNaught’s room was emp- ty. The top sheet on his bed had been carelessly thrown back. An overturned glass of water, its puddle still dripping off the edge of the night table’s sur- face, suggested that he had only recently awakened. His robe was gone, as was one of his slippers. Sole up, the other lay halfway between the bed and the reading table. Sunlight splotched the sin- gle sheet of writing paper on the table. With an unsteady hand, Sanderson picked up the scrawled note : How can I warn anybody without even thinking about it? The urge to teleport can sneak up on you. It can also be an oveipowering compul- sion. But how can I teU you ? How can 1 keep myself from thinking about something, and at the same time write about what it is I’m not sup- posed to think about? I know what happened to Watterman and Fisher. They wen DANIEL F. GALOUYE

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The writing ended abruptly, as though the pen had been snatched cleanly up and away from the paper. IT WAS almost midnight that same day when Vick- ers, having searched Sander- son’s quarters and the hospital for the physicist, tried the laboratory on the strength of a hunch. In the doorway, the whining surge of energy in the excita- tion circuits drew a startled breath from the colonel. He plunged on into the room, rac- ing past the restless genera- tors, past the towering banks of rectifiers and oscillators, past the ultra-frequency con- verters. “You fool!” he shouted as he covered the remaining dis- tance to the excitation chair and began snatching elec- trodes from the band that cir- cled Sanderson’s forehead. He knocked aside the final three glowing parabolic reflec- tors. “You damned silly fool! What are you trying to do?” Sanderson felt no immedi- ate effects from the exposure, despite the fact that there had been no anesthetic. “It had to be done,” he said evenly. “Why? So you could go the same way Watterman and Fisher and McNaught went?” “I’ve got to know what hap- pened to them.” “It doesn’t make any differ- ence now.” Vickers appeared to be growing even more per- turbed. “The Bureau’s going to shut down the project any- way!” Sanderson rose and passed a hand over his forehead, fin- gering the impression left by the electrode band. “That’s just it. They’ll shut us down and we’ll never know what became of McNaught and the others.” “What do you expect to do?” “The same things they did, I guess,” the physicist said, shrugging. “I don’t suppose I’ll have any trouble duplicat- ing their final experience.” He stared at a cleared space in the opposite corner of the laboratory. And even before he could completely summon the intent to leap, he found himself at once on the other side of the room. Aghast, Vickers raced after him. “Sanderson — don’t! You aren’t even conditioned against impulsive jumps!” “That’s the way I want it,” the physicist said impassively. “All the preparations we went through with McNaught did no good. He still hopped — three times that we know of. So maybe I don’t care about self-restraint.” He leaped again, this time popping up in the doorway to his office. Hands spread in a suppli- cating gesture. Colonel Vick- ers followed. “Watterman was not interested in restraining 75 THE LAST LEAP

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himself. He leaped as much as he wanted. And he finally van- ished too.” “I don’t give a hang if I do disappear.” Sanderson turned away. “I’m going to find out where those others went. And the only way to do it is to take the same course they took and see what happens.” He flicked out of sight and ended the leap in the corridor outside his office. «^ANDERSON!” The colo- nel’s voice came excitedly from within the room. Then the door swung open and Vickers burst into the hall. "Call this crazy thing off! Look, I have an idea. In tele- porting from one place to an- other, you have to go through something, even though it seems instantaneous. Through some other plane of existence, perhaps. And maybe when you don’t come back — ^when the others didn’t come back — it was because they got stuck in between!” Sanderson turned his back. Immediately the corridor was erased from his vision, only to be replaced in the next instant by the ponderous railing of a concrete bridge and, beyond, a river whose dark waters sent wisps of mist into the chill air. On his left, the bridge abutment clung to the shore of the lie de la Cite and, farther in the distance, the Cathedral of Notre Dame’s great, slender spire rose 76 against the pink-gray dawn sky. A startled Parisian, wit- nessing the materialization, shouted a fervent “Mon Dieu!” and promptly got his foot caught in the spokes of his bicycle catapulting over the handle bars. At once Sanderson was back in the hallway with Vickers, who was shouting for Miss Connerly. The colonel lunged for him but missed as Sanderson tele- ported to a new position be- hind him. "For God’s sake!” Vickers shouted. “Stop it — ^just for a minute, anyway! I have an- other theory. What if the pro- tective reflex doesn’t always work? Maybe Fisher was just lucky when he was able to leap out of space immediately ! Suppose he returned to space later — and panicked before he remembered he could jump back to safety!” A sudden assault of violent suction and intense cold sprang in on Sanderson, as though he had been snatched up in a giant’s hand. In a shutterlike glimpse, he was fleetingly aware of a broad sweep of blackness, spangled with a myriad brilliant stars, of a vast, shadowy surface hundreds of miles below that shone softly in the light of a full moon. In the next instant he was standing on the beach not far from the spot where he had DANIEL F. GALOUYE

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picnicked with McNaught and Kate the day before. The same moon sent its light down to embrace him and he stood there in silent concentration. The last leap, he realized, had not been voluntary. Vick- ers had merely spoken about space and, on the strength of that suggestion, Sanderson had unintentionally duplicated Fisher's experience. So it had been spontaneous. So what? Maybe that was where they had made their mistake all along — in thinking that impulsive teleportation must be rigorously avoided. Maybe he should let himself go completely — leap whenever and as often as he could, with or without his volition, wher- ever his fancy led. Complete surrender to the impulse, wearing himself out in wild over indulgence — that might be the formula for es- tablishing teleportation on a totally conscious and control- lable plane. If you filled a man with food, it was only logical that he would have no appe- tite, wasn't it? Abruptly he was back in the hospital corridor. Only it was empty now. But not for long. VICKERS darted out from the room that Fisher had occupied. ‘‘Miss Conn — " He spied Sanderson, paused, then came forward cautiously. But the physicist had already seen the hypoder- mic syringe v/hich Vickers was now trying to hide behind his back. There was a furtive sound in the other direction and Sanderson spun around. Kate was closing in on him from the rear with another hypoder- mic. But the visual impression of the nurse was blotted out and immediately replaced by a blaze of lights that sparkled against a background of glis- tening wet buildings and drip- ping sky. Then, in the fierce glow of a lightning bolt. Times Square stood out in eerie white clarity. Hunched under an umbrella, a man and wom- an in formal dress brushed past him and continued on down a Broadway that was al- most deserted in the thunder- storm. Leaping to New York, San- derson assured himself, had not been involuntary. This time he had predetermined his destination. And in a quick follow-up to establish the self-impelled na- ture of his movements, he tele- ported to the base of the Washington Monument, not- ing that there was no storm in the nation's capital ; to Fisher- man's Wharf in San Fran- cisco, where the moon was noticeably lower in the sky ; to State Street in the Chicago Loop, which he left as soon as he felt the first cold drops of rain. Then suddenly he was back 77 THE LAST LEAP

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in the quiet of Fisher’s room in the hospital, only now be- ginning to feel the first sensa- tions of exuberance over his far-ranging travels. But he repressed it, remembering his resolve to reject a sensation of exhilaration. If he was to learn what had happened to Watterman, Fisher and Mc- Naught, and return to tell about it, his attitude would have to be one of scientific objectivity. With a sudden rebirth of determination, he set out again — to a desolate polar ice field, remaining there until the severe cold pierced his cloth- ing like dagger points of fire — to the crest of the Koolau Mountain Range on Oahu, looking down first on sprawl- ing Honolulu and then at the sun sinking in the ocean be- yond— to London, where he stood at the base of Lord Nel- son’s Column in Trafalgar Square and watched the first faint splashes of dawn appear in the eastern sky — to a rug- ged peak in the Rockies, from which he enjoyed an enchant- ing view of the artificial, geo- metric brilliance of Denver. Exhausted, finally, he let himself return to the hospital room and took one final leap to the bed. He stretched him- self across its tightly drawn sheet and fell quickly asleep. CERTAIN that it must have been at least half an eter- nity later, Sanderson finally 78 opened his eyes and turned his face away from the bright sunlight that was falling on his pillow. He reached over and rubbed his arm, realizing at once that it was sore from a number of needle punctures over a con- siderable period of time. He had thrown himself across the bed fully dressed, but he was now in a hospital gown and lay under the sheet. Someone, perhaps as a result of anxious waiting, had kept the desk calendar up to date. And he noted, as he had pre- viously suspected, that it was not the day after his exposure to the ultra-frequency excita- tion, but rather three days later. Still groggy, he reached over to the night table and poured himself a drink of wa- ter. Then, trying to keep his mind on immediate considera- tions, he sat up. Colonel Vickers strode briskly into the room and grinned when he saw Sander- son awake. “It’s about time you came around.” “I suppose you think I ought to thank you for pulling the rug out from under me the other night,” grumbled San- derson. Vickers shrugged. “Doesn't; matter.” “Suppose I’m not cured?” Sanderson suggested warily. “What if I decide to put my- self through another excita- tion treatment?” DANIEL F. GALOUYE

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“That doesn’t matter either — ^what you decide, I mean. Peabody’s been back. He or- dered the laboratory appara- tus dismantled.” “And has it been ?” the physicist asked. Vickers nodded, giving no indication that he had detected the note of amusement in San- derson’s voice. He came over and gripped Sanderson’s shoulder. “I know you’re pretty wobbly, so take it easy. Get up and around whenever you think you’re up to it. I’ll have a light breakfast sent in as a starter.” After the colonel had gone, Sanderson allowed himself a smug smile. It had all happen- ed as he had planned. First the exhausting workout during his initial couple of hqurs of teleporting. Then the long rest with its total lack of mental activity to allow time for him to become psychically attuned to the new ability without any further chance of overdoing it. And now here he was — con- scious and fresh and ready to embark on the second stage of his plan to learn what had happened to the other three subjects. He wondered how long it would be before Vick- ers found out he had given himself a strong enough ex- posure to the ultra-frequen- cies to insure a six-day tele- portive period instead of the usual three. But he was not ready for any more leaps now. He want- ed time to think — ^to evaluate his experiences and attitude, to compare them with those of Watterman and Fisher and McNaught. Then he would ap- ply logic to the overall phe- nomenon and see whether some obscure explanation of the disappearances wouldn’t suggest itself. Eventually, an orderly brought in the breakfast tray with its tomato juice, soft- boiled eggs, toast and coffee, and Sanderson dived vora- ciously into the meal. After he had finished, he complimented himself on the fact that he had not tele- ported involuntarily since his awakening. And this strength- ened the hope that his theory had been correct — that by al- lowing himself free rein with both deliberate and impulsive teleportation, he had exhaust- ed his inclination to uninten- tional leaping. He pushed the tray aside, put on his robe and slippers and walked over to the win- dow. And he stood there star- ing out through the brilliant morning glare at the handful of patients in deck chairs who were drinking in the sunlight on the convalescent porch. McNaught, he remembered quite clearly now, had solved the enigma. But in trying to get the warning across, he had somehow only hastened his final disappearance. THE LAST LEAP 79

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Abruptly Sanderson was thinking back to the night be- fore the sergeant had penned his last frenzied words — to the beach scene in which the youth had practically gone berserk and had begged not to be pressed for his theory on what had happened to Watter- man and Fisher. Something — something that had occurred just before then, or perhaps it was merely something he had thought about — ^must have inspired the sergeant’s comprehension. Sanderson reached desper- ately into his memory of that night, trying to recall in detail what McNaught had said and done. But it was almost as though his mind were a blank. He was trying too hard, he supposed. And he longed for a cigarette so he could relieve his mind momentarily of the self-ipflicted ordeal. Instantly, he was standing before the night table and looking down at his pack of cigarettes. And his hope and confidence were immediately shattered. He hadn’t, after all, succeeded in quelling involun- tary teleportation. He was no better off, he sensed, than the other three had been before their disappearances. He felt a persistent desper- ation closing in on him. It was quite possible, he realized dismally, that he might soon face the necessity of solving the puzzle as the sole means of saving himself. The window of an automo- bile, driving along the road in front of the hospital, flashed an intense reflection into the room. Sanderson shielded his eyes against the sudden burst of light. And abruptly he was think- ing of McNaught again — on the beach, bending over the hot coals, insensitive to the fluttering of a moth in his face, finally becoming aware of the insect and then curious- ly following its swirling flight around the brazier. Sanderson fell back against the bed, astonished and terri- fied. Good God ! It wasn’t — it couldn't be — Not that! Even as his thoughts turned entranced toward the concept, he lashed them down with a frantic surge of resistance. He wouldn’t think about it! The mere approach of the idea to his consciousness would mean the end. Yet he knew that ultimately it would be impossible to keep the hyp- notically compelling thought from his mind. He forced his concentration into another channel — to Mc- Naught’s note that had hope- lessly asked : . . , How can I keep myself from thinking about some- thing and, at the same time, write about what it is Vm not supposed to think about? , . . 80 DANIEL F. GALOUYE

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There was only despair in the realization that now he, too, faced the same paradoxi- cal predicament. Not that he intended writing a warning; that wasn’t necessary, since there would be no more exper- imental subjects. But he would have to find a way of getting a message across if he was going to save himself. ONCE more, the forbidden thought assailed the fringe of his consciousness and he barely succeeded in driving it back into obscurity again. But how long could he keep it up ? He stood paralyzed beside the bed, afraid that even the slightest movement would somehow trip the trigger that was hidden so close to the sur- face of his thought stream. If he could only find some way of letting them know he was in danger! Naturally, he wouldn’t be able to say what the peril was. For he would have to bring it to the surface of his mind first. And that, in itself, would be fatal. But if they knew he was still in the teleportive phase, and if they saw the perspira- tion on his face and his ex- pression of horror, then they would certainly realize the immediate need for sedation. One simple sentence would do it. And he could pen that message without skirting too close to the forbidden thought. Cautiously, he made his way to the writing table. As though he were sitting on an explosive that might go otf with any one of his next move- ments, he gingerly wrote : I exposed myself for a six- day period! The door opened and he turned slowly to watch Kate Connerly enter. He waved the sheet of paper so that she might see it and come read what he had written. He would have shouted the mes- sage, but just then he was frantically fighting off an im- pulse to open his mind to the thought that would send him on his last impulsive leap. He tried to make a noise in his throat. But nothing came out. He stared terrified at the chair and the blanket that was draped across her other arm and he wanted to shout: Not that! Not that! But even thinking about the protest invited a return of the disastrous thought. She took a quick glance in his direction, not really seeing enough to sense that some- thing was wrong, and began ' wrestling the chair again. And even before she said them, he knew that she would speak the fatal suggestive words : “It’s such a beautiful day outside. Dr. Sanderson. You’re going to go bask in the sun.” END THE LAST LEAP 81

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Worlds of if Book Reviews by Frederik Pohl TWO of the most complicat- ed brains recently applied to science fiction are to be found in the skulls of Robert A. W. Lowndes and James Blish. Blish in his own right has produced a dozen science fiction books, most good, some outstanding. If Lowndes has been less prolific, it is because he has spent the last twenty years editing science fiction (and other) magazines, thus putting most of his creative thought into other people’s stories. In their first collaboi'ation novel. The Duplicated Man (Avalon), these two have brewed such a mash of inven- tion and imagination as has not been seen since van Vogt. The distillate is raw, but it is dizzying and sometimes very sweet. We have every reason to believe that Blish-Lowndes wrote this novel with tongues in cheek; certainly at least a part of their intention was to caricature the smirking stick figures which so impossibly triumph in a typical van Vogt work (which are — has anyone noticed ? — the same soulless, pointless totems as populate the works of Ayn Rand). In this they succeeded. But they 82 did more. They produced a novel. Their central character is Paul Danton. He is the Dupli- cated Man. Blish and Lowndes describe him as a cardboard figure : he is a dedicated revo- lutionary but a totally ineffec- tive one; he hates the world state, but can find no better tactic to use against it than joining an underground con- spiracy which has yet to achieve its first success of any kind. This doesn’t matter. Blish-Lowndes need Danton only to serve as a canvas on whom they can paint half a dozen other characters, each part Danton and part someone else. The interplay of the sev- en duplicated Dantons is one of the great merits of the book. The action of the story con- cerns (among much else) a sort of planned cold war be- tween Earth and Venus, a war that is based on deception and sustained by fraud. The rul- ing bodies of each planet are all working at cross purposes, each individual councilor try- ing to achieve his own cryptic aims, both groups honey- combed with espionage and riddled with disloyalty. There

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is always an overt purpose (irrelevant) and a real pur- pose (concealed) for every act. When the interplanetary war finally hots up, it is wag- ed with nearly Nexialist strat- egy. Floods of nuclear missiles are mere diversions. The ulti- mate victorious stroke consists of rolling an empty barrel down a long flight of stairs. The Duplicated Man is a fantastically complicated book. In inept hands, it would be utterly tiresome. In the hands of Blish and Lowndes, it is — ^amazingly! — clear, logi- cal and gripping. It possesses cascades of inventive detail, big (the marvelous immortal, Geoffrey Thomas) and little (the characteristic smudged lips of the Venusians, caused by the folk belief that ball- point pens write better under water). It is a rewarding work. In the age of the Dis- posable Science Fiction Novel, designed like Kleenex to be used once and thrown away. The Duplicated Man is a story which improves with re-read- ing. Astonishing, but there it is. ARTHUR C. CLARKE has a sharp mind and a disci- plined typewriter and his stories of space exploration have that rare and satisfying quality, the feel of being the authentic reminiscences of an Old Space Dog. In The Chal- lenge of the Space Ship (Har- per), he is permitted to cast off the fiction format and pre- sent some two hundred pages of pure fact and speculation — why aliens haven’t come to Earth, and what a summer- resort satellite may be like; whether climate control is feasible, and how to travel be- tween the stars. What is good about these essays is very, very good. When he speaks of wartime radar and of “FIDO” (the R.A.F. fog-dispersal system used to get bombers safely down from the thick British skies), we all can afford to lis- ten. He was on the spot. He has had five sightings of UFOs himself; in explaining them, he explains away nearly all of the case the flying- saucerites have so laboriously built up. Where he writes of the probable shape of a sleep- ing compartment on a Mars- bound rocket, he is discussing a subject to which he has given much thought and a great deal of study. His guess is still only a guess, but it has become the informed guess of an expert. There are ten or twelve pieces as good as these in The Challenge of the Space Ship. Unfortunately there are also ten or twelve others. In “The Men on the Moon,” Clarke identifies for us several dozen historical figures after whom lunar craters have been named ; surely this is only tep- idly exciting to anyone. In “The Star of the Magi,” he 83

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tries to explain the Star that led the wise men to Bethlehem and arrives at the conclusion that it was a supernova (which it surely was not. If the star-gazers of Egypt, China and India had somehow missed it, those of Rome would not. We know that one of Rome’s greatest astrolo- gers, Thrasyllus, was in Asia Minor at the time) . In “Ques- tion Time,” the subject for discussion is not science at all but that quite different topic, the problems of lecturing on science. The final piece in the book, “Of Space and the Spirit,” is a diffuse gather-all which touches on everything and covers nothing. These sections, and one or two others, are the dross in The Challenge of the Space Ship. They do not dim the lus- ter of the gold that appears elsewhere in the book, but they make one wish that the publisher had been a more se- lective miner. A MORE rewarding Clarke — and probably the biggest sci- ence fiction book of recent years — is his Across the Sea of Stars (Harcourt, Brace), which contains eighteen short stories and two complete nov- els, or rather more than the wordage of three ordinary books, in one binding and at one single price. This is a bar- gain. It is also a first-rate in- troduction to Clarke’s work, if 84 the reader who needs one hap- pens to exist. The novels are Earthlight (a peculiarly plausible inter- planetary war between Earth and its scatter of solar colo- nies) and Childhood’s End (concerning’ the supercession of the human race by its own evolved children). "The short stories do not include all of Clarke’s best— “The Nine Bil- lion Names of God” is miss- ing, and so is “The Star” — but they show his ways and moods. Arthur Clarke finds it irritat- ing to be told that “Rescue Party” is his best story be- cause it was his very first. Therefore that fact will not be commented upon at this time, but it is here, and it is a magnificent yarn, and there are many others very nearly as good. DAMON KNIGHT possesses wit and invention, and dis- plays both in Masters of Evo- lution, as his book publishers (Ace) have retitled his old Galaxy novella. City folk and country folk hate each other and no longer have any peace- able contact with each other. So as not to confuse the read- er with on-the-other-hands, Knight has made it a premise that there is nothing useful, good or desirable about any machine — any machine — and the only satisfactory way of life for humanity is biological. To document it, Knight has invented some splendidly

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evolved plants and animals — parrot sort of things for stor- ing data and transmitting messages, ferriferous bushes whose fruits are Bowie knives, etc. The merely technological cities get the worst of it, but Knight convinces you that to put them out of their misery is entirely a kindnes, as he de- scribes the crushing load of absolutely essential labor-sav- ing devices that each city dweller must drag about. This one is fun. THE OTHER half of the dou- ble volume is Fire in the Heav- ens, in which George 0. Smith rids nuclear physics of that pesky little problem, the neu- trino. There isn’t any neu- trino, Smith says. What made physicists think there was such a thing is the previously undiscovered fact that every time ener^ is expended, a lit- tle bit of it drains off to make trouble in the Sun. That is how stars go nova, and that’s what our heroes have to pre- vent in Fire in the Heavens. Smith has written a lot of science fiction stories very like this one. As he is an engineer by profession, his gadgets give the enjoyable illusion of working, which is a plus. Still, because he concentrates on the gadgetry to the exclusion of the development of the characters, this is a very se- rious minus. Not only by gadgetry but by cocktail-hour dialogue and by action, the reader is entertained, but he is almost never made to feel. What’s wrong with that? Why, nothing much, but it is a surprise all the same to find that after two decades George 0. Smith can surprise us with as warm and moving a story as another new book under his byline. The Fourth R (Ballan- tine) . In The Fourth R, Smith turns his back on gum-chew- ing electronic technicians and dauntless space voyages. His hero is a boy, Jimmy Holden. Jimmy was conceived and brought to birth because his parents, both scientists, need- ed a child for their researches into mechanical education. Their researches succeeded, but the parents died abruptly, leaving young Jimmy, six years old, with an adult edu- cation but a child’s brain, a world of knowledge but a body just four feet tall. Worse, Jimmy is utterly alone. He dares confide in no one, and he dares not stay with his guardian — whose interest in the mechanical educator was extreme, and dangerous. Smith has written Jimmy’s story with inventiveness and thought, and, above all, with sympathetic understanding of young Jimmy Holden. It is a splendid job. The person who doesn’t much like science fic- tion will enjoy this book, and so will the person who does. Prolific Smith has still an- other book for us this month 85

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— and still another publisher. Path of Unreason comes out under the Gnome Press im- print, James Forrest Carroll, Smith’s bero, is either a cata- tonic suffering from overwork and deep-seated psychic flaws, or the victim of a plot on the part of alien invaders of Earth. Either premise might make a useful and entertain- ing book, but as Smith has meticulously refused to dis- tinguish between the lady and the tiger for 185 pages, and thumbs his nose at our igno- rance in an epilogue, the effect is more mystifying than amusing. ADAM CHASE’S The Golden Ape (Avalon) concerns a pe- culiar young giant who com- mutes between worlds, fight- ing duels like a very John Car- ter and rescuing a girl very like Dejah Thoris from quite Barsoomian perils. It has a great deal of action and color, but it also has a great deal of tripe. Hank Searls’s first novel. The Big X (Harper) , is a first-rate, fast-moving, tech- nically reliable story of a test pilot flying the last-but-one ancestor of the spaceship. The Big X is science fiction, but only just; in another year or so, it will be history. Yet it contains more of the challenge of the unknown than any dozen routine intergalactic blood-baths. In The Stars Are Too High (Random House), Agnew H. 86 Bahnson, Jr., proposes a se- cretly built spaceship which its inventors use to pretend the Earth is being explored by aliens, so as to unite mankind and end war. This theme has been so well explored by oth- ers, principally Theodore Sturgeon, that only great skill and inventive detail could jus- tify another handling. These elements do not occur in The Stars Are Too High. It is an inferior book; what’s worse, its publishers have claimed for it the status of a classic, which is disgraceful. Bombs in Orbit, by Jeff Sutton, is an Ace original concerning a Russian hydro- gen-bomb satellite project and an American rocket pilot’s fight to nullify it. Sometimes the reasoning is thin, but most of the detail is excellent, the suspense is lushly troweled on and the pace never lets up. Murray Leinster quietly goes on and on writing first- rate science fiction stories, as he has done since 1926. (If he did not appear in a science fiction magazine befoi’e that year, it is only because there was no science fiction maga- zine to appear in.) Apparently he will go on forever. This is an attractive prospect. In Monsters and Such (Avon) , an unprepossessing title has been given to a fine collection of his more recent stories. Only “Proxima Centuari” (1935) goes back more than a decade, but it is well worth

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reviving; and all the others in the book are worth keeping alive indefinitely. Jerry Sohl has two novels for us at once. The first is a reprint of his Rinehart novel, The Transcendent Man (Ban- tam) , which lets us in on the well-kept secret of Man’s rap- id evolutionary rise. Capel- lans are behind it. They drive us upward, for they live on our brain power ; unfortunate- ly, they are about to leave us and we will then rapidly re- vert to the animal. Sohl’s hero must decide what to do about all this. In One Against Herculum (Ace), Sohl invents for us a future city-colony in which crime and violence are kept under control by licensing the privilege of criminal activity. The idea has its merits, but Sohl has made almost no use of it, preferring to drop that notion and get on with another underground revolt against a dictatorial state, and so the story quickly confines itself to routine shoot-and-be-shot. This is a double volume, of which the flip side is Secret of the Lost Race, by Andre Norton, a competent time- killer concerning evil exploit- ers of a frontier planet. Our hero (who, you will hardly fail to guess, turns out to be one of the Lost Race himself) sets everything straight in a few knockdown brawls. Miss Norton also offers The Beast Master (Harcourt, Brace), which gives us a de- molished Earth and a dis- persed handful of humans scattered among the non-hu- man civilized planets of the Galaxy. Her hero is a Navajo who, in the war that destroy- ed Earth, was a commando leader of a squad of animals trained to help wage war. In Seed of Light (Ballan- tine), Edmund Cooper spans many centuries and many light-years and yet manages to maintain a continuity of narrative while, generation after generation, his charac- ters are born, grow and die. Earth is self-destroyed ; only ten humans survive, in a rocket headed for a hoped-for planet of Alpha Centauri. But Alpha Centauri is barren ; the ship wheels around it and heads for Sirius. If there is no planet circling Sirius, they will try Procyon; if not Pro- cyon, then Vega . . . then Al- tair . . . The handful of men, women and babies in the ship are all of humanity, and they will not let themselves be de- stroyed. Talbot Mundy’s celebrated series concerning the adven- tures of Prince Tros aren’t really science fiction, but they are fun. In Tros of Samo- thrace (Fantasy Classic Li- brary), the prince battles Norsemen, pre-Roman Brit- ons and Julius Caesar. In Purple Pirate, he tackles Cleo- patra in intrigue, her sister in love, and Mark Antony in 87

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battle. Tros is always exciting. What’s more, Mundy always does his homework — if his historical facts are sometimes false, it is because of license, not ignorance. Robot Hunt (Avalon), by Roger Lee Vernon, opens into the middle of a complicated and pulse-stirring spy hunt in a future Paris. It is pure Key- stone Kops chase, but it suc- ceeds in catching the interest at once and the pace is sus- tained to the very end. Vernon conceives an Earth in which each sovereign nation has its shield of impenetrable force screens, thus neutralizing all weapons and ending war for- ever— until someone discov- ers a way through the screens. Then, of course, the whole bloody fuss starts all over again. Robot Hunt is compos- ed of ingredients which have produced dozens of the worst literary clinkers of our times, but Vernon stirs in thought. In Starman’s Quest (Gnome), Robert Silverberg proposes to entertain the teen- age audience with a story about a 300-year-old hero coeval with his readers. (He has spent most of his life in near-light-speed space travel. Under relativity law, his ob- jective-time age is only seven- teen.) Silverberg no sooner settles on this theme than he abandons it in favor of a travelogue on an implausible future Earth, populated by unlikely nuts. Gnome also gives us The Dawning Light by Robert Randall, a sequel to The Shrouded Planet. There are strange sights and events, but you must not linger to exam- ine them, for the skin of solid plot and thought that sustains the story is only millimeters thick, and if you pause to re- flect, you will plunge through the crust. For the younger ones, Clif- ford B. Hicks’s First Boy on the Moon (Winston) under- takes to initiate children from eight to ten into the excite- ment of interplanetary travel. A boy named Mike and a boy named Mud stow away on a rocket piloted by Mike’s dad- dy; and, winked at by an utterly incredible space-sta- tion commander, are allowed to participate in the first lunar landing. Being very young, they may not be very critical, so the worn and rudi- mentary plot may get by. Readers who wish to con- trast practice with theory in the case of the undersigned may wish to avail themselves of two new Ballantine titles: Wolf bane (a novel, in collab- oration with the late C. M. Kornbluth) and Tomorrow Times Seven (a collection of short stories) . In a field where a reviewer is a writer is an editor is a fan, the author con- siders himself mighty bi-ave in speaking so forthrightly of the work of his colleagues. END 88

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To Each His Own By JACK SHARKEY A world ideal for life will have life on it — but don’t expect ideal life! ON SEPTEMBER the 24th, 1965, the Venusian space- ship Investigator floated gent- ly to Earth in Times Square. The sleek metal belly of the ship touched feather-light up- on the asphalt “X” of Broad- way and Seventh Avenue, and stubby stabilizing legs extend- ed from ports along the sides of the hull, bracing the ship’s mass against dangerous roll- ing, leaving it hulking there like some metallic beetle at rest. The sun was almost directly overhead, sending yellow-gold serpentine glints wriggling on the gleaming surface of the ship. After the ve^ slight thumping as the ship settled into place, there was no sound throughout the nearby streets of New York. Absent was the noise of traffic, the hubbub of voices. the hurry-scurry of pedes- trians. Nothing but heavy op- pressive silence everywhere outside the body of the ship. No apprehensive eye appear^ at a window to stare at the visitor from the nearest plan- et. No telephone was picked up in nervous haste to warn the authorities of the possible menace to the peoples of Earth. Just the silence and the dancing sunlight. Inside the spaceship, there was swift, practiced activity. The Venusians were a pick- ed, trained crew. This, the first contact with the third planet, called for quick reac- tion, accurate evaluation, and competent decision. Each of the five aboard had a job to do immediately upon landing. With no conversation, they were all at their tasks. It was an operation they’d prac- 89

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ticed many times over, back at their home base on Venus. They were sick of the thing even before being sent to Earth. But their training had paid well, for now their mo- tions were automatic, each separate action swift, sure and precise. Gwann, the pilot, his heavy- lidded eyes narrowed with the intensity of concentration, checked and re-checked his in- struments and gauges. His nimble three-digited hands, with their long, flat palms, flickered from button to switch to dial. He locked the stabilizing legs into position, once each leg had made its contact securely with the sur- face outside. He dampered the power of the interplanetary drive, leaving its deadly ema- nations at a low, and therefore safe, degree of pulsation. He checked the release valves of the individual skimmers, mak- ing certain at the same time that, should the atmosphere outside be hostile to Venusian breathing, the tanks were fill- ed and the cockpit seals were tight and break-free. DROG, the navigator, used compass, ruler and stylus upon the scant, almost rudi- mentary Earth map, to deter- mine the exact point of contact with the third planet. Venu- sian telescopes were able to see — very indistinctly — conti- nental outlines at the twenty- million-mile distance to their 90 neighbor planet. But the foggy overhang that shrouded their home planet had made sharp topographical drawing well- nigh impossible. Volval, as Drog passed him the information, relayed the findings by light-beam back to their home base. The geo- graphical location, coded into the tight beam, sped outward from the surface of Earth to- ward Venus, where it would not be received for at least a minute and a half. Volval, hav- ing transmitted the data, waited impatiently while the Venusian biochemist tested the outside surface against their leaving the ship. Jorik, the biochemist, re- volved the small metal “cage” with its quivering, burbling Venusian life-forms on it back into the space over his work- table. The animals seemed un- harmed by their exposure to the alien planet, but he began more definitive tests upon the samplings of atmosphere and soil and vegetation brought back by a tiny robo-skimmer that had searched throughout a three-mile radius of the ship immediately after the landing, and had returned by homing beam to its tiny access port in the thick metal side of the ship. While Volval waited in in- creasing irritation, and Jorik ran his tests, Klendro, the most expendable member of the expedition, studied his speech over and over, his JACK SHARKEY

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three-valved heart squirting its watery blood through his tiny, hairlike arteries and veins. Klendro was almost a so- cial outcast with these oth- ers, these real spacemen, though his job, he felt, was the most important. Klendro was the Venusian ambassador to the governments of Earth. He went over his speech again, hoping that the Earth broad- casts picked up now and then on Venus had been accurate enough for the Venusian lin- guists to write him a speech that wouldn’t embarrass the Earth people by its inane mis- uses of their tongue. Broadcasts had indicated that the major powers on Earth were the United States — whatever those were — of America and Soviet Russia. The Russian broadcasts, how- ever, being nothing more than a series of eulogies declaring the happiness of life in Russia, had been too lacking in breadth to give the linguists much to work on. They had therefore chosen English as the tongue in which Klendro was to make his speech. He lifted the scroll once more and began reading his speech half aloud, having a bit of trouble, as usual, in con- trolling the square-tipped sur- face of his tongue in forming the unfamiliar syllables. “Pipple of Arth,” he said, slowly and with much effort, “it is with grett plazzer that TO EACH HIS OWN we mek this, tha farst contact with arr nebber planet. We are from tha second planet from yer — or mebbe Uh shudd seh arr — sun. Tha planet you knaw as Venus. We feel that we can share with arr nebber planet the fronts of arr — of arr — ” Klendro braced him- self, then forced out awkward- ly, “moot-yoo-ull sa-yan-tific ri-sarch . . .” He refolded the long coil of the scroll and stuffed it into his belt-sack. Well, he told himself, for better or worse. I’ve got to give this speech. He wished he were anywhere but here. SOME of the broadcasts had indicated a certain bellig- erency in the inhabitants of this alien planet. He wondered, with a kind of sick fright, if he would ever have the oppor- tunity to deliver the speech, even badly. Some of the more esoteric phrasings of the Earth broadcasts had eluded the interpretations of the Ve- nusian linguists. One of the more recurrent phrases was a “slug in the guts.” They were not sure exactly what this en- tailed, but, from the context, the linguists were certain that it was something dire, possibly fatal. Klendro was a very unhap- py Venusian. “Volval!” Klendro heard Drog cry out. “Did you send that stuff?” “Yes,” the light-beam oper- 91

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ator called back. “I’m waiting an Jorik now.” “All set here,” called Jorik, coming into Volval’s compart- ment, followed by Gwann. “The atmosphere is breath- able. A little heavy on the oxy- gen and light on the carbon dioxide, but that was expected before we took off. If we take deep inhales and periodic radi- ation, we should be all right.” “Fine,” said Gwann, the pilot and leader, as Klendro came into the room with the others. “Better keep your guns loose in their holsters, though. You know what they’ve told us about the Earthmen.” “Hot-headed.” Volval nod- ded. “Will we take the skim- mers?” asked Jorik. “Or do you think the Earthmen would prefer being met without the barrier-screens around us ?” "They’d prefer it, all right !” said Drog. “However, in my opinion — ” “We’re going to have to chance it sooner or later with- out the screens,” said Gwann. “The batteries in the skim- mers won’t last forever. We might as well go out there as we are.” “Who goes first?” asked Jorik. “Well,” Gwann shrugged, “if the crowds look hostile, I should go, as your leader. If they seem merely curious, then it’s up to Klendro, as our ambassador, to make his speech.” Jorik frowned. “Now, wait, Gwann. Perhaps I ought to tell you. The sight records on the robo-skimmer showed no evi- dence of Earthmen outside the ship.” “That’s ridiculous,” said Gwann, his eyes flashing. “Ve- nus reports this city is one of the most populous.” Jorik smiled wryly. “Then the populace certainly ducked out of sight quickly when they saw the robo-skimmer com- ing.” Gwann seemed on the point of making a sharp retort, and instead turned away toward the exit lock. “Since things seem suspicious. I’d best go first.” “Sir,” said Volval, laying a hand upon his leader’s arm. “Yes?” queried Gwann, pausing. “Good luck, sir,” Volval fal- tered, drawing his hand back. “Thanks,” said Gwann, not unkindly. “For Venus,” he added. “For Venus,” the others echoed. Gwann released the safety lock on the circular metal door and turned the valve handle. Slowly, the door recessed itself in the metal pocket in the ship’s wall, and Gwann went out into the yellow glow of the sunlight glittering in Times Square. The sun was glowing crim- son on the horizon when the five Venusians met once 92 JACK SHARKEY

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more at the door of their ship. “Nothing — no clue, no peo- ple,” said Jorik, his face wrin- kled with puzzlement. “I can’t understand it.” “Perhaps some holo- caust . . . ?” Volval began weakly. “Or a war?” Drog hinted gravely. “Impossible!” said Gwann, leaning against one of the legs of the gigantic ship. “There is a conspicuous absence of anything that might be con- strued as a weapon of war. There are no bodies in the buildings or in the streets. No wreckage anywhere.” “Perhaps they have been frightened by our appearance and have gone into hiding?” asked Klendro, fingering the edge of his now futile scroll where it protruded from his belt-sack. “Nonsense,” said their lead- er. “From all we’ve learned of the Earthmen, fright would only make them aggressive. They would not have hidden from us ; they’d have tried to shoot us down when we emerged from the ship.” “There was one thing . . .” said Jorik slowly. “I almost did not see it, but its shadow passed close by me on the side of one of the buildings, and I looked up barely in time to get a glimpse of it before it van- ished.” “What was it like?” asked Gwann quickly. “Some sort of animal, prob- ably carnivorous,” said Jorik. “I cannot be certain, of course, but 1 saw a mouth with teeth bespeaking flesh-eating. Quite a — ” he repressed a shudder — “quite a large mouth.” “Strange,” said Gwann. “Exceedingly strange. You saw only the one?” Jorik nodded. “Well,” said Gwann, “one carnivore cannot have ac- counted for a population that runs into the millions. Besides, the Earthmen would be able to deal with mere animal life.” Klendro remembered the “slug in the guts” and blanched. “What should we do, sir?” asked Volval. “Our orders were to make peaceful contact with the Earthmen. If there are no Earthmen — ?” “Calm yourself, Volval.” Gwann smiled, patting the younger man upon the shoul- der. *‘If there are Earthmen to contact, we’ll make that contact. I have an idea.” “What, sir?” asked Drog. “We shall each take one of the skimmers and investigate the surface of the planet. Now, while our maps are incom- plete, I feel that Drog can draw us up competent enough maps to guide us over the sur- face of Earth.” “I can try, sir,” said Drog. “We’ll meet back here at the ship in five days,” said Gwann. “All of you take along enough supplies for five days, plus an 93 TO EACH HIS OWN

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extra day’s rations in case of emergency. The homing beam on our ship will bring you safely back if you get lost.” '‘One thing, sir,” said Jorik, his brow creased in a frown. "We’d best all take along extra ammunition for the guns.” "The carnivores?” The biochemist nodded. "Where there’s one, there are bound to be others. That one I saw was large enough to bite a chunk out of a skimmer.” Klendro, pale already, lost more color. Each was assigned a conti- nent to check. Of the two extra continents, Drog took one, and Gwann the other, the consensus being that the pilot and navigator could better cov- er extra territory than the others, who were less used to piloting the sleek skimmers. Volval was to go to the Europe - Asia land mass, Gwann to Africa and Antarc- tica, Klendro to Australia, Jorik to South America, and Drog to Arctica, after first checking over the North American Continent on which they had landed. "Something exceedingly strange,” said Jorik, before they separated, "about the consolidation of their civiliza- tion. So much wasted land area.” "The sooner I get back to Venus, the happier I’ll be,” said Gwann, keeping his voice down so that only Jorik, the 94 biochemist, could hear him, "This place is eerie. It’s — it’s like a ghost planet.” "And there’s something wrong about the buildings. They are abominably ineffi- cient. I can barely conceive the uses of some of the artifacts.” "Maybe,” said Gwann sud- denly, "we never will know!” "Sir,” said Volval, ap- proaching the pilot, "I’ve dis- covered some maps.” He held out a packet of papers, tinted blue and brown. "Good work, Volval,” said Gwann, taking the packet. "Where did you find them?” "In one of those small shops, not far from the ship, sir. I cannot read the designations, of course, but I thought that, by a comparison with the maps from Venus Observa- tory, we might — ” "That’s intelligent think- ing,” said Gwann, nodding. "Their maps are bound to be similar to ours. Klendro! What can you make of these?” The ambassador came over and took the thick packet. The paper of the maps, as he did so, tore apart, and bits and pieces of the soft, pulpy edges dropped in a shower to the street. "Not very substantial mate- rial, is it?” he muttered, un- folding the topmost of the maps. He looked over the col- ored line drawings on the page in some bewilderment. The let- ters spelling out "Rand Mc- Nally” meant nothing to his JACK SHARKEY

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alien eyes. The map itself was a mercator projection of the globe, the extreme northern and southern continents being somewhat distorted. After a few moments, he shook his head. “I’m sorry. All the Earth broadcasts that we intercepted gave me a working knowledge of the spoken word, sir, but I’m afraid their actual word symbols are beyond me. It would take trained linguists months, perhaps years, to get a correlation between the sound of the word and its writ- ten image.” “Drog?” said Gwann, turn- ing to the navigator. Drog took the rotting sheet in his hands and studied the configurations of the conti- nents. After a bit, he bright- ened. “Sir, I think I can figure this out. According to our landing calculations, we are here.” He jabbed a digit at one section of the page, and was distressed when it went right through. “The material seems to be falling apart, sir.” “Perhaps,” Jorik suggested, “it is undergoing some unnat- ural stress — possibly tied up somehow with whatever it was that depopulated this city?” “A good point, Jorik,” said Gwann. Along black shadow slid across the pavement near their feet and the five Venu- sians, very much startled, look- ed overhead. They were barely in time to see the huge gray form of the carnivore before it vanished behind a sign atop a nearby building which bore the mystifying information “Pepsi-Cola.” “There, sir!” cried Jorik. “That’s exactly like the one I saw earlier!” “Those teetkl” Klendro whimpered. “They could bite one of us in two!” “And what they could do to us, they could do to an Earth- man,” Gwann said specula- tively. “From the sizes of the doorways in these buildings, and the clothing on display in the shop windows, the Earth- men could not have been much larger than us.” “Sir,” said Drog, holding up the map so that the leader could see it, “look here. This blue section that runs all over the map. You see, it’s marked circle-arc-fork-cone-zigzag.” “Yes,” said Gwann. “I see. What about it?” “Well, sir, it recurs on the map, but each time it has a new group of symbols in front of it. What can it mean?” Gwann frowned and studied the five symbols : 0-C-E-A-N. “Seems to suggest a similar- ity between all of them,” said Jorik. “Perhaps the first syro- bol only means that the section is in a different place.” All five Venusians studied A-R-C-T-I-C, A-N-T-A-R-C- T-I-C, I-N-D-I-A-N, and the other symbols that were used 95 TO EACH HIS OWN

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in conjunction with the mys- terious 0-C-E-A-N. ''A tribal tabu!” exclaimed Jorik. ‘'What are you talking about, Jorik?” said Gwann impatiently. “You recall I said there seemed something strange about the consolidation of the populace in certain areas ? The wasted land space?” “Yes, yes. What about it?” “All these sections marked 0-C-E-A-N are the unused areas. There must have been some sort of tribal superstition about dwelling in those areas. That would explain why all the people lived on the higher ground here.” “I — I would have expected to find something blue in that area,” said Gwann uncertain- ly. “Or else why is it so mark- ed?” “Sir,” said Jorik respectful- ly, “some sections are colored very oddly — even in red. Yet no such colors were found any- where on the planet by our telescopes, were they? And none of these large blue areas shows population centers. Tabu areas, obviously — not to be inhabited.” Gwann shivered. “The long- er I stay here, the less I like it. Come on. Each of you take one of these maps. Drog, you assign us to a specific sector by these maps, rather than by ours. We'll meet back here at the ship in five days.” One by one, the Venusians got aboard their skimmers, making sure the protective barriers were working, and then glided off to investigate the ghost planet. Drog, sliding in his trim craft over the Noiih American continent, stopped many times, at each large city he discovered, but the story was the same as in New York. Empty buildings, no particu- lar damages except what could be accounted for by decay and long disuse. Every so often — more often than he enjoyed — a flock of the huge carnivores soared above his skimmer, their long, dark shadows slith- ering over the cockpit in the dancing yellow sunlight. Once, one of them broke away from the group and spiraled down to investigate his craft. Drog jabbed the but- ton of the nose-gun hastily, and a lance of metal sped with a flicker of light into the thick hide of the oncoming monster. A thick spray of blood gush- ed from the wound, as the great beast writhed in torment before sliding down through the atmosphere toward the distant ground. Its blood hung in a grisly trail over it as it plunged, marking its passage, then began to fall slowly after the beast. Drog was by now almost a mile beyond the point where he had fired at the carnivore, but he wasn't too far away to see its hungry companions 96 JACK SHARKEY

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swoop down after it and begin rending it even before it reached the ground. He shuddered and looked away. As he soared onward, he de- termined to keep the barrier on all night long, while he slept. If he could sleep . . . North America taken care of, as well as possible in his limited time, Drog headed northward for the continent of Arctica. Nothing but bare land and ocean bottom met his eye. Feeling increasingly queasy, he nosed the skimmer around and set it swishing back to- ward New York. JORIK watched the shadow of his skimmer pacing his own motion over the tops of the tangled jungle trees below. He inclined the nose of the craft downward, and began a shallow glide toward a clear- ing in the midst of the dense undergrowth. Braking the skimmer gent- ly, he let it settle slowly into the resilient grip of the tall yellow-brown grass in the clearing. Making sure his gun was loaded and the safety catch off, he slid open the cockpit and eased himself out. He was — though of course he didn’t know it — deep in the Matto Grosso of South Amer- ica. Everywhere he looked, violent flares of color peeped at him through the twisted, swaying vines that clung TO EACH HIS OWN everjwhere. Nature had run riot in the jungle. No subtle- ties of shading or form here. Long, sharp leaves gleamed greenly on all sides of the bio- chemist. Radiant reds glowed from the shadowy depths of forest beyond the small clear- ing. Golden streamers hung in profusion from each crooked elbow of the chaotically twist- ed tree branches all about him. Despite the brilliance and beauty of it, Jorik sensed a hidden menace in the place. He should, at that spot, have been hearing shrieking, roar- ing, bleating, grunting of ani- mals, the cries of birds and skittering of insects. There was nothing but that all- pervading silence. Jorik moved slowly away from the skimmer and a^ proached the nearest tree, his scientist’s eye pondering some- thing not-quite-right-looking about it. As he got to it, and touched it, the thick, corru- gated bark fell into powder between his fingers. He press- ed, pried, thumped and tugged at the tree. It was dead. Dead and rotting. His heart fluttered annoy- ingly in his breast. There was something frightening about the way things were going. He could understand a war de- stroying human life, even civi- lization, but this — this was primeval territory. The beasts, the plants, the lower forms of life — ^these should have sur- vived. 97

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But they hadn’t. Suddenly afraid, he rushed back to his skinuner, slid into the cockpit and took off, rising at a swift vertical angle from the dead jungle. Toward the eastern coast of South America, he saw many fine hotels, with magnificent curves of beaches following the perimeter of the land mass on which the people had lived — already he was thinking of them in the past tense — and Jorik wondered at the absence of the blue 0-C-E-A-N that should have bordered those beaches. But as he glided outward from the coast, curving steadi- ly northward toward New York, he saw that the beaches, with their pale silver sands, extended outward and down- ward toward only more land, soon becoming rocky, then turning at last into mud and ooze, with a sprinkling of blackish-green weeds. But no visible trace of the mysterious 0-C-E-A-N. GWANN, searching through- out Africa, fared no bet- ter. Only the silence, the rotting vegetation, and the absence of landlocked life. Higher in the atmosphere of the ghost planet, he saw many of the carnivores, but also smaller animals, soaring in gloriously colored groups, and seemingly haiTnless. There were times when he had to pass through literal clouds of these smaller beasts, whizzing and bobbing and gliding past him by the millions, only to vanish in the hazy distance with a blaze of color. Africa having proven fruit- less, Gwann directed the skim- mer toward the opposite polar region from that which Drog was to investigate. Like Drog, he found only land there, and no continent. The land was ocean bottom. He consulted his map, but there was nothing below his skimmer that corresponded with the cryptic mark- ings: A-N-T-A-R-C-T-I-C 0-C-E-A-N. He turned his skimmer around and started back for New York. VOLVAL, CRUISING from the Alps to the steppes and back again, found nothing to explain the disappearance of the Earthmen. Many cities, many lands, hamlets and vil- lages, huts and palaces ... It was the same every place. Si- lence. Fleeting glimpses of the carnivores and sometimes tinier-but-similar beasts. But no Earthmen. KLENDRO HAD passed over the surface of Australia fifty times in his five alloted days without discovering life of any sort other than the carnivores. And they, for some reason, were unusually well represent- ed in that region. They had come at his skimmer in grin- 98 JACK SHARKEY

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ning swanns, but the barrier held firm, and the unlucky nearer ones spun away with scorched flesh glowing red, to be tom to pieces by their com- panions. When he decided further in- vestigation was useless, Klen- dro was very glad to leave that place. A group of the carnivores gave chase, but Klendro spun his ship about long enough to shoot metal darts into two of them. As the others swerved back to begin an impromptu feast on their wounded companions, Klendro turned the skimmer up to full speed and made quick connec- tion with the homing device on the ship, back in New York. “I DON’T understand it,” said Gwann, on the night of the fifth day. The Venusians were all back in the ship in Times Square, having a meal to- gether that was partly to sat- isfy their appetites, partly to celebrate being together again with their friends. “It’s incredible, all right,” said Jorik. “A whole planet — and of a high degree of civili- zation, too — wiped out. The very vegetation dying. And that’s the frightening part of it; Not dead, mind you, dying. That means that whatever happened here happened re- cently.” “And those constructions in the buildings,” said Volval, staring bemusedly at the wall, “the ones marked S-t-a-i-r- w-a-y. I wonder what they were for.” “Obviously they were deco- rations added by the archi- tect,” said Drog. “Any fool can see they served no pur- pose. If anything, they hinder- ed the use of the access slots to the various levels of the buildings.” “Well,” said Gwann, “our work here is through. We’d better be heading back to Venus.” “And your report?” asked Jorik. “Positive,” said Gwann. "Favorable for immediate pos- session and colonization.” “It’s a good little planet.” Jorik nodded. “But why do you suppose the Earthmen all vanished ?” “We’ll probably never know,” Volval sighed. “Not unless,” said Klendro, indicating a bale of salvaged Earth materials, “our lin- guists and archeologists can make some sense out of this junk here.” “Let’s hope so,” Gwann said. ‘The mysteriousness of this whole thing is going to drive me crazy if they don’t.” “Well, sir,” said Drog, con- sulting his charts, “if we’re going to take advantage of juxtaposition of the two planets — ” “Right,” said Gwann, turn- ing and making his way to- ward the pilot’s compartment. “We’ll depart from Earth in ten minutes. Secure all hatches TO EACH HIS OWN 99

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and loose objects until we get into space.” The crew hurried to their tasks. Halfway to Venus, voi- val, paging idly through one of the rotting books from Earth, gave a shout. “What is it?” said Gwann, coming into the light-beam operator’s compartment, stretching to ease the- muscle cramps from his long stint in the pilot’s cabin. “I’ve found a picture of the carnivore, sir!” said Volval proudly. “Look, sir.” “Hmm,” said Gwann, study- ing the fading illustration. “I believe you’re right. Jorik!” The biochemist popped into the compartment, his face cu- rious. “Yes, sir? What is it?” “Isn’t this one of your car- nivores, Jorik?” asked Gwann, giving him the book. Jorik, reaching for the book, nudged one of the news- papers atop the stack near the cabin wall, and the front page fluttered unnoticed to the floor. Across its surface were spread the incomprehensible — to Ve- nusian eyes — ^words : LITHIUM BOMB TEST COULD DESTROY WORLD Noted Scientist Declares Dan- ger of Polar Experiment ; Melted Polar Caps May Flood En- tire Globe Jorik studied the picture carefully, his gills trickling a faint stream of bubbles as he concentrated on the image of the carnivore. “Yes, that’s one of them, sure enough. I wish I could read Earth writing. I wonder just what a T-i-g-e-r- s-h-a-r-k is.” Volval bobbed up from his place and floated to a port in the ceiling, through which he could see the tiny, glittering ball of Earth, its blue-green surface sparkling like a star against the black backdrop of empty space. “I can’t understand w^t killed them,” he said. “Living conditions were ideal” END IF YOU'VE MOVED . . . please let us know, will you? We want to get your copies of IF to you when they should arrive^-at least a week before the news- stands get theirs — but we can’t unless you inform us that you've moved or are moving. Send both addresses, the old and the new, to: SUBSCRIPTION DEPT. IF MAGAZINE 421 Hudson Street, New York 14, N. Y.

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THE AUTUMN AFTER NEXT By MARGARET ST. CLAIR Being a wizard missionary to the Free’l needed more than magic — it called for a miracle! The spell the Free’l were casting ought to have drawn the moon down from the heavens, made water run uphill, and inverted the order of the seasons. But, since they had got broor’s blood instead of newt’s, were using alganon instead of vervet juice, and were three days later than the solstice anyhow, nothing hap- pened. Neeshan watched their an- tics with a bitter smile. He’d tried hard with them. The Free’l were really a chal- lenge to evangelical wizardry. They had some natural talent for magic, as was evinced by the frequent attempts they made to perform it, and they were interested in what he told them about its capacities. But they simply wouldn’t take the trouble to do it right. How long had they been stamping around in their cir- cle, anyhow? Since early moonset, and it was now al- most dawn. No doubt they 101

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would go on stamping all next day, if not interrupted. It was time to call a halt. Neeshan strode into the middle of the circle. Rhn, the village chief, looked up from his drumming. “Go away,” he said. “You'll spoil the chann." “What charm? Can't you see by now, Rhn, that it isn't going to work?” ^'Of course it will. It just takes time.” '‘Hell it will. Hell it does. Watch.” Neeshan pushed Rhn to one side and squatted down in the center ofr the circle. From the pockets of his black robe he produced stylus, dragon's blood, oil of anointing, and salt. He drew a design on the ground with the stylus, drop- ped dragon's blood at the cor- ners of the parallelogram, and touched the inner cusps with the oil. Then, sighting careful- ly at the double red and white sun, which was just coming up, he touched the outer cusps with salt. An intense smoke sprang up. WHEN the smoke died away, a small lizardlike creature was visible in the parallelogram. “Tell the demon what you want,” Neeshan ordered the Free'l. The Free'l hesitated. They had few wants, after all, which was one of the things 102 that made teaching them mag- ic difficult. “Two big dyla melons,” one of the younger ones said at last. “A new andana necklace,” said another. “A tooter like the one you have,” said Rhn, who was am- bitious. “Straw for a new roof on my hut,” said one of the older females. “That's enough for now,” Neeshan interrupted. “The demon can't bring you a toot- er, Rhn — you have to ask an- other sort of demon for that. The other things he can get. Sammel, to work!” The lizard in the parallelo- gram twitched its tail. It dis- appeared, and returned almost immediately with melons, a handsome necklace, and an enormous heap of straw. “Can I go now?” it asked. “Yes.” Neeshan turned to the Free'l, who were sharing the dyla melons out around their circle. “You see? ThaVs how it ought to be. You cast a spell. You're careful with it. And it works. Right away.” “When you do it, it works,” Rhn answered. “Magic works when any- body does it. But you have to do it right.” Rhn raised his mud-plaster- ed shoulders in a shrug. “It's such a lot of dreeze, doing it that way. Magic ought to be fun.” He walked away, munching on a slice of the MARGARET ST. CLAIR

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melon the demon had brought. Neeshan stared after him, his eyes hot. “Dreeze” was a Free’l word that referred originally to the nasal drip that accompanied that race’s virulent head colds. It had been extended to mean almost anything annoying. The Free’l, who spent much of their time sitting in the rain, had a lot of colds in the head. Wasn’t there anything to be done with these people? Even the simplest spell was too dreezish for them to bother with. He was getting a headache. He’d better perform a head- ache-removing spell. He retired to the hut the Free’l had assigned to him. The spell worked, of course, but it left him feeling soggy and dispirited. He was still standing in the hut, wonder- ing what he should do next, when his big black-and-gold tooter in the corner gave a faint “woof.” That meant headquarters wanted to com- municate with him. Neeshan carefully aligned the tooter, which is basically a sort of lens for focusing neural force, with the rising double suns. He moved his couch out into a parallel posi- tion and lay down on it. In a minute or two he was deep in a cataleptic trance. The message from head- quarters was long, circuitous, and couched in the elaborate, ego-caressing ceremonial of THE AUTUMN AFTER NEXT high magic, but its gist was clear enough. “Your report received,” it boiled down to. “We are glad to hear that you are keeping on with the Free’l. We do not expect you to succeed with them — none of the other mag- ical missionaries we have sent out ever has. But if you should succeed, by any chance, you would get your senior warlock’s rating immediately. It would be no exaggeration, in fact, to say that the high- est offices in the Brotherhood would be open to you.” Neeshan came out of his trance. His eyes were round with wonder and cupid- ity. His senior warlock’s rat- ing— why, he wasn’t due to get that for nearly four more six hundred-and-five-day years. And the higest offices in the Brotherhood — ^that could mean anything. Any- thing! He hadn’t realized the Brotherhood set such store on converting the Free’l. Well, now, a reward like that was worth going to some trouble for. Neeshan sat down on his couch, his elbows on his knees, his fists pressed against his forehead, and tried to think. The Free’l liked magic, but they were lazy. Anything that involved accuracy impressed them as dreezish. And they didn’t want anything. That was the biggest difficulty. Magic had nothing to offer 103

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them. He had never, Neeshan thought, heard one of the Free’l express a want. Wait, though. There was Rhn. He had shown a definite interest in Neeshan’s footer. Something in its intricate, florid black-and-gold curves seemed to fascinate him. True, he hadn’t been interested in it for its legitimate uses, w'hich were to extend and de- velop a magician’s spiritual power. He probably thought that having it would give him more prestige and influence among his people. But for one of the Free’l to say “I wish I had that” about anything whatever meant that he could be worked on. Could the foot- er be used as a bribe? Neeshan sighed heavily. Getting a footer was painful and laborious. A footer was carefully fitted to an individ- ual magician’s personality ; in a sense, it was a part of his personality, and if Neeshan let Rhn have his footer, he would be letting him have a part of himself. But the stakes were enormous. Neeshan got up from his couch. It had begun to rain, but he didn’t want to spend time performing a rain-re- pelling spell. He wanted to find Rhn. Rhn was standing at the edge of the swamp, luxuriat- ing in the downpour. The mud had washed from his shoulders, and he was already 104 sniffling. Neeshan came to the point directly. “I’ll give you my footer,’’ he said, almost choking over the words, “if you’ll do a spell — a simple spell, mind you — exactly right.” Rhn hesitated. Neeshan felt an impulse to kick him. Then he said, “Well ...” Neeshan began his instruc- tions. It wouldn’t do for him to help Rhn too directly, but he was willing to do every- thing reasonable. Rhn listen- ed, scratching himself in the armpits and sneezing from time to time. After Neeshan had been through the directions twice, Rhn stopped him. “No, don’t bother telling me again — it’s just more dreeze. Give me the materials and I’ll show you. Don’t forget, you’re giving me the footer for this.” He started off, Nee- shan after him, to the lat- ter’s hut. While Neeshan looked on tensely, Rhn began going through the actions Neeshan had told him. Half- way through the first decad, he forgot. He inverted the or- der of the hand-passes, sprin- kled salt on the wrong point, and mispronounced the names in the invocation. When he pulled his hands apart at the end, only a tiny yellow flame sprang up. Neeshan cursed bitterly. Rhn, however, was delighted. “Look at that, will you!” he MARGARET ST. CLAIR

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exclaimed, clapping his chap- ped, scabby little hands to- gether. “It worked! I'll take the tooter home with me now.” “The tooter? For that? You didn’t do the spell right.” Rhn stared at him indig- nantly. “You mean, you’re not going to give me the toot- er after all the trouble I went to? I only did it as a fay or, really. Neeshan, I think it’s very mean of you.” “Try the spell again.” “Oh, dreeze. You’re too im- patient. You never give any- thing time to work.” He got up and walked off. For the next few days, everybody in the village avoided Neeshan. They all felt sorry for Rhn, who’d worked so hard, done everything he was told to, and been cheated out of his tooter by Neeshan. In the end the magician, curs- ing his own weakness, surren- dered the tooter to Rhn. The accusatory atmosphere in the normally indifferent Free’l was intolerable. But now what was he to do? He’d given up his tooter — he had to ask Rhn to lend it to him when he wanted to contact headquarters — and the senior rating was no nearer than before. His head ached constantly, and all the spells he performed to cure the pain left him feeling wretchedly tired out. Magic, however, is an art of many resources, not all of THE AUTUMN AFTER NEXT them savory. Neeshan, in his desperation, began to invoke demons more disreputable than those he would ordinar- ily have consulted. In effect, he turned for help to the magical underworld. His thuggish informants were none too consistent. One demon told him one thing, an- other something else. The consensus, though, was that while there was nothing the Free’l actually wanted enough to go to any trouble for it (they didn’t even want to get rid of their nasal drip, for example — in a perverse way they were proud of it), there was one thing they disliked intensely — Neeshan himself. The Free’l thought, the demons reported, that he was inconsiderate, tactless, offi- cious, and a crashing bore. They regarded him as the psychological equivalent of the worst case of dreeze ever known, carried to the nth power. They wished he’d drop dead or hang himself. Neeshan dismissed the last of the demons. His eyes had begun to shine. The Free’l thought he was a nuisance, did they? They thought he was the most annoying thing they’d encountered in the course of their racial history? Good. Fine. Splendid. Then he’d really annoy them. He’d have to watch out for poison, of course. But in the end, they’d turn to magic to get rid of him. They’d have to. 105

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And then he’d have them. They’d be caught. One act of communal magic that really worked and they’d be sold on magic. He’d be sure of his senior rating. NEESHAN began his cam- paign immediately. Where the Free’l were, there was he. He was always on hand with unwanted explanations, hy- percritical objections, and maddening “wouldn’t -it- be - betters.” Whereas earlier in his evangelical mission he had confined himself to pointing out how much easier magic would make life for the Free’l, he now counciled and advised them on every phase of their daily routine, from mud- smearing to rain-sitting, and from the time they got up un- til they went to bed. He even pursued them with advice after they got into bed, and told them how to run their sex lives — advice which the Free’], who set quite as much store by their sex lives as any- body does, resented passion- ately. But most of all he harped on their folly in putting up with nasal drip, and instruct- ed them over and over again in the details of a charm — a quite simple charm — for get- ting rid of it. The charm would, he informed them, work equally well against anything — or person — that they found annoying. 106 The food the Free’l brought him began to have a highly peculiar taste. Neeshan grin- ned and hung a theriacal charm, a first-class antidote to poison, around his neck. The Free’l’s distate for him bothered him, naturally, but he could stand it. When he had repeated the anti-annoy- ance charm to a group of Free’l last night, he had no- ticed that Rhn was listening eagerly. It wouldn’t be much longer now. On the morning of the day before the equinox, Neeshan was awakened from sleep by an odd prickling sensation in his ears. It was a sensation he’d experienced only once be- fore in his life, during his novitiate, and it took him a moment to identify it. Then he realized what it was. Some- body was casting a spell against him. At last! At last! It had worked ! Neeshan put on his robe and hurried to the door of the hut. The day seemed remark- ably overcast, almost like night, but that was caused by the spell. This one happened to involve the optic nerves. He began to grope his way cautiously toward the village center. He didn’t want the Free’l to see him and get sus- picious, but he did want to have the pleasure of seeing them cast their first accurate spell. (He was well protected against wind-damage from it, /MRGARET ST. CLAIR

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of course.) When he was al- most at the center, he took cover behind a hut. He peered out. They were doing it right. Oh, what a satisfaction! Neeshan felt his chest expand with pride. And when the spell worked, when the big wind swooped down and blew him away, the Free'l would cer- tainly receive a second magi- cal missionary more kindly. Neeshan might even come back, well disguised, himself. The ritual went on. The dancers made three circles to the left, three circles to the right. Cross over, and all sprinkle salt on the interstices of the star Rhn had traced on the ground with the point of a knife. Back to the circle. One to the left, one to right, while Rhn, in the center of the circle, dusted over the salt with — with what ? “lley!’’ Neeshan yelled in sudden alarm. “Not brim- stone! Watch out! You're not doing it ri — " His chest contracted sud- denly, as if a large, stony hand had seized his thorax above the waist. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't think, he couldn't even say “Ouch!” It felt as if his chest — no, his whole body — was being com- pressed in on itself and turn- ing into something as hard as stone. He tried to wave his tiny, heavy arms in a counter- charm; he couldn't even in- hale. The last emotion he experienced was one of bitter- ness. He might have known the Free'l couldn't get any- thing right. The Free'l take a dim view of the small stone image that now stands in the center of their village. It is much too heavy for them to move, and while it is not nearly so much of a nuisance as Neeshan was when he was alive, it incon- veniences them. They have to make a detour around it when they do their magic dances. They still hope, though, that the spells they are casting to get rid of him will work even- tually. If he doesn't go away this autumn, he will the au- tumn after next. They have a good deal of faith in magic, when you come right down to it. And patience is their long suit. END mm THE AUTUMN AFTER NEXT 107

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EXChdn^^ ByJ. F. BONE How Muld any race look so ferocious and yet he peace- ful — and devise so nasty a weapon? I I COULDN’T help listening to the big spaceman sitting alone at the corner table. He wasn’t speaking to me — that was certain — nor was his flat, curiously uninflected voice di- rected at anyone else. With some sui'prise I realized that he was talking to himself. People don’t do that nowa- days. They’re adjusted. He noted my raised eye- brows and grinned, his square teeth white against the dark planes of his face. “I’m not psycho,’’ he said. “It’s just a bad habit I picked up on Lyrane.” “Lyrane?” I asked. “It hasn’t been entered on the charts yet. Just discover- ed.’’ His voice was inflected now. And then it changed abruptly. “If you must know, this is ethanol — CoHjjOHt— 111

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and I drink it.” He looked at me with an embarrassed ex- pression in his blue eyes. “It’s just that I’m not used to it yet,” he explained without ex- plaining. “It’s easier when I vocalize.” “You sure you’re all right?” I asked. “Want me to call a psychologician ?” “No. I’ve just been certified by Decontamination. I have a paper to prove it.” “But—” “Draw up a chair,” he in- vited. “I hate to drink alone. And I’d like to talk to some- body.” I smiled. My talent was working as usual. I can’t walk into a bar without someone telling me his life history. Nice old ladies buttonhole me at parties and tell me all about their childhoods. Boys tell me about girls. Girls tell me about boys. Politicians spill party secrets and pass me tips. Something about me makes folks want to talk. It’s a tal- ent and in my business it’s an asset. You see. I’m a freelance writer. Nothing fancy or sig- nificant, just news, popular stuff, adventure stories, prob- lem yarns, romances, and mys- teries. I’ll never go down in history as a literary great, but it’s a living — and besides I meet the damnedest charac- ters. So I sat down. “I guess you’re not conta- gious if you’ve been through Decontamination,” I said. He looked at me across the rim of an oversized brandy sniffer — a Napoleon, I think it’s called — and wag- gled a long forefinger at my nose. “The trouble wfith you groundhogs is that you’re al- ways thinking we spacers are walking hotbeds of contagion all primed to wreck Earth. You should know better. Any- thing dangerous has about as much chance of getting through Decontamination as an ice cube has of getting through a nuclear furnace.” “There was Martian Fe- ver,” I reminded him. “Three centuries ago and you still remember it,” he said. “But has there been any- thing else since Decontamina- tion was set up?” “No,” I admitted, “but that was enough, wasn’t it? We still haven’t reached the pre- Mars population level.” “Who wants to?” He sipped at the brownish fluid in the glass and a shudder rippled the heavy muscles of his chest and shoulders. He grinned nastily and took a bigger drink. “There, that ought to hold you,” he muttered. He looked at me, that odd embar- rassed look glinting in his eyes. “I think that did it. No tolerance for alcohol.” I gave him my puzzled and expectant look. He countered with a gesture at the nearly empty brandy glass. I got the idea. I signaled autoservice — a conditioned re- 112 J. F. BONE

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flex developed over years of pumping material out of spacemen — and slipped my ID into the check slot of the robot as it rolled up beside us and waited, humming expectantly. “Rum,” the spaceman said. “Demerara, four ounces.” “You are cautioned, sir,” the autoservice said in a flat mechanical voice. “Demerara rum is one hundred fifty proof and is not meant to be ingested by terrestrial life-forms with- out prior dilution.” “Shut up and serve,” I said. The robot clicked disapprov- ingly, gurgled briefly inside its cubical interior and extruded a pony glass of brownish liquid. “Sir, you will undoubt- edly end up in a drunkard’s grave, dead of hepatic cirrho- sis,” it informed me virtuous- ly as it returned my ID card. I glared as I pushed the glass across the table. “Robots,” I said contemptu- ously. It was lost on that me- tallic monstrosity. It was al- ready rolling away toward another table. The spaceman poured the pony glass into his Napoleon, sniffed appreciatively, sipped delicately and extended a meaty hand. “My name’s Hal- sey,” he said. “Captain Roger Halsey. I skipper the Two Txvo Four.” “The Bureau ship that land- ed this morning?” He nodded. “Yeah. I’m one of the Bureau’s brave boys.” There was a faint sneer in his voice. “The good old Bureau of Extraterrestrial Explora- tion. The busy BEE.” He fail- ed to pronounce the individual letters. “You’re a reporter, aren’t you?” he asked sud- denly. “How’d you guess?” “That little trick of not an- swering an introduction. Most of you sludge pumpers do it, but I never knew why.” “Libel and personal privacy laws,” I said. “If you don’t know who we are, you can*t sue.” He grinned. “Okay. I don't care. Keep your privacy. All I want is someone to talk to.” I smiled inwardly. “Think my job’s exciting?” he asked. “Skipper of an ex- ploration ship. Poking my nose into odd corners of the Galaxy. Seeing what’s over Hie hill.” “Of course,” I said. “Well, you’d be wrong ninety-nine times out of a hundred. It's just a job. Most of it is checking — or did you know that only one sun in ten has planets, and only one in ten thousand has a spectrum that will support human life, and that only one in ten thou- sand planets has Earthlike qualities? So you can imagine how we felt when we ran across Lyrane.” He grimaced wryly. “I had it on the log as Halsey’s Planet for nearly two weeks before we discovered it was inhabited.” He shrugged. “So the 4iame was changed. Too bad. Always did want to 113 CULTURAL EXCHANGE

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have a planet named after me. But ni make it yet.” I clucked sympathetically. Capt, Halsey sighed, and this is what he told me. II IT’S a beautiful world, Ly- rane is. Like Earth must have been before it got clut- tered up with people. No cities, no smoke, no industrial complexes — ^just green plains, snowy mountains, dark for- ests, blue seas, and white polar caps all wrapped in cotton clouds swimming in the clear- est atmosphere you ever saw. It made my eyes ache to look at it. And it affected the crew the same way. We were wild to land. We came straight in along the equatorial plane until we hit the Van Allen Belt and the automatics took over. We stopped dead, matched intrin- sics and skirted the outer band, checking the radiation quality and the shape of the Belt. It was a pure band that dipped down at the poles to form entry zones. There was not a sign of bulges or indus- trial contaminants. Naturally we had every- thing trained on the planet while we made our sweeps — organic detectors, radar, spec- troanalytic probes — all the gadgets the BEE equips us with to make analysis easy and complete. The readings were so homelike that every man was landsick. I wasn’t any different from the rest of them, but I was in command and I had to be cautious about setting the Two Two Four down until we’d really wrung the analytic data dry. So, while the crew grumbled about hanging outside on a skyhook, we kept swinging around in a polar orbit until we knew that world below us like a baby knows its mother. It checked clean to five decimal places, which is the limit of our gadgetry. Paradise, that’s what it was — a paradise un- trod by human foot. And eveiy foot on the ship was itching. “When we gonna land. Skipper?” Alex Baranov ask- ed me. It was a gross breach of discipline, but I forgave him. Alex was the second en- gineer, an eager kid on his first flight out from Earth. Like most youngsters, he thought there was romance in space, but right now he was landsick. Even worse than most of us. And, like most kids, he’d leap where angels’d dread to walk on tiptoe. “We’ll land,” I assured him. “You’ll be down there pretty soon.” He hurried off to tell the others. We set the ship down in the middle of one of the continen- tal land masses in an open plain surrounded by forest and ran a few more tests be- fore we stepped out, planted 114 J. F. BONE

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the flag, and claimed the place for the Confederation. After that we had an impromptu celebration to thoroughly en- joy the solid feel of ground under our feet and open sky overhead. It lasted all of five minutes before we came to our senses and posted a guard. It was five minutes too long. Alex Baranov had a chance to get out of sight and go explor- ing, and, like a kid, he took it. We didn’t miss him for nearly ten minutes more, and in fif- teen minutes a man can cover quite a bit of territory. “Anyone see where he went?” I asked. “He was wearing a menti- com,” one of the crew offered. “Said he wanted to look around.” “The idiot!” I snapped. “He had no business going off like that.” “Nobody told him not to,” Dan Warren said. Dan was my executive officer, and a good hand in case of trouble, but he left the command deci- sions to me, and of course I figured that everybody knew the cardinal rule of first land- ings. The net result was that Alex had disappeared. I went back into the ship and broke out another men- ticom. “Alex !” I broadcasted. “Re- turn to ship at once !” “I can’t, Skipper,” Alex's projection came back to me, “I’m surrounded.” “By what? Where?” CULTURAL EXCHANGE “They look sorta human — bigger than us. I’m near the edge of the forest nearest the ship. I can’t do anything. I didn’t bring a blaster.” There was panic in his thoughts. And then suddenly I saw two hairy bipeds flash across Alex’s vision. Both of them were carrying spears. The nearest one jumped and lung- ed. The scene dissolved in a blaze of red panic and the pro- jection cut off as though some- one had turned a switch. I had a fix now and turned to face a knob of forest jutting out into the plain. Near the forest’s edge I saw a flurry of movement that vanished as I watched. “Break out a ’copter,” I or- dered. “Why?” Warren asked, and then I realized that I alone of all the crew had seen what had happened to Alex. I told them. The search, of course, was unproductive. I didn’t ex- pect that it would be anything else. I was pretty certain that Alex was a casualty, I’d felt people die while wearing men- ticoms, and the same blank sense of emptiness had blotted out Alex. It was a bad deal all around, I liked that kid. But Alex’s death had pro- vided data. This world was in- habited and the inhabitants weren’t friendly. So I had the crew stake out a perimeter which we could energize with 1U

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the ship’s engines, and acti- vated a couple of autoguards for patrol duty. Alex wasn’t a pleasant thought, but we weren’t equipped to retrieve bodies. So I wrote him in the log as missing and let it go at that. I had to correct the entry a week later when Alex came walking up to the perimeter as large as life and just as healthy, wearing a mild sun- burn, a sheepish expression, and nothing else. The autoguard announced his coming and I headed the delegation that met him. I read him the riot act, and after I’d finished chewing on him he was pinker than ever. “Okay, sir — so I was a fool,” he said. “But they didn’t hurt me. Scared me half to death, but once they realized I was intelligent there was no trouble. They were fascinated by my clothes.” Alex grinned ruefully. “And they’re pretty strong. They peeled me.” “Obviously,” I said coldly. “They have a village back in the woods.” He pointed vaguely behind him. “It’d pay to take a look at it.” “Mister Baranov,” I said. “If I don’t throw you in the brig for what you’ve done, it’s only because you may have brought back some informa- tion we can use. What are these natives like? What did they do to you besides making you a strip-tease artist? What cultural level are they? How 116 many of them do you estimate there are? What do they look like? Get up to the ship and report to Lieutenant Warren for interrogation and draw new clothing.” I had the same half exasperated, half angry tone that a relieved mother has when one of her young- sters returns home late but unharmed. Alex must have recognized it, because he grinned as he went off. I contacted Warren on the intercom. “Dan,” I said, “Ba- ranov’s back — apparently un- harmed. I want him given the works. When you’ve gotten everything you can get, have a man detailed to watch him. If he so much as looks suspi- cious, heave him in the brig.” Warren’s answering projec- tion had a laugh in it. “Always cautious, hey. Skipper? Okay, I’ll see that he gets the busi- ness.” It turned out that Alex didn’t have much real infor- mation except for a descrip- tion of the natives, their vil- lage, and their attitude toward him. It was about what you’d expect from a kid, interesting but far from helpful. The delegation of natives showed up a half hour later. They came walking across the open space between the ship and the forest as though they hadn’t a care in the world. Four of them — ^big hairy hu- manoids, carrying spears. J. F. BONE

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They were naked as animals. Not that they needed clothes with all that hair, but just the same their appearance gave me a queasy feeling — like I was looking at man’s early an- cestors suddenly come to life. If you can imagine a furry humanoid seven feet tall, with the face of an intelligent go- rilla and the braincase of a man, you’ll have a rough idea of what they looked like — ex- cept for their teeth. The ca- nines would have fitted better in the face of a tiger, and showed at the corners of their wide, thin-lipped mouths, giv- ing them an expression of ferocity. They came trotting straight across the plain, moving with grace and power. All external signs pointed to them being a carnivorous, primitive race. Hunters, probably. The mus- cles of my scalp twitched as some deep-buried instinct in- side me whispered, “Competi- tion!” I’VE met plenty of human- oids, but these were the first that roused any emotion other than curiosity. Perhaps it was their fierce appearance, or the bright, half-contemptu- ous intelligence in their eyes, or the confident arrogance in their approach, or merely that they looked more like us than the others I had met. What- ever it was, it was strong, and I had the impression that the feeling was mutual. CULTURAL EXCHANGE “Stop!” I said as they ap- proached the periphery. “Why should we?” the fore- most native replied in perfect Terran. “Because that barrier’ll bum you to a nice crisp cinder if you don’t.” “That’s a good reason,” the native said, nodding. Then the delayed reaction took over and the shock nearly floored me, until I saw' that he was w'earing Alex’s men- ticom. Well, that explained the language and the feeling of mutual distrust — and it could explain why I thought Alex had died back there in the jun- gle. A mental communicator snatched from its wearer’s head can give that impression. But it raised an entirely new set of questions. Where did this savage learn to oper- ate the circlet and how did he recognize its purpose? I guess I w'asn’t too smart, because the native was tuned to me and I wasn’t shielding my thoughts at all. He chuckled — it sounded like the purr of a cat. “We are not stupid, Earthman.” “So I see,” I said uneasily. “I am K’wan, chief of this segment. 1 wish to know why you are here.” “To survey your world. We are members of the Bureau of Extraterrestrial Exploration. It is our job to make surveys of planets.” “Why?” “For trade, colonization, 117

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and exploitation,” I answered. There was no sense in giving him a dishonest explanation. With him wearing that com- municator, it would have done no good to try. “And what have you de- cided about us?” “That’s not our job. We just investigate and report. What happens next is not our affair. But if you’re worrying — don’t. There are plenty of worlds available without bothering inhabited places. Since you are intelligent, we would prob- ably like to trade with you, if you have anything to trade — but that, of course, is up to you. We never intrude where we are not wanted, as long as we are treated with respect. If we are attacked, however, that is a different story.” It was the old respect-and-threat routine that worked with primitive races. But I wasn’t at all sure it was working npw. “Strange,” K’wan said. “I would have sworn you were a predatory race. You are enough like us to be our little cousins.” He scratched his head with a surprisingly hu- man gesture. “In your posi- tion I would have attacked to show my power and inspire respect. Perhaps you are tell- ing the truth.” “A predator can grow soft when he has too much prey,” 1 said. “Aye, there is truth in that. But what is too easy and how 118 much is too much? And does a man change his habits of eating just because he is fat?” “You can find out.” “I do not think that would be wise,” the native said. “Al- though you are physically weak, you sound confident. Therefore you are strong. And strength is to be respected. Let us be friends. We will make an agreement with you.” 1 SHOOK my head. “It is not our place to make agree- ments. We only observe.” “You have not done much of that,” he said pointedly. “You sit here and send your ma- chines over our seas and for- ests, but you do not see for yourselves. You cannot learn this way.” “We learn enough,” I said shortly. “We have talked of you at our council,” K’wan continued, “and we think that you should know more before you depart. So we have come to make you an offer. Let four of your men come with me, and four of mine will stay with you. We will exchange — and you can see our ways while we see yours. That would help us un- derstand each other.” It sounded reasonable. An exchange of hostages — or call it a cultural exchange, if you’d prefer. I told him that I’d think it over and to come back tomorrow. He nodded, tunied, and together with his retinue disappeared into the jungle. J. F. BONE

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WE HASHED K’wan’s proposal over at a board meeting that night and de- cided that we’d take it. The exact status of Lyranian cul- ture worried us. It is a cardi- nal rule never to underesti- mate an alien culture or to judge it by surface appear- ances. So we organized a team that would form our part of the “cultural exchange.” I would go, of course. If K’wan could visit us, I could hardly stay back. Alex was selected partly because he was an engineer, mostly because he’d been over the ground before. Ed Barger, our ecolo- gist, and Patrick Allardyce, our biologist, made up the re- mainder of the party. I’d have liked to take the padre and Doc, but Doc was more valua- ble at base, and if I could have only four men, I wanted fight- ing men. “Now,” I said, “we’ll take along a tight-beam communi- cator. Coupled to our menti- coms, it should be able to reach the ship and put what we see and what happens on permanent record.” Then I turned to Dan Warren. “If anything goes wrong, don’t try to rescue us. Finish your ob- servations and get out. You understand? And get those ex- change natives into Interroga- tion. Condition them to the eyeballs with cooperation dog- ma. We may need some friends here when the second echelon makes a landfall.” Warren nodded. I didn’t have to elaborate. The native village was about what I expected from our reconnaissance flights. It was beautifully camouflaged. You couldn’t tell it from the rest of the forest except that the trees were larger and were hollow — apparently hewn out with patient care to make a comfortable living space in- side. Lyranians lived in one place, if what I could see of their dwellings was any crite- rion. I wanted to look inside, but K’wan hustled us down the irregular “street” that wound through the grove of giant trees until we finally came to the granddaddy of them all, a trunk nearly forty feet in diameter. K’wan gestured at the tree. “Your house while you are here. We made it for you Earthmen.” His voice came over my menticom and was duly recorded on the ship, since we were in constant con- tact, giving our impressions of the place. So far it was strictly SOP. “Thanks,” I said. “We ap- preciate it.” I was really touched at this tribute. K’wan had probably evacuated his own house to furnish us quar- ters where we could be to- gether. The size of it indicated that it must be the chief’s residence. But like all primi- tives he had to lie a little and the fiction of making this place for us was a way of salvaging 119 CULTURAL EXCHANGE

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pSide in the face of our tech- nological superiority. He walked inside and we followed, expecting to find a gloomy hole — but instead the room glowed with a soft light that came from the walls themselves. The air was cool and comfortable, a pleasing contrast to the heat outside. “What the — ” I began, but Allardyce was already peering at the walls. “A type of luminous fun- gus,” he said. “A saprophyte. Lives on the wood of this tree and gives off light. Clever.” I shut my mouth and looked around. There were other rooms opening off this one and along one wall a knobby imita- tion of a staircase led upward to a hole overhead. “Hmmm, a regular sky- scraper,” Ed Barger com- mented, noting the direction of my gaze. “Well, we should not be crowded, at any rate.” I had been noticing some- thing was wrong without re- alizing it. You know the feel- ing you get when you’ve lost something, but can’t quite re- member what it was. Then my neurons made connections and I realized that the communi- cator and the menticom were both as dead as if we were in a lead box. Quietly I moved to the door — and Dan’s voice hammered in my ears : “Skipper ! Answer me! What’s wrong?” “Nothing, Dan,” I said. “We just went into the quarters 120 they assigned us. Something about them blocks transmis- sion and reception. We’re all fine.” “Oh.” Dan sounded relieved. “For a minute I was wor- ried.” “One of the boys’ll call in every two hours,” I assured him. “If you don’t hear from us then, it’ll be time to do something.” “Okay, Skipper, but what’ll I do?” “That’ll be your decision,” I said. “You’ll be ranking offi- cer.” Dan’s chuckle was humor- less. “Thanks, but I hope we keep on hearing from you.” “Don’t worry — you will. These people look worse than they really are. At least they have been nice so far.” “They’d better stay that way,” Dan replied grimly. It was my turn to chuckle. “Keep calm and keep your blasters dry. I’m going inside now. You’ll hear from us in two hours.” Ed BARGER looked at me a trifle oddly as I came through the doorway. “A while ago you were laughing at that story K’wan was tell- ing us about making this house for us. I caught your undertone.” “Sure. What about it?” “Well, I’m not so sure he was lying.” “Huh?” “Take a look around you.” J. F. BONE

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I did. It was a nice room, considering its origin — low benches around the walls, a table and four chairs in the center, a soft, thick floor cov- ering that was a pleasure to the feet. “See anything unusual?” Ed asked. “No,” I said. “What about those bench- es?” “They’re part of the walls,” I said, “cut out of the tree when it was hollowed out.” “Cut to our size?” I did a double take. Barger was right. The Lyranians were seven feet tall and long- legged, but the benches were precisely right for human sit- ting, and the table in the cen- ter was only three feet above the gray floor. Suddenly I didn’t feel so good. “And those rooms — ^there are four of them — scaled to people our size ?” I shrugged. “So they modi- fied the joint for us.” “You still don’t get it. This place is living. It’s growing. Nothing here except those chairs isn’t part of this tree, and I’m not sure that they weren’t. Besides, how did they know that there’d be four of us?” “They could have been hope- ful, or maybe four is their idea of a delegation. Remem- ber there were four of them that visited us, and they sug- gested that four of us visit them.” “It’s obvious,” Allardyce added, "that this place has been made for us. K’wan wasn’t lying.” Barger shook his head. “I still don’t like it. I think we’3 better get out of here. If they are as good biologists as this tree indicates, they’re a Class VI civilization at least — and we’re not set up to handle lev- els that high.” “I don’t think that’s neces- sary,” Allardyce said. “They don’t seem unfriendly, and un- til they do, we’re better off sitting pat and playing the cards as they’re dealt. We can always warn the ship in case anything goes wrong.” “Don’t be jumpy,” Alex broke in. “I told you they were all right. They grew the place for me. It’s just grown a little since.” I made a noncommittal noise. “It’s true,” Alex said. “While I was here I needed quarters and nobody wanted me in with them. They have some custom about not letting strangers in their houses after sunset. So they took a sapling and sprayed it with some sort of stuff and by the next “after- noon I had a one-room house.” “Where did you stay that first night?” I demanded. Alex shrugged. “In one of the trees down the street,” he said, pointing through the door. “It was some sort of a storage warehouse. No air conditioning and blacker than 121 CULTURAL EXCHANGE

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the inside of the Coal Sack. It rains pretty bad at night and they had to give me some shelter.” He was right on time with his last statement, because the skies opened up and started to pour. The four-hour evening rain had begun. It had fasci- nated us at first, the regular- ity with which the evening showers arrived and left, but our meteorologist assured us that it was a perfectly natural phenomenon in a planet with no axial tilt. “But growing a tree in a day is fantastic,” I said. “What’s more, it’s unbelieva- ble, a downright — ” “Not so fantastic,” Allar- dyce interrupted. “This really isn’t a tree. It’s a cycad — re- lated to the horsetail ferns back on Earth. They grow pretty fast anyway and they might grow faster here. Be- sides, the Lyranians could have some really potent growth stimulants. In our hydroponics stations we use delta-gibberelin. That’ll grow tomatoes from seed in a week, and forage crops in three days. It could be that they have something better that’ll do the job in hours.” “And one that makes a tree grow rooms?” I scoffed. ALLARDYCE nodded. “It’s possible, but I hate to think of the science behind it — it makes me feel like a blind baby fumbling in the dark — 122 and I’m supposed to be a good biologist.” He shivered. “Their science’ll be centuries ahead of ours if that is true.” “Not necessarily,” Barger said. “They could be good bi- ologists or botanists and no- thing much else. We’ve run into that sort of uneven cul- ture before.” “Ha!” Allardyce snorted. “That shows how little you know about experimental bi- ology. Anybody able to do with plants what these people do would have to know genetics and growth principles, bio- chemistry, mathematics, engi- neering and physics.” “Maybe they had it once and lost most of it,” I suggest- ed. “They wouldn’t be the first culture that’s gone retrograde. We did it after the Atomic Wars and we were several thousand years recovering. But we hadn’t lost the skills — they just degenerated into rituals administered by witch doctors who handed the for- mulas and techniques down from father to son. Maybe it’s like that here. Certainly these people give no evidence of an advanced civilization other than these trees and their na- tive intelligence. Civilized peo- ple don’t hunt with spears or live in tribal groups.” Barger nodded. “That’s a good point. Skipper.” “Well, there’s no sense speculating about it; maybe we’ll know if we wait and see,” Allardyce summed up. J. F. BONE

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I set sentries, three hours on and nine off, to keep Dan informed of our situation, and since rank has its privileges, I took the first watch. We were all tired from our walk through the woods ; the others turned in readily enough. I was sufficiently worried about the hints and implications in the native culture to keep alert — but nothing happened. I checked in with Dan back at the ship and went to awaken Alex, who had drawn the sec- ond watch, and turned in to the bedroom allotted to me. Normally I can sleep any- where, but I kept thinking about houses grown from trees and upholstery grown from fungus, about spear-carrying savages who understood the working principle of a men- ticom. It was all wrong and my facile explanation of a regress- ed cultui’e didn’t satisfy me. Superior technology and sav- agery simply didn’t go to- gether. Even in our Interreg- num Period, islands of culture and technology had remained, and men hadn’t reverted to complete savagery. But there were no such islands on this world — or none that were ap- parent. Such enclaves couldn’t have escaped our search mecha- nisms, which are designed precisely to locate such things. And besides, an advanced bi- ological technology would have no need for hunting or spears. CULTURAL EXCHANGE They could grow all the food they needed. Any damn fool knew that. Then why the noble savage act? For if our analysis was right, it must be an act. Why were they trying to hood- wink us ? The only answer was that there was a high civiliza- tion here that was being delib- erately hidden from us. The only mistake they had made was in underestimating us — the old story of civilized men sneering at savages, but in reverse. The trees, therefore, must be such old and primitive tech- niques that they thought noth- ing of them, deeming them so inconsequential that even sav- ages like us would know of them and not be suspicious. At that, they probably didn’t have too much time after they detected us orbiting and in- tending to land. And if that were true, there could be only one place where their civiliza- tion was hidden. 1 TRIED to get to my feet, to warn the others — but I couldn’t move and no sound came from my flaccid vocal cords. I was paralyzed, help- less, and K’wan’s amused thought floated gently into my brain. “I told the others that you humans were an advanced race, but they couldn’t believe an obviously warlike species that depended upon machinery could be anything but savages. And your man Alex confirmed their beliefs. So we tried to 123

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meet you on your own ground — savage to savage, as it were. It seems as though we weren’t as good at being savages as we thought.” And K’wan stepped through an apparently solid section of tree trunk that parted to let him pass ! This tree was nothing but a mousetrap, and we were the mice! Why hadn’t one of us carried the discussion a bit further? Any idiot should know that biological agents were fully as deadly as physi- cal ones. And these people were self-admittedly predato- ry. Contempt at my stupidity was the only emotion that fill- ed my mind — that we would be trapped like a flock of brainless sheep and led bleat- ing happily to slaughter. Raw anger surged through me, smothering my fear in a red blanket of rage. K’wan shook his head. “Your reaction works against you. It’s primitive — and, I think, dangerous. We cannot risk associating with a race that cannot control them- selves. You have developed too fast — too soon. We are an old race and a slow race, and our warlike days are far behind us. The council was right. Something must be done about you or there will be more of your kind on Lyrane — ^hard, driving, uncontrolled, violent.” He sighed — a very human sigh — half regret, half resig- nation. “And you promised no harm 124 would come to us if we came with you,” I thought bitterly. “I said you would come to no harm, nor will you. You’ll just be changed a little.” “Like Alex?” “Yes.” “What did you do to him?” He grinned, exposing his long tusks. “You’ll find out,” he said. He sounded just like a villain in a cheap melo- drama. He took the menticom cir- clet off my head and all com- munication stopped. Two oth- er Lyranians stepped through the wall, lifted me and carried me out like a shanghaied drunk from a spaceport bar. I wasn’t particularly sur- prised at the laboratory that lay behind the wall. After all, an observation cage had to have its laboratory facilities. These were good — very good indeed. Even though I knew hardly anything about biological laboratories, there was no doubt that here were the products of an advanced technology. I hated to admit it, but it looked as though we had run into what we had al- ways feared but had never found — a civilization superior to ours. From the windowless appearance of the place, it was probably underground, and K’wan’s look and nod seemed to confirm my guess. They laid me out on a table, took blood and tissue samples and proceeded to forget me while they ran tests and analy- J. F. BONE

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ses. I kept trying to move, but it wasn’t any use. A group of about a dozen oldsters came in, looked at me and went away. The council, 1 guessed. In a surprisingly short time K’wan came back, distinguish- able by the menticom circlet. He was holding something that looked like a jet hypo in his hand. The barrel was full of a cloudy red liquid that swirled sluggishly behind the confining glass. “This won’t hurt,” he said, his thoughts amplified by the circlet. He lifted my arm, examined it and nodded. There was a high-pitched, sibilant hiss as he touched the trigger of the syringe and I felt a brief sting near my elbow. “There — that’s that!” he said. “Now we’ll take you back and get the others.” I swore at him coldly and viciously. He smiled. Alex helped lay me back on my bed in the tree house. He looked down at me and grin- ned. It wasn’t a pleasant grin. It reminded me of a crocodile. Naked, I was standing on an endless sandy plain. Off in the distance the Two Two Four stood on her landing jacks, a tall, needle-pointed tower of burnished silver metal. The sun beat down from a cobalt sky burning my bare back as I trudged pain- CULTURAL EXCHANGE fully across the hot shifting sand. My feet, scorched and blistered, sent agony racing through me with every step I took toward the tall silver col- umn that seemed to recede from me as fast as I ap- proached. My throat was choked with dust and my mind filled with fear and pain. I had to reach the ship. I had to. Yet I knew with dread- ful certainty that I would not. He came at me from a hol- low in the sandy ground, a huge, furry Lyranian — bigger than any I had seen. His white tusks glittered in the sunlight as he leaped at me. Twisting, I avoided him and turned to run. To fight that mountain of fanged flesh was futile. He could rip me apart with one hand. But I moved with viscid slowness, stum- bling through the shifting sands. In a moment he was upon me, clutching with his huge hands, snapping at my throat with his tusked mouth. Fear pumped adrenalin into my system and I fought as I had never fought before, break- ing his holds, throwing jar- ring punches into his fanged face as he clawed and bit at me. With a violent effort I broke away and ran again toward the safety of the distant ship. For a moment I left him be- hind as he scrambled to re- gain his feet and came run- ning after me. He was on me 125

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again, hands reaching for my throat. I couldn’t get away. And again we fought, batter- ing and clawing at each other, using fists, feet and teeth, biting and gouging. His strength was terrible and his hot, fetid breath was rank in my nostrils. With a grunt of triumph he tripped me and I fell on my back on the blaz- ing sand. I screamed as my back struck the searing sur- face, but he held me helpless and immovable, pinned be- neath his massive, crushing weight. And then he began to eat me! I felt his sharp fangs sink into my shoulder muscles and meet in my flesh. With a rush of frantic strength I threw him off again and again, ran stumbling across the plain. Once more he caught me and again we fought. It went on endlessly — the fight, the temporary break- away, the flight, the pursuit, and the recapture. I wondered dully why no one on the ship had seen us. Perhaps they were looking in the wrong di- rection, or perhaps they weren’t even looking. If I sur- vived this and found that they hadn’t been on watch — I snarled and slammed my fist into the Lyranian’s face. Both of us were covered with blood, but he was visibly weaker. It was no longer a fight; we were too exhausted for that. We pawed at each 126 other feebly, and I could de- tect something oddly like fear in him now. He couldn’t hold me — ^but neither could I finish him. I gathered my last remain- ing strength into one last blow. My torn fist smashed into his bloody face. He top- pled to the ground and I fell beside him, too spent to move. I lay there panting, watching him. He rose to his hands and knees and came crawling to- ward me, trembling with weakness. I felt his smother- ing weight pinning me as he fell across me. He twisted slowly, his fanged mouth gaping to bite again. His jaws closed on my arm. I was done — beaten — too weary and bruised to care. He had won. But his teeth couldn’t break my skin. Like me, he was fin- ished. We lay there as the sun beat down, glaring at each other with fear and hate. And suddenly — over us — loomed the familiar faces of my crew and the tall tower of the Two Two Four. Somehow I had reached the ship and safety ! 1 AWOKE. I was bathed with sweat. My muscles were aching and my head was a ball of fire. I looked around. Everything seemed normal. My menticom was on my head and I was lying on the bed in the tree house. Painfully I J. F. BONE

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rose to my feet and staggered into the main room. “My God ! Skipper, you look awful!” Allardyce’s voice was sharp with concern. “What’s wrong?” “I don’t know,” I muttered. “My head’s splitting.” “Here, sit down. Let me take a look at you.” Allardyce produced a thermometer and stuck it in my mouth. “Mmmm,” he said worriedly. “You’ve got fever.” “I feel like I’ve been through the mill,” I said. “We’d better get back to the ship. Doc should have a look at you.” I wanted nothing more than the familiar safety of the ship, away from these odd na- tives and exotic diseases that struck despite omnivaccina- tion. And we should get back before the others fell sick. “All right, Pat,” I said. “Contact Dan. Have him send the big ’copter. We’ll leave at once.” I discounted the expe- rience of last night as delir- ium, but just to make sure, I checked with Allardyce and Barger when they, came in. “Obviously fever,” Barger said. “Nothing happened to me like you describe.” “Nor to me,” Allardyce said. I nodded. They were right, of course, unless the Lyranian in their dreams had eaten and absorbed them. Then — but that was sheer nonsense. I was being a suspicious fool. CULTURAL EXCHANGE But that dream — all of it — had been damnably real. We made our excuses to K’wan as the ’copter fluttered down into a nearby clearing. “I’m sorry about this,” K’wan said apologetically, “but I never thought of the possibility of diseases. We are all immune. We do have some biological skill, as you’ve surely guessed, but our en- gineering technology is far in- ferior to yours. We thought it would be better not to let you know about us until we had a chance to observe you. But you undoubtedly have seen enough to deduce our culture.” He grinned — a fe- rocious grimace that exposed his long tusks. “I suppose we are rather bad liars. But then we’re not accustomed to de- ception.” “I understand,” I said. “You had no way of knowing what we were really like. We could have been the advance guard of a conquering space armada. You showed great courage to open relations with us.” “Not as great as yours. We had the opportunity of exam- ining your man Alex. You had only his untried opinions to go by.” The ’copter came down with a flutter of rotor blades, and I shook hands with K’wan. For a moment I was tempted to call Dan and tell him to turn our hostages loose, but on second thought decided 127

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that could wait. I slipped my menticom off. There was no point in broadcasting my thoughts, and without the gadget KVan couldn't inter- cept them unless they were directed. After all, we were a minority on this world and Earth didn't even know where we were yet. A ship can cross hyper-space far more easily and quickly than the most powerful transmitter can broadcast across normal space. It would be a thousand years before Earth could hear from us by radio, even if they could distinguish our mes- sages from stellar interfer- ence. While I felt oddly friendly, there was no reason to take chances, especially if there was any truth in that dream. “You will be leaving soon?" K'wan asked. “You and the ship?” “Yes," I said. “We have done all we can do here." I looked up at him. He was standing there — holding the menticom in his hand — yet I understood him! I didn't let the astonish- ment show on my face, nor the shock that coursed through my mind when the Lyranian in my brain tried vainly to scream a waiming! Instead I took the circlet and turned to go. “Remember what you are to do; the others will help," K'wan said. “I will remember," I re- plied. You' re damn ivell right ril remember, 1 thought grim- ly. The Lyranian was supposed to wreck the ship. He waved farewell as I turned to enter the ’cop- ter. “Our thoughts go with you for your success,” he said. The Lyranian in my brain screamed and struggled, but I held him easily. I was his mas- ter, not he mine. There would be no sabotage on the Two Two Four. He wouldn’t wreck my ship. “Dan,” I said as we went into orbit, “did Alex come aboard?” “Of course.” “Where is he?” “Down in the engine room, I suppose, or in his bunk. It’s not his watch.” “Maybe you’d better check. But before you do — ” He waited for me to con- tinue, and finally I was able to. “Put Allardyce, Barger, and myself in the brig,” I said. “Set a guard over us with instructions to shoot if we try to make a break. Then get Alex, if he’s aboard. Frankly, I don’t think you’ll find him. They didn’t need a ship’s commander, a sociolo- gist or a biologist, but they did need an engineer. Now get going. This is an order!” Warren stiffened. “Yes, sir — sorry, sir!” Inside my skull, the Lyran- J. F. BONE 128

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ian came to life — struggled briefly — and then quit. Bar- ger, Allardyce and I spent the rest of the trip home in the air-conditioned, radiation-re- sistant, germproof, dustproof, escape-resistant brig. Alex, of course, wasn’t aboard. There aren’t many places on a star- ship where a man can hide, and the crew searched them all. Even so, I kept worrying about the ship’s safety all the way back. It was a miserable trip. I suppose it was just as miserable for the Lyranians in my two companions who kept worrying about how to de- stroy us. It didn’t do them any good either. They never got a chance, and ultimately we reached Decontamination. Barger and Allardyce are up there now. The medics think they can erase the Ly- ranians with insulin shock, but it’ll take time. Mine, be- ing a nice, tame one, was con- sidered to be more valuable in me than out. We’re going to have to know a lot about Ly- rane in a huriy if we’re going to do anything about those people, and my Lyranian can tell us plenty. But I’ll bet we’ll find things different on Lyrane when we go back. They’ll have at least ten years, and with the brains they’ve got — and Alex’s brain to pick— they’ll do just fine from an engineering point of view. I’ll bet they’ll even have spaceships. CULTURAL EXCHANGE From what I can gather from my alter ego, they checked Alex’s brain and didn’t like what they saw. That’s the trouble with ro- mantics. They always re- member the wars and the fighting, never the stodgy, peaceful interims. But you simply don’t spring that sort of stuff on a culture like Ly- rane’s. And I suppose my anger didn’t help things any, but if not for that anger and my primitive bull-headedness, we might not be here- III CAPT. Halsey hurriedly downed the rum. “Skip- pers are picked because they’re tough-minded and au- thoritarian. In space you need it occasionally. Fortunately I lived up to specifications. A peaceful sort like my Lyran- ian just couldn’t take it — for- tunately.” “Fortunately?” I asked. “Sure. What else? Possibly those natives we conditioned would help our case, possibly not. And in the meantime the Lyranians would suck Alex dry. And with the Tivo Two Four gone it’d be maybe a couple of hundred years be- fore we ran into them again, and by then they’d really be ready — loaded for bear with itchy trigger fingers — and we just might have a war on our hands. As it is we’ll send out a battle fleet to give some au- 129

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thority to our negotiators so no one will get hurt. They just shouldn't have picked Alex as typical of us. With his atti- tude and our weapons, they naturally got a lot of wrong ideas.” ‘‘Wrong?” I prompted the skipper. Halsey chuckled. “Yes, that's what I said — wrong ideas,” he said in that remote second voice. “Just because you've forgotten self-defense doesn't mean that other peace- ful civilizations don't remem- ber it.” END Underwater Water Manipulators A vast area some 47 times larger than the United States exists on earth. Comparatively, it’s unused, unexplored. Economically, it’s vital to the continued development of this planet. Potentially, it’s accessible — much more so than anything in space. Yet, in reality its atmosphere turns to solid rock in the most important areas during parts of every year. And even where it remains fluid, the ‘‘atmosphere” is as unbreathable as the moon’s vacuum; its gravity as light as Mars’; its pressure as heavy as Jupiter’s. It is, of course, the 140 million square miles of terrestrial real estate covered with water and ice. Underwater manipulation, like “planetary’^ engineering of science fic- tion, takes place in a completely alien environment and has problems unlike anything on earth. The question of keeping water liquid in sub- freezing winter at low cost is answered by these underwater manipulators. Year-around water commerce is part of the promise. Not only have underwater researchers found out how to keep water from freezing economically in 20 to 80 below zero weather, but also are developing new piers, aerators, wave control methods, propellers, under- water tools ... as reported by Industrial Research. Largely as a result of IGY explorations, scientists are looking to the seas to solve problems now becoming unsolvable on land or on the water’s surface: new sources of oil, manganese, cobalt, copper, gold, and other resources; water trans- lX)rtation impervious to storms; undetectable military installations; un- limited (by eicreage) farms for both crops and seastock. The potential is as vast as the imagination. 130 J. F. BONE

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